The Far Stars War

by David Drake

  We were our side’s magic. Its edge.

  * * *

  We wore the spookeyes for night travel, until we were within ten minutes of the complex. Tilt made us pull them off then. He didn’t want us going blind if somebody had rigged any heat -sensing flares.

  Glass was riding scout, and when we were almost to the area, he came back and did a jive that froze us. Troops ahead, the hand signal said.

  We backed off half a klick to hear Glass’s story.

  “Two tens,” he said, “plus an officer. Issue gear, near as I can tell, sixteen Stein carbines, two grenadiers, two medics with sidearms. The officer is wearing a class-III hardsuit with helmet and shield.” Glass snickered. “But leather boots.”

  I shook my head. Some of these backrocket planets lost big points for logic. Class-III armor would stop anything we were carrying, though I might get an arrow through if I hit a seam just right. But unarmored boots wouldn’t stop anything, and a guy with his feet chopped off was a piss-poor soldier. Stupid. Why’d we want these guys on our side?

  “Where are they?” Tilt produced a small flatscreen and handed it to Glass. Without being asked, everybody pulled in tight to form a circle that would block the glowing screen from outside view.

  Glass tapped the controls. After a couple of minutes, the pale gray lines appeared in the air over the screen, a dim light in the darkness.

  Glass had outlined the shape of the defensive perimeter, complete with positions of trees, heavy brush, and twenty-one troopers. A crosshatch grid wrapped the image and grid numbers sparkled along the edges. The twenty-one were strung out in a long quarter circle a couple hundred meters long.

  “Okay, that’s three each, with three left over.” Tilt looked at me. “How fast are you with that bow?”

  “I can get three in six seconds,” I said.

  “Okay. You get three. These.” He pointed at the grid and I nodded.

  “Lout, you take these four. The officer is yours—do him first, he’s got the communications pod.”

  “That’s a xerox, Tilt.”

  “Asp, these three here—”

  “I can do four.”

  Tilt looked away from the holoproj and at the woman. The moment stretched. “Okay, these four, here and here.”

  She nodded once.

  “Glass, you take the four on this end. I’ll get these three. Razor, the three by the big tree.”

  “I can get four. I can get five,” Razor said.

  “Too slow. If these guys start chopping shrubs with those Steins it’s gonna get real noisy out here. We don’t want to announce to the Target that we’re on our way.”

  “Listen, Tilt—” Razor began.

  “It’s not open for discussion.” He stared at Razor and I saw fear light the man’s eyes. Krishna, it was scary to watch even from where I was, and Razor was facing it dead on. I wondered what he saw.

  “Okay, okay,” Razor said quickly.

  “Set your timers. I want it to start in exactly twelve minutes from ... now. Let’s get there before any of them move. Go. Don’t fuck it up.”

  * * *

  I didn’t opt for my spookeyes even though Glass said there were no flares around. I didn’t like the sickly green light they provided, plus if anybody was running a scope they might spot the power-up.

  The troops evidently weren’t expecting trouble. I got into position, locked my clip next to me so I could get to all sixty arrows in a hurry if need be, and nocked the first shaft. The arrow was match-grade aluminum with a shocktox armor-piercing head, fletched with ari feathers, the best in the known galaxy. I could shoot this arrow through a steel plate and the feathers would lie flat and not be damaged.

  My three were almost exactly where they were supposed to be, only I had a slight problem: a fourth had wandered over into my grid, and it looked like it was the officer, checking on his troops.

  I couldn’t see Lout, couldn’t see or hear any of the other mutes, and I didn’t know if I should take the officer or not. He was Lout’s assignment, but the big man might not be in a position to see him now. The other soldiers might be wearing dentcoms in back teeth to talk among themselves, but those were short-range units. If the officer triggered his compod and called for help, we might be down the tubes.

  Coming up on time, I had fifteen seconds to decide. As I watched the seconds blink off on my timer, I took a cleansing breath and concentrated on my technique.

  At eight seconds to go, the officer turned and started back toward Lout’s grid. I recalled that the S-shaped line of sawbush was where my grid ended and Lout’s began. I figured that if he was in my grid when the time expired, then he was mine. I could do four.

  Three seconds. Two. Still on my side of the line, no more than ten meters away—one—

  I sent the first arrow toward the officer’s ankle, at the leather boot.

  The trick to speedshooting, whether it’s a bow or a gun, is to keep going and not to watch the targets you’ve already shot to see if you’ve hit them. As soon as I loosed the first arrow, I reached for the second, nocked it, and sent it toward the second trooper. The zanshin pause was only there in spirit and not in real time. I let fly the third, saw that the last man had become aware of danger, and drew the fourth arrow to my ear as he unshouldered his slung carbine. Before he could level his weapon, the shocktox hit him and he arched backward and collapsed.

  Seven seconds had passed from the first shot until the last. I reviewed my technique. Four hits. Left ankle, right thigh, left shoulder, right hip. Not a killing wound among them, just as I intended. Any competent bowman could have killed them. Somebody with my skill had to take a handicap. At a hundred and fifty meters, I could not have been so choosy, but this close killing them would have been the same as missing, a failure.

  I was aware of the silenced spring guns going off and of the bodies thumping to the jungle floor, and I listened for the half-expected sound of a Stein going full auto and wrecking the night’s quiet. It didn’t happen.

  I shifted carefully toward Lout’s position, and saw him coming up from hiding, his Rand held ready. Twenty meters beyond Lout, Asp was already moving into the clearing.

  In another minute, it was apparent that our attack had been a complete surprise; all twenty-one of the enemy were down.

  Lout said to me, “Thanks for getting the officer. I couldn’t see him where I was.”

  Tilt gathered us past the clearing, under cover.

  “Hell, that was easy,” Razor said. “I could do that all day long. These guys are sticks.” He wiped at his tanto, cleaning it. “Nothing compared to the ‘pods.”

  Tilt shook his head. “It shouldn’t have been that easy. Somebody should have gotten off a few loud rounds.”

  “So we’re lucky,” Glass said. “You going to fault that?”

  “Depends on whether it’s good luck or bad,” Tilt said.

  “Well, whatever it is, it’s done. Take the scout, Glass.”

  I didn’t share Tilt’s worry. We were the best there were, doing our jobs as they were supposed to be done. We all had our own edges, and the enemy didn’t really have a chance, not ordinary men. How could we not feel secure in our superior talent and higher technology? It was going to go by the numbers, no sweat.

  * * *

  We were almost there. The compound was quiet, well lighted but not obsessively so, and there were no signs of any more troops.

  Glass came back and confirmed that. “Nobody else is out there.”

  We squatted in the brush and considered it.

  “That’s crazy,” Tilt said. “You are telling me that that one double-ten was it? Bunched up on one side in a ragged-ass quarter circle? There’s nobody on the rest of the perimeter?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Listen, I know ab
out hiding, Tilt. I can feel them. Have I ever been wrong?”

  Tilt shook his head.

  “Automatics, maybe?” Lout said. “Trip plates, laser lines, heatproxies. Anybody gets past the troops and they get fried when they try to stroll across the grounds, that’d make sense.”

  We all nodded. That’s how we might do it ourselves. “Yeah, it would make sense,” Glass said, “only it ain’t happening. I went to the far end and back and there aren’t any automatics on these grounds.”

  “Maybe they’re just stupid,” Razor said. “Remember the leather boots.”

  “I don’t think so,” Asp said.

  “Or maybe they’re overconfident,” I said. “The ground war here is mostly a hemisphere away. This place is in the middle of nowhere—maybe they don’t think we can find it.”

  Tilt nodded at that. “Yeah, maybe. Like sending valuable pharmaceuticals in an old transport instead of an armored convoy to keep from drawing attention to it. That might be it.”

  We all looked at the HxL.

  “Guess we’d better go see,” he said. It was his job to worry, but I knew he really wasn’t afraid. None of us was.

  * * *

  All I knew about the Target was that he was the top leader in a local religion. A holy man, as Asp had said. The drill was, if we could snatch him, we’d have a major pawn for the diplocrats to use. If not, we were supposed to bury him, because according to the local religious jive, the leader was invulnerable. A gift from the local god, apparently, bestowed on the head priest for services rendered or somesuch. Razor had laughed when he’d told me that part, but I tried to keep an open mind about it. The universe is full of things we don’t know about. These people were off the beaten path; they could have gotten real inbred. Maybe the priest had some kind of superefficent metabolism, he didn’t get sick or he could heal fast or something. Who could say? It wouldn’t matter, of course. There were six of us and only one of him and he’d have to heal damned fast if we chose to bury him.

  Anyway, if we made the priest dead, that would pull the locals up short. Maybe they’d think God was on our side and not theirs. Good psychology to have going for you.

  We spread out and went for the smallest of the buildings, broken-hex-style, each of us on his or her own track.

  I reached the door behind Lout, with Asp right behind me. The portal was a standard prefab plastic with a lock that wouldn’t keep out anybody larger than a child.

  Lout grabbed the handle and prepared to shoulder the door open. “There’ll probably be alarms,” he said. “Get ready.”

  Asp and I nodded. I glanced at my timer. Thirty seconds.

  Glass, Razor, and Tilt circled around to a second entrance.

  As the time ran down, Lout took a firmer grip on the door’s handle. It moved.

  “Krishna, the damned thing’s not even locked!” he said.

  “Go,” Asp said.

  Lout shoved the door open and jumped inside, going left. I went in and right, with Asp covering the center.

  No alarms blared, no lights flashed, nobody yelled or started blasting at us. Nothing.

  The place was like a warehouse, it was one huge room.

  The lighting was dim, enough for us to see each other but hardly bright. Toward the middle of the big enclosed space was a bluish glow that seemed to pulse.

  “I don’t like this at all,” Lout said.

  I calmed my own breathing and fought to keep my heartbeat slow. I itched all over suddenly.

  “Biologicals?” I said. “Chem?”

  “Maybe. Too late now if there are.”

  It didn’t feel right, whatever was going on here. I had a sudden urge to turn and run from this place as fast as I could, to not look back as I fled.

  “Company!” Lout said. “Over there.” He pointed with his rifle.

  I raised the bow for a draw. Next to me, Asp pulled two pencils and cocked both hands for a double throw.

  “Welcome,” a soft male voice said. “I am Nobiki, Father of the Faith.” He was a short, roundish man, wearing some kind of silky shirt and split skirt. Both looked maroon-colored in the dim light. His feet were bare, and he was bald. Probably pushing sixty or seventy TS years old, I guessed, at least twice my age. A harmless old man.

  “It’s him, the Target,” I said.

  I scanned the room as best I could, looking for guards. Asp and Lout did the same.

  “We’ll have to ask you to come with us,” Lout said. “You are now a prisoner.”

  “I think not,” Nobiki said. And vanished.

  It had been all ours until now, but it got woo-woo; just like that, the madness began.

  I mean, he blinked out like a hologram with the power cut.

  “Holy shit!” I said.

  “It’s a trick,” Asp said, mirroring my thought. “Some kind of projection.”

  “Spread out,” Lout ordered. “Watch the door, Peel.”

  Asp and Lout moved off, and I lost them in the low light. The blue glow I’d noticed before had vanished, too.

  I put my back against the wall near the door and kept my bow ready for a fast draw. Nobody was leaving here while I could help it.

  “Nobody wants to leave,” came that soft voice again. As I jerked around to locate the speaker, a section of the warehouse lit up suddenly, like a diorama in a museum, and I saw Nobiki standing there in his red pajamas, smiling. Facing him about ten meters away was Lout. The big man lifted his rifle and pointed it at the priest. I couldn’t hear what Lout said, but I was sure it was an order to surrender. The smaller man did not move, just continued to smile, his arms down by his sides.

  Lout raised his rifle and aimed. Since we were supposed to take the Target alive if possible, I guessed that Lout intended to clap a round to scare the priest.

  Lout held his aim for a moment, and then lowered the weapon. He stared at it, and I knew somehow that the rifle had misfired. Lout ejected the magazine and reloaded another, aimed again, but nothing happened, it didn’t fire. He put the gun down and drew his hatchet. All the while, the smiling priest never moved.

  Lout shuffled in carefully.

  The priest stood still until the bigger man reached out to grip his shirt, then he dodged to the left a few centimeters. Lout tried again, and Nobiki shifted again. As fast as Lout moved, the smaller man was faster.

  I guessed that Lout must have realized that the little man knew some fighting skill and that he wasn’t going to be able to catch him. And if we couldn’t capture him, there was the other option.

  Lout raised the hatchet and leaped, cutting at the priest’s skull.

  Nobiki snapped his left arm up and blocked the strike. Just stopped it cold.

  Nothing I’d seen in here so far impressed me as much as that block. Lout’s arm could have hit a ferrofoam wall and not stopped so short. He maintained his grip on the hatchet for an instant, then he snarled and tossed the cutting weapon away and grabbed at the priest.

  Nobiki brought his own hands up, and the two men interlaced fingers. I could see the strain on Lout’s face.

  Incredibly, Lout dropped to his knees, his wrists bent back by the force of Nobiki’s grip.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  Lout rolled to one side, breaking contact, and came up. He charged Nobiki. The smaller man leaped to meet him. They came together like two sumo wrestlers, silently, but I could see the power. Lout was knocked aside.

  Impossible!

  Lout sprawled on his back, looking stunned.

  I lifted my bow and arrow and made ready to punch Nobiki’s heart out.

  No. Not yet. I heard a voice say inside my head.

  I lowered the bow. It didn’t occur to me to question the command. Maybe the air was drugged. I couldn’t care less.

  Lout came up, and from whatever made him what he was, he pulled forth h
is reserves. I could see it, I knew that everything he had went into his attack. He slammed into the smaller man, lifted his hands to encircle Nobiki’s throat, and started to choke him. The priest caught Lout’s neck in the same grip.

  They stood there for what seemed like a long time. Finally, the priest sagged, went limp, and fell. Lout’s chest rose and fell with his rapid breathing, but it was obvious that Nobiki was dead. I felt a surge of relief at that knowledge.

  The light went out and Lout vanished. What—? Another section of the warehouse lit suddenly, and I saw Asp, facing a resurrected Nobiki. She threw a poison pencil, but he ducked it and pulled from his clothing an identical weapon, hurling it back at her. Asp dove, came up from the roll, and slung a pair of darts backhanded—

  And in the end, after much effort, she killed him.

  And then Glass killed him.

  And then Razor.

  And Tilt.

  I killed him, too.

  I was sweating and afraid as I shifted to my left and he drew his bow back, aiming for me, and I bent my own bow and I was a quarter second faster, and I sent my arrow to his heart and he fell—

  But only after I realized that he was as good as I was, exactly as good, and that I had to go to my very center, to dig up every last bit of myself that I had, so that it wasn’t skill against skill, but my essence that saved me. I stood there breathing hard, staring at the body with the arrow in its chest.

  I had to draw upon my edge, the thing that made me different from other men, the core of who I was. Only then, full out, was I able to win, and then only just barely.

  It was the ultimate test, and my triumph was unbounded when I passed it. I had met the best there was, no doubt of that whatsoever, I had challenged him and I had won! All my adult life I had been searching for an equal, and finally I’d found one.

  It was the peak moment of my life. I wanted to hold on to it forever, or failing that, I was ready to die right now, either way was fine. I had climbed the mountain and met the gods and nothing was ever going to top it. I knew, in that moment, peace.