Nightfall

by Moshe Ben-Or

  It was amazing, really, that even now, staring death in the face, all he could think of was her. Not his wife. Not his son. Not his mistress. Only her.

  Her skin, her hair, the way she turned to greet him, the way she smiled at him, the scent of her… That impossible, marvelous scent that struck him to the core and turned his knees to jelly.

  He would do anything for her. For just a kiss, just a smile, just a kind word. He was hers, body and soul, from the very first time he had bent to kiss her flawless hand.

  And she would not leave Miranda. She would stand and fight, and die among her people, if that was her fate. But she would not yield her birthright.

  Ah, what a marvel she was! That from such a father would come such a daughter!

  He had grumbled at first. Of course he had grumbled. The Land Tax had hit him square in the pocket, and that had been bad enough. But then came that newfangled Common Code for the lowborn louts, as if they all lived in some chartered city and not on his estates.

  The expense he could put up with. She was the Baroness, after all. It was her right to tax. But to say that he could not do as he pleased on his own land, why, that was an outrage!

  And that horrible, somber court of hers! Only one masque a quarter, not counting Christmas, New Year’s and Founding Day. She wouldn’t even have a ball on her own birthday! Who ever heard of such a thing? Why, she was turning Miranda into Sparta!

  But then…

  Then came the new missile batteries on Puck, and the torpedo bombers that she outright bought, cash on the barrel, out of her own pocket, to replace the worn-out junk left over from the days of her grandfather. And then that fat old imbecile von Kegel just dropped dead one fine morning and there was a new Chief of Staff who wouldn’t dare pocket a guilder of Her Ladyship’s funds, and the Kriegsraumvloot’s ships were actually spaceworthy more than one week out of twenty, and the training cycle actually meant something all of a sudden. There was even talk of new fortresses to be built in the Faerie, but first she was going to overhaul the ones left over after the Pretender’s War.

  Everything the Mad Baron had neglected for three decades, and his brother had neglected before him, she was rebuilding. And Karl von Rennekampff’s life actually had a purpose for the first time in thirty years, and the handsome white uniform he had slouched in from ball to ball wasn’t just a fancy costume to chase skirt and gamble in, but a part of something real. And it was glorious.

  One day, at the card table, some sozzled old fool of a cigar-puffing commodore with more braid than brains had made that same grumble about Sparta. And the realization had hit him like a ton of bricks. She was. For real. That’s where she was heading, in all seriousness. And he didn’t mind one bit, even if some day it meant a House of Commons and a Constitution and up-jumped shopkeepers running the Chancellery. If that was the price to pay, then he would pay it gladly. No foreign ambassador dared tell the Spartan King what to do, did he? For that he would tolerate even burgher officers in the Fleet. After all, the flurry of sudden retirements had left plenty of open slots.

  And say what you will about the freiebürger, stupid they were not. Clever, organized, good with machinery. Plenty of space in the technical ranks for men like that. Save the noblemen for command, eh? The ones who actually could command, that is. Her Ladyship had made it abundantly clear what kind of Fleet she wanted. And what Her Ladyship wanted, it was her faithful servants’ duty to want also, was it not?

  For empty-headed highborn louts who wanted to spend their days drinking, showing off their fancy uniforms and chasing skirt at balls, there was always the Army.

  He had just finished giving that nitwit of a commodore a piece of his mind, when the notice had popped on his net glasses. He was being summoned to court the next morning. And by next evening he was Admiral of the Fleet. Promoted three grades. The better to fire idiots, regardless of rank.

  But you couldn’t repair four decades’ worth of mess in only four years. The Kriegsraumvloot had been a frigate navy even before the Pretender’s War. Afterward, there were only three battleships left, and four cruisers. The Mad Baron had sold the Roland. The Thor had been in refit for three years now. And the Ludwig was a wreck that hadn’t been truly spaceworthy since Karl von Rennekampff had worn an ensign’s epaulets.

  Still, with a proper budget and a free rein, you could get somewhere, even if you started from zero. Two weeks ago, he’d gone to war in a cruiser, but he’d brought almost a hundred light combatants to the fight. Not as good as the Leaguers’, but good. Well trained, well maintained. And he had the fortress guns to back him, and the minefields, and the missile batteries. He was the junior partner in the defense, he admitted that freely. There was no shame in being a junior partner to the entire assembled fleet of a Great Power. But he was a true partner, not a figurehead. Much to the Leaguers’ surprise.

  Now… Now he had a dozen corvettes left. The surviving fortresses were down to fifteen or twenty minutes’ worth of fuel, and enough shells for a couple of good volleys. After that, they’d be sitting ducks. Puck had been resurfaced in glass craters, but there were still a couple of missile batteries hidden among the Far Faerie. Altogether, perhaps he’d last an hour.

  Her Ladyship had called in person to give him his final set of orders. Then she’d put Ingrid and Fritz on, to say goodbye. In appreciation of the admiral’s many years of faithful service to the Crown, his wife and son were being received as the personal guests of Her Ladyship at the palace in New Amsterdam. Her Ladyship assured him that she would see to their safety under all foreseeable circumstances.

  It was, he reflected ruefully, a measure of this fallen age that such subtle hints were thought necessary. Too many New Men. So-called Junkers whose grandfathers had been clerks and shopkeepers, or worse.

  Cowards and flatterers all. The miserable sons of fathers renowned for their treachery. They’d crowded about the throne in a ravenous mob in times of plenty, but now they scattered like rats, unless mortal terror held them at their posts. He’d had to personally shoot two such creatures not an hour ago, when he’d read out his final order to the assembled officers of the Fleet. Panic-sowing, defeatist filth.

  What an age it was, indeed, when men of ostensibly noble birth blanched like burgher schoolgirls at the mere prospect of certain death, and naught but a reminder of the Kinship Law would stiffen their jelly-like spines! Peasant blood, peasant minds. Breeding always told, in the end.

  The admiral’s thumb reached out to stroke the enameled golden surface of his signet ring. Beneath the black-on-white Gothic crosses quartered with the golden, mace-bearing lions of royalty rampant upon a field as crimson as arterial blood, the motto read “In Death – Immortality.”

  He was a Rennekampff. Pure Junker blood all the way back. Four of his ancestors had signed the Founding Compact. And among them had been Ludwig van der Rijn, brother to the First Baron himself.

  The last of the missiles had been loaded now. The last of the shield matter and fuel topped off. And in the cargo hold of every corvette rested a pallet of four warheads, wired together for simultaneous trigger. A sixty-megaton fusion bomb.

  The Zin would subdue the fortresses. They would clear the minefields. They would possess the jump points. And then they would come for Miranda herself. But first they would pay. They would pay such a price that the sweetness of victory would turn to ashes in their filthy maws. A Rennekampff knew how to die. Not only Fritz, but all Miranda would know the hour of his passing, and the name of Rennekampff would live forever.

  There was a flash on the battle command display.

  “Picket thirty-two reports contact, Milord Admiral,” chimed the adjutant AI.

  “Action stations,” calmly replied the admiral as he floated into his control pod.

  Alarms wailed for a moment, and then the lid slid into place, and there was silence.

  * 12 *

  “Please don’t hurt me,” thought Mirabelle intently at the broad back bouncing in front of her.

>   The Leaguer had her by the arm. He was dragging her along a little trail through the woods at what was, for him, a very brisk walk. She had to run to keep up with it.

  Her breath was already coming in short gasps, and her side was beginning to hurt. But she had to keep running, or he would surely drag her on the ground. Or, worse, let go and leave her behind, to face whatever it was he was running from.

  It had to be something even scarier than him. God only knew what that could be.

  “Want to live?” he had asked when she’d shrank away from his extended hand, “Come with me!”

  “Oh please, please, please! Hesus Christos, Santa Maria, Gaia Allmother, whoever is out there, please have mercy!” she thought desperately.

  He cut off his head. Just like that. Like… like taking an apple out of the fridge. One of his own. Another Leaguer. Without even batting an eyelash. He’d almost shot her dead for taking his weird invisible knife. And he was smiling and trying to make nice afterward. And then he just changed, like someone had flipped a switch. Went all cold and angry, growled like a wolf and stripped the dead body of everything he wanted, in seconds. And tossed it aside, like a piece of garbage.

  Why did she ever ask him not to leave? Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid girl! It had just slipped out. She didn’t even know where it had come from.

  Why did he bring her? What did he want from her?

  There was one thing. He was a guy. All guys wanted that thing. The other one had tried to take it by force. This one would, too. He just wanted to get away from whatever was chasing them, and then he would hit her, and throw her on the ground, and yank her shorts off…

  It would hurt. She knew it would hurt. He was an animal. He cut off heads. He would hurt her just for fun, the way those stomps had hurt mom and Annie. Annie had screamed, and screamed, and screamed…

  “Oh God, please don’t let him hurt me!”

  Did she say that out loud? Is that why he’d looked back?

  No, she’d just sobbed. It hurt so much. Like a knife in her side. When would he stop?

  Her face was swelling up where that other one had slapped her. She could feel it. There must be a huge bruise there, she thought. She could taste the blood from her split lip.

  He stopped. So suddenly that she ran right into him. It was like running into a wall. Her arms went around him of their own volition, just to keep her from falling, and suddenly she was all pressed up against him, nose planted in the middle of his back.

  “Right,” he muttered, “There it is.”

  And took off again.

  All at once, they were out of the trees, scrambling down a steep slope.

  Well, she was scrambling, anyway. He was just walking.

  She couldn’t take much more of this. Her breath was coming in short gasps, and her side felt like someone had stuck a hot poker in it. Her knees were buckling with every step.

  There was a muddy shore. A creek. The Leaguer stopped for a second and rinsed off the other one’s invisibility cloak. He’d done something to it to shrink it, and then wiped it with her blanket, but it probably wasn’t clean enough for his liking.

  She thought that he would stop and wash the thing for a while, and then maybe she could rest a bit. Maybe even sneak away somehow, while he wasn’t looking. But he only gave it a quick rinse and stuffed it into his pocket, and then he was going right across the creek.

  Some more mud squished underfoot, and then there was water.

  It was mountain runoff, clear as glass, freezing cold, with a bottom made out of slick, slimy-looking gray rocks. Two steps and it went up to the top of her thighs.

  She tried to keep up, she really did, but the current swept her right off her feet.

  The Leaguer swung around and grabbed her as the water closed over her face.

  She felt the long gun slung across his chest smack her across the legs, and then she was up out of the water, looking down at the smooth, round rocks.

  Each rock had a little fringe of gray scum undulating in the current. You could see the water ripple as it went over them in slow motion.

  It wasn’t real, somehow. Like it was happening to someone else, and she was just watching it in slow-motion VR, every tiny little detail in sharp relief.

  He had an arm across her thighs. His shoulder dug into her stomach. Both of her hands had a white-knuckle grip on his rucksack. Little muddy rivulets were running out of her hair and dripping down into the stream.

  The dead man’s rucksack figured out that someone wanted to hold on to it, and extruded a pair of loops where she was grabbing the fabric. The world went back to normal speed as she gasped for breath. Her teeth were already beginning to chatter.

  The Leaguer had barely broken stride. A few more steps, and he was across the creek. She could see the footprints left behind in the mud as he made his way onto the far bank.

  This side was steeper than the other. The creek had carved its way between two little ridges. He took the forward slope at a run. Halfway down the back slope he veered sharply to the right off the trail, and dumped her unceremoniously onto the ground.

  “That’s it!” flashed through her mind like a terrifying lightning bolt, “He’s going to leave me behind! He’s going to rape me right here and leave me behind!”

  But no, he was pulling the dead man’s invisibility cloak out of a cargo pocket and sliding it on over her head. It wasn’t even all the way on her when he let go, leaving her to put it on the rest of the way herself. As her head emerged from the opening, he reached into his own cloak, up on the left, inside the collar. And vanished.

  She didn’t even have the time to be surprised. Suddenly, she could feel his hand grab her collar. Same spot. Her cloak came alive and morphed. Morphed faster than she had ever seen clothes morph before, flowing down her body, over her legs, over her arms, down her fingers, over her shoes, covering every square millimeter of her. In an instant, it closed over her face and she was left in darkness.

  She couldn’t breathe! Oh God, it was dark and she couldn’t breathe! He was going to kill her the whole time! Truss her up like a spider in some hideous cocoon and use her for food!

  The terror of it shot through her like an electric shock, all the way from her heart down to her toes. She opened her mouth to scream, and there was a hand over her mouth.

  “Quiet,” he said.

  She could breathe. There was air. She could see through the cloak. She could even see the Leaguer next to her. He was outlined and shaded, a transparent, man-shaped gray ghost. And there were menus. VR menus in front of her eyes. A graphic eye interface, just like the ones in the immersion learning tanks in school. It was there just for a second, just so she would know it was there and all was well, she supposed, and then it shrank unobtrusively into a corner of her view and kind of disappeared, except for a few tiny, mostly-transparent colored shapes sitting where they wouldn’t get in the way.

  Readouts. Right. Status and control readouts. If she focused on them, they stopped being transparent. That meant she could control things. Maybe.

  That one with the red Star of David had to be the medical icon. Green shading.

  “Means I’m ok,” she thought.

  “I’m ok.”

  “I’m ok.”

  Right. Breathing. Heart slowing down. All is well.

  “Except for the part where I peed myself.”

  The coat-like one must be the cloak’s housekeeping. Little ghost attribute must mean she’s supposed to be invisible. Green light there, too.

  “Ok, I’m invisible. Cool.”

  The Leaguer hauled her to her feet. It had only been a second since he’d put the cloak on her. Maybe two or three.

  He wasn’t going to leave her. He wasn’t about to rape her. At least not yet. Thank God!

  He was running quickly along the back side of the ridge, so fast that she had to sprint all-out to keep up. If he didn’t drag her along, she’d fall over by now. Only a few meters, though, and then he was going back up towar
ds the creek.

  Halfway up the slope, there was a big old fur tree. The branches reached all the way down to the ground all around the trunk. He stopped suddenly next to it, and she almost ran into him again. He grabbed her, tripped her onto the ground and stuffed her under the branches. His rucksack went in next to her. Her invisibility cloak instantly picked up control of it when it touched her.

  Did that mean that the rucksack didn’t know how to be invisible on its own, or was it just an accident that had happened when the Leaguer had stuffed the rucksack under the tree next to her?

  “Don’t move, don’t twitch, don’t make a sound, don’t mess with the icons. No matter what. I’ll be back in a bit,” he whispered into her ear.

  And then he was gone, running up the slope.

  She could kind of see through the branches. The cloak was using some kind of sensors, she supposed. Passive sound, maybe, and certainly image processing. But it didn’t go very far. The Leaguer was gone in a few steps, and she was alone.

  The ground under the fur tree was covered with old, yellowed needles. She was lying on her stomach on top of them. They looked damp, but the cloak blocked that out. They were kind of soft, though. Her heart was slowing down again. Her side hurt. She needed to pee.

  The needles should have felt wet and cold, but they didn’t. She wasn’t cold at all. In fact, she was kind of warm, and, fall into the creek notwithstanding, she felt dry. If anything, it was getting warmer. It was the cloak, of course. It had climate control, or something. It had even dried her off.

  Now that she wasn’t being dragged around at a run all over creation whether she liked it or not, she felt completely drained.

  It would be nice to get up and pee, and maybe get a drink of water. But her water bottle had been left behind, too, and the Leaguer had said not to move.

  She supposed she could disobey him. Get up, pick up the rucksack he’d left behind. Just walk away. The dead man had to have food in there. There were weapons, too. The Leaguer had stuffed the dead man’s pistol and knife thingy into the rucksack, and the big long gun with the bipod that turned out to kind of shrink and fold in half when you did something to it.