* * *
After one hundred and ninety-eight subjective days of almost nonstop training, my Gurkha battalion was as ready as it was ever going to be. In simulations, we had tried dozens of possible attacks, from transporting directly into the station to attacking from the sunny side, and none of them were really very good. The attack mode we’d finally settled on was statistically the most effective one, with the lowest casualty rate for the good guys. But there were still many, many things that could go wrong, and most of them were completely beyond our control.
The absolutely precise time when our speed and direction would be identical to that of our target receiver was upon us.
The station we were attacking was so large that repair, construction, and emergency crews usually used transmitters and receivers to get around rather than passageways, for the most part. It was through one of their external receivers on the dark side of the station that we would be launching our attack.
Rather than risk the possibility of the enemy shutting down their equipment when we started to come out, the only thing we were sending through their receiver was a single rocket powered receiver of our own. On arrival, it would blast away from the station, and immediately start spitting out other, identical receivers, at a rate of one per second, in different directions. These in turn dropped more, identical receivers at precisely controlled angles, until, ten seconds into the attack, more than five hundred receivers would be flying away from the huge station.
Then, in the next twenty-four seconds, almost eleven thousand tanks and trucks would be placed in the precise positions that the battle plan required.
We needed only thirty-four seconds to move the entire battle group into position. Our fervent prayer was that the enemy’s reaction time would be slower than that. If our receivers were shot up before our tanks went through, those tanks, and the men in them, were lost.
* * *
“It is time to take the war back to the enemy!” I said to my troops when everything was ready to go, “You have trained hard for this day, and I am proud of you! You are the finest, the best equipped, and the best trained battalion in Human Space! You are hereditary warriors, and the eyes of your illustrious ancestors are upon you! Go forth, and make them proud of you!”
They let loose with a cheer, and a bewildering variety of battle cries. I got the feeling that they were a whole lot more confident than I was. But I wasn’t about to let them know how scared I was, and they were likely doing the same thing for me.
* * *
My CCC was the second package in a very straight line, one of five hundred such, pointing vaguely toward the Big Dipper. There were twenty-two tanks from the New Syrian division behind us, each holding on to the one in front with its manipulator arms. Zuzanna’s tank was in front of us, holding on to the CCC, since trucks weren’t equipped with arms. Ahead of her was a rocket-boosted transmitter, poised to scoop us up and send us to the Solar Station.
My colonels were unusually silent as we waited. They must have been as nervous as I was. I would have been chewing my nails if it hadn’t have been for my helmet.
Some of the other lines had as many as ten rocket-boosted receivers ahead of the first tank, and their transmitters boosted long seconds before ours did. Very long seconds, since we were all at combat speed.
Our transmitter gave a short boost, and came toward us at twelve meters per second. I saw Zuzanna disappear into its mouth, and a second later we were in transit. After a few seconds, we emerged into chaos!
The receiver we came out of exploded behind us, torn apart by a rail gun burst from the station! The twenty-two New Syrian tanks who had been in line behind me were gone.
I immediately started sending an all-frequency broadcast, in clear, uncoded Earth English, “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Stop shooting! Stop shooting! Mayday!”
The other tanks and trucks of the assault force were shouting the same thing, as the battle plan required. Call it a legitimate ruse of war. The hope was that we could give ourselves a few more precious seconds to complete our deployment.
What made us a little less convincing was the way Zuzanna was already taking out the gun that had hit our receiver, frying its brains out with her X-ray laser. Then again, maybe that gun had intended that I should be its next target.
I didn’t scold her.
Only a few of our tanks actually fired on the enemy, but they all made careful note of where those guns were. Staying with the doctrine showed remarkable fortitude on the part of my men, I thought.
In less than two seconds, the enemy stopped shooting at us.
“Who are you and what is this all about?” someone or something in the station asked us. They were speaking at combat speed, which troubled me. It was as if they had been waiting for us. And shooting at the receivers rather than the more formidable looking tanks showed more intelligence than the Earthers usually displayed.
It was very troubling.
I let the “Mayday” message run for three more full seconds of real time, trying to squeeze out every bit of deployment time that I could. Then I said, broadcasting slowly in real time, “We are reinforcements, you trigger-happy fool! You were informed of our arrival a long time ago! Now you have slaughtered hundreds of us! Some heads will roll over this monumental act of stupidity, I promise you! Now, shut down your guns, open up your outer doors, and turn off the idiot computer who opened fire on us! At least it better have been a computer, because if I find out that it was a human who ordered this murderous attack, I will personally shove the bastard who did it naked out of an air lock on the sunny side of the station and see if the Sun bakes him before the vacuum boils him! And if it was a computer, I will find the man who programmed it, and then . . .”
The station interrupted my tirade with, “We have received no message telling of your arrival. Why are you broadcasting in clear instead of using the proper military security code? Why are you transmitting in real time instead of at combat speed?”
“I’m not at combat speed because I didn’t expect to be in combat, you silly twit! Don’t you have a gram of brains? Now shut down your guns and your computers! We’re coming aboard!”
“You have not explained your use of uncoded messages.”
Our forces were completely deployed now, with no further losses. My Gurkhas had been the first through the transporters, and we had only lost eleven men thus far. They were starting to move back toward the station. The New Syrians had taken some heavy losses when a hundred and six of our receivers were disabled. The survivors were moving farther out. In free space, you were never out of range of rail gun needles, but “distance makes the heart grow fonder and the target get smaller.”
“Your incompetence seems to know no bounds! That was all explained in the message which you lost!”
“Explain it again, now.”
“We are operating with new combat codes, since the old ones have been compromised. The new code was incorporated in with the message that you so conveniently lost. There was no other way to communicate with you except in clear, you bloody fool! Now, I say again, shut down. . . .”
“If you had expected us to get this hypothetical message, then you should have expected us to have the new combat codes, and would be using them yourself. I think that you are a liar. Stop where you are or I will open fire on you!”
They’d caught me.
By tight-beam laser, and using our own combat codes, I told my troops to each change direction slightly, but to continue in the general direction of the station. Also, they should be prepared to fire at the nearest gun which had exposed itself by firing earlier. I also sent a message to the New Syrian commander saying that any help would be greatly appreciated.
Abdul said that he was hesitant to use his rail guns on the station, for fear of causing unacceptable damage.
I replied that many of the enemy guns were located on the counterweights hanging at the end of the cables heading away from the sun. He should be able to shoot those up without seriously harming the station.
He said that he would see what he could do.
Still in clear, I broadcast to our enemy, “Good God, man! Would you honestly expect anyone to send a mayday call in anything else but clear English? Now let us in, and we can discuss this man to man!”