Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction

by Leigh Grossman

  “Mandella here,” I said. “Isn’t there a spaceport of some kind—seems to me we ought to.…”

  “I’ll get to that, damn it. There’s a ring of these huts all around the camp, so we’ve got to break through somewhere. This place’ll be closest, less chance of giving away our position before we attack.

  “There’s nothing in the whole place that actually looks like a weapon. That doesn’t mean anything, though; you could hide a bevawatt laser in each of those huts.

  “Now, about five hundred meters from the huts, in the middle of the base, we’ll come to this big flower-shaped structure.” Cortez drew a large symmetrical shape that looked like the outline of a flower with seven petals. “What the hell this is, your guess is as good as mine. There’s only one of them, though, so we don’t damage it any more than we have to. Which means…we blast it to splinters if I think it’s dangerous.

  “Now, as far as your spaceport, Mandella, is concerned—there just isn’t one. Nothing.

  “That cruiser the Hope caulked had probably been left in orbit, like ours has to be. If they have any equivalent of a scoutship, or drone missiles, they’re either not kept here or they’re well hidden.”

  “Bohrs here. Then what did they attack with, while we were coming down from orbit?”

  “I wish we knew, Private.

  “Obviously, we don’t have any way of estimating their numbers, not directly. Recon pictures failed to show a single Tauran on the grounds of the base. Meaning nothing, because it is an alien environment. Indirectly, though…we can count the number of broomsticks.

  “There are fifty-one huts, and each has at most one broomstick. Four don’t have one parked outside, but we located three at various other parts of the base. Maybe this indicates that there are fifty-one Taurans, one of whom was outside the base when the picture was taken.”

  “Keating here. Or fifty-one officers.”

  “That’s right—maybe fifty thousand infantrymen stacked in one of these buildings. No way to tell. Maybe ten Taurans, each with five broomsticks, to use according to his mood.

  “We’ve got one thing in our favor, and that’s communications. They evidently use a frequency modulation of megahertz electromagnetic radiation.”

  “Radio!”

  “That’s right, whoever you are. Identify yourself when you speak. So, it’s quite possible that they can’t detect our phased-neutrino communications. Also, just prior to the attack, the Hope is going to deliver a nice dirty fission bomb; detonate it in the upper atmosphere right over the base. That’ll restrict them to line-of-sight communication for some time; even those will be full of static.”

  “Why don’t…Tate here…why don’t they just drop the bomb right in their laps? Would save us a lot of.…”

  “That doesn’t even deserve an answer, Private. But the answer is, they might. And you better hope they don’t. If they caulk the base, it’ll be for the safety of the Hope. After we’ve attacked, and probably before we’re far enough away for it to make much difference.

  “We keep that from happening by doing a good job. We have to reduce the base to where it can no longer function; at the same time, leave as much intact as possible. And take one prisoner.”

  “Potter here. You mean, at least one prisoner.”

  “I mean what I say. One only. Potter…you’re relieved of your platoon. Send Chavez up.”

  “All right, Sergeant.” The relief in her voice was unmistakable.

  * * * *

  Cortez continued with his map and instructions. There was one other building whose function was pretty obvious; it had a large steerable dish antenna on top. We were to destroy it as soon as the grenadiers got in range.

  The attack plan was very loose. Our signal to begin would be the flash of the fission bomb. At the same time, several drones would converge on the base, so we could see what their antispacecraft defenses were. We would try to reduce the effectiveness of those defenses without destroying them completely.

  Immediately after the bomb and the drones, the grenadiers would vaporize a line of seven huts. Everybody would break through the hole into the base…and what would happen after that was anybody’s guess.

  Ideally, we’d sweep from that end of the base to the other, destroying certain targets, caulking all but one Tauran. But that was unlikely to happen, as it depended on the Taurans’ offering very little resistance.

  On the other hand, if the Taurans showed obvious superiority from the beginning, Cortez would give the order to scatter: everybody had a different compass bearing for retreat—we’d blossom out in all directions, the survivors to rendezvous in a valley some forty clicks east of the base. Then we’d see about a return engagement, after the Hope softened the base up a bit.

  “One last thing,” Cortez rasped. “Maybe some of you feel the way Potter evidently does, maybe some of your men feel that way…that we ought to go easy, not make this so much of a bloodbath. Mercy is a luxury, a weakness we can’t afford to indulge in at this stage of the war. All we know about the enemy is that they have killed seven hundred and ninety-eight humans. They haven’t shown any restraint in attacking our cruisers, and it’d be foolish to expect any this time, this first ground action.

  “They are responsible for the lives of all of your comrades who died in training, and for Ho, and for all the others who are surely going to die today. I can’t understand anybody who wants to spare them. But that doesn’t make any difference. You have your orders, and what the hell, you might as well know, all of you have a posthypnotic suggestion that I will trigger by a phrase, just before the battle. It will make your job easier.”

  “Sergeant.…”

  “Shut up. We’re short on time; get back to your platoons and brief them. We move out in five minutes.”

  The platoon leaders returned to their men, leaving Cortez and the ten of us, plus three teddy-bears, milling around, getting in the way.

  15

  We took the last five clicks very carefully, sticking to the highest grass, running across occasional clearings. When we were five hundred meters from where the base was supposed to be, Cortez took the Third Platoon forward to scout, while the rest of us laid low.

  Cortez’s voice came over the general freak: “Looks pretty much like we expected. Advance in a file, crawling. When you get to the Third Platoon, follow your squad leader to the left, or right.”

  We did that and wound up with a string of eighty-three people in a line roughly perpendicular to the direction of attack. We were pretty well hidden, except for the dozen or so teddy-bears that mooched along the line munching grass.

  There was no sign of life inside the base. All of the buildings were windowless, and a uniform shiny white. The huts that were our first objective were large featureless half-buried eggs, some sixty meters apart. Cortez assigned one to each grenadier.

  We were broken into three fire teams: Team A consisted of platoons Two, Four, and Six; Team B was One, Three, and Five; the command platoon was Team C.

  “Less than a minute now—filters down!—when I say ‘fire,’ grenadiers take out your targets. God help you if you miss.”

  There was a sound like a giant’s belch and a stream of five or six iridescent bubbles floated up from the flower-shaped building. They rose with increasing speed to where they were almost out of sight, then shot off to the south, over our heads. The ground was suddenly bright and for the first time in a long time, I saw my shadow, a long one pointed north. The bomb had gone off prematurely. I just had time to think that it didn’t make too much difference; it’d still make alphabet soup out of their communications.…

  “Drones!” A ship came screaming in just above tree level, and a bubble was in the air to meet it. When they contacted, the bubble popped and the drone exploded into a million tiny fragments. Another one came from the opposite side and suffered the same fate.

  “FIRE!” Seven bright glares of 500-microton grenades and a sustained concussion that I’m sure would have killed an unpr
otected man. “Filters up.” Gray haze of smoke and dust, Clods of dirt falling with a sound like heavy raindrops. “Listen up:

  “‘Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled;

  Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,

  Welcome to your gory bed,

  Or to victory!’”

  I hardly heard him, for trying to keep track of what was going on in my skull. I knew it was just posthypnotic suggestion, even remembered the session in Missouri when they’d implanted it, but that didn’t make it any less compelling. My mind reeled under the strong pseudo-memories; shaggy hulks that were Taurans—not at all what we now knew they looked like—boarding a colonist’s vessel, eating babies while mothers watched in screaming terror—the colonists never took babies; they wouldn’t stand the acceleration—then raping the women to death with huge veined purple members—ridiculous that they would feel desire for humans—holding the men down while they plucked flesh from their living bodies and gobbled it…a hundred grisly details as sharply remembered as the events of a minute ago, ridiculously overdone and logically absurd; but while my conscious mind was reflecting the silliness, somewhere much deeper, down in that sleeping giant where we keep our real motives and morals, something was thirsting for alien blood, secure in the conviction that the noblest thing a man could do would be to die killing one of those horrible monsters.…

  I knew it was all purest soya, and I hated the men who had taken such obscene liberties with my mind, but still I could hear my teeth grinding, feel cheeks frozen in a spastic grin, bloodlust… a teddy-bear walked in front of me, looking dazed. I started to raise my laserfinger, but somebody beat me to it and the creature’s head exploded in a cloud of gray splinters and blood.

  Lucky groaned, half-whining, “Dirty… filthy bastards.” Lasers flared and crisscrossed and all of the teddy-bears fell dead.

  “Watch it, damn it,” Cortez screamed. “Aim those things; they aren’t toys!

  “Team A, move out—into the craters to cover B.” Somebody was laughing and sobbing. “What the crap is wrong with you, Petrov?” First time I could remember Cortez cussing.

  I twisted around and saw Petrov, behind and to my left, lying in a shallow hole, digging frantically with both hands, crying and gurgling.

  “Crap,” Cortez said. “Team B! past the craters ten meters, get down in a line. Team C—into the craters with A.”

  * * * *

  I scrambled up and covered the hundred meters in twelve amplified strides. The craters were practically large enough to hide a scoutship, some ten meters in diameter. I jumped to the opposite side of the hole and landed next to a fellow named Chin. He didn’t even look around when I landed, just kept scanning the base for signs of life.

  “Team A—past Team B ten meters, down in line.” Just as he finished, the building in front of us burped and a salvo of the bubbles fanned out toward our lines. Most people saw it coming and got down, but Chin was just getting up to make his rush and stepped right into one.

  It grazed the top of his helmet, and disappeared with a faint pop. He took one step backwards and toppled over the edge of the crater, trailing an arc of blood and brains. Lifeless, spreadeagled, he slid halfway to the bottom, shoveling dirt into the perfectly symmetrical hole where the bubble had chewed through plastic, hair, skin, bone and brain indiscriminately.

  “Everybody hold it. Platoon leaders, casualty report…check…check, check…check, check, check…check. We have three deaders. Wouldn’t be any if you’d have kept low. So everybody grab dirt when you hear that thing go off. Team A, complete the rush.”

  They completed the maneuver without incident. “O.K. Team C, rush to where B…hold it! Down!”

  Everybody was already hugging the ground. The bubbles slid by in a smooth arc about two meters off the ground. They went serenely over our heads and, except for one that made toothpicks out of a tree, disappeared in the distance.

  “B, rush past A ten meters. C, take over B’s place. You B grenadiers see if you can reach the Flower.”

  Two grenades tore up the ground thirty or forty meters from the structure. In a good imitation of panic, it started belching out a continuous stream of bubbles—still, none coming lower than two meters off the ground. We kept hunched down and continued to advance.

  Suddenly, a seam appeared in the building, widened to the size of a large door, and Taurans came swarming out.

  “Grenadiers, hold your fire. B team, laser fire to the left and right, keep ’em bunched up. A and C, rush down the center.”

  One Tauran died trying to turn through a laser beam. The others stayed where they were.

  In a suit, it’s pretty awkward to run and try to keep your head down, at the same time. You have to go from side to side, like a skater getting started; otherwise you’ll be airborne. At least one person, somebody in A team, bounced too high and suffered the same fate as Chin.

  I was feeling pretty fenced-in and trapped, with a wall of laser fire on each side and a low ceiling that meant death to touch. But in spite of myself, I felt happy, euphoric at finally getting the chance to kill some of those villainous baby-eaters.

  They weren’t fighting back, except for the rather ineffective bubbles—obviously not designed as an antipersonnel weapon—and they didn’t retreat back into the building, either. They just milled around, about a hundred of them, and watched us get closer. A couple of grenades would caulk them all, but I guess Cortez was thinking about the prisoner.

  “O.K., when I say ‘go,’ we’re going to flank ’em. B team will hold fire…Second and Fourth to the right, Sixth and Seventh to the left. B team will move forward in line to box them in.

  “Go!” We peeled off to the left. As soon as the lasers stopped, the Taurans bolted, running in a group on a collision course with our flank.

  “A Team, down and fire! Don’t shoot until you’re sure of your aim— if you miss you might hit a friendly. And fer Chris’sake save me one!”

  It was a horrifying sight, that herd of monsters bearing down on us. They were running in great leaps—the bubbles avoiding them—and they all looked like the one we saw earlier, riding the broomstick; naked except for an almost transparent sphere around their whole bodies, that moved along with them. The right flank started firing, picking off individuals in the rear of the pack.

  Suddenly a laser flared through the Taurans from the other side, somebody missing his mark. There was a horrible scream and I looked down the line to see someone, I think it was Perry, writhing on the ground, right hand over the smoldering stump of his left arm, seared off just below the elbow. Blood sprayed through his fingers and the suit, its camouflage circuits scrambled, flickered black-white-jungle-desert-green-gray. I don’t know how long I stared —long enough for the medic to run over and start giving aid — but when I looked up the Taurans were almost on top of me.

  My first shot was wild and high, but it grazed the top of the leading Tauran’s protective bubble. The bubble disappeared and the monster stumbled and fell to the ground, jerking spasmodically. Foam gushed out of his mouth-hole, first white, then streaked with red. With one last jerk he became rigid and twisted backwards, almost to the shape of a horseshoe. His long scream, a high-pitched whistle, stopped just as his comrades trampled over him and I hated myself for smiling.

  It was slaughter, even though our flank was outnumbered five to one. They kept coming without faltering, even when they had to climb over the drift of bodies and parts of bodies that piled up high, parallel to our flank. The ground between us was slick red with Tauran blood—all God’s children got hemoglobin—and, like the teddy-bears, their guts looked pretty much like guts to my untrained eye. My helmet reverberated with hysterical laughter while we cut them to gory chunks. I almost didn’t hear Cortez.

  “Hold your fire—I said HOLD IT damn it! Catch a couple of the bastards, they won’t hurt you.”

  I stopped shooting and eventually so did everybody else. When the next Tauran jumped over the smoking pile of meat in front of me, I do
ve to tackle him around those spindly legs.

  It was like hugging a big, slippery balloon. When I tried to drag him down, he just popped out of my arms and kept running.

  We managed to stop one of them by the simple expedient of piling half-a-dozen people on top of him. By that time the others had run through our line and were headed for the row of large cylindrical tanks that Cortez had said were probably for storage. A little door had opened in the base of each one.

  “We’ve got our prisoner,” Cortez shouted. “Kill!” They were fifty meters away and running hard, difficult targets. Lasers slashed around them, bobbing high and low. One fell, sliced in two, but the others, about ten of them, kept going and were almost to the doors when the grenadiers started firing.

  They were still loaded with 500-mike bombs, but a near miss wasn’t enough—the concussion would just send them flying, unhurt in their bubbles.

  “The buildings! Get the damn buildings!” The grenadiers raised their aim and let fly, but the bombs only seemed to scorch the white outside of the structures until, by chance, one landed in a door. That split the building just as if it had a seam; the two halves popped away and a cloud of machinery flew into the air, accompanied by a huge pale flame that rolled up and disappeared in an instant. Then the others all concentrated on the doors, except for potshots at some of the Taurans; not so much to get them as to blow them away before they could get inside. They seemed awfully eager.

  * * * *

  All this time, we were trying to get the Taurans with laser fire, while they weaved and bounced around trying to get into the structures. We moved in as close to them as we could without putting ourselves in danger from the grenade blasts—that was still too far away for good aim.