Out of the Dark

by David Weber

  OUT OF THE DARK

  TOR BOOKS BY DAVID WEBER

  Off Armageddon Reef

  By Schism Rent Asunder

  By Heresies Distressed

  A Mighty Fortress

  Out of the Dark

  OUT OF THE DARK

  DAVID WEBER

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

  NEW YORK

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue: Planet Ku-197-20

  Planet Ku-197-20

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Chapter XXXV

  Chapter XXXVI

  Chapter XXXVII

  Chapter XXXVIII

  Chapter XXXIX

  Epilogue: Planet Earth

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  OUT OF THE DARK

  Copyright © 2010 by David Weber

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-2412-2

  First Edition: October 2010

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Fred and Joan Saberhagen.

  Friends and inspirations, in more than one way.

  I hope you like Basarab, Fred!

  PROLOGUE

  PLANET

  KU-197-20

  YEAR 73,764 OF THE HEGEMONY

  “Garsul, are you watching this?”

  Survey Team Leader Garsul grimaced. Just what, exactly, did Hartyr think he was doing? Of all the stupid, unnecessary, infuriating—

  The team leader made himself stop and draw a deep breath. He also made himself admit the truth, which was that as effortlessly irritating as Hartyr could be anytime he tried, there was no excuse for allowing his own temper to flare this way. And it wouldn’t have been happening if he hadn’t been watching . . . and if both his stomachs hadn’t been hovering on the edge of acute nausea. Then there were his elevated strokain levels, not to mention the instinctual fight-or-flight reflexes (mostly flight in his species’ case, in point of fact) quivering down his synapses.

  “Yes, Hartyr, I’m watching,” he heard his own voice say over the link. He knew it was his voice, even though it seemed preposterously calm given what was going on inside him at the moment. But his next words betrayed the fact that his calm was only voice-deep. “And did you have something in mind for us to do about it?” he asked pointedly.

  “No, but surely. . . .”

  Hartyr’s reply began strongly only to taper off plaintively, and Garsul felt most of his irritation dissipate into something much more like sympathy. His deputy team leader’s natural officiousness and pomposity were an undeniable pain in the excretory orifice, and his fanatical devotion to paperwork was rare even among Barthoni. Hartyr was also prone to assume his answer was always the right answer to any problem that came along, and he was a pusher—the sort of fellow who would trample his own dam and herd brothers in pursuit of the tastiest grazing. But at this moment the sick horror echoing in the depths of his voice was completely understandable. It wasn’t going to make him likable (nothing was ever likely to accomplish that miracle), but Garsul felt an unusually powerful sense of kinship with Hartyr as he heard it.

  “I wish there were something we could do to stop it, too,” he said more quietly. “Unfortunately, there isn’t. Unless we want to break protocol, at least.”

  He heard Hartyr inhale at the other end of the link, but the deputy team leader didn’t respond to that last sentence. It did put their options—or, rather, their lack of options—into stark relief, Garsul reflected. The Hegemony Council had established its survey protocols long ago, and the Barthoni had played a prominent part in their creation. There was an excellent reason for each and every aspect of the protocols’ restrictions . . . including the need to restrain the enormous temptation for a survey team to intervene at a moment like this.

  “Make sure Kurgahr and Joraym are recording this,” he said now. He could easily have passed the message himself, but it was kinder to give Hartyr something to do. “This is going to be an important part of our final report.”

  “All right,” Hartyr acknowledged.

  The easygoing, centaurlike Barthoni were singularly ill-suited to the sort of spit and polish some of the Hegemony’s other member species seemed to favor. A few of those other races made bad jokes about it, Garsul knew, but that was all right with him. He and his team didn’t need a lot of “sirs” or bowing and scraping to get on with their jobs. They knew who was in charge, just as they knew each of them (likable or not) was a highly trained and invaluable specialist. And every one of them was a volunteer, out here because they were the sort who always wanted to see what was on the other side of the next hill. And perhaps even more importantly, because of their race’s species-wide commitment to what the Hegemony Survey Force stood for.

  Unlike some other species I could mention, he thought sourly, and returned his attention to the visual display.

  The planet they were currently surveying—designated KU-197-20—was a pleasant enough place. Its hydrosphere was a little more extensive than most Barthoni would really have preferred, and the local vegetation would have been poorly suited to their dietary requirements. But the temperature range was about right, and however unsustaining the planetary plant life might be, parts of it were tasty enough, and it came in shades of green that were undeniably easy on the eye.

  The only real drawbacks, if he was going to be honest, were certain aspects of the planetary fauna. Especially the dominant planetary fauna.

  At the moment, the scene the survey remotes were showing him was less green than it could have been, for a lot of reasons. First, because the area he was watching was well into local autumn, splashing the landscape with vivid color . . . and showing more than a few bare limbs, as well. Secondly, because those remotes were focused on a narrow strip of open ground between two patches of woodland, and that strip had been recently plowed. The even more recent rain had transformed the turned earth into a mud bath deep enough to satisfy even a Liatu, just waiting to happen. Which, he thought, only underscored the insanity of what he was watching. Surely the lunatic local sentients (and he used the term loosely) could have found a better spot for their current madness!

  “Garsul?”

  The new voice on the link belonged to Joraym, the team’s xenoanthropologist, and Garsul was darkly amused by his tentative tone. Joraym was the team membe
r who’d been most insistent on their remembering that the local sentients—“humans,” they called themselves—were still mired deep in their planetary childhood. One could scarcely expect them to act like adults, and it would be both unfair and unjust to hold their behavior to the standards of civilized races. The team leader couldn’t quibble with Joraym’s analysis of KU-197-20’s dominant species, but the xenoanthropologist had been looking down his snout for “Barthoncentric prejudice” at anyone who criticized the “humans” ever since they’d arrived in-system. Garsul suspected it was Joraym’s way of demonstrating his own enlightened superiority to his teammates.

  “Yes, Joraym?” he said aloud.

  “Can I deploy some audio remotes?” the xenoanthropologist requested.

  “Why in Clahdru’s name d’you want to do that? The video’s going to be bad enough!” Garsul made a harsh sound deep in his throat. “I hope the Council’s going to put this under scholar’s seal when we get it home, but even some of the scholars I know are going to be losing their lunches if this is half as bad as I think it’s going to be!”

  “I know. I know!” Joraym sounded unhappy, but he also sounded determined. “It’s not often we get a chance to actually see something like this happen, though,” he continued. “We don’t do it, and neither do most of the other races, but from what we’ve been able to determine about the local societal units, these . . . people think this is a reasonable way to settle political differences. Hopefully, if I can get the pickups close enough to the leaders on each side, I’ll be able to establish that and monitor their reactions and decisions as the . . . effort proceeds.”

  “And just why is that so important?” Garsul demanded.

  “Because some of my colleagues back home are going to reject my analysis without a hell of a lot of supporting data. It’s so alien to the way we think.”

  “Excuse me, Joraym, but could that possibly be because they are aliens?” Garsul heard the asperity in his own voice, but he didn’t really care.

  “Well, of course it is!” the xenoanthropologist shot back. “But these creatures are more . . . comfortable with this than anyone else I’ve ever observed. They remind me a lot of the Shongairi, actually, and we all know how well that’s working out. I’m only saying I’d like to have as much substantiation as possible when our report goes before the Council. Their attitude just isn’t natural, even for omnivores, and I think we’re going to have to keep a very close eye on them for a long time to come. Thank Clahdru they’re as primitive as they are! At least they’ve got time to do some maturing before we have to worry about them getting off-planet and infesting the rest of the galaxy!”

  Garsul’s nostrils flared at the mention of the Shongairi. As far as he could tell, these “humans” probably weren’t any worse than the Shongairi had been at the same stage in their racial evolution. On the other hand, they probably weren’t a lot better than the Shongairi had been, either. And as Joraym had just pointed out, unlike the Shongairi, they were omnivores, which made their behavior even more bizarre.

  Which presented Garsul with an unwelcome command decision, given that never mentioned, never admitted to codicil to Survey’s official protocols. The one which had been slipped into place very quietly—by executive order and without any debate before the General Assembly of Races—after the Shongairi were granted Hegemony membership. This was the first time Garsul had actually found himself in the uncomfortable position of applying that codicil, but the classified clause of his mission orders made it clear one of his team’s responsibilities was to provide the Council with the means to evaluate any new species’ threat potential. Exactly what the Council meant to do with such an evaluation had never been explained to him, and he’d been careful not to ask, but Joraym’s last sentence had brought him squarely face-to-face with that classified clause.

  The team leader still didn’t care much for the thought of recording everything that was about to happen in full color, complete with sound effects, but he was forced to admit—grudgingly—that in light of the orders Joraym knew nothing about, his request might not be totally insane, after all.

  “What do you think, Kurgahr?”

  “I think Joraym has a point, Garsul,” the team’s xenohistorian said. He, too, knew nothing about Garsul’s classified orders, so far as the team leader was aware, but his tone was firm. Not remotely anything like happy, but firm. “Like you, I hope they’ll put all this under scholar’s seal when we get it home, but this is pretty close to a unique opportunity to get something like this fully recorded. The data really could be invaluable in the long run.”

  “All right,” Garsul sighed. “I’ll ask Ship Commander Syrahk to see to it.”

  • • • • •

  Far below the orbiting Barthon starship, a young man with a long, pointed nose and a savagely scarred face stood looking out through the morning mists. His name was Henry, Duke of Lancaster, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Chester, Duke of Aquitaine, claimant to the throne of France, and, by God’s grace, King of England, and he was twenty-nine years old. He was also, although no one could have guessed it from his expression, in trouble.

  Deep trouble.

  It was obvious to anyone that he had overreached, and the chivalry of France intended to make him pay for it. His siege of Harfleur had succeeded, but it had taken a full month to force the port to surrender, and his own army had been riddled with disease by the time he was finished. Between that, combat casualties, and the need to garrison his new capture, his original field force of over twelve thousand men had been whittled down to under nine thousand, and only fifteen hundred of them were armored knights and men-at-arms. The other seven thousand were longbow-armed archers—nimble, deadly at long range (under the proper circumstances, at least), but hopelessly outclassed against any armored foe who could get to sword range. And truth to tell, Harfleur wasn’t all that impressive a result for an entire campaign. Which was why, two weeks after the port’s surrender, Henry had put his army into motion towards Calais, the English stronghold in northern France, where his troops could reequip over the winter.

  It might, perhaps, have been wiser to withdraw his army by sea, but Henry had chosen instead to march overland. Some might have called it a young man’s hubris, although despite his youth, Henry V was a seasoned warrior who’d seen his first battlefield when he was only sixteen years old. Others might have called it arrogance, although not to his face. (Not a man to whom the wise offered insult, Henry of Lancaster.) It might even have been a sound strategic sense of the need to salvage at least something more impressive than Harfleur from the expedition. Something he could show Parliament that winter when it came time to discuss fresh military subsidies. But whatever his reasoning, he’d decided to reach Calais by marching across his enemy’s territory as proof the enemy in question couldn’t stop him.

  Unfortunately, the French had other ideas, and they’d raised an army to confront the English invasion. Although it hadn’t assembled in time to save Harfleur and wasn’t much larger than Henry’s army when he started cross-country to Calais, there was time for it to grow, and it had proved sufficient to block his progress along the line of the Somme River. In fact, it had succeeded in pushing him south, away from Calais, until he could find a ford which wasn’t held against him in force.

  By that time, unhappily for the English, the French force had swelled to almost thirty-six thousand men.

  Which was why Henry was looking out into the autumn mist this morning. Confronted by four times his own numbers, he’d chosen a defensive position calculated to give the French—who had long and painful memories of what had happened to their fathers and grandfathers at places with names like Crécy and Poitiers—pause. At the moment his army held the southern end of a narrow strip of clear, muddy earth between two patches of woodland, the forests of Agincourt and Tramecourt. It was plowed, that stretch of dirt, and the autumn had been rainy. In fact, it had rained the night before, and the fresh-turned earth was heavy with water.

>   The French vastly outnumbered him in both mounted and dismounted knights and men-at-arms, whose heavy armor would give them a huge advantage in hand-to-hand combat against the unarmored archers who constituted better than eighty percent of his total force. That was why he’d formed his own limited number of knights and men-at-arms to cover the center of his line and massed archers on either flank. That was a fairly standard English formation, but he’d added the innovation of driving long, heavy, pointed wooden stakes into the ground, sharpened tips angled towards the French. The Turks had employed the same tactic to hold off the French cavalry at the Battle of Nicopolis, nineteen years before, and it had served them well. Perhaps it would serve him equally well.

  The dense woodland covered both of his flanks, preventing the French men-at-arms from circling around to turn them, and his total frontage was less than a thousand yards. A frontal attack—the only way the French could get at him—would constrict their forces badly, preventing them from making full use of their numerical advantage, and the mucky terrain would only make bad worse. In fact, the potential battlefield was so unfavorable (from their perspective) that it seemed unlikely they’d attack at all. Besides, time favored them. At the moment, Henry was in a formidable defensive position, true, and the French were only too well aware of their previous failures in attacking prepared English defensive positions, but this time they had him trapped.

  Henry was short of food, his weary army had marched two hundred and sixty miles in barely two and a half weeks, and many of his men were suffering from dysentery and other diseases. Charles d’Albret, the Constable of France, commanding the French army, was still between him and Calais; his enemies outnumbered him hugely; and his strength could only decline while theirs increased. Constable d’Albret could expect additional reinforcements soon—indeed, the Dukes of Brebant, Anjou, and Brittany, each commanding another fifteen hundred to two thousand men, were even now marching to join him—and if the English were foolish enough to move out of their current position the overwhelming French cavalry would cut them to pieces. They knew they had him and, in the fullness of time, they intended to repay the arrogant English with interest for those earlier battles like Crécy and Poitiers. But for now the Constable, in no hurry to bring on a battle, preferred to negotiate and stall for time and the arrival of yet more troops. After all, the English position was ultimately hopeless.