by David Brin
Dr. Soo cupped her mouth and uttered a high trilling sound, the call of a fyuallu bird. Athaclena did not hear the snapping twang of bowstrings as thirty crossbows fired. She tensed though. If the Gubru had invested in really sophisticated drones…
“Gotcha!” Benjamin exulted. “Six little tops, all broken to bits! The robots are all down!”
Athaclena breathed again. Robert was down there. Now, perhaps, she could believe that he and the others had a chance. She touched Benjamin’s shoulder, and the chim reluctantly handed over the binoculars.
Someone must have noticed when the monitor screens went blank. There was a faint hum, and the upper hatch of one of the hover tanks opened. A helmeted figure peered about the quiet meadow, its beak working in alarm as it saw the wreckage of a nearby watch robot. A sudden movement rustled the branches nearby. The soldier whirled about with its laser drawn as something or someone leaped forth from one of the neighboring trees. Blue lightning blazed at the dark figure.
It missed. The confused Gubru gunner couldn’t track a dim shape that neither flew nor fell but swung across the narrow clearing at the end of a long vine! Bright bolts went wide two more times, and then the soldier’s chance was gone.” There was a “crack” as the shadowy figure wrapped its legs around the slender avian and snapped its spine.
Athaclena’s triple pulse beat fast as she saw Robert’s silhouette stand on the turret of the tank, over the crumpled body of the Talon Soldier. He raised an arm to signal, and suddenly the clearing was filled with running forms.
Chims hurried among the tanks and floaters, carrying earthenware bottles. Behind them shambled larger figures bearing bulky packs. Athaclena heard Benjamin mutter to himself in suppressed resentment. It had been her choice to include gorillas in this operation, and the decision was not popular.
“… thirty-five… thirty-six …” Elayne Soo counted off the seconds. As the dawn light spread they could see chims clambering over the alien vehicles. This was gamble number three. Would surprise delay the inevitable reaction long enough?
Their luck ran out after thirty-eight seconds. Sirens shrieked, first from the lead tank and then from the one in the rear.
“Look out!” someone cried below.
The furry raiders scattered for the trees as Talon Soldiers tumbled out of their hover barges, firing searing blasts from their saber rifles. Chims fell screaming, batting at burning fur, or toppled silently into the undergrowth, holed from front to back. Athaclena clamped down on her corona in order not to faint under their agony.
This was her first taste of full-scale war. Right now there seemed to be no joke, only suffering and pointless, hideous death.
Then Talon Soldiers began falling. The avians hopped about seeking targets that had disappeared into the trees and were struck down by missiles as they stood. The fighters adjusted their weapons to seek out energy sources, but there were no lasers out there to home in on, no pulse-projectors, not even chemically powered pellet guns. Meanwhile crossbow bolts whizzed like stinging gnats. One by one, the Gubru warriors jerked and fell.
First one tank, then the other, began to rise on growling blasts of air. The lead vehicle turned. Its triple barrels then started blasting swaths through the forest.
The tops of towering trees seemed to hang in midair for brief moments as their centers exploded, before plummeting earthward in a haze of smoke and flying wood chips.’ Taut vines whipped back and forth like agonized snakes, spraying their hard-won liquors in all directions. Chims screamed as they spilled from shattered branches.
Is it worth it? Oh, can anything be worth this?
Athaclena’s corona had expanded in the emotion of the moment, and she felt a glyph start to take shape. Angrily she rejected the unformed sense image, an answer to her question. She wanted no laughing Tymbrimi poignancies now. She felt like weeping, human style, but did not know how.
The forest was afroth with fear, and native animals fled the devastation. Some ran right over Athaclena and Benjamin, squeaking in their panicked desperation to get away. The radius of slaughter spread as the deadly vehicles opened up on everything in sight. Explosions and flame were everywhere.
Then, as abruptly as it had started firing, the lead tank stopped! First one, then another barrel glowed reddish white and shut down. Half of the noise abated.
The other fighting machine seemed to be suffering similar problems, but that one tried to continue firing, in spite of its crackling, drooping barrels.
“Duck!” Benjamin cried out as he pulled Athaclena down. The crew on the hillside took cover just in time as the rear tank exploded in a searing, actinic flash. Pieces of metal and shape-plast armor whistled by overhead.
Athaclena blinked away the sharp afterimage. In a momentary confusion brought on by sensory overload, she wondered why Benjamin was so obsessed with Earthly waterfowl.
“The other one’s jammed!” Somebody shouted. Sure enough, by the time Athaclena was able to look again it was easy to see smoke rising from the lead tank’s apron. The turret emitted grinding noises, and it seemed unable to move. Mixed with the pungent odor of burning vegetation came the sharp smell of corrosion.
“It worked!” Elayne Soo exulted. Then she was over the top and gone, running to tend the wounded.
Benjamin and Robert had proposed using chemicals to disable a Gubru patrol. Athaclena then modified the plan to suit her own purposes. She did not want dead Gubru, as had been their policy so far. This time she wanted live ones.
There they were now, bottled up inside their vehicles, unable to move or act. Their communications antennae were melted, and anyway, by now the attacks in the Sind had surely begun. The Gubru High Command had worries enough closer to home. Help would be some time coming.
Silence held for a moment as debris rained to the forest floor. Dust slowly settled.
Then there was heard a growing chorus of high shrieks — shouts of glee unaltered since before Mankind began meddling with chimpanzee genes. Athaclena heard another sound, as well … a rolling, ululating cry of triumph — Robert’s “Tarzan” call.
Good, she thought. It is good to know he lived through all that killing.
Now if only he follows the plan and stays out of sight from now on!
Chims were emerging from the toppled trees, some hurrying to help Dr. Soo with the injured. Others took up positions around the disabled machines.
Benjamin was looking to the northwest, where a few stars faded before the dawn. Faint, warlike rumblings could be heard coming from that direction. “I wonder how Fiben and the city boys are doin’ at their end,” he said.
For the first time Athaclena set her corona free. Released at last, it crafted kuhunnagarra … the essence of indeterminacy postponed. “It is beyond our grasp,” she told him. “Here, in this place, is where We act.”
With a raised hand she signaled her hillside units forward.
46
Fiben
Smoke rose from the Valley of the Sind. Scattered fires had broken out in wheat fields and among the orchards, injecting soot into a morning fast growing pale and dim.
A hundred meters high in the air, perched on the rough wooden frame of a handmade kite, Fiben used field glasses to scan the scattered conflagrations. The fighting had not gone at all well here in the Sind. The operation had been intended as a quick hit-and-run uprising — a way to hurt the invader. But it had turned into a rout.
And now the cloud deck was dropping, as if overladen with dark smoke and the sinking of their hopes. Soon he wouldn’t be able to see beyond a kilometer or so.
“Fiben!”
Below and to the left, not far from the kite’s blocky shadow, Gailet Jones waved up at him. “Fiben, do you see anything of C group? Did they get the Gubru guard post?”
He shook his head, exaggeratedly.
“No sign of them!” he called. “But there’s dust from ” enemy armor!”
“Where? How much? We’ll give you more slack so you can get a better—”
“No way!” he shouted. “I’m comin’ down now.”
“But we need data—”
He shook his head emphatically. “There are patrols all over the place! We’ve got to get out of here!” Fiben motioned to the chims controlling his tether rope.
Gailet bit her lip and nodded. They started reeling him in.
As the attack collapsed and their communications unraveled, Gailet had only become more frantic for information. Frankly, he couldn’t blame her. He, too, wanted to know what was happening. He had friends out there! But right now it might be better to think of their own skins.
And it all started so well, he thought as his craft slowly descended. The uprising had begun when chim workers employed at Gubru construction sites set off explosives carefully emplaced over the last week. At five of the eight target sites, satisfying fiery plumes had risen to meet the dawn sky.
But then the advantages of technology began to be seen. It -had been mind-numbing, witnessing how quickly the automated defense systems of the enemy responded, scything through advancing teams of irregular fighters before their assaults could barely begin. To his knowledge not a single of the more important objectives had been taken, let alone held.
All told, things did not look good at all.
Fiben was forced to luff the kite, spilling air as the crude glider dropped. The ground rushed up, and he gathered his legs for the impact. It came with a jarring thud. He heard one of the wooden spars break as the wing took up most of the shock.
Well, better a spar than a bone. Fiben grunted as he undid his harness and wrestled free of the heavy homespun fabric. A real parasail, with composite struts and duracloth wings, would have been an awful lot better. But they still didn’t know what it was about some manufactured goods that the invader was able to home in on. So he had insisted on homemade — and clumsy — substitutes.
The big, scarred chim named Max stood watch nearby, a captured Gubru laser rifle in one hand. He offered a hand. “You okay, Fiben?”
“Yeah, Max, fine. Let’s get this thing broken down.”
His crew hurried to disassemble the kite and get it under the cover of the nearby trees. Gubru floaters and fighters had been whistling overhead ever since the ill-fated foray had begun before dawn. The kite was almost insignificant, virtually invisible to radar or infrared. Still, they had surely been pushing their luck using it in daylight like this.
Gailet met them at the edge of the orchard. She had been reluctant to believe in the Gubru secret weapon — the enemy’s ability to detect manufactured goods. But she had gone along partway at his insistence. The chimmie wore a half-length brown robe over shorts and a homespun tunic. She clutched a notebook and stylus to her breast.
Getting her to leave behind her portable data screen had taken a major effort of persuasion.
If Fiben had imagined for a moment that he saw relief on her face when he picked himself out of the wreckage, he stood corrected. She was all business now.
“What did you see? How heavy were the enemy reinforcements from Port Helenia? How close did Yossy’s team get to the skynet battery?”
Good chens and chimmies have died this morning, but all she seems to care about is her damned data!
The space-defense strongpoint had been one of several targets of opportunity. Until now the few piddling ambushes in the mountains had hardly been enough to raise the enemy’s notice. Fiben had insisted that the first raid would have to count big. They would never find the enemy so unprepared again.
And yet Gailet had planned the operation in the Vale of Sind around her observers, not the fighting units. To her, information was more important than any harm they might do to the enemy. And to Fiben’s surprise the general had agreed.
He shook his head. “There’s a lot of smoke over in that direction, so I guess maybe Yossy accomplished something.” Fiben dusted himself off. There was a tear in his homespun overalls. “I saw plenty of enemy reinforcements moving about. It’s all up here.” He tapped his head.
Gailet grimaced, obviously wishing she could hear it all right now. But the plan had been to be away well before this. It was getting awfully late. “Okay, we’ll debrief you later. By now this rendezvous must be compromised.”
You gotta be kidding, Fiben thought, sarcastically. He turned. “You guys got that thing buried yet?”
The three chims in the kite team were kicking leaves over a low mound under the bulging roots of a fook sap tree. “All done, Fiben.” They began collecting their hunting rifles stacked beneath another tree.
Fiben frowned. “I think we’d better get rid of those. They’re Terran-make.”
Gailet shook her head emphatically. “And replace them with what? If we’re stuck with just our six or ten captured Gubru lasers, what can we accomplish? I’m willing to attack the enemy stark naked if I have to, but not unarmed!” Her brown eyes were hot.
Fiben felt his own anger. “You’re willing to attack. Why not go after the damn birds with a sharpened pencil then! That’s your favorite weapon.”
“That’s not fair! I’m taking all these notes because—”
She never finished the remark. Max interrupted, shouting, “Take cover!”
The sudden whistle of split air became a rocking boom as something white flashed past nearly at treetop level. Fallen leaves whirled and floated out upon the meadow in its wake. Fiben did not remember diving behind a knotted tree root, but he peered over it in time to see the alien craft rise and come about at the crest of the far hill, then begin its return run.
He felt Gailet nearby. Max was to the left, already high in the branches of another tree. The others had flattened themselves over to the right, closer to the verge of the orchard.
Fiben saw one of them raise his weapon as the scoutcraft approached again.
“No!” he shouted, realizing he was already too late.
The edge of the meadow erupted. Gobbets of earth were thrown skyward, as if by angry demons. In the blink of an eye the maelstrom ripped through the nearest trees, propelling fragments of leaves, branches, dirt, flesh, and bone through the air in all directions.
Gailet stared at the chaos, slack-jawed. Fiben threw himself onto her just before the rolling explosion swept past them. He felt the wake of the white fighting craft as it roared past. Surviving trees rattled and shook from the momentum of displaced air. A steady rain of debris fell onto Fiben’s back.
“Hmm-mmmph!”
Gailet’s face emerged from under his arm. She gasped. “Get friggin’ offa me before I suffocate, you smelly, flea-crackin’, moth-eaten …”
Fiben saw the enemy scout plane disappear over the hill. He got up quickly. “Come on,” he said, hauling her to her feet. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Gailet’s colorful curses ceased abruptly as she stood up. She gasped at the sight of what the Gubru weapon had done, staring as one does at what is too horrible to believe.
Bits of wood had been stirred vigorously with the grisly remains of three would-be warriors. The chims’ rifles lay scattered among the wreckage.
“If you’re plannin’ on grabbing one of those weapons, you’re on your own, sister.”
Gailet blinked, then she shook her head and mouthed one word. No. She was convinced.
Then she whirled. “Max!”
She started toward where they had last seen her big, dour servant. But just then there came a rumbling sound.
Fiben stopped her. “Troop transports. We haven’t got time. If he’s alive and can get away he will. Let’s go!”
The drone of giant machines drew closer. She resisted, still. “Oh, for Ifni’s sake, think of saving your notes!” he urged.
That struck home. Gailet let him drag her along. She stumbled after him for a few paces, then caught her stride. Together they began to run.
Some girl, Fiben thought as they fled under the cover of the trees. She might be a pain in the ass, but at least she’s got spunk. First time she’s ever seen anything like that,
and she doesn’t even throw up.
Yeah? Another little voice seemed to say inside him. And when did you ever see such a mess, either? Space battles are neat, clean, compared to this.
Fiben admitted to himself that the biggest reason he had not puked was that he’d be damned if he’d ever let himself lose his breakfast in front of this particular chimmie. He’d never give her the satisfaction.
Together they splashed across a muddy stream and sought cover away from there.
47
Athaclena
It was all up to Benjamin now.
Athaclena and Robert watched from cover up on the slopes as their friend approached the grounded Gubru convoy. Two other chims accompanied Benjamin, one holding high a flag of truce. Its device was the same as the symbol for the Library — the rayed spiral of Galactic Civilization.
The chim emissaries had doffed homespun and were now decked out in silvery formal robes, cut in a style appropriate for bipeds of their form and status. It took courage to approach this way. Although the vehicles were disabled — there had not been a sign of activity for more than half an hour — the three chims had to be wondering what the enemy would do.
“Ten to one the birds try using a robot first,” Robert muttered, his eyes intent on the scene below.
Athaclena shook her head. “No bet, Robert. Notice! The door to the center barge is opening.”
From their vantage point they could survey the entire clearing. The wreckage of the Howletts Center buildings loomed darkly over one still smoldering hover tank. Its sister, useless barrels drooping, lay canted on its shattered pressure-skirts.
In between the two wrecked fighting machines, from one of the disabled barges, a floating shape emerged.
“Right,” Robert sniffed in disgust. It was, indeed, a robot. It, too, carried a flapping banner, another depiction of the rayed spiral.