Agent of the Terran Empire

by Poul Anderson

  First then did he have time to reactivate the internal compensators? A steady one gee poured its benediction through him. He drew uneven breath into an aching chest. “For this we get paid?” he mumbled.

  While Chives took over, and the thermostat brought the turret near an endurable temperature, Flandry unbuckled and went below to Kit’s stateroom. She lay unstirring in harness, a trickle of blood from the snub nose. He injected her with stimulol. Her eyes fluttered open. Briefly, she looked so young and helpless that he must glance away. “Sorry to jolt you back to consciousness in this fashion,” he said. “It’s bad practice. But right now, we need a guide.”

  “Of course.” She preceded him to the turret. He sat down and she leaned over his shoulder, frowning at the viewscreens. The Hooligan burrowed into atmosphere on a steep downward slant. The roar of cloven air boomed through the hull. Mountains rose jagged on a night horizon. “That’s the Ridge,” said Kit. “Head yonder, over Moonstone Pass. ” On the other side, a shadowed valley gleamed with rivers, under stars and a trace of aurora. “There’s the Shaw, an’ the King’s Way cuttin’ through. Land anywhere near, ’tisn’t likely the boat will be found.”

  The Shaw belied its name; it was a virgin forest, 40,000 square kilometers of tall trees. Flandry set his craft down so gently that not a twig was broken, cut the engines and leaned back. “Thus far,” he breathed gustily, “we is did it, chillun!”

  “Sir,” said Chives, “may I once again take the liberty of suggesting that if you and the young lady go off alone, without me, you need a psychiatrist.”

  “And may I once again tell you where to stick your head,” answered Flandry. “I’ll have trouble enough passing myself off as a Vixenite, without you along. You stay with the boat and keep ready to fight. Or, more probably, to scramble out of here like an egg.”

  He stood up. “We’d better start now, Kit,” he added. “That drug won’t hold you up for very many hours.”

  Both humans were already dressed in the soft green coveralls Chives had made according to Kit’s description of professional hunters. That would also explain Flandry’s little radio transceiver, knife and rifle; his accent might pass for that of a man lately moved here from the Avian Islands . It was a thin enough disguise … but the Ardazirho wouldn’t have an eye for fine details. The main thing was to reach Kit’s home city, Garth, undetected. Once based there, Flandry could assess the situation and start making trouble.

  Chives wrung his hands, but bowed his master obediently out the airlock. It was midwinter, but also periastron; only long nights and frequent rains marked the season in this hemisphere. The forest floor was thick and soft underfoot. Scant light came through the leaves, but here and there on the high trunks glowed yellow phosphorescent fungi, enough to see by. The air was warm, full of strange green scents. Out in the darkness there went soft whistlings, callings, croakings, patterings, once a scream which cut off in a gurgle, the sounds of a foreign wilderness.

  It was two hours’ hike to the King’s Way. Flandry and Kit fell into the rhythm of it and spoke little. But when they finally came out on the broad starlit ribbon of road, her hand stole into his. “Shall we walk on?” she asked.

  “Not if Garth is fifty kilometers to go,” said Flandry. He sat down by the road’s edge. She lowered herself into the curve of his arm.

  “Are you cold?” he asked, feeling her shiver.

  “Fraid,” she admitted.

  His lips brushed hers. She responded shyly, unpracticed. It beat hiking. Or did it? I never liked hors d’oeuvres alone for a meal, thought Flandry, and drew her close.

  Light gleamed far down the highway. A faint growl waxed. Kit disengaged herself. “Saved by the bell,” murmured Flandry, “but don’t stop to wonder which of us was.” She laughed, a small and trembling sound beneath unearthly constellations.

  Flandry got up and extended his arm. The vehicle ground to a halt: a ten-car truck. The driver leaned out. “Boun’ for Garth?” he called.

  “That’s right.” Flandry helped Kit into the cab and followed. The truck started again, its train rumbling for 200 meters behind.

  “Coin’ to turn in your gun, are you?” asked the driver. He was a burly bitter-faced man. One arm carried the traces of a recent blaster wound.

  “Figure so,” Kit replied. “My husban’ an’ I been trekkin’ in the Ridge this last three months. We heard ’bout the invasion an’ started back, but floods held us up — rains, you know — an’ our radio’s given some trouble too. So we aren’t sure o’ what’s been happenin’.”

  “Enough.” The driver spat out the window. He glanced sharply at them. “But what the gamma would anybody be doin’ in the mountains this time o’ year?”

  Kit began to stammer. Flandry said smoothly, “Keep it confidential, please, but this is when the cone-tailed radcat comes off the harl. It’s dangerous, yes, but we’ve filled six caches of grummage.”

  “Hm … uh … yeh. Sure. Well, when you reach Garth, better not carry your gun yourself to the wolf headquarters. They’ll most likely shoot you first an’ ask your intentions later. Lay it down somewhere an’ go ask one o’ them would he please be so kind as to come take it away from you.”

  “I hate to give up this rifle,” said Flandry.

  The driver shrugged. “Keep it, then, if you want to take the risk. But not aroun’ me. I fought at Burnt Hill, an’ played dead all night while those howlin’ devils hunted the remnants of our troop. Then I got home somehow, an’ that’s enough. I got a wife an’ children to keep.” He jerked his thumb backward. “Load o’ rare earth ore this trip. The wolves’ll take it, an’ Hobclen’s mill will turn it into fire-control elements for ’em, an’ they’ll shoot some more at the Empire’s ships. Sure, call me a quislin’ — an’ then wait till you’ve seen your friends run screamin’ down your street with a pack o’ batsnakes flap-pin’ an’ snappin’ at them an’ the wolves boundin’ behind laughin’. Ask yourself if you want to go through that, for an Empire that’s given us up already.”

  “Has it?” asked Flandry. “I understood from one ’cast that there were reinforcements coming.”

  “Sure. They’re here. One o’ my chums has a pretty good radio an’ sort o’ followed the space battle when Walton’s force arrived, by receivin’ stray messages. It petered out pretty quick, though. What can Walton do, unless he attacks this planet, where the wolves are now based, where they’re already makin’ their own supplies an’ munitions? An’ if he does that—” The headlight reflections shimmered off sweat on the man’s face. “No more Vixen. Just a cinder. You pray God, chum, that the Terrans don’t try to blast Ardazir off Vixen.”

  “What’s happening, then, in space?” asked Flandry.

  He didn’t expect a coherent reply. To the civilian, as to the average fighter, war is one huge murky chaos. It was a pure gift when the driver said: “My chum caught radio ’casts beamed at us from the Terran fleet. The wolves tried to jam it, o’ course, but I heard, an’ figure ’tis mostly truth. Because ’tis bad enough! There was a lot o’ guff about keepin’ up our courage, an’ sabotagin’ the enemy, an’—” The driver rasped an obscenity. “Sorry, ma’m. But wait till you see what ’tis really like aroun’ Garth an’ you’ll know how I feel about that idea. Admiral Walton says his fleet’s seized some asteroid bases an’ theirs isn’t tryin’ to get him off ’em. Stalemate, you see, till the wolves have built up enough strength. Which they’re doin’, fast. The reason the admiral can’t throw everything he’s got against them in space is that he has to watch Ogre too. Seems there’s reason to suspect Ymir might be in cahoots with Ardazir. The Ymirites aren’t sayin’. You know what they’re like.”

  Flandry nodded. “Yes. ‘If you will not accept our word that we are neutral, there is no obvious way to let you convince yourselves, since the whole Terran Empire could not investigate a fraction of Dispersal territory. Accordingly, we shall not waste our time discussing the question
.’ ”

  “That’s it, chum. You’ve got the very tone. They might be honest, sure. Or they might be waitin’ for the minute Walton eases up his watch on ’em, to jump him.”

  Flandry glanced out. The stars flashed impersonally, not caring that a few motes of flesh named them provinces for a few centuries. He saw that part of this planet’s sky had no stars, a hole into forever. Kit had told him it was called the Hatch. But that was only a nearby dark nebula, not even a big one. The clear white spark of Rigel was more sinister, blazing from the heart of Merseia’s realm. And what of Ogre, tawny above the trees?

  “What do you think will happen?” Kit’s voice could scarcely be heard through the engine grumble.

  “I don’t even dare guess,” said the driver. “Maybe Walton’ll negotiate something — might leave us here, to become wolf-cattle, or might arrange to evacuate us an’ we can become beggars on Terra. Or he might fight in space … but even if he doesn’t attack their forts here on Vixen, we’ll all be hostages to Ardazir, won’t we? Or the Ymirites might … No, ma’m, I’m just drivin” my truck an’ drawin’ my pay an’ feedin’ my family. Shorter rations every week, it seems. Figure there’s nothin’ else any one person can do. Is there?”

  Kit began to cry, a soft hopeless sobbing on Flandry’s shoulder. He laid an arm around her and they sat thus all the way to Garth.

  X

  Night again, after a short hot winter day full of thunderstorms. Flandry and Emil Bryce stood in the pit blackness of an alley, watching a nearly invisible street. Rain sluiced over their cloaks. A fold in Flandry’s hood was letting water trickle in, his tunic was soaked, but he dared not move. At any moment now, the Ardazirho would come by.

  The rain roared slow and heavy, down over the high-peaked roofs of Garth, through blacked-out streets and gurgling into the storm drains. All wind had stopped, but now and then lightning glared. There was a brief white view of pavement that shimmered wet, half-timbered houses with blind shutters crowded side by side, a skeletal transmitter tower for one of the robotic weather-monitor stations strewn over the planet. Then night clamped back clown, and thunder went banging through enormous hollow spaces.

  Emil Bryce had not moved for half an hour. But he really was a hunter by trade, thought Flandry. The Terran felt an unreasonable resentment of Bryce’s guild. Damn them, it wasn’t fair, in that trade they stood waiting for prey since they were boys — and he had to start cold. No, hot. It steamed beneath his rain cape.

  Feet resounded on the walk. They did not have a human rhythm. And they did not smack the ground first with a boot-heel, but clicked metal-shod toes along the pavement. A flash-beam bobbed, slashing darkness with a light too blue and sharp for human comfort. Watery reflections touched Bryce’s broad red face. His mouth alone moved, and Flandry could read fear upon it. Wolves!

  But Bryce’s dart gun slithered from under this cloak. Flandry eased steel knucks onto one hand. With the other, he gestured Bryce back. He, Flandry, must go first, pick out the precise enemy he wanted — in darkness, in rain, and all their faces nonhuman. Nor would uniforms help; the Ardazirho bore such a wild variety of dress.

  But … Flandry was trained. It had been worth a rifle, to have an excuse for entering local invader headquarters. Their garrison in Garth was not large: a few hundred, for a city of a quarter million. But modern heavy weapons redressed that, robotanks, repeating cannon, the flat announcement that any town where a human uprising actually succeeded would be missiled. (The glassy crater which had been Marsburg proved it.) The Garth garrison was there chiefly to man observation posts and anti-spacecraft defenses in the vicinity; but they also collected firearms, directed factories to produce for their army, prowled in search of any citizens with spirit left to fight. Therefore, Flandry told himself, their chief officer must have a fair amount of knowledge — and the chief officer spoke Anglic, and Flandry had gotten a good look at him while surrendering the rifle, and Flandry was trained to tell faces apart, even nonhuman faces—

  And now Clanmaster Temulak, as he had called himself, was going off duty, from headquarters to barracks. Bryce and others had been watching the Ardazirho for weeks. They had told Flandry that the invaders went on foot, in small armed parties, whenever practicable. Nobody knew quite why. Maybe they preferred the intimacy with odors and sounds which a vehicle denied; it was known they had better noses than man. Or perhaps they relished the challenge: more than once, humans had attacked such a group, been beaten off and hunted down and torn to pieces. Civilians had no chance against body armor, blast-weapons, and reflexes trained for combat.

  But I’m not a civilian, Flandry told himself, and Bryce has some rather special skills.

  The quarry passed by. Scattered flashbeam light etched the ruffed, muzzled heads against flowing dimness. There were five. Flandry identified Temulak, helmeted and corseleted, near the middle. He glided out of the alley, behind them.

  The Ardazirho whipped about. How keen were their ears? Flandry kept going. One red-furred alien hand dropped toward a bolstered blaster. Flandry smashed his steel-knuckled fist at Temulak’s face. The enemy bobbed his head, the knucks clanged off the helmet. And light metal sheathed his belly, no blow would have effect there. The blaster came out. Flandry chopped down his left palm, edge on, with savage precision. He thought he felt wristbones crack beneath it. Temulak’s gun clattered to the pavement. The Ardazirho threw back his head and howled, ululating noise hurled into the rain. And HQ only half a kilometer away, barracks no further in the opposite direction—

  Flandry threw a karate kick to the jaw. The officer staggered back. But he was quick, twisting about to seize the man’s ankle before it withdrew They went down together. Temulak’s right hand still hung useless, but his left snatched for Flandry’s throat. The Terran glimpsed fingernails reinforced with sharp steel plectra. He threw up an arm to keep his larynx from being torn out. Temulak howled again. Flandry chopped at the hairy neck. The Ardazirho ducked and sank teeth into Flandry’s wrist. Anguish went like flame along the nerves. But now Temulak was crouched before him. Flandry slammed down a rabbit punch. Temulak slumped. Flandry got on his back and throttled him.

  Looking up, gasping, the man saw shadows leap and yell in the glow of the dropped flashlight. There had been no way to simply needle Temulak. He was wanted alive, and Flandry didn’t know what anesthetics might be fatal to an Ardazirho. But Bryce had only to kill the guards, as noiselessly as possible. His airgun spat cyanide darts, quick death for any oxygen breather. And his skilled aim sent those darts into exposed flesh, not uselessly breaking on armor. Two shapes sprawled in the street. Another had somehow jumped for Bryce’s throat. The hunter brought up one boot. It clanged on a breastplate, but sheer force sent the alien lurching backward. Bryce shot him. By then the last one had freed his blaster. It crashed and blazed through rain. Bryce had already dropped. The ion bolt sizzled where he had been. Bryce fired, missed, rolled away from another blast, fired again and missed. Now howling could be heard down the street, as a pack of invaders rallied to come and help.

  Flandry reached across Temulak’s gaunt body, picked up the Clanmaster’s gun, and waited. He was nearly blind in this night. The other Ardazirho’s blaster flamed once more. Flandry fired where it showed. The alien screamed, once, and thudded to the street. Scorched hair and meat smoked sickly in the wet air.

  “Out o’ here!” gasped Bryce. He sprang erect. “They’re comin’! An’ they’ll track us by scent—”

  “I came prepared for that,” said Flandry. A brief hard grin peeled his teeth. He let Bryce pick up Temulak while he got a flat plastibottle from his tunic. He turned a pressure nozzle and sprayed a liter of gasoline around the area. “If their noses are any good for several minutes after this, I give up. Let’s go.”

  Bryce led the way, through the alley to the next street, down a block of horribly open paving, then hand-over-hand across a garden wall. No private human vehicles could move after dark witho
ut being shot at from the air, but it wasn’t far to the underground hideout. In fact, too close, thought Flandry. But then, who on Vixen had any experience with such operations? Kit had looked up those friends in Garth who smuggled her out, and they had led Flandry straight to their bitter little organization. It expedited matters this time, yes, but suppose the Ardazirho had supplied a ringer? Or … it was only a matter of time before they started questioning humans in detail, under drugs and duress. Then you needed cells, changing passwords, widely scattered boltholes, or your underground was done for.

  Flandry stumbled through drenched flowerbeds. He helped Bryce carry Temulak down into the hurricane cellar: standard for every house in Garth. A tunnel had been dug from this one; its door, at least, was well concealed. Flandry and Bryce groped for several hundred meters to the other end. They emerged beneath a house whose address they should not have been permitted to know.

  Judith Hurst turned about with a small shriek when the cellar door opened. Then dim light picked out Bryce’s heavy form, and Temulak still limp in the hunter’s arms. Flandry came behind, shedding his cape with a relieved whistle. “Oh,” gasped Judith. “You got him!”

  Bryce’s eyes went around the circle of them. A dozen men stood with taut brown faces in the light of a single small fluoro. Their shadows fell monstrous in the corners and across the window shutters. Knives and forbidden guns gleamed at their belts. Kit was the only person seated, still slumped in the dull sadness of stimulol reaction.

  “Damn near didn’t,” grunted Bryce. “Couldn’t have, without the captain here. Sir Dominic, I apologize for some things I’d been thinkin’ lately ’bout Terra.”

  “An’ I.” Judith Hurst trod forward, taking both the Navy man’s hands. She was among the few women in the underground, and Flandry thought it a crime to risk such looks being shot up. She was tall, with long auburn hair and skin like cream; her eyes were sleepy brown in a full, pouting face; her figure strained at shorts and bolero. “I never thought I’d see you again,” she said. “But you’ve come back with the first real success this war’s had for us.”