by David Drake
THE HISTORY of the Far Stars War, a war involving over a hundred systems and millions of participants, is the story of individuals. Its outcome was determined less by the decisions of Admiral MacDonald or the Gerin Supreme Triad than by uncounted minor decisions made on battlefields hundreds of light-years apart. It was a war that was marked by isolated battles, often fought by men who weeks earlier had been farmers or clerks.
By the time the war began, mankind had spread throughout much of its own arm of the galaxy. No government had been able to gain or keep control of the hundreds of human settled worlds. A lack of any means of faster-than-light communications encouraged the fragmentation of the race as it spread away from a depleted and backward Earth. The pattern of this expansion was hardly organized, and often simply haphazard. Though virtually every star has planets, perhaps one in ten thousand is not immediately inimical to human existence. Of these, less than 1 percent are habitable without extensive and prohibitively expensive artificial environments. All this still left an estimated fifty thousand human-habitable planets within our spiral arm alone. Carbon-based life being present on virtually all of these planets, it follows that in their two hundred years of expansion men have encountered several hundred other intelligent races, many having already perfected some form of space travel of their own.
Men also traveled outward, into the less densely filled regions farther away from the galactic core. The area, for obvious reasons, was designated the Far Stars by most stellar geographers. This was the nearest equivalent they had to “Here there be dragons” and other phrases signifying stellae incognitae. Among these stars, expansion tended to travel in lines, rather than bursts filling whole clusters. Each colony would often be weeks’ travel from another human world, culturally and physically isolated from the rest of the race. The inhabitants, too, tended to be a hardy breed, more concerned for their independence and prosperity than for any larger concerns. Served only by tramp freighters, these worlds gave no allegiance to any higher authority and often lacked even a planetary government. It was because of all this that the first contacts with the Gerin, and their conquest of DuQuesne, went virtually unnoticed by even her neighbors.
The Far Stars War, it was decided long after the fact, actually began in the Terran year 2237. Actually, the monolithic Council of Triads that ruled all eleven Gerin worlds had decided to drive mankind and all other races from “their” portion of the galaxy years before. Other races had fought men, often to their detriment, and the Gerin moved cautiously. Their first action had been to conquer the frontier planet of DuQuesne nearly fifty years earlier, circa 2187. The octopoid Gerin had landed in overwhelming numbers, and aided by complete domination of the air and space above, they quickly crushed all opposition. Most of the planet’s population died in the first few hours when the Gerin bombarded even the smallest villages. Those who survived were isolated, unable to contact each other, and any resistance was met by the complete slaughter of every human in the vicinity. Even so, for nearly two decades a few holdouts fought a hopeless guerrilla action.
By the time other men were once more concerned with the fate of the human population of DuQuesne, two generations had been born under the brutal domination of the Gerin. This interest was generated by a second Gerin assault, this time on the much larger and more prosperous planet of New Athens. Here they met surprising resistance and their landing forces took losses far greater than expected. The Gerin response was to withdraw and then bombard the planet until its surface was no longer habitable. Only a few survived, escaping in private ships.
These carried the warning to other human worlds, and also to the worlds of other races who feared the Gerin would turn on them next.
Though they didn’t know it at the time, and perhaps have never realized it, the slaughter of New Athens and the enslavement of the remaining humans on DuQuesne, more than anything, inspired the unification of the nearby human planets. At first, though, only one planet, Castleman’s World, chose to act. This planet had many advantages, including advanced factory complexes and space docks, which enabled it to construct a fleet of over a hundred warships in less than a decade. Many of these were purchased from the nearby League of Free Worlds; others were converted merchant ships. The loss of a recent minor war with another human world also provided Castleman’s with a cadre of experienced officers and the need to reestablish her prestige.
At first, the Castleman’s fleet met with surprising success. It defeated three separate Gerin formations and retook not only a now lifeless New Athens, but also DuQuesne.
SANGER was the commando’s point man this morning. Twenty meters beyond the abandoned farmhouse, he walked into a Gerin killzone.
“Freeze!” ordered Rudisill, the artillery specialist, second in the six-man column and shocked out of the lethargy of a long march by the pulsing alert on his helmet display. “Sanger, your helmet’s fucked. You’re already in a killzone.”
Coils in each helmet cooled the trooper’s head and approximately half his blood supply, the next -best thing to total environmental control. The refrigerant didn’t prevent DuQuesne’s atmosphere from being a steam bath, though; nor did it do anything to lighten the commando’s load of gear.
For concealment purposes, they’d been inserted by sea with ten kilometers to hike before they reached their objective. Sweat had been rolling off Rudisill’s body with the effort of humping his helmet, weapons, rations—and the heavy spotting table—up and down forested ridges.
Now the sweat was cold.
“Everybody halt in place,” said Captain Lermontov over the unit net. “I’m coming forward.”
Lermontov’s voice was more than calm; it was calming. “Sanger, you know the drill. You’re safe unless you try to back up, so just stay where you are. Might be a good time to take a leak.”
“I done that, sir,” whispered the point man. Then, “Sir, you gonna be able to get me out?”
Commando 441 had carried out twenty-seven missions on this Christ-bitten hellhole without a fatality. The troopers of other units carried lucky charms. Four-four-one had Ivan Lermontov.
But it was going to take more than luck to pull Sanger from the trap into which his faulty equipment had dropped him.
“I don’t see why not,” said Captain Lermontov.
Rudisill heard the soft rustle of vegetation. The commando’s leader was approaching with easy caution from his number-three slot in the column, a hundred meters behind the artillery specialist.
The heads-up display on Rudisill’s visor showed pulsing blips as the computer-directed elements of the Gerin killzone maneuvered for optimal position. Pretty soon, they’d encircle the whole commando, not just the point man.
This killzone consisted of twenty separate elements, strung in a two-kilometer line almost parallel to the commando’s axis of advance. If the commando had crossed to the left rather than the right side of the knob on the last ridge, they’d have been out of the zone’s sensor range.
The troopers wouldn’t have known—or cared—that the killzone was in place. Now—
Each element of the killzone was a twenty-centimeter sphere with sensors, magnetic lift engines, and a rudimentary control/communications computer. When a target entered the sensor range of any element, that computer alerted the other elements and the whole chain drifted closer to do maximum damage to possible following targets. Nothing would happen until the target started to move out of the zone’s lethal area.
The magnetic motors had an electronic signature even in standby mode. Commando helmets could detect a killzone at twice the killzone’s own fifty-meter sensor range.
Except that Sanger’s helmet h
ad malfunctioned.
The shell of each sphere was pre-fragmented ceramic, backed with high explosive. Sanger was within ten meters of one. At that range, the blast would shatter the trunk of thirty-centimeter hardwoods; it would atomize a man.
“Good work, Guns,” Lermontov murmured, using straight voice instead of frequency-hopping radio as he came up behind Rudisill. “If you hadn’t been looking sharp, we’d be in problems now.”
That was oil, not reality. The helmet, not the artillery spotter personally, had done the work; but the words made Rudisill feel better nonetheless. “They’re coming down on us, sir,” he said tightly.
“Sure, that’s what they do,” agreed Lermontov as he paused beside Rudisill.
The captain was a man of middle height, with a gymnast’s shoulders and slim hips. He’d slung his assault rifle and was punching keys on the miniature handset flexed to his helmet.
The face beneath Lermontov’s raised visor looked unconcerned; a boyish lock of dark blond hair peeked out from beneath his helmet.
Lermontov smiled. “Got another job for you, Guns,” he said. “Need you to tell me when I look like I’m a zone element myself.”
Rudisill’s rifle was aimed at the stretch of forest which concealed another of the mines drifting toward the target area. He brushed sweat from his chin with the back of his left hand and said, “Sir, you can’t. These helmets won’t…”
Lermontov flashed a smile that brooked no more argument than a shark’s did. “Don’t you worry, troop,” he said flatly. “These helmets’ll sit up and beg for cookies if you know how to massage ‘em. Your job’s just to tell me—” Lermontov concentrated on the keyboard in his left palm—’’when I’ve got it right. “
Rudisill swallowed and nodded. His visor displayed the slow-moving elements of the killzone as blue dots on the ghostly relief map overlaying the reality of the forest. As Captain Lermontov touched his keyboard, another dot sprang to life beside the artillery spotter. The new arrival was fuzzy at first, but its outline quickly sharpened until it was nearly identical to the other twenty.
“You got it, sir,” Rudisill said. “But I wish you wouldn’t . . .”
“Okay, Sanger,” Lermontov said over the unit push as he stepped forward. “We’re golden. Help’s on the way.”
* * *
The undergrowth folded behind the captain, hiding him from Rudisill after a few long, gliding strides. On Rudisill’s visor, the twenty-first dot moved smoothly toward the original one at a pace swifter than that of the other drifting deathtraps.
Lermontov’s helmet was matching its own output to the commo and motor signatures of a killzone element. If the emanations were close enough, the Gerin sensors would ignore Lermontov until he switched the killzone off.
If the match wasn’t close enough, the blast would be lethal within a fifty-meter circle.
Rudisill knelt carefully so that the ground took part of the weight of his pack. He pretended to ignore the drop of sweat that trembled on the end of his nose.
The dot that was Lermontov paused briefly as it reached the point man’s position. Nothing came over the commo net, but Rudisill could imagine the captain patting Sanger on the shoulder, saying a few cheerful words, and moving on toward the waiting explosive.
Rudisill could imagine it because that had been more or less what had happened to him when a laser toppled a tree across his thighs. The spotting table was smashed, so he couldn’t call in artillery fire. He didn’t have a prayer unless somebody crawled suicidally close to the Gerin bunker and dropped a grenade through its firing slit.
Which Captain Lermontov did.
The dot that was the commando’s leader merged with the almost identical killzone element.
“Okay,” said the captain’s voice. “Now, everybody hug the ground for just a . . .”
Rudisill knew he should flatten from his crouch. He couldn’t bring himself to move.
The line of oncoming beads faded to blurs or vanished as their motors cut back to standby power. The first element of a killzone to make contact became the master link, and Captain Lermontov had just shut it down.
“There, we’re golden,” Lermontov said. “Let’s get moving, shall we? Heatherton, come forward and take point. “
Rudisill finally let his breath out as he rose to his feet.
“Negative,” he said. “I’ll take it, sir.”
He moved forward, letting his eyes scan either side and the trees above him, as though he were already the column’s point man.
“Guns,” Lermontov replied cautiously, “we need you to spot when we reach the hostage pen.”
“We need everybody,” Rudisill said. “I’m here, and we know my hardware works.”
He’d reached the clearing around the farmhouse. The inhabitants hadn’t been gone for long. Chickens squabbled noisily beyond the palings of the kitchen garden, and the hog which snorted off among the trees was domestic rather than feral.
The pig’s masters were probably hidden nearby. Rudisill didn’t bother to try calling them out. The Dukes weren’t going to come forward, weren’t going to help even by dipping a gourdful of drinking water for the troops risking their lives to free DuQuesne from the Gerin.
The Dukes weren’t shit.
Sanger was washing down a tablet of electrolyte replacement with tasteless water from the condenser in his helmet. He was nineteen years standard and could pass for twice that age at the moment.
Sanger stood, shouldering his pack. He didn’t have the spotting table, but the MARS—multi-application rocket system— he and the other three troopers carried was equally heavy. “Thanks, buddy,” he muttered to Rudisill.
“Hell, I didn’t get you assigned to Lermontov’s commando,” Rudisill answered, speaking in a low voice because the captain was waiting only a few meters beyond.
Lermontov had clipped the keyboard back onto his helmet. His right hand gripped his rifle again. His left index finger was tracing designs on the mottled shell of the Gerin mine. The access plate in the top of the sphere was still open.
“Good job, Cap’n,” Rudisill murmured.
Lermontov shrugged. “You watch yourself on point, Guns,” he said.
Always, “Rudisill said without emotion. He stepped forward into the trees, following the azimuth projected onto his visor.
There were no more Gerin minefields, but the commando found repeated evidence of human occupation. Another farm, the prints of bare feet on trails the commando crossed but never followed, once the sound of a baby crying, tantalizingly near.
“I can feel ‘em watching,” said Minh, the last man in line.
“I’d better not see one,” Heatherton responded. “I know damn well those shit-scared bastards’re reporting to the Slime.”
“None of that,” Lermontov said sharply. “There’s no evidence that the locals cooperate with the Gerin. They’re just scared. Same as you’d be if your planet had been run by the Slime for three generations.”
“Cap’n,” said Sanger, “they don’t have the balls t’ live nor die neither. Any of my kin gets that scared, I’ll cut their throats and put ‘em outa their mis ‘ry.”
Rudisill panted in time with the rhythm of his boots. His pack cut him over the collarbone and the jut of his hips. He’d glued sponge from fuse containers over the points of wear, but it didn’t matter. In the long run, the weight and friction were the same, and the ulcers in his flesh reopened.
“I still say,” Heatherton muttered, “that if they ain’t interested in saving ‘emselfs from the Slime, then I’m not interested neither.”
“Look,” said the captain. “When we release the hostages the Gerin are holding, then maybe we’ll see some changes in the local attitude. That’s what headquarters figures, anyway.”
“Headquarters ain’t sweatin’ like pigs in the boonies,” Sanger retorted.
>
They were climbing what Rudisill’s projected map said was the last rise before they reached the target; but it was a kilometer of outcrops and heavy undergrowth, and the map was a best-estimate production anyway. Rudisill figured the Headquarters analysts must’ve been wrong, again, because if the commando were really that close to a Gerin base there’d be...
“Freeze, “ Rudisill ordered as his own body locked in place. But they were all right…
“Sir,” he whispered, “we’ve found it. I’m just about in the defensive ring, but they got half of it shut down so my sensors didn’t pick it up till now.”
“What’re we talking about now, Guns?” Lermontov whispered back. His voice was a phantom in the artillery spotter’s earphones.
Rudisill began unfolding his spotting table. “Sir,” he said, “there’s a plasma battery to right and left. I can’t see them, but they’re live. And…”
He swallowed. “And what I thought was a boulder right here in front of me, it’s concrete. It’s the cap of a missile site. They’re loaded for bear, but I don’t think they were expecting anybody to walk in the back way.”
As Rudisill spoke, he clipped the leads from his helmet onto the spotting table. He could mark targets with a lightpen, but direct input was more accurate by an order of magnitude.
The meter-square table couldn’t lie flat, but it had better be close enough.
“Okay,” said Lermontov. “I’m coming forward…”
“Wait, sir,” Rudisill said.
He focused on the “boulder,” which was literally close enough to spit on, and pressed the enter key on his helmet’s pad. Then he slid a meter to the side, focused on the same point, and clicked the key again. His helmet fed the triangulated data to the spotting table.
There was a muted zeep from the table. The relief map projected on Rudisill’s visor echoed the processed data: three red beads, the Gerin sites identified either by sight or electronic signatures, and nine yellow beads spaced equidistantly around the remainder of the calculated circle.