Chapter 2

The arrival on Excer was almost an anticlimax: it was raining to beat all hell! Somehow, everybody, Jim included, had expected this to be a grand entrance sort of thing with a welcoming parade and all the fixings. Well, the Excers were just not that kind of people.

Once you signed a contract with the Excers, they expected you to live up to it, and no further discussion was necessary. You did what you agreed to do and they did what they agreed to do. It was a little deflating to the human ego, but they would have to get used to little disappointments if they were going to deal with ETs.

The Slayers were directed to their bivouac and left to their own devices. Each squad set up their tent and things settled into a duplicate of Camp Lovecraft; in fact, that was the name they used: Camp Lovecraft-Excer. Not very imaginative, but it worked.

Roberta's first job was to arrange for the Excers to provide the necessary support services the humans needed. The Excers were a little confused by this requirement, at first, but finally got the idea and cooperated to the fullest. The problem wasn't indifference, it was ignorance.

For example, the Excers didn't eat food the way most people did; their energy was from direct conversion of sunlight. Their sunlight was rich in UV (the humans needed sun-block) which the Excers absorbed and converted as needed. Cloudy days and rain were no problem, but shade slowed them down and night shut them down completely. Excers had a kind of internal capacitor which stored enough energy to carry an adult for only about 5 minutes; beyond that time, an Excer just shut down until the light reappeared. Excer emergency crews carried artificial light rich in UV which they used to keep their bodies going if they were without sunlight. Awkward, but workable.

John and Roberta began planning for the first assault on the invading humans on the continent the Excers called "North" before the transport unloading was even complete. The 1st regiment, called "Tigers," would go in as the initial assault, followed by the 2nd regiment, called the "Devil Dogs." The Excers had a ground-effect vehicle which could hold a squad of humans and their immediate equipment needs and could be used as the assault transport. It didn't have any armor, but it did have speed. John planned to use helicopter gunships to protect these craft while they were delivering troops to the beach. All of the tanks were scheduled to go in with the first wave of infantry; they would be moved by Excer heavy-lifters.

For some inexplicable reason, the invaders had not fortified the beach opposite South continent even after the Slayers had shown up on Excer. Jim and John chalked this up to arrogance and hoped to show them the error of their ways. Helen had gotten some spy-satellites launched and they had a good view of North, so they could keep a sharp eye on enemy troop movements.

In less than a week, the Slayers were ready to go on their first amphibious assault. This would be OK, since it was really amateurs fighting amateurs; if the Slayers had been facing seasoned veterans, they would have been slaughtered. John had studied all he could find on the art and science of amphibious assaults, going as far back as WWII on Earth. He had tried to incorporate all of the applicable good ideas he could find and counter all of the possible enemy countermeasures he could envision. He also crossed his fingers!

The Excers were just as anxious to get started, so they were ready on the Tuesday morning selected as D-Day. The first wave of eight squads went in, virtually unopposed. They were followed by the tanks which stayed together so that they could concentrate on reducing strong points, but there were none. The remainder of the Tigers were landed and there was still virtually no resistance. Everybody wondered what the hell of going on?

John and Roberta were ready to move in the Devil Dogs when all hell suddenly broke loose. The Tigers, out of inexperience, had not been very diligent in setting up a defense perimeter when a force of 20 helicopter gunships suddenly attacked. The gunships concentrated on the tanks and knocked out three before the Slayers even returned fire. Several Slayer squads reacted quickly and launched a mass of the laser-guided AA rockets, knocking down five of the helicopters and forcing the rest to retreat. John chalked this up as an even loss rate, but he could see where they needed more training.

Four squads of the Devil Dogs, much to their disgust, were held back as a reserve, but the rest were rushed to the landing beach. The Tigers were to be used as the lead attacking force and the Devil Dogs were to occupy and hold the conquered territory.

The Tigers pushed north toward the population center, meeting stiffer and stiffer opposition as they moved. The four mortars had been mounted on small hover-craft to be used as mobile artillery and were sent up to support the Tigers. The enemy had never faced mortars before, so didn't know what to expect. John hoped to make use of this ignorance.

The Tigers' lead element met a fiercely defended roadblock. The only weapons they had to face were assault rifles, but they were ready this time for gunships if they showed up. There was a lot of shooting from both sides, but the fighting was inconclusive. Then, one of the Tigers remembered the mortars. A quick radio call brought one of them up to within a convenient firing range and a shell was lobbed into the roadblock. This was a laser-guided shell, so there was no question of whether or not the shell would hit the target, the real question was how many enemy would be killed. The Tigers never knew how many they wounded, because the defenders disappeared so fast, but they did find three bodies when they pushed the roadblock off the road.

Jim didn't want to take a chance on pushing too far through such a narrow corridor, so the lead element of the Tigers was halted while the right side of the beachhead was pushed to the attack. Jim had to warn his troops not to make it a contest to see who could capture the most land. He wanted to see a contest between the Tigers and the Devil Dogs to kill the most enemy. He ordered the troops to dismount from their hover-craft and walk forward, but the hover-craft did stay close to the infantry to carry supplies and to evacuate the wounded.

It didn't take long for Jim and John to realize that they were fighting the wrong war! They simply didn't have enough men to fight massed troops against massed troops. With only 1000 troops on either side and a full, if small, continent to clear, this could easily degenerate into something like police chasing bandits across the plains. The Slayers had to find a strategy which would force the enemy into a pitched battle. What to do?

Jim called a staff meeting to consider the possibilities. The unpleasant alternatives were discussed and then Roberta came up with a possible solution: attack their logistics center. She pointed out that the Slayers could afford to follow a scorched-earth policy and this would devastate the invaders, who didn't have the logistics base to cover their supply losses. She suggested that they combine their troops into an invincible force and march back and forth across the continent like a lawnmower, leaving nothing but destruction behind. The enemy had to counter this or starve. There was only one spaceport on the continent and, if they could capture and hold it, they could force the enemy to live off the land.

This looked like a good idea, so they voted to adopt it. An explanation was broadcast to the troops so that they would understand what they were supposed to accomplish and why. Helen pointed out that she hoped the broadcast was intercepted by the other side; at worst, that could only force the enemy to do what the Slayers wanted them to do: attack, attack attack!

A significant part of the plan was to try to entice the enemy gunships into attacking so that they could knock them out of the fight before they had a chance to do too much damage. The tanks were to be the bait. A task force was organized to drive for the population center at the spaceport. This task force had all of their tanks and all of their AA rockets carried by troops in hover-craft. These troops would also act as the infantry cover needed by the tanks. Three of their gunships would act as air cover while the remaining 14 would stay with the main force, just in case.

The expectation was that the enemy would try to stop the task force and ignore the main body of troops. The enemy would hope that this would give them a manpower advantage which would be sufficient to destroy the Slayers and get rid of the very dangerous tanks. Once the task force was destroyed, the rest of the Slayers could by mopped up at leisure.

The Slayers' ace-in-the-hole was the mortars. The enemy appeared not to appreciate the danger they exhibited and the mortars were easily hidden in the mass of other troops and equipment.

All of the Slayers were recalled back to the beachhead and the task force started from there. Meanwhile, all of the Devil Dogs and half the Tigers were sent on their scorched-earth maneuver.

The task force rolled over the ground up to the point of the initial roadblock. This was the point where the task force felt that they could start expecting opposition. Nothing happened, and they moved through unopposed. The ability of the hover-craft to move over virtually any terrain made it unnecessary to stick to the road, so they were able to move in a fairly compact group. The tanks were nearly as free-roaming as the troop carriers, just their added weight from their armor and big gun put any restrictions on them.