Use of Weapons

by Iain M. Banks

  Suddenly aircraft screamed overhead, tearing through the air over the curtain wall, dropping long canisters into the tents, which erupted in flame and black, black smoke. He saw burning people, heard the screams, smelled the roasting flesh. He shook his head.

  Terrified people jostled him, bumped into him, once knocked him down so that he had to pick himself up, dust himself down, and suffer the knocks and the shouts and screams and curses. The aircraft came back, strafing, and he was the only one who stayed upright, walking while the rest fell to the ground; he watched the puffs and bursts of dust fountain in lines around him, saw the clothing of a few of the fallen people suddenly jerk and flap as a round hit home.

  It was getting lighter as he encountered the first troops. He dodged behind a tent and rolled as a trooper fired at him, then got back on his feet and ran round the rear of a tent, almost bumping into another soldier, who swung his carbine round too late. He kicked it away. The soldier drew a knife. He let him lunge and took the knife, throwing the soldier to the ground. He looked at the blade he held in his hand, and shook his head. He threw the knife away, looked at the soldier - lying on the ground staring fearfully up at him - then shrugged and walked away.

  Still people rushing past; soldiers shouting. He saw one take aim at him, and could not see anywhere to go for cover. He raised his hand to explain, to say there was really no need, but the man shot him anyway.

  Not a very good shot, considering the range, he thought as he was kicked back and spun round by the force of the impact.

  Upper chest near the shoulder. No lung damage, and possibly not even a chipped rib, he thought as the shock and pain burst through him, and he fell.

  He lay still in the dust, near the staring face of a dead city guardsman. As he'd spun round, he'd seen the Culture module; a clear shape hovering uselessly over the remains of his apartments high in the ruined citadel.

  Somebody kicked him, turning him over and bursting a rib at the same time. He tried not to react to the stab of pain, but looked through cracked eyes. He waited for the coup-de-grace, but it did not come.

  The shadow-figure above him, dark against light, passed on.

  He lay a while longer, then got up. It wasn't too difficult to walk at first, but then the planes came back again, and though he didn't get hit by a bullet, something splintered somewhere nearby, as he passed by some tents that shook and rippled as the bullets hit them, and he wondered if the sharp, puncturing pain in his thigh was a bit of wood or stone, or even bone, from somebody in one of the tents. 'No,' he muttered to himself as he limped away, heading for the biggest breach in the wall. 'No; not funny. Not bone. Not funny.'

  An explosion blew him off his feet, into and through a tent. He got up, head buzzing. He looked round and up at the citadel, its summit starting to glow with the first direct sunlight of the day. He couldn't see the module any more. He took a shattered wooden tent pole to use as a crutch; his leg was hurting.

  Dust wrapped him, screams of engines and aircraft and human voices pierced him; the smells of burning and stone-dust and exhaust fumes choked him. His wounds talked to him in the languages of pain and damage, and he had to listen to them, but paid them no further heed. He was shaken and pummelled and tripped and stumbled and drained and fell to his knees, and thought perhaps he was hit by more bullets, but was no longer sure.

  Eventually, near the breach, he fell, and thought he might just lie here for a while. The light was better, and he felt tired. The dust drifted like pale shrouds. He looked up at the sky, pale blue, and thought how beautiful it was, even through all this dust, and, listening to the tanks as they came crunching up through the slope of wrecked stones, reflected that, like tanks everywhere, they squeaked more than they roared.

  'Gentlemen,' (he whispered to the rabid blue sky) 'I am reminded of something the worshipful Sma said to me once, on the subject of heroism, which was something like: "Zakalwe, in all the human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age and every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots."' He sighed. 'Well, no doubt she didn't say every age and every state, because the Culture just loves there to be exceptions to everything, but... that was the gist of it... I think...'

  He rolled over, away from the achingly blue sky, to stare at the blurred dust.

  Eventually, reluctantly, he pushed himself over, and then half up, then to his knees, then clutched at the tent-pole crutch and forced down on it, and got to his feet, ignoring all the pestering aches and pains, and staggered for the piled wreckage of the walls, and somehow dragged and hauled and scraped his way to the top, where the walls ran smooth and wide for a way, like roadways in the sky, and the bodies of a dozen or so soldiers lay, blood pooling, the ramparts around them scarred with bullet holes and grey with dust.

  He staggered towards them, as though anxious to be one of their number. He scanned the skies for the module.

  It was some time before they spotted the "Z" sign he made from the bodies on the top of the walls, but in that language it was a complicated letter, and he kept getting mixed up.

  I

  No lights burned on the Staberinde. It sat squat against the grey leechings of the false dawn, its dim silhouette a piled cone which only hinted at the concentric loops and lines of its decks and guns. Some effect of the marsh mists between him and the ziggurat of the ship made it look as though its black shape was not attached to the land at all, but floated over it, poised like some threatening dark cloud.

  He watched with tired eyes, stood on tired feet. This close to the city and the ship, he could smell the sea, and - nose this close to the concrete of the bunker - a limey scent, acrid and bitter. He tried to remember the garden and the smell of flowers, the way he sometimes did whenever the fighting started to seem just too futile and cruel to have any point whatsoever, but for once he could not conjure up that faintly-remembered, beguilingly poignant perfume, or recall anything good that had come out of that garden (instead he saw again those sun-tanned hands on his sister's pale hips, the ridiculous little chair they'd chosen for their fornication... and he remembered the last time he had seen the garden, the last time he'd been to the estate; with the tank corps, and he'd seen the chaos and ruin Elethiomel had visited upon the place that had been the cradle for both of them; the great house gutted, the stone boat wrecked, the woods burned... and his last glimpse of the hateful little summer house where he'd found them, as he took his own retaliatory action against the tyranny of memory; the tank rocking beneath him, the already flare-lit clearing whiting out with bright flame, his ears ringing with a sound that was no sound, and the little house... was still there; the shot had gone right through, exploded somewhere in the woods behind, and he'd wanted to weep and scream and tear it all down with his own hands... but then had remembered the man who had sat there, and thought how he might treat something like this, and so had gathered the strength to laugh at it, and ordered the gunner to aim at the top step beneath the little house, and saw it all finally lift and burst into the air. The debris fell around the tank, sprinkling him with earth and wood and ripped bundles of thatch).

  The night beyond the bunker was warm and oppressive, the land's day-time heat trapped and pressed to the ground by the weight of clouds above, sticking against the skin of the land like some sweat-soaked shirt. Perhaps the wind changed then, for he thought he detected the smell of the grass and the hay in the air, swept hundreds of kilometres from the great prairies inland by some wind since spent, the old fragrance going stale now. He closed his eyes and leant his forehead against the rough concrete of the bunker wall, beneath the slit he'd been looking through; his fingers splayed out lightly on the hard, grainy surface, and he felt the warm material press into his flesh.

  Sometimes all he wanted was for it all to be over, and the way of it did not really
seem to matter. Cessation was all, simple and demanding and seductive, and worth almost anything. That was when he had to think of Darckense, trapped on the ship, held captive by Elethiomel. He knew she didn't love their cousin any more; that had been something brief and juvenile, something she'd used in her adolescence to get back at the family for some imagined slight, some favouring of Livueta over her. It might have seemed like love at the time, but he suspected even she knew it was not, now. He believed that Darckense really was an unwilling hostage; many people had been taken by surprise when Elethiomel attacked the city; just the speed of the advance had trapped half the population, and Darckense had been unlucky to be discovered trying to leave from the chaos of the airport; Elethiomel had had agents out looking for her.

  So for her he had to go on fighting, even if he had almost worn away the hate in his heart for Elethiomel, the hate that had kept him fighting these last years, but now was running out, just worn down by the abrading course of the long war.

  How could Elethiomel do it? Even if he didn't still love her (and the monster claimed that Livueta was his real desire), how could he use her like another shell stored in the battleship's cavernous magazines?

  And what was he supposed to do in reply? Use Livueta against Elethiomel? Attempt the same level of cunning cruelty?

  Already Livueta blamed him, not Elethiomel, for all that had happened. What was he supposed to do? Surrender? Barter sister for sister? Mount some mad, doomed rescue attempt? Simply attack?

  He had tried to explain that only a prolonged siege guaranteed success, but argued about it so often now that he was starting to wonder if he was right.

  'Sir?'

  He turned, looked at the dim figures of the commanders behind him. 'What?' he snapped.

  'Sir,' - it was Swaels - 'Sir, perhaps we should be setting off now, back to headquarters. The cloud is breaking from the east, and it will be dawn soon... we shouldn't be caught in range.'

  'I know that,' he said. He glanced out at the dark outline of the Staberinde, and felt himself flinch a little, as though he expected its huge guns to belch flame right there and then, straight at him. He drew a metal shutter across the concrete slit. It was very dark in the bunker for a second, then somebody switched on the harsh yellow lights and they all stood there, blinking in the glare.

  They left the bunker; the long mass of the armoured staff car waited in the darkness. Assorted aides and junior officers leapt to attention, straightened caps, saluted and opened doors. He climbed into the car, sitting on the fur-covered rear bench, watching as three of the other commanders followed, sitting in a line opposite him. The armoured door clanged shut; the car growled and moved, bumping over the uneven ground and back into the forest, away from the dark shape resting in the night behind.

  'Sir,' Swaels said, exchanging looks with the other two commanders. 'The other commanders and I have discussed -'

  'You are going to tell me that we should attack; bomb and shell the Staberinde until it is a flaming hulk and then storm it with troop hovers,' he said, holding up one hand, 'I know what you've been discussing and I know what... decisions you think you've arrived at. They do not interest me.'

  'Sir, we all realise the strain you are under because your sister is held on the ship, but -'

  'That has nothing to do with it, Swaels,' he told the other man. 'You insult me by implying that I even consider that a reason for holding off. My reasons are sound military reasons, and foremost of those is that the enemy has succeeded in creating a fortress that is, at the moment, almost impregnable. We must wait until the winner floods, when the fleet can negotiate the estuary and the channel, and engage the Staberinde on equal terms; to send in aircraft or attempt to engage in an artillery duel would be the height of folly.'

  'Sir,' Swaels said. 'Much as we are distressed at having to disagree with you, we nevertheless -'

  'You will be silent, Commander Swaels,' he said icily. The other man swallowed. 'I have sufficient matters to worry about without having to concern myself with the drivel that passes for serious military planning between my senior officers, or, I might add, with replacing any of those senior officers.'

  For a while there was only the distant grumbling noise of the car engine. Swaels looked shocked; the other two commanders were staring at the rug floor. Swaels' face looked shiny. He swallowed again. The voice of the labouring car seemed to emphasize the silence in the rear compartment as the four men were jostled and shaken; then the car found a metalled road, and roared off, pressing him back in the seat, making the other three sway towards him before sitting back again.

  'Sir, I am ready to lea -'

  'Must this go on?' he complained, hoping to stop Swaels. 'Can't you lift even this small burden from me? All I ask is that you do as you ought. Let there be no disagreement; let us fight the enemy, not amongst ourselves.'

  '... to leave your staff, if you so wish,' Swaels continued.

  Now it was as though the noise of the engine did not intrude inside the passenger cell at all; a frozen silence - held not in the air, but in the expression of Swaels' face and the still, tensed bodies of the other two commanders - seemed to settle over the four, like some prescient breath of a winter that was still half a year away. He wanted to close his eyes, but could not show such weakness. He kept his gaze fixed on the man directly across from him.

  'Sir, I have to tell you that I disagree with the course you are pursuing, and I am not alone. Sir, please believe me that I and the other commanders love you as we love our country; with all our hearts. But because of that love, we cannot stand by while you throw away everything you stand for and all we believe in trying to defend a mistaken decision.'

  He saw Swaels' hands knit together, as though in supplication. No gentleman of breeding, he thought, almost dreamily, ought to begin a sentence with the unfortunate word "but"...

  'Sir, believe me I wish that I was wrong. I and the other commanders have done everything to try to accommodate your views, but we cannot. Sir, if you have any love for any of your commanders, we beseech you; think again. Remove me if you feel you must, sir, for having spoken like this; court-martial me, demote me, execute me, forbid my name, but, sir; reconsider, while there is still time.'

  They sat still, as the car hummed along the road, swerving occasionally for corners, jiggling left-right or right-left to avoid craters, and... and we must all look, he thought, as we sit here, frozen in the weak yellow light, like the stiffening dead.

  'Stop the car,' he heard himself saying. His finger was already depressing the intercom button. The car rumbled down through the gears and came to a halt. He opened the door. Swaels' eyes were closed.

  'Get out,' he told him.

  Swaels looked suddenly like an old man hit by the first of many blows. It was as though he had shrunk, collapsed inside. A warm gust of wind threatened to close the door again; he held it open with one hand.

  Swaels bent forward and get slowly out of the car. He stood by the dark roadside for a moment; the cone of light thrown out by the staff car's interior lights swept across his face, then disappeared.

  Zakalwe locked the door, 'Drive on,' he told the driver.

  They raced away from the dawn and the Staberinde, before its guns could find and destroy them.

  They had thought they'd won. In the spring they'd had more men and more materiel and in particular they had more heavy guns; at sea the Stabennde lurked as a threat but not a presence, famished of the fuel it needed for effective raids against their forces and convoys; almost more of a liability. But then Elethiomel had had the great battleship tugged and dredged through the seasonal channels, over the ever-changing banks to the empty dry-dock, where they'd blasted the extra room and somehow got the ship inside, closed the gates, pumped out the water and pumped in concrete, and - so his advisors had suggested - probably some sort of shock-absorbing cushion between the metal and the concrete, or the half-metre calibre guns would have shaken the vessel to pieces by now. They suspected Elethiome
l had used rubbish; junk, to line the sides of his improvised fortress.

  He found that almost amusing.

  The Staberinde was not really impregnable (though it was, now, quite literally unsinkable); it could be taken, but it would exact a terrible price in the taking.

  And of course, having had their breathing space, and time to re-equip, perhaps the forces in and around the ship and the city would break out; that possibility had been discussed, too, and Elethiomel was quite capable of it.

  But whatever he thought about it, however he approached the problem, it always came back to him. The men would do as he asked; the commandrs would too, or he'd have them replaced; the politicians and the church had given him a free hand and would back him in anything he did. He felt secure in that; as secure as any commander ever could. But what was he to do?

  He had expected to inherit a perfectly drilled peace-time army, splendid and impressive, and eventually to hand that over to some other young scion of the Court in the same creditable condition, so that the traditions of honour and obedience and duty could be continued. Instead he found himself at the head of an army going to furious war against an enemy he knew was largely made up of his own countrymen, and commanded by a man he had once thought of as a friend as well as almost a brother.

  So he had to give orders that meant men died, and sometimes sacrifice hundreds, thousands of them, knowingly sending them to their near-certain deaths, just to secure some important position or goal, or protect some vital position. And always, whether they liked it or not, the civilians suffered too; the very people they both claimed to be fighting for made up perhaps the bulk of the casualties in their bloody struggle.

  He had tried to stop it, tried to bargain, from the beginning, but neither side wanted peace on anything except its own terms, and he had no real political power, and so had had to fight. His success had amazed him, as it had others, probably not least Elethiomel, but now, poised on the brink of victory - perhaps - he just did not know what to do.