by Alma Boykin
McKendrick realized the problem. “Manx One, remove your helmet for a moment, please.” She did as asked and McKendrick explained, “Commander Na Gael is our xenology specialist. We have access to some experimental technologies, as you can tell by our equipment.” The Swedish Branch officer had heard of her and relaxed. For his part, McKendrick wondered why in heaven’s name his advisor now sported a pair of very real-looking black animal ears on the top of her head. Then a bird called, and as he watched one ear swiveled toward the sound, as a cat’s ear would. Well, that explained the ridge at the center of her helmet he thought, bemused. It also explained her call sign.
“Ah, I believe we might be able to,” Halvorsen said in response to the earlier question, making notes. “If the Poles can get their heavy communications equipment close enough.” As he spoke, Rachel passed Sheep a note with the frequencies involved. She remained silent through the rest of the briefing until Halvorsen asked, “Do you have any idea what we are facing?”
The humans as one turned to their advisor. “Besides a very hard slog, Major? Yes, I think I do,” she hurried, before McKendrick or O’Neil could explode at her. “If the audio signals analysis is correct, we’re dealing with a species called the Vreenahlwee. They are tripedal insects that are controlled by a hive-mind through a combination of pheromones and low-level telepathy. Which means that if you have anyone with a knack for talking mind-to-mind, they need to be very careful if they’re close to a Vreenahlwee. However,” Rachel cautioned, “this is all if my hypothesis is correct. I’d really need to see a set of the armor and its operator up close to make certain.”
“You’ll get your chance soon enough, Manx One,” McKendrick reminded the alien. The briefing wrapped up, and Rachel went back to where the scouts had clustered their vehicles. The afternoon’s heat lingered and brought out the smell of pinesap and warm soil. A faint breeze from the west promised a fair evening, and Rachel offered up a word of thanks that it was not storming and cold. She absolutely detested being cold and wet. Corporal Sherman sat on the running board cum blast deflector of the vehicle he drove, cleaning his rifle and singing “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” under his breath. The woman shook her head as she set her helmet on the bonnet of the Aethelred. “Catch!” someone called, and she reached up and intercepted a flying supper box. It was the dreaded creamed beef and she sighed. Then she heard something digging and skittering in a stony outcrop in the woods beside the parking area.
“Corporal, would you mind watching my things for a moment?” she asked.
“No problem, ma’am,” he said. Rachel took off her weapons and armor, then strode into the dark woods. Twenty minutes later she came back smiling and well fed. The marmots had been young, stupid, and very tender. She rearmed and went to find a place to sit and inspect her equipment.
Corporal Mikitori walked up after she left. “Is she really an alien?” he asked the American.
Sherman shrugged, but Sergeant Lee emerged from behind the Aethelred. “Yes, she is. Manx One’s our secret weapon. And she worked her way through the ranks, so if she says jump or run, do it—ask why later.” The three men looked over to where the woman sat. “Get some rest if you can. We move out in three hours.”
As he stolidly chewed his own field meal, McKendrick thought about his advisor. With her helmet on she looked like something out of a science fiction movie. A black shield covered most of the blind side of her face, while a monocle in a metal frame protected her other eye. She’d covered her body armor with cloth for some reason, and he wondered what sorts of things were wired into the display on her right forearm. Add in her assorted weapons, including that blast rifle of hers, and it was no wonder the European major reacted the way he did. And why had he not noticed her ears before? He snorted to himself—if she began sporting a tail, he’d have to say something. McKendrick wanted her to ride with him, then hesitated. Could they afford the risk? Probably not, but he’d think it over before they moved out again.
And so it was that Rachel found herself tucked into a corner of the Brutus. She’d rather have remained with Lee and the scouts, but no. She napped, her blast rifle tucked within quick reach and her sidearm set on “kill.” After a while McKendrick cleared his throat and she opened her eye, startling a bit until the monocle reset for the correct distance. Her mouth twitched with amusement at the crosshairs that appeared before she blinked them off. “Sir?”
“Tell me more about the species we’re fighting. Why are they here and how do we deal with that armor of theirs?” the Scotsman wanted to know.
She flipped a latch on her left forearm guard and released what proved to be a long, slender computer screen. She passed it over to McKendrick. The display showed a bright purple creature with three legs and two arms extending from a central torso. The figure didn’t seem to have a head. “That’s a Vreenahlwee warrior. The third thorax appendage has been amputated to allow the soldier to carry more and move more quickly. The brain is housed within the lower thorax, between the hips and the ocular patch. Aural receptors are on the top of the thorax stalk.”
McKendrick studied the image. It was hard to take something that color seriously, and he observed, “It doesn’t look that dangerous. How big is it?”
Rachel looked at something on her datalink. “The warriors average one point eight meters. Their homeworld has lower gravity than Earth, so if you managed to catch one without its armor, it wouldn’t be as strong as a human soldier of the same size.” She leaned forward with a grunt as her armor cut into her stomach and tapped a button at the end of the display, changing the picture to show a Vreenahlwee warrior holding a curved black object. “The cutting blade mates into the warrior’s body and becomes an extension of the arm. It also carries poison that paralyses the voluntary muscles of mammals. So you still breathe and you have a heartbeat—all the autonomic systems still function—but you can’t move. And they never attack alone, always in swarms, like your ants.”
The more he heard, the less happy McKendrick was. “You said they are controlled by a hive mind?”
“Affirmative. I wager that their armor has been customized to boost the signals of the central mind-beings, so the warriors can function independently of the swarm.”
“If we can eradicate the mind, what happens?” McKendrick made some notes of his own as Rachel considered the question.
She sighed. “I’m not certain. Best case is if the warriors lapse into utter confusion and can be eliminated piecemeal. Worst case is they go mad en masse and form a single giant swarm.” Rachel sifted through her memories. “I’ve never fought them, sir. They are native to this galaxy, but the only time I’ve crossed paths with them was at an arms market when I was looking into some temporal contraband. Keep in mind, sir, that all this is only if they are, indeed, Vreenahlwee,” she cautioned her semi-superior.
He snorted. “And how often have you been wrong? No, don’t answer that—I don’t want to know.” He waved her off, then returned the viewer. She slid it back into place and locked the frame. “Why are the Vreenahlwee here?”
“I don’t know, sir. I just don’t have enough data on them at the moment,” she admitted. “I’m not even going to speculate.”
“And their armor?”
“Ah, the armor,” she grinned. “Generic, but I assume modified for their bodies and communications style. It’s not the very best, but hardly the worst. They bought it from the Gormak Cartel, judging by the way the joints are hinged. It’s solid, easy to repair, and not very complicated, but can’t support high-end weapons, either. And it tends to have marginal shields. The Gormak buy their shielding units from the lowest bidder, and you know what that means.” Everyone in the Brutus knew exactly, and there was a palpable sense of relief to learn that the giant things had an exploitable weakness.
As he considered the new information, McKendrick felt the Brutus slowing, and he turned his attention to the location display map. It showed . . . nothing.
“The jammer,” he s
ighed. Well, they were close to the enemy, obviously. “Command One,” their driver said over the intercom, “be advised that we’ve reached the suggested staging point.”
“Very good. Move into position,” McKendrick ordered. The vehicle rolled over some rougher terrain, then halted. As soon as it stopped, Rachel undid her shoulder harness and bailed out of the vehicle.
O’Neil snickered. “Shouldn’t have had so much tea,” he called after the woman.
Captain ben David had already disembarked from his vehicle and came over the net “Command One, Command Two, enemy in sight one kilometer from this position.”
The Vreenahlwee, or whatever it was, made no attempt to hide from the humans. It stood on the shoulder of a hill near the staging field, watching the soldiers. Rachel activated the passive scanners in her armor and wondered why the occupant of the armor had its shields turned off. As she and the others watched, lights flashed on, casting a red glow upwards onto the head and chest of the battle armor, giving the thing a very malevolent aura. “Nice touch,” ben David commented.
After several minutes the observer moved, raising its arm. Rachel ducked and trotted off to the side, away from the vehicles as she heard the buzz of a target lock in her earpiece. Before the Vreenahlwee could replicate the massacre of the German branch, a flash and a hiss of thrust cut the commotion, and her monocle darkened automatically as Rachel caught the first glimpse of launch flame. With a loud crack-boomf, a Spike rocket hit the armor’s torso dead center. Something inside the armor exploded and the suit crashed backwards. As soon as it fell, Rachel had her rifle up and was trotting from tree to rock to bush so she could get a better look at the thing.
Sergeant Lee wasn’t far behind her, as the scouts approached the fallen enemy carefully. The impact with the ground had loosened the hatch in the armored “head,” and as the Defense Force troopers watched from behind cover, a thin figure emerged. It moved awkwardly, as if stunned by the impact. Rachel didn’t need the low-light enhancer on her monocle to see that the individual had three legs and two arms. Well, at least I guessed right this time, she grinned to herself. The figure swung toward her and she slammed her mental shields up full, but she’d already been spotted. The Vreenahlwee warrior fired toward her, and she ducked and rolled away from the tree as a blaster shot sent splinters everywhere. Lee and Mikitori fired back, dropping the alien.
Now that she knew exactly what they faced, Rachel went back to the Aethelred, where she’d left her portable supercomputer. With a little work, she dug up an article about the Vreenahlwee. “Oh bugger,” she whispered. The advisor searched until she located McKendrick, who’d gone up to look at the powered armor and its late operator.
“It seems you were correct, Manx One,” he observed, watching ben David poking the Vreenahlwee with a stick.
“Do these things have an exoskeleton?” the Israeli pointed to a dent toward the top of the gray torso, where something had apparently bounced off.
Rachel hunkered down for a closer inspection, wrinkling her nose at the bitter, sharp smell of the creature. “No, I think that’s external armor that has been gen-bonded to the warrior’s skin. The dent is the aural sensor. You’d call it the ear.” Loses color after death. Interesting.
She got up and went back to McKendrick’s side. “Sir, I think I may have found out what the Vreenahlwee want here.”
“Oh?”
“Apparently they’re cross-kingdom parasites.” Rachel tried to phrase it delicately. “It seems that during their larval stage, in order to develop and mature, the juveniles require certain amino acids and hormones produced by mammals.”
“Their young eat mammals,” McKendrick translated.
Rachel nodded.
“Why do I suppose that next you’ll tell me that the Vreenahlwee won’t be satisfied with sheep and cows?” he asked rhetorically.
She nodded again. “The potential intelligence of the creatures is determined by their environment during the larval stage. The Vreenahlwee prefer sapient hosts.”
Moshe ben David put the pieces together. “We need to evacuate the civilians first, before the invaders capture any more—” he winced. “Um, food?”
“That’s what I would recommend, Command Two,” Rachel said.
Back at the Brutus, McKendrick sent his scouts out, then gathered the officers and senior NCOs. “Who here has mountain warfare experience? And I don’t mean just annual training.” Almost a dozen hands came up, including Manx One’s. “And who has worked with civilian evacuations and refugee situations?” Twenty hands, including most of the Americans currently assigned to the Regiment, plus Manx One. There was some overlap, and McKendrick made his plans accordingly.
“Very well. Our tasks are—in order—to contain the invaders, evacuate the civilians, and defeat the Vreenahlwee. Hunter One, I want you and Lieutenant Shapiro to focus on the evacuation. The Bundeswehr and German Branch will take care of clearing the eastern slope. Our job is to focus on the western edge. Command Two, you and Lieutenant Takesti work with Manx One to see what we can do to prevent a repetition of the attack on the Germans. RSM Smith, assign people as needed. Lieutenant Cluj, break through the Vreenahlwees’ jamming. Borrow Manx One if you need to. Everyone clear?” The British soldiers nodded or voiced their agreement. “Good. We’re on unfamiliar ground, facing a potentially dug-in opponent. However,” the redhead smiled grimly, “the GDF motto is ‘Inexstinctus.’ Let’s show the Vreenahlwee what it means.” 1 And with those quiet words, the men and women scattered. Soon the vehicles scattered as well, moving away from the Brutus, just in case.
An hour later, Captain ben David sent Rachel to help Lieutenant Cluj as he tried to find a frequency that wasn’t being jammed. After she left, the Israeli hunted up Sergeant Lee. “Boer One, how long have you known Manx One?”
“Only eight or nine years,” Lee replied. “I don’t really know her that well, sir.”
The black-haired officer glanced over his shoulder in the direction that he’d sent his advisor. “Does she seem a bit odd? Odder than her usual, I mean.”
Lee made certain that there were no lower-ranked witnesses within hearing. “Yes, sir. She’s much more focused and cold than I remember seeing her. And she’s speaking in a language I’ve never heard before when she talks to herself. Kind of hissing, with lots of ‘ee’ and ‘ay’ sounds.”
The officer nodded. “So I’m not the only one.” He wondered if he should be worried, then decided no. He’d heard McKendrick muttering under his breath in what had to be Gaelic, so Rachel wasn’t the only one acting unusual. Ben David chalked it up to stress and went back to work positioning people and getting reports from the scouts. He hoped there wouldn’t be any storms. He’d sent Corporal McWhorter up into the tallest tree they could find to get a view of the sky in case of another air attack. At least the enemy’s jamming had one positive effect—it made identifying flying objects easier. If it flew, it was enemy.
It took work, but Sheep managed to find a way. “Baaagh,” he declared, ready to pull his hair out. “Too bad we can’t use carrier pigeons anymore,” he groused. “Stupid animal rights people. Even a telegram would work, but . . .” his voice trailed off. “Telegram!” he repeated, twisting around and opening a compartment at the bottom of the Brutus’s radio stack.
Rachel blinked as the Serbian excavated a Morse code key and set it on the writing surface. “Sergeant Ruiz?” The Panamanian noncom stuck his head into the vehicle’s hatch. “Manx One, find the wire for this.” The woman folded her arms and waited. “Please, ma’am.” Cluj added. “Sergeant, hook it into the closest telephone landline.”
Rachel sighed to herself and went out, locating the external wiring port more by feel than anything else. After a bit, she located the device and checked it. “Be careful,” she cautioned. “He’s already energized it.”
The man gave her a look she’d seen on the faces of NCOs for centuries. It roughly translated, “I wish just once I’d get an officer I didn’t have to trai
n.” Mindful of their situation, Rachel confined herself to an understanding nod as she carefully handed over the wire. She went back into the Brutus.
“All right, Lieutenant, tell me you are not going to try to contact someone with Morse,” she asked as she studied a printout of the enemy’s broadcasts. They couldn’t decipher them, but did make note of how many there were and how often the signals came.
“No, this is the backup, but it has an old manual telephone built in,” Cluj explained. He hesitated. “Um what’s the German emergency number?” Rachel just shook her head. “Ok, then we call the operator and go from there.” To her surprise, Sheep’s crazy idea worked. He explained much later, “Even twenty plus years after German reunification, this area didn’t get fully converted to digital telephones and fiber optic lines.” So unless the enemy could tap the phone mechanically, they couldn’t intercept a telephone call over the old system.” He’d looked sheepish as he told her, “the same was true around my home village.” Soon, Sergeant Ruiz tracked down one of the Germans assigned to the British Branch, and she and Cluj established communications at least with the closest Bundeswehr unit.
Meanwhile, Rachel returned to her assignment and found ben David and his people trying to balance the need to disperse with the need for mutual defense—and trying to sort out how to start taking the fight to the enemy. “I know they’re moving. They have to be, and they have to be moving against someone. But where in Sheol are they?”
She had no answers for the Israeli’s questions, aside from reminding him that the Harz had been a mining area for thousands of years. “They could be traveling underground.”
McKendrick called his staff in just before 0900 local time. “Good news. Cluj has established communications through the Bundeswehr. The Austrians are getting ready to start moving in from the south and we now have a combined forces plan. The bad news is that the Germans report seeing several scouts launch from the eastern side of the Harz, headed west. We still can’t get good tracking data, and our radios are jammed beyond line-of-sight. So we don’t know what their target is,” the frustrated Scotsman growled.