Staying behind the lines bugged the shit out of Colonel ben Tauros. He actually envied Reaper, and now understood why she had turned down promotion to the officer corps so many times. With her experience she could have been a general, or at least a colonel.
Flogging his brain, he tried to focus only on the big picture and not the casualty count or the intermittent bursts of chatter that brought the details of the fight right into his suitcomm. On his HUD he could see the assault taking shape as an expanding bubble occupying about a quarter of the circumference of the mothership core, a thousand meters wide and five hundred deep. The front lines described a jagged sine wave, and as he stared at it, something nagged at his tactical mind.
Why was the resistance so evenly spaced, so regular? Easier, harder, easier, harder...
Putting aside the why, he asked himself what Moshe Dyan would have done. The general had always been a hero of his, achieving stunning victories for Israel in the twentieth century against high odds by use of bold attacks and lightning operations tempo.
The soft spots might be a trick, might be a trap to sucker him into overextending himself – but EarthFleet was in a time crunch and he had to gamble. If they didn’t grab what they came for and get out, they were all in deep shit anyway.
All right, Bull. Time to place a big bet.
“Listen up. Bull here,” he said on the command channel. “I’ve marked several lanes of advance, each associated with the nearest company. Those companies are to advance at all deliberate speed to extend and widen their salients, taking opportunities to attack to the flanks and encircle defenders. Lieutenant Conquest, all the excess Recluses are to assault up those lanes and drive for the center of the core.” Sending only the battle drones controlled by the AI minimized the risk to personnel, and frankly, the bots were even more efficient in pure attack mode, when they were freed from the constraints imposed by having to coordinate with Marines.
Bull checked time to egress: one hour fifty-seven minutes. After that, all Marines left aboard would be on their own in the middle of a bug swarm. He watched on his HUD as the forward thrusts of his formations extended and widened as designated companies went on the attack. Like spreading water, soon the brigade had surrounded several enemy strongpoints. Bull ordered them to be methodically reduced. Ammo was no problem; sleds constantly shuttled back and forth to Conquest, medevacking the wounded and bringing ordnance and power packs by the ton, as well as spare Recluses.
Recluses...Bull watched on his HUD as the spider drones charged forward like cavalry, cutting through the enemy lines and wreaking havoc with unmatched speed. It appeared the Scourges had not set up a defense in depth. They probably had never had to repel an assault on their mothership. “Yes!” he said aloud as the bots spread out and raced for the center of the core.
***
Rick Johnstone’s brain may have been inside his cocoon, but his mind, his eyes and ears and his consciousness roamed the VR landscape. Aided by Michelle’s vast AI mind distributed throughout Conquest, he leaped from Recluse to Recluse aboard the mothership, looking through their eyes for something, anything resembling what he needed.
“There,” he said, pointing a ghostly finger at a junction box exposed by a glancing laser strike. “That has to be a node.”
Instantly, Michelle’s VR presence was at his side. “I agree. I’m bringing a tap now.” In moments, one of the specially equipped Recluses squatted by the electronic device while a dozen of its fellows gathered to provide defense.
“I’m going in,” Rick said as he felt the connection form.
“I’ve got your back, Commander,” Michelle said.
Feeling his way deftly into the electronic control system, Rick found it less alien than he expected. Digital was digital, whether the system used binary, octal or hexadecimal, human-built or otherwise. Physics bounded cybernetics just like they bounded chemistry or orbital mechanics.
In other words, there were only so many ways to skin a computer, and Rick Johnstone knew them all.
With the power of the AI behind him, he entered the mothership’s network and began to ransack its myriad databases. He found very little ICE; doubtlessly the Scourges never expected an information attack from a hard line within their own ship. He did find encryption too complex to break on the fly, so he told Michelle, “Copy everything and quarantine it. We can crack it later. Right now, just take it all.”
For minutes in the real world, hours in VR space, Rick and Michelle wandered the enemy’s nearly deserted digital halls, stealing petabytes of scrambled data.
“How long?”
“Six more minutes,” Michelle said. “And I’ve found what I think are the physical components of their FTL drive system. The Recluses are salvaging as much of it as they can.”
Rick jumped his viewpoint to the indicated location, a surprisingly small room near the center of the core. “Doesn’t look like much.”
“This is the field control and generation machinery, I believe. The rest is just emitters and power. I already have a few of those.”
Rick smiled. “Michelle, you’re a wonder. You make information warfare look frighteningly easy.”
“Not so easy for the Marines fighting and dying so we could get in here.”
Stunned, recollection of the real world crashed in on Rick. “Oh my God. Jill’s out there fighting. How could I have lost track of that?”
“Welcome to VR confusion, Rick. It’s addictive. But right now, the best thing is to do your job and let her do hers.”
“I want to see her. Now.”
“Of course.” Abruptly, Rick looked at his wife through the eyes of a Recluse, one still with the Marines, controlled by a sled pilot. While he watched, she moved crouching behind a firing line, pointing out targets, slapping backs and encouraging her troops. “See, she’s doing fine,” Michelle said.
“Thanks, Michelle. You have no idea how good that makes me feel.”
Wistfully, she replied, “I wish I did.”