by David Weber
It hadn’t happened because surviving local governments and law enforcement agencies weren’t trying their damnedest to prevent it, either. You simply couldn’t displace that many members of an urban population with no experience of producing their own food—and no means of producing it, even if they’d known how—without mammoth disruptions. Throw in the breakdown of public health systems, the disappearance of gasoline, the steady disintegration of the power grid, the sudden scarcity of medical supplies, and a refugee population with zero experience at maintaining sanitation and hygiene in mass encampments, and the recipe for anarchy was pretty much complete.
Of course, the loss on the very first day of so many of the people who would normally have been available to resist those disruptions hadn’t helped. Torino still had no idea why that huge Homeland Security exercise had been called—he didn’t think he would have been sent off to Plattsburgh without someone at least mentioning the possibility of an outside attack if anyone in Washington had really figured out “aliens” were coming—but one of the consequences had been to concentrate huge numbers of first responders in the very areas the Shongairi had blasted from orbit in the first wave. The survivors of Reserve and Guard units were mostly doing their best to assist whatever local government and law enforcement survived, but others were too busy doing what Torino himself was doing at the moment.
And still others, much as he hated facing the fact, were using their weapons and their own internal cohesion for much less selfless purposes. His own band had encountered two separate groups of onetime National Guardsmen whose leaders were busy setting up as local warlords. One of those leaders had made the mistake of attempting to add Torino’s people—and especially their weapons—to his own “protective association.” That particular would-be warlord was never going to bother anyone again, and a quarter of the liberated slaves he’d been “protecting” (the majority of whom, oddly enough, had been young, female, and physically attractive) had joined Torino. The ones who’d chosen not to had been given most of the thugs’ weapons and directed towards Scranton, which had somehow survived the Shongairi’s kinetic broom and where local officials were reported to have done a far better job of maintaining public order in Lackawanna and the surrounding counties. Of course, Torino figured there was a limit to how much longer Scranton would be able to continue absorbing refugees from the rest of the region. Eventually, the authorities would be forced to close their “borders” or go under like the areas around them.
For that matter, they might leave the border closing too late and go under anyway.
It looked to Torino as if the Shongairi were doing everything they could to encourage exactly that kind of disintegration, in which case they might simply be waiting until Scranton had attracted as many refugees as possible before striking it, as well. Of course, he could be wrong about that. He could simply be looking at the unintended consequences of a strategy which had completely different objectives. In either case, however, the confusion, anarchy, spreading starvation, and growing disease threat were far too vast for his limited resources to have made any difference. So, given that the Shongairi seemed to have completely withdrawn their ground forces from the area, he’d decided to shift hunting grounds.
It continued to amaze him how the tattered wreckage of a society which had been so totally dependent on cell phones and the Internet still managed to pass news along. It often got distorted in the process, yet he’d discovered it didn’t get a lot more garbled than it had been with every yahoo in creation adding his own ten cents’ worth of exaggeration when he posted his version of events (or, for that matter, his complete fabrication of events) online. And news and rumors spread with remarkable speed even without electronic media and even in a society which was rapidly disintegrating.
Assuming the reports they’d been able to pick up were remotely accurate, the Shongairi had established a base somewhere in North or South Carolina. Apparently, they’d modified their initial strategy from one of a general occupation to establishing what the US military would have called “Forward Operating Bases” and gradually extending perimeters of control from there. It made at least some sense, and from other bits and pieces they’d been able to piece together, the Carolinas—or, at least, North Carolina—had been far less devastated than New England and the mid-Atlantic states. They hadn’t been as heavily populated to begin with, and apparently they’d been hit less hard in the initial Shongair bombardment.
Well, that was the story on North Carolina, anyway. From the sound of things, South Carolina had taken a harder initial hit and had most of its state government knocked out on the very first day. At least he’d never heard anyone mention the South Carolina governor by name, whereas Judson Howell, the Governor of North Carolina, apparently continued to head a more or less functional state government.
If Torino had been an alien invader with a functional brain, it would have made sense to him to move in on a fairly stable area with a central authority he could compel to obey him, and that seemed to be exactly what the Shongairi had done. Which meant that if he wanted to find Shongair convoys to ambush and Shongair troopers to kill, North Carolina was the place to go looking for them.
If these people have managed to maintain anything like a degree of public order, he thought now, eyes still closed, they probably aren’t going to be very happy to see you, Dan. The last thing they or their families need is for you to be turning their state into the kind of disaster area you just left up north. Most of them probably don’t like these flop-eared bastards any more than you do, but if you start getting them, or their wives, or their husbands, or their kids killed. . . .
Well, if that was the way it was, that was the way it was. The Shongairi wouldn’t have been pulling in their horns if they hadn’t been getting hurt a lot worse than they’d ever counted on. From everything he’d been able to determine—which, admittedly, might not be all that accurate given the limitations on his communications—they were getting thinner and thinner on the ground. Especially in terms of transport. For that much, at least, he had confirmation from the five ex-truckers who’d fled after being drafted by the aliens to drive human trucks for them. All five of them had ended up joining him, and his raiders had been seeing the occasional human-built (and driven) tractor-trailer rig in the Shongair convoys they’d been hitting even before the aliens had shifted their stance.
Which means we’re hurting the fuckers, he thought fiercely. However bad it looks from our side, they’re getting the shit kicked out of them by people just like us, too, or they wouldn’t be resorting to using our equipment. So if we can just go on hurting them, go on bleeding them, hammering their capabilities back. . . .
He decided—again—not to think about that cost-benefit graph he’d thought about outside Concord. Not to wonder whether or not he and his followers, people like Abu Bakr, had the right to go on killing Shongairi no matter what the aliens might ultimately decide to do about it.
Instead, he opened his eyes, nodded to Abu Bakr, and unfolded one of the North Carolina road maps they’d scavenged from the looted remnants of a gas station in Virginia. He laid it out on the hood of the Honda CRV he’d appropriated as his current “command vehicle” and both of them leaned over to look at it.
“We’re about here,” Torino said, tapping the line of US Highway 421 a couple of miles west of a small circle marked “Boone, North Carolina,” and looked back up at his unlikely lieutenant. “According to everything we’ve heard, this base of theirs is down around Greensboro, about a hundred miles from here. I still don’t want to use the interstate or highways any more than we have to; we’re a lot more likely to run into puppy convoys or patrols or simply get spotted by their orbital recon if we try that. So it looks to me like our best bet is to stay on 421 to Wilkesboro, then take State-268 to Ronda and cross I-77 on US-21 and head for Boonville. From there we can take State-67 as far as Winston-Salem. I don’t think there’s any point planning further ahead than that till we get closer, get a bette
r feel for what’s going down hereabouts.”
“Makes sense to me,” Abu Bakr agreed, craning his neck to study the map. Then he shook his head. “Man, I thought some of those town names in the Pennsylvania boonies were weird! Ronda? Boonville? And what the heck is a ‘Yadkinville’? Or a ‘Pfafftown’?”
Even now, Torino had noticed, Abu Bakr never swore, and he shook his own head with a crooked smile.
“Let’s not be criticizing Southern naming conventions, Abu Bakr,” he said. “I’m a Southern boy, you know. Grew up on what used to be the family farm off Snapfinger Road, in Georgia, as a matter of fact. You wanna make fun of that name?”
He didn’t mention that the onetime family farm in question—and his parents—had been less than eleven miles from downtown Atlanta when the kinetic weapons arrived.
“Wouldn’t dream of it!” Abu Bakr responded with a chuckle. “Matter of fact, that one actually makes sense. Sort of, at least. Lot more than ‘Pfafftown,’ anyway.”
“I’m glad you approve. Now let’s see about figuring out how we want to split up for the last stage.”
. XXVII .
Fleet Commander Thikair pressed the admittance stud, then tipped back in his chair as Ground Base Commander Shairez stepped through the door into his personal quarters. It closed silently behind her, and he quirked his ears at her thoughtfully for a moment before he indicated another chair with the clawed tip of one finger.
“Be seated, Ground Base Commander,” he said, deliberately formal because of the irregularity of meeting with her here.
“Thank you, Fleet Commander.”
He watched her settle into the chair. She carried herself with almost her usual self-confidence, he thought, yet there was something about the set of her ears. And about her eyes.
She’s changed, he thought. Aged. He snorted mentally. Well, we’ve all done that, haven’t we? But there’s more to it in her case. More than when I last spoke to her over the com, in fact.
Apprehension prickled through him at that realization, since their last conversation had been less than three of the local days ago. They’d had enough surprises since dropping out of hyper for anything which could affect the imperturbable, always efficient Shairez so obviously—and in such a short time—to make him acutely unhappy.
“What, precisely, did you wish to see me about, Ground Base Commander?” he asked after a moment. And why, he did not ask aloud, did you wish to see me about it in private?
“I’ve made substantial progress with my initial psychological profile of these humans, Sir. As I’d said in my last personal report to you, that project had been badly delayed by the more pressing emergencies which had to be dealt with immediately. In fact, I still haven’t completed my full analysis of the results, but certain clear differences between Shongair and human psychology have already emerged. On the basis of those differences, unfortunately”—she met his gaze unwaveringly—“I’ve been forced to the conclusion that our initial hopes for this planet were . . . rather badly misplaced.”
Thikair sat very still. It was a testimony to her inner strength that she’d spoken so calmly, he thought. It was clear from her expression and tone that she was not referring to any of the manifold problems they’d already experienced, which meant she’d discovered something even more disastrous. Not many subordinates could have brought that word to an imperial colonizing expedition’s supreme commander without flinching . . . particularly when the hopes in question had been not “our” initial hopes, but his initial hopes.
He drew a deep breath, feeling his ears fold back against his skull, and closed his eyes while he considered how much those hopes had cost his expedition in just three local months. Of course, he reflected grimly, it had cost the humans even more. Yet no matter what he did, the insane creatures refused to submit.
Perhaps Shairez was about to explain that obstinacy of theirs to him. Odd to discover that he suddenly had so much less desire to have that riddle solved after all. Yet. . . .
“How badly misplaced?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“The problem, Sir,” she replied a bit obliquely, “is that we’ve never before encountered a species like this one. Their psychology is . . . unlike anything in our previous experience.”
“That much I’d already surmised,” Thikair said with poison-dry humor. “Should I conclude you now have a better grasp of how it differs?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Even the redoubtable Shairez hesitated for a moment, however, and it was her turn to inhale deeply before she resumed.
“First, Sir,” she began then, “you must understand that there are huge local variations in their psychologies. That’s inevitable, of course, given the fashion in which they’ve retained so many separate nation-states this late into their societal development. I confess, however, that even now I hadn’t realized they retained so many bewilderingly different cultural and societal templates, as well. I’m afraid the degree to which their planetary communication net—and their entertainment media, in particular—had . . . cross-pollinated thanks to their communications satellites, Internet, and mass dissemination of ‘movies’ and recorded music helped me to underestimate their . . . profound diversity.” Her ears flicked a shrug. “I’ve attempted throughout to remind myself that these creatures aren’t us, that their developmental and evolutionary history bears no resemblance to our own. Yet I continue to find my own cultural experiences insisting that anyone with this level of technology must have developed some sort of common, worldwide culture. Except very superficially, however, that most definitely is not the case.
“There are, however, certain common strands. And one of those, Fleet Commander, is that, essentially, they have no submission mechanism as we understand the term.”
“I beg your pardon?” Thikair’s eyes popped open. Despite all their experience with this perverse, irrational, illogical species, that couldn’t be true, could it? The very idea was preposterous!
“No submission mechanism?” he repeated, trying to be certain he’d actually understood her correctly. “None?”
Shairez seemed unsurprised by his reaction. She simply let her ears droop in an expression of weary, exhausted unhappiness and sighed.
“None, Sir,” she confirmed heavily. “There are a few—a very few—other races of the Hegemony which perhaps approach the humans’ psychology, but I can think of no more than two or three. All of them, like the humans, are omnivores, but none—not even the Kreptu—come close to this species’ . . . level of perversity. Frankly, any Shongair psychologist would pronounce all humans insane, Sir, and in this case even the weed-eaters would probably agree with us!”
Of course they would, Thikair thought bleakly. Trust the Cainharn-cursed humans to be the first species every race of the Hegemony would proclaim mad!
“Unlike herbivores,” Shairez continued, using the technical term this time, instead of the customary pejorative, almost as if the precision of her language could protect her from what she was saying, “or even the overwhelming majority of omnivores, for that matter, they have a streak of very Shongair-like ferocity, yet their sense of self is almost invariably greater than their sense of the pack.”
She was obviously groping for a way to describe something outside any understood racial psychology, Thikair thought.
“Almost all herbivores have a very strong herd instinct,” she said. “While they may, under some circumstances, fight ferociously, their first and overwhelming instinct is to avoid conflict, and their basic psychology subordinates the individual’s good—even his very survival—to the good of the ‘herd.’ Most of them now define that ‘herd’ in terms of entire planetary populations or star nations, but it remains the platform from which all of their decisions and policies proceed.
“Most of the Hegemony’s omnivores share that orientation to a greater or a lesser degree, although a handful approach our own psychological stance, which emphasizes not the herd, but the pack. None of them approach it very closely,
however, because for all of them the urge to seek prey is secondary—part of their survival imperatives, yes, but not primary to their race’s early survival. None of them were at the top of their planetary food chains in their prehistoric, pretechnic periods. Indeed, most of them became tool users and eventually developed civilizations primarily because they were so poorly suited by nature as predators. They required tools and technology to overcome their inherent weakness and to protect themselves against other predators, and like the herbivores, flight from danger was more important in their evolutionary history, more central to their development, than the pursuit of prey.
“Our species, however, unlike any of the Hegemony’s other member races, evolved primarily as hunters, not prey. Prior to our own tool-using period, we were at or near the very top of our planetary food chain, and so we evolved a social structure and psychology oriented around that primary function rather than a template designed to protect us from other predators. Unlike virtually all herbivores and the vast majority of omnivores, Shongairi’s pride in our personal accomplishments—the proof of our ability—all relates to the ancient, primal importance of the individual hunter’s prowess as the definer of his status within the pack.
“Yet the pack is still greater than the individual. Our sense of self-worth, of accomplishment, is validated only within the context of the pack. And the submission of the weaker to the stronger, of the follower to the leader—of the beta or the gamma to the alpha—comes from that same context. It isn’t simply the basis of our honor code and our philosophy, Fleet Commander; it’s bred into our very genes to submit to the pack leader. To defer to the individual whose strength dominates all about him. Of course our people, and especially our males, have always challenged our leaders, as well, for that was how the ancient pack ensured that its leadership remained strong. Yet within our psychology and culture, there have always been properly defined channels—customs, mores, and traditions—which defined how and when that challenge could be presented. And once a leader has reaffirmed his dominance, his strength—his right to lead—the challenger submits once more. Our entire philosophy, our ethics, our societal expectations and our considerations of honor, all proceed from that fundamental starting point: the weaker and the less capable, for the good of all, always submits to his legitimately stronger, more capable superior.”