The Bug Wars Read online

  The Bug Wars

  Robert Asprin

  Robert Asprin

  The Bug Wars

  "REMINDER" by Buck Coulson

  The stardrive was discovered on a planet in Centaurus,

  By a race that built their cities when the Earth was burning gas.

  They swept across the starlanes in the dawning of creation,

  And a million years of empire came to pass.

  Their successors were a swarm of mighty insects from Orion.

  They did not have the stardrive, but they did not ever die.

  They smashed a dying empire and then settled down to rule it,

  And another million years or so went by.

  The Insects were supplanted when the drive was rediscovered.

  They could not stop rebellion when they could not catch their foes.

  And the Tzen became the rulers. They were reptiles from Arcturus,

  And they worshipped the dark swamps from which they rose.

  But the Tzen were few in number and the universe is mighty,

  And they felt their domination slip away between their claws.

  Others fought for domination and the universe was chaos,

  While on Earth a creature shaped flint with its paws.

  Now the first ones are forgotten and the Insects but a memory,

  And the creature called Man stands upon the threshold of his fame.

  But remember, puny Earthlings, there were others here before you,

  And still others who will follow in your flame.

  BOOK ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  I became awake. Reflexively, with the return of consciousness, I looked to my weapons. I felt them there in the darkness, strapped to my body and attached to the panel close over my head. I felt them, and relaxed slightly, moving on to other levels of consciousness. I have my weapons, I am alive, I am a Tzen, I am dutybound, I am Rahm.

  Having recalled I am a Tzen, it did not surprise me that I thought of my duty before even thinking of my name. It is part of the character of the Tzen to always think of the species and the Empire before thinking of themselves, particularly the Warrior caste, of which I was one. It has occasionally been suggested, privately of course, that some of the other castes, particularly the Scientists, think of the individual before they think of the species, but I do not believe this. A Tzen is a Tzen.

  I flexed my talons. Yes, my body was functioning efficiently. I was ready to venture forth. There had been no sound of alarm or noises of battle, but I still was cautious as I pressed the release lever of my shelf with my tail. The door slid down a fraction of an inch and stopped as I scanned the chamber through the slit.

  The chamber was dimly lit, closely approximating moonlight. The air was warm-not hot, but warm and humid, the temperature of night in the Black Swamps. We were not being awakened for relaxation and food replenishment. We were being awakened to hunt. We were preparing for combat.

  Without further meditation, I slid the door the rest of the way open and started to slide from my shelf, then paused. Another Tzen was moving along the walkway I was about to step out on. I waited for him to pass before standing forth and securing my weapons.

  The fact that I outranked him, in fact was his immediate superior on this mission, was irrelevant. My waiting was not even a matter of courtesy, it was logical. The walkway was too narrow for two to pass, and he was moving on it first.

  We exchanged neither salutes nor nods of recognition as he passed, his tail rasping briefly on the walkway. His ten-foot bulk, large even for a Tzen, was easy to recognize in the semidarkness. He was Zur, my second-in-command for this mission. I respected him for his abilities, as he respected me for mine. I felt no desire to wish him luck or a need to give him last-minute instructions. He was a Tzen.

  He, like the rest of my flight team, had performed efficiently in practice, and I had no reason to expect they would perform otherwise in actual combat. If he or any of the others seemed lax or panicky in battle, and if that shortcoming endangered me or the mission, I would kill them.

  The walkway was clear now, and I moved along it to the junction between the shelf-wall and the engineward flex-well. For a moment, I was thankful for my rank. As flight team Commander, my flyer was positioned closest to the floor, which spared me climbing up the curved wall. Not that I would mind the climb, but since flyer training began, I had discovered I was mildly acrophobic. It didn't bother me once I was flying, but I disliked hanging suspended in midair.

  I didn't spend a great deal of time checking over the flyer. That was the Technicians' job. I knew enough about the flyers to pilot them and effect minor repairs, but machines were the Technicians' field of expertise as weapons are mine, and anything they missed on their check would be too subtle for me to detect.

  Instead, I occupied my time securing my personal weapons in the flyer, a job no Technician could do. I do not mean to imply by this that the Technicians are lacking in fighting skill. They are Tzen, and I would willingly match any Tzen of any caste on a one-for-one basis against any other intelligent being in the universe. But I am of the Warrior caste, the fighting elite of a species of fighters, and I secure my own weapons.

  In truth, it was doubtful they would be necessary on this mission; still, it heartened me to have them close at hand. Like so many others, I had not yet completely acclimated myself to the new technology that had been so suddenly thrust upon us. The hand weapons were a link with the past, with our heritage, with the Black Swamps. Even the High Command did not object to the practice of carrying hand weapons on a mission. They merely limited the total weight of personal gear carried by a Warrior in his flyer. Nobody comes between a Tzen and his weapons, not even another Tzen.

  Content with my inspection, I eased myself into the flyer and settled into the gel-cushion. With a sigh, the flyer sealed itself. I waited, knowing that as my flyer sealed, a ready light had appeared on the pilot's board; and that as soon as all the lights from this chamber were lit, we would be ready to proceed with the mission.

  Unlike the colony ships, transports such as the one we were currently chambered in were stark and bare in their interiors, devoid of anything not absolutely vital to the mission. This left me with little to meditate on as I waited. Almost against my wishes, my thoughts turned toward the mission we were about to embark upon. My reluctance to think about the mission did not spring from a reluctance to fight or a fear for my personal safety. I am a Tzen. However, I personally find the concept of genocide distasteful.

  Finally the flex-walls, both the one my flyer was affixed to and the one across the chamber, trembled and began to move. The mission was about to begin. Slowly they straightened, changing the parabola-cross-sectioned shape of the room into a high, narrow rectangle. The flyers on my wall were now neatly interspaced with those on the far wall. The net result was to stack us like bombs in a rack, poised and ready to drop.

  As our flight team made their final preparations, we knew that the chambers on either side of us would be spreading their walls, taking advantage of the space vacated by our walls to ease the loading of its flyers. As I have said, there is no wasted space on a transport.

  The floor of the chamber opened beneath me. As the bottom flyer in the stack, I had an unobstructed view of the depths below. I experienced a moment of vertigo as I looked down at the patch of darkness. We are not an aerial species.

  Then I was in a free-fall. There was no jerk of release; I was just suddenly falling. Although I normally avoid stating opinions as fact, this is not a pleasant sensation.

  As we had been warned during our briefings, the Battle Plan called for a night attack. This was tactically sound, since the Enemy are day-hunters, while we Tzen are accustomed to working at night. It gave us an immeasur
able advantage in the impending fight. It also meant that the planet-face we were plummeting toward was dark, giving no clue of terrain features.

  Crosswinds buffeted my flyer as I fell, but I was not concerned. Crosswinds, like atmospheric pressures and weather conditions, would have been taken into consideration by the pilot when he'd dropped us. In their own way, the pilots were specialists as highly trained as the Warriors.

  The tingle in the footplate told me my flyer was in the outer fringe of one of the power sources dropped by scout ships. Still I fell. Now I could make out a few features of the terrain below. Far off to my left was a large body of water, below was some type of mountain range, while off to my right stretched an immense forest. Obviously it was a highly inhabitable planet. No wonder the Enemy had picked it as one of the spots to settle in. No wonder we had to take it away from them.

  The tingle in the footplate was noticeably stronger now, but I continued to fall. I allowed myself to ponder the possibility of an auto-pilot malfunction, but dismissed the thought. The programs were so simple as to be essentially infallible, and thus far, I did not have sufficient cause to assume malfunction.

  As if to confirm my conclusions, the auto-pilot chose that instant to react to the ground rushing towards us from below. With a soft pop, the mighty flexi-steel bat wings that had been folded against the flyer's sides unfurled, catching the rushing air and slamming the craft from a dive into a soaring glide. The sudden declaration forced me deep into the gel-cushion and narrowed my eyes.

  A jab of pressure with both my heels on the footplate took the flyer out of auto-pilot and gave me full control. I allowed the flyer to glide forward for a few moments, then arrested its progress, hovering it in place with subtle play on the footplate. It was a moderately delicate process, but we had been trained by long hours of practice to be able to accomplish this almost without thinking, as we had trained in all facets of handling the flyers. The flyers were to be an extension of our bodies, requiring no more thought for operation than the operation of our legs. It was an advanced form of transport, nothing more. Our minds were to be focused on the mission, on the Enemy.

  As I waited, I surveyed the immediate terrain, using both my normal vision and the flyer's sonic sensor screens. I was not overly fond of the latter, but their use was essential when operating a flyer. There would be times, particularly flying in the dark, when we would be traveling at speeds requiring warning of approaching obstacles well in advance of the range at which our normal night vision was effective.

  I was hovering over a river valley, the rising thermals making the job of hovering an easy one. Ahead and to the right was the beginning of the vast forest range I had noted from the air. Obviously the pilot had been accurate in his drop calculations.

  "Ready, Rahm."

  It was Zur's voice telepathed into my mind. I did not look back. I didn't need to. His signal told me all I needed to know, that the team was in position behind me, each flyer in place in our tetrahedron formation, hovering and impatient to begin.

  I telepathed my order to the formation.

  "Power on one...Ready...Three...Two...One!"

  As I sent the final signal, I trod down solidly on the footplate and felt the surge of power as the engine cut in. There was no roar, not even a whisper of sound. This was one of the advantageous features of this new propulsion system. The sparkling engines were noiseless, giving deadly support to our favored surprise attack tactics. The race that had developed the engine were fond of using it for noiseless factories and elevators. As a Warrior race, we had other uses for it.

  Our formation darted forward through the dark on the first assault of the new war.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Faintly in the darkness, we could see other formations paralleling our course. Somewhere behind us were four other waves, constituting the balance of our Division. One hundred formations, six hundred flyers pitted against an enemy numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Still, we were not overly concerned with the outcome. Our flyers gave us superior speed and maneuvering ability in the air. Our weapons were more than adequate to deal with the enemy. Given superior maneuverability and weapons, we would have an edge in any fight, regardless of the odds. Our military history had proven this to be true time and time again. Then there was the fact we were Tzen. I would trust in the fighting-born and trained of the Tzen over any Insect's blind hive instinct. We would win this War. We would win it because we had to.

  We had reached the trees now, our formation flying low and straight without seeking targets. The trees dwarfed our craft with their size. Their trunks were over thirty feet in diameter, and stretched up almost out of sight in the darkness. Our zone was some distance ahead. If the transport had timed its drops properly and if everyone maintained the planned courses and speeds, the attack should be launched in all zones simultaneously, just as our Division's attack was tuned to coincide with the attacks of the other divisions taking part in the assault on this planet. In theory this would keep the Enemy from massing against us.

  I could see the dark masses of the nests high in the trees as we sped silently on. I strained my eyes trying to get a good look at the Enemy, but could make out nothing beyond general seething blobs. They were sleeping, gathered in great masses covering the nests, apparently unsuspecting of the shadows of death flitting through their stronghold. This was not surprising. They and their allies had ruled the stars virtually uncontested for over a million years. We Tzen had taken great pains to mask our existence, much less our development, until we were ready to enter into combat. Now we were ready for combat, and the Enemy would know us-if any survived, that is.

  Still, I wished I could get a better look at them. It was difficult for me to accept the concept of a wasplike creature with a twenty to thirty foot wingspan. Studying drawings and tri-D projections was helpful, but nothing could serve as well as actually seeing a live enemy.

  Though confident, I was uneasy. I would have preferred to have the first encounter with the Enemy on solid ground, or better still, on the semiaquatic terrain we were accustomed to battling on. I was uneasy about having our first encounter as an aerial fight against an aerial species. For all our practice with the new flyers, the air was not our element. I wished the initial battle did not hinge on our ability to outfly creatures born with wings. It made me uneasy. I did not contest the logic behind the decision. It would. be disastrous to enter into ground maneuvers while the Enemy still retained air supremacy. But it did make me uneasy.

  Suddenly something struck the side of my flyer too quickly to be avoided. It clung to the Plexiglas, scrabbling and rasping, seeking entrance. It took a great deal of effort to keep my attention focused forward, to avoid flying into something, with the creature raging at the edge of my peripheral vision less than a foot from my head. I had a quick impression of multifaceted metallic eyes glaring at me and darting mandibles gnashing on the transparent bubble; then I rolled the flyer and it was gone. There was a quiet burst of sound behind me like a sudden release of compressed air, and I knew that Zur had finished off the interloper. I shot a sideways glance at the spot on the canopy where the creature had clung briefly before being shaken off. There were deep gouges in the bubble from the Enemy's efforts, and a few spots where the creature's saliva had begun to eat through.

  I was pleased. The brief encounter had prepared me for battle far more than any mental exercise I could have devised. New energy coursed through my veins, adding that all-important extra split second of speed to my reflexes. Instead of developing it in the first pass, I would now be entering the conflict in a controlled battle frenzy.

  For the first time I began to entertain hopes of emerging from the battle alive.

  Then we were at our target zone. At my signal the formation expanded, each Tzen increasing the distance between his flyer and his teammate's. Then, as a unit, we climbed toward the treetops and the Bug War began.

  The combat, like any combat, soon became too fast-paced for conscious thought. We
had trained with our flyers and weapons until they were a part of us, and their use was as unthinking as flexing our talons. Our minds and senses were focused on the Enemy and the terrain.

  Thoughts became a flashing kaleidoscope of quick impressions and hazily remembered instructions. Use the cold-burn rays as much as possible...less effective than the hot-beams, but they'll damage the forest less...we'll want to settle here someday...Swarm massing to block flight path...burn your way through...don't wander more than five degrees from your base course...sweep three nests simultaneously with a wide beam...if you wander you'll end up in a teammate's line of fire...turn ninety degrees...turn right, always right...Kor is on your right...don't trust her for a left turn...avoid the tree trunk and burn the nests as your weapon bears...Enemy on the wing tip...roll...burn the nests...don't wander from base course...

  We were working our zone in a broken sweep Pattern. A straight geometric pattern would have been easier to remember and more certain for a complete sweep. It also would have been predictable. If we tried to use a geometric sweep, by the third pass the Enemy would be massed and waiting for us. So we continued our twisted, seemingly random pattern, crossing and recrossing our own path, frequently burning our way through swarms of the Enemy flying across our path in pursuit.

  ...Turn to the right...burn the nests...cold-beam rays only...

  We were constantly flirting with disaster. Our flyers could outdistance the lumbering Enemy; but if we used our speed, dodging trees required most of our attention, and we ran the risk of missing nests. If we slowed our speed to an easy pace for sweeping, the Enemy could either overtake us or move to intercept. So we flirted with death, sometimes plunging recklessly ahead, sometimes rolling as we turned to free our flyers of the Enemy clinging to the wings, threatening to drag us to the ground with the sheer mass of their numbers.