The Parafaith War (3 page)

“Ye shall not be afrightened by them, for the Lord thy God is among thee, a mighty god and terrible. And He shall deliver their kings unto thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their names from under heaven. There shall be no man or woman to stand against thee, not even those who once would have lived forever, and ye shall render them unto dust and raise on that dust new mansions in thy Father’s house, as it is His will….”

At 0650 Trystin, a mug of Sustain in hand, crossed the space between the small galley and the control center, conscious that Voren had been watching from the command chair The incense odor had died down, but the ammonia remained, as did the citrus-bitter smell of Sustain. Sustain with him.

“You’re looking cheerful.” Voren straightened. “Glad that incense smell is gone.” “Don’t feel that cheerful.”

Voren’s eyes glazed as he kicked out of the system. Then he stood up. “Hate the swing watch. That extra half hour is murder,” “Anything happen?”

“No. Been watching for something more from the stupid paraglider-but nothing. Damned revs’ll show up before long, though. Bet on that. But it’s your baby. I’m going to get some sleep.” Voren stood and yawned, then turned and trudged down toward the bunking cubicles, running his hand through his dark brown hair.

After settling into the command seat, Trystin scanned the messages waiting for him. Most were routine, except for three.

“Trystin Desoll, LT, SecWatch, East Red Three, from Perimeter Control. Re yours of 1651 13/10/788 concerning new rev tactic. Appreciate datadump and parameters. Will advise you further.”

Advise him further? About what? What else wasn’t Per-Con telling him? ‘ The second one, from Quentar, was shorter. “Trystin, Weslyn didn’t get your warning in time. Terrible mess. The second squad from the last paraglider dump hit East Red Six about the same time they hit you. Damned revs.”

He hadn’t really known Weslyn-just vaguely remembered him as short and squarish, darker even than the Eco-Tech norm, and one of the newest Service officers on Mara.

The third message was puzzling. “Trystin Desoll, LT, SecWatch, East Red Three. Report MedCen, Klyseen, Mara, 0900, 10/21/788, for screening as per Farhkan f/up study. Considered duty day.”

Farhkan follow-up study? What the frig was that? He on-lined his own file for a key-word search, while he went four-screen. The screens showed all defense equipment functioning and ready; no movement along the hundred kays of his perimeter; and no storms building over the badlands, although those didn’t usually appear until midday or later.

Cling. The mental chime alerted him that the system had located the Farhkan references. Trystin scanned through them, nodding as he remembered. When he had just been finishing his Service officer training, he, and all the other trainees about to be commissioned, had received an invitation to take part in a study sponsored by the Farhkan cultural mission. The study involved periodic in-depth physicals and occasional interviews. Participation also provided an annual bonus of nearly three percent of his base pay. He’d signed up, taken the physical, and forgotten about the requirement for follow-ups.

Trystin shrugged. If the physical made it a duty day off the perimeter line, that was an added bonus. He could probably even count on spending part of the day with Ezildya.

Dropping his attention back to full four-screen, he squared himself in the command chair.

“Anything new, ser?” Ryla’s voice snapped through the link.

“Nothing yet. Could be we’ll have a quiet day. They happen sometimes.”

“Sometimes, ser.” Ryla sounded less than certain. “Did the shuttle get our prisoners? And … raw materials?” Trystin could have checked himself, but he was making conversation.

“Yes, ser. Packed away on the 0440, rear section. Authenticated by Brysan. Mangrin flicked receipt already.” “Hope Yressa makes the survivors sweat.” “Me, too.” Ryla paused. ‘The crackers are down to eighty-five percent. We’ll need an overhaul on the ones in towers four and fourteen in the next month. Could be sooner. I’ll copy you on the report.” “Stet.”

As the noncom began his daily business of checking, scheduling, and troubleshooting the forward reclamation equipment, Trystin flicked the satellite plot into high resolution and tried to study the hills, but all he really got were blurs and an incipient headache.

In some ways, the perimeter setup didn’t make the best military sense, because the installations were too close to the perimeter, but the reclamation equipment was there because its job was to change headland and badland into something more receptive to the cross-gene engineered plantings that were laid down in patterns following the initial soil cracking.

So … the perimeter defense installations were set, and periodically moved forward, to protect the most expensive and critical equipment from the revvie attacks. And the greenery followed, kays and: kays behind.

Trystin’s principal duty was to protect the equipment, and the installation, just like every other Service officer’s job on the Maran perimeter was. Or in the Helconyan satellite stations. Or in the Sasktoon perimeter lines, or the Safryan Belt installations, row that Safrya was basically habitable.

With the thought of Helconya, he wondered how Salya’s biologicals were going. She’d always had that kind of bent, enjoying their father’s gardens from the time she could reach out to the flowers. Trystin smiled. His older sister had talent, talent beyond screen-watching and neutralizing revs.

At 09:06.51, his senses seared alert-red, and Trystin overlayd the four-split with the command options.

What looked to be another squad of revs had poured from over the steepest hill, sliding through the local equivalent of a cross between a cactus and scrub brush. They carried long objects larger than the standard assault rifles. Trystin could count nearly two full squads of the lightning-streaked suits, their new heatshielding clearly effective against the sensors.

“Revs at zero eight nine-” Ryla’s observation came late. Ping! Ping! Crumpt!

The three-screen identified the heavy penetrating shells and the boosted rocket pyres as they impacted the composite armor of the sector building. Trystin belatedly shielded the fans, then dumped the attack report on-line.

Both the weapons and the revs were aimed, not at the rear, and main, reclamation towers, but toward the sector building housing Trystin, the sector maintenance-equipment center, and the sector perimeter-defense center. Ping! Crumpt! Crumpt!

The explosions sent vibrations through the building. “Heavy shells, ser!” The revs surged forward. Crumpt! Crumpt! The sector building shook with the impact of the shells and pyres, and Trystin could feel the damage-assessment reports building in the backfile. He triggered the antipersonnel gattlings. After the day before, he had no desire to risk more revvie booby traps, and this was the most heavily armed group of revs he’d personally seen. Osberyl-tipped, depleted uranium shells fragmented across the revvie line. CRUUMPTTT’!!!

The entire sector control building rocked with the explosion, and Trystin dropped from four-screen into status, flashing through the maintenance lines, finding minor damage, jammed internal portals, but a ninety-two-plus status. While atmospheric integrity remained, his hand touched the emergency respirator pak in his belt for reassurance, long after his mind had returned to four-screen to survey the area to the east of the sector building.

He shook his head and went on-line to send a follow-up report to PerCon.

“Perimeter Control, from East Red Three, station under attack by single squad. Have neutralized revs. Will follow up with analysis.”

The reddish sands showed only fragments of synthfab and a spray of brownish lumps-that and a superficial fusing of the soil’s silicon, a fusing that pointed like an antique arrow toward the command center. “What was that, ser?” “Something new, Ryla. Still analyzing.” “They just exploded, ser.”

Trystin had already called up the visuals and frozen them. The explosion had taken place faster than the scanner speed, but from what Trystin could tell, the gattlings’ antipersonnel shrapnel had triggered something.

He froze the attack visuals and went back to four-scan for another sweep of East Red Three, but the visuals and the heat sensors showed a three-kay clearance, not that the sensors were all that accurate if the revs came in with insulation-like the last two waves had.

He flicked back to the visuals and full sensor screens of the attack, trying not to shake his head as he did. At least two of the revs had literally turned into the human equivalent of shaped charges with the impact of the heavy gattling shrapnel. He studied the suit shapes again and frowned. “Ryla?” “Yes, ser?”

“You filed that report on the new revvie suit fabric, didn’t you?” . “Yesterday.”

“Take a look at the attack visuals and the energy flows. They’ll be in your screens in a moment. It looks like the fabric has something like one-way energy reflection that works with explosives.” From what Trystin could tell from the screen recordings, the fabricat least the part in front of the back-carried respirator paks-had turned the biolectric explosion forward and toward the sector building. If the revs had been much closer … He did shake his head.

Better heat-sensor insulation, more scout coverage, more glider wings, bioelectric suicide traps, hand-carried heavy weapons, and now this.

“Bastards … you mean they’re turning their troops into shaped charges?”

“I don’t know that it’s quite that bad-just the ones who are captured or killed by high-impact charges.”

“That’s most of them, isn’t it?” asked the noncom. “What about the ones you sent to Yressa?” “Shit … talk to you later.”

He remembered to unshield the fans-he worried about the power drain, since the promised organonutrient tanker hadn’t shown yet. A fusactor would have been more practical in some ways, but the Eco-Tech compact kept nuclear power in orbit and deep-space ships. He kept checking the sensors and the satellite plot, even as he direct-fed his third urgent report to PerCon in as many days-and then copied both reports to the South Ocean reclamation station where Yressa directed the rev captives. He wiped his forehead. What did the revs want? For every one of their troops to be killed? Was Quentar right in claiming the only safe rev was a dead rev? he took another scan of the maintenance status of the station before linking to Ryla’s console.

“Yes, ser?” “Most of it can wait, but that side door on the lower

level is leaking, and it’s getting worse.” “I’d already flagged that, ser, and I’ll try to get it sealed.” “How about the other doors?” “I might be able to handle it later, and maybe tonight… ” “Thanks.”

Trystin went back to a full-concentration scan of the four screens before leaning back in the command seat and letting the systems work for him.

If the information he’d gotten from the captured revs had been correct, there couldn’t be too many more squads from the downed paraglider. On the other hand, there could be as many as sixty gliders on their way down to Mara, although Trystin doubted that the DefNet had been that lax.

HHssttt… ssss… The long, low crackle hiss-burned through the implant, and Trystin checked the metplot, noting that wind shift had apparently resulted in a storm buildup earlier than usual.

He shook his head, not really wanting to damp the system’s sensitivity. Instead he continued to study the four screens, wincing at each burst of static. Still, the rising winds were good for the power system.

The mental cling! alerted Trystin to the incoming, and he called it up on his internal screen.

“Trystin Desoll, LT, SecWatch, East Red Three, from Perimeter Control. Re yours of 0926 14/10/788, Send full datadump to PerCon and to RESCOM.”

With a deep breath Trystin began compiling the datadump requested by PerCon, although it took little enough time, objectively. It just seemed like forever. He tagged the dump with a cover transmittal and pulsed it out. “Perimeter Control/RESCOM [Klyseen], from Trystin DesoII, LT, SecWatch, East Red Three. As per request. datadump follows”

Was it only 1100? He hoped Yressa and the research people could cheek on the latest rev captives and that he hadn’t sent them troyens. He wiped his forehead. How could anyone know that the revs were getting even sneakier?

He scanned the screens with full concentration, hut nothing showed to the cast besides the red sandy soil, the hills, the ammonia cacti, the weedgrass clumps, and the gathering clouds that promised headaches later in the day.

After standing and stretching, Trystin walked around the command seat. He really didn’t need to stay that close to the main console. The direct neural input was faster, but the rules were there iii case the implant-based systems went, and he had to run the defenses manually— not that he wanted to. Not being able to react fast enough was a good way to get killed, and manual operation was far slower. But using a defective net was also a quick way to overloading his implant-and to neural burnout.

Finally, he walked back to the galley to refill the cup of Sustain, and then trotted back up to the command seat.

Outside, in the thin atmosphere, the precrackers turned soil, and the crackers cracked it. To the west, the planters dropped the cross-gene plantings in patterns. To the south, the latest water comet melted, and the water-vapor content of the atmosphere climbed marginally, and bit by hit the amount of oxygen rose.

Beyond the red-blue haze that was the sky, more troid ships were flung out of the revvie systems, and more paragliders and troops were on their way toward Mara, and Trystin. Why did the revs beat on the Coalition, rather than the Hyndji systems or the Argenti plutocracy? Was it because ecologic technology was the closest thing to the genetic manipulation that had created the immortals? Or because the Coalition was closer and had more potentially habitable real estate? And why did all the revs seem so certain about the rectitude of their ways?

lie took another sip of Sustain and studied the screens, waiting for Gerfel. Tonight, no matter how he felt, no matter how bad the exercise room smelled, he was going through his workout. Tonight. He studied the screens and sipped Sustain.