The officers spent a good deal of time playing with their new complement of war machines. Feng became good enough at configuring the machines himself, but he chafed at their many limitations.
Wenbo remained their most talented simulation artist. Feng and Wenbo spent many hours playing out toy scenarios with the dogs and their men. They both wanted to develop an intuitive feel for what the dogs were capable of.
A few days out from the station, the officers were summoned for a virtual meeting. Feng and Zhengqing were in a lab with Wenbo when the meeting was announced.
Captain Lin MingZhong, in command of the Ascending Dragon, addressed them. Feng had seen the captain in person a few times as well. Captain Lin had a flat face in profile, with thin down turned lips and ragged eyebrows. The man’s eyes were intelligent, piercing.
“We will conduct a mock incursion of Grand China station,” Captain Lin began. “You will configure the dog machines from our wargame arsenal. The opposing force already on the station will be similarly armed and deployed for the exercise. Of course I assume you will also make full use of your simulations, so the design specs of the station will be made available.”
“This time you’ll be fighting against a unit that’s configured the way the Divine Space Force operates in real battle, although the weapons are non-lethal. The lack of real projectile weapons does change the tactics a little, but of course we will leave those to the virtual simulations for now. At least until we conduct an incursion on someone else’s station.”
Feng chuckled. He liked Captain Lin. The man always talked as if certain they would someday go to war. Feng didn’t know what to expect, but he knew it paid to be prepared.
Their captain’s official record was quite impressive. Not surprising given that the man commanded such a modern, powerful ship. Lin MingZhong was a veteran of one of the very few combat actions that took place during the fall of Japan. He had taken part as an officer in the seizure of Japanese space stations by Chinese forces. When the government of Japan had conceded control of the nation to China semi-peacefully, the stations and their companies had attempted to become independent. The Divine Space Force had ensured that these valuable stations remained in the Eastern sphere of control.
“Your orders are to seize control of Grand China station with minimal incidental damage.”
Graphics of the station appeared in their PVs.
“You have some limitations of course, as this is an exercise. Points of entry are limited to existing locks, marked on your maps. To compensate for your lack of breach location options, the garrison’s deployment will be frozen until the last five minutes before your breach.”
“I’ll leave your questions to the oversight officers on this list,” said Captain Lin, appending a pointer to his transmission. “Good luck, and don’t disappoint me.”
Feng absorbed the data on estimated number of defending combatants. He saw a complement of three dog machines. There were also other security machines, fifty Yongji robots, which were humanoid-sized security machines quite common in Chinese paramilitary police forces. Listed next were six Yongshan heavy machines, true military war robots. The human security force was a mere thirty individuals. This part didn’t surprise Feng— humans were expensive to keep alive in space. They required food, air and water as well as a myriad of other tiny bits of supplies and equipment that amounted to luxuries so far from Earth.
Since the machines on both sides would be equipped with non-lethal or completely fake weapons, a glue grenade or an electrical stunner would be about the most the men had to fear. Of course, accidents could always happen during such exercises. Feng hadn’t seen anyone die in his training, although he had witnessed injuries resulting in broken bones and unconsciousness. The officers kept warning about deaths that had happened, and Feng believed them.
At first glance, the mission seemed very doable, almost easy, in fact. Their own complement of one thousand dog machines, together with a almost a hundred officers and three hundred men should be more than a match for the garrison.
Feng felt suspicious. He joined a discussion channel forming with some of the junior officers and the oversight personnel the captain had mentioned.
“Are there any questions?”
“So, this is an opportunity for us to learn the tactics of the more experienced officers?” Feng asked.
And therefore an opportunity for us to prove our worth by defeating them?
“I’ll tentatively answer that question with a yes,” said the officer cryptically.
Feng traded glances with Zhengqing. He decided they were both thinking the same thing. The defenders had something extra on their side. The green officers were expected to go in and lose. Then the higher ranks would distill the result into some kind of lesson.
Li Feng was going to keep that from happening. He’d somehow expect the unexpected, and they’d seize the station anyway. He clenched his fist in anticipation of the challenge.
“What is the confidence level on our intelligence providing these data on the defender’s composition?” asked Zhengqing.
“It’s very high,” replied the exercise coordinator. “It’s been furnished by operatives on the station. There is no reason to suspect they’ve been compromised. No recent shipments of military hardware have been reported in the region.”
Of course, the officers knew what was on the station. It was their station, after all, but the officer spoke in terms of the exercise. Which meant that the junior officers could be getting inaccurate information. But the exercise coordinator was not trying to give them any reason to expect the unexpected.
“So, Feng. What’s the catch?” Zhengqing asked with a smile. “Or is this really a case of blind cat finds dead mouse?”
Feng laughed at the use of the old Chinese saying. “It can’t be that. We’re being set up to fail. You can feel it, too. The last challenge was too hard, and this one’s too easy.”
Zhengqing nodded. “Let’s come up with some possibilities.”
Feng felt happy that Zhengqing came to him as a peer even though the other had the technical command decisions in his pocket. The informal leadership of Zhengqing had solidified into a real command assignment after the success of their first mission. Feng was among a half dozen of the other junior officers promoted just below Zhengqing for his role in the formation of the battle tactics.
“The only thing I’ve come up with so far is, maybe the dog machines can’t touch a Yongshan,” Feng said.
“That could be it,” Wenbo agreed. “What do these dogs have that can crack a tank?”
Zhengqing nodded. “I also found some laser emplacements at security checkpoints on the station. There are a few spots in the station where the dogs would have to rush them at such checkpoints, and between some Yongshans and a few lasers, we might have some trouble.”
Feng was silent for a moment. His mind had switched away from the Yongshan problem.
“Actually, they’ve given part of it away already,” Feng said.
“What? Given what away?” asked Wenbo.
“They’ve talked about this a couple of times, skirting around it, but never directly. It’s not extra hardware that is supposed to cause us the problem. It’s the configuration. The strategy. Remember how he said we’d be fighting a unit configured like a real unit? He implied we’re missing a piece of the puzzle.”
“So he’s saying because we’re green we’re idiots at strategy?” Zhengqing said.
“Well, several times they’ve said the dogs are idiots,” Feng said. “And they implied there was a solution for that.”
“The dogs can be set up to be controlled remotely by human pilots,” Wenbo said. “We can run them from our PVs.”
Feng nodded. “That must be it.”
“There aren’t enough of us,” Zhengqing said. “But, we could make units of about fifteen dogs and slave them to one human pilot. Make them take cues from the human leader?”
Wenbo shrugged. “You may be reaching. A
human might be able to be smarter in complex context, but I bet the dog can shoot faster and better than a human pilot.”
“Well only one in fifteen would be human. He would serve as a squad leader,” Zhengqing said. Feng and Wenbo could hear the excitement in his voice. “He says where to go and when. He says what to shoot and the dog can do the shooting.”
“Yes, we should run some simulations,” Wenbo said. “But we could be imagining this. Look, they could have just meant that a real unit makes use of combined arms. Dogs, security forces, and some heavy war machines.”
Zhengqing nodded. “Okay. We’ll consider multiple possibilities, then. Get to work on the squad leader idea in your simulations. Set us up so we can practice as a leader, hooking us into the simulation and leading the dogs into battle. I’ll take a careful look at what we have to deal with the Yongshans.”
***
Two days later, Feng sat in a transport module attached to Grand China station. He wore a DSF combat uniform, which was a combination of a tough military skinsuit and a light vac suit. His eyes were closed. In his PV he ran alongside the rear dogs of his squad. He’d managed to score a sixteen dog squad to lead. He controlled one of the war dogs in pilot mode. The other dogs took cues from his dog, staying near and copying his combat tactics.
Other squads of dogs poured out of the mock breach point behind his squad. The Ascending Dragon had deployed both of its incursion ships, attacking the base from two different spots.
Zhengqing believed he had found a solution for the Yongshan machines. The dogs would find them but wouldn’t engage. Then the soldiers of the Ascending Dragon would move in with anti-armor weapons that could be targeted from afar. They had smart grenades that could be launched from great distances, including around corners. Some of those grenades were specialized to self-guide themselves to the underbelly of a heavy machine and explode upwards to disable it where its armor would likely be weak.
Zhengqing had selected a large batch of these specialized devices with mock warheads to use in the wargame. The plan called for a few dogs to be sent in simultaneously to draw fire and increase the chances of the grenades getting through.
Feng’s squad guarded an access corridor near the breach point. Once the entire arsenal of dogs had been injected through the breach, then the plan called for them to move to the nearest transport and communications hub, about five hundred meters toward the core.
The dog he controlled indicated it heard a disturbance approaching his squad’s position.
“They’re responding to our breach,” he transmitted. “We have enemy units incoming.”
His message included a pointer to his squad’s location.
Then dogs appeared at the end of the corridor. Feng opened fire, letting the dog aim and shoot for him. Although he piloted the dog in the abstract sense, it still had much better targeting capabilities than he did through the PV interface.
A firefight erupted. Some of his dogs dropped prone to reduce their target areas and to allow those behind, including Feng’s dog, to add to the fire. At least one of the enemy dogs was down. Then Feng’s feed went dead.
He switched to another dog in the squad, with the same result. His fourth dog got him a look at the battle. Several of the dogs were dead in front, with the rest of his squad sheltering behind them and shooting down the corridor. The enemy dogs ahead weaved in and out of sight as they advanced from alcove to alcove. Feng didn’t see many enemy dogs, he estimated less than ten advancing on his position. His feed went dead again.
He tried to get another dog but couldn’t. The squad had been decimated.
“A lot of dogs responding to our incursion, my squad is down,” Feng transmitted in consternation. He knew Zhengqing and others would be monitoring the big picture. They knew where his squad was. The fact he was overwhelmed might help them track enemy movements.
Feng looked for another squad to insert himself into as a pilot. He managed to get half a squad from another pilot already in the base. As he looked, he saw heavy casualties from his entire transport group.
Feng took control of his new dog. This group had dispersed in an atrium adjoining the breached airlock. The dogs knocked over several of the large plants and pieces of furniture which cluttered the area. No people were around. No doubt the locals had been warned to stay in their quarters for the duration of the wargame.
“Something’s wrong,” Zhengqing told his officers. “They’re much more effective than possible given the numbers we were told to expect. Find cover, watch your attack routes and wait for the soldiers to join your squads,” he ordered.
Feng put his dog in a corner, pushing aside a massive vase holding a miniature palm tree and hiding behind it. The other dogs in the squad dropped to the ground under tables and behind chairs or support columns.
No soldiers were visible in the atrium. As Feng watched, two security robots entered from an archway on the far end of the atrium. Feng’s squad opened fire with his pilot dog. The security robots were almost immediately neutralized, but other dogs had entered from another door on the side, behind a support column. Already many of Ascending Dragon’s dogs were dropping out, declared as mock casualties from this new attack.
Feng’s dog sat behind the vase and sniped at two enemy dogs, but his dog was missing. The other dogs moved deceptively and used their cover very well.
“These dogs are good,” Feng reported. “They’re hard to hit. If they’re being piloted, then these guys have a lot more practice than we do. They’re outperforming us considerably.”
Feng’s squad only managed to hit two enemy dogs before he lost the feed. He tried to switch again but all the dogs were marked as disabled or destroyed.
“Transport Module One, I have no choice but to order you to disengage and detach from Grand China,” Zhengqing transmitted. “Enemy dogs are holding the breach and there’s no point in sending the rest of you out there to be mowed down. Stand down and return to the Ascending Dragon.”
Zhengqing’s voice sounded very flat. Feng could understand. He felt immense frustration. But he still had hope for the other module. If the enemy had concentrated on Transport Module One, then had the other module’s invaders been able to take over other areas unchecked?
He felt the module detach from the station. He strapped himself in and accessed the battle channels to see what was going on with the other prong of the attack. The other transport module had breached under the spaceport. The dogs moved up through the station towards the port, where they’d encountered two Yongshans supported by security robots.
The dogs were attempting to flank the Yongshans while waiting for soldiers to unleash the special tank buster grenades. They ran into security robots in the side corridors and started to take heavy casualties immediately.
Feng watched the skirmish.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “Somehow, we’re being outgunned. That last group only had five security robots in it, but it defeated a ten dog squad!”
The attacking dogs fell back and regrouped with the human soldiers. At first they were lightly harassed by the security forces, but then the dogs that had defeated Module One arrived back at the spaceport. At that point, things went very much the same as they had for Module One: the enemy’s firepower was more effective, and their dogs harder to hit. The invasion force took heavy casualties. Almost all the men were glued or declared dead by the wargame protocols.
“We’re done,” Zhengqing transmitted. “I’m offering surrender to ensure that we can get my men out of the glue before we take any real losses.”
Feng opened a private channel to Zhengqing.
“Their dogs were better than ours, nothing more,” Feng said acidly.
“Agreed. But the demonstration had to be made. Their configuration is quite superior.”
Feng ground his teeth. He hated losing, but he couldn’t argue with the truth. They’d been schooled by the other side. Now he’d have to learn the lesson and take it with a dose of humility.
Zhengqing told Feng before the meeting, “Yes, it was not fair. But real war isn’t fair, either. The universe doesn’t make fair battles. You have to fight them anyway.”
Feng couldn’t disagree with him.
The officers signed on to a virtual environment from all over the Ascending Dragon. The environment took the form of an immaculate lecture hall. Hundreds of seats descended a gentle slope toward a lectern at the front.
There, they were addressed by a tall, thin man with close-set eyes. Feng’s link told him that the speaker was Kong Jun Shang Xiao Jiang, a colonel in the electronic warfare section of the warship.
“Your incursion of Grand China was competently planned and executed reasonably well,” Jiang opened. “You all share credit for that. Of course the purpose here was to show you the effectiveness of the newest paradigm in robotic warfare. Despite wielding a superior force, you weren’t able to defeat an enemy configured in our real battle mode.”
Feng’s face screwed up in anger again.
Their dogs were smarter. That’s all.
But Feng knew enough to keep his mouth shut. He fumed inside.
“As I’m sure you noticed, the key to their superiority was in the way the garrison dog machines were used. In fact, the other team’s dogs were controlled from here on the Ascending Dragon. Our battle director used that control to make the garrison robotic forces act as a single coordinated unit. That also provided the flexibility and brainpower the dogs and Yongji lack.”
The officers murmured amongst themselves. Elements aboard their own ship had commanded the garrison force?
Synchronicity Trilogy Omnibus Page 36