Soldiers

by John Dalmas

  The pirates slowed their approach now, as if to join the battle group, intending to come alongside one or more of the large ships. Drago's fists and belly had clenched. "Not yet," he muttered, "not yet… NOW!"

  It was as if the Bachelor's master had heard him; less than a mile from the nearest cruiser, he released three torpedoes. A moment later there was a great flash, the explosion driving the cruiser sideways. Magnified on his bridge screen, Drago saw flame and debris vent from the breached hull. Even as he'd fired, the Bachelor's skipper had activated his strange-space generator. A second later the pirate vessel winked into warpspace.

  Drago emitted a single explosive "Yeah!" Then his gaze fixed on the Ludmilla, intense again. She'd been trailing the Bachelor by about two miles. This was a delicate moment. Kunming's most urgent question was whether the aliens had force shields. The Ludmilla's skipper was to hold his fire until they'd had time to generate shields, if any. Then they'd surely generate them, if they had them.

  Seconds passed-dragged-three, four, five… No shields. It seemed to Drago they'd had abundant time. Meanwhile the Ludmilla had slowed to avoid overrunning her target. "Not yet," he muttered. "Not yet. Not… " Then, faintly luminous in the blackness, shields began to form. "Now!" he shouted. At that instant the Ludmilla launched her salvo. Almost as quickly the battleship's war beam hit her, and seconds later the pirate's unarmored hull blew apart in a widening sphere of gassed metal and debris.

  Time to leave! The Minerva had half-closed the gap. As Drago activated the strange-space generator, her light hull resonated to an alien target lock. Had it been a torpedo lock, he'd have been in warpspace before the torpedoes reached him. As it was, a war beam began its non-explosive but sustained and intense energy transfer an instant before the Minerva left F-space.

  An instant too short for human reaction, though the temperature increased. Then Drago stared at his screen. It showed not the indigo blue his shipsmind used to represent warpspace, but the restful yellow it showed for hyperspace.

  "Gracious god," he breathed. He knew exactly what had happened. In the moment when warpspace was generating-in that small fraction of a second-the beam had corrupted his warpdrive, and he'd entered hyperspace instead.

  His first officer too sat staring, then finally spoke. "Looks like we're screwed," he said softly.

  "Screwed, rolled over, and screwed again," Drago answered, then paused. "Take the helm. I've got a report to make." Getting up, he started aft to the cabin shared by his savant and her attendant.

  It had been evening in Kunming when Drago Dravec notified War House of his emergence in the Hibernia System's cometary cloud. So instead of going to his apartment to sleep, Admiralty Chief Fedor Tischendorf had lain down on the couch in his office, just a few strides down the corridor from his savant's suite. When Drago's next savanted contact arrived, the admiral's night yeoman woke him. The admiral was off his couch instantly, wide awake and energized, and reached the savant's couch in under a minute, his shoes on but unsecured.

  The savanted exchange was recorded and backed up on War House's AI. And on the admiral's powerful mind, where it instantly began to make connections, tying it into the extensive interconnected matrix that was his understanding of reality-his personal, internal version of the universe.

  The session took nearly an hour, the information sometimes coming slowly: the size of the system defense force and the planetary guard flotilla; their distances from Star; descriptions of the enemy warships; the masses of the battleships and cruisers, their outriggers… and of course their shields, beam locks and radio frequencies. Important stuff.

  Tischendorf imagined the pirate screening his cube-visuals and data-deciding what was meaningful and what wasn't. And when in doubt, telling it. Better the error of excess than to leave something out that might prove important. Invaluable.

  The admiral wasn't surprised that one of the corsairs had funked out. He wouldn't have been shocked if none had carried it through.

  The last thing Dravec mentioned was being scorched by a war beam in the moment of escape.

  "Did you take damage?"

  "It knocked out my warpdrive and FSP dish. So I can't use the F-space potentiality to navigate, and I can't use dead reckoning like I could in warpspace. I'll pop into F-space from time to time though, if I can, and see if I can figure out where I am and what direction I've been going. Ever hear of anyone making it back like that?"

  The admiral pursed his lips, then answered. "No, Drago, I haven't. But I'll put someone on it; see if we can come up with something useful for you. Maybe we can. We've been performing wonders on industrial mobilization. We've got the beginnings of a real fleet under construction, and your information will be extremely useful. All of it. We'd hoped the aliens hadn't developed shield technology-it would have given us an important advantage-but just knowing it will help us plan, and save lives and ships."

  He paused. "And, Drago, check in with us from time to time, just so I know you're alive. For what it's worth, I wish you well. If you make it back, and if you're interested… the fleet can always use more good officers."

  A very long way off, in another, very different universe, Drago Dravec grimaced at Tischendorf's words. If Henry Morgan was dead, and he just about had to be, then Drago owed loyalty to no one but his crew. They'd waited three long days at rendezvous, and Morgan hadn't shown. While Minerva, Bachelor, Ludmilla and Aztec had arrived within minutes of each other. Presumably Morgan was dead.

  "I'll think about it, Admiral," Drago said. "Meanwhile, do me a favor: pass along my apologies to Ambassador Khai." Only now did he realize he didn't know her first name. "I expect I made a lot of trouble for her. And she's quite a person, quite a lady. Maybe I should have let her handle things, but I didn't trust that bastard Rees. Basically he's psychotic."

  They wound up the session then. War House's master artificial intelligence had not only backed up the recording of the session in real time, it had uploaded a copy to the prime minister. Meanwhile, for Tischendorf, it was less than two hours before time to get up, so he simply took off his shoes and lay down on his couch again.

  Where he dreamed of drifting derelict in hyperspace.

  Chapter 15

  Recruits

  Bulk carriers were well suited for conversion to "snooze ships"-stasis ships-for evacuating colonies. They were extremely large, and their holds readily segmented by decks, dividing them into numerous levels.

  In Esau Wesley's broad, low-ceilinged compartment, the aisles between the stasis lockers were packed with men; the sexes had been separated when they'd come aboard. Which left Esau uneasy, because he didn't know where his wife was. Women and men, they'd been told, needed to be put in separate holds for prestasis processing. "Processing," he discovered, meant getting ready for three and a half months of stasis; a kind of deep sleep, they'd been told. "Standard" months, whatever that meant. They'd also been told they wouldn't get any older in stasis. He'd wondered if that meant setting back their birthdays three months, but hadn't asked. The man who'd told them things had one answer for all questions: the single word "later."

  They hadn't even been fed since the night before boarding the ship. By then they'd had to show their nakedness to what he supposed were physicians, who among other things had stuck them with needles, drawn blood, looked at their teeth, and shamelessly examined their private parts.

  After that they'd been given a thin, soft, snug-fitting, one-piece suit to wear "for while you're in stasis." There were no seams except in front, where they'd been open from throat to crotch. Like winter underwear but without buttons or a trapdoor. After they'd got into the sleep suits, men had shown them how to fasten the seams by pressing. He hadn't known the whys for any of it. Then, at their command, he'd rolled up his homespuns, tied them with a tape they'd provided, and fastened his high-cut moccasins to the bundle with another tape. All the while wondering if he'd ever see his real clothes again; they were a lot better than what he'd been given.

  When
he wakened, the lid was open on his stasis locker, and there was a faint smell in his nose, mildly sharp. He wasn't groggy, but he was briefly confused. Then he remembered. Meanwhile his bundle lay on his belly, moccasins included. At least the Terrans didn't seem to be thieves.

  Then a whistle had blown, and a loud voice had bellowed instructions. Esau had climbed from his locker and changed into his own clothes, he and all the other men in his compartment. They filled the aisles. Nobody had said much, and most who spoke, spoke quietly. His stomach growled, and he felt strange.

  The whistle shrilled again, cutting off the soft refugee murmur. Again the loud voice spoke, seeming to come from all around them. "ATTENTION ALL PASSENGERS! ATTENTION ALL PASSENGERS! YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE DISEMBARKED. YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE DISEMBARKED. STAY ALERT AND FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS. STAY ALERT AND FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS. WHEN ORDERED, FILE OUT IN AN ORDERLY MANNER. DO NOT PUSH. WE DO NOT WANT ANYONE CRUSHED, OR KNOCKED DOWN AND TRAMPLED. WHEN YOU GET OUTSIDE, LISTEN FOR YOUR NAME. WHEN YOU GET OUTSIDE, LISTEN FOR YOUR NAME."

  Esau was pretty sure the voice wasn't human. They'd been warned that Terrans used machines to do all sorts of things for them; apparently that could include talking. As for "disembarked"-he supposed that meant getting off the ship. And they'd be calling off names! He'd listen for Jael's, and go to her regardless of anything. Anyone got in his way, too bad for them.

  Meanwhile he waited. He didn't know whether three and a half months had passed, like they'd said, or three weeks, but he was pretty sure it was less than three years and more than three days. There was a vague sense of time having passed, and an even vaguer sense of having dreamt. But however long it had been, they seemed to have arrived, presumably on Terra.

  Somewhere, someone must have given an order, because now the packed humanity in his aisle began to move. It was a main aisle, leading directly to an open door, toward which they moved slowly under the scowling gaze of a very tall man. He held what the refugees took to be a hand weapon of some sort. Esau's column flowed rather smoothly, out the door into a wide corridor. Like an aisle-wide subcurrent in a river of humanity, some of whose currents were female.

  "You got a wife here somewhere?" asked a voice beside him. It belonged to another youth, a bit shorter but similarly built.

  "I sure hope so. I did when I got on this thing."

  "I wonder what it'll be like outside."

  Esau had no reply for that. Just now his attention was on how he felt physically-light-footed, even light-headed. "Do you feel like I feel?" he asked.

  "Might be. How's that?"

  "Kind of strange. Light."

  From behind them another voice spoke. "We all feel it. Things weigh less on Terra, including us. Back home I weighed three hundred and thirty pounds. Here I weigh two hundred and thirty."

  Esau looked back at the man, a man about his own age. And like himself, rather tall by the standards of New Jerusalem. But not as strong-looking as most; he didn't have the look of a farmer. Also, he wore eyeglasses. Esau decided he must be a speaker of the books. Or judging by his age, a student speaker.

  "How could that be?" Esau asked. "We don't look any thinner than we used to."

  "Because the gravity is different here. A pound at home only weighs point-seven pounds here."

  Esau wondered what a "point" had to do with it. And grabbity? "What's `grabbity'?" he asked.

  "Gravity," the fellow said soberly, "is what God created for things to weigh differently on different worlds."

  Esau didn't ask anything more. He didn't think much of the answers he'd already gotten. Besides, they were spilling down a ramp now, into a cold drizzle. It had been early summer when they'd left home. Here it felt like fall. Three months then, he told himself, or a little more. Seems like they told the truth about that. Combined with not stealing his clothes, it made the Terrans out to be not so bad as he'd feared. Maybe they'd changed over the centuries.

  He was glad he had his homespuns on again, and not the thin Terran clothes he'd slept in. Wool would keep off the drizzle better. At the foot of the ramp, tall men dressed like the armed guards in the corridor directed them into separate columns of twos. There was a certain amount of confusion, and the guards had to do some pulling and pushing. When one of them pulled on Esau, he didn't seem very strong, just tall. Esau told himself he could take the guy down and sit on him if need be. But it went all right, though one of the guards cursed way worse than Esau had ever heard in his life. The columns separated somewhat, eight or ten feet apart. Then someone up ahead shouted "halt" in another really loud voice, and after some jostling and piling up, the columns got themselves stopped.

  Looking sideways down the gap between his column and the next, Esau saw a man talking into something he held in one hand. The words came out loud enough; it seemed to Esau he could have heard them a quarter mile. The man said that when their name was called, they should go to a flag that someone up ahead was waving in the air. Then a bunch of names were called, some of men, some of women. After a bit they got to the W's-there was even a Wesley-but no Esau or Jael. Then the process started over again at a different flag.

  Esau stood there in the rain through several rounds of that, while the drizzle started to soak through. The column had got a lot thinner before his name was called-his followed by Jael's-and he took off at a trot. Running was so easy, he began to believe in grabbity. Jael had already been somewhere up near the flag; now he could see her standing by it. She'd seen him, too, and was waving her arms overhead.

  Their group was led to a large sort of tent, the biggest he'd ever seen. Light passed through it, but he couldn't actually see through it. There they were given a kind of food-crunchy flatbread that tasted decent enough-and water to wash it down. Then they'd been lined up, each line leading to a different man at a different table. He and Jael stayed together now, determined not to be separated again, Esau first, Jael close behind. These lines also moved slowly; another kind of "processing," Esau decided. The people doing it to them wore clothes just alike, as far as he could tell: greenish-brown. When he reached the table for their line, the man sitting there had him say his name to a small box.

  "Esau Wesley," Esau said, then gestured. "Hers is Jael Wesley."

  The man ignored the last part. "Esau Wesley, you need to make a decision now, the one they told you about before you left New Jerusalem. There are two kinds of jobs available to you. You can either be a soldier, and protect humankind from the invaders, or you can be a laborer. The choice is yours. But I must tell you that if we get too few soldiers, the invaders will win, and kill us all."

  Esau's jaw jutted. "I'll be a soldier if my wife can be. We've got to stay together."

  "No problem," the corporal said. "Now I'm going to give you instructions. Answer when I tell you to. And speak clearly." He paused. "Do you, Esau Wesley, understand that you are volunteering to be in the Commonwealth Armed Forces? And that you will be subject to all military rules and regulations? Please answer now, yes or no."

  Esau wasn't entirely sure what "military" meant, but "rules and regulations" was clear enough. "Yes," he said.

  "Good. Congratulations, Recruit Esau Wesley." The corporal was supposed to shake Esau's hand then, but shaking the hand of one Jerrie had been more than enough. He simply pointed. "Get in line behind sign C over there. To get your physical exam and army clothes." He knew from an earlier shipment that some off-worlders didn't know the word uniform.

  Esau frowned at him without moving. "I'll wait for her," he said, gesturing at Jael. "We'll go together."

  The man's face and voice turned impatient. "Recruit Wesley, that is not possible. You'll be naked for your physical exam, so it's men with men and women with women. You can be together later. Now go get in line C."

  Reluctantly Esau left. Then the corporal repeated the procedure with Jael.

  Jael felt mildly anxious that she couldn't spot her husband. Though not as anxious as she'd been aboard ship, and that had worked out all right. There were lines of one sort
or another all over the huge tent, and she'd been directed to one consisting solely of women. Most, like herself, were young, and either single or childless, she supposed. It seemed unlikely that soldiers could take care of their children. Surely not in a war. Within thirty minutes, she'd been checked out by medics, inoculated, and issued a uniform. After changing clothes, she was directed to a mixed line. Esau wasn't there, either. He's still waiting for his physical exam, she told herself, but again anxiety gnawed her gut.

  That line took her through the drizzle to a large nearby tent called a mustering shed, where she still couldn't see Esau. Here there were quite a few women, and most of the men appeared older. Her anxiety grew. Again names were called alphabetically, recruits gathering behind a man called ensign something. Something outlandish. When a company had received its complement of newly processed recruits, it left. Then a new ensign replaced the old, and the process repeated, starting with A again. When at last Jael's name was called, she fell in as instructed. And now she felt the beginning of panic, because Esau's name wasn't called. Hers followed Warner, and after it came Whitney, Wilcox, Williams and Yancy.

  After the name Yancy, the ensign called, "All right, follow me!" and led off toward an exit, another man following to herd stragglers. Jael stepped out of line and ran to catch up with the ensign. "Sir," she said, "my husband isn't here!"

  He glowered but did not slow. He was the tallest man she'd seen, even among the Terrans, a lantern-jawed giant. His skin was brown, his arms and hands long, and his eyes were hooded by thick slanting lids. "Soldier," he ordered, "get back in line. If you've got a problem, it can be handled at the waiting shed. We'll be there in a minute."

  Not relieved, she fell in immediately behind him. In two minutes they arrived at another large tent, where a lot of people waited. The ensign told his charges to sit down on a block of empty benches he pointed to. They all did except Jael. She stood determinedly.