by David Drake
"Did I shoot at him?" the sergeant boasted, pausing a moment for Radescu to clamber onto his seat again. "Cop,yeah,Loot—he's got a third hole in line with his eyeballs." As the jeep boosted downslope, gravity adding to the thrust of the fans, Bourne added, "Spoiled the bloody trophy, didn't I?"
Radescu knew that even a light bolt could be lethal at line of sight, and he accepted that magnification through the helmet faceplate could have brought the warrior's image within the appearance of arm's length. Nonetheless, a micron's unsteadiness at the gun muzzle and the bolt would miss a man-sized target three kays away.The general could not believe that anyone,no matter how expert,could rightfully be as sure of his accuracy as the Slammers' gunman was.
But there were no further shots from across the valley as the jeep slid over earth harrowed by the barrage of firecracker rounds and tucked itself into the mouth of the nursery tunnel which was the patrol's objective.
The multiple channels of the commo helmets were filled with message traffic, none of it intended for Radescu. If he had been familiar with the Slammers' code names, he could have followed the progress of the support operation—an armored battalion reinforced by a company of combat engineers—which should have gotten under way as soon as the patrol first made contact with the enemy.For now, it was enough to know that Hammer would give direct warning if anything went badly wrong: not because Radescu commanded the indigenous forces, but because he accompanied Hawker and Bourne, two of Hammer's own.
"Duck,"said the helmet with unexpected clarity, Bourne on the intercom, and the general obeyed just as the vehicle switched direction and the arms of the tunnel entrance embraced them.
Though the nursery tunnels were carved through living rock—many of them with hand tools by Molts millennia in the past—the entrances were always onto gentle slopes so that no precocious infant projected himself over a sharp drop. That meant the approach was normally through soil, stabilized traditionally by arches of small ashlars, or (since humans landed) concrete or glazed earth portals.
Here the tunnel was stone-arched and,though the external portion of the structure had been sandblasted by the firecracker rounds, blocks only a meter within the opening bore the patina of great age. Radescu expected the jeep's headlights to flood the tunnel, supplementing the illumination which seeped in past them. Instead Profile Bourne halted and flipped a toggle on the dashboard.
There was a thud! within the plenum chamber, and opaque white smoke began to boil out around the skirts. It had the heavy odor of night-blooming flowers, cloying but not choking to the men who had to breathe it. Driven by the fans, the smoke was rapidly filling the tunnel in both directions by the time it rose so high that Radescu, his head raised to the arched roof, was himself engulfed by it.
The last thing he saw were the flashing holograms of Hawker's display, warning of Molt activity in the near distance. Before or behind them in the tunnel in this case, because the rock shielded evidence of ionization in any other direction.
Something touched the side of Radescu's helmet. He barely suppressed a scream before his faceplate slid down like a knife carving a swath of visibility through the palpable darkness. He could see again, though his surroundings were all in shades of saffron and the depth of rounded objects was somewhat more vague than normally was the case.Lieutenant Hawker was lowering the hand with which he had just manipulated the controls of the Oltenian's helmet for him.
"Molts can't see in the smoke," Hawker said. "Want to come with me—" the muzzle of his gun gestured down the tunnel "—or stay here with the sarge?"
"I ought—"Radescu began,intending to say"to join my men." But the Oltenian portion of the patrol under Captain Elejash had its orders—set up on the crest, await support, and let the vehicles draw fire if the Molts were foolish enough to provide data for the Slammers' gunnery computers. Each location from which a satellite registered a bolt being fired went into the data base as a point to be hit not now—the snipers would have teleported away—but at a future date when a Molt prepared to fire from the same known position. In fact, the casualties during the patrol's assault seemed to have left the surviving Molts terrified of shellfire, even the desultory bombardment by Oltenian guns."Yes, I'm with you," the general added instead.
The nursery tunnel would normally have been wide enough to pass the jeep much deeper within it, but the shock of the penetrators detonating had spalled slabs of rock from the walls, nearly choking the tunnel a few meters ahead.
"Dunno if it's safe," the mercenary said, feeling a facet of the new surface between his left finger and thumb.
"It's bedrock,"Radescu responded nonchalantly. He had a fear of heights but no touch of claustrophobia. "It may be blocked, but nothing further should fall."
Hawker shrugged and resumed his careful advance.
The tunnel was marked by several sharp changes of direction in its first twenty meters, natural since its whole purpose was to train immature Molts to sense and teleport to locations to which they had no physical access. There were glowstrips and some light trickling through the airshafts in the tunnel roof, but the angled walls prevented the infants from seeing any distance down the gallery.
Radescu's gun wavered between being pointed straight ahead in the instinctive fear that a Molt warrior would bolt around a corner at him, and being slanted up at 45° in the intellectual awareness that to do otherwise needlessly endangered Lieutenant Hawker, a step ahead and only partially to the side. Noticing that, the Oltenian pushed past the Slammer so as not to have that particular problem on his mind.
When Radescu brushed closer to the wall, he noticed that its surface seemed to brighten. That was the only evidence that he was "seeing" by means of high-frequency sound, projected stereoscopically from either side of the commo helmet and, after it was reflected back, converted to visible light within microns-thick layers of the face shield.
It was the apparent normalcy of his vision that made so amazing the blindness of the pair of Molts which Radescu encountered in the large chamber around the fourth sharp angle. One of them was crawling toward him on hands and knees, while the other waddled in a half crouch with his arms spread as though playing blindman's bluff.
The shotgun rose—Radescu had instincts that amazed him in their vulgarity—but the general instead of firing cried, "Wait! Both of you! I want to talk about peace!"
The crawling Molt leaped upright, an arm going back to the hilt of a slung weapon, while the other adult caught up an infant. Both adults were very aged males, wizened though the yellowish tinge which was an artifact of the helmet's mechanism disconcerted eyes expecting the greenish-black scales of great age. The one who was crouching had a brow horn twisted like that of the old warrior in Belvedere . . . .
Hawker was a presence to his left but the Oltenian general concentrated wholly on the chamber before him, sweat springing out on his neck and on the underside of his jaw. There were not merely two Molts in the chamber but over a score, the rest infants in their neat beds of woven grass scattered across the floor of the room—where the adults, their lamps useless, could find them now only by touch.
"Keir,stop!" shouted the Molt who had not reached for a weapon. He was speaking in Rumanian, the only language common among the varied autochthonal themes as well as between Molts and humans. In this case, however, the Molts almost certainly spoke the same dialect, so the choice of language was almost certainly a plea for further forbearance on the part of the guns which, though unseen, must be there. "If they shoot, the young—"
The other Molt lunged forward—but toward a sidewall, not toward the humans. He held a stabbing spear, a traditional weapon with two blades joined by a short wooden handgrip in the center. One blade slashed upward in a wicked disemboweling stroke that rang on the stone like a sack of coins falling.
"We won't hurt your infants—" Radescu said as the spearcarrier rotated toward the sound with his weapon raised. Hawker fired and the Molt sagged in on himself, spitted on a trio of amber tracks: smoke conce
aled the normal cyan flash of the powergun, but shockwaves from the superheated air made their own mark on the brush of high-frequency sound.
The adult with the twisted horn disappeared, holding the infant he had snatched up as Radescu first spoke.
Alexander Radescu tried to lean his gun against the wall. It fell to the floor instead, but he ignored it to step to the nearest of the infant Molts. The little creature was surprisingly dense: it seemed to weigh a good five kilos in Radescu's arms,twisting against the fabric of his jacket to find a nipple. Its scales were warm and flexible; only against pressure end-on did they have edges which Radescu could feel.
"We'll carry them outside," said the Oltenian. "I'll carry them . . . We'll keep them in—"his face broke into a broad smile, hidden behind his face shield"—in the conference room; maybe they'll like the fountains."
"Hostages?" asked Hawker evenly, as faceless as the general, turning in a slow sweep of the chamber to ensure that no further Molts appeared to resume the rescue mission.
The infant Radescu held began to mew. He wondered how many of the females and prepubescent males had been fleeing from the ridge in short hops when the bomblets swept down across them. "No, Lieutenant," Radescu said, noting the ripples of saffron gauze in his vision, heat waves drifting from the iridium barrel of Hawker's powergun. "As proof of my good faith. I've proved other things today."
He strode back toward the exit from the tunnel,realizing that his burden would prevent any hostile action by the Molts.
"Now I'll prove that," he added, as much to himself as to the mercenary keeping watch behind him in the lightless chamber.
The image of Grigor Antonescu in the tank of the commo set was more faithful than face-to-face reality would have been. The colors of the Chief Tribune's skin and the muted pattern of his formal robes glowed with the purity of transmitted light instead of being overlaid by the white glaze of surface reflection as they would have been had General Radescu spoken to him across the desk in his office.
"Good evening,Uncle,"Radescu said."I appreciate your—discussing matters with me in this way."Relays clicked elsewhere in the command car, startling him because he had been told he would be alone in the vehicle. Not that Hammer would not be scowling over every word, every nuance . . . .
"I'm not sure,"replied the Tribune carefully,"that facilities supplied by the mercenaries are a suitable avenue for a conversation about State policy, however."
His hand reached forward and appeared to touch the inner surface of the tank in which Radescu viewed him. In fact, the older man's fingers must have been running across the outside of the similar unit in which he viewed his nephew's image. "Impressive, though. I'll admit that," he added.
The Tribune had the slim good looks common to men on his side of Radescu's family. He no longer affected the full makeup his nephew used regularly, because decades of imperious calm had given him an expression almost as artful. The general aped that stillness as he went on. "The key to our present small success has been the mercenaries; similarly, they are the key to the great success I propose for the near future."
"Wiping out an entire theme?" asked Antonescu over fingers tented so that the tips formed a V-notch like the rear sight of a gun.
"Peace with all the themes, Uncle," Radescu said, and no amount of concentration could keep a cheek muscle from twitching and making the wings of his butterfly beauty patch flutter. "An end to this war, a return to peaceful relations with the Molts—which off-planet traders have easily retained. There's no need for men and Molts to fight like this. Oltenia has three centuries of experience to prove there's no need."
Cooling fans began to whirr in a ceiling duct. Something similar must have happened near the console which Antonescu had been loaned by Hammer's supply contingent in Belvedere, because the Chief Tribune looked up in momentary startlement—the first emotion he had shown during the call. "There are those, Alexi," he said to the tank again, "who argue that with both populations expanding, there is no longer enough room on Oltenia for both races. The toll on human farm stock is too high, now that most Molts live to warrior age—thanks to improvements in health care misguidedly offered the autochthons by humans in the past."
"Molt attacks on livestock during puberty rites are inevitable,"Radescu agreed, "as more land is devoted to ranching and the number of indigenous game animals is reduced." He felt genuinely calm, the way he had when he committed himself in the conference room with Marshal Erzul. There was only one route to real success, so he need have no regrets at what he was doing. "We can't stop the attacks. So we'll formalize them, treat them as a levy shared by the State and by the Molts collectively."
"They don't have the organization to accomplish that,"Antonescu said with a contemptuous snap of his fingers. "Even if you think our citizens would stand for the cost themselves."
"What are the costs of having powerguns emptied into crowded ballrooms?"the younger man shot back with the passionless precision of a circuit breaker tripping. "What is the cost of this army—in money terms, never mind casualties?"
Antonescu shrugged. Surely he could not really be that calm . . . He said,"Some things are easier in war, my boy. Emotions can be directed more easily, centralized decision making doesn't arouse the—negative comment that it might under other circumstances."
"The Molts," said the young general in conscious return to an earlier subject, "have been forced by the war to organize in much the same way that we have rallied behind the Tribunate."
By an effort of will, he held his uncle's eyes as he spoke the words he had rehearsed a dozen times to a mirror."There could be no long-term—no middle-term—solution to Molt-human relations without that, I agree. But with firm control by the leaders of both races over the actions of their more extreme members, there can be peace—and a chance on this planet to accomplish things which aren't within the capacity of any solely human settlement, even Earth herself."
The Chief Tribune smiled in the warm, genuinely affectionate manner which had made him the only relative—parents included—for whom Alexander Radescu had cared in early childhood. Radescu relived a dual memory, himself in a crib looking at his Uncle Grigor—and the infant Molt squirming against him for sustenance and affection.
Antonescu said, "Your enthusiasm, my boy, was certainly one of the reasons we gave the army into your charge when traditional solutions had failed. And of course—" the smile lapsed into something with a harder edge, but only for a moment "—because you're my favorite nephew, yes.
"But primarily," the Chief Tribune continued, "because you are a very intelligent youngman, Alexi, and you have are cord of doing what you say you'll do . . . which will bring you far, one day, yes."
He leaned forward, just as he had in Radescu's infancy, his long jaw and flat features a stone caricature of a human face. "But how can you offer to end a war that the Molts began—however fortunate their act may have been for some human ends?"
"I'm going to kick them,"the general said with a cool smile of his own, "until they ask me for terms. And the terms I'll offer them will be fair to both races." He blinked, shocked to realize that he had been speaking as if Chief Tribune Antonescu were one of the coterie of officers he had brought to heel in the conference room. "With your permission, of course, sir. And that of your colleagues."
Antonescu laughed and stood up. Radescu was surprised to see that the Chief Tribune remained focused in the center of the tank as he walked around the chair in which he had been sitting. "Enthusiasm, Alexi, yes, we expect that," he said. "Well, you do your part and leave the remainder to us. You've done very well so far.
"But I think you realize," the older man went on with his hands clasped on the back of a chair of off-planet pattern, "that I've stretched very far already to give you this opportunity." Antonescu's voice was calm, but his face held just a hint of human concern which shrank his nephew's soul down to infancy again. "If matters don't—succeed, according to your plans and the needs of the State, then there won't be f
urther options for you. Not even for you, Alexi."
"I understand, Uncle," said Alexander Radescu, who understood very well what failure at this level would require him, as an Oltenian aristocrat, to do in expiation. "I have no use for failures either."
As he reached for the power switch at the base of the vision tank, he wondered who besides Hammer would be listening in on the discussion—and what they thought of his chances of success.
The bolt was a flicker in the air, scarcely visible until it struck an Oltenian armored car. The steel plating burned with a clang and a white fireball a moment before a fuel tank ruptured to add the sluggish red flames of kerosene to the spectacle. The vehicle had been hull down and invisible from the ridge toward which the next assault would be directed; but the shot had been fired from the rear, perhaps kilometers distant.
Three men in Oltenian fatigues jumped from the body of the vehicle while a fourth soldier screamed curses in a variety of languages and squirmed from the driver's hatch, cramped by the Slammer body armor which he wore. The turrets on several of the neighboring armored cars began to crank around hastily, though the sniper was probably beyond range of the machine guns even with solid shot. There was no chance of hitting the Molt by randomly spraying the landscape anyway; Radescu's tongue poised to pass an angry order down when some subordinate forestalled him and the turrets reversed again.
"Nothing to be done about that,"Radescu said to the pair of men closest to him. He nodded in the direction of a few of the hundred or so armored vehicles he could see from where he stood. Had he wished for it, satellite coverage through the hologram projector in the combat car would have shown him thousands more."With a target the size of this one,the odd sniper's going to hit something even if he's beyond range of any possible counterfire."
A second bolt slashed along the side of an armored personnel carrier a hundred meters from the first victim. There was no secondary explosion this time—in fact, because of the angle at which it struck, the powergun might not have penetrated the vehicle's fighting compartment. Its infantrymen boiled out anyway, many of them leaving behind the weapons they had already stuck through gunports in the APC's sides. Bright sunlight glanced incongruously from their bulky infrared goggles, passive night vision equipment which was the closest thing in the Oltenian arsenal to the wide assortment of active and passive devices built into the Slammers' helmets.