Orion Shall Rise

by Poul Anderson

  Mikli put arms akimbo. For a few seconds, only the trumpet had voice. ‘And you call yourselves Norrmen,’ he said.

  Suddenly: ‘Okay. Load that tube and give it to me.’

  ‘Sir?’ They goggled at him.

  ‘I’ll open the door for you. Be prepared to follow. You –’ he pointed to the most woebegone of the group – ‘I’ll have your side-arm. You run on home to your mother and see if she can’t supply the cojones she overlooked when you were on the assembly line.’

  The man flinched. ‘Sir, this is crazy,’ the leader protested. ‘We can’t afford to lose you! I’ll try it again myself.’

  Mikli shook his head. ‘No. I’ve got a notion, but I won’t waste time explaining, and you haven’t the craziness to execute it properly anyway.’ His laughter shrilled. ‘Also, I’m not about to miss a chance like this for making havoc!’

  They shuffled their feet and looked away. ‘Jump,’ he ordered, as quietly as possible under the racket. They regarded him and made haste to obey.

  Pistol at waist, loaded launch tube on his back, Mikli put foot to rung. ‘When you hear this thing go off, follow,’ he directed. Monkey-agile, he swarmed aloft.

  A haze of horn-sound filled the zigzag passage. At its end the dead men lay sprawled in a heap. Their eyes stared, their mouths gaped, blood and brains and excrement besmeared them. Mikli made a slight moue and picked his way over them to the next ladder.

  When his brow was almost at the verge, he stopped. Clinging one-handed, he unbuckled his dress belt and passed it around the rung at his midriff, refastening it to make a loop against which he could freely lean. He unshipped the rocket launcher and raised it, with some effort, until its front half rested on the floor above. His left hand took hold of the stock, which should have been at his shoulder, and tilted the barrel upward.

  Bullets whanged. Wairoa had seen. The tube jerked to the impacts. Mikli grinned wider than before. His right hand reached for the firing switch.

  It was a madman’s plan, therefore it had not occurred to the guards. He could aim only by blind estimate, and the barrel wouldn’t hold steady. The odds were immense that the rocket would not strike near the vulnerable point where the bolt met its housing, but merely dent the steel somewhere else. Mikli relied on his luck. Speaking to the gathered Wolves, he had called it destiny.

  The alarm cut off. Silence crashed down.

  For a short while, he could not know that it had, as stunned as his ears were. Then he heard the signal that came after, high and icy, a sound like a winter wind.

  In three minutes, Orion Two would rise.

  Mikli fired. Smoke and flame whirled above him. Fumes scorched his breathing. The whoom of the missile ended in a doomsday crash. Knife-edged shards of it flew glittering and wailing, caromed from the walls, hailed past him where he pressed himself tight to his side of the shaft. He scarcely felt the lacerations. They didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but stopping the ship.

  He sprang upward. No bullet greeted him. Soot-stained and battered, the door sagged ajar. ‘Ya-a–ah!’ he screamed in his victory, and plunged toward it.

  Wairoa stood fast while the trumpet cried its summons. Eye to loophole, weapons ready, he waited. When the guardsmen appeared, he picked them off. He paid no heed to the one who lay bound on the floor. Afterward, though, his gaze strayed to the dead woman. He stooped, briefly laid a hand on her belly, straightened, and resumed his vigil, a gaunt night figure amidst whiteness and machinery.

  The rocket launcher poked over the verge. He fired several times, but that was no fleshly target.

  The horn ceased blowing. Orion whistled.

  Wairoa eased. His watch was ended.

  Almost.

  The blast sent him staggering backward. He dropped his rifle. Dazed, he went to his knees. Blood dripped from his nose. He crawled back erect. Mikli Karst had slipped through the crack that had opened. His pistol was drawn.

  Orion whistled.

  Mikli shot. Wairoa stumbled, caught at a wall, leaned panting against it. From the hole in his guts, crimson spurted and flooded. Mikli made for the control board.

  Wairoa gathered himself and scuttled to intercept. ‘No!’ Mikli howled. ‘You can’t!’ He shot again, nearly point-blank. Wairoa did not seem to feel. He reached his enemy and grappled.

  Embraced, they reeled by the panel, on outward. Mikli could not bring his gun to bear, against the grip on that arm. Wairoa twisted, bones snapped, the pistol clattered to the floor. Mikli’s free hand gouged. Wairoa ignored. He was using his own right arm to steer his opponent, keep them both moving.

  ‘No!’ Mikli shrieked. ‘No!’

  Wairoa smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  They lurched onto the balcony. Mikli sank teeth into Wairoa’s throat. Wairoa levered him over the guard rail. Mikli did not let go. They fell together, a hundred and more meters down the shaft toward the pit.

  – Below, the squad leader exhorted his men. A few who were brave rallied to him. They climbed the ladders and burst into the control section. That was just in time for them to perish in the fire and thunder of the ascent.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  This time the angry magnates had not met in Kemper under false pretenses. They made known their purpose, and gathered in Dordoyn, at Castle Beynac, whose warders gave Captain Jovain his first open defiance. There were many more of them than had been at the previous conference. Their entourages filled every spare room in the keep, every possible place nearby, and not even the innkeepers would take money for lodging.

  Sessions began early each day and ran until well after sundown. The matter dealt with was as grave as any in the history of the Domain, or more so. Everybody demanded to be heard, repeatedly and at length. Disagreements and doubts ranged from basic principles to the pettiest procedural details. Personal enmities flared. Intrigues, covert threats, crass bargaining went on in the darker corners of the castle and the clock. Yet slowly, inefficiently, humanly, the meeting bumbled toward a consensus.

  At last Vosmaer Tess Rayman could stand before it and offer a summary. She had been elected chairman at the beginning, rather to her own and the collective surprise. The feeling had seemed to be that as a service officer whose career had made her intimate with Skyholm and respected among Aerogens and groundlings alike, she might be the least controversial person present. She soon disabused the rest of that notion, but nobody seriously ventured to challenge her style of riding herd on the assembly. Most were somewhat grateful for it.

  The auditorium had been added to the fortress a pair of centuries ago, a long and narrow-windowed chamber. Beneath each sill was a statue of an Ancestor, in the abstract style of that era. A turret above was actually a camera obscura, whose electronics filled a screen girdling the room above the windows with a view of the outside as seen from a height. This evening it showed dusk setting in over trees that were still leafless, valley muddied by rain, river wanly agleam. A few stars had blinked into sight and Skyholm hung low in the north like a moon across which tiny lights glittered. The coldness of the scene pierced an air grown hot, stuffy, and tobacco-laden.

  From the podium, Tess looked over the scores who sat before her. The colors and cuts of regional garb bespoke what a mixed lot they were – Clan Seniors and managers, merchant princes, regional lords and ladies who ranged from the shy and scholarly Mestromor to the elegant Grand Mayor of Elsass, from the severely black-clad President of Bourgoyn to the shaggy mountaineer who was Chief of Jura – She cleared her throat.

  ‘I would like at this point to sketch what we appear to have agreed upon,’ she said. ‘Not that any individual here will endorse every part of it. However, my impression is that we’ve reached a point where compromises bringing us to unity have become possible.

  ‘Jovain’s replacement of Skyholm personnel cannot and must not be tolerated. It does worse than giving him – him and his pack of mercenaries, Espaynians, Maurai “advisers” – total control over the most powerful instrumentality in Uropa, perhaps i
n the world. He can blast us to ash. We have no check whatsoever upon him, except outright rebellion and ruinous guerrilla warfare. It may well be that nothing stays his hand but the knowledge that that would destroy the Domain … and, let’s give them credit, probably the Espaynians and Maurai in the Skyholm crew wouldn’t obey such an order without extreme provocation from our side.

  ‘They are doubtless honorable, by their own lights. I myself will concede that Jovain may be. The point is that he and they decide what shall happen, not us, not the peoples and the ancient usages of the Domain.’ She pointed at the image of the aerostat. ‘Once that saved civilization in Franceterr. Later it guarded and nurtured. Now he has turned it into the means of absolute power.

  ‘And that is what’s worst. Skyholm rightfully belongs not to him but to the Domain – to our forebears and to children yet unborn, as well as us. It’s the heart of everything that we are. You may or may not personally believe that the anims of the Ancestors live on up yonder, but you know full well that their heritage does. Our purpose is to claim that heritage back.’

  She paused. A rustling went through the audience. She made her voice dry.

  ‘What do we propose to do about it? Well, first, obviously, we petition for a convention of Seniors. They can’t meet in Skyholm as always before, but that may not be legally required. They should vote Jovain’s impeachment and removal.

  ‘Meanwhile, in earnest of our resolve, we should announce that henceforward our allegiance is withheld. Our states shall pay no dues to the center, recognize none of its officials, and heed none of its decrees; and we call on other states, corps, Ligues, companies, organizations of every sort to do likewise.

  ‘Several among you have argued in these past days that such action will tear at the very fabric of our society. This is true. Nevertheless –’

  A young man darted through the main door and along the aisle. ‘News, news!’ he howled. Tears coursed down his face, which was stretched out of shape. ‘The radio –’

  Tess lifted a hand to stay the unease in the group. ‘What the devil?’ she demanded. ‘Unseemly, if it isn’t an emergency.’

  ‘It is,’ Ans Debyron said through his weeping. He reached the podium and sprang up beside her. ‘Hear me, my sirs and ladies. The Mong armies attacking the Northwest Union have been wiped out – by nuclear weapons. Deu deliver us!’ He sank to his knees and sobbed.

  Tess held her place while horror made chaos below her. At last her gaze sought the image of Skyholm, ice-white above deepening darkness. ‘And what will you do now?’ she whispered.

  2

  Terai Lohannaso was in his cabin, writing a letter to his wife, when Orion Two blasted free. Blue-white radiance flashed through the port, bright as a dozen suns.

  His chair crashed back. The cabin abruptly seemed nighted, except for the banners of dazzlement that flew across his vision. He groped his way out. Another burst came down the ladder that led to the deck. It was less fierce than the first, and even then he gauged that the angle was much more steep.

  By the time he was topside and the afterimages had cleared from his eyes, there had been a third flash, but it showed star-tiny and was the last seen. Crewfolk boiled about in near panic or squatted stunned. Those who had happened to look straight at the initial explosion were recovering their sight, but more slowly than he.

  Terai plowed the mob from his path, reached the rail, and stared around.

  The morning had grown calm again, save for a flock of terrified cormorants whose wings beat black against a sky that held only a few clouds. The sea sparkled greenly; a slight, cold breeze sent wavelets smacking against the hull and made it roll a bit. Rongelap lay anchored off the little Barren Islands, to keep watch on Cook Inlet. To starboard the mountains of the Kenai Peninsula reared over the horizon, and forward the peaks of the Leutian Range, distance-hazed but brilliant in their snows. Besides the dreadnaught, half a dozen lesser ships were in view – no more, since the fleet had dispersed in squadrons well away from each other.

  Afar to the north, beyond the heights Teria could see, a thread of vapor reached heavenward, slowly twisting apart and dissipating, the track of the comet.

  ‘Now hear this!’ bawled the loudspeaker from the bridge. ‘Now hear this! We have no cause for fear. All personnel to battle stations – smartly, look alive! – like seamen of the Queen!’

  That rallied the Maurai. They trotted to their posts, resolution in their gaits and countenances. Terai felt proud of them.

  ‘Will Captain Lohannaso report to the admiral’s office?’ the voice called. He was already bound in that direction.

  The muted thunders reached him after a number of minutes which confirmed that their source was in the neighborhood belonging to Orion.

  Palu Halaweo, skipper of the flagship, gave Terai an expression of dismay. ‘Do you mean their spacecraft are ready?’ he asked.

  The intelligence officer kindled his pipe and took a puff that tingled soothingly over tongue and palate. ‘No, sir,’ he replied. ‘That was a single launch. A prototype vehicle, I’m certain, intended for tests and data collection. No matter how much information the Norries have from astronautical archives, it’s just not possible that they could design and build something so ambitious on a basis of pure theory, I’ve told you before, my investigations have established they’ll need months yet to finish the work; and at that, the reliability will be questionable.’

  ‘But why did they send this one off in sight of Tanaroa and everybody?’ Admiral Kepaloa demanded. ‘I would have waited for a fog, at least.’

  ‘That’s a puzzler, sir,’ Terai admitted. ‘I suspect something went rather drastically wrong – for which, three cheers, hm? Did we get a triangulation on the site?’

  ‘I’m waiting to hear –-’ A rating appeared with a sheet of paper in her hand. Kepaloa laughed. ‘Speak of Nan and you’ll feel his teeth in your butt! I do believe this is the report.’

  ‘Yes, sir, three accounts, almost simultaneous,’ the sailor announced.

  Two were from aircraft which had been on patrol off their carriers; the third was from Kodiak Island, which the surviving marines had occupied. In addition, aboard this vessel, young Roberiti Lokoloku had coolly hastened to a binnacle and taken a compass bearing on the trail while it was still clearly defined. Terai drew the lines on a map and examined their point of convergence. ‘Ye-e-es,’ he murmured, ‘this identifies the area a great deal more precisely than before. May I suggest that the admiral let me compose a message for radio to Wellantoa? The geology department at the University will either have details about those mountains or know where to get them. That will give us clues to where the other launch facilities can be, and we’ll proceed to bomb them to flinders.’

  ‘Aye!’ exclaimed Halaweo. ‘They must be well hardened, but how many tonnes of high explosive can they stand? We’ll bring it in by the convoy load if we must.’

  Kepaloa scowled. ‘Why are they inviting it? Damnably queer –’

  An intuition thrilled along Terai’s nerves. ‘Sir,’ he said, while his fist smote the table, ‘I suggest also that we keep receivers open to every plausible channel. It could well be that we’ll get a communication … from space.’

  The rating reappeared. ‘Sir,’ she declared anxiously, ‘we have a report from a scout plane. The ironclad that was lying near Omer village is southbound at full speed. She’s sent up small, fast flyers of her own – spotters for her guns, we think.’

  ‘Hm. Well, well.’ Kepaloa considered the chart. ‘About three hours till she heaves in sight of us. A desperation maneuver? We’ll prepare a suitable welcome for her, eh, gentlemen?’ He saw how Terai stiffened, heard the breath go in between his teeth. ‘Aii, what’s the matter, Lohannaso?’

  ‘Hello, Earth. Hello, Earth. Spacecraft Orion calling Earth and mankind.

  ‘Talence Iern Ferlay of the Domain of Skyholm speaking. With me is Ronica Birken of the Northwest Union. We are in orbit around the world. It’s unbelievably beautiful.
…’

  ‘Ronica Birken speaking. I am of the Northwest Union. I helped take this ship away from the Wolf Lodge in hopes she’d carry off the guilt my folk must otherwise forever bear. Treachery, mass murder, hazarding a new Doom, and the vision of an empire – I dare not imagine that you will follow along, once you have understood. Listen down there! You’ve been lied to, used, treated like interchangeable pieces of machinery. You who were the Free Folk, what you’ve gotten is a government, and it’s handling you the way governments always do their subjects.…’

  ‘Talence Iern Ferlay again. I don’t agree with everything my lady has said, but we’re united in this, that we will not condone what has happened and it shall be avenged.’ The Unglish changed to Francey. ‘To my mother and her family, my foster mother and hers, all my kin, all my comrades, a word of love and comfort. We don’t know what we are going to do next or whether we can make a safe landing somewhere, sometime. But if we die, don’t grieve. We won back our honor and we are out in the middle of a miracle.…’

  Terai did not hear the broadcast as it came in. He was in his cabin again, finishing his letter home. ‘Farewell, best beloved,’ he wrote, signed his name, put the paper in an envelope and sealed it. He had a fair idea of what would presently happen. Seeking back to the admiral’s office, he found the tape of the message. As it played for him, the gray hair stirred on his head. ‘Tanaroa!’ he whispered. ‘How I envy you, Iern, boy. Luck be with you.’

  Early that afternoon, Sea Serpent rounded the southernmost cape of the Kenai Peninsula and headed for the Gulf of Laska. She was a huge and ugly vessel, low in the water, her upper works harshly angular: bridge, deckhouse, gun turrets, missile platforms, lifeboat nacelles. Armor gleamed in sunlight that a rising mistiness had turned pale. Three stacks fumed forth stench and murk.

  High above, several Maurai jets circled helpless. They had chased away the enemy planes, but when they attacked the ship, their missiles could not seriously damage her, and murderous antiaircraft fire brought down half their number. Bombers had come, to drop their loads from a safe altitude; and laser beams detonated the bombs in midair.