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ONE OF THE SIX CAMERAS bobbled as the soldier wearing it stumbled. He fell backward, and the camera angle picked up a view of another soldier’s nostrils as she dragged the wounded man to safety. In seconds, she had grabbed the camera and snapped it into place on her vest before she rejoined the line. The Imshee they were firing at had barely even twitched. Tyce jotted a note on a slip of paper and pushed it toward John.
“How does the situation look?” Ama asked.
Tyce spared Ama a glance before turning back to the monitors. John answered her. “We’re barely holding, and we’ve lost too damn many people.”
“We killed two at our position,” Ama said. While true, both had required point-blank shots to those huge eyes, and both times the Imshee had taken their executioners out with them. The first Imshee struck Tyce as uncoordinated, and yet these new Imshee struck out with those sharp claws, even when they were dying.
Tyce couldn’t figure out why these Imshee were so much more aggressive. They lacked most of the mangy hair, and they were smaller. Tyce suspected the Imshee were now throwing immature fighters into the breach, a tactic that spoke of either desperation or an utter lack of paternal instinct. Maybe both.
“The main corridor killed one, but they can’t hold. They keep retreating.” They had been forced to leave their wounded and dead so that when the Imshee moved forward, their people were lost behind the enemy line. Tyce had seen Yoss fall and the Imshee walk over his body. He could only pray that Yoss was alive and the fight was keeping the Imshee too busy to check their kills.
“What are you doing?” Ama asked as she walked along the wall, touching a few slips of paper here and there. They were stuck to the wall in clusters, each with Tyce’s blocky handwriting.
“Helping Tyce with his research.”
Her laugh was dark and forced. “My ship never had to scavenge for paper before he joined us. Have you spotted any patterns yet?”
“Nothing useful.”
And that was the main reason Tyce was happy to let John deliver the news. Tyce was a giant coward who didn’t want to admit the truth: all his observations and all the deaths meant nothing. He had no revelations, no crazy plan, nothing to save them.
The video monitors weren’t showing anything new or unusual, so Tyce pushed away from the display. Despite having all the wounded, the engineers and the medical people crowded into the room along with the most immature of the fighters, the noise in the room never rose above a murmur. Tyce kept his own voice low enough that only John and Ama would hear him. “Yoss fell.”
Ama closed her eyes for a second, and then nodded slowly. “I will pray that his soul finds its rightful place in the universe.”
Rage washed through Tyce so strongly that he had to grip the edge of the table. He wanted to scream about the unfairness of it all. He wanted to demand she explain how her precious universal balance could allow such senseless death. He wanted her to make some promise that it would all work out. John rested a hand on Tyce’s shoulder. “These new Imshee don’t act like the first few we encountered.” His tone was almost apologetic, as if he regretted forcing Tyce to discount the loss of his friend.
Tyce got it. They had to focus on the task. He curled his fingers around John’s wrist and took several deep breaths. The whole time Ama had concern in her eyes.
“They’re smaller,” Tyce said, “so either they are immature, the equivalent of human teenagers, or they’re like Rownt where adults with less status are smaller. Either way, they seem to be throwing less experienced individuals at the line.”
“So they understand cannon fodder,” Ama said disapprovingly. Ribelians had many moral failings, but they did have an almost universal disgust toward the idea of putting inexperienced and often unwilling young people on the fighting line. “I have faith in you and your paper to solve this,” she said.
Tyce shook his head. “Don’t,” he said softly. He hoped the others in the room didn’t hear him, but he couldn’t allow Ama and John to continue with this blind faith. “I don’t see a weakness.”
Ama embraced him, an awkward gesture, since Tyce was still seated. “You are not powerful enough to move the universe,” she whispered in his ear. Tyce closed his eyes. Sometimes her version of help left him gutted.
John shot her a nasty glare. “We work as long as we can and gather as much intel as possible,” he said firmly. “If the Imshee are sending in cannon fodder, then something we’re doing is working. They are feeling the stress of this fight, maybe more than us if they’re sacrificing their crew.”
“Or they have young and low status individuals they wish killed,” Ama said.
Tyce sighed. That made sense in an alien sort of way, but he hoped John was right. Sending cannon fodder right at the battle line spoke of panic. And Command had reported that Imshee were afraid of humans. That matched. He studied the wall of observations. Nothing else fit into a coherent pattern. One grouping caught his eye. Each slip described how the Imshee retreated—the weird backward leap that sometimes caused them to brain themselves on the ceiling.
“Did Command say that Imshee were afraid of persistence hunting specifically?”
“Yes,” John said slowly. He tilted his head and studied Tyce.
Ama crouched next to Tyce’s chair, a knowing grin curling the edges of her mouth. “What have you realized?”
Tyce frowned. He wasn’t sure of his theory, but it made sense. “They don’t persist. They don’t understand prolonged battle.” Up until this last assault, every Imshee attack employed strike and run tactics.
John scoffed. “They scare the Rownt. I’m pretty sure they know how to win a battle.”
“We don’t know how long that battle lasted. They may have fired their weapons and torn right through the Rownt shields. We do know Rownt don’t carry a fight past the one battle, so it makes sense they would understand each other if neither species engages in extended warfare.”
John sat on a crate Tyce had been using for a desk. “First, how the hell do you have such specific intel on the Rownt? I know that update came after Lieutenant Munson reestablished contact with Earth.” There was no way Tyce would answer that. Eventually John sighed. “Fine, second, the Rownt said that all the other species they knew understood the concept of war as Munson described it—a prolonged series of battles spread over time and in different locations.”
“Multiple battles over time is fine,” Tyce said, “but do they have prolonged battles with a persistent enemy?” It was the first theory that made sense to him. The Imshee were panicking because they wanted the ship, but the human insistence on simply holding territory frustrated and confused them. It was a classic approach-avoidance conflict.
Just as John opened his mouth, Ama spoke. “How does this help us design a strategy?”
“We need to hold our position,” Tyce said.
John scoffed. “That’s what we’re already doing.”
“And we keep doing it.” Tyce grinned as the strategy developed in his mind. The Imshee wanted the ship and were excited about claiming it. They approached the goal and hit resistance, but as they grew closer to the goal, the resistance grew greater and the avoidance drive slowly overwhelmed the desire for the ship. He could see it all. “Eventually the negative feelings toward persistence will overwhelm their drive to take the ship,” he said.
Ama frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Hell, no,” Tyce said. “I’m applying human psychology to an alien because I was trained in human-human strategy, not xenopsychology. And I don’t know the background of these Imshee. If they are fighters, variable ratio reinforcement might come into play.” Tyce shrugged.
Ama offered a small smile and shook her head. “I am constantly baffled by the enigma of you, but I’ll let the fighters know our theory.” She headed for the door.
Tyce turned to John. “What the hell is she talking about with enigmas?” He didn’t expect an answer—Ama was an enigma herself. She was so deeply steeped in Ribelian religion that she spoke in riddles more often than not, and she considered it bad manners to come right out and tell someone what they should do or believe. Weird woman.
“I think she means that you understand the motives and theories behind human behavior well for someone who has a questionable hold on them in the more practical sense.” John patted him on the shoulder and then stood. “I’ll talk to the engineers. Maybe they have something that can help us hold position even if they can’t find the weapons systems.”
Tyce shook his head and turned back to his monitors. The Imshee were keeping up such a steady rate of fire that Tyce suspected they had several aliens taking turns. How many? That was a question Tyce would’ve loved to answer. However, without access to some sort of internal security feed, he had no way to satisfy his curiosity.
Tyce closed his eyes and concentrated on the corridor. Nothing. Feeling a little foolish, Tyce held his hands out the way he had when he’d been tuning the surveillance system and whispered to the ship, to the universe at large or Ama’s guardian gods, “A little help, please.”
Tyce knew the ship could send vague impressions and feelings, but he didn’t know if the ship would understand Tyce’s desperate need. Even if Tyce’s strategy was the right one, it required a war of attrition with too many good men and women giving their lives to hold the Imshee off. And he had no way of knowing what was going on with the shuttles and children since the crew down-ship were following radio protocols.
The ship’s engine gave a burp of speed, and the floor bucked under his feet. Tyce grabbed two of the monitors, but the others slid off the makeshift desk and crashed to the ground.
“What was that?” a Dragon engineer yelled. “Does anyone have instrument readings?”
John came running over. “What happened?” he asked Tyce. If the engineers didn’t know, Tyce certainly didn’t. Medics called for help and the wounded demanded information. Most of them were soldiers, and now they were trapped on their backs while the enemy pushed in on their position.
“Help me out here.” Tyce used a foot to push a broken computer piece off the chair, and John put a monitor on the floor next to the now-broken desk. Tyce put the other monitor on the seat. “Fuck.” Tyce breathed the word, watching the monitor as multiple Imshee crawled and pushed forward, like a slow motion stampede.
“They’re rushing the line. Reinforce the main corridor!” Tyce shouted over the general din. The soldiers who were off shift or assigned to the engineering room all grabbed weapons. Tyce whirled around in his chair to grab his own gun, but John caught his wrist.
“Find us a better strategy than suicide.” He then confiscated Tyce's weapon and ran for the door. To hell with that. Tyce would not sit back with the engineers while his friends tried to hold the line. If anyone could save them, it would be engineers finding the damn weapons panel. Short of that, Tyce didn't know what he could do other than join hand-to-hand fighting.
Tyce was nearly to the door when an overwhelming burst of wrongness grabbed his chest so hard that he fell to one knee and clutched the wall.
A soldier stopped and dropped to a knee next to him. “Sir, are you okay?”
Tyce pushed the soldier away and struggled back to his feet. The emotions had been so strong and alien that he knew they were coming from the ship. He stared at the ceiling. “If you're trying to say something, you've got to find a better way to communicate.” The soldier stared at him as if he had lost his mind.
“Well?” Tyce asked the ship.
“Well, what, Sir?” The confusion on his face gave way to alarm.
Tyce blinked at the soldier, and for one second, was struck by the strangeness of his form. Human locomotion required constantly throwing oneself off balance, and catching the body with the forward foot. It was a bizarre function, but at the same time, he had to admire the lack of friction and the reduction in joints. Fascinating.
Tyce blinked as he struggled to find his own mind. “Go,” he told the soldier. He didn't even know the man's name. He didn't know any of the Command soldiers, and that probably said something shitty about him because now he was sending them out to die.
“Sir, let's get you a medic.” He got a hand under Tyce's arm to pull him back into the room.
“No.” Tyce tried to pull his arm away, but the soldier was strong.
“It's okay sir, it could be that those probes in your brain have shifted. I'm sure the medics can do something for you.”
Tyce spotted the alcove where Acosta had shoved him and the shape made sense.
Two legs lacked stability, but four legs provided more steadiness. Four arms kept the body in proportion—two large arms with long, strong fingers and two smaller ones tucked up close. The creature would be long and two arms could reach all the way back to the rear of the creature, giving it an off-balance appearance. An elongated head held a brain large enough to control all those limbs, and a large sloping nose dominated the face. The creature would walk into the deep alcove, thrusting its head deep into the ship’s neural interface.
Tyce heard gunfire and shouts. The sense of doom nearly enveloped him, only when he looked at the alcove, the panic faded.
It was the best decision. It was the only decision.
And maybe it was a suicide move or a Hail Mary, but Tyce knew there was only one way any of them would survive this attack. He shoved the soldier away and dove headfirst into the alcove. The soldier shouted, but then needle pinpricks surrounded him, and everything went black.