War World IV: Invasion

by War World IV Invasion v2 Lit

  The detonation was in his left shoulder. He tried to breathe, couldn’t. Heard someone running toward him, then realized it was the sound of his own feet kicking against the ground as he told himself Get up Get up Get up--but couldn’t. Then he could breathe again. Did so and almost passed out when the crossbow bolt grated against a splinter of clavicle. That triggered a second detonation of all-consuming pain: a silent detonation, this time--except for a scream which, he realized a moment later, was his own. Then another gunshot, this time from the assault rifle. He raised his head, dizzy from the pain that the movement produced in his shoulder. The woman was standing over the crossbowman, the assault rifle aimed down at his inert form. Then the male refugee grabbed Knecht, helped him up, and told the woman not to waste ammunition: a revolver shot to the heart and a rifle shot to the head had to be lethal--even to Saurons.

  Emmanuel remembered insisting that they throw the first Sauron’s body on the fire and then drive off the horses. Lacking the strength to explain why, he waved off their questions and took his first stumbling step into the darkness--and toward the sea. They called after him, surprised, worried; “Where are you going?”

  He turned, almost fell, croaked, “Home.” He started to run again. A moment later, he heard their footfalls join the cadence of his own.

  They had covered eight kilometers since then. Emmanuel was sure of that much: he could hear the sibilant rush of the Widebay river from where he lay. But that still left at least five kilometers to the coast, and he couldn’t make that distance under his own power. No way to build a litter: nothing but wireweed nearby, and nothing but the stobor-infested darkness beyond that. And after the Saurons finished tracking the two horses, their main body would be in hard pursuit. Emmanuel looked at the woman, discovered that she was looking at him again, her eyes deep and unreadable. “Help me to sit up,” he requested.

  She put down the lantern, placed a hand behind both of his shoulders and drew him toward her. Emmanuel felt the bolt shift, but it did not scrape against any of the shattered bones. As she removed her hands, he allowed himself to sag forward slightly, letting his waist bear the weight of his torso. He looked up, saw that the man had squatted down alongside the woman. His eyes were wide, bright, restless. The woman’s gaze remained steady, as though she was waiting for Emmanuel to say something.

  Emmanuel cleared his throat. “I have a plan.” The man’s eyes quickly focused on Knecht. “It is a plan that will save some of us, but you must be prepared to do whatever is necessary in order for it to work.”

  The man’s eyes widened for a moment, then his jaw set and his eyes narrowed; “If it’s necessary, I’ll do it.”

  Good, thought Emmanuel. He may not be much of a thinker, but he has courage enough to be prepared to offer his life in exchange for ours--or at least, for hers. Emmanuel looked at the woman, who had not yet responded. She nodded slowly, her voice low and hoarse, “Yes. I’ll do what must be done.”

  Emmanuel sighed, nodded, produced a thimble-sized plastic container from within the folds of his cloak. He unscrewed the top of the container and shook four small, cream-colored spheres into his palm. The woman’s eyes grew large; evidently, she knew what she was witnessing and understood its larger significance. Knecht swallowed the home-made aspirin in a single gulp, aware that the woman was now following his every movement with keen interest.

  The man held out a battered canteen; “Here. Pills go down easier with water.” He had not noticed what his travelling companion had; that the pills were not of pre-Sauron manufacture.

  Emmanuel waved the canteen away. “Thank you, but I’m fine. In order for this plan to work, I have to tell you a story--”

  The man’s mouth fell open. “You have to what?”

  “Tell you a story.”

  “With the Saurons right behind us? We don’t have time to listen to any--”

  The voice that cut in was the woman’s; “Shut up.” The man stammered, and then fell silent. The woman inclined her head, but her eyes never left Emmanuel’s. “Please,” she said, “tell us your story.”

  Emmanuel resisted the urge to lean back as the pressure of poignant memories gathered in his chest. Closing his eyes, he sought for words that would relieve him of that crashing weight. . . .

  Vera ran a hand down her leg, spreading the sweat of a two-kilometer jog into an even, shiny (and not unattractive, thought Knecht) thigh-coating layer. A second pass--this time with a towel--removed the gleam and brought Knecht back from the edge of an undefined sexual fantasy. Vera, noting his rapt attention, smiled and reiterated her question--which he had obviously not heard. “So why should anyone want to live on Haven? I’d think that people would rather live here instead.”

  “Here? On Ayesha? Where we get our food, our air, and our warmth from machines?”

  “And what’s so bad about machines?” Vera’s tone had become slightly more severe, but her brow was still smooth, her eyes animated and almost . . . playful?

  Knecht felt his brow wrinkle while his mouth smiled-- an incongruous combination that reflected his puzzlement over Vera’s seemingly contradictory social signals. “There’s nothing wrong with machines--when they’re operating properly. But if they cease to function and one is completely dependent upon them, then--”

  “--then one calls a repairman.”

  “Yes--if there’s a repairman around to call. The war with the Saurons--”

  “--is far away from here. Nothing is going to happen to us outbackers, Emmanuel. Byers’ System has nothing that the Saurons want. Besides, the Imperium will win: it must.”

  Knecht shrugged. “Perhaps. But even if it does, how much of the Imperium will be left when the war is over? Will there even be an Imperium? You’ve heard the latest stories, Vera: whole worlds have been cut off from Imperial contact and are backsliding into a second Dark Age-- worse than the one which occurred after the break-up of the CoDominium.”

  She nodded, some of the mischief gone from her bright eyes. “Yes, I’ve heard those stories, Emmanuel-- but perhaps that’s all they are: stories.”

  “I wish I could believe that, but I can’t. I don’t see how anyone can. Particularly you.”

  Vera’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I hear that even you pilots are having repair and maintenance problems, now.”

  Vera’s light blue eyes sharpened, studied his face closely. “Where did you hear that?”

  Knecht brushed past her inquiry. “From what I’ve heard, over a third of Ayesha’s tankers and shuttles are currently grounded due to ‘primary failures.’ Do you deny that?”

  Vera looked away, then shook her head: no.

  Knecht continued gently. “Where, then, are the spare parts you need for repairs? On back order, like everything else around here.”

  “The spare parts are coming with the next supply shipment.”

  “So said the captain of the last Imperial transport that passed through. And that was--what?--almost ten months ago? That makes the current supply ship almost half a year overdue.”

  Vera would not look directly at him now. “What are you saying, Emmanuel?” Her voice was small, nearly lost within the faint hum of the motors which kept the spin gym--a massive rotunda--turning at a stately two revolutions per minute.

  Knecht shrugged. “I am saying that it makes no sense to wait and see if the Imperium will come apart; it’s already starting to do so. We haven’t been able to get replacement parts down in life support for almost four years now. And don’t believe what the administrators are telling you about ‘integral ecological viability;’ hydroponic self-sufficiency is a failure--at least insofar as establishing a closed bioloop is concerned.” Without thinking, Emmanuel put his hand atop Vera’s to add emphasis to his conclusion. “Don’t you see? One day, the Imperial ships will stop coming--and on that day, we will all begin to die.”

  Knecht saw his argument affect her--or rather, he saw that Vera was affected, and assumed that her response w
as caused by his argument. Vera, who was staring down at Knecht’s hand, raised her eyes back to his. “But, Emmanuel, how could Ayeshans survive down on Haven? It’s cold, inhospitable--and crawling with bandits. And what about the gravity? How long do you think I would last?” She drew her hands away and placed them on her unusually slim hips--a physiological trait common to most persons who had been born and raised in low-gee environments.

  Knecht resisted the sudden impulse to place his hands on hers once again. “You were raised in a half-gee; living on Haven would take some adaptation, but you’d make it.”

  “Would I? Here I am, exhausted by a ten minute jog in a one-gee environment.” She swept her hand around to indicate the entirety of the spin gym. As she did, the entrance--an iris portal located in the rotunda’s huh--dilated, admitting three individuals in sweat suits. The shortest one was an almost ghost-thin woman. She was laughing loudly, assertively, head tossing back, a tightly-braided pony-tail swishing in a raven blur; Janine Chattaburray. In almost every aspect--physiognomy, personality, politics--she was Knecht’s outspoken antithesis. He refocused his attention on Vera.

  And found that she had followed his gaze toward Janine Chattaburray. She smiled faintly; “A friend of yours?” Her voice indicated that she knew otherwise, but there was another, subtler, tonal component that suggested-- what? Uncertainty? Concern? Maybe even rivalry?

  Knecht merely uttered a cross between a grunt and a laugh. “I’d expect that she’s much more your friend than mine. Janine is not fond of my views--or of me.”

  Vera looked back at Janine, who seemed to have noticed Knecht from the corner of her eye, but did not look directly at either him or his companion. “Janine-- my friend?” echoed Vera dubiously. “No, I think not.” When she turned back to face Knecht, she wore a small, enigmatic smile.

  Knecht, perplexed by Vera’s response to Janine, simply bored back into the core of their conversation. “Even people born here on Ayesha, in less than point one-five gees, could survive on Haven. Or, to be more specific, they could survive at Castalia, where there are neutral-buoyancy tanks specially designed for low-gee--”

  “Emmanuel, you speak of Castalia as though it actually exists.” A look of mild incredulity evicted a little of Vera’s smile.

  “Castalia does exist. I--rather, we--have documentation that shows it to be--”

  “--a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream,” finished a new female voice.

  Emmanuel did not have to look up to identify the speaker: it was Janine. But--as he always did--he looked up anyway. The wispy zero-gee worker had approached to within a few meters, hands on hips, and flanked by two much-larger male friends. Knecht nodded, acknowledged her with a single word: “Janine.”

  She didn’t even look at him, but concentrated her brown-black eyes on Vera. “I thought you had more sense than to waste your time with Ayesha’s most prominent ‘evangelist of the absurd.’ “ There was an extra measure of archness in her tone--apparently aimed at Vera herself. “Has he tried to recruit you into his precious ‘Castalia Society’ yet?”

  “No,” Vera answered, her enigmatic smile returning. “Not yet.”

  This response seemed to irritate Janine. “I had thought better of you, Tekla.” She spat out Vera’s family name as though it were a curse.

  Vera’s smile broadened. “Whatever you might think of me, you obviously approve of my taste.”

  Janine’s chocolate-brown complexion darkened. “Your taste? Tekla, the only taste you seem to have is a taste for humiliation--and self-destruction. Do you know what the rest of the piloting staff will say when they learn that you’ve been listening to this mumbo-jumbo Castalia crap?”

  “Frankly, I don’t care what they say.”

  Janine leaned forward sharply, aggressively, her voice lowered to a sharp hiss. “Tekla, I don’t think you’re getting the message; I’ve got enough political connections to make sure that you care what the other pilots are saying.” Janine leaned forward another few centimeters, the tip of her nose only a few millimeters away from Vera’s; the challenge was unmistakable.

  Knecht rose and stepped forward, crowding Janine back. “That’s enough.” He had meant it as a command; it came out as a snarl. Janine turned, eyes bright and fists clenched, but there was a quality to her facial expression that Knecht didn’t understand, an eagerness that seemed oddly reminiscent of arousal.

  The two of them stood toe to toe for the better part of a second. Then the thinner of Janine’s male companions shoved forward, trying to interpose himself--but, not being accustomed to a full-gravity environment, he overcompensated; he tumbled toward Knecht. Knecht foresaw the unintentional contact and brought his hands up--reflexively--to steady himself--but he also foresaw the misunderstanding that would surely follow. Janine saw it, too; over the thin man’s shoulder, Emmanuel saw her expression change. Excitement transformed into dread and her eyes shaped a clear message of regret; No--I didn’t mean for this to happen.

  The thin man bumped solidly into Emmanuel, who used his hands to ward off some of that impact--a response that Janine’s protector felt as a retaliatory shove. For a moment, there was indecision in the zero-geer’s eyes--indecision regarding Emmanuel’s intent, indecision about how to respond. Then Janine’s companion abandoned the uncertainty of thought for the clarity of action; he swung a haymaker at Knecht.

  Knecht ducked the blow easily and straight-armed the man in the abdomen. The zero-geer went down, but his larger friend was already in motion: he dove forward and bore Emmanuel to the ground. As they landed, the attacker’s left elbow sank deep into Knecht’s gut. Then, with surprising swiftness, his right fist came around and slammed into Emmanuel’s left cheekbone.

  Knecht’s world flickered and became uncertain. Women were shouting. Another voice--a male voice that he recognized but could not place--was saying Stop, I’m warning you, Stop. Knecht saw the big zero-geer’s fist draw back again, cocking like the hammer of a pistol--

  But the poised fist did not fall; another hand had locked around the zero-geer’s wrist. That new hand pulled, twisted, and wrenched the fist out of sight, around and behind the zero-geer’s own back. The big man emitted a grunt of pain, rising to a crouch as he tried to wriggle out of the armlock, thereby giving Knecht a clear view of his rescuer: Owen Trainor. Knecht smiled; Owen’s presence meant that the fight was going to be brief--very brief.

  Evidently, Owen’s reputation was not universal knowledge amongst zero-geers. Knecht’s first assailant regained his feet and angled in toward Owen, fist back for a blow--but Owen moved first. He rose up on the ball of one foot, half spun, and swept his other foot out, up, and around; toe angled inward, Owen’s boot plunged deep into the zero-geer’s solar plexus. The slap of the impact was accompanied by a whoosh of expelled air; the thin man crashed to the floor, wheezing for breath.

  Then Emmanuel was aware of Vera kneeling at his side, her face close to his, her breath warm and sweet and so pleasant to feel that he didn’t notice how much his head hurt when she helped him back to his feet. Owen released the large zero-geer with an outward twist, sending him back toward Janine. Owen nodded at her. “Why don’t you and your friends move along, Ms. Chattaburray?”

  Janine answered with a defiant glare. “Why blame it on us, Trainor? We didn’t start anything. But your friend is a little oversensitive--particularly when it comes to his precious Castalia.”

  “He’s ‘oversensitive’?” Owen’s response was as flat and sharp-edged as slate. “Maybe your memory needs a little refreshing, Chattaburray. Emmanuel’s father died searching for Castalia--left him without any family to speak of. That makes him the last direct descendant of Castalia’s founder, Jonathan Knecht. For good or for bad, Castalia’s shaped his whole life, so you tell me: is Emmanuel really ‘oversensitive’--or are you just insensitive?”

  Janine opened her mouth for a retort, but first, she stole a quick glance at Knecht. At the mention of his father, Emmanuel’s eyes had gone blank--as blank as a dead man�
��s. Janine closed her mouth slowly, stared at Owen, at Vera, and then motioned for her two protectors to follow her out of the spin gym.

  Owen turned to look at Emmanuel. “You okay?”

  Knecht shook off the memories of his father and nodded--which hurt. “Yeah, I guess.”

  Owen shook his head. “This has got to stop, Manny. You’re making trouble for all of us.”

  Knecht nodded again. “Yes; I know.”

  “Emmanuel did nothing wrong.” There was indignation in Vera’s voice. “She--Janine--came over to us, looking for a confrontation. With me.”

  One half of Owen’s mouth curved into a smile. “Oh?” He and Vera looked at each other for a long moment, then she smiled and looked away. Owen let his partial smile spread to the other half of his mouth and nodded. “I see. Well, Manny, maybe this is a special case. So don’t sweat it. But you’ve got to be careful where--and how loudly--you get on your soapbox. Overdo it, and you’ll undermine everything we’re working for.” Owen took a step back, raised a hand. “I’ll see you--both of you--later on.” He smiled again--almost as mysteriously as Vera, Knecht thought--and then left.

  Vera, looking after Owen, asked, “What did he mean, ‘undermine everything we’re working for?’ “

  Emmanuel sighed. “This is not the first time I’ve gotten into a fight because of my--beliefs. And when I get into a fight, that causes problems for the other members of the Castalia Society.”

  Vera leaned her head to the side. “So what is this ‘Castalia Society?’“

  Knecht smiled. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it, considering you’ve been on Ayesha for almost four years now.”

  “Five; almost five years. I’ve heard of Castalia, but this is the first time someone has mentioned a ‘society.’ “

  “Well, we’re not exactly popular with other Ayeshans, so we don’t advertise a great deal. Sorry; that’s a misleading understatement: we don’t advertise at all.”