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Battle Strategy
by Steve Anderson
SGAcreative.com
(c) 1995-2005,
Steve Anderson, Writer@SGAcreative.com
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Commodore Grey stared at the solid mass of blips for another second, captivated by the computer's
representation of the inconceivable alien force entering the solar system, and then finally looked up.
He stared at Captain Peters and asked quietly, "He did what?"
Peters turned white. "Admiral
Richards took the time-ship prototype and left," he repeated.
The Commodore breathed out slowly.
"Did he say anything about where he was going?"
"Only that he had a conference to attend."
"Well, then," Grey said sourly, "let's just hope he comes back with some idea of how to save us,
or that'll be the epitaph for the whole human race."
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The young Englishman looked askance at the short Frenchman on the other side of the table. "And
you won this Waterloo of yours?"
The Frenchman bristled and spat out a few words which the electronic
interpreter he had been given flatly refused to translate.
"Can't you at least try to be civil,
Hal?" asked a young woman in a rough brown robe, looking up from her crucifix for just a moment. She
paused, then commented, "You really should choose your words more... diplomatically."
An overweight
American in brown and light grey fatigues snorted derisively at the end of the table. "Oh, come on,
Joan. Speech-making is overrated. Hal's got better elocution than I do, and I had to hold press conferences
on television!"
"Norman is correct," intoned a tall man in a long blue coat and a powdered wig.
"Results are what count."
An exclamation in an unfamiliar tongue burst from the mouth of a man
seated at the far end of the table. A moment later, a translation filtered through the electronic interpreter
he had been given: "Strategy matters, too!"
"Give it a rest, Hannibal," snapped the woman sitting
beside Hal.
A stout Englishman midway down the table silenced her with a stare. "Really, Elizabeth,"
he said, "just because you took all the credit for the storm that destroyed the Armada...."
"Ladies
and gentlemen, PLEASE!!" roared a middle-aged man who stood at the end of the table in a crisp white
uniform. He pounded the table for emphasis. "We're not here to argue about who's greater than whom.
Each of you was great, that's why you're here. And you're all here because I, Admiral Richards, United
Earth Defense, need your help to save humanity."
A conference table full of kings and queens,
princes and princesses, generals and officers, gradually quieted down.
The man in white sat down
at the end of the table. "Planet Earth," he said, "is under attack." He started to explain, but was
cut off by Hannibal of Carthage.
"What is a 'planet'?"
Richards put his hand over his
eyes. "I don't have time to explain astrophysics.... let me start again."
"The world," he said,
looking around the table to be sure the various interpreters got the word right, "the entire world...
is in danger."
"From where?" demanded a huge man in a toga. "Do we war with the gods again?"
"Blasphemy!" cried the woman with the cross. "There is only one true God, and He loves His children."
She paused, musing. "Perhaps we war with agents of the Devil...."
Richards sighed. "Not exactly,
but that's a good enough explanation for right now."
"Fiends of Hell?" Hal asked. "That's a
little out of my league."
Richards buried his head in his hands. "Please," he moaned at last.
"There are thousands of years of technology and history and science separating all of us. I can't begin
to explain to half of you exactly who we're fighting, and the rest of you probably wouldn't believe me.
But please, just listen."
Silence, at last.
Richards started once again. "Okay," he
said. "Now, we, humanity, are being attacked. Our attackers have cut off communications; we don't know
what they want, but they seem to be bent on our destruction, and they've already defeated the strongest
defenses we could throw at them."
Murmurs of concern ran around the table.
"I'm in charge
of our defense force," Richards continued, "and I--well, I don't belong here with the rest of you. I'm
an impostor."
"What are you talking about?" someone asked.
"I've never fought a fair
fight in my life," Richards answered. "I've always"--he paused and looked at Joan's crucifix--"'known
my enemy,' you might say. And I've used my knowledge of his or her strengths and weaknesses to manipulate
the odds."
Heads nodded around the table. It was a familiar and popular strategy.
"I've
never gone into a fight without knowing that the odds almost guaranteed a stunning victory," Richards
concluded. "Each of you has," he said then, turning and gazing at each of the people at the table in
turn. "And your names have gone down in the history books as belonging to people who thrived under long
odds, so I'm hoping you can tell me the trick in winning when the odds aren't behind you at all."
"The trick?" Hal asked dubiously.
"Yes," Richards replied, nodding emphatically. "All I've
ever done is what's been easy. Each of you has done the impossible, time and time again. How did you
do it? What's the trick to beating the odds?"
Silence fell across the table as the assembled
guests struggled to put lifetimes of experience and wisdom into words.
One by one, they spoke,
saying nothing the Admiral didn't already know. Know your enemy. Know your own strengths and weaknesses.
Take any advantage you can. Use surprise to your advantage. Never underestimate your enemy, but never
overestimate it, either.
"I know all that," the Admiral sputtered at last. "But there's something
more to what all of you did. Something beyond what they put in the history books." He paused, then
demanded again, "What's the trick?"
The big Ancient Greek shrugged. "The trick," he commented
through his own electronic translator, "is to rely on a lifetime of experience."
Elizabeth nodded.
"The work is difficult," she said. "Over time, it gets easier, but there isn't any trick. It's not
magic." She laughed. "You're not the first to think it is, though. I tried to explain strategy to
Will Shakespeare; he didn't understand it, either."
The Admiral fumbled for words. "But--" he
managed at last, then trailed off into silence.
"It's like chess," Churchill observed after a
moment's silence. "The better mind prevails. But if your opponent has a full set of pieces, and all
you have left is a pawn--" He shrugged.
The Admiral closed his eyes, and his shoulders sagged.
"You're doomed."
"No," said Hal. He seemed about to go on, then paused and looked into each
set of eyes around the table before proceeding. "It's not that simple," he said at last. "It is a trick.
Not a single special technique, but a sort of approach to the whole affair of war. It is like magic."
A tableful of eyes turned hard and stabbed at him. He held up a hand, and the shocked murmurs fell
away.
"Not necromantic magic," he said. "Stage magic. Theatre. Illusion."
Now the
eyes were curious, tied to ears cocked to hear his explanation.
"A feint," he said simply, "is
most effective when the enemy doesn't know it's going to be a feint."
Revelation dawned on the
Admiral's face. "Misdirection," he breathed almost silently.
"Exactly," Hal said quietly. "My
archers at Agincourt were a gamble in tactical terms. I could have been beaten easily, except that I
had already won the battle strategically."
"Because," Richards said, beginning to nod enthusiastically,
"the French ignored the threat your archers posed and completely misjudged your army."
"And so,"
Hal finished, "they cheerfully walked into my trap."
The Admiral nodded again, a crafty smile
playing at the corners of his mouth. "And you," he said, turning to Hannibal of Carthage. "It wasn't
just because it was thought impossible that taking the elephants over the Alps was brilliant, it was
because no one was expecting it."
Hannibal simply smiled.
Richards stood. "Thank you
all. If you'll excuse me, I have a battle to win."
Joan of Arc held up a hand. "As do we,"
she reminded him. "You will be taking us home, won't you?"
"After I win my own battle," he replied.
"I've delayed preparing too long already, and besides, if I'm not victorious, it really won't matter
what Earth history has been like up to now, will it?"
No one at the table disagreed with him.
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Sweat was beading on Commodore Grey's brow as he stared at the screen from the command chair and
realized he might still be sitting here, waiting for Admiral Richards to return, when the aliens arrived
and finished off the last of Earth's defenses.
And then, blessed sight, the Admiral appeared,
striding out of the lift with more cocky self-assurance than ever. "Report," he ordered, settling into
the seat Grey gratefully yielded.
"Not good," Grey replied. "Our primary and secondary defenses
didn't even slow them down. Their attack force is just about to pass Mars orbit now."
The Admiral
nodded, and even, astoundingly, smiled. "Very good."
Grey blinked. "Sir?"
"How would
you evaluate our position?" Richards asked him.
Grey shrugged. "That experimental project in
Nevada we were talking about last night can generate a particle beam that might be powerful enough to
take out one of their motherships, but it could only put out one shot like that, and they've got five
motherships."
"And what do we have left in space?"
"Half a dozen robot mining ships in
the asteroid belt. They're unarmed, and so small they don't even register on the aliens' sensors; that's
the only reason they haven't been destroyed already."
"So, all in all, you'd say....?"
"We're
doomed." A beat. "Sir."
The Admiral smirked. "Watch and learn," he said jauntily. "Stand
ready to fire that beam in Nevada across the lead mothership's bow."
Commodore Grey nearly choked.
"Sir?"
"That's an order," the Admiral said mildly.
"Uh, yes, sir. Preparing to fire
our only shot harmlessly past the enemy."
The Admiral nodded. "Lieutenant," he said, turning
to the communications officer. "Prepare to patch me through to the aliens."
"But sir," the Lieutenant
objected, "the aliens have already said they'll only communicate for a surrender."
"There'll
be a surrender, all right," Richards replied. "Patch me through."
"Yes, sir."
"And you,
Captain," the Admiral said, turning to an officer standing idle, "get me direct control of those robot
miners. I want you to be able to control their output from here, on my command."
"Yes, sir,"
the Captain replied, seeming just as confused as everyone else by the Admiral's orders. The Admiral,
he suspected, had finally gone around the bend.
"I've got the alien commander for you, sir,"
the Lieutenant said.
"I hope you know what you're doing, sir," Grey said quietly.
"So
do I, Commodore," the Admiral replied. "So do I. Put the Commander on screen, Lieutenant."
The
alien was hideous, and it was only by an act of will that the Admiral managed not to show his revulsion.
"You are prepared," it hissed, "to sssurrender without a fight? How disssappointing."
"On
the contrary," Richards replied, contempt dripping from his words. "I'm offering you a chance to surrender
to me, before I order my fleet to annihilate you."
The alien made a raspy noise the Admiral assumed
was meant to be a laugh. "We have ssswatted your defenssses like flies, and you threaten usss?"
"You've followed the bread-crumbs we laid out for you," the Admiral corrected. "You've walked right
into our trap."
"What trap?" the alien scoffed.
"I'm afraid," the Admiral said, "that
we have you surrounded. If you'll scan the asteroid belt, you'll notice the exhaust gasses as our cloaked
warships close ranks."
The alien commander abruptly cut off communications, and Richards quickly
turned to the Captain he'd put in charge of the robot miners. "Get those drones' refinery systems running.
I want as much exhaust as you can give me without giving away the source."
The Captain grinned.
"Yes, sir!"
A few moments later, the alien was back on the screen, looking a bit paler than
before.
"How do I know," it demanded, "that these cloaked shipsss of yoursss are any better armed
than the othersss?"
"Really," the Admiral said. "You don't think what you've seen up to now
has been our best weaponry, do you?"
"We are not convinsssed," the alien hissed.
"Well,
then, maybe this will change your mind," Richards replied. "Commodore Grey," he ordered, not taking
his eyes off of those of the alien, "give our friend out there a warning shot."
"Sir?" Grey asked,
confused. A moment later, his eyes went wide as understanding dawned. "Oh, I see, sir. Right away."
On the screen, the alien commander looked up and blanched visibly as a beam of pure particle energy
lanced out of the Nevada desert and nearly incinerated its flagship.
"Now," Richards said smugly,
"about that surrender."
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Ten minutes later, it was all over, and Admiral Richards had reported back to the visitors gathered
in his conference room. In a few minutes, their memories would be wiped, but for now, they had a right
to know what had happened.
As he finished his explanation, a cheer went up and a roomful of history's
greatest military leaders celebrated the survival of the human race. Hal and Joan danced a waltz, Churchill
slapped Napoleon on the back, and Hannibal of Carthage muttered something around a grin. The translator
missed it, but everyone at the table understood the sentiment; in the Admiral's mind, it took the shape
of a phrase he remembered from his childhood: "I love it when a plan comes together."
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