On the Oceans of Eternity

by S. M. Stirling

  Soon, he thought, staggering a little when the shaft of a falling javelin smacked against his thigh; with a practiced effort of will he didn't think about what would have happened if the spear had come down six inches closer.

  He'd briefed Barnes and all the noncoms on what they were supposed to do and told them to pass it on. The noise was enormous, stunning, and the stink nearly as bad, sweat and fear and shit and death, and the foul odor of the wrong things burning.

  Now I have to ask them to run without actually running away.

  "Standard-bearer," he said.

  The young woman was new to the job, having only one arm usable at the moment-everyone who could fire a rifle was working, right now; even his radio tech was on the line in the redoubt. She came forward at his gesture and stood to his right.

  "Bugler." He'd been sticking tight to O'Rourke's left elbow, just as he should.

  "Ready," he said, flipping his pistol to his left hand and drawing his katana.

  The sword rose, pointing to the flag and the gilt eagle topping it-he had to be seen, and if that made him a conspicuous target, that was a cost of doing business. Now, here's where we learn whether we're certainly dead, or just probably. If the Marines broke, they'd be overrun and swarmed under in seconds. The Ringapi didn't look as if they were in a prisoner-taking mood. Head-taking, more likely. Like O'Rourke's own remote ancestors, the migrants from the middle Danube were given to collecting trophies.

  "Sound retreat and rally" he ordered crisply.

  The bugler had to take two tries-the first one ended in a strangled squeal, and he worked his mouth and spat before making a second attempt. That rang out chill and strong, cutting through the snarling brabble of battle like a knife through flesh.

  For a moment, relief made his knees waver. The troops were doing it, peeling back from the walls and dashing back toward him, starting with those furthest away. It was hurried, a little ragged-and some disappeared under knots of Ringapi, spear butts rising and falling and axes glittering. But most made it back, most, the enemy still had to clamber over the wall, even if the ditch around it was full of their dead in layers often four deep.

  "To me, the First!" O'Rourke shouted, throwing his voice from the gut. "Rally by me!"

  The ones who lived did; he felt himself swelling with pride. They halted by the biscuit-tin barricade; not one tried to clamber over it for a moment's safety. Instead they swung into two lines, one to either side of him and one behind at the very base of the wall, forward kneeling and rear standing. The bayonets on their rifles didn't glitter in the firelight; every single one of them was colored a slick, dripping red. So was the sword of Hantilis the Hittite; he'd picked up a round Ringapi shield, now much nicked and battered, and he fell in behind O'Rourke's bugler without waiting to be told not to get in the line of fire.

  Hands scrambled to reload. The whole interior of the rectangular enclosure outside the wall at its eastern end was suddenly packed solid with Ringapi warriors, every one of them rushing forward. There was no way the Marines who'd rallied to him could meet it in time…

  … but the line who rose from behind the biscuit-box wall could. The space spanning the north and south walls was much smaller than either was long. Even with casualties, the rifles on the wall behind him bristled shoulder to shoulder. Cecilie Barnes's voice called out, steady and calm:

  "Volley fire, present-fire!"

  BAAAAAMM.

  The bullets slammed into the front rank of the Ringapi, who were crammed shoulder to shoulder across the width of the enclosure, too. And packed arse to belly down the length of it, where they'd swarmed over the walls from both sides.

  The Marines who'd fired ducked down and reloaded; behind them in the last redoubt another line stood and volleyed over their heads; the firing step there was a foot higher, and they were over the heads of the Marines in front of the biscuit-tin wall as well. Hot air slapped the back of O'Rourke's neck beneath the flare of his helmet, like a soft heavy hand. The noise slapped his eardrums, too, hard enough to hurt.

  "Volley fire, present-fire!"

  BAAAAAMM.

  By then the front rank of the Marines who'd rallied to him were ready. He filled his lungs, remembering to keep his voice in the same parade-ground tone as always:

  "Front rank-volley fire, present-"

  "-fire!"

  "-fire!"

  "-fire!"

  "-fire!"

  The volleys slashed out at intervals of three-quarters of a second, four ranks to shoot, steady as a metronome, the rifles rising and falling like the warp and weft of a loom. Islanders still fell; the Ringapi were throwing spears at close range, and they thudded into chests and bellies, gashed faces and arms. But most of the enemy were too crowded to do anything but stand or try to swarm forward. The front rank ran into an almost physical barricade of lead.

  O'Rourke added his pistol's fire to the volleys. Even shooting left-handed he didn't miss, with a row of targets scarcely beyond arm's reach. This close to a Ringapi warrior with the battle lust upon him, you knew right down in your gut that this was a man who'd kill you if he could, and acted accordingly. Somewhere down deep in a very busy mind he still found a spare second to admire the way they kept coming, right into the muzzles. If this was what his ancestors were like, he wasn't surprised they'd ended up overrunning everything between Turkey and Ireland. He was surprised they hadn't gotten themselves massacred en masse.

  Of course, then they'd met Roman discipline, and that was about what had happened…

  The wall of enemy warriors in front of him bulged, swelling upward like a wave hitting a steep beach: men falling dead or wounded; men tripping over them as they were pushed from behind by the onrush of those too stupid to realize what was happening or too brave to care; or men trying to climb right over the mass ahead of them.

  "Front rank-volley fire, present-

  "-fire!"

  "-fire!"

  "-fire!"

  "-fire!"

  And suddenly the wave ahead of them wasn't trying to advance anymore. The volleys went on as the front rank turned and clawed at the men behind, and then they turned as well, until no Ringapi were left standing inside the enclosure.

  "Cease fire," O'Rourke said, his voice sounding a little tinny and faint in his ears.

  Hantilis was swearing in amazement, possibly just at being alive. Stretching across from the northern wall to the southern in front of the leveled rifles was a mound of dead and dying Ringapi; at the very front it was higher than a man's waist- nearly high enough to block the fire of kneeling marksmen, too high to remain stable, and bodies were slithering down to rest against the Marines' boots. The heaving of injured men trying to get free of the four-deep crush atop them helped that process. Where the layer of bodies thinned out behind the front of the wave the whole surface crawled and moved, amid a threnody of agony, right back to the wall of the burning hospital.

  "All- ' O'Rourke cleared his throat. "All right, let's get back over this wall here. See to the wounded. Move it, people, let's go!"

  Barnes's voice added to his, and the surviving noncoms. He lost himself in work, waiting for the shrieks and panther screams that would herald the next attack. It was ten minutes before he realized that there was silence outside the fortlet, half an hour before he believed it. The Ringapi campfires still guttered and gleamed through the dark to the westward. Not until dawnlight caught the snows atop Mount Ida to the south was his gut convinced, and not until he heard the cries of the jackals and foxes coming close to feed.

  True dawn showed the Ringapi camp struck and empty, nothing but litter and smoldering fires left burning through the tail end of night. The ruins of the hospital still smoldered as well, sending up a sour dark smoke that had everyone coughing when the wind shifted wrong. Ash came along with the smoke, more of it when brick or bits of roofing fell with thumps and crashes. Overhead there was a thick scatter of circling kites and ravens and…

  Yes, by God, eagles too, he thought with du
ll amazement.

  "What do they eat when there's no war?" he thought aloud.

  "When is there no war in these lands?" Hantilis asked.

  Barnes came up as well, with mugs of sassafras tea. O'Rourke sipped gratefully at his, trying to ignore the men calling akawa… akawa… from the heaps of enemy dead. Water, he suspected. And mathair was unpleasantly obvious, too…

  "What's the butcher's bill, Captain?" he asked.

  "Twenty-two dead, sir," Barnes said; it was as if a robot was speaking. "Including Hussey and my company sergeant.

  Another forty badly injured. That's not counting the sick from the hospital."

  He knew she was using the term badly injured conservatively; half or more of the ones still at the walls had crusted bandages. Many of them were only fit to shoot if they had something to prop them up.

  "We're down to eighty rounds per rifle," she went on. "Must've shot off… God, forty, fifty thousand rounds. We're short of medical supplies, too; well fixed for food. Most of the transport animals are dead but we've got about six horses left."

  Including Fancy; he felt a slight pang of guilt even now at how relieved that made him feel.

  "We should get things policed up," she continued in the same dead voice. "Get some hot food for the troops. Clean weapons. See if we can help some of the enemy wounded, get the bodies buried or at least hauled away, strengthen the walls-they might be back."

  O'Rourke looked around; most of the Marines were slumped into unconsciousness beside their rifles; the one in ten still awake on orders looked at him through red-rimmed eyes that stared out of smoke-blackened faces. He suspected he had the same fixed, flat stare; he also suspected-knew-that what everyone wanted right now was sleep.

  "You're right," he said, dragging himself upright. Then, softly: "Hell of a shindy, macushla. Hell of a shindy, indeed." A mental shake. "First-

  "Heads up!" the lookout on the roof of the storehouse called, and then: "By God, it's the regiment!"

  That brought a thin cheer from those awake, and woke some of the sleepers. O'Rourke dragged himself to the rooftop and confirmed the sentry's sighting; two companies in column of march, mounted scouts out ahead, and some heavy weapons in between. He walked out into the track he'd ridden down…

  "Saints, was it only thirty hours ago?" he whispered to himself. "They must have forced the march." The base was better than forty miles away, and the roads were terrible.

  He blinked in surprise when he saw who was heading up the column, and snapped off a salute. "Brigadier Hollard!" he said. "Last I heard you were in Hattusas."

  "Came out to see to some things," he said.

  O'Rourke looked back at the Marines who'd halted in the roadway. In normal times he'd have said they were clapped out and ready for rest; right now they looked almost indecently fresh.

  "With two companies of the First and those heavy weapons, and a day to entrench, we can hold against anything outside the hosts of hell," he said.

  "It looks like you already did, Pat," Hollard said softly, looking over the battlefield; he removed his helmet and ran a hand over cropped sandy hair. "Christ crucified… I thought you'd all been massacred, until I saw the flag still flying."

  "Reverend Smith's hearing confessions right now," O'Rourke said grimly. Captain Barnes came up while he was speaking. "It didn't come cheap, I'm telling you that, I am."

  "I could use some extra medics and supplies, sir," Barnes said.

  Hollard shook his long head. "Of course, right away."

  He turned in the saddle and gave the orders, and figures with the winged snake emblem on blue uniforms ran forward. The rest of the column seemed paralyzed, staring at the carnage around the little outpost, some of them gagging when the wind shifted.

  "We can hold forever, now. Against the hosts of hell themselves," O'Rourke went on, conscious that he was repeating himself but too tired to really care.

  Hollard swung down from the saddle and gave him a sympathetic slap on the shoulder. "I'm afraid that's what's heading this way," he said. "Troy's fallen, and Walker's men are pouring up from the coast-here, and up the Meneander Valley from Miletos. We're retreating."

  O'Rourke nodded dully. "I'll need transport for the wounded," he said.

  "Emancipator is making a run into the regimental HQ and she'll pick up anyone who can't march," Hollard said.

  "What about the supplies here, sir?" Barnes asked.

  "Take what you can. Burn the rest," Hollard said, his thin mouth and knob of a chin closing like granite. "Starting now, we don't let anything fall into Walker's hands that he can use. Vastatio."

  "Ah, that's the way of it, then," O'Rourke said, nodding mechanically.

  "One thing," Kenneth Hollard said, looking at the barley-sack ramparts, half-visible now under the men who'd died sprawled across them. "Why didn't you dig a ditch outside the walls-no time?"

  "We did dig one, Brigadier sir," O'Rourke said. "It's just full."

  Hollard shook his head again. "Colonel, this is going to be one for the Corps history books, up there with Chosin and Okinawa."

  O'Rourke hadn't thought of it in quite that way before… but it was a notable feat of arms, after all. "I'll want to see that my lads and lasses get the recognition they deserve for it, too," he said. My one regret about that is that I'll have to recommend Kyle Hook for a medal. And there I was hopin' to send him to the punishment company.

  "And we'll have to find a name for it." Hollard's mouth quirked from its chiseled line. "How about the Battle of O'Rourke's Ford?"

  Even then, they could laugh. Barnes looked at them both as if they were insane… which, when he thought of it, wasn't all that far wrong. Plus she'd been barely into her teens at the Event.

  "Classical reference, macushla" he said. "Classical reference."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  October, 10 A.E.-Nantucket Town, Republic of Nantucket

  October, 10 A.E.-Near Hattusas. Kingdom of Hani-land

  October, 10 A.E.-Nantucket Town, Republic of Nantucket

  October, 10 A.E.-Neayoruk, Kingdom of Great Achaea

  October, 10 A.E.-Nantucket Town, Republic of Nantucket

  November, 10 A.E.-Western Anatolia

  October, 10 A.E.-Long Island Sound, Republic of Nantucket

  "Morning, Jared," Joseph Starbuck said.

  "Morning, Joseph," Jared Cofflin replied; even in the later months of the Year 10, the government of the Republic of Nantucket remained pleasantly informal.

  The Councilor for Finance and the Treasury leaned back in his chair. That was in an office of the Pacific National Bank, which was also the headquarters of the Republic's departments of finance and taxation. It stood at the junction where Main Street turned southwest and Liberty branched off from it; the redbrick rectangle with its two white pillars in front had been erected in 1818, to finance the Island's expanding whaling trade in the South Seas.

  Nearly two centuries ago, or more than three millennia in the future, but once again Nantucketer ships sailed all the seas of the earth.

  You need bold captains for an Age of Expansion, Jared thought. You also need hardheaded bankers and a sound currency.

  "Good of you to drop by; I know it's supposed to be a holiday for you," Starbuck said. "But I wanted to catch you before you talked to young Tom Hollard over on Long Island. Might be I could sweeten the meeting… for him, at least."

  Jared nodded. He could imagine Joseph on his own quarterdeck easily enough, if you ran him back a half a century or so in biological age. In his late seventies, the pouched blue eyes still reflected a mind of flinty practicality, near-perfect for this job.

  And it's my job to find the right people, he thought.

  About two-thirds of any leadership position was knowing how to find the right people to delegate to. The other third was knowing when they were wrong.

  Of course, the fourth third is knowing when to let them fail a couple of times because it's the only way they'll believe you when you say they're screwin
g up. And the fifth third-

  "It's a busman's holiday," he said aloud. "As for Tom Hollard, well, if you can arrange for the war to be over, and the damned income tax to be abolished, it'll make things sweet as milk. Otherwise, he's going to be unhappy. Hell, I'm unhappy, but we need guns and soldiers and ships and pay for the crews."

  The window was open onto Main, letting in bright fall sunlight. They'd had the first frosts, and the cool salt-scented air made him glad enough of the thick raw-wool sweater he wore.

  Even this early the sound of iron-shod hooves and wheels on the Main Street cobbles was fairly loud, together with steam whistles from factories and boats down in the harbor.

  "I've got the estimates," Starbuck went on. "After you've read these, you can surprise him by saying he's quite right and the taxes won't be going up any more."

  As he spoke, Starbuck flicked one long bony finger toward the screen of the personal computer on his desk. It was one of the two dozen or so allowed to assist vital functions at any one time; it would be a very long time before the Islanders could make disk drives, or the new Pentium the magazines had been talking about before the Event. Starbuck's work also rated one of the even more valuable dot-matrix printers, salvaged from an attic. The tapes on those could be replaced with an ink-saturated cotton that did almost as well as the woven nylon originals.

  As for toner cartridges for laser printers… About the time we get space shuttles.

  "End of the story, Jared, is that there's no more fat to cut into for war production."

  Cofflin took the sheets and looked through them. Ayup, he thought. There were times when he disagreed with Starbuck, but he'd never found him to be flat-out wrong yet.

  "You're telling me that to get any more for Peter, we have to rob Paul?" he said. Then, deliberately provocative-Star-buck was one of those people who thought better angry: "I thought war was supposed to get economies going? World War II and all that."

  "Jared, it's nonsense to think that when you take what people grow and make, lug it to the other side of the world with a lot of sweat and time, and then throw it on a bonfire, it somehow makes you well-off," Starbuck snapped. "I was a teenager in the tail end of the Depression; after Pearl Harbor, the ones who'd been idle got put to work, so everyone felt richer. That's how I got my first job."