“Sire,” his driver called up to him. “There’s a way around this blockage, at a turnoff we just passed.” His navigation computer had analyzed the surveillance photos, and highlighted an alternate route for them.
Culpa ducked down inside the turret to see the driver’s display screen. Noting which mechanized units were near the point where a secondary road branched off, he initiated a communications link with a senior officer, a Legion commander, who was closest to the junction, as indicated by an icon in his helmet’s visor display.
“Legion Commander Blas Forton, I have a scouting mission for you.”
The surprise was evident in Forton’s voice when he replied. “Ready Sire. What is my mission?” He didn’t know why the column had abruptly halted, other than it wasn’t because of an attack.
“The main road ahead of us has been blocked with massive mining equipment, at a narrow point in this valley. You will lead the twenty units in your Legion, and scout the roadway to your left. The orbital images show that route also will take us through the city, towards the spaceport. However, the images from a half cycle ago do not show if it has also been blocked with heavy mining equipment. I need you to be my eyes, and discover if the way is open. Leave now.”
“Yes, Sire.”
Next, Culpa requested a link with Acting Space Force Commander Grudfad, which wasn’t immediately granted by the Flagship’s AI, which had questions it had been directed to ask callers, to filter them by need and priority.
Grudfad, when he finally spoke, was quick to divert a request for support from orbit. “Group Commander, my AI reports the enemy has blocked your way, but has not attacked your Group 3. What do you need? My fleet is heavily engaged with a large enemy fleet, which made its exit a twentieth of a cycle ago. We are unable to provide bombardment support at this time, for you or the other three Ground forces.”
Culpa was startled by this revelation, since it hadn’t been shared, as far as he knew, with any of the ground forces. It didn’t change their mission in any way that he could see, but it suggested that their Space Force Commander wasn’t as in tune with Ground Forces as would have been Force Commander Thond. The latter never portrayed the elitism often projected by the Space Force elements towards Ground Forces.
Among the Thandol High Command, some thought too much money was spent on maintaining the Empire’s ground attack capability, that their three security forces deliberately wasted resources there, because they were denied larger space fleets. What angered the ground forces was the attitude that fleet power was the most important, and it found its way into the Ragnar fleet personnel as well. They looked down on their foot-padding brethren.
The Ground Force Ragoon foot-padders in turn had a derisive description for the Ragnools, who bore that generic name as members of the Space Force, and called them vacuum-suckers. The Ragoons also knew the average Ragnool wasn’t a physical match for the generally larger and fitter Ground Force members, who fought their opponents up close, where they could actually see them. It apparently was a species-wide cultural divide, because a similar attitude was found between the Finth and Thack Delos space and ground forces.
Because the Thandol so thoroughly dominated the other three space fleets in the Empire, they employed their designated security species exclusively for such surface actions. They did have their own ground forces, but they were predominately security escorts, honor guards, or for show in the socially prestigious Marching Army of the Emperor. The million marchers, when called upon, wore their splendid uniforms and carried oversized, lightweight replica weapons, on the occasions the Thandol wanted to display the thundering power that such heavy elephantine creatures, with four flat feet stomping in unison, could produce as they marched in wide ranks. A ceremonial march often happened as part of scheduled celebrations within Thandol society. Other, less frequent times, after a new species was annexed into the Empire, or if a less than subservient people needed a reminder after a revolt, of who was in charge.
In that respect, the Thandol had solved the apparently universal army-navy rivalry in each species, by not having a truly functional army to spark such rivalry. Some solutions were better than others were, and this one would eventually prove to be a poor one.
Today, Culpa was experiencing a bit of that sense of dismissal of his problems down here on the planet, but he hadn’t asked for fire support. All he wanted was current orbital observations. He could have dispatched his own drones, but he assumed what he needed was already available from the fleet.
“I appreciate your difficulty, Sire. I was seeking the most current orbital images of an alternate route that I’m having scouted. Sorry to have distracted you, Sire. My Ragoons can manage.”
“Very well, Commander.” And the link was cut. There was no doubt the flagship AI could have provided current surface images, since it received feeds from every combat ship in the fleet. However, Culpa wasn’t calling the AI again. He ordered drones aloft from designated recon units.
The Legion Commander delivered an early favorable report. “Sire, this secondary road isn’t as sturdy as the main road, or as wide, but we’re easily able to maintain a double column at a fast pace. There are numerous old looking and abandoned personal vehicles along the right side of the road, but they do not impede our progress. It appears the fleeing civilians knew we were advancing rapidly, and the evacuation route was perhaps too clogged to escape quickly enough in older battered vehicles.
“From ropes and ladders I see along the side of the steep ridge on our left, they climbed to the top to avoid becoming road kill if we drove over their flimsy transports.”
Culpa was pleased. “Excellent. The front third of the column will turn back and follow your trail, and the remainder of the column will then follow me. Legion Commander, you will remain in the lead until we reach the wider valley.”
The four-lane highway, where the Group Commander was about to reverse course, easily had room to turn around the thirty-five-foot length of his main battle tank Pillager hull, even with the additional five feet of his big smooth bore cannon pointed forward. He ordered all of the units of his front third of the column to reverse and turn onto the secondary road now, ahead of him, which would leave him about one third of the length of the full column behind Legion Commander Forton. Not the position of glory he’d maintained up to now, but he’d take the lead again after they left the narrow confines of the secondary roadway. That route would lead to a wider central valley, where the most developed part of the city lay. The narrow, claustrophobic valley they now followed was about double the length of the three hundred thirty-six units still with the main column, which stretched nearly two miles in length.
Culpa, when he entered the narrow cut to the adjacent valley, had feeds by then from several drones, to show him the way was open all the way to the end. The abandoned vehicles were an anomaly to him. He’d have expected them to leave them on the roadway to try to slow his advance again. Besides, if his Pillagers could drive two abreast here, then so could have a good portion of the mining equipment. Blocking both routes would have required him to clear one route or the other, guaranteeing a longer delay.
The abandoned personal transports were all parked to the right hand side of the road, close to a rock face on a narrow gravel shoulder. Considering they were fleeing towards the same wide valley that he was trying to reach, and they preferentially drove on the right side of the highways on this planet, parking on that side seemed logical. Although, they were more frequently clustered as he traveled along the middle part of the valley.
The farthest drone showed some moving vehicles were still exiting the far end of the valley at high speed, wisely fleeing his advance. As his tank rumbled by the parked cars, he saw the ladders, and what appeared to be dangling ropes on the opposite side rock face, and realized they must have been desperate to escape this confined valley. Yet, had they been more patient, obviously the road congestion eventually had cleared. It suggested panic to him.
He sent
a drone over the top of the ridge to his left, looking for where those humans, now on foot, could have gone. There was a narrow single lane paved trail at the top, but there were only some abandoned trucks and piles of small mining equipment left all along the top. He flew one drone close, and saw that these were a mix of mechanical and laser drills. Not a surprise, considering this was a region of heavy mining, with signs of vertical groves on the ridge walls as evidence of how the valley walls had been widened, to accommodate the roads they built. Perhaps they had been working here on widening the road when the invasion began. However, he didn’t see where the people had gone.
His curiosity about the presumed ropes was deflected when he was called by Legion Commander Forton. “Sire, I have paused, because there is a tall wooden barrier placed in the road ahead of me. It’s more a sign of some sort than a wall, and seems flimsy. It has what appears to be a form of Thandol script painted on it, which I’ve seen before. The type of script they use to represent sounds they can make with their trunks, but it’s not the words of their normal writing, most of which I can read of course.”
“Does it block our progress? If it’s wood, it should be easy to blast out of the way.”
“Yes, Sire, but it is apparently a message from the humans, using Thandol phonetic script. The lead elements of your column following my Legion hasn’t caught up to us yet, so I halted to inquire if you understand this phonetic script. We can’t pronounce the sounds ourselves, of course, because that requires two trunks, but if it were read aloud by a Thandol, we would understand the basic words in Thandol. I think this is a message intended for us, and they don’t know the written words of our language.”
Culpa’s curiosity was now focused. “Of course I can't read that script either, but like you, I recognize it if seen. It’s usually used for new subservient species that can’t understand spoken Thandol, and an AI that knows the sounds intended by the script can sound out the notes of the spoken words in that species own language.”
“Yes, Sire. I think humans have left us a message, using that Thandol script. Do you think we need to hear it spoken?”
“Send me the image. I’ll ask the flagship AI to analyze the script and speak the words to us, in whatever language it is. If the phonics replicates a human language we won’t understand anyway, but if it’s spoken in Thandol, or even Ragnar, it may be comprehensible. Not that they could possibly know our own language.”
The transliteration to audio didn’t take long, and Culpa had it broadcast from his suit’s external speakers for the nearby tank crews to hear, and sent it to Forton, who did the same. The language they heard, despite the Group 3 commander’s expectation, was surprisingly understandable, sounding as if it were spoken by a Thandol. Except, that it was entirely in the Ragnar tongue, at least until three incomprehensible words at the end, which were presumably in the human language. Just prior to the final three human words, was a threatening phrase in Ragnar, which was abundantly clear.
****
Juanita Jansky, the newly minted PDF Lieutenant, and not a young woman, merely a promoted former sergeant, confirmed what they’d been hoping to hear from her PDF troopers, posted as forward observers. “The last of the riggers are off the ridge tops, and their trucks have just cleared Ridgeway Road on the north end. They’re completely clear now. If this stunt doesn’t work, we’d all better get our asses out of New Caledonia. This is the only place we can possibly keep them from tearing the city a new asshole.”
The four mining company supervisors, whose crews had cooperated on the work along Ridgeway Road, still sounded adamant that their impromptu proposal would work.
One of them pointed out the precedent, again. “This isn’t the first time ordinary people have done something like this, although not with tanks, since the Krall were on foot.”
Another of them had a question, a scar faced woman named Carly. After the hurried initial introductions and explanations, done a half day and an eternity of work ago, Jansky was surprised she remembered the name.
“Lieutenant, if they don’t stop at that wood barricade to read our sign, which the Kobani showed us how to make, what then?”
Jansky exaggerated her shrug, so it would be visible with her body enclosed in armor. “My troopers were told not to wait if they busted right on through. I’m just hoping we can get them all bunched in tighter, so the front and tail of that long column is between both choke points. The bastards dropped off twenty-six armored units along the way, and I don’t have any good ways of defeating them if those isolated units regroup. I hadn’t expected them to leave anyone behind them. We’ll know in a minute if we’ll have all of these in the main column bunched together and all of them stopped. If we can’t pin them here, we’ll Molotov as many as we can before they get out of this valley.”
“What about those big laser batteries you had tilted halfway over on their sides? Can’t they burn the ones they left behind or that get by us?”
“We only did that with six batteries placed in the three biggest valleys, and unless the enemy drives through the center of those valleys, we can’t hit them if they take alternate routes, such as the one we diverted them through this time. The main purpose of those tilted over batteries was to shoot down low flying Stranglers if they attacked the valley populations. The Ragnar held them back, apparently worried they might fly over some of them if we hid them between ridges. They surely want the ground attack to knock the lasers out first, so they can move in and zap anyone not protected by armor and wire mesh, like me and my hundred troopers. If we can stop these tanks, we’ll stop or slow down the Stranglers. At least long enough for the Kobani to break the hold the Ragnar fleet has on the planet.”
“Hey, the lead tank just halted a hundred feet from the sign.” One of the miners had been watching a screen in the improvised combat center, displaying one of the images available from prepositioned cameras on the ridge tops, or from some placed inside the parked cars.
“He’s looking at that big damn sign. Do you think he can read it? It looks like squiggly gibberish to me.”
The Lieutenant answered frankly. “I don't give a shit. The front of the column has stopped, and that will allow the break in the middle of the column to catch up to the twenty lead tanks. If we get the last tank beyond the rear chokepoint, we go hot.”
They had received a printed transcript of what was allegedly on the sign, their version written in Standard, naturally. That had been provided to them by one of the Kobani captains fighting the Ragnar fleet. Athena Christopoulos, via her ship’s AI, had relayed the text of the message in Standard, along with an image of exactly what the alien Thandol markings on the sign should look like.
They had used a home decorator bot to paint the sign’s background color white, and overlaid it with the supposedly decorative pattern of bizarre black squiggles, curves, and dots of the Thandol phonetic script, which the bot had used as its design. They hurriedly placed the finished sign on the road as the rigger crews finished their rough shallow bores, and completed their work. It was a hell of a job for only a half a day notice, and several riggers were hurt as they bypassed normal safety procedures. Their work, and those volunteers that had parked and positioned the cars on the side of the road, was what was important. The sign was an amusing afterthought, which might or might not produce some benefit. Knowing what it said had clearly boosted the spirits of those trying to save their city and world.
They placed the sign on the roadway at the end of the riggers work area, in the hope it would pause the advance of that armored column briefly. They wanted them to bunch up more tightly in the narrow confines of the canyon, where they had been hurriedly diverted.
There were very few defenses on the entire planet against the Ragnar’s massive mechanized armor, powered by fusion generators that gave them unlimited range. The Ragnar’s lack of experience with human ingenuity, and human ability to adapt, might only work for this first encounter. These weren’t Krall barbarians, who would repeatedly cha
rge an enemy heedless of consequences.
An audio pickup on a camera mounted at the top of the twenty-foot high sign, detected amplified rough vocalization sounds and guttural grunts, originating from the lead armored unit. It actually seemed to be issuing from a chest speaker on the armor of the ape sticking out of a hatch, sitting on the turret of the largest tank. He had removed his helmet and was glaring at the sign, his mouth not moving, so he wasn’t speaking.
Based on previously recorded Ragnar speech, this untranslated message sounded like the Ragnar language to the human listeners, but it was pronounced with a distinct Thandol accent. As if spoken using their two flexible trunks, producing the Ragnar words. To Jansky and the others with her, who spoke only Standard, it seemed much like gibberish as did the written script on the sign.
Carla glanced down at a printed transcript of the same message, which was presumably being translated into spoken words for the apes. Only the three words at the end would be spoken in a replica of Standard. All of them were waiting to hear those words, and expecting some reaction. She read the text while it was being spoken in Ragnar.
We know you hate your Thandol masters, and they despise you. Your failure here will not be forgiven by them. Join with us to defeat them, or kiss your hairy butt goodbye. Remember Gribble’s Nook!
There was a prompt reaction from the lead tank. It lurched forward and fired its main gun as it did so, blowing the sign to smithereens. When it covered the short distance to the splintered remains, hundreds of remote detonators along the rock walls were triggered, just as the massive tank reached the intended choke point. A powerful string of explosions erupted along the middle of the ridge walls on both sides of the lead elements, bringing down tens of thousands of tons of rock on them, blocking the road ahead, and burying the entire twenty units of the leading Legion under ten to fifteen feet of rock, depending on how the walls crumbled onto them. Almost half of the Legion’s tanks had their Ragnar commanders still sitting on their turrets, the top hatches open when the blasts came. They were mowed down by fast moving heavy rock fragments sprayed from the sides. Legion Commander Forton barely had time to register what was happening, before a multi-ton boulder helped him lose interest.
Koban 6: Conflict and Empire Page 21