Rise of the Terran Empire

by Poul Anderson

  "I thought along the same lines, sir. From what I know of, uh, available production and transportation facilities, and the generally sloppy Ythrian organization, they can't put strong reinforcements there fast. Whether or not my escape alarms them."

  Cajal leaned over his desk. "Suppose we did it," he said. "Suppose we established a base for aircraft and ground-to-ground missiles. What do you think the Avalonians would do?"

  "They'd have to surrender, sir," Rochefort answered promptly. "They . . . I don't pretend to understand the Ythrians, but the human majority—well, my impression is that they'll steer closer to a Götterdämmerung than we would, but they aren't crazy. If we're there, on land, if we can shoot at everything they have, not in an indiscriminate ruin of their beloved planet—that prospect is what keeps them at fighting pitch—but if we can do it selectively, laying our own bodies on the line—" He shook his head. "My apologies. That got tangled. Besides, I could be wrong."

  "Your impressions bear out every xenological study I've seen," Cajal told him. "Furthermore, yours come from a unique experience." The new drink arrived. Rochefort demurred. Cajal said: "Please do take it. I want your free-wheeling memories, your total awareness of that society and environment. This is no easy decision. What you can tell me certainly won't make up my mind by itself. However, any fragment of fact I can get, I must."

  Rochefort regarded him closely. "You want to invade, don't you, sir?" he asked.

  "Of course. I'm not a murder machine. Neither are my superiors."

  "I want us to. Body of Christ"—Rochefort signed himself before the crucifix—"how I want it!" He let his glass stand while he added: "One request, sir. I'll pass on everything I can. But if you do elect this operation, may I be in the first assault group? You'll need some Meteors."

  "That's the most dangerous, Lieutenant," Cajal warned. "We won't be sure they have no hidden reserves. Therefore we can't commit much at the start. You've earned better."

  Rochefort took the glass, and had it been literally that instead of vitryl, his clasp would have broken it. "I request precisely what I've earned, sir."

  XVII

  The Imperial armada englobed Avalon and the onslaught commenced.

  Once more ships and missiles hurtled, energy arrows flew, fireballs raged and died, across multiple thousands of kilometers. This time watchers on the ground saw those sparks brighten, hour by hour, until at last they hurt the eyes, turned the world momentarily livid and cast stark shadows. The fight was moving inward.

  Nonetheless it went at a measured pace. Cajal had hastened his decision and brought in his power as fast as militarily possible—within days—lest the enemy get time to strengthen that vulnerable country of theirs. But now that he was here, he took no needless risks. Few were called for. This situation was altogether different from the last. He had well-nigh thrice his former might at hand, and no worries about what relics of the Avalonian navy might still skulk through the dark reaches of the Lauran System. Patrols reported instrumental indications that these were gathering at distances of one or two astronomical units. Since they showed no obvious intention of casting themselves into the furnace, he saw no reason to send weapons after them.

  He did not even order the final demolition of Ferune's flagship, when the robots within knew their foe and opened fire. She was floating too distantly, she had too little ammunition or range left her, to be worth the trouble. It was easier to bypass the poor old hulk and the bones which manned her.

  Instead he concentrated on methodically reducing the planetary defense. Its outer shell was the fortresses, some great, most small, on sentry-go in hundreds of orbits canted at as many angles to the ecliptic. They had their advantages vis-a-vis spaceships. They could be continually resupplied from below. Nearly all of them wholly automated, they were less versatile but likewise less fragile than flesh and nerve. A number of the least had gone undetected until their chance came to lash out at a passing Terran.

  That, though, had been at the first battle. Subsequently the besieging sub-fleet had charted each, destroyed no few and forestalled attempts at replacement. Nor could the launching of salvos from the ground be again a surprise. And ships in space had their own advantages, e.g., mobility.

  Cajal's general technique was to send squadrons by at high velocity and acceleration. As they entered range of a target they unleashed what they had and immediately applied unpredictable vectors to escape return fire. If the first pass failed, a second quickly followed, a third, a fourth . . . until defense was saturated and the station exploded in vapor and shards. Having no cause now to protect his rear or his supply lines, Cajal could be lavish with munitions, and was.

  Spacecraft in that kind of motion were virtually hopeless goals for missiles which must rise through atmosphere, against surface gravity, from zero initial speed. The Avalonians soon realized as much and desisted for the time being.

  Cajal's plan did not require the preliminary destruction of every orbital unit. That would have been so expensive that he would have had to hang back and wait for more stocks from the Empire; and he was in a hurry. He did decide it was necessary to neutralize the moon, and for a while Morgana was surrounded and struck by such furies that mountains crumbled and valleys ran molten.

  Otherwise, on the whole, the Imperials went after those fortresses which, in their ever-changing configurations, would menace his first landing force on the date set by his tactical scheme. In thus limiting his objective, he was enabled to focus his full energies sharply. Those incandescent hours, running into a pair of Avalonian days, were the swiftest penetration ever made of defenses that strong.

  Inevitably, he took losses. The rate grew when his ships started passing so close above the atmosphere that ground-based projectors and missile sites became effective. The next step was to nullify certain of these, together with certain other installations.

  Captain Ion Munteanu, commanding fire control aboard H.M.S. Phobos, briefed his officers while the ship rushed forward.

  "Ours is a special mission, as you must have guessed from this class of vessel being sent. We aren't just going to plaster a spot that's been annoying the boys. We're after a city. I see a hand. Question, Ensign Ozumi?"

  "Yes, sir. Two. How and why? We can loose enough torps and decoys, sophisticated enough, that if we keep it up long enough, a few are bound to duck in and around the negafields and burst where they'll do some good. That's against a military target. But surely they've given their cities better protection than that."

  "I remind you about eggs and grandmothers, Ensign. Of course they have. Powerful, complicated set-ups, plus rings of exterior surface-to-space launchers. We'll be firing our biggest and best, programmed for detonation at high substratospheric altitude. The pattern I'm about to diagram should allow one, at least, to reach that level before it's intercepted. If not, we start over."

  "Sir! You don't mean a continent buster!"

  "No, no. Calm down. Remember this ship couldn't accommodate any. We have no orders to damage His Majesty's real estate beyond repair. Ours will be heavy brutes, true, but clean, and shaped to discharge their output straight ahead, mainly in the form of radiation. Blast wouldn't help much against the negafields. We'll whiff the central part of town, and Intelligence tells me the fringes are quite flammable."

  "Sir, I don't want to annoy you, but why do we do it?"

  "Not wantonly, Ozumi. A landing is to be made. Planetside warfare may go on for a while. This particular town, Centauri they call it, is their chief seaport and industrial capital. We are not going to leave it to send stuff against our friends."

  Sweat stood on Ozumi's brow. "Women and children—"

  "If the enemy has any sense, he evacuated nonessential persons long ago," Munteanu snapped. "Frankly, I don't give a curse. I lost a brother here, last time around. If you're through sniveling, let's get to work."

  Quenna flapped slowly above the Livewell Street canal. Night had fallen, a clear night unlike most in the Delta's muggy winters.
Because of that and the blackout, she could see stars. They frightened her. Too many of the cold, nasty little things. And they weren't only that, she was told. They were suns. War came from them, war that screwed up the world.

  Fine at first, lots of Ythrians passing through, jingle in their purses, moments when she forgot all except the beauty of the male and her love for him; in between, she could afford booze and dope to keep her happy, especially at parties. Parties were a human idea, she'd heard. (Who was it had told her? She tried to remember the face, the body. She would be able to, if they didn't blur off into the voices and music and happy-making smoke.) A good idea. Like war had seemed. Love, love, love, laugh, laugh, laugh, sleep, sleep, sleep, and if you wake with your tongue tasting bad and needles in your head, a few pills will soon put you right.

  Except it went sour. No more navy folk. The Nest empty, a cave, night after night after night, till a lass was ready to scream except that the taped music did that for her. Most humans moving out, too, and those who stayed—she'd even have welcomed human company—keeping underground. The black, quiet nights, the buzzing aloneness by day, the money bleeding off till she could barely buy food, let alone a bottle or a pill to hold off the bad dreams.

  Flap, flap. Somebody must be in town and lonesome, now the fighting had started again. "I'm lonesome too," she called. "Whoever you are, I love you." Her voice sounded too loud in this unmoving warm air, above these oily waters and dead pavements, between those shadowy walls and beneath those terrible little stars.

  "Vodan?" she called more softly. She remembered him best of the navy folk, almost as well as the first few who had used her, more years back than she cared to count. He'd been gentle and bothered about his lass at home, as if that dragglewing deserved him. But she was being silly, Quenna was. No doubt the stars had eaten Vodan.

  She raised her crest. She had her deathpride. She would not be frightened in the midnight streets. Soon dawn would break and she could dare sleep.

  The sun came very fast.

  She had an instant when it filled the sky. Night caught her then, as her eyeballs melted. She did not know this, because her plumage was on fire. Her scream drowned out the following boom, when superfast molecules of air slipped by the negafields, and she did not notice how it ruptured eardrums and smashed capillaries. In her delirium of pain, there was nothing except the canal. She threw herself toward it, missed, and fell into a house which stood in one blaze. That made no difference, since the canal waters were boiling.

  Apart from factors of morale and war potential, the strike at Centauri must commit a large amount of Avalonian resources to rescue and relief. It had been well timed. A mere three hours later, the slot which had been prepared in the defenses completed itself and the first wave of invasion passed through.

  Rochefort was in the van. He and his hastily assembled crew had had small chance to practice, but they were capable men and the Meteor carried out her assignment with an elan he wished he could feel. They ran interference for the lumbering gunships till these were below the dangerous altitude. En route, they stopped a pair of enemy missiles. Though no spacecraft was really good in atmosphere, a torpedo boat combined acceptable maneuverability, ample firepower, and more than ample wits aboard. Machines guided by simple robots were no match.

  Having seen his charges close to ground, Rochefort took his vessel, as per assignment, against the source of the missiles. It lay beyond the mountains, in the intensely green gorge of a river. The Terran boats roared one after the next, launched beams and torpedoes against negafields and bunkers, stood on their tails and sprang to the stratosphere, swept about and returned for the second pass. No third was needed. A set of craters gaped between cliffs which sonic booms had brought down in rubble. Rochefort wished he could forget how fair that canyon had been.

  Returning to Scorpeluna, he found the whole convoy landed. Marines and engineers were swarming from personnel transports, machines from the freighters. Overhead, patrol craft darkened heaven. They were a frantic few days that followed. Hysteria was never far below the skin of purposeful activity. Who knew for certain what the enemy had?

  Nothing came. The screen generators were assembled and started. Defensive projectors and missiles were positioned. Sheds were put together for equipment, afterward for men. And no counterattack was made.

  Airborne scouts and spaceborne instruments reported considerable enemy activity on the other continents and across the islands. Doubtless something was being readied. But it didn't appear to pose any immediate threat.

  The second slot opened. The second wave flowed down, entirely unopposed. Scorpeluna Base spread like an ink-blot.

  His intention now being obvious, Cajal had various other orbital fortresses destroyed, in order that slots come more frequently. Thereafter he pulled his main fleet back a ways. From it he poured men and equipment groundward.

  The last Avalonian ships edged nearer, fled from sorties, returned to slink about, wolves too starveling to be a menace. No serious effort was wasted on them. The essential was to exploit this tacit cease-fire while it lasted. On that account, the Imperials everywhere refrained from offensive action. They worked at digging in where they were and at building up their conquest until it could not merely defend itself, it could lift an irresistible fist above all Avalon.

  Because he was known to have the favor of the grand admiral, Lieutenant Philippe Rochefort (newly senior grade) got his application for continued planetside duty approved. Since there was no further call for a space torpedo craft, he found himself flying aerial patrol in a two-man skimmer, a glorified gravsled.

  His assigned partner was a marine corporal, Ahmed Nasution, nineteen standard years old, fresh off New Djawa and into the corps. "You know, sir, everybody told me this planet was a delight," he said, exaggerating his ruefulness to make sure his superior got the point. "Join the navy and see the universe, eh?"

  "This area isn't typical," Rochefort answered shortly.

  "What is," he added, "on an entire world?"

  The skimmer flew low above the Scorpelunan plateau. The canopy was shut against broiling air. A Hilsch tube arrangement and self-darkening vitryl did their inadequate best to combat that heat, brazen sky, bloated and glaring sun. The only noises were hum of engine, whirr of passage. Around the horizon stood mountain peaks, dim blue and unreal. Between reached emptiness. Bushes, the same low, reddish-leaved, medicinal-smelling species wherever you looked, grew widely apart on hard red earth. The land was not really flat. It raised itself in gnarly mesas and buttes, it opened in great dry gashes. At a distance could be seen a few six-legged beasts, grazing in the shade of their parasol membranes. Otherwise nothing stirred save heat shimmers and dust devils.

  "Any idea when we'll push out of here?" Nasution asked, reaching for a water bottle.

  "When we're ready," Rochefort told him. "Easy on the drink. We've several hours to go, you and I."

  "Why doesn't the enemy give in, sir? A bunch of us in my tent caught a 'cast of theirs—no orders not to, are there?—a 'cast in Anglic. I couldn't understand it too well, their funny accent and, uh, phrases like 'the Imperials have no more than a footgrip,' you have to stop and figure them out and meanwhile the talking goes on. But Gehenna, sir, we don't want to hurt them. Can't they be reasonable and—"

  "Sh!" Rochefort lifted an arm. His monitoring radio identified a call. He switched to that band.

  "Help! O God, help!—Engineer Group Three . . . wild animals . . . estimate thirty-four kilometers north-northwest of camp—Help!"

  Rochefort slewed the skimmer about.

  He arrived in minutes. The detail, ten men in a groundcar, had been running geological survey to determine the feasibility of blasting and fuse-lining a large missile silo. They were armed, but had looked for no troubles except discomfort. The pack of dog-sized hexapodal lopers found them several hundred meters from their vehicle.

  Two men were down and being devoured. Three had scattered in terror, seeking to reach the car, and b
een individually surrounded. Rochefort and Nasution saw one overwhelmed. The rest stood firm, back to back, and maintained steady fire. Yet those scaly-bristly shapes seemed almost impossible to kill. Mutilated, they dragged their jaws onward.

  Rochefort yelled into his transmitter for assistance, swooped, and cut loose. Nasution wept but did good work at his gun. Nevertheless, two more humans were lost before the lycosauroids had been slain.

  After that, every group leaving camp got an aerial escort, which slowed operations elsewhere.

  "No, Doctor, I've stopped believing it's psychogenic." The major glanced out of the dispensary shack window, to an unnaturally swift sunset which a dust storm made the color of clotted blood. Night would bring relief from the horrible heat . . . in the form of inward-gnawing chill. "I was ready to believe that at first. Your psychodrugs aren't helping any longer, though. And more and more men are developing the symptoms, as you must know better than I. Bellyache, diarrhea, muscle pains, more thirst than this damned dryness will account for. Above all, tremors and fuzzy-headedness. I hate to tell you how necessary a job I botched today."