School of Fire

by David Sherman

  "I could have told you that was going to happen," Chan said dryly. "Dumb guy." Then he thought frantically about what to do next while MacIlargie fired a shot at the hopper as it swooped past them. MacIlargie missed.

  "You just gave them our position," Chan told him. "They'll fry us on their next pass."

  "No they won't," Schultz's voice said. "Maneuver toward me. I know a way out of here." MacIlargie ran upright, fast enough that Chan's reaching hand couldn't grab him and pull him into cover.

  Chan made his way using as much cover as he could. The escort hopper came back around the side of the tor and swept the area he and MacIlargie had just vacated. Continuing the circuit, its fire reached the narrow opening in the hillside the four Marines ducked into just as Chan, again bringing up the rear, was diving through it. A couple of hundred meters away the last of the hoppers was off-loading its passengers, and the reinforced company was deploying for an assault on the tor to mop up any of the "enemy" who weren't killed by the escort hopper.

  MacIlargie and Godenov huddled near the entrance, exclaiming to each other about their narrow escape from the hopper.

  "Now you know why nobody makes the mistake of firing at Marine hoppers more than once," Chan snarled.

  MacIlargie looked at him innocently and shrugged. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

  Chan shook his head patiently. "Now what do we do? Hope they give us a chance to surrender, or do we go out in a blaze of glory?" he asked sarcastically. He quickly looked around. The cave appeared to extend only three or four meters into the side of the tor.

  "Neither," Schultz said. "Follow me." He scuttled to the back of the cave, past MacIlargie and Godenov, and seemed to melt into the rock wall on the left.

  "Where'd he go?" Godenov exclaimed.

  "You coming with me or not?" Schultz's muffled voice echoed from the wall.

  Chan brushed past the two men to examine the wall where Schultz had disappeared. "Well, I'll be. Come on, you two."

  Situated where it couldn't be seen until you were right on top of it, a crack just wide enough for a man to squeeze through opened into the side of the cave. Chan pulled and pushed his way through, and for a brief moment thought he was going to get stuck. MacIlargie, smaller, got through more easily. Godenov, like Chan, almost got stuck.

  "Hey," MacIlargie exclaimed when he was in the crack, "it's dark in here. How are we going to see where we're going?"

  After a couple of meters the narrow slit opened into a room larger than the cave mouth. Schultz was patiently waiting for them. They could see his face easily in the greenish illumination from a sphere in his hand the size of a tennis ball, a non-issue, civilian glowball. It wasn't a bright light, but in the darkness of the cave it was enough to see by.

  "Never go into the field without your own personal glow-ball," he said to the new men. "If you live long enough, you might learn these things."

  "Why wouldn't we live long enough?" MacIlargie asked.

  "Because you're stupid. If you don't make a mistake in training and get yourself killed, someone else might kill you to keep you from getting him killed." He turned to a tunnel leading away from the entrance to the room. "I hope none of you are claustrophobic," he said over his shoulder. "It gets tight in a few places back here."

  "Wait a minute," Chan said sharply. "Where are we going?"

  "This way." Schultz pointed at the tunnel.

  "Where does 'this way' go?" Chan asked. He didn't want to admit it, but in fact he was claustrophobic.

  "To the other side of the tor. This place is honeycombed. We can come out anywhere we want."

  "Yeah, and if it's honeycombed, we can get lost anywhere too. And how do you know it's honeycombed?" Schultz was a hard, cold man. The fact that Chan wanted to argue with him was a measure of how afraid he was of being in a cave.

  "I've been here before. There are markers we can follow." He walked toward a shadow on the other side of the room and toed a small cairn. "Like this." He ducked and disappeared into the shadow—the mouth of a passageway.

  "You better be right," Chan muttered, "because if I get lost or stuck in here and die, I'm coming back to haunt you." Then, louder, he said to MacIlargie and Godenov, "Follow him."

  The tunnel was low enough that they had to crouch to get through, but they didn't have to crawl—the crawling and slithering came later. This first tunnel curved gently to the left, then took a sharp right and emptied into another cavern, which had two exits.

  Schultz didn't hesitate before picking one and heading for it.

  Nervous sweat was beginning to bead on Chan's forehead. "Are you sure you know where you're going?"

  "I'm sure."

  "I don't see any of those markers you said were there."

  "You're not looking," Schultz said as he slid into the exit he'd chosen.

  "I see it," MacIlargie said as he hurried after Schultz. His boot tapped the cairn as he passed it and knocked it over.

  Godenov gave Chan a glance that was half excited and half scared, then followed.

  "Muhammad's beard," Chan muttered. He shrugged out of his pack, dug in it for his glowball, then paused momentarily to repile the cairn. He hoped it didn't matter what order the rocks went in, because he couldn't remember how they'd been piled before MacIlargie knocked them over. "Wait for me," he said as he sidestepped into the crack in the wall. It was another tight squeeze, and he resolved that he wasn't bringing up the rear again—if he got stuck, he wanted someone behind him as well as in front so he could be pushed or pulled in either direction to get free.

  Time seemed to suspend its normal movement, and it felt like they were spending the beginning of an eternity making their way through the rock passages. But it took less than one hour standard to make their way to the other side of the tor. They squeezed sideways through vertical and near-vertical cracks, slithered on their bellies through horizontal ones. Here they had to clamber up, there they gingerly climbed down. Most of the time, though, they duckwalked or crawled on all fours; few of the passages were high and wide enough for them to walk erect. Now and then they passed through chambers so small only three of them could squeeze in, but one of them was big enough to hold a platoon. Chan never got permanently stuck, but there was one briefly harrowing spot where he couldn't move forward or aft until he let all the air out of his lungs and was push pulled through with his sweat serving as lubricant. Schultz noticed how wet he was and how he stank of fear, but only grunted.

  When they reached yet another small room, Schultz took off his helmet, then turned off the glowball and returned it to his pack. "Wait a few minutes," he whispered to the others. "The exit's right on the other side. We'll let our eyes adjust until we can see some light, then follow it."

  "We're not out yet," Chan said. "And there's still a whole company out there looking for us."

  Schultz's helmetless head was now visible as a shadow on a shadow, and Chan saw him shake it. "They're not still looking for us here. Only a couple other people know about these caves. Either they're searching every opening on the other side of the tor or they think we managed to evade all their sensors and get away."

  "Uh-huh."

  At last, diffused light was visible on the far side of the room.

  "Let's go," Schultz said. They followed him through the crack. The crack turned, dropped, and became a narrow tunnel that emptied directly onto the hillside next to a mid-size boulder. Schultz dragged himself out, then helped the others gain the open air.

  "We made it," Chan said, immensely relieved. He shook himself, enjoying the feeling of nothing pressing in on him. "Now we need to find out where Mike Company went to so we can do a number on them."

  "We're right here," came a voice from above and behind them. "Drop your weapons or you're dead."

  They looked back and up into the faces and blasters of a Marine squad.

  "You didn't really think you were the only ones who knew about the caves in there, did you?" the Mike Company squad leader asked.


  Suddenly, the air smelled of fish again.

  Chapter Two

  The communications console bleeped insistently beside Kurt Arschmann's elbow. He frowned, his train of thought interrupted. Damn. These production accounts for his plantations were complicated. How could he get through them with these interruptions? He could have given the accounts to his staff to review, especially now that he was burdened with the duties of Chairman of the Ruling Council, but for seventy years he'd personally reviewed the accounts every quarter, and he wasn't about to stop now.

  "Yes?" he demanded impatiently. The dark complexion and jet-black hair and mustache of Kalat Uxmal appeared instantly on the console screen. People of Arschmann's social stratum still noticed such things, although, after two hundred years of intermarriages on Wanderjahr, mixed lineage—in Uxmal's case Pakistani and Mayan—had become accepted, even among the elite. Kalat's narrow features always reminded Arschmann of a rat, but he kept the unkind thought to himself. Kalat was too valuable to Arschmann as his private secretary to hold his mixed heritage against him or to mock his unfortunate physical endowments.

  "Excellency, a matter of the utmost urgency—"

  "What is it, Kalat? Spit it out!" Arschmann fumed. "Excellency, I should really tell you about this in person," Kalat answered. Arschmann looked at the image of his secretary on the screen, glanced again at the overseer's report, and drummed his fingers on his desktop. "Very well. Come up at once."

  As the door to Arschmann's private sanctum hissed shut behind him, Kalat seemed to glide across the richly carpeted floor. That was another thing about Kalat that Arschmann had observed with annoyance over the years: he seemed always to creep about, so deferential and obsequious, but popping up at your elbow when you least expected it. Real men walked with purpose, unafraid, confident, spoke their piece clearly and moved on. But like many powerful men who prized efficiency and loyalty, Arschmann could not do without Kalat. The man was always there when needed, and nothing seemed too complicated for him to handle. He was really more a chief of staff than a secretary. Arschmann ran a big hand through his thick blond hair.

  "Excellency, I have the most terrible news to impart." Kalat bowed slightly but remained silent. Arschmann sat behind his desk, waiting for Kalat to continue.

  When he did not, Arschmann sighed. "What is the news, Kalat?" Arschmann asked in a tired voice.

  "Excellency, in brief, your nephew is dead."

  Arschmann just stared at Kalat for a long moment. "Which nephew, precisely?" he asked in a small voice.

  "Excuse me, Excellency. Captain Rickdorf."

  The color drained immediately from Arschmann's face. He had trouble speaking. Then, in a voice so quiet Kalat had to lean forward to hear it: "How?"

  Briskly, Kalat outlined the details of the ambush conducted by the Che Loi Brigade of the Peoples Liberation Army in the Bavaran Hills Province. As his secretary concluded, one part of Arschmann's whirling mind realized Uxmal was enjoying his role as the bearer of sad tidings.

  Both men sat, silent, for a long time. Rickdorf had been a favorite nephew. The boy had always been a pompous fool and a very poor choice as an officer of the Feldpolizei, but his love of the active life and his open admiration for the "Germanic" virtues of his forebears had endeared the young man to his uncle. Not smart enough to attend a first-class university off-world, as was the practice among the landowning class on Wanderjahr, young Rickdorf had attended a military school in the capital, where he excelled at riding, shooting, and fencing, but not at tactics or history. No one had ever thought his appointment as an officer of Feldpolizei, the paramilitary force created to deal with the guerrillas, would have ended so tragically. In fact, the young man's father considered the Feldpolizei an ideal place to keep his son out of trouble.

  And now he and nearly a hundred of his men were dead!

  Arschmann rested his head in his hands. "Do we know who conducted the ambush?"

  "Excellency, our intelligence sources believe the bandits were under the command of Fernando Hing."

  Arschmann's hands flew away from his face and he sat straight up.

  "Goddamnit, the son of my cousin has murdered my nephew. And I put that son of a bitch through school!" Secretly, though, he was glad it hadn't been the other way around. Although Hing was an obstacle to Kurt Arschmann's ambitions, he admired Hing for his efficiency and dedication—primary virtues for a man, in Arschmann's opinion.

  Then Arschmann took a deep breath and gathered himself. There was work to do. This incident would give him the leverage he needed. "Kalat, I want you to assemble the Council immediately," he said. His resonant baritone carried to the far corners of the spacious room.

  "Excellency, on such short notice... I could easily arrange a satellite conference in just a few minutes..."

  "Goddamnit, Kalat, I want them here, in person, and I said immediately! I don't need to spread the news; if we know, the whole world knows what happened out there. We need to discuss what to do about it, and I won't do that over a satellite hookup where someone might be listening in. I want them all here by tomorrow morning. Make that very clear. Those who are visiting their plantations on other continents can fly back this evening. See that it is done."

  Back in his own office, Kalat Uxmal smiled. He would make the calls necessary to convene the Council tomorrow. My God, he thought, that a poor boy like himself, from the barrios of Brosigville, could have risen to such a position of power and influence! But first he had to get a message to a person right there in the capital. Kalat chuckled.

  "Thank you, sweet Karl," Arschmann whispered when he was alone again, as if addressing the man in the portrait on the wall of his office. Briefly, he considered smoking a pipe of thule, but he had no business celebrating in view of the news that had just been delivered. In fact, he had already forgotten about the late Captain Rickdorf.

  This thing with the Peoples Liberation Army, or whatever fancy name they were going under, had taken a very bad turn. They should have taken immediate and decisive action against the guerrillas years ago, as he had advised at the time imprisoned them, shot them, exiled them, whatever it took. But no one believed a handful of overeducated college radicals could ever pose a serious threat to the government of Wanderjahr, especially not when the Confederation had just granted them an unrestricted license to export thule to every world in Human Space. Not when unparalleled prosperity was about to catapult Wanderjahr from a third-class developing world into an economic competitor with the oldest and most advanced members of the Confederation of Worlds.

  What do these fools want? Arschmann mused silently. Democracy? That was a system where fools were allowed to elect other fools and cowards to ruin their lives for them. Sharing of wealth? That only guaranteed everyone would be poor. Land ownership? Pigshit! What would the peasants of Wanderjahr know about managing their own property? Independence? What was that but pure economic survival of the fittest? Unionizing of the plantation workers? Good God, didn't they realize that a union would only create power and prosperity for its bosses and nothing for the peasants? No, what the bandits wanted was power all to themselves, Arschmann concluded, and if they got it, they would ruin the economy and social order painstakingly established on Wanderjahr by his forebears over two and a half centuries. And, more important, their seeking power put the bandits in direct competition with him.

  Kurt Arschmann glanced at the hologram portrait of Karl Eschmann Wanderjahrer that occupied an honored place on one wall. Dressed in the antique formal garb of the late twenty-second century, the old explorer seemed to stare through him. Arschmann was descended from Wanderjahrer through a female line of his family. His own fierce blue eyes matched those of the revered patriarch. Otherwise there was no physical resemblance. There was even less between them philosophically. Where Karl Wanderjahrer had been a philanthropist and a visionary, Kurt Arschmann was a businessman.

  Karl Wanderjahrer was the descendant of a long line of German Christian evangelicals belonging t
o a sect calling itself the United Brotherhood. They believed in hard work, the glory of God, and the dignity of man. Viciously persecuted in ancient times, the church found spiritual renewal in America, where it nourished long before the Second American Civil War. It had reestablished itself in its native Germany long before Karl Wanderjahrer was born in Neu Kaiserslautem in 2101.

  The Brotherhood did not eschew the fruits of its labor. Quite the contrary. Over the years many of its families became very wealthy, including the Wanderjahrers. By the time Karl came into his inheritance at the age of forty, he had already developed plans to fulfill one of the Brotherhood's most cherished dreams: the creation of a world where their descendants could live in peace with one another, free from the persecutions that had plagued the sect since its founding in the fifteenth century.

  With the purchase of the starship Dr. Elly Brosig, Karl's and the Brotherhood's dream became a reality. Chartered by the Confederation of Worlds as an exploration and survey vessel, the Brosig actually accomplished much good work extending the outer envelope of Human Space during the fifty-year period it took Wanderjahrer and his companions to find the right world for their settlement. When the world later to be known as Wanderjahr was discovered, it fit all the criteria the Brotherhood's vestrymen had established as necessary for settlement: far from the space lanes of the day, habitable by humans without the necessity of terraforming, and an environment capable of supporting an agricultural economy. Initial surveys reported a fauna possibly inimical to humans, reptiloid creatures vaguely reminiscent of the Cretaceous period of Earth's geological past, but the vestrymen decided the beasts of Wanderjahr could be controlled, so an immigration company was established.

  Karl compromised on a name for the new world. Arguing that it was too egotistical to name the place obviously after himself, no matter how much he deserved the honor, he suggested Wanderjahr, a play on his own name and on the German word "Wanderjahre," a journeyman's years of travel. Unlike so many staid and serious members of the Brotherhood, Karl Wanderjahrer did have a sense of humor.