by John F. Carr
With engines hardly louder than the hum of the guy wires in the slipstream, the five biplanes were at the western Great Forest in minutes, then turned north to follow the foothills to the Forest Border District, the newly demilitarized zone between the Redfield Satrapy, the Anglia Satrapy and Uossi Suomi.
Leino regarded the approach to the border with a grim shake of his head. Every year his equipment and recruits got better, but there were fewer of both; meanwhile, the Redfield Satrapy seemed to double its own available forces and their inferior equipment in the same time.
Inferior, but far more easily maintained. And there were many more of them, here and across the Miracle Mountains. Leino wondered how many times in human history the best had been overwhelmed by the numerically superior mediocre? Best not to think about it, he decided. His ship’s chronometer told him they should be within radio range of the Redfield squadron by now.
“Signal, signal,” he spoke, holding his throat microphone. “This is Uossi Suomi Recon Number Seven, Leino commanding.” It was also Uossi Suomi for Everything Else, Number Seven; he didn’t think the Redfielders were fooled into believing Uossi Suomi had ships to spare for specialized duty. But he repeated the identification and proceeded to hail the as-yet-unseen Redfield squadron. “Approaching rendezvous point for joint operations. Redfield Satrapy aircraft squadrons, do you read?”
The answer came back after a few seconds. “Affirmative, Finlandia Recon, this is Redfield Interceptor Squadron Viggen, Viggen commanding.”
For a moment, Leino was impressed; only the very best pilots had their squadrons named after them. This Viggen fellow must be quite the golden boy of the Redfield Satrapy Air Force.
He hadn’t missed the insult, though. Redfielders, in particular, delighted in referring to Uossi Suomi as Novy Finlandia—a taunt almost guaranteed to end in blood.
“You are twelve degrees south-southwest of our position, time-tocontact, seven minutes at your top speed, over.”
Leino grinned. They would have to let him know that they were aware of his own aircraft’s speed and range capabilities. Still, for Redfield toadies, they were being positively civil.
“Confirmed, Viggen,” he answered. “Seen any spooks today?”
Leino’s attempt to lighten the mood was apparently unappreciated.
“We will hold at thirty-five hundred meters until we have you in visual, Recon. Viggen out.”
Leino passed the information on to his squadron, closed the circuit, and sighed. Those damn Redfielders had no sense of humor.
III
In his cabin, Vessel First Rank Galen Diettinger watched the information on the screen before him as it scrolled past at speeds too great for human norm eyes to register. Second Rank’s final plan for the orbital bombardment had required no revision. The ground assault plans drawn up by Deathmaster Quilland had been only slightly modified; certain aspects contained elements of that predictability to which Saurons were prone, owing to their innate sense of superiority over the human norms they so stubbornly continued to refer to as ‘cattle.’ This despite Sauron’s utter defeat at the hands of those cattle who comprised the human norm Empire of Man.
Diettinger sighed and sat back as the screen flow halted, then produced a single line of addenda:
OPERATIONAL REVIEW COMPLETE. REPEAT?
Unmoving, Diettinger continued to watch the screen. After the greatest defeat of the Sauron Race, he stood on the verge of its last victory: one which would preserve that Race’s dream of human self-determination and perhaps, one day, restore the Sauron people to their proper place among humanity as guardians of that dream and guides toward that destiny. That the invasion of the moon called Haven would indeed be a victory, he had no doubt. Diettinger commanded the Fomoria, a Sauron heavy cruiser, the most versatile design in the Sauron fleet. Its crew complement included, among others, the One hundred and first Provisional Battalion of the Twenty-fifth Regiment of the Third Fleet.
Now, of course, he reflected, it is the Sauron Fleet.
But in fact it was no longer even that. The coming action was more forced-colonization than conquest; its purpose to establish a safe world for the remnants of the Sauron people: seven thousand, four hundred and fifty-one Sauron Soldiers, including Command, Cyborgs, Soldiers, and crew. The entire Sauron Race.
And so, Diettinger thought as he looked about his cabin, the Talon-class heavy cruiser Fomoria is no more. She and her crew would pose as pirates, raiders from beyond the Imperial periphery. Their telemetry was now of a large warship, an old Striker-class relic called the Dol Guldur, still of Sauron manufacture, but virtually ubiquitous throughout known space. The majority of the Soldiers aboard had already taken favorably to the new name, just as they had so easily adapted to the rakish cut of their new “pirate” uniforms.
Even their new standard of a burning eye wreathed in flames, originally limited to the wings of the modified strike fighters and powered armor of the assault teams, was finding its way onto tunics and uniforms at an alarmingly undisciplined rate.
“The ‘Dol Guldur,’ indeed.” He looked across his cabin, speaking softly to the plaque above the table which bore the name “Fomoria” in the spare, severe Sauron script of Standard Anglic. Beside it was the Great Seal of the Sauron State.
Well, he thought, they gave their devotion to one system, and it failed them. Perhaps they deserve a new one, at that.
Returning his attention to the screen, Diettinger recalled the Philosophy courses from his days at the Academy. There, Academician Edainiak had driven into their skulls his notion of Nemesis Theory, and in thirty years of combat, from thirteen-year-old Blooder to sixteen-year-old Heir and now to First Rank—at an age he’d rather not think about—Diettinger had yet to see Edainiak’s premise refuted.
Nemesis Theory, Edainiak had informed them, stated that in any conflict between groups of widely disparate capabilities, however gifted the individual commander initiating the conflict, an opposite number inevitably rose from the ranks of the less-favored side to challenge the attackers. Edainiak maintained that there was always at least one such leader and his appearance was as much a given as evolution itself. Organisms fought to survive, and in any life-threatening environment—given time—they would, to the limits of their ability, produce a suitable response to cope with such threats. As human societies were no less expressions of the organism—man—who created them, the emergence of such an individual—usually male, and therefore more likely to mate and reproduce—was inevitable.
Some of these impromptu leaders were, of course, more effective than others; a function of the society which produced them as well as the available resources they provided such individuals to pursue their ultimate purpose.
But there is always at least one, Diettinger mused as he idly rubbed the patch covering his empty left eye socket, even in limited conflicts. One person who emerges as uniquely qualified to operate in the environment of chaos that is war.
The ascension of such a man was a foregone conclusion; the sooner resistance coalesced about him, identifying him, the sooner he could be eliminated, making Diettinger’s job that much easier. Other such men would come along, of course, in time. But Diettinger’s immediate concern was this invasion and the rapid establishment of Sauron dominion over Haven; and the emergence of a single competent—or worse, gifted—enemy commander was the single greatest threat to the achievement of those goals.
No matter. The Nemesis would arise and another after him, and another after that, and the Saurons would deal with them all. For the corollary to Nemesis Theory was that such a man had virtually no use to the society from which he sprang once the threat to that society had passed or had become accepted as part of the normal mode of existence. Sauron Role Models throughout history were drawn exclusively from military or political leaders, many of whom had exploited this fact—such as Augustus and Tokugawa, who had engineered the societal acceptance of their rule, or Scipio and Churchill, who despite their triumphs had eventually been
defeated by it—they were lessons in themselves.
In the end it was simple human nature, Sauron or otherwise, that defeated the Nemesis. It was not anything as melodramatic as “destiny.” It was simply the naked ingratitude of the brute mass of mankind.
Diettinger reached forward and pressed the “Y” pad for a repeat of the upcoming battle plan.
The ultimate defeat of the Nemesis, which Haven was sure to produce, was—he knew—still a very long way off.
Chapter Fourteen
Brigadier Cummings left the elevator and hustled into the command center. The low-ceilinged room was full of technical ranks watching screens and punching in instructions to the communications and surveillance scanners. Captain Hastings pushed his way through chairs and scrambling technicians. “Glad you came, sir.”
“Bandits again?”
“Yes, sir. We’re out of phase with Orbiter Prime so we haven’t been able to establish communications with her yet.”
“What about the refueling depot at Cat’s Eye?”
“Offline. No answer, not even via direct laser line.”
“Not good.” Cummings took a deep breath. Their last bridges to the Empire and the outside universe were quite possibly gone. If so, gone for good this time. When the 77th had pulled out, there had been dozens of surveillance satellites at the Alderson point and many more throughout the system, both at the refueling station circling Cat’s Eye and in Haven’s upper orbit. The first raider, posing as an inter-system freighter, had eliminated all those at the Alderson points so they wouldn’t have to worry about sneaking out the backdoor.
The next pack of bandits, the Black Hand, had come in with three ships. They had destroyed most of Haven’s geo-synchronous and near-earth orbit satellites and relay stations except for Orbiter Prime, an unmanned platform maintained by the University of Haven and monitored by their observer station in the plains outside the Redfield Satrapy’s industrial heartland of Home Valley. During their raid on Castell City, the Black Hand had smashed the spaceport, rendering all but two shuttles inoperable, only one of which was still spaceworthy. The defenses at Fort Kursk had been good enough to take out one of the raiders, a refitted merchantman, but not good enough to stop the rest from destroying the remaining planetary spaceports.
Now, Orbiter Prime was out of contact. Assumed destroyed. Along with the refueling station and the new satellites which had taken years to put into orbit and had cost so much of their limited resources. Now they would never be replaced—not without outside help. These raiders either intended to stay or, having refueled, had no plans of ever coming back.
The pirates had also made sure that no one else would ever leave this beleaguered moon. Haven, four Alderson Jumps from the nearest habitable world, was now not only the end-of-the-line, but, for all intents and purposes—a one-way stop.
“What happened?” Cummings asked.
“We assume Mother Bandit took out the refueling station. We don’t know about Orbiter Prime, yet. Mother Bandit is moving toward the Valley with multiple signals in attendance, which we assume are fighters. Several of the signals are big enough to indicate possible interstellar fighters. This is not a typical bandit, our telemetry indicates she is far larger than any pirate I’ve ever seen. She might even be a man-of-war; a heavy cruiser.”
While Hastings was talking, three screens suddenly went blank. “Damn it, there goes another eye.”
An irreplaceable eye, thought Cummings, silently cursing the raiders. He knew only too well how limited the Fort’s resources were—finite and impossible to replace. He didn’t even want to think about the refueling station. “Target Mother Bandit, while we still can. Deploy the Invictas and Gamma-Four batteries against the smaller contacts.”
Shielded by a Langston Field, there was nothing a cruiser-sized ship need fear in Fort Kursk’s stripped-down arsenal. As the last world at the edge of the Tanith Sector, Haven had never been a serious military target, so Fort Kursk had never been provided the defensive weaponry to take on a man-of-war. Nor had the sparsely-settled moon ever had the resources to do the job itself. Now everyone on Haven would pay for that negligence.
Two of the four batteries of Gammas fired into the atmosphere. Only a few thousand meters above Fort Kursk both missile groups were vaporized by point defense beams from the Mother Bandit. A score of outclassed Invicta-class gunboats streaked upward to engage the bandit fighters.
“We’ve got a match on Jane’s,” shouted one of the communications officers. The Field signature is that of a Sauron heavy cruiser, disguised as a Talon-class heavy cruiser!” Four more screens blinked out as the floor abruptly rolled beneath them.
“Saurons, what the hell!” Hastings cried.
In a few minutes we’re going to be blind, Cummings thought. There wasn’t even time to begin exploring the implications of finding a Sauron heavy cruiser at the end of the Imperium, attacking a world the Empire had abandoned decades ago. The big question, though, was: Why was it wearing a disguise? Was this forward-line-of-battle ship, like Haven, cut off from the rest of human occupied space? And why here of all places?
Suddenly the room jumped and shuddered once more, lights and screens flickering off and on. Then a bright flash and the lights went out for good.
“We took a big hit,” someone shouted.
Moments later the whine of the auxiliaries kicked in and the lights returned, although dimmer than before.
“Not us!” answered one of the technicians as he studied his flickering screen. “Castell City just lost ten megatons-worth of real estate.”
Cummings felt his personal universe tilt as well as the room; his wife, at her insistence, was still living in Castell rather than the compound at the fort. Laura, my love, may God help you! I just pray that Helga and her family are still alive, or—maybe a quick death might be the best thing, rather than the lingering one from radiation poisoning.
They hadn’t had much of a life together, for a long time. But that hadn’t prepared him for Laura’s sudden death. Not this kind of death. At least it was painless. Thank God Ingrid is at Whitehall with the Baron. He couldn’t imagine losing all of his family at once. Maybe it was better this way—
Cummings paused for a moment, put his personal feelings back in the compartment where they usually stayed during his tour of duty, and turned his attention back to the screens.
The outer fort had already taken half a dozen major hits from missiles and aerial bombardment. Why no nukes?
Only one explanation made sense: the Saurons didn’t want to destroy the fort. They undoubtedly had plans to use it as a staging area for their invasion, much as they had done on Comstock with Fort Anzio. A time that now seemed another era, when the Land Gators were still based on Haven, before they’d been transferred to Friedland. Yet, as Baron Hamilton continually reminded him, it could be much worse. Had been much worse, even on Haven, in the dark years after the Patriotic Wars and the fall of the CoDominium. Or on Earth, where civilization had been forever shattered by a furious exchange of nuclear, bacteriological and chemical stockpiles that had rendered large parts of Homeworld uninhabitable.
The room rocked again, but not with the same force. Someone whispered, “Hell’s-A-Comin.’” It was so apt a pronouncement that, for a moment, Cummings forgot it was also the name of Haven’s third-largest city.
“Captain Hastings, have someone try to get through to Whitehall. We have to warn the Baron about this. Let him know the Saurons have come.”
Cummings felt Colonel Anton Leung’s hand as it squeezed his shoulder. Leung, too, had family in Castell. Two techs were bent over their terminals, openly weeping. Other eyes were turned his way, searching for an answer, a plan. Something. Anything. He mentally reviewed their contingency plans: raiders from space, internal revolt, rebellion, piracy, brigands, insurrection. No one, himself included, had thought of invasion.
Who but people born and bred here would want to live on this snow-hell of a world? A world that was more a loopho
le than any sort of home for terrestrial life. A world so far from the usual Alderson tramlines its closest neighbor was Fulson’s World, a former prison planet, itself not much more hospitable to man than Haven.
No one but Saurons. But why? Had the Saurons destroyed the Empire and won the war so quickly? The last dispatch to Fort Kursk had been six years ago, a dozen message balls from an Imperial survey craft bringing supplies to the refueling station at Cat’s Eye. It had been the usual combination of war propaganda and mail from expatriates scattered throughout the Empire. Reading between the lines, it was obvious that Haven was not the only place from which the Empire had withdrawn. It was also obvious that the war effort was beginning to place an intolerable strain on those linkages of trade, communication and law that made up the Empire. But there had been no evidence that the Empire was on the verge of complete collapse.
Had the Saurons perfected one of their superweapons and destroyed the Imperial fleets in a series of lightning strikes? If so, this lone cruiser might well be mopping up the final holdouts. Or was it the other way around? Was it Sauron that lay in ruins? If so, was this band of Soldiers a lost legion, going aground at humanity’s farthest outpost? The fact that the Saurons had come alone and in disguise supported the latter argument.
Would he ever know?
The room shook again and someone shouted, “Two more Invictas gone! The bandits are slaughtering them!”
Cummings shook his head. There were too many questions racing through his mind that would probably never be answered, certainly not in the short lifetime he and the Haven Volunteers had left once the Saurons got their hands on them. He might make a useful Quisling to the Saurons, but he preferred death’s momentary sting to a lifetime of betrayal.
He was the heart of Haven’s resistance, or at least the Haven Volunteers were. Momentous decisions had to be made quickly, before the Saurons pinned them down in the fort, then dispatched them in detail. He wondered how Colonel Cahill and the second regiment were holding out at Fort Fornova.