by Glen Cook
Von Drachau followed. "Sal," he said with beer in his mustache, "I mean it. I'm sorry. Wish I could look at it like you. Like this's just
a job..."
"Uhm." I made a grudging peace. "So can it." But he kept on. Something was biting him, something he wanted coaxed out.
"The mantas," he said. "What do we know about them?"
"They get in the way."
"Why? Territorial imperative? Sal, I been thinking. Was today a set-up? If people was working the other side, they couldn't've set a better trap. In the old ships both of us would've gone down."
"Watch your imagination, kid. Things're different in the Islands, but not that different. We've run into feeding mantas before. You just attacked from the wrong angle." I tossed off my third double. The Gap bottom cold began leaking from my bones. I felt a bit more charitable. But not enough to discuss idiot theories of manta intelligence.
We already knew many odd forms of intelligence. Outworlders have a curious sensitivity to it, a near reverence puzzling to Old Earthers. They go around looking for it, especially in adversity. Like savages imputing powers to storms and stones, they can't accept disasters at face value. There has to be a malignant mover.
"I guess you're right," he said. But his doubt was plain. He wanted to believe we were fighting a war, not exterminating noxious animals.
Got me thinking, though. Curious how persistent the rumor was, even though there was no evidence to support it. But a lot of young people (sic!-I was twenty-eight) are credulous. A pilot, dogfighting a manta pair, might come away with the notion. They're foxy. But intelligence, to me, means communication and cooperation. Mantas managed a little of each, but only among mates. When several pairs got involved in a squabble with us, we often won by maneuvering pairs into interfering with one another.
The matter dropped and, after a few more drinks, was forgotten. And banished utterly when we were summoned to the Commander's office.
The interview was predictable. McClennon was determined to ground von Drachau. I don't know why I defended him. Labor united against management, maybe...
Guess Horst wasn't used to having a friend at court. When we left he thanked me, but seemed puzzled, seemed to be wrestling something inside.
Never did find out what, for sure-Old Earthers are tight-lipped, but von Drachau had the best of us beaten-but there was a marked improvement in his attitude. By the end of the month he was on speaking terms with everyone, even men he'd grossly alienated at JGIV.
That month I also witnessed a dramatic improvement in Horst's shooting. His kills in the Sickle Islands had been almost accidental. Changing from rockets to cannons seemed to bring out his talent. He scored kill after kill, attacking with a reckless abandon (but always with a care to keep me well positioned). He'd scream in on a manta, drop flaps suddenly, put himself into a stall just beyond the range of the manta's bolt, then flaps up and fall beneath the monster when he'd drawn it, nose up and trigger a burst into its belly. Meanwhile, I would fend off the other till he was free. My kill score mounted, too.
His was astonishing. Our first four weeks together he downed thirty-six mantas. I downed fourteen, and two whales. I'd had fifty-seven and twelve for four years' work when he arrived, best in the wing. It was obvious that, if he stayed alive, he'd soon pass not only me but Aultmann Zeisler, the CO JG I, a ten year veteran with ninety-one manta kills.
Horst did have an advantage we older pilots hadn't. Target availability. Before, except during the lesser migrations, the wing had been lucky to make a dozen sightings per month. Now we piled kills at an
incredible rate.
Piled, but the tilt of the mountain remained against us. Already stations farther south were reporting sightings of small herds that had
gotten past us.
It was coming to the point where we were kept busy by mantas. Opportunities to strike against whales grew rare. When the main migratory wave broke we'd be swamped.
Everyone knew it. But Derry, despite sending reinforcements, seemed oblivious to the gravity of the situation. Or didn't care. A sour tale began the rounds. The Corporation had written us off. The whales would remove us from the debit ledger. That facilities at Clonninger and stations farther down the cable were being expanded to handle our withdrawal didn't dent the rumors. We Old Earthers always look on the bleak side.
In early winter, after a severe snowstorm, as we were digging out, we encountered a frightening phenomenon. Cooperation among large numbers of mantas.
VIII
It came with sunrise. Horst and I were in the air, among two dozen new fighters. The wing had been reinforced to triple strength, one hundred fifty gliders and a dozen armed zeppelins, but those of us up were all the ground personnel had been able to dig out and launch.
Signals from ground. Against the aurora and white of the Harridans I had no trouble spotting the Harkness whales, full adults, leaving a branch canyon opposite Beadle. Close to a hundred, I guessed, the biggest lot yet to assault the Gap. We went to meet them, one squadron circling down. My own squadron, now made up of men who'd shown exceptional skill against mantas, stayed high to cover. We no longer bothered with whales, served only as cover for the other squadron.
I watched for mantas. Had no trouble finding them. They came boiling 'round the flank of an ivory mountain, cloud of black on cliff of white, a mob like bats leaving a cave at sunset. Hundreds of them.
My heart sank. It'd be thick, grim, and there was no point even thinking about attack formations. All a man could do was keep away and grab a shot at opportunity. But we'd take losses. One couldn't watch every way at once.
A few mantas peeled off and dove for the ships attacking the whales. The bulk came on, following a line that'd cross the Dase.
We met. There were gliders, mantas, shells and lightning bolts thicker than I'd ever seen. Time stood still. Mantas passed before me, I pulled trigger rings. Horst's death's-head devices whipped across my vision. Sometimes parts of gliders or mantas went tumbling by. Lower and lower we dropped, both sides trading altitude for speed.
Nose up. Manta belly before me, meters away. Jerk the rings. Fog across the canopy face, but no explosions against dark flesh. We struggled to avoid collision, passed so close we staggered one another with our slipstreams. For a moment I stared into two of the four eyes mounted round the thing's bullet head. They seemed to drive an electric line of hatred deep into my brain. For an instant I believed the intelligence hypothesis. Then shuddered as I sticked down and began a rabbit run for home, to replace my ammunition.
A dozen mantas came after me. Horst, alone, went after them. I later learned that, throwing his craft about with complete abandon, he knocked nine of those twelve down before his own ammunition ran out. It was an almost implausible performance, though one that need not be dwelt upon. It's one of the mainstays of his legend, his first ten-kill day, and every student of the fighting on Camelot knows of it.
The runway still had a half meter of snow on it. The three mantas followed me in, ignoring the counterfire of our ground batteries. I was so worried about evading their bolts that I went in poorly, one wing down, and ended up spinning into a deep drift. As a consequence I spent two hours grounded.
What I missed was sheer hell. The mantas, as if according to some plan, clamped down on our landing and launching gates, taking their toll while our craft were at their most vulnerable. In the early going some tried to blast through the overhead netting. That only cost them lives. Our ground batteries ate them up. Then they tried the barrage balloons, to no better effect.
Then the whales arrived. We'd been able to do nothing to stop them, so busy had the mantas kept us. They, sensing food beneath the net, began trying to break in. Our ground batteries fired into the dangling forests of their tentacles, wrecking those but doing little damage to the beasts themselves. Gigantic creaks and groans came from the net anchor points.
For pilots and ground crews there was little to do but prepare for a launch when circumstan
ces permitted. I got my ship out, rearmed, and dragged to catapult head. Then for a time I stood observer, using binoculars to watch those of our craft still up.
In all, the deaths of a hundred fourteen mantas (four mine, ten Horst's) and twenty-two whales were confirmed for the first two hours of fighting. But we would've gone under without help from down the cable.
When the desperation of our position became obvious the Commander signalled Clonninger. Its sailcraft came north, jumped the mantas from above. They broke siege. We launched, cats hurling ships into the Gap as fast as steam could be built. Horst and I went in the first wave.
Help had come just in time. The whales had managed several small breaches in the netting and were pushing tentacles through after our ground people.
Even with help the situation remained desperate. I didn't think it'd take long for the mantas, of which more had come across, to clamp down again. When they did it'd only be a matter of time till the whales wrecked the net. I pictured the base destroyed, littered with bones.
Before we launched, the Commander, ancient with the strain, spoke with each pilot. Don't know what he said to the others, but I imagine it was much what he told me: if I judged the battle lost, to run south rather than return here. The sailcraft had to be salvaged for future fighting. If we were overrun the fighting would move to Clonninger.
And in my ear a few words about taking care of von Drachau. I said I would.
But we survived. I won't say we won because even though we managed to break the attack, we ourselves were decimated. JG Kill's effectiveness was ruined for the next week. For days we could barely manage regular patrols. Had we been hit again we'd've been obliterated.
That week McClennon three times requested permission to evacuate nonessential ground troops, received three refusals. Still, it seemed pointless for us to stay when our blocking screen had been riddled. Small herds were passing daily. Clonninger was under as much pressure as we and had more trouble handling it. Their defenses weren't meant to stand against whales. Their sailplanes often had to flee. Ground personnel crouched in deep bunkers and prayed the whales weren't so hungry they'd dig them out.
Whale numbers north of the Harridans were estimated at ten thousand and mantas at ten to twenty. Not vast, but overwhelming in concentration. Populations for the whole continent were about double those, with the only other concentrations in the Sickle Islands. By the end of that week our experts believed a third of the Harridan whales had slipped past us. We'd downed about ten percent of those trying and about twenty-five percent of the mantas.
IX
A fog of despair enveloped Beadle. Derry had informed McClennon that there'd be no more reinforcements. They were needed further south. Permission to withdraw? Denied again. We had only one hundred twelve effective sailcraft. Ammunition was short. And the main blow was yet to fall.
It's hard to capture the dulled sense of doom that clung so thick. It wasn't a verbal or a visible thing, though faces steadily lengthened. There was no defeatist talk. The men kept their thoughts to themselves-but couldn't help expressing them through actions, by digging deeper shelters, in a lack of crisp efficiency. Things less definable. Most hadn't looked for desperate stands when they signed on. And Camelot hadn't prepared them to face one. Till recently they'd experienced only a lazy, vacation sort of action, loafing and laughter with a faint bouquet of battle.
One evening Horst and I stood watching lightning shoot among the near pure copper peaks of the Harridans. "D'you ever look one in the eye?" he asked.
Memory of the manta I'd missed. I shuddered, nodded.
"And you don't believe they're intelligent?"
"I don't care. A burst in the guts is all that matters. That's cash money, genius or retard."
"Your conscience doesn't bother you?"
Something was bothering him, though I couldn't understand why. He wouldn't worry bending human beings, so why aliens? Especially when the pay's right and you're the son of a man who'd become rich by doing the same? But his reluctance wasn't unique. So many people consider alien intelligence sacred-without any rational basis. It's a crippling emotional weakness that has wormed its way into Confederation law. You can't exploit a world with intelligent natives...
But conscience may've had nothing to do with it. Seems, in hindsight, his reluctance might've been a rationalized facet of his revolt against his father and authority.
Understandably, Ubichi was sensitive to speculations about manta intelligence. Severe fines were laid on men caught discussing the possibility-which, human nature being what it is, made the talk more persistent. Several pilots, Horst included, had appealed to McClennon. He'd been sympathetic, but what could he have done?
And I kept wondering why anyone cared. I agreed with the Corporation. That may have been a defect in me.
*"If this thought truly occurred to del Gado at the time, it clearly made no lasting moral impression. News buffs will remember that he was one of several Ubichi mercenaries named in Confederation genocide indictments stemming from illegal exploitation on Bonaventure, though he was not convicted.
-Dogfight
As soon as we recovered from attack, for morale purposes we launched our last offensive, a pre-emptive strike against a developing manta concentration. Everything, including armed zeppelins, went. The mission was partially successful. Kept another attack from hitting Beadle for a week, but it cost. None of the airships returned. Morale sagged instead of rising. We'd planned to use the zepps in our withdrawal-if ever authorized.
In line of seniority I took command of my squadron after a manta made the position available. But I remained von Drachau's wing-man. That made him less impetuous. Still addicted to the flying, he avoided offending a man who could ground him. I was tempted. His eye was still deadly, but his concern over the intelligence of mantas had begun affecting his performance.
At first it was a barely noticeable hesitance in attack that more than
once left blistered paint on his ship. With his timing a hair off he
sometimes stalled close enough for a mania's bolt to caress his craft.
My admonitions had little effect. His flying continued to deteriorate.
And still I couldn't understand.
X
His performance improved dramatically six days after our strike into the Harridans, a day when he had no time to think, when the wing's survival was on the line and maximum effort was a must. (He always performed best under pressure. He never could explain how he'd brushed those nine mantas off me that day. He'd torn through them with the cold efficiency of a military robot, but later couldn't remember. It was as if another personality had taken control. I saw him go through three such possessions and he couldn't remember after any.) It was a battle in which we all flew inspired-and earned a Pyrrhic victory...the back of the wing was broken, but again Beadle survived.
The mantas came at dawn, as before, and brought a whale herd with them. There'd been snow, but this time a hard night's work had cleared the catapults and sailships. We were up and waiting. They walked-or flew-into it. And kept coming. And kept coming.
And by weight of numbers drove us to ground. And once we'd lost the air the whales moved in.
McClennon again called for aid from Clonninger. It came. We broke out. And soon were forced to ground again. The mantas refused to be dismayed. A river came across the Gap to replace losses.
Clonninger signalled us for help. From Beadle we watched endless columns of whales, varicolored as species mixed, move down the dragline south. We could do nothing. Clonninger was on its own.
McClennon ordered a hot air balloon loaded with phosphorous bombs, sent it out and blew it amidst the mantas crowding our launch gate. Horst and I jumped into their smoke. That entire mission we ignored mantas and concentrated on the whales, who seemed likely to destroy the net. Before ammunition ran out we forced them to rejoin the migration. But the mantas didn't leave till dark.
Our ground batteries ran out of rockets. Half
our ships were destroyed or permanently grounded. From frostbite as much as manta action (the day's high was -23° C.), a third of our people became casualties. Fourteen pilots found permanent homes in the bottom of Ginnunga Gap. Rescue balloons couldn't go after them.
Paradoxically, permission to withdraw came just before we lost contact with Clonninger.
We began our wound-licking retreat at midnight, scabby remnants of squadrons launching into the ink of the Gap, grabbing the ups, then slanting down toward Clonninger. Balloons began dragging the line.
Clonninger was what we'd feared for Beadle: churned earth and bones ethereally grim by dawn light. The whales had broken its defenses without difficulty. Appetites whetted, they'd moved on. From three thousand meters the borders of the earth-brown river of devastation seemed to sweep the horizons. The silvery drag cable sketched a bright centerline for that death-path.
We were patrolling when the first airships came south. The skies were utterly empty, the ground naked, silence total. Once snow covered the route only memory would mark recent events...
Days passed. The Clonninger story repeated itself down the cable, station after station, though occasionally we found salvageable survivors or equipment. Operations seemed ended for our ground units. But for us pilots it went on. We followed the line till we overtook straggler whales, returned to work.
As the migration approached Derry corporate defenses stiffened. Though we'd lost contact, it seemed our function at the Gap had been to buy time. True, as I later learned. A string of Beadle-like fortress-bases were thrown across the northern and Sickle Islands routes. But even they weren't strong enough. As the mantas learned (even I found myself accepting the intelligence proposition), they became more proficient at besieging and destroying bases. The whales grew less fearful, more driven by their mating urge. Mantas would herd them to a base; they'd wreck it despite the most furious defense. Both whales and mantas abandoned fear, ignored their own losses.