Warriors [Anthology]

by George R. R.

  Thikair bared one canine in frustration, but she had a point. The Shongari’s last serious war had been fought centuries ago, against fellow Shongari, before they’d ever left their home world. Since then, their military had found itself engaging mostly primitives armed with hand weapons or only the crudest of firearms...exactly as they were supposed to have encountered here.

  “A second factor,” Shairez continued, “may be that our initial bombardment was too successful. We so thoroughly disrupted their communications net and command structures that there may be no way for individual units to be ordered to stand down.”

  “ ‘Stand down’?” Squadron Commander Jainfar repeated incredulously. “They’re defeated, Base Commander! I don’t care how stupid they are, or how disrupted their communications may be, they have to know that!”

  “Perhaps so, Squadron Commander.” Shairez faced the old space-dog squarely. “Unfortunately, as yet we know very little about this species’ psychology. We do know there’s something significantly different about them, given their incredible rate of advancement, but that’s really all we know. It could be that they simply don’tcare that we’ve defeated them.”

  Jainfar started to say something else, then visibly restrained himself. It was obvious he couldn’t imagine any intelligent species thinking in such a bizarre fashion, but Shairez was the expedition’s expert on non-Shongari sapients.

  “Even if that’s true, Base Commander,” Thikair’s tone was closer to normal, “it doesn’t change our problem.” He looked at Thairys. “What sort of loss rates are we looking at, assuming these “humans” behavior doesn’t change?”

  “Potentially disastrous ones,” Thairys acknowledged. “We’ve already written off eleven percent of our armored vehicles. We never expected to need many GEVs against the opposition we anticipated, which means we have nowhere near the vehicles and crews it looks like we’re going to need. We’ve actually lost a higher absolute number of transports, but we had many times as many of those to begin with. Infantry losses are another matter, and I’m not at all sure present casualty rates are sustainable. And I must point out that we have barely eight local days of experience. It’s entirely possible for projections based on what we’ve seen so far to be almost as badly flawed as our initial estimates.”

  The ground force commander clearly didn’t like adding that caveat. Which was fair enough. Thikair didn’t much like hearing it.

  “I believe the Ground Force Commander may be unduly pessimistic, sir.” All eyes switched to Shairez once more, and the base commander flipped her ears in a shrug. “My own analysis suggests that we’re looking at two basic types of incident, both of which appear to be the work of relatively small units acting independently of any higher command or coordination. On one hand, we have units making use of the humans’ heavy weapons and using what I suspect is their standard doctrine. An example of this would be the destruction of Company Commander Barmit’s entire command a few days ago. On the other, we have what seem to be primarily infantry forces equipped with their light weapons or using what appear to be improvised explosives and weapons.

  “In the case of the former, they’ve frequently inflicted severe losses— again, as in Barmit’s case. In fact, more often than not, they’ve inflicted grossly disproportionate casualties. However, in those instances, our space-to-surface interdiction systems are normally able to locate and destroy them. In short, humans who attack us in that fashion seldom survive to attack a second time, and they already have few heavy weapons left.

  “In the case of the latter, however, the attackers have proved far more elusive. Our reconnaissance systems are biased toward locating heavier, more technologically advanced weapons. We look for electronic emissions, thermal signatures such as operating vehicle power plants generate, and things of that nature. We’re far less well equipped to pick out individual humans or small groups of humans. As a consequence, we’re able to intercept and destroy a far smaller percentage of such attackers.

  “The good news is that although their infantry-portable weapons are far more powerful than we ever anticipated, they’re still far less dangerous than their heavy armored vehicles or artillery. This means, among other things, that they can engage only smaller forces of our warriors with any real prospect of success.”

  “I believe that’s substantially accurate,” Thairys said after a moment. “One of the implications, however, is that in order to deter attacks by these infantry forces, we would find ourselves obliged to operate using larger forces of our own. But we have a strictly limited supply of personnel, so the larger our individual forces become, the fewer we can deploy at any given moment. In order to deter attack, we would be forced to severely reduce the coverage of the entire planet which we can hope to maintain.”

  “I take your point, Thairys,” Thikair said after a moment, and bared all his upper canines in a wintry smile. “I must confess that a planet begins to look significantly larger when one begins to consider the need to actually picket its entire surface out of the resources of a single colonization fleet!”

  He’d considered saying something a bit stronger, but that was as close as he cared to come to admitting that he might have bitten off more than his fleet could chew.

  “For the present,” he went on, “we’ll continue operations essentially as planned, but with a geographic shift of emphasis. Thairys, I want you to revise your deployment stance. For the moment, we’ll concentrate on the areas that were more heavily developed and technologically advanced. That’s where we’re most likely to encounter significant threats, so let’s start by establishing fully secured enclaves from which we can operate in greater strength as we spread out to consolidate.”

  “Yes, sir,” Thairys acknowledged. “That may take some time, however. In particular, we have infantry forces deployed for the purpose of hunting down and destroying known groups of human attackers. They’re operating in widely separated locations, and pulling them out to combine elsewhere is going to stretch our troop lift capacity.”

  “Would they be necessary to meet the objectives I just described?”

  “No, sir. Some additional infantry will be needed, but we can land additional troops directly from space. And, in addition, we need more actual combat experience against these roving attack groups. We need to refine our tactics, and not even our combat veterans have actually faced this level of threat in the past. I’d really prefer to keep at least some of our own infantry out in the hinterland, where we can continue to blood more junior officers in a lower threat-level environment.”

  “As long as you’re capable of carrying out the concentrations I’ve just directed, I have no objection,” Thikair told him.

  And as long as we’re able to somehow get a tourniquet on this steady flow of casualties, the Fleet Commander added to himself.

  * * * *

  IX

  An insect scuttled across the back of Stephen Buchevsky’s sweaty neck. He ignored it, keeping his eyes on the aliens as they set about bivouacking.

  The insect on his neck went elsewhere, and he checked the RDG-5 hand grenade. He wouldn’t have dared to use a radio even if he’d had it, but the grenade’s detonation would work just fine as an attack signal.

  He really would have preferred leaving this patrol alone, but he couldn’t. He had no idea what they were doing in the area, and it really didn’t matter. Whatever else they might do, every Shongari unit appeared to be on its own permanent seek-and-destroy mission, and he couldn’t allow that when the civilians he and his people had become responsible for were in this patrol’s way.

  His reaction to the Shongari attack on the Romanian civilians had landed him with yet another mission—one he would vastly have preferred to avoid. Or that was what he told himself, anyway. The rest of his people—with the possible exception of Ramirez—seemed to cherish none of the reservations he himself felt. In fact, he often thought the only reason he felt them was because he was in command. It was his job to feel them. But however
it had happened, he and his marooned Americans had become the protectors of a slowly but steadily growing band of Romanians.

  Fortunately, one of the Romanians in question—Elizabeth Cantacuzène—had been a university teacher. Her English was heavily accented, but her grammar (and, Buchevsky suspected, her vocabulary) was considerably better than his, and just acquiring a local translator had been worth almost all of the headaches that had come with it.

  By now, he had just under sixty armed men and women under his command. His Americans formed the core of his force, but their numbers were almost equaled by a handful of Romanian soldiers and the much larger number of civilians who were in the process of receiving a crash course in military survival from him, Gunny Meyers, and Sergeant Alexander Jonescu of the Romanian Army. He’d organized them into four roughly equal sized “squads,” one commanded by Myers, one by Ramirez, one by Jonescu, and one by Alice Macomb. Michelle Truman was senior to Macomb, but she and Sherman were still too valuable as his “brain trust” for him to “waste her” in a shooter’s slot. Besides, she was learning Romanian from Cantacuzène.

  Fortunately, Sergeant Jonescu already spoke English, and Buchevsky had managed to get at least one Romanian English-speaker into each of his squads. It was clumsy, but it worked, and they’d spent hours drilling on hand signals that required no spoken language. And at least the parameters of their situation were painfully clear to everyone.

  Evade. Hide. Do whatever it took to keep the civilians—now close to two hundred of them—safe. Stay on the move. Avoid roads and towns. Look out constantly for any source of food. It turned out that Calvin Meyers was an accomplished deer hunter, and he and two like-minded souls who had been members of the Romanian forestry service were contributing significantly to keeping their people fed. Still, summer was sliding into fall, and all too soon cold and starvation would become deadly threats.

  But for that to happen, first we have to survivethe summer; don’t we? he thought harshly. Which means these bastards have to be stopped before they figure out the civilians are here to be killed. And we’ve got to do it without their getting a message back to base.

  He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. But he didn’t see any choice, either, and with Cantacuzène’s assistance, he’d interrogated every single person who’d seen the Shongari in action, hunting information on their tactics and doctrine.

  It was obvious they were sudden death on large bodies of troops or units equipped with heavy weapons. Some of that was probably because crewmen inside tanks couldn’t “hear” approaching recon drones the way infantry in the open could, he thought. And Truman and Sherman suspected that the Shongari’s sensors were designed to detect mechanized forces, or at least units with heavy emissions signatures, which was one reason he’d gotten rid of all his radios.

  It also appeared that the infantry patrols had less sensor coverage than those floating tanks or their road convoys. And in the handful of additional brushes he’d had with their infantry, it had become evident that the invaders weren’t in any sort of free-flow communications net that extended beyond their immediate unit. If they had been, he felt sure, by now one of the patrols they’d attacked would have managed to call in one of their kinetic strikes.

  Which is why we’ve got to hit them, fast, make sure we take out their vehicles with the first strike...and that nobody packing a personal radio lives long enough to use it.

  It looked like they were beginning to settle down. Obviously, they had no idea Buchevsky or his people were out here, which suited him just fine.

  Go ahead, he thought grimly. Get comfortable. Drop off. I’ve got your sleeping pill right here. In about another five—

  “Excuse me, Sergeant, but is this really wise?”

  Stephen Buchevsky twitched as if someone had just applied a high-voltage charge, and his head whipped around toward the whispered question.

  The question that had just been asked in his very ear in almost unaccented English ... by a voice he’d never heard in his life.

  * * * *

  “Now suppose you just tell me who you are and where the hell you came from?” Buchevsky demanded ten minutes later.

  He stood facing a complete stranger, two hundred meters from the Shongari bivouac, and he wished the light were better. Not that he was even tempted to strike a match.

  The stranger was above average height for a Romanian, although well short of Buchevsky’s towering inches. He had a sharp-prowed nose, large, deep-set green eyes, and dark hair. That was about all Buchevsky could tell, aside from the fact that his smile seemed faintly amused.

  “Excuse me,” the other man said. “I had no desire to...startle you, Sergeant. However, I knew something which you do not. There is a second patrol little more than a kilometer away in that direction.”

  He pointed back up the narrow road along which the Shongari had approached, and an icy finger stroked suddenly down Buchevsky’s spine.

  “How do you know that?”

  “My men and I have been watching them,” the stranger said. “And it is a formation we have seen before—one they have adopted in the last week or so. I believe they are experimenting with new tactics, sending out pairs of infantry teams in support of one another.”

  “Damn. I was hoping they’d take longer to think of that,” Buchevsky muttered. “Looks like they may be smarter than I’d assumed from their original tactics.”

  “I do not know how intelligent they may be, Sergeant. But I do suspect that if you were to attack this patrol, the other one would probably call up heavy support quickly.”

  “That’s exactly what they’d do,” Buchevsky agreed, then frowned. “Not that I’m not grateful for the warning, or anything,” he said, “but you still haven’t told me who you are, where you came from, or how you got here.”

  “Surely”—this time the amusement in the Romanian’s voice was unmistakable—”that would be a more reasonable question for me to be asking of an American Marine here in the heart of Wallachia?”

  Buchevsky’s jaw clenched, but the other man chuckled and shook his head.

  “Forgive me, Sergeant. I have been told I have a questionable sense of humor. My name is Basarab, Mircea Basarab. And where I have come from is up near Lake Vidaru, fifty or sixty kilometers north of here. My men and I have been doing much the same as what I suspect you have— attempting to protect my people from these ‘Shongari’ butchers.” He grimaced. “Protecting civilians from invaders is, alas, something of a national tradition in these parts.”

  “I see...,” Buchevsky said slowly, and white teeth glinted at him in the dimness.

  “I believe you do, Sergeant. And, yes, I also believe the villages my men and I have taken under our protection could absorb these civilians you have been protecting. They are typical mountain villages, largely self-sufficient, with few ‘modern amenities.’ They grow their own food, and feeding this many additional mouths will strain their resources severely. I doubt anyone will grow fat over the winter! But they will do their best, and the additional hands will be welcome as they prepare for the snows. And from what I have seen of you and your band, you would be a most welcome addition to their defenses.”

  Buchevsky cocked his head, straining to see the other’s expression. It was all coming at him far too quickly. He knew he ought to be standing back, considering this stranger’s offer coolly and rationally. Yet what he actually felt was a wave of unspeakable relief as the men, women, and children—always the children—for whom he’d become responsible were offered a reprieve from starvation and frostbite.

  “And how would we get there with these puppies sitting in our lap?” he asked.

  “Obviously, Sergeant, we must first remove them from ‘our lap.’ Since my men are already in position to deal with the second patrol, and yours are already in position to deal withthis patrol, I would suggest we both get back to work. I presume you intended to use that grenade to signal the start of your own attack?”

  Buchevsky nodde
d, and Basarab shrugged.

  “I see no reason why you should change your plans in that regard. Allow me fifteen minutes—no, perhaps twenty would be better—to return to my own men and tell them to listen for your attack. After that,” those white teeth glittered again, and this time, Buchevsky knew, that smile was cold and cruel, “feel free to announce your presence to these vermin. Loudly.”

  * * * *

  X

  Platoon Commander Dirak didn’t like this one bit, but orders were orders.

  He moved slowly at the center of his second squad, ears up and straining for the slightest sound as they followed his first squad along the narrow trail. Unfortunately, his people had been civilized for a thousand standard years. Much of the acuity of sound and scent that had once marked the margin between death and survival had slipped away, and he felt more than half-blind in this heavily shadowed, massive forest.