IronStar

by Hallman, Grant

  “Going to one-three-alpha, aye. Eat your heart out, spaceman! I’m a pilot, so I can do that! You can go fly a sim! LAS-1, by. Great day for flying, ma’am.” It took Kirrah a moment to register that, out of the patter flowing from Margaret’s multitasking mind, the last words were directed at her. Outside the generous flight deck windows, the Geera River was shrinking and sliding past under them. In the low morning sunlight, the endless plains of not-grass looked soft and lush. Each bush and occasional tree cast a long crisp shadow westward. A market cart and a few pedestrians could be made out along the road paralleling the Geera’s north bank. Ahead, three of Kirrah’s semaphore towers were visible.

  “So it is, Margaret. Beautiful day! Mmm, by the way, what’s ‘Roehl One’?” Below her feet, the rumble of the belly-thrusters slowed and died as the hybrid craft transitioned seamlessly from hovering rocket to winged atmospheric flight.

  “V-thrust off, confirm. Oh, that’s how we designated the original LZ, ma’am. Over by the city wall, where Attilla’s shuttle is parked, that’s Roehl Two.” Kirrah could feel a tiny thread of panic rising: Gods, now the Regnum’s naming things after me. The shuttle continued to climb in the calm morning air, speeding westward.

  “How would you like us to approach the Oh-die city, ma’am?” asked Ensign Piersall.

  “Let’s follow the Geera, that river just to the right, all the way to the big lake. Then let Captain Og’drai here guide you right down the shipping channel. No rush, say four hundred meters AGL, about three fifty kph.” Kirrah looked over the woman’s shoulder to the flight instruments, noted their position and speed. “And by the way, could you take us a little higher for a minute, let my friend see the big lake ahead of us?” If his eyes don’t pop right out of his head first, that is…

  “Yes, ma’am!” the young pilot replied with a grin. She slid the dual main throttle levers forward another quarter and eased back on the control stick in her left hand. Behind them the low roar of the aft rockets deepened, their chairbacks pushed a little harder, and the craft’s nose lifted thirty degrees, forty. Beneath them the world seemed to fall away and the horizon grew larger. They quickly ascended past a few widely scattered early clouds, small puffy things floating over the plains. After half a minute, she eased back on the throttles and began smoothly to level off. The suddenly distant horizon ahead had turned from green to a glittery blue.

  “There, that’s three thousand meters, should just about do it…” Captain Og’drai was staring awestruck out the front windshield.

  “Is that the Sea of the Sun? Kirrah Warmaster! We have been travelling no more than a bhrakka, and I can see it! It’s a three day journey!” Kirrah smiled and said:

  “Margaret, could you swing us to port so he can see the city we just left?” Obediently the thirty-two meter craft banked left and carved an arc to the south over the plains Kirrah had camped on months before, after their first victory on the Geera. Captain Og’drai looked back out the left side window, where the city walls of Talameths'cha made a small line across the plains at the junction of four sparkling blue-green ribbons. He looked back to their right, took in the lake in the distance.

  “So small!” he said in an awestruck voice. “My life has plied up and down this river, and across that sea, so many days’ travel, and in three bhrakka you have shown me the span of it from one end to the other! And there, beyond the city, the WhiteCap Mountains! Another five days’ ride to the east!”

  “Just wait,” Kirrah replied, “until you see your entire world shrink behind you so it looks no larger than a glatha-fruit held in the palm of your hand. And beyond that, to a point of light lost among thousands of stars. And then another whole world, ahead of your bow. You will see this, my friend. I promise. Margaret, could you take us through that small cloud to the west? Straight down-sun?”

  The pilot nodded, smiled and swung the craft’s nose to the right, taking dead aim on a small cloud a few kilometers away and a few hundred meters across, slightly lower than their height. With the sun directly behind them, in a moment their shadow appeared, a tiny fuzzy dark spot on the white cloud.

  “Watch that cloud,” Kirrah said. They swept swiftly closer, their shadow, expanding slowly at first, held centered on the white nebulosity by Margaret’s casual skill. Suddenly Captain Og’drai gasped in wonderment as a perfect circular rainbow appeared on the cloud’s outer edge, and seemed to contract inward across its white face. Then another - two concentric circles of brilliant colors, like two target rings converging on their rapidly expanding shadow at the very center. Then a third, fainter rainbow appeared outside the first two, and they swiftly plunged through the center of the rainbows, into the cloud and a tiny bump of turbulence, and in two heartbeats, out the other side and back into the fresh blue morning sky and brilliant sunlight.

  “Hey, how’d you do that?” asked PO Thornlea from the engineering station.

  “Very old pilot trick, Lorraine,” answered Margaret. “Not many spacers remember it. Never had a chance to try it, myself.”

  Kirrah replied, “I spent… some time on Longsummer, Margaret, when I was growing up. I had temporary access to a Mannheim P-11, um, that’s a single-seat powered glider. That one term I spent every spare hour in the air, just for the fun of it. Captain Og’drai here has been so helpful showing me his world, I just wanted him to get a glimpse of mine. Sorry, back to our course.”

  “Kirrah Warmaster is most generous,” the stocky Talamae Captain said. “I have seen more marvels since she arrived than I ever thought to see in my life! Thank you.”

  The shuttle swung slightly left, to due west. They descended gradually, leveling off at four hundred meters, and in ten minutes swept over the coastline and out above the Sea of the Sun. The freshwater lake was some six hundred kilometers wide and a thousand north-to-south. They were crossing midway down its eastern shore, and ahead of them a long point of land stretched from the opposite shore across two thirds of the breadth of the lake, dividing it into two watery lobes. Og’drai pointed down to the north side of that peninsula and said:

  “Ale’appa was there. Before the O’dai came, I carried Talam’s oil and returned with Ale’appa’s fish and spiced wine and hides.” He sighed. “They made the best raingear, too. All O’dai, now.” He nodded and Margaret turned their nose south toward O'dakai, capital of O’dai.

  Ok, maybe this is kind of fun, Kirrah said to herself thirty minutes later. They had passed half a dozen sailing vessels, all O’dai according to Captain Schmado’s expert opinion, and were just coming up on the south shore of the lake, at the center of the O’dai capital. But now to business… Captain Schmado joined them in the cockpit at her request, replacing Captain Og’drai at the jumpseat. The O’dai Admiral’s status was still somewhat ambiguous. He showed no desire to return with the other prisoners, and had behaved himself like a model guest, or prisoner, depending on one’s interpretation of his continued presence among the Talamae. He had seemed genuinely appalled at the ‘curse-of-heaven’ attack.

  “Argosy, LAS-1 descending to two hundred. No threats. Mac, activate.”

  “Confirm recording, Marg,” came the voice from the aft compartment, on intercom. At barely three times the heights of the masts in the harbor, the shuttle rumbled across the waterfront and over the city itself. The teeming city streets seemed to subtly change color as they passed overhead, probably, Kirrah realized, as every person in the crowd turned his or her face to the sky.

  They continued straight south up the river that bisected the city. Two cities, Kirrah corrected a moment later. The city that wrapped around the harbor extended five or six kilometers inshore, faded into fields, and then south of that an even larger city sprawled some four or five kilometers to either side of the river.

  “Where is the center of O’dai government, Captain Schmado?” Kirrah asked.

  “Farther up-river, Warmaster. You see, there ahead of us, just west of the river, that largest building is the palace. The one with all the gardens around it,
then the double walls and the barracks between.” Indeed the only large patch of green among the brown-and-orange roofs below them was a square some four by six hundred meters surrounding a one by two hundred meter structure of white and orange stone that was probably the height of O’dai architecture, if one’s taste ran to shoeboxes stacked in a rectangle. The green patch was in turn surrounded by an inner and outer wall, between which buildings of all descriptions shared space with open areas probably used for drills and parades. Beyond the outer wall was a broad avenue, and beyond that what looked, to judge by the size of the buildings, like the rich part of town.

  In another minute, the last of the habitations scrolled back under their wings and they were lofting southward across plains dotted by farms and occasional dwellings. Ensign Piersall began a turn to the right and then swung them far to the left in a figure-eight loop.

  “Ma’am, do you want to raster-scan the whole city, or…?”

  “Yes, Margaret, eventually. First let’s overfly that palace building, see what we pick up, then work west in north-south passes.”

  “Aye, ma’am.” The shuttle rolled right again and leveled out of the turn with the palace directly ahead and due north. As they passed over the big building, the intercom chimed and a voice said:

  “Bingo, Marg. There must be a whole rabbit warren under that pile of stone. GPR’s picking up tunnels, metal artifacts all over, and there’s a good solid NMR trace for iridium and osmium. And titanium and aluminum. And Kruss organometallics. Unless the indigs have just invented hullmetal and aluminum smelting, that’s your lizzie outpost.”

  “That’s one of them, Mac. Stay sharp.”

  “Two, actually, about forty meters apart, both deep under the palace building. Looks like living quarters and lab, and a storeroom I’d guess, from the variety of traces.

  “There’s another trace, a hullmetal door off the roof of the palace, and what I’d call a support bay for a small flyer, although it’s empty at the moment. And a conduit connecting it to the larger room below, and I think that’s a comm antenna beside it.”

  Another forty-five minutes of flying up and down over the city in a grid pattern produced no additional evidence of alien presence, but did reveal a comprehensive sewer system, a skirt of small houses crowded together, a manufacturing district, also extensive shipbuilding, warehousing, and native military presence. By the tenth low-level pass the population seemed to be on the verge of panic, surging and milling about like barnyard chickens under a hawk. The military forces appeared to be collecting in clumps, but with no ground target, they had no place to rally. The longer they overflew the city, the glummer Captain Schmado seemed to get.

  “Are you not glad to see your homeland, Captain?” Kirrah asked.

  “No, Warmaster. I am amazed by your Regnum’s power, but I have lost my love for O’dai’s king and his warmaking. I do not expect to live long beyond our arrival.”

  “You are serving Talam and have my protection, Schmado. You will be safe in the shuttle. Have you no friends or family here?”

  “Friendship with a failed Fleet-Captain would be unwise for any O’dai, Warmaster. Family… I had a household, a wife and two sons. I doubt any survived the King’s displeasure over the loss of my fleet.”

  “That is sad to hear, Schmado. I hope your fortunes improve. Ok,” said Kirrah, “…let’s drop in for a visit. Margaret, put us down in the garden area just fifty meters outside the north entrance to that palace. It’s about the only open level patch near the main building. Marcus, Adrianne, ready to roll as we touch.”

  Whoever was manning the shuttle’s guns put an infrared targeting laser on the indicated area, which showed up like a beacon to those on the flight deck. Ensign Piersall lit the belly thrusters and lowered the landing gear in a reverse of the process they had used taking off. Although the LAS was equipped with forward-firing thrusters, most pilots made it a point of pride to kill forward speed by pulling the ship’s nose up and balancing on the belly and tail thrusters, then pitching down nose-level and descending on belly thrusters alone.

  Kirrah watched with professional appreciation while her young pilot jockeyed the main throttles down while twisting their twin T-shaped handles to bring up the vertical lift. As before, she nailed the landing perfectly, and the ramp was cycling down even as the whirlwind of ash and burned leaves was settling around them. Outside, courtiers, servants and a few guards were scurrying for cover from the formidable downwash. In seconds, the Marines were formed up in a double line outside the ramp, and Kirrah and Peetha descended like visiting royalty. They stood on the scorched earth of the gardens facing the imposing ten meter tall arched doorway in the palace’s twenty-meter high north wall.

  A horn sounded, and the heavy double bronze doors swung open to disgorge a line of O’dai crossbowmen and swordsmen, in the scarlet and yellow uniform Captain Schmado had told them indicated the King’s guard. The heavy doors boomed shut behind them and they deployed into a double line between the shuttle and the palace. A voice sounded in Kirrah’s helmet on the Unit General comm channel:

  “All units, Cavanaugh,” said the voice she now recognized as coming from the shuttle’s ‘Guns’ station: “Multiple hostiles approaching on foot through gates in north and west walls, respond?”

  “Guns, Warden. Negative response. Unless you see something dangerous, let them test us. Being ignored can be very discouraging to attackers.” Kirrah appreciated Marcus’ advice and stood at attention at the end of the line of Marines. The ramp lifted and closed into place behind them, sealing the craft in hullmetal and polycorundite. Through her suit’s external pickups she could hear orders being shouted and see men deploying in flanking positions along both sides of their line. At a shouted command, all the O’dai archers raised their crossbows and loosed simultaneously at the Regnum formation.

  With a tremendous clatter, sixty or seventy heavy crossbow quarrels rattled and shattered on the Regnum combat armor. At each impact, the fine mesh of active hullmetal links caught and stopped the iron point, and a subskin of slo-flo turned a ten or fifteen centimeter disc of armor into a rigid plate for a quarter-second, dissipating the impact harmlessly. Kirrah smiled over at Peetha through their transparent polycorundite helmets. The Wrth girl seemed to be enjoying herself immensely, and even grinned back. Kirrah set her suit’s comm to translate to O’dai through its external speakers:

  “Kirrah Warmaster greets the brave O’dai guards and bestows her blessings on all here. As a gift to O’dai, Talam is returning some of the injured from the Nineteenth O’dai Imperial Army, including Prince Paedako, Fourth Son of His Astral Majesty King Oka’sse. King Oka’sse is invited to appear, and greet his returning soldiers.”

  After what to Kirrah seemed an unprofessionally long time, the O’dai finished reloading their crossbows and let loose another volley, with similar negative results. When a third volley scattered harmlessly from the shuttle itself, the O’dai swordsmen marched forward in a phalanx. They approached Kirrah’s formation, hesitated a moment at the total lack of response from their opponents, then began swinging huge overhand sword strokes against the armored figures. Heavy blades thudded and ground ineffectively against hullmetal cloth or bounced from polycor helmets. Men crowded one another attempting to find some opening in the defensive clothing.

  Finally one large guardsman stepped up to one of the bigger Marines and gave a sharp tug on the man’s heavy beamer, which was carried at port-arms. The Marine twisted his weapon, poked the big O’dai’s sharply in the belly with its butt, and returned to port-arms.

  Kirrah spoke again through her suit’s external speakers. “O’dai have never been known for their hospitality, but Kirrah Warmaster grows impatient with this impoliteness. The next O’dai to attempt harm will pay.” The same large guardsman, breathing deeply and straightening from his bent posture, stepped around in front of her. He leered at her, said something untranslatable, placed one hand on her helmet’s face and pushed, hard. She stepped back one
pace, then swung forward and delivered a swift, vicious kick to the man’s shin. The rigid toe of her combat boot made a visible dent in his armor’s shinplate, and he howled and went down holding his ankle.

  “Must we spill your blood before you see you are wasting your efforts?” she demanded. “The time of fighting between Talamae and O’dai is over. We want nothing from you except to return your own injured soldiers. And to have the small lizard-beings depart from your midst, the ones you call ‘Heaven-messenger’, whose real name is Kruss, which means devourer of humans. Who will receive the O’dai prisoners from me? They need care.”

  Another barked command and gesture, which allowed Kirrah to note the identity of the commander, and three of the guards crouched low and reached for Peetha, the smallest of the suited figures. Ok, that’s enough Mr. Nice Guy… Kirrah drew her beamer and traced a white-hot point across the nearest man’s wrist. At her motion, Peetha drew her Kruss field knife and struck like a snake at the man reaching for her. The blade slid between his center and ring finger and continued, splitting his right hand longitudinally from fingers to wrist. He shrieked almost soundlessly and fell back, cradling the two halves of his right hand in his left, blood pouring from the gash. Kirrah’s target was on his knees staring at the still-smoking red wound across his wrist. The third man reached for Peetha’s ankle and prepared to heave her off her feet, but the girl stepped forward, locked her knees around his neck and stood like a tree, trapping him face down on his hands and knees in front of her. Kirrah noted with approval her protégé’s use of the suit’s technology to lock her assailant in place. Two more guards reached to assist their trapped fellow, but stopped warily as Kirrah’s weapon swung to track them. She keyed the Unit Command channel and asked: