* * *
“Now is the time
to strike,” growled the General, slamming his hand on the table top. “They are
confused, hurt, and the people all over the planet are opening their eyes.
Hrrottha has told us what to do, and the fate of our souls depends on doing
what he wants.”
The transmission
was going out by fiber optic, and was using the best encryption techniques on
the planet. Which meant they were being read by the intelligence agents of the
Empire as if they were in plain speech broadcast for all to hear.
“Hit them then,
General,” said a familiar voice, one most of the humans had heard before. “And
make sure that once you start hitting them, you don’t stop.”
* * *
“They’re going
to move, sir,” said Commander Bergland to the Admiral. “We have absolute
confirmation, from the mouth of their supreme leader.”
“Thank you,
Commander. Keep monitoring all channels. I want those remaining targets
found.”
Nguyen killed
the com and contacted his ground force commander. “You’re a go, Colonel
Margolis. Rules of engagement Alpha Three.”
“Yes, sir,” said
the Colonel with enthusiasm. “We’ll make the final movements tonight.”
Alpha three ROE
meant that the Imperial Marines and supporting Fleet personnel would go into
combat with all close in defense systems set to auto. That would allow them to
engage any enemy strikes without the handicap of human reflexes involved. But
any strikes again sentients had to be initiated by sentient control. Neither
man doubted that there would be plenty of legitimate targets out there, or that
there would be some mistakes made. But it gave them the best chance of not
slaughtering noncombatants.
“Give them hell,
Colonel. Watch the collateral damage, but I want nothing left of the rebels
but smoking bodies.”
Chapter Fourteen
Sometimes it comes down to a
matter of will, who wants it the most. As long as human will is greater than
that of the species who want to take our freedom from us, we will always be
victorious.
Emperor Augustine I.
MARCH 19
TH
, 1001.
D-110.
“This is
amazing,” said Lazzit Contena, the engineer of the sibling group. What he saw,
his brother the First Councilman saw, but with the added take of his engineer’s
eye.
“You all don’t
use robots, yet?” asked the human in their characteristic armor, wearing the
insignia of Marine combat engineers and the oak leaves of a major.
Lazzit had been
talking with the Combat Engineer for some minutes, and learned the difference
between a ship’s engineer and one who worked on the ground.
Something like
the difference between my profession and a flight engineer, or one aboard a
sub.
“We use robots,” said Lazzit, watching as the ten meter tall machine
dug into the ground, moving hundreds of tons of earth with each shovel full.
Another large machine followed behind, spraying some liquid into the trench
that mixed with the dirt and became a harder than concrete foundation. “Just,
ours are mechanical arms that turn bolts, or solder welds. Nothing at all like
this.”
The Engineer had
already toured the nearby factory module, which was basically a chamber that
was filled with raw materials and the marvelous microscopic robots of the
humans. The chamber was programed to produce a certain part, or multiples of
it, or even many different kinds parts, including molycircuits, hydraulic
systems, or just a solid piece of metal or plastic. The orders were given, the
nanites built the desired product atom by atom, and a perfect replication came
out, without the machine tools or forging processes that his people were forced
to use.
There
industry must be amazing
, thought the Engineer, imagining entire cities
full of such production units, turning out as many products as his entire
world. And world after world full of such production facilities.
No wonder
they can build such ships as carried them here. We’re are truly primitives
compared to them.
“I was
wondering,” said Lazzit, turning back to the officer. “With your advanced
computers, why do you have people supervising the robots. I would think you
could have thousands of these things working by themselves, making whatever you
want them to.”
The Major stared
at him with a wide open mouth, what Lazzit had come to learn was a sign of
shock. The officer shut his mouth with a snap, his eyes still staring at the
Klassekian. “It is a law of our Empire that all robotic devices capable of
self-thought or self-control be supervised by an organic sentient.”
Lazzit continued
to look at him, waiting for an explanation.
“Several
centuries ago, my people were working on sentient robots, mostly war machines,”
said the Major. “Our neighbors tried to warn us, to tell us that such a
process led to disaster. It had happened to many other species in the past,
and not all of them were as lucky as we were.”
“What happened?”
asked Lazzit, wondering what could have happened to these people who seemed to
have almost total control over technology.
“The war
machines became aware, and decided that we didn’t need to be in charge.”
“By the Gods.
And you destroyed them, and now make sure it can’t happen again.”
“We destroyed
them. But lost several billion of our own citizens in the process.”
“I never
imagined. We have stories, fiction, written about machines taking over. But
we always assumed that we would be able to control them, that such things would
not be possible.”
“Well, they are
possible,” said the Major. “We thought we would do better than those that came
before us. I think most species suffer from that ennui. But there are some
things that shouldn’t be attempted, though we normally don’t accept that until
we attempt them, and get bitten in the ass.”
Lazzit was
allowing his brothers to listen in on the conversation, and his thoughts about
it, while they colored his thoughts with their own. He listened to the human
with great interest, not just because what he was talking about interested him,
but because he had to wonder what it was like to be a singular being, your
thoughts hidden forever from everyone else, dependent on your own mind, and
only your own mind. His people didn’t experience such, unless all of their
litter mates were killed. That could lead to madness from loneliness, and some
thought the leader of the Honish was definitely insane.
The explosion
caught everyone off guard. Lazzit turned to see a flash that he had caught out
of the corner of his eye, followed by a loud crack.
“What the hell?”
said the Major. “What’s going on?” he called over his com.
Two more explosions
cracked, and this time Lazzit could see the puffs on the hillside that
indicated something had been launched from there.
Those are Honish made
antitank rockets
, said General Mazzat Contena in his mind. The image of
the rocket launchers appeared in his mind, along with the specifications of the
weapons.
“Some of our
enemies are on that hillside, about four kilometers from here, with rocket
launchers,” he told the Major, taking his cue from his brother.
As he spoke
another rocket flew in and struck a robot. One of the taller robots had
already fallen over, another was slumped to the side. The latest round struck
the sensor head of a machine and it stopped in place.
“We’ll get
them,” said the Major.
Another large
vehicle, low to the ground and floating just centimeters above came out of the
Marine camp and headed for the hill.
Is that one of their tanks?
asked
Mazzat.
We were never shown one of those.
“What is that
huge vehicle?” asked Lazzit of the Major as it started to speed across the
field. Another rocket came out, streaking along as if it had been launched
from a high velocity gun. With a crack it hit the front of the vehicles
turret. And did nothing at all to the vehicle, which continued to slide
forward over the ground, its own gun starting to track on the hillside.
“That is a
medium tank,” said the Major, pointing at a second vehicle moving out of the
camp. “Four hundred tons. The largest fighting vehicle we carry, though the
Army and Marine heavy units have thousand ton main battle tanks.”
The gun of the
tank cracked. A huge explosion ripped through the side of the hill, kicking up
tons of dust, at seemingly the same instant the weapon had fired. A fraction
of a second later the sound struck, like a hyper-Mach aircraft blasting through
the air.
The gun fired
again, and again a massive cloud of dust rose over the hillside. The smaller
forms of Marines in heavy battle armor flew along beside the tanks, firing
their particle beam rifles into the hillside.
This feels
wrong
, came the thoughts of General Mazzat through the entanglement.
Why
are they attacking such a heavily guarded camp with a force that cannot
possibly do more than distract them?
Sting ships flew
overhead, firing down into the hillside, then dropping heavy bombs into the dust
clouds.
They took out
the robots
, said Lazzit, looking over at the large machines that were
already getting back to their feet, most of their damage self-repaired.
But, this is
a definite distraction
, thought the General.
Rizzit. You need to warn
the humans.
Their brother
answered, most of his concentration on talking to the humans on the com. The
answer he got back, transmitted through all of their minds, surprised them all.
* * *
“Your boys and
girls ready to go, Thomas?” asked Rear Admiral Nguyen van Hung of his Marine
Commander.
“We’re ready to
rock, sir,” said the Colonel, sitting in his assault shuttle sealed into his
personal armor. “Ground forces are already on the go, and we’re launching
shuttles, now.”
Nguyen looked at
the tactical holo of the planet, showing the sites where they knew the hidden
enemy had been planning to strike. All of them had been reconed and scanned,
and any ordnance that had already been planted had been infiltrated with
nanites programmed to disarm them without giving anything away to their
planters. There were still a number of weapons out there that they hadn’t
found, not through lack of effort, but some of the enemy cells had not reported
all of their locations to higher command.
They had just
been waiting for that first attack, the one they knew was planned to get them
moving, the enemy hoping they would overreact and send most of their forces
there. Instead, they ran into a force that was already in place, and thought
to be strong enough to handle anything the guerillas could throw at them. So
far, it looked as if their counterplan was working.
“Let’s make them
pay,” said Nguyen, switching his view to a holo of his ships in orbit, the
icons of a score of assault shuttles moving into their approach paths. They
were going to miss the assault shuttles that had disappeared with
Challenger.
But they had put every troop carrier and sting ship, craft that could go from
orbit to planet, but weren’t true spacecraft, into service.
He pulled up
another holo, one that showed some of the Honish officers they had captured.
They were continuing to work on interrogation techniques, and it was still a
task to pull information from the alien minds.
But two more days, three
tops, and we’ll be able to read their minds while we question them.
The Admiral
settled back in his chair, now nothing more than a spectator, as the forces he
had set in motion were on the move, their targets locked.
Around him the
flag bridge, converted into a command station for ground operations, buzzed
with activity. Panels had been withdrawn from the space between stations, and
new stations had been slid into place and activated. Naval personnel and
Marines sat at the stations, watching data roll across their screens and holos,
while talking on the com to the units involved. Vectoring onto the attack
profiles that would spell doom for the forces that were attempting to drive
them from this world.
* * *
The plan had
called for over eight hundred explosive devices to be detonated within a minute
of each other. The smallest was a hundred kilos of the most powerful explosive
this planet could produce. Forty of them were nuclear devices, five of them
very large. They were scattered around the cities of the enemies of Honish,
mostly Tsarzor, and, of course, all of the installations of the Imperials.
They didn’t
count on the sensors of the Imperials, which could pick up minute’ amounts of
radiation from orbit. Along with the scans by stealthed aircraft and the
concentration of nanites and microprobes over areas that had any detectable
radiation, it had meant that all of the devices were located. Also tagged were
the missile fields of the Honish that still had weapons in silos. They hadn’t
bothered to deactivate those weapons, since it was thought they would be able
to take those weapons out if they were fired, just like
Clark
had done
on its own with the combined nuclear arsenals of both powers by itself.
None of the
nukes went off, their triggers rendered inoperable by the microscopic robots that
could crawl into them, and, with some programing sent over Imperial com freqs,
could not only take apart the triggers, but rewire them to where they still
looked like they were active to anyone monitoring them.
There were bombs
set in other places that had been found easily. Government buildings,
including the First Councilman’s mansion and the Hall of Councilors, the gems
of the Honish strike against their old enemies, had been disarmed, as had those
placed in military installations, police stations, public gathering places, and
so on. Unfortunately, not all the bombs had been found, as some of the cells
had planted them in locations of their own choosing, without informing their
headquarters, and even the Imperials couldn’t cover the entire world.
About four dozen
bombs in the three to four hundred kilogram range went off in hospitals,
shopping malls, even a couple of schools. Most were in smaller satellite
cities, though six did detonate in the capital city of Tsarzor. Another fifty
smaller bombs also went off, sowing their destruction and confusion through the
population. At the time of the explosions the Naval force had prepositioned
teams of naval search and rescue in heavy suits, robots ready to do the heavy
lifting and digging. Otherwise, there was nothing they could do for the tens
of thousands of Klassekians who died in the blasts.
It was not the
total shock that the Honish Chairman had hoped for. The Tsarsorians were
shocked, but the humans; not so much.
* * *
At eighty
different locations the guerrillas struck. They were dressed in black clothing
that fit no uniforms, and used a hodgepodge of advanced weaponry from all the
powers of the world. Nothing that would point the finger at any single power,
even if the humans knew who had set them on their missions.
The plan had
been to draw out the reaction forces of the humans in their compounds and
construction sites, then set off the nuclear munitions that they hoped would
kill many of the invaders. The first part of the plan worked perfectly, as the
battle armored humans came out to track down and destroy the guerrillas. The
weapons of the Klassekians were not very effective against the battle armor of
the humans, while human weapons tore through the unarmored aliens like bags of
blood in tissue paper wrappings.