Kingdoms Fury

by David Sherman

  The Dragons stopped evasive maneuvers and sped across third platoon's trail as though they were cutting and running. But they were headed on a course that would expose them to more cave entrances that might be guarded by rail guns. Third platoon rose and followed along a parallel route. The Dragons stopped behind an islet that stood high enough to shield them from the suspected Skink positions and waited for the infantry to catch up. Third platoon went past the islet on its other side, closer to the entrances. The Marines stayed in the water, crouched to present the smallest possible targets for Skink gunners. When they were less than two hundred meters from the cave entrances, they stopped and waited for the Dragons to come forward.

  "Rail gun signature detected," the string-of-pearls monitors reported.

  The Dragon crews immediately directed their vehicles into evasive maneuvers, and the gunners oversaw downloading of the targeting data from orbit to their guns.

  "Damn!" one of the drivers swore. The slap he gave his console sounded like a gunshot in the command center.

  "Dragon One down," the Dragon One commander said with a leaden voice.

  "Not your fault," the Dragon One crew chief told his driver. "The relay took too long." There had been a slight time lag between when he gave the commands and when the commands reached the Dragon. That lag could have been long enough to keep the Dragon in the line of fire of the rail gun.

  "Dragon Three, locked on," the gunner of the remaining Dragon said calmly. Its gun was able to maintain a lock on its target no matter how violently the vehicle maneuvered.

  "Fire," the Dragon Three crew chief said, just as calmly.

  Unseen in the command center, the Dragon spat a ball of plasma at the rail gun that had just taken out its partner.

  "Signature gone," the string-of-pearls monitors reported. "New signal up. Locking on." This time the Grandar Bay didn't download targeting data; it was the Laser Gunnery Division's turn. "Signature gone," the ship reported to the Marine command center.

  Mere seconds separated the three explosions: the one that demolished one of the two remaining Dragons was quickly followed by two more a couple hundred meters east of third platoon. A moment later Lieutenant Rokmonov ordered the Marines to move out—east, toward the location of the explosions.

  Lance Corporal Schultz halted and lowered himself when he saw the devastation through a break in the trees. Tendrils of smoke still rose from a patch of charred vegetation in the middle of a small hummock. The hummock was covered with tumbled and shattered trees and brushes, and broken vegetation floated in the water around it. Here and there sunlight glinted off something metallic. Nothing moved except the rising smoke and small fragments of foliage in the breeze.

  Corporal Kerr observed the scene from a few meters away. "Doesn't seem to be anybody alive there now," he reported. "I don't see a cave entrance."

  "Wait for me," Rokmonov replied. A moment later the lieutenant was with Kerr and Schultz. He watched for a minute, then said, "Let's check it out."

  Kerr and Schultz rose to a crouch and quickly crossed to the destroyed area and a short distance beyond it. Corporal Doyle reluctantly went with them. The three Marines examined the ground around the charred area and the water surrounding the hummock.

  "All clear," Kerr reported.

  "Five, set a perimeter," Rokmonov said on the all-hands circuit as he went to join the fire team on the hummock.

  "Aye aye," Staff Sergeant Hyakowa answered. He began issuing orders to the platoon. The Marines moved into positions around the hummock, leaving Rokmonov and the comm man alone to examine the hummock.

  Fragments, some of them metal, studded the ground in the charred area. More fragments were flung about the hummock. It was obvious that the Dragon's plasma cannon had destroyed the Skink weapon. But what had it been doing sitting exposed in the open? And why hadn't any of the many patrols the Marines and Kingdomites sent out found one before?

  Hyakowa joined Rokmonov and quickly wondered the same thing. "Rat, give me Claypoole and Mac," he said.

  Claypoole's toe caught on something just inside the charred area and he almost fell. "What?" he squawked, and knelt to see what had tripped him. His probing fingers found a hard ridge about a centimeter high and a couple millimeters wide. He brushed at it, clearing ash and dirt away to expose several centimeters of the ridge.

  "Look at this!" He raised his chameleon shield so the others could see his face and kept brushing at the edges of the visible ridge, lengthening the exposed area. By the time Rokmonov and Hyakowa joined him, he could see about thirty centimeters of the ridge. It was uniform in height and slightly arch. He did a quick mental calculation and concluded that if the arc continued it would probably make a circle.

  "Buddha's blue balls," Hyakowa said softly when he saw the arc. "How deep does it go?" He dropped to his knees and began digging with his knife along both sides of the ridge.

  "Mac, get over here," Rokmonov told MacIlargie. "See that? Help Claypoole clear it."

  "Mohammed's cocked eye," MacIlargie whispered when he saw the metallic ridge. He dropped and began clearing it in the opposite direction from Claypoole.

  "It goes down about ten centimeters on the inside of the arc," Hyakowa said. "It seems to be the side of a dish." He dug away from the ridge.

  "Rabbit, give me a fire team," Rokmonov said.

  Sergeant Ratliff sent his third fire team.

  "See this?" Rokmonov said when Corporal Dean and his men joined him. Dean whistled. "See if you can find more of it. One of you dig in the middle." Rokmonov indicated the narrow trench Hyakowa was digging from the ridge toward the center of the charred area.

  "Izzy, dig here," Dean told Lance Corporal Godenov when he and his men were near the middle of the charred area.

  "Right." Godenov began digging with his knife.

  Dean and Quick went to the opposite side and probed with their toes until they found the ridge, then started clearing.

  The digging soon revealed that the ridge did indeed make a circle, and the circle was the lip of a dish about four and a half meters in diameter. And MacIlargie made another discovery.

  "I found a cable!"

  "The rest of you keep clearing," Rokmonov said. He signaled Hyakowa to come with him.

  The top end of the cable Godenov found was fused from the heat of the plasma ball that had destroyed the rail gun. The bottom end went through the metal dish under the dirt.

  "Hammer has an uncomfortable feeling," Ratliff reported on the command circuit.

  Rokmonov considered for a few seconds, then spoke into the all-hands circuit, "Let's check out the other one, then head in. Everybody, look alive, there are probably Skinks nearby."

  The Grandar Bay's laser had been even more destructive. More than half of the dirt from the "dish" was gone, which clearly was a constructed platform for the rail gun. Unlike the platform hit by the Dragon's plasma gun, this one was depressed from the surrounding ground far enough to expose the edge of a retracted lid that would slide into place when the rail gun was belowground. Rokmonov understood why none of the patrols in the area had ever found one.

  Now that he knew how to locate and kill the rail guns that had grounded his aircraft and kept his armor out of action, Brigadier Sturgeon put his staff to work drawing up new operational plans. He even brought Archbishop General Lambsblood into the planning—the Army of the Lord would have a major role to play in the upcoming offensive.

  Lambsblood was elated. De Tomas had been right; the business with Sturgeon was clearing up, and command of his army returning to him! He shuddered when he recalled what he had seen in the lowest level of Wayvelsberg. Perhaps he wouldn't need Dominic de Tomas as a friend in the future. De Tomas was a powerful man, a dangerous man. After the demons who now infested the countryside were banished back to the hell from whence they came, perhaps something could be done about—

  No, now was not the time to think such thoughts. The Collegium had eyes and ears in too many places. Sometimes, Lambsblood though
t de Tomas could read thoughts.

  The commander of the Army of the Lord was given an extensive briefing on the latest findings. He had never heard of rail guns, but was thoroughly impressed by the presentation on the history of the weapon he was given by the Confederation Navy. The daring displayed by the Marines in locating rail guns and the inventiveness and close cooperation displayed by them and the Confederation Navy in destroying three of them made him wonder if they had known about the rail guns earlier and weren't admitting as much. He grew eager as Brigadier Sturgeon outlined the plan of operation.

  In his excitement about being the main thrust, he failed to wonder why Sturgeon had relegated his own forces to such a minor, supporting role. Nor did it occur to Lambsblood that the supposedly complete briefing he was given was in fact somewhat less than fully complete.

  Phase one of Operation Exorcism was designed to reduce the number of rail guns in the Skink arsenal. The Army of the Lord sent two battalions of remotely controlled Gabriel armored fighting vehicles into the wetlands where the demons were concentrated. During the one day it took for the rail guns of the demons to consume all of them, the Gabriels and the Grandar Bay killed at least 150 of the rail guns. Phase one was declared over on the second day, when not a single rail gun made its presence known.

  The Great Master sat on his commander's throne, his face expressionless. No females hovered in the background, ready to serve steaming beverages to the assembled Over Masters and more senior of the Senior Masters. No cup or graceful vase with delicate flowers sat on the low table by his side—not even the low table was there, nor were there tables between the kneeling Over Masters and more senior of the Senior Masters who knelt in their rows before the Great Master. The Great Master wore his battle armor once more. The battle sword that had drunk blood in so many battles lay across his knees, one hand wrapped tight around its hilt.

  The Over Master in command of the defenses stood in front of the Great Master, not facing him, but with his right side to the Great Master. He held his battle sword, both hands on its hilt, its point on the matting between his feet. His subordinate, the Senior Master in command of the greater rail guns, knelt with his back to the Great Master. Both of them were clad only in loincloths.

  "The Earthmen have done us a great damage!" the Great Master said, his voice a breaking storm. "Greater damage than when they raided one of our supply depots. They did it because no one saw the damage being done and kept our greater rail guns hidden, where they would not be destroyed. This is unpardonable dereliction! There is only one course that may be taken."

  The Great Master's slitted eyes flicked to the Over Master in command of defense, flicked to his sword, flicked to the Senior Master in command of the greater rail guns. The Over Master in command of defense bowed deeply, raised his sword above his head, and brought it down on the extended neck of the Senior Master in command of the greater rail guns. The Senior Master fell forward onto the matting, his spine cleaved almost all the way through. Blood gushed from the wound, and the Senior Master's mouth opened and closed as though he tried to speak. The Over Master raised his sword and brought it down again. His aim was true, the head rolled clear. The Senior Master's body spasmed once, twice, lay still. More blood flowed.

  The Great Master looked dispassionately at the corpse, then spoke one word to the Over Master in command of defense, the closing of a crypt door: "Die."

  The Over Master in command of defense reversed his sword, held it by the blade, with the point against his abdomen just below his ribs, and fell forward onto it. An involuntary gasp escaped his mouth as the blade went deep, severing major blood vessels and carving vital organs. He took long minutes to die.

  The Over Masters and more senior of the Senior Masters who knelt before the Great Master remained silent and expressionless during the proceedings. None dared remind the Great Master that it was he who had authorized such profligate use of the greater rail guns.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Three light-years from Kingdom, the starship SS Fundy's Tide, a commercial freighter, popped out of Beamspace. Navigation went to work immediately to find out exactly where they were. As soon as Navigation was oriented, the location was passed to Helm, who then aimed the starship toward a nearby planetary system. The inertial drive kicked in and the Fundy's Tide began the Space-3 portion of its transit to the uninhabited world known formally as Society 362. A dozen years or so earlier, the Bureau of Human Habitability Exploration and Investigation had abandoned Society 362 as unsuitable for human colonization. The scientists and technicians who declared it uninhabitable had dubbed it "Quagmire." BHHEI had left an array of video, audio, seismic, and atmospheric recorders behind.

  Ten years after the abandonment of Society 362, the Explored Worlds subcommittee of the Congress of the Confederation of Human Worlds, as part of an investigation of possible budget irregularities of BHHEI, decreed that a survey be made of all planets the Bureau had investigated and determined were unsuitable for human colonization. BHHEI had few ships of its own; it mostly relied on contract ships, commercial vessels it could charter or book space on. As all of BHHEI's ships were engaged in the exploration of other worlds, it put to bid contracts for shipping companies to make stops at the eight hundred or so worlds it had explored and abandoned. In most instances, starships could simply drop out of Beamspace long enough to go into orbit around the world and signal the recorders—such as those the BHHEI had left on Society 362—to upload the data they'd collected.

  In the normal manner of governments, the contracts went to the lowest bidders, which meant in most cases the contracts weren't very lucrative, which in turn meant they were low priority. So, quite naturally, the survey took longer than anticipated. Even though starships regularly ported at the Kingdom of Yahweh and His Saints and Their Apostles, none of the shipping companies that made those runs had a BHHEI contract. Thus, it was two years before a ship owned by low-bidder Southern Seas Cargo and Freight, a minor player in interstellar trade, made a voyage that took it in the vicinity of Society 362. The small payment from BHHEI for this side trip was expected to be the biggest chunk of the profit for the voyage.

  Navigation between stars isn't a precise science. No matter how exactly a Beamspace course is plotted, the reentry point into Space-3 can be off by several light-minutes. Since reentry inside a gravity well would destroy a starship, reentry points were always plotted with a great enough margin of error to guarantee that the ships would reenter Space-3 outside a gravity well. The Fundy's Tide reentered Space-3 eight days' travel from Society 362.

  On orbit minus seven, the radar section reported a difficulty with its equipment.

  "What's the problem?" the captain asked.

  "It's reporting an object approaching us at point one C," Radar said.

  The captain couldn't think of anything that could travel at .1C in Space-3. "Find and fix the problem," he said.

  "Skipper, according to the diagnostics, there's nothing wrong with it."

  "There must be something wrong, nothing moves at point one C in Space-3."

  "Ah, it's heading straight for us, Skipper. Collision course." Radar's voice had a rising edge.

  "Where's it coming from?"

  "It's coming from the direction of Society 362."

  The captain considered this for a few seconds. Just because nothing traveled at .1C in Space-3 didn't mean nothing was on a collision course with the Fundy's Tide. "Course deviation," the captain said to Helm. "Move us ten kilometers to the left."

  "Aye, Skipper."

  The Fundy's Tide was out of the path of the object when it went through the space the starship would have been in had the captain not ordered the course deviation. Every instrument that tracked or observed the unidentified object insisted that it was traveling at an unbelievably appreciable percentage of the speed of light. Nobody had any idea what it was or how it might have attained that speed.

  On O-6, or six days prior to orbit, radar reported another .1C object heading
toward the starship from the vicinity of Society 362.

  Once more Fundy's Tide sidestepped.

  "The navy has a starship at Kingdom, doesn't it?" the captain asked Communications after the second object passed harmlessly by.

  "Sure does, Skipper. There's some sort of war going on there. Hey, they've got Marines and everything!" Communications had wanted to enlist in the Marines but failed the physical and so joined the Merchant Marine as a way to "see the universe."

  "Good. I want to send a drone to Kingdom. Two messages, both telling about those point-one-C objects. One message goes to the Confederation ambassador. Tell the ambassador that if another object comes toward us at that impossible speed, we're aborting this mission. Second message to the navy: tell them if they've got something in orbit here, they should put up warning signs for starships that might come nearby; those things are dangerous. Add that if the objects aren't theirs, they should send someone to check out the situation."

  Shortly after sending the drone, the captain said, "Radar, are you picking up any ships in orbit around Society 362?"

  "Checking, Skipper."

  It was nearly a half hour, standard, before Radar completed its check and had sufficient resolution on the returned signals. "Skipper, there are several blips. None are transponding identification signals."

  "What kind of information do the blips give?"

  "One seems to be about the size of a Ragnorak-class vessel. The others appear to be smaller."

  The captain thought long and hard about that; Ragnorak was the civilian cruise ship version of the Confederation Navy's Crowe-class amphibious battle cruiser. He asked, "Could they be navy, testing a new weapon?"

  "Yessir, could be."

  "Communications, try to raise them, tell them they're endangering a civilian freighter."

  No object came toward Fundy's Tide at an impossible speed on O-5, five days before the planned orbit. Neither did a reply come from the ships in orbit around Society 362, so the crew spent the day in idle and unproductive speculation about what the objects were and who was in orbit. The captain ordered Communications to send another drone to the navy at Kingdom asking about the ships in orbit around Society 362.