Chapter Sixteen
The corner of Brigadier Sturgeon's mouth twitched as he read over Commander Daana's operation plan, but as FIST commander, it was inappropriate for him to wear a feral grin. Later, when he ordered his FIST into combat, he would look like an alpha wolf about to assert his dominance. He liked the plan and approved it with no changes. Shortly afterward, Commander van Winkle presented his trio of proposals. Sturgeon approved them as well, and released the infantry commander to prepare Company L for the initial stages of the operation.
From its beginnings in hot-air balloons in the mid-nineteenth century, military commanders have found aerial observation and intelligence gathering a valuable pursuit. But aerial observation has always been vulnerable to defeat. As soon as an observer is spotted by the object of its search, steps can be taken to hide or put out decoys. Even orbital satellites can be deceived by such measures. And aerial observation platforms, weather balloons, manned aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles have always been vulnerable to fire directed at them from the ground. Even orbital satellites were vulnerable to jamming or destruction by ground, air, or orbital-based weapon systems. And an enemy's intelligent use of camouflage just added to the problem. Those are simple facts that commanders who use aerial observation have always had to live with.
The Confederation Marine Corps, on the other hand, being Marines, didn't believe they had to accept limitations just because everybody else did. And, as Marines, they believed firmly in taking care of their own. They wanted the use of UAVs for battlefield intelligence gathering, and didn't want the craft to be fooled or lost just because they could be seen by an enemy on the ground. So they came up with their own form of UAV, one that could be disguised as any manner of native flier that approximated its size. Sizes, actually; the Marines used two different UAVs that could variously look like bird, mammal, or large insect analogs--whatever flying creature was appropriate for where they were deployed.
Not only could the Marine UAVs mimic the look of local flying fauna, they could mimic their actions. Some birds or their analogs constantly flap their wings in flight, while others use their wings sparingly and glide mostly on thermals. The same was true of flying mammals and their analogs. The bodies of flying insectoids commonly bop up and down between their wings, and jitter from side to side in flight.
So could the Marines' UAVs, which could even adjust their thermal output to mimic the infrared signals of real fliers.
As soon as the Confederation Marines adopted their new UAVs, their UAV combat losses dropped dramatically.
The Confederation Army, which was still using UAVs that looked and acted like UAVs, continued to suffer heavy UAV combat losses and became intensely jealous. The Marines, being Marines, smiled smugly and basked in the army's jealousy. After a few campaigns and wars in which the Confederation Army lost a goodly number of UAVs, the army's then-chief of staff broke down and said "pretty please," and the Marines graciously allowed the army to license their UAV design.
Confederation Army UAV losses dropped dramatically.
That didn't mean the army stopped swearing about "those damn Marines." After all, didn't the army have an ancient tradition of bestowing its castoffs and obsolete equipment on the Marines? One should expect some gratitude, they thought. But no, not from "those damn Marines"; they were too arrogant by more than half.
For initial operations on Maugham's Station, the Marines disguised their larger UAVs as the Joseph's coated papukaija, a largish, nut-eating bird with riotously colored plumage; and the smaller ones as varpuna thrushmockers, a midsize, drab-plumage, insectoid eater that flitted swiftly from tree to tree.
Three UAV teams, three areas to observe--fortuitous symmetry.
The FIST-level UAVs were much more sophisticated machines than those used by the infantry companies. The company-level UAVs needed to be constantly controlled and observed, so if both of a blaster company's UAVs were flying simultaneously, both members of the UAV team had to focus on them, one Marine flying each. FIST-level UAVs, on the other hand, had low-level AIs capable of enough independence that an experienced operator could easily control two simultaneously. FIST UAVs were even smart enough to recognize not only the patterns they were programmed to look for, but patterns that didn't match anything they'd already observed on their missions, and to draw their operator's attention to them.
Staff Sergeant Geiger monitored his displays with only a part of his attention during the flights of his two varpuna thrushmockers to the strange, calderalike valley north of Ammon. He paid far more attention to the instruction he was giving Lance Corporal Hawker, the most junior and least experienced man in the FIST UAV squad. It was only Hawker's second live operation. Admittedly, the previous operation--against the Skinks on Kingdom--had been quite a baptism of fire.
"We have to do this a lot differently," Geiger explained. "On Kingdom, we had to search an entire planet, with lots of open landscapes and swamps. Here, we're going to be looking in small areas with very definite boundaries and dense forest--and we don't even have any clear definition yet of what ground level is, or how the ground lays."
That was why Geiger operated the thrushmockers while Hawker handled the two mock Joseph's coated papukaijas. Usually, the senior team member had the larger UAVs. Here, Geiger expected most of the intelligence they gathered to come from deep within the tree cover where the larger UAVs would have more trouble maneuvering, and he wanted personal control of the vehicles that could go deep.
"I want you to stay high," Geiger said, "one in the treetops and the other above them--"
"You already told me that several times, Staff Sergeant," Hawker interrupted.
"And I'm going to keep telling you until you can repeat it in your sleep." Geiger wasn't annoyed by the interruption, he expected it; Hawker wasn't the first Marine he'd broken in as a UAV operator, and they'd all reached a point where they got so sick of having their instructions repeated to them that they objected. He'd done the same thing when he was a lance corporal just starting out as a UAV driver. Just wait until this youngster had to start repeating his instructions after only hearing them one time--and keep repeating them until the mission was over.
"As I was saying, you stay high, I go low. You look for clearings, even breaks in the canopy that are just large enough for a hopper to drop a man-line through, anyplace that gives access between the top of the canopy and the ground below the trees. And pay attention to your infra views. Close attention. You've seen the records of the Skink infra signatures. They don't show much in infra, but they do show--you have to look sharp to spot and recognize them."
Geiger grinned behind the expressionless mask of his face at the way Hawker grimaced when he mentioned the Skinks. During their major assault on Haven, before 34th FIST was reinforced by 26th FIST on Kingdom, one Skink squad had made it all the way to FIST headquarters, and most of the UAV squad--including Hawker--had to take up blasters and fight them off.
"Remember to keep track of where my birds are so we can coordinate when one of us spots something that needs investigation."
Hawker tuned Geiger's voice out and watched his displays. Especially the visual. He hadn't been on many planets, so every new world was still a marvel to him. He'd originally applied for UAV school because he thought flying the observation birds would give him lots of opportunity to see new worlds in ways the infantry or squadron ground crews never could. So far he hadn't been disappointed. Flying UAVs was as much fun as he'd thought it would be, so much so that he didn't even mind all the hours he had to put in on maintaining the birds--or listening to his team leader repeating instructions he knew well enough to recite in his sleep.
He did his best to forget fighting the Skinks on Kingdom.
He enjoyed the swooping flight of the mock Joseph's coated papukaijas. The birds had evolved for short flights in the upper canopy, with short forays into the understories, but they were capable of extended journeys so long as they could make frequent stops. These two papukaijas were
launched from the UAV tower and glided several kilometers, using their wings only occasionally to move from updraft to updraft. They didn't follow a straight path from the launch tower to their destination. Instead, they zigged and zagged from copse to copse, and stopped for occasional "rests."
Similarly, the "thrushmockers" that launched when the "papukaijas" were halfway to their area of operations, wings beating constantly, flitted this way and that as though snatching insectoids on the fly, and stopped to perch now and again.
The UAVs reached their AO near enough to simultaneously be in coordinated formation, but with just enough staggering to appear natural and random to an observer. Surely if that hypothetical observer noticed that they seemed to be paired--one papukaija and one thrushmocker in each pair--the pairing would seem random. By then Lance Corporal Hawker was droning his instructions aloud in harmony with Staff Sergeant Geiger's repetition.
The four birds perched on the topological crest of the strange valley's walls and cocked their heads from side to side, swiveled about, aiming one eye here, one eye there, looking over the terrain.
Back in the operations center, Geiger and Hawker studied their displays, paying particular attention to the visual and infra views. Hawker's eyes widened at the sight of the lush vegetation that spread before them, and it made him eager to fly his papukaijas over and into the canopy. Geiger likewise noted the lushness with pleasure, but he also noticed the absence of birds flying above it. Both noticed that no large, heat-producing bodies were visible in infra, and the motion detectors showed nothing that indicated moving masses that couldn't be accounted for by air currents in the trees.
"Let's do it," Geiger murmured. He pushed a button, and one at a time the thrushmockers launched themselves into the air and darted, wings flitting, into the trees.
Next to him, Hawker also pushed a button, and a second after Geiger's birds, the two papukaijas flung themselves off the cliff edge and spread their wings to swoop on the air currents above the treetops.
"Where is everybody?" Hawker suddenly blurted.
"It's about time you noticed we aren't crashing somebody's party," Geiger came back. "Turn on your proximity sensors and threat detectors."
"Aye aye," Hawker replied, tapping the commands into his console. "This is weird. Did you ever see empty air like this anywhere before?"
"Once," Geiger said, keeping most of his attention on his displays. "On an exploratory world that wasn't ready for human habitation. We were searching for lost prospectors who weren't supposed to be there in the first place. Photosynthesis hadn't had enough time to pump sufficient oxygen into the atmosphere, and avians hadn't evolved yet."
"That's different, that's a young planet. What about one like this, a world that has birds, with an area where there aren't any fliers?"
"Only where local conditions make the atmosphere poisonous." Geiger checked his displays. "That's not the situation here; that air's breathable."
Hawker flew one of his UAVs higher and ratcheted up its visuals, then coasted the bird in a circular pattern. "Plenty of birds in the sky," he murmured, "but they're all on the other side of the wall."
"Do you see me?"
Hawker checked a display. "Got you in a pretty picture."
"I'm going to the deck for a closer look. Watch me."
The two fake thrushmockers had been flitting through the middle canopy; after the first few minutes, Geiger had stopped their insectoid-catching charade--there didn't seem to be any flying insectoids in the middle canopy. The two disguised UAVs, nearly a quarter klick apart, darted groundward. Neither landed. Instead they flew just a meter above the ground, as slowly as possible for a thrushmocker. Their infras showed nothing but the faint background glow of the rotting vegetation that covered the ground. Light gathering visuals showed what looked like the normal detritus that blanketed a deciduous forest floor: leaves, twigs, rotted branches, bark flakes, trailing vines, with saplings and weeds poking through all over, straining to reach sunlight.
Geiger checked Hawker's displays, then asked, "See anything odd on my visuals?"
Hawker looked at the other's visual displays for a moment and shook his head. "Looks like a hundred other forests I've flown through."
"Look harder." Geiger flicked his eyes between his own and Hawker's displays while the lance corporal searched his visuals for something out of the ordinary.
"Nothing," Hawker finally said, a question in his tone. Obviously, Geiger saw something and he was missing it.
"No bones," Geiger said. "Animals die in a forest. Their bodies rot away, but bones are left behind because they take longer to decay away or subsume. There are no bones."
"But--"
"The native bones here aren't quite the same as ours, but they decay the same as ours. And there aren't any in this forest--Wait a minute, what's that?"
One of the thrushmockers veered toward something that poked out of a tangle of vines and shoots. It was the first sign they'd seen of animate life inside the bowl. Geiger double-checked his displays to make sure nothing was lurking nearby, then hovered his UAV about thirty centimeters above and to one side of the protrusion.
"Bone," he whispered. "It's a bone. He magnified the vision of the eye fixed on the bone--it was curved like a rib--and blinked. A tendril had bored through its surface. He looked down the bone, into the tangle of vines. By gathering more light, he was able to peer deeper into the tangle and see more bones underneath the vines. He blinked again; several of the bones seemed to have tendrils poking into them.
Suddenly his view spun about as something struck the UAV from its blind side, then the view went blank. His fingers danced over his console as he looked quickly from display to display--all of the UAV's sensors were down!
As he switched to the other thrushmocker and sent it to the lower canopy, heading toward the dead bird, he asked, "Did you see what hit me?"
"There wasn't anything there!" Hawker squawked. "My motion detector picked up something faint, but there isn't anything where it came from."
"Show me," Geiger snapped. An arrowed line traced on the overview. He simultaneously angled his remaining bird toward the line's point of origin and increased the magnification on the overview. "How could someone get that close without us spotting him?" he demanded--the arrowed line was only ten meters long. Hawker wisely decided against attempting an answer.
The thrushmocker circled above where the overview showed the shot had come from, and Geiger focused all its sensors on the place. Nothing. Not even the highest magnification and light gathering showed any sign of a depression on the ground cover where a body might have lain in ambush.
"Are you sure that's where it came from?" he growled.
"According to the motion detector, that's where."
"Damn," Geiger muttered. He drew a vector through the vine tangle where he'd been examining the bones and the spot where Hawker's motion detector showed the silent shot had come from and beyond, and sent his remaining UAV along it, searching for any sign that the shot originated farther out, or sign of someone withdrawing. "Send one of your birds inside the canopy and follow me," he ordered.
"Aye aye." Hawker left his high papukaija orbiting and dropped his low one into the middle canopy, trailing the thrushmocker. "Right front!" he shouted, and threw his UAV into a rapid climb, jinking from side to side in evasive maneuvers.
But his warning was too late as a string of viscous, greenish fluid arced out and spattered the thrushmocker, tumbling it into a tree trunk. The UAV crunched and plopped to the ground.
"It came from that tree!" Hawker sent his bird into an Immelmann, and came out of it swooping at the tree the stream had come from. He didn't see the stringer that barely missed his UAV's tail feathers. Seven meters from the tree he twisted his UAV's body to vertical and spun its wings in a braking rotation. The wings blocked his peripheral vision, and he didn't see the second streamer that hit his UAV's side, spinning it out of control. A third streamer blinded it and sent it careening tow
ard the ground.
"Get that last bird out of there, now!" Geiger barked.
Hawker canceled his remaining UAV's motion-mimic and sent the false bird climbing for altitude at speed before turning it to head for home.
In little more than two minutes, three of the flight's four UAVs were gone--and they didn't know what had killed them.
In the Grandar Bay's real-time intel section, SRA2 Hummfree watched the three Marine UAVs die. He made sure he'd programmed his console for instant replay of what he was watching, then leaned back and rubbed a hand over his eyes. He'd seen the UAVs go down, had even seen faint flickers that might have been the flight paths of whatever it was that killed two of them. What he hadn't seen was anything at the other end of the flight path of the killer.
He leaned forward again and replayed the scene. And replayed it again, and again. But no matter how he diddled the dials and tickled the buttons, no matter how he merged visual, infra, X and gamma ray--it didn't matter that he was able to clarify the flight paths of the killer strokes that took down the UAVs--he couldn't find any signal that would show him the shooter.
He increased the long baseline interferometry he was using from three satellites to four, then five, and finally six. With the resolution he was able to tweak out of that, he could make out individual leaves in the upper canopy. But he still couldn't find the shooters.
What was going on down there?
Chapter Seventeen
Corporal Sonj and Lance Corporals Makin and Zhon flicked off their HUD displays and glanced toward where Sergeant Steffan was squirreled out of sight on the north side of the shallow depression in which the recon team lay hidden; their infra signals were muted. The recon team leader kept his HUD on and reran what he and his men had just observed. The navy's string-of-pearls had relayed scrambled visual signals to them, with infra overlay, from the quartet of disguised UAVs flying through the interdicted area they were about to enter over the ridgetop fifty meters away.
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