by Colin Kapp
Wonderingly, he followed her towards one of the laboratory blocks, overwhelmingly conscious of her femininity, yet still not daring to consider her objectively as a woman. He regarded her as a tormentress, yet his emotional involvement was secured by an overpowering fascination for this enigmatic and supremely capable female who so dominated his life.
In one of the laboratories she stopped before a round glass case of surgical cleanliness in which hung a suit of metal mesh. This was woven of filaments so fine that its texture was scarcely visible, and the material was so thin that light from behind penetrated it as easily as if it were no more than a shadow. For a few moments Dam stared at the ion-suit, wondering how and why it was different from the previous ones he had so reluctantly worn, and what was the purpose of this preview. He decided that the suit must be smaller and tighter€”impossibly tight to judge from the finger diameter of the gloves and the detail of the body parts.
Absolute was watching his perplexity with critical amusement.
"That's your suit, Lover. Not only will it fit like a second skin€”it is a second skin."
"I don't understand."
"You will! They're going to strip the skin off you surgically, dress you in the suit, then replace your natural skin. Once the nerve ends repair themselves through the mesh, you'll scarcely know its there€”except that with the inclusion of an atom-powered paraformer implant you'll have inbuilt para-ion ability."
"Over my dead body!"
"Your dead body's no use to me, Lover. Your living body is. Don't think I'm giving you the option."
"There's no way I'm going to let you mutilate me by major surgery. You can kill me if you wish, but I'm not having that thing in my body. There's no point in continuing to live on those terms. Tell Abel I want to volunteer for active combat duty."
"I'll tell him you're a bloody coward."
"Cowardice doesn't figure. I'm bound to die anyway in para-ion service. But I'd sooner die as a natural man than live longer as a metal-skinned freak."
"Freak? God . . . I'll give you something to think about!"
She swiftly unbuttoned the blouse of her tunic again, shrugged the garment back, and thrust her bare torso close to him.
"Feel me! Come on€”with your hands!"
Half afraid, he touched the soft, warm skin, then recoiled. Under the delicate, yielding flesh his sensitive fingers detected the deliberate weave of a metal mesh. His dismay brought a traumatic shock which numbed his arm.
"You . . .?" Too many conflicting things competed for the end of the sentence. "Why did you allow . . ."
"It's none of your bloody business. But if a woman can learn to live with it, so can you, Lover." She pulled her tunic blouse back abruptly. "I've laid the medics on for tomorrow."
"I'm serious, Absolute. Take what action you like against me, but in no way do I intend to become like you. Don't you realize it's warped your whole personality? I don't think it was only your skin they replaced with metal. I think they also stuffed your head full of barbed wire and rusty razor blades."
"You think so?" Although her face remained passive, there was a wealth of amused fury in her voice. "Don't get me started on what little boys are made of. You've not got the stomach to hear the answers. As it happens, Abel may still manage to steal you from me€”but what you want has nothing to do with it. When you signed for para-ion service you transferred to us the power of life and death. But no mention was made of the quality of the life or the manner of death. So I'll promise you one thing, Lover€”if I manage to keep you, what you've had to endure so far will be a mere nothing compared with what's to come."
It was the following morning before Dam gained any idea of what his fate was to be. He had slept badly and was still sadly tired when a guard awoke him and thrust a communicator set into his hand.
"Lover?" It was Absolute speaking on the radio link.
"Yes?"
"I've been discussing your case with Abel. I've been overruled, damn you. You're being transferred out for combat duty."
"That suits me fine! When do I go?"
"Immediately. There's a few formalities to be settled first, but after that you can go to hell by the shortest available route as far as I'm concerned. You'd better double over here and collect your training release right now, because I don't intend wasting any more time on you."
"I'm on my way."
Now that the chance for combat duty had become real, Dam was nowhere near as certain that he wanted it, but at least being outside the guarded walls of the training establishment would, he hoped, offered improved prospects for escape. Against this was the nagging suspicion that the self-contained para-ion ability offered by the suit beneath the skin formed the only possible escape route. Thinking about it carefully, it appeared to him that given what Absolute had demonstrated there was very little the guards could bring against him were he so equipped. Removing the need for the cumbersome machinery of the paraformer had removed the last obstacle to crashing the camp's defences while in the para-ion condition. Nothing in his psyche, however, could accept the prospect of living with the metal mesh beneath his skin.
The guard escorted him to the polished hall outside Absolute's office. Dam knocked mechanically.
"Come!" said Absolute's voice, and even the single word seemed to signal her frustration.
He entered, but even as he cleared the door he knew he had made a mistake. White-clad arms were waiting on either side to seize and carry him forward to where Absolute, with a face of malicious triumph, was waiting for him with an anaesthetic pad. Sudden panic drove Dam into a frenzy, but he was in the hands of experts, and though he summoned all the strength available to him, his face was thrust inexorably towards the fatal pad. His last impression was that of Absolute's golden nails thrusting an ersatz moon towards his face, and the sickly scalding of the anesthetic in his lungs.
He woke later to find himself strapped on a hospital trolley. A burst of fear made him strain to break his bonds, but they were too secure. His movements brought Absolute over to look down on him, and once again Dam saw the inexplicable passion in her expression. She was both the goddess who mocked his agonies and the controller of his future; yet his hatred for her was infused with a large measure of desire, and his fear of her was similarly complicated by a near-masochistic fascination. Both psychologically and physically, Dam knew her influence on him would remain until the day of his death.
Someone came to wheel the trolley, and Absolute walked in front. He could not see her, but the sound of her steel-tipped heels on the floor seemed to speak the thought that was uppermost in his mind:
"Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! . . ." all the way down the echoing corridors to the operating theatre.
CHAPTER XVII
In many respects Lightning had been more fortunate than many of the other worlds Terra had chosen to attack. The defenders normal mode of living, massively insulated from the great storms which racked the planet's surface, had caused them to develop living conditions incidentally well suited to withstand all but the most dedicated space bombardment. Their extensive use of tunnels deep beneath the mountains rendered most of their installations proof against even nuclear attacks. Furthermore, the rising generations had grown to accept the violence of the planetary atmosphere as part of their natural environment; whereas units of the Terran occupation force had no such background, and viewed the dark and turbulent wastes of the surface as a region akin to Hell.
A further factor working in favour of the defenders of Lightning was the fact that, owing to her relative isolation even from the Hub communities, very little was known either about the size of her population or its distribution. Although a military government had been installed, the deposed planetary administration had so successfully sabotaged the record systems that whole townships, especially some of the submarine food-farm complexes and subterranean mining colonies, had remained effectively unknown to the new rulers. The smallness of the cities had led the Terrans into the erro
r of believing the entire population was probably less than fifty million. A true count which would include the small enclaves scattered around the black and jagged coastlines would have returned a figure nearly four times as great. The magnitude of the error was due to the Terrans habitual assumption that most people live in cities; it needed long familiarity with the way of life on Lightning to appreciate that on the planet of storms the reverse was true.
The apparent pockets of resistance against which the Terrans had moved their lost ghost-squad had in fact been deliberately contrived by Garside Raad, and the main elements of the real resistance force had been persuaded to remain concealed against the time of Liam Liam's promised return to give them some coverage from space. Nobody, least of all the inhabitants of Lightning, held any illusions about the full weight of the holocaust which would arrive if the commander of the ships in orbit decided to seek the ultimate solution to the Lightning 'problem' and put a few planet-breaking hellburners down on the surface. Thus the Terrans were pacified by an uneasy simulation of conquest; while beneath, around and above them, shadowy forces were being carefully arranged.
Such was the subtlety of these forces that the action actually began not near to Lightning but halfway towards Terra, where the communications ship handling the FTL relay link between Terra and the Hub reported intruders in her sector of space, and appealed for assistance. Shortly a report was broadcast that the intruders had passed without incident, and that assistance was no longer required. Units of a Terran ship-chain which had started to her aid were recalled: had they continued, they would have found the original relay ship totally destroyed, and sitting in its place, expertly concerned with handling the traffic for the Terran FTL relay, was a new ship without any territorial insignia. So efficiently had this substitution been arranged that nobody but those concerned with its planning and execution knew that it had taken place.
Having lost his superior in Liam Liam's earlier attack, the Terran reserve commander, Ernst Rimini, was unsurprised to receive notification of the pending arrival of a new sector commander. Painfully aware of the shortcomings of his own performance€”he had lost both paraformer ships and an entire para-ion squad€”Rimini had already resigned himself to the prospect of demotion and posting to some more hazardous occupation. In this frame of mind he was not as diligent as he might have been in counter-checking the identity of the approaching vessel which bore his new superior. The personal credentials he did check via the communications relay data link were speedily confirmed by a message appearing to originate from Terra; and thus he greeted Sector Commander Mail without once wondering why the Terran insignia of his stateship stood on a vessel of obvious Hub design.
Sector Commander Mail was an unusual man, with a slight outworld accent which might have been more consciously called to attention had he not been so engagingly ugly and had such a deep and penetrating mind that the luckless Rimini was immediately forced to defend every single action he had taken. The interview lasted six hours, after which Rimini, believing himself to be in complete disgrace, was ordered to begin his immediate return to Terra for re-assignment. With the bitter heart of a man who knows he has wasted a life's career, the reserve commander transferred to a fast cruiser, and ordered it back towards Terra and the Rim.
Breaking with tradition, Sector Commander Mail did not immediately call a shipboard conference of fleet captains, but instead required executive officers to locate any survivors or technicians from the former para-ion project. Such was the apparent logic behind the move that protocol was forgotten, and the sole remnants of the ill-fated 'ghost' team--seven members of the technical crew who had been visiting supply ships during the hijack episode€”were swiftly located and transferred to the sector commander's stateship.
It was only at this point that Mail set up a full shipboard conference on the acting flagship, to which he required attendance not only by the fleet captains and their seconds, but also the senior officers commanding the ground forces. Such a demand was unprecedented, but held promise of mammoth policy changes in the conduct of the Lightning campaign, and was therefore doubly welcome. There was scarcely an absentee when the assembly gathered on the flagship and settled to greet their new sector commander. Their anticipation was short-lived, however, because an unaccountable explosion entirely destroyed the ship and all who were within her.
Stunned and virtually leaderless, the remainder of the orbiting warforce hastily regrouped, and sent a message via the FTL link to report their plight to Terra and seek instructions. Within an hour the reply came: 'Suspend all operations against Lightning. Await reinforcements.' Needless to say, the answer did not originate from Terra, but from an unidentified ship in the relay chain; nor did Terra herself receive any information which might lead her to doubt in the satisfactory progress of the Lightning campaign. The orbiting warforce sat back to await reinforcements, having no idea how long these might take to come.
Meanwhile, the stateship which had brought the fatal sector commander to the scene had slipped almost casually out of orbit and made planetfall in a sheltered bowl in a broken range above Barna. Under the lashing ferocity of the storm, the Terran insignia began to wash away to reveal faintly beneath the overlay its original name of Starbucket. Through the pitiless punishment of the elements ran Liam Liam, who bore more than a passing resemblance to the former sector commander who was presumed to have been killed when the flagship exploded. The similarity was completed by the fact that the former agent was covering his head with a uniform jacket which bore the crests, stars and medals with which normally only Terran sector commanders were adorned.
Under an overhang which concealed the entrance to a fortified tunnel, Garside Raad, apparently much aged by his experiences with the Terran occupation force, was only too glad to see Liam, but there was a question hanging over his brow.
"Well met, Liam! How're things upstairs?"
"In orbit? The nearest approach to chaos which can be devised. We eliminated most of the local top brass in that last space-blast, and we're intercepting all of their signalling with Terra and modifying some of their instructions to suit ourselves."
"That's even better than I'd hoped. So what brings you back here?"
"To deliver a few words of wisdom. The situation in orbit can't last for long. Whatever Terrans may be, they aren't stupid. Soon they'll have a task force out here to investigate. When that force gets here, I think the retribution will be massive."
"But we've time to drive the occupying force off first?"
"Certainly, if that's the way you want to play it. But the more damage you do to them now, the worse they'll make it for you in the end, you understand? I can give you some coverage from space, but I can't fight a Terran armada."
"But what's the alternative?"
"Co-operate. Play helpful and subservient to your Terran masters currently in distress. Blame all their misfortunes on the Devil's disciple called Liam Liam, and hope like hell they fall for it."
"Are you serious?"
"I only tell you the truth, you understand? These are early days in the history of opposition to Terra. If you fight them now, they will crush you. Acquiesce, and many of you will live to see more equal battles."
"Liam, even if I wanted to, I couldn't hold our people now. It's fight first and pay the Devil later. You know that."
"That's what I figured you'd say. It's the real reason I held on. During my brief career as Terran sector commander I made it my business to establish what they had in the way of planetary hellburners up there in orbit. Well, they've seven, all in one hell-ship which they keep in far orbit for safety. That's enough to destroy all life on Lightning about twenty times over. If you carry the fight against the ground forces and look like winning, they're just nervous to put one or two of them down here."
"It's a prospect we've already faced. But we'll fight them nevertheless."
"The good patriot isn't the one who dies defending his territory, it's the one who makes the enemy die whilst
attacking it, you understand?"
"Meaning what?"
"That I can't subscribe to heroics, however motivated. War's too deadly a game to be controlled by sentiment. If you want any further assistance from me, I'll need a solemn promise."
"Name it."
"As I attempt to make my exit through the ship chain, I shall try to take that hellship out of space. If I succeed, you'll be in no doubt of it, because the flash will be as brilliant as a thousand suns. But if I fail, those weapons will still be poised above you. In that case I want your solemn promise not to attack, but meekly to sit it out until we can meet Terra on more equal terms."
"That's a ferocious demand to make, Liam."
"It's all I have to offer, you understand?"
Garside Raad considered in silence for a moment.
"I can't promise more than the intent. I don't know if even I could hold the population of Lightning passive under the Terran heel."
"I'll settle for good intentions," said Liam Liam. "And may God have charge of all our futures!"
It was probable that the demoralization of the orbiting warforce added to the success of the mystery surrounding the return of the former sector commander's stateship from the planet's surface: whatever the reason, the little ship regained its place in orbit without once having to answer a challenge, although its mission had been the cause of much speculation. Even though the sector commander was himself presumed dead, the impression he had left on the few with whom he had actually spoken made it seem an impertinence even to question the captain of his vessel. It was rumoured that Mail had in fact been on a mission of galactic importance, and that his pose as sector commander had been an elaborate, and unsuccessful, attempt to divert the attention of interstellar espionage agents. Euken Tor, commanding the little ship, made only the formal, routine communications with the rest of the fleet, thereby neither confirming or denying these suspicions.
