Ensign Flandry Read online

  Beneath lowered bushy brows, behind a tobacco cloud, Abrams regarded him. “Telling me my business?” His tone was mild.

  “No, sir. Certainly not. I—I’ve gotten plenty of respect for you.” The idea flamed. “Sir! You do have more information than you admit! A pipeline to—”

  “Shut up.” The voice stayed quiet, but Flandry gulped and snapped to an automatic brace. “Keep shut up. Understand?”

  “Y-yes, sir.”

  Abrams glanced at his team. None of them had noticed.

  “Son,”

  he murmured, “you surprise me. You really do. You’re wasted among those flyboys. Ever considered transferring to the spyboys?”

  Flandry bit his lip.

  “All right,” Abrams said. “Tell uncle. Why don’t you like the idea?”

  “It—I mean—No, sir, I’m not suited.”

  “You look bundled to the ears to me. Give me a break. Talk honest. I don’t mind being called a son of a bitch. I’ve got my birth certificate.”

  “Well—” Flandry rallied his courage. “This is a dirty business, sir.”

  “Hm. You mean for instance right here? Charlie?”

  “Yes, sir. I … well, I sort of got sent to the Academy. Everybody took for granted I’d go. So did I. I was pretty young.”

  Abrams’ mouth twitched upward.

  “I’ve … started to wonder, though,” Flandry stumbled. “Things I heard at the party … uh, Donna d’Io said—You know, sir, I wasn’t scared in that sea action, and afterward it seemed like a grand, glorious victory. But now I—I’ve begun remembering the dead. One Tigery took a whole day to die. And Charlie, he doesn’t so much as know what’s going to happen to him!”

  Abrams smoked a while. “All beings are brothers, eh?” he said.

  “No, sir, not exactly, but—”

  “Not exactly? You know better’n that. They aren’t! Not even all men are. Never have been. Sure, war is degrading. But there are worse degradations. Sure, peace is wonderful. But you can’t always have peace, except in death, and you most definitely can’t have a peace that isn’t founded on hard common interest, that doesn’t pay off for everybody concerned. Sure, the Empire is sick. But she’s ours. She’s all we’ve got. Son, the height of irresponsibility is to spread your love and loyalty so thin that you haven’t got enough left for the few beings and the few institutions which rate it from you.”

  Flandry stood motionless.

  “I know,” Abrams said. “They rammed you through your education. You were supposed to learn what civilization is about, but there wasn’t really time, they get so damned few cadets with promise these days. So here you are, nineteen years old, loaded to the hatches with technical information and condemned to make for yourself every philosophical mistake recorded in history. I’d like you to read some books I pack around in micro. Ancient stuff mostly, a smidgin of Aristotle, Machiavelli, Jefferson, Clausewitz, Jouvenel, Michaelis. But that’ll take a while. You just go back to quarters today. Sit. Think over what I said.”

  “Has the Fodaich not seen the report I filed?” asked Dwyr the Hook.

  “Yes, of course,” Runei answered. “But I want to inquire about certain details. Having gotten into the Terran base, even though your objective was too well guarded to burgle, why did you not wait for an opportunity?”

  “The likelihood did not appear great, Fodaich. And dawn was coming. Someone might have addressed me, and my reply might have provoked suspicion. My orders were to avoid unnecessary risks. The decision to leave at once is justified in retrospect, since I did not find my vehicle in the canyon when I returned. A Terran patrol must have come upon it. Thus I had to travel overland to our hidden depot, and hence my delay in returning here.”

  “What about that other patrol you encountered on the way? How much did they see?”

  “Very little, I believe, Fodaich. We were in thick forest, and they shot blindly when I failed to answer their challenge. They did, as you know, inflict considerable damage on me, and it is fortunate that I was then so close to my goal that I could crawl the rest of the way after escaping them.”

  “Khr-r-r,”

  Runei sighed. “Well, the attempt was worth making. But this seems to make you supernumerary on Starkad, doesn’t it?”

  “I trust I may continue to serve in honor.” Dwyr gathered nerve. “Fodaich, I did observe one thing from afar while in Highport, which may or may not be significant. Abrams himself walked downstreet in close conversation with a civilian who had several attendants—I suspect the delegate from Terra.”

  “Who is most wonderfully officious,” Runei mused, “and who is proceeding on from here. Did you catch anything of what was said?”

  “The noise level was high, Fodaich. With the help of aural amplification and focusing, I could identify a few words like ‘Merseia.’ My impression is that Abrams may be going with him. In such case, Abrams had better be kept under special watch.”

  “Yes.” Runei stroked his chin. “A possibility. I shall consider it. Hold yourself in readiness for a quick departure.”

  Dwyr saluted and left. Runei sat alone. The whirr of ventilators filled his lair. Presently he nodded to himself, got out his chessboard, and pondered his next move. A smile touched his lips.

  6

  Starkad rotated thrice more. Then the onslaught came.

  Flandry was in Ujanka. The principal seaport of Kurijsoviki stood on Golden Bay, ringed by hills and slashed by lithe broad brown Pechaniki River. In the West Housing the Sisterhood kept headquarters. Northward and upward, the High Housing was occupied by the homes of the wealthy, each nestled into hectares of trained jungle where flowers and wings and venomous reptiles vied in coloring. But despite her position—not merely captain of the Archer but shareholder in a kin-corporation owning a whole fleet, and speaker for it among the Sisterhood—Dragoika lived in the ancient East Housing, on Shiv Alley itself.

  “Here my mothers dwelt since the town was founded,” she told her guest. “Here Chupa once feasted. Here the staircase ran with blood on the Day of the Gulch. There are too many ghosts for me to abandon.” She chuckled, deep in her throat, and gestured around the stone-built room, at furs, carpets, furnishings, books, weapons, bronze vases and candelabra, goblets of glass and seashell, souvenirs and plunder from across a quarter of the planet. “Also, too much stuff to move.”

  Flandry glanced out the third-floor window. A cobbled way twisted between tenements that could double as fortresses. A pair of cowled males slunk by, swords drawn; a drum thuttered; the yells and stampings and metal on metal of a brawl flared brief but loud.

  “What about robbers?” he asked.

  Ferok grinned. “They’ve learned better.” He sprawled on a couch whose curves suggested a ship. Likewise did his skipper and Iguraz, a portly grizzled male who had charge of Seatraders’ Castle. In the gloom of the chamber, their eyes and jewelry seemed to glow. The weather outside was bright but chill. Flandry was glad he had chosen to wear a thick coverall on his visit. They wouldn’t appreciate Terran dress uniform anyhow.

  “I don’t understand you people,” Dragoika said. She leaned forward and sniffed the mild narcotic smoke from a brazier. “Good to see you again, Dommaneek, but I don’t understand you. What’s wrong with a fight now and then? And—after personally defeating the vaz-Siravo—you come here to babble about making peace with them!”

  Flandry turned. The murmur of his airpump seemed to grow in his head. “I was told to broach the idea,” he replied.

  “But you don’t like it yourself?” Iguraz wondered. “Then why beneath heaven do you speak it?”

  “Would you tolerate insubordination?” Flandry said.

  “Not at sea,” Dragoika admitted. “But land is different.”

  “Well, if nothing else, we vaz-Terran here find ourselves in a situation like sailors.” Flandry tried to ease his nerves by pacing. His boots felt heavy.
br />   “Why don’t you simply wipe out the vaz-Siravo for us?” Ferok asked. “Shouldn’t be hard if your powers are as claimed.”

  Dragoika surprised Flandry by lowering her tendrils and saying, “No such talk. Would you upset the world?” To the human: “The Sisterhood bears them no vast ill will. They must be kept at their distance like any other dangerous beasts. But if they would leave us alone there would be no occasion for battle.”

  “Perhaps they think the same,” Flandry said. “Since first your people went to sea, you have troubled them.”

  “The oceans are wide. Let them stay clear of our islands.”

  “They cannot. Sunlight breeds life, so they need the shoals for food. Also, you go far out to chase the big animals and harvest weed. They have to have those things too.” Flandry stopped, tried to run a hand through his hair, and struck his helmet. “I’m not against peace in the Zletovar myself. If nothing else, because the vaz-Merseian would be annoyed. They started this arming of one folk against another, you know. And they must be preparing some action here. What harm can it do to talk with the vaz-Siravo?”

  “How do so?” Iguraz countered. “Any Toborko who went below’d be slaughtered out of hand, unless you equipped her to do the slaughtering herself.”

  “Be still,” Dragoika ordered. “I asked you here because you have the records of what ships are in, and Ferok because he’s Dommaneek’s friend. But this is female talk.”

  The Tigeries took her reproof in good humor. Flandry explained: “The delegates would be my people. We don’t want to alarm the seafolk unduly by arriving in one of our own craft. But we’ll need a handy base. So we ask for ships of yours, a big enough fleet that attack on it is unlikely. Of course, the Sisterhood would have to ratify any terms we arrived at.”

  “That’s not so easy,” Dragoika said. “The Janjevar va-Radovik reaches far beyond Kursovikian waters. Which means, I suppose, that many different Siravo interests would also be involved in any general settlement.” She rubbed her triangular chin. “Nonetheless … a local truce, if nothing else … hunh, needs thinking about—”

  And then, from the castle, a horn blew.

  Huge, brazen, bellows-driven, it howled across the city. The hills echoed. Birds stormed from trees. Hoo-hoo! Fire, flood, or foe! To arms, to arms! Hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo-oo!

  “What the wreck?” Ferok was on his feet, snatching sword and shield from the wall, before Flandry had seen him move. Iguraz took his ponderous battleax. Dragoika crouched where she was and snarled. Bronze and crystal shivered.

  “Attack?” Flandry cried among the hornblasts. “But they can’t!”

  The picture unreeled for him. The mouth of Golden Bay was guarded by anchored hulks. Swimmers underwater might come fairly close, unseen by those garrisons, but never past. And supposing they did, they still had kilometers to go before they reached the docks, which with Seatraders’ Castle commanded that whole face of Ujanka. They might, of course, come ashore well outside, as at Whitestrands, and march overland on their mechanical legs. The city was unwalled. But no, each outlying house was a defense post; and thousands of Tigeries would swarm from town to meet them; and—

  Terran HQ had worried about assaults on the archipelago colonies. Ujanka, though, had not seen war for hundreds of years, and that was with other Tigeries … Hoo, hoo!

  “We’ll go look.” Dragoika’s gorgeous fur stood on end, her tail was rigid, her ears aquiver; but now she spoke as if suggesting dinner and flowed from her couch with no obvious haste. On the way, she slung a sword over her back.

  Blaster in hand, Flandry followed her into a hall dominated by a contorted stone figure, three meters high, from the Ice Islands. Beyond an archway, a stair spiraled upward. His shoulders scraped the walls. Arrow slits gave some light. Ferok padded behind him, Iguraz wheezed in the rear.

  They were halfway to the top when the world said Crump! and stones trembled. Dragoika was thrown back against Flandry. He caught her. It was like holding steel and rubber, sheathed in velvet. A rumble of collapsing masonry beat through his helmet. Screams came thin and remote.

  “What’s happened?” Iguraz bawled. Ferok cursed. Even then, Flandry noted some of his expressions for later use. If there was a later. Dragoika regained balance. “Thanks,” she murmured, and stroked the human’s arm. “Come.” She bounded on.

  They emerged on the house tower as a second explosion went off. That one was further away. But thunder rolled loud in Starkad’s air. Flandry ran to the parapet. He stared across steeply pitched red tile roofs whose beam ends were carved with flowers and monster heads. Northward, beyond these old gray walls, the High Housing lifted emerald green, agleam with villas. He could see the Concourse pylon, where Pride’s Way, the Upland Way, the Great East Road, and The Sun And Moons came together. Smoke made a pillar more tall.

  “There!” Ferok yelled. He pointed to sea. Dragoika went to a telescope mounted under a canopy.

  Flandry squinted. Light dazzled him off the water. He found the hulks, out past the Long Moles. They lay ablaze. Past them—Dragoika nodded grimly and pulled him to her telescope.

  Where the bay broadened, between Whitestrands to west and Sorrow Cliff to east, a whale shape basked. Its hide was wet metal. A turret projected amidships; Flandry could just see that it stood open and held a few shapes not unlike men. Fore and aft were turrets more low, flat, with jutting tubes.

  As he looked, fire spat from one of those dragon snouts. A moment later, smoke puffed off the high square wall of Sea-Traders’ Castle. Stones avalanched onto the wharf below. One of the ships which crowded the harbor was caught under them. Her mast reeled and broke, her hull settled. Noise rolled from waterfront to hills and back again. “Lucifer! That’s a submarine!”

  And nothing like what he had fought. Yonder was a Merseian job, probably nuclear-propelled, surely Merseian crewed. She wasn’t very big, some twenty meters in length, must have been assembled here on Starkad. Her guns, though of large caliber, were throwing chemical H.E. So the enemy wasn’t introducing atomics into this war. (Yet. When somebody did, all hell would let out for noon.) But in this soup of an atmosphere, the shock waves were ample to knock down a city which had no defenses against them.

  “We’ll burn!” Ferok wailed.

  On this planet, no one was ashamed to stand in terror of fire. Flandry raced through an assessment. Detested hours and years of psych drill at the Academy paid off. He knew rage and fear, his mouth was dry and his heart slammed, but emotion didn’t get in the way of logic. Ujanka wouldn’t go up fast. Over the centuries, stone and tile had replaced wood nearly everywhere. But if fire started among the ships, there went something like half the strength of Kursoviki. And not many shells were needed for that.

  Dragoika had had the same thought. She wheeled to glare across the Pechaniki, where the Sisterhood centrum lifted a green copper dome from the West Housing. Her mane fluttered wild. “Why haven’t they rung Quarters?”

  “Surely none need reminding,” Iguraz puffed. To Flandry: “Law is that when aught may threaten the ships, their crews are to report aboard and take them out on the bay.” A shell trundled overhead. Its impact gouted near Humpback Bridge.

  “But today they may indeed forget,” Dragoika said between her fangs. “They may panic. Those tallywhackers yonder must’ve done so, not to be hanging on the bell ropes now.”

  She started forward. “Best I go there myself. Ferok, tell them not to await me on the Archer.”

  Flandry stopped her. She mewed anger. “Apology-of-courage,” he said. “Let’s try calling first.”

  “Call—argh, yes, you’ve given ’em a radio, haven’t you? My brain’s beaten flat.”

  Crash! Crash!

  The bombardment was increasing. As yet it seemed almost random. The idea must be to cause terror and conflagration as fast as possible.

  Flandry lifted wristcom to helmet speaker and tuned the Sisters’ waveband. His hope
that someone would be at the other end was not great. He let out a breath when a female voice replied, insect small beneath whistle and boom: “Ey-ya, do you belong to the vaz-Terran? I could not raise anyone of you.”

  No doubt all switchboards’re flooded with yammer from Our Men In Ujanka, Flandry thought. He couldn’t see their dome in the hills, but he could imagine the scene. Those were Navy too, of course—but engineers, technicians, hitherto concerned merely with providing a few gadgets and training Tigeries in the use of same. Nor was their staff large. Other regions, where the war was intense, claimed most of what Terra could offer. (Five thousand or so men get spread horribly thin across an entire world; and then a third of them are not technical but combat and Intelligence units, lest Runei feel free to gobble the whole mission.) Like him, the Ujanka team had sidearms and weaponless flitters: nothing else.

  “Why haven’t Quarters been rung?” Flandry demanded as if he’d known the law his whole life.

  “But no one thought—”

  “So start thinking!” Dragoika put her lips close to Flandry’s wrist. Her bosom crowded against him. “I see no sign of craft readying to stand out.”

  “When that thing waits for them?”

  “They’ll be safer scattered than docked,” Dragoika said. “Ring the call.”

  “Aye. But when do the vaz-Terran come?”

  “Soon,” Flandry said. He switched to the team band.

  “I go now,” Dragoika said.

  “No, wait, I beg you. I may need you to … to help.”

  It would be so lonely on this tower.

  Flandry worked the signal button with an unsteady forefinger. This microunit couldn’t reach Highport unless the local ’caster relayed, but he could talk to someone in the dome, if anybody noticed a signal light, if every circuit wasn’t tied up—Brrum! A female loped down Shiv Alley. Two males followed, their young in their arms, screaming.