She gestured a shrug, a graceful movement. "One might wonder that they felt the need to, but unfortunately they did."
"So," said Foster Peixoto, "what is the upshot of all this?"
"I'm getting to that, sir. But first I want to point out our advantages there. Our surveillance buoys above all-no pun intended. And our concealment screen seems to be quite effective against Wyzhnyny aerial observation. Thus we know a lot about what they're doing, and they know rather less about what we're doing. In fact, in our own domain, our troops have the forest to cover their movements, while Wyzhnyny aerial reconnaissance is harassed, hurried, and costly.
"The Wyzhnyny have penetrated our concealment area with what appear to have been two-man ground recon teams, that in the forest tend to be missed by our buoys. But that hasn't seriously compromised our concealment.
"Another long-term Wyzhnyny disadvantage is supplies. They've been depending on supplies they brought with them, of course, and seemingly had been using the supply ships for storage. Though we don't know how much they may have transferred into cave storage. The two supply ships we caught on or near the ground, we destroyed. Others escaped into warpspace."
"Are you suggesting we can starve them out?"
"I doubt it will come to that. We believe the Wyzhnyny will take desperate measures to avoid it."
"Suicide attacks?"
"In time, perhaps. But we expect the Wyzhnyny force in warpspace to make efforts to supply their people on the ground. Though the odds of their succeeding aren't good. Our offplanet flotilla is alert to possible emergences by Wyzhnyny ships. Also we have Dragons and a marine mother ship standing by in near-space, for critical onworld emergencies."
She stopped expectantly. For long seconds the prime minister gazed thoughtfully at her before speaking. "I take it, then, that we need feel no concern about events on New Jerusalem, at least for the time being."
"I wouldn't go that far. The Wyzhnyny remain a potent force there, but our successes so far are encouraging."
Now the president spoke. "Brigadier, you said nothing about Wyzhnyny prisoners."
"Marshal Kulikov brought that up with General Pak this morning, when they discussed Pak's report. Pak had hoped to capture some live Wyzhnyny prisoners in conjunction with other missions, but Wyzhnyny do not surrender. Threatened with capture, their wounded suicide, preferably with a grenade, taking some of our people with them. Seemingly unconscious Wyzhnyny are apt to be shamming, hoping to entice someone close enough. These things were learned in the first days of fighting. General Pak is now preparing a mission tailored specifically to capture and transport prisoners."
The prime minister sighed audibly. "Tell General Kulikov that both the president and I put a high priority on this."
They ended their meeting then, and the brigadier left. Pak's capture mission! she thought. God, to be young again! She'd have bucked for airborne training and an assignment on New Jerusalem. Ah well, she mused, I'm lucky just to be in the military at a time like this. Interesting that I chose the military in this life, instead of business or music or child rearing. This life, when the military has meaning.
Some personnel didn't like living and working underground, but Gosthodar Jilchuk was comfortable with it. He'd grown up in a cool damp region, and was not claustrophobic. And his quarters were comfortable, luxurious even. His walls, where not occupied with video windows, were hung with expensive tapestries from his old home world, and luxurious furs from the subpolar regions of this new home world.
Just now, though, none of that impinged on him. He was busy digesting and assimilating what had happened the night before. He'd absorbed the available information and opinions, then dismissed his staff. Now he lay at a low writing table, torso upright, jotting and doodling as he thought, using a stylus on a jotting glass. Sometimes he used them to make notes. Tonight he used them mainly to bleed off pressure.
The bottom line was he'd lost an entire tank battalion. Of fifty-four tanks, just six were repairable; ten at most. The day before, he'd been confident that despite the Battle of the First Days, he'd retained clear superiority in armor. Getting so much of my armor underground before the human bombards attacked was the smartest thing I've done. No, the only smart thing I've done. I've been trading armor, aircraft and warriors for knowledge, and I've come out sadly short on the exchange.
(Scribble scribble!)
When the bombards had left, he'd sent out his aircraft to challenge the enemy aerospace attack craft. Which unfortunately had proven more heavily armed and armored, and very well crewed. Now the question was: why haven't the humans used them since? What are they saving them for? Or is there a rivalry between the humans' space commander and their ground commander? Perhaps even between the services themselves?
He shook off the question. There was no way to know. He only knew he was overdue for some good luck.
(Scribble scribble! Jot jot!)
His latest rude surprise was that the humans had battle robots! Robots with responses more intelligent and nuanced than anyone could have imagined. They'd been reported on the Battle of the First Days-radioed reports from the confusion of close combat. But there'd been no verification, and no one had taken it seriously. The assumption had been that some of the humans, perhaps their master gender, wore full body armor. But the descriptions they now had seemed to repudiate that.
(His stylus had nearly stopped moving.)
So. Battle robots. That meant that humans had much more advanced artificial intelligence technology. But they couldn't have many robots. If they did, they'd have used them more extensively. Perhaps these were prototypes, or test models.
Don't talk yourself into any assumptions, he chided. Go about your business. Plan. Execute. Adjust. Exterminate. In the imperial dialect, the initials had long since become an acronym meaning victory.
Meanwhile he'd reduced one area of uncertainty. Seventeen two-man recon teams had penetrated the blind area at various points, and radioed when they'd done it. Eleven radioed additional observations from inside, and five had returned and been debriefed. None of what they'd seen had seemed noteworthy, but even that was worth knowing, and he knew now that the concealment field was not also a force shield. That had been predicted, but having it verified was vitally important.
(His stylus had speeded up. Now it moved furiously, in a sort of automatic writing.)
Especially in conjunction with something even more important: from the penetration points, Intelligence had mapped a decent approximation of the overall perimeter. It was circular! Which suggested a single, centrally located field generator. Laying heavy artillery fire on the center might very well knock it out, depriving the humans of their concealment. It might also cut off the head of their command structure.
But before I do that, I'll plan the ground attack to overrun them. With their concealment broken, I can commit aircraft for effective reconnaissance, and air support for the ground forces.
He looked at his jotting glass, where his stylus had been so busy while he cogitated. In the middle he'd scrawled undisciplined spirals and swirls, with scattered small ritual sunbursts. Taken together they formed a circular mass. And into the heart of it were arrows, as if into the center of a target.
A shiver rucked his fur from scalp to sacrum. It seemed to him this was going to work. He began to decipher the tightly scrawled notes he'd written.
On the second day after the raid, Arjan Hawkins Singh walked into a patients' dayroom-a squad tent, with board floors on timber foundations. Courtesy of the Burger engineering regiment and its small but efficient sawmill. Only Esau and Jael were there; few of the wounded were well enough to use a dayroom. They sat watching a documentary on defense industries of the Core Worlds. It was a year out of date, of course, but interesting. Enlightening. Gave an outworlder a notion of how things were done on the Core Worlds, and how all this stuff-ships, weapons, equipment-came to be.