The Excalibur Alternative

by David Weber

  Indeed, far more so than most, for the six dragons guarding the demon-jester went knowingly and willingly to their own deaths as they followed the stocky little alien up the steps to his box.

  Neither Matilda nor Father Timothy had cared at all for that portion of the plan. Grayhame had been unhappy with it, but had grasped its necessity, while Maynton had objected only mildly, as if because he knew it was expected. Although Sir George had come to respect and like Sir Richard as much as he had ever respected or liked any other man, and to rely upon him completely, he had long since realized that the other knight had a limited imagination. And despite all else that had happened, only Sir George had ever actually "spoken" with the dragons. The others were willing to take his word for what had happened because he had never lied to them, never abused their trust in him, in all the years of their captivity, but they had not themselves "heard" the dragons speak. And because Maynton had never heard them, they remained less than human to him. He continued to regard them, in many ways, as Sir George continued to regard the Hathori: as roughly human-shaped animals which, however clever or well trained, remained animals.

  But they were not animals, and Sir George knew he would never be able to see them as such again, for it had been they who insisted that their fellows with the demon-jester must die.

  Their logic was as simple as it was brutal. If the demon-jester could be enticed out of his air car and taken alive, he could be compelled to order the remainder of his crew to surrender. Like so much else of the vaunted Federation, the guild's hierarchical command structure was iron bound. If their superior officer ordered them to surrender, the other guildsmen would obey... and the "Commander," for all his readiness to expend his English slaves or slaughter the inhabitants of "primitive" planets, possessed nothing remotely resembling the human or dragon quality of courage. With a blade pressed to his throat, he would yield.

  But to get close enough to apply that blade had required, first, a way to get him out from behind his air car's force fields, and, second, that someone get within arm's reach. The fashion in which Sir George had structured the "demonstration" for the local chieftains had accomplished the former, but no one could accomplish the latter until the demon-jester's guards, Hathori and dragon alike, were neutralized. The Hathori would defend him no matter what; the dragons would have no choice but to do the same if they were commanded to, and no one could doubt that such a command would be given if they failed to spring forward on their own immediately.

  Neither Sir George nor his officers were particularly concerned about the Hathori. Not in the open field, at least, where they were confident of their ability to destroy the bulge-eyed wart-faces with longbow fire or swarm them under quickly. Once aboard ship, in the narrow confines of its corridors and chambers, that would change, unless the humans could win their way into its interior before the Hathori could be armed and armored by the guildsmen. The closer quarters might still favor the smaller, more agile humans, but the structure of the ship would also force them to engage the Hathori head on, without the opportunity to outflank them or bring their own superior numbers to bear. Close combat under those conditions would allow the plate-armored, ax-armed wart-faces to use their advantages in size and strength to their greatest effect. The English advantage in numbers was sufficient for Sir George to feel confident that the Hathori would ultimately be defeated, but he knew only too well how bloody a price his men might be forced to pay.

  The dragons and their "energy weapons" were another matter entirely, and they had been relentless in their conversations with Sir George. It was entirely possible that the demon-jester's personal guards would be able to cut a way at least as far as the air car with their personal weapons, especially if the Hathori kept the English busy, and once he was behind his force fields and once again invulnerable, the demon-jester would be ruthless in destroying any and all possible threats. Which meant, the dragons insisted, that no chances could be taken. Capturing the demon-jester alive was the one move they could be certain would succeed; at the very best, any other gambit would almost certainly cost the English far heavier casualties by requiring them to fight their way into the ship. For those reasons, the demon-jester's personal guards must die, and they'd hammered away at that point until Sir George was forced to promise to accept their plan. Which didn't mean he liked it.

  Now he watched the demon-jester reach his position on the canopied platform. The "Commander" crossed to the throne-like chair constructed especially for him, and Sir George could almost taste the thick-bodied little creature's satisfaction as he gazed down at all about him. The elevation of his position, establishing his authority over the chieftains he had summoned here, had been a major part of the baron's argument for the arrangement of the stands, and Sir George smiled a much harder, hungrier smile as he watched the demon-jester bask in his superiority to the despised primitives clustered about his feet in all their abject inferiority, completely oblivious to his own exposure.

  The demon-jester gazed down at Sir George for another moment, then nodded regally for the demonstration to begin, and Sir George, in turn, nodded to Rolf Grayhame.

  The archery captain barked an order, and two dozen plate-armored archers, helmets and metal work brilliantly polished for the occasion, surcoats washed and bright with color over their armor, marched briskly to the firing line. Sir George had longed to call for a larger number of them, but he'd concluded that he dared not. Twenty-four was more than sufficient to provide the demonstration the "Commander" desired. To ask for more bows to be issued might have aroused suspicion, or at least caution, and the demon-jester might have decided to remain safely in his air car after all.

  The archers stopped in formation and quickly and smoothly bent and strung their bows, and the demon-jester, like the gathered chieftains, turned to gaze at the targets just over a hundred yards down range. Most of those targets were shaped like humans, but some among them were also shaped like natives of this world, and all were "protected" only by the large wicker shields the natives used in battle. The sort of shields longbow arrows would pierce as effortlessly as awls.

  Grayhame barked another order, and twenty-four archers nocked arrows and raised their bows.

  "Draw!" Grayhame shouted, and twenty-four bowstaves bent as one.

  "Loose!" the archer captain bellowed... and twenty-four longbowmen turned on their heels in perfect unison, and twenty-four bow strings snapped as one. Two dozen arrows flew through the bright sunlight of an alien world, glittering like long, lethal hornets, and crashed into their targets with devastating force.

  Eighteen of those arrows carried deadly, needle-pointed pile heads. At such short range they could pierce even Hathori plate armor, and they smashed into the wart-faces on the raised dais like hammers. Five bounced harmlessly aside, defeated by the angle and the Hathori's armor; thirteen did not, and all but two of the bulge-eyed aliens went down. Not all of those felled were dead, but all were out of action, at least for the moment.

  And so were the two who were unwounded, for the remaining six arrows had done their own lethal work. Every one of them had slammed home in the "Commander's" body, and the brilliant red garment which would have shrugged aside fire from the dragons' terrifying "energy weapons" was no help at all against clothyard shafts at a range of under ten yards. They drove clean through the creature's body, spraying bright yellow-red blood, and then deep into the back of his throne-like chair.

  The demon-jester never even screamed, couldn't even tumble from the chair to which the arrows had nailed him, and the two uninjured Hathori gaped at their master's feathered corpse in shock. That shock seemed to hold them forever, although it could not actually have been more than the briefest span of seconds, but then they turned as one, raising their axes, and charged the nearest humans.

  They never reached their targets. The archers were already nocking fresh arrows while the handful of knights and men-at-arms who'd known what was to happen charged forward, but many of the men and women who hadn't
had the least idea what was planned were in the way. As surprised as the demon-jester's guards themselves, and completely unarmed, all they could do was flee, and their bodies blocked the archers' line of fire to the surviving Hathori.

  But it didn't matter. The wart-faces had moved no more than two strides when half a dozen lightning bolts literally tore them apart.

  The air was full of human shouts and screams of consternation and shock as the enormity of what had just happened smashed home, and the alien chieftains had vaulted from their places and disappeared with commendable quickness of mind. Sir George had watched them vanish, and now he made a mental note to keep an eye out for their return, in case they should sense an opportunity to strike at all the hated off-worlders while those invaders fought among themselves. But almost all of his attention was focused elsewhere, and he charged up the stairs towards the demon-jester's body. Maynton and three other picked knights accompanied him, helping to drive through the confusion, and his own sword was in his hand by the time he bounded onto the platform. It wasn't needed—the dragons had already dispatched the wounded Hathori with ruthless efficiency—and he leaned forward to jerk the bright, faceted pendant from around the neck of the corpse. He held the precious device in his hand, his heart flaming with exultation as he gazed down at it, and then something touched his armored shoulder.

  He spun quickly, only to relax as he found himself gazing up into the silver eyes of one of the dragons. The towering alien regarded him for several long seconds and then waved at the carnage about them, pointed to the dead demon-jester, and cocked his head in unmistakable question. The baron followed the gesturing hand with his own eyes, then looked back up at his huge, alien ally, and grinned fiercely.

  "Your folk may have been willing enough to die, Sir Dragon. Aye, and brave enough to do it, as well! But it isn't the English way to murder our own, and with this—" he raised the pendant "—we'll not need that piece of meat to take his precious ship, now will we? And with us to hunt the guildsmen, and your folk to hunt Hathori, well—"

  His grin bared his teeth as he and the mute dragon stood eye to eye, and then, slowly, the dragon showed its own deadly-looking fangs in a hungry grin of its own and it gave a very human nod.

  "Then let's be about it, my friend!" Sir George invited, reaching up to clap the huge alien on the back, and the two of them started down the platform stairs towards the waiting lander together.

  -XI-

  "So," Admiral Mugabi sighed. "It's official."

  "Not quite," Admiral Stevenson replied with a tight smile. "What's official is my informing you that the Galactics are finally getting around to issuing their ultimatum. Of course, we're not supposed to know that, because the official note hasn't arrived yet. And the consensus is that even when it does, the exact consequences if it's rejected won't be precisely spelled out in it, anyway."

  "Of course they won't," Mugabi snorted. "They're so damned sanctimonious that there's no way they're going to commit themselves in an official communique."

  "I wouldn't bet on that," Stevenson said much more somberly. "The one thing we can be fairly certain of is that they didn't have this brainstorm overnight, whatever they may be trying to tell their citizenry. There had to be some pretty drastic horsetrading to get the Kulavo and Daerjek to sign off on their final position. Unless ONI is completely off base, one of the points the hardliners like the Saernai and Josuto will have insisted upon is that the Kulavo, at least, officially endorse their prescription for finally solving their little problem once and for all. After all, the Kulavo have been the `conscience' of the Council for so long that the faction that wants to smash us almost has to have the cover of their public agreement. So I'd guess that the final act in that little Kabuki play will be the presentation of an official note demanding that we hand the ship—and the Romans—over on pain of military action."

  "But I'll bet you anything you care to name that they won't mention words like `genocide' in any official note," Mugabi shot back.

  "You're probably right about that," Stevenson agreed. "Of course, they won't have to, either. After all, if we're so unreasonable as to provoke them into taking military steps in the first place, any little accidents, like a planet-buster that just happens to go off course, will be on our own primitive heads. They'll have warned us that we could get hurt, so their hands will be clean when the `accident' takes place on schedule. I mean, all they're really demanding is that we hand over to them a ship that's stolen private property and the crew—who are also private property, under the Federation's laws—who stole it and murdered their legal owners in the process. If we're so unreasonable, stupid, and primitive that we're unwilling to hand such bloodthirsty, mutinous criminals over to the appropriate authorities, then certainly no law-abiding government like the Federation could possibly just stand by and see its fundamental legal principles flouted. Obviously they have to take steps, and if those steps just coincidentally end up with a star system full of aborigines getting mashed in the gears, well, maintaining the rule of law sometimes requires unpleasant actions."

  "Sure it does," Mugabi growled.

  It wasn't the best growl he'd ever produced. In fact, it wasn't even close. The men and women of the Solarian Navy were only too familiar with the subterranean rumble the bearlike admiral normally produced in moments of intense displeasure, but he was too tired to do justice by it this time... and not just physically.

  He cocked back the chair behind his desk and let his body sag around his bones for just a moment while he scrubbed his black, broad-cheekboned face. Then he let his hands fall back to the old-fashioned blotter and turned his head to gaze out the armored viewport set into the outer hull of the huge space station.

  It was a spectacular view. Under normal circumstances, it exercised a perpetual fascination and spawned an almost childlike sense of delight deep within him. But not even the view could lighten the crushing sense of despair which loomed over him today.

  The planet about which the station orbited was a cloud-swirled sapphire, breathtakingly beautiful as it floated against the soot black of space and the pinprick diamonds of the stars. The white disk of its moon was visible around its flank, and the clutter and cluster of hundreds of spacecraft glittered like scattered gems of reflected sunlight as they went about their business. One of the Navy's main construction docks dominated the scene, and Mugabi could just make out the bright, color-coded vacuum suits of the yard workers as they hovered about the mile-long hull of what would have been a new battlecruiser. The ship was perhaps three-quarters completed, with most of the hull plating in place. Probably her powerplant was pressurized and on-line, since he could see that three of her five main drive nacelles had already been closed up. But even under the best of circumstances, she was still at least six months from completion... and even under Mugabi's most optimistic estimate, there was no way she could be finished and worked up for duty before the hammer came down.

  He closed his eyes and scrubbed his face again, feeling the responsibility which accompanied his despair and wondering which was truly the greater burden. He'd given the Solarian Navy forty-three years of his life, from the heady days as an ensign, when he'd truly believed that humanity might be able to build a fleet strong enough to protect its world against the Galactics, until today. Along the way, he and the rest of the human race had learned too much about the crushing power of the Federation for him to cling to any false hope that the Navy could successfully defend the Solar System, yet he'd continued to hope—or to tell himself that he did, at any rate—that they could at least put up sufficient fight to convince the self-serving Galactics that humanity's threat was too slight to justify the losses they might take to eliminate it. But all of those false hopes were gone now, exposed for the pipe dreams they had been. The Federation's Council had decided to call the human bluff, and no one knew better than he how threadbare that bluff truly was. Yet even now, even knowing how futile it would be, the high rank and the duties he had spent half his lifetime ea
rning remained. Hopeless though it might be, the responsibility to defend humanity against its foes was still his, and if it would have been so seductively easy to pass that responsibility on to someone else, that was an act of which he was constitutionally incapable. Besides, it wasn't as if it would really have mattered in the end.

  "Has the President decided how she'll respond to the Galactics yet?" he asked finally.

  "No," Stevenson replied. "Or if she has, she's keeping the final call confidential so far. There hasn't been any official demand for her to respond to yet. In fact, I doubt very much that the Galactics have the least suspicion that we know what they're up to. They're not very good at that part of this," he added with monumental understatement.

  "Maybe not, or maybe they just don't care," Mugabi said without opening his eyes.

  "I think they really are as incompetent as they seem," his superior said. "They haven't really had to be competent—not when they carry the biggest stick in the known universe. Besides, their fundamental arrogance seems to preclude any possibility of their taking any of us `primitives' seriously enough to worry about how we play the game."

  "And even if they did worry about how we play it, they'd only change the rules if it looked like they might lose." Mugabi opened his eyes once more, and glared almost challengingly at the other admiral.