The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century

by Harry Turtledove

  The image shifted. Emery was standing on the steps of the new Chicago Police Headquarters on South State Street. Every light in the building behind him burned brightly, and a steady stream of riot-equipped police was hurrying up and down the stairs.

  “Not quite on the scene, Ted,” he began. “Our crew was forcibly excluded from the area where the fighting is now in progress. We’re here at Chicago Police Headquarters now, which you will recall was the focus of the battle during the 1985 riots. The local police and the Special Urban Units are doing their planning and coordinating from here.”

  Warren cut in with a voice-over. “What precisely has taken place?”

  “Well,” said Emery, “it started when a detachment of Special Urban Police arrived at Community Defender Central, as it’s called, to arrest Mitchell Grinstein and several other organization leaders. I’m not sure who opened fire. But someone did, and there were several casualties. The Community Defenders have their headquarters heavily guarded, and they drove back the S.U.U. in the early skirmish that I witnessed. But things have changed since then. Although the local police have cordoned off a large portion of Chicago’s South Side and excluded me and other reporters, I now understand that Grinstein and his Militiamen are holed up inside their building, which is under S.U.U. siege.”

  He looked around briefly. “As you can see, there’s a lot of activity around here,” he continued. “The local police are on overtime, and the Special Urban Units have mobilized their entire Chicago battalion. They’re using their regular armored cars, plus some heavier weapons. And I’ve also heard reports that something new has been deployed by the S.U.U.—a light tank with street tires instead of treads, designed for city use.”

  “Are all the A.L.F. forces concentrated around Grinstein’s headquarters?” Warren asked.

  Emery shook his head. “No, not at all. The ghettos on the South and West sides are alive with activity. The local police have suffered several casualties, and there’s been one case of a squad car being Molotov-cocktailed. Also, there are rumors of an impending A.L.F. counterattack on Police Headquarters. The building is symbolic to both sides, of course, since the renegade local Militiamen seized and razed the earlier building on this site during the 1985 fighting.”

  “I see,” said Warren. “The A.L.F. is known to have active chapters on several college campuses in your area. Have you gotten any reports from them?”

  “Some,” Emery replied. “The police have been ignoring the campus chapters up to now, but we understand that a strong force of Liberty Troopers moved in on the University of Illinois’ Chicago campus in an attempt to make citizens’ arrests. Some fighting was reported, but resistance was only light. The students were mostly without arms while the Liberty Troopers, of course, are a paramilitary force.”

  “Thank you, Ward,” Warren said, as the image suddenly shifted. “We’ll be back to you later for an update. Now, we will continue with the rest of President Hartmann’s most recent statement.

  “For those who just flicked on, the President has just ordered the arrest of the A.L.F. leaders. This move was made with the support of the Vice-President, and thus presumably with the support of the Old Republicans, the President’s partners in his coalition government. It’s an important shift on the part of the Old Republicans. Last year, you will recall, Hartmann’s efforts to pass his Subversive Registration Bill were thwarted when Vice-President Delaney and his followers refused to back the measure.

  “Since the Liberty Alliance and the Old Republicans, between them, command a majority in both houses of Congress, Delaney’s support of Hartmann guarantees Congressional approval of the President’s actions tonight.

  “And now, the rest of the Presidential message…”

  * * *

  THERE WERE HILLS BELOW, and dark forests in a shroud of night. And the only light was the sudden jagged brilliance of the lightning. But there were two thunders.

  One was the thunder of the storm that churned above the forest. The other was the thunder of the jet, screaming between the stormclouds and the trees and laying down a trail of sonic booms across the landscape.

  That was the Alfie. Reynolds watched it in his infrared scope, watched it play at Mach 1, slip back and forth over the barrier. And while he watched he gained on it.

  He had stopped sweating, stopped thinking, stopped fearing. Now he only acted. Now he was part of the Vampyre.

  He descended through the stormclouds, blind but for his instruments, lashed by the lightning. Everything that was human in him told him to pull up and let something else take the Alfie. But something else, some drive, some compulsion, told him that he must not hang back again.

  So he descended.

  The Alfie knew he was there. That was inevitable. It was simply holding its fire. As he was holding his missiles. He would save them until the last second, until the Alfie lasers were locked on him.

  The Vampyre moved at half again the bomber’s speed. Ripped through the last bank of clouds. Framed by the lightning. Fired its lasers.

  The beams cut the night, touched the bomber, converged. Too far away. Hardly hot. But warming, warming. Every microsecond brought the sleek black interceptor closer, and the wand of light grew deadlier.

  And then the other beam jumped upward from the bomber’s tail. Swords of light crossed in the night. And the shrieking Vampyre impaled itself upon the glowing stake.

  Reynolds was watching his infrared when it died. The mere touch of the enemy laser had been too much for the system’s delicate opticals. But he didn’t need it now. He could see the bomber, ahead and below, outlined in the flashes.

  There were alarms ringing, clamoring, slamming at his ears. He ignored them. It was too late now. Too late to pull away and up. Too late to shake the lasers.

  Now there was only time to find a victim.

  Reynolds’ eyes were fixed on the bomber, and it grew larger by the microsecond. His hand was on the missile stud, waiting, waiting. The warheads were armed. The computers were locked, tracking.

  The Alfie loomed large and larger in the eyeslit. And he saw its laser slicing through the dark. And around him, he could feel the Vampyre shake and shudder.

  And he fired.

  Four and five were flaming arrows in the night, climbing down at the Alfie. It seemed, almost, like they were sliding down the laser path that the Vampyre had burned.

  Reynolds, briefly, saw his plane as the others must have seen it. Black and ominous, howling from the stormclouds down at them, lasers afire, draped in lightning, spitting missiles. Exhilaration! Glorydeath! He held the vision tightly.

  The Alfie laser was off him, suddenly. Too late. The alarms still rang. His control was gone.

  The Vampyre was burning, crippled. But from the flames the laser still licked out.

  The bomber burned one missile from the sky. But the other was climbing up a jet. And the Vampyre’s fangs now had a bite to them.

  And then the night itself took flame.

  Reynolds saw the fireball spread over the forest, and something like relief washed over him, and he shuddered. And then the sweat came back, in a rushing flood.

  He watched the woods come up at him, and he thought briefly of ejecting. But he was too low and too fast and it was hopeless. He tried to capture his vision again. And he wondered if he’d get a medal.

  But the vision was elusive, and the medal didn’t seem to matter now.

  Suddenly all he could think about was Anne. And his cheeks were wet. And it wasn’t sweat.

  He screamed.

  And the Vampyre hit the trees at Mach 1.4.

  THERE WERE CIRCLES under Warren’s eyes, and an ache in his voice. But he continued to read.

  “…in Newark, New Jersey, local police are engaged in pitched street battles with the Special Urban Units. City officials in Newark, elected by the A.L.F., mobilized the police when the S.U.U. attempted to arrest them…

  “…latest announcement from S.U.U. headquarters says that Douglass Brown a
nd six other leading A.L.F. figures died while attempting to escape from confinement. The attempted escape came during a surprise attack by Community Defense Militiamen on the jail where Brown and the others were imprisoned, the release says…

  “…both the Community Defense Militia and the Liberty Troopers have been mobilized from coast-to-coast by their leaders, and have taken to the streets. The Liberty Troopers are assisting the Special Urban Units in their campaign against the Community Defenders…

  “…President Hartmann has called out the National Guard…

  “…riots and looting reported in New York, Washington, and Detroit, and numerous smaller cities…

  “…in Chicago is a smoldering ruin. Mitchell Grinstein is reported dead, as well as other top A.L.F. leaders. A firebombing has destroyed a wing of the new Police Headquarters…Loop reported in flames…bands of armed men moving from the ghetto sections into the Near North…

  “…Community Defenders in California charge that they had nothing to do with original attack…have demanded that the bodies be produced and identified…mass burial, already ordered…

  “…bombing of Governor’s mansion in Sacramento…

  “…Liberty Alliance has called all citizens to take up arms, and wipe out the A.L.F…. that an attempted revolution is in progress…this was the plan all along, Alliance charges…California attack a signal…

  “…A.L.F. charges that California attack was Hartmann ploy…cites Reichstag fire…

  “…Governor Horne of Michigan has been assassinated…

  “…national curfew imposed by S.U.U…. has called on all citizensto return to their homes…still out in one hour will be shot on sight…

  “…A.L.F. reports that Senator Jackson Edwards of New Jersey was dragged from his police sanctuary in Newark and shot by Liberty Troopers…

  “…martial law declared…

  “…reports that last bandit plane has been shot down…

  “…Army has been mobilized…

  “…Hartmann has declared death penalty for any who aid so-called revolutionaries…

  “…alleges…

  “…charges…

  “…reports…”

  IN KENTUCKY, a forest was burning. But no one came to put it out.

  There were bigger fires elsewhere.

  Gregory Benford

  A professor of physics at the University of California in Irvine, Gregory Benford is regarded as one of science fiction’s “killer Bs” for the award-winning novels and short fiction he has written since 1965. He is considered one of the preeminent modern writers of hard science fiction for such novels as Eater, which works cutting-edge astronomy into its story of mankind’s first contact with aliens in the twenty-first century. However, Benford has also been praised for his explorations of humanist themes, notably in his Galactic Center sextet of novels of human-alien contact and human-machine interface comprised of In the Ocean of Night, Across the Sea of Suns, The Stars in Shroud, Great Sky River, Tides of Light, and Furious Gulf. His short fiction has been collected in In Alien Flesh. He is the author of Foundation’s Fear, a novel set in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series; has collaborated on Beyond the Fall of Night, a sequel to Arthur C. Clarke’s Against the Fall of Night; has written a medical thriller, Chiller, under the pseudonym Sterling Blake; and has written a popular science book, Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia. His work as an anthologist includes Nuclear War, the alternate history compilation Hitler Victorious, and four volumes in the What Might Have Been series. The publication of his novel The Martian Race, about the first manned mission to the Red Planet, was timed to coincide with the 1999 touchdown of the Mars polar lander.

  Gregory Benford

  TURKEY

  TROUBLE. KNEW THERE’D BE trouble and plenty of it if we left the reactor too soon.

  But do they listen to me? No, not to old Turkey. He’s just a dried-up corn husk of a man now, they think, one of those Bunren men who been on the welfare a generation or two and no damn use to anybody.

  Only it’s simple plain farm supports I was drawing all this time, not any kind of horse-ass welfare. So much they know. Can’t blame a man just ’cause he comes up cash-short sometimes. I like to sit and read and think more than some people I could mention, and so I took the money.

  Still, Mr. Ackerman and all think I got no sense to take government dole and live without a lick of farming, so when I talk they never listen. Don’t even seem to hear.

  It was his idea, getting into the reactor at McIntosh. Now that was a good one, I got to give him that much.

  When the fallout started coming down and the skimpy few stations on the radio were saying to get to deep shelter, it was Mr. Ackerman who thought about the big central core at McIntosh. The reactor itself had been shut down automatically when the war started, so there was nobody there. Mr. Ackerman figured a building made to keep radioactivity in will also keep it out. So he got together the families, the Nelsons and Bunrens and Pollacks and all, cousins and aunts and anybody we could reach in the measly hours we had before the fallout arrived.

  We got in all right. Brought food and such. A reactor’s set up self-contained and got huge air filters and water flow from the river. The water was clean, too, filtered enough to take out the fallout. The generators were still running good. We waited it out there. Crowded and sweaty but O.K. for ten days. That’s how long it took for the count to go down. Then we spilled out into a world laid to gray and yet circumscribed waste, the old world seen behind a screen of memories.

  That was bad enough, finding the bodies—people, cattle, and dogs asprawl across roads and fields. Trees and bushes looked the same, but there was a yawning silence everywhere. Without men, the pine stands and muddy riverbanks had fallen dumb, hardly a swish of breeze moving through them, like everything was waiting to start up again but didn’t know how.

  ANGEL

  We thought we were O.K. then, and the counters said so, too—all the gammas gone, one of the kids said. Only the sky didn’t look the same when we came out, all mottled and shot through with drifting blue-belly clouds.

  Then the strangest thing. July, and there’s sleet falling. Big wind blowing up from the Gulf, only it’s not the sticky hot one we’re used to in summer, it’s moaning in the trees of a sudden and a prickly chill.

  “Goddamn. I don’t think we can get far in this,” Turkey says, rolling his old rheumy eyes around like he never saw weather before.

  “It will pass,” Mr. Ackerman says, like he is in real tight with God.

  “Lookit that moving in from the south,” I say, and there’s a big mass all purple and forking lightning swarming over the hills, like a tide flowing, swallowing everything.

  “Gulf storm. We’ll wait it out,” Mr. Ackerman says to the crowd of us, a few hundred left out of what was a moderate town with real promise.

  Nobody talks about the dead folks. We see them everywhere, worms working in them. A lot smashed up in car accidents, died trying to drive away from something they couldn’t see. But we got most of our families in with us, so it’s not so bad. Me, I just pushed it away for a while, too much to think about with the storm closing in.

  Only it wasn’t a storm. It was somethin’ else, with thick clouds packed with hail and snow one day and the next sunshine, only sun with bite in it. One of the men says it’s got more UV in it, meaning the ultraviolet that usually doesn’t come through the air. But it’s getting down to us now.

  So we don’t go out in it much. Just to the market for what’s left of the canned food and supplies, only a few of us going out at a time, says Mr. Ackerman.

  We thought maybe a week it would last.

  Turned out to be more than two months.

  I’m a patient woman, but jammed up in those corridors and stinking offices and control room of the reactor—

  Well, I don’t want to go on.

  It’s like my Bud says, worst way to die is to be bored to death.

  That’s damn near t
he way it was.

  Not that Old Man Turkey minded. You ever notice how the kind of man that hates moving, he will talk up other people doing just the opposite?

  Mr. Ackerman was leader at first, because of getting us into the reactor. He’s from Chicago but you’d think it was England sometimes, the way he acts. He was on the school board and vice president of the big AmCo plant outside town. But he just started to assume his word was it, y’know, and that didn’t sit with us too well.

  Some people started to saying Turkey was smarter. And was from around here, too. Mr. Ackerman heard about it.

  Any fool could see Mr. Ackerman was the better man. But Turkey talked the way he does, reminding people he’d studied engineering at Auburn way back in the twencen and learned languages for a hobby and all. Letting on that when we came out, we’d need him instead of Mr. Ackerman.

  He said an imp had caused the electrical things to go dead, and I said that was funny, saying an imp done it. He let on it was a special name they had for it. That’s the way he is. He sat and ruminated and fooled with his radios—that he never could make work—and told all the other men to go out and do this and that. Some did, too. The old man does know a lot of useless stuff and can convince the dumb ones that he’s wise.

  So he’d send them to explore. Out into cold that’d snatch the breath out of you, bite your fingers, numb your toes. While old Turkey sat and fooled.

  TURKEY

  Nothing but sputtering on the radio. Nobody had a really good one that could pick up stations in Europe or far off.

  Phones dead, of course.

  But up in the night sky the first night out we saw dots moving—the pearly gleam of the Arcapel colony, the ruddy speck called Russworld.