Korval's Game

by Sharon Lee

  Shakily, the tech ordered his papers, offering them with yet another salute.

  The scout’s brother snatched them, looked them over contemptuously, with a special sneer for the coveted meal cards. Abruptly, he turned, shoved the offensive papers into Nelirikk’s hands and stalked over to the screen bank.

  “Troop!” barked Nelirikk. “Have you eyes?”

  “Sir!” A shaky salute. “Yes, sir!”

  “Good! Take them elsewhere if you ever wish to eat again!” He threw the papers and the tech caught them against his chest, his eyes on the meal cards Nelirikk still held in his hand.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Put yourself on half rations tonight,” Nelirikk snapped, and pushed the cards into the tech’s sweating face. “Dismissed!”

  “Sir!” The tech saluted, threw a terrified glance at the major, who was now inspecting the lateral board, and all but ran from the shed.

  Nelirikk pushed the door shut, dropped the sack and yanked it open.

  “Quickly,” he said, putting the bomb into the hands of the scout’s brother. “We are off the mark.”

  ***

  Crouched in scant cover, Val Con waited while an officer dressed in what he had to believe was the original of the uniform Nelirikk had approximated for himself, face bearing vingtai eerily similar to Shan’s artwork, performed what could only be an inspection.

  Precious minutes ticked by and still the officer did not emerge from the comm shed.

  Three minutes more, Val Con thought, belly down under a cable lorry. If he is not gone in three minutes, I will set the charges against the shed’s exterior and trust in the luck.

  Chancy enough under the best of conditions, the luck being notoriously fickle. Yet, what else could be done? This whole mad venture sat on the knees of the luck, born of the desperate necessity of success. They must succeed in routing the Yxtrang. Must. The cost of failure was too terrible to contemplate.

  The door to the shed opened and Val Con tucked his face into the crook of an arm, watching sidewise as the inspector and his aide marched to the waiting armored car, entered and were driven away.

  Close on the mark, Commander, he told himself, checking the area carefully. Be quick, now, and all’s well.

  Finding the immediate environs suitably empty, he left his cover, ghosted to the shed and let himself inside.

  ***

  The scout’s brother was safe in his chosen craft. Nelirikk continued further down the field, so that there should be some distance between the two of them on take-off.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw an armored car make a wide turn and bear down on his position. There was no reason to assume that the driver of the vehicle was in any way interested in an adjutant inspector, but Nelirikk felt the newly shaved hairs lift on the back of his neck.

  Taking care to betray no haste, he changed course, angling toward one of the newer, Raphix-class planes. The damned car came after and Nelirikk grit his teeth, marching on, soldierly, measuring the distance, if it came to a chase.

  Behind him, the car accelerated. Over the engine’s excitement, a voice shouted out in the language of the Troop, “You there! Halt for the Inspector Major!”

  Nelirikk ran.

  ***

  It was wonderful, Shan thought, what a little height did for one’s perspective.

  Snug in the cockpit of the quiescent Yxtrang fighter, trusting his projected suggestion to any and all passersby that this same cockpit was empty, he looked down the field of planes.

  Some way down the field, lorries and refuellers were busy preparing the next pod of planes. Shan made a note of that.

  Closer to home, he spied the broad shoulders and soldierly stride of Nelirikk Explorer, followed by an armored car bearing the Yxtrang graphic for “Inspection Office.” Shan sat up, trying to get a reading on the occupants of the car. His touch fell short and he saw the car accelerate. Saw Nelirikk break stride and bolt for the ladder of a plane.

  It lacked five minutes of the mark.

  Shan engaged the shock webbing, hands moving—though he was careful not to be too quick—over the fighter’s board.

  ***

  Val Con was running too close to the mark. Delayed and delayed again by the movement of maintenance vehicles and technical crews, he finally swung back, angling for the last of three planes that sat in pristine isolation at the very edge of the field.

  It was chancy. The location was open, and the guards—three guards, he counted—suggested that these craft were meant to be flown by pilots of rank.

  Chancy. He sank back into his sliver of shadow and tried to weigh how chancy. The cause was not served, if he died before he ever gained the air.

  After all, he had promised Miri that he would meet her at Erob’s field this noon.

  He smiled a little then, feeling the tension in his face. A foolish promise on both sides, given what they both undertook. Still, she would expect him to exert himself to keep it.

  A diversion was clearly required. If he could but entice the guards a few steps away from their posts, he would have Luken’s oft-desired honest advantage that made a dash for the nearest craft possible.

  As if his thought ignited it, thunder roared across the field, closely followed by a second boom, which was an air-to-ground cannon being fired. A second engine roared into life and the guards were running toward the sounds, rifles ready, and Val Con threw thought away, gathered his bag and his breath and ran.

  He didn’t look for the guards. He looked at nothing but the ladder, convenient enough for one of Nelirikk’s length, but requiring a leap at the end of his race, and with the bag to hamper him—

  A pellet hit the ground a pace ahead, gravel bits exploding, and he jumped, grabbed the ladder, heard another shot, but he was climbing, and it was a third shot and a fourth. His hand slipped and he snatched a recovery, felt the bag slide and let it go, swarming up, up, and falling into the cockpit, the left leg numb beneath him, but he flung forward, slapped the switch and the bubble rose up and over, sealing him into safety with a click.

  ***

  The engine roared to life and the plane began to move. Shan applied the brake, carefully, found the control for the cannon, crossed hairs on the armored car’s position and pushed the firing stud.

  The plane lurched under him, the armored car went up in a hail of metal, and he eased off the brake, letting the engine have its way as he saw the plane Nelirikk had chosen, with the Yxtrang numbers 32 on the tail, begin to creep forward. Nodding, he took the lead, relinquished the brake entirely and let the engines pull the plane down the runway, pushing her a little now, hauling back on the stick the instant he was able.

  Climbing, he looked down, saw Nelirikk’s plane leap off the field, and quite a commotion on the ground. A finger’s width above the tree-tops, he leveled out and banked hard, sweeping back the way he had come, using the belly guns to kill the planes sitting weak and defenseless, pulled back on the stick at the end of his line, saw 32 flying neck-or-nothing, lashing the field into shrapnel.

  It was now thirty-five minutes since they had separated and there was no third fighter in the air. Shan bit his lip, banked again, searching—and saw a plane rising, a sleek affair with the numbers 03 painted high on its proud tail. He grinned. Trust Val Con to steal himself a beauty.

  For an instant it seemed to him that the pretty plane faltered, then it was climbing, arrow-bright, leveled and banked smoothly right, sweeping in low over the field, guns blaring.

  All according to plan, Shan, he told himself, ridiculously relieved. With a phrase or two varied. We’re all safe in the air, for whatever that’s worth. Go east, young man, and finish things up. After which, I promise, you may go mad.

  He pulled on the stick and made his turn, still climbing, east, in search of targets.

  ***

  He’d been hit. The left leg, well above the knee. There was blood. A lot of blood. Not good.

  There was also pain, now that he had seen the wound.
He tried to shake it out of awareness, used the levers to shrink the cockpit to minimum, and discovered the shock webbing was too large for him, and then discovered that it didn’t matter. He could not be webbed in and reach his instruments. Instead, he raised the pilot’s couch to maximum and perched precariously on the edge. The pain . . .

  The drill.

  He stretched, took a breath and touched the first key, chanting the drill to focus his mind.

  “Power check; external go. Internal, go. Clock set synchronize; clock reset to trip zero. Power on. External power stable. Internal stable. Release external cable.”

  He faltered, the pain chewing his thoughts. He ran the Rainbow, quickly, drawing the body away from the mind, continued to chant the drill.

  “Drag brake on, mech brake on. Engine A start. Engine A positive, null thrust.”

  He was late on the mark. They would be worried, but he couldn’t rush the drill, because . . .

  Something would go wrong, if he rushed the drill.

  “Engine B start. Engine B positive, null thrust. Clock check; timing positive. Annular pressure fifty percent, thrust positive. Scan positive. Weapon check; outboard cannon check.”

  There were soldiers, on the ground far below. They were running toward him. He looked up and there was a soldier there, too, at the top of the ladder, looking down at him through the dome.

  “Remove fuse sixteen. Cap fuse sixteen. Pull pin seven.”

  There was a truck headed his way, he saw the cannon in its bed and hurtled through the last of the drill.

  “Drag brake off, mech brake off, inlets open, full power, on.”

  He was moving, as the drill said he should, scattering soldiers as he gained speed. He looked up, saw the soldier still clinging to the dome, then forgot him as the speed built and off to the right a building exploded, brilliant orange smoke spreading rapidly in the whipping wind.

  The speed was building quickly and the pressure felt good against him, except his leg . . . and it took him a moment to find the dial that told him the plane was going fast enough so he pulled back hard on the stick, and didn’t notice when the soldier finally slid off the dome.

  Climbing, he saw another plane circling, but it didn’t fire, so he banked to the right, setting up for his run over the field, like they’d planned.

  He saw another building blow up as he came in low-incandescence, then heavy black smoke, rapidly thinning. He triggered the cannons, saw planes and men die under him, then he was climbing again, and the other fighter was banking, heading east and he remembered that was the plan, too. Shan would go east. Nelirikk would go south. He would go west.

  Accordingly, he banked to the right—“Ah!”

  He held onto consciousness, the agony receded. Stretching for the dial, he upped the oxygen content in cabin, enough, he hoped, to keep him from getting sleepy. Not enough, quite, to make him drunk.

  Filling his lungs with richer air, he stretched again to the board, and increased the cabin pressure, which would help reduce the bleeding.

  This craft was a beauty, wonderfully stable. He took advantage of that to remove both hands from the controls and cut the rest of the leather away from the wound. Then he bandaged it as well as he could, taking care to make the wrappings tight.

  WARZONE

  “You will forgive me if I seem discourteous,” Miri told the guy with the hatchet. “We are in train to engage the enemy and timing is vital. I suggest that you continue to the rear and remove your folk from active danger.”

  “Your concern does you credit,” he replied, but not like he meant it. He gestured, showing her the rabble and the rakes, spears, pistols, pipes, knives and rocks that was the most of their gear.

  “As you see, we are armed. We are prepared to fight. Forgive me if I notice that your troop is thin. We will bolster your numbers and increase the opportunity of success.” His face was bleak, and not quite sane.

  “We are before you now because we did fight, Captain, and we prevailed. All of us have dead in the city.”

  Last thing she needed, Miri thought. Buncha crazy civilians with no idea of discipline, half of them out on their feet and a short handful holding anything like useful weaponry.

  She glared at the guy and he didn’t flinch, there being something in the set of his mouth that reminded her, forcefully, of Val Con in his hell-or-high-water mode. She could move on without taking them, sure. But she couldn’t stop them from following and making a mob scene on the field that would send discipline straight to hell and get needless numbers killed.

  Damn it.

  “Very well,” she agreed, inclining her head at the angle that said she knew he had her over a barrel and she was letting him have his way, but not to push it.

  “The sergeants will assign your people to existing squads. Understand me: you will follow the orders of the sergeants, from this moment until the enemy is defeated. In the meantime, I do not take children onto a battlefield.”

  She pointed at the nursery contingent—two dozen kids, none of them over eight or nine, guarded by three adults armed with hunting rifles, which were the closest thing to real weapons in the whole mob.

  “Those will proceed, with their protectors, to the rear and beg grace of Erob.”

  “Captain, they will.” He bowed then, deep and courtly, like she was doing him some kind of major favor, instead of inviting him to get massacred, and turned to relay her orders to the rabble.

  ***

  “Meteor shield?” Emrith Tiazan looked at her kinsman, saw neither madness nor levity in his face, and asked, steadily, “What meteor shield?”

  “The one that our instruments assure us is even now in place, covering an area with Korval’s Tree as its center.”

  Korval’s Tree sat in the front garden and well for them that it did, Erob thought, sighing sharply.

  “It appears that the Planetary Defense Unit is concerned that the Tree may come under attack from space.” She eyed tel’Vosti. “I must assume that its concern has at least one leg in reality?”

  “I think we have no option, Emrith.”

  “So.” She moved behind the desk, accessed the delm’s archive and keyed in a search for “Planetary Defense Unit.” The answer came quickly enough, and when she had read it she sighed again. Gift of Korval. Gods protect them all from Korval’s gifts.

  “Here is something to amuse, Win Den,” she said, scrolling to the end of the file. “In times when its attention is not diverted by the possibility of meteor strike, Planetary Defense Unit is none other than Dragon’s Tooth, Korval’s contract suite.” She sat back, suddenly very tired indeed.

  “The blood thins, Win Den. We should not have forgotten this.”

  “Peace dulls the senses,” he said softly. “Give praise, Emrith, that Korval’s Tooth has remained alive. Let us hope that it is also sharp.”

  ***

  Troops were moving, up from the south. Nelirikk identified the supply line, dropped the nose and used the cannon rather than squander the precious bombs nestled in the fighter’s belly.

  There was return fire on his second pass, and he spent a bomb to take out the anti-aircraft turret at the head of the column, then used the cannon again, killing a command vehicle before he was past it all and banking to the left, setting up for his final pass.

  Two more bombs away from his hoard, and a foursome of land-armor destroyed. Nelirikk climbed and swung back to the course, well satisfied with his work thus far.

  ***

  A storm was brewing and the rising wind was unexpectedly troublesome when the plane slowed in the aftermath of cannon fire. Shan held his altitude with brute force and swept back again, his cannon-fire concentrated on a line of slow-moving trucks.

  The plane shuddered and lost forward speed rapidly. Shan gunned the engines and below him saw blossoms of flame as the ammo trucks exploded.

  ***

  Pod 77’s instruction to Dutiful Passage’s guns seven and nine was to fire a broad, low-level magnetic beam direct
ly into the Yxtrang shield, intensity to remain constant for five Standard minutes, increasing to maximum for one-half minute and cutting out.

  Priscilla shook her head, fingers building the equation in screen two while Ren Zel fed data to Maincomp for simulation. A mag beam that low would deliver little more than a nudge to even the lightest of the shield boats. What possible defensive gain might accrue to such a—

  Beside her, Ren Zel hissed, for all the worlds like an offended house cat. She gasped, startled out of her concentration, looked to the sim, and wondered at his restraint, that he had neither howled nor roared.

  The mag beam fired, low and steady, off of gun seven for five Standard minutes into the mass of light craft, encountered in the third layer an extremely light pallet-skid. The beam pulsed, the skid moved. In the fifth layer, the skid encountered a workboat and the pressure of its shielding coupled with the steady push of the beam started that craft moving as well.

  The sim for gun nine showed a similar phenomenon, each beam finally pushing a cluster of ten small ships, toward the center of the Eye.

  When the first of the defenseless boats hit the edge of the Eye, the power simultaneously pulsed to full. The boats, impelled by the beams, skittered into the firing zone, and—

  “They won’t stop the beam,” Priscilla whispered. “They don’t have enough shielding. It will go right through them.”

  “Not entirely,” Ren Zel said. “The beam will lose energy as it passes through the obstacles and will strike the on-world target with somewhat less intensity.”

  She felt ill, even as she approved the Pod 77’s tactics. A defense logic, indeed. Once the battleship’s weakened beam struck through atmosphere, the ancient weapon would have a clear return shot.

  “How many,” Ren Zel asked quietly. “How many of those things are at large?” He inclined his head, acknowledging her place in the line direct of a clan not his own. “If it may be told.”

  “Two,” Priscilla told him, and felt his relief as sharply as her own. “Only two. This one, and one other.”