Cain's Land

by Robert Frezza

  In Orbit, HIMS Aoba [2-brook Rain 14]

  “HEADS UP, CHILDREN. A CLOUD OF MISSILES RISING-I MAKE OUT FOURTEEN, with more still launching,” Sery sang out from the console. “Target appears to be Zuiho.”

  Detlef Jankowskie slammed the panel to sound action stations. “Somebody wake Captain Kobayashi.” Jankowskie and Kobayashi had begun alternating watches after the last missile.

  Jankowskie opened a channel to Zuiho. “Jankowskie here. We're being fired at. Fourteen missiles and counting. It looks as though they plan on swamping our defenses, and the missiles probably have nuclear warheads. Put some distance between your ship and those warheads.”

  Zuiho acknowledged.

  “They'll never clear,” Sery announced.

  “Open a line to corvette Jintsu,” Jankowskie said curtly. “Commander Nitobe, this is Jankowskie. Make an oblique firing pass and scatter some chicken seed across the missiles' path. We'll interpose and act as goalkeeper for the ones you miss.”

  “I will comply. Good hunting, Aoba,” Nitobe replied.

  Tatekawa and Kawabe, manning the firing positions, were running check sequences without waiting to be told to do so.

  “I hope the Blues hired the lowest bidder,” Jankowskie joked as he began maneuvering the ship into harm's way.

  Lieutenant-Commander Nagahiro, the ship's executive officer, reached the bridge and took a seat next to him.

  “Jankowskie-san, perhaps we still have time to launch corvette Chokei,” Kawabe said hesitantly.

  Jankowskie shook his head impatiently. “'They were waiting to catch us like this, and we haven't got ten minutes. We'll have to dance with who we have.”

  “Fast little buggers,” Sery commented as his sensors measured the missiles' speed. “Total of twenty-seven fired.”

  No one else had much to say.

  As the missiles reached the hundred-kilometer mark, Jintsu came in at a sharp angle. Nitobe skillfully steered his ship to scatter a cloud of chicken seed in the path of four missiles and twisted to engage four more.

  “All right.Mark the stragglers, and prepare to clean them up,” Jankowskie said.

  “Captain! Jintsu missed!” Kawabe said excitedly.

  “Hits. No damage,” Sery reported. The fusion-charged chicken seed was gouging small dents in the ceramic casing of the missiles without penetrating. Sery looked up. “'The missiles

  are dropping their third stages now. Don't count on running them out of fuel.”

  Jintsu ineffectually engaged with a laser. “Aoba, our fire has no effect. We are preparing to engage with five-hundred kilogram projectiles,” Nitobe reported.

  Ignoring little Jintsu, the missiles continued to streak toward Aoba and Zuiho.

  “They have speed and we do not,” Lieutenant-Commander

  Nagahiro said quietly. “This is most awkward.”

  “Kawabe, launch the five-hundred-kilogram projectiles we have fused for impact at forty-second intervals,” Jankowskie said to fill the deadly silence. “When we run out of those, launch whatever else we've got loaded.”

  “Jintsu's first projectile is a clean miss. It looks as though their electronic countermeasures aren't too shabby either,” Sery said.

  Captain Kobayashi appeared. “Twenty-seven missiles,” Jankowskie told him. “We're luring them into rifle range.”

  “Launching five-hundred-kilogram projectile,” Kawabe said, his voice unnaturally shrill.

  “Jintsu is making another firing run,” Sery said

  Jankowskie slapped the intership frequency. “Nitobe, sheer off. We're launching.”

  “So very sorry, honorable Captain. I cannot comply. Please tell Commissioner Mutaro and Vice-Commissioner Vereshchagin we did our duty.”

  Seconds later, Jintsu impaled herself on a missile in the middle of the swarm. The missile's nuclear warhead and the ship's fusion bottle went up together in a horrific explosion.

  “Launching second projectile,” Kawabe reported

  “Discontinue launching,” Kobayashi told him.

  The blast overtook the lead missiles. Half a moment later, it engulfed Aoba.

  “Sensors down,” Sery reported.

  “I can no longer track,” Kawabe reported “I greatly hope that Jintsu got all of them.” Tatekawa, who had banged his head, hung limply in his seat with a bruise on his temple.

  “We will know in a minute,” Kobayashi observed.

  Sery shook his head. “Hell of an O-Bon festival.”

  “We lose more corvettes that way,” Jankowskie commented. “Radiation count is up. I hope nobody was planning on children.”

  An hour later, hanging off at a safe distance, it was clear that Aoba had suffered major damage. Jintsu continued to exist as a cloud of stripped atomic nuclei in an area about a hundred kilometers in diameter.

  Before returning command to Captain Kobayashi, Jankowskie entered a scrap of verse he bad once beard from Hans Coldewe into the ship's log:

  “Nail to the mast her holy flag/Set every threadbare sail/And

  give her to the god of storms/The lightning and the gale.”

  L-Day plus 459 [3-brook Rain 14]

  CONNIE MARAIS SAT AT HIS WORKSTATION, PUZZLING OVER A POEM KANYASE had left him. He had studied it for two months and felt no nearer to unlocking its riddle. In translation, it read:

  In the sky two moons In your face one mouth

  In the sky many stars In your face only two eyes

  Hearing Kobus Nicodemus calling, he turned off his computer and stepped outside to see Isaac Wanjau and Dr. Seki returning from a meeting with the Blues. Marais was shocked at the change in Seki's appearance. Never robust, Seki now appeared careworn.

  Seki addressed the team. “Company Sergeant Wanjau and I have been informed that there is concern over our security here. For this reason, the Pochteca have asked us to move to the city of Cuextla. Although there are many disadvantages attendant upon this course, it will provide us with an opportunity to see a city and perhaps understand the naturales better.”

  “We have perhaps ten minutes to pack,” Wanjau said gruffly. “Stuff your pockets with food and a change of clothes. If any of you have records or data files from the ship that I have not personally approved, destroy them now.”

  Marais felt as if he bad been punched in the stomach.

  Wanjau looked at each of them in tum. “I asked Dr. Seki to try to put a polite face on things.”

  HIMS Zuiho [3-brook Rain 14]

  “DO WE KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING DOWN THERE?” NICOLA BOSENAC ASKED.

  “We activated a relay station on the smaller moon, which allows us to make contact with our reconnaissance platoon twice a day.” Vereshchagin paced the compamnent. “Markus Alariesto flew east in a Sparrow to try to extricate Gerrit Myburgh and Rikki Sanmartin, but Blue soldiers are occupying the area in force, and he was not able to land. The contact team is being held. Natasha Solchava has had to sedate Isaac Wanjau's wife.”

  “But why would the Blues attack like this?” Bosenac knotted his hands. “It seems senseless.”

  Vereshchagin paused before responding. “Many months ago, Dr. Marais reported a fragmentary conversation to the effect that the Pochteca mistrusted us, that we represented change. This would seem to be our only clue.”

  “It seems a terribly thin reason to go to war.”

  “As little as I understand the Blues, I do not believe that their society would survive open contact with us without being changed. If the contact team is correct, they have no word for

  'religion' because the word implies that there can be more than one set of beliefs.”

  “The one fact about them we seem sure of is that they kill their infants. My church would view this as a terrible sin.”

  “Perhaps the Blues believe us incapable of overlooking this. Hans often takes me to task for violating the great law of living, which is 'Thou shalt not offend against the notions of thy neighbors.' “ Vereshchagin
tried to smile and gave up the effort. “Father Nicola, I sometimes wonder whether I accomplished anything on Suid-Afrika and what I can hope to accomplish here.”

  “Commissioner, God can't keep men from folly, and folly is something that Suid-Afrikans are unusually good at.” Bosenac shook his head ruefully. “As for the Blues, it’s astonishing how little we know about them and how much less we understand.”

  “The converse is also true,” Vereshchagin said absently. “Eh?”

  “The Blues know more about us, and understand less.” Vereshchagin paced the cabin a few more times. “Sun-tzu said that leadership in war requires intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and sternness. Trustworthiness and humaneness are perhaps the most difficult to cultivate.”

  He paused. “Soldiers share expectations, a moral sense of what is right and wrong. This is the common thread underlying the traditions, the stories we tell, and the trust my men have in me and each other is rooted in it. It gives meaning to deaths and suffering. Now, I am about to do something my men will find incomprehensible.” He checked the time. “I must leave you now, Father. If you wish to be a good chaplain. pray.”

  Entering his cabin. Vereshchagin saw that Aksu and Reinikka were squeezed in next to his usual conferees, and that Esko Poikolainnen had set up a view screen so that Kobayashi and Jankowskie could also participate. He accepted a cup of tea from Piotr Kolomeitsev and held it, feeling the warmth seep into his hand. “Hans? Shall we begin?”

  “You know how I feel. Twenty-seven missiles qualifies as hostile intent.” Coldewe gestured. “Detlef tells me that the Blues are trying to knock down our satellite network as we speak. I'd like to sugar the Blues' tea for Jintsu, and I want our people back, even Dr. Seki, bless his pacifistic little heart. The Blues have twenty-nine days worth of food to feed the contact team, after which things get sticky. We have an even larger problem looming, which is the strong possibility that the Blues will shoot down our next supply ship when it wanders into orbit, fat, dumb, and happy to be a target drone. If we lose that ship, we lose our ability to maintain ourselves here.”

  Kobayashi and Jankowskie looked at each other. Kobayashi amplified Coldewe's remarks. “We do not know precisely when or where the next supply ship will arrive, and we will have a limited ability to communicate with the ship before it enters orbit I regret that I consider it necessary to strike.”

  “Will we use nuclear weapons?” Simon Beetje asked.

  The Iceman's explanation confused Beetje. “I somehow doubt that obliterating cities with the forty nuclear warheads we possess would influence the Pochteca--the Blues appear somewhat

  callous about loss of life. It would also seem to be a fragile foundation upon which to build a lasting relationship.”

  Kobayashi said stiftly, “Captain Jankowskie and I have discussed employing ship-launched munitions to damage the planet’s industrial base. Lieutenant Aksu has convinced me that we lack the capacity to obtain lasting results, and that the attempt would almost certainly result in the loss of Aoba and Chokei.”

  “Indeed,” Pia Szuba volunteered unexpectedly, “identified industrial plants do not account for the level of industrial activity here. Significant subcomponent production is carried out at the village level. Attacks on industrial plants would merely force the Blues to further disperse their industry.”

  Jankowskie added, “People think a big meteor strike helped finish off the last dinosaurs, so Yotaro and I kicked around the idea of moving about fifty kilometers worth of asteroid onto a collision course with the planet”

  'There are inherent difficulties in taking orbital material in tow,” Kobayashi said, “and there does not appear to be any extraneous planetary matter that could be induced to strike the planet anytime in the near future, the near future being defined as within the next hundred years.”

  “Dr. Kita, Dr. Beetje?” Vereshchagin asked. “Would you care to add anything?”

  Beetje said in a weary voice, “We have to do something, but what can we do?”

  Vereshchagin aslted, “Piotr?”

  The Iceman smiled. “Anton, you have already detennined the course of action we will follow, and the sole responsibility is yours.”

  Vereshchagin looked at the faces around him. “Although our relations with the Blues are unfriendly, waging war in earnest is not calculated to improve them. Our objective is to prevent the Blues from becoming a threat to Earth and the colonial worlds. Until-and unless-they evidence a desire to leave their home world and move into space, I do not view them as a threat.”

  “Even if inaction results in sacrificing the next supply ship and curtailing our stay?” Kolomeitsev asked.

  Vereshchagin nodded. “Hans, I would like to see a plan for rationing.”

  Coldewe shrugged. “You'll have it by tomorrow.”

  Jan Snyman could not contain his astonishment. “Sir, it sounds like we're just going to do nothing.” Mitsuru Aichi wordlessly echoed his sentiments.

  Kolomeitsev said nothing, but smiled, perhaps recalling admirals who made careers out of doing nothing.

  “Commissioner,” Kobayashi said, “we are almost finished with our repairs. The Blues have a rudimentary satellite network on the water side of their planet. Destroying this network would

  temporarily reduce the danger to ourselves and the supply ship.”

  Vereshchagin considered briefly, then nodded. “Take it out.”

  “What about the hostages?” Coldewe asked. “I want them back and I want Rikki back, but if we pull them out, we let the Blues know we can sneak shuttles into their airspace.”

  Detlef Jankowskie started to suggest taking Blues as hostages to trade before the futility of this impressed itself on him.

  Vereshchagin made no reply for a long while. Finally, he said, “Hans, see if you can come up with a plan that allows us a reasonable chance of bringing out our people.”

  “Even if this plan risks compromising future operations?” The Iceman asked.

  Vereshchagin nodded. “Even so.”

  “All right,” Coldewe said.

  “Are all of you comfortable with this policy of nonaction?” Vereshchagin asked. He looked directly at Mitsuru Aichi. “Are you, Major?”

  Aichi swallowed hard. He recalled a phrase from the I Ching: 'The inchworm shrinks so as to be able to gain faith.” Just as the worm has to pull its ends together before it can stretch out and move forward, a person must bend and yield in order to grow. “I am satisfied, honored Commissioner.”

  Vereshchagin nodded. 'Thank you all,” he said with finality.

  As the meeting broke up, Jan Snyman said to Coldewe, “Our people aren't going to like this much.”

  Coldewe said slowly, “Anton gets paid to make decisions people don't like. We get paid to make them like it”

  L-DAY plus 510 [4-brook Rain 14]

  “l THINK WE SHOULD GO BACK INSIDE,” SUPERIOR PRIVATE MYBURGH SAID APOLOGETICALLY, studying his pitifully thin sensor array. “They will begin looking for us again at daybreak.”

  “I feel like a lizard.” Hendricka Sanmartin made no immediate move to comply. “Scuttling into a hole at the approach of the sun.”

  “Please, ma'am.” Myburgh tugged timidly at her sleeve. “Getting shot at makes me nervous.”

  “What are our chances of escaping?”

  “Not very good,” Mybwgh admitted.

  The Blues had found enough evidence of human presence to convince themselves to keep looking. Although the forest was far too wet to set ablaze, they were combing it carefully, and the hide site Kekkonen and de Kantzow had prepared was not intended to withstand prolonged scrutiny.

  Sanmartin shook her head. “If I give myself up, they will be so pleased at having found me that you can sneak away.”

  “Ma'am, these people aren't people.” There was considerable fear in Mybwgh's eyes. “Finding you might make them look even harder. And if I let you get caught, if they don't shoot me, Col
onel Hans will. He ordered me to take care of you.”

  She reluctantly crawled in after him. “You must pardon me. I seem to be a little bit out of my depth here.”

  “To tell the truth, ma'am.” Mybwgh said with feeling, “so am I.” He held up a tarok deck. “Want to play a few hands?”

  ”Are you sure you want to play?' She turned onto her left side and tried to make herself comfortable. “You don't seem to win very often.”

  Myburgh shuddered.

  She grinned. “I suppose keeping me occupied is the lesser of two evils.”

  “Yes, ma'am.” Myburgh said with real feeling.

  HIMS Zuiho [5-brook Rain 14]

  “I AM TELLING YOU, PIA, I AM REACHING THE POINT WHERE I CAN'T LIVE WITH THE SITUATION anymore.” Simon Beetje brushed his hair back. “I feel as though I am living a lie.”

  “Maria appears happy. She is even wearing makeup, now.”

  “But the pattern hasn't changed.” Beetje tried to think of examples. “She assumes that because I love her, I will do whatever she wants, and if I balk, it is because I'm too stupid to understand. It’s maddening--” He caught his breath. Pia wore a high-buttoned blouse, and he found his eyes straying. “It is particularly maddening because I don't love her anymore.”

  Szuba's shoulders slumped, ever so slightly. “Is there anything new about Miss Sanmartin?”

  He shook his head. “Hans keeps me informed. The Blues are still searching, which gives us hope that they haven't found her yet.” He tried to redirect the conversation. “Pia, there is something I have been meaning to say to you for a while, now. You've been incredibly patient, listening to me--”

  “But the important thing is that you still care about Maria, and she cares about you very much,” Szuba said dogmatically, staring at him with an unwavering and disconcerting gaze.