Nightfall

by Moshe Ben-Or

  By a series of what could only be termed outright miracles, Shin Takawa’s optimistically named Procurement Department had finally gotten its hands on a smart fiber mill in relatively good condition. He could now, potentially, make large numbers of ponchos, camouflage tents, tarps and other such equipment, assuming he could find some source for the more specialized nanites. There was more to a poncho than programmable polymer. Civilian clothing it was not. And, of course, moving even part of the machinery up into the mountains would require enormous effort, not to mention setting it up, calibrating it, training the workers…

  He only had two process engineers and neither of them had worked in textiles. Maybe Marco could track some s-fiber people down for him. He had the records of all the Local Force people they’d trained this year. One of them might know something about the textile business, or know someone who did. Or maybe one of Patty’s pet hacendados had a former s-fiber engineer hoeing beans in his work camp.

  He could try to contact the resistance in the city, but he didn’t trust them. They were too amateurish, those would-be revolutionaries, with their clandestine radio station always less than one step ahead of the Sanchez police and their splurges of furtive flier-pasting. In the whole year, they’d only managed two serious actions, and in return they’d lost nearly a hundred people, by his count.

  Granted, that Denero girl made for a really nice, photogenic martyr, and the heroic-looking holograms on the resistance posters were actually quite well done, but those two facts didn’t make up for the lack of a respectable bodycount. Twelve enemy for ninety-eight of your own was a tad much, even for Stage One guerrilla warfare.

  No, what he really needed was an outside source of equipment. All of the legendary leaders of partisan armies in a position similar to his own had possessed a pipeline to the outside. From the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Three Star Run, the basics were the same. To fight a Great Power, one needed the technical support of another Great Power.

  Sadly, thought Yosi as he walked down the hallway, the one Great Power whose support he’d most counted upon was nowhere in evidence.

  Leclerk’s lifepod was just around the corner now.

  The little vessel’s communication beacon was the only device he had capable of transmitting off-planet in a stealthy fashion. Normally, a recovery ship would send a code group to all the pods that might be hiding in the immediate vicinity and only then would the pods begin transmitting. The normal mode could be overridden by the medical computer if the occupant of the pod was incapacitated and the machine decided that the only chance of saving the human’s life was to transmit a loudly obvious universal distress signal. The occupant could manually override the system as well, both to stealthily communicate and to loudly shout for help, should he so choose.

  There was always hope that the enemy would spare a prisoner, after all. A civilized enemy, like the Empire, for example, would generally do so. But if one were fighting barbarians - the Archduchy of Omicron came instantly to mind - such a hope was slim indeed.

  Every few days, at random, they would turn the transmitter on for a few moments and send a burst out into the void, just barely short enough to avoid triangulation. Yosi had composed the message long ago, though he updated it periodically. The receiver was always on.

  There was always someone watching the pod, of course. The problem was that Yosi could count those among his troops literate in a League language on the fingers of his hands.

  Everyone qualified for pod duty was losing hope. After a year of waiting for a transmission, watching the receiver was becoming just another onerous chore, a boring waste of valuable time in the eyes of many.

  Yosi had made it a habit, lately, to daily stop by the pod at a random hour, both to remind his people of the importance of this task and to ensure that they stayed on their toes. Once, late at night, he had caught a man asleep.

  Today was not a transmission day according to the pod’s random number generator. The woman on duty looked up at her commander in surprise he pushed away the curtain that separated the pod room from the rest of the cave complex. Obviously, she didn’t expect him to still be prowling the corridors fifteen minutes before Kol Nidre.

  “Blessed are you, Adonai, who shows mercy in judgment!” muttered Yosi as he walked up to the pod and entered the transmit code.

  Surely today of all days one could hope for a miracle, however small.

  The pod blinked a transmit light at him as the code burst went out.

  The messenger came while the last shofar blast of the day still echoed through the cave that served as a synagogue. The pod’s receiver had decoded four sentences:

  Your message received. Will advise higher. Gmar Hatimah Tovah, and May the Allmother Keep You.

  --Prizrak 17

  Yosi grinned like an idiot all through the Kiddush. Nobody noticed. Or, if they did, they didn’t say.

  * 56 *

  It was three in the morning. Again.

  The news of the Zin retreat from Hadassah had demanded a speech from Her Ladyship, and then the evening meeting had run over as usual, and then Lord von Volmer had to be received in person regardless, and then that urgent message from Rotsmeer had come in…

  And through it all, she had to decide, and command, and never falter.

  The Baroness was Miranda herself. The Baroness was indestructible. The Baroness was indefatigable. The Baroness always had an answer for every problem. Nothing fazed the Baroness.

  Even when she had no answers. Even when she couldn’t go on. Even when all she really wanted was to throw the lot of generals and admirals and ministers and noble lords out of the wardroom and curl up atop the map table with the nearest reasonably-soft object for a pillow. Or maybe just break into tears from sheer fatigue.

  “Heavier than mountains is the Diadem!” quoted Isabella wearily as the stateroom door hissed shut behind her.

  The very weight of this world rested upon her shoulders. Upon hers alone, for there could be no substitute and no equal.

  One who dared mount the Gothic Throne could, forever after, neither share his burdens, nor shed them. The Diadem condemned, for life.

  Whom, after all, could one such as she trust, among all Mirandans?

  A sister, a consort, a bosom friend? She had none of these.

  And even if she had possessed some such, what of it? Six centuries of Mirandan history provided ample cautionary tales for her edification, with nary a happy ending. Even the First Baron had ended up fighting a war against his own flesh and blood.

  She had dreamt, once, that it might be different for her. There had been one. One not of Miranda. She had hoped.

  But he was now forever gone. Passed out of the world, to that distant land from which no traveler returned. And all her hopes had gone with him.

  She was alone, now and for all eternity, upon this pinnacle whence she had elevated herself. And she would bear the burden alone, until one day she stumbled, like all the others had stumbled before her.

  For it had ever taken only one stumble. Just one false step. The weight of the Diadem ensured it. The Lion ate his bearers.

  She really should eat something, thought the Baroness of Miranda as she plopped bonelessly down onto her bunk. She’d had nothing all day, but for a few slices of buttered toast wolfed down as the six-o’clock battle update smoothly segued into the seven-o’clock planning meeting. But she was so tired…

  The insistent beeping of her Valet broke through the darkness. There was someone at the door. The clock on the bulkhead read 03:29.

  “What?” snapped Isabella angrily, sitting up just as the merciless AI brought the lights to full brightness.

  “I... I have been ordered to deliver this message into your hands personally, Your Ladyship,” quavered the Able Seaman out in the hallway, holding up a smart paper envelope marked with the black-and-magenta candystripe of ULTRA EYES ONLY, “It meets your PIR number seven, with immediate notification criteria.”

  Isabella’s heart tried to jum
p out of her chest. Before she forced it back down, her suddenly balled-up stomach did its damnedest to try and climb up the walls of her esophagus.

  Priority Intelligence Requirement Seven with immediate notification...

  “The envelope appears authentic, Your Ladyship,” curtly nodded the palace guardsman who stood behind the armored secbot, between the poor boy and her stateroom door.

  Her Valet confirmed it also, citing the ship’s AI.

  The message had been received by the ship sixty-eight seconds ago. The contents had been committed immediately to smart paper after passing the separated meme screen, and just as immediately purged from all shipboard databanks.

  ULTRA EYES ONLY. The highest possible level of classification. On par with Treasures data.

  Her hands were trembling. She forced them to stillness with an effort of will.

  “You may approach,” pronounced Isabella regally, ordering her ship suit to morph from comfortable flannel pajamas back into the field-gray-and-brown uniform with the red royal flashes that had become her signature look over the past ten months.

  As the door slid back into place, a wave of her hand sent the half-dozen spider secbots who hid unobtrusively around the stateroom skittering back into their lair between the wall and her bunk. The Valet disappeared. Red-to-green lights ran from her secretaire, settling, by way of a reminder display, around the perimeter of the door, and in a single line around the walls.

  The separate AI fiefdom that was Her Ladyship’s personal stateroom was now as completely isolated from all things external as artifice could manage without abandoning ship.

  The envelope unfolded as the smart paper’s sensors authenticated her biometric identity.

  It was a covertly intercepted League communication, addressed to no less a personage than the Chief of Operations of their Combined General Staff. It was possible, reflected Isabella, that she was reading the message before its intended recipient.

  Her Ladyship’s PIR Seven was satisfied by a short, separately encrypted paragraph appended to the end of the main message. Only seven people in the entire universe possessed the Signet needed to decrypt it. And not one of the other six had any clue that there even existed a seventh.

  She did not feel the paper leaving her hands. Nor did she hear the soft rustle as it folded itself back up while still in the air, or the tiny thump as the envelope hit the top of the map table. Isabella barely noticed, with an abstract detachment, that her knees had buckled, and she was now sprawled out nervelessly upon the softness of her bunk.

  For the first time in her adult life, or perhaps for the second, Hope had won the toss over Probability.

  “Gods above!” muttered the baroness, “Gods above!

  “Three thousand days. Three thousand, three hundred and twenty-one days...”

  Isabella smiled. The smile turned instantly into a sob.

  “You just wait, you bastards!” she choked out, “You just wait!”

  And not a single sentient being, whether biological or cybernetic, stood witness as the iron-hearted, indestructible War Goddess of Miranda cried helplessly into her pillow, wracked by a storm of rekindled hope.

  End of Book One

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