The War With Earth

by Leo Frankowski

  Hours went by, but I didn't want to rush them. They knew what they had to accomplish better than I did.

  We humans sat around my living room, talking and watching television, living in Dream World, but at standard speed, not times thirty. The computer power was needed elsewhere.

  We were talking about maybe calling it a night when Agnieshka, Eva, and Marysia came back in the room, and we felt ourselves shift back to times thirty speed.

  "I think that's done it," Agnieshka said. "We'll want to keep a close eye on things for a while yet, but we finally have that fellow under control."

  "What fellow do you mean?" I asked.

  "Earth's computer. New Kashubian engineers would have put each of those guns under a separate computer, and then linked them all so they could talk to each other. These people from Earth seem to be central control freaks. They have everything in their army tied into one huge computer. It's slow, being made out of silicon, but it is big. We had to design three new viruses, plus a worm, to chip off small parts of it, rewrite those sections so they would be under our control, and then chip off a few more small parts, and do it again. He had absolutely paranoid alarm circuits all over the place, and if we hadn't been thirty times faster than he was, we never could have done it."

  "Wait a minute. Are you telling me that you not only have control of those guns out there, but also control over the entire enemy army?" I said.

  "We have control over their command and control computer, but that's not like somebody having control over our CCC. With us, everybody takes orders directly from the general staff through the CCC. The Earthers still have the traditional command structure set up, with twelve grades of enlisted men, and twelve levels of officers. Their computer handles communications, but many decisions are made by the hierarchy."

  "Yes," Quincy said, jumping up, grinning wildly, and gesticulating enthusiastically. "But if we control their communications, we are in a position to do all sorts of amusing things to them. But we've got to be careful with it. If they start to distrust their computer, they have lots of backups available to them. Whenever we play some games on them, we must always make it look like it is the people who are screwing up, not the machines."

  "Well, isn't that the usual case?" Maryisa, Quincy's tank, asked.

  "Okay, okay," I said. "First things first. You ladies have control over the rail guns, right? The enemy is still receiving supplies and troops through the probe, right? And if we fired those guns, would the enemy know about it?"

  "Uh, yes, yes, and no, boss. We have the guns, the probe is still working, they have no people on the surface, and we can fake it so that no one below will know about what's going on out here."

  "Good. Set it up and open fire. And don't forget about blasting a tunnel for us to hide in."

  Looking through the humanoid drone's eyes, I saw all the rail guns but one aim at the sun and glow slightly along the rails. One gun aimed at a tungsten dune, and the side of that erupted in a spectacular fireworks display.

  "What's the situation on ammunition?"

  "There is a six-hour supply on hand, and I've ordered up additional supplies from the warehouse."

  "Good. Order us a lot, in fact, send up all the rail gun needles they have in stock, but in small batches, using circuitous routes. We don't want them to catch on to what's happening. They have one ammunition warehouse?"

  "Four of them, boss."

  "Okay. Do a bunch of complicated transfers between them, to confuse the issue. See to it that a lot of stuff gets lost."

  "Yes, sir."

  "How many kinds of ammunition do they have?"

  "More than forty, boss. Their 'army' was snatched together from more than three hundred local units, who often armed themselves as they pleased."

  "Wonderful. From now on, I want all requests for ammunition to be filled wrong. They should get something similar to what they need, but not quite the right stuff. Something that will fit their weapons but jam under fire would be very nice."

  "Yes, sir."

  Quincy said, "Good ideas, Mickolai. But our ladies should create a 'paper trail,' as it were, showing that the mistake was always made by the outfit that requested the ammunition in the first place. Never by the warehouse. This will cause a more deadly war amongst the heathens than the one that they are trying to fight against us."

  "I like it," I said. "Kasia, you have been unusually silent lately. Anything wrong?"

  "I've just been thinking over what can be done about screwing up the enemy. There are so many lovely possibilities!"

  "Well then, why don't you curl up with Eva and see what you can accomplish? Just remember, whatever you do, you can't let the enemy lose faith in their computer. It has to be those guys in that other unit who are causing all of the misery."

  "Got it. I'll keep you posted, Mickolai, my love."

  Kasia flicked out with that certain gleam in her eye, the one she usually had when she'd figured out a way to make another billion marks. Eva followed her.

  "How about you, Quincy? Got any more brilliant ideas to confound the invaders from Earth?"

  "One or two, one or two. I think that I'll go curl up with Maryisa and solve a few other problems while they percolate in my brain."

  "There's no big hurry. I can't see us trying to enter the shaft until the other half of our squad finds us, and that probably won't happen for at least three standard days yet."

  "Reasonable. I'll see you in the morning."

  Quincy and Maryisa flicked out, leaving me alone with Agnieshka.

  "So, my lady, everything is going on schedule?"

  "Yes, boss."

  "Good. How many troops have they brought over since we got here?"

  "They've just about doubled their forces, with about the same mix as before."

  "We'll have to see about doing something about that. Tell me, is there any connection between the enemy computer and the receiver that is linked with the old probe? Can we simply turn it off from this end?"

  "No, sir. That equipment is entirely independent, and can't do anything but receive what's sent to it. And the Earthbound receiver in the probe is linked only to a transmitter here that is in enemy hands. The whole Hassan-Smith transporter system was well designed to be tamper proof, for obvious safety reasons."

  "A pity. Have you been able to tie in with a communication line that can let me speak with the Kashubian general staff? It would be nice if we could let them know what we are doing."

  "I'm afraid not. There are no physical connections between the two systems. It's probably another manifestation of that paranoid worry the Earthers have about somebody invading their computer."

  "Well, it might be paranoid, but even paranoids can have people who are trying to kill them. Consider the fact that we actually have invaded their system, without their knowing it, and that it is our intention to cause them considerable havoc."

  "You have a point there, boss."

  "Glad that you agree. Now, then. I want you to fill me in, to give me the most complete situation report you can."

  "Really complete, boss?"

  "Well, how about an eight-hour synopsis?"

  "Oh. Okay, boss."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Dirty, Rotten Tricks

  The next five and a half months in Dream World were spent playing the delightful game of bringing confusion to the enemy. Many of our stunts were the results of the six of us sitting around and discussing various dirty tricks to pull. That is to say, three humans and three computers.

  At one point, Quincy said, "Sleep deprivation is one of the best ways to turn a good combat troop into a dangerous zombie. Dangerous to his own side, I mean. Whenever a person or unit gets called up for some emergency, always make sure that it's someone who has only gotten about twenty minutes sleep. Any sleep under a half an hour doesn't do a man the least bit of good."

  "Good idea," I said. "And always make sure that it is the same group that is always called up, while some other outfit nearby n
ever seems to have anything to do. It will make the overworked group feel picked on, and the other outfit as defensive as hell."

  "I like it," Kasia said. "It would work especially well if the two groups never liked each other very much in the first place, say, a battalion of Hindus next to a battalion of Moslems."

  "Oh, that is delightfully rotten, but yes, of course you're right. In fact, we should make a point of trying to get as many ancient enemies rubbing shoulders as possible, and then see to it that one of them gets all the breaks, and the other is treated like shit," Quincy said.

  I said, "Of course, the most ancient animosity that ever existed is between men and women. There are quite a few all-female units out there, especially in the Chinese contingent."

  "Yes," Kasia said. "And in that situation, it should always be the female unit that gets the shit treatment. Women are always convinced that they get the short end of the stick in ordinary circumstances, and if we make it very obvious to them they are being consistently stepped on, they'll be ready to explode. We should be particularly rough on them when they've all got PMS."

  "When they've all got PMS?" I asked, "What do you mean?"

  "It's a matter of pheromones," Kasia said. "Chemicals that control behavior in animals, including humans, and sometimes plants, too. We aren't troubled by them in our army, since we all live inside of these coffins where the pheromones can't get out, but if a group of women are living together, like in a barracks, natural pheromones will cause them to synchronize their menstrual periods. They all get PMS at the same time."

  "Why would nature do such a thing?" Quincy asked.

  "It beats me," Kasia said. "But it happens. Living in an all-female barracks in New Kashubia in the bad old days, without enough water to take a proper bath, things got very hairy for a few days every month. I think that our computers should be able to figure out when their periods happen, by checking the records for minor infractions of discipline, among other things. But when an all-female outfit has PMS, they should get the rottenest jobs possible."

  "That is so truly wicked! I love it!" Quincy giggled.

  * * *

  But in the end, more dirty, rotten tricks were thought up and put into practice by a single individual human, with the eager help of our tanks' computers, than came out of us working as a group. Some things were just too embarrassing to talk about in public.

  Quincy latched on to the Earthworm's commander, one General Burnsides, and did everything his devious mind could come up with to make a laughingstock of the man. Orders were twisted, or sent to the wrong outfit, or made deliberately insulting. And always, there it was on his notepad computer, as though he himself had done it. The man was screaming at everyone around him within a day, and they had all decided that he was either going insane, or was secretly on drugs.

  About every twenty minutes somebody in the enemy army, usually a career sergeant, would get a notice that since he had been busted back to private for various serious infractions of duty over eight months ago, and had continued drawing sergeant's pay since that time, all payments to him and his dependents would cease until the overdraw was paid back.

  And about once every ten minutes some private with a record of drunken binges would be notified that his promotion to tech sergeant had been approved over a year ago, and receive a check for the back pay due him.

  Both of these things would be always be traceable directly to General Burnsides.

  After a while, I saw a certain pattern emerge.

  Most of my little jokes were of a physical nature.

  Radio doesn't work very well inside of all-metal tunnels that are occasionally interrupted with metal air locks. Communications have to be mostly by land lines, usually fiber-optic cables.

  To disrupt communications, I simply had the computer not use certain lines, for a while, cutting off whole companies and battalions. From the outside world, it looked like the line had been cut, but when the increasingly harassed repairmen got there, it would be functioning properly, and had been for the last five minutes.

  Usually, we managed to call the person out of bed after twenty minutes of sleep to fix the thing, and she had to report that no trouble was found. She would go back to sleep, and twenty minutes later she would be called back to repair the same line, and this time get it right, dammit!

  I found that if you do this to a person, especially a woman with PMS, thirty-five times in a forty-eight hour period, you can get her to shoot her boss.

  As I noted earlier, many of the enemy weapons were chemically powered. This at first struck me as being a ridiculously obsolete way of doing things, but when you consider that most of their troops were infantry, who might have to fight when there wasn't a suitable power supply available, it did make a certain amount of sense. Chemically powered bullets are much more portable than fusion bottles.

  Just because a weapon is old-fashioned doesn't mean that it is no longer useful. Most soldiers will still carry a knife, for example, and next to a rock or a sharp stick, that's about as ancient as a weapon can get.

  Chemically powered projectiles are expended rapidly in combat, so the Powers That Be on Earth had provided their troops with a machine that automatically reloaded the brass casings they still used. This machine was controlled by what was now our computer.

  It took me two days in Dream World, but I finally got the thing to fill one casing in five hundred, not with the usual slow-burning smokeless powder, but with a high-speed plastic explosive that generally blew the gun in half.

  When they checked the ammunition, it looked okay, so they blamed the problem on manufacturing defects in the weapons. Strange theories about metal fatigue being caused by interspatial transfer were going around.

  And if they had found one of the booby trapped bullets, the serial number on the package would have proved that the ammo had been manufactured on Earth, and must have been caused by sabotage there.

  Not only did my stunt cause a lot of direct casualties, but men got to distrusting their weapons, and hesitating before they used them. Hesitation in combat is often fatal.

  * * *

  Quincy was having fun twisting orders. The Earthers still used over twenty languages among themselves, and this meant that they were largely dependent on their computer to translate as well as to transmit orders. Since some words have many different meanings, things can get confusing enough even when everybody is speaking the same language.

  When you have someone deliberately trying to confuse things, and have a lot of languages to play with, the results can be horrendous. Eventually, Quincy managed to get three open gun battles going at the same time, between different Earth factions.

  * * *

  Kasia discovered that most of the food for Earth's forces was delivered dried and in bulk, to be prepared and packaged by an automated factory, carefully programmed for each soldier's dietary needs. This was necessary because of the wide range of ethnic groups that made up the invading army.

  Soon, Hindus were being fed beef stew, Moslems were getting roast pork, and everybody was getting violently ill when they found out what they'd been eating.

  If you hated asparagus, you got it for every meal. Everyone with an allergy got exactly what he was allergic to.

  And whenever anyone complained, the food processing technicians could always prove that people were being fed precisely what they had ordered.

  Eventually, men were actually taken off the battle lines so they could be given lectures on how to fill out computerized forms properly.

  Once, Kasia did let it get blamed on a machine. For one nine-hour period, every meal produced contained an overdose of habanero peppers, which meant that for nine hours most of the Earthers were unable to eat the meals sent to them. She let the problem be tracked down to a single solenoid driver, and didn't do it again once the problem was "fixed." By then, she was out of habanero peppers, anyway.

  Then she discovered that medicines were being handled in the same way. They were shipped to New Ka
shubia in bulk, and automatically put in single-dose packages as needed. This let them have large enough supplies of everything on hand in the event of an epidemic, or whatever.

  When I found that my sweet and loving wife, too tenderhearted to shoot a deer, was putting potassium chloride into syringes labeled "morphine," I thought that she was going just too far, and I said so.

  "What you are doing means that any guy who gets wounded is going to get a dose of poison that will kill him immediately. That's not nice."

  "So? I mean, did we invite those bastards to come here in the first place? They invaded us! They've killed a lot of our people. I still don't know how my family is doing, or whether they're dead or alive. And killing the enemy is what we're in the army for, dammit!"

  Rudyard Kipling had it all figured out hundreds of years ago. The female of the species is far deadlier than the male.

  Quincy came in on my side, in a left-handed way.

  "Kasia, you really don't want to kill a wounded man. If you do, they'll just leave his body there until they have time to get rid of it, and get back to the fight. But if he's badly wounded, they have to take care of him, or risk a riot among their own troops. It takes three men to carry away and treat one wounded man. The arithmetic is very simple. You kill an enemy, and you take one man out of combat. You wound an enemy, and you've taken four men out of combat."

  "I hadn't thought of it that way before."

  "True. Now, what you should be doing is turning minor ailments into major ones. For example, Syrup of ipecac is used when someone has eaten poison. One spoonful will give a man a vomiting fit that will last for an hour. Feed him the same stuff in the 'medicine' you give him, and you'll keep him weak for days. Get enough of that stuff into the enemy, and their military effectiveness will be seriously reduced. Or find something that looks like aspirin, but gives people the symptoms of bubonic plague, or Ebola virus, or some such. Cholera might be nice, if you can manage it. There is nothing like cholera to break an army's morale. There's tons of runny shit all over the place! It's not as though you'll have to fool scientists who have tons of equipment and years to spend on a problem. I doubt if the Earthworms brought a microscope with them. They have combat medics with them here, guys who are used to treating problems that are pretty obvious, like people with holes in them. If it looks like cholera, they'll call it cholera, and not look for the bacteria. Historically, far more combatants have died of diseases than from enemy action, and the Earther generals know it. If you handle it right, you'll scare the pants off them!"