by Steve White
At this range, neutrino-pulse communications were virtually instantaneous. The comm screen awoke, revealing a man in a highly non-reg version of the wartime Raehaniv fleet uniform.
"Aelanni?" His voice broke in an incredulous squeak. "This is Yarvann hle'Taren. We've been maintaining surveillance of the Seivra displacement point, and we had a quick-response force to react to any developments out here, and . . . and what am I babbling about? Arduin told us your father didn't die as is generally believed, but by now we had become certain that all of you were dead!"
Suddenly, she could barely suppress a giggle as she quoted a saying of Eric's people. "The rumors of our death have been greatly exaggerated." Then she remembered herself, and glanced at the holo tank in which the Free Raehaniv ships were springing into life as the fleets' computers began to talk to each other. "Please continue to match vectors with us and the Korvaasha, Yarvann. We still have a battle to fight. We'll explain everything later. But," she added, beckoning to Rosen, "first of all, there's someone you should meet."
* * *
Grashkul stared fixedly at the tactical display and knew the ashen taste of hopelessness.
When the feral humans of the asteroids had set upon his battlecruisers he had ordered the battleships to alter course and attempt to reach Raehan. But the oncoming unknowns had followed, remorselessly continuing to close the range, and a missile duel had erupted that had soon exhausted his depleted magazines. And the victorious Raehaniv ahead had decelerated so as to cross his course, so that now the surviving battleships were about to come into range of their energy weapons. Missiles were still arriving from astern, but he hardly noticed the buffeting of near-misses.
This could not be happening. The Acceptable Knowledge, which had never failed the Unity before, did not allow for it. A universe without the solid and immovable foundation of the Acceptable Knowledge's infallibility was a universe of unimaginable chaos, from which his mind shied away too quickly even to consciously reject it.
And yet it was happening.
Kaathgor approached slowly, dragging a leg that had been injured by a falling structural member, threading his way through the damage-control workers. "Scanning reports another incoming spread of missiles, Effectuator. What are your orders?"
For a moment that stretched and stretched, Grashkul was silent, eye staring unseeingly ahead. Kaathgor was about to repeat the question when the Effectuator of Expansion spoke almost inaudibly, to no one in particular.
"Lies. All lies. Nothing but lies."
Before Kaathgor could ask him what he meant, a war-god's mace smote the flagship, and noise and flame became all the universe that was or could be.
* * *
"But are you quite certain that this is the way I should put it?" Varien sounded very dubious.
They stood in the midst of frantic activity as specialists established contact with their opposite numbers in the Free Raehaniv Fleet through specially-installed banks of communicators, coordinating the mop-up of the Korvaash remnants.
But Varien had the main console all to himself as he prepared, before they even rendezvoused with Aelanni, to broadcast a message that would blanket the Tareil system.
They had hastily cobbled the message together, and DiFalco had come into the discussion with the advantage of a man with a clear idea, and so had placed a strong imprint on the sheet of hard copy Varien now held before him, reading over once again with unabated skepticism.
"I suppose, Eric," he continued hesitantly, "if you're quite sure . . ."
"Trust me. I know what I'm doing." DiFalco shot a glance at the chronometer. "You're on!"
Varien cleared his throat and took a breath. "People of Raehan: I have returned . . ."
Chapter Fifteen
Daeliuv regarded Yakov Rosen and tried once again to overcome a sense of unreality. It wan't that the man across the table was particularly strange-looking—short and stocky on Raehaniv standards, looking older than Daeliuv now knew he was, features and coloring faintly exotic, but overall nothing alarming. It was his very ordinariness which seemed wrong, even though Daeliuv had known about the Landaeniv for some time.
The Free Raehaniv had rendezvoused with Aelanni first, before Varien and his new allies had arrived. By now they had seen other Landaeniv, in all their surprising variety. But Rosen had been the first one they had set eyes on, and to all of them who had been present for that first visual pickup from Aelanni's control room he remained the quintessential Landaeniv, imprinted on their minds with the strength of first impressions.
No, not "Landaeniv," Daeliuv scolded himself. Terran. Must remember that.
He dragged his mind back to the subject at hand. "So you found this abandoned base just after entering the system you call 'Terranova'?"
"Yes," Rosen replied in his fluent Raehaniv. "It was purely by chance—a wildly improbable chance, as I've often reflected in the years since." He frowned and sipped his wine. (The Free Raehaniv had been able to keep limited supply channels open, and the reception the two of them had gotten away from had been an occasion to warrant the breaking out of long-hoarded stocks.) "I gather it was the same with the asteroid—Turanau?—that you Free Raehaniv discovered."
"Precisely. It was only by sheer chance that we learned of this dead civilization that was operating in our part of the galaxy at the time humans appeared on Raehan." Daeliuv paused, then spoke almost plaintively. "And your scientists are quite certain that your ancestors evolved on Earth?"
"Oh, yes. That's been established for a long time. There's no break in our world's evolutionary history as there is in yours." Rosen was silent for a long, thoughtful moment, stroking the beard he had grown on Terranova—it was thicker than any Raehaniv could have managed, Daeliuv noted. "But you spoke of a 'dead civilization,' Daeliuv. Are you absolutely certain it's dead?"
"What?! Well . . . there certainly doesn't seem to be any evidence that it's presently active."
"No. Not unless you count the fact that we've both been making these highly unlikely discoveries at the same time—which also happens to be the time at which we're coming into contact with each other. Can you imagine what the odds against that must be?"
Daeliuv gave him a long, hard look. Then he smiled. "Don't tell me you Lan . . . Terrans believe in ghosts, Yakov!"
Rosen's intense expression dissolved into a wry grin. "Oh, no. Not to worry. I can't really believe we're all going through the motions as actors in somebody else's . . ." He stumbled to a halt. The Raehaniv for "psychodrama" was beyond him.
"At any rate," Daeliuv said briskly, "we can't let it concern us now. The freeing of Raehan has to take first priority. Speaking of which, it's almost time for the conference.
"So it is." Rosen drained his wine and stood up. "Someday, after all this is over, I want very much to see Turanau. We need to do some very hard thinking about these matters."
"We do," Daeliuv agreed.
Arduin had come out from the asteroids to join the combined fleets, and he and Varien had greeted each other with as much emotion as two Raehaniv of their generation were able to display in public. But the stream of pressurized catching-up had dried to an embarrassed trickle when Varien had inquired as to Tarlann. He had listened unflinchingly to the story of his son's capture.
"His wife and children have never emerged from Gromorgh's headquarters," Arduin had concluded. "Beyond that, our sources have been able to learn nothing about them. We've avoided contacting him, since we're certain that they're being held as hostages and we don't want to put him in an impossible position. He's been keeping a very low profile. Our sources report"—he had avoided Varien's eyes—"he's been walking with a limp."
"He knew the risks," was all Varien had allowed himself to say. Otherwise, he had kept silent, alone with his pain.
Now he and Aelanni sat at the head of the conference table in Liberator's briefing room. He translated English into Raehaniv for Arduin, Daeliuv, Yarvann and Miranni; Aelanni, backed up by Rosen, did the reverse for Di
Falco, Golovko, Levinson and Kuropatkin. Captured Korvaash translation devices were being programmed for English, but they were still far from ready.
"Our situation is as follows," Varien began his summary. "Our light units and transports are proceeding as planned through the displacement point from Seivra, and have destroyed the crippled Korvaash ships there. They will rendezvous with us at Raehan, toward which we ourselves are now on course. We need to decide how to proceed when we arrive."
Daeliuv cleared his throat. "The problem," he began with a didacticism that was perceptible even in translation, "is as follows. The Korvaasha, true to their policy of holding conquered populations hostage, have placed their headquarters and other major installations in four of our chief cities, having razed large areas of those cities for the purpose. We have been able to learn enough about those installations to know that they are very strong, particularly the main one in Sarnath. To annihilate them from orbit would require high-yield nuclear ground bursts. To take them by storm would be a costly undertaking."
Miranni spoke up. "Couldn't we simply sit in orbit and wait them out? If we offer them their lives—as much as I hate to do it—they'd surely surrender eventually. They can't squat in their fortresses forever!"
"They wouldn't have to." DiFalco's face was set and grim. "Don't you see? Time is on their side. Sooner or later, a Korvaash convoy or task force is going to pass through Seivra. The skeleton force we've got there now can't possibly prevent at least one of them from getting away and warning the rest of the Korvaash empire. All the Korvaash occupiers of Raehan have to do is hold out until relief arrives."
"Eric's right," Yarvann stated emphatically. He had felt refreshed ever since the initial round of meetings and mutual visits. He liked the Terrans!
Miranni ignored him and stared straight at DiFalco. "What are you proposing, then? That we missile the fortresses from space, obliterating our own cities?"
"No," DiFalco answered slowly, giving Varien plenty of time to translate and wishing the Global Wars-era Raehaniv hadn't rejected with horror the kind of precision kinetic-energy weapons that might have spared them this dilemma. But they had, and that was that. "I fully appreciate that that's an unacceptable solution. Your resistance fighters and our Marines will just have to go in and take those fortresses by ground assault. There's no alternative."
Arduin spoke just as slowly. "You realize, Colonel DiFalco, that an all-out ground battle will also wreak horrible devastation on a city? Not as much as a nuclear weapon, of course, but . . ."
"Damn it." Levinson broke into Varien's running translation. "Of course we realize that. But I don't hear anyone offering any better suggestions." He took a deep breath. "Two or three generations ago, Americans—that's my and Colonel DiFalco's people, on Earth—somehow got the idea into their heads that in war nobody is supposed to get killed, and therefore if people do get killed it must mean somebody has been incompetent. Like most of the things Americans of that era liked to believe, it was bullshit." Varien supplied a sanitized translation. "Face it: there's no clean, painless, bloodless way you're going to get your planet out from under the Korvaasha and their human storm troopers." He had heard about the Implementers, and the loathing the stories had called up had come from the memories in his very genes.
"We can't argue with your logic," Arduin spoke heavily. "But the fact remains . . ."
"The fact remains," Miranni blurted out, "that it's Raehan, our world, that you're talking about. Could you apply the same cool rationality if it were your Earth?"
DiFalco was opening his mouth to answer when Varien held up a hand. "With your permission, Eric, I'd like to respond to that. Aelanni, please translate into English." He turned to the Free Raehaniv side of the table and switched to their tongue.
"I understand what you're feeling," he said, very gently, addressing all of them in the second person plural but looking Miranni in the eyes. "For a long time we Raehaniv have regarded war as a demon that might be summoned up merely by thinking about it in realistic terms. Even you of the Free Raehaniv Fleet still flinch from looking the demon squarely in the face whenever you can possibly avoid it. So did I, until recently. But if we are to end our world's agony, we must face it! To prolong war by shrinking from the measures necessary to end it is merely moral cowardice masquerading as moral delicacy. And to impugn the motives of those who advocate those measures is to compound the felony with intellectual dishonesty. Don't resent the Terrans because they're asking you to make the kind of tragic choices we Raehaniv have been able to avoid for so long. On the day we encountered the Korvaasha, our lives became a long chain of tragic choices. Thanks to the Terrans, we may now have the chance to break that chain! You all know by now the risks they've taken to give us that chance. And remember: for them, destroying the fortresses from orbit would be the safe, easy way. In the ground assault Colonel DiFalco proposes, many of his Marines will die so that our cities may live."
Miranni's eyes fell, and there was a long, long silence.
Finally, Arduin spoke gruffly. "You're right, Varien. So are you, Colonel DiFalco. We'll do whatever we have to do." There were low sounds of agreement from Miranni and Daeliuv, and a loud one from Yarvann.
* * *
Tarlann raised his head from the floor to which he had been flung, and looked up, and up, and up. Gromorgh stood before him.
"You know why you have been brought here," came the slow, tinny bass from the translator pendant. "You undoubtedly heard the broadcast from the feral inferior being claiming to be your father."
So that's going to be the official line, Tarlann thought dully. Of course he had heard the broadcast; so had everyone on Raehan who had a receiver and had been alerted. The Resistance had been spreading the word that something big and mysterious was going on. He hadn't needed his old close contacts to hear the whispers.
He had listened, and wept, and then sat down to wait. In the old days he would have gone to Dormael's and been spirited to a safe bolthole. But now there was nowhere he could go, nowhere they could not seek out the homing beacon they had implanted in his flesh.
The Implementers had come soon afterwards and taken him to the Korvaash stronghold, where he had expected to at least see Nissali and Iael once more. But he had seen no one; they had locked him in a holding cell and, to all appearances, forgotten about him. Finally, after a time of cold, filth and barely edible slops—he could not say how long a time—the Implementers had returned and taken him to this chamber.
He cautiously raised himself a little—his neck felt like it was breaking, looking up at this angle. "Yes, Director. I heard it. I have no special information concerning it."
"I did not expect you to, given your demonstrated uselessness as a double agent. It is, of course, a palpable fraud, intended to raise morale among the feral elements here on the planet with its fantasies of allies of your own species from beyond the stars, and of technological developments which are logically impossible, being unforeseen by the Acceptable Knowledge. It can have no effect except to incite futile acts of rebellion and delay your race's inevitable incorporation into the Unity. No, your father and sister are dead. The claims in the broadcast are as impossible as its accounts of imaginary triumphs are exaggerated."
Puzzlement grew in Tarlann. Why was the Korvaasha telling him all this, with such un-Korvaash prolixity? It was almost as if . . .
With almost physical force, the realization came. Gromorgh was, indeed, reciting an official line—a line to which he himself needed to demonstrate his adherence, for the benefit of whoever might be listening. The Director of Implementation was actually frightened!
The thought was so dizzying in its novelty that Tarlann forgot his inhibitions for an instant. "If this is so, Director, then why have I been brought here?" As soon as it was out of his mouth, Tarlann braced for the impact of a truncheon. But none came, and a heartbeat passed before Gromorgh replied.
"You may be of some use as a hostage, even though we are not, of course, actually
dealing with your father. If the feral inferior beings mean to sustain this charade, they will have to seem to be influenced by threats to your life."
All at once, Tarlann could no longer keep himself in a crouch. Moving as if in a dream, he rose shakily to his feet and looked straight up into that disturbing eye. Both Gromorgh and the Implementers were, he supposed, shocked into immobility, but that was unimportant. All that mattered was what he now knew.
"Yes," he began slowly, "you need a hostage, don't you? You and I both know you do." His voice picked up tempo. "And every word in the broadcast was true, wasn't it? And so were the rumors before that." He threw back his head and, for the first time, a peal of joyous laughter was heard within those walls. "Father is back, and Aelanni, and their allies, these Terrans, and together we're going to rid the universe of you and your maggot-eaten Unity!"
The spell broke. An Implementer stepped forward and kicked Tarlann's legs out from under him. He tried to stay in fetal position against the rain of blows, but a kick to the kidneys made him arch his back with a gasp of pain. But before the beating could continue, the flat mechanical voice spoke.
"Enough. Take him to the maximum-security level and confine him with his son. Tell Laerav that he is not to be damaged to such an extent as might jeopardize his hostage value."
Tarlann had never realized the extent of the Korvaash fortress. As he was taken down through successive levels, he saw that the brutally intrusive structure in the heart of Sarnath was merely the tip of a subterranean iceberg of weaponry and torment.
The penultimate level was the worst, with its packed cells and much-used torture chambers—no real attempt had been made to clean up the results of their use. He could see why, for the Implementers who worked these levels matched their surroundings. He could detect his guards' disdain. Evidently there was social stratification even among Implementers, and these barely human creatures were the pariahs, the untouchables of that hierarchy of debasement.