War World IV: Invasion

by War World IV Invasion v2 Lit

  The conductor came stamping in. “There is no power!” he said. “I cannot recharge the batteries!”

  “Tell us something we don’t know,” growled Lytikainen, and gestured at the wooden chandelier, lightless overhead.

  “How far can we go on the charge left in the batteries?” Ikola asked.

  The conductor shook his head. “I don’t know. Not all the way to Metsajoki though, I think. The engineer should be here soon. He’ll at least have some idea.

  They ate in a silence broken only once, by the tavernkeeper. “You really think they’ve blown up the dam?” he asked Ikola.

  “I don’t know it,” Ikola answered, “but I feel sure of it. I’ve never heard of the power failing in Koillinen Province before. Not along the railroad, anyway.”

  The cook stared thoughtfully at an upper corner of the room, then brightened. “When I was a boy, there was a big wood range in the kitchen here, and a tall, wood-burning oven. My father made me split wood for them each day. I think they may be in Hietala’s old barn. I could move them back in here.” He paused. “But it wouldn’t be worthwhile if the trains don’t run. I wonder if they cut up the old wood-burning engines for scrap?”

  Perhaps, Demidov thought, the dam wasn’t blown up. Perhaps somehow the power line was broken. True it was underground, but there might have been a landslide somewhere along the line, or a torrent. He shook his head. No. The dam is blown up.

  The engineer came in then, swearing. “Saatana!” he swore. “Those bastards have really done it to us! Now I can’t recharge the batteries!”

  “How close to Metsajoki can we get without a recharge?” Ikola asked.

  “What’s the point of going to Metsajoki?” the engineer countered. “There won’t be any electricity there either. Take my word for it.”

  “The point is the reserve armory there.”

  The engineer said nothing for a long half minute. “You think the Saurons will come even here? To Koillinen Province?”

  “Maybe, maybe not; we need to be prepared.” Ikola repeated his question then. “How far can we get?”

  “I’m not sure. We might get halfway.”

  “That’s a lot closer than this,” Lytikainen said.

  “Shit.” The engineer looked dejected. “I’m only two standard years short of my pension. And now this! And Erkki”--he indicated the conductor--”is almost as close.”

  “Four and a half,” the conductor said. He looked as if he hadn’t considered that aspect of it before. “Those rotten bastards!”

  The room was quiet then, except for the sounds of tableware and eating. When they were done, they left, but not until Lytikainen and the conductor had each bought a liter of whiskey. Demidov wondered if the tavernkeeper would be paid for their meals, now that the trains had stopped. He also wondered if it would make any difference. Would the economy continue in some sort of clumsy fashion, adjusting as it went?

  The sun shone as if nothing had happened. The radio had said the radioactive plume from the power plant was drifting south. At least they didn’t have that to worry about. At least not yet.

  Partway to the train they met Migruder coming down the street. He was drunk, and looked truculent. The rest went on while Ikola, Dufva, and Morgan tried to talk the Nevadan into turning around and going back to the train. Anna Vuorinen waited nearby in the shade of a steelwood tree. When Migruder insisted on eating first, Dufva and Morgan started with him to the tavern. They’d grab something he could eat on the train, Dufva said. Ikola and Demidov, with Vuorinen, began sauntering back toward the railroad.

  They were eighty meters from the train when Ikola heard the howl of a fighter’s heavy engines. Instinctively, without ever having heard the sound before, he sprinted for the cover of a cluster of trees near the street, the others a jump behind. A series of explosions stunned them, and the locomotive and passenger cars split apart where they stood, pieces of debris raining down for ten seconds or more.

  Ikola was up and running again. After their heads cleared, Demidov and Vuorinen dashed after him.

  Indeed the stone age! They were even destroying the railroad rolling stock.

  They didn’t find actual bodies, only what was left of them: the engineer’s in the wreckage of the locomotive cab, the conductor’s in the first car, Lytikainen’s and the man from Minerals in the second. By that time Dufva and Morgan had run up too, and within minutes there were some hundred townspeople as well. And Migruder. The Nevadan looked sober now, Ikola thought, sober and full of anger. Somehow Ikola’s own anger had receded. Migruder! I should tell him he saved our lives, Ikola told himself. He’d really be mad then.

  Susilahde had a reserve rifle platoon, with its own small armory that held nothing heavier than rifles. One of its radiomen called battalion headquarters at Metsajoki. The armory there was intact; presumably the Saurons hadn’t recognized it.

  Within the hour, Ikola, a captain in the reserves, had signed out several surplus packsacks, canteens and sleeping bags from the supply sergeant, along with five assault rifles, magazine belts, and an automatic pistol. All of them, including Vuorinen, had worn heavy woods boots when they’d left Hautaharju. The tavernkeeper provided them with potatoes and turnips and a large block of cheese. It was 130 kilometers to Metsajoki, with no guarantee what they’d find there, but there were two small villages along the way, and some logging camps. With luck they wouldn’t have to sleep out in the chill of dim-day or the hard cold of true night.

  Ikola had given one of the packs to Migruder and one to Morgan. Migruder was grimly determined to walk the thousand or so kilometers to New Reno. Like the others, he had a small stock of groceries, but supplemented with two liters of whiskey. He’d had a revolver in his luggage all along, and had salvaged it from the wreckage. Now it rode in its holster at his waist.

  Finally they started for the railroad again: Ikola, Dufva, Demidov, and Anna Vuorinen. And Morgan; Morgan was going with the Finns. His mother had been Finnish--it was she who’d taught him the language--and he’d had a bellyful of Migruder.

  They didn’t know what the world situation would be when they arrived at Metsajoki.

  Migruder too walked to the railroad, but apart from the others and somewhat behind them. When they reached the right-of-way, Ikola told the others to go on, he’d catch up with them. Then he waited till Migruder arrived.

  “Migruder,” he said.

  The Nevadan didn’t answer, merely stopped and scowled.

  “Good luck,” Ikola said in Americ, and held out his hand.

  Migruder stared for a moment, first at the hand, then into Ikola’s face, and his hostility seemed to fade. Nonetheless he turned without answering or meeting Ikola’s preferred hand. He simply showed his broad back and started south along the right-of-way past the string of log cars on the siding. Ikola watched him go, then turning, strode north past the wreckage.

  The others had gone only a little way, glancing back. Now they stopped to wait. Ikola caught up with them, and together they hiked north along the tracks, past the railyard and into the forest.

  The bunker shook once again as yet another Sauron missile found its mark on the surface two hundred feet above. Colonel Edon Kettler didn’t quite stagger, just modified his brisk pace for a few seconds into the rolling gait which the inhabitants of General Cummings’ field redoubt had come to call the “Sauron Shuffle.” This time, it was two steps to the right, one back and three forward; but like most modern dances, one just sort of moved the way it felt right.

  Like everybody else in Cummings’ orbit, Kettler was running to an appointment. Formerly an officer of Enoch Redfield’s Satrapy Air Force, Kettler was now more or less attached to the Fort Kursk garrison, since that day he had flown through the Sauron’s initial orbital strikes to reach Fort Fornova with a request for aid and a rapidly contrived plan to strike back at the invaders. Even before his arrival, all contact had been lost with the Redfield Satrapy, and Kettler had come to accept the fact that his status as a sort o
f military “minister without portfolio” was now permanent.

  General Cummings had agreed to his proposal for attacking the Saurons. Mostly, he had been impressed by Kettler’s apprehension of the invaders’ plans, which had allowed a team of “volunteers” to target a missile at the last Sauron shuttle down to Haven, the shuttle which Kettler had reasoned would be carrying their senior staff officers. Monitoring the Sauron transmissions in the hours which followed the attack, it had turned out that Kettler--a career military man in a provincial air force on a backwater moon, who had never even seen a Sauron-- had predicted their actions perfectly.

  Well, Kettler admitted to himself, almost perfectly. They’d caught the shuttle, but there was no way to keep its pilot from guessing the tactic and maneuvering to break the missile lock.

  Even so, Cummings had taken an instant liking to Kettler, and with no country of his own to return to any longer, it had been only natural that the dispossessed pilot would find a place here.

  Kettler put his briefcase up under one arm and pushed open the heavy door before him. He thought again about almost catching the Saurons, and remembered what he’d been told about no one being able to shave a margin of success thinner than a Sauron.

  And anyway, “almosts” don’t win wars, he reminded himself, and trying not to think of his family as he entered General Cummings’ briefing room, Kettler reflected that he would try to do better this time.

  Cummings looked up as he entered, and though he looked tired, there was none of the bone-deep weariness that Kettler saw in the eyes and posture of the other inhabitants of this post. He lives for this, Kettler realized, and remembered that Cummings too had a family when this all began. A wife he knows is dead, killed in the first hours of the invasion, a daughter he can hope was safe, but whom he’ll probably never see again. Kettler supposed that he probably looked much the same as Cummings, himself.

  Kettler’s home had been in the Redfield Satrapy’s heavily industrialized Home Valley district, an area which the last scouts had reported was now filled with a 12,000 radlevel dust cloud. It was, Kettler thought, a common bond for most of Cummings’ command.

  “Good morning, sir,” Kettler greeted his de facto C-in-C. He was still surprised at how natural that felt, considering the past differences between Redfield and the Hamiltons. But he reminded himself that “past” was indeed the word; the coming of the Saurons had changed everything.

  “Morning, Ed.” Cummings idly brushed brick dust from the map he was studying; “Came rather close this morning, didn’t they?”

  Kettler shrugged. “The price of using these old tunnels so close to the power stations, General Cummings. Every time the citizens try to re-start a generator for one of the hospitals, they get another strike for their troubles.”

  Cummings nodded, looking up at the cracked ceiling. “If the Saurons thought we were down here, they’d put a nuke right into this room.” A young lieutenant brought two cups of coffee. “Time to move on, anyway, Colonel,” Cummings said as he looked into his cup. “We’ve almost run through the supplies in this cache. What have you got for me?”

  Kettler spread his papers over the map. “Concentrations of tribesmen in the Northern Steppes and bandits known to have been operating in the Shangri-La before the invasion. The information includes remaining records of the Redfield Satrapy, Cracovia steppe patrols and Novy Finlandia Intelligence--”

  Cummings interrupted. “They’re Finns, Colonel,” he reminded him. “They call their nation Uussi Suomi; they’re rather touchy about people using the Russian version of the name.”

  Kettler grumbled to himself that everybody outside “Uussi Suomi” had called it “Novy Finlandia” for as long as he could remember. And there probably wasn’t much left of the place, whatever they called it. Still, he assumed Cummings had a purpose for wanting him to amend his own patterns of address. Cummings seemed to have a purpose for everything.

  Cummings became absorbed in the data before him.

  Kettler watched, and waited. He knew that Cummings had fought the Saurons for a good long while as an officer of the departed Empire. Cummings knew his foe, without a doubt, but he still welcomed Kettler’s input. Kettler had exhibited something of a knack for guessing what the Saurons would do in a given situation. Perhaps he was more than a little bit like them, but no one had yet been foolish enough to tell him so to his face. Kettler suspected it was his objectivity that Cummings valued. Where Saurons were concerned, the General was conspicuously lacking in that characteristic.

  Cummings began without preamble, “We’re changing our methods of engaging the Saurons.” Cummings sat back with a folder on the horse-clans of the northern steppes, flipped open a pair of glasses and put them on. “I’d love to think we could stage a major confrontation with the Saurons, but I don’t think we’d win it even with every Havener capable of carrying a weapon.”

  “That’s a cheerful thought. Sir.”

  Cummings looked at him over the rims of his spectacles and smiled. “We were losing our wars against each other long before they came, Colonel. We’d fractured and polarized ourselves into a state of balkanization that made late twentieth century Earth look positively monolithic.”

  Kettler had no idea what “balkanization” meant, but he remained dubious about Cummings’ assessment of Haven’s societal decline. The Redfield Satrapy had been an extremely stable--if despotic--entity, and its major opponent in the last years before the Saurons was the depressingly resilient republic of Novy Finlandia--or Uussi Suomi, as Kettler was trying to think of it, now. Lots of Haven hadn’t been getting on too well since the Empire pulled out, to be sure. Other parts had gotten along quite nicely, thank you. Better than ever, in fact.

  Cummings went back to his notes. “Dispersal of the industrial base would have finished us off in a century. Haven just can’t support its population at Empire levels with dispersed industry. So, while I’d like a united front against the Saurons, it’s going to have to be established in rather an unorthodox way. You were a fighter pilot, isn’t that correct, Colonel?”

  Kettler cleared his throat. “I’m a qualified pilot, General; Mister Redfield insisted that all members of the Satrapy air force be able to fly.”

  Cummings watched him. “The Redfield Satrapy had enough of an aviation industry to make that worthwhile?”

  Kettler nearly blurted out the standard security-conscious response, before realizing its absurdity. “Actually, we did have a surplus of aircraft, General. Frankly, though, we had a rather poor pilot-training program, in my opinion.”

  “And you would be qualified to judge,” Cummings answered; it was not a rebuke, Kettler realized. Nor was it a question.

  “Sir?”

  “Colonel, surely you don’t think I’d have welcomed you into my staff without checking you out? You were a staff officer of the Satrapy Air Force. You were, in fact, something of a fair-haired boy, Enoch Redfield’s organizational genius. That was before you ran afoul of the heir apparent, however.”

  Kettler remained silent at first, but knowing an answer was expected, he finally said: “That was all some time ago, General.”

  “Indeed it was, Colonel.” Cummings agreed. “It was, in fact, a different era. And it’s as dead as Enoch Redfield and his up-and-coming-tyrant of a son. But what matters is that you were his air arm organizational expert. Weren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.” Here it comes, Edon, Kettler thought. You’ve outlived your usefulness and if you’re lucky, you’ll be put out on the road to try and survive the wasteland of cratered destruction that Haven was becoming. He’d seen something very much like it happen a dozen times under Enoch Redfield; it would have happened to Kettler, too, after the duel, had he not been just as useful to the old man as Cummings had noted.

  But it would happen here. It would happen because Cummings had no loyalty to a Redfielder, after all; he had no need for a pilot, no food to spare to keep one around; but most of all, Cummings had no air force. Kettler’s ye
ars of training and study and self-discipline at the Redfield Satrapy University had been to develop the one skill which, even as a youth, he perceived his fellow citizens in the Satrapy had lacked. He was an organization man, and in the world of guerrilla warfare which Cummings had mastered, Kettler’s kind of organization existed to be disrupted.

  “Colonel?”

  “Sorry, sir.” Kettler closed his briefcase. “Yes, General. My sole expertise is in organizational work. I suppose that’s not much help.”

  Cummings blinked. “Colonel, I don’t know what you’re talking about; organizational work is exactly what you’re going to be doing in the next few years. If you live.”

  “Sir?”

  “The Empire made Haveners live together. But the Saurons will give Haveners the opportunity--even the incentive--to ignore or kill one another; either is to the Saurons’ advantage. There has to be a third alternative, and I think you’re the man to provide it. We’re going to try unionizing.” Kettler wasn’t quite sure he understood what was being said, until Cummings added: “You’re familiar with the phrase: ‘Hearts and Minds,’ aren’t you, Colonel?”

  Suddenly understanding, Kettler smiled. He still had a job, after all.

  A BETTER KIND OF WAR, Don Hawthorne

  Cyborg Rank Koln stepped forward onto a strip of naked stone which jutted out from below the walls of the Citadel. Here, in this lonely, windswept, frigid place, he was suspended between two worlds. Behind him and above, the sweeping spires of the castle whose towers soared above the valley floor, in graceful arches which belied their strength, but spoke eloquently of their purpose: Nothing moved between the valley and the steppelands beyond without the approval of those who held this fortress. And below, the debris-littered northeast expanse of the valley the natives called the Shangri-La, where the ruins of the Fomoria still glowed with enough residual heat to be visible to his genetically augmented vision. The pall of irradiated smoke above the Shangri-La Valley was still slowly rising, the last mark of the great ship’s passing. The cattle had struck a blow-- futile, of course; but impressive nevertheless.