The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection (118 page)

In the beginning I had thought that this was a rather stupid way to run an invasion. No plans, no diagrams, no pep talk, no training, no maneuvers – no nothing. It finally dawned on me that this
was
the ideal way to mount an invasion that you wished to keep secret. The pilots had plenty of piloting experience, and we would get more on the outward voyage. The troops were ready to fight; the sources of supply supplied. And somewhere at the top there were locked boxes of plans, course tapes and such. None of which would be opened until we were safe in warpdrive and outside communication would be
impossible. All of which made life easier for me since there were few opportunities to trip me up in my knowledge of things Cliaandian.

It was with a great deal of pleasure that I found myself assigned as pilot of a troop transport. This was a role I could fill with honor. My earlier assignment of a roommate had not been accidental either, because Ostrov climbed into the navroom a few minutes
later and announced that he was going to be my co-pilot.

‘Wonderful,’ I told him. ‘How many hours do you have on one of these Pavijan class transports?’

He admitted to an unhappily low figure and I patted him on the shoulder.

‘You are in luck. Unlike most First Pilots your old Uncle Vaska is without ego. For an old drinking buddy no sacrifice is too great. I am going to let you fire the takeoff
and if you do the kind of job I think you will do, then I might let you shoot the landing as well. Now hand me the checklist.’

His gratitude was overwhelming, so much so that he admitted that he had been saving his fountain pen for a real emergency since it was filled with 200 proof alcohol and we both had a squirt. It was with a feeling of contentment – and scarred throats – that we watched
the troops marching up and filing into the loading ports far below. A few minutes later a grizzled full-bearded colonel in combat uniform stamped into the navroom.

‘No passengers allowed
here,’ I said.

‘Shut your mouth, lieutenant. I have your course tapes.’

‘Well, let me have them?’

‘What? You must be either mad or joking – and both are shooting offenses in combat.’

‘I must be on edge, colonel,
not much sleep, you know …’

‘Yes.’ He relented slightly. ‘Allowances must be made, I suppose. It hasn’t been easy for anyone. But that’s behind us now. Victory for Cliaand!’

‘Victory for Cliaand!’ we extolled ritually. There had been a lot of this the last couple of days. The Colonel looked at his watch.

‘Almost time. Get the command circuit,’ he ordered.

I pointed to Ostrov, who pressed the
right button instantly. A message appeared on the comscreen.
STAND BY.
We stood. Then it began blinking quickly and changed to the harsh letters,
SET COURSE
. The colonel took the tape container from his pouch and we had to sign as witnesses on a form stating that the tape was sealed when we received it. Ostrov inserted the tape into the computer and the colonel grunted in satisfaction, his work
done, and turned to leave. He fired a parting shot over his shoulder on the way out.

‘And none of those 10 G landings that you moronic pilots seem to enjoy. I’ll court-martial you both if that happens.’

‘Your mother knits sweaters out of garbage,’ I shouted after him, waiting, of course, until the door was closed. But even this feeble effort stirred enthusiasm in Ostrov who was beginning to
respect me more and more.

Hurry up and wait is common to all military forces and that is what we did next. The checklists were complete and we saw ship after ship take off until most were gone. The transports were last. The green
BLASTOFF
signal came as a relief. We were on our way. To a nameless planet circling an unknown star as far as
any of us were concerned. The tape told the computer where
we were going but did not condescend, nor had it been programmed, to inform us.

This security blanket lasted right up to the invasion itself. We were seven boring days en route with nothing to drink and the ship piloted by the computer and the frozen rations barely edible. On a long term basis, without the ameliorating effects of alcohol, Ostrov proved to be less than a sparkling companion. No
matter where the conversation began it invariably ended up in repetitive anecdotes from his school days. I slept well, I’ll say that, and usually while he was talking but he never seemed to mind. I also checked him out on the instruments with drills and dry runs, which may have done him some active good and certainly acquainted me with the controls and operation of the ship.

Since the ship was
completely automated, Ostrov and I were the only crew members aboard. The single doorway to the troop area was sealed and my friend the surly colonel had the only key. He visited us once or twice which was no pleasure at all. On the seventh day he was standing behind us glowering at the back of my neck when we broke out of warpdrive and back into normal space.

‘Take this, inspect here, sign that,’
he snapped and we did all those things before he broke the seal on the flat case. This was labeled
INVASION
in large red letters which rather suggested that things would be hotting up soon. My instructions were simple enough and I switched on the circuits as ordered so the ship could home on the squadron leader. A yellowish sun shone brightly off to one side and the blue sphere of a planet was
on the other. The colonel glared at this planet as though he wanted to reach out and grab it and take a bite out of it, so future developments seemed obvious enough without asking questions.

The invasion began. Most of the fleet was ahead of us, lost in the night of space and visible only occasionally as a network of sparks when
they changed course. Our squadron of transports stayed together,
automatically following the course set by the lead ship, and the planet grew in the screens ahead. It looked peaceful enough from this distance, though I knew the advance units of the fleet must be attacking by this time.

I was not looking forward to this invasion – who but a madman can enjoy the prospect of approaching war? – but I was hoping to find out the answer to the question that had brought
me here. I believed that interplanetary invasions were
still
impossible, despite the fact that I was now involved in one myself. I felt somewhat like the man who, upon seeing one of the most exotic animals in the zoo, said ‘there ain’t no such animal’. Interplanetary invasions just don’t work.

The interplanetary invading force rushed on, a mighty armada giving the lie to my theories. As the nameless
planet grew larger and larger, filling the forward screens, I could see the first signs of the war that I knew was already in progress; tiny sparkles of light in the night hemisphere. Ostrov saw them too and waved his fist and cheered.

‘Give it to them, boys,’ he shouted.

‘Shut up and watch your instruments,’ I snarled. Suddenly hating him. And instantly relenting. He was a product of his environment.
As the twig is bent so grows the bough and so forth. His twig had been bent nicely by the military boarding school into which he had been stuffed as a small child. Which, for some unknown reason, he still thought well of although every story he told me about it had some depressing or sadistic point to make. He had been raised never to question, to believe God had created Cliaand a bit better
than all the other planets, and that they were therefore ordained to take care of the inferior races. It is amazing the things
people will believe if you catch them early enough.

Then we were turned loose as the individual transports scattered to home in on their separate targets. I fiddled with the radio and silently cursed the Cliaandian passion for security and secrecy. Here I was landing
a shipload of troops – and I didn’t even know where! On the planet below, surely, they could not very well disguise that fact, but on what continent? At what city? All I knew was that pathfinder ships had gone in first and planted radio beacons. I had the frequency and the signal I was to listen for, and when I detected it I was to home in and land. And I knew that the target was a spaceport. With
the final instructions I had received some large and clear photographs – the Cliaandian spies had obviously been hard at work – of a spaceport; aerial and ground views. A big red
X
was marked near the terminal buildings and I had to set the ship as close to this site as I could. Fine.

‘That’s the signal!’ The dah-dah-dit-dah was loud and clear.

‘Strap in – here we go,’ I said, and fed instructions
to the computer. It worked up landing orbit almost instantly and the main jets fired. ‘Give the colonel the first warning, then feed him proximity and altitude reports while I bring her in.’

We were dropping towards the terminator, flying into the dawn. The computer had a fix on the transmitter and was bringing us down in a slow careful arc. When we broke through the cloud cover and the ground
was visible far below I saw the first sign of any resistance. The black clouds of explosions springing up around us.

‘They’re shooting at us,’ Ostrov gasped, shocked.

‘Well, it’s a shooting war, isn’t it?’ I wondered what kind of veteran he was to be put off by a little gunfire, and at the same time I hit the computer override and turned off the main jets. We dropped into
free fall and the next
explosions appeared above and behind us as the gun computer was thrown off by our deceleration change.

I caught sight of the spaceport below and hit the lateral jets to move us in that direction. But we were still falling. Our radar altimeter readings were being fed into the computer which kept flashing red warnings about the growing proximity of the ground. I gave it a quick program to hold
landing deceleration as long as possible, to drop us at 10 G’s to zero altitude. This meant we would be falling at maximum speed and slowing down for minimum time, which would decrease the time we would be exposed to ground fire. And I wanted the colonel to have the 10 G’s he had once warned me about.

The jets fired at what looked like treetop height, slamming us down into our couches. I smiled,
which is hard to do with ten gravities pulling at you, thinking about the expression on the colonel’s face at that moment. Watching the screen I added some lateral drift until we were just over the hardstand which was our target area. After this it was up to the computer which did just fine and killed the engines just as our landing struts crunched down. As soon as all the engines cut off I hit
the disembark button and the ship shivered as the ramps blew out and down.

‘That takes care of our part,’ I said, unbuckling and stretching.

Ostrov joined me at the viewport as we watched the troops rush down the ramps and run for cover. They did not seem to be taking any casualties at all which was surprising. There were some bomb craters visible nearby and heaps of rubble, while fighter-bombers
still roared low giving cover. But it didn’t seem possible that all resistance had been knocked out this quickly. Unless this world did not have much of a standing army. That might be one answer to explain the Cliaandian invasion success; only pick planets that are ripe
for plucking. I made a mental note to look into this. Well behind his troops came the colonel in his command car. I hoped that
his guts were still compressed from the landing.

‘Now we have to find some drink,’ Ostrov said, smacking his lips in anticipation.

‘I’ll go,’ I said, taking my sidearm from the rack and buckling it on. ‘You stay with the radio and watch the ship.’

‘That’s what all the first pilots always say,’ he complained, so I knew I had called this one right.

‘Privilege of rank. Someday you will be exercising
it too. I shouldn’t be long.’

‘Spaceport bar, that’s where it usually is,’ he called after me.

‘Don’t teach your grandpa to chew cheese,’ I sneered, having already figured that one out.

All of the interior doors had unlocked automatically when we landed. I climbed the ladders down to the recently vacated combat deck and kicked my way through the discarded ration containers to the nearest ramp.
The fresh sweet air of morning blew in, carrying with it the smell of dust and explosives. We had brought the benefits of Cliaandian culture to another planet.

I could hear firing in the distance and a jet thundered by and was gone, but after this it was very quiet. The invasion had fanned out from the spaceport leaving a pocket of silence in its wake. Nor was anyone in sight when I walked, unexamined,
through the customs area and, with reflex skill, found the bar. The first thing I did was to drain a flask of beer, then poured a small Antarean
ladevandet
to hold it down. There were ranked bottles behind the bar, new friends and old ones, and I made a good selection. I needed something to carry them in and opened one of the sliding doors beneath, looking for a box or a bag, and found myself
staring into the
frightened eyes of a young man.

‘Ne mortigu min!’
he cried. I speak Esperanto like a native and answered him in the same tongue.

‘We are here to liberate you so mean you no harm.’ Word of this conversation might get to the authorities and I wanted to make the right impression. ‘What is your name?’

‘Pire.’

‘And the name of this world?’ This seemed sort of a dim question for
an arrogant invader to ask, but he was too frightened to question it.

‘Burada.’

‘That’s fine, I’m glad you decided to be truthful. And what can you tell me about Burada?’

Badly phrased, admittedly, and he was too stunned to answer. He gaped for a moment, then climbed out of the cabinet and turned to root about in it. He came up with a booklet that he passed over in silence. It had a 3D cover
of an ocean with graceful trees on the bordering shore that sprang to life as soon as the heat of my hand touched it; the waves crashed silently on the golden sands and the trees moved to the touch of unfelt breezes. Letters formed of clouds moved across the sky and I read
BEAUTIFUL BURADA … HOLIDAY WORLD OF THE WESTERN WARP …

‘Looting and consorting with the enemy,’ a familiar, and detested,
voice said from the doorway. I turned slowly to see my friend the colonel from our ship standing there fingering his gaussrifle with what can only be termed a filthy grin on his face.