Orion Shall Rise (71 page)

The resolve abided that had launched him on this enterprise.
It’s for her, mankind, Gaea, my fame (no, I’m not supposed to think about that), sanity, righteousness. In this terrible hour, we must ourselves be terrible
. ‘Well,’ he repeated.

‘Would you like me to deliver the ultimatum?’ Rewi offered.

‘No,’Jovain said. ‘Thank you, but – no, I am the Captain. Of course, if you should want to add something –’

‘I told you earlier, sir, that could give a false impression of indecisiveness and prolong matters,’ the Maurai answered imperturbably. ‘I trust you’ll not falter.’

‘It won’t be easy,’ Mattas said. His beard waggled as he talked. A scrap of bacon was caught in the grizzled shag. ‘You may have to conduct massive destruction. Remember always, it’s surgery. Gaea will heal.’

And we’ll go back to our customary lives?
Jovain thought.
No, Gaea never raises the dead. She brings forth new lives. How sinister did the mammals seem to the dinosaurs?

The intercom buzzed. He stabbed its accept button. A woman’s voice spoke accented Angley: ‘Your Dignity, please hear Eygar Dreng, director of Orion for the Wolf Lodge of the Northwest Union. Dr. Dreng, you address the Captain of Skyholm, Talence Jovain Aurillac.’

Mattas and Rewi showed the same tenseness that Jovain felt in his belly. His chest muscles hurt.
Not Gaean, not Gaean. Relax, like a tiger
.

A hoarse masculine tone: ‘Hello, Skyholm, hello.’

‘Greeting, sir,’ Jovain said, and waited for the interpreter.

‘This is Dreng,’ he heard in Angley about as good as the underling’s. ‘Proceed, if you please.’

Jovain recovered from his surprise. After all, the master of Orion could not be an ignoramus. A substantial literature on aerodynamics and related sciences existed in the Domain, and since the Enric Restoration, copies had gone abroad. Dreng had doubtless wanted to read the originals; if he had an ear for languages, he could have acquired a conversational knowledge with slight extra effort, for Angley and Unglish were close kin; maybe he had kept in practice by periodic talks with that woman, secretary or research librarian or whatever she was – Jovain snapped off his speculation. His business was too deadly serious.

‘I am the Captain,’ he said. ‘Do you, eh, do you understand what the situation
is?
We were broadcasting announcements of our intentions, appeals to your reason, on every usual band while we approached. But we got no answer.’

‘You did not rate an answer, as long as we could hope your balloon would puncture and go down in the drink.’

Anger flared cleansing through Jovain. ‘Well, it did not!’

‘So?’

Jovain wrestled for self-possession. ‘Hear this. The aerostat is positioned above you. Its accumulators are fully charged and indefinitely rechargeable. Any aircraft or missiles you may send against us – not that I believe you have any with the capability – will be blasted out of existence. Our lasers will ruin your project, your entire goal in this senseless war. I beg you, surrender before it is too late. Your own government has disowned you. I have a representative of the Maurai at my elbow, ready to help negotiate reasonable terms.’

‘Sure,’ Eygar Dreng said contemptuously. ‘The trouble i
s,
your idea of “reasonable” and ours have nothing to do with each other. Look, we here have considered this, the bunch of us, since your first message came in. We’re agreed, we’ll take our chances. We’ll keep the same channel open for communication, and you might do well not to sizzle our transmitter out. Don’t you realize you’re laying your entire civilization on the line?’

Mattas pulled his hips from his chair arms as he rose. The seat clattered to the deck behind him. ‘How much harm will you make us wreak on Gaea?’ he bawled.

‘Fuck you,’ Eygar Dreng said.
Click
. The intercom went dead.

‘Punish them,’ Mattas said thick-tongued, while his fists punched about, ‘punish them, punish them.’

3

An unseen sun loosed wrath upon the land.

Clouds and rain could not stop such bolts. They seared their way through; water turned to live steam, so that vapor trailed after every flash; thunder banged; electric sparks and streamers rushed eerie blue; the wind was troubled in its course, it eddied about and whined.

Where a beam smote, trees exploded and their fragments burst aflame. Herbage vanished at the center, became charred in broad rings about such a patch of baked earth. Rocks glowed red. The beasts and men that took direct hits were lucky, for they perished too fast to know it. Those on the fringes were cooked alive, or took a superheated breath and felt their lungs shrivel. At larger distances, any that chanced to be looking in the direction of a ray were blinded – and the rays went everywhere.

Some were winks, that did their havoc and then, recreated, struck nearby. Some lasted for a minute or more. They did not hold steady, for there was no sense in drilling at a target the gunners could not see. Instead, they walked around on the mountains, down into the valleys, up across snows that gave way in avalanches. As the hours passed, square kilometers of wilderness turned into blackened, smoking, steaming, flood-riven desolation, save in random spots where things that had been animals might still writhe and scream.

Toward evening the rain ended and the sky began to open. Men who had been elsewhere, who had glimpsed the fury from behind shielding ranges, and by cowering had saved their sight, now saw a foreign moon above them in dusky heaven. So huge was it that it seemed to be falling down upon them, and that was when many lost their last wits, cast their weapons away, and ran haphazardly, howling. Its sunset-ruddy light made the stormclouds around it glow, as if with inner fires that would soon break forth.

Pickets on the heights, who had taken shelter during the onslaught, used the luminance to observe that which had been done. They put portable transceivers to their lips, and radio waves swept to and fro through a dusk grown hideously quiet. The men huddled into their parkas against deepening cold. The invader moon faded as the sun dropped farther below the horizon, but they saw how the circle of it blotted out stars, and knew they would see it again, coldly ashine, ready to kill the rest of them.

Eygar Dreng sat in his office, as alone as ever a man could be. It was a homely, cluttered room, mostly full of overloaded bookshelves and file cabinets, communications and computer equipment, a few such souvenirs as a kayak paddle from the racing championship he had held in his youth. Upon his battered old desk were two pictures, one of his family, one out of ancient archives, a Voyager view of Saturn. The ventilators whispered.

He held a radiophone to his ear. Colonel Rogg’s voice, relayed from the field, sounded faint and thin, as if a ghost spoke: ‘No, sir, we have no hope whatsoever. I thought we might, but the enemy has demonstrated his capabilities – and he was, in effect, shooting blind. Tomorrow looks like clearing weather. A technology like his must include optics that can pick out individuals on the ground. Sir, I am responsible for my men. Today I’ve seen too many of them – well, we’ve a hospital tent here at base, you know, and the rescue and medic teams have been absolutely heroic, but – No, sir, tomorrow we withdraw.’

‘You realize that leaves Orion open to ground attack, as soon as the Maurai can muster more troops,’ Eygar said. His own voice dragged, as did every muscle and bone in his body. ‘No replacements for you, when the aerostat interdicts every approach.’

‘They wouldn’t come anyway, would they, to certain death – and for what? Sir, we’re licked. Our duty is to salvage what we can.’

‘You suppose the Yurrupans will let you evacuate.’

‘That’s for you to arrange, sir. You have a line to them, don’t you? I… I assume they wouldn’t hunt us just for fun. Whatever happens, we’re leaving. Surely you’ll help save lives.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the colonel said. ‘Myself, I’d be glad to die leading a charge against them. But they’re up in the sky.’

‘I understand,’ Eygar told him gently. ‘Commence what preparations you’re able. I’ll be in touch again before … before sunrise.’

After a few technical details, he set the phone down and punched his intercom. ‘Get me Skyholm, Nona,’ he instructed dully.

The answer sounded appalled: ‘Not to surrender? Already?’

‘No, not yet, I guess. But I do have to parley.’ Eygar sat back and waited. Once he smiled at the image of his wife, children, son-in-law, grandchild; once he touched the Saturn picture.

The phone rang. He fitted himself to it. Preliminaries babbled. Then:

‘Captain Jovain speaking. Dr. Dreng? I trust you want to talk reason. Believe me, we have not enjoyed doing what you forced us to do.’

‘I wonder – No, pardon me. This has been a shock.’

An oddly sympathetic tone: ‘I know. Please say what you wish.’

‘I suppose you learned, from your Maurai allies, approximately where our militiamen are, and selected an occupied area for a demonstration, as closely as you were able given the weather.’

‘Yes, we did. I warn you, my meteorologists tell me that tomorrow it will clear.’

‘Uh-huh. Okay, Captain, the militia have had enough. If you permit, they’ll leave in the morning.’

‘Splendid! I
am
happy. Naturally, in common humanity, we will permit. But let me give you another warning. We will monitor, and consider any evidence of bad faith to be an intolerable provocation.’

‘Oh, sure, sure.’ Discussion turned to routes and schedules. The Norrmen would meet at Tyonek, and Maurai ships would be on hand to transport them away, probably to Seattle. The march and embarkation would take several days.

‘Meanwhile –’ Joy beiled through Jovain’s words. ‘About your installation. I suggest you bring your personnel to the same pickup point, for the same conveyance home. The Maurai will require guides and the like, of course, on their way to the site.’

Eygar grinned lopsidedly. ‘Oh, no, Captain,’ he said. ‘That was not on the agenda. We stay.’

‘What?’Jovain yelped. He recovered equilibrium. ‘Your position
is
hopeless. I repeat, Skyholm will fight until you surrender or are destroyed. You are already outlaws, yes, in the proclamation of your own government. Do the decent thing,
give
up, spare lives, and amnesty should be possible for most of your group.’

‘“Outlaw” bears a rather special meaning in this country,’ Eygar said. In the recital of a tradition there was strength. ‘We don’t hold with locking human beings in cages or turning them over to professional killers. An outlaw is a person who’s forfeited his right to redress for anything anyone may do to him. It’s about as effective a deterrent to crime as I know of, and less expensive than the rest. But declaring a man outlaw
is
the gravest business we can undertake, a lengthy process with every safeguard our forefathers could
devise, much too important to trust to a government. Besides, at present the Northwest Union has no government. We don’t count those miserable puppets of the Maurai.’

‘Don’t preach anarchism to me!’ Jovain rasped. The world has seen, in the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf of Laska, the world has seen what that leads to. The time
is
ripe for ending it.’

‘Ah, so.’ Eygar laid hand around jaw. ‘In other words, you’ll not be content with dismantling Orion.’

‘Certainly not, after the lessons of the past several decades. The Northwest Union will be made into a civilized nation. The criminals who built and used forbidden weapons will be brought to justice.… Ah, I myself take for granted you were not a party to that, Dr. Dreng. Conduct yourself properly and I think a later investigation will clear you. I see no reason to penalize individuals who were simply misguided.’

‘Have you discussed these policies with the Maurai Federation?’

‘Only en passant. But I think their general intent is obvious. They do not propose to have a war every twenty years! And my government intends to participate in the peace conference.’

‘You’ve got the power to insist on that.’

‘Yes.’ Triumph: ‘Therefore, shall we arrange an armistice?’

‘No,’ said Eygar Dreng. ‘Orion hasn’t quit yet.’

‘You’re insane!’ yelled the voice at his ear.

‘Stubborn, yes. Insane, no. We’re well provisioned, heavily armored, and you don’t know exactly where to aim your shots at us. You’ll need weeks or months to reduce us, or the Maurai to ferry soldiers north. Meanwhile, anything could happen. I’ve read a fair amount of military history, Captain. Now and then it’s paid off for a garrison to hold out till the bitter end. But I hope you’ll allow our militia to go. That you won’t try using them to blackmail us.’

‘Oh, yes, oh yes. World opinion –’Jovain breathed heavily. ‘Do you imagine I’ll retreat? If I keep station till the Maurai troops come, my Domain will have disintegrated beyond retrieval. If I probe randomly for your launch sites, I will inflict dreadful harm on Gaea. Do you see me caught between those two horns?’

Eygar said nothing.

‘I will do whatever is necessary to crush your misbegotten society,’Jovain said. ‘And I have a third possibility open to me. Where I am, I command an enormous area, land inhabited by your people, waters plied by their ships. Furthermore, Skyholm
is
movable; it
came to you, didn’t it? I can punish your whole nation until it rises and marches against you itself. Not its nature but its artifacts, cities, villages, farms, roads, mines, everything men have built, with surgical precision.

‘Across the Inlet from you is another peninsula, settled, prosperous-looking. Dreng, I tell you most solemnly, if you have not yielded by tomorrow noon when the cloud cover will be gone, by tomorrow night that will all lie a desert. Which will be the merest beginning.’

Eygar shook his head as if clubbed. ‘And you condemn us for using a few nukes,’ he said.

‘Enough!’ Jovain shrilled. ‘I’ll hear no more. You shall
not
desecrate Gaea –-’ For a space, his breathing shuddered, until he could finish flatly: ‘You are overwrought, Dr. Dreng. Let’s adjourn this. Think it over. Ask your personnel how they feel. Then – well, before noon I shall expect to hear from you. Do you follow me? Very well, goodnight.’