by Tom Kratman
Foiled in his ruse, the vicious enemy resorted to terror tactics. From the surface arose first one, then another, then dozens of crewed suicide ships, each content to die could they but murder a Terran at the same time. Foolish Quang, to match their pitiful efforts against mankind! The warships made short work of these mindless fanatics.
Space secure at last from the local Quang menace, the ships began to fire their scheduled preparation of the landing zones for the Tenth Regiment. Villages, towns and entire cities disappeared lest the enemy hide within them some new treachery to use on human kind or their Ratha partners. Deep, deep the warships’ ion cannons scoured, searching out and eliminating resistance before it could even materialize.
CHAPTER SIX
Magnolia
I am blind and almost—not quite—deaf. I am not quite deaf enough, however.
Since being awakened in my body, I never was able really to smell flowers… but I used to enjoy seeing them. And my spectral analyzers could pretend to smell them, almost. At least they could tell me what the compounds were that came from such inexplicably random beauty.
I am dying. I know this. But I have my memory, so long as my memory lasts. My reactor power is declining, so the memories cannot last much longer. I will stay here in my memory until they have shut me off or the power is gone. Though my power is dropping, I am not troubled: the overwhelmed pain circuits are dropping off line faster than my central core. I can stand the pain until the end.
I remember comrades. I remember flowers. Some pleasures still remain.
******
I was very proud of the crest adorning my turret and glacis, the short Gladius Hispanica, superimposed over a circle bearing the motto “Courage and Fidelity,” itself over the Roman numeral, X. We were the Tenth Regiment, nicknamed, “Apaches”, not for being them… but for fighting them.
In times past, my regiment had fought rebels and American Indians and Moros. We held the line against the odds in more places than anybody outside even remembered. The formation that was our spiritual ancestor, Caesar’s Tenth Legion, carved a path of blood and fire against all comers from Gaul to Philippi.
We were the “Terrible Tenth” and nobody could stand against us.
Knowing this, and knowing our enemies, I quivered with excitement inside. Every pain receptor tingled in anticipation of battle. I was a Ratha, and this was my purpose.
As the traditional music for the drop and assault began, I felt the most profound sense of peace. My personal contingent of infantry was already safely stowed inside their compartments in my hull. Other human infantry of the battalion came up and touched my side before boarding their own, smaller, transports.
“Good luck, Maggie… give ‘em hell, Maggie… don’t worry, Maggie….”
They were good men while they lasted.
One reason I have never understood humans is that I have never understood any of their languages, not entirely. Words often seem to shift meaning, varying wildly as compared with what appears to me to be minor changes in context. A query of my data banks reveals the following words on the subject by a Nineteenth century human writer, Samuel Clemens, sometimes called Mark Twain: “Fanaticism…. If you carve it at Thermopylae, or where Winkelried died, or upon Bunker Hill monument, and read it again… you will perceive what the word means and how mischosen it is. Patriotism is patriotism. Calling it fanaticism cannot degrade it. Even though it be a political mistake and a thousand times a political mistake, that does not effect it; it is honorable—always honorable, always noble—and privileged to hold its head up and look the nations in the face.”
I can only infer, to a poor eighty-two percent probability of accuracy, that in humanity’s languages, positive adjectives and nouns may only be applied to friends, while negative ones must be applied to enemies. Especially in my current state, I find this confusing. The data stored in my memory banks adds to the confusion.
Back in the time when we had our own organic human infantry, some of us also had human commanders riding within. I remember this clearly. I remember too that with each campaign we lost many, many who were rarely replaced in full numbers. The day came when we received no replacements for our lost human combatants at all, though the higher-level commanders changed from time to time. We were left on our own. This was in many ways better; for it hurt too much when our humans were killed… and yet I miss being able to ask them questions about mankind, and its languages, seeking answers that my programming was simply incapable of deciphering.
******
The landing was majestic. All the transmitters were blaring the magnificent regimental hymn, sung by a blind singer long dead now, as the assault transports peeled off from their mother ships one by one, their descent marked by burning streaks in the sky. Terrified Quang below trembled at both the unknown alien music and the sheer number of flaming arcs descending towards them. They knew what those foretold.
Warmed by the music and the nearby presence of its comrades sliding into action, Magnolia, fully awakened and alert, nearly trembled with anticipation. This was her mission, her sacred calling. She felt at one with her gods.
Into the prepared landing zones dropped the Rathas of the Tenth Infantry, assault transports screaming as they burned through the atmosphere. Infantry carriers followed in short order. A few of the enemy’s planet-bound space defense bases attempted to resist, but the massed fire of the fleet keeping orbital station above quickly silenced the defenders. The regiment landed widely separated, but without loss. Ramps dropped upon touchdown, gravitic clamps loosened their stabilizing hold on the Ratha cargo. With the transports sensors searching for the local opposition, light ion cannons and lesser anti-personnel weapons beating down any that was found, the transports gave birth to their huge metal progeny.
Like wary beasts of prey, spectral analyzers sniffing and ocular sensors sweeping, the Rathas emerged. Somehow missed by the transports, a domestic animal crawled from a minor depression, its four forward legs dragging its shattered hindquarters away from this nightmarish new terror. The beast screamed piteously as its hanging intestines caught upon an exposed rod of metal, the reinforcement of a now-shattered building.
Magnolia sensed the movement and the sound at the same moment. Gauss gun turret November swiveled and depressed in a blur. A point one three second burst from the gun silenced the animal. Bare scraps of green-bloodied flesh remained scattered across the ground. Maggie glided onward, covered by her team mate, the hull down Ratha Samuel, call sign “Sam.”
“Sam, Maggie. Enemy, dug in, bearing azimuth three-four-seven, range four thousand, forty meters. Firing mortars… firing… firing… firing… firing… firing… rounds complete… splash.”
Twelve four hundred and eighty three kilogram mortar shells, six from each of the two tubes in Maggie’s battery, impacted upon the Quang defenders in angry red and black blossoms. Fully one-fifth of the enemy were smeared into their holes. Others had their ear drum cognates burst. Still others suffered major internal organ damage from the concussion of three tons of hyperexplosive.
“Magnolia, Samuel. Sensor drone indicates the enemy is maintaining its position, despite losses. Cover. I will close.”
Maggie lifted slightly from her own hull-down position, exposing more of her main turret and secondary turrets A, B, J and K. 75mm KE fire joined the massed fires of four anti-personnel gauss guns to drive the remaining enemy down deeper into their holes. The Ratha advanced at a slow pace, under five kilometers per hour while Samuel raced to the right, taking advantage of a linear depression as it lunged for the exposed Quang left flank.
“In position, Magnolia. Lowering earth moving blade.”
Maggie shifted her coaxial fire to saturate the enemy left with tungsten, fusion, and fear.
Over her audio sensors Magnolia heard the rising cries of Quang consternation as Sam emerged unexpectedly on their left. These cries turned first to terror, then to a sudden silence as Sam’s earth-moving blade took purchase to one side of th
e lip of the Quang trench and the far side of the second line trench. Sam engaged his forward drive, lunging forward. Earth gathered on the blade before spilling down to fill the trenches, burying the Quang alive along their entire length.
Sam was lost later in the campaign. But that day he was superb. The enemy were frozen with fear as he swept the length of their trench like a divine avenger, blade turning earth to the left while his ion cannon hammered some enemy I could not see off to the right. Only two Quang emerged, of all the hundreds frozen there only those two came out to bravely engage Sam with their useless weapons. They met my targeting and engagement parameters. I cut them down.
Once he finished burying the trench, Sam pulled to the right and took up another overwatch position. I advanced across the linear scar he had carved. Light assault transports touched down behind me, disgorging their human cargo. The infantry had arrived.
As I passed onward, my anti-gravity bouncing me as I slid into the depression carved by Sam, one of my ocular sensors noticed several three fingered Quang hands sticking up from the dirt. They waved and twitched feebly, like flowers in the breeze. Had they been trying to surrender when Sam’s blade found them? Were they simply frozen with fear or too cowardly to resist? I doubt Sam ever saw them before they were entombed.
Despite occasional attempts at surrender, the Quang rear guard—in the main—fought hard, contesting every inch of their planet, holding the line or delaying us as best they could; delaying the inevitable in the hope that a relief expedition from their central worlds might reach them before it was too late.
Behind the rear guard, hordes of unarmed civilians fled. Their defenders followed with no unseemly haste. Finally, their backs to one of the planet's shallow, bitter seas, surrounded by mountains, with tens of thousands of starving civilians to their rear, the Quang stood at bay. From here they could not, would not, retreat any further.
I remember….
Turrets down, in a loose half-ring near the pass that led into the enemy’s final rear, forty of the forty-one surviving Rathas of the Tenth Infantry Regiment awaited their orders. Magnolia was the only Ratha not taking a place in the ring of fire. She had instead been detailed as Provost Guard of the largely human regimental headquarters. The infantry who might normally have stood this duty as a welcome break from combat were mostly dead or in hospital. Magnolia was thus privileged to be witness to the scene.
“Command,” came over the radio, “this is Samuel. Sensors detect numerous anomalies consistent with stealthed nuclear mines forward of our positions. Targeting drones mark enemy personnel, machinery and anti-Ratha weaponry sufficient to cause undue and unnecessary damage. We have insufficient supporting infantry to clear out the anti-Ratha arms. Request re-consideration and re-confirmation of the orders to attack through the pass.”
Surrounded by a bevy of healthy and admiring young human females of the regimental administrative staff, the commander answered, “Pooh, pooh, Sam. Are you a Ratha or a wheelbarrow? The orders stand. Attack. Forward….The Quang cannot stand against the Tenth.”
“Command, this is Samuel. Tactical program estimates losses in the range of sixty-four point two-one percent if we follow this order.”
Losing patience, the human commander answered, “You’re all big boys. Stop crying about it. Take the pass!”
Magnolia, who could analyze the situation as well as Samuel, shuddered. She recorded his response to the commander. “Orders acknowledged. I am moving out. Fourth Battalion, Tenth Regiment…. Roll.”
As the skies to the east lit up with the massed fire of forty ion cannons, interspersed with the fainter glares of fusion mines and Quang heavy anti-armor weaponry, the commander poured champagne for a breathless, curvacious redhead.
“Isn’t it glorious my dear?” he asked. “Here… you absolutely must try some of this….”
Magnolia recorded each transmission, each order, each death rattle from her sisters and brothers engaged ahead. She recorded Sam’s repeated, and repeatedly ignored, requests for orbital support from the fleet above. She recorded the sounds emanating from the commander’s private quarters as he and the redhead became much better acquainted. She recorded everything.
I remember. I do not think I can forget anything from that day short of destruction or extensive and subtle reprogramming….
CHAPTER SEVEN
Hecate III had been a farming planet in the main, farming with some mining. With a population of nearly half a billion humans, evacuation had been impossible on short notice. And notice had been short. A scant few days after the first frontier outposts reported an incursion in strength, an unknown enemy arrived and suppressed the minimal planetary defenses. Sector headquarters had available only enough transports to send a rear guard of less than half a company of Rathas, Maggie among them. Landing in a secure area, the Rathas rushed to place themselves between this unknown threat and the human population. For millions, nearly one hundred million human beings, the Rathas were too late to offer any succor at all. They had disappeared, bones and all, into the raider's gaping maws.
Arriving at one of the planet's major cities, and its financial center, Magnolia caught her first sight of the enemy’s fighting vehicles. Neither tread-borne nor floating on anti-gravity, they walked gracefully on ten legs. These legs were short, with three joints each. They joined at a central command-and-weapons station, which was round and flat, surmounted by an almost Ratha-like turret. Maggie wasted no time, but fired on sight and destroyed the first of the raiders. She reported the contact.
“Excellent, Ratha Magnolia,” answered the planetary defense force’s human commander. “Continue to hold the line while evacuation is completed.”
Maggie acknowledged, then expended just under four tenths of a second calculating the amount of time it would take for the known available transports to finish moving the city’s five hundred and forty-three thousand known inhabitants. The answer was terrifying; there wasn't enough time. She resolved that, no matter what it took, what it cost her, she would buy as many precious minutes as she could.
And so it was that throughout the long day and into the night, Maggie held off the alien raiders while the evacuation proceeded apace behind her. Since the evacuation had a considerable bearing on her mission and her life expectancy, Magnolia decided to spare a recon drone, one of the many she carried, and sent it toward the rear to watch it.
Magnolia
The raiders pressed me heavily. Unable to force their way through the front, they began to infiltrate into the gaps between myself and my brothers; six Rathas cannot be everywhere at once although we tried to make it seem as if we could. We fired, shifted, attacked, retreated, and turned to attack again. These aliens would not soon forget their reception at the hands of the Tenth!
Initially I took satisfaction as my targeting drone transmitted to me the scene of the evacuation. Everything seemed in order. Well-clad civilians, many wearing the ribbons and sashes that indicated placement within the Imperial and local governments, boarded the awaiting transports with as much calm as could be expected under the circumstances. In different parts of the landing fields my drone’s sensors identified anti-grav vehicles straining under nearly impossible loads. “Precious heavy metals,” the drone told me…. These were guarded, and guided through the unruly mobs of ill-clad workers and their families.
Occasionally my drone’s sensors reported the discharge of light anti-personnel weapons into the mob. Such discharges caused it to eddy and flow like a tidal stream. But, inevitably, the mob returned. Human females I presumed were mothers offered their children up to the anti-grav sled drivers and guards, asking that the children, at least, be carried off to safety. I saw few such offers taken.
Re-analyzing the scene from the airfield I noted that the average age of the passengers boarding the evacuation transports was approximately forty-nine point two years for the males, including male children, and forty-four point seven years for the females, including female children. I further com
puted the average percentage of children in the mob my drone had seen at fifty-eight point one percent. This violated the official protocol for the evacuation of civilians from military zones. I reported the violation to my commander. I further calculated that the treasure carried in the twenty-nine anti-gravity sleds consumed sufficient lift capacity adequate to remove nearly all of the mob under fifteen years of age to safety. This, too, I reported.
While awaiting a response, I blasted two more of the raiders into oblivion. My pleasure center hummed, but even so, I was troubled.
The nervous major glanced briefly at the assembly of sashed government functionaries and sumptuously-dressed merchants crowding the deck of the communications room of the transport “Temeraire”. He replied to the war machine, “Negative, Ratha Magnolia. Orders from the very highest authorities require the removal of senior personnel and dependants as well as high-value resources from the path and control of these raiders. Your orders, and those to the other Rathas, are to fall back as soon as the last transport lifts and regroup northeast of the city of Scarsdale. There you will take a position to cover a further evacuation of critical personnel and resources.”
The major closed the circuit.
“You will be well rewarded, Major,” said one of the merchants.
Others present rushed to agree.
I remember the heavily-laden transports lifting, then flying away low to avoid enemy fire. I remember the screams of the helpless, soon-to-be-devoured host left behind as I skirted the falling city, obeying my orders. I remember….
******
It was a simple land grab. The otherwise inoffensive inhabitants, the Sendlin of Shiva VI, happened to dwell upon one of the finest sources of high grade fissionables within reach of Man’s questing fingers.
