“We are under attack!” he shouted in vibrant Massoodai.
“Control yourself!” The field colonel in charge of the module was a wizened old Massood who’d survived several theaters of operation. She glanced sharply at a screen set in the east wall. “I see no evidence of enemy skids or floaters in our vicinity.” The module shook again. “Explain your conclusions.”
The junior officer was not reluctant to do so. “I know it seems impossible, honored Colonel, but the Crigolit are attacking without the aid of aerial transport … from underwater.”
“Impossible!” declared another of the Massood. At that moment the lights went out.
Self-powered screens and fluorescent wall coatings flickered to life, restoring interior illumination. A quick check with the rest of the module confirmed the implausible report. The Crigolit were indeed mounting an unprecedented subsurface assault, which explained how they had been able to approach the module so closely without exposing themselves to early detection. The module’s defense systems were designed to hunt for incoming vehicles or self-propelled weapons, not for individuals quietly approaching below the surface.
As he raced from the command chamber, Nevan found himself wondering at the daring of it all. The Crigolit had the same healthy fear of watery submersion as other intelligent species on both sides. Somehow a group of them had been persuaded to overcome that fear.
Sensors provided video that showed Crigolit soldiers advancing by means of small, self-contained rebreathers attached to their chests and backs. Wraparound masks allowed them to see underwater. Since the notion of swimming—not to mention the mechanics of the process—was as alien to them as it was to the Massood or Hivistahm, each attacking soldier had been provided with a small propulsion pack fitted to his or her rear legs. Arms held weapons while the second set of legs hung free.
The Amplitur, Nevan reflected, must have worked long and hard with this particular assault group to enable them to mount such an unnatural offensive. Repeated suggestion sessions would have been required to overcome deeply ingrained Crigolit fears. Whatever the eventual outcome of the battle, such radical alteration of natural instincts would inevitably result in some severe psychological damage among the survivors. That would not trouble the Amplitur, Nevan thought grimly. Wasn’t it all in the service of the Purpose and therefore self-justifying?
Scooting forward singly instead of en masse, they had succeeded in fooling the module’s detection systems until well within attacking range. Now the unnerved defenders hastened to try and organize a defense against a kind of offensive they’d felt sure could never happen.
While some of the Crigolit went to work on the stabilizers and propulsion system, others attacked surface-mounted weapons from below. Still more broke in through the landing and service ports just above water level. They swarmed into the module’s corridors, discarding their rebreathing equipment as they advanced.
Nevan found himself retreating, using his sidearm as he dodged incoming fire. The Crigolit were familiar with Hivistahm engineering and so concentrated their efforts on the module’s communications and fire-control rooms. That left Nevan and a few others room to maneuver, but only temporarily. As soon as they had secured communications and rendered the module’s defenses helpless, the enemy would begin a methodical search of the remaining chambers.
The defending Massood and Humans fought back ferociously, but they had nowhere to retreat and no room in the narrow corridors in which to maneuver. With the Crigolit jamming internal communications, there was no way to make use of the two large sleds docked in the module’s service ports. Furthermore, the bulk of the module’s combat contingent was updelta, fighting to drive the Crigolit inland. Not only was the enemy on the verge of taking control of the floating base, but if they did so, those troops fighting upriver would be cut off.
The module’s crew had been caught seriously unprepared, having made the assumption that since the enemy had never attacked underwater before, it was a possibility that could safely be ignored. They had been fooled as well as taken off guard. Perhaps the Amplitur had lifted the idea from the many times Humans had attacked their own installations utilizing a similar approach.
Explosions and loss of illumination came more frequently as the Crigolit continued to advance. In hastily rigged defensive positions, isolated clusters of Massood or Humans tried to make a stand. The interior of the module had not been designed for internal defense, however, and one by one the defenders were killed or captured.
One other Core member was part of the module’s regular operating staff. Sergeant Conner came rushing around a bend in a corridor, splashing through the salt water that had entered through a breach in the outer base wall, and pulled up next to Nevan. Blood ran down his face from a cut in his forehead, making him blink. He was breathing hard.
“Glad I found you, sir!” Though all Core members were on a first name basis with one another, it was important to maintain appearances in case others might be watching or listening. As such, it would not do in a combat situation for a noncom to address a superior in too familiar a fashion.
“We’re losing it.”
Nevan glanced around the corner, drew back. The corridor ahead was still deserted. “What’s the word on reinforcements?”
“Mostly unprintable, sir. Not much likelihood. The bugs got to communications fast. Several of us sent out a quick report over field units, but chances are they don’t have sufficient range to reach our people upriver. Even if they did there’s not going to be enough time for them to get back here.” The sergeant paused, wheezing. “I’m open to suggestions, sir.”
Nevan considered. “If they’ve taken communications, they’ll go for engineering next. Let’s keep moving in the opposite direction.”
Once they nearly stumbled into a pair of Crigolit skittering down a corridor. Milky eyes gazed back into their own, followed by a startled exchange of oaths and fire. Nevan found himself dropping and rolling to avoid the neural beams which sought his spine. One struck nearby and his right foot went numb.
His own weapon was less sophisticated. The Crigolit’s head exploded on contact with the tiny expanding shell as Nevan’s pistol flared. The other insectoid carried a rifle, which took a small chunk out of the sergeant’s shoulder. Conner’s return fire snapped his assailant in two.
Ignoring his tingling foot, Nevan struggled erect and examined his companion’s wound. It was messy but superficial. They resumed their desperate odyssey.
It was clear that the Crigolit were in complete control and there was little chance of driving them off. Their unprecedented assault had been a complete success. With any reinforcements or relief questionable at best, there was no thought of organizing any kind of counterattack.
“This way, sir.” Conner was leading him toward the emergency lifeboat bay. The corridor heading toward it was depressingly deserted.
The lifeboats had been included to provide a means of escape in the event that the delta region was struck by a severe storm. They contained no weapons or armor, but neither Straat-ien or Conner much cared. Right now they constituted a possible way out; maybe the only way out.
Unfortunately, the same idea had also occurred to the Crigolit.
There were half a dozen of them assembled near the entrance to the bay. It looked as if they’d only recently arrived. Several were in the process of removing their bulky underwater rebreathers. Behind a makeshift barrier of jumbled furniture and equipment, the others were trying to calibrate a large and nasty-looking automated weapon for close-quarter work.
Whoever had planned this assault knew what he was doing, Nevan thought in frustration.
They crouched behind the last bend in the corridor. “I don’t think they saw us,” he whispered. “They’re too busy setting up their position. I think I saw five.”
“Six.” Conner continued to bleed from the shoulder, but the gash in his forehead was clotting reassuringly. “Maybe more, but I don’t think so.” He was about twenty-fi
ve, Nevan guessed. Already an experienced soldier, scared and hardened all at once. “If we wait till they get that big gun on auto, we’ll never get past them.”
“Too many to rush.” Nevan considered, eyeing his young companion. “You know how to suggest.” It was not a question.
Conner gazed back at him uncertainly. “I’ve only done it a couple of times, sir. Each time it involved an allied individual I was close to. Never an enemy, and never in numbers.”
“Time you tried.” Nevan loosened the grip on his side-arm’s trigger. “I want you to pretend that you’re a Crigolit officer. A High Unifer. Believe that you’re in command. We’re going to order them to search the next corridor. We’re going to present the edict in such a way that they won’t even think of questioning its logic.”
Conner looked doubtful. The young sergeant had to do his part, Nevan knew. There was no way he could successfully suggest half a dozen Crigolit on his own. If they were merely confused instead of immediately convinced, they would open up with their weapons as a matter of training. And that would be that.
They would have one chance to do it right.
“Don’t use your translator. Don’t even open your mouth. Just make the suggestion. You’re a Crigolit Unifer giving an order to troops in the field. They have to listen.”
They rose. When Conner nodded, Straat-ien stepped around the corner and started boldly up the passageway. They’d had one good look at the enemy soldiers; sufficient to visualize them.
Two of the Crigolit glanced up immediately. Nevan stared right back at them, feeling the sweat start down his ribs. He reiterated the directive in his mind, tensing with the strain. Conner marched next to him, staring straight ahead.
The four other quadrupeds edged away from the formidable gun to stand alongside their brethren. A moment flickered away; heavy time. Then they simultaneously pulled their sidearms. Nevan heard the sergeant suck air but he couldn’t spare the energy to admonish him. His own sidearm hung uselessly at his side.
Fortunately, the Crigolit could not be counted among the enemy’s mental giants. They traditionally thought and did things as a group. If one complied, others tended to follow. Brandishing their weapons, the six Crigolit started down the corridor. One brushed close enough to Nevan to make contact. It hesitated, the tiny black pupil shifting, but lurched on in pursuit of its comrades. It was clearly confused but while operating under a direct order from a High Unifer couldn’t spare thought for reflection.
That would come soon enough, Nevan knew, as the powerful mental suggestion he and Conner had applied wore off. Then the six would slow, blink, and gaze at one another in search of explanation. They would remember, and hurry to return to their former position. By which time the two Humans needed to be gone.
The Crigolit rushed into the next passageway. They had been ordered to challenge a possible counterattack. It was easy to see that no such assault was in progress or even in evidence, but they scoured their surroundings nonetheless. Gradually their efforts slackened. An edict was an edict, but none of them could recall precisely when or how they had received it, or the name of the commanding Unifer in whose name it had been issued.
Two paused to confront one another. Mass delusion was not unknown in combat situations. Had there even been an order? It was time to ask some questions.
Avoiding the eerily pulsating but uncalibrated big gun, Conner vaulted over the makeshift barrier into the lifeboat bay. Straat-ien was close behind. As they passed it, both men looked longingly at the almost operational weapon; at the narrow barrel and attached magazine of explosive armor-piercing flechettes. If they hung around, there was a good chance they could wreak some serious havoc … before they were killed.
Conner energized the nearest lifeboat tube. A watertight door slid aside to reveal a craft far larger than they required. It would hold up to forty Humans and Massood.
Nevan glanced back up the corridor, saw only smoke and haze. If there were other survivors who hadn’t yet been captured, they would have to make their own way down to the bay. It was important that someone escape to provide Base Command with a firsthand report of the disaster.
They piled into the compact craft. Conner slid into the pilot’s chair and initiated the console. As soon as the watertight door shut behind them, the external cover rolled aside. As it did so they were greeted by a view through the foreport of several startled Crigolit chugging clumsily past. In their bulky rebreathers and individual propulsion units they looked distinctly unhydrodynamic.
That hadn’t hampered their activities, Nevan reminded himself.
One of the swimming Crigolit awkwardly managed to twist out of the way. Its companions were less fortunate as Conner gunned the engine and the lifeboat smashed into both of them. Looking back Nevan could see the pair fumbling weakly at their damaged rebreathers. The fumbling quickly ceased.
Conner flicked the switch that would return them to Base Attila. The lifeboat rose to the surface and raced southward. A rearward-facing viewer showed smoke and occasional flame rising from the islandlike exterior of the captured command module. With the module’s defenses now disabled, a Crigolit skid had pulled up and docked alongside to unload fresh troops unencumbered by unnatural rebreathing apparatus. The battle was all but over.
Not overconfidence but oversight had doomed the station, Nevan reflected disconsolately. Fatal oversight. Because the enemy had never before done such a thing it had been blithely assumed they never could. Some long-term strategic assumptions were going to have to be reevaluated.
Amphibious Crigolit. What would the Amplitur come up with next?
One step back, two steps forward. That was how you won a war, he thought. This was a decided step back. Gripping the back of the seat he was leaning against until his fingers hurt, he envisioned the number of dead and dying Massood and Humans who remained behind, trapped in the module, which had been turned into a giant spherical coffin. There was nothing he could do about that, nothing he could do for them.
He looked away from the viewer. Conner was trying to get his attention.
“I’ve got movement onshore, sir. Range about a hundred meters.” As it fled, the lifeboat hugged the coast for protection. “Doesn’t look like Crigolit, but it’s hard to tell. These on-board sensors weren’t designed for combat use and don’t have battlefield resolution. They’re pretty basic.”
“Could be an Ashregan signature.” Nevan sat down next to him, studying the readout.
“Possible.” The sergeant glanced up from the board. “Or some of our own people. Maybe one of those hand-unit-generated distress calls got through.”
As an important field officer, Nevan knew it was his duty to save himself for further combat, not to mention so that he could report in person on what had happened here at the mouth of the Circassian delta. He thought swiftly. The lifeboat was empty. Only two lives were at stake, and one of them was his own.
“Let’s take a quick look. Make as fast a pass as you can, evasive approach. Just get us in close enough for one glimpse and then take us out as fast as this thing can scoot. Use a multiple-field-frequency scan.”
The latter wasn’t necessary. They had visual confirmation before a responding voice shouted at them over the console speaker. Conner nudged a switch and the lifeboat slowed as it approached the tree-lined shore.
“Identify yourselves,” he said, addressing the pickup.
“Who the blazes are you? Identify your own damn self! What the hell’s going on out in the bay?”
Nevan smiled slightly as he leaned forward. “This is Colonel Nevan Straat-ien, Strategy and Planning. Delta module has been taken by enemy amphibious assault. As far as I know only myself and Sergeant Conner managed to get out.”
“Amphibious Crigolit? Who’re you trying to kid?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
There was a pause before the voice replied, only slightly more under control than before. “I’m Lieutenant Mogen, Second Alphan Biodiv Corps. We hit t
he bugs hard upriver, sir, and were on our way back for requip when we heard the fireworks start. My noncoms and I caucused and decided a roundabout return might be a good idea.”
“Better than you know, Lieutenant. I’m not kidding about the amphibious Crigolit assault. I wish I were. It looks like the squids have been working overtime on minds as well as machines lately.”
Conner eased the lifeboat closer to the cluster of anxious, confused soldiers waiting inshore, negotiating a path between shattered tree stumps and mud banks. Nevan studied them through the foreport. Sixty to seventy heavily armed men and women, all wearing recently acquired dirt and muck in addition to standard camouflage. They were accompanied by perhaps fifty Massood. He saw few wounded. Their sliders idled beneath overhanging vegetation, hot and ready to run.
The lieutenant was a stocky, powerfully built man with dark skin and straight black hair. He wore a seeasy over his wounded right eye. It would help him make out shapes and changes in the light while the damaged organ beneath healed. Behind him a Massood junior officer stood at semiattention. A distant explosion drew everyone’s attention back to the bay.
“I still can’t believe it,” the junior officer muttered.
“Neither could we. It’s real enough, all right.”
“What do we do now?” The lieutenant indicated his distraught troops and the double rank of two-person sliders parked in a semicircle beneath the trees on the highest patch of boggy ground. A combat seat clung to each side of the battle units’ drive frames.
“We’ve been fighting for days. There isn’t a slider in the bunch with enough of a charge left to reach Attilla even if they take one soldier per unit.”
Conner stood patiently next to Nevan. “We could probably fit most of them in the lifeboat, sir. At the very least we could evacuate all the wounded and many of the rest.”
That was what they should do, Nevan knew. That would be the eminently sensible course of action. It was also diametrically opposed to what he was feeling. Judging by the expression on the lieutenant’s face, he felt similarly, and said so as he nodded in the direction of the bay.
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