Koban 6: Conflict and Empire (25 page)

They passed multiple locations where ongoing mining operations were conducted, but they were all inactive today, their heavy equipment apparently parked out of sight. On reflection, Culpa had to admit that his eighty-six landers, located only a half cycle drive away from the only nearby city of consequence had obviously been noticed, and the people had fled. Another disadvantage this ridged terrain presented was that the twenty Strangler captains that accompanied his group hadn’t wanted to risk accidentally flying over a mobile defense battery, many of which were known to be concealed in valleys. The civilians here wouldn’t have yet experienced the pleasures of writhing in pain as their flesh felt like it was aflame, and their nerves put their muscles into uncontrollable spasms.

As was traditional for a Ground Force commander traveling with his Armored Force, Culpa was in the lead Pillager, one with the large smooth bore gun that made most Ragnar armored commanders feel powerful. It was in this capacity that he was the first to discover where some of the heavy mining equipment had been moved.

Rumbling around a bend in the roadway, following a course that orbital surveillance revealed was the most direct route to the spaceport, his driver brought the tank to a screaming scratching halt. This was followed by the instant reaction of the following units, which were electronically linked for the length of the long column.

There was a massive rock hauling truck blocking the right lane. In fact, there were dozens of them, bulldozers with massive wide front buckets, and two giant tracked boxy looking machines with a huge articulated arm and scoop, which had all been abandoned on the highway. They covered all of the paved surface and the narrow shoulders on each side, right up to the steep rock walls that had been cut to widen the highway.

His gunner traversed the big gun seeking a target, and Culpa pivoted the controls for the forward mounted lasers. However, there wasn’t anything threatening them. Except for the deliberate blockage of the road, of course. They could eventually blast their way through, and drag or push the smaller equipment out of their way. As large as the Ragnar mechanized armored units were, much of the mining equipment was larger, and it would seriously delay them if they had to clear the road.

“Sire,” his driver called up to him. “There’s a way around this blockage, at a turnoff we just passed.” His navigation computer had analyzed the surveillance photos, and highlighted an alternate route for them.

Culpa ducked down inside the turret to see the driver’s display screen. Noting which mechanized units were near the point where a secondary road branched off, he initiated a communications link with a senior officer, a Legion commander, who was closest to the junction, as indicated by an icon in his helmet’s visor display.

“Legion Commander Blas Forton, I have a scouting mission for you.”

The surprise was evident in Forton’s voice when he replied. “Ready Sire. What is my mission?” He didn’t know why the column had abruptly halted, other than it wasn’t because of an attack.

“The main road ahead of us has been blocked with massive mining equipment, at a narrow point in this valley. You will lead the twenty units in your Legion, and scout the roadway to your left. The orbital images show that route also will take us through the city, towards the spaceport. However, the images from a half cycle ago do not show if it has also been blocked with heavy mining equipment. I need you to be my eyes, and discover if the way is open. Leave now.”

“Yes, Sire.”

Next, Culpa requested a link with Acting Space Force Commander Grudfad, which wasn’t immediately granted by the Flagship’s AI, which had questions it had been directed to ask callers, to filter them by need and priority.

Grudfad, when he finally spoke, was quick to divert a request for support from orbit. “Group Commander, my AI reports the enemy has blocked your way, but has not attacked your Group 3. What do you need? My fleet is heavily engaged with a large enemy fleet, which made its exit a twentieth of a cycle ago. We are unable to provide bombardment support at this time, for you or the other three Ground forces.”

Culpa was startled by this revelation, since it hadn’t been shared, as far as he knew, with any of the ground forces. It didn’t change their mission in any way that he could see, but it suggested that their Space Force Commander wasn’t as in tune with Ground Forces as would have been Force Commander Thond. The latter never portrayed the elitism often projected by the Space Force elements towards Ground Forces.

Among the Thandol High Command, some thought too much money was spent on maintaining the Empire’s ground attack capability, that their three security forces deliberately wasted resources there, because they were denied larger space fleets. What angered the ground forces was the attitude that fleet power was the most important, and it found its way into the Ragnar fleet personnel as well. They looked down on their
foot-padding
brethren.

The Ground Force Ragoon foot-padders in turn had a derisive description for the Ragnools, who bore that generic name as members of the Space Force, and called them
vacuum-suckers
. The Ragoons also knew the average Ragnool wasn’t a physical match for the generally larger and fitter Ground Force members, who fought their opponents up close, where they could actually see them. It apparently was a species-wide cultural divide, because a similar attitude was found between the Finth and Thack Delos space and ground forces.

Because the Thandol so thoroughly dominated the other three space fleets in the Empire, they employed their designated security species exclusively for such surface actions. They did have their own ground forces, but they were predominately security escorts, honor guards, or for show in the socially prestigious Marching Army of the Emperor. The million marchers, when called upon, wore their splendid uniforms and carried oversized, lightweight replica weapons, on the occasions the Thandol wanted to display the thundering power that such heavy elephantine creatures, with four flat feet stomping in unison, could produce as they marched in wide ranks. A ceremonial march often happened as part of scheduled celebrations within Thandol society. Other, less frequent times, after a new species was annexed into the Empire, or if a less than subservient people needed a reminder after a revolt, of who was in charge.

In that respect, the Thandol had solved the apparently universal army-navy rivalry in each species, by not having a truly functional army to spark such rivalry. Some solutions were better than others were, and this one would eventually prove to be a poor one.

Today, Culpa was experiencing a bit of that sense of dismissal of his problems down here on the planet, but he hadn’t asked for fire support. All he wanted was current orbital observations. He could have dispatched his own drones, but he assumed what he needed was already available from the fleet.

“I appreciate your difficulty, Sire. I was seeking the most current orbital images of an alternate route that I’m having scouted. Sorry to have distracted you, Sire. My Ragoons can manage.”

“Very well, Commander.” And the link was cut. There was no doubt the flagship AI could have provided current surface images, since it received feeds from every combat ship in the fleet. However, Culpa wasn’t calling the AI again. He ordered drones aloft from designated recon units.

The Legion Commander delivered an early favorable report. “Sire, this secondary road isn’t as sturdy as the main road, or as wide, but we’re easily able to maintain a double column at a fast pace. There are numerous old looking and abandoned personal vehicles along the right side of the road, but they do not impede our progress. It appears the fleeing civilians knew we were advancing rapidly, and the evacuation route was perhaps too clogged to escape quickly enough in older battered vehicles.

“From ropes and ladders I see along the side of the steep ridge on our left, they climbed to the top to avoid becoming road kill if we drove over their flimsy transports.”

Culpa was pleased. “Excellent. The front third of the column will turn back and follow your trail, and the remainder of the column will then follow me. Legion Commander, you will remain in the lead until we reach the wider valley.”

The four-lane highway, where the Group Commander was about to reverse course, easily had room to turn around the thirty-five-foot length of his main battle tank Pillager hull, even with the additional five feet of his big smooth bore cannon pointed forward. He ordered all of the units of his front third of the column to reverse and turn onto the secondary road now, ahead of him, which would leave him about one third of the length of the full column behind Legion Commander Forton. Not the position of glory he’d maintained up to now, but he’d take the lead again after they left the narrow confines of the secondary roadway. That route would lead to a wider central valley, where the most developed part of the city lay. The narrow, claustrophobic valley they now followed was about double the length of the three hundred thirty-six units still with the main column, which stretched nearly two miles in length.

Culpa, when he entered the narrow cut to the adjacent valley, had feeds by then from several drones, to show him the way was open all the way to the end. The abandoned vehicles were an anomaly to him. He’d have expected them to leave them on the roadway to try to slow his advance again. Besides, if his Pillagers could drive two abreast here, then so could have a good portion of the mining equipment. Blocking both routes would have required him to clear one route or the other, guaranteeing a longer delay.

The abandoned personal transports were all parked to the right hand side of the road, close to a rock face on a narrow gravel shoulder. Considering they were fleeing towards the same wide valley that he was trying to reach, and they preferentially drove on the right side of the highways on this planet, parking on that side seemed logical. Although, they were more frequently clustered as he traveled along the middle part of the valley.

The farthest drone showed some moving vehicles were still exiting the far end of the valley at high speed, wisely fleeing his advance. As his tank rumbled by the parked cars, he saw the ladders, and what appeared to be dangling ropes on the opposite side rock face, and realized they must have been desperate to escape this confined valley. Yet, had they been more patient, obviously the road congestion eventually had cleared. It suggested panic to him.

He sent a drone over the top of the ridge to his left, looking for where those humans, now on foot, could have gone. There was a narrow single lane paved trail at the top, but there were only some abandoned trucks and piles of small mining equipment left all along the top. He flew one drone close, and saw that these were a mix of mechanical and laser drills. Not a surprise, considering this was a region of heavy mining, with signs of vertical groves on the ridge walls as evidence of how the valley walls had been widened, to accommodate the roads they built. Perhaps they had been working here on widening the road when the invasion began. However, he didn’t see where the people had gone.

His curiosity about the presumed ropes was deflected when he was called by Legion Commander Forton. “Sire, I have paused, because there is a tall wooden barrier placed in the road ahead of me. It’s more a sign of some sort than a wall, and seems flimsy. It has what appears to be a form of Thandol script painted on it, which I’ve seen before. The type of script they use to represent sounds they can make with their trunks, but it’s not the words of their normal writing, most of which I can read of course.”

“Does it block our progress? If it’s wood, it should be easy to blast out of the way.”

“Yes, Sire, but it is apparently a message from the humans, using Thandol phonetic script. The lead elements of your column following my Legion hasn’t caught up to us yet, so I halted to inquire if you understand this phonetic script. We can’t pronounce the sounds ourselves, of course, because that requires two trunks, but if it were read aloud by a Thandol, we would understand the basic words in Thandol. I think this is a message intended for us, and they don’t know the written words of our language.”

Culpa’s curiosity was now focused. “Of course I can't read that script either, but like you, I recognize it if seen. It’s usually used for new subservient species that can’t understand spoken Thandol, and an AI that knows the sounds intended by the script can sound out the notes of the spoken words in that species own language.”

“Yes, Sire. I think humans have left us a message, using that Thandol script. Do you think we need to hear it spoken?”

“Send me the image. I’ll ask the flagship AI to analyze the script and speak the words to us, in whatever language it is. If the phonics replicates a human language we won’t understand anyway, but if it’s spoken in Thandol, or even Ragnar, it may be comprehensible. Not that they could possibly know our own language.”

The transliteration to audio didn’t take long, and Culpa had it broadcast from his suit’s external speakers for the nearby tank crews to hear, and sent it to Forton, who did the same. The language they heard, despite the Group 3 commander’s expectation, was surprisingly understandable, sounding as if it were spoken by a Thandol. Except, that it was entirely in the Ragnar tongue, at least until three incomprehensible words at the end, which were presumably in the human language. Just prior to the final three human words, was a threatening phrase in Ragnar, which was abundantly clear.

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