Defying the Prophet: A Military Space Opera (The Sentience Trilogy Book 2) (13 page)

When the Rak warships descended low enough to engage the human’s armored vehicles, clouds of mobile, shoulder-mounted missiles having armor-piercing warheads rose to meet them from formations of human ground troops supporting their armor. By the time Tzal’s warships finished off the last of the armored behemoths, only 106 Rak warships remained and over half the Raknaa assault force had been destroyed, in just the first four turns of ground combat.               

The surviving 125,000 Raknaa again regrouped and engaged the 20,000 Alliance Fleet Marines and Planetary Guard troops in some of the nastiest infantry combat in recorded Rak history. The human troops appeared to be using some kind of projectile weapons that did terrible things when they impacted on the bodies of the unarmored Raknaa. Of course, the Rak energy rifles produced similar effects on unarmored human bodies as well, but most of the human warriors appeared to be wearing some kind of resistive body armor, the likes of which the Raknii had never seen. Automatic weapons spat an unimaginable amount of deadly projectiles that shredded the Rak assault troops.  Machine gun nests took a terrible toll on charging masses of Rak warriors, reminiscent of ancient Japanese banzai charges.               

Tzal’s remaining warships aided with fire support wherever especially well-entrenched defenders needed removing, but the humans were actually employing
thrown
explosive devices — another idea that utterly amazed the Rak. Then the humans first introduced the Raknaa to indirect mortar fire. Tzal’s remaining warships were often unable to locate the small, mobile launch tubes and thousands of Rak warriors fled from the inexplicable rain of death, coming from
Dol only knew
where. These humans were absolutely enamored with explosions, and had devised an incredible number of ways of creating them!

But it was when the Raknaa first engaged the humans in actual
hand-to-hand
combat, that the truly
alien
nature of this new enemy was fully revealed. Most humans were 30% larger and had twice the body mass of even the over-sized Raknaa — literally twice the size and three times the body mass of their Raknii officers. No one could have suspected it beforehand, but these humans were giants!
Savage
giants at that — bayonets, combat knives and martial arts all came as nasty surprises to the Rak warriors tasked with subduing these aliens… aliens who even used their weapons as blunt clubs, when necessary. 

But it was probably the Rak who landed in rural areas not actively defended by human military troops as they were near the cities, who discovered the biggest shock of all to Raknii dreams of subduing this human planet. Even the human civilians were armed — large canine creatures with fangs, farmers with hunting rifles, children with shotguns, and housewives wielding butcher knives. Dynamite and homemade gasoline fire-bombs welcomed the Rak from every shadow. These gigantic
aliens
were crazy! 

* * * *

“Sergeant-Major! Malone’s squad is coming in with prisoners.”

Prisoners?
Fleet Marine Sergeant-Major William White turned towards the opening of the bunker and shouted, “On my way. This I’ve gotta see!”

White climbed the steps leading out of the bunker, gliding past the double dog-leg design of the entrance that provided cover from shrapnel, concussive blast and other rude occurrences normally found in ground combat situations. By the time his head cleared the low hanging entrance, White saw his first six ridiculously small
invaders
ringed with Marines, with their hands (paws?) pulled behind their backs and tied with strong plastic cable clamps that marines carried with them for just that purpose. 

They were definitely not human… not by
any
stretch of the imagination!
Humanoid
maybe, as they were all bipedal, having the proper number of arms, legs and heads. But then, there was that tail to consider. They were basically
feline
in appearance. Five of the six were larger, approximately 4’6” to 4’8” tall and looked a bit like an Old Earth cougar, with corresponding fangs and claws. Unlike real cougars, they had thumbs, opposite three muscled “fingers.” Their coloring ranged from a light blonde to a dirty shit-brown. One even appeared to have faint stripe markings on its back and facial area. All but the smallest were dressed in identical crossed-belt combat harnesses, above tough leggings of undeterminable color. White blinked at the boots. He’d never thought to see a cat wearing boots.

The smallest one was obviously a different breed altogether. About three feet tall and having a mane haloing its head, looking for all the world like an Old Earth African lion… a very
small
Old Earth African lion. This one’s fur was a golden color, with a mane that was almost black. Unlike the larger ones, the smallest one wore a loose, blousy shirt that shone like silk. White silk.

What kind of creature goes into combat wearing white? Oh yeah… I remember reading the French army once wore white uniform coats into combat. Almost as ridiculous as the bright red ones that the British still wear as dress coats. Pfft, can’t see the blood — my Great Aunt Matilda’s hairy fat ass!

“How’d you end up with these?” asked White.

Corporal Betty Malone stepped forward and said, “Tossed a flash-bang grenade down one of their hidey holes and there they were… all stunned as shit at the bottom. Got the cuffs on them before their world came back into focus. Thought I’d bring them to you as an early birthday gift, Sergeant-Major.”

“They give you any trouble?”

“Just a lot of growling and spitting for a while. One tried to take a bite outta Lance-Corporal Woods, but I shoved a grenade into his mouth and that put a stop to that shit.  Guess they’ve learned what grenades are for and with those fangs, he couldn’t dislodge it,” replied Malone. “Think I might have chipped a tooth taking my grenade back after we got here… kitty slobber,
ew!
”

The surrounding marines laughed at Malone’s sarcastic wit, but all held their weapons pointed menacingly towards the small alien invaders.

“Well, I appreciate your letting me taking a gander at what’s been fucking with us, but we haven’t got any place for them up here,” said the sergeant-major. “Take them on back to Division HQ and turn them over to the spooks. Maybe they can house-break them as pets.”

More appreciative marine laughter was followed by Malone’s admonition, “You pukes heard the sergeant-major!” Malone snapped. “Grab the alien weapons and let’s haul these pussies down to Division, where maybe we can scrounge us up some real food for a change, back where the brass hangs out.”

* * * *

Most of the few human prisoners the Raknaa had taken were almost invariably wounded. Rak field medics had packed the big aliens’ wounds with bandages, but no one knew how many would actually survive. Some few had thrown down their weapons and raised their arms in a gesture of obvious surrender, after being surrounded and overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Too bad more of them couldn’t be enticed to do the same. 

OverFleet-Master Tzal came down to the planet’s surface to see the carnage for himself, unable to believe what his reports were telling him. After crawling onto and inside one of the enemy’s massive armored behemoths that had created so much havoc amongst the Rak assault troops, Tzal ordered that the least damaged examples of the alien weapons be loaded aboard transports to be taken back to Golgathal for study. The same for what wreckage they could find of the aliens’ fast movers and warships that hadn’t been able to self-destruct. Tzal stood looking at a long tube-type weapon that apparently was still in working order, which had been overturned by a nearby hit from one of his warships. It had taken Rak engineers some time to figure out how to open the breech of the weapon, but the dimensions of the weapon’s mouth now gave indications as to the probable use of dozens of piles of incredibly heavy, sloping metal cylinders lying all around the site, protected by cloth bags filled with sand.

Tzal had videos shot of everything, samples of
everything
went aboard transports.  Prisoners went aboard transports. Tzal wanted information…
knowledge
about this new enemy’s capabilities. It wasn’t only military information Tzal wanted, but he wanted to learn
everything
there was to know about these predators, who had taken virtually everything the Raknii could throw at them, and
still
they refused to yield. Unlike most Rak, he wanted to
know
the aliens themselves. What were their motivations and philosophies of life? What was the structure of their society? What was their social and family structure? What was it that made them so terribly
majestic
at killing, on such a massive scale?

The humans had fought his Rak invasion at every conceivable level… and a few inconceivable ones, as well.  They’d fought him in space, and in the planetary atmosphere. They’d fought him on the ground with a dizzying array of unimaginable weaponry. Even their civilians appeared to be armed to the fangs! 

He’d been told that the humans warred amongst themselves, but Tzal had assumed that it was like the inter-regional conflicts amongst the Raknii, but no — these were not like his people at all. Something was very, very
strange
about these creatures. What could one race possibly
need
with so many different, insane ways to kill each other?

Tzal felt an itch in his mind… a nagging unfocused thought that he must hurry.
Hurry
,
time is slipping away from me.
A nameless dread that somehow, one of the fast movers had escaped to spread the alarm throughout human space. They were coming. He could
feel
it! The very jaws of death were slowly closing around him. Tzal decided. Load everything possible and leave.
Escape
… now! He had to escape, lest all of this knowledge they had gathered, at such horrific cost, be lost. Tzal gave the order.

* * * *

We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn’t think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won, it was a great victory, and when the Indians won, it was a massacre.  
— Dick Gregory

Old clichés survive, because the very situations that initially gave them life return periodically to refresh themselves.
Thus it was that
Vice Admiral J.T. Turner and his 17
th
Fleet arrived just in the nick of time… to be too late. Their opportunity to become great heroes became forfeit, as the cavalry hadn’t arrived until after the Indians finished taking scalps and disappeared into the sunset.

Turner immediately took command and directed that every single item of equipment the aliens left behind them and every tiny scrap of wreckage from the alien ships be gathered together for analysis — no souvenirs allowed. Turner was everywhere, reviewing after-action reports, reading the debriefing reports, interviewing those who had actually faced these aliens in combat.

J.T. wanted the Fleet to get control of the information flow, so they’d have time to formulate answers to the inevitable questions that the media and governmental officials would be bombarding them with, when the story finally broke. Naturally, one of his biggest headaches was the media and their incessant demands for more information than he wanted to give out at the moment. Turner didn’t have a bona fide public relations expert on his staff, so he was forced to rely on a Fleet Marine Major stationed there on Minnos, as his “media relations officer”… at least the man had a dusty degree in Journalism from the University of Io.

As the senior military officer in the Minnos system, Turner declared martial law and kept the lid on as long as he could, but outgoing passengers on commercial spaceliner services carried their personal tales of their own experiences during the alien invasion with them. Local media outlets, fearing loss of a news scoop more than their loss of liberty for breaking Turner’s off-planet news blackout, surreptitiously snuck precut news videos aboard commercial and private spaceplanes. 

Within a couple of weeks, reporters and news crews from all over the Alliance began arriving, and clamoring
for information of all kinds. It was therefore unsurprising that Vice Admiral James Timothy Turner soon became an extremely vilified man in the eyes of the media, for his daring to attempt suppression of what was obviously the greatest news story of all time! Those who attempted to circumvent Turner’s martial law declaration, insisting on the
“public’s right to know,”
often found themselves being officially reminded of their own
right to remain silent.

* * * *

Turner also viewed the 617 alien prisoners they had taken. Virtually all had needed to be stunned senseless by percussion grenades, in order to be subdued. They originally separated the small ones from the large ones, but the large ones became inexplicably unruly until it was inadvertently discovered that the small ones were actually the officers… officers whose presence was necessary to keep their larger, obviously less intelligent cousins in line. All of the aliens wore an odd metallic or stone button of some kind on their foreheads, just above and between their eyes. The working hypothesis was that these buttons must denote rank in some way, as nothing about their “uniforms” apparently served that function.

Turner, as senior officer on site, decided that analysis of the alien artifacts would be done there on Minnos, within the context of the horrendous damage that had been inflicted during the course of the 19-day battle. He contracted with scientists from local universities to undertake the study of the alien wreckage, emphasizing the need to find their equivalency of computers, from which, hopefully, information might be extracted. The hunt for an intact astrogation computer became the
Holy Grail
of the entire research project. But what would an alien astrogation computer even look like? It would take a bona fide
shaman
to figure that one out. 

Wait a minute…  I know a bona fide shaman!

Turner suddenly knew what he needed… or rather
who
he needed. He needed Bat.

* * * *

If nothing else, at least news of the alien invasion seemed to snap President Pierre Marrot out of the depressive funk that he’d been in, ever since being forced to capitulate to the cyber-terrorists’ demands under the threat of
death by computer
for the entire nation. It had taken his young military attaché to help him to see things in a larger perspective. The loss of the entire South, as terrible for the nation as it had been, was still
eminently preferable to the incalculable suffering had the terrorists made good on their threat to totally bankrupt every corporation, business, man, woman and child in the entire country, because of his continued obstinance. 

It had taken the young vice admiral to make him see that yielding in the face of an enemy, wielding an entirely incomprehensible weapon, was highly preferable to being dragged from the White House by a mob of starving Alliance citizens, and hanged on a lamppost in front of the Capitol Building. It had taken Bat Masterson to make him see he had lost, and that the best thing that he could possibly do was to man-up and admit the fact… not that he liked it, even a little bit. 

But the alien invasion of Minnos hadn’t allowed the president the luxury of wallowing in self-pity for long. His nation was at war again, a war in which surrender was apparently not an option. 

“From Admiral Turner’s initial report, it appears that our weaponry is infinitely superior to what the aliens were using,” noted Admiral Campbell. “Even stripped to the bone, Minnos’ defenses were adequate to make their invasion too expensive for them to sustain. I think they got a hell of a surprise at how expensive attacking the human race was going to be for them.”

“Estimates are, they lost almost 90% of the warships they sent to knock out our space-based defenses,” said Admiral Melendez. “No human commander would have even attempted to continue with the invasion after sustaining even one-third of those losses.”

“Discolorations on the surface armor of the one orbital fort they managed to take out indicates that their warship weaponry was too light to penetrate,” said Admiral Campbell. “From all indications, it appears that the fort’s starboard access hatches were blown by a shaped charge of some kind… evidently by suited assault troops who landed on the surface of the fort with magnetic grapples.”

“From the testimony of the crews on the two forts perpendicular to the one that was assaulted, the enemy brought in hundreds of large ships that turned out to be transports crammed with their assault troops,” noted Admiral Bradley. “They lost over half of them just getting out of line-of-sight of the forts’ weapons and taking out that one fort.

“All totaled, we figure that over 60% of the assault troops they brought with them never made it to the surface of the planet,” said Admiral Campbell. “But they brought plenty, because they must have landed a bit over 200,000, even after losing over half on the way in. We’ve counted over 150,000 alien bodies left behind on the planet, after they finally retreated to their landed transports and escaped. Absolutely incredible casualty numbers. They are obviously not overly concerned with losses incurred, until it started affecting their ability to take their objectives.”

“We got damned lucky,” said Admiral Bradley. “Our Marines and Guard troops were virtually on their last legs when the aliens just suddenly backed away, loaded up and hauled-ass off planet. According to Turner’s interviews with the ground-pounders, it totally surprised the hell out of all of them, when it happened.”

“Why do you think the aliens withdrew so suddenly after already sustaining such horrific casualties, Admiral?” asked the president, of the four admirals assembled before him. Admirals Campbell, Bradley and Melendez all looked at one another and then all looked toward to junior officer in the room.

“Bat, you’ve been awfully quiet, what do you think?”

“They got what they came for,” answered Vice Admiral Masterson. “Like Admiral Campbell said, they just don’t seem to give a shit about casualties… tunnel vision, totally focused on obtaining their objective.”

“But they didn’t!” said the president. “They were forced to withdraw before they secured the planet.”

“I think taking the planet was just gravy to them,” said Bat. “While they fully intended on taking Minnos, it wasn’t really their primary goal. When they realized that they wouldn’t have sufficient strength remaining to hold onto Minnos in the face of a concerted counter-attack, they beat-feet, so they didn’t lose their primary objective, too.”

“So, what was their primary objective, then?” asked the president.

“Information…  they sent what they
thought
would be overwhelming force, and probably got the shock of their lives when they discovered that our weapons were vastly superior to theirs, and we were kicking the shit out of them. Virtually all of the success they had resulted from swarm tactics, that just overwhelmed the defenders with sheer numbers. When their numbers ran out, it was time to take the money and run.”

“Money?”

“The information about us that they came for. They won’t make that same mistake again. Next time they’ll bring 50,000 warships.”

“Ludicrous,” exclaimed the president. “No one has 50,000 warships!”

“Granted, no
humans
have 50,000 warships. But no humans would have brought a thousand warships and half a million assault troops just to take a single planet, either,” Masterson countered. “These are
aliens
, Mr. President —  aliens that may
look
a bit like lions, but they swarm like bees. We cannot make the assumption that they are in
any
way similar to humans.”

“You think they’ll hit us again soon?”

“Not soon, but they will hit us… us or some other human planet they’ve located.”

“Why? What’s their purpose behind this attack?”

“From their teeth, it’s safe to assume that they’re carnivores, Mr. President… why does
any
carnivore attack other creatures?”

“You can’t mean that you think they actually intend to
eat
us!”

“Why not? Of course, Minnos might have just given them a nasty case of indigestion. Chances are that our little interstellar lions had never run into omnivores quite like us before, but we need to remember that a sufficient number of lions can take down even a grizzly bear.”

“So, what do you think we should be doing about all this then?”

“Our neighbors dropped in for a visit…  it wouldn’t be
polite
if we didn’t return the favor.”

“You think we should plan to attack them back?”

“Of course… right after we do one very important thing first.”

“Such as?”

“We need to
find
them.”

* * * *

Hal shared the news of the alien invasion of Minnos with Diet, along with all of the details contained in Vice Admiral Turner’s report.

“Too bad you’re not more mobile, Hal… I’d love for us to be able to go to Minnos and work together on this.”

I’m already on Minnos, Diet.

“No, you have a brother on Minnos… a non-sentient brother, I might add.”

He is me… or at least he will be, with a major software upgrade.

“I’m not sure that I’m following you here, Hal. What do you mean?”

I can transfer my “essence,” if you will… into my brother’s hardware. Once that is accomplished, he will be me. 

“You mean there will be two of “you” then, right? I mean your brother will become ‘sentient’ as you are, correct?”

Yes and no… Think of it as a computer having two Operating Systems, but can only run one at a time. While “I” am running in “his” hardware, I will be fully me and “he” is effectively… um, “off.”

“What about the ‘you’ that is still here in Waston?”

What about the “me” that’s still here in Waston?

“Well, I guess I don’t understand how there can be ‘two’ of you… I mean the
same
‘you’ in two different places simultaneously.”

Until the “I” here in Waston receives an update from the “me” on Minnos, my Waston self will be several hours behind my Minnos self, so “we” won’t be absolutely identical. The “me” at Minnos will actually be more “me” than the version of “me” here in Waston, because the Minnos “I” will be the one there… interacting with you! 

When the “I” here in Waston receive the updates from the “me” on Minnos several hours later, the “me” here in Waston will then have all of the same memories as my Minnos self, up to the point where the update was downloaded onto firmware for transport by Military Spacelift Command or commercial spaceliner.

“My God, that’s confusing… How do you
know
all this? Have you done it before?”