Korval's Game

by Sharon Lee

  ***

  They’d been lucky. For one thing, Yxtrang hadn’t been expecting them—not quite yet, anyhow. For another, they hadn’t exactly been over-manned.

  For a third thing, Miri thought as she waited for the last of the situation reports to come in, Yxtrang had thought they’d be going up against a professional fighting force.

  What they got was the remaining Irregulars, whose ranks had been doubled and doubled again by the time they hit the airfield, by bands of desperate and vengeful civilians.

  Miri wondered if the guy with the hatchet had managed to stay alive. Seemed like she owed the man an apology. His crew hadn’t been rabble. She’d seen rabble, now.

  The Irregulars launched the attack, hitting the Yxtrang mess tent with three rounds of mortar fire at half-through dinner. They’d followed up with an occupation of the ammo dump and turned the two captured field pieces against the disoriented Yxtrang.

  It was the mob that attacked the remaining entrenched field piece in a wave. The soldiers there had faced knives, spears, rocks, and raw hatred. None had died easy, and there were an astonishing number of Yxtrang among the mass of corpses.

  The last report came through and Miri sighed. Eleven Irregulars dead or missing. Hundreds of civilians, ditto. Yxtrang had spiked the fuel tanks with sand, damn their black hearts. She’d’ve done the same.

  But, the airfield was theirs, theoretically, and a couple hundred meters in all directions, with a tenuous western connection.

  Theory came in to it because the Yxtrang weren’t being good losers. They hadn’t thrown their guns away and run screaming from the field. They had retreated in as good order as possible, those who were left, and now they waited in the woods, maybe for dark, maybe for a dawn attack, but probably for reinforcements. Now and then, a couple would dance out onto the floor and throw a party favor, probing for weakness.

  Miri, drawing on a stockpile of weaponry Yxtrang had forgotten to take with them when they vacated, called for occasional mortar fire to the south and east. To the west were the fringes of Kritoulkas’ crew, and a couple pieces of modest merc armor.

  She’d ordered the captured field artillery used for on-the-spot training—so far a quarter of the troop had been part of the drill. They were firing randomly on the valley trails most likely able to support incoming Yxtrang armor or supplies.

  The civilians, with nothing nearby to murder, were in the way, milling around on the runway. That was no good. She called to one of her lieutenants to clear the field and a few minutes later a sergeant and a squad marched over to move the mob along.

  Miri drank some water from her canteen and checked the time. Ought to be seeing planes, real soon. The wind was rising, and she could see heavy clouds on the horizon. Great. The piloting tapes Val Con had her learning weren’t coy about the difficulties of flying in storms. The sooner she saw planes, the happier she’d be.

  In fact . . . She tipped her head, frowning after the sound which might have been engine noise—but wasn’t.

  She listened with care. Armor, she decided. Kritoulkas must’ve decided to advance herself a little while things’re quie—

  She felt the rumble then, shouted, “Incoming!” and saw the Irregulars go for cover, and some of the brighter civilians.

  Armor.

  And it wasn’t theirs.

  ***

  He had used all his bombs, to the glory of the Troop and the mortification of the enemy. The 14th Conquest Corps had lost heavily this day, in arms, ammunition, equipment, and status.

  They had lost pilots, too. Three of rank who rose against him had gone gloriously to duty’s reward.

  Nelirikk checked the fuel gauge, made one last mid-level pass over the wreckage and confusion that had been the 14th’s southern stronghold, and set his course for Erob’s airfield, where his captain and his arms-mates awaited him.

  ***

  It was possible, Shan thought, that he had done lasting damage. Certainly, he’d played merry havoc with the heavy artillery, the armor, and the ammo.

  And the planes.

  Despite holding Soldier Lore deep in his bones, he was far too much Korval to kill ships without pain. Reason said that the ships of the enemy must be nullified.

  But a pilot’s heart wept for the pretties left dead or dying, never to know the sweet thrill of lift again.

  The building storm was at his back as he came in toward the agreed-upon airfield and saw, with a gasp of relief, that the Irregulars’ flag was flying.

  In the woods, as he passed over, half-a-dozen armored vehicles, closing rapidly toward the field.

  He banked sharply and saw the storm straight-on, a wall of boiling black cloud, lanced with lightning and topped with miles of blazing white thunderheads; then he dropped the nose, caught a tank in the cross hairs and pushed the firing stud.

  ***

  First, there were no planes. Then, there were two, from opposite directions.

  Miri watched the first come in ahead of the racing storm, saw it slow, drop, then swing back over the woods, and the noises it was making promised enemy.

  “Mark that!” she yelled to the crews. “Get the mortar and both pieces on that heading. Rapid fire!”

  The second plane circled the field once, waggled its wings a couple times, and then came in low, flared out neatly and touched down with barely a sound, coming around in a wide circle until its nose was pointing at the woods.

  The pilot cut power, but a whine remained in the air as the hatch went up and Nelirikk, his face showing faint marks like daubs of paint, dropped to the ground, ran to her and saluted.

  “Count three rounds in the nose cannon, my Captain. No fuel to fly with.”

  She took his salute, wondering how someone so ugly could look so good. “Can’t help you with the fuel. We got armor gonna come outta those woods pretty soon. Can you aim the cannon while you’re grounded?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Do it.”

  He bolted for his plane and it was time for the first one to come back in, too fast, to Miri’s eye, touching down and flaming out in the same instant, rolling uncontrolled toward the far end of the field. It came to her that the pilot was dead, or bad hit, and she reached inside her head for the comfort of Val Con’s pattern.

  The last thing she remembered seeing was the bright orange ’chute popping out of the tail of the rolling plane, dragging its speed down to nothing.

  ***

  The ship was on red alert, the crews responsible for guns seven and nine by the captain’s order removed from their stations.

  The timer in the corner of the main command screen counted to zero and faded. Targeting comp reported guns seven and nine on-line, magnetic beams, low.

  Captain and first mate watched as actuality repeated simulation and the beams inexorably pushed defenseless ships into the maw of the Eye.

  The Yxtrang battleship fired.

  Shuttlecraft and workboats, pallet-skids and lighters, took the charge, expanded. And were gone.

  “Beam energy leached by a factor of three, Captain,” the first mate said quietly from his work screen. The captain nodded.

  Targeting comp reported guns seven and nine off-line, targets destroyed.

  ***

  The wind buffeted his ship. He corrected, nearly over corrected. The horizon was higher than it should be, surely. . . ? A long reach to the board and that was corrected, too.

  He was approaching his first strike zone, the airfield far behind. Below, the enemy moved. He found the supply column and came in low.

  These were hardened soldiers, familiar with the sounds of battle. Few even looked up as air cover streaked over.

  Val Con dropped the nose of the ship, brought video cross hairs to bear on the streaming troops, and fired his cannon.

  The sound was a long low moan; the plane shuddered and lost forward speed rapidly. The slower it went, the more the local winds tore and tossed it.

  The run took just seconds, the return a hard ri
ght bank and he gasped as the injured leg was pressed by acceleration.

  Back again, flying low, nose down . . .

  These were seasoned troops. There was return fire, but the anti-aircraft gun wasn’t in position yet.

  Val Con brought the cross hairs to bear once more, ignoring the figures running for cover, concentrating on his target.

  This time he scored a direct hit, and the surprising blast lifted the plane and bounced him around in the oversized cockpit. He rescued himself with a snatch at the instrument panel, his vision black at the edges and the pain was a carnivore, eating him alive . . .

  It was instinct, a snatch at life no less vital than his grip on the instrument panel.

  He reached into that portion of himself that had been most abused by the Department, and flipped a certain toggle-on.

  The pain did not fade, it was simply no longer relevant data. He was aware that he was wounded, that the wetness down his leg was blood, and he bent to tighten the wrappings, for it would be inefficient to die of blood loss before the mission was done.

  Very distantly, there was song. The song comforted him, though he could not stop right now to listen. There were targets below him and the mission was imperative. If he failed, the song would die, and he would not allow that.

  ***

  He had done with the moving troops and flown on, seeking other targets. He had tightened the wrapping on his leg again, and enriched the air supply. He cut a long strip of leather from his jacket and used that to tie himself, standing, against the board. The fuel gauge was fine. There were still many bombs in his belly.

  He went over the field at mid-level, saw the shapes of space-worthy ships and knew he had found targets that merited his skill. He came back in, readying his guns, but they were alert here, they weren’t a moving column that was vulnerable to air attack.

  They fired missiles at him and he saw people on the ground, running for planes. He brought the nose down and fired at the planes, because it would be bad to have to fight them all in the air.

  The rising missiles altered courses, seeking. Val Con saw one beside him, pacing him, it seemed. He veered toward it and it veered away. He laughed, veered toward it again, and watched it pull away.

  Cannon-fire was not so coy. Bursts exploded just off his wing-tip and he banked right, braced hard against the board, and there was a song in his head and he wanted to listen, but he couldn’t because there was an enemy plane coming against him and he had to uncap his wing cannon and fire.

  He was nearly blinded by the explosion, felt his craft buffeted, heard the sound of metal shred bouncing off the high-strength skin.

  Reflex took over and he banked sharply to the right, knowing that he shouldn’t—sharply to the right, the leather tie held him up, and sharply to the right and now he was behind the plane that had been chasing him and if he pressed this switch again. . .

  The cannon fire was pretty. He laughed at the explosion.

  He’d gotten past the field, though, and he needed to kill the spaceships. He banked to the right, coming in low, and he’d always been good at this part. He knew how to almost touch the tops of the trees and he went over the big hump and remembered that he needed to have all the weapons live.

  But the spaceships weren’t sleeping anymore. One was awake and lifting, and people on the ground were shooting at him, two more missiles came by to look at him and veered off because the ship said he was an Yxtrang ace.

  He fired his cannon at the rising target but he was too fast, and by it, and swept around to the right and pulled back on the stick because the target was climbing.

  He needed to do something about that, he knew. This target—this target was troop transport. He couldn’t let it get away and bring more soldiers down.

  There was a song in his head. He’d heard it many times before. He banked right and saw the target above him, and pushed the power bar to full.

  The target got slightly closer, but he knew it was faster than he was and could fly higher. He fired his cannon, but it didn’t explode like the other targets.

  It was hard to move with the power bar all the way up and the leather strap was holding him tight while his mount climbed directly under the target, but the target was getting smaller.

  There was a song in his head and he wanted to listen, but the target had to be stopped. The sky was getting darker and the target getting smaller and he couldn’t go much higher because it was the wrong kind of ship—

  He fired his nose cannon and his wing cannon and his missiles all at once. He fired and thought maybe he’d hit the target and then thought maybe he hadn’t because it kept moving and he couldn’t go straight up anymore, anyway. His leg was hurting and he was very tired.

  He closed his eyes and sagged against the board.

  He remembered then that the song was named Miri and that he’d been very lucky to hear it.

  ***

  Erob, what numbers of them were in the house rather than in troop with his astonishing and admirable niece, or on the grounds, had taken shelter in the deep cellars.

  He had given warning, for whatever good that would do them, to the defenders locked outside the shield, and relayed an encoded situation report to Jason Carmody’s last known position, down by the quarry encampment.

  Duty done, Win Den tel’Vosti sat behind his desk in the back parlor that had become his war room, and waited for what might occur.

  “Uncle?” Alys stood poised on the threshold, looking slightly rumpled in a tunic handed down from an older cousin, the weapons belt pulled snug ’round her waist, gun ready by her hand.

  He sighed. “Child, you should be in the cellar with the rest.”

  “But you aren’t,” she replied, irrefutably. “Why came you here?”

  He sighed again, feeling very old, indeed, and as if all his years had taught him nothing.

  “Because I am a general, child. Duty requires me to be at my station, in case there should be need.”

  “Oh.” She came lightly across the room and leaned against his side, one arm across his shoulders. He put his arm around her waist, careful of the gun.

  “What will happen, Uncle?”

  “I don’t know,” he said softly. “Perhaps nothing.” But even Alys was too old to believe that.

  “Dragon’s Tooth would not have awakened,” she told him, “if it were nothing. Clan Korval is our ally.”

  Wisdom and folly in one short utterance, tel’Vosti thought. As if to be Korval’s ally placed one in anything like safety. He hugged her lightly.

  “That’s so.”

  The lights went out. The computers went off-line.

  There was sound: the scream of ten thousand fingernails drawn simultaneously down ten thousand slate boards, going on and on.

  The air was filled with static and the room was very warm. Alys gasped and flinched, caught herself and stood quiveringly still against his side, her arm like a bar of lead across his shoulder.

  The sound stopped.

  The lights came up. The computers beeped and rebooted. The air was gentle, pleasantly cool against the skin.

  Alys sighed and slumped a little. tel’Vosti remembered to breathe.

  The intercom on the desk chimed. He leaned forward and touched the key.

  “Yes?”

  “Uncle, it’s Kol Vus. There’s another message on the old telecoder. Planetary Defense Unit says that the shield has deflected an energy bolt. Shield power is down, it says here, by fifty-five percent.” There was a pause.

  “Planetary Defense Unit advises us that the shielding will not divert another strike. And then it says, ‘Phase Two enabled, Phase Two confirmed, Phase Two in progress.’”

  ***

  Shan threw himself down the ladder and ran low across the field, pistol in hand, and flung to his belly next to the small leather-clad crumple.

  His foray in the woods had stopped one Yxtrang tank, which left five more closing on the field. The Irregulars all seemed to be pointing in the right
direction, the mortars and anti-armor guns in position. Nelirikk’s plane, with the Yxtrang number 32 on the tail, was on standby power, which might well mean there were rounds left in the nose cannon. For the moment, the side of the airfield was as safe as any other position in the immediate vicinity, but it wasn’t going to stay that way, and Miri. . .

  She lay like one dead, face against the ground, the combat helmet askew, showing a bright gleam of hair.

  That she was not dead or even wounded, he knew, though he barely knew what to make of the tangle of steel and fire that confounded his Inner Eyes.

  The ground shook. A turret appeared at the end of the field, as the first of the Yxtrang armor cleared the trees. Shan came to his knees, pistol ready, heard the whine from Nelirikk’s plane change pitch, and went down, covering Miri’s body with his own.

  Nelirikk’s cannon roared, the ground steadied, Shan rocked back on his knees, holstered the pistol, gathered his brother’s lifemate into his arms and ran.

  ***

  She was so tired. Opening her eyes was too much effort. But she had to open her eyes, because . . .

  Damned if she knew why.

  It was warm. She was tired. So . . . very . . . tired. Better to sleep and not to care . . .

  Because there had been three planes and only two had landed. She needed to open her eyes and look for the other one, the most important one, to be sure that it got home safe.

  She demanded sight with all her will and heavy eyelids lifted. The world was a blur.

  It took her a second to realize that was because she’d fallen across the instrument panel and her cheek was against one of the dials. She exerted more will, and got herself upright, helped by the strap around her waist, that anchored her to the board.

  That was better. She could see the instruments, the fuel gauge, the altimeter—how high?—and the compass. And through the windscreen she could see—

  A slow drifting. And that was wrong, she knew from the tapes he had made her learn. Wrong, because it meant—

  The plane wasn’t level.

  Her hands were heavy, but she got one around the joystick, found the horizon meter and slowly pushed on the stick, watching the horizon line crawl down from almost vertical toward level.