Fine, said her family. As it happened, Morgan was the third and last born of her particular generation of Kai-Anilas. Her eldest sister was in line to inherit the estates. Morgan didn't mind. She knew she would always be welcome on holiday at Oxmare. Her middle sister also found a distinctive course. That one joined the clergy.
And finally Morgan's family gave her a ship, an allowance, and their blessing. The dreamer went into private (and expensive) flight training, and came out the sharpest image of a remittance woman. Now she was a hired soldier. In spite of the source of their riches, her family really wasn't entirely sure of the respectability of her career.
The Kai-Anila family had fattened on aggressive centuries of supplying ships and weapons to the mercenary pilots who fought the symbolic battles and waged the surrogate wars that by-and-large settled the larger political wrangles periodically wracking Almira. Symbolic battles and surrogate wars were just as fatal as any other variety of armed clash to the downed, blasted, or lasered pilots, but at least the civilian populations were mostly spared. Slip-ups occasionally happened, but there's no system without its flaws. A little leery of societal gossip, the increasingly image-conscious Kai-Anila family started trying to give Morgan more money if she would come home to Oxmare less frequently for holidays. The neighbors—who watched the battlecasts avidly—were beginning to talk. The only problem was that Morgan couldn't be bribed. She was already sending home the bonuses she was earning for being an exemplary warrior. Her nieces and nephews worshiped her. She had a flare for armed combat, and Runagate couldn't have been a better partner in the fighter symbiosis.
Her family did keep trying to find her an estate she could mistress. It didn't work. The woman liked what she was doing. There would always be time later for mistressing, she told her parents and aunts and uncles.
In the meantime, she found another pilot she thought she might love. He turned out to be setting her up for an ambush in a complicated three-force continental brouhaha. She found herself unable to kill him. She never forgot.
Morgan found another person to love, but he accidentally got himself in her sights during a night-side skirmish on the moon Loathing. Runagate was fooled as well, and her lover died. For the time being, then, Morgan concentrated on simply being the best professional of her breed.
Temporarily she gave up on people. After all, she loved her ship.
"I don't think I love Bob," said Holt. "After all, he's just a ship." Holt looked flushed and mildly uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation.
"You haven't lived with him as long as I have with Runagate," Morgan. "Just wait."
"Maybe it's that you're another generation." Morgan's eyebrows raised and she looked at him peculiarly. He quickly added, "I mean, just by a few years. You spend a lot of time on appearances. Style."
Morgan shrugged. "I can back it up. You mean things like the sound and motion simulators?"
He nodded.
"Don't you have them installed?"
Holt said, "I never turn them on."
"You ought to try it. It's not just style, to come roaring down on your target from out of the sun. It helps the pilot. If nothing else, it's a morale factor. The meds say it's linked to your epinephrine feed, not to mention the old reptile cortex. It can be the edge that keeps you alive."
The man shook his head, unconvinced.
"Soul-baring done?"
They both turned. Tanzin stood in the doorway. Bogdan and Amaranth loomed behind her. "Mind if we bring our caf in here?"
The five of them sat and drank and talked and paced. It seemed like hours later that Dr. Epsleigh walked into the ready room. She handed them data-filled sheets. "The departure rosters," she said.
Amaranth scanned his and scowled. "I'm not blasting for Kirsi until the final wave?"
"Nor I?" said Tanzin.
Nor were Holt and Morgan.
"I'm going," said Bogdan, looking up from his sheet.
"Then I shall join you," Amaranth said firmly. He looked at Dr. Epsleigh. "I volunteer."
The administrator shook her head. "I hadn't wanted to save all my seasoned best for the last." She paused and smiled, and this time the smile was warm. "I want reserves who know what they're about—so both of you will go later."
The two large men looked dismayed.
"All your ships are still being readied," said Dr. Epsleigh. "Obviously I'm saving some of my best for last. Cheer up, Chmelnyckyj."
Bogdan looked put out. Morgan stared down at the table. Holt and Tanzin said nothing.
"I know the waiting's difficult," said Dr. Epsleigh, "but keep trying to relax. It will be a little while yet. Soon enough I'll send you out with your thimbles and forks and hope."
They looked at her with bewilderment, as she turned to go.
Morgan was the only one who nodded. Runagate shrilled in her ear, "I know, I know. It's from that snark poem."
"I hate waiting," Amaranth said toward the departing Dr. Epsleigh. "I should like to volunteer to join the first sortie."
The administrator ignored him. They waited.
Since the machine had no sense of whimsy, it couldn't have cared whether it was called a boojum, a snark, or anything else. It would respond to its own code from its fellow destruction machines or its base, but had no other interest in designation.
It detected the swarm of midges long before they arrived near Kirsi's orbit. The boojum registered the number, velocity, mass, and origin of the small ships, as well as noting the tell-tale hydrogen torches propelling them.
No problem.
The machine was done scouring Kirsi anyway. It registered a sufficiently high probability that no life-form beyond a virus or the occasional bacterium existed anywhere on the planetary surface.
The boojum accelerated out of its parking orbit and calculated a trajectory that would meet the advancing fleet at a precise intermediary point. Weapons systems checks showed no problems.
Time passed subjectively for the pilots of the first wave of Almiran ships.
Counters in the boojum ticked off precise calibrations of radioactive decay, but the machine felt no suspense at all.
The Almirans joined the battle when their ships were still hundreds of kilometers distant from the boojum. Their target was too far away to try lasers and charged beam weapons. Missiles pulled smoothly away from launching bays, guidance computers locking on the unmistakable target. If the guidance comps, in their primitive way, felt any rebellious qualm about firing on their larger cousin, there was no indication—just a few score fire-trails arcing away toward the boojum.
The missiles reached the point in space the machine had picked as the outer limit of its defensive sphere. The boojum used them for ranging practice. Beams speared out, catching half the incoming missiles at once. Dozens of weapons flared in sparkling sprays and faded. The machine erected shields, wavery nets of violet gauze, and most of the remaining missiles sputtered out A handful of missiles had neared the machine before the nets of energy went up and were already inside the shields. More beams flicked out and the missiles died like insects in a flame. One survivor impacted on the boojum's metal surface. Minor debris mushroomed slowly outward, but the machine did sot appear affected.
"That's one tough borker," said the first wave leader to his fellows.
Then the boojum began alternating its protective fields in phase with its offensive weapons. Beams lanced toward the nearing Almirans. Some pilots died instantly, bodies disintegrating with the disrupted structures of their ships. Others took evasive action, playing out complex arabesques with the dancing, killing beams. More missiles launched. More lasers and beam weapons were directed toward the boojum. Fireworks proliferated.
But eventually everyone died. No pilot survived. Information telemetry went back to Almira, so there was a record, but no fighters or pilots of the first wave returned.
The boojum lived.
Its course toward Almira did not alter.
The second wave of Almiran figh
ters held its position, waiting for counsel, waiting for orders, waiting. The third and final wave sat on the ground.
"I won't say that's what we expected would happen, but it was certainly a possibility we feared." Dr. Epsleigh turned away from the information screens. The others in the room were quiet, deadly silent, as an occasional sob escaped. Faces set in grim lines. Tears pooled in more than a few eyes.
"Now what?" said Tanzin quietly.
Morgan asked, "Will we join the second wave of fighters?"
Most of the hundred pilots in the briefing hall nodded. Weight shifted. Chairs scraped noisily. Noses were blown into handkerchiefs.
Holt said, "What is the plan now?"
"Bad odds I can live with," said Amaranth, stretching his massive arms, joints cracking. "Assured mortality does not thrill me."
Dr. Epsleigh surveyed the room. "I've conferred with the Princess Elect and every strategist, no matter how oddball, we can round up." Given time, we might be able to rig heavier armaments, plan incredibly Byzantine strategies. There is no time," She stopped.
"So?" said Tanzin.
"We're open to ideas." Dr. Epsleigh looked around the room again, scrutinizing each face in turn.
The silence seemed to dilate endlessly.
Until Morgan Kai-Anila cleared her throat. "An idea," she said. Everyone stared at her. "Not me." She slowly pointed. "Him."
And everyone stared at Holt.
"I don't think it will work," said Holt stubbornly.
"Have you got a better idea?" Morgan said.
The young man shook his head in apparent exasperation. "It's like a bunch of kids trying to mount a colonization flight. They borrow their uncle's barn and start building a starship back behind the house."
Morgan said, "I hope my suggested plan is a bit more realistic."
"Hope? That machine out there just killed a whole borking planet!"
The woman said stiffly, "I know my plan has a chance."
"But how much of one?"
"Holt, can you come up with better?" Tanzin looked at him questioningly—almost, Holt thought, accusingly. He said nothing, only slowly shook his head no. "In the final seconds before a combat run," Tanzin said, "you've got to choose a course." She shrugged. "If Occam's razor says your only option is faith, then that's what you fly with. Okay?" With her one good eye, she surveyed the others.
"All right, then." Morgan looked over at Dr. Epsleigh. The four of them had adjourned to a smaller office to consult.
"Can you arrange transport? The fighters would be faster, but I doubt there's any place close to set down."
Dr. Epsleigh punched one final key on the desk terminal. "It's already done. There'll be a windhover waiting as soon as you get outside. Is it necessary you all go?"
"I really would like to accompany Holt," said Morgan. She glanced at Tanzin.
"I may as well stay here. If this cockamamie plan works, I can start the preparations from this end. Just keep me linked and informed."
Dr. Epsleigh said, "I'll get a larger transport dispatched to follow you north. If you can make progress and see some future in continuing this scheme, the transport will have plenty of space for your, um, friends."
"Are the villagers expecting us in North Terrea?" asked Holt.
Dr. Epsleigh nodded. Her tousled black hair fell into her eyes. She shook it back and blinked. Evidently she had been awake for a long time. "They're under a most extreme request to cooperate. I don't think you'll have any difficulty. Besides, you're the fair-haired local boy who made good, true?"
"See?" Morgan smiled tiredly and took Holt's arm. "You can come home again."
"Well," said Morgan, "I admit it's not the sort of jewel that Oxmare is." North Terrea sat in awesome desolation in the middle of a cold and windswept semi-arctic plain. The town was surrounded by ore processors, rolling mills, cracking towers flaring jets of flame, and all manner of rusting heavy machinery.
"It's grown since I was last here," observed Holt.
"What brought colonists here first?" Morgan began to decelerate the windhover. The craft skimmed along two meters above frozen earth.
Holt shrugged. "Molybdenum, adamantium, titanium, it's hard to say. These plains used to be one of the 'Reen's great hunting preserves. That ended quickly. North Terrea was built in a day or so, the 'Reee were driven off, the game mostly left of its own accord. That which stayed either got shot by human hunters or was poisoned by industrial chemicals."
"Self-interest run rampant," mused Morgan. "Did no one ever try to put the brakes on?"
"I suspect a few did." Holt looked vague, almost wistful. "I don't think they got too far. There were livings to be made here, fortunes to be wrested from the ground." His tone turned angry and he looked away from her to the fast-expanding image of North Terrea.
"I'm sorry," she said, words almost too soft to hear.
They were indeed expected. A small group of townspeople waited for them as Morgan set the windhover down at North Terrea's tiny landing field. At first Morgan couldn't tell the gender of the members of the welcoming party. Dressed in long fur coats, they were obscured by falling snow. The great, light flakes drifted slowly down like leaves from autumn trees.
Morgan cat the windhover's fans and opened the hatch to a nearly palpable miasma of ice-cold industrial stench. She squinted against, the flakes tickling her face and realized that some of the greeters wore thick beards. Presumably they were the men.
"I hope those coats are synthetics," said Holt, as much to himself as to Morgan, "or dyed skelk."
"I think they are," said Morgan, avoiding passing an expert opinion. They don't have any of the quality and gloss my parents' coats do, she carefully did not say aloud.
The greeting party trudged toward them across the landing pad, packed snow squeaking beneath their boots. Holt and Morgan climbed out of the cockpit and down past the ticking, cooling engine sounds.
"Holt, my boy," said the man in the forefront, opening his arms for an embrace. Holt ignored the gesture and stood quietly, arms at his sides. The man tried to recover by gesturing expansively. "It's been a while since we've seen you, son."
"Haven't the checks been arriving?" asked Holt.
"Punctually, my boy," said the man. "Our civic fortunes rise with boring regularity, thanks to you and that fey ship of yours." He turned to address Morgan. "I forget my manners. I'm Kaseem MacDonald, the mayor hereabouts. The 'cast from Wolverton informed us you'd be Morgan Kai-Anila, true?"
Morgan inclined her head slightly.
"We've certainly heard of you," said the mayor. "We're all great fans."
Morgan again nodded modestly.
"There isn't much to do of a winter night other than to keep tabs on the narrowcast and see what fighters like you and our boy here are doing." Mayor MacDonald chuckled and clapped Holt on the shoulder. "Sure hope you two never have to go up against each other.''
Holt spoke in a low voice. "I think there are arrangements for refueling us?"
"Plenty of time for that," said the mayor, his head bobbing jovially as if it were on a spring. "Our grounders'll tank you up again during the feast. Heh, grounders." He chuckled again. "We even pick up the talk from the 'casts."
"What feast?" asked Holt and Morgan, almost together.
"We don't have time to fool around," said Morgan.
"I believe the message from the capital was a priority request," said Holt.
The other North Terreans looked on. Morgan didn't think they looked either particularly happy or hospitable. Mayor MacDonaid showed teeth when he grinned. "You need sustenance just as much as the windhover does. Besides, you can meet some of my local supporters and I know they'd love to meet you. I'm running for re-election again, you know."
"We can't do it," said Holt. "There's no time."
"I'm not saying a long dinner," said the mayor. "Just time to eat and say hello to the folks and be seen. Everybody can use a little reminder of where those venture investment checks come from."
<
br /> "No," said Morgan. "I don't think so. We've got to—"
The mayor interrupted her smoothly. "—to get some nourishment and relaxation before continuing whatever your urgent mission is."
"No."
"Yes," sad the major "It's necessary. You'd be shocked, I'm sure, to learn how erratic the ground crew here can be when they aren't working refreshed and rested."
Morgan said, "Why, this is—"
This time it was Holt who interrupted her. "We'll take refreshment," he said, his gaze locked on the mayor's. "It will be a brief delay "
Mayor MacDonald beamed. "I'm sure your refueling will be as brief, and extremely complete and efficient."
Holt glanced at Morgan and smiled coldly at the mayor. "Then let's be about it."
The mayor waved toward the terminal building. "It isn't far, and warm transport awaits."
As the group trudged off across the field, it seemed to Morgan that she was feeling something like a sense of capture. The fur-coated North Terreans surrounding her reminded Morgan of great sullen animals. Their fur might be synthetic fiber, but it still stank in the moist fog that hung low over the town.
Starships descending atop stilts of flame.
Cargoes of frozen optimists being sledded into chromed defrosting centers.
Towns and villages carved out of tundra winterscapes.
The occasional city erected in the somewhat more temperate equatorial belt.
A developing world torn from wilderness.
The triumph of a people.
Heaps of slain 'Reen piled beyond the revetments of a fort constructed from ice blocks.
Morgan stared at the towering starships. "That's not right," she said bemusedly. "The big ships stayed in orbit. The shuttles brought the passengers and supplies down. Then the larger vessels were disassembled and ferried down to be used as raw materials. I learned all that when I was three."
"It's artistic license," Holt answered, his own gaze still fixed on the scene of the slaughtered 'Reen. "Historical accuracy is not the virtue most prized in North Terrea." In the fresco in front of him, the attackers had outnumbered the beleaguered humans by at least ten to one.
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