“But the enemy will know more about the location of those cables than we will,” I said. “What’s more, they will be operating from fixed positions, most likely, which makes their job easier. It will be dangerous for our men to come in at a fast, shallow angle. We might be forced to come straight in against fixed installations, like a torpedo bomber during the Second World War. From a gunner’s point of view, someone coming straight at you is a stationary target, and easy pickings. Some of those old squadrons lost every single plane in their first real attack. This will not be a simple battle to plan.”
“The solar arrays are not their only unusual weapon,” Mirko said. “They have over fifteen thousand accelerators on that station. Most of them are used for sending kilogram-sized fuel shipments to the robot fleet of exploratory ships, but some of those things are capable of accelerating probe ships massing over a hundred thousand tons. All of them can send things out at very close to light speed. All they have to do is have it pointed at where we might be, and then when they want to fire, to not turn on the Hassan-Smith transporter the next time the object gets to the end of the accelerator.”
Conan said, “Our rail guns accelerate bits of metal weighing a tenth of a gram to a quarter of light speed. Of course, they do that quickly, and often.”
“True,” Mirko said. “It sometimes takes more than a year to get a new robot ship up to speed, so we might as well consider that each of their big accelerators is a single shot weapon. But they have sixteen times as many accelerators as we have tanks attacking them.”
Lloyd said, “Those accelerators are steerable, but slowly. Their tactic will be to have them up to speed, and pointed in some arbitrary direction. Then, when something looks like it will be in the right place at the right time, to fire. That means that our doctrine will have to be to not shoot back. Once they’ve fired, each accelerator won’t be able to get off another shot again, not before the battle is over, one way or another. And even it could, you wouldn’t still be in the right place for it to hurt you.”
“That will have to be our program,” I said. “It’s not going to be an easy doctrine to follow. But, the purpose of this exercise is to capture the damn place, not to destroy it.”
“Right,” Conan said. “Not to worry. We’ll have a whole division of tanks right behind us to do that for us.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!
I was sitting on top of the CCC, wearing a decorated drone that I’d brought along for no really good reason, except that maybe it reminded me of home. The KEF had provided humanoid drones for the men in the tanks, but not for my colonels and me, so I had simply provided them myself, except for Quincy and Zuzanna, who had brought along their own.
To hell with bureaucrats, anyway.
I hadn’t received any orders regarding our personal tanks, either, so we’d brought them along as well, empty. You never can tell when a few extra Mark XIX tanks might come in handy.
I was in the middle of the starry void, surrounded by a cluster of almost twelve thousand tanks, trucks, and transporters. Their colored, blinking pilot lights showed them drifting slowly, getting themselves oriented for transport.
It had taken me a while to get used to living inside a CCC. When I was linked up to it, in combat mode, I had a vast, computerized intelligence as part of my own mind. Computers are much better than people at some things, like data storage and retrieval, math, and simply counting things.
Unaugmented, when I looked at the stars about me, I saw a vast number of points of light, and my human mind could only call them “many.”
Linked up, I knew the exact number of them, neatly sorted as to magnitude and spectral type. I could look at any one of them, and tell you its name and/or number, its size, its age, and how far away it was. I knew which of those stars had inhabited planets, and what sort of people lived there. I knew their political, economic, and religious persuasions, and even a good deal of public information about each of their citizens.
When my unaided senses saw a tank floating by, I only knew it to be one of ours. Aided by the CCC, I knew that the left forward MagLev sensors needed repair, but that they wouldn’t affect its combat readiness for this mission. I knew that the observer was Jemadar Tanker First Class Gunta, that his tank’s name was Suki, and that he had a wife and three children back on Earth, and all of their names. I even knew how they’d been doing in school when last he’d seen them, and the name of his native village, where they lived.
In simulated combat, I knew at every instant what each of my men was doing, what their location was, and what difficulties they were having, be they mechanical, physical, or psychological. I knew the precise number of them who were ready to fight, and what their effectiveness would be.
When they were successful, I felt their joy.
And when they died, I felt their deaths. I knew because one man had already died, of an aneurysm that his tank couldn’t do anything about.
It gave me an incredible feeling of power, but it was not at all pleasant.
I looked about me.
Old Sol was the nearest star, but it was so far away that without Agnieshka or the professor to point it out, I wouldn’t have noticed it.
I felt lonely, and being without Kasia made things much worse. I couldn’t even send her a message. We finally had a military interstellar communication system. The CCC had just been equipped with a new miniature transceiver that could transmit microscopic memory cubes to anywhere in Human Space, but we were under a security blackout, and the professor wouldn’t let me or anyone else use it.
Being in a CCC gave me instantaneous communications with everyone in my battalion, with or without their knowing about it. Not that I would ever eavesdrop on anyone. But socially, well, the Gurkhas were good people and fine soldiers, but they weren’t Kashubians. There was a cultural barrier between us that was reinforced by my supposed rank, and we worked together on a very formal basis. Social contacts with them were difficult for all concerned.
My colonels were all old friends, of course, and during the attack on Baden-Baden Island, I’d gotten to know the eight men in my guard pretty well. “Personal Guard” had seemed a bit grandiose, so we had changed it to just the “Truck Guard.” But even with old friends and comrades, the barrier of rank was still there.
I’d always heard about the isolation of command, and now I was finding out that it was very real. These fine people were ready to go to their deaths, if need be, but I was the one who would have to order them there.
I had been expecting an invitation for a courtesy call on the general who was commanding the division of rail gun equipped tanks that was our backup on this mission. Our orders had been issued separately, and we each had our own job to do, but as the commander of the larger force, he was senior to me. There was also the fact that he was a real general while I was still a lowly tanker first.
But after more than a month went by in Dream World, I decided to hell with protocol. I felt that I really should get to know this guy, if we were going to fight the Earthworms efficiently. I sent him a voice-only message, identifying myself by name and the fact that I commanded the Gurkha Battalion, but not actually mentioning my rank.
“This is Abdul Nasser Hussein, commanding the Eighth New Syrian Armored Division,” he said, politely not mentioning his rank, either. “Mickolai, your request for an interview is denied.”
That knocked me back about four steps. I said, “May I ask why?”
“Certainly. My orders are to protect the station from a possible counterattack. But if I am unable to keep it from being retaken, I am to destroy it. I will follow those orders, whether you and your men are able to get out of there in time or not. Given the choice, I would rather not have to kill a friend. Therefore, I do not wish to befriend you. We shall meet later, if we both live through this fight. Good luck in the forthcoming battle. May God be with you. Out.”
Well, that gave the old adage of “Conquer or Die!” a whole new meaning. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect.