Princess Valerie's War

by Terry Mancour

  Camp Valiant had suffered bombardment during the fight, but had sustained only light damage and virtually no casualties, as the troops had been moved en masse to Rivington for its defense. But a small skeleton staff had held off three combat cars full of mercs until a pinnace from the Princess Valerie swept in and blew them out of the sky. More bodies were dug out of the wreckage.

  Spasso was not among them.

  The party of three-hundred mobile infantry and assorted combat cars that had attacked Tradetown had started a few fires, but they had perversely given up softer targets for concentrating on attacking the Shrine of the Trasks. Not that they had much luck. The invaders never got within a hundred feet of the temple, so viciously did the local people defend it. Clearly Spasso was after his severed, gold-plated hand.

  The Golden Hand guards who stood watch at the shrine weren’t about to give it up, though. Five of them organized the city watch and the local militia to successfully defend the temple. By the time reinforcements came, they had the day well in-hand.

  Garvan Spasso had not, apparently, felt so compelled as to come for his hand himself.

  As the night wore on, scattered pockets of invaders were systematically engaged and eliminated around the city, and by dawn there was only one area not strictly under Tanith control, the abandoned northern tower.

  It was a massive three-dimensional maze covering hundreds of thousands of square feet per section, and it was still choked with debris and junk and the occasional patch of woodland that had grown on old landing stages. It made an ideal defensive structure, as the Royal Army commanders found out. Piles of rubble and collapsed beams made excellent sniper posts. It was easy to booby-trap with knives and explosives. There was cover everywhere, most of it was in perpetual darkness, and a squad could walk right by a man in the gloom if they weren’t careful.

  There were easily two or three thousand mercenaries in the tower, clumped together at various points, and another hundred or so scattered throughout the building to slow down any attackers with sniper fire. Clearing them away was difficult. It was painstaking work, clearing each section, and around every corner lurked a new threat.

  The Tanith men didn’t flinch from the task; emboldened by the return of their Princess and the fleet, they attacked the building with renewed vigor. The Golden Hand commandos took particular care in searching the ruin, searching intently for any sign of Garvan Spasso.

  Lt. Bentfork led one team, twenty Royal Army of Tanith troopers down from the Golden Hand. They’d come in fast in a combat troop carrier, arriving on a landing stage about fifty floors up and deploying within seconds. Bentfork had been tasked to destroy the rogue telecast station that Spasso’s people had set up to broadcast his impotent propaganda. It was widely hoped that Spasso would be found there.

  Even though dawn rained down on Rivington, the interior of the building was cavernous, and he had his troops move with as much caution as possible. A tripwire grenade ended one private’s life and informed them about the type of foe they faced; a sniper took two more as they plunged deeper into the building, and there was a gallant little firefight until a lucky shot stopped the sniper. They pressed on.

  Bentfork knew they were getting closer to their target when they began encountering more concentrated groups of mercenaries clustered around heavier weapons. There were machine-gun emplacements set up in nests of debris, making any approach in force difficult. It didn’t take a .50 machine-gun long to clear a corridor. Bentfork sent a scout down another way, to see if they could find a useable flank, but a distant burst of rapid fire told him that the other routes to the exterior chamber that housed the rogue station were covered, too.

  “There’s no way we can get up that way, Lieutenant,” one of his scouts reported with disgust. “And they’ve laid mines the last thirty feet or so, so we can’t even crawl up to throw grenades!”

  “We need a rocket launcher!” one private suggested. Bentfork shook his head.

  “It would take too much time – we have a mission, and we have everything we need to accomplish it.” By the time he could radio for assistance, get to a landing stage where he could safely accept a rocket launcher, and find his way back here, Spasso’s men could die of old age. “I wonder if these guys are flat thinkers,” he wondered aloud.

  “What?” one of the privates asked, confused.

  “Flatland,” Bentfork said. “We read it in school. It’s about—” he broke off, realizing that even though the man he addressed was from the Sword Worlds, he hadn’t had Bentfork’s education. He’d been among the very first to attend Prince Lucas’ special school in Rivington, coming there when he was only twelve. It had seemed an almost magical experience, taking a boy from the Iron Age and showing him the wonders of the Atomic Age. He was often amazed at the lack of interest or appreciation his Sword World counterparts demonstrated about the incredible civilization they were from. This man, for instance, had apparently slept through some elementary mathematics.

  “I’m just wondering if they’ve considered all of the angles of attack,” he sighed. “Does anyone have any plastique?” Two of the men did, as it turned out, and gladly handed it over. Bentfork smiled.

  “Perfect! I’m guessing those mercs set up a perfect field of fire with lots of cover. But I’m also guessing that they’re only thinking of front, back, left and right. Corporal, take one of your men back to that stairwell we passed. Go down one floor and see if you can find your way to the exact location of that nest, only underneath. Then plant the plastique on the ceiling, back up, and blow it.”

  “That’s bloody brilliant, Lieutenant!” the corporal said, admiringly, as he accepted the explosives. He chose a man and went off on his mission, while Bentfork prepared the other dozen to take advantage of the confusion to press an attack. It took about twenty-five minutes, longer than he’d expected for the team to achieve its mission, but then he got a call on his radio from the corporal, who warned him to be ready for action.

  The explosion was deafening, but it was the dust that was the most debilitating. A lot of dust can accumulate in a ferrocrete structure over five hundred years, and the explosion put a great deal of it back into the air. Vision was obscured almost as thoroughly as if by a smoke bomb.

  “Forward!” Bentfork called, drawing his sword, as his men all hacked and coughed their way into battle. They pressed forward carefully through the cloud of dust towards the machinegun nest. Along the way several smaller explosions occurred unexpectantly as falling debris triggered the anti-personnel mines that were left in front of them. The last few mines the soldiers discovered they gently slid into the large hole in the corridor where the machinegun used to be. They extended this same service to the severed body parts and corpses of the defenders.

  The hole itself wasn’t too difficult to navigate, but once on the other side they were almost immediately beset by more defenders with submachine guns and pistols. Bentfork swore bitterly as the lively fire-fight went on through the dust and gloom, cursing Spasso for the man-made hell his actions had wrought in this ruin. While Bentfork knew, intellectually, that he was just a man, it was hard not to appreciate the apparently demonic nature of Spasso’s attacks. Two more of his men were wounded in the fight, until the defenders ran out of ammunition and were shot by his squad.

  Two more brief engagements left two more mercenaries stretched out dead before they got to the telecast station. The chamber itself only had a single guard who went down under Bentfork’s sword before the man had a chance to raise his pistol.

  “Surrender in the name of the Realm!” the guardsman bellowed as he burst into the chamber, sticking the point of his blade under the chin of the terrified operator while his men filled in behind him. The man nodded, speechless, his hands raised. The room was open to the sky on the southern wall, where Spasso’s men had erected an antenna by the simple expedient of unrolling it down the side of the building. Bentfork stopped the signal by the simple expedient of cutting the antenna from the rig with h
is sword.

  “Where is Garvan Spasso?” he demanded of the operator, his voice filled with menace.

  “I don’t know! I swear!” the man pleaded. “I surrendered, remember?”

  “I want Spasso,” Bentfork repeated, his nostril’s flaring as he got within inches of the man’s face. He did his best intimidating sneer. “My father cut off his right hand. I wanted to get the other one. It’s my life’s dream. I’d be happy to add yours to the family collection. Now, where is Garvan Spasso?”

  “I swear to God, I don’t know!” the man, a Space Viking technician who had definitely seen happier times. His eyes were white with fear as he trembled before the large and angry officer. “He was here yesterday, when we first captured the place, but after we got set up he was off! I swear!”

  “So where was he headed?” Bentfork demanded.

  “Somewhere over in the Slags! In a combat car! Had to see someone, he said! But that was hours and hours ago!”

  “Take him down to Military Intelligence and have him re-questioned under veridication,” he ordered his men as he returned his sword to its scabbard. He tagged his helmet radio and waited for a clear channel to Command. “Team Lambda reporting: telecast station has been neutralized on the fifty-fifth floor. No sign of Spasso, but he might have been here yesterday. Rumor has it he headed for the Slags.” He waited for an acknowledgement before he put the radio away and directed the men in mopping-up the remaining mercenaries on the floor. He was helped by the arrival of another squad, fresh from the Princess Valerie, and a RAT Major who was more than willing to take command of his men to continue mopping up Spasso’s mercenaries.

  Bentfork left them behind and headed down three floors and a thousand feet west, where he came to a landing stage being used as an advanced staging area. Crates of grenades, submachine gun and rifle ammunition were stacked hurriedly to one side, alongside a pre-packed case of rations and a first-aid station where a half-dozen RAT troopers were being attended by a Royal Army medic and a couple of robodocs. There was a table where scanners and situation boards were set up, and a RAT Captain was questioning prisoners under the red and blue glow of an encephalographic veridicator. Bentfork wandered over and took a look at the situation board for a moment before he stood by patiently to wait for the Captain.

  The man was clearly agitated as he sent his latest prisoner off to be processed.

  “Any luck? Finding Spasso?” Bentfork asked, hopefully.

  “Nothing,” the man said, disgusted, as another bound mercenary was sullenly placed in the device at gunpoint. It looked like some mad artist’s conception of an ancient electric chair, except for the big glass globe that sat over the prisoner’s head. If it stayed blue, the man was telling the truth. If it turned red, his own thoughts betrayed the fact that he was lying. The coolest gangster in the galaxy, or the most serene monk in the depths of meditation couldn’t fool a veridicator. “Spasso was here, but no one’s seen him in hours. They were supposed to hold this building and shell the Planetary Building until reinforcements from the Nottingham arrived.”

  “They’re going to be late,” Bentfork chuckled.

  “I heard. That’s why I’m so busy,” the Captain explained. “As soon as word got out, they started surrendering in droves. They all know about the reward. More than half of them would be happy to give up Spasso just to get off Tanith. But the slippery bastard just . . . disappeared.”

  “One of my prisoners told me he headed out for the Slags – do we have anyone over there?”

  “Funny you should mention that,” the captain mused. “Three of the men I’ve interrogated weren’t off-world mercs, they were Slagtown derelicts who signed on for this months ago. They didn’t know what they were doing at the time, but the money was good. Three weeks ago they started going off into the woods and being trained with weapons. Then when the Lamia was taken, they were the ones who started rioting in the downtown area, before they met up with Spasso’s men and took to the tower. But the fighting didn’t start in the Slags, so we don’t have any troops in that direction. Say,” the captain said, an idea dawning on him, “I guess that would be the perfect place to hide out during an invasion after it went south – the one place we don’t have troops looking for him!”

  “He’s crafty, all right,” Bentfork said, irritated at the demon-spawn’s temerity. “He must have some kind of intelligence network on Tanith left over from his days working for the Prince,” he reasoned. “And he’s obviously getting help from somewhere. Not the King of Gram – he’d have better troops.”

  The captain nodded in agreement, lighting his pipe as he prepared to question the next prisoner. “Half of these men are Merthan neobarb mercenaries, half are the kind of Space Viking you don’t like associated with the profession. Spasso’s kind, in other words. Their equipment is definitely bargain-basement stuff. Their combat contragravity was pretty battered up, too. But even an army of rabble costs money, much less the ships to get them here.”

  “I’ll look into it,” Bentfork decided. “Now, is there any way I can ask you to call me an aircar? I want to head over to the Slags and see if I can’t find Spasso.”

  The captain started to say something, then stopped. “You mudfoots really, really don’t like that guy, do you?”

  “He burned a temple that has been in Tradetown for three hundred years. He killed hundreds when he came to my home. He raped my father’s wife,” Bentfork said, flatly. “She wasn’t my mother, but she was the next best thing. A beautiful woman. I remember when he took her, and how she cried, and how angry my father was. He vowed that day to see Spasso’s head on a pike, and I aim to keep that vow. I know it’s not the Sword World way to take multiple wives, but she’s my family, and he kept her in his chamber for days, treating her like the worst kind of slave. Then he tried to kill the Deliverer and the White Lady. And then kidnapped their child, a child some of my people regard as divine. That’s an offense to the gods, in any religion, and if I can watch Spasso’s body flayed alive before the eyes of the Trasks at the Tradetown shrine before throngs of cheering crowds, I shall see it as a tangible sign of divine justice in the universe. Yes, Captain, we mudfoots really, really don’t like that guy.”

  “Let me call you a car, son,” the captain said, gently. Bentfork noted that he was clutching the hilt of his sword so tightly his knuckles were white. He forced himself to relax, but it was hard. He felt like he was on a hunt, and the prey was nearly in sight. If he could just catch Spasso, he knew, his family’s honor would be restored in full.

  That was what drove him. He wanted the stain of Spasso removed from the universe, and Nogal Bentfork would not count himself truly a man until he saw the man’s head removed from his body with his own eyes. Preferably by his own hands.

  It only took ten minutes for a combat car to come by and pick him up, once called, and he was gratified to see it was loaded with four RAT troopers fresh from mopping up the southern front.

  “Are you gentlemen otherwise occupied?” he asked carefully, as he settled into the remaining seat. Despite his early life as a privileged neobarbarian noble, he still felt self-conscious when he found himself in command of ‘civilized’ Sword Worlders. True, much of the mystique surrounding the men from the stars had faded as he had lived and trained with them at Camp Valiant and environs, and gotten to know them as people, but there was still an imperceptible distance between the Sword Worlders and the “mudfoots” they served with. Particularly an officer of the Golden Hand. “Because I have a line on Garvan Spasso, and I need some back-up,” he explained. “Interested?”

  He faced a sea of wolfish grins. “We got to the front too late,” the corporal in charge confessed. “We haven’t so much as fired a shot. We’re at your command, Lieutenant!”

  “All right. Driver, to the Slags. Does anyone know if there are any troops out there?”

  “Just the Rivington Police,” the driver said, derisively. “There was a riot or something, early on. But that was two days ago. They
’re still patrolling, but most of them are on civil defense duty, enforcing curfew and preventing looting. Or that’s what I’ve heard.”

  It took them only moments to get to the Slags. Bentfork had the driver drop off he and his four men at what was arguably the nicest part of the itinerant camp, a cluster of huts and sheds that had been erected by the poorest of the poor. Then the driver went back aloft to patrol over the area, waiting for Bentfork’s signal to provide support.

  Lt. Bentfork sighed meaningfully as he looked around the ruin. Once this had been a tower every bit as splendid as the Planetary Building and it’s damaged, derelict twin he’d just come from.

  Then, during Tanith’s decivilization, someone had bombed the massive structure. It had thankfully fallen away from, not towards, the other two, spreading out a slightly-radioactive band of rubble that stretched out almost a mile from one side to the other. A few generations later the survivors of the city had begun picking it clean of structural steel and other artifacts to trade for food. Eventually it had been overtaken by the wilderness. There was still quite a lot of identifiable rubble, around, some of it towering nearly three stories high, and it was riddled with “natural” caves and tunnels.