“This is the line,” she said.

  “What do you mean, this is the line?”

  “This is the place beyond which no android has yet gone.”

  I was a little confused. But I thought about it and then produced a handheld computer. Reviewing the data there, I realized that she had a point. We had advanced as far forward as any element of the android front line on any of the fronts. I found this both illuminating and irritating.

  “Major Cringe, Colonel Stumps, are you guys telling me that no one is allowed to march beyond this point?” I asked them.

  They glanced at one another in confusion as if they did not quite understand my question, but then they gestured toward the thinnest point in the trees. You could actually see buildings on the horizon—Mataran City was just now barely becoming visible through some of the gaps.

  “It is not that we’re not allowed, sir. It is that it is not yet time for that step to be taken. The advance to the city outskirts has not been triggered.”

  “Triggered…” I said, “is that what you call it? What is it, some kind of ‘if’ statement?… some kind of logical connection that’s made in every one of your android brains at the same time?”

  Colonel Stumps thought about this for a moment, and then he nodded. “Yes, sir. I think that is a valid description.”

  “So, you’re saying that until every different part of our lines has moved forward to this same distance from the city outskirts, no one is allowed to advance?”

  Major Cringe shook her head. She took it upon herself to answer this time. “Again, sir, it is not that we are not allowed. It is that none of us would make such a decision under these circumstances.”

  “Ah-ha,” I said. “Now I begin to understand. It’s not so much that you guys are somehow limited in your behavior, but rather that since you all think the same way, you tend to only proceed in a lockstep fashion?”

  The two androids agreed with me that this was the case, and I began to understand them more intimately. This was definitely a weakness. The androids were essentially identical-minded characters, not what you wanted on an active battlefield.

  The androids almost didn’t have to confer with each other about decisions, since they were of the same mind. They were all going to do the same thing anyway, so they really weren’t sending messages back and forth, making recommendations or generating chain-of-command decisions. Instead, they were just all acting at once upon their natural instincts and proclivities—which were essentially the same from one individual to the next. It was really weird as a human to experience this firsthand.

  “All right, all right,” I said. “This business of standing around in battlefields isn’t going to work—not against this enemy. What we’re going to have to do is break your normal rules, and I’m here to do that for you.”

  A ring of artificial eyes stared at me in silence.

  “Because I’m a human, I do not have the same mind that all android officers have, so therefore, I’m going to behave differently than any of you would. I’m going to force you to win this battle, whether you guys want to or not.”

  Colonel Stumps objected. “General Gorman, we want to win this battle. It is our goal. It is our mission statement. It is imperative that we win this battle.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “No offense meant, Stumps. Don’t worry. I don’t have any doubts about your focus or your unity of purpose. I am simply questioning your methods. As B-6 has given me the authority to command this small group from 2nd Division, I’m going to do it to the best of my ability. What’s more, I’m going to trigger the advance of all android forces on this town right now.”

  The androids looked concerned, but they did not object immediately.

  “All right,” I said, turning around. “Let’s march—all of you at once. Form a line. March forward.”

  They did as they were ordered, but they definitely looked uncomfortable. They hesitated. They took short half-steps. They swung their rifles erratically, and they looked agitated.

  “What’s the matter now?” I demanded. “Why aren’t you guys marching as before? Are you sensing some alien formations? Are they counter-attacking again?”

  “No, sir,” Colonel Stumps said. “We are breaking with behavioral norms. This puts every android into an error state, so while we are still functioning, we’re proceeding with increased caution and transmitting warning messages to our superiors.”

  I looked at the two of them, and I blinked a few times. “Transmitting warning messages?”

  Moments later, my communications headset began talking to me. It was B-6, and he seemed as agitated as the rest of the androids on this planet.

  “General Gorman,” he said, “what do you think you’re doing?”

  “B-6, good to hear from you, sir. I’m doing exactly what you asked me to do. I’m winning this battle.”

  “Gorman, a significant portion of my entire army is currently deployed on this planet, and what you’re doing, as far as I can tell, is putting it at risk.”

  “With all due respect, sir,” I said, “do you want me to be your general? Do you want me to lead your armies to victory? Or, do you want me to be one more android who doesn’t know what he’s doing? Because I’ve got plenty of those down here. You’re welcome to replace me with any one of them.”

  B-6 was quiet for a while. I knew by now that he was thinking it all over carefully.

  Finally, he responded. “Gorman, you are hereby authorized to proceed. Consider yourself an experiment with an undetermined outcome.”

  I thought about that and nodded to myself. It was a pretty big risk, a generous level of trust that B-6 had just given to me. I couldn’t ask for more.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. “That’s all.” I closed the channel before he could give me any more restrictions.

  Marching forward and pressing the line deeper, we quickly emerged from the last of the trees and approached the outskirts of Mataran City itself. All around me, for kilometers on both sides, I saw androids in the gathering darkness of the evening. More and more of their lines marched forward just as we had.

  I knew that at two points besides Sector Three, the enemy aliens had managed to counter-attack and push back the android lines. But they’d been defeated here and in the majority of firefights. I decided it was best to simply ignore the pockets of aliens that were pressing outward and instead advance, attacking the enemy at the city outskirts.

  Darkness fell as we marched into quiet streets. They weren’t actually empty, but they seemed devoid of normal life. There were no pets, humans, or even living trees to speak of.

  There was carnage, however. Bodies were everywhere. There was also a lot of twisted wreckage. Crashed vehicles littered the streets. Barricades made of furniture, fencing materials and bricks from buildings formed defensive lines now and then, but they were all broken and the defenders were absent. At every one of these barriers, the citizens of Mataran City had already perished. They’d been overwhelmed by the aliens and destroyed.

  As I walked through the unnatural stillness of this city of the dead, I became increasingly somber and remorseful. If we hadn’t wasted our time, we could have possibly saved some of these people. I took a large amount of video material of all these tragedies. I wasn’t able to find a single living animal or person in the city—other than the few aliens that we found and destroyed, and there weren’t many of those.

  It was clear to me now as I marched around the dark echoing streets that the aliens had perhaps been trying to escape our encirclement. They’d already done their worst deeds here—devouring and butchering the city. Perhaps the three different places they’d pressed outward were attempts to escape our ring of marching plastic men rather than an attempt to actually defeat us in battle.

  Whatever the case, the city was a total loss, and all we had managed to do was kill a few thousand aliens before the battle was over.

  During all the excitement, I’d forgotten about Lucas Droad and Jort. I’d been caught up in the battle. I contacted the mobile headquarters, and I asked them to join me in the heart of the town.

  When I realized that the city was pretty much empty and devoured, I slowed down our advance and Jort caught up with me.

  “Captain Gorman, Captain Gorman,” he said. “There you are! Always, you have been one step ahead of me! It’s been crazy-time trying to follow you.”

  “Sorry, Jort,” I said. “A battle is a battle. It waits for no one.”

  Jort nodded enthusiastically. “I understand, Captain. I understand. You are a smart man. You are a fast man. You marched ahead to make these plastic fools work hard and fight hard.”

  Lucas Droad found us next. We were in the center of town by this time. It was a scene of carnage that was made both better and worse by the fact that most of the bodies had been consumed by the aliens. There were remnants, however. Bloody clothes, shoes, occasional fingers, discarded bones… It was disgusting and Jort, Droad, and I were the only ones forced to smell it.

  “This brings back memories,” Droad said, “… unwanted memories. It seems the Chain has not suffered alone. This is exactly how things went back in my home colonies. I am saddened in the extreme to see this playing out all over again in the Conclave.”

  “No!” Jort exclaimed. “You’re wrong! The plastic men will stop them. I have seen them fight. I have seen them fight while our man here, Gorman, gives them orders. These plastic fools, I think they are better than regular human fighters—they have no fear. They don’t stop until they are torn apart. They are the perfect antidote to the poison of these aliens.”

  Droad smiled grimly at him. “I hope you’re right, Jort. I hope you’re right.”

  I gave orders for the town to be searched for survivors, but I already knew there wouldn’t be any. These aliens were very thorough.

  Most upsetting to me was evidence indicating the slaughter could have been reduced. A few of the inhabitants could have been saved if we’d only moved more quickly, but no. B-6 and his men had circled around the city, joined forces, formed a perfect line and marched slowly into the dying city. That, combined with some counterattack efforts made by the aliens had given them enough time to kill everyone in the town.

  There were occasional signs of fresher blood—not just dried stains. I found it all upsetting, but I had to remind myself that the androids had done pretty damned well. They had defeated the aliens, they had won the day. Sure, we were too late, but perhaps the next time we’d do a better job.

  By the time we three humans and thousands of androids had returned to the troop ships, I was bone-tired. Even Jort had stopped his continuous talking. As I walked toward the massive ramps—each the size of a city block—alongside my android army, B-6 contacted me at last.

  “You achieved victory,” he said to me.

  I laughed. It was a bitter and hollow sound. “Victory?” I asked. “Not really. Yes, we destroyed a few of the enemy, and we took the town, but all the people are dead.”

  B-6 thought that over. “That is still a victory,” he said. “The aliens killed here are not going anywhere else. We took back the city.”

  “I disagree,” I said. “The Connactic should know that this was a failure. Taking the city is not good enough if all the people are dead.”

  “An interesting disharmony of thought,” B-6 said. “It seems pointless to belabor the discussion as we are not going to agree. There is definitely room for improvement, and you definitely helped us achieve our goals in this part of the campaign.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’m glad I could be of some help. Now, I suggest we quickly move on to the next concentration of human life on this planet. If we move faster this time…”

  “No,” B-6 said, interrupting me. “No, I don’t think we’re going to do it that way. For one thing, there are precious few humans left—this city was the last. What we have to do now, is finish destroying the aliens.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Can I help you with that endeavor?”

  “Yes. I want you to take direct command of the next action. You are going to invade a nest.”

  I glanced at Jort and then Droad. “Do either of you gentlemen wish to accompany me this time out? You, Jort. You were complaining about having been left behind before…”

  Jort looked alarmed. He thought about it, swallowed hard and then nodded. “Yes sir, Captain Gorman. Yes, I will go with you. You are a smart man. You won the day. I want to see aliens die—lots of aliens.”

  “Okay,” I said, and I turned to Droad. “What of you, Governor Droad?”

  He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I’ve actually invaded many nests, many times,” he said. “I think I can help you to do it right.”

  “Excellent,” B-6 said. “All three of you will serve as commanders. Now, return to your ship. The campaign will move on to the second continent, the one to the north.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  A day or two later, I found myself landing on the northern continent of Ailoth. This section of land was raw and wild. There were no real cities here, just a few outposts. With Jort and Droad at my side, I was again given command of a division of android troops. Unfortunately, there were no replacement soldiers—only a few thousand were in fighting shape.

  The Conclave army had no facilities to build new androids, only repair old ones, so I was given no reinforcements. Altogether, I had less than three thousand troops. The good news was that my seven officers had all survived the previous battle. They’d escaped harm largely because we’d missed the heavy combat at the end.

  In any case, it didn’t take us long to find a nest in the north. It was in a mine—of all things, a lowly copper mine buried in the slopes of some worn-down mountains. Using LiDAR and various other forms of sensory equipment, we managed to find the fresh tunnels underneath the mine that shouldn’t have been there.

  These tunnels wormed down deeper to the enemy nest. Below the original mine we could make out cavernous larvae chambers. Here, the aliens were still in their hungry, youthful stage and not yet differentiated into one of the myriad forms of the enemy. It all reminded me of looking at some kind of an oversized alien ant farm. But… these creatures, I had to remind myself, were far more advanced, intelligent and deadly than any form of ant I’d ever run into.

  “You want to know what I’m thinking, Captain Gorman?” Jort asked me as we landed and disembarked on the broad ramps of the transport ship.

  “Sure, Jort,” I said. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “I’m wondering where all the people are.”

  I shrugged. “What do you mean? We’re just out in the countryside looking for nests. This is a pretty large planet. It never was thickly inhabited. You can’t expect there to be cities everywhere, and these aliens have done well to hide themselves in the most remote locations.”

  “All of that’s true, sir,” Jort said. “All of that is true. But it’s strangely empty in this part of the planet.”

  He was right, of course. The quiet was bothering me, too. We’d arrived before dawn, and when we’d landed on the northern continent, I was alarmed by what I noticed. There were no lights anywhere, few obvious signs of life of any kind. Only the quiet forests stood as mute witnesses to the invasion.

  “Hmm,” I said, thinking it over. “Well, perhaps the local towns are trying to hide from the aliens. Maybe they don’t want to give away where they are by burning the midnight oil—or maybe they’ve simply lost power.”

  Droad spoke up next. “Jort has a point. When we invaded the southern continent, that city had lights, some signs of human activity. The bodies we discovered when we walked into that town were fresh. Here, I’m not getting the sense that there’s much left…”

  “It’s thinly inhabited, yes, but there must be someone alive,” I insisted. Thinking it over, I decided that after I organized my unit I would ask B-6 about it.

  As my group was rather small compared to a full division, I was given the task of scouting the first nest we’d found. A full division was supposed to land later in the day to deploy a full complement of 30,000 androids. These would organize and destroy any strong resistance that we weren’t able to handle.

  I could tell that circumstantially this was an odd decision made by B-6. Why not simply land a full division and get it over with? Why couldn’t B-6 get ready as quickly as possible, march in, and kill everything?

  Well, perhaps it was because he wanted to do it on the cheap. Perhaps B-6 figured he had an expendable unit—one led by a gullible man of flesh and blood such as myself—who could be thrown away. My ragtag army wasn’t much better than I was, being a broken pack of half-wrecked robots that the Conclave didn’t need any more.

  B-6 was cagey. Of that much I was very certain. I suspected that he would rather let the rest of my division fail and die than damage a fresh one. There were other possible reasons, of course. It could be that B-6 wanted to observe me in action in a different sort of situation. Invading a nest required different tactics than did retaking a town. There would be no human civilians running around, just the aliens in their domain. When pitted against androids who were invading—in this case led by a human—the results of the experiment could be illuminating. Would I win, or would I lose?

  B-6, I suspected, was performing an experiment. He wanted to know how a nest invasion would go before he committed more valuable troops. He was performing this experiment with an utter disregard for my life or the existence of his most damaged division.

  That only made sense according to his way of evaluating things. Androids weren’t known for their compassion. They knew enough to follow a success with another similar success, but that didn’t mean that they rewarded individuals for good behavior or even good service. They only concern themselves with efficiency as an overall strategy. The aliens and the androids were similar in this way. They both just wanted to get things done, budget allowing.

  After trudging up a wicked slope, we reached an opening carved into the side of a large hill. It yawned like a mouth and led into a pitch-black mine.