Out of the Dark (28 page)

Thikair bared one canine in frustration, but she had a point. In fact, it was one
he
ought to have borne in mind and insisted be far more thoroughly factored into the prelanding planning.

But that’s not really totally fair,
he told himself after a moment.
You
did
allow for a much higher than usual level of capability on their part—that’s why you and Thairys planned such an extensive bombardment. Why you destroyed every major human army and navy. Why you hit them hard enough that
any
species would have to recognize how massively superior your capabilities were and submit. And even if they have the ability to hurt us, they
do
have to recognize they can’t ultimately win, so why haven’t they
submitted?

“A second factor,” Shairez continued, “may be that our initial bombardment was too successful. Although their Internet continues to operate, it’s evident that there’s enormous confusion on their part. There are no clear messages from their authorities at anything except a very local level. I believe we may have so thoroughly disrupted their national governments’
communications and command structures that there may be no way for individual units to be ordered to stand down.”

“‘Stand
down
’?” Squadron Commander Jainfar repeated incredulously. “They’re
defeated,
Base Commander! I don’t care if they’ve managed to hurt us here and there,
nothing
is going to change that. And I don’t care how stupid they are, or how disrupted their ‘command structures’ may be, either! As you say, they’re still communicating with one another over their ‘Internet,’ so they
have
to know that!”

“Perhaps so, Squadron Commander.” Shairez faced the old space dog squarely. “Unfortunately, as yet we know very little about this species’ psychology. We do know there’s something significantly different about them, given their incredible rate of advancement, but that’s really all we know. It could be that they simply don’t
care
that we’ve defeated them.”

Jainfar started to say something else, but then visibly restrained himself. It was obvious he couldn’t imagine any nominally intelligent species thinking in such a bizarre fashion, but Shairez
was
the expedition’s expert on non-Shongairi sapients.

“Even if that’s true, Ground Base Commander,” Thikair’s tone was closer to normal, “it doesn’t change our problem.” He looked at Thairys. “What sort of loss rates are we looking at, assuming these creatures’ behavior doesn’t change?”

“Potentially disastrous ones, Sir,” Thairys acknowledged grimly. “We’ve already written off over eleven percent of our armored vehicles. Worse, we never expected to need that many GEVs in the first place against the opposition we anticipated, which means we have nowhere near the vehicles and crews it looks like we’re going to need. We’ve actually lost a higher absolute number of troop and cargo transports, but we had many times as many of those to begin with. Infantry losses are another matter, and I’m not at all sure our present casualty rates are sustainable. And I must point out that we have barely eight local days of ground combat experience. It’s entirely possible for projections based on what we’ve seen so far to be almost as badly flawed as our initial estimates.”

The ground force commander clearly didn’t like adding that caveat. Which was fair enough. Thikair didn’t much like
hearing
it.

“I believe the Ground Force Commander may be unduly pessimistic, Sir.” All eyes switched to Shairez once more, and the ground base commander flicked her ears in a shrug. “I realize that may sound odd after what I just said, yet I believe it may be true nonetheless. My own analysis suggests
we’re looking at two basic types of incidents, both of which appear to be the work of scattered, usually relatively small units acting independently of any higher command or coordination.

“On one hand, we have units making use of the humans’ heavy weapons and employing what I suspect is their standard doctrine. Examples of this would be what happened to Brigade Commander Harshair or the destruction of Company Commander Barmit’s command in my own ground base’s area of responsibility. On the other, we have what seem to be primarily infantry forces equipped with light weapons or using what appear to be improvised explosives and weapons.

“In the case of the former, they’ve frequently inflicted severe losses—again as in Harshair’s and, to a lesser degree, Barmit’s cases. In fact, more often than not, they’ve inflicted grossly disproportionate casualties. However, in
those
instances, our space-to-surface interdiction systems are normally able to locate and destroy them. In short, humans who attack us in that fashion seldom survive to attack a second time, and they already have few heavy weapons left. Logically, losses to that sort of attack should begin to taper off quite rapidly. Indeed, from the most recent combat reports I’ve viewed that would appear to be happening already.

“In the case of the second type of attack, however, the attackers have proved far more elusive. Our orbital reconnaissance systems are all biased towards locating heavier, more technologically advanced weapons. In fact, they’re really oriented primarily for
fleet
combat, not for planetary operations at all. Our air-breathing reconnaissance systems, on the other hand, while specifically designed for planetary operations, are all oriented towards locating and tracking primitive opponents with no understanding of their capabilities. Our orbital systems look for electronic emissions, the sort of high-intensity thermal signatures we might find from operating power plants, and things of that nature. As far as the ability to track the natives is concerned, they’re at least reasonably well suited to locating and following
large
thermal signatures—the sort associated with cities or towns, or with organized bodies of troops in the field. They’re far less well equipped to pick out individual humans or small groups of individuals, however. We’ve always relied upon our air-breathing systems to provide our ground commanders with that sort of short-range tactical information.

“But
these
creatures obviously have similar sorts of sensor capabilities. Not as advanced as ours, perhaps,” Thikair would have been happier if she hadn’t added the qualifier, “but sufficiently advanced for them to understand
the sorts of precautions needed to defeat or at least minimize our normal advantage in sensor reach. As a consequence, we’re severely handicapped in dealing with the smaller, pure infantry forces whose attacks are beginning to significantly outnumber those of forces with heavy weapons.

“The good news is that although their infantry-portable weapons are far more powerful than we ever anticipated, they’re far
less
dangerous than their heavy armored vehicles or artillery. This means, among other things, that they can engage only smaller forces of our own warriors with any real prospect of success.”

“I believe that’s substantially accurate,” Thairys said after a moment. “One of the implications, however, is that in order to deter attacks by these infantry forces, we would still find ourselves obliged to operate using larger forces of our own. But we have a strictly limited supply of personnel, so the larger our individual forces become, the fewer we can deploy at any given moment. In order to deter attack, we would be forced to severely reduce the coverage of the entire planet which we can hope to maintain.”

“I take your point, Thairys,” Thikair said, and bared all his upper canines in a wintry smile. “I must confess that a planet with any sort of technology begins to look significantly larger when one begins to consider the need to actually picket its entire surface out of the resources of a single colonization fleet!”

He’d considered saying something a bit stronger, but that was as close as he cared to come to even suggesting that he might have bitten off more than his fleet could chew.

“Very well,” he continued after a moment, “I believe the time has come to shift our approach. In respect to that consideration, however, Ground Base Commander Shairez, could you tell us the state of these creatures’ ‘Internet’?”

“Of course, Fleet Commander,” Shairez said, although she was perfectly well aware that he’d already read her report. That she was delivering it not for his ears but for those of his staff and senior officers.

“The humans’ cyber net is not only more extensive than we had assumed before we actually invaded it, but considerably more robust. I realize you were already aware of those facts before we attacked the planet, but I believe we’ve all been somewhat surprised by the implications of that fact for human coordination and dissemination of information. I confess that my own staff was slow to grasp them, although in their defense I must point out that they’ve been dealing with an extraordinary information overload.

“The general distribution of the imagery of the destruction of so much of Ground Base Two’s infrastructure and personnel has had particularly grave implications. I believe many of the humans have interpreted that . . . unfortunate episode as an indication that we have not, in fact, fully secured our control of their planet. Even Shongairi in that position might consider that they weren’t in honor bound to submit at this stage. Certainly prisoner interrogation indicates a great many
humans
appear to have interpreted it in that fashion.

“Perhaps worse, however, the humans continue to distribute information about our deployments and force movements, and also about the strengths and weaknesses of our combat equipment. We’ve discovered some evidence—strong evidence, actually—to suggest that the human ‘Robinson’ was directly responsible for what happened to Brigade Commander Harshair’s forces because he was able to use the humans’ intact communications to alert an ‘American’ force to Harshair’s approach.”

Tactful of her not to mention that the “American force” in question was only one of their
battalions,
not even a full regiment
, Thikair thought sourly behind his expressionless ears.
Dainthar only knows what would have happened if Harshair had run his muzzle into something
they
called a brigade! On the other hand, I don’t suppose it could have been a
lot
worse, given that less than eight percent of his personnel—and only a single twelve of personnel transports and cargo vehicles—survived the experience as it was
.

“Other information is also being passed,” Shairez continued. “Some of it is of little consequence to our operations but still useful to the humans in terms of guiding them to sources of shelter, food, that sort of thing. Some of the messages being passed may actually be of benefit to us. Messages of that sort would include exaggerated reports of our strength, speculation as to capabilities and ‘super weapons’ we may simply have chosen so far not to employ, and speculation that all which has so far befallen their planet is actually the result of collusion with us on the part of their governments or some cabal of their own kind.” Her ears shrugged briefly up and down in an expression of mingled bafflement and amusement. “There’s something almost Shongair about some of the rumors and speculation, although I can’t quite imagine any of our people entertaining such bizarre speculations about our leaders.

“There is very little evidence of any ability, or even any organized effort, on the part of nation-state governments to reassert control via the Internet, however. Calls for such an effort have been posted repeatedly, but without
evoking any response. Or, at least, any response which the majority of humans appear to consider genuine rather than the work of what humans call ‘crackpots’—the term would appear normally to be reserved for the weak-minded and/or charlatans, Fleet Commander—or something emanating from us. Apparently humans have had experience in the past with outsiders exerting control through a theoretically legitimate government. Indeed, they have several terms for that sort of arrangement and the humans who support it. ‘Puppet government,’ ‘façade democracy,’ ‘collaborators,’ ‘quislings,’ ‘capitalist running dogs,’ ‘fellow travelers’ . . . the list is a long one, and it would appear humans do not feel duty or honor bound, when such arrangements are resorted to, in submitting to the local government’s authority.”

Ears went to half-cock all around the table in bafflement as Thikair’s officers tried to wrap their minds around such a bizarre psychology. It was obvious from their body language that they’d been no more successful at it than
he
had, the fleet commander reflected dryly.

“And the security aspects of the current situation, Ground Base Commander?” he inquired aloud.

“To this point, Fleet Commander, my staff and I aren’t particularly concerned over the security of our own systems. While the humans’ computer technology is in many ways surprisingly advanced and innovative, it’s far from the equal of our own. They do show an amazing degree of . . . ‘ingenuity’ is probably the best word for it. Their efforts to penetrate our security measures have become increasingly sophisticated much more rapidly than we initially projected, but that may not be as surprising as it seems, in light of their general rate of technological advancement. Efforts to break into our systems are also increasing in number and frequency, as well. I have no fear that those efforts will succeed in the immediate future, yet I must concede that if they are allowed to continue, the odds that they will
ultimately
succeed become significantly higher.”

She hadn’t mentioned that so far as she and her analysts could tell virtually all of the attempts to penetrate the fleet’s computer nets had been what humans called “freelance,” Thikair reflected. Assuming the local government entities had possessed greater cybernetic resources than individual citizens, that suggested a degree of widely distributed capability and self-motivation he really preferred not to consider too closely.