War World IV: Invasion

by War World IV Invasion v2 Lit

  If Ashcroft was disappointed by learning the nature of his first command, he did not show it; he nodded once. “I understand, Deathmaster. And my mission?”

  Quilland pointed over his own shoulder to the hardcopy map behind him. “You are to conduct a general reconnaissance of the mountain passes located at the juncture of the Miracle and Girdle of God mountain chains. These passes are called ‘The Knots’ by the cattle. You are to carry your reconnaissance through The Knots and into the tidal plain beyond. You are to follow this river”-- Quilland traced the east-running blue line with his finger--”out of the pass and to the coast. There, you will assess the shore regions for general habitability, current settlement status, and natural resources.”

  Ashcroft blinked at Quilland’s sudden conclusion. “And then, Deathmaster?”

  “And then you conquer the region. You have another task in mind, perhaps?”

  “No, Deathmaster.”

  “Very good. Yours is the first team that we are sending into this region. Shortly after beginning your mission, you will pass through the area formerly belonging to the Redfield Satrapy. You may augment your unit’s basic equippage by commandeering suitable materiel from the locals there.” Assuming they have anything left that’s worth commandeering--which I doubt.

  Ashcroft only nodded once. “I understand, Deathmaster.”

  Do you? Do you really? Do you understand that Diettinger is giving you the dregs in the hope that you’ll turn them into a better unit--but also because, if your recon team is waylaid and slaughtered out in that trackless mountain wilderness, it will only be a minor military loss--and a further refinement of the overall Sauron genetic pool? Quilland returned the young officer’s nod. “You have your orders, Senior Assault Leader Ashcroft. You are dismissed.”

  Another nod and Ashcroft rose and smoothly strode toward the door. Quilland watched the young Soldier’s back, appraised and approved of the broad shoulders and otherwise rangy build that was the new model--the Haven model--of the Sauron Soldier. A promising officer--a rocket still early in its steep, rising trajectory--but flawed. Will you reason it out, my young eagle? Will the knowledge catch you quickly, before you leave on your mission? Or will it come to you later, on some lonely grey mountainside of treacherously damp slate? Can’t you guess why Diettinger is willing to risk you on such a low-priority mission, Ashcroft? Are you so truly the Sauron ideal, so willing to obey, to trust the wisdom of your superiors, and never once consider what your orders imply about how those superiors see you--that they might know more about Senior Assault Leader Ashcroft than he knows about himself?

  Ashcroft’s grey uniformed back disappeared around the doorjamb. Quilland sighed, opened the young officer’s dossier, looked down at the Breedmaster’s report one more time. Brave young Ashcroft; always in the thick of it, even as a young trooper. Always where the action was hot--and the radiation intense. Breedmaster Caius was not certain whether it had been the repeated battlefield exposures or some other problem--such as a xenovirus-- but the fertility results were indisputable.

  And because we’re on Haven, they’re also unalterable-- which was why the results were suppressed. Ten years ago, Ashcroft, we could have given you back the posterity resident in your own genes. But now, there is no chance of it. You are another victim of our exile on Haven, another grand ideal lost forever, flawed only in your inability to recreate that ideal in the form of a successive generation. And because of that, my bold young eagle, you are relegated to the level of a tool-- a thing we will use and consult and call comrade and even Deathmaster (maybe, someday). But you and your legacy are already dead to us, as are the sons and daughters who might have been yours, but for a few too many rods on some inauspicious day several years ago.

  Quilland scowled at the documents once again and closed the dossier slowly. He turned and looked out the window at the lilliputian rivulet of tribute that meandered slowly past his eyrie and into the Shangri-La Valley. He sighed again--but didn’t even realize it.

  THE GIFT OF THE MAGI, Charles E. Gannon

  Perhaps the night had suddenly grown darker, or perhaps he was blacking out due to blood loss; whatever the reason, Emmanuel Knecht felt himself lose balance and fall forward. As he hit the frigid ground, the pain in his left shoulder surged and then burst beyond its former periphery. The pain washed down through his left lung, and a taste of bitter copper rose into his mouth. Emmanuel was mildly surprised to discover that he was able to trace the progress of each new sensation with an almost luxurious detachment. He didn’t even flinch when the crossbow bolt in his left shoulder grated against the frozen earth and pushed through another centimeter of muscle and sinew: that was a bad sign.

  The woman was the first to reach him. With a strength that seemed incongruous in her spare frame, she grasped his right upper arm and rolled him over. He closed his eyes as his entire weight was momentarily poised upon his left side; he felt the splintered ends of his shattered collarbone brush against each other. As those conductive points of pain made their brief contact, he felt rather than saw an excruciating, absolute whiteness. But part of his mind remained far away from that actinic agony--a part that kept asking, Why doesn’t it hurt more?

  Then Knecht felt the earth against his back and the pain faded, but the brightness grew. Emmanuel allowed his eyelids to open slightly; the woman’s lantern--mostly covered--shone in his eyes. He calmly thought, She’ll get us all killed, and then clawed at the light with his right hand, trying to knock it away.

  His hand refused to respond as intended. His attempt to slap aside the lantern manifested as a weak, sweeping gesture, as though he was merely trying to ward off the illumination. However, this feeble effort produced the desired result; she lifted her cloak to cover the lantern. But not before he saw her face more clearly, more proximally, than he had thus far: high, slightly weathered cheekbones framed by sandy blond hair faintly streaked with grey--well-preserved, considering she was a woman in her early twenties.

  A woman in her early twenties; ten years ago, some recidivistic male bureaucrats--willfully clinging to their socially-incorrect ways--still insisted upon calling women in their early twenties “girls.” And, ten years ago, there was a certain physiognomic logic to their choice of words; back then, most women of twenty-five were fresh-faced and smooth-cheeked, their bodies graced with sweeping curves that bespoke a healthy mix of fat and muscle. But all that was before the arrival of the Saurons. Now, childhood was over before it had a chance to begin; girls were women by age fifteen.

  Above her flesh-taut cheekbones, the woman’s eyes roved back and forth, watching Knecht for signs of consciousness. Hers were sad eyes, he thought; they were grey-blue and bracketed by crow’s feet, each talon-like crease a memento mori of something forever lost. Parents, siblings, friends, virtues: their passings were recorded where her tears had mourned them.

  The man who travelled with the woman approached and looked over her shoulder at Emmanuel. “He alive?” the man asked her.

  She nodded. “But not by much. We’ve got to stop.”

  Emmanuel shook his head; they both started. “I’m still conscious. Help me up.”

  The woman hesitated but the man moved forward and took hold of Knecht under the left armpit. Flaring pain engulfed Emmanuel’s left lung, arced up his neck and then into the left temple. The woman came to support him on the right side, and, swaying between the two of them, Emmanuel straightened his legs. He smiled and nodded. The man and woman stepped aside. Emmanuel thought about taking a step, but someplace between the thought and the first motion, the surrounding darkness folded in upon him and the starry sky spun like a celestial pinwheel. Knecht fell, tried to get up again, but he couldn’t; the woman was holding him down. “Be still now,” she told him. There were tears in her voice.

  The man walked off, muttered a single word: “Damn.” It was clear to him that Emmanuel was not going any farther. When the man spoke again, it was in a tight, still voice. “They’re going to find us--fin
d us and kill us.”

  “Be quiet,” the woman whispered.

  His response was hushed, but obstinately grim. “They’re going to kill us.”

  Emmanuel swallowed, noticed how dry his throat had become, and turned his head away. So close, so close, and still no way to get help. But maybe that was a blessing in disguise. This way, he could not be tempted to disregard the secrecy protocols, could not expose the others who were awaiting his return. Knecht had ran out of the easy answers to which he might succumb--the kind of easy answers that had gotten him into this predicament in the first place.

  Knecht had spotted them just as dusk was closing in: a man and a woman setting up camp. Even at a distance, Emmanuel could see that they were haggard and weary, and all his training--and instincts--told him, Don’t stop. Don’t get involved with a pair of doomed refugees that you can’t help anyway. Don’t take stupid risks; you’re almost home. But when she looked up, saw him, and waved--waved--Knecht could not help himself; he had to go to them. He could have been anyone or anything: a Sauron, a bandit--hell, there were even rumors of cannibals in the area. Nevertheless, she had offered Knecht a timeless human gesture of greeting. It marked her as a good person---and too ingenuous to survive in outlands roamed by petty warlords, marauders, and, possibly, Saurons. She and her travelling companion were just bodies waiting to be harvested--unless Emmanuel intervened.

  So Knecht made his first mistake: he joined them. He helped them light their fire (using a flint striker; the waterproof matches would come later--if they seemed to be the right sort of people), and asked them where they were bound. The man’s vague answers and largely inaccurate geographical references informed Emmanuel that this couple really didn’t know where they were going. And that meant--in the darkest sense of the idiom--that they were going nowhere fast. Maybe, if they had been mean-spirited or rude, Knecht might have moved on, but instead, they offered him an equal share of their food and invited him to camp with them for the night. Emmanuel accepted the food with genuine gratitude--and a gnawing sense that he was now obligated to help them.

  That’s when he made his second mistake--when he saw, and opted for, the “easy” answer, thereby violating every bit of wisdom that four years on Haven had imparted to him: he offered to travel with them for a day or two. He did not mention how close he was to his home, what that home was, or that he was hoping that maybe--just maybe--they could become a part of his community. All he offered them was his fellowship and another mouth to feed, but they welcomed and agreed to his offer. Good people, all right--too good to survive very long on their own.

  As the blackness of truenight grew thicker, he listened to their story. They had started as a group of fourteen, the only survivors of a Sauron raid upon their town. For several months, they bounced from one site of semi-civilization to another, running before the continually rising tide of famine and disease that characterized the third year of the Sauron occupation. In the end, they decided to abandon the Shangri-La Valley entirely. They struck for the east coast: a dangerous journey, hut one which they felt would put them beyond the scope of the Sauron depredations. They followed the River Jordan to Little Crater Fork, a craggy cleft where the Madigan River joins the outflow from the mountain-bound Crater Lake. Saurons and sickness had reduced their number to nine by that point. Two more were lost in the narrow ravines flanking the Madigan River’s northeasterly upstream course. Two hundred kilometers south of that source, the survivors left the ravine network and ascended into the rugged, rolling highlands that were known as The Knots. Two months and three more of the refugees were lost as they navigated those winding passes, the Miracle Mountains soaring towards the clouds on their right, the peaks of the God’s Girdle jutting upward on their left. The last four survivors eventually came to the humble upland source of the Widebay River and began a twisting descent to the east coast. Slippery footing near a waterfall claimed one refugee, and the cliff lions got another. The last two--the man and the woman--had pushed on until, four days ago, they topped a bluff carpeted with wireweed and saw the sun rising over a distant ocean: the Eastern Sea--and their destination.

  Emmanuel smiled, nodded, thought: How can I tell them that their destination has doom written broad across its untamed tidal flats? That it’s teeming with land gators, covered by swards of deadly firegrass? That its coastline is a wild, wind-blasted heath, haunted by the banshee-like cries of carrion-seeking stobors? All that, and winter is following hard upon their arrival in this dubious paradise. What word of hope can I offer them? An assurance that the Saurons aren’t interested in the east coast? True for now--but what about next year?

  And that had been Emmanuel’s third and critical error: to assume that he--or anyone--could ever assert with any accuracy what the Saurons were and weren’t interested in.

  Two hours after sunset, they heard horses approaching. Because they could hear the horses, Knecht knew that it was already too late to do anything constructive. However, the male refugee apparently had not yet learned the basic facts about night combat. So, when he rose up brandishing his spear, Emmanuel sent a palm-edged chop into the back of his right knee. The man crumpled backward, spitting out a curse--which died in mid-utterance; less than thirty meters away, a rifle barked. A bullet whispered through the space the man’s torso had occupied only a moment before.

  Three, possibly four, seconds later, a Sauron with an assault rifle emerged from the darkness, the weapon’s barrel sweeping back and forth with the regularity of a cold, grey metronome. Another Sauron galloped in shortly after, leading his partner’s horse by the reins. Theirs had been a standard Sauron tactic, one that Knecht had seen many times before. Under the cover of darkness, a single sniper silently insinuated himself into close range. Then, the main body--in this case, the horseman--began a slow, noisy advance. When the enemy’s leaders and combat-capable personnel started to react, the sniper went to work, trying to eliminate as many as possible.

  As the second Sauron began to dismount, the sniper took a particular interest in Emmanuel; the black abyss of the rifle’s flash suppressor had centered on his chest. Knecht sat very still, letting his loose black robes obscure and thereby diminish his round-muscled frame--a frame that would have told a Sauron observer: This one eats well and regularly, even better than you do. The sniper’s attention remained on Knecht a moment longer, and then the barrel began to drift in the direction of the male refugee, who had--unwisely--glanced at his fallen spear. The rifleman took a frost-crunching step forward, and Emmanuel, feeling himself momentarily unobserved, conducted a rapid assessment of the tactical situation.

  Two Saurons. One armed with a six-millimeter assault rifle, currently at seven meters range and closing. The other, at eleven meters range and tying the horses, was currently unarmed, although a readied light crossbow was hanging next to his saddle. Both Saurons had enough gear on their horses to support brief independent operations, but not enough to suggest that they were living off the land. That made them advance scouts--outriders for a larger unit. However, that unit was probably on a low-priority mission; there was only the one primitive, small-calibre firearm between the two scouts--well beneath standard Sauron ordnance ratios.

  The sniper took another step, the frozen wireweed crackling like broken glass under his boot. Emmanuel felt a bead of sweat trickle out of his armpit, snake wetly down his side; he had to act. Not for himself, not for the refugees, but for the people at home: the people who were depending upon him to ensure their safety by protecting their secrecy--even at the expense of his own life. Knecht waited for the Sauron sniper’s third step, waited for the frost to crackle. As it did, Emmanuel thumbed back the hammer on the revolver he held concealed within the folds of his travelling mantle.

  The hammer’s metallic clik-clak blended into the shattering of the wireweed, and the sniper, ears filled with his own noisy progress, did not pick out the sound. However, his comrade started, made a half-turn in Emmanuel’s direction, and then spun back toward his horse,
his hand an eye-defying blur as he lunged for his crossbow. The sniper--hearing his partner’s swift, combat-paced movements--froze, alert but obviously perplexed.

  Emmanuel felt time slow down as he raised his hands toward each other. His left palm locked into place beneath and behind his right-handed hold upon the revolver. He had to get both of the Saurons: otherwise, they’d discover everything. They’d discover that the revolver was of recent die-cast manufacture. They’d discover that the barrel was cold-rolled, that the propellant was nitrocellulose based. In short, they’d discover that their campaign of technological expunction had missed at least one community capable of creating weapons which could challenge their domination of Haven.

  Even as the revolver’s hammer was falling, Knecht saw that the sniper’s head was already turning back in his direction, the muzzle of the assault rifle trailing slightly behind. The roar from Knecht’s pistol obliterated all other sound and the 11-millimeter magnum hollowpoint slug opened up a red crater just to the right of the Sauron’s sternum. The Sauron wobbled but the assault rifle continued to swivel toward Knecht.

  Emmanuel’s second shot wasn’t as clean. Fighting against the resistance of the uncocked hammer put his shot high; it punched a gushing hole through the Sauron’s upper left lung. The assault rifle started chattering, but Knecht’s hit had rocked the Sauron backward; the muzzle rose, bullets whining overhead into the darkness. Emmanuel leaned into the revolver, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger sharply; the top of the Sauron’s head disappeared. Then the body toppled backward, the assault rifle stuttering fitfully for one last moment.

  Emmanuel swung toward the second Sauron--who locked eyes with him over the taut, drawn arms of a loaded crossbow. Knecht heard the weapon’s string sing and the shuttle slap forward--just as the rim of his revolver’s muzzle superimposed itself upon the Sauron’s chest. Knecht snapped the trigger back--and felt, as well as heard, the world explode.