by Chris Bunch
He took the bottle out of the bucket when a large and drunk man stumbled up to the table.
“Hey cutie … wanna dance, dansh, oops.”
He pivoted through 180 degrees and fell on the table, which was insufficient for his bulk. The table collapsed, and the ice bucket and chairs smashed.
Maev still held her glass, and Njangu deftly emptied the bottle in the glass, dropped the bottle on the now-snoring drunk’s chest, and shouted for a cleanup crew and another bottle.
“Y’see,” he said. “I know how to take you to all the right places. Wanna dance some more?”
• • •
“I called this minisymposium,” Dr. Ann Heiser said, “not only to let our esteemed colleague have a chance to tell his tales of slaughter, but to pose a very serious question:
“Do any of us have any suggestions we might offer to the Force on how this war might be fought?”
There were two dozen men and women in the room, all civilians except for Alt Ho Kang. She’d been recently commissioned for her scientific research during the Musth War, and transferred to Force II Section as an analyst. She still didn’t quite believe her new rank, the pay that went with it, and that she wasn’t still driving a Grierson around the landscape.
“I’ll be more specific about what we’re looking for,” Froude said. He was still badly underweight from his time in the jungle, but the pallor and the fatigue had mostly gone. “Only because Ann and I discussed this before you were all kind enough to show up here and listen to my war story.
“Let me open with something you may find fairly surprising:
“No one knows very much about hyperspace, about the nature of the beast itself. Stardrive has been around for several millennia, but no one seems to have done intensive research in the area of what, exactly, we’re moving through.
“We know, or rather deduce, that N-space is quote real endquote, because it fits into our equations neatly, not to mention the empirical evidence that we actually get somewhere. We generally use certain predetermined navigational points, more for convenience than anything else, to travel from one place to another.
“We have machinery that can guide us from point to point. That machinery, should we make a blind jump, that is, a transition from a known to an unknown point, or unknown to unknown points, can tell us where, in normal space, we emerged.
“Generally, at least.
“In war, if our ships detect an enemy in normal space at a close enough distance, we can follow the enemy into N-space, launch a missile, and destroy that ship or track it as it jumps from place to place. If we are quick enough, we can even launch a special missile from normal into hyperspace, and the enemy can be destroyed. Or so it’s presumed, for those circumstances have happened often enough, without that enemy returning to bother us, to make such a generalization. It’s very interesting to note, by the way, that very seldom has a ship, to my knowledge, been hit once it enters hyperspace, then later return to normal space with damages. Does that suggest hyperspace acts as a conductor of shock, as water can? Or are the normal alloys used in ship construction weakened, during the time the ship is in hyperspace, so that it is extraordinarily vulnerable to shock?
“All these are most basic questions, and I’ve not been able to find an answer, nor can I find, anywhere in the literature, any research that’s significant, even in those two minor areas.
“There’s a great dearth of hard data. We know hyperspace is a finite entity, but — ”
“Pardon me, Doctor,” Ho Kang asked. “And forgive my ignorance. But how do we know it?”
“At least two reasons,” Froude said. “First is that we can consistently go from one point to another using the same amount of power and navigational settings. Secondly, it takes the same amount of internal, perceived and recorded, time to make that transition.
“But that’s no more, in my opinion, than a blind man who has learned to move around his house by rote, remembering the chair is here, the table there, and so forth. Move the furniture, and the man will become confused and possibly bark his shins.
“I wonder if the Confederation never commissioned a thorough investigation because its wars generally covered a huge area, with ships and fleets going from one place to another before battle commenced, just as ancient warship leaders didn’t much care about the oceans they crossed, other than that they were mapped for dangerous reefs to avoid.”
A woman stood. “Even though practical physics isn’t my area of interest, I agree we know little, damned little about this convenient dimension called N-space. But I don’t see how that pertains to your opening statement about fighting this conflict with Larix/Kura. Other, of course, than basic research has historically been well fueled by a good solid war.”
There was laughter as the woman sat down.
“I’m not sure, either,” Froude said. “All I know is that when two men are going to have a flight, and neither one knows anything about the field of conflict, the one who finds a map, or better yet visits the potential battleground, has an infinite advantage.
“I’ll simply — I hope — clarify what I’m stumbling around with this illustration.”
He went to the old-fashioned greenboard, picked up a marker.
Froude put a large K on one side of the board, an L about half a meter away.
“Here we have Kura, over here, Larix. Kura is the food basket for Protector Redruth’s empire. Larix is the industrial complex. Eliminate Kura, and the Larissans starve. Eliminate Larix, and the Kurans go back to harvesting their crops with hand tools.”
Froude drew a circle around one letter, then a tube to the other, and a circle around it. His sketch looked like a weightlifter’s dumbbell.
He drew an X on the tube.
“Here, then, might be the vulnerable area. Strike here, in the hyperspace between the two systems, or at the nav points where a ship emerges from hyperspace to reset its navigational apparatus before jumping again, in a manner I haven’t the foggiest about, and the results might be most impressive.”
• • •
“I think,” Ben Dill said, speaking precisely as he picked up the pitcher of beer and drank directly from it, “the next stage oughta be going over and hammering those goddamned Kurries and Larries.”
“Ah, but where, specifically?” Alikhan asked. He wasn’t in much better shape than his friend, having eaten a container of the spoiled, spiced meat the Musth used for a narcotic.
There were about twenty soldiers in a corner of the comfortable, old-fashioned noncommissioned officers’ mess. Almost all were I&R people. Alikhan and Dill were the only officers, present by invitation for a quiet wake for the three I&R soldiers lost on Kura. The only other raider there was medic Jil Mahim, who claimed the best vacation imaginable was to lie in bed, listen to the shouted orders, old-fashioned bugle calls, and loudspeakered commands, then roll over and go back to sleep because none of them was for her. Dill had already accused her of Strange Thinking, and been punished with a pitcher dumped in his lap.
“Why,” Tweg Lav Huran, Oct Team Leader, Second Troop, I&R, “where they are, of course.”
“Who in hell promoted that man to warrant?” someone said. “Outstanding frigging talent for the obvious.”
“That,” Alikhan said, “will be determined in the course of events, I suspect. I have a better question: What do you humans plan to do with these people after you win the war?”
“You see why I love this guy?” Dill bellowed. “He always assumes on the sunny side of the street.”
“I’d guess,” said Tweg Rad Dref, a Grierson aircraft commander with I&R, “we’ll hang that Redruth and the rest of his war-criminal ossifers by the balls, and let the other people go on about their business, leaving us alone.”
“Or maybe we oughta sorta scoop ‘em up,” another noncom said. “Import ‘em to Cumbre to do our scutwork.
“Especially the cute ones,” she added. “Leaving their balls intact.”
“I asked the questio
n,” Alikhan went on, “because of what I’ve heard about these people. Unless all of you are exaggerating, the people on Larix and Kura seem to have little free spirit or independence.”
“ ‘Ats what the intel has,” Senior Tweg Als Severine, II Section Senior analyst, said. “We’ve gone out and talked to a lot of the Rentiers an’ such, who used to go over to Larix for shopping and getting in trouble they didn’t want to get back here, back before the Confederation went and vanished on us.
“They all talk about how the Larissans would be terrified of anybody who had more clout than they did, and, if they couldn’t get out of the way of those anybodies, they couldn’t be enough of a slave for em.
“I wouldn’t believe a Rentier about anything,” Mahim said. “But didn’t these Larissans have that evil little side glance you get when you’re on the bottom that says someday your back’s going to be turned, and I’ll have a big long knife, and then you’re for it?”
“Believe it or not, Jil, I know what you’re talking about, and that was one of the questions we asked,” Severine said. “Nobody claimed to have seen anything like it.”
“Hmmph,” Mahim said skeptically. “Hard to believe the trampled class doesn’t want to do paybacks.”
“We also checked any old holos from Larix or Kura,” Severine said, “when we were building our profile of your average, mythical kind of Larissan. We knew goddamned good and well those holos didn’t report nahthing but sweetness and light, but still looked for stories about, oh, some servant wiping out all of the children he was put in charge of, or some chauff … shoof … sorry, a little too much alk … some pilot doing a headfirst into the ground with his employers in the backseat.
“Nothing.”
“So far, this bears out my question,” Alikhan said. “If these people appear to have been beaten down by this Protector, and I guess he was the third generation to do this, what happens after the war?”
“Howzabout,” Dill said, emptying the pitcher into his glass, tossing it back over his head to thud down somewhere, “we just blow ‘em out of the skies and move on?”
“That will not work,” Alikhan said. “They will do nothing but fret for a time, then find themselves another dictator, and try once more.”
“So that means,” Huran said, “we’ll have to first beat their butts flat, then go in on the ground and play nursemaid for a generation? Shit, I don’t like that at all, at all.”
“Who knows?” Mahim said. “But I feel sorriest for the poor bastards around this table, who are going to make that landing, and get dead flattening butts.”
“That’s what we get paid damned little for,” Dref said.
“Shuddup, everybody,” Dill said, standing. From somewhere, he’d found another full pitcher. He clambered on top of the table, and started singing the age-old song:
Did you ever think when a hearse went by
That you might be the next to die?
Then, changing tempo:
The worms crawl in
The worms crawl out
The worms dance tangos
All over your snout.
He went back to speech:
“A hymn to the next of us to go south:
“Hymn … hymn … screw him …”
None of the other drinkers in the cavernous club, nor the barkeeps, thought of intervening. I&R mourned their dead in their way, and would retaliate terribly against any interruptions.
When the singing started, Jil Mahim put her head down on the table and began snoring gently. A considerate warrant moved her head out of the pool of beer it was lying in.
• • •
Monique Lir clambered the last few meters to the top of the sea mount just before dawn. A thousand and more meters below her, waves crashed sullenly on the rocks around the pillar and rocked the small boat she’d rented.
Lir had driven in a skyhook at midnight and hung a hammock from it, a little angry at herself that she’d take a third day to finish the ascent.
The top of the sea mount was about thirty meters to a side and had collected enough dirt for a few small, twisted trees to grow.
Lir slid out of her pack and her climbing harness, stretched, allowed herself two sips of water as a reward for this first ascent.
She sat, cross-legged, on the stone as the sun slowly came up, emptying her mind. As far as she could see, in any direction, was nothing but water. No boats, no people, no aircraft, no loudspeakers, no officers, no noncoms, no crunchies.
A perfect leave.
Lir knew there were horrendous stories about how she spent her leaves, from running a whorehouse specializing in sadomasochism to being a millionaire recluse on some far-off island where no one knew her real name. She didn’t bother to deny them.
All that mattered was this stillness, this peace atop a mountain, preferably one that had never been climbed, even more preferably one that was unknown or considered unclimbable.
She would eat, sleep until midday, then rope back to her boat and navigate for that second sea-pillar no one seemed to have gone up.
Monique Lir was having a wonderful leave.
CHAPTER
18
“Here I thought you went and learned your lesson about doing anything without my kind fatherly hand,” Njangu Yoshitaro said briskly, swiveling in his chair to face Garvin. “But you didn’t. Which got you in a goddamned dungeon, rotting your toenails off.
“After that, you shoulda figured out you’re supposed to be the Perfect Leader, out there all nit and tiddy in your goddamned white uniform waving the saber, and I’m the guy that tells you when to charge and in what direction.
“Now, let’s talk about this flight-school shit,” Yoshitaro went on. “You’re gonna leave that frigging Penwyth in charge of me and I&R while you go farting around for what, six months?”
“What’s the matter with Erik?” Garvin asked.
“Not that much, actually,” Njangu admitted. “Rich people just make me nervous. Forget him. Go back to that six months you’re at Zoomie school.”
“A lot less than that,” Garvin said. “They’re doing a lot of hypnopacking, like they did with basic drill.”
“I thought hypnosis only conditions you to do things reflexively, like right face and to the rear harch and shit like that.”
“They think, with enough repetitions, they can give us more than that.”
“Us. Who’s us?”
“The old man’s ordered a big push on pilots. Anybody that’s ever wanted to fly is going to get a chance. No bullshit, no drill, just intensive hands-on stuff,” Garvin said. “Hypno can give you instant response to say, spin recovery, at least the book response, just like it can teach you how to do hup-ho inspection arms.”
He grinned sheepishly. “And don’t I sound like I know what the hell I’m talking about. We’ll find out whether that works in a week or so.”
Njangu stared at Garvin for a very long moment.
“One more time: We?”
“Oh yeh. I went and volunteered you, too.”
“You don’t screw around, do you?”
“Can’t,” Garvin said briskly. “We got a war to win. The first raid goes out against Kura tomorrow morning. Besides, weren’t you ragging me a couple of minutes ago about daring to do things without you being two steps to my right and two to my rear, butting in and telling me what I’m doing wrong?”
Njangu considered. “Well, shut my moneymakin’ mouth. I think I went and argued myself into an untenable position, like the educated sorts say.
“So I guess I’m gonna go learn how to crash into things. Maybe that’ll get me a couple extra credits a month, knowing how to swoop around the heavens.”
Njangu frowned, turned serious. “Actually, Garvin, m’friend, that does bring up an interesting thought.”
“What, you crashing into things?”
“No. Look. We’re gonna go beat up Larix/Kura, right?”
“Gad, no wonder I follow you in wonderment. You reach such ama
zing conclusions without needing any hard evidence like us commoners.”
“You got that right,” Njangu said. “The first stage is going to be farting around in outer space, right? That doesn’t give a lot of opening for I&R, does it?
“Second stage will have to be a ground invasion. So we’ll go in front, like always, and get killed.”
“That sounds like SOP for Idiots and Runners,” Garvin said.
“Uh-huh. Then, after we beat Redruth to a bloody pulp, then what? Then we go looking for the Confederation to try to figure out what happened, right? Which will probably involve some folks of Evil Intent and, again, will be, at least in the first stages, fought or at least investigated in space.”
“Mmmh,” Garvin said. “I’m starting to track.”
“Yeh,” Njangu agreed. “It doesn’t sound like I&R’s gonna be a real astounding place to get medals, which translates to more money and loot, now does it?”
“You’re thinking it’s time to move on?”
“No way,” Njangu said. “What, go into one of the regiments and specialize in shining boots, spaceship corridors, and saying yessir in chorus? That idea blows giptels.
“I think what we’d better start thinking about is how we transition I&R, in toto, into the future.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m not ready to tell you Steps Alpha through Omega,” Njangu said. “But I’ll give you a clue. If we go hootin’ after the Confederation, we’re gonna need a bigger army, right?”
“You don’t think the ten thou of us in the Legion aren’t going to conquer all, what with our clean livers and pure thoughts?” Garvin said. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get silly. You’re right.”
“Damned straight I’m right. The Force gets big, I&R gets big, too.”
“What, like a Recon Regiment if the Force goes up to a Division in strength? That’d make you a Caud and me, what? Super-Caud?”
