The bridge Duty Officer turned from inspecting system monitors. "They're on their way down. Landing in about four minutes."
"Put General Wylott on the screen," Broghuilio instructed. The pinkish, somewhat puffy countenance with its slicked-back silver hair appeared a few seconds later. "A commendable performance," Broghuilio acknowledged-which was about the closest he came to lavishing outright praise.
"Your Excellency is too gracious."
"What is the arrangement?"
"Major Krebe and a detachment have remained at Dorjon. We will proceed to a rendezvous point on the surface, where a Lambian craft is waiting to take us back. The scout has been concealed at Dorjon. Freskel-Gar awaits at your pleasure."
Broghuilio nodded. "Satisfactory."
Wylott indicated the direction over his shoulder and behind him with his eyes, and lowered his voice. "Shall I present Freskel Gar's General Irastes now?"
Broghuilio took in the figure slumped in a seat in the background, still evidently in some kind of mild shock. His mouth puckered in mild amusement behind his beard. "How well do things work with the language?" he asked.
"Difficult. The similarities are… distant," Wylott admitted.
He would cut a more impressive figure if Irastes were to meet him as part of his first experience of entering the command bridge of a converted Jevlenese interstellar transport, Broghilio decided. Maximizing effect was half the art of command and leadership. "I will receive him here," Broghuilio replied.
The lander appeared overhead minutes later, completed a slow descent, and docked in its mating bay of the transport. Shortly afterward, General Irastes and his staff and escorts were conducted through, gaping from side to side in total stupefaction. Broghuilio waited imperiously at the head of the grouped bridge officers, his arms folded. They would depart without delay, as soon as the visitors had absorbed enough to produce the required mood of receptiveness. There was no need to tell them that without h-grid power the ships' systems were running on reserves to maintain life support for the occupants, the main armaments were useless, and the secondaries only good for as long as reserve power lasted. When that ran out the ships would be little more than piles of scrap metal on the lunar surface. Minerva possessed no industries that were capable of refueling them.
***
Prince Freskel-Gar Engred stared again at the object lying on the table in his private chambers of the fortress at Dorjon, alongside the weapons that his experts had still been examining and questioning the foreigners about when General Irastes and his party returned. Irastes had brought it back as a token of the importance he attached to the events that had burst upon them that day. It was a rock from the far side of the Moon. Irastes had been there since the last time they spoke. The prince was still struggling to take in the things he had just been hearing.
Aliens that were human?… Somehow speaking a mutilated smattering of Lambian… Some kind of time warp from the future; but a different future. How could you have a different future when you didn't have a future yet? All of that was beyond Freskel-Gar. What was clear to him, however, was that they possessed weapons of immense potency; and even if the stocks should be limited, or if Lambia was unable to supply the materials to operate and maintain the weapons, the knowledge that these aliens possessed could be of immeasurable worth.
Freskel-Gar's deputy, Count Rorvax, who had been making some progress with following the aliens' speech translated the words of the their leader, a stormy, black-bearded man called Broghuilio. "You… I think he means on this world… don't know… War. Organizing for war… Plans and designs, yes, and a few… puppy snaps? Skirmishes. But what of… I don't quite get that… the minds of the people? What of… the same word. I think it means shaping the country, state, I guess… into a, not sure… can wage war? We can… make you into a… war leader… who will unite and… something like carry… all of Lambia… This bit's awkward. He's talking about a force Cerios won't be able to resist… Lambia and Cerios will be/become one, with one king…" Broghuilio gestured pointedly at Freskel-Gar, "and… something grand-sounding, to do with destiny."
The prince gazed again at the piece of dull, crumbly rock. Irastes had said their ships up there were the size of ocean liners. And they were willing to bargain. For reasons that Broghuilio seemed disinclined to elaborate, they were not able to get back to wherever they had come from. There were over two thousand of them up on the lunar surface in need of sanctuary and sustenance, in return for which they could no doubt render valuable services. Freskel-Gar's eyes gleamed at the pictures that Broghuilio's words had painted in his mind. He felt he had the basis of what could be a very profitable deal here. For a long time now, he had been working toward the day when he would unseat Perasmon. His followers were ready; the equipment was in place. But he had never felt sufficiently sure of having the margin that would ensure them the edge. This could be it.
The other factor had been to await the right opportunity. And that could just have been answered, too. Rorvax had brought the news that President Harzin of Cerios was coming to Lambia to meet with King Perasmon, following the negotiations that had been going on for some time between their technical advisers. It could only mean that a truce between the two powers was in the offing, after which Perasmon would be a hero, and Freskel-Gar's chance of power and fame would be gone permanently. If he was going to make his move, it seemed it would have to be very soon, or never.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
"Attack! Attack! Battle stations!" The passages and decks of the Lambian corvette Intrepid, patrolling in northern waters, erupted in a frenzy of bodies tumbling out from doorways, pulling on pieces of kit as they scrambled to clamber through hatches and up ladders. Petty Officer Jissek came out of the wheelhouse onto the starboard bridge as the crew of Number Four gun were frantically finding their positions, just in time to see the black shape diving out of the night to the east. The torpedo struck amidships thirteen seconds later.
The concussion pitched him over the rail, into the signal bay above the foredeck main gun. He lay crumpled, semiconscious, pain shooting through seemingly every joint in his body. The sounds of shouting and screams penetrated through the ringing in his ears. He hauled himself up dazedly, using the mast stanchion by the flag locker. The deck beneath him was already tilting alarmingly. As he looked up, the center of the vessel lit up in a sheet of orange, silhouetting debris and bodies thrown into the air. Figures staggered out onto the bridge above him, and promptly disintegrated along with the door and companion way behind them as the aircraft made a second pass, firing rockets and cannon.
***
The sea was choppy under a squally wind, its gray just a little darker than the sky. Jissek could feel the cold creeping into his bones through his wet, oil-sodden clothes and the rubberized canvas floor of the raft. They couldn't last long in this, he knew, barely fifty miles from the ice shelf. But it would have been unbecoming to say so.
There were just two of them now. Two of them alive, anyway. The sonar operator who had lost a leg had died maybe an hour before, but he was still lying with his head on Ensign Thorke's lap. Kept as a shred of extra cover from the wind? Or was it that they simply hadn't had the energy to lift the body overboard? Perhaps they just didn't see any point in it. The cold made thinking difficult and sporadic, an effort of will in itself.
Thorke was hurt, too, having taken something in his back-a bullet, or piece of shrapnel or flying debris. His breathing was heavy, and he coughed intermittently, which brought trickles of blood to his mouth. Just nineteen, his first operational trip. But he hadn't complained. Jissek felt little more than a boy himself. Inwardly, he was bracing himself to the thought of having to face the rest of whatever was ahead alone. He looked at the boy's face. It was paler, developing a greenish tint. Thorke licked his lips dryly. Automatically, Jissek started weighing the risk of wasting their limited provisions. Then, catching himself and repulsed by his own meanness, he unscrewed the cap of the water flask and offered it
across. Thorke took a sip, nodded gratefully, and passed it back. Jissek screwed the cap on without taking any himself and returned the flask to the survival box.
He had seen other rafts being inflated and figures hauling themselves or others into them in the light of the flames from the sinking corvette. But if they were still anywhere, they had drifted out of sight before daylight came. The only reminder from one cheerless horizon to the other that the Intrepid had ever existed was a corpse floating grotesquely about forty feet away, which had stayed with them doggedly along with some pieces of floating wreckage. It seemed strange. If the other rafts had drifted out of sight, why hadn't this local patch of flotsam dispersed too? Currents did funny things, he supposed. A shape that he had noticed earlier on the skyline seemed nearer and looked like ice. Did it mean they were being carried northward?
He thought about Ilia, fussing with her plants and painting the walls in the flat they had finally scraped together enough for, and Lochey just toddling the last time Jissek had been home on leave and seen him; about his parents, pottering in their garden and always worrying about him. If the end was going to be long and drawn out, he hoped they'd never know. Hunger was knotting his stomach. Time to measure themselves a breakfast, maybe. Or would it be more practical and sensible to wait until… He was doing it again.
"Sir…?" Thorke's voice came as little more than a dry croak but sounded suddenly urgent. Jissek looked up. Thorke was staring at something high up and behind him. Jissek turned himself stiffly to look over his shoulder.
How it could have come up on them without making a sound, he didn't know. It looked like a huge metal egg, the size of a truck, hanging in the air about a hundred feet away. "What is it, sir?"
Jissek shook his head. "I'm not sure." He had never seen anything like it.
"Is it theirs?" the ensign asked fearfully.
"I can't tell."
After apparently inspecting them, the object moved closer. Jissek felt his own mouth go dry. It came to just feet away, looming over them, and then descended to immerse its lower part in the water so that the vertical part of its surface was alongside the raft. A panel that had been invisible opened to reveal a chamber with an inner door, beyond which was a larger, orange-lit space showing glimpses of fittings and equipment panels. "Can you hear me?" a voice called from within.
Jissek nodded numbly. "Yes… Who are you?"
"That would be too much to go into right now. Besides, you don't look as if you've exactly got all day to sit there listening. This is about as close as I can get. Can you make it across? There's plenty of room for three."
"No," Jissek replied. The compulsion to correct was reflexive. "Just two."
***
They were progressing back in time, toward the war's beginnings.
The Shapieron's doctor pronounced that the uninjured sailor from the raft had slept, eaten well, and was strong enough for visitors. His companion was still unconscious after surgery, with chances of recovery that were not good. The situation did not call for the pestering of a crowd of interrogators. Frenua Showm, who was technically in charge of the political mission, decided that she and Hunt would talk to him. His name was Jissek, the medics had established, and he appeared to be a Lambian.
ZORAC had increased its proficiency as a translator rapidly with the contacts made in the course of these reconnaissance visits. Approaches had been restricted to isolated individuals, which did have the risk that the individual approached might have little of value to tell them. Hunt had suggested keeping things simple and saving time by putting a probe down in the middle of a university campus with a concentration of people who would be able to answer anything, and wrapping the whole thing up in one operation. Danchekker, however, felt that in all the hysteria and excitement that a stunt like that was likely to cause they would probably end up being too deluged with questions and demands for explanations themselves to have much chance of asking any, and the present policy had prevailed.
Showm was silent as Hunt walked with her along the corridor of pale yellow walls and glowing luminescence panels to the clinic and medical bay. Her decision to handle this herself was more than just to complement his scientific perspective and show a Thurien presence, Hunt knew. For her this had become a deep personal matter, involving aspects of her nature that she desperately needed to understand better and to master to progress toward in the inner development that Thuriens regarded as the fulfillment of existence. Hunt had seen her shaken reaction when one of the Shapieron's probes sent back views of the aftermath of a Lambian air strike on an industrial suburb of a city, and watched her face as an intercepted news broadcast showed young orphaned children, some blinded, others missing limbs, telling their stories. For her, the possibility of creating even a sliver of reality in which such things could be avoided was becoming an object of almost religious fervor.
An orderly admitted them to the room. Jissek was sitting in an easy chair by a small table in the outer room of the suite, wrapped in a robe, with baggy hospital pants and fluffy house socks. ZORAC had mentioned ahead that he had expressed a reluctance to receive visitors in bed. He stared at Hunt in surprise. Hunt was the first human Jissek had seen since coming aboard. He had watched over his companion through the probe's trip back to the Shapieron, and lost consciousness as soon as the Ganymean medics took charge.
Showm began. ZORAC's translation came from a grille above the table. "The doctor tells us it would be comfortable for you to talk now." Jissek's eyes strayed back to Hunt. "My name is Frenua Showm. We are here just for a short time, from a world that is far away. This is Dr. Hunt, a scientist. We would like to ask you some questions."
"Is there news of Ensign Thorke? The one who was with me. I was told he was being operated on."
"It does not look good, I'm afraid," Showm told him. Typically Thurien, Hunt thought. Incapable of bending anything, even a little. Jissek nodded. He seemed to have been ready for it. Hunt sat down in the other chair at the table. Showm took the couch by one wall.
"You are the Giants, who inhabited Minerva long ago?" Jissek said. "The stories we've heard are true? You went to another star?"
"That is correct."
Jissek looked at Hunt in puzzlement again. "So… are you a Lunarian?"
Hunt clasped his hands together on the table, looking affable. "This could get complicated. We've probably all got lots of questions to ask. But you owe us…" He paused while ZORAC queried Jissek for a translation of the phrase. "So why don't you answer ours first?"
Jissek nodded. "I'll try."
Hunt looked toward Showm. She consulted some papers she was carrying and verified Jissek's name, that he was from Lambia, a naval officer, and other details that the doctor had already established. It was just to get a dialogue moving. Showm came to the subject of the war. "How long has it been going on now?" Jissek seemed unsure how to answer.
"Was there a formal declaration at some point?" Hunt asked. "A day when Lambia or Cerios announced that a state of war existed with the other?"
Jissek shook his head, as if such an idea were new to him. "It just… grew, year by year."
"How did it begin?"
"There was always a problem with the Cerians, for as long as I remember. They were driven by private greed and corruption, even at a time when the survival of all of us depended on working together as one race. We wanted to move everybody to Earth…"
"Yes, we know about that," Showm said. The Cerians they had talked to put a different interpretation on it, of course.
Jissek went on, "Our king had tried to reason with them, to make them see that what they were doing would destroy the chances for everybody. But they said they would make us do things their way, and they began manufacturing weapons. Lambia had to do the same, to defend itself. The Cerians sent planes over our country to spy on us. One of their spy ships came into our coastal waters. When Lambian naval craft went out to turn it back, it fired on them, and it was sunk in the engagement that followed. That happened be
fore my time in the Navy. But it was probably when the actual fighting began."
"You're talking about the Cerian frigate Champion," Showm said, glancing at her notes.
Jissek's eyebrows went up in surprise. "Yes."
The Cerian version was that the Champion had been attacked in international waters.
"And that was how long ago?"
"Two to three years… Something like that."
"Does the name Xerasky mean anything?" Showm asked. Xerasky had been the Lambian dictator at the time of the final war.
"No."
So Xerasky hadn't succeeded Zargon yet.
Showm went on, "You mentioned your king. Do you still have a king in Lambia now?"
"Yes."
"King Perasmon?"
Jissek looked surprised again but this time shook his head. "No. He was killed. Freskel-Gar is king now."
Showm glanced at Hunt pointedly. This was interesting. Freskel-Gar had been the last of the kings before Lambia became a dictatorship under Zargon. "How about the name Zargon?" Hunt inquired.
Jissek nodded. "Oh yes. He's one of the king's generals. Very powerful. He commands the advanced weapons program. Highly secret. Cerian Intelligence has been trying to penetrate it-and with some success, due to Lambian traitors and double agents."
"What kind of weapons are we talking about?" Hunt asked curiously. When no immediate response was forthcoming, he prompted, "Nuclear fission, fusion? Particle and radiation beam? Advanced nucleonic?"
"I… don't know anything about such matters."
Hunt let it go at that. "How about this General Zargon? Can you describe him?"
"Yes, everybody has seen him in the news and on TV. Not all that tall but very broad." Jissek brought his hands up to indicate his chest and shoulders. "Darkish skin, like a heavy tan, and a black beard-short beard, trimmed and neat. Big chin, pugnacious teeth." Hunt leaned back in his chair and gave a satisfied nod. It sounded like Imares Broghuilio all right. He would have staked an arm on it.
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