Warriors [Anthology]

by George R. R.

  * * * *

  They may have magic tanks, but they don’t have very good doctrine, do they? a corner of Basescu’s brain reflected. They hadn’t so much as bothered to send any scouts across, or even to leave one of their tanks on the far bank in an overwatch position. Not that he intended to complain.

  The tank turret slewed slowly to the right as his gunner tracked his chosen target, but Basescu was watching the wheeled vehicles. The entire bridge was barely 150 meters long, and he wanted all of them actually onto it, if he could arrange it.

  * * * *

  Company Commander Barmit sighed as his GEV approached the far bank. Climbing up out of the riverbed again was going to be rather less pleasant, and he slowed deliberately, prolonging the smoothness as he watched the transports heading across the bridge.

  Kind of the “humans” to build us all these nice highways,he reflected, thinking about this region’s heavily forested mountains. It would be a real pain to—

  * * * *

  “Fire!” Nicolae Basescu barked, and Company Commander Barmit’s ruminations were terminated abruptly by the arrival of a nineteen-kilogram 3BK29 HEAT round capable of penetrating three hundred millimeters of armor at a range of two kilometers.

  * * * *

  Basescu felt a stab of exhilaration as the tank bucked, the outer wall of its concealing building disappeared in the fierce muzzle blast of its 2A46 120 mm main gun, and his target exploded. Three of the other four escort tanks were first-round kills, as well, crashing into the river in eruptions of fire, white spray, and smoke, and the stub of the semi-combustible cartridge case ejected from the gun. The automatic loader’s carousel picked up the next round, feeding the separate projectile and cartridge into the breech, and his carefully briefed commanders were engaging targets without any additional orders from him.

  The surviving alien tank swerved crazily sideways, turret swiveling madly, and then Basescu winced as it fired.

  He didn’t know what it was armed with, but it wasn’t like any cannon he’d, ever seen. A bar of solid light spat from the end of its “gun,” and the building concealing his number three tank exploded. But even as the alien tank fired, two more 120 mm rounds slammed into it almost simultaneously.

  It died as spectacularly as its fellows had, and Radu and Matthias hadn’t exactly been sitting on their hands. They’d done exactly what he wanted, nailing both the leading and rearmost of the wheeled transports only after they were well out onto the bridge. The others were trapped there, sitting ducks, unable to maneuver, and his surviving tanks walked their fire steadily along their column.

  At least some of the aliens managed to bail out of their vehicles, but it was less than three hundred meters to the far side of the river and the coaxial 7.62 mm machine guns and the heavier 12.7 mm cupola-mounted weapons at the tank commanders’ stations were waiting for them. At such short range, it was a massacre.

  * * * *

  “Cease fire!” Basescu barked. “Fall back!”

  His crews responded almost instantly, and the tanks’ powerful V-12 engines snorted black smoke as the T-72s backed out of their hiding places and sped down the highway at sixty kilometers per hour. What the aliens had already accomplished with their “kinetic weapons” suggested that staying in one place would be a very bad idea, and Basescu had picked out his next fighting position before he ever settled into this one. It would take them barely fifteen minutes to reach it, and only another fifteen to twenty minutes to maneuver the tanks back into hiding.

  * * * *

  Precisely seventeen minutes later, incandescent streaks of light came sizzling out of the cloudless heavens to eliminate every one of Nicolae Basescu’s tanks—and half the city of Alba iulia—in a blast of fury that shook the Carpathian Mountains.

  * * * *

  VII

  Stephen Buchevsky felt his body trying to ooze out even flatter as the grinding, tooth-rattling vibration grew louder on the far side of the ridgeline. The AKM he’d acquired to replace the his M-16 still felt awkward, but it was a solidly built weapon, with all the rugged reliability of its AK-47 ancestry, ammunition for it was readily available... and it felt unspeakably comforting at that particular moment.

  His attention remained fixed on the “sound” of the alien recon drone, but a corner of his mind went wandering back over the last three weeks.

  The C-17’s pilot had gotten farther east than Buchevsky had thought. They hadn’t known they were in Romania, not Serbia, for a day or two—not until they came across the remains of a couple of platoons of Romanian infantry which had been caught in column on a road. Their uniforms and insignia had identified their nationality, and most of them had been killed by what looked like standard bullet wounds. But there’d also been a handful of craters with oddly glassy interiors from obviously heavier weapons.

  The Romanians’ disaster had, however, represented unlooked-for good fortune for Buchevsky’s ill-assorted command. There’d been plenty of personal weapons to salvage, as well as hand grenades, more man-portable antitank weapons and SAMs—the SA-14 “Gremlin” variant—than they could possibly carry, even canteens and some rations. Buchevsky had hated to give up his M-16, but although Romania had joined NATO, it still used mainly Soviet bloc equipment. There wouldn’t be any 5.56 mm ammunition floating around Romania, but 7.62 mm was abundantly available.

  That was the good news. The bad news was that there’d clearly been a major exodus from most of the towns and cities following the aliens’ ruthless bombardment. They’d spotted several large groups—hundreds of people, in some cases. Most of them had been accompanied by at least some armed men, and they hadn’t been inclined to take chances. Probably most of them were already aware of how ugly it was going to get when their particular group of civilians’ supplies started running out, and whatever else they might have been thinking, none of them had been happy to see thirty-three strangers in desert-camo.

  Foreign desert-camo.

  A few warning shots had been fired, one of which had nicked PFC Lyman Curry, and Buchevsky had taken the hint. Still, he had to at least find someplace where his own people could establish a modicum of security while they went about the day-to-day business of surviving.

  Which was what he’d been hunting for today, moving through the thickly wooded mountains, staying well upslope from the roads running through the valleys despite the harder going. Some of his people, including Sergeant Ramirez, had been inclined to bitch about that at first. Buchevsky didn’t really mind if they complained about it as long as they did it, however, and even the strongest objections had disappeared quickly when they realized just how important overhead concealment was.

  From the behavior of the odd, dark-colored flying objects, Buchevsky figured they were something like the U.S. military’s Predators—small unmanned aircraft used for reconnaissance. What he didn’t know was whether or not they were armed. Nor did he have any idea whether or not their salvaged shoulder-fired SAMs would work against them, and he had no pressing desire to explore either possibility unless it was absolutely a matter of life or death.

  Fortunately, although the odd-looking vehicles were quick and agile, they weren’t the least bit stealthily. Whatever propelled them produced a heavy, persistent, tooth-grating vibration. That wasn’t really the right word for it, and he knew it, but he couldn’t come up with another one for a sensation that was felt, not heard. And whatever it was, it was detectable from beyond visual range.

  He’d discussed it with Staff Sergeant Truman and PO/3 Jasmine Sherman, their sole Navy noncom. Truman was an electronics specialist, and Sherman wore the guided missile and electronic wave rating mark of a missile technician. Between them, they formed what Buchevsky thought of as his “brain trust,” but neither woman had a clue what the aliens used for propulsion. What they did agree on was that humans were probably more sensitive to the “vibration” it produced than the aliens were, since it wouldn’t have made a lot of sense to produce a reconnaissance platform they knew pe
ople could hear before it could see them.

  Buchevsky wasn’t going to bet the farm on the belief that his people could ”hear” the drones before the drones could see them, however. Which was why he’d waved his entire group to ground when the telltale vibration came burring through his fillings from the ridgeline to his immediate north. Now if only—

  That was when he heard the firing and the screams.

  It shouldn’t have mattered. His responsibility was to his own people. To keeping them alive until he got them home...assuming there was any “home” for them. But when he heard the shouts, when he heard the screams—when he recognized the shrieks of children—he found himself back on his feet. He turned his head, saw Calvin Meyers watching him, and then he swung his hand in a wide arc and pointed to the right.

  A dozen of his people stayed right where they were—not out of cowardice, but because they were too confused and surprised by his sudden change of plans to realize what he was doing—and he didn’t blame them. Even as he started forward, he knew it was insane. Less than half his people had any actual combat experience, and five of them had been tankers, not infantry. No wonder they didn’t understand what he was doing!

  Meyer understood, though, and so had Ramirez—even if he was an Army puke—and Lance Corporal Gutierrez, and Corporal Alice Macomb, and half a dozen others, and they followed him in a crouching run.

  * * * *

  Squad Commander Rayzhar bared his canines as his troopers advanced up the valley. He’d been on this accursed planet for less than seven local days, and already he’d come to hate its inhabitants as he’d never hated before in his life. They had no sense of decency, no sense of honor! They’d been defeated, Dainthar take them! The Shongari had proved they were the mightier, yet instead of submitting and acknowledging their inferiority, they persisted in their insane attacks!

  Rayzhar had lost two litter-brothers in the ambush of Company Commander Barmit’s column. Litter-brothers who’d been shot down like weed-eaters for the pot, as if they’d, been the inferiors. That was something Rayzhar had no intention of forgetting—or forgiving—until he’d collected enough “humans’“ souls to serve both of them in Dainthar’s realm.

  He really had no business making this attack, but the recon drone slaved to his command transport had shown him this ragged band cowering in the mountainside cul-de-sac. There were no more than fifty or sixty of them, but a half dozen wore the same uniforms as the humans who’d massacred his litter-brothers. That was enough for him. Besides, HQ would never see the take from the drone—he’d make sure of that—and he expected no questions when he reported that he’d taken fire from the humans and simply responded to it.

  He looked up from the holographic display board linked to the drone and barked an order at Gersa, the commander of his second squad.

  “Swing right! Get around their flank!”

  Gersa acknowledged, and Rayzhar bared his canines again—this time in satisfaction—as two of the renegade human warriors were cut down. A mortar round from one of the transports exploded farther up the cul-de-sac, among the humans cowering in the trees, and a savage sense of pleasure filled him.

  * * * *

  Buchevsky found himself on the ridgeline, looking down into a scene straight out of Hell. More than fifty civilians, over half of them children, were hunkered down under the fragile cover of evergreens and hardwoods while a handful of Romanian soldiers tried frantically to protect them from at least twenty-five or thirty of the aliens. There were also three wheeled vehicles on the road below, and one of them mounted a turret with some sort of mortarlike support weapon. Even as Buchevsky watched, it fired and an eye-tearing burst of brilliance erupted near the top of the cul-de-sac. He heard the shrieks of seared, dying children, and below the surface of his racing thoughts, he realized what had really happened. Why he’d changed his plans completely, put all the people he was responsible for at risk.

  Civilians. Children. They were what he was supposed to protect, and deep at the heart of him was the bleeding wound of his own daughters, the children he would never see again. The Shongari had taken his girls from him, and he would rip out their throats with his bare teeth before he let them take any more.

  “Gunny, get the vehicles!” he snapped, his curt voice showing no sign of his own self-recognition.

  “On it, Top!” Meyer acknowledged, and waved to Gutierrez and Robert Szu, one of their Army privates. Gutierrez and Szu—like Meyer—carried RBR-M60s, Romanian single-shot anti-armor weapons derived from the U.S. M72. The Romanian version had a theoretical range of over a thousand meters, and the power to take out most older main battle tanks, and Meyer, Gutierrez, and Szu went skittering through the woods toward the road with them.

  Buchevsky left that in Meyer’s competent hands as he reached out and grabbed Corporal Macomb by the shoulder. She carried one of the salvaged SAM launchers, and Buchevsky jabbed a nod of his head at the drone hovering overhead.

  “Take that damned thing out,” he said flatly.

  “Right, Top.” Macomb’s voice was grim, her expression frightened, but her hands were steady as she lifted the SAM’s tube to her shoulder.

  “The rest of you, with me!” Buchevsky barked. It wasn’t much in the way of detailed instructions, but four of the eight people still with him were Marines, and three of the others were Army riflemen.

  Besides, the tactical situation was brutally simple.

  * * * *

  Rayzhar saw another uniformed human die. Then he snarled in fury as one of his own troopers screamed, rose on his toes, and went down in a spray of blood. The Shongari weren’t accustomed to facing enemies whose weapons could penetrate their body armor, and Rayzhar felt a chill spike of fear even through his rage. But he wasn’t about to let it stop him, and there were only three armed humans left. Only three, and then—

  * * * *

  Buchevsky heard the explosions as the alien vehicles vomited flame and smoke. At almost the same instant, the SA-14 streaked into the air, and two things became clear: One, whatever held the drones up radiated enough heat signature for the Gremlin to see it. Two, whatever the drones were made of, it wasn’t tough enough to survive the one-kilo warhead’s impact.

  He laid the sights of his AKM on the weird, slender, doglike alien whose waving hands suggested he was in command and squeezed the trigger.

  * * * *

  A four-round burst of 7.62 mm punched through the back of Rayzhar’s body armor. The rounds kept right on going until they punched out his breastplate in a spray of red, as well, and the squad commander heard someone’s gurgling scream. He realized vaguely that it was his own, and then he crashed facedown into the dirt of an alien planet.

  He wasn’t alone. There were only nine riflemen up on his flank, but they had perfect fields of fire, and every single one of them had heard Fleet Commander Thikair’s broadcast. They knew why Rayzhar and his troopers had come to their world, what had happened to their cities and homes. There was no mercy in them, and their fire was deadly accurate.

  The Shongari recoiled in shock as more of them died or collapsed in agony—shock that became terror as they realized their vehicles had just been destroyed behind them, as well. They had no idea how many attackers they faced, but they recognized defeat when they saw it, and they turned toward the new attack, raising their weapons over their heads in surrender, flattening their ears in token of submission.

  * * * *

  Stephen Buchevsky saw the aliens turning toward his people, raising their weapons to charge up the ridge, and behind his granite eyes he saw the children they had just killed and maimed...and his daughters.

  “Kill them!” he rasped.

  * * * *

  VIII

  “I want an explanation.” Fleet Commander Thikair glowered around the conference table. None of his senior officers needed to ask what it was he wanted explained, and more than one set of eyes slid sideways to Ground

  Force Commander Thairys. His casualties were over six
times his most pessimistic pre-landing estimates...and climbing.

  “I have no excuse, Fleet Commander.”

  Thairys flattened his ears in submission to Thikair’s authority, and there was silence for a second or two.

  But then Base Commander Shairez raised one diffident hand.

  “If I may, Fleet Commander?”

  “If you have any explanation, Base Commander, I would be delighted to hear it,” Thikair said, turning his attention to her.

  “I doubt that there is anysingle explanation, sir.” Her ears were half-lowered in respect, although not so flat to her head as Thairys’, and her tone was calm. “Instead, I think we’re looking at a combination of factors.”

  “Which are?” Thikair leaned back, his immediate ire somewhat damped by her demeanor.

  “The first, sir, is simply that this is the first Level Two culture we’ve ever attempted to subdue. While their weaponry is inferior to our own, it’s far less relatively inferior than anything we’ve ever encountered. Their armored vehicles, for example, while much slower, clumsier, shorter-legged, and tactically cumbersome than ours, are actually better protected and mount weapons capable of destroying our heaviest units. Even their infantry have weapons with that capability, and that’s skewed Ground Force Commander Thairys’ original calculations badly.”