Terai heard the reports with rage – rage at the smugness and stupidity of the Federation’s Ministry of Defense, at the public apathy and intellectual mendacity which had mired down every effort that anybody did make toward restoring the strength and alertness that had won the Power War. Oh, yes, he remembered, they knew in Wellantoa that Sea Serpent existed, old and obsolete. The Norries were allowed to keep her as a mother ship for their coast guard in these waters. But her actual owner was the Wolf Lodge, which contracted her out.
No one had thought to tell Terai, or any of his service, to check on her while they were in Laska. She had simply, quietly gone off to some isolated workplace where she was transformed into this monster. Armor, armament – electronic weapons, copied from Skyholm, such as the Royal Navy itself did not possess … defending Orion directly, they would have revealed what exact location it was that they guarded, but this was a mobile stage for them –
And there the thing came.
Under power, sails folded, Rongelap and her squadron moved to engage. The time had been too short for reinforcements to arrive. And now the time had shrunken to nothing.
A rifle bellowed, the shell flew invisibly fast, seeking range. A fountain erupted white near the ironclad.
She returned no shot. Instead, it flashed at her forward launch pad. The rocket streaked aloft, a silver spear trailed by firelit smoke. The sound of its passage boomed across kilometers.
On the bridge, Kepaloa brought his binoculars down as the projectile crossed the sky and dropped from sight. ‘I am afraid your guess was correct, Captain Lohannaso,’ he said roughly.
‘It was logic, of a brutal sort,’ Terai answered. ‘And not a Nan-devoured thing we can do about it, except –’
Incandescence flared on the southeastern horizon. A dreadful grumbling noise followed, and vapor made a new snowpeak on the sea.
Halaweo snatched a microphone. ‘Now hear this!’ he intoned. ‘That was a nuclear warhead, as you have been notified might be the case. Stand fast to your posts. They can’t throw one at us, this close, without destroying themselves. As for those rays you have also heard about, they seem to be for air protection only. In any case, a beam that can touch off a warhead will not have the energy to do much against a hull. No ship could carry the generating capacity for that. You face no danger you have not faced before, and you have a vital job to do.
‘Prepare for action. We’re going after those kea birds!’
Engines woke to full speed. The Maurai craft surged forward. Their guns raked before them. Blast and shrapnel went furious over the ironclad.
She had courageous men aboard. Regardless of casualties, they launched a second rocket, a third, a fourth. The skies blazed.
Radio reports were coming in. The Wolf spotter planes had done their work before they must flee. No target vessel that they identified was fast enough to get out of the nuclear kill radius. Each explosion claimed an aircraft carrier and her attendants. Elsewhere, horror immobilized Maurai crews, or whipped them close to mutiny. ‘We’re beaten, we can’t fight this, it’s the Downfall –’
Terai was not sure why heart remained in the sailors here. Well, he and others had been frank with them before exhorting them, and a fiend confronted is less terrible than one unseen.
‘I love you, Elena,’ he had started his letter. He didn’t know if she would ever receive it. Maybe only the fishes would.
Morale must be drawn close to breaking. Terai saw it snap in Halaweo. ‘Merciful Haristi, we’re ruined like the Mong,’ the captain groaned.
‘No!’ Terai seized him by the shoulder, hard enough to bring a gasp of pain. ‘Not if we can sink that ship. She has to be their last atomic resource. They can’t have had much for combat use, if they wanted Orion to rise. They don’t even have missiles with the range and accuracy to shoot from inside the firth. On!’
Hostile turrets swiveled. Guns bawled. Rongelap’s mainmast splintered and fell. Flames licked over its length. Wounded crewmen screamed. Their comrades kept stations, returning the shots.
The ironclad heeled about and throbbed toward the mouth of Cook Inlet, where the shore batteries waited. Some distance off, a Maurai frigate was burning and sinking.
‘We’ll have to let her go,’ Kepaloa said. ‘She can knock us to pieces.’
‘No, sir, no,’ Terai urged. ‘Don’t you see? She must have more nukes aboard, probably all they have left. She is their nuclear weapon. And she’ll smash the next force we can bring to bear –unless we send her to the bottom this day.’
Kepaloa gave him a long regard before replying, ‘I think you have just assumed command, Lohannaso. Very well, we pursue till the end.’
A chemical burst rocked the dreadnaught again. Slivers of metal and wood hailed into human flesh. Fire blossomed and crackled on the port side. Men lay moveless, like broken dolls, or dragged their crippled bodies off in search of help.
But other men served the guns of Rongelap and her companions. Sea Serpent lurched in the water, listed, slowed to a crawl. Her after turrets were wreckage. Her stacks were blown away; the black gang must be choking. What conventional shots she could get off made geysers in the sea. And still the Maurai closed in.
‘Ho-o-o!’ Terai shouted. ‘You didn’t think we’d have the manhood, did you?’
Hulled and aflame, Rongelap was nonetheless the faster vessel. She drew alongside. Her riflemen interdicted the opposing deck. Terai bounded down off the bridge. On his way, he snatched a fire ax from its rack and swung its crimson-painted starkness over his head as if it were a lightning bolt. ‘Grapple, board, and scuttle!’ he called. ‘For the sake of your children!’
No fear was in him, nor any anger. He moved like a storm or a tide. Within him was the cool memory of swimming with his dolphin friend through the waters of home.
Nobody ever knew, afterward, whose was the vengeful hand that armed and set off a remaining nuclear warhead. A fireball whirled upward. Momentarily, waves boiled. Birds fell from the air, seared. The crash echoed through far valleys and loosed avalanches down the sides of mountains. A wind howled into being and bore the fallout poisons eastward across the Gulf.
Later there was a great stillness, and the sea lay empty.
3
After the weight and violence of acceleration, free fall was like a dream, half-wakeful by an open window in a morning of early springtime.
Earth gleamed in blue-and-white purity, greening Northern lowlands, sculptured heights, quicksilvery rivers and lakes, weather aflow. Then a new sunset went red-gold down the curve of the planet, as the spaceship ended another ninety-minute circuit and swung around over the night side. She found no darkness. The stars crowded it out of heaven. Alone in the unlighted control cabin, Iern let his spirit soar amidst radiance.
Ronica winged back to him. She had been on inspection. He embraced the fragrance and litheness of her. The Milky Way brought her face frostily forth in the shadows. They floated hand in hand.
‘All okay,’ she told him. ‘We’ve got us a better machine than the designers themselves knew … Have you had any response to our broadcast?’
‘No, not yet. But it will require special relaying arrangements, and they are … preoccupied … down there – and to be honest, I would rather not hear for a while what has been happening.’
‘I understand,’ she sighed. ‘I’m close to collapse too. Reaction. But here is healing for us.’
He nodded. ‘Healing for the human race, maybe. Ronica, we cannot let this be lost. I thought we had to keep Orion from rising, but now, when we’ve seen – Somehow, it must.’
She kissed him. ‘Yes.’
‘On that account,’ he said, ‘I think we should wait to return. I mean longer than the time for rehearsals, familiarization. A week or more, till the situation has stabilized someplace, if it ever can. Till we know where we can land without having the craft taken away and forever grounded.’
‘My same idea, darling. We’ve ample rations.’
Eager
ness lightened the exhaustion in his voice. ‘And ample power. The computer capabilities aren’t great, but we don’t need much finesse, given the drive energy available. We don’t have to remain in Earth orbit.’ Suddenly, in the teeth of everything, he laughed. ‘How would you like a leisurely trip around the moon?’
4
‘I did what I did for love of her,’ Jovain mumbled. ‘Oh, also because I wanted to remake the Domain in my own image, and get revenge on Iern – but chiefly it was for her. Now I have none of them.’
Mattas Olvera laid a hand on the Captain’s shoulder with an unwonted gentleness that matched his voice: ‘You were serving Gaea.’
‘I was serving myself.’ Jovain made a chopping gesture at the prism window. ‘And she denies me likewise.’
The ucheny had found him in the Garden, at the bower of the roses. He had gone there to look down upon the ground, where Faylis was. Golden-white under an afternoon sun, against the deephued sky, cloud deck hid both land and sea from him. Reports were that a devastating gale raged beneath, such as the Stormriders had formerly gone out to do combat with.
‘You speak wrongly,’ Mattas admonished. ‘She no more can withdraw from you than you from Her. Life is One. Only when organelles grow diseased –’ He veered from that. ‘And you haven’t actually lost your, m-m, wife, have you? My impression has been that she wearied of this environment but is waiting for you in Tournev.’
‘How long must she wait? How long can she? Will she? We had drifted well apart already.’ In a rush of bitter-tasting wrath, Jovain shook his fist at the immensity around and above him. ‘And I can imagine how her romantic little heart is aflutter at the word –Golden Boy Iern alive, circling the planet like a god set free, and hallelujah ringing from end to end of the Domain! While I stand here abandoned, disowned, a prisoner in my stronghold –’
Mattas’ tone sharpened. ‘Self-pity doesn’t become you. Be a man again. You were.’
Jovain smote fist in palm. ‘I, I’m sorry. The catastrophe in Merique, climaxing all those mad revelations, and my own realm falling apart –’ He held his eyes turned outward while he reached a degree of steadiness. ‘I’m astounded at how composed you’ve stayed. I should have thought you, a Gaean adept, would be in torment. Victory is in sight for that horde of ruthless technolaters.’
Matts’ words harshened further. ‘I don’t agree.’
‘Why not?’
‘Gaea will prevail. That’s what I came about. Rewi Seraio asked me where you were. He urgently wants a meeting of the leadership. I guessed you might be here, and in need of some psychic help before you saw him.’
‘What?’ Jovain straightened. A tingle ran down his spine. ‘Thank you, but we’d better not delay. I’m in control of myself.’ The prospect of action, any action, after this impotence, is like blood given a wounded soldier.
The men walked rapidly among blossoms and leaves. They tried not to see how much was faded, withered, or dead. Persons detailed from the new staff to tend the Garden lacked the time, experience, and devotion of the former keepers. The very around lost its sweetness.
The higher levels were empty, a maze of echoing corridors and deserted rooms, save for the occasional technician or Terran Guardsman. The latter saluted crisply. Few of the civilians did, because few were Francey. Skyholm today was crewed largely by Espaynians and Maurai. Jovain often wondered how many of them were even civilians. The heads of their contingents, Yago Dyas Garsaya and Rewi Seraio, avowedly were not, but officers in the intelligence corps of the Zheneral’s Army and the Queen’s Navy.
He had wanted a band obedient to none and nothing other than himself. Instead – Well, he did keep the upper hand militarily, but he was not certain what measure of real control that gave him.
Reaching his office, he sent for the foreigners and settled himself under the portrait of Charles and the Declaration of Tours. The glass desktop felt cold beneath his hands. Mattas took a chair that stridulated under his bulk. ‘We want revenge,’ he growled, red-faced. ‘Or cautery, if you like, burning the cancer out of Gaea before it spreads.’
‘What can we do?’ Jovain responded dully. ‘Once the Domain could have dispatched help to the Mong, but what is left us?’
As if on signal, Ashcroft Lorens Mayn entered, erect in his green uniform, his features haggard and yet twistingly akin to his sister’s. He came to attention. ‘Sir, I’m afraid there is more bad news,’ he said. ‘A couple of hours ago, before the storm got so intense we lost most radio signals, a pair of messages came in. High Midi has renounced allegiance. So have the Seniors of Clan Kroneberg, unanimously.’
‘They too?’ Jovain sighed. ‘Scarcely a surprise. Sit down, Lorens. Have you heard anything lately from Faylis? I haven’t.’
‘No, nor I,’ the young man said with compassion. ‘But I had no time to visit her when I was last in Tournev. You remember my concern then was that masked attack on several Guardsmen.’
‘No clues to the thugs so far? We might do best to impose a curfew. If we can’t control that one city and its hinterland, we’re finished. Skyholm itself is.’
Yago Dyas Garsaya came in, found a chair, lit a cheroot, and smoked it in nervous whiffs. ‘I have had some information passed to me by my home office, from the Mong countries,’ he said. ‘The Gaean network, you know, as well as what few agents we have there.’
Jovain’s pulse quickened. ‘What do you hear? Are they planning a new attack?’
The Espaynian shook his head. ‘Apparently not. The Soldati seem utterly demoralized.’
Mattas’ beard bristled. ‘And they claim to be a warrior race!’ he snorted. The Norrmen must have spent their stock of hell-weapons, or nearly so. The ashes of the slain cry on every wind for vengeance.’
Yago shook his head. ‘Those regiments that were ready to go, and died, were the ones where some of that spirit survived from of old – and evidently a more crucial example to the rest than anyone understood,’ he explained. ‘After all, Gaeanity does not make for a warlike ethos. And it does heighten the shock of something like … like that which was done. Whole polks in the Five Nations are refusing to join the colors. Those that say they will are being gutted by desertions.’
Mattas sagged. ‘The birthplace of the Insight.’
‘Besides, it appears the governments have abundant trouble at home. Reports are starting to come in of slugai running off, or meeting to organize and demand equality. Many have been seen armed, in public.’
‘That society must be further decayed than it knew itself,’ Jovain said slowly. ‘The minute the grip of the aristocrats slackened – and, yes, the fact that kinsmen, fellow Mericans, had broken the pride of the Mong – What do you think will come of it?’
Yago shook his head sadly. ‘Who knows?’ he responded. ‘Unrest on a continental scale; possible disintegration; at the very least, the end of the old order. I think the Northwest Union need no longer worry about its eastern front.’
‘Until we –’ Mattas stopped as Rewi Seraio entered.
The Maurai was a brown-skinned man in late middle age whose portliness and professorial manner did not make him appear the less formidable. Before he was seated, he was talking, in flat, rapid Angley sentences: ‘Captain, gentlemen, I asked you to join me because my country has suffered a disaster of its own and may soon, as a consequence, be in a crisis without precedent. Naturally, this strikes at those of Her Majesty’s subjects who are here, and thus at Skyholm.’
Foreknowledge clamped a hand on Jovain’s heart. ‘A nuclear strike against you,’ breathed out of him.
Rewi nodded. ‘Yesterday.’
Mattas made a noise as if he were being strangled. Lorens did not stir, but now he did not look young at all.
‘I only received a report on it lately,’Rewi continued. ‘Matters have been so chaotic that it’s taken this long to get anything like a coherent account together. That sensation about the spaceship started the confusion, and may have precipitated it.’
‘How? W
hat happened?’Jovain asked faintly.
‘You have heard the broadcast Ferlay and Birken made, or a replay, haven’t you? They declared they had taken the prototype vessel in order to deny it to the Northwestern slaughterers. This was admirable, of course, but quite likely it was what forced the Norrmen to their next action.
‘They dispatched a battleship armed with nuclear-headed rockets. It took out our aircraft carriers, which was doubtless its primary assignment, and in the course of doing so destroyed or crippled nearby ships to a total of a fourth or more of our Grand Fleet. A final explosion demolished it, but among other things cost us our flagship and commanding admiral.’
Jovain sat motionless. He did not know what else to do. Yago punished his lungs with smoke. Lorens crossed himself. Mattas belched a Douroais obscenity.
After a silence, Rewi’s impersonal voice resumed:
‘One wonders how far to trust a leadership that has inflicted such egregious miscalculations and negligences on Her Majesty. However, I think the assessment is correct, that the enemy vessel was not only his last carrier for such weapons, but went down with his last stock of them. You may recall that the Ferlay-Birken message included descriptions of the Orion spacecraft, with key technical details. Thus we know how much fissionable material is tied up in them, and we can estimate an upper limit for what amount could have been scavenged. Surely all that the enemy could spare for warheads has now been expended. He will scarcely sacrifice spacecraft to get more. Not only does he lack reliable means of delivery, it would negate the whole purpose of his effort.’
‘Nobody can predict what a madman will do,’ Jovain said. ‘Whoever ordered that battleship out must have been insane, no?’
Rewi gave him a grim smile. ‘Insanity is a relative matter, sir. I can imagine demoniacal hatred behind the move, but in spite of the price, it’s paid off handsomely.’
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