Confident that it was safe the legionnaire grabbed the handles and pulled the container out of its hole. It was light, too light for a box with grenades in it, which confirmed his initial impression. Someone had used the box for something else.
Booly carried the container over and placed it in front of the fire. Most of the dark green paint was intact, but there were patches of dark brown rust, and any number of scratches. There was no lock, just a series of latches, all of which were stiff. He pried them open, took a long deep breath, and pushed the lid up and out of the way.
The contents were sealed in clear plastic, and Booly recognized some of the items even before he sliced through the outer covering. He saw his grandmother’s Wula sticks. his father’s Medal of Valor, his mother’s long-barreled target pistol, and much, much more. There were photos, diaries, Naa story beads, his grandfather’s flick blade, and a Hudathan command stone. Not the sort of items most mothers would leave for their sons—but the kind that a warrior would. For each and every one of the objects told a story, was part of who he was, and a source of strength.
It was her way of reminding him of where he came from, of who had gone before, and the nature of his inheritance.
Not land, not money, but a legacy of honor.
Suddenly, without knowing why, the officer thought of Maylo ChienChu. She had doubts about their relationship. That was obvious. Could her doubts have been related to his? After all, why should she be sure of him, if he doubted himself? Or was that too easy?
Whatever the reason, he felt stronger now, confident that he was entitled to the stars that rode his shoulders and the responsibility that went with them. Because of the objects in the box? The pilgrimage to get them? The fact that his mother cared? It hardly mattered. What was, was. Half an hour later Booly crawled into his sleeping bag, closed his eyes, and entered a dreamless sleep. Millions upon millions of snowflakes fell from the lead gray sky, performed airborne pirouettes, and spiraled into the ground. They formed a lace curtain through which Neversmile and Wilker maintained their watch. A jumble of boulders broke the wind, provided the twosome with some cover, and screened the trail. They waited through six foreshortened “days” before stones rattled, a dooth coughed, and General William Booly made his way down off the plateau.
He paused no more than twenty feet away from them to scan his surroundings. He felt something—but wasn’t sure what. Whatever it was sent a chill down his spine. The officer resisted the impulse to pull his blast rifle, kicked the dooth in the ribs, and continued on his way. He wanted to reach the fort—wanted to leave the planet. Algeron was in good hands, and there was work to do. Lots of it. Neversmile waited until the general had established a sizeable lead, mounted the cyborg’s back, and spoke into the mike. “Senses to max. .. patrol speed.” Wilker obeyed. Behind them, covered by a thin blanket of cold wet snow, lay two mounds of carefully piled rocks. Algeron continued to spin—and darkness swept in from the east.
Chapter 5
Even the final decision of a war is not to be regarded as absolute. The conquered nation often sees it as only a passing evil, to be repaired in after times by political combinations. Karl von Clausewitz
On War
Standard year 1832
Planet Hudatha (Protectorate), the Confederacy of Sentient Beings The packet ship Mercury dropped into orbit, offered a burst of code, and waited for the appropriate response.Battle station Victory, one of four such structures constructed immediately after the last Hudathan war, hung like a dark omen over the planet below. One of the vessel’s many computers checked, confirmed the newly arrived ship’s identity, and gave the necessary permissions. The Mercury’s control room was too small to accommodate visitors—but a viewscreen filled one of the wardroom’s four bulkheads. Governor, now Envoy Sergi ChienChu watched with keen interest as the battle station grew to fill the smaller vessel’s screen. At the conclusion of the last war, he had played a role in the seemingly endless design process that led up to the Victory’s construction. So, in spite of the fact that he’d never seen the finished product before, the industrialist recognized the spherical shape as well as the heavy duty weapons mounts and the other installations common to Monitor class warships. Because, for all her size, the battle station was capable of movement, had to be capable of movement, given the complex interplay of gravitational forces associated with Hudatha and her Jovian binary. The battle station Triumph, now obscured by the planet itself, had nearly been destroyed during the mutiny while Victory and two other platforms remained loyal. A matter of no small importance lest the Hudathans escape.
ChienChu thought of the Monitor class ships as something akin to old-fashioned corks, the kind used to keep mythical genies trapped within their bottles. Now it was he who proposed to release them. Was he correct in wanting to do so? Or just terribly naive?
But the packet ship bore two passengers . . . and as the Victory grew larger and the landing bay opened to receive them, the second had some very different thoughts. War Commander, now Ambassador DomaSa looked out on what appeared to him as nothing less than a mechanical monster, a machine that could sterilize the surface of the planet below. The fact that his people had actually perpetrated such horrors on others, had reduced entire worlds to little more than radioactive slag, made no difference whatsoever. This was unjust, this was unfair, this must end.
The Victory’s cavernous landing bay swallowed the Mercury as if she were little more than a snack. ChienChu watched with considerable interest as the packet ship followed a bright orange robodrone down the center of a blast-scarred deck and toward the area reserved for transient vessels. Here was a significant portion of the Confederacy’s remaining strength, resident in row after row of sleek two-seat fighters and squadrons of boxy assault vessels. None of which could be used against the Sheen lest the genie escape. Who was truly captive? The industrialist wondered. The Hudathans? Or the forces left to watch them?
There was a noticeable bump as the packet ship touched down. All manner of maintenance droids, robo hoses and other automated equipment rolled, slithered, and swung into action. The Mercury would be refueled, provisioned, and relaunched in less than six hours.
DomaSa struggled into some standard issue Hudathan space armor. ChienChu thanked the Mercury’s four person crew and hauled his duffel bag to the lock. It took three minutes to cycle through. Self-propelled stairs stood waiting, along with a spacesuited lieutenant commander and two ratings. She saluted, and her voice came over ChienChu’s onboard multi-freq corn unit. “Welcome aboard. Admiral. My name is Nidifer. We received orders to dispense with the side party. I hope that was correct.”
ChienChu returned the salute and smiled. “Yes, thank you. Your people have enough to do... Let’s save the ceremony for real admirals Please allow me to introduce Ambassador Hiween DomaSa.”
The naval officer bowed to the extent that the space armor would allow her to do so. “Welcome aboard. Ambassador. My name is Nidifer, Lieutenant Commander Nidifer. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Please follow me.”
It took the better part of fifteen minutes to cross the busy flight deck, enter the VIP lock, and cycle through. The Victory’s commanding officer was waiting to greet them. He was tall and thin, and looked like a skeleton brought to life. He was the real thing, meaning an officer who had graduated from the academy, and wore two stars. His hand was hard and bony. “Admiral ChienChu ... Ambassador DomaSa... welcome aboard. Admiral Kagan at your service. Sorry I wasn’t there to greet you ... but one of our shuttles lost power. A tug is bringing her in. I thought we’d give you a chance to stow your gear and gather in my cabin. Sound okay to you?”
The visitors assured him that it did. and little more than thirty minutes later the visitors arrived in Kagan’s cabin. The Victory was considered a hardship post, which meant that extra money had been spent to make the ship more livable. Wood paneling lined the bulkheads, backlit shelving held some of the art objects the naval officer had collected during his years of service,
and the furniture was worn but comfortable. The admiral gestured toward some chairs. “Please, have a seat.”
DomaSa chose a chair backed by a bulkhead, knew it had been placed there for his comfort, and felt a little better.
Refreshments were offered, both guests refused, and Kagan looked from one to the other. He was curious and let it show. “So? What can I do for you?”
ChienChu gestured toward the planet that hung beyond the view port. “First we’d like a briefing, you know, surface conditions, intel reports, whatever you’ve got. Then we’ll need some transport.” He looked at DomaSa. ‘That should cover it.”
Kagan felt a rising sense of anger and fought to control it. Here he was, sitting on what amounted to a time bomb, while some half-baked has been thought up ways to waste his resources. But the bastard had pull, the kind of gees that could crush a there two-star, and the officer forced a smile. “Yes, of course. I’ll arrange for the briefing. But that’s as far as I can go. The ambassador isn’t cleared to receive military intelligence. As for the trip, well, Hudathan nationals can return to the surface whenever they choose, but you will have to remain in orbit. Or return with the There—the choice is up to you.”
One of the things ChienChu liked about his status as a cyborg was the fact that when he ordered his face to remain blank it actually did so. “I’m sorry. Admiral. I forgot to present my credentials. Perhaps you would be so kind as to review them.”
The cyborg withdrew a small case from his coat pocket and gave it over. The naval officer inspected the seal, applied his thumb to the print-sensitive pad, and saw the lid pop open. A disk nestled in a plastic holder. Kagan took the disk, excused himself, and entered the neighboring office. He was back three minutes later. His face was pale. The words sounded stiff and formal. “I am to place myself under your command for the duration of your stay, render all possible assistance, and keep the nature of your mission secret.” He looked down into ChienChu’s synthetic eyes. The resentment was clear to see.
“What may I ask is the nature of your mission?”
ChienChu smiled in an effort to put the man at ease. “Ambassador DomaSa and I are here to examine the feasibility of integrating certain branches of the Hudathan military into the Confederacy’s armed forces.”
A look of disbelief came over Admiral Kagan*s face, and he practically fell into his chair. His voice was thick with emotion. This was a joke. It had to be. “Surely, you jest.”
“No,” the cyborg assured him calmly. “Nothing could be more serious.”
The snow, which had been falling throughout the night, stopped, the sun came out, and the temperature soared to eighty. All before noon. Just another day on Hudatha. Legion Captain Augustus North warned the sentries that he was coming out, palmed the hatch, and waited for it to whir up and out of the way. They still had power, something of a miracle after months on the surface, but for how much longer? A week? A month? Maybe, if the tech heads could keep the fusion generator running, and the ridge heads allowed them to live.
The officer squinted into the glare, stepped out into the slush, and returned the cyborg’s salute. What remained of the battalion included four quads, plus thirty-six Trooper IF’s, down from twelve quads and seventy-two Trooper IF’s the day of the crash.
North turned, eyed the mountain of half-slagged metal, and started to climb. There were plenty of sharp edges where a wide variety of munitions had struck so it paid to be careful. Medical supplies were running low—and the doc was hard-pressed to patch people up.
The insanity had originated on the Triumph more than three months before. A cadre of mutineers, led by Major Pinchett, North’s commanding officer, received confirmation that the mutiny was under way, and took control of the ship’s bridge. Then, more than a little full of themselves, they had called on the rest of the battle stations to surrender.
The Victory, under the command of Admiral Kagan, along with the Celebration and the Jubilant had attacked their sister ship with a vengeance. The mutineers put up stiff resistance, and did pretty well for a while, but never stood a chance. Pinchett offered to surrender, but Kagan refused to listen, and the pounding went on.
North would never forget missile after missile slamming into the monitor’s hull, the steady bleat of battle klaxons, the smell of his space armor, people running down corridors, and Hudatha hanging above. The weird thing was that North had never been asked to join the mutiny .. . and wasn’t sure how he would have reacted. Lord knew there was reason, starting with the cutbacks, the way ex-soldiers were left to beg in the streets, and what could only be described as a pathetic state of readiness. But mutiny?
No, it didn’t seem right. There was no way to justify what Kagan did, though, pounding the T to scrap, and destroying each life pod within seconds after launch. The admiral saw the capsules as bacteria, as the manifestation of a horrible disease, to which no mercy could be shown. That’s when North, with help from a loyalist naval officer, loaded the freighter with troops and tried to escape. They didn’t get far.
Kagan caught the ship shortly after it left the Triumph’s launch bay, scored dozens of direct hits on the lightly armored vessel, and ignored their pleas for help.
Damaged, and with no possibility of escape, the freighter had fallen toward Hudatha’s surface. It was a miracle that anyone had survived, but a naval officer, a woman named Borkna, knew her stuff and managed to pancake in.
The transport skidded for the better part of two miles before running into a small hill. Not just any hill, but a hill with what remained of a castle on top, and walls on which many lives had been spent. The kind the Hudathans had spent hundreds if not thousands of years fighting each other for. Now, with the hull snuggled up against old stone walls, and both covered with patches of green-black mold, not to mention islands of quickly melting slush, it was hard to tell one construct from the other. Given enough time, say a year or so, and the wreck would be invisible from the air. North was sweating by the time he made it to the top of the wreck and stood on a barely legible “C,”
which, along with a “T” and a six-digit number was part of the ship’s official ID number. Listed as missing? As unrecoverable? There was no way to know.
Corporal Gorwin was there waiting for him. She lifted one of her energy-cannon-equipped arms by way of a greeting. “Morning, sir.”
The words were cheerful enough, especially in light of the fact that the lower part of her body was missing, and, with no chance of repairs, she had volunteered to stay on the top of the ship as a semi-permanent sentry.
North nodded and worked to catch his breath. He was short and stocky. His uniform was filthy but so was everyone else’s. “So, Gorwin, any sign of the geeks?”
The cyborg nodded. “Yes, sir. I notified the control room by radio. Right after you left. Take a look toward the west.” Her voice was dull—empty of hope.
North pulled a small pair of binoculars out of his shirt pocket and brought them up to his eyes. What he saw made him suck air into his lungs. The Hudathans had attacked before, twentyseven times to be exact, but never like this. An army was on the march. There were thousands of the bastards. More than he and his handful of troops could possibly deal with.
The situation was reminiscent of the Legion’s most famous battle, that day in the spring of 1863 when Legion Captain Jean Danjou and a force of sixty-four men took on more than two thousand Mexican troops and fought them to a standstill. That was the good news. The bad news was that only three legionnaires had survived. Danjou was not among them. The name of village where the fight took place was Camerone.
Gorwin, who had similar thoughts herself, read the officer’s face. “Yes, sir. It looks a lot like Camerone.”
In spite of the fact that ChienChu had been living in cybernetic bodies for many years now—he had never controlled anything like a Trooper IF. Theoretically outmoded some fifty years before, T2s continued to roll off the assembly lines because they were sturdy, effective, and, when compared with a Trooper
IFI and its animal analogs, cheap to produce and maintain. Part of their value stemmed from the proven ability to operate in just about any environment that one could imagine, which was what awaited the industrialist below.
DomaSa, who had no need of technology in order to survive, watched the process with obvious amusement. The transfer took place in one of the onboard equipment bays. The cybertechs injected some drugs into ChienChu’s artificial circulatory system, removed his brain box from his “normal” body, and “loaded” a Trooper IF.
ChienChu endured the brief moment of sensory deprivation, felt the new body react to his presence, and experienced something akin to a drug-induced rush as system after system came online. Though theoretically analogous to what he had experienced before, there was no real comparison. The war machine was faster, more powerful, and loaded with systems civilians had no need for. The industrialist’s left arm was an air-cooled .50 caliber machine gun, his right arm was a fast-recovery laser cannon, and he could run at speeds up to fifty miles per hour. He spoke, realized how loud the PA system was, and turned it down. “I’m ready for anything—even Hudatha.”
DomaSa looked him over. “That may be true, my friend—but the switch did nothing for your appearance.”
“Look who’s talking,” ChienChu replied. “Come on, let’s see if I can walk.”
The thousands of Hudathan troopers marched as if on parade, which essentially they were, crossing the Plain of Skulls toward the castle Glid, where the great KasaKa had ruled during feudal times, and the aliens now lived. An insult that must be expunged . . but not till Ikor IfanaKa was finished with them. Training was important, and, if properly husbanded, the humans coutd be stretched for another couple of weeks. Real combat, with real aliens, was hard to come by. That’s why they had been allowed to live for such a long time.
Besides, the Hudathan liked the look of his troopers, the banners that flew above their heads, the gleam of their weapons, the sound of the drums, the way the whistles shrilled the air, and the wind in his face. This was the way things had been, should be, would be if his people were free. IfanaKa sat on what amounted to a half-enclosed sedan chair, winced as pain stabbed his fully extended leg, and listened to his aide. The youngster had little difficulty keeping pace. The words were clear—but the message wasn’t. “DomaSa? Landing with a high-ranking human? Impossible! Shoot the translator.”
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