Warworld: The Lidless Eye (15 page)

“On to Haven, Second Rank.” Diettinger spoke matter-of-factly, suppressing the fact that maneuvering the
Fomoria
into position for the strike would be Second Rank’s last official duty as a Soldier. Diettinger had already extended the deadline for her relief, but soon it would be unavoidable. Althene was far too valuable as breeding stock to risk in future ops; she had to accept it. She didn’t have to like it, nor did he. Although he wasn’t quite sure why.

Warren Delancey leaned forward and tapped his screen. His data line was flickering again. That was twice in the past hour. Not that it mattered; he was due to be relieved in another three hours. The University’s patron, Enoch Redfield, took a dim view of technicians who were on duty when equipment failed, for whatever reason. And God knew, there were plenty of engineers and technicians begging in the streets of Castell and Lermontovgrad who would be more than happy to trade places with him.

There it was again. The band flickered amber, green, red and then back to its usual blue. Quite distracting. Delancey supposed he had better do something about it, after all. The old computers weren’t much, but they were a damn sight better than almost anything else on Haven.

Delancey thought he had just about traced the problem to its source when Alec breezed into the room behind him.

“How’s it working?”

Delancey looked up distracted. “Hmm? How’s what working?”

Alec pointed to the terminal, grinning.

“I found a couple of bad boards in the system a few hours ago. I’ve been setting new ones from stores. Is your screen any better?”

For a moment, Delancey was almost touched by the younger man’s solicitude; it was evident by his tone and manner that Alec was attempting an act of rapprochement, something he’d seemed incapable of doing formerly. But turning back to the screen, Delancey’s low opinion of the youth returned.

“Evidently not. Look at that.” Delancey jabbed an accusing finger at
the screen. The data line was now bright orange. The words flashing on it in brighter yellow read:

Alec frowned. He was obviously torn between believing the detection or having to admit that he had erred in his tests on the new boards he’d installed. “Well, couldn’t it really be…? If so, the Satrapy’s radar might have picked up something. Should I check with Colonel Kettler—”

Delancey’s smirk of disapproval killed the question on the young man’s lips.

“At least with the bad boards,
something
worked. Now I can’t even recall the storm oscillation data. You must have lost the fix on the transceiver at the refueling station.” Delancey’s voice had taken on a patronizing, accusatory tone. If Alec had lost the transceiver, it would likely be the end of the boy. Only one vessel was left that was able to reach the station. The shuttle was kept in neutral territory, and while nominally ‘owned’ by the University, in reality it was commonly owned by all the fractured power groups on Haven, including the Haven Volunteers. That meant no one used it much.

No one groundside was going to be happy about using the shuttle to fix some University student’s blunder.

“You’ll be lucky if they don’t just launch you into orbit.” Delancey muttered as Alec left the room.
Or launch both of us, for that matter.

Delancey decided to call his relief and tell him not to bother coming in; the fewer people who knew about this the better. Maybe Alec could get things back to normal before anybody discovered his error.

The tallest of the four Deputies, Speaker Martin Sanderson, stood up and began to pace. All four were dressed in dark blue cloaks and tunics that had been the height of Spartan fashion a decade before the Seventy-seventh Imperial Marines had left some twenty years ago.

Deputy Sanderson cut an impressive figure and he knew it; he was long and lean, tanned a dark mahogany by the wind and sun. His flowing silver hair formed a promenade over the prow of his forehead. Every impatient movement said: I am a man of substance, a man of power, a man not to be kept waiting.

What Sanderson really needs
, thought Brigadier Cummings,
are lights, an audience and a solido camera; not this empty staff room, stripped of its furnishings, designed to house the headquarters of an Imperial Marine Division.
Near empty now except for the four Deputies, himself and his adjutant, Colonel Anton Leung.

“Need I remind you, Brigadier-General, that as Commander-in-Chief of the Haven Volunteers you are legally answerable to the highest planetary authority. Furthermore, it is your duty to maintain civil authority and order. As Speaker of the Haven Planetary Chamber of Deputies, I order you to put an end to these raids perpetrated by the so-called ‘free citizens’ of Rhinegold. Our caravans can no longer travel in safety; thus, food stocks in the capital are running dangerously low.”

Now we cut to the chase
, Cummings thought sourly. Already forgotten was the Brigade’s squashing of the insurrection that had started in Docktown and threatened to engulf the entire city in open warfare. It was about what he’d expected.

As far as the Rhinishers were concerned, former King Steele would have sent an army over to Rhinegold and demanded tribute; in fact, he had, on more than one occasion. Upon Steele’s death Rhinegold had declared their independence from Castell City—and its rump planetary government along with it.

In the four years since Steele had been deposed—that is, hanged from a lamppost like one of his infamous antecedents back on Old Earth—trade had begun to shrink drastically, almost in direct proportion to how piracy, hijacking, banditry and other forms of lawlessness had increased. The Chamber of Deputies’ solution: jaw it to death. Maybe it would go away. Maybe it would get worse. Meanwhile, there was a world to run—Ha!

The Haven Volunteers had worked to keep an uneasy peace between the City and the towns, but they didn’t have the manpower to police every road and byway. Especially when so much of the Militia’s energies were spent in securing foodstuffs, weapons, ammunition, clothing, and other necessities for their own use.

“Confound it, Brigadier! Something must be done, or thousands are going to starve this coming winter.”

Cummings might have been more sympathetic if he hadn’t seen this coming years ago and warned the Chamber of Deputies to create a city militia, instead of a tin-badge Praetorian Guards unit, the Castell
Guard. Already people by the hundreds were dying in the countryside as antiquated food factories broke down; the secret of their repair becoming lost as Haven slowly spiraled down into decivilization.

Cummings and his overwhelmed Brigade were the last protectors of civilization on Haven; a force he wasn’t about to squander to soothe the consciences of politicians—jackals who had refused to discipline themselves and their followers into taking the necessary steps to stave off chaos and famine.

Cummings stood up from behind his desk so that he and Deputy Sanderson were eye to eye. Behind him as a backdrop was the seal of the Empire of Man, the Imperial Eagle with twin lightning bolts in its claws.

“Deputy Sanderson, I understand and—as a human being like yourself—deplore the actions of the growing criminal class; however, I owe my allegiance to the Emperor, and, in His absence, to the people of Haven. It is not in their best interests to squander my few remaining military assets defending a paralyzed government against a foe you helped create by your own inaction and refusal to form a real city militia. Therefore, I deny your request for military assistance.”

Sanderson began to puff up as though he were about to attempt to blow away Cummings’ arguments with sheer oratory, when flashing fingers of red light began to strobe through the room and klaxons howled.

The Brigadier, with Colonel Leung in tow, pushed through the Castell delegation and out of the room.

Behind him, he heard Sanderson sputter, “It’s the Empire’s and the Militia’s duty to protect its citizens from outlaws. We demand that you do your—”

In the corridor outside, the howl of the warning horns grew almost unbearable, drowning out the Deputy’s words. Cummings and his aide took the emergency elevator down into the fortress’ command center in the heart of the mountain. Deep underground there was safety against even nuclear weapons, devices which no one other than the Militia—despite Enoch Redfield’s propaganda—had in their possession. By Imperial law, even these were forbidden. The Brigadier had conveniently
lost
some from the Regimental inventory while arranging the Seventy-seventh’s evacuation—something to be said for being top rank. He was the only one who knew how many.

It was conceivable that some starving physicists might have aided one of the minor powers—the New Communist Soviet, perhaps, or someone else—to rediscover the atomic bomb. With all the available texts, he knew with sudden certainty, it was a distinct possibility; although one that he had hoped never to face in his lifetime. Civilization on Haven was already spiraling towards darkness. Even one nuclear attack, if placed strategically, could start a domino effect that would destroy everything that remained of Imperial culture and civilization.

Captain Marinus Leino of the Uusi Suomi Air Force began taxiing his small biplane onto the runway for takeoff. Early in her history, New Finland had borne the hated Slavic version of her name imposed by the Soviet Bureau of Relocation. But “Novy Finlandia” had disappeared from every map and government document the day after the CoDominium had collapsed, in Haven’s first era of abandonment. And since that day, there were few quicker ways to die than to walk into a miner’s bar in Uossi Suomi and refer to the place or its citizens by its former Russian name.

Glancing over his shoulder, Leino watched as the four other planes of his squadron taxied forward to line up and wait their turn, their bright metal skins gleaming in the early morning Trueday sun. As he looked back toward the hanger for clearance, he spotted the mechanic, Flynn, running after him, a communiqué flimsy in his hand. The biplane’s engine was designed for virtual silence, but Leino still had to shout since Flynn’s hearing was poor.

“What’s the matter?” Leino’s voice held some concern; his wife was expecting, and in Haven’s thin atmosphere, there was no such thing as an easy birth.

Flynn staggered against the thin metal frame of the ship, gasping for breath. He handed the note up to Leino in the cockpit.

“Just came in,” the older man gasped. “They said you had…to check…it out… Ah, god damn it!” Flynn caught some breath and spat, cursing his age and infirmity.
To think I once took the Emperor’s shilling as an Imperial Marine!
He shook his head and cursed again.

Leino smiled down at him, setting the throttle to idle as he read the note:

YOU ARE INSTRUCTED TO PROCEED POSTHASTE WITH FULL SQUADRON TO CENTRAL BORDER DISTRICT, THERE TO RENDEZVOUS W/AIR UNITS OF REDFIELD SATRAPY. DO NOT FIRE—REPEAT—DO NOT FIRE ON REDFIELD UNITS; THEY ARE UNDER YOUR COMMAND FOR JOINT OPS, INVESTIGATION OF CONFIRMED—REPEAT—CONFIRMED SIGHTINGS OF SUPRAORBITAL SCOUT CRAFT. ASCERTAIN ID SAID S/O CRAFT AND RETURN. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ENGAGE SAME.

Leino laughed outright at the last order.
Engage an orbital fighter with a biplane? Good thing they expressly forbade it
, he thought sarcastically.
Idiots!

“Is this some sort of joke?” he asked Flynn. The old mechanic waved his hands in exasperation. The propwash whipped his clothes and thin hair.

“How the hell should I know? You think I run like this for the jollies? You’re the flyboy, you find out!” Flynn stalked off, cursing anew.

Leino grinned.
Might as well get to it
, he thought. He would hardly have believed the report himself, but for the rendezvous with the Redfielders. To get the Uossi Suomi government and the Redfielders to cooperate on anything would take nothing less than off-world contact—or an interplanetary war.

Tension between the two states had grown rapidly ever since Enoch Redfield had moved his operations into the eastern Shangri-La Valley. Through dynastic maneuvering Redfield had married his son to the daughter and only heir of New Anglia. Grand Duke Clifford had conveniently died less than a year later, and suddenly Uossi Suomi had a Redfield Satrap for a neighbor. It was immediately apparent that Enoch was pulling his son Abraham’s strings, and no one was surprised when a large contingent of the Redfield Army and Air Force arrived to provide security for the newly “allied” state.

He sincerely hoped there was no mistake; putting his boys in close formation with those Redfield thugs was not his happiest duty. But he didn’t worry—much.

His squadron’s guns were loaded. He was confident they could handle anything fate might throw their way.