Trial by Fire - eARC (31 page)

“Yes.”

“It has a payload bay for chemical dispersion.”

“You are defoliating the area?”

“We are. With new dispersions every hour.”

“And First Delegate Hu’urs Khraam knows of this?”

“He approved it yesterday. Finally.”

Darzhee Kut looked cautiously toward Astor-Smath. Again, no sign of concern on the human’s face. “But why?”

Graagkhruud was the one who answered. “Why do you think? These jungles, particularly those close to our compounds and installations, are perfect lurking grounds for these human vermin.”

“But thermal imaging—”

“Cannot reliably distinguish insurgents from the normal workers, or from the dogs, or deer or other creatures which abound in those cursed bushes. We have but one choice: to strip away the forests.”

Astor-Smath finally spoke. “First Fist Graagkhruud is correct. This has been an observed principle of jungle warfare for centuries. Defoliation is a prudent step.”

Darzhee Kut could hardly believe his audio sensors. “Mr. Astor-Smath, it sounds as though you support the idea.”

“Support it? I recommended it, and actually commenced a more subtle campaign of it, weeks prior to your arrival here.”

“But your world’s biosphere—”

“—Has recovered from injuries far greater than this one. The defoliative agents being spread by your people are relatively safe, nonpersistent chemicals with which we have long experience.”

“
You
supplied the poisons?”

“We refer to them as ‘defoliative agents.’ And yes, we have provided them, free of charge. One of our affiliate megacorporations produces them in bulk.”

Graagkhruud’s head rose up. “In a month, maybe two, we will have cleared a radius of ten kilometers around all of our compounds that are surrounded by jungle, old plantations, or high brush. Then these insurgents will have to come into the open to fight us. And that will be the end of their rural insurgency. But until then—”

As if proving First Fist’s point, a rocket hissed up out of the sagging trees just beyond the ruined
kempang
and struck the ROV as it swooped low to begin its second spraying run. The wings cartwheeled away from either side of the smoky orange flash. The breathy boom of exploding fuel tanks rolled across the cleared ground, trembled and broke like a hoarse wave against the building beneath their feet.

By the time Darzhee Kut had reverse-scuttled so that his back was against the wall, and as far under the awning as he could go, the Hkh’Rkh were all involved in carefully choreographed chaos. Two of the troop had sprinted back down the ramp and took up covering positions at the entry to the building. The rest fanned out across the deck in the hunched crouch that was the Hkh’Rkh’s preferred combat movement posture. In that time, First Fist had patched into the compound command net and begun giving orders. “All bunkers to combat alert status. Response team one to the marshalling area. Ready reserves and response teams two and three to groupment point alpha. Off-duty reserves to this building in five minutes: combat gear only, no heavy weapons, double ammunition load, autoinjectors loaded with stimulant, ready to embark. Attack sleds one and two to the vertipad with current armament, weapons hot.” As he spoke, First Fist checked his weapon—a large bore dustmix rifle with an underslung grenade/rocket launcher—adjusted his targeting goggles, and inspected First Voice’s entourage of huscarles
cum
bodyguards.

Two of the Hkh’Rkh had unpacked a large weapon from canisters they had been carrying on their backs. They expertly snapped a light, simple tube into a breech-and-tripod combination. Two others unclipped large cassettes from their belts, handed them to the loader, who mounted them on either side of the breech. A fifth tossed a complex electronic sighting and guidance device. The gunner caught it, snapped it into place on top of the breech, slightly offset to the left. He checked that the aperture at the rear of the breech was aimed directly behind them into a open walkway. “Rocket launcher assembled and ready, First Fist.”

Darzhee Kut quivered.
Their disdain of us is wrong, but their opinion of themselves as warfighters is warranted.
Oddly, the Hkh’Rkh seemed more calm, more temperate and organized now, than at any other time he had seen them.
Perhaps a life lived in anticipation of war makes war the most comfortable state of being.

The troop-leader acknowledged a radio report, turned to Graagkhruud. “Response Team One is ready, First Fist.”

Graagkhruud turned to his superior. “First Voice?”

First Voice nodded. “Send them. On foot.”

“Foot, First Voice?”

“Foot. We have seen one rocket destroy one vehicle. More vehicles may bring more rockets.”

Astor-Smath drew his palmcom away from his mouth. “The ROV was hit because it was too low for us to cover with the PDF systems. Attack sleds at fifty meters altitude should be quite sa—”

“They go on foot. Hold the sleds in reserve. Send up two more ROVs.” First Voice pointed down at the clearing. “And let the response team’s Arat Kur associates send their scouting machines out in a broad forward arc.”

Following First Voice’s extended claw, Darzhee Kut saw—trailing behind the broad, armored loping backs of the Hkh’Rkh response team—two Arat Kur combat suits. Heavy, armor-segmented, and with enhanced, biofeedback-directed limbs, the hexapedal units advanced, using an insane, high speed serpentine. Around each of the suits buzzed or zipped almost a dozen ancillary vehicles, some no bigger than a pancake. A pair of wheeled units, each sporting quad rocket canisters, paralleled it. They were almost as big as the combat suit itself. As Response Team One passed the perimeter delineated by the outermost of the bunkers, the two new ROVs buzzed overhead, widely separated.

Darzhee heard the approaching missile before he saw it, mostly because it was not heading across his field of vision but was vectored straight at him—or rather, at the closest ROV. Launched at an almost perfectly horizontal angle from the western slope of Gunung Sawal, it flashed for the ROV in a ruler-straight line.

One of the PDF blisters spun quickly, made a noise like gravel being force-fed into a turbojet, and the missile came apart, the warhead detonating a moment later.

Astor-Smath turned, pleased. “As I said, the PDF systems—”

—suddenly came alive all at once, spinning and shooting as if they had gone collectively insane. From slopes farther north, on the opposite side of the mountain from the mass driver, a veritable torrent of white and gray plumes arced in towards the compound. Some discorporated into fluttering debris, others exploded, a few spun corkscrewing up or down into the jungle. The base’s targeting arrays swept in tiny arcs, accessing, locking, engaging, accessing the next.

Graagkhruud kept his earpiece close with a single cupped appendage and gave First Voice a running report. “Most are free rockets, some are unarmed, a few are self-guiding. Launch rate is twenty per second. We’ve just about—”

Darzhee saw one of the missiles veer away from the compound, seeming to falter. He wondered if it too had been clipped, but then—as the final and most dense wave of rockets had the arrays twitching spasmodically, the missile suddenly cut back and came straight at them. His intestine squirmed. “I see—”

“Incoming!”

“It’s inside the umbrella—!”

“Reacquire—”

Darzhee was sure he was dead as the rocket bore straight in upon them. There was a jarring report, falling debris, the smell of cordite—and he was aware that he, and everyone else on the veranda was still alive and unhurt, except for one of First Voice’s personal guards. The large Hkh’Rkh staggered back a step, raising a suddenly clumsy claw to his chest. He had been transfixed by a thin spine of metal, evidently a grid-arm from a sensor array. The Hkh’Rkh looked down at it somberly—and fell over, blood torrenting out his mouth and the exit wound in his back. He had almost completely exsanguinated by the time the first of the other huscarles had reached his twitching body.

The group of them started at Graagkhruud’s sharp command, “Leave him. He is finished. Guard and attend to your suzerain. This is not over.”

“Shall we not avenge Kra Rragkryzh?”

Graagkhruud stared at the body. “How? And be not overconfident in presuming to take vengeance so easily. We live because we were not the target.”

Darzhee Kut cycled his focal lenses. “Not the—?”

Astor-Smath nodded, pointed back over their heads. Darzhee spun, looked: the targeting array on top of the building was gone, the mast sheared off and blackened just beneath where the sweep armature had been. Astor-Smath was already giving orders to recalibrate the remaining two targeting arrays to create a smaller, but heavily overlapped umbrella of coverage for the center of the compound.

Graagkhruud growled. “You should release the bunker PDFs to autonomous fire and intercept, with priority for terminal defense.”

Astor-Smath nodded, passed that along.

Darzhee Kut looked around, felt unusually confused and more useless than any other time that he could recall. “What happened?” he asked.

Yaargraukh heard. “The humans were not trying to destroy the ROV or us. They probably didn’t even know we were here. They were after the main targeting arrays.”

“Why?”

“Because they want to learn how to overwhelm our systems, how to saturate them.”

Graagkhruud’s assent was a chesty rumble. “And they have learned one way to do so.”

“That rocket: there was one which curved in its flight—”

First Voice spoke. “I saw that, too. Very sophisticated. It tested the programming of the intercept computers.”

Astor-Smath cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

“Speak to the Arat Kur technicians. I predict they will tell you that their system automatically prioritizes missiles which head directly toward the high-value targets within the defense umbrella: hangars, warehouses, construction depots, barracks, command and control centers. But that missile approached, veered, appeared to have malfunctioned, moved past us—but then had powerful boosters which allowed it to angle back in just after the humans launched their final, largest salvo. While our targeting computers were busy acquiring, then dismissing, and then reprioritizing that apparently malfunctioning missile as a target, the computers became backlogged with the sudden wave of new targets. It was only a delay of one hundredth of a second, but that delay allowed the missile to slip inside the engagement perimeter. And it removed our array.”

“Which proves what?”

“Which proves, Speaker Kut,” said First Voice, turning toward him, crest rising, “that if the humans could have done that two more times, we would no longer have central arrays, only the smaller tactical intercept radars integral to each of the PDF units. Inferior targeting and computing capabilities, minimal coordination, unacceptable duplication of effort. In short, the insurgents would have started scoring many more hits.” He looked out at the slopes of Gunung Sawal. “Too many.”

Graagkhruud signaled Response Team One, which had gone prone at the start of the attack, to resume their advance. Darzhee Kut moved closer to Yaargraukh, who now leaned upon the handrail. “What do you think they will find?”

He wobbled his neck uncertainly. “Probably some abandoned missile racks. Judging from the fire-and-forget missiles the humans included in their barrage, several scorched trash cans, as well. They use them as disposable launch holders for the more sophisticated missiles that have integral or remote guidance packages. Sometimes our patrols find dead bodies; sometimes they find their own death. And before many more days have passed, they will encounter infiltrators from the more advanced nations. I’m sure they are here now. Probably organizing insurgency groups such as this one.”

Graagkhruud snorted. “So far, its seems otherwise. We do get occasional reports—and corpses—of Indonesian military personnel who are leading these insurgents. But there have only been three confirmed incidents of them being led by foreign cadre elements. One Chinese, one Australian, one American.”

Yaargraukh’s tongue snaked out and back again. “Be patient; there will be more.”

Darzhee Kut found it strange to be taking the side of Graagkhruud. “I am sure you are right in this, Advocate, but even if a few of them do run our blockade of this island, what can they do? Because we have remained within a limited number of cantonments and garrisons, we are all but impregnable. Our recon and combat drones, ROVs, and microsensors allow us to detect all threats long before they close with us. Our PDF systems intercept their missiles long before they reach us. And our orbital fire support immediately interdicts anyone foolish enough to fire such weapons at us.”

Yaargraukh turned to face Darzhee Kut. “That all sounds most reassuring. Certainly more reassuring than what we witnessed five minutes ago.”

Graagkhruud’s eyes swiveled sideways in their protuberant sockets at Yaargraukh. “We have sufficient control, Advocate.”

“I wonder,” commented Astor-Smath. “Either way, I intend to take no chances.” He spoke into his collarcom, “Recall the refuse sweepers.”

Graagkhruud rose up. “No. They will continue.”

“They might be killed,” Astor-Smath pointed out diffidently.

“Then their blood will be on the claws of their own kind.”

“Even so, First Fist, you cannot afford to have a massacre on your hands.”

“Astor-Smath speaks truth.” Darzhee Kut turned to First Voice. “Your wisdom is most wanted at this moment, First Voice of the First Family.”

The aged Hkh’Rkh stared after the loping backs of the receding response team. Without turning, he spoke. “Advocate?”

“I agree with Speaker Kut, First Voice. The humans would consider such an event to be a massacre of innocents.”

Graagkhruud growled. “It would be their own fault.” He glanced at Astor-Smath. “It would be an attack by humans, upon humans, who were themselves impressed by humans. Surely they will not blame us for their own—”

“With respect, I must interrupt,” Yaargraukh huffed, “for time is short and the First Voice has asked for my judgment in this. The humans would not be surprised at the killing of insurgents. They understand that armed resistance invites death. But impressed civilians forced to serve our troops by clearing these fields, then taken under fire and killed? The average human will consider these people martyrs, regardless of the details of who technically compelled their service. For every one you kill this way, ten will swear a blood oath of vengeance and take arms against us. Maybe more.”