Orphan's Triumph (Jason Wander) (17 page)

His eyes had sunk into pits in his face. He dragged fingers across gray stubble on hollow cheeks and croaked. “They won’t shave me, sir. It’s driving me crazy.”

In thirty years, Ord had never admitted discomfort to a living soul, so far as I knew.

“I’ll speak to the nurse.” A lie. If he bled out one nick’s worth, there would be nothing left. He said, “You’re going to outlive me.”

My throat swelled so I couldn’t speak. I waved my hand. “Ahhh.”

“I’m glad. No man should bury his son.”

He had slipped away from reality. I whispered, “Sergeant Major, I’m not—”

“Yes. The way Jude is yours. I’m as proud of you as you are of him.”

“Proud? I never got things right.”

“But you always tried.”

I laid my hand on his arm.

His lips moved. “You’re on your own now, Jason.”

Six minutes later, his skin was cold beneath my fingers.

THIRTY-FIVE

THE CLANS OF BREN cremate their dead on pyramidal pyres of gathered wood, and the time of Ord’s funeral was dictated by the hour at which a pyre of a size appropriate to the departed’s station was completed.

Bassin the First, himself, as a comrade in arms of the departed, would place the last log on Ord’s pyre.

Bassin ruled a kingdom divided against itself, plains hunters and desert nomads against the worldly Marini, and, within Marin itself, abolitionists against slave holders. And none of the clans were crazy about having us neocolonial motherworlders on their soil. But Ord had fought shoulder to shoulder with them all when we had all made common cause and expelled the Slugs from Bren after thirty thousand years.

Therefore, over the next three days, Tassini Scouts carried janga wood from the Tassin desert, Casuni warriors brought scrub oak from the Stone Hills, and Bassin dispatched his royal barge upriver to gather magnolia from the base of the Falls of the Marin. Only when all that had been completed did Ord’s funeral begin, on a clear, cold night in the center of our landing field. The full White Moon lit the field so that the moon’s light reflected off Earth troops’ Eternad armor. It also reflected off the breastplates of mounted Casuni warriors on reined-in duckbills and off the delicate swords of Tassini Scouts mounted on twitching, ostrichlike wobbleheads. Crowds of civilian freemen and freewomen gathered, too, attracted by the spectacle.

Meanwhile, preparations to retake the Red Moon from the Slugs advanced. I had slept three hours each of the last three nights. I could have slept longer. My staff, the Marini, the Zoomies, and most of all the landing troops had forged and practiced a plan that I believed would succeed. We would retake the Red Moon, we would seek out the Slugs’ home, and we would win the war. Ord had seemed to think that we would, and Ord had never been wrong.

The Red Moon rose above the horizon and silhouetted the fifty-foot-high pyramid that Bassin now climbed. After Bassin placed the last log, actually a ceremonial stick, Ord’s catafalque was borne to the pyramid’s top by a joint honor guard, then set ablaze.

I stood alongside Jude, both of us left of, and a pace behind, Bassin. A Marini band piped a dirge. Jude whispered, “How are you doing, Jason?”

I shrugged. “I spent these last few days with him. Soldiers don’t usually get to see death coming. I thought we’d talk about things that mattered. Things we hadn’t said. But mostly we watched war movies and told stories. Sometimes we laughed.” I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

The Red Moon, still befogged by the Slug fleet that kept us from it, had risen so high now that its disk intersected the roiling smoke plume that had been Ord.

In the civilian crowd, a murmur rose.

I shot Bassin a glance.

He leaned toward Jude and me and whispered, “It’s nothing. If a warrior’s smoke crosses his enemy’s path before battle, it’s bad luck.”

I whispered, “Sure. It means he’s already dead.”

The dirge ended.

Jude said, “Huh?”

I stared where my godson was staring, up at the Red Moon, which seemed smaller. The Red Moon shrank in the sky, from basketball-size to melon-size.

The murmur spread to the Casuni and Tassini ranks, then to the more worldly Marini soldiers, and finally to my troops.

Overhead, the Red Moon, our key to victory, had become as tiny as a crimson pea. Then it winked out altogether.

Now the Tassini and Casuni pointed and shouted. Their mounts pranced and snorted. Within the old city, miles from us, an alarm bell sounded, then another, then more, until the night echoed with them.

Bassin muttered, “This is impossible.”

I shook my head slowly as I stared at the night sky of Bren, which for the first time in human experience held only one moon. “Expect the worst from the gods of war and they will seldom disappoint you.”

THIRTY-SIX

ORD’S FUNERAL PYRE had burned out by the time the White Moon set and the sun rose. Recent events considered, a wagering man could have cleaned up last night simply by betting that the sun would rise. Bassin had returned to the Summer Palace in the old city to show the flag of stability and, I supposed, to figure out how to explain the disappearance of the moon—disappearance of the moon!—to his subjects, before his enemies blamed it on him.

As commander in chief, the last thing I could do under the circumstances was act like the sky had fallen, even though it had, in reverse. So I sat at the head of my conference table in my conference room, with my staff plus Howard and Jude, and conducted my daily staff meeting. When we arrived at new business, I turned to Howard. “What happened?”

He removed his old-fashioned glasses and rubbed his eyes. “It took us years to figure out how to achieve a controlled breach in the containment of the Red Moon’s Cavorite. The difficulty and scope of the task was more complex to us at this state of human knowledge than the Manhattan Project, to develop nuclear fission bombs, was last century. It could have taken the Pseudocephalopod far longer to develop the process, for all we know. What we do know is that the Pseudocephalopod implemented the process within weeks of its occupation of the Red Moon.”

Tierney, whom I had brevet promoted to sergeant major, asked, “Did they blow the Red Moon up?”

Howard shook his head. “The Pseudocephalopod achieved a controlled breach of the Red Moon’s Cavorite. It harnessed the moon’s own ability to be pulled in one direction by the gravity of half of this universe. In effect, it made the Red Moon into a starship, a hot-rod engine of planetary proportions.”

Somebody said, “Then the Slugs drove the hot rod off the lot at two-thirds the speed of light.”

Tierney said, “The frigging moon just disappeared, Colonel Hibble. Why are things still so normal?”

Howard said, “If Earth lost its moon overnight, the tidal consequences alone would be catastrophic. But the very property, disobedience to the so-called law of gravity, that makes the Red Moon able to act as its own power plant renders its departure an astrophysical nonevent.”

I said, “No problems for Bren?”

Howard shook his head. “Physically, no. Without the Red Moon to reflect sunlight, nights on Bren will be a little darker from now on. That’s about it.”

My indigenous population liaison officer said, “But socioeconomically, it’s a handful. Bassin’s still a brand-new king, by Bren standards, and the first male monarch in six hundred years. His enemies are saying the moon’s disappearance is a bad omen. That abolition and personal freedom and toadying to us motherworlders are bringing Armageddon.”

I set my jaw. “Without us, Bren would still be part of the Pseudocephalopod Hegemony, and their kids would still be dying of smallpox.”

“Sir, we hear that Bassin’s cabinet is advising him to crack down on his dissenters. And they want us to do the dirty work. And take the blame.”

I nodded. “He asked me to meet him at the palace in an hour. Let’s see what he wants.” I turned to Howard, again. “Okay. Let’s address our new situation. Obviously, we can’t retake the Red Moon the way we planned. Can we chase it down?”

Howard shook his head. “With a head start, and a screen of protective spacecraft, all of which it’s willing to expend to keep us from following, the Red Moon’s effectively gotten away clean.”

“To where?”

“I dunno.”

“What are the Slugs gonna do with it?”

“I dunno.”

“But the Red Moon could be used to reverse the course of the war, against us?”

Howard shrugged. “By sabotaging Silver Bullet, it already has. But you mean, could the Pseudocephalopod use the Red Moon offensively? In some unimagined capacity? Yes, it could.”

“Howard, are we out of options?”

“Only the good ones.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

THE STREETS OF MARINUS usually resemble Paris with friendlier drivers. Earth electrics like the staff car that carried me to the Summer Palace, via the boulevards and crooked alleys of the old city, usually elicited smiles and waves from hack drivers and kids on the sidewalks. Silent electrics didn’t spook draft duckbill teams pulling wagons, the way Earth horseless carriages did at the beginning of the last century. But the day after the Red Moon was kidnapped, drivers in the streets were surly with one another and with me, and crowds picketed outside the palace gates.

Picketing, or more specifically affording citizens the right to assemble freely and petition the government for redress of grievances, was a concept that had rubbed off on Bassin from translated history chipbooks I had given him. At the moment, he probably wanted to give them back. A sergeant of the Household Guard, plumed and armored and as stiff as his sword, led me to Bassin the First. I recognized him. He had been a platoon sergeant during the Expulsion—in fact I had decorated him myself.

As we clattered up stone stairs, I asked, “What do you make of recent developments, Sergeant?”

He snorted into his gray mustache. “If I may be blunt, General?”

“One soldier to another, Sarge.”

“This old world’s still turning today, ain’t she? If His Majesty would say the word, I’d drop a boiling oil cauldron on them bellyachers. We still got the old cauldrons in the gatehouse. That’s what the queen, may paradise spare her from allies, would have done already.”

“Yep. That’s how we treat dissidents where I come from, Sarge.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Really, sir?” Then he smiled and nodded. He leaned back toward me and covered his mouth with his hand as he whispered, “I suggested it to His Majesty. Perhaps you could put in a word, as well?”

I sighed. “If it comes up.”

Bassin received me on a terrace outside his apartments, overlooking the distant crowds. We stood staring down, our hands on the terrace rail. Bassin smiled, his lips tight. “In my grandmother’s day—in my
mother
’s day—no one would have dared assemble to express dissatisfaction with monarchial stewardship.”

I smiled back. “Second thoughts about reform?”

“Daily. My grandmothers and my mother would be appalled at the state of the nation. The aristocrats and the western tribes are.”

“Maybe even some of your household staff.”

He smiled again. “Ah, yes. The boiling oil.”

“You
could
go back to doing things the way your family always did them. Even that. You
are
the king.”

The absolute monarch of Bren, who had lost a leg and an eye as a maverick crown prince opposed to slavery, crossed his arms. “I’d sooner be hanged and disemboweled by a mob.”

I eyed the protestors beyond the gates. “Be careful what you wish for. I hear your advisers want us to pour the oil for you.”

“They do. But I
am
king. Jason, if I resort to force at the first disagreement…” He shook his head.

“We’ll stay the course of civil resolution here. We’ll assist the motherworld any way we can with the wider war, but you’re the ones with the starships.”

“If you weren’t going to ask me to have my troops break some heads, then why did you ask me here?”

“Not to ask anything of you, my friend. To ask how you’re managing. Ord was more to you than an exceptional noncommissioned officer.”

I stared out across the city, at the slow-flowing River Marin. “I don’t know. How did you manage when your mother died?”

“Badly at first. But they say a son isn’t fully realized until his last parent is gone. I suppose that’s literally true for an heir to a throne. You lost your last parent long ago, but the sergeant major, I think, stepped into that role for you since. Now, Jason, we’re both orphans. There’s no one to point the way for us. Now it’s our job to point the way for others, and the only compass we have is within us.”

Howard was waiting in my office when I got back from the Summer Palace.

He looked up, a nicotine gum stick between his fingers. “Did Bassin need help?”

I cocked my head. “No, I don’t think so. But he gave me some. What’re you doing here?”

“You asked about options.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Howard, what haven’t you been telling me this time?”

He scrunched up his face. “Can I just show you?”

THIRTY-EIGHT

HOWARD WALKED ME BACK TO HIS OFFICE, two flights down. He pointed at an ancient black-and-white photograph, framed on his wall. A man in a wide-brimmed hat and broad-lapelled suit that accentuated his thinness stood staring at the camera, alongside a beefier, mustached man in the last-century uniform of a U.S. Army two-star. The caption set in the mat around the photo read “Oppenheimer with Groves. Los Alamos, 1944.”

I tapped the glass over the picture, a copy of which hung in every office I’d ever known Howard to make a mess of. “Your patron saints.”

Howard stood beside me, arms crossed, staring into the gray and long-dead faces. “Silver Bullet is this century’s Manhattan Project, Jason.”

If the Slugs hadn’t demonstrated the ability to neutralize our nukes from the get-go, the Manhattan Project could have been the Manhattan Project of this century.

Howard always understated his case about Silver Bullet’s scope and importance. He did so less from modesty than from his Spook reflex to conceal the project and its cost. The concealment was more from the people who paid for it than from the Slugs, who really seemed to care less about us. Compared to Silver Bullet, the Manhattan Project had been the technological equivalent of plumbing. The Manhattan Project had also been cheaper to the society that funded it. Cheaper by the degree that a cheeseburger is cheaper than an ocean liner, and the Manhattan Project had produced not one but two atom bombs within three years. Howard’s Spooks had labored for three decades and counting without success.