Rise of the Terran Empire Page 14

  "War is inevitable between the Autarchy of Babur and the Solar Commonwealth. We have intelligence that the Commonwealth will seek to occupy the Maian System. Your resources would obviously be of extreme value to a navy campaigning far from home: especially the terrestroid planet Hermes. There bases are easy to build, repairs and munitions to make, accumulated toxins to flush out of the life support systems of ships; personnel can get rest and hospital care, recruits can possibly be found among the populace. The Imperial Band cannot permit this."

  "We're neutral!" Sandra's hands strained together. Their palms were damp, their fingers chill.

  "Your neutrality would not be respected," said the Baburite. "It is necessary that the Imperial Band forestall the Commonwealth and establish a protectorate. Hear us well. A fleet detachment, which your admiral will have told you is considerably your superior in strength, is waiting at the outer limits of your planetary system. Its mission is to prevent Commonwealth forces from entering.

  "You will cooperate with it. A majority of the crews are oxygen breathers who will be based on Hermes. Their correct behavior is guaranteed; but hostile actions directed at them will be severely punished. You will deal with them, as well as with the Baburite command, through our military authority.

  "Conduct yourselves properly, and you need have no fears. The Maian System contains no planet which Baburites could colonize. Their ways and yours are so mutually foreign that interference of one with another is unlikely in the extreme. You should instead fear Commonwealth imperialism, against which you will be shielded."

  Sandra half rose. "But we don't want your shielding—" She choked down more words like you filthy worm.

  "It is necessary that you accept," said the emotionless voice. "Resistance would cost the Imperial Band casualties, but you your entire armed service. Thereafter, Hermes would lie exposed to bombardment from space. Consider the welfare of your people."

  Sandra sank back. "When would you come?" she whispered.

  "We will move as soon as this conference is over."

  "No, wait. You realize not—I can't issue orders to a whole world, I've not dictatorial powers—"

  "You will have time to persuade. The ships of the Imperial Band will need it to deploy, since they cannot use hyperdrive within the inner parts of the system. You can be granted as much as four of your planetary rotations before the surrender of your navy and the landing of the first occupation units must be accepted."

  There was more: hot protest and frosty demand, plea and refusal, bargaining over detail after detail, wrath and despair met by calm immovability; but the time was far shorter than it would have been between two humans. The Baburite was simply not concerned about honorific formulas, face savings, alternatives, compromises. Conceivably it might have been, had the gulf between the races been less unbridgeably wide. Sandra remembered the cyanops on the cliff edge, hounds and hunters before it.

  When at last the screen blanked, she covered her eyes for a little before she summoned her cabinet to come witness the playback and give her what counsel it could.

  Up and down Eric Tamarin-Asmundsen paced, from end to end of the living room in his mother's apartment. She had set the lights low and left open the French doors to the balcony, for it was a beautiful night, both moons aloft and nearly full, dew aglimmer on lawns and the crowns of trees, cool air full of the odor of daleflower and the trills of a tilirra. Beyond the garden wall, a modest sky-glow from the city picked out a few steeples. The lamps of cars flitting overhead were like many-colored glowflies.

  Eric's boots thudded savagely on the carpet. "We can't just give in," he said for the dozenth frantic time. "We'd be slaves forever."

  "We're promised internal self-government," Sandra reminded him from the chair where she sat.

  "How much is that promise worth?"

  She drew heavily on her cigar. The smoke tasted harsh; she'd had too many in the past several hours. "I know not," she admitted in a flat tone. "Still, I can't imagine any interest the Baburites might take in our local politics."

  "Intend you to wait with folded hands and find out?"

  "We can't fight. Michael sent me his considered opinion that our forces are grossly outnumbered. Why kill and be killed to no good end?"

  "We can organize guerrillas."

  "They'd spend nigh their whole time surviving." At the present epoch, Hermes had a single continent, Greatland, so enormous that most of its interior was a desert of blazing summers and bitter winters. "Worse, they'd invite reprisals on everybody else. And never could they defeat well-equipped troops on the ground, missile-throwing ships in orbit."

  "Oh, we can't free ourselves alone." Eric's arm slashed the air. "But see you not, if we lie down to be walked on—if we actually add our fleet to theirs, let our factories work for them—why should the Commonwealth care what happens to us? It might leave us under Babur as part of a bargain. Whereas if we're its allies, no matter how minor—"

  Sandra nodded. "Believe me, the Council and I discussed this at length. I dare not tell Michael to lead our ships off. He'd be intercepted by a squadron of theirs, have to fight his way past them."

  Eric stopped in midstride. "Hermes isn't responsible if he and his men disobey your orders, is it?"

  Sandra locked her glance with his, for seconds. "The admiral and I have our understanding," she said at last.

  "What?" It blazed in Eric.

  "No untoward sentence passed between us. I'd better not say more, even to you."

  "And you're going, too!" he shouted. "A government in exile, by the whole Trinity, yes!"

  "My duty is here."

  "No."

  Sandra slumped. "Eric, dear, I'm wrung dry. Plague me not. You should go join Lorna."

  He gazed at the big woman, who had turned her face outward to the night, until he said, "All right. I see. For your part, will you help Lorna forgive me?"

  She nodded wearily. "I expected you'd go, and I'll not plead," she replied low. "You are my son."

  "And my father's."

  She shook her head. The ghost of a smile crossed her lips. "He'd not hare off to be a dashing warrior. He'd stay put and brew trouble till the Baburites wished they'd never stirred from their planet." Her calm broke. "Oh, Eric!" She dropped her cigar and rose, arms outspread. They embraced hard. Nothing remained to say in words. After a while, he kissed her and departed.

  He did not take the ducal space-yacht, but his personal runabout. It barely overhauled the Hermetian ships. They were already accelerating out of the system. Admiral Falkayn did not summon him aboard Alpha Cygni, but assigned him to the destroyer North Atlantis. That proved to be sound thinking.

  Soon afterward, as had been easily predictable, they encountered those units of the Baburite task force which were near enough to intercept them. As yet, they were too deep in Maia's gravitational well to go safely into hyperdrive. "Hold vectors steady," Falkayn ordered them. "We'll not have more than this engagement. Fire at will."

  The captain of North Atlantis had allowed Eric on the bridge as a courtesy, provided the heir apparent keep absolutely quiet. That was a command more stern than chains. Presently he felt the scourge, as the hostile forces closed.

  Around his eyes blazed the stars in their thousands, the Milky Way foamed across the girth of heaven, a nebula shone distance-dimmed bearing new suns and worlds in its womb, the Magellanic Clouds and the Andromeda galaxy glimmered in their mystery. That was one part of reality. The opposite part was the hardness which enclosed him, faint beat of driving energies and mumble of ventilators, men who stood thralls of instruments and controls, the wetness and reek of his own sweat . . . and a muttered "First shot theirs. Must've been a missile from Caduceus that stopped it," as flame winked briefly afar.

  The kinetic velocities of both groups were too high to match in a single pass. They intermingled, exchanging fire, for minutes; then they were moving out of effective range. Eric saw a ghastly rose unfold, where a weapon from his vessel had tracked down another
from the foe. Otherwise the explosions were remote, hundreds of kilometers off, and registered as glints; an energy beam striking a target did not register at all.

  Seated like a statue, the destroyer's captain heard the combat analysis officer report in a cracking voice: "Sir, practically every strike of theirs is concentrated on Alpha Cygni. They must hope to saturate her defenses."

  "I was afraid of that," the captain said dully. "The only capital ship we've got. The Baburites are more interested in stopping her than buzzbugs like this."

  "If we accelerated in her direction, sir, we might be able to catch a few of their missiles."

  "Our orders are to maintain our vectors." The captain's features remained visor-blank; but he glanced across at Eric. "The important thing is that some of us escape."

  The officer swallowed. "Aye, sir."

  A few minutes later, the information arrived: Alpha Cygni had taken a warhead. No further word came from her—but flash after flash of fireball did, for her screens and interceptors were now gone, and even receding, the Baburites could pound her hulk into dust and slag.

  The captain of North Atlantis looked straight at Eric. "I think you're our new commander, sir," he said.

  "C-carry on." The son of the Duchess wrestled down a scream.

  Battle faded out. Eventually the Hermetian flotilla dared enter hyperdrive. Detectors declared the enemy was not pursuing. Because they spent their main effort on the battleship, the invaders had taken losses of their own, making theirs temporarily the inferior force. Divisions of their armada elsewhere were too far-flung to have any hope of catching up. Besides, fighting at faster-than-light was a tricky business of drawing alongside and trying to match phase; a kill was too unlikely to make the attempt worthwhile, when Hermes had not yet been brought under the yoke.

  Eric rose. Each muscle felt like a separate ache. "Proceed toward Sol at the highest feasible rate," he ordered. "Have everybody stand by for a message from me." His grin was acid. "I'd better give them a talk, not?"

  In this wise died Michael Falkayn, older brother of David and, since their father's death a pair of years ago, head of the Falkayn domain.

  XI

  As swift as any vessel in that near-infinitesimal droplet of the galaxy which we have slightly explored, Muddlin' Through reached Earth almost simultaneously with the first messengers from the embattled Mirkheim expedition, whose survivors would not come limping in for two or more weeks. Traffic Control kept her hours in orbit. Her crew did manage to swap a few radioed words with Nicholas van Rijn. "I will meet you at Ronga," the merchant said—and little else, when communication was surely being monitored.

  The likelihood of war had evidently thrown the bureaucrats in charge of space safety into a blue funk. But clearance finally came. Ship and pilot were licensed to set down anywhere on the planet that adequate facilities existed. Muddlehead got orders to make for a certain atoll in the South Pacific Ocean.

  Approached from above, the scene was impossibly lovely. The waters shone in a thousand shades of blue and green, sunlight sparkling over their wrinkled vastness; breakers burst silvery on the coral necklace of the island, within whose arc a lagoon lay like an amethyst; tall clouds massed in the west, their purity shaded azure, while elsewhere heaven was a dome of light. We have so few places like this left on Earth, David Falkayn thought fleetingly. Is that—not ambition, not adventure, no, the longing for a peace which only our genes remember—is that what really sends us out into the universe?

  Feather-softly, landing jacks touched the surface of a small paved field. The main personnel lock opened and its gangway extruded. Falkayn had been waiting there, but Chee Lan darted between his legs and reached ground first, bounced in the air, sped to the adjacent beach, and rolled on warm white sand. He followed more sedately, until he saw who came to meet him. Then he also ran.

  "Davy, oh, Davy!" Coya flung herself at him and they kissed for an unbroken minute or better, while Adzel paraded discreetly by. Waves rushed and murmured, seabirds cried.

  "I tried to call you right after the boss," Falkayn stammered. What a poor greeting words gave.

  "He'd already contacted me, told me to come here," she said, leaning happily against him.

  "How're Juanita and X?" He saw, as he had felt, the growth of the child within her during the weeks of his absence.

  "Fat and sassy. Look over yonder. C'mon." She tugged his arm.

  Van Rijn stood at the border of the field, holding his great-granddaughter by the hand. As the newcomers reached them, the girl released herself, flew to Daddy to be hugged, then from his embrace looked up at Adzel and chirped, "Ride?"

  The dragon set her on his back and all started for the house. Palms soughed in a wind whose salt was sweetened by odors of jasmine; hibiscus and bougainvillea glowed ardent in arbors. "Welcome home, by damn," van Rijn boomed. "Was a poxy long wait, not knowing if you was chopped into cutlets or what."

  Falkayn broke stride. A chill blew across his joy. "Then you didn't get our dispatch?" he said. "We sent a torp from the neighborhood of Mogul."

  "No, nothings. Our data bank stayed bare as a mermaid's bottom."

  Falkayn's grip tightened around Coya's waist. That time had surely been, for her, the frozen ninth circle of hell. "I was afraid you might not," he said slowly.

  "You mean somebody snaffled it?" Coya asked.

  "Ja," van Rijn growled. "The Space Service, who elses? Plain to see, they got secret orders to take anything for me to somebody different."

  "But that's illegal!" she protested.

  "The Home Companies is behind it, of course, and in a case like this they don't give snot whether it's illegal or well eagle. I hope you used cipher, Davy."

  "Yes, naturally," Falkayn said. "I don't think they can have broken it."

  "No, but you see, they kept me from getting maybe an advantage in this diarrhea-fluid situation we got. I seven-point-three-tenths expected it . . . . Here we are." The party climbed the steps, crossed a verandah, and entered an airily furnished room where stood a table covered with drinks and snacks.

  Chee soared to a chair, crouched on it, and chattered, "You've heard about a battle commencing at Mirkheim, I gather. We were there. Earlier, the wan-yao jan-gwo chai reng pfs-s-st Baburites jailed us—" Her native phrase gave a succinct description of their ancestors, morals, personal cleanliness, and fate if she could have her way.

  "Oh, no," Coya breathed.

  "Hold, hold," van Rijn commanded. "I decree first we snap some schnapps, with a little liter or so of beer in tow and maybe a few herring filets or such for ballast. You do not want your new baby should become an adrenalin addict, ha?"

  "Nor this young lady," said Adzel, for Juanita's giggles had given place to a worried silence. He reached around, lifted her off his shoulders, and started juggling her from hand to enormous hand. She squealed in delight. Her parents didn't mind; she was safer with him than with anybody else they knew, including themselves.

  "Well—" Falkayn could not quite yield to pleasure. "What's been happening at home?"

  "Nothing, except the bomb going ticktacktoe," van Rijn said. "Bayard Story, he made one last try to get me in combination with the Seven, what meant putting me under their orders. I told him to paint it green, and he left the Solar System. Otherwise, only rumors, and news commentators who I would like to do a hysteria-ectomy on."

  "Who's Bayard Story?" Chee inquired.

  "A director of Galactic Developments, delegate to the meeting at Lunograd," van Rijn told her. "He was pretty much the spokesman for the Seven. In fact, I suspect he was the wheelsman."

  "Mmm, yes, I remember now, I happened to see his arrival on a newscast," Falkayn put in. "I admired his skill in giving the reporter a brief, crisp, straightforward statement that didn't say a flinkin' thing." He turned to Coya. "No matter. Haven't you anything special to relate, darling?"

  "Oh, I was offered a contract by Danstrup Cargo Carriers," she answered, referring to an independent within the League. S
ince she stopped trade pioneering, she had worked out of her home as a high-powered free-lance computer programmer. "They wanted an analysis of their best strategy in case of war. Everybody is terrified of war, nobody knows what the consequences would be, nobody wants it, but still we drift and drift . . . . It's horrible, Davy. Can you imagine how horrible?"

  Falkayn brushed a kiss across her hair. "Did you take the job?"

  "No. How could I, not being sure what had become of you? I've filled in the time with routine-type stuff. And—and I've played a lot of tennis, that sort of thing, to help me sleep." She shared his distrust of chemical consolations.

  In a way, van Rijn did too. He used alcohol not as a crutch but as a pogo stick. "Drink, you slobberwits!" he roared. "Or do I have to give it to you with a hypochondriac needle? You got home safe, that's what matters first. So crow about it; then look at this nice table of goodies and raven."