CHAPTER THREE
Sal grabbed for the radio transmitter. “Al! Is that really you?”
“You bet it is,” Alfonso’s familiar voice came back.
“But what are you doing out here?”
“Checking out mineral deposits. I saw on Recent Postings that you were out in this region. I’m only a couple thousand miles away. I thought we might get together.”
“Yes, let’s!” Sal said. “Do you want to come here or shall I go to your ship?”
“I think you’ve got better facilities.”
Sal decided that Alfonso was probably manning a one-man class B Minerals Explorer Probe. The amenities wouldn’t be much on a workhorse like that, whereas Sal was commander of a star class Battleship, one that had all the amenities expected of someone showing the Sforza battle flag.
Alfonso would be impressed. It would give Sal a chance to show off a bit. That wasn’t very nice, he told himself. But he forgave himself in advance. He’d get back to self-discipline after Alfonso left.
Alfonso’s stubby little ship locked onto one of the battleship’s entry ports. Soon Alfonso came through the port. He was a good-looking boy, exactly Sal’s age, and he was wearing a high-fashion black explorer’s tunic with tailored riding breeches. Goggles were draped casually around his neck, the mark of a deep-space man. But Sal couldn’t get his eyes off that tunic. It had zippers everywhere, like the pictures of the airplane pilots who fought Earth’s ancient wars in the skies. Sal felt a twinge of jealousy. He decided he’d get himself a tunic just like it, only with more zippers.
Alfonso was almost half a head taller than he was, though their height had been identical when they were both five years old. That was almost eleven years ago, back in the playground attached to the zygote factory.
The earliest thing Sal remembered was his birth place, Zygote Factory 122a on Drina 12. He could still smell the dusty factory odors; see the fluorescent lighting, full and without focus; and hear the soft hum of machinery nurturing the thousands of developing zygotes.
Alfonso had been in the Petri dish on his left hand side, the final one in the long row. That made Alfonso a close brother to him, especially since he had no brother on his right hand side, an oversight of factory planning that might have been responsible for Sal’s bouts of moodiness.
Of course, all the zygotes from 122a were his brothers, technically speaking. But with Alfonso it was different, more special. He liked Alfonso and wanted Alfonso to like him. Sometimes he also hated Alfonso and wanted to best him. It made for an interesting relationship.
After early development, the two boys had played together. Sal remembered the enormous playground at 122a, green with Ev’ergreen, a grass substitute made of recycled plastics, a substance that never needed cutting and was considered superior to the real thing. The two boys had played the usual games at that time, based on war and business, mankind’s two chief concerns. Alfonso was always physically bolder, though Sal was the more clever of the two.
Early on in life, they had both been selected for advanced studies. Sal’s skill at electronic games had guaranteed him entry to the yearly military-management draft, when lucky boys and girls with good intelligence and superior hand-eye coordination were selected by the Condottieri. They learned to lead older troops, men of twenty to thirty, already past their prime, reflex-wise, but good enough for handling one man fighters in the formations known as StarSwarms. After a brief period as a free agent, Sal had signed with Sforza, one of the biggest of the independent warlords, who controlled half a dozen mercenary battle groups in his region of space near the Galactic Center.
Alfonso had taken a different path. He hadn’t been interested in war. He had signed for the Management Resources Program with Substances Ltd., a huge conglomerate that had mining interests on many different planets. Alfonso decided to specialize in the Rare British Explorations Division, where his boldness and lack of self-reflection would be useful traits. The boys hadn’t met since graduation from dear old 122a.
“Well, Sal,” Alfonso said. “You look like you’re keeping well.”
“Can’t complain,” Salvatore said. “What about yourself?”
Alfonso shrugged. He got up from the chair and walked to the sideboard. There he poured himself a fruit drink. Already he had the serious, no-nonsense look that characterized so many of the Business people. He was a good-looking boy, straight nose, regular features. His mouth, even at the age of sixteen, was tight. He looked handsome, self-contained, unflappable, and a little wistful, like a child peering out of a hard boy’s face.
Sal, on the other hand, was more immediately emotional. Red-haired, with freckled skin that burned easily, he felt things directly, and he acted on his intuitions. This was considered a good quality in a battle group commander. One had to have the right instincts to run a battle group.
“So what do you do.” Alfonso asked, “working for a Condottieri?”
“The usual military stuff,” Sal said. “Putting down rebellions. Helping one side or the other. Occasionally something interesting comes up.” He poured Alfonso another fruit juice and said, with exaggerated unconcern “Like now, I’m going to take on a job of restoring a princess to her throne.”
“You’re kidding,” Alfonso said. “I didn’t know they still had princesses ruling planets.”
“Better believe it, and she’s a real one, from Excelsus. But it’s going to take some action to get this thing done right.”
“Will it be dangerous?” asked Alfonso, a little note of awe in his voice that pleased Sal very much.
“Oh, I suppose so,” Sal said offhandedly, “But I’ve got a good bunch of lads here under my command. We’re going to go in and do it right.” He felt a swell of satisfaction as he spoke. He could see how impressed Alfonso was by it all.
“Which planet is it?” Alfonso asked.
“Melchior. It’s a small green one in the Cygne system.”
“I know the place! I’m going there to check out the mineral rights for Substances Ltd!”
“Then I’ll see you there,” Sal said.
“Wow, that’s really great,” Alfonso said. “I hope you’ll give me a good deal on mineral rights, if this place turns out to have anything valuable. It’ll look good to my company.”
“Consider it done,” Sal said magnanimously.
Alfonso had never been aboard a star class battleship. He was especially interested in the War Simulations Room, where the main Battle Organ was located. He looked at that instrument with awe. To operate it, one sat back in a reclining lounge-chair. The Battle Organ was lowered over the operator, a half-sphere surrounding his head and shoulders. Over three hundred instruments could be reached with minimum movements of arm and hand. There were entire sets of data gloves within easy reach, each controlling different arrays of offensive and defensive weapons. Alfonso knew that these allowed Sal to control different parts of the attack operation.
A computer could have been programmed to run the Battle Organ. But the matter of intuition that lay behind choice was a human gift, not a cybernetic one. Sal could beat any computer operated war game played against him.
Playing a game of war and fighting a real one were not just similar; with modem weaponry, they were identical. In both, there was the god-like feeling of controlling complicated matters with an effortless ease. In actuality, running a battle simulator, even for a few minutes, was extremely taxing. No one could do it for long. The Battle Organ was provided with a cut-in operating program which could take over when the human operator took his few moments of involuntary rest.
With the Battle Organ, one never saw any blood or torn or scorched flesh. It could be dialed up on the screen, but it wasn’t necessary. Not that Sal was squeamish. But it helped to play the game when he could keep it impersonal.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sal was trying to relax—a difficult task as his men still hadn’t returned—when he received an urgent signal from Toma, asking the commander to visit him as soo
n as convenient. Sal went to confer with Toma in his quarters.
On their own planet, the spider robots lived in caves where they spun vast communal webs. All of them took turns repairing old web and creating new web. Onboard the Endymion, Toma had a room to himself. It was filled entirely with gossamer filaments of web. Once a spider robot was in his web, he fell immediately into a deep, trancelike sleep. It was almost impossible to wake him before his own internal time clock clicked over to waking mode.
Opening the door, Sal saw what looked at first like swirling mist. After a moment his vision adjusted and he saw it for what it was—gossamer-light filaments, spun to a great fineness, and filling the room entirely. There was a hint of furniture, but this too was constructed out of filament. Toma had spun a chair for Sal, and had applied hardener so it wouldn’t collapse under him. On the walls, there were portraits of Toma’s parents, also done in filament and colored with different dyes. The room had a misty, faraway and long-ago sort of look, as though Sal were seeing it in a dream.
“Come in, sit down,” Toma said. “I have already brewed your favorite Ovaltine drink for you. And perhaps you’d like to try these.” He picked up a plate from a low filament table and extended it to Sal on one tentacle. There was an embroidered cloth over the plate, made of gossamer with bright threads of red and green running through it.
“What is it?” Sal asked.
“Look for yourself,” Toma said. Sal removed the cloth. Beneath, he saw small circular objects, black in color, made up of two circles pasted together with a white substance.
Sal picked one up, sniffed it, cautiously bit into it. He burst into an astonished grin.
“Oreos!” he cried. “And the genuine formula, too! Toma, where did you get them? Genuine Oreos haven’t been seen for at least two hundred years.”
“I came across the recipe recently while I was monitoring the Spider Robot CB Net. One of our archaeologists dug it up on a recent trip to Earth. Is it good?”
“Extremely good,” Sal said. “I only wish you could taste one for yourself.”
“I wish so too, Boss. But you know we spider robots eat only metals. I will have a little candied copper filigree just to keep you company.”
They munched together companionably for a while, boy and spider robot in the web-filled storeroom. Then
Toma asked. “Are you really going to help Princess Hatari, Boss?”
“I am,” Sal said flatly. “I don’t like what I’ve heard of the Balderdash. And I have the right to enter into an independent contract.”
“Only,” Toma pointed out, “if no previous contract exists.”
“The only contract that exists is one between Princess Hatari and Sforza. She told us that herself.”
“I’m afraid the princess exaggerated a bit,” Toma said.
“What do you mean?” Sal asked.
“I took the liberty of accessing the aforementioned contract on the Warlord Agreements Database. A contract exists, commander, but it is not between Princess Hatari and the Sforza. It is between the Balderdash and the Sforza.”
“The Balderdash! Are you telling me we’re in alliance with the Balderdash?”
“Yes, Sir. I’m afraid we are.”
“So the princess made it all up? But how could she have known the contract number?”
“She is listed in the contract, Commander. But as an enemy, both of the Balderdash, and, since the signing of the contract, us.”
Sal paced up and down. His brow was furrowed. “I don’t want the Balderdash as my allies!”
“That is what the Count has agreed to.”
“I choose my own enemies!”
“Forgive me, sir, but as a paid employee of the
Sforza, it is more correct to say the Count chooses them for you.”
“I don’t like it,” Sal muttered, slumping into a chair. “And if I don’t like it, I don’t have to do it.”
“You will have Count Sforza himself as your enemy if you persist in this course. What is the matter if I may ask? Count Sforza has been very good to you.”
“Picking me was a good deal for him.” Sal responded, “I was a Senior Pinball Wizard the year of my graduation, one of the best sixteen-year-old prospects to come along in a decade. That’s what the newspapers said. He was lucky to get me.”
“Perhaps so. But he has done well by you. It isn’t every young man of sixteen who gets appointed bubaldar after only one year of service.”
“It’s just bubaldar second-class, the lowest rank that can hold independent command.”
“Didn’t he appoint you Sackmeister of Aldoona when your forces overran the Sachaverell Salient?”
“Sure, he made me Sackmeister,” Sal said. “But what about Jacopo Kelly? He made him a zumdwiller third-class, and he hadn’t even fought in a campaign!”
“Give the count time. He’ll see to your advancement. But do not attempt to go against his wishes by attempting to put the princess on the throne of Melchior.”
“Hell,” Sal said. “I’ve already promised her I’d do that.”
“That was before you knew she’d lied to you.”
“Yes, that’s so. Well, I guess we’ll have to tell her.”
“We, Commander?
“I know, I have to tell her myself. Is that it?”
“That’s proper form,” Toma said.
“Damn it, it’s awkward . . .”
Just then the alarm went off.
“It’s the men returning!” Sal said. “Thanks for the Oreos, I have to get back to the Command Room.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The StarSwarm of Sal’s Battle Group made a brave spectacle as they returned to the Battleship Endymion in their small, sleek spaceships. They came in fast from outer space, driving toward the Endymion at full bore, keeping up their speed until the last possible moment, then making a short, sizzling, braking turn just before they would have crashed into the big ship’s hull. Sal had warned them over and over not to do that because there was always the possibility of a mistake, and he was responsible to Sforza Management Services if any of his craft were dented or destroyed. But the men were unable to resist the dashing gesture. Although they were full grown, they had signed with the Sforza Condottieri for the fun of it as well as for the money. They had all taken the Immaturity Option which let them have childish enjoyment in simple things. Sometimes Sal envied them. But he had chosen a different path, giving up much of his own enjoyment in order to get ahead. There’d be plenty of time for him to relax and play the fool when he was older. Right now, he needed to make his way in the world. Fun would have to come later.
Sal’s second-in-command, Dick Fogarty, reported on the success of the campaign. He was a big man in his late twenties, already balding, hearty and thick of chest, and with a scruffy blond beard.
“Hi there, Commander!” Fogarty cried as he stepped into the Command Room.
“Welcome back, Soldier,” Salvatore said. “How did the battle go?”
Fogarty told him how their StarSwarm had crept into Ratisbone, the enemy stronghold at Star Pass Nine, and descended into the planet’s atmosphere unnoticed through their skilful use of the high-beam deflectors that gave their descent a virtual invisibility.
The StarSwarm had gone down through the clouds, coming out at last, twenty ships strong, over the city of Aria. They had caught the enemy completely by surprise.
And then the destruction began. The Ratisbone air militia scrambled to get space-borne, and were destroyed piecemeal by Fogarty’s wing-men. The lamentations were loud from Ratisbonean mothers grieving for their fighter-spaceship sons and husbands who had tried, too late, to get aloft.
After a brief battle, Fogarty’s men isolated the main city of Aria with volleys of lava fall, creating a fiery barrier between the city and the garrison of Space cadets who were pledged to defend it. The ships of the Sforza Condottieri had gone into their berserk dives, their jets burning fiery trails at oblique angles across city streets. Rain clouds exploded
into sweaty evaporation as they dived beneath them, maximum-g burning, and came up with guns blazing.
They could have used the nuclears, of course, but that was frowned upon. Ever since the old days when atomics had nearly wiped out civilization, this form of warfare had been held in disrepute. The Universal Gaming Board, which controlled all combat setups, had set down stringent rules, working on a complex scale of war game simulation packages in hopes of someday weaning mankind from its favorite pursuit of unlimited destruction.
“To sum up, Sir, we destroyed the place, and I believe we did you proud,” Fogarty said.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Sal said. “I expected no less. I suppose all the men behaved properly?”
Dick Fogarty frowned and turned away. “Yes sir. All except Carruthers, who turned tail and ran when the first enemy resistance was encountered.”
Salvatore scowled. “I’ll not have cowardice in my Corps!”
“We know that, Sir,” Dick said. “We took the liberty of following Carruthers when he tried to take refuge on one of the East Range Planets.”
“What did you do to him?” Salvatore asked.
Fogarty drew a finger across his throat and rolled his eyes.
“Mercifully, I hope?” Sal said.
“After the first moment, he didn’t feel a thing,” Fogarty said.
“You’ve all done well.”
Just then Toma hurried in.
“Announcing the arrival of the Princess Hatari,” he said.
“What’s she doing back here already?” Sal asked.
“You invited her to dinner.”
“I didn’t say when, though, did I?”
“You told her to come over after the squadron returned. She must have watched them from her ship’s viewport.”
“She seems to be in a great hurry?” Sal asked.
“Perhaps she’s hungry,” Toma said.
Dick Fogarty had followed this conversation with a puzzled look on his face.
“Do we have a visitor, Sir?” he asked. “I did notice a new ship parked near the dorsal fin when we came in.”
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