By Force of Arms

by William C. Dietz

  A klaxon sounded somewhere behind him. Fighters probably—back from a sortie. He could clear the deck or risk being blown off the ledge. Rawan took. one last look at the valley and turned away. The cavern yawned and he stepped inside.

  The holo, shot during a rare break in BETA-018’s cloud cover and augmented by footage supplied by recon drones, ran its course and faded to black. The Gladiator’s hangar deck had been pressurized and, with the addition of folding chairs, transformed into a serviceable auditorium. The lights came up as Booly stood and made his way to the portable podium. The ship’s motto, “For glory and honor,” faced the audience. He looked out at the crowd. It was the most unlikely gathering the officer could have imagined.

  The Jonathan Alan Seebos claimed the first couple of rows and, if it hadn’t been for differences in age, would have been as identical as the hard-eyed stares fastened on his face. Immediately behind the clones sat the men, women, and Naa warriors still at the Legion’s core. Further to the rear, like mountains rising from a human plain, the Hudathans loomed. Their skins were gray, their backs uncomfortably exposed, and their expressions were grim.

  And behind them, like a race unto itself, the cyborgs stood. Some human, some Hudathan, they were big, but dwarfed by the aerospace fighters beyond and by the scale of the Gladiator herself.

  Here, Booly thought to himself, are the real aliens, beings who no longer resemble the species from which they came, and no longer perceive life in the same way.

  None of the Ramanthian ground forces had been assigned to the assault on 18, both because of their lack of experience in fighting on ice worlds and their participation in other initiatives. These were the minds that would take Booly’s ideas, translate strategy to tactics, and lead their troops into battle—not in segregated units, as certain politicians had suggested, but in integrated groups in which Hudathans, Naa, and humans would fight side by side. It was a risk, a big risk, but so was the alternative.

  Assuming the Confederacy managed to win most of the upcoming battles, assuming that it managed to survive the Sheen onslaught, the heat of the conflict would bake the military into its final form—a form that would be difficult to break without causing considerable damage. The kind of damage that might lead to another rebellion or civil war.

  Still, it was with a sense of deep-seated concern that the officer started to speak. His words were translated as necessary. “You’ve read the reports, heard the analysis, and seen the footage. So you know what we’re up against. Given the threat posed by the Sheen, the Gladiator is the only ship the Confederacy could put against BETA-018. One ship—one planet. Why use more?”

  Booly waited for the laughter to die away. “The Thraki are extremely experienced warriors. They have their backs to the wall and are well dug in, not only dug in, but dug into an allied planet, with civilians in residence. The settlement called ‘Frost’ lies only six miles away from the Thraki base. An orbital attack would destroy both.

  “To root the Thraki out, Admiral Tyspin’s fighters are going to have to penetrate the valley and put weapons on hardened targets... the most important of which is the base itself.” Booly paused to scan their faces. Pilots stared up at him. “In order for the jet jockeys to hit their targets, the ground pounders will need to silence at least some of the batteries that line both sides of the canyon.”

  A major yelled, “Camerone!” and a substantial portion of the audience roared the appropriate response. “CAMERONE!”

  Booly noticed that many of the Jonathan Alan Seebos remained silent, as did a substantial number of the Hudathans, but some joined in. That was progress. He grinned. “Thank you. I’m glad to see that someone’s awake out there.”

  Laughter rippled through the audience. Booly picked up where he had left off. “You and your troops come from different worlds, pack different DNA, and have different cultures. Those differences could manifest themselves as a weakness, a fatal weakness, or, and tremendous progress has been made in this direction, they could become the source of our strength, and the reason we emerge victorious. Not just here, but elsewhere, when the Sheen drop hyper.

  “Long hard days have been spent establishing a chain of command, integrating our varied systems, and selecting best practices. Every single one of you deserves credit for making that happen. Now comes the test, the moment when steel meets steel, when courage owns the day.”

  A human legionnaire rose at the back of the audience and shouted the ancient Hudathan battle cry: “BLOOD!”

  The audience roared the response: “BLOOD!”

  A Hudathan stood, raised his fist, and shouted “CAMERONE!”

  Booly smiled, waited for the noise level to drop, and brought the meeting to a close. “You know what to do—so go and do it. Insertion teams Blue, Red, Yellow, and Green will drop about six hours from now. Kick some butt for me.”

  The flight of six daggers shuddered as they forced their way down into the planet’s hard, thin atmosphere. Lieutenant Commander Rawlings bit her lower lip. She’d seen combat before, back during the mutiny, but not like this. She had been a watch officer then, standing shoulder to shoulder with the bridge crew, staring into a three-dimensional holo tank as brightly lit sparks fought duels in the dark.

  This was different. There was the loneliness of her one person cockpit plus the knowledge that five pilots were counting on her for guidance and leadership. One Hudathan, two Seebos, and a couple of “greenies” right out of the navy’s Advanced Combat School. Rawlings didn’t know which scared her most, their lack of experience or hers. A group of red deltas wiped themselves onto her HUD and Lieutenant Hawa Morlo-Ba, who never tired of being first, made the call. “Blue Five to Blue One ... bandits at six o’clock!”

  Rawlings listened to herself say, “Roger that, Five,” and took pride in the flat laconic sound of the words. “Tally ho!”

  Clone intelligence claimed that Thraki interceptors were protected by cloaking technology obtained from a race called “The Simm,” and it appeared that they were correct. The enemy interceptors were a good deal closer than she would have preferred. The naval officer “thought” her aircraft to starboard, felt it side slip into a dive, and brought the ship’s weapons systems on-line.

  The others watched her go, followed the officer down, and scanned their readouts. Power was critical, weapons were critical, everything was critical or would be soon.

  Flight Warrior Hissa Hol Beko watched the Confederate aircraft descend, checked her wing mates, and confirmed their positions. The pilot’s weapons, like the rest of her ship, were controlled by the special gauntlets she wore. Each movement had meaning. Index to finger to thumb: “Safeties off—accumulators on.” First two fingers in parallel : “Ship-to-ship missiles—safeties off—guidance on—warheads active.” The pilot’s displays flickered with each carefully articulated movement. Then, as the enemy fighters came into range, a circuit closed, and her fingers began to tingle. Beko fired and the air war began.

  Rawlings heard tone, fired chaff, and rolled. The enemy missile sped past and exploded. The fighter that had fired it pulled a high-gee turn and attempted to flee. The rest of the Thraki interceptors did likewise.

  Both of the Seebos responded with a nearly identical cheer, applied full military power, and gave chase.

  Rawlings wanted to stop them, wanted to call the pilots back, but wasn’t sure why. Good fighter pilots were aggressive, competitive, and little bit obnoxious. But this was too easy, too tempting, too ...

  Beko checked her screens and grinned as the enemy ships took the bait. The Hegemony had been most accommodating during the early stages of the Clone-Thraki relationship and shared some of their knowledge regarding Confederate technology. That was how Beko knew the range at which her adversaries would be able to detect her fighters and was able to put that knowledge to work. By leaving two heavily cloaked interceptors behind, and leading the enemy towards them, she and her wing mates had closed the trap.

  The Seebos saw deltas appear as if by
magic, tried to react, but ran out of time. Rawlings winced as the orange-red flowers blossomed, gritted her teeth, and took the challenge.

  The Thraki had reversed direction by then... which meant that she and her three surviving pilots were about to go head to head with six enemy aircraft. That’s when the naval officer noticed how precisely the enemy was grouped. Because they had a taste for discipline? Or because the pilots were trained to fight tightly controlled machines ? Computer controlled machines that behaved in predictable ways? Words followed thought: “Break! Break! Break! Take ’um one on one, over.”

  Beko frowned, and the fur crawled away from her eyes as the oncoming formation seemed to explode. Confederate vessels went every which way as she struggled to understand. But there wasn’t enough time, not at combined speeds of more than a thousand units per hour, and the sky went mad.

  The Confederate ships rolled, turned, dove, and climbed. Missiles left their racks, coherent light stuttered toward their targets, and 30 mm cannon shells tunneled through the air.

  Beko yowled in frustration as the formation disintegrated around her, fired at one of the oncoming ships, and knew she had missed. And then, before she could recover, the interceptor took a hit. Alarms went off, systems failed, and a computer made a decision. The cockpit blew itself free of the ship, a cluster of chutes popped open, and the planet swayed below. Beko saw no less than three of her pilots die or bail out during the next two minutes. Shame filled her heart, and the weight of it pulled the warrior down.

  The Command and Control Center, or CCC, was almost eerily quiet. Near disasters, disasters, and total disasters were announced in the same emotionless drone used to describe the most important of victories. It was a large compartment by shipboard standards, buried deep within the Gladiator’s armor-clad hull, and the place from which Booly, his staff, and a group of highly skilled technicians ran the assault on BETA-018.

  Screens lined the bulkheads, video flashed, rolled, and stuttered; indicator lights signaled from the darkness, and “Big Momma,” the ship’s primary C&C computer murmured in the background. Booly cocked his head as the latest summaries came in over the speakers. “Preliminary totals indicate casualties more than 16 percent in excess of plan. Estimate that 86.2 percent of enemy force engaged. Approximately 72.1 percent of enemy aircraft destroyed.”

  Something moved through the officer’s peripheral vision, and a coffee cup landed at his elbow. Admiral Tyspin lowered herself onto a chair. She looked tired. He smiled. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  She lifted her cup by way of an acknowledgement. “De nada.”

  “So how’re we doing?”

  Tyspin eyed him through the steam, took a sip, and lowered the mug. “You heard Big Momma... We took causalities ... too many... but the sky belongs to us.”

  Booly nodded. “And the insertion teams?”

  “Ready to drop.”

  “Give ’em my best.”

  Tyspin smiled. “I already did.”

  Once Dagger Commander, now Lieutenant Drik Seeba-Ka felt the landing craft fall free, checked the seal on his anus, and was relieved to find that it was intact. He hadn’t been so lucky the first time out—and spent the day wallowing in his own shit. No one had noticed though, not in the stink of the training swamp, and disgrace was avoided.

  But what of today? the Hudathan asked himself, as he stared down the aisle. What of the twenty-five Hudathans, twenty-five legionnaires, four Naa and six cyborgs placed under his command? How would they regard him when the sun finally set? Assuming some survived? Would they honor his name? The officer was determined that they would. But what did barbarians know of honor? And could he trust them? War Commander Doma-Sa said “yes,” but who could be sure?

  Seeba-Ka touched the Legion-issue wrist term and watched video blossom on the inside surface of his visor. He saw the ridge, two of the weapons emplacements that topped it, and the initial objective: a cluster of Thraki airshafts. The mission was simplicity itself. Neutralize the defenders, drop through the airshafts, and destroy everything in sight. If they made the LZ, if they could penetrate the complex, if the enemy gave way. The purpose of the assault was to take some pressure off the forces detailed to drive the length of the valley floor. The landing craft shuddered as the hull hit the upper part of the atmosphere, but the Hudathan didn’t even notice. He ran the sequence again.

  About four feet away, thumbs hooked into his battle harness, First Sergeant Antonio “Top” Santana eyed his commanding officer through half-closed lids. What was the hatchet head thinking anyway? Jeez, the sonovabitch was ugly. He seemed to know his shit, though, which was good, because Santana was ready if he didn’t. Two slugs in the back of the head, and the matter would be settled. Not a pleasant thought but better than letting a geek waste his team. The noncom smiled.

  A little further down the aisle, over on the starboard side, Quickfoot Hillrun started to snore. Oneshot Surekill took exception and kicked the other scout’s foot. The sound stopped for a moment but quickly resumed.

  Lower in the hull, below Surekill’s feet, cyborgs hung within cylindrical drop tubes. The team consisted of four humans and two Hudathans. The tech types had gone to considerable lengths to ensure their com equipment was compatible. That being the case, and borgs being borgs, the “machine augmented” troopers chatted on a low-power utility band. Corporal Lars Lastow, one of the 1,021 cyborgs that then Colonel Bill Booty had rescued from Fort Portal back during the mutiny, was interrogating one of his Hudathan colleagues. “So, Sergeant Horla-Ka, how’s your sex life?”

  “The same as yours,” the noncom answered stolidly. “Nonexistent.”

  “That’s not what I hear,” the human continued. “I hear they wired you guys to come every time you kill someone.”

  “Come?” Horla-Ka responded, “I don’t understand.”

  “You know,” Lastow went on, “shoot your load, blow your rocks, have an orgasm.”

  “Oh that,” Horla-Ka answered evenly. “Yes, it’s true.”

  “Damn,” the human responded. “You are one lucky bastard.”

  The Hudathan eyed his readouts, saw the seconds ticking away, and knew the enemy was waiting. And not just waiting, but locked, loaded, and ready to fire. “Yes,” he replied dryly. “I am one lucky bastard.”

  One level up, and all the way forward, Navy Lieutenant Mog Howsky “thought” the nose up, wished she had something to do with her hands, and kept her eyes on the HUD. The “backdoor” as she and her copilot called it consisted of a broad U-shaped valley that lay behind the Thraki stronghold and ran parallel to it.

  The plan was to approach from the south and then, when the enemy base was due west, make a hard turn to port. Conditions permitting, Howsky would make two separate passes. The cyborgs would drop during the first, engage the weapons emplacements, and secure the LZ. With that accomplished, the assault boat would return, off-load the soft bodies, and haul ass. Assuming I have one to haul, Howsky thought to herself.

  Mountains rose on both sides, sparks floated up to greet them, and the hard part began. “All right,” Horla-Ka growled, using his external speakers in spite of the fact that there was no need to, “we are two from dirt. Remove safeties—prepare to drop.”

  Conscious of what awaited them and the importance of their role, the cyborgs were silent. They could “feel” the side-to-side motion as the ship jinked back and forth. Thanks to the fact that they could “see” via the landing craft’s external sensors, the team knew what to expect.

  A missile raced over her head and a green tracer whipped past the cockpit as Howsky completed the run. Commands that originated in her brain burped through the computer-assisted interface to make things happen. Flaps fell, jets fired, and the ship started to stall. Repellors stabbed the darkness, the belly gun fired, and slugs hosed the ridgeline. There it was, just as the simulators said it would be, a flat area, a series of duracrete weapons emplacements, and the stacks beyond.

  There was a cracking sound as a high vel
ocity slug punched a hole in the canopy and took Second Lieutenant Gorky’s head off. Howsky felt her friend drop out of the control matrix, swore as blood splattered the side of her helmet, and forced herself to concentrate. The tubes opened on command, the borgs dropped free, and she turned to port. If anything happened, if the boat took a hit, the hard bodies would be safe. Well, not safe, but safer. She lined up the targeting reticule on the pillbox and thumbed the pickle. Slugs marched their way up to a pillbox and forced their way inside. Something exploded, and flames belched out through the side-mounted cooling vents.

  Lastow “heard” the buzzer, “felt” the clamps release, and nothing happened. He should have been falling, should have cleared the ship, but hadn’t dropped more than an inch or two.

  Okay, okay, the cyborg said to himself, it’s a jam. How many simulated jams have you cleared? A hundred? Yeah, easily. Test the circuits, look for shorts, reroute the signal. Electricity did as it was told, a relay closed, and the clamps opened.

  It was only then, as the Trooper II body dropped clear of the ship, that the legionnaire remembered to check the target, discovered that the boat had cleared the ridge, and realized he was still in the process of falling. Not ten feet as he had planned, but a hundred feet, onto the rocks below. Those who monitored his scream, and that included Horla-Ka, would never forget the sound.

  But there was no time for sympathy, for grief, or any of the other emotions that tried to push their way in. Thraki shells exploded all around. The Hudathan gave his orders. “Form a line abreast! Missiles first! Engage the weapons emplacements!”

  Dor Duplo, with Lastow’s scream still echoing through his mind, launched two missiles at once. They sensed heat, accelerated away, and hit the closest pillbox. Light flashed, thunder cracked, and the bunker came apart.