Trial by Fire

by Charles E Gannon

  The Fleetmaster’s mandibles ground sharply, stopped, ground again. “It is unfortunate, but we cannot target the human sensors individually, and they must be eliminated. Order the EMP strike. Now, you said there were other vehicles?”

  “Yes, R’sudkaat. Mostly high-speed VTOLs, inbound from Sumatra, Christmas Island, Lombok Island, and from the decks of ships beyond the fifty-kilometer limit.”

  “Sink all ships that have launched any vehicles. Interdict the VTOLs.”

  “Sir, we are trying, but it is taking longer than anticipated.”

  Fleetmaster R’sudkaat was very quiet, the same way, according to suntimers, that the worst storms on the surface of a world are preceded by great, almost eerie, periods of great stillness. “Why is the interdiction taking longer than anticipated?”

  “The VTOLs are not conventional attack craft. They are electronic warfare platforms, managing the hundreds of rocket-deployed drones that are now creating false images electronically.”

  “Well, overcome their computing with ours and erase them from the walls of existence.”

  “We are trying to do just that, Esteemed R’sudkaat, but their programming is—challenging.”

  The Fleetmaster’s retort was a sudden, shrill, warble-shriek that was loud in the silent bridge. “Then engage them visually! Use our look-down optical arrays and eliminate them. These VTOLs are the most important target. Belay all other orbital fire missions until they are eliminated.”

  “Including the rockets?”

  “Including the rockets.”

  H’toor Qooiiz rose up, alarmed. “But if we allow their rockets to reach Java in even greater numbers—?”

  “We have no choice,” Tuxae mouthed at his friend in a low, warning hum. “The VTOLs are making so many false images, it is impossible to tell which are the real VTOLs, the real drones, the real rockets, and Rockmother knows what else.” Louder, to the quivering Fleetmaster, “It shall be as you say, Esteemed R’sudkaat.”

  “See that it is. If we are to act effectively, we must have a clear picture of what is happening.”

  Tuxae turned to his console. As if we ever had one.

  Over the Sunda Strait, off Sumatra, Earth

  Thandla saw a flash, more like a single pulse of a strobe light than any beam or lightning. The closest portside VTOL underwent a hallucinatorily rapid set of transmogrifications. First it was tilting, listing down toward the water; then it was suddenly discorporated, as though it had been magically transformed from an intact hull to a forward-tumbling cloud of debris; and then it was an angry orange-yellow ball of fire that, along with a dull, faint blast, was behind them so quickly that, for a split second, Sanjay Thandla wondered if he had imagined the whole thing.

  But no. Their portside wingman was gone, destroyed by an Arat Kur orbital laser.

  It was the fifth VTOL lost from Dortmund’s flight. Thandla kept adjusting the signals, dancing from one EW protocol to the next, seeding misleading telltale signatures into the image-makers, trying to throw the Arat Kur off the scent of each successive signal iteration and how it might evolve in the next ten seconds. At the same time, he considered the odds: five out of eleven VTOLs destroyed. The first had been as much a casualty of chance as enemy intent. The Arat Kur had started with cluster bomblet dispensers from orbit. The first such barrage put its footprint on the northern edge of their flight’s inverted approach delta. Probably a failed Arat Kur attempt to get a lock on them and place a thick curtain of high velocity fragments directly in front of them. But the far left VTOL had picked up a few of pieces of shrapnel. Its airframe compromised, it folded up and flew to pieces like a child’s model plane struck by a sledgehammer.

  However, the Arat Kur had not only been looking to kill the VTOLs, but force them into a narrower approach vector. The subsequent cluster bomblet attacks had boxed them in, off-centered first to the southern flank of the VTOLs’ delta formation, then back to the northern extent, crowding the German aircraft in closer to each other, making their location more predictable, and targeting more simple. Clearly, it had worked. In the last three minutes, four more VTOLs had been lost to the one weapon that they could not outrun or mislead: orbital lasers.

  The debris cloud of their portside wingman was already far behind, a wispy, spherical airborne puff disappearing into the horizon. And such are we all, Thandla admitted, before returning to his strange, invisible battle with the Arat Kur computers. It was not how he had envisioned war. From the ancient Vedic texts to the contemporary graphic documentaries, images of combat were swift, chaotic, vivid, and seething with flame and blood. But his duel with alien computers was more akin to a mortally hazardous form of meditation, carried out while sitting in a glass-encased chair skimming above the surface of serene blue waters. And if one lost one’s focus, stumbled over the binary-coded mantras with which they fooled the eyes and ears of their foes, there was a flash and an end, so quick that the victims did not know and their fellow travelers would not see, if they happened to blink at the wrong moment.

  Dortmund announced. “One hundred kilometers range.” He sounded grimly satisfied, perhaps a bit surprised.

  From the belly of the VTOL, Thandla heard the sharp, high hum of recessed bays opening. Then missiles were leaping out from beneath them, their tails bright and dwindling as they raced on ahead toward Java. “What are they?”

  “Air-to-air missiles.”

  “How can they hit anything? We have no satellite or airborne targeting for over-horizon intercepts.”

  Dortmund turned, his thin lips bent in what might have been a smile. “These missiles have been retrofitted with UV sensors, and all our aircraft have been marked with UV paint. So if our missiles do not detect such paint—”

  “—then they know an aircraft is a permitted target.”

  “Exactly. So we can saturate Java’s airspace with these self-directing long-range missiles without any worry that they will chase down friendly targets.”

  “But won’t the Arat Kur learn to—?”

  “Herr Doktor, if the Arat Kur had a day in which to learn, we would not be able to use this tactic again. But if the Arat Kur are still capable of fighting after today, it is because we will have lost. Everything.”

  Chapter Forty

  North-Central Jakarta, Earth

  Vrryngraar of the moiety of the Family Haanash wiped his own light mauve blood out of his eyes and went low around the corner into the street known as Mangga Besar Selatan. He led with the AK-47 he had taken from insurgents his Honor Troop had surprised lurking in the back of a large truck. He could barely fire the weapon. The trigger guard circled his claw like a snug ring. Furthermore, he was unable to hold it properly. The humans had only one opposable digit, not two pairs of them arranged in a cruciform, dual pincer pattern. But he only had twenty rounds left in his dustmix weapon and there was no sign of resupply. Indeed, there was no sign of anything except for humans and more humans, all of whom seemed to be carrying guns.

  Vrryngraar almost squeezed the trigger when he detected peripheral movement, but saw that it was one of the Arat Kur attached to his troop. Or rather, what was left of his troop. “Arat Kur. Which are you?” No reply on the radio. He yelled so that the grubber would hear him through his suit. “Arat Kur! Open your suit and tell me. Who are you?”

  The suit’s armored chin plate sighed open like a dead snake’s jaw. “I am U’tuk Yaaz,” the translator said. It sounded distorted, uneven.

  “What is wrong with your suit?”

  “Some of its melodies no longer sing true. The translator and the links to my minidrones no longer work.”

  Vrryngraar pony-nodded his understanding. Disabled by the recent EMP bursts. They had burned out the laser targeting and ranging systems on his troop’s weapons, as well as their thermal imaging goggles and communication encryption chips. “Where is Team leader Krek and your fellow-Arat Kur? Did you finish your scouting mission?”

  “Team leader Krek and my comrade-partner Eerzet are no
more.”

  For the first time since encountering the species, Vrryngraar felt some measure of sympathy, even pity, for an Arat Kur. “How did they die?”

  The Arat Kur moved so that his eyes focused on Vrryngraar directly. He had the distinct sense of being stared at, even judged. “They were not paying attention. They were too distracted.”

  “By what?”

  “I will show you.” The Arat Kur spun and scuttled into a half-collapsed building. Vrryngraar scanned both ends of the street cautiously, then ducked in behind him.

  It was dark, smoky, but also musty with the scent of old bread, and filled with wooden crates stacked in roof-reaching rows. From up ahead, U’tuk Yaaz spoke. “What distracted them is here.” Vrryngraar followed the sound of the Arat Kur’s voice, turned a corner—

  —and almost stepped on a dead human. Just beyond the body were U’tuk’s two fellow-scouts—or rather, their remains—impaled and pinned to the ground by what had evidently been a ceiling-mounted deadfall trap: a grid of spikes weighted by cinderblocks, evidently triggered when they had handled the human body.

  Vrryngraar looked at U’tuk. “Where were you when this happened?”

  The Arat Kur waved a weak claw in the general direction of the street. “I was the rear guard. Watching for humans.” Then he pointed at the human corpse. “Why did you do this?”

  Vrryngraar stared at him. “Do what? I did not kill this human.”

  “I do not mean the killing, and I do not mean you, personally. I mean all you Hkh’Rkh. And I mean the manner of the human’s death. Why do you torture them so?”

  Vrryngraar wondered if fear, loss of comrades, and isolation had damaged U’tuk’s mind more than combat had damaged his suit. “Be clear, grubber. What torture?”

  “Do not say you do not know. This was the third time I have seen this kind of killing. Go, look at its mouth.”

  Vrryngraar did. And now, the unusual nature of this particular corpse became evident, made it distinct from the hundreds—no, thousands—he had already seen or made this day.

  The evident cause of the human’s death was a wound to the groin. But no, it was worse than that. The male generative member had been removed. If the nearby evidence could be trusted, the penectomy had been performed with a rusted strip of corrugated metal, torn from a nearby wall. Judging from the lack of other injuries, the amputation of the member had been the cause of death, which meant that it had been performed pre-mortem.

  Imagining that deed made it impossible for Vrryngraar to think for a long moment. What savagery was this? Not even animals did this to each other, Then he saw that the crudely severed member had been jammed deep into the corpse’s mouth. He looked up at U’tuk.

  Who said, “You must stop this.”

  “Me? Stop this? How?” Then he understood the presumption implicit in the Arat Kur’s exhortation. “You must be mad, to think this the work of my troops, of the Hkh’Rkh. What do we care of the humans’ insane dominance rituals and symbolic disfigurements? We did not do this.” He saw U’tuk’s mandibles sag in shock, drove home his point. “Grubber, do you not understand? The humans did this—to their own kind.”

  The Arat Kur was completely motionless for a moment and then shivered so sharply that his armor rattled. “But why—?”

  “Look around you. Do you know what this place was?”

  “N-no.”

  “I patrolled this street sometimes. The owner was a merchant of bulk goods. But he also sold grain.”

  “So he was one of the food distributors?”

  Could the grubber truly be so naïve? “Not legally. He found ways to acquire food when the other humans could not and sold it to them for greatly increased prices. He profited from their hunger. And the more hungry they became, the more he profited.”

  “So they—?”

  “Yes. They did this.” Vrryngraar looked down again. The humans might not be warriors, might be duplicitous and conniving s’fet, but that did not diminish their capacity for savagery. If anything, it seemed to amplify it.

  “We should not have come here.” U’tuk’s voice was quiet, withdrawn.

  Although worried that the Arat Kur was perilously close to slipping into some kind of trauma-induced fugue state, Vrryngraar also could not suppress a quick, confirmatory neck-sway. No, they should not have come here. There was no honor in such a place, in such a conflict—for one could not call it a war. The only proper course of action regarding humanity was to leave it alone, and, if possible, isolate it. Just as one would handle any other sophont that was quite irremediably and dangerously insane. “I agree. Tell me the result of your scouting mission. Is it safe to withdraw back to the presidential compound through this area?”

  The Arat Kur took a moment to respond. “Yes. Before entering this building, our scouting mission was uneventful. We encountered no sign of insurgents. If any humans remained in the area after we first cleared it, they have kept to their houses.”

  “Promising. Are you still in contact with the compound?”

  “I receive their signals, but they do not receive mine. And the rest of your troop?”

  Vrryngraar swayed his neck in the direction of the rest of his battered, hiding unit. “All radios save one—our shielded set—were disabled. But we lost that set and its operator to enemy fire about ten minutes ago. Which is why I came to find you.” Vrryngraar rose up out of his crouch. “Stay hidden in this spot. I shall return to the troop and lead them here. Together we shall return to the compound. We are no longer combat effective. All we can do now is make a report and gather replacements.”

  The Arat Kur bobbed and said nothing as Vrryngraar turned and exited the black marketeer’s warehouse. Trying to put the image of the butchered human from his mind, Vrryngraar swept back around the corner by which he had entered Mangga Besar Selatan and started across a smoke- and mist-shrouded moonscape that had once been a side-street. He recalled his explanation to the cowed and quiet U’tuk: his unit was “no longer combat effective.” He growled at the grim irony of the term. His troop was down to a dozen, most of whom were incapacitated in at least one limb, few of whom had more than thirty rounds of ammunition left. Half a hundred proud Hkh’Rkh reduced to that handful, hiding like a pack of furtive s’fet in a semi-intact basement—and having fought only one true battle to speak of.

  They had spent most of the morning fighting the unpredictable and inexperienced insurgents. With the exception of a demolition trap, each encounter merely inflicted some wounds. But those wounds had caused fatal decreases in agility, speed, responsiveness. Then, half an hour ago, they had encountered a true military force. Mostly nonindigenous, these humans had been taller, of diverse phenotypes, and equipped with extremely high-power liquimix assault rifles, rocket-propelled munitions, and sophisticated sensors. Worst of all, they had been trained professionals. Vrryngraar had to admit that what the humans might have lacked in size and courage they more than made up for in technical skill and cunning. His troop lost a dozen dead, and a similar number wounded before ammunition depletion forced Vrryngraar to think, and then do, the unthinkable. He withdrew. From humans.

  And since then, they had been fleeing. They called it a withdrawal, but call it what one might, they had been beaten and repulsed, and now sought the sanctuary of the main compound.

  Perhaps it was because Vrryngraar was preoccupied by his sour reverie, but, as he angled toward an alley that led to his remaining troops, he moved incautiously into a solid wall of smoke billowing up from a clutter of burning vehicles. He did not wait for a gap in the dark, feathery drifts, and so emerged from the blinding blackness straight into the rear of a crowd of humans gathered at a street corner.

  Most were females or young, clustered around two persons in intense discussion. One was a local male armed with an AK-47, trying to communicate in the planet’s main—and maddeningly untidy—language with a female who was lighter of skin and subtly heavier of build, particularly in the shoulders, head, and upper legs. Th
e female was the first to see Vrryngraar. Her eyes snapped over, detecting his movement even as he emerged from the smoke. He admired her reflexes. She uttered a one-syllable word that sounded like a bark and dove toward the entry of the nearest building. The local with the gun turned, taking approximately one half-second to absorb the situational change before reacting.

  That half-second’s delay was his death. Vrryngraar brought up his own AK-47, tried squeezing off a single round, but wound up two-tapping the human. The first of the 7.62 x 39mm rounds went into the human’s side, making a wide bloody wound and spinning him slightly so that the second bullet caught him square in the sternum. The human fell backward with the utterly nerveless flop of those who die instantly on their feet.

  Vrryngraar pointed the gun at the dominant female and let instinct guide him. “Obey or she dies,” he shouted at the rest of the humans.

  The first tentative cries of terror, shock, loss ended abruptly. The dominant female rose from her covered position—she had almost made it through the doorway on a fast low crawl—and turned to face him. As was common with some human subspecies, her eyes were green and very clear, like the Great Equatorial Sea of Rkh’yaa. That brief second, he missed Homeworld so very greatly that he could have lamented with a hero’s grief-hooting. But this was neither the time nor the place. “You. Who are you?”

  She was one of the few of the half-circle of humans before him who did not start back when he barked out his question. Instead, she looked at him, seemed to be studying him, even his armor and gear. Then she nodded gravely. “Great Troop Leader, I was a diplomat.”

  He suppressed his surprise at her rapid ability to identify his rank, and although his first impulse was to dismiss her improbable claim to be a diplomat, her confident demeanor and sure identification of his social standing compelled him to hold that dismissal in abeyance. “A diplomat for whom? To whom?”