by Jack Colrain
“The air strike?”
Palmer nodded. “Yeah. That armor holds up nicely, but damn, it rings like a fucking bell! I feel like Quasimodo.”
Hope came out to join them. “It’s lucky one of us can still hear. Listen,” She instructed them.
Daniel did, and heard the faint sound of aircraft in the distance. “Those planes are pretty far off,” he commented.
Hope listened for a minute longer. “They’re not getting any closer, either. Nothing seems to be heading this way.”
“The Gresians have a fleet of what, to them, are near enough Mozari warships to worry about,” Lizzie told Daniel. “One small group of humans isn’t going to worry them too much out here.”
“They seemed pretty worried on Lyonesse, Lizzie.”
“They had religious motivation there. Here, they’re most likely to think you just got lost and separated, and that they can pick you off anytime. They don’t have to make an effort to hunt us down since they don’t know what our ultimate destination or intention is.”
“Us?”
“This is as much my mission as yours, you know. It’s been two and a half thousand years since I was programmed to defeat the Gresians, by whatever means.”
Daniel remembered, and forced himself to remember the means she’d chosen to use.
His train of thought was interrupted by a call from Sergeant Bailey.
“Sir, it’s the Sydney. Switching them through to your comms.”
“Attention, all battalion commanders and officers,” the voice of Commander Wells of the Sydney came crisply to Daniel’s ears. “Air support is suspended effective immediately. I repeat, all air support operations are temporarily halted. Birds in the air with deliveries in progress will return to their ships’ flight control directions upon delivery. All others are already leaving atmosphere.”
“This is Colonel Pemberton,” someone replied. “Is there a reason?”
“We wouldn’t do it otherwise.”
“How long is temporary,” another voice asked, and Daniel could hear gunfire and plasma-fire in the background.
“Unknown, pending... some problems.”
Problems, Daniel thought. What were the problems in space likely to be? He ran back into the barn, followed by the others. Returning to his Super-Bradley, he got on the air to Colonel Barnett. “Sir, did I just hear correctly about the suspension of all air coverage?” Daniel knew he had heard correctly, but didn’t want to feel it or to believe it. The answer was the inevitable one.
“Affirmative, Dan. Something weird is going on up here.”
“Weird?”
Barnett hesitated a moment, then said, “The Gresian fleet has pulled back.”
“That’s good news, surely?”
“It was, or so we thought. Unfortunately, when our fleet pursued them, the Gresians began opening gateways immediately in front of our ships. Some of the ships tried to reverse out of it, or at least stop, but their momentum carried them forward anyway.”
“What—” Daniel took a second to find his voice. “How many ships have we lost?”
“Several landing craft, and, so far, we’ve lost a heavy cruiser with almost 300 sailors aboard and half a dozen fighters.”
“Shit...” Daniel breathed. This wasn’t just weird, it was disturbing. The sweat on him turned cold instantly.
“So, things are rather confused up here; nobody wants to risk moving at any speed in case they get potted into a gateway like a goddamned pool ball into a corner pocket. And with the fleet having stopped moving, we’re all sitting ducks up here. We need those fighters back to run interference for us.”
“They are fast enough to dodge aside of an opening gateway entrance,” Hope said, joining Daniel with worry showing on her face. Doug Wilson had come over, as well, and Daniel reckoned that was fair enough since he was so vital to the success of the mission.
“Exactly, Captain Ying. The admiral, General Carver, and the rest of the fleet’s brass are tying themselves in knots trying to figure out what to do.”
Wilson frowned. “Their problem will be that they don’t have the years or level of expertise with the gateway system that the Gresians do.”
“Correct, Professor.”
“OK,” Daniel said. “You’ve given the order, so how long before all air cover is pulled out and gone?”
Barnett paused as if checking something. “There are a few dozen fighter aircraft within atmosphere, still providing close air support to the divisional landing zone on the southern continent.”
“They’re taking some Gresian heat?”
“So far, they’ve got almost eight thousand boots on the ground at the Southern LZ Two. They’re pushing forward and securing additional territory. We don’t really know what this new naval tactic means, though.”
“It means the Gresians are losing the naval battle,” Lizzie said directly from the comm system, her voice full of concern.
“That’s good, isn’t it? You sound worried,” Barnett said.
“I am. They may switch tactics and begin weaponizing the gateways.”
“What makes you think that?”
“They did it previously, in engagements with the Mozari. The Gresians would open a gateway ahead of the ship, too close for them to stop before they went through.”
“Where did they end up?” Barnett asked, a heartbeat before Daniel could.
Lizzie hesitated. “Certainly nowhere good. Daniel, do you remember when you asked if it was possible to weaponize a gateway by opening one in the core of a planet, or the photosphere of a star, and putting the exit over a target?”
Daniel did. “And you said that was impossible.”
“It is. But the reverse is more than possible, and, actually, is a known Gresian naval tactic.”
“Then the ship—” Barnett cut in.
“Ends up frying in the heart of a star, dropped into a black hole, or just going straight-up, face-first into a nice big rocky planet,” Lizzie suggested. “The Gresians aren’t very nice, so the possibilities are endless.”
“Why didn’t they do that at Lyonesse?” Hope wondered aloud.
“They wouldn’t have been sure of your capabilities, and also, there you were trying to get away. A big difference from when the enemy is trying to destroy or take over a world of yours. You know what I mean, right?”
“How are they doing it?” Wilson asked. He was visibly thinking hard, and Daniel could almost see the wheels turning in his head. “To be able to run so precise a tactic, dependent upon making decisions in fractions of nanoseconds...”
“They have help,” Lizzie said flatly. “I mean, not actual help in the sense of spies or something. Toward the end of the Gresian-Mozari war, their ships couldn’t compete with the Mozari nanotechnology, so they created an AI that could analyze the battlespace and open gateways directly in front of Mozari ships and send them… wherever was most nasty and fatal, basically.”
Daniel’s eyes widened. “Wait, you’re telling me there’s a Gresian AI?”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “It’s more focused on a single purpose than I am; it’s a naval strategist, for the most part. I’m a much better model, way more nuanced and skilled, and, if I may say so, with a far wider range of talents, of which naval strategy is merely one.”
“You’re capable of countering the Gresian strategic AI, though?” Daniel pressed.
“I have a certain set of skills, as they say.”
“Are you engaged with it at the moment?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You didn’t ask.” Lizzie held up her hands placatingly. “There’s a reason for that; it’s part of my programming. I’m designed to have a failsafe, which is to not get involved without your explicit orders. I’m raring at the bit here to have a go at it, but I can’t until you say so. And, frankly, it’s one of my talents which your lot have tended to ignore. Jobs for the boys, and all that...”
“I’m giving you the say-so!” Daniel sa
id quickly. “Fuck that glass ceiling!”
“That’s a bit vague,” Lizzie said, frowning. “What I need is explicit permission and/or orders to take control of the ships in the fleet, and direct the battle in real-time. By which I mean real time for me, and for the Gresian AI, without needing to rely on the reaction times of you lot—which are a lot slower than the Gresians—let alone the time it takes to pass orders down your command chain.”
“Take over from the admiral and the captains? I don’t have the authority to—”
“Not in your chain of command—yeah, I get that. You still haven’t learned to ditch that procedure-over-efficiency thing. But in the Mozari command chain, you do, and the flagship is a Mozari ship.”
“I’d be court-martialled for this,” Daniel thought aloud. It was stupid, insane, based on every lesson he’d earned in the service. It was also maybe their one chance, and he remembered something that Chief Hammond, the founder of the unit, had told him once. In the Prussian army before the era of Nazi Germany, Hammond had said, they used to say that a good officer knew to follow orders, but the best officer knew when not to follow orders.
“They’d have to come down here to arrest you,” Lizzie pointed out. “Good luck with that.”
“Do it. Take direct control of whichever resources you need to be able to move quickly enough to counter the Gresian AI’s tactics.
“I’m on it!”
“Sydney from Greyhound. We have a possible counter for this new Gresian tactic. Apparently, it’s run by a Gresian AI, and Lizzie’s original programming was to counter that AI’s abilities. She’s able to react faster than human controllers can, given complete control of navigation, so I’ve given her permission to do so.”
“You’ve let an alien AI loose to move our fleet around like pieces in a game of battleships?” Barnett yelped. “The admiral will freak! Jesus, Daniel, this decision is way above your paygrade… It better prove a good one.”
“To use one of our most valuable resources, yes, sir, I’m sure.”
“I wish I was.” Barnett sounded pissed.
“Do you have doubts about Lizz—about the AI?” Daniel corrected himself.
“I’m not that mad about the idea of an autonomous, artificial intelligence fighting a battle we can’t even understand.”
“You’re worried she’ll go all Skynet on us and turn the Terminator movies into reality?” Daniel shook his head. “That’s not going to happen. Not her.”
“Not it, you mean.”
“I know what I mean, sir.”
“Yeah,” Barnett sighed, “and you also know what your mission means. I suggest you get back to it. Dismissed.” Barnett cut the connection, to Daniel’s relief. He went over to the corner in which Sergeants Stewart and Cole were examining Cole’s mechanized armor. “Give me good news, and that’s an order,” he told them, fully expecting to be disappointed.
“Sure, sir,” Stewart replied, “but there’ll be bad news with it. Can’t have one without the other.”
“Shoot.”
“We can definitely fix Cole’s armor,” Stewart said. “It’s taken a few holes, but we can patch those with nanites. None of the control interface or processing power has been damaged.”
Daniel wasn’t ready to celebrate yet; not before hearing both sets of news. “And the bad news?”
“Scheduling, mainly. It’ll take a few hours. We’re also going to have to scrounge some materials.”
“What sorts of materials?”
“Mostly stuff we can cannibalize from our existing gear,” Cole said. He was already looking much healthier. “The platoon has six spare railguns, so if we can break those down for parts, we can then use nanoforges in the APCs to create the parts necessary to fix my armor in… maybe two to three hours.
“Two hours is two too long.” Daniel shook his head. “We’re on a clock, chasing to make up lost time, and can’t spend that length of time in one place. Sooner or later, one of those Gresian planes is going to come this way and sick the lot on us.”
“Understood, sir,” Stewart said quietly.
“Strip out any parts and ammo we might have a need for, then set a demolitions nanocharge and destroy the mechanized suit.”
“Yes, sir,” Cole said, nodding sadly.
Fifteen
Without Cole’s mechanized armor, Daniel’s platoon could move twice as fast—especially when the land smoothed out into recognizable fields on a flatter plain, which wasn’t filled with hills and bomb craters.
They made good time, covering almost a hundred miles in a couple of hours, and their GPS showed them heading pretty much in a direct line for their originally-planned landing site. Daniel didn’t know if they had birds on this planet, but he was happy to be the one making time by going as the crows would fly.
Occasionally, an aircraft had flown overhead, but none had attacked them—Daniel presumed that was because they were out in the middle of nowhere, and thus not an immediate threat, but something to be dealt with later—and Lizzie had been living up to her name by being busy, so the trip had been uneventful since abandoning use of the one Big Mike. The lack of trouble hadn’t led to a lack of tension in Daniel’s gut, though, and that tension now stretched its cold fingers up his spine as the vehicles drew to a halt.
A couple of miles to the right, in a shallow hollow, there was a scattering of buildings linked by paths and thick tree branches which passed through some of the towers. Daniel had called a halt to take a look and check it against the route that Palmer had worked out earlier. “Is that a town?” Daniel asked Doug Wilson. “Or the Gresian equivalent?”
Wilson, who’d emerged from the APC to look at the settlement through field glasses, said, “Obviously. At least, it’s definitely a settlement. Whether they call it a village, a town, or what, I really couldn’t tell you. Not my field, really, so I don’t know.”
“I’m glad we lived long enough to hear that one,” Kinsella muttered.
“I’ll send the drone for a look,” Daniel decided. It only took a couple of minutes to get the lightweight sensor drone flying over the town. Closer in, even from above, the buildings looked quite unlike human ones. There were some inevitable similarities—they had doors and windows, for example, and pathways between them—but these structures tended to be supported by the branches of thick, red-leaved trees, and stretched across multiple trees. Buildings on the ground were mostly sculpted, flowing towers, and there was a surprisingly graceful, gothic-looking bridge across a river.
The drone wasn’t picking up any signs of life in any vision mode, so Daniel couldn’t tell if this was a civilian settlement or a military or police base of some kind. Almost all he could tell was that it was definitely Gresian; all of the surfaces had that dark coral and obsidian look to them. So, not of the Shaldine, who’d built in stone.
The question Daniel asked himself—and also asked Hope, Palmer, and Wilson—was whether they should continue on through the town or detour around it just enough to stay stealthy, going not so far out of their way as to be miles or hours behind the new schedule. “Well,” Daniel concluded after voicing the concerns, “we don’t want to get bogged down in another firefight, and we can’t have it hit from the air or orbit right now, so… “
“We go around?” Wilson prompted.
Hope nodded. “That would be my suggestion.”
“Is a diversion worth it?” Palmer asked.
Daniel thought for a moment. “The place isn’t that big. Looping around it won’t take us much out of our way. Probably ten minutes, tops.”
“It’s still not the shortest distance between two points if we’re on a direct line for the Shaldine facility.”
“Well, since you mention it,” Wilson pointed out, “a straight line might be the shortest path, but it’s not always the quickest if there’s interference on the way. And, as it happens, we’ve been zig-zagging some anyway, so, no, we’re not on a direct straight line anyway.”
“That being the case, a
nd discretion being the better part of valor,” Daniel decided, “we’ll go around.”
The river was black and silver, even in the daylight on this planet. They’d been reassured that water was still water even on Gresian worlds, because it was simple elementary chemistry of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, but it looked like a mix of ink and mercury from Daniel’s position. He supposed that was because of whatever earth or rock lay underneath it.
He cursed and leaned back against the edge of the commander’s hatch as the APC drew to a halt about twenty yards from the sloping riverbank. “Great. That’s just great.” He should have thought this might happen, he told himself. He’d seen that bridge and a river flowing through the town, and the damn thing had to come and go from somewhere.
“It’s not like it’s a huge river,” Cole pointed out. He had spelled Torres in the driver’s seat to give her a chance to stretch her legs. Now they all disembarked from the APCs to do likewise. “Even on Earth, you get rivers a mile or two wide all over the place.”
That wasn’t news to Daniel. “Yeah, the Hudson’s a couple of miles wide coming out of Toppenzee… I get it; it could be worse. This is definitely no Hudson. Looks about, what, forty yards?”
“More like fifty, I’d say.”
“The Super-Bradleys will ford a river wider than that. Hell, they’d probably do those two miles you mentioned,” Daniel acknowledged.
“But width isn’t the problem. What worries me is how deep the damned thing is.” Daniel kept squinting as he walked down to within about five feet of the river, knelt and stood, and then switched vision modes on his suit. He did everything he could think of to get a better angle on the water, where the sun’s reflection on the blackness of it would let him see through it,but it was like trying to see through quicksilver.
“Have we got any sensors for gauging the depth?” Wilson asked from the passenger section. “A chunk of metal and a string would do it, if we had something to float on to measure it.”
“And here I didn’t bring my water wings,” Kinsella quipped.
