WarWorld: The Battle of Sauron

by John Carr

  “Helm, acknowledge, damn it! I know you’re not dead, I can hear you bleeding.”

  “Hard about 170, aye,” the helmsman hacked out a reply. “Slowing to one-G.”

  “Damage report.”

  “Starboard batteries out, sir. Field intact, but...” He fell silent for a moment. “Captain, I’m getting weird signals on my board, looks like multiple hull breaches.”

  “What?” Adderly directed his acceleration couch to the Damage Control Officer’s station.”What is the location?”

  The DCO shook his head. “Everywhere, sir. Mostly toward the rear of the ship, but spread out in pockets - there goes another one!”

  “They must have gotten something inside the Field, but what would do -”

  He suddenly recalled Diettinger’s file: The product of a race of soldiers and a man who had never yet lost a naval engagement. An innovator. To Adderly those two facts meant Diettinger’s success stemmed from chances he took that the regular Sauron High Command would never have considered.

  “I will be dipped in shit,” Adderly whispered. “Helm! Emergency stop, all engines reverse full.”

  “Reverse full, aye, emergency stop.”

  The next instant the klaxons went crazy, followed by the voice of the Canada’s Security Officer on the emergency address system.

  “ATTENTION ALL DECKS. ATTENTION ALL DECKS. INTRUDER ALERT. INTRUDER ALERT. ENEMY MARINES ON DECKS ONE AND THREE, SECTIONS FIVE, SEVEN, EIGHT, NINE AND TWELVE. NUMBER UNKNOWN.”

  Adderly keyed in the Security Officer’s station. “What the hell is going on, mister?”

  The SO was a young Imperial Marine, Lieutenant Harris, struggling to get into his battle dress and talk at the same time. Adderly could hear small arms fire in the background.

  “Saurons, Captain, some kind of EVA marines. They’re using breach charges and coming in through the hull. We’re losing atmosphere up here and half my men can’t get to their suits.”

  “What’s their strength?”

  “Unknown, sir. There are at least a dozen of the bastards inside; they aren’t even trying to secure an airlock. They’re just burning their way in -” Harris suddenly looked confused, then startled, finally shocked.

  Adderly realized he couldn’t hear the background noise anymore, understanding only when he saw the lieutenant’s cheeks turn pink and his eyes red as he began frantically groping at the wall where an emergency oxygen hood was mounted. Harris was pulling on it when an impossibly broad shape appeared in the doorway behind him.

  “Harris -” No use, there was no atmosphere to carry the warning and Harris wasn’t wearing an earphone. The armored Sauron’s weapon probably killed Harris; it certainly destroyed the communications plate. The screen went black.

  “Engineering, seal off decks one through four.”

  “Which sections, sir?”

  “All of them, stem to stern! And seal deck five as well. Then flood them with whatever you’ve got, and I don’t mean gas. Use coolant, use fuel, use plasma if that’s all you’ve got, but do it, and I mean now!”

  “But... Captain Adderly, there are still men up there...”

  The look in Adderly s eyes showed that he knew that; that in fact, he was not likely to ever forget it.

  III

  “Entering Tanith’s gravity well, First Rank.”

  “Cut thrust, enter orbital path.” Diettinger had heard nothing from Damage Control, meaning they were on the job. Fomoria was now at 87 percent combat effectiveness, well within acceptable limits. “Deathmaster Quilland: status of EVA Marines?”

  “Assault Leader Bohren reports six decks of Canada secured, First Rank. Imperials tried flooding the decks with liquid hydrogen from their fuel cells, but the Marines reached the sixth deck before it was sealed off.”

  “Very Good.” The EVA Marines were on their own for a while, at least until Fomoria emerged from the other side of Tanith. “Communications, enemy status?”

  “Strela is coming alongside the Canada. Both Chinthes are firing controlled bursts into the aft decks of the Canada, igniting pockets of fuel in the flooded sections.”

  Diettinger asked, “What?”

  Communications was just as bewildered. “It is apparently intentional, First Rank. I am getting comm fragments that indicate the Imperials think they have trapped the EVA Marines and are trying to finish them off.”

  Diettinger thought about what that implied. Can they be that irrational? Could any race of men hate another so much?

  “And the Konigsberg?”

  “Drifting, First Rank. I’m picking up sporadic communications that indicate severe internal damage.”

  Diettinger nodded, satisfied. It had all gone surprisingly well. The opportunity to fire at the Konigsberg while inside her field had decided the battle. He realized Second Rank was looking at him.

  “Speak.”

  Althene rose from her acceleration couch against the now three-gravities acceleration with little effort and approached Diettinger’s chair. “The message buoy, First Rank?”

  “Yes, Second. The one I ordered you to send. I presume you did so.”

  “Of course, First Rank, but...”

  “But now you are concerned that it was unnecessary.”

  Second Rank said nothing.

  “Recall, Second, that we have not yet secured the borloi and we may yet have to deal with an enemy convoy and its reinforcements.” He turned back to the screens. “And, in any case, what is done is done. Return to your station.”

  “Entering Tanith orbit, First Rank,” Communications said.

  “Time to drop point?”

  “Twenty-three minutes, First Rank.”

  Diettinger accessed Drop Bay Three. “Cyborg Rank Koln.”

  “Koln here.”

  “Stand by for drop in twenty-three minutes.”

  “Affirmative.”

  The featureless cloud cover of Tanith revealed nothing of the surface beneath to the naked eye, but the screens projected the outlines of continents, islands, inland seas, overlaid with the traceries of man’s marks on the face of the jungle world. There were not many of those.

  At one minute before drop-point, Diettinger turned control over to Koln. Sixty-one seconds later, Weapons’ panel read green.

  “Pathfinders away, First Rank.”

  “Deathmaster Quilland. Prepare your men for drop on the next pass.”

  “Affirmative.”

  Four hours later, Koln signaled the spaceport sufficiently secured for reinforcement, and the Fomoria’s drop-tubes opened again. Diettinger’s full complement of ground forces was now committed to Tanith’s spaceport. “Take us out of orbit. Make for the Canada. Stand by to retrieve any EVA Marines who have not reached the enemy ship.”

  Four

  Seeing the Fomoria closing on them again from Tanith orbit, Adderly ordered the Strela and the two Chinthes to try and get any survivors off the Konigsberg.

  The Canada was beyond help.

  The Sauron EVA marines had not been caught in the aft decks as was hoped. Canada’s marines had been killed to a man by at least fifty Saurons, probably more.

  Adderly had given the order to abandon ship, forcing his bridge crew off almost at gunpoint, finally demanding they leave as his final order. He had then tried to initiate the scuttle codes, but found he couldn’t access them. Either the Saurons had done something to the ship’s computer or it had been damaged when the Canada took the mixed salvo from the Fomoria.

  Whatever the cause, Adderly had been frantically trying to run a manual self-destruct program when the Saurons had blasted their way onto the bridge.

  The next thing he knew, figures in armor were shoving him into a space-suit. He was prodded down the corridors ahead of a wicked looking energy weapon and hustled into his own shuttle. A Sauron waiting there put cable ties about his wrist while another one piloted the shuttle out of the bay.

  He looked out the viewport, hoping for some sign of the Strela, but it was nowhere to be found. In
stead, the dagger-shaped Sauron heavy cruiser grew in his sight. His shuttle landed in a cavernous hangar bay.

  The Saurons always seemed to be in a hurry, but Adderly found that he didn’t really mind. He was beyond caring. No one taken prisoner by the Saurons had ever been heard from again, and he doubted that he would be an exception.

  Adderly wound up in a room with a desk, a viewport and a conference table. The two armored guards who’d brought him in the shuttle stood behind him on either side. Incredibly, he found himself looking at a sampler on one wall, a framed embroidery that appeared impossibly ancient and read in Anglic: “Discretion is the better part of valor.”

  After a few moments, the door behind him opened and a distinguished-looking man entered. Tall, with sharp features, his straight white hair failed to make him look old. He went to the desk and sat down.

  The helmet was suddenly unlatched and jerked from Adderly’s head, and he blinked despite the lighting of the room, which was subdued and comfortable.

  The man at the desk frowned at the cable ties on Adderly’s wrists and said something to the guard in a strange language. One of the Soldiers was about to pull Adderly’s wrists apart to break the cable tie, but the man stopped him with a single word of Sauron. The guard instead broke the tie with his fingers.

  “You are the commander of the Canada” the man said.

  Adderly frowned.”I am. Captain WILL Adderly. May I ask who you are?”

  “Vessel First Rank Galen Diettinger, commander of the Fomoria”

  Adderly’s jaw dropped.”What?” He looked over his shoulder at the huge forms behind him.”But . .this is a Sauron ship!”

  Diettinger looked puzzled. “Yes. Is it surprising that a Sauron ship should be commanded by a Sauron?”

  One of the guards guided Adderly to the chair opposite Diettinger’s desk.

  “But you...you’re human” stammered Adderly. “At least, you look human.”

  At that, Diettinger actually blinked. He leaned forward, frowning. “What did you expect, Captain Adderly?”

  Since the Secession Wars had begun, interstellar trade had ground to a standstill. Imperial propaganda had been stronger every year, and Imperial paranoia over Sauron eugenics had grown more strident with each passing day. It suddenly struck Adderly that he had been fighting Saurons for his entire career, yet this was the first time in his life he had ever actually seen a Sauron.

  These were the people who were bringing six hundred years of interstellar civilization crashing down about his ears; who were breeding themselves for war, fine-tuning their genes to create a race of human Warrior Ants. The people who had sterilized a dozen worlds in half as many years.

  Somehow, this Diettinger’s obvious humanity and apparent decency made it all worse than it already was.

  “I expected . . something different. What do you want?” he asked, his voice dead.

  “I had you brought here not as a prisoner of war, but for a parley. My Marines are taking the Canada as a prize ship, but you have my word that after this meeting is concluded, you will be released for retrieval by another ship of your task force. Captain Adderly, I am here at Tanith on a simple raid, not for this world’s conquest.”

  ‘You must think I’m an idiot,” Adderly said. “Tanith’s Alderson Point routes are old news. Her tramlines reach into Secessionist as well as Loyalist Space. Tanith’s System has a mucking great gas giant for cheap refueling. All of which makes the whole system extremely attractive.”

  Diettinger nodded. “Obviously. But there are many other ways into the Empire, and securing Tanith is the last one I would choose. It must be obvious, however, that more than a single cruiser would be assigned to the task. In any case, that is not my decision.”

  Diettinger leaned forward, watching him for a moment.”And, if I thought you were an idiot, Captain Adderly, you would not be here now.”

  He doesn’t blink, Adderly thought, although he knew it had to be his imagination. Suddenly it hit him: this was the first time in his life he had ever been confronted by someone with a discernible force of will. Charismatic bastard, I’ll give him that.

  “I have a proposition for you that can save a great many lives, both Sauron and Imperial,” Diettinger said.

  I would have said, “both Sauron and human” Adderly realized. He smiled a tired smile.

  “This should be good. Let’s hear it.”

  “I want the exact location of the borloi awaiting shipment by your convoy. I have Pathfinders looking for it now; I believe you call them death’s heads.’ They are supporting Marines who are securing the spaceport for shuttles to ship it to the Fomoria. While this situation persists, both your forces and the citizens of Tanith will be subjected to heavy loss of life.”

  “Borloi - -” Adderly said, almost sagging in the chair with relief, but caught himself.

  They’re here after the borloi? Why? Suddenly he remembered what Diettinger had said about Tanith. “There are many ways into the Empire”

  Had the Sauron commander meant routes, or tactics? Were the Saurons going to try to destabilize the Empire by flooding it with borloi? It didn’t make sense, Imperial officials would clamp down hard on anything that threatened the war effort, and personal vices like drug abuse received the simplest solution - summary execution of buyer and seller alike.

  Adderly wracked his brain, trying to think of any military applications of borloi. None came to mind, but the Saurons did nothing without a reason, usually military. They were no slouches in the chemical warfare department, either. Still, if the borloi was their target that meant they didn’t know the real reason the convoy was coming.

  Adderly waited a long time before answering. “All right,” he said finally, defeated. “Give me something to write with.”

  Diettinger smiled. “I have an excellent memory. You may simply tell me the location.”

  Adderly shook his head. “What good would it do? How old are your maps of Tanith? Sure, the borloi is at the spaceport, but where? There are a lot of storage chambers, most unmarked, and all of them underground. The Commandant knows how addictive borloi is and keeps it in a special facility, safe from spacers and dock hands.”

  Diettinger considered a moment, then handed him a writing stylus of some heavy Sauron alloy. “Very well. Please don’t embarrass me by trying to kill yourself with this, or yourself by trying to harm me. I promise you that neither your speed nor your hand-to-hand combat skills are a match for mine or those of my Soldiers.”

  Adderly grunted and began to draw. Rectangles, circles, landmarks, roadways, all neatly labeled, all fiction. He was flirting with treason to buy time for the convoy, so he was determined to be convincing.

  He had almost finished when he noticed Diettinger had turned to the viewport, looking out at the wreckage of the Konigsberg. Something twisted in Adderly’s chest as he watched Diettinger smugly reviewing his defeat of Adderly’s command.

  Another one for your record, eh? It was hopeless, anyway; he had never entertained the notion that the Sauron’s promise to release him had been sincere. He added a few more notes to the fraudulent map while he waited for Diettinger to turn around again. The Sauron’s reflexes might be superhuman, but he couldn’t react to what he didn’t see coming, and they had to be as vulnerable as humans somewhere. He only hoped the pen was heavy enough.

  Adderly made shaking motions with the pen. “I thought these things were supposed to work in low gravity.”

  “I’ll get you another.” Diettinger began to turn to his desk, and Adderly extended the motion into an overhanded throw.

  The pen was a centimeter away when Diettinger saw it - and caught it, Adderly realized with a shock. But it was too late. The makeshift dart had penetrated the Sauron’s left eye.

  Diettinger’s head snapped back and cracked against the viewport. Instantly, Adderly felt a hand close about his throat and lift him off the deck. The guard holding him up began shaking him like a rat.

  “No!” Diettinger ordered. He
pulled the pen out, and was holding a hand to his ruined eye. The other guard was speaking rapidly into an intercom device, probably summoning medics to treat Diettinger and remove what would be left of Adderly after the guards got through with him.

  “Congratulations,” Adderly thought he heard Diettinger say, unsure of anything as his vision darkened. His windpipe felt as if it had been crushed, and he began coughing. The guard hadn’t killed him, as he’d expected, but he hadn’t put him down, either. At least he’d let up on the terrible pressure that had been cutting off his breath.

  At a signal from Diettinger, the guard drove Adderly to his knees against the deck. He watched as the Sauron commander’s blood fell slowly to the floor, then stopped. He looked up; Diettinger’s face was inches away, the ruined eye dark with clotted blood - no longer bleeding.

  Fast healing, Adderly thought, groaning inwardly. They would be...

  “I do not understand you, Captain. I brought you here because you conducted yourself like a soldier, and I wanted to offer you something I thought you valued - the chance to save lives.”

  The guard was still holding Adderly down, still crushing his throat. He could breathe, but only a little. He felt faint and far away. He cursed through clenched teeth, “As if you bastards ever cared about that!”

  Diettinger remained impassive. “In point of fact, Captain Adderly, I do. Although we do not view death the way you do; I am human, after all.”

  “You’re a goddamn traitor, then -” The grip tightened. Adderly desperately wanted to lose consciousness, having no desire to see the end the Saurons would provide him for after this assault on their commander - but his brain refused to shut down.

  Diettinger rose. “I serve a Race fighting for its independence from a regime that does not understand our motives and cannot possibly understand our goals. That makes me a patriot, Captain Adderly. You serve that regime, enforcing its will on hundreds of planets, regardless of whether they want you there or not. What does that make you?”