Bridgehead

by David Drake

There was other alien wreckage and even one broken corpse sprawled near the water’s edge like a patch of algae; however, only the one car seemed to be functional. Sue had not been sure the aliens would have left anything. It had seemed a reasonable possibility, however, since only one-person vehicles had penetrated the forest fringe. It was not surprising that the aliens, nervous and literally out of their element, had not dispatched recovery personnel on a hike through the trees in the dark to a site where numbers of their fellows had been slaughtered in broad daylight.

  Anyway, the alien vehicle afforded the only possibility Sue saw for rescuing her lover.

  Its cockpit was something of a scramble to enter. The aliens had not seemed particularly strong, but their joints were extremely limber. The car was apparently intended to be mounted by gripping the coaming with a combination of six hands and feet, then executing a quick jerk to swing the rider aboard. Schlicter grimaced as her right palm slipped on the four-foot-high coaming. She folded her knife, slipped it back in her pocket, and tried again to clamber aboard. Her boots first slipped vainly, then flailed outside the cockpit as her buttocks landed on a seat not meant for humans.

  The controls were not meant for humans, either.

  The cockpit was lighted, but there was a tiller instead of a steering wheel; no knobs or pedals; and no identifiable instruments. The pattern of lines in the dashboard’s lumpy padding might at that have been the instruments, but the possibility could only be tested if Schlicter got the vehicle to do something in the first place. The cockpit had the warm washday odor of bleach, but there was no gush of chlorine to poison a human occupant as she waggled the tiller experimentally. Nothing happened.

  Gingerly, she put her feet down, boots cocked sideways to make room for her toes, her knees raised almost to eye height by the low seat. Her feet did not shuffle onto hidden controls.

  Running her right index finger along the dashboard, Sue found that what had seemed to be padding was in fact hard and slick. Therefore, the bulge over which her finger was tracking might—

  The car dropped with a bump and a slurp of mud. The lights went out. The woman swore. On reflection, though, anything was better than still being stuck here in the morning. And if touching the top of the lump made the vehicle ground itself, perhaps …

  Her finger tweaked the lower curve of the dash, very briefly, as if she were testing a hot stove. The touch was enough: the car rocked as it freed itself and balanced again a handsbreadth above the ground. The hidden cockpit lighting again cast its bilious glow over the interior.

  Since the molding to the right of the tiller was the off/on switch, then the similar excresence to the left must also be significant. Sue touched the top of the lump with more assurance than she had reactivated the car a moment before. Nothing happened. Frowning but still determined, she slid her finger down over the surface of the lump. The car lurched forward as if someone had let in its clutch with a bang. Above Sue, the open viewscreen flapped like a sail.

  Experience with motorcycles kept Schlicter from the panic reaction of snatching her hands away from the controls. Instead, she drew her left index finger fiercely back up the curve which had set the vehicle in motion. Her right hand grabbed at the tiller.

  The car slewed to the right momentarily before it lost its forward motion.

  A fan of light flooded from the curve of the vehicle’s bow, illumination as clean as that of a halogen beam, but—like the interior lights—with a disquieting hint of yellow green. Schlicter had palmed the end of the tiller, a natural act for a human but not for the Vrage, whose hands had more of an elbow joint than a palm. The light switch, out of the way of its normal users, had been thrown by human accident.

  Sue Schlicter paused. She was cramped into the alien vehicle like a fat man in a basket chair. The car’s lights glared out at the tangled forest. Beneath her, the stream bubbled frantically. She took a deep breath and drew the viewscreen down. Her vision through it was as clear as if it were optical-grade Plexiglas without the differing refractive indices of air and glass to contend with. The screen hung where she released it, its bottom edge a finger’s breadth above the coaming. Whether or not chlorine would flood the cockpit when the screen latched, the seal would certainly cut off the outside air the human herself required.

  “Dear God, Charles,” Sue muttered. Then she touched the speed control and began to pick her way through the vegetation.

  * * *

  The dome rattled, as it always did when someone transported to Base Four from an oxygen world. The volume balanced. The slightly higher pressures within the shed before transport, however, meant that the flimsy structure shuddered at the shock of partial vacuum.

  The door flew open before Selve could reach for it. Selve and Astor had expected to be greeted by one of the Monitors. There were six figures waiting. All of them were anonymous in their suits until Deith spoke. “Come to beg us for another chance when the Directorate won’t give you one?” the stocky Monitor said, gesturing the Contact Members out of the shed with a brusque hand.

  The Monitors wore holstered handguns. Unlike the shoulder weapons which Astor had insisted she and Selve carry, guns were not issued to Monitors as part of their working equipment.

  “Do you like wearing atmosphere suits, Deith?” Astor said as she strode out of the docking shed without looking down at Deith. Selve followed his colleague more deliberately. He knew that his own physical presence would not prevent jostling in the doorway. None of the Monitors would permit themselves to be in Astor’s line when the tension was this high.

  “If you don’t,” the big female continued as she walked away, “then let’s keep this till we’re inside. But hold the thought, it’s important.”

  The cruel atmosphere made an underwater scene of Base Four. Vision was not impaired more than it would have been on Skius—or Earth—in a light haze, but the distorted colors were more unpleasant than was the actual constriction of the atmosphere suits. Vehicles for internal ground transportation in this hostile environment snapped along the guides set in the streets when the base was laid out. There were no aircraft. Anything more than a few feet in the air would be suicidally vulnerable in combat of the sort the base’s architects anticipated. So far as the planet itself was concerned, there was nothing anywhere on its surface of interest to the Skiuli except for the staging area they had built for their assault.

  Of course, the Vrages must have made similar assumptions when they equipped their own staging area.

  Deith muttered a demand to one of her colleagues. That Monitor, at her order, abandoned dignity and ran ahead of the party, which Astor continued to lead with her long strides. The Monitor pulled open the outer door of the airlock and stood holding it, as if he feared that the Contact Team would slam it shut on their hosts. Astor halted at the opening without looking around, blocking the others until Selve stepped by her. The big female then followed Selve regally, making room for the Monitors.

  “Not what we’re here for,” Selve muttered disapprovingly. Pumps began to ram the local atmosphere out through vents.

  “Neither is breathing,” said Astor. “But we have to breathe, too, if we hope to succeed.”

  The Portal Four control room was in a wing devoted solely to instrumentation and living quarters for the Monitor Group. Deith and her fellows were nearly as isolated from the remaining base personnel as the Contact Team was from the local populace of Earth. The Monitors were to remain behind during the assault and holding action which would mean death for very nearly everyone they sent through the Portal. The circumstances could have made Deith what she was … but Selve, for one, believed the pattern of the Monitor’s personality had been set long before.

  The remaining half of the Monitor Group waited in the control room. They did not wear atmosphere suits—or guns. Astor and Selve stripped back their hoods as soon as they were out of the airlock. The Monitors escorting them stayed masked and faceless until Deith had closed them all within the control room.

&nbs
p; “We have a proposal,” Selve said as if he were not aware of the psychic atmosphere.

  “The Directorate has already turned it down,” Deith said from where she stood in front of the door.

  Selve and Astor were in the center of the room, near the main console. Selve abandoned the fiction that all members of the Monitor Group were equals. He turned to Deith as he continued. “The Directorate has taken it under advisement. We want to explain it to you so that you can add your agreement to ours.”

  “Advisement,” Deith sneered. “Rejected and you know it.”

  “I know it’s the best chance we’ll ever have to end this war without more of our own being slaughtered!” shouted Astor as she whirled toward Deith. The Monitor stepped back by reflex and bumped the door panel.

  One of the suited Monitors started to draw her gun. “Wait!” Selve shouted.

  “If we wait,” Astor said, “half a million of the people out there are dead.” Her voice was loud but controlled. Instead of simply waving, she accompanied her statement with three full-armed chops in a short arc toward the outside wall. “Luck’s given us a chance to smash the Vrages. You can’t throw it away.”

  “It isn’t really luck,” Selve broke in quickly as his companion sucked in a breath. “The Vrages were bound to offset their staging area just as we did ours, so that they won’t lose their homeworld to the bombs sent by rebound. They didn’t need to separate their base from their bridgehead, because they were willing to sacrifice the whole assault force. It was natural that they’d have set up on one of the most Skius-like planets in the direct Skius transport column.”

  “Then what matters,” retorted Deith in a deadly voice, “is that we attack at once, that we set up a perimeter on Vrage, that we emplace a World Wrecker, and that we blow their foul planet to ions!”

  “But there’s a better—” Selve began.

  “There’s no better way than following orders!” the Monitor bellowed over Selve’s words.

  Astor pointed her long arm straight at Deith. She said, “There’s better than losing more like Keyliss! Listen to us, Deith. It could be everyone you know next.”

  “What advantage is there to fighting the Vrages at Portal Thirty-one instead of their homeworld?” asked a Monitor wearing her ordinary uniform instead of an atmosphere suit. “The only way we can win is to destroy their planet once and for all. They’re—Vrages.”

  The question cooled the tension. It also made it clear that Deith’s gibes had been based on more than guesswork: the proposition which Selve and Astor had gasped to the Directorate while Keyliss was being hooked to life support and replacement systems. That proposition had already been relayed to Base Four in accurate detail. Supply and communications channels from Skius to Portal Four were closed to the Portal Eleven Contact Team. That the Directorate had chosen to use those channels now, when the traces they left could be a signpost to Vrage attackers, showed desperation at the highest levels.

  Astor swallowed. She crossed her hands to the opposite collarbones and gave herself a firm hug. With her eyes closed she said, across Deith’s attempt to reenter the discussion, “The base is here at Portal Four so the troops could live and train under the conditions of the assault. How would you like to fight a battle here?”

  “They aren’t fighting a battle,” Deith snapped. “They’re going to take and hold a perimeter on the Vrage homeworld for three hours until a World Wrecker can be dug down into the crust. Nobody claims we need to overrun Vrage!”

  “The Vrages spotted us this time at Portal Thirty-one,” Selve said. “Where their base is, their assault force is training in oxygen just the way ours is stumbling around out there in the chlorine.”

  Deith opened her mouth to interrupt. Selve made a quick, one-handed gesture with his palm up. “We slaughtered them, Deith. Astor did. I did, me.” He slapped his slung weapon in an attitude of disbelief. “The same way they’ll do to our troops on Vrage—or would here if they could find us. No matter how well trained our people are, they can’t fight the Vrage on a Vrage world. Not for three hours, not for one hour. We won’t end the war that way.”

  “Something’s come through!” called a Monitor who had stayed bent over his console while arguments over the future existence of Skius rattled across the control room. “A few minutes ago, from Portal Eleven.” The readout bloomed in sapphire light above the Monitor’s instruments as he separately polarized the display to face every person in the room.

  “You’re an idiot!” Astor said. “That’s us.”

  “No, he’s right,” said Selve. He alone of those scanning the data could interpret it with assurance. “Somebody riding our flow, Astor. Again.”

  He and his colleague broke for the doorway with such abrupt determination that instinct threw Deith out of their way before her natural hostility could try to block them.

  “I’ll get Security!” cried one of the armed Monitors.

  “You won’t!” Deith shouted back. “Come on, we’re going to check this out ourselves and make sure the Directorate hears!”

  She caught one of her suited fellows by the elbow and dragged him with her through the doorway to start the pursuit. Deith’s right hand was fumbling with the flap of her holster.

  * * *

  This time, the second occasion the drive coils had sent Mike Gardner through what he thought was time, the sensation was that of stepping into a bath of cold water. Then he spread his legs for the sake of mental, not physical, balance and blinked while his brain finished correlating the real world with his terrified imaginings.

  He was in a domed shed whose door was quivering. The light had an unpleasantly chemical appearance. It slanted through the translucent walls strongly enough to fling Gardner’s shadow onto the door panel.

  Mike dared fate with a deep breath. The air he drew in had a tinge of plastic and low humidity. There was none of the chlorinated lethality that he had feared. The student wet his lips and stepped briskly through the door, out into a world as bleak as an army base in winter.

  The purulent yellow green of the air did not so much soften lines, the way fog would, as dissolve them in acid. Even without that, the two- and three-story buildings were stark and windowless. At first glance, the area was a single structure, like the snakes knotted behind the statue of Laocoon. Ten broad avenues leading to the hub where Gardner stood were overarched by covered bridges which managed to suggest an oil refinery rather than a willow-pattern plate.

  Mike walked faster. He had begun by bending his neck stiffly toward the ground as if by not looking he would not be seen. That was foolish; his whole purpose here was to see. One thing immediately obvious was that this was not the planet Earth, however many years into the past or future one might go. The Travelers had been lying—arrogant Astor, sensitive Selve, and Keyliss, whose arm had flopped back onto the concrete at her feet that afternoon.

  The pillars of the transport equipment—here black and so tall that Gardner could not pick out their tops at sunset in the turgid atmosphere—were set over a hundred yards apart. The shed in which the human intruder had appeared was at one apex of the isosceles triangle formed with the drive pillars as a base, an arrangement quite familiar to Mike Gardner. The scale at which it was constructed, however, was stunningly unexpected.

  Toward Gardner slid a vehicle very nearly as broad as the entire avenue. It filled the arches over the roadway like a train through a subway tunnel. Though it was still a thousand yards distant, the engineer’s mind translated scale into objective reality: thirty feet high, minimum; a hundred and fifty broad; and at least that length for stability. At least. The domed surface was studded with antennas like convex shields, too numerous to be microwave dishes and of unguessable purpose. The tubes beneath all the antennas were too like the muzzles of the Travelers’ shoulder weapons to be intended for any other purpose.

  There was some traffic on the others of the ten radial avenues. Vehicles the size and shape of the front half of a motor scooter zipped past or eve
n between the central pillars. They and their orange-suited drivers were more noticeable for their motion than for shape, like flies glinting from cow to cow in a pasture. No one seemed to notice Gardner, though he was the only pedestrian in sight. Sara Jean’s description of the city like a giant termite mound recurred to the young engineer. This time the words were colored by his near certainty that the city, the Travelers’ home, was not on Earth, either.

  Dear God in heaven.

  Mike walked toward the nearest building at a pace just short of a run. The bow of the oncoming tank blinked each time the vehicle slid under the shadow of an arch. The tank was as awesomely fast as it was huge. The ground was beginning to rock. Though the whole surface was either covered or stabilized, there was enough grit to rise in a gray haze around the bow and sides of the vehicle.

  A one-story appendage of the sprawling buildings reached to within thirty yards of the point at which Mike Gardner had materialized. The structure would be dwarfed by the tank, but at least it would be noticed and avoided. A lone interloper in the path of that vehicle would be swatted away as certainly as a sheep strayed onto the railroad tracks.

  Mike halted with one hand flat against the wall of the building to reassure himself that it was there and protecting him. The tank slid into the circular plaza around the pillars, and what had been a parklike expanse looked suddenly like a cul-de-sac with the rusty, jagged mass of a garbage truck using it. The tank was much longer than Gardner had dreamed, four hundred and fifty, possibly five hundred feet. The dust it raised seemed to expel the vehicle from the boulevard into the hub like smoke from a gunshot. The tank passed between the pillars and, without slackening the speed which its size made seem less than the real forty-five miles an hour, bent its course up another of the radial streets.

  In shocked amazement, Mike Gardner watched nine identical vehicles follow their leader. Their scale was naval, not military, and the array of weapons with which each bristled had been equaled by nothing on Earth since the battleships which took the Japanese surrender in 1945.