Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire Read online

  Captain Flandry-Defender of the Terran Empire

  Table of Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  Outpost of Empire

  The Day Of Their Return

  TIGER BY THE TAIL

  HONORABLE ENEMIES

  THE GAME OF GLORY

  I

  A Message in Secret

  Chronology of Technic Civilization

  COMPILED BY SANDRA MIESEL

  Captain Flandry:

  Defender of the Terran Empire

  Poul Anderson

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  "Introduction" copyright © 2009 by Hank Davis. "A Chronology of Technic Civilization" by Sandra Miesel copyright © 2008 by Sandra Miesel.

  Acknowledgements

  "Outpost of Empire"—originally published in Galaxy, December, 1967. Copyright © 1967, Galaxy Publishing Corp.

  The Day of Their Return—originally published as a Signet Book by The New American Library, Inc. Copyright © 1975 by Poul Anderson.

  "Tiger by the Tail"—originally published in Planet Stories, January, 1951. Copyright © 1951 by Love Romances Publishing Co., Inc.

  "Honorable Enemies"—originally published in Future combined with Science Fiction, May, 1951. Copyright © 1951 by Columbia Publications, Inc.

  "The Game of Glory"—originally published in Venture Science Fiction, March, 1958. Copyright © 1957 by Fantasy House, Inc.

  "A Message in Secret"—originally published in Fantastic, December, 1959. Copyright © 1959 by Ziff-Davis Publications, Inc. Reprinted 1961 by Ace Books, Inc. under the title Mayday Orbit.

  A Baen Book

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4391-3333-0

  Cover art by David Seeley

  First Baen printing, February 2010

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

  t/k

  Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)

  Printed in the United States of America

  Baen Books by Poul Anderson

  The Technic Civilization Saga

  The Van Rijn Method

  David Falkayn: Star Trader

  Rise of the Terran Empire

  Young Flandry

  Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire

  Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra (forthcoming)

  To Outlive Eternity and Other Stories

  Time Patrol

  Hokas! Pokas! (with Gordon R. Dickson)

  Hoka! Hoka! Hoka! (with Gordon R. Dickson)

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  I'm indebted to Sandra Miesel for informing me, when I was still gathering the novels and stories of the Technic Civilization universe, that Poul Anderson had done revisions to the Flandry stories appearing in the Ace editions of the earlier collections, Flandry of Terra and Agent of the Terran Empire. Without that information, this book and the next in the series would have reprinted the original versions of the stories instead of Anderson's more polished and preferred later versions. That's in addition to my already being indebted to Sandra for her indispensible chronology of the Technic Civilization series. Take a bow, Sandra.

  I'm also indebted to Karen Anderson for elucidating the pronunciation of Aycharaych, and to Geoffrey Kidd for catching a dumb factual mistake in my introduction, thereby making me look far more savvy than I am. Two more bows, if you will; and put your hands together, audience.

  ENTER AN ADVERSARY,

  CHARISMATIC AND RUTHLESS

  In fiction, not invariably but often, a resourceful and omnicompetent hero will be given a similarly formidable opponent. Sherlock Holmes had his Professor Moriarty, though for only one story, with a short mention in the final Holmes novel—after all, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created him specifically for the purpose of killing off his detective so that he could write about something else. Nero Wolfe had his Arnold Zeck, at greater length (three novels), James Bond his Ernst Stavro Blofeld (two novels, and a somewhat longer run, though initially as a barely-seen presence, in the movie versions). In comic books, the presence of an adversary is almost mandatory: Batman vs. the Joker; Superman vs. Lex Luthor; Captain Marvel vs. Dr. Thaddeus Bodog Sivana; etc.

  And Dominic Flandry has Aycharaych.

  Working with the Merseians, the primary enemy of the Terran Empire, Aycharaych is a redoubtable antagonist, charming in both personality and physical appearance, brilliantly intelligent—and possessing the ability to read minds. Possibly descended from birdlike ancestors on his homeworld Chereion, a planet about which the Merseians know little and the Terrans less, his head is hairless, having instead eyebrows of tiny feathers and a crest of larger feathers atop his head. His feet, usually bare, are birdlike with spurs on the ankles. When the Terran official Desai meets him in The Day of Their Return, the Chereionite's appearance makes him think of a Byzantine saint. That particular description will quickly become ironic, and lethally so.

  Saints also have causes for which they strive and even die. Aycharaych is working with the Merseians, but keeps a distant and amused attitude toward the Merseian-Terran conflict, as if it's all a game to him; certainly not a cause. He gives the impression that he's beyond causes, and seems to consider both Merseians and humans as his inferiors: clever animals, perhaps, and amusing ones, but nothing more.

  Ironic detachment aside, he has more respect for Dominic Flandry than for most humans or Merseians, and at one point tells Flandry that the two of them are very much alike. In "Honorable Enemies," included in this volume, he even saves Flandry's life in a tight spot—but makes it clear that his motive was that Flandry was useful. Forget about hail fellow, well met.

  In this fifth volume of the Technic Civilization saga, Aycharaych is active (mostly behind the scenes) in the novel The Day of Their Return, and personally makes Flandry's life more complicated in the aforementioned "Honorable Enemies." While the Chereionite is not involved in the other stories and novel contained herein, he will be an even more active nemesis to Flandry (and very much vice versa) in the sixth volume, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra. (Never let a good villain go to waste . . .)

  The reader may be wondering about the pronunciation of "Aycharaych." Karen Anderson reports that Poul based it on the initials HRH, but pronounced the first and third syllables ('aych') with a Mexican "Ay!" followed by a guttural 'ch' like Scottish "loch."

  Sandra Miesel, undisputed authority on most things Technic (and bordering on omnicompetent herself), has long kept track of its chronology and knows its cycles well.

  * * *

  As I mentioned in the introduction to the previous volume, Young Flandry, Dominic Flandry is offstage for the earlier part of this book. The curtain raiser, "Outpost of Empire," tells of rebellion on a planet at the edge of the Empire's domain and how a far greater tragedy was averted. (Flandry is brilliant, but doesn't have an absolute monopoly on competence.)

  That's followed by the novel The Day of Their Return, in which Flandry is briefly mentioned (his rank is still Commander), but remains offstage.

  Then comes the first published (1951) Flandry story, "Tiger by the Tail," and Flandry, now a captain, is back in action, though most of the action consists of subtle manipulation. (I wonder if Poul Anderson read Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest before writing this story.) There's more physical action in th
e second Flandry story to be published (also in 1951), "Honorable Enemies," and again the adversary is outfoxed, though Flandry this time has more than a little help from a very smart lady.

  I should mention again that Anderson originally thought of Flandry as a science fiction counterpart to Leslie Charteris' Simon Templar, usually referred to as the Saint, and while Templar was a crack shot with a pistol, an artist with a knife, and usually came out on top in a fistfight, much of the time he outthought the bad guys. At the end of one Saintly tale, two gangsters were maneuvered into machine-gunning each other as the Saint walked away into the fog. Templar and Flandry are not only men of action, but adroit chess players as well.

  A few years passed, and Flandry returned in 1957's novella "The Game of Glory." (Never let a good hero go to waste . . .) Then in 1959 came two Flandry novels. The earlier falls later in the overall Flandry timeline and will be in the next volume, but the other, A Message in Secret, concludes this book. In both, Flandry is once again a swash-buckler's swash-buckler and also adroitly outfoxes his enemies—and sometimes his allies as well.

  Poul Anderson was a born writer from the beginning, but the passage of a few years had honed his skills, so the later Flandry stories were written with a surer hand and Flandry was becoming a more rounded character. However, Anderson did some tweaking of the present stories before they appeared in two collections from Ace books at the end of the 1970s. The Flandry of those first two stories as they originally appeared, upon learning that the humans on a planet have near-religious feelings about Terra, might not have mused:

  He didn't want to tell them what Terra was actually like these days. (Or perhaps had always been. He suspected men are only saints and heroes in retrospect.) Indeed, he dare not speak of sottish Emperors, venal nobles, faithless wives, servile commons, to this armed and burning reverence.

  Or, elsewhere in the same yarn, might not have given voice to a complaining soliloquy:

  "This they call fun?" He tottered erect. Snow had gotten under his parka hood. It began to melt, trickling over his ribs in search of a really good place to refreeze. "Great greasy comets . . . I might have been sitting in the Everest House with a bucket of champagne, lying to some beautiful wench about my exploits . . . but no, I had to come out here and do 'em."

  And while we do overhear his thoughts in the version of "Honorable Enemies" included in this volume:

  . . . we're in the way of [the Mersians'] dream of galactic overlordship. We are the first ones they have to smash. Or so they believe. And so we believe. Never mind what the unascertainable objective truth of the matter may be. Belief is what brings on the killing.

  The more cynical of those thoughts, beginning with "Or so they believe," was added by Poul Anderson at the end of the 1970s, adding a touch of humanizing tarnish to his hero's polish; a bit of tarnish which throws Flandry's undeniable valor into sharper relief.

  No longer a cocky ensign, Flandry now has few illusions. (Mind, the cockiness isn't completely absent.) Yet he lacks any illusion that if the Terran Empire falls it will be replaced by anything that isn't much worse, including domination by the Merseians. And even if the Long Night is relentlessly approaching, he has no intention of going gentle into that Long Night. Instead, after donning the exceedingly colorful and flamboyant garb suitable to a decadent culture, he'll strap on a blaster, check to see that it's fully-charged, and prepare to go down fighting.

  But he won't be going down in the pages which follow. His fight will continue in the next two volumes of the Technic Civilization saga. See you there.

  —Hank Davis, 2009

  Outpost of Empire

  "No dragons are flying—"

  Karlsarm looked up. The fog around him was as yet thin enough that he could glimpse the messenger. Its wings sickled across nightblue and those few stars—like diamond Spica and amber Betelgeuse—which were too bright and near to be veiled. So deep was the stillness that he heard the messenger's feathers rustle.

  "Good," he murmured. "As I hoped." Louder: "Inform Mistress Jenith that she can get safely across open ground now. She is to advance her company to Gallows Wood on the double. There let someone keep watch from a treetop, but do not release the fire bees without my signal. Whatever happens."

  The sweet, unhuman voice of the messenger trilled back his order.

  "Correct," Karlsarm said. The messenger wheeled and flew northward.

  "What was that?" Wolf asked.

  "Enemy hasn't got anyone aloft, far as Rowlan's scouts can tell," Karlsarm replied. "I instructed—"

  "Yes, yes," growled his lieutenant. "I do know Anglic, if not bird language. But are you sure you want to keep Jenith's little friends in reserve? We might have no casualties at all if they went in our van."

  "But we'd have given away another secret. And we may very badly want a surprise to spring, one of these times. You go tell Mistress Randa the main body needs maximum cover. I'm after a last personal look. When I get back, we'll charge."

  Wolf nodded. He was a rangy man, harsh-faced, his yellow hair braided. His fringed leather suit did not mark him off for what he was, nor did his weapons; dirk and tomahawk were an ordinary choice. But the two great hellhounds that padded black at his heels could only have followed the Grand Packmaster of the Windhook.

  He vanished into fog and shadow. Karlsarm loped forward. He saw none of his hundreds, but he sensed them in more primitive ways. The mist patch that hid them grew tenuous with distance, until it lay behind the captain. He stopped, shadow-roofed by a lone sail tree, and peered before and around him.

  They had had the coastal marshes to conceal them over most of their route. The climb by night, however, straight up Onyx Heights, had required full moonlight if men were not to fall and shatter themselves. This meant virtually no moon on the second night, when they entered the cultivated part of the plateau. But with a sidereal period of two and a third days, Selene rose nearly full again, not long after the third sundown, and waxed as it crossed the sky. At present it was hardly past maximum, a dented disk flooding the land with iciness. Karlsarm felt naked to the eyes of his enemies. None seemed aware of him, though. Fields undulated away to a flat eastern horizon, kilometer after kilometer. They were planted in rye, silvery and silent under the moon, sweet-smelling where feet had crushed it. Far off bulked a building, but it was dark; probably nothing slept within except machines. The fact that agriculture took place entirely on robotized latifundia made the countryside thinly populated. Hence the possibility existed for Karlsarm of leading his people unobserved across it after sunset—to a five-kilometer distance from Domkirk.

  Even this near, the city looked small. It was the least of the Nine, housing only about fifty thousand, and it was the second oldest, buildings huddled close together and much construction underground in the manner of pioneer settlements. Aside from streets, its mass was largely unilluminated. They were sober folk here who went early to bed. In places windows gleamed yellow. A single modern skyscraper sheened metallic beneath Selene, and it too had wakeful rooms. Several upper facets of the cathedral were visible above surrounding roofs. The moon was so brilliant that Karlsarm would have sworn he could see color in their reflection of it.

  A faint murmur of machinery breathed across the fields. Alien it was, but Karlsarm almost welcomed the sound. The farmlands had oppressed him with their emptiness—their essential lifelessness, no matter how rich the crops and sleek the pastured animals—when he remembered his forests. He shivered in the chill. As if to seek comfort, he looked back westward. The fogbank that camouflaged the center of his army shimmered startlingly white. Surely it had been seen; but the phenomenon occurred naturally, this near the Lawrencian Ocean. Beyond the horizon, barely visible, as if disembodied, floated the three highest snowpeaks of the Windhoek. Home was a long march off: an eternal march for those who would die.

  "Stop that, you," Karlsarm whispered to himself. He unshipped his crossbow, drew a quarrel from his quiver, loaded and cocked the piece. Hard pull o
n the crank, snick of the pawl were somehow steadying. He was not a man tonight but a weapon.

  He trotted back to his people. The fog was thickening, swirling in cold wet drifts, as Mistress Randa sent ever more of her pets from their cages. He heard her croon a spell—

  "Shining mist, flow and twist,

  fill this cup of amethyst.

  Buzzing dozens, brotherlings,

  sing your lullaby of wings.

  Ah! the moonlight flew and missed!"

  He wondered if it was really needed. Why must women with Skills be that secretive about their work? He heard likewise the tiny hum of the insects, and glimpsed a few when Selene sparked iridescence off them. They kept dropping down to the ryestalks after they had exuded all the droplets they could, filling up with dew and rising again. Soon the cloud was so dense that men were almost blind. They kept track of each other by signals—imitated bird calls, chirrs, cheeps, mews—and by odor, most of them having put on their distinctive war perfumes.

  Karlsarm found Wolf near the red gleam of one hellhound's eyes. "All set?" he asked.

  "Aye. If we can keep formation in this soup."

  "We'll keep it close enough. Got a lot of practice in the tidelands, didn't we? Very well, here we go." Karlsarm uttered a low, shuddering whistle.

  The sound ran from man to man, squad to squad, and those who knew flutecat language heard it as: "We have stalked the prey down, let us leap."

  The fog rolled swiftly toward Domkirk; and none in the city observed that there was no wind to drive it.

  John Ridenour had arrived that day. But he had made planetfall a week earlier and before then had crammed himself with every piece of information about Freehold that was available to him—by any means necessary, from simple reading and conversation to the most arduous machine-forced mnemonics. His whole previous career taught him how little knowledge that was. It had amused as well as annoyed him that he ended his journey explaining things to a crewman of the ship that brought him thither.