by Chris Walley
“I’ll do what I can to help.”
“Are you staying?”
There was an evasive look. “No. I have work to do elsewhere. But, please don’t press me.”
“I won’t.”
“In fact, I need to go quite soon.”
An idea struck Merral. “Before you do, I want you to see this.”
He led his friend down the narrow tunnels off the command bunker until they came to a door labeled Archaeology Site: Take Care!
“Vero, you remember how this is built on older fortifications? Look.”
They entered the darkened corridor and Merral found a light switch. The faint light that came on revealed a short tunnel with a low roof; on one side was a transparent sheet. They stepped forward so that they could see behind it an ancient wall on which words were written in fading and peeling paint.
“Graffiti!” Vero said peering at it. “From the first occupants of these tunnels?”
“So it seems. Can you read it?”
“Some of it.” They wandered along peering at the scrawls.
“So many years ago,” he murmured. “This one is ancient English. ‘I miss Louisiana.’ I wonder what she looked like?”
“Are you sure Louisiana is a girl’s name?”
“Female version of Louis. Got to be.”
Vero moved on to the next one, which was on two lines, and ran his finger over the covering sheet. “Got this. The first line reads, ‘How long’s this war gonna go on for?’ Gonna means ‘going to.’”
“Makes sense. The second line?”
“It’s in quote marks by a different hand: ‘The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.’”
“That’s a bit cryptic.”
Vero raised a hand. “No, I remember that line. It’s by a famous Welsh poet.”
Merral, reminded that his father’s Historic was Welsh, thought of his family and the distance between them and the fact that he was probably not going to see them again. In an instant the pain of war seemed very real and sharp to him. He sighed. “Soldiers speaking a long-dead language very far from home. I would never have thought I could identify with them.”
“We can,” Vero said in a flat tone. Then he stepped back from the wall. “Well, another day, maybe I can look at the rest. Look, I must go. I have work to do.”
“Jorgio is worried about you. Is this diversion risky?”
The smile was strange. “My friend, the only d-diversions likely to work are risky.”
Merral sensed an awkwardness between them. “I have no idea what you’re planning. It’s nothing wrong, is it?”
Vero seemed to take a deep breath. “It’s not wrong. Not quite.”
“Not quite? I’m worried some of your schemes get very close to being wrong.”
Vero gave a sudden mournful shake of his head. “Perena said things like that.” Without warning he banged his fist against the wall. “I still miss her, Merral. Every day.”
Some moments passed before Merral said anything. “I’m sorry. We’d have lost a long time ago without her.”
“That doesn’t help.” Vero gave a shake of his head. “Look, I must be off. Take care, pray for me, and—if all goes wrong—forgive me.”
Then before Merral could say any more, he had gone.
34
On Friday morning, Merral introduced Betafor to the team in the Circle and sensed both curiosity and caution in the glances and greetings. Merral was intrigued that, over the next hour or so, it was DC who most seemed to take to the newcomer as she was installed near the center of the bunker and linked with feeds from a number of sensors.
Merral watched her out of the corner of his eye from the other side of the Circle. She displays the Lamb and Stars on her tunic, but supposing she betrays us? He considered that for some time. Amethyst is the most vital thing, and here only Anya, Lloyd, and I know of the plan. It’s a risk we must take.
Later in the morning, Merral squatted down next to the Allenix. “So, Betafor, what is your prediction?”
“Commander, you know as well as I do, the Dominion . . . will attack here. As soon as they can. The chief issue is how many ships they can land.”
“I presume Assembly forces will attack them as they begin atmosphere entry.”
“That is the vulnerable point. But you will almost certainly be outnumbered. There will be attempts at multiple landings.”
“So you wish you were not here?”
“Commander, if you were me, would you wish to have your existence threatened by a war that did not involve you?”
“No. But are you really saying you don’t care whether good or evil wins?”
“I will do my duty. But I remind you that the language of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ that you use is foreign to me. I am outside your values.”
And that is exactly why we don’t trust you.
By midday the rain was becoming more fitful. Merral was grateful for the signs of its easing; some facilities were flooded, and there was an urgent need to spray mirror ice on some walls.
Amid more meetings and more simulations he talked on a grainy link to Ethan. The fact that the Gates were closed and the Blade was now visible had heightened the sense of crisis across the world.
“There’s no panic,” Ethan said. “Everyone is being very disciplined.” But the look on his face expressed his concern.
For how long can panic be averted?
Early in the afternoon, Merral found time to talk with Anya, summoning her from a tightly packed room of people to a small side office with a large window that overlooked the Circle.
“How are you?” she said, closing the door behind her, and he felt the concern in the words.
“Managing. DC is working me hard.”
“They rate her very highly.”
“Rightly. Lloyd is in awe of her. Or in love.”
She smiled.
“And how are you?”
“Surviving.” The look in her eyes told him she felt trapped. She doesn’t want to be here; she doesn’t want not to be here.
“I wish I had Luke to help me,” Merral said, and as he did, the pain of that loss stung him afresh.
“You’ll manage.”
“Are you making any progress?”
“We’re running endless simulations,” she said. “But there are so many uncertainties. How many will attack us? Will the blades work? Will we face new and more terrible weapons?”
“And on any simulation so far, do we win?”
Her hesitation told him all he needed to know. “Well . . . it’s early.”
Merral called up a map on the wallscreen. “Let me tell you what I have done. I’ve talked with the artillery people. We are moving the cannon to be able to hit more landing zones at once. The best guess is that there will be multiple attacks. Four, maybe five landing sites simultaneously.”
She nodded assent.
“As for the reserves,” he continued, “they’ve been moved well clear of the main base. I’m having them separated into two groups and sited farther away. Here—” he pointed to a valley in rugged ground some twenty kilometers to the east—“and here.” His hand touched a cluster of peaks to the west.
“Makes sense. What else?”
“There was too much reliance on radio transmissions; most positions are now linked by fiber-opt cable.” He shrugged. “And there will be other things. As events unfold.”
He lowered his voice. “But I don’t think we can win. I think the best we can hope for is to hold on. And hope that Laura delivers something special.”
She gave a tiny nod of agreement.
“So,” he asked, “how do you feel I’m doing?”
Anya leaned back in her chair and gave him an evaluative look. “You, Forester, have changed.”
“For better or worse?”
The smile revealed pain. “Could certainly be worse. No, you’re doing well. They all trust you. You are confident—or more than they are. I can believe you are the man for the hour.”
“In what sense?”
He shrugged. “I want to put the clock back. I want to be a forester again. I don’t want to be saluted. Or called sir ever again.”
She looked at the floor. “I don’t know that we can ever go back. Not now. None of us. We have set sail from our own land, and we cannot return there. All we can hope is that the Most High allows us to cross beyond the current rough seas and find a new land.”
“Poetic.”
“Poetic, no. Reflective, yes.”
“And true.” They stared at each other. And on this new land will she and I be together? He wondered suddenly if he dared ask her.
Then it came to him with a sudden certainty that not only was it not right to ask her, but it was futile. She cannot answer. She has issues she must face, battles that she alone must come through.
He heard a knock on the door. Merral sensed new and urgent business awaited him.
“There may not be much chance to talk over the next few days,” he said. “I just want you to know that I . . . am concerned for you.”
She nodded. “Likewise.”
In the late afternoon, Merral walked round the fortifications again. There were more soldiers than ever before, and more keen-faced men and women with backpacks and weapons were still arriving. Amid intermittent gusts of rain, he talked to the engineers who were struggling with pipe, wires, and trenches under water. Ankle-deep in mud, he consulted with specialists and soldiers about weapon ranges and cover and protective fire. In general, he was pleased with what had been accomplished but also daunted by what still remained to be done.
Finally, Merral walked over the frail bridge to the Gate control center to see how the system was working. Behind the new massive blast doors he found the duty technician staring at a screen with a single waveform crossing it.
“The Gates remain locked down, sir,” he said, and Merral moved on to look at the rest of the center. There were duplicates of a few of the command and control facilities of the main bunker, but everything was on a much more compact scale, with space for perhaps a dozen people, twenty at most. As a desperate, final resort this may work for a few days . . . but no more.
Merral returned to the main bunker and more meetings. That night the clouds broke briefly and he was summoned up onto the crest of the mountain in the cold, moist night air to see, high in the blackness, a fiery red smudge against the stars.
“An abomination,” the soldier next to him muttered.
“Yes,” Merral replied. “Just so. An abomination.”
By dawn on Saturday, the rain had all but ceased, and when Merral walked around some of the upper bunkers at ten, the sun’s heat coming through torn clouds was already evaporating the pools of water so that a strange pale mist hung around the site.
From a trench on the summit, Merral surveyed the scene as best he could. All his senses told him of activity. There were the sounds: the constant crack of orders, the near continuous whistling of rotorcraft blades, the ceaseless throaty roar of engines as excavators and cranes were steered back into transports or parked. There were sights: the glimpses through the mist of long files of men and women in new brown uniforms moving out from the temporary campsites to defense lines, the flags of the Assembly being hoisted, and everywhere the gleam of the almost universal mud. There were smells: engine oil, lubricants, the chemical aroma of the last mirror ice being sprayed on.
As Merral tried to imagine what the scene before him might look like in five or six hours’ time, a message crackled in his headset. “Sir, better get down. New data incoming on attacks.”
He ran down to the Circle.
DC broke the news. “Commander, the Dominion forces are starting course corrections. It fits with landings here. In two hours.”
From her reading of the signals, Betafor agreed, and ten minutes later Ethan called to confirm with a similar ADF prediction. He added that they were preparing to engage the incoming Dominion vessels. “Merral, I shall be speaking to the world soon and announcing you are in charge at Tahuma.”
“Very well. I will make a short speech.”
“We will transmit it on.”
Vero, installed at the ranch in the Negev that Delastro had used as his base, sat down at the table in the topmost room of the old tower and looked at the list before him. He had all he needed. Some of the things he had found in the herbs and potions left behind by the prebendant. Some ingredients he had refused, so there was nothing that involved live animals or fresh blood. The things discovered in the freezers prove that the prebendant tried such means. I will not go down that road.
He surveyed the jars of powders and liquids, checking them off. He had the solitude, he had the ingredients, and—courtesy of the dead, mutilated priest—he had the formula and the commands he needed.
In the heavy silence, he sat still as for the thousandth time he considered the rightness of what he was doing.
It will not be magic in any real sense. I want nothing for myself. I just want to attract the attention of the lord-emperor. It is a distraction, pure and simple.
Vero turned to the sheets of paper before him and began to rehearse the words.
Merral made the speech from the summit of Tahuma-A; he had been guaranteed a brief moment of silence, and the technicians had arranged for his words to be broadcast through speakers across all the nearly two hundred square kilometers of the defenses. A single camera had been positioned to film him against a backdrop of the banners of Earth and the Lamb and Stars.
Merral adjusted his uniform, stared across the broad panorama of desert scored with ditches and constructions, and waited. The green light came on.
“I am Merral D’Avanos of Farholme, talking to you now as your commander.” His words, distorted and blurred, came echoing back to him from a hundred loudspeakers on the plain around. “I am both conscious of that honor and humbled by that responsibility. I need your prayers. Let me tell you what we know. It now seems certain that in the next few hours the enemy will attack us here. He comes here because he wants access to the system of Gates that forms the very basis of the Assembly. If he seizes that power, then the evil and terror of our enemies will be across all the worlds in days. We have no option but to stop them here.”
He paused and swallowed, hearing his words repeated like the murmur of some strange sea.
“It was often said, in ancient battles, that those who fought were privileged. It was then often a lie. It is not so, however, today. We face an enemy without virtue and without mercy. We have done nothing to him; his sole motivation is hatred for us and all we stand for. We had forgotten much of war—and been glad to forget—but reluctantly, we have now taken up the weapons of war to deal with this enemy.”
He paused again.
“We had forgotten much of war, but we of the Assembly have never forgotten courage and sacrifice. What we have honored with our words, may we now honor with our actions. As mortal men and women, we live all our lives knowing that one day we must put on immortality. For some of us that day may be upon us.”
Beyond the echoes he seemed to hear a profound silence.
“Let us do all we have to do with hope and, as far as it is possible, with grace. Now to the Lamb, slain, risen, and coming again, be all glory and praise. God be with you all.”
He bowed his head for a moment and as he prayed, an almost overwhelming silence seemed to envelop him.
He looked up. “To your posts, soldiers. Get your armor on.”
If the other battles of the Great War deserve fuller treatment, so does the space conflict above Earth that day. But here too, only the briefest summary can be given.
Fifteen Dominion ships approached Earth, twelve apparently intending to land. The assault on them began even as Merral spoke. For some fifty minutes a dozen Assembly vessels attacked with ferocious determination in the silent, lethal emptiness of space. With the glowing and ominous mass of the Blade of Night in the background, ship
s exploded, were gutted by cannon fire, or were rammed. Nine Assembly vessels were destroyed, and none of their hundred or so crew survived.
Yet their losses were not in vain: only six Dominion ships made it through into the atmosphere and the two suppression complexes that would have supported them were disabled or destroyed. The surviving ships corkscrewed down toward landing sites around Tahuma.
Merral watched the battle from the Circle, hearing the restrained cheers and groans as victories or losses were registered.
“Six ships,” DC said quietly and adjusted a screen. “Now it’s up to us. Ready, Chief?”
“Ready, DC.”
“Hear orders! Hi-alt missile batteries: arm. Fire on first firm lock.”
Merral turned to Betafor, who was squatting next to him with an array of wires coming out of her chest. “Krallen estimates?”
“Provisional figures only. Twenty thousand. And other things.”
Merral felt the ground shake.
“First missiles away,” intoned DC.
Merral looked at the clock. It was three minutes after two in the afternoon, and the Battle of Tahuma had begun.
For Merral, the pattern for much of the next four hours was similar. The Circle, with the lights dimmed slightly, became a nervous and strained environment full of men and women hunched over screens and talking in urgent whispers. Every so often there would be the rumble of outgoing artillery or the sharper explosion of an incoming round.
Merral stayed close to DC and Betafor, with Lloyd and varying team leaders nearby. DC, her jacket discarded, would sit swaying backward and forward on her seat, tapping buttons and scrolling down screens and calling out messages and snapping out commands. Every few minutes, she’d throw a question over her shoulder for the chief and ask for a decision. At less frequent intervals she’d ask Betafor for information.
Merral, seated just behind DC, tried to assimilate her constant rapid-fire statements with comments from Betafor and from other sources. He located events on maps and tried to see trends. He had to force himself to concentrate and not let his mind wander. Time seemed to vanish in the nonstop succession of data, decisions, and orders.