In the Virtual Bank Line

I am with a scouting mission of five. We've tracked signals to a particular small planet, but we can't decode the signals or tell who they're aimed at.

We land in an area composed mainly of swamps (a class N planet). There appears to be no animal life more evolved than small plants, and there is one structure. It's a three-story house-looking structure covered over with something resembling white ivy and caulking. My particular mission is to find and disable to signal's source. Three will find the person/persons manning this signaling station, the last is the radio who keeps communication with our ship, parked on the other side of the sun from this planet in synchronous orbit (SOP - it keeps our troop carrier hidden until we need them).

I've discovered that the signal source is organic - it's the white webbing that covers the house. It's like an organic web of signal processing and accelerating synapses grown over an artificial structure. By following the whole down to its root, I can knock out the signal. This is why our scans found nothing - it's another organic structure in the middle of a wealth of organic structures.

In the meantime our people have discovered the man stationed here. There is only one, since there is no machinery to maintain. We have found out from whom he is getting his information, but we don't know for whom his broadcasts are specifically intentioned. The fact that it's a broadcast rather than a beamed signal is disturbing. The man gets away, and our troop carrier follows him.

He's gone to an inhabited class M planet, and since his propulsion system is superior to ours, he gets there long before we do. By the time we get there and locate his signal again, he has already constructed a wooden building and begun the process of growing the communication web over it. The tendrils are still young and small, though, so their signal is too weak to leave the planet's atmosphere. However, our scans show that thousands of his troops are in the vicinity.

My advance team of five goes to the planet to find him. Three are out doing recon, radio is with me, and I'm at the structure scraping the new communication lines off the building. We look out over a grassy field next to the house. It's the size of five or six football fields, covered in picnic blankets and umbrellas where the inhabitants of the area are having a public festival. They are getting up onto a stage at one end and taking turns singing for the crowd. Beyond them, in the very tall grass, we can make out the soldiers from the other side. They are just sitting there, waiting for us.

We make our way into the crowd. We've done this before. We talk to the people in charge, telling them that we're just here to purchase supplies, that we don't want to interfere with them in any way. These people are friendly and offer to share their picnic with us. This works to our advantage. Our troops work their way into the crowd, keeping one eye on the soldiers in the tall grass off to one side. In case of attack, our soldiers will be able to rush to one side, keeping the civilians out of the line of fire.

The waiting is the worst part. We sit there for hours, trying to be friendly and interact with the people on this planet, wondering why the enemy is just sitting there. We have the advantage at the beginning of the battle, since several hundred yards separate us and our weapons are all either pulse or projectile, good at longer distances. Their weapons are also based on that white organic goo and are only good at close range, but are more deadly since the white goo sticks and then sends tendrils under the armor. We don't want to rush into a trap, but the waiting is tense.

My job is done. I get into my short-range ship to head back to the troop carrier where I can analyze the white goop and its communication tendrils. As I am leaving the planet's atmosphere, I encounter something else disconcerting. There are single soldiers in individual carriers - hundreds of them - scattered in high orbit. Their carriers are like space bicycles - good only for carrying one person to and from a craft in orbit. They carry only a couple of hours' worth of oxygen and can't hold any cargo at all. The most a person would be able to carry is the gear they were wearing and perhaps a hand weapon.

These troops aren't in a formation. They can't be waiting to be called to the surface - they're too scattered. They can't be waiting to intercept anything coming from the planet - they're not armed. As I pass them (they don't appear to notice my small craft) they are making noises and gestures amongst themselves that indicate that they are a suicide squad. They are there to perform one mission that will take them out along with their target. I just don't know what their target is. Capturing any of them is no good. That soldier would be dead before I got him/her on my ship.

As I head back to my ship, I wonder whether there is a plan of attack that is so subtle and insidious that we're not seeing it, or whether these are the last, desperate moves of this particular enemy. I don't know how the overall battle is going. I'm not privy to that. I only know that I'm still alive, my people are still alive, and that we've been victorious through more than one battle. What I've seen so far - the broadcast signals, the low-tech weapons, the scattered attacks, all look like desperation.

I don't know what this war is for.