The Great Destroyer

by Jack Thorlin

  Takagawa, had directed the most stunning technological leap forward in centuries. In the span of three years, she had reversed the push of the Great Stagnation. It would take decades, he thought, before all of the ancillary inventions stemming from breakthroughs in Project Charlie would be patented and sold to civilians.

  And he, Professor Tom Jackson... well, he might be the sorry bastard who wasted the achievements of his best friend and his wife if he couldn’t figure out a way to change the dynamics of the slow-burning war in Africa.

  When the three leaders of Project Charlie were seated, Peskov began. “Welcome, welcome to the show,” he said with a giggle.

  Jackson didn’t need to look at Emma to know that they shared the same thought. Peskov was increasingly erratic, increasingly weird in his mannerisms and behavior. He was far and away the most brilliant programmer they had, however, so his eccentricity was tolerated.

  A lot had been tolerated, in fact. He had driven two good female programmers from Project Charlie with unwanted sexual advances. Yazov, characteristically brilliant, had come up with the solution of hiring a prostitute to pose as a lab assistant. No more women had been driven from the program, and Peskov had continued his work on the higher order processing functions of the Charlie central processor.

  Peskov adjusted his glasses and started in a grand tone. “When Joan of Arc’s bug plugged itself into a data cable running from an Ushah air conditioning unit to the central habitat control system, it was the first time our two civilizations connected our higher minds together. We communicated not just between individual entities, but between the electronic overminds that provide the backbone for our societies.”

  Takagawa cleared her throat. “Dmitry, what did you find in their system?”

  Annoyed to have his bombast cut short, Peskov said, “Yes, well, the first crucial question we faced was whether the Ushah would have any sort of security on their systems at all. After all, they spent some unknown decades or centuries on their mothership, and during that time they probably wouldn’t have had to worry much about penetration of their data networks.”

  This still wasn’t quite answering Peter’s question, Jackson thought, but at least Peskov wasn’t just grandstanding. With Peskov, you took what you could get.

  “Well, it turns out they do have security protocols. Lucky for us, the protocols were pretty weak, just alphanumeric passwords not at all dissimilar to what we have here on Earth. We had the three fastest supercomputers on the planet chomp through the permutations and, bam: we had control of the habitat climate system.”

  Peskov giggled, and this time Jackson smiled, trying to make Peskov feel like less of an outsider. “Hopefully you turned off their heat, gave them a little taste of the frigid 90 degree heat,” he said.

  “Not exactly,” Peskov said. “Their climate control was merely the entry point. The climate control system has its own connection to a computer system in the Ushah’s colony office—whatever you call the place where they make decisions for the specific colony.” He waved a hand airily. “We rode that connection into the colony office, got through another slightly more complicated alphanumeric passcode, and voila, access to all communications channels between the colony office and the Enshath’s inner circle back in Madagascar.”

  “Holy shit,” Jackson said. “We’re reading the messages between the emperor of the Ushah and the colonies?”

  Shaking his head in annoyance, Peskov said, “I didn’t say that. We only had access to the communications between the Enshath and Colony 4.”

  “Why didn’t you follow the electronic connection and hack the Enshath’s system?” Takagawa asked.

  Peskov replied defensively, “We had no idea what would happen when we try to jump onto the Enshath’s system. She might have had higher security, might have locked us out of the entire system, and she’d definitely have someone monitoring who’s on her system. Better to plunder all we could from the colony instead of getting too greedy right at the outset.”

  “That sounds wise, Dmitry,” Yazov said. Peskov beamed. Praise from Yazov was hard won indeed, and the Russian soldier seemed to be the only one Peskov genuinely respected in the program. Doubtless a holdover from their time together in the prison camps, Jackson surmised.

  “Yes, well, it paid off,” Peskov said with a grin. “It took the Ushah colony office about two hours to figure out we were on their system and kick us off. They’ve apparently found all the bugs now though, so we’re not getting anything else out of the operation.”

  “So what did you find in those two hours?” Jackson asked, trying not to sound too excited.

  “Not much,” Peskov said, looking at his fingernails in a theatrical display of nonchalance. “Just their social structure, how they’re increasing their population so rapidly, and a couple dozen other things vitally necessary to know if humans are going to survive.”

  Takagawa and Jackson both tried to ask questions first, and Jackson deferred to his wife. He wasn’t sure she noticed. “What’s behind the population increase?”

  Peskov’s smile spread from ear to ear, showing off stained teeth. “Let’s start with something more basic. Want to know how long they were on that big-ass ship of theirs?”

  He waited patiently, and finally Emma said, “Well?”

  “15,355 years.”

  “Mother of God,” Yazov said quietly.

  Peskov chortled. “Older than that, if you’re talking about Jesus. We had to piece that one together. We figured out how long a year was on the Ushah home planet—-about 40 percent longer than ours—then calculate backwards by the first entry on their mothership’s log.”

  “But why—” Takagawa began to ask, and was cut off by Peskov.

  “Why did they send the ship’s log by electronic message to this colony? You all really ought to read that first entry. It’s more like the Bible than a ship’s log. It talks about the Great Destroyer that overran the Ushah home world and its colonies in its solar system.”

  Peskov continued, “The Enshath at the time ordered that a massive vessel be prepared to house embryos and frozen specimens of each sub-type of Ushah: soldiers, scientists, technicians, artists, and leaders. They would be sent off on an automated ship to visit solar systems with potentially inhabitable planets. When a planet was found that fit the parameters, a few hundred embryos would be developed and brought to term by machines.”

  “How could that first generation figure out what was happening?” Jackson asked, trying to process the story.

  Peskov answered matter of factly, “Well, they put some Ushah in hibernation, and planned to have them wake up when it was time to start teaching the new generation. The voyage evidently lasted far longer than they had planned for, though. At some point in the thousands of years, the teachers died. That was a contingency the Ushah had planned for, however. They had a backup plan.”

  Takagawa said, “The backup plan?”

  “How do our children learn?” Peskov asked rhetorically. “Interactive videos, of course. The Ushah developed a learning curriculum that could be taught with simple videos and very basic machines. That first generation was developed about four years ago. They were given growth hormones in utero to ensure that they would develop quickly enough to be ready for a first contact with whatever species inhabited their new home planet.”

  Takagawa was the first one to process the meaning of this point. “They’ve been cooking up more embryos. They could have millions on that ship.”

  “Quite right,” Peskov said. “But we don’t know how many they actually have. The only reason we know this much was because the first entry in the logbook appears to be their fundamental text. It directs them to continue their civilization wherever they ultimately go. The message they send around to every colony is a scan of the original logbook, which appears to have been signed by the last Enshath of their home planet, Shalatha the Thirty-First.”

  Jackson shook his head. “They’re so much like us. I could see us doing somethi
ng like this in similar circumstances.”

  “What was the Great Destroyer?” Yazov asked suddenly.

  Eyes turned to Peskov, who shrugged. “We don’t know. The first entry just calls it the Great Destroyer.”

  Jackson realized the significance of the question. “Could it be something biological, something they’re contaminating our planet with?”

  Peskov was about to answer, but Takagawa interjected, “Probably not. Why bring something to contaminate their new planet?”

  They were quiet for a moment. Then, Jackson asked, “What else did you find in their communications?”

  “There wasn’t actually a huge amount of communication between Colony 4 and the central administration in Madagascar,” Peskov said. “The colonies seem to enjoy a semi-autonomous status. Colony 4 has been reporting back on major developments, like combat deaths in encounters with the Charlies. The Sanushahan—the governor of the colony—sent soldiers to Colony 2 after one of the encounters with a team of Charlies left thirty Ushah soldiers dead last year.”

  “We knew about the reinforcements,” Jackson said. “The satellites picked up on it right away. Anything else from communications with the Enshath?”

  “Other than the first logbook entry of the mothership, there wasn’t a lot of fascinating stuff between Colony 4 and the Enshath. But the individual Ushah at Colony 4 send all sorts of interesting things back to Madagascar on the main communications line. We’re still translating and analyzing that stuff; it’ll probably take weeks to figure it all out. But from what we’ve read so far, we’ve learned a lot about Ushah society.”

  “First,” Peskov held up a finger, “their castes are rigidly separated. Soldiers never become leaders; scientists never become soldiers; you get the idea. Within the castes, though, they have an explicit meritocracy. The offspring of an Ushah soldier of officer rank are not guaranteed officer status, and the children don’t even bother asking for favors from their parents in their electronic messages home. If you don’t earn that promotion, you don’t get it.”

  Peskov snapped his fingers theatrically. “Oh, that reminds me. Second big point: the Ushah reproduce with two parents, but they can engage in extensive genetic modifications to better fit into sub-castes. The diplomats, for example, are a sub-specialty of leaders with heightened empathy. The linguists are scientists with tweaks to their hearing and certain pattern recognition parts of the brain. While the Ushah biologically can reproduce between castes, it is punishable by death. Can’t go polluting the bloodlines.”

  “Third: they’re polyamorous, and don’t mate for life. Children are raised in groups by the caste they’re born into.”

  Takagawa observed, “That’s a big divergence from human evolution. Stable parenting is crucial for the development of intelligence because it takes a longer infancy to develop a larger brain.”

  “If their castes are cohesive, that might be stable enough,” Jackson thought aloud. He noticed Peskov was impatient to go on, so he motioned for the Russian hacker to continue.

  “Last big thing,” Peskov said, “They joke around. A lot. They appear to be more social than we are, and it appears that part of maintaining bonds is sending back constant humorous updates.”

  Jackson asked, “How do you know the updates are supposed to be humorous?”

  “They answer the messages with an onomatopoetic series of letters that sound like Oslahef would when she laughed.”

  “So what kind of jokes do the Ushah make?” Takagawa wanted to know.

  Peskov shrugged. “It’s hard for us to understand the cultural references, so the humor goes above our head. But we think that the humor is a lot like ours—another example of convergent evolution. Here’s one joke sent from a soldier based at Colony 4 that we could understand after we translated their terms to ours.”

  He read from a printout. “‘I saw a diplomat doing useful work the other day. I guess there’s no end to the weird stuff on this planet...”

  “They mock the other castes?” Takagawa asked.

  “It’s probably socially healthier than unquestioning obedience and respect,” Jackson said.

  Chapter 30: George

  “Vladimir, move your line ten meters further up the hill,” George ordered through electronic message.

  “Acknowledged,” Vladimir replied, “but then we will be in the open, without cover.”

  George answered simply, “That is what I want.” George didn’t need to worry about whether Vladimir would comply. Charlie IVs were not known for their inability to follow orders.

  He experienced a moment of doubt about Vladimir, about his ability to adhere to the plan. In a human, the emotion might be called frustration, but in a Charlie, it manifested in considering the uncertainty of the situation.

  This battle would be a departure from normal practice in several ways. It was the first time a Charlie would have full operational command over all Charlie forces. For the first time, the Ushah would overrun a Charlie operational base. And, as Vladimir had pointed out, it was the first time the Charlies would be deliberately left out as bait.

  The firsts did not trouble George. After his initial encounters with the Ushah, George had come to the conclusion that truly decisive victories required some form of trickery or superiority of organization so that the Charlies could bring far more firepower to bear at a decisive point in space or time. Such victories required more than simple tactics or technical superiority in aim and reaction time—they required strategy.

  A call from Yazov. “George, you’re moving Vladimir’s force up. Please explain?”

  “We need to make the target as attractive as possible,” George replied with the infinite patience of a robot. “The Ushah will not wait for their flanks to catch up for an assault if they think they can win the battle immediately. They will be less likely to detect and respond to the real danger in time.”

  Yazov grunted in admiration. “Clever, George.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Experiencing pride in the compliment, George immediately reminded himself that vanity had destroyed past generals. Napoleon Bonaparte, the namesake for one of the Charlies in Vladimir’s line, had become so certain of his genius that he refused to believe he could make the wrong decision. That, of course, led to bad decisions.

  George did not think highly of Napoleon Bonaparte’s later career, his arrogant and ill-advised plans at Borodino and Waterloo, though he had appreciated the French emperor’s tactics at Marengo, Austerlitz, and Friedland. The precocious Charlie IV had requested further training on military strategy beyond simple squad-level tactics. Professor Jackson arranged to have seminal texts on military history delivered to him electronically in the field. Over hours of patrolling or repairs, George had attempted to distill lessons from battles in past centuries or millennia.

  The first opportunity to use his lessons had come eight months earlier, when the Ushah had made their first large effort to take out a Charlie base of operations. That base, similar to Delta, was three miles north of Colony 1, the first Ushah colony on mainland Africa.

  A particularly clever Ushah commander had waited for torrential rain, then thrown as many soldiers as he could at the Charlie base. The Charlies, it turned out, had difficulty identifying targets in the rain, and a dozen Ushah had closed to within two hundred meters of the shipping containers at the base when they struck.

  Four Charlies on patrol were destroyed immediately by rail-gun fire, and the Ushah quickly destroyed two of the three shipping containers. George had been returning from a patrol to the north with a team of ten Charlies when the battle began. The other seven Charlies in the area immediately assumed defensive positions to defend the base. The Ushah commander then launched the second part of his assault, an attack from the east that destroyed four of the seven defending Charlies.

  The other Charlies in George’s squad wanted to rush to assist the Charlies at the base, but George remembered the lesson he had derived from the Battle of Gaugamela. Alexand
er the Great had defeated a flanking attack by the Persians with a decisive attack straight to the heart of the attacking enemy, routing the Persian king and shattering the morale of the attackers.

  George had assumed command with little resistance from the other Charlies, who knew nothing of Alexander the Great but knew that George’s intuition could be trusted.

  Running behind a ridge, George’s Charlies emerged over a hill near the highest concentration of Ushah, where George assumed the Ushah commander would be. The Charlies had broken the Ushah formation, and George had personally killed the Ushah commander with a .50 caliber shot to the head. When the other prong of the Ushah attack realized their commander was dead, they hastily retreated from the base back to Colony 1.

  After that, George had fought the Ushah in pre-planned large-scale ambushes and attacks often enough that he felt confident in his ability to predict how they’d react. His preeminence in that field had been recognized by his fellow Charlies, and they had agreed that George should coordinate the Charlies in battle if the data connection to Viktor Yazov in Houston should fail. George had dutifully relayed this development to Yazov, who had agreed that the idea made sense.