They just looked like the upper halves of big, nasty guys with shiny steel arms and integral night-vision goggles on their heads. The first time one had looked up at English on that hull, he was acutely aware that, somewhere down on the planet’s surface, somebody human was taking his measure.
So he’d given whoever-that-was the bird, before he trashed the robot.
English relaxed a little and toggled to Sawyer, “You know, this Associate retrofit ain’t half bad.”
“Good thing,” came his lieutenant’s voice. “We’re continuing pickup. Want to get with Manning about the Haig’s damages and how she’d like to handle the docking procedures?”
“Sure thing. Patch her through.”
Manning’s imported com said, “Delta Two, the Haig’s not so crippled that we can’t augment her and fly her out of here, if I give your TA what she needs to know.”
“Us? Fly her—” He realized that he was sticking his nose into an intelligence protocol problem, and stopped before he went on the record. “You bet we’ll fly her, push her, or pull her. Whatever TA and you think, Intel.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Delta Two. FI out.”
FI: Fleet Intelligence. Such as it was, it was going to save the Haig, or blow her. Manning hadn’t said it, but English understood: couldn’t give the Syndicate a Fleet vessel with experimental hardware to study. He wouldn’t want Manning’s problem.
English was monitoring his pickups and helping guys in the door when his Associate shunted him Cleary without a single convention.
”Got the late news, Cleary?” he asked. He wasn’t angry anymore. He was helping Trask pull the last of his wounded in the door, and you couldn’t be angry at live people when you were so glad to see hurt people.
“I just thought you’d like to know: Padova’s going to be okay; so’s the bridge personnel in general. We’ve got a tight time window, though, before the Syndicate recovers enough to send up something else from groundside.”
Something that could kill them.
“Yeah, well, you’re the technical advisor. All you have to do now is teach a bunch of Marines what they need to know to salvage a partly crippled destroyer enough to kick her butt out of here. Can do?”
“Can do, English. No sweat.”
“Great, Omega. Delta Two, out.”
WHEN SOCIETY began to break down during the rapid fall of the last Empire, societies and peoples sought ways to survive the chaos that followed. The Alliance found their solution in mutual support. On the worlds that evolved into the Syndicate of Families, a type of high-technology feudalism developed. Not densely settled at the beginning of the era, the depredations of pirates and similar raiders soon decreased the population even further. The industrial base that did survive tended to be concentrated in the hands of those few who had retained the skills and knowledge necessary to maintain them.
On many worlds the collapse of the highly technical infrastructure of their society created a backlash against those few capable of maintaining what was left. When you live in an animal power society and have been bombed by spaceships, those who could build spaceships become your enemy. Too often entire planets fell into feudal barbarism, each little valley controlled by a warlord. Very often the technical expertise that was retained did so by being passed down within a family. Precious technical manuals and tapes became family treasures. These families soon began to think of themselves as something separate from the illiterate society around them. When the worlds recovered enough that the merchant class were again more important than the soldiers, then these highly skilled families rose to dominance.
Even then the military barbarism was often replaced by competition between a few robber barons who controlled virtually all means of production. The situation was soon complicated by the reappearance of space-traveling traders as the area outside their cluster began to recover. Much like Japan, after a period of open trade, the families that dominated continents and now often entire worlds felt threatened by the change. Unlike feudal Japan, these same families valued technology and so began to seek out and adapt the developments and rediscoveries of the worlds outside their cluster for their own use. The threat of outside influences destroying their firm hold on their world’s populations also caused the most powerful families to unite. Together these fifty families were able to both isolate their worlds and gain domination of those few planets within their boundaries that were not already under one of their number’s sway.
It’s a funny thing about loyalty. When you were raised under the expectation of unquestioned obedience to a group, it’s a hard habit to break. This was particularly so when you were one of the privileged few. With something as strong as the concept of family, where you felt you were part of the group because of the very blood in your veins, then the loyalty was even greater than could be aroused by an abstract concept like an Alliance, or even a Fleet.
BEFORE HE GAINED consciousness of pain, the last thing Tony Lucca remembered was dying.
Weasels to port, two o’clock. The scout didn’t have enough shielding to do this, and the scout didn’t have a plasma cannon, not even with one charge. One single second of white brilliance, one amazing revelation. Tony knew he wasn’t going to make it. Time spun and vaguely he thought about how mad his folks were going to be, and Theresa wasn’t ever going to forgive him.
And he had promised them all, too, that he wasn’t in any danger. Not like the war, anyway. Although as an occupation and native populations specialist he could get sick to his stomach on some of the things considered honors in primitive societies. He had laughed and made faces when he told Theresa the worst he was going to encounter was being presented with a meal that resembled one of Lovecraft’s Older Gods.
And now he was going to die. Vision telescoped, his peripheral completely in darkness. Like entering a long tunnel, he thought, surprised to find that he wasn’t aware of pain. Pleased about that too. From some ancient and innocent memory he dredged up the words he had learned by rote before memory even began. “Now I lay me down to sleep . . .”
They weren’t the right words, he knew, but he wasn’t worried. The brightness understood that he was muddled and new at this. He hadn’t died before and so it was all very confusing. But he thought that somebody would understand that he really was very sorry for having cheated on the seventh-grade math final.
The scout needed more room for electronics, surveillance devices along with the consumer perks that should win some native hearts. Plenty of omni screens and relays. The Bainbridgians might only be culturally subnormal due to years of Weasel occupation, not to some intrinsic inferiority. According to the report the natives still practiced stick agriculture and lived in hand-built huts without running water. But every one that had been exposed to omni had immediately loved it.
Or so the reports had said. “The natives are friendly,” Tony had muttered to himself during the briefing. Not that he minded, not at all. Preparing the area for occupation was not going to be easy even with native cooperation, and it was Tony’s job to insure the locals were with the Fleet all the way.
Tony wasn’t worried about the locals. There had been some reports of Weasel diehards on suicide runs in the region, and he didn’t like that one bit. No way. He wasn’t some Hawk Talon wannabe like his cousin Jimmy Apache. He wanted the whole occupation of Bainbridge to go just like the cases he had read in the textbooks back in training on Port.
But the Intel boys had assured him that the last bit of Weasel insurgency had been “cleaned up.” Which, given what he knew about the Khalia, meant that they had been eliminated in a permanent manner. Much as he had had his doubts about how thorough they could be, given the terrain and large uninhabited sectors on Bainbridge, he had agreed that it was better to carry more omni equipment than weapons.
Besides which, he wasn’t really qualified to shoot anyway. One of the reasons he had become an occupatio
n specialist in the first place—he couldn’t shoot. At anything at all, including a target. The doc had said it was a sight-line disability, not will. They’d called it a “Wild Eye.”
That hadn’t made the other guys in basic like him any better. Behind his back he knew they called him a coward and a pacifist and a bleeding-heart girl. When he’d opened his locker to pack to move out of the barracks and begin training in alien culture, he’d been showered with a flurry of white feathers. Tiny little things that probably had been taken out of some old-style pillow someone had brought from home.
He knew what that meant and it hurt. And he had vowed to prove them wrong. No matter what it took, no matter how long, he was going to show the whole Fleet.
And maybe he had. He knew the scout had to have evaporated. There wasn’t any hope at all. Which was why he couldn’t understand why he hurt so badly. Being dead was being beyond the pain—at least that’s what the priests had said. And while he didn’t have a whole lot of faith in the priests, they knew more about death than anyone else Tony had known.
And then a soft voice cut through the sharp wall as relief very slowly enveloped him. “That should keep you for now,” the voice said. “Do you want some water?”
Water sounded wonderful. He tried to say yes and only managed to grunt. A straw touched his lips and he began to sip.
“Slowly,” the voice said. “Just a little.”
The water was tepid, and after a few sips Tony could feel it lying in his stomach, sloshing and heavy. The straw was removed and he was grateful. Moistened somewhat and drifting a little apart from the pain he was able to rest again.
“That was a bum shot you took,” someone said, bringing Tony to full consciousness. He’d been wavering on the edge for a while, not wanting to surface and unable to stay in the safety of sleep. This voice was a man’s, with a slight rasp as if the speaker had hurt his throat.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I didn’t even get down.”
“Too bad,” the man sympathized.
It was only then that Tony realized that he couldn’t see anything. The painkillers had kept him in a warm haze that had relieved any anxiety. He was afraid like he had never been afraid before. Slowly he tried to open his eyes and found they were bound shut. He started to lift a hand to his head, but his arm was much too heavy and resisted.
“No, no, wait,” the first voice said, alarmed. “You have an IV in that arm. Now what’s the trouble?” she asked soothingly.
“I can’t see,” Tony said, his mouth sticky from medication and his throat dry.
“That’s because you have bandages on,” the woman said. “Your eyes were hurt in the blast. We did surgery as soon as you were brought on board, and all indications are that you will regain your sight. But you have to rest and you can’t be tearing off the dressings.”
“Yes,” he assented, recognizing the authority behind that soft voice. He couldn’t tell if she was a doctor or simply a corpsman and it didn’t matter. Just so long as she was right. The panic retreated to a distant place in his mind, but it wasn’t completely gone.
Then he giggled. Maybe the surgery had corrected the flaw that had made him a Wild Eye in the first place. Then he could show those Marines. He’d learn to shoot with the best of them. Comforted, he let his curiosity free. At least answers would occupy his mind and keep it off the dull throb that threatened to encompass his entire body.
”This has gotta be the Salah AI-Din, right?” he asked just for openers. “Has Ivan Yagudin or Samiah Zin been down to check up on me?”
Yagudin had been his best friend and roommate aboard the Salah AI-Din, an engineer who was all geared up to go down to Bainbridge and start constructing accommodations for the Fleet personnel who would take charge of the area. Ever since the discovery of the Syndicate there was plenty of burrowing into newly acquired territory, securing and holding every position. But Tony figured that if he had been brought aboard the Salah AI-Din wounded, Ivan at least would have asked after him.
Samiah, on the other hand, was a long shot. He’d admired her for a long time and she knew it. Still, it didn’t hurt to ask.
“The which?” the raspy male voice answered. “Salah AI-Din? No, you’re on the Cardiff. We were closer to the position you got blasted to, like way over the other side of Bainbridge.”
“Oh.” Tony couldn’t keep the disappointment from his voice. He’d wanted to be back on his own ship with his friends and the familiar rivals, where he knew the order of the day and the mission objective. Still, he knew he shouldn’t be too disconcerted. Probably the Cardiff had been closer and would pass him back once he was recovered enough to move.
No question about it, really. The Salah AI-Din was in synchronous orbit over Bainbridge’s largest continent, the one where they had been planning to set up shop. And he knew perfectly well that for this kind of assignment no more than one cruiser could be spared. No doubt Cardiff had business elsewhere to attend.
“By the way,” the man said, “I’m Alex Schurr. Your roommate here in sickbay for the duration. Weapons officer.”
“What’re you doing in sickbay?” Tony asked, only half interested in the answer.
“Would you believe I tore out a ligament in my knee playing inversion deadduck? And bones they can knit like nothing, but ligaments are completely beyond control. Not important enough to bother with an entire branch of medicine and technology, unless you happen to be the person on the receiving end. Then it hurts like a son of a bitch.”
Tony had to smile at that. At least his injury had been acquired in the line of duty. With that much confidence, he introduced himself, braced for the usual nasty cracks from a line officer to an occupation specialist. The expected barb didn’t come. Instead, Schurr seemed almost interested. “I’ve never met an occupation specialist before,” he said perfectly amicably. “You guys are sort of the advance team, aren’t you? So what’s going on on Bainbridge? The natives aren’t exactly human. You think you can get them to accept a Fleet presence? This would be a great staging area for this sector, I guess, if you can win over the locals, right?”
“Well,” Tony started slowly, “I don’t want to bore you. Weapons officer and all.”
Alex only laughed. “Whatever you say has got to be less boring than lying here watching the bulkhead rust. They don’t give me any juicy drugs to dull the pain. Just endless reruns of last month’s least favorite omnidisk. Believe me, in two days you will know more than you ever wanted to know about the life cycle of Lyrian avian predators.”
Tony warmed to Alex a little more. After all, he’d never met a weapons officer this friendly. And it was his one chance to prove his theory.
Lucca had always been convinced that if he could only get hold of one of those arrogant line types, get them to stay listening, he could convince them that his speciality was not some catch-all for misfits. He knew that a little education went a long way with local populations, and from the data the same would work perfectly well on his shipmates. Only before now he’d never gotten a chance. Besides, Schurr had all the good qualities of the line types, that immediate assumption of camaraderie and a trusting, open nature.
“How much do you know about Bainbridge?” Tony asked conversationally. “About the natives?”
“Not much,” Alex admitted. “I only shoot at them, I don’t study them.”
Tony began to nod but that made his head spin. He leaned back into the crisp pillows and collected his thoughts. “Bainbridge was prime Weasel territory,” he began. “The native population was peaceable and easy to control, the attack routes into Alliance space immediate. Besides which, it was an excellent place to hide and cut out supply lines. Not that you weapons officers ever think of that, but without supplies the repair bases of Mainstay and Ace of Clubs wouldn’t function for more than a week. And as much as anyone else, they’re responsible for keeping ships on the line against the Khalia
after the Weasels lost Bethesda.
“Anyway, even though most of the resistance was wiped out early on in the settlement campaign, there were a few diehards out there. They’re the ones who must have got me. Even you guys aren’t infallible, you know. Anyway, with full native cooperation Bainbridge is the perfect place to direct sector activities. Both to finish up any pockets of Khalian resistance and to penetrate farther into the Syndicate. We might not know where their home worlds are, but those shadow-types in Intel think they’re somewhere in this general direction. Which means that we’re going to have to have Port Junior in some corner. And Bainbridge is perfect. Great climate, nice air, lots of veggies, not too much gravity, everything everyone ever wanted in real estate.
“The only catch is the locals. Who just happen to love omni. Haven’t found a sentient species that doesn’t, including the Weasels. At least when you’ve got programming they’re interested in. Anyway, I was going to set up omni on Bainbridge. We’ve got disks already translated into the native dialect with a good variety of programming. All subtly playing up the Fleet and the Alliance, naturally.
“I have a complete research plan to advance the programming and use it to influence the culture, to bring it to Alliance level and invite a Fleet base on planet. That’s really the crux of my job.”
“Well, if you need it, I know where you can get a great disk on deviant wildlife,” Alex volunteered. Tony almost laughed but it hurt too much.
He felt good, safe, pleasantly warm from the conversation, but he was tired, too. Talking was wearing. There was so much more he wanted to tell Alex, about how programming was chosen and how his research plan fit into the long-term plans of the Fleet. But now he was only exhausted.
He drifted into the twilight stage of sleep and became vaguely unsettled. Although everything had been positive so far, he felt some nagging vague anxiety at the edge of consciousness.
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