Extremis (19 page)

It was crude, simplistic, faint. But the intent was clear, and unassisted contact had been made.

However, Ankaht now felt the porthole closing, partly because she herself was becoming too exhausted to maintain it, partly because Jennifer seemed to have drifted past the point of both relaxation and focus where their minds were truly aligned with each other.

Ankaht leaned back and discontinued her enormous
selnarmic
push. She spent a moment recovering, then rose, pointed to the smart-walls that wrote in accordance with her
selnarmic
commands. “Jennifer Peitchkov. Ankaht depart.”

As she did, Jennifer looked up and showed her teeth in what the humans called a “smile.” Although it could mean many things in many contexts, it seemed to indicate a positive emotion here. And, almost as faint as a feather brushed across her forehead, Ankaht felt a faint
selnarmic
fragment reach out from the human: (affinity).

Ankaht tried to return that emotion, then turned and made for the exit. She hadn’t achieved as much as she had dared hope.

But it was a start.

* * *

Sandro finally reached the main road back into Melantho and checked the chronometer on the console. He was already two hours late and had another thirty minutes before he’d get to the house. And he hadn’t stopped to get the toilet paper yet. Well, there was one roll left. That ought to be enough. And besides, everyone there was a Marine. Nothing was beyond their courage, after all.

He gunned the already-whining engine and wondered if he should vacuum the car to remove any chemical residues of the plastic explosives he had buried—just in case the Baldies started getting smart enough to run spot checks.

* * *

Heshfet swished her lesser tentacles impatiently. “How long, Lentsul?”

“Soon, Manip. Five minutes, maybe six.”

The rest of the Enforcers sat still and stolid in the back of the wheeled security carrier. Two, like Heshfet, had their tentacles snugged through and around the handles of their machine-pistols. The rest—still following the orders of the Council of Twenty—had their own weapons close to their clusters but not clutched and ready.

Heshfet pushed an exhortative wave of (vigilance) through the team and then reached to open the channel to the combat air patrol.

“Heshfet?” asked Lentsul.

(Sardonic.) “Just in case things get interesting. Although we would never be so lucky.” She also activated the remote-deployment mode of the vehicle’s six defense blisters. So primed, they could be launched to serve as independent aerial weapons platforms at the flick of a
selnarmic
switch. “How long now?” she asked again.

“A minute less than before, Manip.”

Which Heshfet rewarded with a brief wash of (amusement). “Not bad. You have some spirit after all,
Ixturshaz
. Now pay attention to the road.”

* * *

Van Felsen leaned back from the table. “Well, if Joe is right that the Baldies did not set out as invaders—and it seems a reasonable conjecture—we are nonetheless stuck with the fact that they have
become
invaders. If we can get them to reconsider their aggressive posture, that would be wonderful, but we won’t know one way or the other until we can talk to them. And I suspect some of them are thinking the same thing in reverse—which is why they took the artists: to find a way to talk to us.

“But in the meantime, we have a war on our hands. And until now, we’ve concentrated on preparations, not operations. There have been some rogue activities, of course: most notably the bombings in this very city.”

Diane, who had been McGee’s willing accomplice on two of the bombing missions, tried very hard not to flinch or fidget. Which was fortunate, because she had the distinct, if peripheral, impression that Van Felsen was watching out of the corner of her eye. Falco was openly staring in her direction.
Great, they must know. But keep your trap shut unless they
ask
, Diane.

Van Felsen hadn’t paused. “But just as we’re here to find clues on how we might be able to talk to the Baldies, we’d also better make plans for backing up our diplomatic words with some major military muscle. And of course we can’t ignore the possibility that the only reason the Baldies want to talk to us is to tell us how to best get in line for our pending extermination. So let’s start with an assessment of our current status. You’re done correlating all the regional reports, Terrence?”

“Finished just yesterday, Comman—eh, Liz.”

Van Felsen almost smiled. “Elizabeth will suffice, Terrence.”

“Er…yes, Elizabeth. Well, as I was saying right before I put my foot in it and it’s taken a while to get all the regional reports in place and summarized. We’ve confirmed earlier reports that the Baldies have deorbited large pieces of their space arks to use as citadels for the seven small cities they’ve established on the Adriagean Archipelago and the coastlines of Sparta and Sisyphus. We don’t have good intel on these sites because of the sparse populations on those continents. However, subsequent covert observation places the estimated population of each Baldy city at somewhere between three hundred thousand and five hundred thousand.”

Van Felsen’s eyes were narrowed and bright. “But then why put one city—their biggest—right here in Melantho? And why dislocate so many of the residents?”

“Well, of course we only have speculation, but I agree with Ensign Montaño’s analysis that the Baldies felt they needed one point of contact with the resident population. Melantho was their logical strategic alternative. It’s a deep-water port, has a sizable spaceport, and is the roadway and air-corridor hub for our largest cities—Icarius, Asphodel, and Hallack. By investing Melantho, they put themselves right at the center of the Big Triangle, meaning they can observe, patrol, and of course strike all three from their rather sizable military base right here.

“As to why they felt it necessary to unhouse the entirety of the West Shore District, and give us fifty thousand refugees to deal with, your guess is as good as mine. But Montaño thinks that just as we need to keep tabs on them, so they feel the need to do the same with us. And since they had already decided to make this city their planetside military fortress, where better to keep tabs on us than right here, where they have plenty of force to maintain control?”

Van Felsen nodded. “Okay. Let’s stay on the topic of their military. What do we know about its dispersal, command structure, doctrine?”

Falco shook his rather knoblike head. “Too damned little. Their table of organization is—well, it’s a damned mystery. We think we’ve observed NCOs as distinct from line troops, but then the roles seem to change. And sometimes we encounter units made up entirely of the tall, golden ones but other times comprised of a mix of those and the short, dark Baldies. We don’t know how they pass orders, but they are a marvel of coordination—particularly in a firefight. While we’re shouting orders, trying to track our people on HUDs, and keeping the tactical channels free of needless chatter, the Baldies are moving like a well-oiled machine. Never a misstep. They’ve got us hands down on operational fluidity and situational awareness of their own people. We make up for it in better tactics and doctrine. If their plans were a tenth as good as their small-unit cohesion and control, we’d be ground meat.

“On the technical side, we’ve seen short arms, long arms, and what we think are rocket launchers. At the risk of overgeneralizing, I’m happy to report that their personal weapons are just not up to our military standards, either in terms of accuracy or lethality. They seem more like—well, multipurpose weapons…which I guess goes right along with what Joe is postulating regarding their origins as refugee-pioneers. They don’t have purpose-built military tech. Or maybe their attitude is to simply let their automated stand-off platforms do the heavy work. We all know they are very dependent upon user-directed blisters, which are both well-armored and well-equipped with a variety of passive and active sensors. Almost all their troops—if you can call them that—have laser designators with which they call in support from these blisters or from off-site rocket batteries. And they are pretty aggressive about bringing down the thunder really close to their own positions. The one incident when a Resistance cell actually close-assaulted a Baldy position, the damn no-noses actually called in a broken arrow.”

Diane had heard the term before, usually in historical references, but had never quite figured out what it meant. “A broken arrow?”

Ved leaned in her direction. “Sort of like a danger-close fire mission on steroids. ‘All tubes and ordnance: fire for effect, my coordinates.’ ”

Diane swallowed, felt her eyes widen. “Shit…Ved,” she said.

He smiled at her, caught a nod from Falco. “Okay. The report on our own equipment situation. Here’s the bottom line—we can’t field true military units. At least, not many.”

Van Felsen looked up sharply. “I thought we pulled in a sizable percentage of the caches and stashes. Didn’t we get enough?”

Ved shrugged. “Yes and no.”

Falco’s scowl was as sour as his tone. “Well, that statement was a marvel of clarity.”

“Sorry, Cap—Terrence. Here’s what I mean to say. Yes, we have a lot of military-grade equipment, particularly weapons, ammo, personal commo and tracking gear, and—thankfully—air-defense systems, including high-velocity missiles. But we had to leave a lot behind at Acrocotinth Main Base. There simply wasn’t time for removal. And if we wanted to keep the Baldy anxiety regarding a possible resistance movement low, then we had to be very careful regarding how much we took from the other bases and armories. Any depot or cache that was located in a populated area with other loot-worthy targets nearby—well, we took all the contents in those cases. And we made sure the surrounding area was looted as well.”

Joe nodded. “So it didn’t look like the military matériel was taken with special care and malice aforethought.”

“Right. But isolated bases and armories—that was a hard call. How much should we take? In retrospect, I’m not sure the Baldies would have minded if we took it all, lock, stock, and barrel. But we had no way to know they’d be this clueless about resistance movements. So we figured that we should take no more than ten to twenty percent of the total matériel, with all of the missing items withdrawn in an orderly fashion and due to reasonable causes.”

Van Felsen was frowning. “Still, all together, that sounds like a lot of gear.”

“It is—if you were to pile it all up in one place. You could comfortably outfit a few battalions of light infantry. Yeah, some of the equipment is almost Rebellion vintage, but what the hell: it’s still milspec. Compared to the combat gear the Baldies have shown us, any fifty of our troops could dish out a double helping of whup-ass to any fifty of theirs. But we’ll never get that density of military technology in any operation or region. We’ve got scores of Resistance cells all over the place, and each one of them needs a stiffening core of the heavy punch that milspec weapons deliver. When you start dividing the equipment among all those cells, it gets spread pretty thin.”

“So…?”

“So I recommend that we keep a central operational reserve. Maybe about ten percent of the milspec total. We hold that back for the return of the Fleet—that is, when the
big
balloon goes up—or when we get a target with a high enough strategic value to put in all our chips on one roll of the dice. Otherwise, each Resistance cell keeps a small cache of military gear for any operations of major local significance, but only to be used if given authorization by Elizabeth. So until we’ve got a good reason to bring out the big guns, we keep them quiet and hid—”

“Commander, I’ve got movement at the east end of the street. Baldy security vehicle, sir. Dismounting troops.”

“Shit.” Falco kicked back out of his chair and went for his strangely angular overnight bag. Felsen yelled down the stairs, “Private Dalkilik, get on deck,” then turned to the other “hunter,” who was moving to support their front street spotter. “No, Corporal—you check the back door and see if our path of retreat is clear.”

Joe and Ved had each produced old, short-barrel bullpup assault carbines: low-powered by modern standards, but their compact designs had allowed them to fit in the officers’ luggage. Diane, tugging at the flap of her holster, stopped when Van Felsen put a hand on her arm and asked, “Corporal Narejko, are you up to date on your heavy-weapons training?”

“Affirmative.”

“Good. Then open the big map tube we brought.”

Diane did. Instead of maps was yet another tube—an irregular dark green one that was the launcher for a relatively modern fire-and-forget multimissile pack.

“Take up your position at the far left window, Corporal,” ordered Van Felsen as she produced and checked her own machine-pistol.

* * *

Lentsul almost started when Heshfet leaned over and stabbed a tentacle at the forward camera monitor: the front door of the target house had opened a crack, then shut quickly. The
Destoshaz
Manip sent a pulse of (thrill, interest, aggression) to everyone in her vehicle. “Well, maybe visiting here isn’t such a pointless task, after all. Hold here, Lentsul, and launch our drones. All of them.”

He complied. The security APC rolled to a stop, its nose just poking into the street that fronted on the house they had been sent to check. In that moment, all six weapons blisters rose up and out of their half-bays, turboprops whining, ducted side fans angling them up and away from the armored personnel carrier.

Heshfet stretched her arm over Lentsul’s shoulder and pointed to the screen. “Look at all the thermal blooms inside the house. It has very much been reoccupied. Dramatically so.”

Lentsul followed her gaze. “Agreed, Manip. Indeed, there might be too many of the
griarfeksh
. I will send two of the blisters around the back. In addition, I suggest we—”

Heshfet sent the combat air patrol a support request through the
selnarm
-moderated command circuit. Within a second, her message had been acknowledged. Even now, at least half a dozen Arduan strike craft would be sweeping in to put their ordnance at Heshfet’s disposal. As she triggered the vehicle’s squad-bay door, she instructed (readiness, wariness, ferocity) and also: “The natives that submit, we take captive. All others are to be killed.” She rose up to her full height, brandished her machine-pistol. “Now”—Heshfet’s
selnarm
surge swept the length of the vehicle—“follow me!”