The AI War (18 page)

"No," said the computer. "We'll draw them off, loop back, land on the nightside."

"Can we outdistance them?" she asked, dubiously eyeing the tacscan. The lead combine ships were turning in pursuit, with three more breaking orbit to join the chase.

"Long enough. But there will be a missile salvo."

"Can you show me D'Lin?" she asked.

Shrinking, the tacscan moved screen-right. Screen-left now showed a world of green-blue oceans and swirling clouds. A string of brown spread north and south from the equator.

"Archipelago," said Zahava.

"Yes. D'Lin's mostly water," said the computer. "I'll put the stats on your comm screen."

"Don't bother," she said, looking at the screen-left. "I won't have time to read them."

Silver needles were spanning the gap between the lifepod and the combine ships.

Faster than the machine spoke them, Zahava read the flame-red letters beneath the tacscan:

NUCLEAR ORDNANCE LAUNCHED.

TARGET: THIS VESSEL—INTERCEPT PROBABILITY 93.4 PERCENT.

Cursing, arms flailing, Zahava fell backward as her flight chair dropped into crash position, water spilling across her chest. Then she forgot about it as the flight chair became a white cocoon, its sides sweeping up, expanding to enfold her in a thick-padded crash shell. Suddenly giddy, she found herself rising, butting into the soft quilting of the cocoon.

"Broaching atmosphere at max speed, full evasive pattern," the computer whispered near her ear. "N-gravs going off-line until landing—missiles home on it at final approach,"

The sudden shock of G-plus gravity pressed her deep into the cocoon, fighting for breath. From outside, the hull screamed as the pod knifed into atmosphere, plunging toward the charted location of the old quadrant capital. The computer thought it odd that most of the area scanned as rain forest, but committed to its pattern, missiles closing, it said nothing.

What was left of the 103rd Border Battalion lay hidden in the ruins, hoping the thick, old stone and the night would keep death away.

Major L'Kor sat at the head of what once had been an impressive stairway—a long, graceful sweep of alabaster-white stone, broken long ago by fusion fire, the torn slabs of rock smoothed by millennia of wind and rain.

"How many?" he asked, steeling himself.

"Seven," said G'Sol, looking not at him but at the spectacular night sky, high above the canopy of jungle. She was a captain, even younger than L'Kor, but just as thin and worn. It would have been hard to judge, there in the starlight, whose mottled-green uniform was the more patched.

"Sit," he said, jerking his head to the right. "You look like you're about to fall down."

G'Sol sat. Like the rest, she'd been on quarter rations and brackish water for a week. Sickness and short rations were going to finish what the invaders had missed.

"Jungle fever?" he asked wearily.

"Yes," she said, hugging her knees, looking out into the night. "It's going to get us all—water's bad, food's low, medicine's gone. I give us a month. The rains start then, anyway."

"Maybe we'll get lucky, S'Yin," said L'Kor softly. "Maybe they'll find us." He looked toward the night sky, brilliant with a million stars. Some of the lights were moving—more tonight than before, thought the major. But who knew what they did, or why?

"I'm not going to sit here, waiting to die," said G'Sol, a sudden fire to her voice. She stood, looking at L'Kor. "There are ninety-eight of us left. Let's buy something with our lives."

"What?" said the major with a bitter smile. He stabbed his carbine toward the sky. "They're invulnerable to our weapons, their ships track us from space, their little ships hunt us down and slaughter us like v'arx." He looked up at the angry young woman. "What can we do against that, Captain?"

"Y'Gar," she hissed. "He's back."

L'Kor was on his feet, grabbing her by her shoulders. "Where?" he said tightly. "He was in that impregnable processing center they built."

"K'Lorg and S'Lig came in at dusk. Y'Gar feels safe enough to have moved back into the Residence. Are you trying to hurt me?" she added.

"Sorry," said L'Kor, dropping his hands. He picked up his weapon. "Must be a thousand ways into the Residence. Let's go talk with the troops."

Together they turned toward the great collapse of stone behind them. Massive, white-columned, the old palace had been home to every Imperial governor from J'Kol, the first, through thirty-two centuries of Empire, to the last and best remembered.

Only the front portico had survived bombardment and assault—the pillars and wall still stood, though roofless now, choked by jungle creepers that were finally winning their long battle with the growth retardants. Half seen, two sentries stood behind the huge pillars flanking the central doorway. The metal doors were centuries gone, scavenged for scrap.

Major and captain were picking their way around the craters in the plaza when the too-familiar whine of n-gravs sent them whirling about, carbines raised.

Something large and silver was setting down on the broken highway fronting the stairs. The raucous night sounds of the jungle stopped.

"Get everyone out the back—disperse into the jungle," L'Kor ordered the sentries.

"It doesn't look like one of their ships," said G'Sol. Resting on four landing struts, the craft's rounded top was almost level with where the two officers stood. Bright red lights flickered along its top and sides.

"Whose ship does it look like?" snapped the major. "See to the dispersal. I'll get you a little time." Working the carbine, he chambered a round.

"But . . ."

"Do it," he said, eyes on the ship. "Cut Y'Gar's jewels off for me, S'Yin."

The captain hesitated for an instant, then smiled tightly. "For you, S'Ta," she said, slapping her knife, and was gone.

"Luck," he whispered after her.

The night sounds resumed as Major L'Kor trotted briskly down the stairs, carbine on his hip, resolved they wouldn't take him alive. He just wanted, before he pulled the trigger, to ask them why.

"We are approaching our landing point," said the computer, retracting the cocoon. "Pursuing vessels have withdrawn."

"Why?" asked Zahava, sitting up. "What about the pursuing missiles?"

"One is a function of the other," said the machine. ' 'The missiles homed on an echo projection of this lifepod, detonating at intercept. The combine commander, believing us wiped, has withdrawn to orbital station."

"And why don't they detect this rather large piece of metal?" asked the Terran, waving her hand about the pod.

"We have sensor deflectors," said the computer. "Without our n-gravs, hostile vessels were presented with only one possible target."

A suspicion was growing in Zahava's mind, but before she could voice it, the screen came on.

"The good news is that civilization continued on D'Lin," said the computer. "The bad news is that it appears to be under a firm but subtle occupation." The nightscan of the archipelago highlighted the largest island in blue. "D'Lin's population center, once the island of I'Kol, after the first exarch." A small red triangle appeared north of the blue, beside a winding river. "Detention camp, shuttle park." Green blips moved over island and camp. "Patrol craft—class one E—a modified Fleet shuttle design used by Combine T'Lan. I detect no street patrols or evidence of curfew. Commercial broadcasts give no indication of an occupying power. Yet, they are there."

"Where are we landing?" she asked.

"Here." A marker flashed along the northern coastline, far from the red square. A bay, Zahava noted.

"The landing area used to be headquarters of the Imperial Governor of Quadrant Blue Nine. It's been abandoned since Fleet stormed R'Actol's headquarters. Jungle appears to be taking over."

"Jungle?"

"See for yourself," said the computer. "We've landed." There was a faint tremor as struts took over from n-gravs, then the screen changed to outside view, the darkness swept away by the pod's sensors. Jungle, broken roadway, tumbled ruins, shattered stairway and a man, walking down the stairway—a man in jungle combat dress, carrying a rifle.

"Friend or foe?" said Zahava.

"No data," said the computer.

"Lotta good you are," she said, checking her blaster-f charge. "Open up. I'm going out. Can you cover me?"

"Cover you?"

"Covering fire?"

"Certainly."

L'Kor stood just outside the soft circle of pulsing red glow thrown by the lifepod's navlights, watching Zahava clamber down the long duralloy ladder from the airlock.

This one looks human, he thought. And wearing a uniform and side arm. Perhaps a senior officer. Human beings could be sending those
things
against their own kind. . . . L'Kor clenched the carbine's stock, knuckles white.

Zahava jumped the final four rungs, landing on soft, leafy earth. Turning, she found herself staring down L'Kor's carbine. "Is it always this humid here?" she asked, looking past him. There didn't seem to be any more. "How about pointing that weapon somewhere else?"

She was rewarded by the sound of the safety snapping off. "Die," said the man, pointing the gun at her heart— then dropping the weapon and throwing his hands over his face, staggering back as the carbine's muzzle vanished in a blast of flame.

The blast echoed off the stairs and out over the jungle.

"Can we talk?" said Zahava as the other recovered, rubbing his eyes.

"What about?" said L'Kor. Best chance is to make whoever was in that ship shoot me, he thought desperately, pinpoints of light still dancing in his vision. Anything would be better than
that
.

"About the occupation," she said, wondering if everyone here was this slow. Or had he just been through a lot? "About the ships."

A sudden rush of anger banished L'Kor's suicidal intent. "Murderer," he hissed, stepping toward her, fists clenched. "Butcher."

Zahava stepped back, shocked by his hate. "I'm not with them," she said. "They're combine ships, either allied with the AIs or taken over
..."
Seeing his sullen incomprehension, she stopped. Someone has to give up something, she thought.

L'Kor didn't flinch as she drew her weapon. I am the wind, he thought, recalling a snatch of poetry old when the Empire was young. I am the wind and none . . .

His detachment was broken as Zahava extended her blaster to him, grips first.

Disbelieving, Major L'Kor took the weapon, staring from it to Zahava.

"My name's Tal," she said. "Zahava Tal. What's yours?"

"That's not the whole story, Major," she concluded. "That would take the rest of the night. But it's most of what applies to D'Lin."

"I see," said L'Kor, sipping the t'ata from his field cup. "And call me S'Ta. But it doesn't explain why these . . . these things, these AIs, have seized this small, backward world. Or what we can do about it." He bit into a biscuit, savoring it, his first real food in weeks.

"Something the AIs and the S'Cotar found out on my world, S'Ta," said the Terran. "We primitives bite hard."

They sat around a small fire amid the moss-hung ruins of R'Actol's palace, a roof of stars overhead, the shri cacophony of the tropical rain forest all around. As L'Kx wolfed down another biscuit, Zahava sniffed the night ai There was an indefinable essence to it. Fecund, si decided—the smell of jungle and antiquity.

What a monstrosity this place must have been, si: thought. As if the Greeks had built the Parthenon along tr scale of the Temple of Karnak—the center-ringed columi might kindly be called pregnant Doric—and thrown i some Aztec tiling.

Built to daunt, she decided, sipping her t'ata. But tin had done finer work than the builders, sculpting the Imperial edifice into an enchanted ruin, a place whe shadow and starlight evoked the shades of Empire ai Destiny.

Empire and Dust, thought Zahava, looking up at tl alien stars. And will I ever see John again? she wondere

She turned at the crackle of brush and flame—L'K was throwing more scrub on the fire. The flames flan high, sending tall shadows dancing across the ruins.

"It's doing it to you, isn't it?" smiled the major, lea ing back, head on his rucksack. He sighed, hands clasp behind his head. "It's a melancholy place," he said befo she could answer. "We used to camp here when I was boy—play marines and R'Actolians after supper, and tin go to bed, dreaming that the starships had come back."

Zahava tossed her t'ata into the brush. "Well, they' come back, haven't they?" she said.

L'Kor nodded grimly.

"How'd it happen?" she asked.

Based in the harbor town of S'Hlur, the 103rd was paramilitary battalion, charged with police and custoi duties in the northern half of R'Tol. There'd been no n trouble since the last of the pirate villages had been era cated, in L'Kor's grandfather's time. Eleven years out the academy and the major was looking forward to a transfer to P'Rid and the Exarch's Guard—a certain promotion to colonel second.

The silver ships had ended that, sweeping in from the ocean at dawn, blasting the sleeping town, burying many of the garrison in their burning barracks, making strafing runs along the narrow streets.

L'Kor and G'Sol had been rallying the survivors, readying for a second attack, when it came—machines: small, wedge-shaped machines that flew silently over the makeshift barricades and knifed through the troopers, spewing blaster bolts and tumbling decapitated bodies about the compound.

Standing astride an overturned truck, L'Kor had emptied first his pistol and then an automatic rifle into the machines. The bullets pinged off the dull blue metal, leaving it unblemished. A near miss had exploded into the truck, throwing L'Kor to the ground, stunned. As G'Sol helped him up, old Sergeant N'San, just a week from retirement, had scrambled up the west wall to the battalion's lone antiaircraft gun. Swinging the gun down and around, he'd sent a stream of cannon shells tearing into the machines as they'd gathered for a final sweep.

L'Kor used the few moments the sergeant bought to get everyone over the demolished south wall and into the jungle. As they'd reached cover, the antiaircraft position and most of the west wall had exploded behind them, adding its acrid smoke to the pall that hung over the slaughter.