by John Carr
“Go ahead, Sean.”
The coals flared briefly, sending out a blast of hot air.
“Ahhh. Does these ol’ bones good. I’ll miss these times most when I’m called to the Beyond.”
“Hush,” Albert Hamilton didn’t like the turn their conversation was taking; it was too reminiscent of his own woebegone thoughts of a few minutes ago. “You’ll outlive me yet, Sean.”
“Har!” the Sergeant Major began a harsh laugh that quickly turned into a rasping cough. Once he’d regained his breath, he continued. “Not with these lungs, Baron. This Haven cold’ll be the death of me.”
Albert passed a tumbler of whisky to his former comrade in arms. He noticed the tremble in Sean’s hand. It’s possible he may not make it through this winter, the Baron admitted to himself. Yet another piece of the past he would lose...and mourn. “ ‘Tis cold, Sean; want a tartan?”
“Aye, Baron.”
He passed a tartan woven in the Hamilton plaid to his old comrade, who placed it on his lap, over his thin shanks. The Baron put one over his own lap and felt the subtle change in temperature. We old men are like land ‘gators, always looking for the sun and warm places.
“Did ye see the lass tonight at the dinner table, M’Lord? Her eyes ave been red since we returned from the Kendricks.”
“Yes, I have,” the Baron said. “I also noticed the way Ingrid avoided my grandson and how stilted he behaved in her presence.”
“Ye don’t think!” the Sergeant Major said, with a catch in his throat. “Not the daughter of yer old friend? No, nay our laddie.”
The Baron took a deep draught of the Glenmorangie, which burned all the way down past his breastbone. He sputtered for a moment, then blurted out, “You’re damn right I do. Where’s the young ram been for the past few days? Never in his life have I seen him so eager to go on patrol. Curse the boy, damn him all to Hell!”
“Ya don’t mean it, Baron.”
“Yes I do. If he weren’t the Heir...And, it’s not as if we don’t have enough serving wenches to slake any young man’s coals, and that one’s no longer a boy!”
“Aye,” McGee said with a morose sigh.”Bad business, this be. The General, one o’ yer oldest friends and one o’ Greensward’s staunchest allies. And with him away fightin’ the Beasts.”
“Yes, the boy’s timing, as usual, is impeccable. I had hoped that bringing those two together might forge an alliance with the most powerful house on the world. Instead, we’ve offered the General a deadly insult. And broken faith with a friend to boot. A girl under our protection, no less!
“Weren’t the flesh pots of Tampa and Last Chance good enough for the boy?”
“Aye, the lad spends more time in the kitchen than the cooks,” Sean agreed.
“Bah! It’s long past time for him to settle down and raise me a brace of grandchildren. I had such hopes. It’s not as if Ingrid’s plain in appearance. Or stupid or ignorant. She’s well-educated, smart, a good conversationalist, and, unless these old eyes of mine are playing tricks, she’s a woman that could take the chill out of any man’s bones!”
“Aye, and it appears she has. And a bonnie lass she is, too.”
“I should have insisted on a chaperone, but at their age...? He must have taken advantage of her, why else would he be so scarce? Yet, nary a complaint from her. Praise be, as otherwise, I’d have to set out on a course that we would all regret before it ended.”
“Ye don’t think she’ll tell her father?”
“Not that lady. She knows how to take her licks and still keep her back straight. I wish I could say the same for my Grandson. They could be good together, but this bickering between them must cease.”
“But how, m’ Lord? Neither of these youngins takes to the bridle. I don’t understand young Hamilton. I’d thought he’d changed after leaving Castell, but not so much, I fear.”
“He’s been restless ever since we raided Castell and bearded King Steele in his own den. He is bored with our provincial life, I fear. I indulged him too much, and Mary did too, bless her, after my son’s death. I should have taken a firmer hand to him, but it’s too late now.”
“Aye. And he is the Heir.”
The Baron’s hand came down hard on the small rosewood table, knocking the Sergeant Major’s empty tumbler onto the thick carpet. He felt his friend’s gnarled hand on his shoulder.
“I know,’twas Raymond ye were groomin’ for the barony, but ye’ll have to put those thoughts away. He’s doin’ his duty fightin’ the Beast in some far off part of the Empire. I doubt he or his issue will return to Haven in this century, or the next.”
The Baron nodded numbly, “I know that in my mind, but not in my heart. I miss my boy. He was a man and a leader. I had hopes he would take my place and fill these stone halls with grandchildren...”
“ ‘Tis not too late for John, m’ Lord.”
“McGee, the boy is almost forty T-years old. He’s not a lad anymore. It’s long past time for him to set aside his childish ways.”
“Yer Granddaughter, Matilda, has two fine grandsons, and maybe another on the way.”
“Yes, but they’re Mazurin’s, not Hamiltons.”
“Ye could put it in yer will that to inherit - ”
“Blast it, I could never do that to her husband. I’m not going to take the man’s name away from him. Aram Mazurin has been a good son-in-law and vassal. True, he retired from the Militia to please my daughter. In peaceful times, he might be accepted, but not now. Besides, what would our liegemen say if I passed over my own flesh and blood?”
“Aye.’Tis true. John’s well-liked by the vassals, too. Didn’t young Hamilton volunteer to take command of the battalion against the big raiding party, Wheelock’s Raiders, they call themselves?”
“This blasted Sauron attack has every bandit gang in the Valley up in arms! I’m still not happy how John used his position to pass right over the heads of men who’ve fought in more battles than he’s seen. I don’t want him to die, no matter how convenient it might prove.”
“M’ Lord; he is the Heir!”
“You’re right. It is time he took his rightful place and led the troops. I fear this war with the Saurons may be the death of that boy.” “Aye, Baron, or perhaps the birth of the man.”
II
“I believe it not only impolitic for you to be in my cabin, Second Rank, but positively rude. And possibly insubordinate.”
Diettinger had been awakened by Groundmaster Helm’s call, but his first sight had been of Second Rank seated at his desk in the darkened room.
“Permission to speak, First Rank.”
Diettinger waited a long time before he gave it.
“There is a power struggle going on behind the scenes, of which you are only partly aware,” Second Rank said.
“I will deal with the Cyborgs in my own manner, Second.”
“No doubt, sir. But I do not refer to Cyborgs. I refer to Haven.”
If Diettinger had been a cat, his ears would have arched forward on his head. “Clarify.”
Second Rank paused as if gathering her thoughts. “Saurons are soldiers, not pioneers. We are the development of thousands of years of refinement in the martial arts and sciences. Thus, we could only come about within the framework of an ordered civilization, such as the Empire.”
Diettinger almost groaned. Second Rank was an historian, after all, with the historian’s need for lecturing.
“Now we have come here: a battle of conquest, with no further battles to follow. Every trooper here has grown up under the auspices of a starfaring military society. Conquer and move on to the next battle.” She shook her head. “Such a lifestyle is gone forever, now. We are here to stay, and as our survival instincts, both natural and engineered, begin to activate, we will adapt our character to the environment far faster than we will our genetic structure.”
“And what do you think will be the result of this adaptation?” Diettinger asked. Despite himself, he was captivated by Se
cond’s line of reasoning.
She gestured with one hand.”You see it all around you. The dominance myth I used has backfired. The Soldiers have embraced it wholly. Faced with an inferior opponent, Saurons previously conquered and left it at that. The possibility always existed that the next foe might be better. But now, there is no longer a greater Sauron social order around us to judge our actions, thus our troops begin to act as, to think of themselves as, pirates. They strut, they boast, they are full of their own superiority. Before, only enemy non-combatants were referred to as ‘cattle’, the term is now being applied to all non-Saurons on Haven. In time, patrols will not return. They will simply establish their own minor fiefdoms among the Haveners. Military discipline will dissipate. What social structure we do have will collapse as we are overcome by the vacuum of authority on Haven.
“In three generations, at the outside, the Sauron Race will degenerate into barbaric warlords, our martial heritage a thing of dim myth. And at that moment, the Empire’s victory will be complete, for then the Race truly will die.”
Diettinger could feel the tension in her, and in himself. The only hope for his people was their adaptation to Haven. But at what price?
“Do you have a recommendation for avoiding this situation?” Of course, First Rank. I would not be here otherwise.”
“Speak.”
“You are the First Rank, thus you are de facto the First Soldier. You must become the First Citizen.”
“Martial virtues are not social virtues, Second.”
She shook her head. “Nor can they ever be. But with you as political and military figurehead, the Sauron system can be started anew here, on Haven, as it was on Sauron hundreds of years ago. A society of militarists: Soldier-citizens, bound by codes of military behavior, dedicated to the propagation of the warrior Race as an ideal.”
Diettinger and Second Rank looked at each other in silence for a long time. Finally he spoke.
“Are you suggesting, then, that I re-establish the dynasty, here on Haven, with myself as patriarch?”
“Such an act would legitimize your status as First Citizen to the Cyborg Ranks, as well as to the troops. They all support you, First Rank, but a world of sheep can be very seductive to young wolves.”
“The establishment of such a dynasty requires issue with Sauron parentage on both sides. All such Sauron females are already assigned to Cyborgs.”
“Come, now, sir,” Second Rank’s voice dropped. “Surely by now you’ve deduced the most obvious reason for my being here...”
Diettinger nodded, then sighed. He wasn’t going to get back to sleep, after all.
III
Lieutenant John Vohlt lay flat against the cold stones of the cliffs that shielded him from the Saurons along the floor and opposite rock walls of the Karakul Pass. His chest ached from contact with the chilling rock through his parka, but the pain was bearable - and it helped keep him awake. The long-range scanner he held to his eyes was the last one in his unit, possibly the last from the entire force General Cummings had sent up into the Atlas Mountains.
By the time Vohlt and his team had arrived, Colonel Harrigan’s forces were ready for their planned maneuver. What little organized resistance there had been to the Saurons in the northern Shangri-La Valley was over. There remained only the diversionary attack before they pulled out of the Valley completely. Colonel Harrigan had not come to get his force butchered in a last desperate act of defiance.
Well, not the entire force, anyway, Vohlt thought with a humorless grin. That’s our job.
“You’ll take your men up through here.” Harrigan had indicated Vohlt’s route on a map of the Valley passes, pointing out a small depression in the rocks over the eastern side of the Karakul Pass.”There’s a small - as in hand-sized - plateau here, and you can make camp in the overhang just back from it; it should keep you out of sight of the Sauron opticals and any air reconnaissance they might have.”
Harrigan had taken a bottle of domestic rum and poured a healthy amount into his tea. The command tent was bloody cold.
“You’ll have to pull this up by hand, of course. We can’t risk anything as big as a muskylope being seen.”
Vohlt had nodded. “Can we have the rum, too, sir?” he had asked, grinning.
Harrigan had smiled back, sadly.”Why not.”
Vohlt and five other men had left an hour into Harrigans attack. When the “rout” came, they had split off and quickly hid in the passes. Major Seastrum’s company had provided the diversion - make that ’suicide attack’ - that had covered their exit. Vohlt lifted a metal capful of rum to his lips and sipped it carefully. “Absent friends,” he whispered.
Behind him, the four surviving members of the team were sleeping.
Beyond the bed-rolled men squatted the object they had laboriously manhandled up into these rocks. Harrigan had admitted that it would not defeat the Saurons. It wasn’t powerful enough to take out their staging area, and had arrived too late to be used there anyway. The Saurons were on Haven to stay.
But General Cummings believed it would go a long way toward keeping the Saurons cautious for a long time to come. Haven was no major world; it couldn’t even stand against one shipload of Saurons. But even an old dog could still bite.
The image in Vohlt’s opticals was fading. He shook the device and looked through it again. A little better. The charge is going, he decided. He switched it off to conserve the little cell’s energy and considered the item in his hands. Light intensifying binoculars with range-finding capability and up to 10 X 120 power magnification, more than you could ever possibly need.
But when the last of the charge is gone, it will be half a kilo of junk, he thought. He set it for simple lens magnification, lowest power cell use, and put it back in its case until it would be needed. Maybe he could rig something up out of the basic lenses after the charge was gone.
He laughed at his trivial plan for the future. He had almost forgotten why he was here.
IV
According to the scouts, Wheelock’s Raiders were less than half-a-klick from their position. It was still dark, about an hour and a half before Trueday. John Hamilton had read that nomads didn’t like to fight either at dusk or dawn, which might explain why they were all milling around, occasionally shooting off automatic rifles into the sky, like children with strings of firecrackers.
The scouts said the raiders were bunched around campfires, drinking and bragging. Probably building their courage and their bloodlust.
Regardless, it wouldn’t be long now before they rushed their position. In their own way, the raiders were as committed to this attack as the defenders were to stopping their advance. A loss of face here would bolster defenses throughout the central valley, and cost the raiders stature as well as loot. John took out his gauss gun and sighted it on the top of the rise, where the first outriders would appear. The infrared scope picked up the boulders’ slightly higher temperature. Were the raiders to attack now, they would be sitting ducks.
According to his scouts, there were about five thousand of them, a big raiding party pushed south by the Sauron’s consolidation in the north.
Wheelock’s Raiders had sacked and burned half-a-dozen small towns and villages in the past week. Fingers of flame had pointed out their passing to the Whitehall’s residents. Rumor had it they were nomads from the Northern Steppes driven south by the Saurons, who had little use and no tolerance for them. According to information relayed by General Cummings, the Saurons were turning Fort Stony Point into their primary planetary fortress.
Grandfather was right, he thought, they are here to stay.
While this raid had come at a bad time for the barony, being so close to harvest, it was good for him. Planning and preparations had taken him far from the castle and Ingrid’s accusing eyes. What had possessed him? Would he ever stop thinking with his prick, instead of his brain? Now, the wall between him and Ingrid had turned into an ice sheet. It was damned sad, she had such beautiful eyes wh
en aroused - Stop it. I’ve lost her now, as well as my own self-respect. Maybe the best thing for everyone would be for me to fall in battle. An honorable end to a not-very-honorable life...
Stop being so damn dramatic! He thought, disgusted with himself. I don’t want to die, and no one else really wants me to, either. The Baron, Ingrid, his friends, their liegemen, they all need me to do my best. Well, he would give them that much, at least.
For awhile, John had hoped this small army would pass them by for easier prey. But rumors of Hamilton wealth or hard knowledge of Hamilton guns, or perhaps just desperation for Hamilton food had pointed them to the castle. Whitehall was filled to the bursting, with liegemen, landholders, servants, soldiers, neighbors and anyone else who could claim safety within its walls. The locusts from within could prove as destructive to Whitehall as those outside, were a siege to drag on for any longer than a week or two. No one survived a Haven winter low on foodstuffs.
This was not the only danger Whitehall faced from siege. John Hamilton, as Castle commandant, had been put in charge of the castle defenses. While he knew they could weather a siege far longer than the raiders, it was the end of the growing season and there were crops to be harvested. If the siege went on for any length of time, those crops not lost to brigandage and trampling would be lost to the cold weather. Already they had had their first light snowfall. A long siege would cost more lives in the coming winter than those lost in combat, plus leave the castle vulnerable to disease and winter raids.
The machine guns, given to them by General Cummings, and their own locally made Gatling guns, were set in positions with the best possible fields of fire. In the first few minutes of battle, these would inflict the most casualties and, according to plan, tip the balance to victory. With only eight hundred troops, John knew he did not have enough manpower to halt a determined frontal assault. On the other hand, these brigands had not yet encountered a well-armed and determined foe during their trek down the Valley from the north. The Baron and he had agreed that such an opponent might quickly dim the Wheelock horde’s enthusiasm for battle.
