Yet despite his ninety years, First Cyborg in a fight could destroy any Soldier.
“Welcome to Koln Base,’’ Krell said.
Hammer’s black eyes had caught the slight--very slight--signs of resentment, and let it be. Resentment was irrational but endemic. If the planet was culled for it, there’d be few Soldiers left, and no cattle at all for them to rule. He acknowledged Krell’s greeting with a curt nod. “I’m here to get the construction of Koln Base back on schedule,” he said.
Krell took the cyborg to his office, picking up his construction chief on the way, and together they reviewed progress and problems. Krell had a manpower shortage that couldn’t be corrected by simply rounding up more forced labor: He’d need to feed, train, supervise, and police them. Skilled Sauron construction personnel for training and supervision were in short supply, assignment priorities being given to construction requirements at the Citadel. Further, Soldiers were always in short supply, being needed to fight the cattle. And a Sauron Soldier required twice the food that a Sauron construction specialist did-- four times that of a forced laborer. The Soldier’s peculiar metabolism and his need to stay fit required abundant exertion more or less regularly, and his genetically supercharged system burned calories and used up vitamins and essential minerals at remarkable rates, even on garrison duty.
Any added food for additional personnel would have to come from local tribes, and existing agreements didn’t provide for further levies, except for forces in the field. While to enforce increases would require even more Soldiers, perhaps bringing about a major outbreak of fighting that could even threaten Koln Base, unfinished as it was.
Beyond that there was the matter of construction in winter, this far north. Construction slush could only be poured during Trueday, unless heated forms were made and used, and resources for producing forms were short. Furthermore, although the shortest day was well past, the weather was still getting colder. Cat’s Eye, with Haven in tow, was just approaching the longest radius of its slightly elliptical orbit, and the total solar energy received per day would continue to decrease for another T-month.
None of these considerations were new to Hammer, or to the First Soldier’s staff, back at the Citadel. The Citadel itself was incomplete, partly for similar reasons, and work had been in progress on it for more than sixty years. But the Citadel was an enormous project, considering the resources available. Also it was the administrative, military, industrial, and strategic center of the entire Sauron hegemony on Haven, and its completion was of highest priority.
By contrast, Koln Base was a small outpost, like a shed compared to a vast mansion. Its sole, though important, purpose was to control access to a small birthing valley, called Koln Valley by the Saurons. Its construction was simple, straightforward, and involved no unusual technical problems; it was appropriate for the First Soldier to demand more rapid progress. And the acceptance of excuses was foreign to Sauron philosophy; to accept excuses could lead to the collapse of Sauron dominance, Sauron goals, and eventually Sauron survival.
Finally, with records examined and difficulties described, Hammer got to his feet. His deep rich voice was calm but implacable: “I’ve seen enough. When I am ready to leave, in one hundred hours, you will have a plan ready for delivery to First Soldier Diettinger, describing how you will reverse the situation here and complete the base by the scheduled date. It must be a feasible plan, complete with programs, projects, and targets. I will courier it. Meanwhile, I will inspect your troops, construction work, completed installations, and current military operations if any.”
Base First Rank Krell had stiffened. “As you order, First Cyborg,” he said.
The Soldier, at present arms, stood stiff as his rifle barrel. First Cyborg Hammer stopped in front of him and looked him up and down. Like the others in his rifle company, the Soldier’s face was olive tan, not the glare-darkened near black of a Sauron who spent a great deal of time on the steppe in winter. Obviously the training schedule was slack. With a slap that might almost have broken it, the First Cyborg snatched the rifle from the Soldier’s hands. He spun it so it nearly blurred, examined it, then slid back the bolt, held the muzzle to his eye, and peered up the spiral-grooved barrel.
Finally he slapped it back into the man’s hands. “Dirt in the butt plate grooves; dirt in a screw slot,” he said to the platoon officer beside him. The officer wrote it on his clipboard.
Grim-faced, Hammer strode down the line to another Soldier. Something had been unacceptable with almost every man, a sure sign of general laxness in discipline. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with dirt in a screw slot, but if discipline was slack in little things, it was likely to be slack in others. While a tough training schedule did more than maintain combat fitness; it maintained morale, and reduced behavioral problems.
He wondered what he’d find at Operations Center.
The swarthy officer in charge of Operations Center gestured at the double-plated thermal window and the frozen landscape outside. After a dozen hours of sunshine, it had warmed considerably, but it still was bitter cold. “We do not routinely pursue military activities in winter here,” the man said.
Hammer had noticed the temperature read-out: -17°F. On the steppe above the valley it would be colder; windier at least. At sunrise, after forty-seven hours of dimday, it might have been -58°F; by two hours before sundown it would probably have warmed to 14°F on the steppe, and be ready to start getting colder again. And occasionally there would be forty or more hours of Truenight, with the temperature dropping to as low as -94°F.
“Do not belabor the obvious to me, Second Rank Morens,” Hammer replied. “I am interested in what operations you may have, routine or not.”
Ops Center in-charge Morens nodded, feeling the beginning of gooseflesh at the implied criticism. ‘Yes, First Cyborg. It was natural to feel ill at ease when being inspected by any cyborg, and First Cyborg was even uncannier than others. He’d been appointed First Cyborg when First Cyborg Koln had died, though several others had been senior to him then. Even his voice was not quite like the other cyborgs’. His resonant bass almost sounded electronically altered. The rumor was, he’d been part of an experimental batch, back on Homeworld, and the only one of it who’d survived gestation.
“We have one military operation in progress,” Morens answered. “Recently we learned of an inhabited plateau rising fourteen hundred meters above the steppe. About four hundred klicks northeast.”
Hammer nodded. He’d heard a report of the place; the Mongols had spoken of it.
“They must have a birthing valley somewhere,” Morens continued. “One we don’t know of. Base First Rank sent out a reconnaissance in force, about a hundred and seventy men, to feel out the cattle there, and if feasible, to establish dominion and interrogate their leadership.”
A long-range reconnaissance in force, with troops in short supply here! In winter on the steppe, four hundred klicks was at least four T-days’ march for Sauron Soldiers, perhaps as much as eight, depending on snow depths and on the detours necessary to commandeer rations from the winter stations of steppe herdsmen. More equipment and supplies had to be carried, and more time was needed to set up and break down camp. Say six T-days out and six back, with an indeterminate time spent on the plateau. This action of Krell’s might produce interesting results, he told himself, but it should have been postponed till Koln Base was finished.
Perhaps Krell was beginning to fail mentally; occasionally that was where deterioration first showed.
Morens had continued talking. “A few hours before daybreak, they reached the head of the trail to the plateau top, and took the fort there. They had six casualties, two of them dead, and killed most of the garrison. No one alive there spoke Anglic or any other known language. Assault Group Leader Borkum left a squad to hold the fort and care for the wounded, with a few cattle to serve them, and left with several other cattle to find whoever rules there.”
“Hmh! Inform me when you learn
anything further,” Hammer said. For Krell, who’d complained of a lack of troops, to send a sixth of what he had on a lengthy, low-priority mission was irrational and irresponsible. He’d initiate a fitness and replacement action when he got back to the Citadel.
Following his inspection, Hammer slept for four hours. He’d just eaten when an orderly from Morens found him: there was further information from the reconnaissance force on the plateau. Hammer took a final swig of mittenwort tea, then strode to Ops Center.
The new reports were on tape, and at Krell’s orders, they had descriptive as well as situational information. Like the steppe at its foot, the plateau was covered with from two to five decimeters of wind-slabbed snow. But their Mongol guide had been useless to them up there; the local language was something quite different. The Sauron force’s three captives had Been useless, too, even after one had been killed as an incentive. The only indications of roads or trails had been stacks of rock-cairns--and Assault Group Leader Borkum had selected the route himself. Where cairn routes crossed or forked, the junction cairn was somewhat larger, its rocks painted with what seemed to be words in some non-Roman, non-Cyrillic alphabet. A thin staff, two splinted-together thighbones of yak or muskylope, stuck out the top, sometimes with the wind-tattered remnant of a flag. There was no way of telling what route might be more important; even digging away the snow and examining the ground itself had failed to help.
The troops had come to an inhabited place--winter quarters for a herding operation. They’d stopped to butcher some yaks, eat, sleep for three hours and eat again. No one there appeared to speak any known language, but Borkum had stood before the frightened ranch-hands and had one shoved up to him. He’d then ordered the man to guide them to their capital, demanding loudly, with gestures. The man stood frightened and mute till Borkum struck and killed him with his fist. Then he’d repeated his command to a second and third, killing each when they’d failed to respond. When he’d begun to order a fourth, one of the others had seemed to comprehend. He’d come forward and indicated that he would go with them. Whether the man actually knew what was wanted was uncertain. Borkum’s radioed report had been made just prior to leaving.
When he’d heard it all, Hammer got to his feet. “I am going to overfly the plateau,” he said. “Get me a map and mark the location.”
Koln Base First Rank Krell watched the scout fighter lift vertically from the cloud of snow and dust it raised. He himself had requested an exploratory overflight of the plateau a T-month past, and had been refused. Only three aircraft were left, high command had replied, and only two of those were operational. Neither could be spared for such a mission. Also, though it wasn’t pointed out, aircraft fuel was a problem. Groundmaster Fosse had signed the rejection, and was no doubt responsible for its tone of disdain. It was in response to this disdain, Krell recognized now, that he’d sent Borkum out with 170 men to explore. By hindsight it had been an unwise, irrational decision, and with First Cyborg’s inspection report, he expected to pay for it.
And now First Cyborg, without anyone’s approval, without even consulting with anyone, had departed to do what Groundmaster Fosse had disapproved.
Krell supposed he should feel vindicated, but what he actually felt was resentment. He wasn’t sure why, and was disinclined to the kind of introverted analysis that he might have turned to to sort it out. All he knew was that First Cyborg disdained the chain of command of which he, Under Regiment Leader Krell, Koln Base First Rank, was a part. And no one would do anything about it.
Though Groundmaster Fosse would be unhappy with it, might even take it out on his, Krell’s, hide, Krell suspected.
Hammer was piloting himself, the assigned pilot idle but alert beside him. The mid-afternoon sun glittered on a snowscape broken only by patches of black rock, precipitous and windswept, on a range of broken hills. Like some bird of prey’s, his vision had shifted into magnification mode, to examine briefly Borkum’s reconnaissance force, five klicks below him, 154 Soldiers trotting through shin-deep snow, the wind-slab broken for them by their mounted guides and several pack muskylopes, hard-pressed to keep ahead.
The column of Sauron Soldiers had passed other livestock stations since the first, without stopping; apparently its commander was satisfied with his new guide. Ahead, visible on Hammer’s horizon but far beyond their own, was what might have been a fortress on a ridge. Unaware, the Sauron force was headed directly toward it. A moment later he could see a town at its foot. The ridge was not high. Hammer switched on his microphone.
“Reconnaissance force, this is First Cyborg in the scout that just passed above you. You are headed directly toward a town. Continue on your present heading. Over.”
“First Cyborg, this is Assault Group Leader Borkum. Your message and order received. Borkum out.”
Hammer banked off then toward the unseen south rim of the plateau. He’d investigate the fortress and town later. It would be hours before the reconnaissance force arrived there. He had time to explore, perhaps find the birthing valley the locals used--the valley and the route to it.
When he crossed the south rim, he banked eastward, following it. It was even more precipitous there than it had been near the canyon route the reconnaissance force had climbed. And that had been passable only by pack animals and by men mounted or on foot. Here and there, as he flew, he found rough canyons cutting back into the plateau wall. Men active and strong enough might have climbed them--Sauron Soldiers could have easily enough--but not animals with riders, and downward they led nowhere except to the high steppe. There was nothing remotely like a birthing valley.
At near-sonic speed he continued. The east edge was more precipitous than the south. Here the lava caprock was more recent and higher, and as yet no canyons had developed. On the north, the plateau reared into volcanic hills, almost mountains, that northward broke off steeply into badlands. Beyond the badlands lay more desolation, less high than the plateau but higher than most of the known steppe.
Hammer broke off his exploration; his fuel was limited. There was more north rim to see, and the west rim, and still some of the south. He could examine them later; somewhere there had to be a birthing valley. But for now he’d fly to the town he’d seen, land nearby and wait for the reconnaissance force. It should be in sight of the fortress by now.
He landed on the ridgetop less than a hundred meters from the “fortress,’’ which seen close-up was no fortress at all. It had no artillery, no battlements, no enclosing defensive walls. Its several outer doors seemed neither strong nor guarded. It was simply a large, four-story stone building partly carved into the ridge, with a squared tower at an upper corner tapering upward another three stories.
In the town below, a few of the larger buildings were also square and of stone. Most, however, were domes, or domes atop cylinders, made of large, crude bricks. Probably, he surmised, to minimize the need for construction timber. Presumably these people had carried on a modest commerce during the First Empire, with timber from the Shangri-La Valley brought in, perhaps by airship. Expensive, even then. The round buildings may have been built since that time, some of them at least. Walls would be thick, for insulation. The smoke that rose from their chimneys were mere wisps.
He’d been down only minutes when the locals arrived, eighteen of them, on foot and without apparent weapons. Some were dressed in bulky sheepskins loosely open in the afternoon sun, the side flaps of their caps turned up. Others wore loose, orange-yellow robes, and orange-yellow skullcaps on shaven heads, as if it were actually warm out there. Two carried banners on short poles. Several others played flutes of bone or horn, making what Hammer supposed was music. Except for the slitted eyes, their faces reminded
Hammer of some of the Dinneh--brown-near-black, with high cheekbones. Their noses varied from aquiline to almost flat, their faces from broad and round to long and angular.
Though it was late afternoon now, his control screen told him the temperature was --11°F, but the wind was only one to two
meters per second, its direction variable.
He sensed no intended threat from this entourage of--greeters?--stopped some twenty meters away. When, after several minutes, Hammer had not responded, one of the men in yellow approached. By t time, Hammer knew from his radio that the reconnaissance force had the town in sight from a distance of about three klicks--under the conditions, about a fifteen-minute loping “march” for the nearly tireless Sauron Soldiers.
He touched a key, activating the loud hailer, and another, activating the external sound pickup and recorder. “Who is in charge here?” he demanded into his microphone.
For several long seconds, the only visible response was concern or consternation by a few, uncertainty by others, and calm by the rest. The music had stopped. Then the nearest of the yellow robes spoke, loudly and slowly, in a language which to Hammer sounded rather like Mongolian. Local or Mongolian, he understood none of it.
He interrupted. “I will speak with someone who speaks Anglic!”
Again uncertainty. The one who’d spoken before spoke with companions now, in some decidedly different language. Then he turned back to Hammer again, speaking again in Mongolian, or whatever it was. This time the man’s speech--entreaty?--was backed by pointing with one hand toward the large stone building.
Hammer switched his microphone to the band being used by the reconnaissance force. “Assault Group Leader Borkum, this is First Cyborg. You have a Mongol guide with you, is that not so?”
War World III: Sauron Dominion Page 9