The Long Night df-10

by Poul Anderson

  Was it coincidence that she took her new station soon after Ridenour joined the raiders? Tonight we find out, Karlsarm vowed.

  The blaster cannon stood on a bare ridge, barrel etched gaunt across the Milky Way. His group crouched under the last tree and peered. One of Noach’s beasts could go unobserved among the scattered bushes, but not a man. And the beasts weren’t able to describe what went on at the controls of a machine.

  —Could he—”

  Karlsarm chopped off Evagail’s whisper with a hiss. The gun was in action. He saw the thing move through a slow arc and heard the purr of its motor. It was tracking. But what was it locked onto? And why had no energy bolt stabbed forth?

  “He’s not fixingto shoot up the camp,” Karlsarm muttered. “That’d be ridiculous. He couldn’t get off more than two shots before he was dead. But what else?”

  “Should I rush?” Evagail asked.

  “I think you’d better,” Karlsarm said, “and let’s hope the, damage hasn’t already been done.”

  He must endure the agony of a minute or two while she gathered the resources of her Skill—not partially, as she often did in everyday life, but totally. He heard a measured intake of breath, sensed rhythmic muscular contrations, smelled sharp adrenalin. Then she exploded.

  She was across the open ground in a blur—Ridenour could not react before she was upon him. He cried out and ram She overhauled him in two giantess bounds. Her hands closed. He struggled, and he was not a weak man. But she picked him up by the wrists and ankles and carried him like a rag, doll. Her face was a white mask in the starlight. “Lie still,” she said in a voice not her own, “or I will break you.”

  “Don’t. Evagail, please.” Noach dared stroke an iron-hard arm. “Do be careful,” he said to Ridenour’s aghast upside-down stare. “She’s dangerous in this condition. It’s akin to hysterical rage, you know—mobilization of the body’s ultimate resources, which are quite astound. ing—but under conscious control. Nevertheless, the personality is affected. Think of her as an angry catavray.”

  “Amok,” rattled in Ridenour’s throat. “Berserk.” He shivered.

  “I don’t recognize those words,” Noach said, “but I repeat, her Skill consists in voluntary hysteria. At the moment, she could crush your skull between her hands. She might do it, too, if you provoke her.”

  They reached the gun. Evagail cast the Terran to earth, bone-rattlingly hard, and yanked him, back on his feet by finger and thumb around his nape. He was taller than she, but she appeared to tower over him, over all three men. Starlight crackled in her coiled hair. Her. eyes were bright and blind.

  Noach leaned close to Ridenour, read the terror upon him, and said mildly, “Please tell us what you were doing.”

  In some incredible fashion, Ridenour got the nerve to yell, “Nothing! I couldn’t sleep, I c-came here to pass the time—”

  Karlsarm turned from his examination of the blaster. “You’ve got this thing tracking that ship in orbit,” he said.

  “Yes. I—foolish of me—I apologize—only for fun—”

  “You had the trigger locked,” Karlsarm said. “Energy was pouring out of the muzzle. But no flash, no light, no ozone smell.” He gestured. “I turned it off. I also notice you’ve opened the chamber and replaced the primary modulator with this little gadget. Did you hear him talk, Evagail, before you charged?”

  Her strange flat tone said: “‘—entire strength of the outbacker army on this continent is concentrated here and plans to remain for several days at least. I don’t suggest a multi-megatonner. It’d annihilate them, all right, but they are subjects of His Majesty and potentially more valuable than most. It’d also do great ecological damage—to Imperial territory—and City hinterlands would get fallout. Not to mention the effect on your humble servant, me. But a ship could land without danger. I suggest the Isis herself, loaded with marines, aircraft and auxiliary gear. If the descent is sudden, the guerrillas won’t be able to flee far. Using defoliators, sonics, gas, stun-beam sweeps and the rest, you should be able to capture most of them inside a week or two. Repeat, capture, not kill, wherever possible. I’ll explain after you land. Right now, I don’t know how long I’ve got till I’m interrupted, so I’d better describe terrain. We’re on the northeast verge of Moon Garnet Lake—’ At that point,” Evagail concluded, “I interrupted him.” The most chilling thing was that she saw no humor.

  “Her Skill heightens perceptions and data storage too,” Noach said in a shocked, mechanical fashion. “Well,” Karlsarm sighed, “no real need to interrogate Ridenour, is there? He converted this gun into some kind of maser and called down the enemy on our heads.”

  “They may not respond, if they heard him cut off the way he was,” Noach said with little hope.

  “Wasn’t much noise,” Karlsarm answered. “They probably figure he did see somebody coming and had to stop in a hurry. If anything, they’ll arrive as fast as may be, before we can disperse the stockpiles that’ll give a scent to their metal detectors.”

  “We’d better start running,” Noach said. Above the bristly beard, his nutcracker face had turned old. “Maybe not.” Excitement rose in Karlsarm.

  “I need at least an hour or two to think—and, yes, talk with you, Ridenour.”

  The Terran straightened. His tone rang. “I didn’t betray you, really,” he said. “I stayed loyal to my Emperor.”

  “You’ll tell us a few things, though,” Karlsarm said. “Like what procedure you expect a landing party to follow. No secrets to that, are there? Just tell us about newscasts you’ve seen, books you’ve read, inferences you’ve made.”

  “No!”

  Roused by the noise, other men were drifting up the hill, lean leather-clad shapes with weapons to hand. But Karlsarm ignored them. “Evagail,” he said.

  Her cold, cold fingers closed on Ridenour. He shrieked. “Slack off,” Karlsarm ordered. “Now—slack off, womant—have you changed your mind? Or does she unscrew your ears, one by one, and other parts? I don’t want you hurt, but my whole civilization’s at stake, and I haven’t much time.”

  Ridenour broke. Karlsarm did not despise him for that. Few men indeed could have defied Evagail in her present mood, and they would have had to be used to the Mistresses of War.

  In fact, Karlsarm needed a lot of courage himself, later on, when he laid arms around her and mouth at her cheek and crooned, “Come back to us, loveling.” How slowly softness, warmth and—in a chill dawnlight—color reentered her skin: until at last she sank down before him and wept.

  He raised her and led her to their cave.

  At first the ship was a gleam, drowned in sun-glare. Then she was a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. But swiftly and swiftly did she grow. Within minutes, her shadow darkened the land. Men saw her from below as a tower that descended upon them, hundreds of meters in height, flanks reflecting with a metallic brilliance that blinded. Through light filters might be seen the boat housings, gun turrets and missile tubes that bristled from her. She was not heavily armored, save at a few key points, for she dealt in nuclear energies and nothing could withstand a direct hit. But the perceptors and effectors of her fire-control system could intercept virtually anything that a lesser mechanism might throw. And the full power of her own magazines, vomited forth at once, would have incinerated a continent.

  The engines driving that enormous mass were deathly quiet. But where their countergravity fields touched the planet, trees snapped to kindling and the lake roiled white. Her advent was dancer graceful. But it went so fast that cloven air roared behind, one continuous thunderclap between stratosphere and surface. Echoes crashed from mountain to mountain; avalanches broke loose on the heights, throwing ice plumes into the sky; the risen winds smelled scorched.

  Emblazoned upon her stood HMS Isis and the sunburst of chastising Empire.

  Already she had discharged her auxiliaries, aircraft that buzzed across the lakeland in bright quick swarms, probing with instruments, firing random lightning bo
lts, shouting through amplifiers that turned human voices into an elemental force: “Surrender, surrender!”

  At the nexus of the cruiser’s multiple complexity, Captain Chang sat in his chair of command. The screens before him flickered with views, data, reports. A score of specialist officers held to their posts behind him. Their work—speech, tap on signal buttons, clickdown of switches—made a muted buzz. From time to time, something was passed up to Chang himself. He listened, decided and returned to studying the screens. Neither his inflection nor his expression varied. Lieutenant-Commander Hunyadi, his executive officer, punched an appropriate control on the communications board in front of him and relayed the order to the right place. The bridge might have been an engineering center on Terra, save for the uniforms and the straining concentration.

  Until Chang scowled. “What’s that, Citizen Hunyadi?” He pointed to a screen in which the water surface gleamed, amidst green woods and darkling cliffs. The view was dissolving.

  “Fog rising, sir, I think.” Hunyadi had already tapped out a query to the meteorological officer in his distant sanctum.

  “No doubt, Citizen Hunyadi,” Chang said. “I do not believe it was predicted. Nor dor I believe it is precedented—such rapid condensation—even on this freak planet.”

  The M.O.’s voice came on. Yes, the entire target area was fogging at an unheard-of rate. No, it had not been forecast and, frankly, it was not understood. Possibly, at this altitude, given this pressure gradient, high insolation acted synergistically with the colloidogenic effect of countergravity beams on liquid. Should the question be addressed to a computer?

  “No, don’t tie facilities up on an academic problem,” Chang said. “Will the stuff be troublesome?”

  “Not very, sir. In fact, aircraft reports indicate it’s forming a layer at about five hundred meters. An overcast, should be reasonably clear at ground level. Besides, we have instruments that can see through fog.”

  “I am aware of that latter fact, Citizen Nazarevsky. What concerns me is that an overcast will hide us from visual observation at satellite distance. You will recall that picket ships are supposed to keep an eye on us.” Chang drummed fingers on the arm of his chair for a second before he said: “No matter. We will still have full communication, I trust. And it’s necessary to exploit surprise, before the bandits have scattered over half this countryside. Carry on, gentlemen.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Hunyadi returned to the subtle, engrossing ballet that was command operations.

  After a while, Chang stirred himself and asked, “Has any evidence been reported of enemy willingness to surrender?”

  —“No, sir,” the exec replied. “But they don’t appear to be marshalling for resistance, either. I don’t mean just that they haven’t shot at us. The stockpiles of metallic stuff that we’re zeroing in on haven’t been moved. Terrain looks deserted. Every topographical and soni-probe indication is that it’s normal, safe, not booby-trapped.”

  “I wish Ridenour had been able to transmit more,” Chang complained. “Well, no doubt the bandits are simply running in panic. I wonder if they stopped to cut his throat.”

  Hunyadi understood that no answer was desired from him.

  The ship passed through the new-born clouds. Uncompensated viewports showed thick, swirling gray formlessness. Infrared, ultraviolet and microwave scopes projected a peaceful scene beneath. It was true that an unholy number of’ tiny flying objects were registered in the area. Insects, no doubt, probably disturbed by the ship. Time was short in which to think about them, before Isis broke through. Ground was now immediately below: that slope on the forest edge, overlooking the lake and near the enemy weapon depots, which Chang had selected. It would have been a lovely sight, had the sky not been so low and gloomy, the tendrils and banks of fog drifting so many and stealthy among trees. But everyone on Isis was too busy to admire, from the master in his chair of command to the marines ranked before the sally locks.

  Aircraft that had landed for final checks of the site flew away like autumn leaves. The cruiser hung until they were gone, extending her landing jacks, which were massive as cathedral buttresses. Then slowly she sank down upon them. For moments the engines loudened, ringing through her metal corridors. Words flew, quiet and tense: “—stability achieved… air cover complete… weapons crew standing by… detectors report negative… standing by… standing by… standing by…”

  “Proceed with Phase Two,” Chang ordered.

  “Now hear this,” Hunyadi chanted to the all-points intercom. The engines growled into silence. The airlocks opened. Inhuman in helmets, body armor, flying harness, the weapons they clutched, the marine squadrons rushed forth. First they would seize the guerrilla arsenals, and next cast about for human spoor.

  The bridge had not really fallen still. Data continued to flow in, commands to flow out; but by comparison, sound was now a mutter, eerie as the bodies of fog that moved out of undertree shadows and across the bouldery hillside. Hunyadi looked into the screens and grimace “Sir,” he said uneasily, if the enemy’s as skilled in moving about through the woods as I’Ve heard, someone could come near enough to fire a small nuclear missile at us.”

  “Have no worries on that score, Citizen Hunyadi,” Chang said. “Nothing material, launched from a projector that one or two men might carry, could reach us before it was detected and intercepted. A blaster beam might scorch a hull plate or two. But upper and lower gun turrets would instantly triangulate on the source.” His tone was indulgent; like most Navy men serving on capital ships, Hunyadi was quite new to ground operations. “Frankly, I could hope for a show of resistance. The alternative is a long, tedious airborne bushbeating.”

  Hunyadi winced. “Hunting men like animals. I don’t like it.”

  “Nor I,” Chang admitted. The iron came back into him. “But we have our orders.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Read your history, Citizen Hunyadi. Read your history. No empire which tolerated rebellion ever endured long thereafter. And we are the wall between humanity and Merseian—”

  A scream broke through.

  And suddenly war was no problem in logistics, search patterns, or games theory. It entered the ship with pain in one hand and blood on the other; and its footfalls thundered.

  “Bees, millions of things like bees, out of the woods—oh, God, coming inboard, the boys’re doubled over, one sting hurts enough to knock you crazyYaaahhhh!”

  “Close all locks! Seal all compartments! All hands in spacesuits!”

  “Marine Colonel Deschamps to Prime Command. Detachments report small groups of women, unarmed, as they land. Women appear anxious to surrender. Request orders.”

  “Take them prisoners, of course. Stand around them. You may not be attacked then. But if a unit notes a dense insect swarm, the men are to seal their armor and discharge lethal gas at once.”

  “Lock Watch Four to bridge! We can’t shut the lock here! Some enormous animal—like a, a nightmare crocol dile—burst in from the woods—blocking the valves with its body—”

  “Energy weapons, sweep the surrounding, forest. All aircraft, return to bomb and strafe this same area.”

  Atomic warheads and poisons could not be used, when the ship would be caught in their blast or the gases pour in through three airlocks jammed open by slain monsters. But some gunners had buttoned up their turrets in advance of the bees. Their cannon hurled bolt after bolt, trees exploded and burned and fell, rocks fused… and fog poured in like an ocean. Simultaneously, the instrumentation and optical aids that should have pierced it failed. The crews must fire at random into horrible wet smoke, knowing they could not cover the whole ground about them.

  “Radio dead. Radar dead. Electromagnetic ‘scopes dead. Blanketed by interference. Appears to emanate from… from everywhere… different insects, clouds of them! What scanning stuff we’ve got that still works, sonics, that kind of thing, gives insufficient definition. We’re deaf, dumb, and blind!”

  Aircraft
began to crash. Their instruments were likewise gone; and they were not meant to collide with entire flocks of birds.

  “Marine Colonel Deschamps—reporting—reports received—catastrophe. I don’t know what, except… those women… they turned on our men and—”

  Troopers who escaped flew wildly through fog. Birds found them and betrayed them to snipers in treetops. They landed, seeking cover. Arrows whistled from brush, or hellhounds fell upon them.

  “Stand by to raise ship.”

  “Lock Watch Four reporting—they’ve got in through the fog, under our fire—swarming in, wild men and animals—good-by, Maria, good-by, universe—”

  Most aircraft pilots managed to break free. They got above the clouds and ran from that lake. But they were not equipped to evade ground fire of energy weapons with which there was no electronic interference such as continued to plague them. It had been assumed that the marines would take those emplacements. The marines were now dead, or disabled, or fleeing, or captured. The women called their men back to the guns. Stars blossomed and fell through the daylight sky.

  “This is. Wolf, commanding the Free People group assigned to HMS Isis. A prisoner tells me this thing communicates with the bridge. Better give up, Captain. We’re inside. We hold the engine room. We can take your whole ship at our leisure—or plant a nuclear bomb. Your auxiliary forces are rapidly being destroyed. I hope you’ll see reason and give up. We don’t want to harm you. It’s no discredit to you, sir, this defeat. Your intelligence service let you down. You met weapons you didn’t know about, uniquely suited to very special circumstances. Tell your men to lay down their arms. We’ll lift the interference blanket if you agree—not skyward, but on ground level, anyhow, so you can call them. Let’s stop spilling lives and begin talking terms.”