The Great Destroyer (18 page)

“So what did you find in those two hours?” Jackson asked, trying not to sound too excited.

“Not much,” Peskov said, looking at his fingernails in a theatrical display of nonchalance.  “Just their social structure, how they’re increasing their population so rapidly, and a couple dozen other things vitally necessary to know if humans are going to survive.”

Takagawa and Jackson both tried to ask questions first, and Jackson deferred to his wife.  He wasn’t sure she noticed.  “What’s behind the population increase?”

Peskov’s smile spread from ear to ear, showing off stained teeth.  “Let’s start with something more basic.  Want to know how long they were on that big-ass ship of theirs?”

He waited patiently, and finally Emma said, “Well?”

“15,355 years.”

“Mother of God,” Yazov said quietly.

Peskov chortled.  “Older than that, if you’re talking about Jesus.  We had to piece that one together.  We figured out how long a year was on the Ushah home planet—-about 40 percent longer than ours—then calculate backwards by the first entry on their mothership’s log.”

“But why—” Takagawa began to ask, and was cut off by Peskov.

“Why did they send the ship’s log by electronic message to this colony?  You all really ought to read that first entry.  It’s more like the Bible than a ship’s log.  It talks about the Great Destroyer that overran the Ushah home world and its colonies in its solar system.”

Peskov continued, “The Enshath at the time ordered that a massive vessel be prepared to house embryos and frozen specimens of each sub-type of Ushah: soldiers, scientists, technicians, artists, and leaders.  They would be sent off on an automated ship to visit solar systems with potentially inhabitable planets.  When a planet was found that fit the parameters, a few hundred embryos would be developed and brought to term by machines.” 

“How could that first generation figure out what was happening?” Jackson asked, trying to process the story.

Peskov answered matter of factly, “Well, they put some Ushah in hibernation, and planned to have them wake up when it was time to start teaching the new generation.  The voyage evidently lasted far longer than they had planned for, though.  At some point in the thousands of years, the teachers died.  That was a contingency the Ushah had planned for, however.  They had a backup plan.”

Takagawa said, “The backup plan?”

“How do our children learn?” Peskov asked rhetorically.  “Interactive videos, of course.  The Ushah developed a learning curriculum that could be taught with simple videos and very basic machines.  That first generation was developed about four years ago.  They were given growth hormones in utero to ensure that they would develop quickly enough to be ready for a first contact with whatever species inhabited their new home planet.” 

Takagawa was the first one to process the meaning of this point.  “They’ve been cooking up more embryos.  They could have millions on that ship.”

“Quite right,” Peskov said.  “But we don’t know how many they actually have.  The only reason we know this much was because the first entry in the logbook appears to be their fundamental text.  It directs them to continue their civilization wherever they ultimately go.  The message they send around to every colony is a scan of the original logbook, which appears to have been signed by the last Enshath of their home planet, Shalatha the Thirty-First.”

Jackson shook his head.  “They’re so much like us.  I could see us doing something like this in similar circumstances.”

“What was the Great Destroyer?” Yazov asked suddenly.

Eyes turned to Peskov, who shrugged.  “We don’t know.  The first entry just calls it the Great Destroyer.”

Jackson realized the significance of the question.  “Could it be something biological, something they’re contaminating our planet with?”

Peskov was about to answer, but Takagawa interjected, “Probably not.  Why bring something to contaminate their new planet?”

They were quiet for a moment.  Then, Jackson asked, “What else did you find in their communications?”

“There wasn’t actually a huge amount of communication between Colony 4 and the central administration in Madagascar,” Peskov said.  “The colonies seem to enjoy a semi-autonomous status.  Colony 4 has been reporting back on major developments, like combat deaths in encounters with the Charlies.  The Sanushahan—the governor of the colony—sent soldiers to Colony 2 after one of the encounters with a team of Charlies left thirty Ushah soldiers dead last year.”

“We knew about the reinforcements,” Jackson said.  “The satellites picked up on it right away.  Anything else from communications with the Enshath?”

“Other than the first logbook entry of the mothership, there wasn’t a lot of fascinating stuff between Colony 4 and the Enshath.  But the individual Ushah at Colony 4 send all sorts of interesting things back to Madagascar on the main communications line.  We’re still translating and analyzing that stuff; it’ll probably take weeks to figure it all out.  But from what we’ve read so far, we’ve learned a lot about Ushah society.”

“First,” Peskov held up a finger, “their castes are rigidly separated.  Soldiers never become leaders; scientists never become soldiers; you get the idea.  Within the castes, though, they have an explicit meritocracy.  The offspring of an Ushah soldier of officer rank are not guaranteed officer status, and the children don’t even bother asking for favors from their parents in their electronic messages home.  If you don’t earn that promotion, you don’t get it.” 

Peskov snapped his fingers theatrically.  “Oh, that reminds me.  Second big point: the Ushah reproduce with two parents, but they can engage in extensive genetic modifications to better fit into sub-castes.  The diplomats, for example, are a sub-specialty of leaders with heightened empathy.  The linguists are scientists with tweaks to their hearing and certain pattern recognition parts of the brain.  While the Ushah biologically can reproduce between castes, it is punishable by death.  Can’t go polluting the bloodlines.”

“Third: they’re polyamorous, and don’t mate for life.  Children are raised in groups by the caste they’re born into.”

Takagawa observed, “That’s a big divergence from human evolution.  Stable parenting is crucial for the development of intelligence because it takes a longer infancy to develop a larger brain.”

“If their castes are cohesive, that might be stable enough,” Jackson thought aloud.  He noticed Peskov was impatient to go on, so he motioned for the Russian hacker to continue.

“Last big thing,” Peskov said, “They joke around.  A lot.  They appear to be more social than we are, and it appears that part of maintaining bonds is sending back constant humorous updates.”

Jackson asked, “How do you know the updates are supposed to be humorous?”

“They answer the messages with an onomatopoetic series of letters that sound like Oslahef would when she laughed.”

“So what kind of jokes do the Ushah make?” Takagawa wanted to know.

Peskov shrugged.  “It’s hard for us to understand the cultural references, so the humor goes above our head.  But we think that the humor is a lot like ours—another example of convergent evolution.  Here’s one joke sent from a soldier based at Colony 4 that we could understand after we translated their terms to ours.”

He read from a printout.  “‘I saw a diplomat doing useful work the other day.  I guess there’s no end to the weird stuff on this planet...”

“They mock the other castes?” Takagawa asked.

“It’s probably socially healthier than unquestioning obedience and respect,” Jackson said.

“Vladimir, move your line ten meters further up the hill,” George ordered through electronic message.

“Acknowledged,” Vladimir replied, “but then we will be in the open, without cover.”

George answered simply, “That is what I want.”  George didn’t need to worry about whether Vladimir would comply.  Charlie IVs were not known for their inability to follow orders.

He experienced a moment of doubt about Vladimir, about his ability to adhere to the plan.  In a human, the emotion might be called frustration, but in a Charlie, it manifested in considering the uncertainty of the situation. 

This battle would be a departure from normal practice in several ways.  It was the first time a Charlie would have full operational command over all Charlie forces.  For the first time, the Ushah would overrun a Charlie operational base.  And, as Vladimir had pointed out, it was the first time the Charlies would be deliberately left out as bait.

The firsts did not trouble George.  After his initial encounters with the Ushah, George had come to the conclusion that truly decisive victories required some form of trickery or superiority of organization so that the Charlies could bring far more firepower to bear at a decisive point in space or time.  Such victories required more than simple tactics or technical superiority in aim and reaction time—they required strategy.

A call from Yazov.  “George, you’re moving Vladimir’s force up.  Please explain?”

“We need to make the target as attractive as possible,” George replied with the infinite patience of a robot.  “The Ushah will not wait for their flanks to catch up for an assault if they think they can win the battle immediately.  They will be less likely to detect and respond to the real danger in time.”

Yazov grunted in admiration.  “Clever, George.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Experiencing pride in the compliment, George immediately reminded himself that vanity had destroyed past generals.  Napoleon Bonaparte, the namesake for one of the Charlies in Vladimir’s line, had become so certain of his genius that he refused to believe he could make the wrong decision.  That, of course, led to bad decisions.

George did not think highly of Napoleon Bonaparte’s later career, his arrogant and ill-advised plans at Borodino and Waterloo, though he had appreciated the French emperor’s tactics at Marengo, Austerlitz, and Friedland.  The precocious Charlie IV had requested further training on military strategy beyond simple squad-level tactics.  Professor Jackson arranged to have seminal texts on military history delivered to him electronically in the field.  Over hours of patrolling or repairs, George had attempted to distill lessons from battles in past centuries or millennia. 

The first opportunity to use his lessons had come eight months earlier, when the Ushah had made their first large effort to take out a Charlie base of operations.  That base, similar to Delta, was three miles north of Colony 1, the first Ushah colony on mainland Africa.

A particularly clever Ushah commander had waited for torrential rain, then thrown as many soldiers as he could at the Charlie base.  The Charlies, it turned out, had difficulty identifying targets in the rain, and a dozen Ushah had closed to within two hundred meters of the shipping containers at the base when they struck.

Four Charlies on patrol were destroyed immediately by rail-gun fire, and the Ushah quickly destroyed two of the three shipping containers.  George had been returning from a patrol to the north with a team of ten Charlies when the battle began.  The other seven Charlies in the area immediately assumed defensive positions to defend the base.  The Ushah commander then launched the second part of his assault, an attack from the east that destroyed four of the seven defending Charlies.

The other Charlies in George’s squad wanted to rush to assist the Charlies at the base, but George remembered the lesson he had derived from the Battle of Gaugamela.  Alexander the Great had defeated a flanking attack by the Persians with a decisive attack straight to the heart of the attacking enemy, routing the Persian king and shattering the morale of the attackers.

George had assumed command with little resistance from the other Charlies, who knew nothing of Alexander the Great but knew that George’s intuition could be trusted. 

Running behind a ridge, George’s Charlies emerged over a hill near the highest concentration of Ushah, where George assumed the Ushah commander would be.  The Charlies had broken the Ushah formation, and George had personally killed the Ushah commander with a .50 caliber shot to the head.  When the other prong of the Ushah attack realized their commander was dead, they hastily retreated from the base back to Colony 1.

After that, George had fought the Ushah in pre-planned large-scale ambushes and attacks often enough that he felt confident in his ability to predict how they’d react.  His preeminence in that field had been recognized by his fellow Charlies, and they had agreed that George should coordinate the Charlies in battle if the data connection to Viktor Yazov in Houston should fail.  George had dutifully relayed this development to Yazov, who had agreed that the idea made sense.

George considered the battle strategy to be used today.  Yazov had come up with the basic concept, but George had fought enough battles against the Ushah to recognize areas where the scheme could be improved. 

Where Yazov had originally envisioned the battle taking place right outside Colony 2, George knew that the Ushah would be much more headstrong if they thought they could accomplish the unprecedented destruction of a Charlie operating base.  He had told Yazov as much.

Yazov had seemed surprised, George remembered.  He had spent years training the Charlies, and this was the first time one of them had the temerity to suggest a change in strategy to him.  To Yazov’s credit, he had recognized that George was right, and had agreed to the change. 

The Ushah were coming because of Joan, George knew.  Joan’s successful mission to infiltrate the Ushah colony and plant electronic intelligence collection devices had unsettled the Ushah as no previous defeat had.  They were an intensely secretive people, and while they cared about the loss of soldiers to the Charlies, they were furious that their breeding chambers, hospitals, and children had been mere meters away from a rampaging robot.

Anger, George had learned through experience, was a weakness of biological beings such as the Ushah.  Having suffered through such embarrassment at the hands of the Charlies, the Ushah would not approach the battle rationally.  It would be best to stoke their anger, give them reason to think they would be able to exorcize their demons with a crushing victory.

Looking to the sky, George noted the burning midday sun. 
High humidity and hot—perfect weather for the Ushah.
  While George was personally indifferent to the climate, he knew that he should mildly prefer cooler weather, which would allow his onboard temperature control systems to work less strenuously.  That would make the Charlies quieter and extend their battery life.  No such luck. 

The daytime battle would be somewhat unusual.  The Ushah were expert night fighters, and often tried to take advantage of their excellent vision in the dark.  But they had finally learned that the Charlies could not be intimidated by the darkness like humans could be.  As a matter of fact, the Charlies couldn’t be intimidated by much of anything. 

“Here they come,” Yazov observed from Houston.  “Satellites show sixty to eighty Ushah inbound.”

“Formation?” George asked.

“Wedge,” Yazov answered.

George was not capable of smiling, but he felt a distinct pleasure as his internal processor assessed that the Ushah were playing right into his hand, and thus furthering his Deep Satisfaction that the war might swing in favor of the Charlies.  Of course, he didn’t think about it in those terms—he just felt pleasure.

There followed a moment of concern for his fellow Charlies, especially those in Vladimir’s force.  They were his comrades, and leaving them in a deliberately vulnerable position gave him a distinct sense of unease.  His subconscious processes noted that he was taking a course of action that imperiled other Charlies, and that was not generally a situation correlated with success on the battlefield.  His conscious higher processing registered that correlation as discomfort, and decided that it might be attenuated if he took some action to raise the probability that his friends would survive the battle.

“Vladimir, be ready to begin the retreat on my command,” George said unnecessarily.

Vladimir must have recognized by the obviously unnecessary reminder that George was suffering from some form of jitters.  “Of course, George.”

George also realized that Vladimir was reassuring him.  That only deepened his sense of respect for Vladimir.

“They’re two hundred yards out.  Be ready,” Yazov advised.

“Understood.”  George sent a message to Art.  “Are you in position?”

“Yes, George.  Everyone is ready.  Except the Ushah, of course.”

Not the best time for humor, George thought, but a few of the other Charlies radioed back messages of up to four “ha” sounds. 
They thought it was a pretty good one
, George estimated.  Perhaps they merely wanted a distraction from the tension of the coming battle. 
More human by the day
, a part of George’s mind thought.

Thunder sounded to the south.  The Ushah had opened fire on Vladimir’s squad, thinking they had found a fat patrol in the open. 
Which they had
, George thought.  The Ushah hadn’t had many chances to destroy ten Charlie IVs in a single, quick engagement. 

In short order, two Charlies were hit, one of whom, William, named for William the Conqueror, was destroyed when his battery back melted from an impact.

The prospect of victory would now be infecting the mind of the Ushah commander, who would want to make a name for him or herself, George thought. 
Direct as much firepower as possible on those Charlies
, the Ushah commander would be thinking.

“They’re charging forward,” Yazov reported. 

“Begin the retreat,” George ordered.  The Charlies ran back quickly.  Ordinarily, they would retreat only as far as necessary to find cover and then return fire, but now they bounded backwards and fired almost blindly in the direction of the Ushah, as if in a panic.

Ulysses, whom George knew was named after a famous Union general from the American Civil War, took a rail gun shot to his right leg and collapsed.  That in turn led Shakha, another Charlie IV from Vladimir’s contingent named for a Zulu commander, to stop dead in his tracks, run back five steps, haul the damaged robot on to his shoulder and continue the retreat.

Shakha had taken no more than five steps when a rail-gun projectile blew off his right arm.  The robot’s superb balancing subroutines not only kept him upright, but kept Robert on his shoulder.  Barely missing a step, Shakha continued backwards.

The retreat took Vladimir’s line back over the top of the ridge, into dense forest and toward Base Delta.  Once the Ushah crested the ridge, they could see the base and began pouring down toward it, a massive victory in sight.

George felt a sense of pain at the loss of several Charlies, the horrible danger he had put Vladimir’s line in.  But he knew that their destruction was leading the huge Ushah force into the center of the base, channeling them in exactly the way George had hoped for.

Wait
, George told himself.  Just a little longer.  Don’t spring the trap too early.  He was processing the live satellite feed, seeing the wave of Ushah come surging down the ridge and into the base.  Vladimir’s line ran just to the other side of the shipping containers, then found cover behind trees and stopped.  Their planned retreat ended, and now they assumed defensive positions, ready to be destroyed in place rather than yield another step.

“Art, it is time,” George said.

“Yes, George.  Too bad the Ushah don’t know what time it is.”

George registered the comment with great amusement.  “Hahahahaha.”

Movement stirred on the far side of the base from George, east of the onrushing Ushah who had been so intent on the pursuit of Vladimir and the wounded Charlies that they hadn’t protected their flanks.  Art and ten Charlies were looping behind the attacking enemy.