Nightfall

by Moshe Ben-Or

  He’d won. They’d lost. The end.

  Nice of them to bring him all those goodies, though. Made for a tidy little cache. Weapons, ammo, food, armor, spare ponchos, everything a fellow might need for a nice, refreshing walk in the woods. Not bad at all for around two weeks’ work.

  Yosi had kept a rifle, twelve hundred rounds, and a few grenades. Between that, his pistol and some food, it felt like a nice, comfortable fifteen kilos or so. He smiled, happily clearing his mind of everything save the freshness of morning air, the pristine beauty of alpine wilderness, and the steady rhythm of his steps.

  Only to stop twenty kilometers later, frozen in mid-stride. It was as if someone had hit him over the head with a club. There were people up ahead. Many people. He could feel their minds on the other side of a low ridge. There was a road down there, according to his map. The old firebreak would make a good place to talk. Anyone trying to rush him across the narrow band of clear dirt wouldn’t make it three steps. The trees on his side of the road would give him plenty of overhead concealment, in case the aliens’ aerial patrols came around looking for him again. Perhaps he could get something worthwhile out of these folk. Didn’t feel like it, but it was worth a try, anyway.

  Clenching his teeth, he pushed ahead. Within moments, he could see them.

  They sat, huddled by the side of the road. Faces gray with fatigue. Clothes gray with mud. Adults too tired to walk any further. Children too tired to even cry. About them scattered the refuse of past lives. Boxes, suitcases, a lonely painting in a splintered, once-gilded frame, plastic bags stuffed hurriedly with clothes and silverware, shoes, broken toys…

  As Yosi walked down this row of faces -- angry or begging or terrified or uncaring -- this row of pathetic, mud-stained trash, pity came crashing down upon him in waves too large to overcome.

  Who were they? Why were they here? That was unimportant, even to them. A hunch, an instinct already ancient when the first primate climbed out of a tree to take a first, hesitant step into the savanna, had told them to run. And run they did. Blindly, instinctively, without thought or purpose, until they could run no further. Now they sat, in a blind, uncaring stupor, waiting they knew not for what.

  The pressure of their minds overwhelmed him. To them, he was all but divine. He had food, weapons, a purpose. He had energy. And they had nothing but hunger and sickness and fatigue.

  They wanted him to help them. Feed them, heal them, tell them what to do. But above all they wanted to turn back the clock, to wake up and see the old world around them, to have this terrible nightmare come to an end. Even now, buried in the deepest shadows of despair they hoped that, somehow, the clouds would part and the sun of their past, happy lives would once again shine forth. In a single instant, they had lost their whole world. And they could think of naught better to do than to sit and stare and wish for that instant to be undone. As if wishes were fishes…

  His mind overloading, Yosi set his poncho to maximum stealth with a violent twitch and ran as fast as his legs could carry him. Blindly away, as far as he could from this revolting pit of helplessness and despair.

  In his rush, he nearly stumbled over two interlocked figures. A man and a woman. No, a teenage girl. The man’s pants hung about his ankles. His hands had ripped apart the girl’s mud-spattered pink tee shirt and were now busy with her shorts. Both struggled silently, furtively, as if a single sound would bring nuclear annihilation raining down upon their heads.

  But there was more to it than that. The girl was projecting fear, radiating anger. She had the Talent. That was what had brought Yosi here. Even in his blind flight, he’d heard her silent screams, subconsciously, and had come unthinkingly toward them. The sheer strength of her Talent amazed him. If she could focus her emotions and throw them at her opponent, the man would probably die of a heart attack on the spot.

  As all this flashed through his mind, Yoseph pulled out his vibro and took a desultory swipe at the would-be rapist’s neck.

  The head came rolling off the man’s shoulders, face frozen in surprise. A crimson fountain of fresh blood gushed out of the wound, showering over the girl. She pushed the twitching corpse off just as the sphincter muscles relaxed, adding the stench of excrement to the coppery tang of blood.

  Strangely, the girl’s fear only intensified. Weakly, she tried to push herself away, hands slipping in bloody mud.

  Suddenly, Yosi realized that his good intentions weren’t necessarily so obvious at first glance.

  With his poncho in maximum stealth, he was, for all intents and purposes, invisible and silent to the untrained and unaided senses. Perhaps, while he was running full tilt, the girl might have seen some kind of faint disturbance in the air, or a few moving branches. In the exact moment when he’d struck off the rapist’s head, she might have, for a split-second, perceived the totally silent, ghostly fractal line of the vibro blade slicing through the man’s flesh. Maybe, if the angle had been just right and her senses were especially sharp, there might have been some kind of fleeting, mirage-like suggestion of an arm to go with the ghostly blade.

  But that would be it. For all she knew, he was a visitor from the netherworld. Or, worse, an alien soldier. For that matter, the fact that he was human wouldn’t exactly declare him safe in her eyes, either.

  Yosi turned his poncho back into garment mode. The camouflage layer instantly reverted to its preset League Woodland pattern. The smart fabric reconfigured itself, turning a tight-fitting, all-covering bodysuit back into a simple, loose, hooded overall. The vibro, tuned to the poncho, stopped trying to match the appearance of empty air and turned the bluish-gray of pretend steel.

  The girl gasped. To her, he had suddenly materialized out of thin air.

  Yoseph sheathed the vibro and pulled back his hood.

  The girl’s mouth half-opened.

  He could feel the raw torrent of fear coursing through her. Any moment now, she would scream. And if she started, she might not be able to stop...

  “Please,” Yosi flinched, dragging out his best Paradisian, “No noise much. You give me headache.”

  The girl’s terror mixed with confusion for a moment, then suddenly just… vanished.

  “Just get it over with,” she said, falling limply back.

  There was nothing but fatigue in her voice now. Somehow, her mind seemed to wall itself up from the rest of the universe. Yosi could feel nothing. It scared him.

  What’s more, he didn’t know Paradisian well enough to carry on the conversation.

  It would have been nice to be able to rely on his poncho. But, alas, he hadn’t updated the poncho translator in ages. His net glasses did the translating, so that’s where the language updates had gone. The poncho just rode along, pretending to be a tee shirt, unless and until he needed it to fight. A surprise EMP barrage was the one thing he hadn’t planned for.

  Most upper and middle class Paradisians spoke Imperial Standard. Quite a few spoke at least one of the League’s three official languages, as well. The lower classes relied on the translator modules in their net glasses, which wouldn’t function anymore.

  So, what circle did this girl come from? Would she understand Standard or Hebrew, or Zemelsky, or French? Yosi finally bet on Hebrew, simply out of reflex.

  Slowly, in his gentlest, calmest voice, he said: “I am not going to hurt you. Honest.”

  He tried to smile, but it came out a crooked, embarrassed grin. He tried to project, but just couldn’t concentrate well enough.

  Hoping that he was projecting after all, subconsciously, Yoseph tried the first thing that came to mind.

  “Look, if I was going to do anything, I’d have done it by now. Here, I’ll help you get up.”

  His hand stopped partway.

  The girl had curled herself up into a little ball and sat there, shivering like a tiny, scared rodent. She stared blankly downward into the mud, seeing there something visible only to herself.

  Did she understand him? It felt like she did, but was he sure?<
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  All of a sudden, her hands jumped toward him.

  In the blink of an eye, she had seized hold of the vibro at Yosi’s belt, pulled it out of its sheath and pointed it at her would-be rescuer. Her eyes now focused intensely on Yoseph, following his every move.

  Yosi jumped back a good three meters, as if stung. His rifle came up of its own volition. His finger tightened on the trigger…

  In the last instant, just as he was about to kill her, their eyes met.

  Looking back at that moment, Yosi would never fully understand why he’d refrained from pulling that trigger. It was as if an electric shock had passed from those frightened gray eyes to the darkness of his own. And perhaps in the other direction, also.

  Their gazes held each other trapped. The outside world dissolved away like a mirage.

  There was nothing. Nothing in the entire universe save him and her. Her eyes and his.

  “You put that down, girl!” growled Yosi, still scooting backward and off to the side, almost at a run, rifle pointed unerringly at the middle of the girl’s forehead, “You put that down right now!”

  She held the handle with both hands, as if the weapon were really the dagger it pretended to be at first glance. She had no poncho to control the thing with. But there were still the emergency controls. She just needed to squeeze the little twin safety buttons on the pommel and twist to activate the manual interface.

  Duke Reginald had given him that vibro after Miranda. It was a Golden Age relic. No one could make its like, anymore. It could morph faster than the eye could follow, to a maximum length of six meters. Even at full blade extension, a step lunge with it would pierce battleship plate like tissue paper.

  Wordlessly, the girl put the vibro down on the ground next to her feet.

  “Careful of the blade. You touch it, it’ll cut off your foot,” warned Yosi.

  “Scoot back. Nice and slow.”

  “Please don’t leave,” whispered the girl pleadingly, as he bent to retrieve the weapon.

  She really didn’t understand what she’d done, thought Yosi. Just a scared little girl trying to protect herself, nothing more.

  Besides, he was responsible for her now, wasn’t he? A man was responsible for those whom he rescued.

  He wasn’t sure what she was scared of more, him leaving or him staying. He didn’t think she knew, either.

  “My name is Yosi,” he smiled, trying his best to be friendly and nonthreatening.

  As far as it was possible, he reflected ironically, for a hundred-and-fifteen-kilo armed man to appear nonthreatening to a half-naked little girl less than half his size. Especially under the present circumstances.

  “Mirabelle,” swallowed the girl nervously.

  “Are you comfortable with Hebrew or should we switch languages?” asked Yosi.

  “I speak Standard, if that’s easier.”

  “With all the League tourists in San Angelo, my mother insisted that I learn Hebrew and Spartan,” replied the girl, “You don’t look like you’re from Sparta to me.”

  Yosi chuckled. Those who didn’t know much about Sparta, even many League citizens, always assumed that there was only one mutually-intelligible “Spartan” across the Kingdom, the way there was only one mutually-intelligible Hebrew across both New Israel and Haven. But, in the real world, Spartans spoke forty-five different languages, almost as many as Jagobarans. The Unification might have subordinated the planet to Zemelsk, but outside the Core Duchies, the culturally-related parts of southern Ledonia and the King’s military, Zemelsky appeared only in school lessons and government documents.

  He glanced down at the corpse at his feet.

  Something wasn’t right. It took him a second to figure out what it was.

  Those weren’t pants. It was a poncho. Set to be a League Woodland Pattern overall, same as his. Piss and shit all over it, now. The pommel of a vibro poked out from the folds. The bastard had worn it on the back of the hip. There was a military rucksack off to the side, sitting right next to a pink flannel blanket that looked like it belonged in some ten year old girl’s bedroom. And a Znamensky.

  “Imbecile!” cursed Yosi silently at himself, “Shit for brains, you’re lucky to be alive!”

  Asshole didn’t want a crowd standing around waiting to take turns, did he? Asked his buds to take a walk. Or maybe he was their scout, machinegun or not. Wanted the juicy little bit for himself before the boss called first dibs, eh?

  Didn’t matter. He could fix this. Head back in the game, dammit!

  The girl reached for the blanket at his feet, but Yosi snatched it up first.

  He needed something to wipe off the dead bastard’s poncho. Hard reset and a wipe and a rinse in the creek, that would get the thing clean enough for the girl to wear.

  The Znamensky was the Shock Corps version. Thank God for small favors.

  Creek was… that way.

  * 11 *

  Karl von Rennekampff took another sip of coffee as he considered the fleet readiness report. It was not, he mused, a bad brew at all, especially for microgravity. Somehow, his steward had managed to carry the Admiral’s personal coffee supply along through the four emergency transfers of flag.

  Premium beans from his estate on Helligoland Island. The best coffee on Miranda. A luxury export on par with the fine wines from Her Ladyship’s personal estates. A tiny indulgence for a condemned man.

  Paradise had fallen in a single day. But the Leaguers had tried to hold on to Miranda. You had to give it to them, they really had tried. Ten of their twelve active duty Line Squadrons had seen action here over the past two weeks. Twelve of the seventeen Long Range Action Squadrons, too, and the three Category One Reserve Line Squadrons that just happened to have been called up for routine training at Sparta and New Israel when the war broke out. Even the Hector, that magnificent beast, had cut short her shakedown cruise to fight here.

  For two weeks straight, the jump points had rippled with non-stop action. The great array around Oberon and Titania first, and then, as the enemy came closer, the secondary and tertiary arrays around the outer gas giants as well. How they had gotten them was a mystery, but whatever almanac jump solutions the humans had, the aliens had also.

  They wanted the primary jump array, Miranda’s great blessing and curse; and they would possess it, whatever the cost.

  Again and again they came, like storm waves smashing against the black cliffs of Helligoland. For every warship the League lost, the enemy lost four. But they had the ships to lose, more ships than anyone had seen since the end of the Götterdämmerungskrieg, and there was, it seemed, no limit to their will to lose them.

  From the atmospheres of the twin gas giants all the way to the asteroids of the Near Faerie, and beyond to the orbit of Puck, a new ring of mangled metal and shattered ceramic cluttered the jump points. You could see it with the naked eye from his orbit among the Far Faerie. Shiny fireballs exploding among the angry striped reds and yellows of Oberon. Fiery streaks lighting up the cool, placid blue of Titania. Bright, sudden flashes of white in the darkness as cosmic rays hit bits of shield matter and escaped jump fuel. The debris of smashed-up ships in their hundreds, and mangled corpses in their thousands, slowly spiraling down into oblivion.

  The Leaguers had stripped every other front to the bare bones. Along the chain of fortified outposts and fueling stations they had built between Hadassah and Paradise, swarms of light combatants from their Patrol Squadrons had fallen ever back, trading space for time. For six days there had been ground fighting on Timon, their own people fighting and dying on one of their own worlds, but they would not transfer forces from Miranda. A good quarter of everything they had brought was gone already, but they would not have retreated from here over those losses, either.

  It wasn’t out of the goodness of their hearts that they defended his homeland with such ferocity. Nor did a tender love for the Joint Guarantee they had signed with the Imperials at the end of the Pretender’s War motivate them in the least. It was s
imple self-interest that gave the Leaguers such courage. If Miranda fell, the war would come to Volantis and New Helena, and thence to Sparta and New Israel themselves.

  The League was mobilizing everything it had. There were Category One squadrons to replace the active force’s losses here already, and even a couple of Category Two squadrons that had managed to beat their six-week clock. Not since the First Imperial War had any of the Members called upon third and fourth category reservists, but both the twelve-week and the twenty-four-week clock were running now. But none of that would save Karl von Rennekampff. His clock had run out.

  From Paradise, the enemy had advanced in every direction at once, in numbers that simply boggled the mind. The Empire reeled under their blows, and the Archduchy’s fleets had crumbled so fast that no news of the Omicronians had been heard of since the fourth day of the war. Xing fell within the first week. Lingjao had held a little longer. And now Tienchen had fallen as well. From Tienchen, the enemy threatened New Helena by the back door. And two hours ago news had arrived that there was fighting at the Hadassah jump points. Miranda had been bypassed.

  This was the last bulb of coffee. The end of the beans, and the end of his life. The end of the Fleet, too. Very fitting. It would be nice to have gravity for a bit, but there was no sense in warming up the ship-wide gravity generators only to turn them off again in half an hour. Ready or not, the Kriegsraumvloot would clear for action one last time.

  The Leaguers were going. You could see the flashes of their jump drives as they transitioned out, squadron by squadron. They would fight for New Helena and Volantis now, and for Hadassah. Everything in between, well…

  Some would stay for a bit, of course, but not enough to hold Miranda. Just enough to give the aliens one last bloody nose, to slow them down for a little while and then fall back toward New Helena. He could have been going with them. But she…

  She would not go.

  Her father would have gone. Would have sat in some palace on Sparta with a Government in Exile, and diddled his servant girls and maybe made the occasional speech for his magnanimous masters, waiting for the war to end in the hopes that the Leaguers would throw him a bone in exchange for his obedient tail-wagging. But she was made of sterner stuff.