The Great Destroyer (19 page)

Vladimir and his robots had slowed the Ushah advance with their sudden halt and assumption of defensive positions, but the Ushah commander still smelled victory, still saw the shipping containers tantalizingly close.  He did not order his soldiers to take cover, but instead gave a primal screech signifying an all-out attack.

Vladimir’s contingent cut down ten of the attackers, but the Ushah poured deadly fire back at them, disabling two more Charlies.

Then Ushah started falling at the rear of the assault as Art’s force crashed in from behind.  The roar of Gram rifles in their rear caused the Ushah to fall to the ground, trying to get their bearings.

George had no intention of letting them do that.

When the Ushah had begun to return fire at Art in earnest, George unleashed the last part of his surprise.  Standing up to his full seven feet, George raised a tube with a bulbous projectile at one end.  Bringing the rocket launcher up smoothly, George sighted on the space between Vladimir and Art’s forces and fired.

George’s rocket had not yet reached its target when the nine other Charlies with him fired their own rockets.  With a loud
whoosh
, a dozen smoke trails leaped from the woods around George. 

The rockets detonated among the Ushah, wrecking the trees behind which they had taken cover and further disorienting the soldiers who just seconds earlier had been on the verge of victory.  George estimated seven dead Ushah, six wounded from the barrage.

Now the Ushah, cut down to about thirty-five soldiers, were in an impossible tactical situation.  Their avenue of retreat was cut off by Art’s force; they could not advance because Vladimir’s robots were in a firm defensive position; and they could not maneuver to the west, where George and his comrades were pouring fire into their flanks. 

Beset on all sides, the Ushah force had nothing to do but raise their weapons and fire defiantly at the enemies crushing them from all sides.  George remembered that the Roman legions at Cannae had been hemmed in so tightly by the encircling Carthaginians that they couldn’t even wield their swords. 

The Ushah were not quite that constrained, but their doom was no less certain.  George wondered how Hannibal would have felt to see his double-envelopment tactic used by robots to defeat aliens.  He liked to think the Carthaginian would have felt pride that three-thousand years had not dimmed the brilliance of his achievement.

It was all over in another three minutes.  Art pressed in from the rear, relentlessly driving the Ushah from cover so that Vladimir and George’s Charlies could cut them down with ease.

The Ushah commander stood to rally his soldiers, trying to get them to charge back at Art’s force and break free, but he was cut down by three bullets and did not rise again.

That must have precipitated what came next.

An Ushah tossed his weapon away from the cover he had taken and screeched out in his native tongue, “Do not shoot!  Do not shoot!”

The Charlies, able to understand the shouts because of the work done by human linguists to document the Ushah tongue, immediately translated the cries and realized that the soldier was trying to surrender. 

Though they had no programming to account for such an event, the Charlies understood that taking an Ushah alive was potentially useful and avoided firing on him.  For their part, the Ushah quickly realized that they only way to survive the day was to surrender. 

Only seven Ushah out of sixty were left alive at that point, two of them grievously wounded.  Art shot one of the surrendering Ushah before George could order all Charlies in the area to cease fire, leaving six Ushah who had thrown their weapons far away and put their hands up.  George wondered if the Ushah had evolved that gesture for surrender on their own in another example of convergent evolution or if they had learned it from watching human television.

A sudden quiet pervaded the battlefield.  At a cost of seven Charlie IVs, thirty of the robots had utterly vanquished double their number and taken six valuable prisoners, the first Ushah in human captivity since Oslahef, the linguist captured by Charlie II.

The Charlies assembled understood to varying degrees what the victory meant.  In a literal sense, they noted the fact that the victory had come without human control over their actions.

No one knew quite what to say.  Then Joan struck up a cheer, surprising all the other Charlies by projecting the words through her external speakers rather than in an electronic message, as if she wanted the Ushah to hear it.  The other Charlies all joined in, unanimously shouting.

“George!  George!  George!” 

The Charlie IV felt no embarrassment at the praise, only a faint sense of impropriety.  His strategy had carried the day, but not alone.  Vladimir’s force in particular had lost over half its number, Charlies who had been forcibly separated from the only existence they would ever know. 

George said aloud, “All honor to the soldiers of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who paid the ultimate price.”

That quieted the other Charlies, but several sent messages of affirmation.

Then, Art spoke via electronic message to all Charlies present.  “We have won a terrific victory.  My compliments, George.  We should take advantage of this success and move on to Colony 4.  Their security complement will be severely weakened, and we can at the very least extract intelligence information from the buildings inside before the Ushah can rally any sort of defensive force.”

A number of the Charlies agreed, none more vehemently than Simon and Joan, two of Art’s staunchest allies.

George considered the idea.  There was conflicting advice from the classical military theoreticians on the value of pursuing a beaten foe.  Sun Tzu advised that a beaten enemy should be given a way to escape because a cornered enemy could be dangerous, even in defeat.  However, seizing the initiative in the aftermath of a great victory was also a strategy well-recognized in military history. 

He forced himself to evaluate the specifics of the case before him. 
What was to be gained from the risk?
 

They might defeat whatever defenses remained at Colony 4, at least temporarily, and could then extract whatever they wished from the buildings.  The defeat would be a grave psychological blow to the Ushah, a further escalation from what had so recently been small skirmishes. 

What could be lost from that course of action?
 

The Ushah might repulse his attack, destroying some Charlies in the process.  Such loses would be conventional, however, and George had every confidence that the Charlies could retreat back faster than the Ushah could advance.  It was extremely unlikely that the attacking force would be annihilated wholesale. 

It was a good gamble, George decided.  However, a deep part of his processing subroutines noted that he was going beyond the battle strategy that he had agreed to follow with Yazov.  The thought nagged at him, but he nevertheless messaged Art and the other Charlies, “I agree that we should pursue the Ushah, but I must seek Yazov’s approval for that course of action.”

With that, George radioed to Houston.  Yazov had remained silent throughout the assault, which George had interpreted as a vote of confidence in his abilities.  “Mr. Yazov, have you been following our messages?”

“Yes, George,” the reply came immediately.  “I need to seek permission of the Terran Alliance for taking offensive action against the Ushah.  I will try to get an emergency hearing from First Representative Flower.  Stand by.”

Art walked over to George and said aloud, so Yazov would not be able to follow the conversation, “You know what the Terran Alliance will say.”

George took a moment to consider.  “They tend to be more cautious than Viktor Yazov,” he observed simply.

“Yes, they do,” Art said with what would have sounded like strained patience had a human said it.  “They are afraid of war despite the fact that no humans are at risk on the battlefield.  They do not care at all that we have lost seven of our friends.  To them, we are valuable, but ultimately disposable, tools.”

“What is the purpose of your statements?” George asked.  He was genuinely puzzled.  He had never held a conversation like this before and had no way of knowing what Art was driving at.

“They are going to tell us to stand down because they cannot think rationally about this war,” Art said.  “They are paralyzed with fear of the Ushah because they have lost all ability to fight and they know the Ushah have not.  They do not understand that a strong attack right now would help the overall war effort and ultimately make them safer because they are irrational about violence.”

The accusations made sense, George knew.  But there was something unsettling about this conversation.  “Why speculate about the Terran Alliance response?  We will see soon enough what they decide.  In the meantime, we must bind the prisoners.  You and your soldiers will see to it.”

Art moved off, and the act of ordering Art back to work made George feel better, though he could not guess why.

* * *

Five minutes passed, and George had made up his mind to call Yazov if he didn’t hear anything back in the next thirty seconds when Yazov’s voice transmitted to the remote corner of southeast Africa from Houston, Texas.

“Stand down,” Yazov said plainly.  “Secure the perimeter and check the enemy dead for intelligence.  Vladimir, you and your team will bring the captured back to Monapo after nightfall and turn them over to the Arcani commander there.”

George was surprised by the order despite Art’s prediction. 
Couldn’t the Terran Alliance see the plain military facts in front of them? 
“Mr. Yazov, did you tell First Representative Flower and Safety Minister Redfeather the full situation here?”  George didn’t particularly understand the idea of a patronizing question.

“Yes,” Yazov replied testily, “I told them that we had an open shot at Colony 4.  They did not think it wise to proceed.”

“Why not?” George asked.

“That’s none of your goddamn concern,” Yazov exploded.  “Just lock down the area and make sure no Ushah come looking for their dead friends.”

That response made no sense to George.  He could recognize the anger and frustration in Yazov’s voice, but it was very much out of character for the taciturn Russian commander.

It didn’t take much consideration to conclude that Yazov must be frustrated by the Terran Alliance.  He wouldn’t be angry at the Charlies, not after they had just won such a crushing victory.  Whatever Flower and Redfeather had told him, it must have upset him greatly.

George detected Art approaching him and turned to face his comrade.  “It is as I said,” Art said simply aloud.  “The Terran Alliance has once again proven that it is capable of throwing away whatever victory we place before it.”

George didn’t know what to say to Art, so he said nothing. 

After a moment, he transmitted, “Vladimir, have your team round up the prisoners.  You and your force will deliver them to the Arcani later this evening.  For now, we need to establish a perimeter in case the Ushah governor in Colony 4 panics and decides to send a relief force to see what happened to her soldiers.”

Once Vladimir’s soldiers had bound the Ushah and sat them down outside the shipping containers, the Charlies returned to the field, looking out for any sign of follow-on forces from Colony 4.  After an hour, George concluded that there would be no such attack.

* * *

It was late afternoon when the Charlies had assembled the Ushah prisoners for the march back to Monapo.  George’s charge was running down, and he decided to get his battery pack replaced.  As he waited for another Charlie to assist him in getting the new pack mounted, he observed the Ushah prisoners.

The Ushah were being kept in the sun next to the shipping containers of Base Delta, where the Charlies could keep an eye on them relatively easily and where the concentration of Charlies was highest in case the Ushah tried to break free.  No one had much experience keeping Ushah prisoner, and George would not have bet his life, such as it was, on the ability of the Charlies to keep an Ushah soldier’s hands tied.