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There were two dead men lying where they had been dragged aside and neatly laid out with their heads
in almost the right positions. They had both been decapitated by an antipersonnel laser beam, which had
cauterized the wounds, except for the major arteries. There was less blood than was usual in our
simulations. They were the first real combat casualties I'd ever seen. Their faces looked surprisingly
peaceful. . . .
Judging from the half-eaten rations that were lying around, it looked like they had both been eating lunch
together when Quincy had appeared and killed them. That suggested poor discipline, since one of them
should have stayed on guard. At least, he would have in our army.
They were Orientals, Chinese perhaps, and were wearing what we would call work fatigues, not the far
more expensive Squid Skin. Their weapons were old style assault rifles, pistols, and rocket launchers, all
powered by chemical explosives. The pistols were still in their holsters, the rest were all stacked neatly
against the wall. The two soldiers had been killed before they had a chance to get to their weapons.
All this suggested that the Earth forces were either underfunded, or that they had second-rate troops
around doing low-grade tasks like guarding unused receivers.
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Agnieshka found a Kashubian comm line and tapped into it, trying to get some idea of what was
happening in the war.
I got into my humanoid drone and adjusted the Squid Skin to resemble the enemy uniform. I picked up
some of the enemy weapons and went down the corridor to stand guard. Until the whole squad arrived, I
didn't want any interruptions. Soon, Quincy was in his drone, standing guard in the other direction.
Breaking codes and ferreting out information from comm lines were tasks that the computers could do
better without our help.
It seemed like forever before Kasia arrived, followed by Conan, Maria, Zuzanna, and the ammunition
truck.
By then, Agnieshka and Marisa, Quincy's tank, could report the areas under enemy control, where the
fighting was going on, and the approximate numbers of the enemy. They had some forty thousand troops
on New Kashubia, and ninety percent of them were infantry. The rest were in light combat vehicles, for
the most part. They had only a few dozen main battle tanks on the planet.
Only twenty percent of their infantry were equipped for fighting in a vacuum. An odd choice, since New
Kashubia didn't have a natural atmosphere. All of the air in the tunnels had been imported. My best guess
was that troops on Earth were used mostly for police work, and peacekeeping operations, not real
combat.
But it is dangerous to underestimate your enemy. Even if it seems that they are acting stupid.
"But boss, the key fact that I've unearthed is that the receivers in New Kashubia that were assigned to
the original probe sent from Earth are still operating at maximum capacity. They are still sending in more
troops."
"Okay, people," I said. "We will do plan C."
Plan A had been "The war is over, our side has already won, let's go join the party!"
Plan B was "The war is over, our side lost, and we are about to become guerilla terrorists."
Plan C involved shooting at the local sun.
When the first probe got to this system, it found a neutron star that was putting out two searchlight
beams of deadly radiation. This star was spinning, end over end, once every twenty-two seconds, in a
plane that was at a high angle to the orbit of the only planet left in the system. The only place in the entire
system where the probe's computer could find to put itself in the "safe, stable orbit" that its programming
required was at right angles to the radiation beams, in a twenty-two-second orbit around the star.
This put it very close to the tiny star's surface.
Rail gun needles had plenty of speed to get to the probe and do damage, but at a range of over a
hundred million kilometers, we really doubted if we could hit it, even if we tried a few billion times, which
we intended to do.
We could, however, hit the sun right behind it. When you added the quarter light speed of a rail gun
needle to the neutron star's fierce gravitation, the impact was enough to kick up some considerable
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radiation on its own. Maybe enough radiation to fry the probe's robot brain.
Of course, nobody had ever tried this, but it looked like a pretty good bet: one truckload of ammunition
against the chance of disrupting the enemy's only supply line.
We headed out as soon as the truck arrived, with Quincy at point, Zuzanna as slack, and Conan as rear
guard. More troops would be following us, using the same receiver, but they would be assigned to the
general staff, and not acting independently like us. Not wanting to explain things that they didn't have a
need to know, I figured to be gone when they got here.
First, we had to get to the surface of the planet. The nearest route took us three thousand kilometers
west, and then two thousand kilometers up.
Those distances were as the crow flies, of course, and there weren't any crows on New Kashubia. The
way we had to go, it was much longer.
Only about two percent of the tunnels on New Kashubia are filled with air. It had only been five years
since the smuggling network had started and we could afford to import the lighter elements in any
quantity. We had eighty years of heavy mining behind us, and a lot of old tunnels. The plan was to fill
them all, eventually, but these things take time.
We got to an air lock, went through into the vacuum beyond, and left the door open behind us. Air was
screaming through, the wind was pushing at our backs, and the New Kashubians among us were all
having guilt trips about it. We had all been trained excessively about the importance of conserving air, and
of the dangers of being in a vacuum.
Every room of any size in the living areas in the planet had air locks on it, as well as emergency bottles of
air and vacuum gear, and every Kashubian had been well trained in their use.
My hope was that the Earth troops had not had the benefit of such training, and that if they didn't actually
die, their mobility would be restricted, and their fighting ability hampered. When you are at war, anything
that you can do to disturb the enemy is good.
Anyway, we weren't losing the air. It wasn't actually leaving the planet, or anything like that. It would
simply pool up in the lower levels, and we could recover it, eventually. Why the general staff hadn't
dumped the air in enemy-held areas was beyond me, but I had orders to act on my own.
Even in a vacuum, our speed was restricted to four hundred kilometers per hour in the copper layer
since it wasn't magnetic, and our tanks had to run on the magnetic bars that served as their treads. It was
only when we worked our way up to the iron layer that we could really stretch out and move.
The point tank magnetized the floor as it went along, the rest of us just cruised along, and the rearguard
degaussed the track, in the vague hope of confusing anybody who might be following us. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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