There Will Be War Volume II

by Jerry Pournelle

  I shouldn’t complain. Field soldiers risk their lives; all I had to do was put up with the sneering of a Thousand Worlds Commerce Department Inspector who clearly had no use for Metzadans or the Metzadan Mercenary Corps. And by myself; General Bar-El was with the men.

  She dumped the contents of the backpack onto the flat black surface of her durlyn desk, the messkit, sheathknife, and various items of clothing falling in agonizing slowness.

  “This doesn’t look standard,” she said, gathering it all into a pile, then picking up the sheathknife. “And I’ve seen the gear you killers carry before.” Inspector Celia von du Mark tested the edge of the oversize blade with her thumb. “Molysteel?”

  I shook my head. “No, just high-carbon—and no better than they could make, down there. The… General had everything special-ordered—that’s an infighting weapon, called a Bowie.” I held out my hand for it; she slapped the hilt into my palm. “The angle of the blade cants upward when you hold it so; at waist-height, it’ll cut into your opponent’s abdomen, makes it easy to—

  “Spare me the details,” she snapped, tossing her head, sending her shortish black hair whipping around her thin face. “Just as long as you don’t violate tech levels, I don’t give a good goddamn what toys you’re carrying.” Brow furrowed, she cocked her head to one side. “Of course this isn’t a typical pack.” There was no hint of a question in that, just disbelief.

  I shrugged. “Check for yourself. We posted bond; we’re not going to sacrifice that, not for the sake of having a rustproof knife or two.” I slumped back into a chair. “But go ahead, have your men—

  “My people.”

  —have your people check it out. Except for the bows, arrows, maps, and the siege-tower hardware, you won’t find anything on any of the two thousand men in the regiment that doesn’t duplicate what you’ve got in front of you.” I spotted a piece of fur on the corner of her desk, and picked it up. There wasn’t anything prepossessing about it; just a smooth brown swatch of soft fur, the size of my palm. “This is what it’s all about?” I sighed. “Doesn’t look all that special.”

  “Try dipping it in a weak acetic acid solution, let it dry.” She sat down behind her desk, and rummaged around in a drawer. “Then it looks like this.”

  A twinkling shape flew toward me; I snatched it out of the air. Now this was nice: the swatch was white and shiny, gathering and shattering the light of the overhead glow, a spectrum of colors washing over its surface. I’d never seen a piece of treated oal-fur before; it’s strictly a luxury item, and Metzada is a poor world. Tidelocked to a small M3 star, we have to import trace elements, medicines, electronics parts. When we venture to the surface of our own planet, it’s in well-insulated vacuum suits, not fur coats. There’s only about five million of us; ten percent of our population is in the MMC. We Metzadans have to earn our foreign exchange by fighting as mercenaries. Luxury would be lowering the number of us who have to lose our lives earning offworld credits, not importing oal coats.

  “What’s this?” She held up a folded, triangular piece of fabric, opening it only partway.

  “Called a shelter half. It’s half a tent; you pitch two of those things face-to-face, and you’ve got room for two soldiers to sleep.” I’d asked Bar-El why we were taking special-ordered shelter-halves instead of the usual mini-tents, and he’d pointed out another use for them. You can wrap a corpse in one, and bury it deeply, he’d said. But don’t tell the men. Might make them nervous. And then he’d smiled. And I’ve got one specially made for you.

  I fondled the piece of fur. It was nice, certainly, but hardly worth dying for. And, of course, nobody was going to die for fur. The lowlanders were paying us to try to chase the mountain people out of their walled village halfway up the slopes of Mount Cibo, right in the middle of oal country, the only remaining area on the continent where the chipmunk-like creature hadn’t been hunted to extinction.

  Certainly, some of us would die. But not for the fur. For the credits that keep Metzada alive.

  That sort of distinction used to be more important to me.

  “And this?” She held up a round cylinder, flat and half the size of my head.

  “That’s a messkit. It seals air-tight; you can put food in it, just chuck it in a fire, pull it out with a stick. Then you use the point of your knife to flick that little lever open.”

  She smiled slyly. “I’ve got another use for it—you fill it full of water, bury it in a fire you’ve built next to a wall—say, or a village on the slopes of Cibo. And then you wait until it builds up enough internal pressure to blow apart. And, incidentally, shatter the wall.” She tossed it to the floor. “Denied. The messkits stay aboard here, when your regiment takes the shuttle down.”

  I figured that a little bit of false outrage would go over well. “Inspector, we—

  “Enough of that. The Commerce Charter specifically provides that offplanet mercenary soldiers can be brought in. Less bloodshed that way, supposedly; it’s better than letting the locals hack each other to ribbons. But there are limitations—and dammit while I’m in charge up here there are going to stay limits.”

  I wiped my hand across my forehead. “I know: not more than one mercenary for every four hundred locals, and no import of military—

  —technology beyond what the locals possess. They don’t have bombs like that. And you can’t bring them in. Understood?”

  Of course I understood. And I should have known better. Bar-El had said that they’d never let us get the messkits by.

  We rode down on the first shuttle, along with the three battalion commanders, and their bodyguards. Which was standard—that goes back to the old Palmach days, long before there was the Metzadan Mercenary Corps, when no soldier ever set foot on a piece of land where an officer hadn’t been first. There’s nothing romantic about it, no bravura—just a matter of human economics: we’ve always had a lot of officer material, and traded off the high mortality among officers for lower casualties among line soldiers.

  Other armies did—and still do—see it differently. Which is why we’re better. And, to a large extent, why I get to wear my stars at home.

  I followed Bar-El out into the daylight, squinting nervously in the bright sunlight. Indess orbits a F4 star, much brighter, whiter light than we use in Metzada’s underground corridors.

  “Relax,” he said, dropping his pack to the dirt of the landing field. “We’re on Thousand Worlds territory here, in the first place.”

  I watched Colonels Davis, Braunstein, and Orde walk down the ramp, their three bodyguards standing behind them, bows strung and arrows nocked, keeping careful watch on the one-story stone buildings that circled the field. They didn’t look any too relaxed. “And in the second place?”

  Bar-El shrugged. “I doubt that there’s a Ciban within a hundred klicks.” He turned around, and raised his voice. “Yonni, over here.”

  Davis trotted over, his blocky guard behind him. “What is it, Shimon?” Yonatan Davis was a short, wide man, whose girth and baldness always gave the impression that he was more suited to be a shopkeeper than an officer. I’ve known the type before; some compensate by being martinets. Davis went the opposite way, giving and taking orders with an informality that suggested that he was good enough not to have to put on airs.

  “My…” Bar-El paused, “…executive officer and I are going to go talk to our employers, make sure that they got my message, have the staffs and spearheads ready.” He pointed toward the north. “You’re in charge until I get back; have your battalion bivouac there, the other two there, and there.” He rubbed a finger across the break in his nose. “There won’t be any problem here, but set out guards, just for practice.”

  Davis nodded. “Soon as they land. But speaking of practice,” he bounced on the balls of his feet, experimenting, “we’ve got about nine-tenths of a g here.”

  “So?”

  “So nobody has loosed an arrow under this grav, not recently. You want me to improvise targets, get som
e practicing done?”

  “No.” Bar-El turned away.

  “Wait one minute, General.” Davis reached for his arm, clearly thought better of it. “They have to get some practice—better here than in combat.”

  Bar-El sighed. “They won’t need it. We’re not supposed to win this one.” He jerked a thumb at me. “Ask my exec, when we get back. And, in the meantime, just follow orders. Understood?”

  Davis turned away, wordless. I trotted after Bar-El.

  “And what the hell was that for?” I kept my voice calm, with just a touch of a tremor, for effect.

  He chuckled. “So that’s not supposed to be common knowledge, eh? We’re supposed to be able to storm a walled city—population about fifteen thousand, three thousand effectives—with two thousand men? While there’s horsemen harassing our flanks?”

  In fact we weren’t. And weren’t going to. “That’s what the contract says.”

  He patted at his hip pocket. “I’ve got a copy of the contract. It’s handy, when you run out of bumwad— Tetsuki, I have no intention of just going through the motions. I’m supposed to fail. Damned if I’m going to play wargames, just to keep you happy.” He looked up at me, a smile quirking across his lips. “But I’ll do it to keep our employers happy.”

  At the edge of the field, Bar-El stopped a blue-suited Commerce Department loader. “How do I go about finding Senhor Felize Regato?”

  Regato’s mansion was clear evidence that damn little except military tech was on the Proscribed list for Indess. The floors looked to be real Italian marble; among the paintings I spotted a Picasso and a Bartolucci—and the glows overhead made me smile: their light was the same color of the glows at home.

  A white-linen clad servitor led us into Regato’s study, a high-ceilinged room with enough space for a family of twelve, back home. The fur that covered the couch where we sat wasn’t oal—that would have been too easy—it was the pelt of some coal-black animal, glossy and soft.

  After the requisite wait—Regato was a busy man, and clearly wanted us to know it—he sauntered in, a tall, slim man with a broad smile creasing his dark face. We stood.

  “General Bar-El, it is a pleasure.” He clasped Bar-El’s hand with both of his own. “And this is your aide, Colonel…?”

  “Hanavi, Senhor—and technically I’m his executive officer, not his aide.”

  He smiled vaguely, and dropped into an overstuffed chair, idly smoothing the legs of his suit. “General, I believe we share a hobby.”

  Bar-El didn’t return Regato’s smile. “I don’t have hobbies.”

  I shot a glance at my uncle. This was playing along to keep the employer happy? Contradicting the First Senhor of the Assembly didn’t quite seem to fit the bill.

  Regato’s brow furrowed. “Oh? I thought we were both devotees of ancient military history.” He waved a hand at the bookshelves behind him. “I’ve studied from Thucydides to,” he half-ducked his head, “Bar-El.”

  Bar-El chuckled. “Thank you—but Thucydides was a historian, as you know, not a soldier—and for me the history of my profession isn’t a hobby, it’s business.”

  Regato raised a finger. “Ah, but he was the first to recount battles, to preserve them for future generations. I only wish that he had been around later, when Cincinnatus was alive.”

  Bar-El cocked his head to one side. “He would have had to live an extra few hundred years. And been a Roman, instead of a Greek. Why Cincinnatus?”

  Regato touched a button on the table at his elbow. “Coffee, please, three cups.” He raised his head. “Because he reminds me of you. If I remember correctly,” he smiled in self-deprecation, “he, too, was called out of retirement to command an apparently impossible campaign.”

  A shrug. “Different situation—Cincinnatus was honorably retired; I was booted out of the MMC and off of Metzada.”

  “That is hardly a relevant difference here; even were you capable of taking a bribe, the Cibans would have nothing to offer you. Hunting rights or the oal? You couldn’t take advantage of that. Hard currency, the sort Metzada needs? They don’t have any; most of the prime farmland on the continent and the only offworld trading center is down here in the valley.”

  A different servitor from the one who had showed us in arrived with a steaming silver pot of coffee on a tray with three cups and saucers, plus condiments. We all were silent until the servant deposited the tray and left.

  Regato poured coffee for all of us, then sipped his own and sighed. “On to business. I received your message by courier, and your instructions were followed to the letter. At a warehouse near the port you will find precisely two thousand rulawood shafts for spears—each exactly three meters long, as requested—and spearheads for them, boxed separately.” He lifted his head. “We could have attached them for you.”

  “I’d rather have my men do it themselves. And the rest?”

  A nod. “Dried meat and vegetables, enough to feed two thousand for a month. If you need more spears, I can have the shafts and heads sent up to you, if you’ll give the convoy protection.”

  “I doubt we will—and if we do, Ciba is heavily forested, according to my maps. With rula.”

  I’d read the report on rulawood, and it sounded useful; similar to bamboo, but lighter and stronger. Strong enough that the Ciban villagers were confident enough of it to build the walls of their village out of rula.

  “Good.” Regato wrinkled his brow, as though he was about to ask why Bar-El wanted the spearshafts down here, if he knew that there would be plenty of rula where we were going. Or maybe I’m just projecting; that’s what I wanted to ask. “So,” he steepled his fingers together, “two questions: first, why didn’t you ask to have horses ready? We could provide them, you know.”

  “I know—but my men aren’t horsemen, and I have no intention of putting them on horses, up against a larger force, every man of whom has grown up on horseback.” Bar-El shook his head. “We are professionals; riding horses, we’d be amateurs.”

  Regato nodded. “In that case, I understand why you wanted spears that you could use as pikes. Second question: how many ninjas do you have with you? I assume that you’re going to use assassination.” He gave a knowing smile.

  Which explained why Regato had been willing to hire us, despite the odds. It wasn’t just that he believed in Bar-El, or the mystique that’s grown up around the MMC’s successes. He had at least a suspicion, heard a rumor about the Metzadan ninjas.

  Bar-El shook his head. “There aren’t such things as ninjas. There haven’t been for half a millenium.”

  He said that with a straight face; he might even have thought it true. Which it was, at least in one sense: Metzada’s rumored assassins are only called ninjas by offworlders; we aren’t descended from the Nipponese society that died out in the nineteenth century, Earthside. Not directly descended—but some of the members of the Bushido Brotherhood that were transported to Metzada along with the children of Israel had been trying to revive the ancient arts. It’s been kept secret, the fact that we have a cadre of assassins with the MMC, but there’s nothing you can do about rumors.

  And an assassin can be a kind of handy person to have around; it can blow an opponent’s organization apart, when the top general dies. Or, better, when he’s kept alive, but all his top staff officers are killed.

  Of course, an assassin has to have some sort of cover, that will let him mix with the troops, without even his own people knowing what his job is. Inspector General is a nice one. You even get to wear your stars, on your off-hours.

  Bar-El went on: “And it wouldn’t do any good, even if we used assassins. Which we don’t—I don’t think a stranger could survive long enough in a Ciba village to first,” he held up a finger, “find out who the top commander is; and second,” another finger, “kill him.” Bar-El shrugged. “If he could get over the walls in the first place.” Bar-El turned to me. “Don’t you agree, Colonel?”

  He was precisely correct, as usual. Which was why I
had no intention of killing anyone within the village. “Absolutely.”

  Regato spread his hands. “Then how are you going to do it? You’re outmanned, in strange territory, and the enemy has greater mobility.”

  Bar-El sat silently for a moment. “Do you need access to the mountain?”

  For a moment, Regato’s polite veneer faded. “Of course we do—in more ways than one. We need the credits, so that we can bring in power technology. And we need to control the mountain, because the thousand-times-damned Commerce Department won’t let reactors onto a world without a single government. There’s almost a million of us here; we can’t let a few thousand mountain… yokels stand in the way of progess. And—

  “Enough.” Bar-El held up a hand. “I don’t give a damn whether you’re right or wrong, as long as you’re paying the bills. My point is, that if you need what we can do badly enough, you don’t need to know how we’re going to do it.” He sat back. “And I don’t like to talk about battle plans, I never do. If you’ve studied my career, you should know that I never tell anyone anything they don’t need to know.” He jerked a thumb at me. “I haven’t even told my exec how I’m going to do it.”

  No, he hadn’t. Because I already knew what we were going to do.

  Lose.

  There’s an old saying, to the effect that a battle plan never survives contact with the enemy. Bar-El liked to hold forth on what nonsense that was, pointing to campaigns from Thermopylae through Sinai to Urmsku, where things went exactly as planned. For one side, at least.

  “Besides,” he’d say, giving the same pause each time, “the last line in the orders, in the plan, should always be the same, should always prevent the plan from becoming obsolete: If all else fails, improvise.”