by Ian Miller
"Third wave!" suddenly came the announcement from one of the detectors. Detection had now become easier. The damage done to the previous ships had created huge amounts of small particles. Pieces of metal, and even small fragments of plastic could have relative velocities with respect to the ships of several tens of kilometers per second, and if these particles struck, considerable heat energy was generated. A major battleship could conceal itself, but they could not conceal the incandescent debris trail they left behind. Also, while the ships could absorb the impacts without damage in most places, damage could be done, especially to sensitive sensor equipment. The ships could not take the risk, and automatic means were taken to disperse this detritus. The problem was, by so clearing corridors for their ships, they defined the paths those ships would take.
Even though the ships remained effectively invisible, their approach paths were known, and the cannon could now methodically deal with this wave. Soon, more ships were struck, and more glowing metal began to fly off. The enemy then appeared to make a mistake, by focusing long-range fire in an attempt to destroy the cannon. This, it would seem, diverted them from their primary objective.
Nevertheless, it began to be at least partially effective. Great detonations could be heard above, and occasionally the ground shuddered, piles of masonry fell from the ceiling, and two cannon were taken off-line.
More small ships were noted, and were destroyed, more bombs struck, more dust flew, and the roof gave way somewhere else, showering the defenders and two more guards with a cascade of dirt. The noise became almost deafening at times, the ground was almost constantly vibrating, but most of the equipment continued to work, and now Gaius was walking behind the troops, encouraging them, goading them to keep firing. They kept firing, and as one defender was to note later, the only reason he wasn't scared stiff was because he didn't have the time to be scared. He was simply too busy trying to keep his equipment functioning properly that he hardly noticed the damage.
The terrible thumps stopped. The detectors reported no more bombs in flight.
"Pattern one!" Gaius called out. Four cannon were out of action, and five sets of controlling equipment were no longer working. Gaius had ordered the engineers to make sure that dead controlling equipment was not linked to live cannon, but while switching was being undertaken, it took time, and the firepower was down.
Nothing could be seen. Then came the cry, "Exhausts!"
There they were, a large number of motor exhausts. The enemy were leaving. Cheering broke out.
"Continue pattern one!" Gaius ordered. "Detectors on full sensitivity!"
There was a stunned look, but then one look at Gaius' face indicated that he was serious. There were to be no celebrations.
What was felt to be a pointless exercise continued, and it was just when Gaius had to prod individuals to keep them going, an anomaly was detected.
"Pattern four!" Gaius ordered.
The great cannon focussed on the area, then suddenly the signs of a ship disintegrating could be seen. At that point a number of exhausts could also be seen, as the motors of a number of ships left behind opened up.
"Pattern eight!" Gaius called. Pattern eight was essentially individual ship targeting, except that computers allocated a ship to each screen, thus ensuring that each cannon was devoted to a different target until all ships were targeted.
The ships twisted and turned, but gradually struck beams and were 'wounded'. Then a further flight of bombs was launched, but by now the enemy ships were rapidly becoming disabled. Three were destroyed, and gradually the bombs were destroyed. Then came three further thumps, two distant, one massive and close. The room shook and shook, more concrete fell, dust flew, and earth fell about the door. Then, as the dust cleared, an Ulsian stood before Gaius.
"The enemy still here wish to surrender, sir."
"Tell them their surrender is accepted, and they will not be fired on as long as they proceed slowly into a long range orbit, and accept boarding."
"Most are reported to be incapable of directed flight."
"Then inform them that boarding parties will be sent to them." He paused, then added, "You'd also better let the space fleet know about that."
"Yes sir."
Gaius waited until the signal had been sent, then he announced, "Maintain stations, in case of treachery!" This got a stunned look, but orders were orders. Then Gaius added, "And, everybody, well done!"
"Did we win?" someone asked.
"I don't know," Gaius replied, "but you all fought as well as you could, and in the end, that is all that matters. You have all done your duty, and you should be proud, and at least you didn't lose. Now, engineers, make sure the air supply is working, and if anyone's buried, get them out. Then let's work out how to get things ready for the next watch."
This was greeted with puzzled looks.
"Be very clear about this," Gaius nodded. "That was only the beginning. The war will go on until one side defeats the other, and a further attack may come at any time."
With a feeling of grim fatality, the Ulsians returned to their screens, and the engineers began digging.
Chapter 21
It took a further seven hours before those from the outside gained access. As a very grim-faced crew came to man their watch, the almost exhausted defenders struggled out. Those entering the control room were shocked. There were the remains of fires and broken electrical wiring everywhere, the walls and ceiling were obviously being held up with makeshift props, and a third of the equipment was no longer operational. But it was those leaving that made the deepest impression. Every defender was filthy, most had torn uniforms and many had bandages of some sort. They were too tired to march, and they stumbled along, helping comrades who seemed to find even walking difficult. Then came seven stretchers, each with a wounded soldier. Then there was their commander, his face a strange grey-black with streaks where rivulets of sweat had poured out, his uniform almost destroyed, with one section on the side almost burned beyond repair, and he was at the back, helping carry a stretcher! But even stranger was the looks on the faces of the crew. The looks of triumph, the looks of experience, the looks of those who knew they had passed through valleys of death and emerged victorious, and the looks of those who, seeing the replacement crew, knew they had stood firm, while the new crew could not know whether they would. Already they were veterans, the next shift novices.
The usual elevator took them upwards, then it stopped, but not where it was supposed to stop. A chill came over the defenders as they realized what this meant. They scrambled through a muddy wet cavity to find a mud-bespattered makeshift cage suspended by a wire rope that would lift them the last fifty meters to the surface. The walls of the shaft were twisted and torn, beams jagged out to end in glistening new metal, where the twisted beams had been cut to make way for the cage. New metal struts had been placed here and there to buttress otherwise collapsing beams, and over all the walls, rivulets of mud made their way downward. In every cavity, droids were busy, cutting metal, welding metal, quickly trying to get some semblance of reliability into this makeshift service.
As the cage neared the surface, the makeshift crane lifting them could begin to be seen through clouds of steam. The closer they got to the surface, the more the metal bent, while in places there were now solidified flows of molten metal. That great heat had been applied was obvious, for even now when rain struck the metal, hissing clouds of steam were given off. Now, on the walls, signs of flowing metal could be seen, and in places shaded from the rain, globs of metal still glowed a dull red. The globs covered pipes, covered and blocked ducting, and in places had sealed entranceways.
As the cage lifted over the brow, continual flashes of blue lit up a great smoking steaming crater, a crater poxed with smaller craters, a crater with irregular heaps of twisted steaming rubble, a crater with seemingly endless numbers of wires and cables barely supported, swaying in the wind and spitting blue fire every time they touched. Beyond was the black of the
Ulsian night, a suitable backdrop to the intermittent blue that turned the clouds of steam and smoke into a ghostly shroud over the rubble of the library.
Below, hundreds of robots were tearing into the devastation, laying pipes, providing improved access and services to the underground defensive networks. There, on the southeast corner of where the library had been the fins of a great ship stuck up from the crater its impact had created. The cage began to pick up speed as it left the devastation, and everybody had to hang on to handholds to brace themselves against the wind and rain lashing them. For Gaius, the situation deteriorated rapidly. The cage reached some sort of ramp where it was disconnected from the wire and propelled across a space into a tunnel where it landed on some sort of conveyor. As Gaius was to remark later, he had never been so frightened in his life as when that capsule was propelled towards a narrow hole in the ground which was hardly any bigger than the capsule itself.
"There were twenty centimeters to spare!" an Ulsian engineer snorted when told of this.
The cage was then conveyed through the tube, but this time everyone was exposed to the stinking gases of the tunnel. By the time the ride through the underground system was completed, Gaius had achieved some sort of stunned calm. Then the cage stopped, and the door opened. Nobody moved, so Gaius also stayed put.
A couple of minutes passed until one of the Ulsians said, softly, "Sir?"
"Yes?" Gaius asked in a comforting tone.
"You should go. They're waiting for you."
"Oh!" Gaius said. "Sorry! I was waiting for you to get out."
"Oh no sir! We must stay here until you are well clear. You're a hero!"
"So are all of you!" Gaius nodded, as he began to get up. "You come out too, straight after I do." He paused, and saw the doubtful looks. "That's an order!"
He stepped out from the cage, crossed a flat area and went through a door, then marched down a corridor into a largish room. On the other side of the room, judging by their clothes, was an important delegation. He waved the others to keep coming, he pulled himself together, then he marched towards the delegation and stopped in front of them. As he stared at their splendid attire, he suddenly realized that he must have looked like some scarecrow. He wiped his face with the back of is hand, then noticed the trail on his hand left by the wet dust. He felt a trickle of what he knew was likely to be muddy water reach his neck.
"Ulse bears you its deepest gratitude!" the leader said solemnly.
"Thank you," Gaius replied, perhaps a little stiffly. He noted the other defenders had not followed, and had been herded off to one side. That annoyed him, but to hide his feelings he continued "However, I should remind you, the library was totally destroyed, so . . ."
"It won't take long to construct another library," came the terse reply. He indicated that Gaius should accompany him towards a further room, and as they walked, he said in an explanatory tone, "You realize the prime target was below you?"
"I hadn't really thought," Gaius replied. "In the exercises I was following orders, and in the battle I was too busy to worry about that."
The Ulsian politician nodded, at least to give the impression to the cameras that he understood, although, as Vipsania was to note later, the chances of his actually doing so were rather small. "Even though you may not realize it, your analysis of the situation, and your command of the defence were exemplary, and Ulse thanks you."
"Then it can do something for me," Gaius said evenly.
"And what is that?" the politician asked. He was clearly worried. Gaius was supposed to accept the praise and step back, leaving the politician to bask in the glory. Now, in front of the cameras, here was a problem.
"I want each of the Ulsians who defended the raids to receive a decoration," Gaius said firmly. "They were the ones who did the fighting, and without their dedication, you would have lost."
"Certainly, certainly," the politician said. He was relieved that this was an easy problem to address, but he was highly annoyed that this alien upstart was to get the public credit for requesting the decorations. He had to get him out of the limelight, at once. He suggested that Gaius might like to go through to the next room, while he made a final address to the citizens.
Gaius nodded, and gave a little laugh to himself. Ulsian politicians were just as transparent as Roman ones. He walked through the door, to be greeted by a big hug from Vipsania.
"I saw the images of the library," she said as she hugged him again. "I was sure you must be dead!"
"Don't worry!" Gaius consoled her. "I once heard a prophecy. I can't die yet, because it hasn't been fulfilled."
"That must be comforting!" Vipsania snorted, and stepped back. "And just what do you find funny about that?" she said, as Gaius appeared to be on the verge of laughter.
"I'm covered in dirt," Gaius grinned. "You have some of it all over your right side!"
She turned and looked towards a wall, on which there was something that functioned partly as a mirror. Her first reaction was annoyance, but she soon saw the funny side.
"There's a small victory function," she said. "I now look as if I've been sufficiently close to it that I've got grounds to be there!"
A small table was on the other side of the room, together with some officials who were clearly instructed to wait patiently. Gaius suggested to Vipsania they should go and get this over with.
There were the inevitable speeches, but the essence of the matter was that under each library was a complex of critical nature to the future of Ulse. Gaius' analysis had been correct. That had been a raid to end the Ulsian confederation forever. Thanks to the personal bravery of Gaius and of the newly promoted Colonel Klendor, two of the complexes remained totally intact. Thanks to Gaius' training, all but two of the remaining complexes had sustained no more than moderate damage and were easily repairable, and only one was totally destroyed.
The tactic had been to land and send nuclear type devices down the service ducts. The landing craft had been destroyed on approach to all but three libraries. At one, the enemy had accidentally bombed out the air inlet ducts, and by the time they had begun to find the ducts, ground forces had arrived and captured them. A bomb had been sent down into each of two complexes; in one the bomb became stuck in a cave-in and detonated early, completely destroying the defenders but being sufficiently far from the intended target that most of those down there would survive, but in the last one the radiation was so intense no life could enter the zone for at least a hundred years.
But, apart from that serious setback, the attack had failed in its objectives, and it was fully conceded that the defence had prevailed solely because of Gaius' presence. And now, some well-earned refreshments.
And, thought Gaius, a secondary photo opportunity for second level politicians. But suddenly he felt too tired to care. And he also felt more than a little proud. He, from a civilization so far behind it was simply not funny, had analyzed a military problem of this time, he had correctly assessed what would happen, he had drilled the defenders in the Roman style and he had won. Yes, his troops had done the fighting, such as it was while sitting behind screens, but if he had never turned up they would have lost. Their reliance on the machines would have cost them because they would never have fired until they found the ships, and they had only found them by firing on them. And once the bombs started falling, the early Ulsians would have fled.
It seemed that while the nature of the weapons had changed out of all recognition, the underlying principles had not. He might yet work towards getting on a ship, to burn up those important centuries.
Chapter 22
They felt some sense of anticipation, for they were to see what it was that had been the target of the alien attack. The initial excitement was somewhat diluted by the ridiculous degree of security they had to put up with. For the fourth time, Gaius, Vipsania and Lucilla were scanned for weapons and alien bacteria. At their apartment, their outer skins and clothes had been sterilized to almost ridiculous levels before they were all
owed to dress, at which point they were then sealed in special plastic suits and conveyed by tube to the site of where the great library had been, then they were carried into a further elevator, sealed, the outer suits resterilized, then the elevator descended. This elevator did not stop at the defence level but kept dropping. Then, deep below, the elevator stopped, the door opened, and the suited party emerged for their final sterilization and inspection.
This routine finally over, a small doorway at the end of a corridor was pointed out to them. They were to go through the door; no Ulsian would go closer than this unless specifically invited. Somewhat surprised, they walked towards the door, which opened just before they reached it, then they went through to emerge into an enormous room, the far wall of which was filled with a strange honey-comb-like layered structure.
"Welcome!"
They looked up to see a monstrous Ulsian-like face emerge from one of the hexagonal tunnels to look down on them. The face appeared to be attached by a very thick neck to a cylindrical body that disappeared into the honeycomb.
"Thank you," Gaius replied politely.
"Our appearance shocks you?" another similar head appeared. Gaius, by now, had recognized that the expression corresponded to the Ulsian form of a smile, at least from the Ulsians he had met before. But none of them had looked remotely like this. None of their heads were remotely as big, and these creatures appeared to crawl or slide, although then again there were not very many alternative ways of moving through a pipe.
"It surprises me," Gaius replied.
"You know who we are?" another challenged. It's eyes seemed to penetrate right through them, but even so Gaius decided that the expression was more that of an amused challenge than any attempt to be overpowering.
"Different sort of Ulsians?" Gaius ventured.
"Not exactly," the first said, and after a pause, added, "If all you can manage is to guess that we look different, I'd say your guessing lacks imagination." There was a Hrrmph from other pipes, then the Ulsian looked directly at Vipsania and said in a kindly tone, "Your efforts at liberating Ulsian women through your plays were doomed to fail, you realize."
