by John Ringo
Peering through the curtaining lianas at the edge of the hummock, the team was greeted with a view of determined activity. In most places the fragile towers described in their briefing were scattered on the ground, being demolished to mine the base materials. In a few places, ziggurats or pyramids of metal and stone were rising. They were well spaced and in between were low barracks of stone and mud. In the distance a causeway through the swamp was being constructed and what looked like defensive works were under construction near them. By the nearest ziggurat was a series of pens but what the pens held could not be seen from the team’s angle.
“Ellsworthy,” murmured Mosovich, “what’s in the pens?”
“Little posies in most,” she whispered from her accustomed over-watch. “A few Crabs in one.”
As she was talking, a Posleen walked over and dumped a double handful of squirming Posleen nestlings into one of the pens then trotted away.
“Mega gross,” whispered Ellsworthy.
“What?” asked Mueller.
“The other ones are eating new ones, mostly. I think some of ’em survived.”
“Yuck,” muttered Richards.
“Get it on tape,” ordered Ersin. The video would in fact load onto a Flash BIOS memory chip.
“I’ve got a feed going off my scope, don’t worry.”
“Okay, we’re gonna pull back a little and get up and dry,” whispered Mosovich. “We’ll trade off observers until it seems like we’ve got it all and then pull back to the pickup.” He began moving back into the swamp. “Ellsworthy, you’ve got first watch.”
“Yessa, massa. I keep a good watch.”
* * *
Two days later they were mostly dried out and badly confused.
“You’re sure of what you saw?” asked Mosovich for the fifth time.
“Y-y-y-es, dangit!” Martine was by turns angry, disgusted and horrified.
“No species could survive that way!” exclaimed Mueller, the subvocalization going vocal for a moment.
“Pipe the fuck down,” snarled Mosovich, “If he says he saw it, he saw it. I just wish you’d gotten it on the microcam.”
“B-b-b-by the t-t-t-time I-I-I-I…”
“Yeah, I know, it was already over. Okay, we have data on their building rate and materials use. We’ve gotten a look at their fixed defenses. We have an idea what they forage for and some idea of what they eat. We have one unconfirmed report, sorry Sergeant Martine, on some specialized feeding habits. Anything else.”
“Why the pyramids?” asked Mueller. When completed they would resemble Central American pyramids to an uncomfortable degree. At the base of each was a large hut and the beginnings of a parade or playing field. The God Kings had been observed to spend most of their time in and around the huts. The one nearing completion had a small house or palace at the apex.
“Worship?” wondered Richards.
“Of who? The God Kings?” asked Ersin.
“I wonder if that’s why they call them that?” asked Trapp, stroking his Bushmaster quietly on a diamond stone.
“Seven pyramids, seven God Kings?” mused Mosovich.
“We’ve counted at least ten, maybe more. They’re hard to tell apart,” noted Mueller.
“So, not one pyramid per God King. Over thirteen hundred normals, right?”
“Right,” agreed Mueller, pulling out a palmtop computer. “Thirteen hundred normals, 10 or so God Kings and 123 Crabs, down from a high of 220. Total of 500… shuttled through.”
As the pyramids neared completion, the pens of nestlings had been moved nearer. And the reason for the penned Tchpth became clear. The team had watched helplessly as Tchpth after Tchpth was taken from the pens and slaughtered. They were well aware that they were watching intelligent, in many cases extraordinarily intelligent, beings being killed and eaten but there was no way to affect the outcome without compromising their mission. It was one of those unfortunate cases where the importance of the mission outweighed the death of any single individual or even group of individuals. It didn’t mean they had to like it. Nor did they like it when the occasional group of new Tchpth would be herded out of the jungle and into the pens.
“But what about this report of Martine’s?” asked Richards. “Why would any species do that?”
“I-I s-s-saw what I-I-I-I s-saw,” said the commo NCO, firmly.
“Might be a response to limited resources,” suggested Trapp.
“What limited resources?” scoffed Mueller. “They just conquered a food-rich planet.”
“Might be they like the taste,” said Tung.
They all turned to look at him; he was notoriously chary of words, so when Tung spoke people listened.
“Sure, they’ve probably been designed to be able to eat anything, but that’s the only home food they got. Maybe they like the taste.” Everyone just stared at him in amazement. It was the most anyone had ever heard him say in one sitting. It also made perfect sense; it would explain why the God Kings ate their clan’s nestlings, as Sergeant Martine had witnessed only an hour before.
“Okay,” stated Mosovich, “we’ll take that as a possibility until a better one presents itself. I think we’ve covered about all there is to cover here. Time to go look at another site. We’ll start our extraction tomorrow morning. Get dry tonight people, it’s the last chance you’ll get for a few weeks.”
17
Planetary Transport Class Maruk,
N-Space Transit Terra-Diess
0927 January 28th, 2002 ad
“Lieutenant Michael O’Neal, reporting as ordered, sir!” Mike held a rigid salute, eyes fixed six inches over the battalion commander’s head.
“At ease, Lieutenant.” The tall, spare officer went back to studying the hardcopy report in front of him, making annotations at irregular intervals.
Mike took the opportunity to study the room and its occupant, as “at ease” permitted, his feet shoulder width apart, hands clasped behind his back. Lieutenant Colonel Youngman was slightly balding and very lean. His wiry frame bespoke a high degree of physical fitness but he looked almost fragile compared to O’Neal. He was definitely a runner; from the starved greyhound look, probably a weekend marathoner.
The room was a barren almost Spartan ellipsoid, less, Mike suspected, as an extension of the occupant than due to cultural conflict. The blank gray plasteel walls were impervious to all normal attachment systems — glues would not stick and nails would bend — while the organic-looking tubes overhead, indicative of Indowy construction, were impossible to hang anything from. There were no mirrors, lockers or shelves, only a desk, two chairs and the floor. The light was the odd greenish blue favored by the Indowy. It gave the rooms a cold dark look, reminiscent of a horror movie.
On the floor were several boxes, undoubtedly filled with all the items this battalion commander considered de rigeur for office decorations. Mike began to list the probable contents starting with “national colors, one each.” When he reached “wife and children, picture of, five by seven, photo of mistress artfully concealed beneath” he realized that his good intentions of remaining calm were slipping. After ten minutes the colonel put down his second report and looked up.
“You look upset, Lieutenant.”
“I do, sir?” Mike asked. Despite this jerk showing his importance by having Mike cool his heels for ten minutes, Mike was sure his expression had not changed.
“You have looked pissed off since you came in the door. Actually, you look like you could bite the ass out of a lion.” The colonel’s face had assumed a disapproving pucker.
“Oh, that, sir,” said Mike, no longer surprised. The mistake was made all the time. “That expression’s a fixture. It’s from lifting weights.”
“A ‘lifter,’ hmm? I find that lifters are generally poor runners. How are your APRT scores, Lieutenant?” asked the colonel with a lifted eyebrow.
“I pass, sir.” I usually about max it, sir, he thought with a note of wry humor. And if you think “lifters” a
re poor runners, you ought to see a marathoner on the bench. Being able to press twice your body weight made pushups and sit-ups a cinch. The running was a pain, but he usually made the runs in nearly max time for his age group.
“Passing is not enough! I expect maximum physical performance out of my officers and, while you are not actually assigned to this unit, I expect you to be an example as well. There are absolutely no fit areas on this ship to run, but when we reach the planetary objective I expect to see you ‘leading the way’ in daily fitness. Do I make myself clear?” The colonel attempted to wither him with a glare. After years of experiencing icy Jack Horner dressing downs at the slightest mistake, the glare slid off Mike like water off diamond.
“Airborne, sir,” Mike snapped, with apparent perfect seriousness.
“Hmm. That brings us to your mission. As I understand it, you are to ‘advise’ me and my staff on the functions and uses of these combat suits. Is that correct?”
“Sir,” Mike paused and launched into his carefully prepared spiel. “As part of the GalTech Infantry Team, I have an intimate knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of armored combat suits. The team also specified the requirements for operational readiness. The pressure of circumstances have made it imperative to deploy your battalion before it met all training parameters and before anyone, the GalTech team, GF TRADOC or Fleet Strike Forces, felt it was fully ready. So I was assigned to help. Sir, you know all about light infantry tactics, probably heavy infantry too, but I know suits and suit tactics. I’ve got more time in them than anybody in the Fleet,” he concluded, not without pride. Mike paused, not sure how to go on.
“Are you saying, Lieutenant, that you don’t think we’re fully trained, fully prepared to fight?” asked the colonel, quietly.
Mike looked shocked. “No, sir, not even close. You’re no more prepared than the Marines were to invade Guadalcanal but you’re being deployed for much the same reason.”
“Well, Lieutenant,” said the colonel, smiling like a cat with a canary, “I hate to disagree, but your vaunted suits are not that hard to use. I got used to mine very quickly. They’ll be a real bonus on the Air-Land Battlefield but I don’t see how they’ll change tactics significantly. And learning how to use one is a cinch, so, as far as I can see your main purpose is to look over my shoulder.”
What “Air-Land Battlefield”? Taking to the air around Posleen is a short ride to carbondom. “Sir, part of my function is to evaluate the performance of this battalion, but, sir, with all due respect, my main function is advisory. A standard suit has two hundred thirty-eight discrete functions that can be combined in a near infinite number of permutations. For full ability, a soldier has to be able to multitask at least three in a combat environment. I mean, you can get by with just one or two, but three to five is ‘run, jump and shoot’ infantry. A command suit has four hundred eighty-two discrete functions. Its primary problems, almost faults, are information overload and function difficulty,” Mike paused and looked up, remaining at a Parade Rest position. He wished he could light up a cigar, but this officer was obviously not a smoker.
“Unless you have an AID that is really attuned to your needs you risk overload of C3I” — command, communication, control and intelligence — “flow. You either overload on information or filter out too much, either of which is dangerous. As to purely suit functions, a command suit has so many special functions designed to permit the commander to keep up with multiple highly mobile units and keep him alive, that you again risk either overload or suit drain.
“Sir, the TRADOC requirement is a minimum of two hundred hours training time for the standard suits and three hundred hours for the command suits. Records show that only E-4s and below have in excess of one hundred hours. Sir, I have three thousand hours and I feel like a novice. Among other difficulties with limited suit time, the autonomic systems grow with the user and go through periods of instability. They’ve never been tested in actual battle and their instability is marked below a hundred hours.” Mike paused, wondering if the commander understood his total horror at the nearly inexcusable lack of preparation of the battalion. He knew from the tenor of his briefing that Fleet TRADOC had the same reservations.
“Son, I understand what you mean about overload, I ran into it early on. I did what any good commander would do, I delegated and set up a communications net. As to using the suits, you’re right, they’re too complicated and that autonomic nervous system is a piece of shit. That’s in my report. You see,” he lifted one of the papers, “I make reports too. And I kind of expect that the reports of a battalion commander with over twenty years in this man’s Army will carry a little bit more weight than a damn lieutenant’s.
“Now, I don’t care what you think your mission is, or who you think you are. What I want you to do is go to your cabin and stay there for the rest of the trip. You’re not confined to quarters or anything but I decide how my battalion is run, how it trains, what its tactics are. Not any former E-5 with a shiny silver bar that thinks he’s hot shit. If I find you in the battalion area without my direct permission, in the training areas, or talking to my officers about tactics or training I will personally hang you up, shake you out and strip you of commission, rank, honor and possibly life. Do I make myself clear?” concluded the battalion commander, the words dropping into the quiet like iron ingots.
“Yes, sir,” said Mike, eyes fixed on a point six inches above the commander’s head.
“And when we get home, if you’ve been a good little boy, I’ll send along a nice neutral report instead of one that uses ‘arrogant’ and ‘insolent’ as adjectives. Clear?” The officer smiled thinly.
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed.”
Lieutenant O’Neal came to the position of attention, did a precise about-face and marched out the door.
* * *
When the cabin door opened, Mike was lying on his bunk wearing battle silks and a set of issue Virtual Reality sunglasses nicknamed Milspecs. Battle silks — officially, Uniform, Utility, Ground Forces — was the uniform developed for day to day use by CES and ACS infantry. It was not designed for combat and since it was developed by a GalTech team, they had rammed through a uniform based on comfort and style. Light gray in color, it looked something like a hooded kimono. The material, cotton treated through an Indowy process to “improve” it, was smooth as silk, lightweight, and temperature reactive. With a few twists to close or open throat and cuffs it was comfortable from one hundred to zero degrees Fahrenheit. Mike was conspicuous in them because, despite the fact that they had been issued to the ACS unit, everyone besides him wore BDU camouflage.
It had been a month since his abortive meeting with the battalion commander and he occasionally reflected that he was in the best shape of his life. Since he could not perform his secondary missions, training and advisement, he spent his time in evaluating the battalion’s readiness (low), working out, and improving his own readiness. Despite the colonel’s pronouncement that there were no areas large enough for running, Mike had discovered desolate corridors stretching for miles. With difficulty he tracked down an Indowy crew member; most of the Indowy were staying far away from the unpredictable predators in their midst. After circumspect courting of the skittish boggle he gained access to gravitational controls in most of the unused sections.
The hallways were primarily maintenance corridors for cavernous holds now filled with ammunition, spare parts, tanks, rations and the myriad other things civilized man takes to war. Normally they contained machinery, tools, food, seeds, nannites and the myriad other things Indowy take to colonize, for it was an Indowy colony ship. The expansive cylinder, five kilometers long and a kilometer across, now carried the NATO contingent of the Terran expeditionary force on its four-month voyage to Diess.
For the past month the corridors had rung to the sound of plasteel on plasteel as Mike ran, jumped, dodged, shot and maneuvered units in full Virtual Reality mode under gravities ranging from none to two. When t
he door opened, he was refining one of the VR scenarios: “The Asheville Pass.”
America found itself in a situation unprecedented in its history. The last significant conflict in the contiguous U.S. was the Civil War and, with a few notable exceptions, neither side in that conflict had had any interest in causing civilian casualties. The Posleen had every interest in causing casualties; they saw the population as a mobile larder. There would be times, especially for ACS forces, when an un-American concept, the desperate last stand, would be required. Given that fact, it was a situation to be trained for like any other.
The Asheville scenario required an ACS unit to hold a pass against a superior Posleen force to buy time for the city to be evacuated. It tailored the Posleen force to the defending unit and its supports, but in every case they were outnumbered at least a thousand to one. In the original scenario at a certain point another unit broke and the Posleen advanced through that pass and the city driving the refugees into the rear of the defending unit with devastating results.
Originally designed as a no-win scenario, Mike was changing it so that one time in ten, if the defending unit did everything right, they would “win.” In the new scenario the other force held, permitting the evacuation to proceed until the destruction of the attacking force.
Mike was considering a memo for record that the assault force needed to be increased or statistically enhanced. Despite the fact that it was designed as a “no-win” scenario, using the standard battalion task force Mike had started to defeat the Posleen two times out of three, other force breaking or not. This should not have been possible with seven hundred troops defending against 1.5 million Posleen; a ratio of more than two thousand to one. It turned out to be a matter of artillery employment more than anything. Admittedly the battalion ended up as a short platoon and it required the battalion commander to survive and rally the troops to the end. But still.