I began to feel elated as we drew closer. The Macros had made a mistake. Perhaps they’d had some complex plan, something that took a week to put together. But we’d moved faster than they’d thought possible and arrived with a valid force before they were ready for us. Now, they scrambled and worked desperately under their domes, but it was too late.
It was a nice fantasy, but like most fantasies, it didn’t survive its inevitable impact with reality. What they were really up to none of us had expected, not until the last minute.
When I saw the dome shut off, and the glimmering surface dimmed down and flickered out entirely, I knew this was it. The moment of truth. What had they been building under there?
Under the dome were three large ships. I knew them all well. The one in the center was the most interesting-it was a transport. I’d spent months in the belly of a ship very much like it. The other two were cruisers. Their arrowhead shape was unmistakable. As the trio lifted off, they released a swarm of missiles.
“Defensive fire!” I screamed into the com-link, flipping it to general channel override. “Forget the ships, I want every vehicle laser we have engaged. Take out those missiles! Infantry, advance and scatter!”
More orders poured over the various channels as my sub-commanders realized the danger. If these incoming birds were nuclear, just one of them would wipe out most if not all of my brave little army.
We’d foreseen this possibility, and had dispersed our forces somewhat. We weren’t tightly balled up. But a high-yield weapon would still kill the infantry and probably our tanks as well.
I counted the streaking missiles. They took bare seconds to shoot up to their cruising height, at which point they did a sharp turn and aimed downward. This move was a new one. I recalled anti-tank weapons of a similar design back on Earth. They were programmed to fire over obstacles by rising up, then turning sharply and coming down on a tank’s turret, which was generally its weakest point. The armor was usually thin up there. In the case of our own vehicles, our tanks did have hatches that were much thinner steel than the walls.
My tanks did rather poorly against this incoming threat. The turrets were no longer manually operated, as I’d set up brain-boxes and motors with sensory input systems to operate them. These performed much better than human gunners could hope to do. But the turrets themselves weren’t very fast to turn and acquire a target. The big turrets traversed, taking long seconds to lock-on and aim.
It was the destroyers that saved us from annihilation in the end. I’d had them float overhead, eighteen of them, all with three weapons each. They burned down most of the missiles. Only three got through, and each took out one of my tanks. Fortunately, the warheads were conventional explosives.
The fight was far from over, however. The next barrage of missiles was fewer in number, but more threatening. They flew directly at my destroyers. I knew what that meant. They’d decided to take out my air cover.
“To all Fleet units,” I shouted. “You are ordered to perform evasive action. Rise and scatter. If one missile gets through, I don’t want to lose an entire squadron.”
The destroyers fled. Like a flock of birds avoiding a charging dog, they put on bursts of power and flew in every direction. The missiles wavered, and then split apart, seeking individual targets. Caught in crossfire from all three guns on every destroyer, the missiles were burned down quickly. For a few seconds, I dared to think my ships would escape. But then, after we’d shot down most of them, one of them decided to explode in order to do whatever damage it could.
Macro missiles aren’t like their terrestrial counterparts. Each is a small ship, manned by an independent enemy machine. Looking back on the detonation, I figured one of the Macro pilots had calculated my ships were going to shoot them all down, and decided to go out in a blaze of glory. It should have been a win for us, but for one thing: the missile was carrying a thermonuclear warhead. The single explosion was powerful enough to destroy the rest of the missiles and two of my ships-not to mention a hell of a lot of Centaur ground troops.
— 22
The worst part of the aftermath was the Centaur dead. It was hard not to feel for them. I knew they were all volunteers. Like all their herd-mates, they were more than happy to lay down their lives for the cause of planetary liberation. But as I watched them fall like dominoes, burned and flattened by the power of the fireball, I didn’t feel like they’d made a useful sacrifice.
We would have lost all the ground troops, but for the fact the air burst occurred at about two miles up. Still, we lost over three thousand in five seconds. Another four thousand were mortally burned or irradiated. They would linger, but wouldn’t survive. The surviving Centaurs had each gotten their life-time dose of radiation and there were burns, but at least their goggles prevented blindness. Out of sixteen thousand, less than half were able to continue advancing.
Inside our tanks, my marines fared better. Only three of the big vehicles had been knocked out, those that had been directly below the blast. The one I shared with Captain Sloan swayed and rocked as if it was being kicked by giants, but survived intact. I studied the carnage around the tank and ground my teeth at the scene. I ordered what was left of my force to regroup and quickly press the attack against the dome.
The three enemy ships had escaped us entirely, covered by their barrage of missiles. The ships flew off and out of orbit quickly, heading for the nearest Macro-held planet. Miklos called me as they fled.
“Sir, request permission to pursue the enemy ships.”
“Denied,” I said.
“But sir-”
“Still denied. I need your ships for air cover. I don’t want to lose them, or any more of my troops.”
I could have ordered my ships to charge after the Macro vessels, but to do so would have left my ground force without air cover. I figured my little army had suffered enough. Miklos gave up and we proceeded to advance with grim determination. When my land army finally limped to the spot where the dome had been, the truth became clear: the Macros had pulled up stakes and fled the planet entirely. The factory was gone-even the Macro workers were gone. They’d obviously loaded it aboard the cylindrical transport ship and lifted off with it in the hold.
I understood now where the enemy production had been spent all this time. Instead of building ground forces, they’d built ships. Space-going vessels were more expensive in terms of time and resources to produce, but they’d saved their factory that way and dealt us a hard blow on their way out.
Captain Sloan clapped me on the back suddenly as I stared at the scopes and screens. I glared at him.
“It’s not so bad, sir,” he said.
We were both sitting inside our tank. At least we’d survived unharmed. It was more than I could say for most of the Centaurs I’d brought on this campaign.
“It’s worse than bad,” I said. “It was a charley-foxtrot, and you know it.”
He shook his head. “No, Colonel. I don’t accept that. Let’s consider the situation strategically. You’ve driven them off an entire world-the very world the Centaur civilization was born upon. They have got to be happy with you for that. They’d gladly have given a million lives to resecure their home planet.”