Dancers in the Afterglow (3 page)

Unless...

"Private? You still there?" he asked softly, thinking as he spoke.

"Yes, sir?"

"You know of the attack?"

"I—I heard it on the news, yes, sir. But they said they had it contained!" The tone was almost pleading now.

"You know what it means for the base to be evacuated, don't you?" he responded slowly, carefully.

"They can't have evacuated, sir! They just—they just wouldn't leave us here. They evacuated Tramion and Calliande and Sopolene! They wouldn't desert us here on Ondine!"

He sighed. "They had time before. They expected the attacks, and they had the transports ready. Yes, I'm afraid they would evacuate. Check the code room if you doubt it. I'll bet it's a mass of molten metal right now."

For a long while there was silence at the other end, but he could hear her breathing. Finally she wailed, "Sir? What are we going to do now?"

Sten Rolvag chomped on his cigar.

"You stay there. Any other military show up, tell them to stay put with you. You navy or marine?"

"Marine, sir."

"Good, good," he said, almost to himself. "That means you know how to fight. Okay, I'll be there as soon as I can. Round up anything that looks useful for a firefight."

"What are you going to do, sir?" she responded, relieved that someone seemed, calm and had a plan.

He considered his reply.

"We're going to do what marines throughout human history have done when left behind. We're gonna go into the bush and continue the fight. What else
can
we do?"

Rolvag disconnected and put his card back into his pocket. He was glad the flyer was filled with supplies; he had lots more at his camp in the bush.

Almost absentmindedly he scanned the skies of Ondine, pitch-black in the deepening night, as if he might see the invaders coming in, right at him.

He wondered how long they had.

He went immediately to his flyer and drove down to the Surf 'N Sands Hotel. He walked into the lobby, went to a house phone, and called his clients.

It was some time before one of them answered, sleepily.

"This is Sten Rolvag," he told her crisply. "Wake the others, get dressed and packed, and be ready to leave quickly. The navy has just evacuated from Ondine, and we're lost to the Machists. We have to move fast."

There was a long pause, then the woman spoke. "Oh, my God!" was all she could manage.

So far there were six, counting himself. He could carry only a few more in the flyer, he knew. He hoped that at least one or two others would have joined the private at SP headquarters.

The four yawning women from Grumett Corporation looked sloppy and unkempt

And scared to death.

Their luggage, what they would need for the trip, was all packed on the flyer. One carried their toiletries case.

The lawyer looked particularly nervous. "Is it true?" she asked him, hoping for, expecting some cruel joke.

He nodded. "It's true. Let's move!"

They piled into the flyer, stunned and sleepy, and watched him climb in and throttle forward to the north of the city. There was little traffic this time of the morning, and he wasn't paying much attention to the traffic laws anyway.

The four women rode as if in a dream, unable to think, unable to react to this new nightmare in their lives.

Finally, Rolvag pulled into a parking area just beyond a gatehouse and set the flyer to idle. He turned to the four passengers. "Wait here," he ordered. "I'll be back quickly."

The private was still inside. She was a dark, thickly set woman of perhaps eighteen who didn't mirror her petite voice at all. Her name was Amara. She was alone.

"I'm Rolvag," he told her, and she looked at him in surprise.

"I—I thought you were a marine officer," she stammered.

He smiled. "Honey, I was happily retired until tonight, but right now it looks like I'm the commanding general of the whole goddamned Marine Corps. Let's go." He looked around. "Nobody else?"

"A few calls," she responded. "Nobody would believe me. They thought I was supposed to put them on stall because of the combat situation." She looked around. "Nobody came, as you can see."

"Weapons?" he asked her. "Anything usable?"

She shook her head negatively. "No, nothing but my issue sidearm. What they didn't take they blasted. S.O.P. You should know that. Leave nothing for the enemy."

Rolvag grunted. "I was afraid of that. Well, okay, we'll make do with what we have. Let's go."

She looked at him strangely. "Go? Go where? What good will it do?"

He felt irritation rising within him. "We're going to remain free until they liberate us, and we're gonna make it hot as hell for the Machists. Now, come on!"

She looked around again at the deserted office.

"What are we supposed to do that with?"

"With me," he replied, grabbing her arm and pulling her along. She did not resist.

Obbligoto

Observations on worlds conquered by the Machists, particularly Calliande, indicate a deep knowledge of human behavior patterns. The human race was obviously well researched before the start of the war, probably for decades. As a result, we find that they have developed a system for dealing with captive indigenous populations which is at once crude, vicious, and effective. The first stage we call the despair and weeding process, and it parallels much in human history.

For, in order to effectively control and assimilate a hostile population, you must first show the absence of hope.

—
A Primer on Machist Behavior, p.
812, Naval College, 1161 A.C.

HE LOOKED LIKE AN AD FOR A PLAS-PARLOR. MEDIUM
height, thin and muscular, with deep brown eyes and carefully shaped, thick, wiry black hair. He looked, in fact, almost
too
perfect: not a scar, mark, mole, or pimple on him.

He glanced around the sterile office dispassionately, as if his mind were somewhere else, pondering more important matters. Inwardly, he chuckled at the place.

It looked like the office of a typical small import-export firm, which was what the door alleged. He had no doubt they actually
did
some business here, but he wondered if anyone interested in knowing what the place really was couldn't find out without much effort.

The receptionist was a mousy little man, the kind with "clerk" stamped all over him—the sort that barely glances up at you, and never looks you straight in the eye.

"I'm here to see Mr. Hudkins," the visitor said in a quiet and expressionless voice. "I have an appointment."

"Well, ah, I see, sir," harumphed the clerk. "And who shall I say is here?"

"Just tell him it's Daniel," the dark man replied. "He'll know who I am. He sent for me."

The clerk reached over and touched a small stud next to his intercom. Instantly a noise blanker cut off all sounds for a few centimeters around the equipment, so that no one could hear what was said.

No ordinary man. Daniel could have neutralized the blanker or read the man's lips, but he didn't. It wasn't worth the trouble.

The clerk touched the stud again. "Ah, go right in, sir. Third door to the right. Has his name on it."

Daniel nodded and walked down the hall to the proper office. He paused, considered knocking, then decided just to barge in.

Admiral Hudkins looked much the way one would expect him to look—tall, thin, a bit stooped, with a fine-lined face and rich handlebar mustache. He stood as Daniel entered, and motioned him to a chair.

Daniel took it, although he had no need of chairs and such. But formalities were part of the act, and they always made the people he dealt with feel better, even when they knew his true nature, as Hudkins did.

The Chief of Naval Intelligence got right to the point. Unlike the clerk, he was direct, brusk, and looked everyone in the eye.

"You've heard about Ondine?" he asked the visitor.

Daniel nodded. "Hell of a mess. How'd you let them slip it past you like that?"

The admiral looked almost apologetic. "We got suckered, that's all. They know we have some people on their captive worlds—they catch one occasionally. They did a big show for us, nice little secret documents, ship orders, and the like. Various ships showed up at various places, supposedly on the way to other places, and the like. The plan was supposed to be a hit at Ariante, with a feint at Ondine. We believed them. Ariante is a tempting prize, only nine light-years from the current front, six billion people, lots of heavy industry. So we adjusted accordingly, and we were suckered. That's what hurts the most about this one— losing a planet is bad enough, but to be suckered out of it ... well, it's galling."

Daniel shrugged. A sadness, yes, and a humiliation; but that is the nature of war.

"So what does this have to do with me?" he asked in that same soft voice.

The admiral reached down and grabbed some charts, then leaned over and handed them to the other man. "The top chart is the position of the front over a ten-light-year sector on both sides of Ondine as it existed before the attack. Now flip over the first transparency."

Daniel did, and suddenly the line changed. Twenty, thirty enemy ships were shown in picket position around Ondine. The distance of the line was about four light-years.

"Looks like a lock on Ondine to me," Daniel said honestly.

"Go to the second map. That shows dispositions for ten times that first one's distance. Now look at it, with the Machist ships in the same position."

Daniel did so, and saw immediately what the older man meant. Now, instead of a mild bulge, there was a diagonal line almost forty light-years away from Ondine, with a bulge like a soap bubble that hadn't yet come free from its blower-ring. It was long, and sliced through essentially unoccupied space for the full forty light-years plus the four around Ondine.

"They're bringing up ships fast," Hudkins told him, "but there's no way a position like that can be defensible. Not forever."

"Why not just take a big group in and break it?" Daniel asked.

Hudkins looked worried. "We can't. Ships can only be built so fast; people can be trained to man those ships properly only with time to do so. We're already stretched thin. In a couple of years, perhaps as many as five, we'll increase our strength upward of ten times what it is now. Enough, we think, to punch holes in that line wherever we want. But now—the front's moved past the human frontier, back into our front yard. Places like Ariante must be defended to the utmost. Priorities must be set. If we weaken one to retake Ondine, the enemy will hit us there and force further losses."

Daniel nodded slowly. "It does seem a pity, though, that such an obvious weakness can't be exploited."

Hudkins smiled broadly. "Yes, doesn't it? Remember, this thing works both ways. Machist supply lines are stretched dangerously thin. Fighters slip under the front and break that continuity still more. Ondine looks to us like a commander's desperation to win a battle because his superiors are frustrated with stalemate. But, like us, they can't spare the ships and men to fortify it heavily."

"How soon before you think you can take it back?" Daniel asked.

The admiral shrugged. "We'll need a year at least, maybe more if we get any more nasty surprises, or if they unexpectedly try and fortify the place."

Daniel spread his hands. "Then what's the problem? We
are
going to take it back; it's simply a matter of waiting for our time to come."

The intelligence chief frowned. "It's not a question of that—it's a question of what we find when we take it back." He paused, considering his words carefully.

"You see," he continued, wetting his lips nervously, "there's only a small population down there. Easy to work with, to manage. Plenty of space to play around. We think there might be another reason for taking Ondine."

Daniel's eyebrows rose. "Like what?"

"An object lesson," the other replied grimly. "A demoralizer of the first water. Sixteen million people— tourists from just about every world you can think of. Plenty of folks around here have friends, relatives, or acquaintances on Ondine. We've seen what the enemy does to people on the worlds they capture. The more time they have the more effective they are, true, but they'll have to do a rush job here. Everything to convert that world and that population into something else, something horrible and different. Something which, when we
do
liberate it, will terrify everyone in the Combine."

Daniel shook his head slowly from side to side. "I don't see how that's possible."

"The facts have been heavily suppressed," the admiral admitted. "It wouldn't do to have them get out. But—well, when the Machists take a world, they convert it. They change it and the people into something alien, inside and out." He sighed. "In the past we could do nothing. Now we need time to keep the same thing from happening on Ondine. That's where you come in. That's to be your job. Slow them down. Use whatever methods you have to. Make sure their project isn't completed before we get there."

It was Daniel's turn to look grim. "You know I've never actually been in action, don't you? I'm a prototype, the laboratory guinea pig. There's been nothing like me before, and nobody, not even I, know how I will act or can act. And infiltrating a taken world, organizing resistance, slowing down or stopping the Machist takeover for an indeterminate period until you can liberate it—it just may not be possible."

The admiral nodded agreement. "I'm well aware of the impossibility of what we're asking, and, frankly, I'd rather not send
you
in. We don't know enough. You don't know enough." Suddenly his fist banged down hard on his desk. "But, dammitall, man! We have to
try!"

Daniel left the office quietly and walked out onto the street. The air was warm, but he barely noticed. He looked at the city—at the broad boulevards, moving walkways, silent minitrams, and gardens hanging from the sides of the gleaming buildings.