by B. V. Larson
I slept and showered on one of the destroyers, then went back to work. Miklos called me from HQ in the sky.
“The Macros still haven’t made a move, sir,” he said.
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it? You sound worried.”
“No, I don’t think it’s good. They are up to something. I wish I knew what.”
“Well, we aren’t going to give them any more time. I’ve already decided how we are going to take the last dome. We’ll do it by marching overland. It’s only about sixteen hundred miles away. Centaur troops are much faster being four-footed, and my tanks can travel overland about as fast.”
“Won’t that take days, sir? And won’t it wear out your native troops?”
I sighed. “Yes, probably. They aren’t nanotized. I can’t expect them to do the impossible, but this is their planet. I want their help for the final push. We simply don’t have the airlift to transport them all to the next target. We would have to put down on a new LZ without cover, too. The Macros might object.”
“I have a suggestion, sir.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Take your tank platoon first,” he said. “The destroyers are capable of carrying one each. I’ve already done the math.”
“Okay, what then? Without support, my sixteen tanks might not survive long. The Macros will storm them with missiles.”
“We have to put the rest of the fleet on station over the region to shoot down missiles. When the tanks unload, we set up laser turrets.”
“Okay…” I said, taking off my helmet and thinking about it. Cool winds tousled my wet hair, chilling my head. The wind felt great. Somehow, suit air-conditioners never seemed to quite keep up with a man’s level of perspiration. There were always hot wet spots and freezing cold dry spots.
“What about my infantry?” I asked.
“We take them in last, as they are the most vulnerable. These destroyers have much more lift than the old Nano ships. They can carry five times the payload. I recall a primitive design for landing pods you used back on Earth-a boxcar like unit.”
“Hmm,” I said, thinking it over. “The problem is the Centaurs themselves. They don’t like being cooped up.”
“Yes, but these systems do not have to survive in vacuum. They do not have to be sealed. You could build them quickly with planks of Macro steel, and cut many holes in the walls. They would be able to look out and see the sky and the grass around them. This should prevent panic.”
I laughed. “You are describing cattle trailers. You know that, don’t you? You want me to build a hundred-odd cattle trailers?”
“ Flying cattle trailers. Exactly, sir.”
In the end, I went with Miklos’ idea. It was risky, but it would get a large force onto the field at the Macro dome’s doorstep very quickly. I didn’t like the idea of losing these forces to an enemy missile barrage, or a rush of Macro war machines, but I liked the idea of giving the enemy another week to prepare even less.
By the end of the second day, as the sun fell below what we now called the western horizon, we were ready to launch. The destroyers used their large, black arms to pick up and carry my tanks. Like mother cats with squirming kittens, they sailed away into the sky. There were a few near disasters when wind-gusts caused the tanks to creak and tip. With only one arm holding onto each one, they weren’t very well-balanced. But they made it over hills, forests, lakes and grasslands-hundreds of miles of grass.
When they finally landed, some fifty miles from the enemy dome, I fully expected to hear about a counterattack. I did not, however. Instead, there was no response. No missiles, no war machines-nothing. I didn’t like it, but I kept going with the plan. I didn’t have a better move to make.
When the destroyers left us there on a hillside, sixteen four-man crews in each tank, it was a lonely feeling. The ships had to go back and transport the centaur troops next. But still, it felt as if we’d been abandoned.
All our sensor systems showed no movement out there. Satellite recon had reported activity: Macro workers were busily transporting supplies to the enemy factory, but no one had seen anything come out. What were they doing in there?
By midnight, I had my army assembled. We rolled forward the minute we were prepared. Just before dawn, we reached the dome.
This dome wasn’t at the bottom of a lake, at least. It wasn’t in a spiraling pit, either. Instead, it was nested in-between a set of craggy mountains. Not really a valley, the spot was more of a shallow depression where the peaks met. The mountains around were riddled with holes and were heavily mined by the Macro workers running in and out. As we advanced, we destroyed every harvesting system we ran into. They didn’t put up much of a fight-we simply had too much firepower for them. With the big guns on every tank and literally thousands of native troops charging forward with heavy beamers, every enemy was destroyed within minutes of contact.
I began to feel elated as we drew closer. The Macros had made a mistake. Perhaps they’d had some complex plan, something that took a week to put together. But we’d moved faster than they’d thought possible and arrived with a valid force before they were ready for us. Now, they scrambled and worked desperately under their domes, but it was too late.
It was a nice fantasy, but like most fantasies, it didn’t survive its inevitable impact with reality. What they were really up to none of us had expected, not until the last minute.
When I saw the dome shut off, and the glimmering surface dimmed down and flickered out entirely, I knew this was it. The moment of truth. What had they been building under there?
Under the dome were three large ships. I knew them all well. The one in the center was the most interesting-it was a transport. I’d spent months in the belly of a ship very much like it. The other two were cruisers. Their arrowhead shape was unmistakable. As the trio lifted off, they released a swarm of missiles.
“Defensive fire!” I screamed into the com-link, flipping it to general channel override. “Forget the ships, I want every vehicle laser we have engaged. Take out those missiles! Infantry, advance and scatter!”
More orders poured over the various channels as my sub-commanders realized the danger. If these incoming birds were nuclear, just one of them would wipe out most if not all of my brave little army.
We’d foreseen this possibility, and had dispersed our forces somewhat. We weren’t tightly balled up. But a high-yield weapon would still kill the infantry and probably our tanks as well.
I counted the streaking missiles. They took bare seconds to shoot up to their cruising height, at which point they did a sharp turn and aimed downward. This move was a new one. I recalled anti-tank weapons of a similar design back on Earth. They were programmed to fire over obstacles by rising up, then turning sharply and coming down on a tank’s turret, which was generally its weakest point. The armor was usually thin up there. In the case of our own vehicles, our tanks did have hatches that were much thinner steel than the walls.
My tanks did rather poorly against this incoming threat. The turrets were no longer manually operated, as I’d set up brain-boxes and motors with sensory input systems to operate them. These performed much better than human gunners could hope to do. But the turrets themselves weren’t very fast to turn and acquire a target. The big turrets traversed, taking long seconds to lock-on and aim.
It was the destroyers that saved us from annihilation in the end. I’d had them float overhead, eighteen of them, all with three weapons each. They burned down most of the missiles. Only three got through, and each took out one of my tanks. Fortunately, the warheads were conventional explosives.
The fight was far from over, however. The next barrage of missiles was fewer in number, but more threatening. They flew directly at my destroyers. I knew what that meant. They’d decided to take out my air cover.
“To all Fleet units,” I shouted. “You are ordered to perform evasive action. Rise and scatter. If one missile gets through, I don’t want to lose an entire squadron.”
Macro missiles aren’t like their terrestrial counterparts. Each is a small ship, manned by an independent enemy machine. Looking back on the detonation, I figured one of the Macro pilots had calculated my ships were going to shoot them all down, and decided to go out in a blaze of glory. It should have been a win for us, but for one thing: the missile was carrying a thermonuclear warhead. The single explosion was powerful enough to destroy the rest of the missiles and two of my ships-not to mention a hell of a lot of Centaur ground troops.
— 22
The worst part of the aftermath was the Centaur dead. It was hard not to feel for them. I knew they were all volunteers. Like all their herd-mates, they were more than happy to lay down their lives for the cause of planetary liberation. But as I watched them fall like dominoes, burned and flattened by the power of the fireball, I didn’t feel like they’d made a useful sacrifice.
We would have lost all the ground troops, but for the fact the air burst occurred at about two miles up. Still, we lost over three thousand in five seconds. Another four thousand were mortally burned or irradiated. They would linger, but wouldn’t survive. The surviving Centaurs had each gotten their life-time dose of radiation and there were burns, but at least their goggles prevented blindness. Out of sixteen thousand, less than half were able to continue advancing.
Inside our tanks, my marines fared better. Only three of the big vehicles had been knocked out, those that had been directly below the blast. The one I shared with Captain Sloan swayed and rocked as if it was being kicked by giants, but survived intact. I studied the carnage around the tank and ground my teeth at the scene. I ordered what was left of my force to regroup and quickly press the attack against the dome.
The three enemy ships had escaped us entirely, covered by their barrage of missiles. The ships flew off and out of orbit quickly, heading for the nearest Macro-held planet. Miklos called me as they fled.
“Sir, request permission to pursue the enemy ships.”
“Denied,” I said.
“But sir-”
“Still denied. I need your ships for air cover. I don’t want to lose them, or any more of my troops.”
I could have ordered my ships to charge after the Macro vessels, but to do so would have left my ground force without air cover. I figured my little army had suffered enough. Miklos gave up and we proceeded to advance with grim determination. When my land army finally limped to the spot where the dome had been, the truth became clear: the Macros had pulled up stakes and fled the planet entirely. The factory was gone-even the Macro workers were gone. They’d obviously loaded it aboard the cylindrical transport ship and lifted off with it in the hold.
I understood now where the enemy production had been spent all this time. Instead of building ground forces, they’d built ships. Space-going vessels were more expensive in terms of time and resources to produce, but they’d saved their factory that way and dealt us a hard blow on their way out.
Captain Sloan clapped me on the back suddenly as I stared at the scopes and screens. I glared at him.
“It’s not so bad, sir,” he said.
We were both sitting inside our tank. At least we’d survived unharmed. It was more than I could say for most of the Centaurs I’d brought on this campaign.
“It’s worse than bad,” I said. “It was a charley-foxtrot, and you know it.”
He shook his head. “No, Colonel. I don’t accept that. Let’s consider the situation strategically. You’ve driven them off an entire world-the very world the Centaur civilization was born upon. They have got to be happy with you for that. They’d gladly have given a million lives to resecure their home planet.”
I nodded glumly. We’d won, but we could have done better. “I could have captured two of their factories, doubling our output. Now, we’re still sorely out-produced.”
Sloan shook his head. “No. No, I don’t see it that way at all. Yes, they have more industrial capacity than we do. They always did. But now we have so much more than we ever did before. We are in better shape than before, comparatively. But frankly, what I don’t get is why we’ve done so well up until now.”
“What do you mean, Captain?”
“Why haven’t they just wiped us out? They can field so many more ships than we can. If they still have ten times our production capacity, how can we compete?”
“I can answer that,” I said. I proceeded to explain my theories about the nanotech, and how it was actually superior to Macro tech in many ways. After a while, he began to catch on. His mood brightened further.
“That’s fantastic,” he said. “I can see the possibilities. We can mix these two technologies and build things they can’t compete with.”
I still looked glum. It was time to tell him why I wasn’t cheering up. “Technological and production gaps are not my current worry. The real issue is strategic: they’ve been building fleets while I’ve been building ground forces. That was a huge error on my part.”
“But we drove them off the planet!”
“Sure,” I said, “but they have five more. And I now think they are all building fleets. They can afford to give up a world or two. If in the end they loft an overwhelming fleet, we’ll be cut off. The Centaur habitats will be destroyed. They will divide us, holding the high ground.”
“High ground?”
I pointed upward, at the roof of our tank. “Space,” I said. “Notice how in each battle, they’d managed to knock out a few of my destroyers? If we lose our last ships, we can’t beat them. We’ll lose this campaign. And after that, Earth’s next.”
Finally, Captain Sloan was frowning. He’d run out of glib reasons to celebrate. A minute or so later he cracked open a flask and offered it to me. I took it and swigged. It was blood-warm and nasty-tasting. I took another, larger swig and handed it back. He did the same.
Neither of us a talked for a while. Outside the tank, the wind sighed and the sun sank down, turning the sky blood red. We opened the top hatches to cool down the interior. We listened to the ticking metal as some part of the tank contracted. The grasses outside were all dead and black, so they rattled rather than rustled as the winds hit them.
Finally, I spoke up. By this time, the flask Captain Sloan and I had been passing back and forth between us was bone dry. “We’re going to have to change the factory production. No more tanks. No more infantry packs. No more landing pods. We have enough of that stuff. We’re switching to ships-tonight.”
Captain Sloan didn’t argue. Instead, he climbed out on the tank and sat on the turrets. It was night now, and the wind had shifted, taking the stink of burnt Centaur fur in the opposite direction. We opened our visors and smelled the cold wind and the burnt grasses. I wondered how long it would take this world to heal all the wounds it had suffered from the Macro occupation. I hoped it wouldn’t be too many years, it was a lovely place.
A day and a half passed by quickly. We rested very little during that time. I used the hours to return my ground forces to the pit with the factory in it. I ordered them to disperse and be ready in case the enemy counterattacked. I wasn’t about to let the Macros retake this prize without a fight.
After my weary, damaged army had reorganized into something that resembled a fighting force again, and I’d replaced my losses with fresh Centaur volunteers, I decided it was time to talk to the herds.
“Colonel Riggs!” came the voice through Marvin’s translation box. “The sun has crossed your brow!”
“Yes, I’m sure you’re right about that,” I said, echoing their joyous tone. I always pretend
ed to understand what they were talking about, especially if it was some kind of idiomatic greeting. It saved a lot of time when dealing with the long-winded Centaurs.
“We return to green the fields with our droppings! Death no longer stalks the sacred lands, nor the reviled places between stones. We thank you for this bounty.”
“Okay,” I said. “You are indeed welcome, and I assure you the Centaurs that fell in my service died honorably. Every one of them.”
“Your words ring true.”
“Now, I have a favor to ask-” I said.
“Do not bother to ask! You must command us! We will march onto the next world in our thousands. We will wash the grasses clean with our blood! The machines are without honor. No wind will ever ruffle their fur, for they have none. The sky-”
At that point, I kind of blanked out. The sky — their longest speeches always began with the sky. Their streams of words could be as endless and mysterious as the heavens themselves. They proceeded to praise me, the planet, the lakes, the mountains and every blade of liberated grass. I didn’t interrupt. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, and I sensed it would be quite rude to break into the gushing words. I figured they’d earned the right to make a windy speech after I’d gotten thousands of their finest slaughtered playing cannon fodder.
Eventually, they seemed to be running out of gas. I could tell, because they began asking me prompting questions. “Is this not so? Has honor not been served with zeal?”
“It has, it has,” I assured them. “Let me ask you something, if I may.”
“Ask not! Demand! Make your needs known without hesitation! Be not concerned-”
“Thank you,” I said gently. “I will do so. I need one of your factories. Maybe two. I apologize, but I need to move a Nano production system to the planet to work together with the captured Macro factory.”