by Kali Altsoba
It is often said that “God made the Cosmos, but nanny-bots made the Thousand Worlds.” Of these, all agree that their masterpiece was Amasia. The exceptional range of bio-seeding on its oceans and the supercontinent Lemuria was the most complete and successful transfer of OE genes. Amazonian and arctic ecosystems flourish there, alongside vast deserts, savannah and tundra, deep forest zones, fragile alpine meadows, even a large marsupial enclave ecosystem rife with bandicoot, quoll, kangaroos and tree possums. Amasia hosts many tens of thousands of specialized microbial, insect, fish and bird species found no place else in Orion, not even on Old Earth. Amasia is a treasure. Orion’s genome vault. A great DNA reserve bank of and for us all.
Humanity is content with its history of terraforming, universally agreed as the most impressive achievement in all the histories of the Thousand Worlds. Or most of us were, until a few decades ago. Now there are dissenters from our history. They are mostly Grünen and eco-religious in inspiration, with very few adherents outside the old Imperium. The movement has a pseudo-intellectual wing known as ‘biopolitical science’ by Grün intellectuals who founded it, or more often as ‘Purity’ among common folk.
It argues that Orion’s imported ecosystems are not wondrous but corrupted, pale copies of the pure OE form. It says that we must return to a restored OE genome, and that the Imperium will lead the way on this enlightened path to the past. Some analysts say that this idea is gaining dangerous influence among key Imperium elites and power bases, notably within the Special Action Commando and across parts of the Jade Court of Imperator Pyotr III. Others refuse to believe that an idea so clearly preposterous and anti-modern could move decisions in council chambers of one of the great star empires of Orion, that ‘Purity’ is only a matter of court posing and fashion; an intellectual fetish of the passing moment, not a concern for the rest of Orion...
Forest
For two more weeks the Wreckers hit noisy Rikugun pursuers and patrols hard and often and brutally, as both pursued and pursuers move roughly south-by-southwest in jagged bounds. Jan orders all bodies stripped naked and strung over tall root loops as a warning. They’re fed upon by small scavenger animals and hordes of insects. Some are gnawed raw by gray bears.
The patrols stop coming deep into Pilsudski Wood as more RIK officers flatly refuse to lead their commands too deeply into the forest. Instead they stop after penetrating no more than three or four klics, wait for a few hours then turn back. One aggressive major tries to go further, but his men conduct a sitting strike, feigning injuries and exhaustion. When he threatens them with severe punishment they put their hands atop trigger guards in an implied threat of mutiny.
The souring mood forces 10th Armored’s Brigade tactical staff to lie to Brusilov, as well as to a horde of RSU intelligence officers back at Main HQ. They report to their angry general and to less interested RSU that only a handful of forest bandits are still alive.
“We got ‘em all, taishō. All the bandits.”
“All of them?”
“All but a few scattered stragglers, starving and alone in there. They pose no threat to anything we want to do on Genève. The coming winter will kill the very last ones off.”
But even these reported stragglers are wanted dead or alive by the enraged taishō. Maybe even more by a civilian memex on the homeworlds that’s hungry for better lies about the war. “I want them, too, do you understand? No waiting for winter. Go in there and bring them out.”
A quick adjustment: “We can send in swarms of HK drones to hunt them down. The rest will come out, to resupply or to surrender. We’ll scoop them up as they do, like fish in your net.”
“What of this so-called Ghost? I want the specter’s head. Bring me his head on a dinner plate, so that I may gift it to my cousin Pyotr.”
“That’ll be harder, sir. Maybe impossible. Our reports confirm that he’s dead, evaporated by one of our big spandaus. Nothing left of him to bring to you, taishō. Not even a jawbone.”
“A pity. But just so he’s a real ghost at last!” Brusilov laughs, thinking that he’s a wit. It almost works, too. Brusilov briefly backs off more aggressive tactics and tells RIK Main HQ that he’s won the fight for the lower forest. He makes it sound like he’s a world conqueror.
Until Jan and Zofia come out to set up night hit-and-run raids to kill his troopers where they camp, outside the forest edge. They drop pickets dead where they stand, caught in infrared scopes by snipers who kill with focused ultrasound, raising brain pressure until membranes burst apart. Surprised by stealthy death, the dead all have open and astonished, bulging looks. They’re cursed and kicked by other Grünen, for letting bandit infiltrators pass them to reach the camp.
Wreckers creep catlike into 10th Armored field huts pitched too near the woodland line, cutting any sleeper’s carotid that wants slicing. Sleepers take care too little and so are quickly slain. After, the slain care not at all as they sleep. Wrecker squads set up booby-traps for drunk and late-returning bunk mates, men staggering back from RIK portable vid-brothels. They leave them all in spreading ruby pools, then pad silently back under leafy cover. Moving like panthers.
One raid carries off four enemy ‘suspends,’ lightly wounded and ‘frozen’ RIK waiting on med evac. They awake under stimulants back to the pain of unfrozen wounds stinking of pus and gauze, then move right into quick and brutal interrogations. After that they’re quickly knifed.
Before Jan orders the murder of the last prisoner in Pilsudski, the badly beaten but defiant man tells him that Toruń is surrounded by ground forces and under daily attack by arti and Jabos. Good news and bad. It means that Toruń still holds out, but there’s likely no way in. Where else to go? All of Genève is under occupation. It’s Toruń or no place. Toruń or death.
Jan means to link with the last standing garrison, and not just to save Madjenik. He wants almost more to spare himself. ‘There, some superior officer will relieve me of this burden, take over command of the company, knowing that I’m not fit. Will let me fight but not command.’
He always wakes to find himself inside a dark forest surrounded by desperate young fighters looking to him, to him alone, as guide and savior. It worries him sorely. He thinks all fighters under his command must perish, that only the timing of his next error evades foresight. The old lines from the march stride back into his thoughts, only newly garbled by his doubt.
“All of my fighters know
Their captain will blunder.
Theirs not to hew and cry,
They will follow me, and die,
I’ll surely kill all four hundred.”
He pushes the dark thought away, bending to his iron task, to mislead RIK pursuers as to where Madjenik’s headed. His voice is calm in command, deeper and leavened with confidence he displays always now, but doesn’t always feel. Yet his self-doubt is redoubling his quality as an officer, forcing him to check and correct every decision without causing command paralysis.
“Lieutenant Jablonski, send four two-scout units south, then southeast. Tell them to make it look like Madjenik is heading for the south coast. Tell them to leave small, but not too small, tracking clues behind in hasty camp sites. Pick out best woods folk for this job.”
“I’m on it, sir. They’ll leave two hours before dawn, one hour before we move out and turn north-by-northwest as you ordered. How long do they go out?”
“Five days, no more. Then they’re to double back the long way around. They are few and we are many. They’ll catch us up in time.”
“Yes sir. Should I lead them?”
“No. You’re needed here, lieutenant. Send Tom Hipper. He’s been hard for a command of his own, and to get away for a bit from Pie Girl. Let’s see what he can do out there.”
Jan orders the whole company to reassemble to make a last feint to the southeast, then he doubles back in a wide westward loop before turning the main body silently and hard north-by-northwest. Tom Hipper’s little first command moves the other way. Noisy as a wounded
bear.
Tom leaps to the job of deceit, and he’s good at it. The small diversion group leaves careful bits of carelessly dropped rubbish: tears of ration foil, a broken hardtack biscuit, two burned-out pink crystals, an empty water bottle. It makes gashes in the roots that rise in arching loops three times higher than the tallest man. It leaves odd rifle gouges at shoulder height in tree trunks klics apart. It disturbs leaf fall on the shores of silver pine lakes, impressing dozens of knee marks in the mud so that it looks like a hundred men collected water there. It makes subtle paths, but not too subtle, in grayed teak windfall that litters the deep forest floor where it has lain soft and unmoved for centuries. Forest creatures watch and wonder at lumbering RIK pursuers who are never more than an hour or two behind. Tom Hipper makes sure of that.
The deceivers are all native to Genève and so are born to woodcraft, unlike the crashing, grunting RIK pursuit. As the scouts circle back to rejoin Madjenik far to the northwest, they go quiet, but leave behind a whole backpack of tiny crawler bots and recce tree snakes that scatter in all directions, giving off false locator beeps and blips and beacons. The decoy bots lead the inept pursuers even farther southeast, before finally going dark and still. RSU is left utterly baffled.
Once Jan’s certain Brusilov’s ground pursuit has been blunted by his ambushes and quick strikes, then gone off chasing Madjenik’s ruses and Tom Hipper’s deceits in several wrong directions, it’s a straight trek for surviving Wreckers through the ancient forests. Northwest to the Toruń berm, to a great and golden city of wood under a fiery siege. Will it still be there?
The whole company moves more like a single squad, with woodcraft of a quality only native Genèvens can pull off. Raised to it from childhood. Raised to respect and familiarity with the old growth woods. They turn off and baffle all electronics, leave no fresh marks or green gouges, make no impression in deep windfall or new leaves, hide their shadows in the shade.
Wary, scared and cautious Grün trackers wait several critical days before reporting to 10th Armored HQ that they just can’t say where or when Madjenik left. Nor can befuddled RSU officers explain the escape to an enraged Brusilov. “The bandit trail has disappeared, taishō.”
The only creatures who see Madjenik move are forest foxes who sit still and hidden in golden fur, blending into thick leaf fall. Or a lone kestrel hovering over a small pine clearing by day to spot a careless mouse. Or small owls with big round eyes that pierce the blackest night.
At the feet of gentle hills Madjenik avoids all small ponds and lakes. It stays away from the still water, not wanting to leave footfalls in thick guano beside tiny inland shores. But it can’t help startling nervous loons whose long, plaintive calls hang in cooling summer air like air raid warnings. That worries Jan, who fears that a listening drone far overhead will notice and vector down. Finally, the hanging calls of the unquiet loons settle hauntingly behind the walkers as they move on and deeper into the woods. Under ever-older oak and teak canopy, slyly sliding north.
Little owls screech down at them from dark trees at night, angry at a clumsy movement below that keeps mice and other small rodents too scared to come out where they might hunt them. They hear small animals scooting overhead along high branches or burrowing under huge roots that rise like arches above the forest floor. They don’t know what the creatures are, unable to be sure what’s moving in canopy even with night-vision, so careful is the timid fauna to keep distance from a troop of humans moving through long-forbidden, undisturbed, ancient woods.
Sometimes they do see the noise-maker, coming upon a startled black bear or a small herd of forest elk or a family of small red deer. Then deterrent roars or braying trumpets of fright rise up, crashing sounds of mortal fear and flight that tear apart the deep stillness of the woods until the terrified animals get away, always protecting their precious young the way the humans in Orion have forgotten to do. Hurling them in their millions instead into danger, death and war.
They walk under a cathedral canopy of engineered gold oaks and teaks, birch and maples, and mightiest of all, towering redwoods. They move soundlessly across a spongy floor meters thick with undisturbed leaf and branch fall from a thousand autumns. The old windfall smells of new mold and long centuries past, since lost to time and seasonal repetition, to the rhythm of the woods. For Madjenik is in the deepest forest on Genève and even in all Orion, growth no cutter or tourist has seen in more than ten centuries. Only a lonely warden or two ever comes this way, every few decades. Approves, and passes on.
Then it all changes.
Officially, the bombers that arrive over the southern forests are there to give 10th Armored tactical support, with orders to make precision-attacks following “reliable sightings of bandit movement.” Main HQ even tries to restrict Brusilov’s use of incendiaries.
“Exercise great care not to damage valued export property of the Imperium. After each precision strike is made, Jabos must drop fire retardants on affected areas. Fire containment is top priority outside all strictly approved target areas. Confirm this understanding.”
Off-the-record, pilots are given verbal-only orders by the humiliated and furious taishō of 10th Armored, enraged to learn of the Ghost’s escape. For he’s heard fresh rumors that the man’s not dead, whoever he is. He almost screams the new orders to the pilots, in a private briefing.
“Set the forest ablaze, north to south. Burn it all down if you have to. I don’t care what Fourth Army HQ told you or what it costs my cousin in lost lumber. Fucking trees! Burn them all if you must, but kill everyone in there! Roast every rat bandit alive! Kill the Ghost! No more excuses! No more limits! As an Oetkert prince and taishō, I order you to do this.”
Madjenik barely stays ahead of the great fires that enraged Brusilov orders. Jabos drop incendiaries at random to literally smoke any last Wreckers out. Skycraft and pilots divert from bombing the Toruń berm perimeter. Most pilots are happy to leave a sky combat zone over a city where they meet deadly streak missiles and heavy anti-skycraft fire. “Archie” is what they call it.
“Shit, it’s a lot easier bombing trees!”
“Yeah, they don’t fuckin’ shoot back.”
“Look at that forest burn!”
“The whole thing is glowing orange, as far as the eye can see, even from this far up.”
“Surely nothing can live in that?”
This forest mission is far more to their liking, akin to the “First Happy Time” on Genève, as pilots call their open fields campaign when the Jabos and Raptors strafed unmolested across the great plains, ripping up the long columns of woe, of retreating KRA and civilian refugees.
“Taxi war. It got boring, lining up to wait to take turns strafing slow ground targets.”
“Still fun to pull the trigger and feel the pulse cannon pounding inside the airframe.”
“Well, you bet! No better feeling outside a Kestino whorehouse.”
“You mean outside your mother’s bedroom.”
“Shut the fuck up Kat! I’ll pay you back for that when we land at base.”
“Shut up, of all of you.” It’s the bomber group commander. “Stay on target, drop incendiaries and go back to reload all racks.” He’s not really angry at his pilots. This mission is too easy.
Almost as easy as the “Second Happy Time” that lies just ahead, when Jabos will make unopposed strafing runs along five Old Forest Roads where there’s no archie at all, to roast the endless civilian columns trying to flee to Toruń. Madjenik doesn’t know about the Old Forest Roads. It’s not far enough north yet to know. Not far enough north or ahead in time to yet smell the vast ash and death zone that will soon replace the ancient woods. Madjenik is still in the deep south, inside the preserved, roadless old growth forests farthest from Toruń.
The first night of the fire bombing 130 Wreckers are trapped inside a towering ring of intense flame and heat, unable to strike an incorporeal enemy or hurt its sinister master, wreathed in flames of hubris, laughing at their dilemm
a of an impassible barrier of fire. They prepare to die, praying to old gods or new ones, calling back to mind parents or lovers or children, all while huddling in a compact circle of primal fear. Some turn trigger locks off, holding masers armed and humming to their temples. Or clutch frag grenades to their chests, ready to end themselves and each other before a flame-wind reaches in to lick them insane with pain beyond imagination.
An hour passes as the canopy turns from dark living green to screaming red. Scorched and hairless, angry trees stand groaning and smoking all around. Then the sky clears and the lost platoons are saved. By sheer bloody and unadulterated luck, a gusty wind has carried the high blaze skipping over the vaulted roof of the great forest without ever clambering down to braise the cowering platoons hunched fetally on its carpeted floor. Zofia is right in the middle, driving Jan mad with helpless worry. She laughs as she steps out, dubbing it “our fickle fortune of war.”
