Chapter Sixteen

"THE sky is turning black. Look at it!" Tia Barse stood beside the shuttle and pointed. The cloud-dotted blue-green sky darkened. This storm cloud was caused by hundreds of the huge planet-beamers in the Death Fleet.

"Here comes a truck for us," said Norlin. He wanted to break and run. Only a sense of de-corum held him back. They'd get under the kilo-meters-thick protection of the planetary defense shield in less time if he simply waited. The ner-vous energy and need to do something made his feet move in the direction of the approaching truck.

"Race you for it," Barse said, smiling crook-edly. Her strangely colorless eyes turned back to the sky. She held the ship's cat tightly to her body until it began to squeal in protest. She ig-nored the animal's protests. "There's the first barrage."

Norlin shuddered when he saw the rainbow discharge in the atmosphere. Each touch of the deceptively beautiful ray brought death. They brought immediate replies from the heavy laser-cannon batteries on the ground.

"Sounds as if they've automated. Those lasar-tillery emplacements won't roll over and die just because an ionizing beam hits them. No humans to kill."

"They'll switch to the electronics-killing fre-quencies if they have to," said Norlin. He found it impossible to watch anything for more than a few seconds. His eyes darted from the shuttle to the approaching truck and then back to the ae-rial battle. The sky darkened even more as the Death Fleet moved into lower orbits. Each ship swung past faster but there were more of them. He nodded approval for the tactic. Any individ-ual ship received considerable punishment, but the speed in the lower orbit took it out of range quickly—and the planet-beamer following it took up bombardment.

Share the damage, concentrate the destruc-tion.

The truck screeched to a halt. "You two want

a ride home or are you staying for the main show?"

"How many ships overhead?" asked Norlin.

"Who knows? Who cares? It only takes one of them to kill you dead, dead, dead." Barse climbed in and scooted over on the bench seat until she pressed against the driver. "You have such a great philosophy. Tell me more."

Norlin got in and wished only to be away from the landing field.

"What do they want? They can trade for everything they're taking. Why risk dying just for a few days of unhindered looting?"

"You're the captain. You tell me," said Barse, turning from her low conversation with the driver. "What caused the Mongol hordes to sweep through Asia and Europe? Why did the Visigoths enjoy conquering more than the deca-dent pleasures of the Roman Empire? Why did Empress Aphia order Torrik IV

destroyed? A whim. Maybe they're indulging in an alien whim."

"It might be a scavenger hunt. Ever do that when you were a kid?" asked the driver. He and Barse started swapping lies about their youth. Norlin turned away and stared at the bright rainbows shimmering in the distance and slowly moving closer. He almost slammed through the glasteel windscreen when the driver braked suddenly.

"Out. Into that tunnel. There's only one way to go if you're looking for a place to keep from hav-ing your head exploded."

"You've got such a way with words, Joe," complimented Barse.

"See you after my duty shift," he promised. He slammed his foot down and the truck leaped away the instant they climbed down from the cab.

Norlin and Barse hurried down the narrow metal-lined, downward-sloping tunnel. He fought down feelings of claustrophobia. Space-men couldn't afford such fears, yet this was dif-ferent. The weight of the ground above him grew until he wanted to scream. Just as he thought his imagination would bring down the entire world, the tunnel opened into a well-lit area filled with elevators. Standing in front of each elevator door were two armed guards. Norlin turned when he heard metal scraping across fabric. Guards on either side of the door and behind had leveled laserifles.

"Sublieutenant Pier Norlin and Lieutenant Tia Barse, reporting as ordered," he said.

"Identities check," came a distant voice. "Ele-vator four straight to the Old Man's office." The guards left their post and escorted them to the elevator. Barse sniffed and said, "What a bunch of pretty flowers. Not a fighter in the bunch."

The guard on Barse's right started to protest. The instant his attention focused on her rather than the laserifle he held, she acted. She dropped the cat, swung around, wrested the rifle from him, and kicked his feet from under

him. She towered above him, the laserifle pointed at the other startled guard.

"As you were, Engineer," Norlin said irritably. To the guards he said, "There's no reason to keep the rifles on us. Either shoot or stay at port arms." He took the laserifle from Barse and tossed it back to the fallen trooper.

"What can you expect? They haven't seen combat. They're all garrison soldiers." Barse scooped up the cat and petted him.

The door opened and Norlin pulled Barse in with him before the soldiers overcame their shock and got mad. The tiny elevator pressur-ized, giving Norlin a fraction of a second to brace himself. Then the bottom fell out of the world.

"Some ride," gasped Barse. "Reminds me of the first time I was in free-fall. I even feel drop-sick."

"Don't get sick in front of the admiral," he cautioned.

"Hell, Cap'n,. I was thinking of waiting to be sick on the admiral. Be the most fun he's had in days." Barse crossed her thick arms and smiled her crooked smile.

Norlin swallowed several times as the eleva-tor continued to drop into the bowels of the planet. After what seemed to be hours, the cage began to slow. Its deceleration was gradual but almost drove him to his knees. The door popped open and he staggered out.

The admiral's aide looked up from a console and smiled. "Don't worry. I've been up and down from the Pit a thousand times and I still walk like I'm drunk when I get out."

"Knowing you, Martin, you probably are drunk."

"Still the same old Tia, I see. Go on in. Admi-ral Bendo is expecting you. Don't take up too much time. They're beginning to open up with everything they've got."

He turned back to his work, his fingers flying across the keypad and figures double-timing over the vidscreen.

"Do you know everyone in the base?" Norlin asked his engineer.

"Seems that way, doesn't it, Cap'n? I make friends easy."

She quieted when they entered the admiral's office. All four walls were covered with vid-screen displays. Norlin glanced up; the ceiling held its own display. It took him several seconds to realize it showed a slowly changing sector of space above the planet.

"I check visually now and then," the admiral said. "The display gives a complete revolution every ten minutes."

The screen winked white, then came back to show stars.

"The Death Fleet has wiped out some of your sensors," said Barse. "That's why you have blank areas. Do you know what's going on in those sectors?"

"We know from what is entering and leaving —and there aren't too many yet," the senior of-ficer said. He settled into a reclining chair and

stared at the ceiling. "I'm too old for combat. But there're not many others left." He sat upright and spun around, staring di-rectly at Norlin. "Why didn't you mutiny?"

"What?" The question took Norlin by surprise. "I'm a sworn officer in the Empire Service."

"So were the captains and crew of fourteen cruisers, two battleships, and a few score smaller ships. They saw the Death Fleet ap-proaching, and they mutinied and ran. Why didn't you?"

"I knew what they had done to Penum, Lyman IV, and Murgatroyd."

"You're from Murgatroyd, aren't you, Lieuten-ant?"

"Yes, sir." Barse remained unusually quiet.

"Rebel planet. Maybe we need more rebels. The Empire doesn't have the backbone to stand tall any longer. Emperor Arian is more inter-ested in his pleasures on Earth than governing properly."

"Sir, that's approaching treason."

"So court martial me." Bendo heaved a deep, gusty sigh, then coughed. "It's nothing you haven't been thinking. The Service is only as good as its principles. I checked your record, Norlin. Nothing outstanding, but you do have a commitment and sense of honor lacking in most of our officers."

"Thank you, sir."

"Don't. It's a curse. I have it, too. I ought to pull out, let those bastards take Sutton II while I shift back to Earth. They won't attack the

center of our society. They're not strong enough."

"You're working well against them, sir."

"Not good enough, but we take out adequate numbers to know we can defeat them. I've gone over the data you sent from Lyman IV. They always attack through infiltration and from po-sitions of strength and surprise because we can defeat them if we're prepared."

"And if half the ES doesn't turn and run," put in Barse.

Norlin tried to quiet her.

Admiral Bendo motioned him away. "She's right. We could blow them out of the sky in an hour if we had their cohesion of purpose. We had the will once. It's moved out to the far fron-tier." He coughed again.

"It might even be dead. No matter. We have to fight, not philosophize." The room shook. Bendo wheeled his chair around and worked on a panel so vast that the individual controls lacked identifying labels. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small hand controller. He pushed back and began using the controller on the panel.

"Each one is identified in the hand unit," said Barse. "It's keyed to his personal touch. No one else can use it."

"What does the board control?" asked Norlin. "It looks like a fire control board, but it's so huge!"

"I control planetary defense," the admiral said. "I've already programmed in the general course of our defense. I make the second-to-sec-ond adjustments myself rather than letting the computer do it. Makes me think I've got some reason for being here." Norlin nodded. His professors at the Empire Service Academy had been split on the proper use of a battle computer. Some claimed the faster responses of an electronic device out-weighed the predictability they displayed. Others insisted no computer could match the human mind for integrating thousands of data and acting nonlinearly. Falling into a pattern turned a battle into a slaughter—the winner being the side discerning the other's regularity of behavior and capitalizing on that order.

"They orbited and tried to use their radiation cannon. The station sustained heavy damage but had prepared enough. The core remained intact and a few officers fought back."

"The rest mutinied?" asked Barse.

"I'm afraid so. It didn't matter. The Death Reet destroyed the station within an hour. That small resistance gave us ample warning and time to prepare."

"What of my warnings?" asked Norlin, star-tled that no one had heeded the messages he had sent. He had risked his life and command for what?

"My aide ignored it. I never saw it until after our sensors picked up the leading elements of their fleet," said Bendo. "By then it was almost too late. They infiltrated a dozen or more sneak ships that wreaked havoc on our fleet. Most were destroyed in dock."

Admiral Bendo ran a shaking hand over the sparse gray thatch on his head. Norlin fancied he could see through the parchment-thin hand. Bendo spoke with authority, but his body be-trayed him in subtle ways. He coughed again; this time Norlin listened and heard a death rat-tle.

"My aide led the small group of officers in an attempted coup," Bendo said without turning around. He used the computerized controller to play the vast panel as if an organ. Lights flashed on and off; somewhere halfway around the world lasartillery batteries fired and surface-to-space missiles launched.

"The one outside? I've known Martin for years." Barse frowned, not believing this of her friend.

"Not him. Another. He's dead, even if his rebels still are trying to take control. They want to sue the aliens for peace and work out a coex-istence."

"But—"

"I know, Norlin. I've seen your pix. So have they."

"But the aliens give no quarter. They obliter-ated Murgatroy d!"

"We've been at peace too long. It's as perni-cious as being at war too long. You get to enjoy it, think it's the only state there can be. One makes you soft, the other vicious. I'm not sure either is much good in perpetuating the spe-cies." Bendo made a wide sweep with the con-troller and lit half the panel red. Norlin blinked as the vidscreens turned white, then returned to their displays. Most of the la-sartillery on-planet had fired. Behind its fiery

bolt went a barrage of missiles, some of which penetrated because of the laser assault.

"Vary the attack. Catch them off base with one, then follow with another. And still an-other." Bendo fired the lasers again. "Doesn't always work, though. They're good. They're vul-nerable, but you have to probe hard."

Norlin listened with half an ear. He had strayed to a panel manned by four under-officers. They struggled at their individual consoles at some task that wasn't immediately obvious to him. Then he understood.

"You've mined an entire moon!"

"Not mined. Something better," said the ad-miral. "Watch this. We damaged ten percent of their ships with the first major assault. This will be even more interesting. They expect the next attack from on-planet. The outer moon has been completely mirrored."

"Fighting mirrors?" asked Barse. "How do you position and aim them fast enough?"

"We're using continuous-wave lasers for this attack. Chemically fired, slow-burning duration, high energy." Bendo pointed his controller over the shoulder of the middle officer at the board. Red lights flashed everywhere.

Norlin jerked around and stared at the ceil-ing. The laser beams blasted at the speed of light from batteries on-planet, found their tar-gets on the outer moon and were reflected. To the Death Fleet it seemed a new enemy had at-tacked from spaceside.

"That took another 10 percent of them, the sneaking bastards," said Bendo. "But it's not the major assault. Gordon, are they turning to the j new attack?" i

"Half rotated their weapons outward, sir," j came the immediate reply. j

"Take them out." j A new barrage of particle beams from con-tained-chamber, measured-detonation nuking j licked upward. The bombs exploded, radiation contained by rock and force fields, then fun-j neled outward. As the first wavefront left, a new ! bomb detonated. By the time the chamber re-duced to force-field-backed slag, eight devices had been fired, the last one sealing the tunnel-barrel. The planet shook and quakes racked the bur-ied headquarters.

"We've destroyed half their fleet, Admiral. The ships beaming the planet are reforming. Com-puter analysis is working, working, working. Can't identify this attack formation."

"What do you make of it, Norlin?" asked Bendo.

"This isn't any pattern for space bombard-ment, sir. They're protecting the ships moving in. They might try to duplicate the attack they used on Murgatroyd." He heard Barse's teeth grinding together when he mentioned her home world.

"The back of their attack is broken," pointed out the admiral.

"They're going to invade," Norlin said, not even thinking what he said. "No," he said quickly, "that's absurd. They can't land without having reduced the planet to rubble."

"Your instincts are good. Don't try to correct yourself. They're forming a shield to protect landing craft." Try as they might, the ground defenses could not penetrate the tight shielding of ships around the huge cargo vessels in the center of the Death Fleet. Norlin watched in helpless fascination as the sky rained down thousands of alien war ma-chines.

They had been defeated in space. The aliens intended to triumph on the planet's surface where the lasartillery and missiles couldn't be used.