Orion Shall Rise (69 page)

Foreknowledge clamped a hand on Jovain’s heart. ‘A nuclear strike against you,’ breathed out of him.

Rewi nodded. ‘Yesterday.’

Mattas made a noise as if he were being strangled. Lorens did not stir, but now he did not look young at all.

‘I only received a report on it lately,’Rewi continued. ‘Matters have been so chaotic that it’s taken this long to get anything like a coherent account together. That sensation about the spaceship started the confusion, and may have precipitated it.’

‘How? What happened?’Jovain asked faintly.

‘You have heard the broadcast Ferlay and Birken made, or a replay, haven’t you? They declared they had taken the prototype vessel in order to deny it to the Northwestern slaughterers. This was admirable, of course, but quite likely it was what forced the Norrmen to their next action.

‘They dispatched a battleship armed with nuclear-headed rockets. It took out our aircraft carriers, which was doubtless its primary assignment, and in the course of doing so destroyed or crippled nearby ships to a total of a fourth or more of our Grand Fleet. A final explosion demolished it, but among other things cost us our flagship and commanding admiral.’

Jovain sat motionless. He did not know what else to do. Yago punished his lungs with smoke. Lorens crossed himself. Mattas belched a Douroais obscenity.

After a silence, Rewi’s impersonal voice resumed:

‘One wonders how far to trust a leadership that has inflicted such egregious miscalculations and negligences on Her Majesty. However, I think the assessment
is
correct, that the enemy vessel was not only his last carrier for such weapons, but went down with his last stock of them. You may recall that the Ferlay-Birken message included descriptions of the Orion spacecraft, with key technical details. Thus we know how much fissionable material
is
tied up in them, and we can estimate an upper limit for what amount could have been scavenged. Surely all that the enemy could spare for warheads has now been expended. He will scarcely sacrifice spacecraft to get more. Not only does he lack reliable means of delivery, it would negate the whole purpose of his effort.’

‘Nobody can predict what a madman will do,’ Jovain said. ‘Whoever ordered that battleship out must have been insane, no?’

Rewi gave him a grim smile. ‘Insanity
is
a relative matter, sir. I can imagine demoniacal hatred behind the move, but in spite of the price, it’s paid off handsomely.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Consider. Bombing has become out of the question until we can build more carriers or else invade Laska in force and construct air bases there. Either would take the better pan of a year, at least, even if we accept the foreign help we’ve been offered. Similarly for a massive landing on the peninsula. Meanwhile those people are free to carry on their work. They’ve lost their prototype, but I should think they’ll need less time to produce a second one, especially since the first has proved out remarkably. It ought not to take very much longer than that to ready their entire space escadrille.

‘Meanwhile, too, the blockade is ended. Worse than the losses sustained is the collapse of morale. The report sent me says that it’s no use telling the crews that the nukes are all spent. An obsession about the atom is built into them, into our entire culture. Nothing now prevents the southern Territories from pouring reinforcements and supplies north, by sea as well as by land. We can’t control those parts, aside from enclaves – not when a whole people has the taste of victory in its mouth.

‘And what of reaction at home and abroad? This is not a popular war, you know. The report mentioned riots or demonstrations in a number of Maurai communities. Terror and, yes, a certain rebellious admiration for the sheer audacity of the foe. I suspect Ferlay and Birken have fired millions of imaginations; and
our
sworn objective is to dismantle those spacecraft. I wouldn’t be surprised if Beneghal backs out of the negotiations about an alliance with us. I’ll wager a year’s pay that the Free Mericans in the Southwest do.’

Rewi’s look pierced them, one after the next, ending at Jovain. ‘In short,’ he said, ‘the odds at present are even or worse that the Norrmen will succeed in their undertaking, and a handful of irresponsible adventurers will come to dominate this planet. They may then encounter the kind of difficulties that you have, Captain, but our civilizations as we have known them will go under.’

‘Unless,’ Mattas said.

‘Yes,’ Rewi replied. ‘We discussed this, you and I.’

Comprehension crashed through Jovain. ‘Wait!’ He heard his voice as a thin shriek. ‘Skyholm?’

‘Yes, Your Dignity,’ the Maurai told him. ‘The aerostat is
dirigible. We can take it over the Pole and station it above the enemy within a week. We don’t need precise targeting information, when we have unlimited solar power. We can maintain laser fire for as long as need be – flame down his troops, burn out his support in the region, keep his mechanics and their works below ground, drill down into his caverns, until he surrenders.’

‘Almighty Deu,’ shivered from Lorens. He crossed himself again.

‘Nothing could touch us,’ cried Yago, ‘nothing!’

‘No wait, wait,’ Jovain stammered. ‘Here at home … the Domain would be prey to my own enemies –’

‘Is it not, as things are?’ Rewi retorted.

‘Iern could freely land in Franceterr. They’d swarm to him.’

‘What danger is a single unarmed spacecraft? You would return as a hero, sir, a conqueror, invincible. And … I think I can safely promise that the Maurai Federation will be beside the man who saved its world.’

‘Who saved Gaea,’ Mattas urged. ‘Saved Her from a second Judgment. Exacted justice for atrocities, not only committed against human beings but against Her own self.’

Skyholm,
rang in Jovain.
The most powerful single fortress and engine in existence. Its Captain the shaper of the next thousand years and more – if he shows the decisiveness that becomes a man –

Glory mounted in him. He sprang to his feet. ‘I will!’ Beneath the tumult he was aware of the sun-arrows he would be sending to kill and burn, kill and burn, he, a revengeful god.

5

Once more the Boot Heel roared.

Addressing a regathered assembly that day, Eygar Dreng had ended with a shout: ‘– We can win, and before God, we shall! If we’ve lost heavily, the enemy has lost more. He won’t be back soon. Tomorrow we get busy again, and we’re going to work like trolls. This night, though, we’ll hold a celebration and a wake, a celebration of our victory and a wake for those brave men and women whose lives bought it for us. Drink your thanks to the memories of Mikli Karst, Bryun Scarp, everybody who died so the Wolf may run free. In their spirit, Orion shall rise!’

He was in the mess hall himself that evening, seated on a table as if it were a throne. His brawny hand gripped a glass of whiskey, his
short legs kicked, and his voice rumbled through the racket. The chamber could hold only a fraction of the folk, especially counting militiamen off duty. Most spilled out into the halls, to pass their own bottles around, bellow forth song, stamp forth dances, embrace, often drop a few tears, then hoot defiance or laughter. Air was hot, smoke-blue, rank, but it could have been a winter wind that whipped them to life.

Tides of them struggled in and out the doorway, across the floor, around the bar. A scarecrow figure appeared in their midst. He had been able to move fast along the corridors, but here the crowd trapped him. Snarls lifted, curses resounded, fists threatened, while quietness spread in waves from the center as people turned to stare.

‘– traitor, spy, tear ’m apart, string ’m up –’

‘Belay that!’ Eygar boomed. ‘Let him be.’ The growling and milling about were slow to die away. ‘Are you the Free Folk, or a rabble o’ Mong city-serfs? What’s happened can’t be Plik’s fault. Let him be, I say!’

The crowd moved from the Angleyman, pushing and shoving each other, until there was as much space as possible around him. Eygar beckoned. ‘Come on over, fellow,’ he called.

When the singer had done so, the director proffered the flask at his side. ‘Have a swig,’ he invited.

Plik tilted it at length. ‘Aaah!’ he sighed. ‘God bless you, sir. I needed that enough to risk my bones in this place. You’re most kind.’

‘I’ve enjoyed what I’ve heard of your stuff. And I don’t imagine you bear any responsibility for what your, uh, your friends did.’

Plik returned a steady look. ‘No, sir. However, they remain my friends.’

‘You’ve a right to your sympathies.’

‘Oh, but I have none, except for the innocents whom these vast causes have killed, mangled, bereaved, and for those whom they will.’

‘Well, do your job and watch your tongue,’ Eygar advised. ‘A lot of the boys are pretty touchy, after what we’ve suffered, and I can’t spare you a bodyguard. Okay, proceed to the bar if you want.’

Plik could not get away immediately through the human press. Thus he heard an officer who stood next to the chief say in anxious wise: ‘About the stolen spacecraft, sir. I do think we should discuss the hazard it poses.’

‘Okay, I’ll finish what I was telling you, and then we’ll get down to serious drinking,’ Eygar replied. ‘Tomorrow we can go over the details if you insist. Basically, I don’t agree it is a danger. Ferlay broadcast that his intentions are peaceful, if not favoring us any longer. I believe him. And in fact, I hear from a couple of radar tracking posts that he’s taken off for outer space.’

‘He’ll return, sir. And
Orion Two
will still have atomic bombs in her drive racks.’

‘He can’t drop them on us. Not unless the entire system is redesigned and rebuilt first, and who’s going to do that for him? The Maurai? No; dead against their whole ethic. Besides, Ferlay and Birken left because the use of nukes in war disgusted them beyond endurance.’ Eygar bit his lip. ‘I can’t say as how I blame them too much.’

‘Nevertheless –’

‘Oh, I’m not relying on psychology alone. Ferlay
could land
in Federation territory without cracking up, maybe. The Maurai
could
be so desperate they’d convert his bombs into warheads and fly a special mission over us. Remember, though, those aren’t high-yield units; they’d vaporize the ship if they were. If the total kilotonnage were put into a single weapon, and stuck fairly close, it could take out one of our launch tubes, no more. They’re reasonably well dispersed, remember, and damn well hardened. If the fissionable stuff were divided among a sufficient number, then each of them would have to strike precisely. The Maurai don’t have information that exact … nor bombsights that good. Nobody’s fought a real air war since the Doom. Today’s technology for it is primitive.

‘I credit them and Ferlay with the common sense to recognize all this.’

‘The ship herself is a potential weapon, sir,’ the officer argued.

‘You mean her blast,’ Eygar said. ‘Yeh, theoretically Ferlay could stand her on her blast and torch out our sites, one after the other. It’d be a feat of piloting beyond belief, no matter what a crackerjack he is, especially when he has no copilot and just a single engineer. But it is a far-fetched theory. Well, simply to put minds like yours at ease, Jayko, I’m having the militia bring some rockets to this area.’

‘Nuclear?’

Eygar gestured forcibly. ‘No! I’m informed that we’ve shot our wad of those filthy things, and don’t mind admitting I’m glad.
These are small solid-fuel jobs with chemical warheads. They can get up to about ten klicks’ altitude. The spaceship would have to hover closer than that if she was to inflict any real damage, and a single missile forward of the plates would bring her down.’

His fist hit the table. Bottle and tumblers rattled. He took a hefty swallow of liquor. ‘Repeat, I don’t expect any such attempt,’ he said. ‘Ferlay must know better. Besides, I suspect he loves that ship as much as I do. Maybe more, since he’s had her out yonder, the lucky bastard. We are prepared against contingencies, Jayko. Therefore, God damn it, let me concentrate on this booze.’

Plik edged his way out of earshot in the hubbub. Though he continued to draw hostile stares, nobody abused him further.

An arm linked with his. Glancing down, he spied Lisba Yamamura of the library staff. ‘Hi,’ she said, almost timidly.

‘Why … hello.’ He was surprised. They had chance-met occasionally since their quarrel of several months ago, but a degree of coolness had prevailed between them. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m not quite sure lately, you?’

Plik shrugged a little, smiled a little.

‘If you’re thirsty, which I bet you are, be warned you’ll need half an hour at least to belly up to the bar,’ she told him. ‘Care for some of mine to tide you over?’

‘Thank you.’ He accepted her glass and took a modest sip. ‘But how do I deserve it?’

She gave him a long look. ‘You must be very lonely these days,’ she said.

‘Hm, well –’

‘Nobody wants to hear your songs, do they? Have you composed any new ones? These events ought to ’ve inspired you, whether or not you’d be wise to make it public.’

From the hall came a sound of deep young voices. The melody spread and strengthened, bringing in man after man.

‘Let a long-imprisoned thunder

Shake the mountains and the skies

While the stars behold a wonder

As we make Orion rise.

Death to tyranny!

Now the Wolf runs free!

Defy the gods on high, for they shall die.

And we’re faring,

And we’re faring,

And we’re faring forth to liberty! Liberty! Liberty!’

Plik shook his head. His lips had gone pale. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t try to compete with that.’

‘What?’ Lisba asked. ‘Stirring tune, yes, but I don’t think the words are anything special.’

‘They’re doggerel,’ Plik replied, while the rest of the song overrode all else. ‘However, don’t you see? I’m a poet of sorts, or claim to be. I invoke demons and afterward do my best to report what I saw. But this
is
the tongue of the demons themselves.’

He disengaged his arm from hers. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve doubtless offended you again.’