Too much had been invested in this theater already. The clan of the Gooksyu-Gubru could not afford a loss here.
So the battle fleet had arrayed itself. Ships kept watch over the five local layers of hyperspace, over nearby transfer points, over the cometary time-drop nexi.
News came of Earth’s travails, of the desperation of the Tymbrimi, and of the tricksters’ difficulties in acquiring allies among the lethargic Moderate clans. As the interval stretched it became clear that no threat would come from those directions.
But some of the other great clans were busy. Those who were quick to see advantage. Some were engaged in futile searches for the missing dolphin ship. Others used the confusion as a convenient excuse to carry through on ancient grudges. Millennia-old agreements unraveled like gas clouds before sudden supernovae. Flame licked at the ancient social fabric of the Five Galaxies. From the Gubru Home Perch came new orders. As soon as ground-based defenses were completed, the greater part of the fleet must go on to other duties. The remaining force should be more than adequate to hold Garth against any reasonable threat.
The Roost Masters did accompany the order with compensations. To the Suzerain of Beam and Talon they awarded a citation. To the Suzerain of Propriety they promised an improved Planetary Library for the expedition on Garth.
The new Suzerain of Cost and Caution needed no compensation. The orders were victory in themselves for they manifested caution in their essence. The chief bureaucrat won molt points, badly needed in its competition with its more experienced peers.
The naval units set forth for the nearest transfer point, confident that matters on Garth were well in beak and hand. The ground forces, however, watched the great battleships depart with slightly less certitude. Down on the planet’s surface there were portents of a minor resistance movement. The activity—as yet hardly more than a nuisance—had started among the chimpanzee population in the back country. As they were cousins and clients of men, their irritating and unbecoming behavior came as no surprise. The Gubru high command took precautions. Then they turned their attention to other matters.
Certain items of information had come to the attention of the Triumvirate—data taken from an enemy source—information having to do with Planet Garth itself. The hint might turn out to be nothing at all. But if it were true the possibilities were vast!
In any event, these things had to be looked into. Important advantages might be at stake. In this, all three Suzerains agreed completely. It was their first taste of true consensus together.
A platoon of Talon Soldiers kept watch over the expedition making its way into the mountains. Slender avians in battle dress swooped just over the trees, the faint whine of their flight harnesses carrying softly down the narrow canyons. One hover tank cruised ahead on point and another guarded the convoy’s rear.
The scientist investigators in their floater barges rode amidst this ample protection. The vehicles headed upland on low cushions of air. Perforce they avoided the rough, spiny ridgetops. There was no hurry, though. The rumor they chased was probably nothing at all, but the Suzerains insisted that it be checked out, just in case.
Their goal came into sight late on the second day. It was a flattened area at the bottom of a narrow valley. A number of buildings had burned to the ground here, not too long ago.
The hover tanks took positions at opposite ends of the scorched area. Then Gubru scientists and their Kwackoo client-assistants emerged from the barges. Standing back from the still stinking ruins, the avians chirped commands to whirring specimen robots, directing the search for clues. Less fastidious than their patrons, the fluffy white Kwackoo dove right into the wreckage, squawking excitedly as they sniffed and probed.
One conclusion was clear immediately. The destruction had been deliberate. The wreckers had wanted to hide something under the smoke and ruin.
Twilight came with subtropical suddenness. Soon the investigators were working uncomfortably under the glare of spotlights. At last the team commander ordered a halt. Full-scale studies would have to wait for morning.
The specialists retired into their barges for the night, chattering about what they had already discovered. There were traces, hints of things exciting and not a little disturbing.
Still, there would be ample time to do the work by day. The technicians closed their barges against the darkness. Six drone watchers rose to hover in silent, mechanical diligence, spinning patiently above the vehicles. Garth turned slowly under the starry night. Faint creakings and rustles told of the busy, serious work of the nocturnal forest creatures—hunting and being hunted. The watcher drones ignored them, rotating unperturbed. The night wore on.
Not long before dawn, new shapes moved through the starlit lanes underneath the trees. The smaller local beasts sought cover and listened as the newcomers crept past, slowly, warily.
The watcher drones noticed these new animals, too, and measured them against their programmed criteria. Harmless, came the judgment. Once again, they did nothing.
45
Athaclena
“They’re sitting ducks,” Benjamin said from his vantage point on the western hillside.
Athaclena glanced up at her chim aide-de-camp. For a moment she struggled with Benjamin’s metaphor. Perhaps he was referring to the enemy’s avian nature?
“They appear to be complacent, if that is what you mean,” she said. “But they have reason. The Gubru rely upon battle robots more extensively than we Tymbrimi—We find them because they are expensive and overly predictable. Nevertheless, those drones can be formidable.”
Benjamin nodded seriously. “I’ll remember that, ser.”
Still, Athaclena sensed that he was unimpressed. He had helped plan this morning’s foray, coordinating with representatives of the Port Helenia resistance. Benjamin was blithely certain of its success.
The town chims were to launch a predawn attack in the Vale of Sind just before action was scheduled to begin here. The official aim was to sow confusion among the enemy, and maybe do him some harm he would remember. Athaclena wasn’t certain that was really possible. But she had agreed to the venture anyway. She did not want the Gubru finding out too much from the ruins of the Howletts Center.
Not yet.
“They’ve set up camp under the ruins of the old main building,” Benjamin said. “Right where we expected them to plant themselves.”
Athaclena looked at the chim’s solid-state night binoculars uncomfortably. “You are certain those devices aren’t detectable?”
Benjamin nodded without looking up. “Yes’m. We laid instruments like these out on a hillside near a cruising gasbot, and its flightpath didn’t even ripple. We’ve narrowed down the list of materials the enemy’s able to sniff. Soon …”
Benjamin stiffened. Athaclena felt his sudden tension.
“What is it?”
The chen crouched forward. “I see shapes movin’ through the trees. It must be our guys gettin’ into position. Now we’ll find out if those battle robots are programmed the way you expected.”
Distracted as he was, Benjamin did not offer to share the binoculars. So much for patron-client protocol, Athaclena thought. Not that it mattered. She preferred to reach out with her own senses.
Down below she detected three different species of biped arranging themselves around the Gubru expedition. If Benjamin had spotted them they certainly had to be well within range of the enemy’s sensitive watch drones.
And yet the robots did nothing! Seconds beat past, and the whirling drones did not fire on the shapes approaching under the trees. Nor did they alert their sleeping masters.
She sighed in increased hope. The machines’ restraint was a crucial piece of information. The fact that they spun on silently told her volumes about what was happening not only here on Garth but elsewhere, beyond the flecked star-field that glittered overhead. It told her something about the state of the Five Galaxies as a whole.
There is still law, Athaclena thought. The Gubru
are constrained.
Like many other fanatic clans, the Gubru Alliance was not pristine in its adherence to the codes of planetary/ecological management. Knowing the avians’ dour paranoia, she had figured that they would program their defense robots one way if the rules were still valid, and quite another if they had fallen.
If chaos had completely taken over the Five Galaxies, the Gubru would have programmed their machines to sterilize hundreds of acres rather than allow any risk to their feathery frames.
But if the Codes held, then the enemy did not yet dare break them. For those same rules might protect them, if the tide of war turned against their faction.
Rule Nine Hundred and Twelve: Where possible, non-combatants must be spared. That held for noncombatant species, even more than individuals, especially on a catastrophe world such as Garth. Native forms were protected by billion-year-old tradition.
“You are trapped by your own assumptions, you vile things,” she murmured in Galactic Seven. Obviously the Gubru had programmed their machines to watch for the trappings of sapiency—factory-produced weapons, clothing, machinery—never imagining that an enemy might assail their camp naked, indistinguishable from the animals of the forest!
She smiled, thinking of Robert. This part had been his idea.
Gray, antelucan translucence was spreading across the sky, gradually driving out the fainter stars. To Athaclena’s left their medic, the elderly chimmie Elayne Soo, looked at her all-metal watch. She tapped its lens significantly. Athaclena nodded, giving permission for matters to proceed.
Dr. Soo cupped her mouth and uttered a high trilling sound, the call of a fyuallu bird. Athaclena did not hear the snapping twang of bowstrings as thirty crossbows fired. She tensed though. If the Gubru had invested in really sophisticated drones …
“Gotcha!” Benjamin exulted. “Six little tops, all broken to bits! The robots are all down!”
Athaclena breathed again. Robert was down there. Now, perhaps, she could believe that he and the others had a chance. She touched Benjamin’s shoulder, and the chim reluctantly handed over the binoculars.
Someone must have noticed when the monitor screens went blank. There was a faint hum, and the upper hatch of one of the hover tanks opened. A helmeted figure peered about the quiet meadow, its beak working in alarm as it saw the wreckage of a nearby watch robot. A sudden movement rustled the branches nearby. The soldier whirled about with its laser drawn as something or someone leaped forth from one of the neighboring trees. Blue lightning blazed at the dark figure.
It missed. The confused Gubru gunner couldn’t track a dim shape that neither flew nor fell but swung across the narrow clearing at the end of a long vine! Bright bolts went wide two more times, and then the soldier’s chance was gone. There was a “crack” as the shadowy figure wrapped its legs around the slender avian and snapped its spine.
Athaclena’s triple pulse beat fast as she saw Robert’s silhouette stand on the turret of the tank, over the crumpled body of the Talon Soldier. He raised an arm to signal, and suddenly the clearing was filled with running forms.
Chims hurried among the tanks and floaters, carrying earthenware bottles. Behind them shambled larger figures bearing bulky packs. Athaclena heard Benjamin mutter to himself in suppressed resentment. It had been her choice to include gorillas in this operation, and the decision was not popular.
“… thirty-five … thirty-six …” Elayne Soo counted off the seconds. As the dawn light spread they could see chims clambering over the alien vehicles. This was gamble number three. Would surprise delay the inevitable reaction long enough?
Their luck ran out after thirty-eight seconds. Sirens shrieked, first from the lead tank and then from the one in the rear.
“Look out!” someone cried below.
The furry raiders scattered for the trees as Talon Soldiers tumbled out of their hover barges, firing searing blasts from their saber rifles. Chims fell screaming, batting at burning fur, or toppled silently into the undergrowth, holed from front to back. Athaclena clamped down on her corona in order not to faint under their agony.
This was her first taste of full-scale war. Right now there seemed to be no joke, only suffering and pointless, hideous death.
Then Talon Soldiers began falling. The avians hopped about seeking targets that had disappeared into the trees and were struck down by missiles as they stood. The fighters adjusted their weapons to seek out energy sources, but there were no lasers out there to home in on, no pulse-projectors, not even chemically powered pellet guns. Meanwhile crossbow bolts whizzed like stinging gnats. One by one, the Gubru warriors jerked and fell.
First one tank, then the other, began to rise on growling blasts of air. The lead vehicle turned. Its triple barrels then started blasting swaths through the forest.
The tops of towering trees seemed to hang in midair for brief moments as their centers exploded, before plummeting earthward in a haze of smoke and flying wood chips. Taut vines whipped back and forth like agonized snakes, spraying their hard-won liquors in all directions. Chims screamed as they spilled from shattered branches.
Is it worth it? Oh, can anything be worth this?
Athaclena’s corona had expanded in the emotion of the moment, and she felt a glyph start to take shape. Angrily she rejected the unformed sense image, an answer to her question. She wanted no laughing Tymbrimi poignancies now. She felt like weeping, human style, but did not know how.
The forest was afroth with fear, and native animals fled the devastation. Some ran right over Athaclena and Benjamin, squeaking in their panicked desperation to get away. The radius of slaughter spread as the deadly vehicles opened up on everything in sight. Explosions and flame were everywhere.
Then, as abruptly as it had started firing, the lead tank stopped! First one, then another barrel glowed reddish white and shut down. Half of the noise abated.
The other fighting machine seemed to be suffering similar problems, but that one tried to continue firing, in spite of its crackling, drooping barrels.
“Duck!” Benjamin cried out as he pulled Athaclena down. The crew on the hillside took cover just in time as the rear tank exploded in a searing, actinic flash. Pieces of metal and shape-plast armor whistled by overhead.
Athaclena blinked away the sharp afterimage. In a momentary confusion brought on by sensory overload, she wondered why Benjamin was so obsessed with Earthly waterfowl.
“The other one’s jammed!” Somebody shouted. Sure enough, by the time Athaclena was able to look again it was easy to see smoke rising from the lead tank’s apron. The turret emitted grinding noises, and it seemed unable to move. Mixed with the pungent odor of burning vegetation came the sharp smell of corrosion.
“It worked!” Elayne Soo exulted. Then she was over the top and gone, running to tend the wounded.
Benjamin and Robert had proposed using chemicals to disable a Gubru patrol. Athaclena then modified the plan to suit her own purposes. She did not want dead Gubru, as had been their policy so far. This time she wanted live ones.
There they were now, bottled up inside their vehicles, unable to move or act. Their communications antennae were melted, and anyway, by now the attacks in the Sind had surely begun. The Gubru High Command had worries enough closer to home. Help would be some time coming.
Silence held for a moment as debris rained to the forest floor. Dust slowly settled.
Then there was heard a growing chorus of high shrieks—shouts of glee unaltered since before Mankind began meddling with chimpanzee genes. Athaclena heard another sound, as well … a rolling, ululating cry of triumph—Robert’s “Tarzan” call.
Good, she thought. It is good to know he lived through all that killing.
Now if only he follows the plan and stays out of sight from now on!
Chims were emerging from the toppled trees, some hurrying to help Dr. Soo with the injured. Others took up positions around the disabled machines.
Benjamin was looking to the northwest, where a few
stars faded before the dawn. Faint, warlike rumblings could be heard coming from that direction. “I wonder how Fiben and the city boys are doin’ at their end,” he said.
For the first time Athaclena set her corona free. Released at last, it crafted kuhunnagarra … the essence of indeterminacy postponed. “It is beyond our grasp,” she told him. “Here, in this place, is where we act.”
With a raised hand she signaled her hillside units forward.
46
Fiben
Smoke rose from the Valley of the Sind. Scattered fires had broken out in wheat fields and among the orchards, injecting soot into a morning fast growing pale and dim.
A hundred meters high in the air, perched on the rough wooden frame of a handmade kite, Fiben used field glasses to scan the scattered conflagrations. The fighting had not gone at all well here in the Sind. The operation had been intended as a quick hit-and-run uprising—a way to hurt the invader. But it had turned into a rout.
And now the cloud deck was dropping, as if overladen with dark smoke and the sinking of their hopes. Soon he wouldn’t be able to see beyond a kilometer or so.
“Fiben!”
Below and to the left, not far from the kite’s blocky shadow, Gailet Jones waved up at him. “Fiben, do you see anything of C group? Did they get the Gubru guard post?”
He shook his head, exaggeratedly.
“No sign of them!” he called. “But there’s dust from enemy armor!”
“Where? How much? We’ll give you more slack so you can get a better—”
“No way!” he shouted. “I’m comin’ down now.”
“But we need data—”
He shook his head emphatically. “There are patrols all over the place! We’ve got to get out of here!” Fiben motioned to the chims controlling his tether rope.
Gailet bit her lip and nodded. They started reeling him in.