Thirty seconds might not sound like much, but in combat, he’d discovered, it could seem like an eternity. It ought to be long enough, at any rate. With that many rifles to support the machine guns they should be able to kill almost all the Shongairi in the convoy before they boogied. And so far, at least, he’d seen no sign that the aliens were even close to adjusting their response patterns enough to close that window on him.
Of course, if they did adjust properly, he’d probably only get to find out about it once, now wouldn’t he?
He snorted at the thought, yet it was true, and he wondered sometimes if their failure to change their doctrine quickly indicated that they were simply inherently bad at improvising or adapting for some reason. One of his instructors at the Air Force Academy had insisted that one major reason the Japanese had lost World War II so decisively was that the Japanese language was much more poorly suited to improvisation, to changing plans on the fly, than English was. After all, she’d pointed out, cognitive thought was bound up in the syntax of the thinker’s native speech, and so was the ability to quickly and clearly communicate changes in plan to subordinates. That, she had argued, was a primary reason Japanese units had persisted in trying to drive through even a broken plan rather than stopping what wasn’t working and coming up with a new approach on the fly . . . something US Marine units had been very good at doing. Was it possible the Shongairi had something like the same problem on steroids?
It was an intriguing possibility, but in his bleaker moments he knew it wasn’t really going to matter in the end. The aliens were still at the top of the gravity well, still able to drop rocks on anybody who pissed them off. Ultimately, Dan Torino and other people like him—people who no longer had anything to lose—could kill a lot of them, but they couldn’t stop them. He was pretty sure this invasion had already cost them a lot more heavily than they’d expected, yet in the end, they could literally blast the human race back into the Stone Age anytime they chose.
There’s probably some point on a graph somewhere, he thought now. Some point where the cost of subjugating the Earth crosses the value of conquering the Earth more or less intact. The point where they decide to just go ahead and take out all of our infrastructure, kill however many of us it takes to make us give up, rather than try to preserve it for whatever value it may generate for them down the road. And if there is, then probably what I’m doing is the worst damn thing I could possibly do. I’m one of the people pushing that “cost” line higher and higher, when any rational person should probably be thinking about ways to convince them not to kill any more of us than they have to. But I guess I’m just not rational that way anymore. And neither are a hell of a lot of other human beings, from what I’ve heard. Not so far, at least.
He grimaced, but he didn’t change his mind. He knew he wasn’t going to, either. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, and maybe ultimately it was only going to get the human race hurt even worse than it already had been, but he simply couldn’t not do it. He’d kill every single Shongair he could, and he’d go right on doing it until he was out of ammunition and he ripped out his last kill’s throat with his bare teeth and fingernails. That was just the way it was.
“Hsssst! I hear them coming!” his second in command hissed softly, and he nodded.
“Good,” Longbow Torino said quietly, chambering a round in his own M16. “Good.”
. XXIII .
Platoon Commander Dirak didn’t like this one bit, but orders were orders.
He moved slowly at the center of his second squad, ears up and straining for the slightest sound as he followed the double-twelve troopers of his first squad along the narrow road. The trail, really, because calling the narrow lane of roughly graded dirt a “road” was being far too generous. It was better than many he’d seen on other conquered worlds, but compared to this world’s usual road net. . . .
Unfortunately, it was all he had at the moment, and his people had been civilized for a thousand standard years. Much of the acuity of hearing and scent which had once marked the margin between death and survival had slipped away, and he felt more than half blind in this heavily shadowed, massive forest.
There were no longer any forests like this on his homeworld—not with this towering primeval canopy and tree trunks which could be half as broad as a Shongair’s height at the base—yet the woodland around him was surprisingly free of brush and undergrowth. According to the expedition’s botanists that was only to be expected in a mature forest where so little direct sunlight reached the ground. No doubt they knew what they were talking about, but it still seemed . . . wrong to Dirak. And, perversely, he liked the saplings and underbrush which did grow along the verge of this narrow trail even less. They probably confirmed the botanists’ theories, since some sun did get through along the line the trail broke in the overhead canopy, but they also formed a dense, leafy wall along the trail’s borders which left him feeling cramped and shut in.
Actually, a lot of his anxiety was probably due to the fact that he’d been expressly ordered to leave his assigned recon and communications relay drone well behind his point, anchored to the wheeled transports snorting laboriously along the same trail far behind him. Analysis of what had happened to the last three patrols into this area suggested that the “humans” had somehow managed to destroy the drones before they ever engaged the infantry those drones were supporting with surveillance and secure communications. No one had any idea how the primitives—only, of course, they weren’t really primitives, were they?—might have been able to detect and target them so effectively, but no one could be permitted to get away with inflicting that sort of losses. Something clearly had to be done to bring these attackers to heel, and the lack of honor they’d shown in not only refusing to submit when they’d so clearly been defeated but actually ambushing Shongair patrols like assassins had to be punished.
Unfortunately, standard tactics to accomplish those laudable ends didn’t appear to be working, so HQ had decided to try a more stealthy approach . . . and chosen Dirak to carry out the experiment.
As it happened, Dirak had begun to formulate a theory of his own, not that anyone seemed particularly interested in hearing about it. Nor that he was especially eager to offer it, for that matter. The ancient, ancestral pack had not looked kindly upon beta and gamma members who jostled the pack alphas’ elbows. Originality might have been valuable in a leader, but it had been dangerous in an undermember. In order to become a leader, an alpha had required the ability to think problems through, to adjust and recognize opportunities for advancement . . . which, of course, was the very thing which had made those qualities dangerous to an established pack leader when they manifested in one of his betas. And since one of the things at which effective pack leaders were supposed to excel was the elimination of threats to the pack—or to its leader—betas who seemed too smart had tended to suffer accidents . . . among other things. At the best of times, they’d been kept firmly in their places, even at the cost of completely ignoring good suggestions from them, lest their competence seem to undermine their pack leader’s competence. Which, Dirak had occasionally thought, had not been a very consistent attitude even then . . . and certainly wasn’t one now. Unfortunately, it seemed to be programmed into his people at an almost genetic level, despite the inherent inefficiency it represented.
It never occurred even to Dirak that his ability to recognize that problem even in the privacy of his own mind made him significantly different from the majority of his kind. On the other hand, it did occur to him that—as a human might have put it—the brightest and tallest flowers got picked (or cut) first.
We ought to figure out a way to get past that, he thought . . . very cautiously, with no intention of ever sharing the thought with another soul. The Empire’s going to need the best, sharpest thinkers we can find when the time comes to deal with the weed-eaters and their sycophants. Yet we’re systematically depriving ourselves of that very quality. Or, at least, we’re certainly not encouragi
ng it!
Well, no one had ever suggested every aspect of Shongair nature was perfect, he supposed. Still, he was tempted to suggest—to his immediate superior, at least—that part of the problem might be that their operational doctrine was still constrained by their experience against primitive foes. A reconnaissance and communication remote at three hundred marshag was effectively beyond the reach of any bow or crossbow the Shongairi had ever encountered. There was no need for them to be particularly evasive targets when no one had the range to knock them down anyway. These creatures’ weapons, however, did have the range to knock them down, so might it not make a modicum of sense to think about programming the remotes to at least . . . move around some? Dodge? Be something besides a motionless target?
In the meantime, though, he had his orders. He had done a little modification of his own, without mentioning it to his company commander, and his remote was in constant motion, circling and turning in midair. Of course, that presented a few problems of its own, given that no one had ever considered the desirability of designing hardware to stabilize the view from drones that didn’t dodge around a lot, anyway. He couldn’t simply lock his drone’s pickup on a single point and let a turreted lens and onboard software keep his area of interest centered while the vehicle circled the area, the way a human operator might have done in similar circumstances. It was making him a little dizzy when he surveyed his tactical board, since he wasn’t accustomed to having his aerial viewpoint moving around that way, but if it helped keep the RC undestroyed, he’d put up with a little vertigo.
Oh, how the gods must have smiled upon me for me to draw this duty, he reflected morosely. I understand the need to gain experience against these . . . creatures, the need to blood our inexperienced troops, get a better idea of their tactical capabilities. And of course they can’t be permitted to dishonorably massacre our warriors and then get away unpunished! But why did I get chosen to poke my head into the hasthar’s den? It wasn’t like—
He heard an explosion behind him, the display board linked to his remote went abruptly dead, and he wheeled towards the thunderous sound. He couldn’t see through the overhead canopy, but he didn’t need to see it to know the explosion had been his RC drone. Apparently its evasions hadn’t been evasive enough, but how had they even seen it through these damnable leaves and branches?!
The question was still ripping through his brain when he heard more explosions—this time on the ground . . . where his two reserve squads were following along in their APCs.
He hadn’t yet had time to realize what those explosions were before the assault rifles hidden behind trees and under drifts of leaves all along the southern flank of the trail opened fire.
And, unfortunately for Platoon Commander Dirak’s future as a Shongair innovator, the men and women behind those assault rifles had figured out how to recognize a Shongair infantry formation’s commanding officer.
• • • • •
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Stephen Buchevsky bellowed, and the bark and chatter of automatic weapons fire faded abruptly.
He held his own position, M16 still ready, while he surveyed the kill zone and the tumbled, grotesquely sprawled drift of Shongair bodies. One or two were still writhing, although it didn’t look like they would be for long.
“Good,” a voice said behind him with fierce, obvious satisfaction, and he looked over his shoulder. Mircea Basarab stood in the dense forest shadows, looking out over the ambushed patrol. “Well done, my Stephen.”
“Maybe so, but we better be moving,” Buchevsky replied, safeing his weapon and rising from his firing position.
His own expression, he knew, was more anxious than Basarab’s. This was the third hard contact with the Shongairi in the six days since he’d placed his people under Basarab’s command, and from what the Romanian had said, they were getting close to the enclave he’d established in the mountains around Lake Vidraru. Which meant they really needed to shake this persistent—if inept—pursuit.
“I think we have a short while,” Basarab disagreed, glancing farther down the trail to the columns of smoke rising from what had been armored vehicles until Jonescu’s squad and half of Basarab’s original men dealt with them. “It seems unlikely they got a message out this time, either.”
“Maybe not,” Buchevsky conceded. “But their superiors have to know at least roughly where they are. When they don’t check in on schedule, someone’s going to come looking for them. Again.”
He might have sounded as if he were disagreeing, but he wasn’t, really. First, because Basarab was probably correct. But secondly, because over the course of the last week or so, he’d come to realize Mircea Basarab was one of the best officers he’d ever served under. Which, he reflected, was high praise for any foreign officer from any Marine . . . and didn’t keep the Romanian from being one of the scariest men Buchevsky had ever met.
A lot of people might not have realized that. In better light, Basarab’s face had a bony, foxlike handsomeness and his smile was frequently warm. Buchevsky was convinced the warmth in that smile was genuine, too, but there were also dark, still places behind those brilliant green eyes. Still places which were no stranger to all too many people from the post-Ceausescu Balkans or the Afghan mountains where Buchevsky had spent so much time. Dark places Master Sergeant Stephen Buchevsky recognized because he’d met so many other scary men in his life . . . and because there was now a dark, still place labeled “Washington, DC” inside him, as well.
Yet whatever lay in Basarab’s past, the man was almost frighteningly competent, and he radiated a sort of effortless charisma Buchevsky had seldom encountered. The sort of charisma which could win the loyalty of even a Stephen Buchevsky, and even on such relatively short acquaintance.
“Your point is well taken, my Stephen,” Basarab said now, smiling almost as if he’d read Buchevsky’s mind and reaching up to place one hand on the towering American’s shoulder. Like the almost possessive way he said “my Stephen,” it could have been patronizing. It wasn’t.
“However,” he continued, his smile fading, “I believe it may be time to send these vermin elsewhere.”
“Sounds great to me.” A trace of skepticism edged Buchevsky’s voice, and Basarab chuckled. It was not a particularly pleasant sound.
“I believe we can accomplish it,” he said, and whistled shrilly.
Moments later, Take Bratianu, a dark-haired, broad-shouldered Romanian in a leather jerkin festooned with knives, hand grenades, and extra rifle magazines, blended out of the forest.
Buchevsky was picking up Romanian quickly, thanks to Elizabeth Cantacuzène, but the exchange which followed was far too rapid for his still rudimentary grasp of the language to sort out. It lasted for a few moments, then Bratianu nodded and Basarab turned back to Buchevsky.
“Take speaks no English, I fear,” he said.
That was obvious, Buchevsky thought dryly. On the other hand, Bratianu didn’t need to speak English to communicate the fact that he was one seriously bad-assed individual. None of Basarab’s men did.
There were only twenty of them, but they moved like ghosts. Buchevsky was no slouch in the field, yet he knew when he was outclassed at pooping and snooping in the shrubbery. These men were far better at it than he’d ever been, and in addition to rifles, pistols, and hand grenades, most of them—like Bratianu himself—were liberally equipped with a ferocious assortment of knives, hatchets, and machetelike blades that would have served perfectly well as short swords like the old Roman gladius. Indeed, Buchevsky suspected they would have preferred using cold steel instead of any namby-pamby assault rifles.
Now, as Bratianu and his fellows moved along the trail, knives flashed and the handful of Shongair wounded stopped writhing.
Buchevsky had no problem with that. Indeed, his eyes were bleakly satisfied. But when some of the Romanians began stripping the alien bodies while others began cutting down several stout young saplings growing along the edge of the trail, he frowned and g
lanced at Basarab with one eyebrow raised.
The Romanian only shook his head.
“Wait,” he said, and Buchevsky turned back to the others.
They worked briskly, wielding their hatchets and machetes with practiced efficiency as they cut the saplings into roughly ten-foot lengths, then shaped points at either end. In a surprisingly short period they had over a dozen of them, and Buchevsky’s eyes widened in shock as they calmly began picking up dead Shongairi and impaling them.
They worked their way through the entire stack of bodies who’d fallen to Buchevsky’s own ambush, cutting more saplings when their original supply ran out. Blood and other body fluids oozed down the crude, rough-barked stakes, but he said nothing as the stakes’ other ends were sunk into the soft woodland soil. Twenty-five dead aliens hung there, lining the trail like insects mounted on pins, grotesque in the tree shadows, and he felt Basarab’s eyes.
“Are you shocked, my Stephen?” the Romanian asked quietly.
“I . . .” Buchevsky inhaled deeply. “Yeah, I guess I am. Some,” he admitted. He turned to face the other man. “I think maybe because it’s a little too close to some of the things I’ve seen jihadies do to make the point that nobody better fuck with them.”
“Indeed?” Basarab’s eyes were cold. “I suppose I should not be surprised by that. We learned the tradition long ago from their Turkish co-religionists, after all, and it would seem some things do not change. But at least these were already dead when they were staked.”
“Would it have made a difference?” Buchevsky asked quietly, and Basarab’s nostrils flared. But then the other man gave himself a little shake.
“Once?” He shrugged. “No. As I say, the practice has long roots in this area. One of Romania’s most famous sons, after all, was known as ‘Vlad the Impaler,’ was he not?” He smiled thinly. “For that matter, I did not, as you Americans say, have a happy childhood myself, and there was a time when I inflicted cruelty on all those about me. When I enjoyed it. In those days, no doubt, I would have preferred them alive.”