The Books of the Wars (16 page)

Across the Yards came the People, wild, raging with a passion that could never know the precise, crystalline exactitude that had fallen over Shan. Warm, panting and sweating they ran on, their eyes glazed, their feet moving in long forgotten patterns, their mouths forming a single oath, "The Ship!" Right now, Shan reflected, not a single one of them knew what he was actually doing, while he and all those around him knew exactly what they were about: they were purpose, determination and knowledge, unhindered by clumsy, mindless emotions. The shambling mass that was rushing at them was the World, and that was the kindest thing one could ever say about it.

The tanks, though, were something of a puzzle, for while they seemed to be related to the
Victory,
there was a sense of infinite corruption about them and their crews; but anything that might cause questions about the masses or the tanks was utterly crushed by the concentrated power of Coral and his machine. Of all the thousands of People running toward Shan, only this one could not strike any sort of fear into him.

The wave was less than a quarter of a mile away when both sides fully opened up. A solid sheet of yellow flashes leaped out from the
Victory
's defense perimeter; a thousand People fell, and several of the smaller tanks vanished in a torrent of heavy grenades. "The Ship, the Ship . . . !" The cry melted into the crashing of big guns, automatic weapons, and bombs.

The nearest tank, the white one bearing Coral, was now less than a hundred yards off; explosions swept away the black and tan uniforms that stood before it. Flame flowers blossomed on its mountainous flanks, but nothing could seem to damage it or touch the giant atop its main turret, his hair plastered back from the muzzle blast of the tank's main batteries.

In an irregular curving line beginning at the main quay on the Tyne and running across the Yards to the Sea, the two forces joined. Macalic was shot through the head, half his skull and brain splattered upon the clean hull of his wondrous
Victory.

Shan pushed the body of his late superior down into the tempest below, to get a clear field of fire. He used only one of the guns, holding it steadily in both hands and taking dead aim; ten short cracks, reload, ten more, another magazine, ten more. . . . There were no more clips and Shan felt as if the life had been sucked out of him; he felt starved and sick.

He turned to the machine gun position ten feet to his left. The two attendants were dead amid a clutter of empty ammunition boxes, but the gunner was still alive. Shan stared at him, so amazing was his appearance. The man was screaming like a maniac, his reddened eyes bulging from their sockets but still riveted to the sights; his twisted mouth was dripping foam. Even over the thunder of battle, Shan could hear the man's piercing shrieks, revolting and tinged with madness. But the man's body was as cool and mechanical as Shan had been a moment ago. Calmly his hands sighted the gun, pressed the trigger and cleared the action of faulty slugs, while his torso and legs sat rooted to the floor plating. A bullet whistled by Shan and clipped the man lightly on the arm; he swiveled his raging head and glared at the wound briefly before returning his eyes to their work. His arm had not flinched, his body had betrayed not a single evidence of pain. There was only his possessed head that fought to be with the People and with the warm comfort they found in the Myth of the Ship; from the neck down one might have supposed that the man was an accessory of the gun and of the physical thing that was only the
Victory.

Shan was gripped by an urgent need to fire a gun, that its strength might be his again. He got up and moved quickly toward the raving man. The maniac saw him coming and swung his weapon around, his eyes an extension of the iron sights. A burst tore past Shan to strike musical notes on the Victory's hull; a bullet ripped his feet from under him and he fell into the battle. The man snapped back into his former position just as a shell from Coral's tank punched him and his gun into the Ship's silver skin.

Shan fell, it seemed to him, with extraordinary slowness, drifting like a fat, bloody feather down into the fire and swords. White, black, silver, tan, and red: he alighted on a pile of bodies and bounced off onto the concrete. There was no noise now, not the slightest sound; the whole battle was being performed in pantomime. The colors swirled around him with quiet ease until the black occupied all of it.

* * *

Shan awoke some time later. It was dusk and the engagement was over. He was paralyzed, with only his eyes retaining any sort of functional ability. He was propped up against the mound of corpses on which he had landed and could see that his left leg was shattered below the knee; better that he should feel nothing.

All around him lay the wreckage of the battle. Coral's white battle machine stood, still untouched, in the middle of a clutter of burned-out tanks. The dead, arrayed in all manner of uniforms, were scattered over the Yards. The columns of smoke were still spiraling up from the Techno highlands, and some fairly large fires were raging in the factory districts. He could not see the
Victory—
it was behind him—but he was sure that any damage even this force might have done would be lost on her vast flanks. The shadow of the Ship cast the whole area into a premature night.

He could see horsedrawn wagons and motor trucks moving through the Yards, their crews wearily loading white-clad bodies into them and sprinkling shovels of lime on the black and tan ones.

Torn banners stirred sadly in the light evening breezes, their brilliant gold and white stained by smoke or blood. A horde of seagulls circled and dived over the field, trying to beat the graves' details to the eyes of the dead.

Shan wished with all his soul that he could cry, but he had by then almost lost the power to even blink. The heap of cadavers shifted and he fell helplessly on his side.

He now saw a large group of Technos directly ahead of him; several thousand, he guessed, for they seemed to be backed up all the way to the main gate. There were many women and children among the captured, so it seemed that the People had not gone on the rampage in the highlands that they might have. A big man, Coral perhaps, was standing on a wagon with a bullhorn held before him. Although he could not hear a word, Shan could easily guess what was going on. The surviving Technos were being given a choice: they could remain and serve the Ship's new captains and escape with them to Home. Or they could leave.

Shan looked closer, for the darkness was getting thicker, and was shocked at what he saw. Many of the Technos were, predictably, weeping or simply sitting on the ground, stunned with sorrow or pain; but one by one, as the tears dried and the sorrows fell into a numb coldness, they raised their eyes, not to the World or to the evening stars, but to the
Victory.
Almost every member of that crowd, Techno and People alike, was entranced by the Ship and with the reality that Coral and his men had suddenly given it.

The choice of leaving must have just been given, for the prisoners were stirring uneasily. Some managed to tear their eyes away from the Ship and looked to their burning homes in the highlands. Others talked earnestly, not looking at each other.

The man with the horn made an appealing gesture. The crowd shifted again and the dying Techno realized that not a single person had stepped forward.
How?
he asked himself, remembering the iron determination of just a few hours ago. Then he remembered his own exact feelings and saw that the courage was summoned in the name of the
Victory,
not for any noble schemes of World reconstruction. The ownership of the
Victory
had shifted and the Technos followed like trained dogs.

He looked up again to see that a single person had stepped forward—a girl, certainly not old enough to be called a woman. Even though her uniform was torn and dirtied, she was still an exceedingly beautiful creature; fair skin, fine features, long gold-yellow hair, she did not belong in this ruin. Hell, Shan thought, she did not belong in the World at all: a First World princess would have been closer to the mark. But her face did not retain the regal calm that her movements expressed. She was confused, and moved her olive eyes first to the
Victory,
then to Coral, to the highlands, and finally to the night sky; she was crying and tried to cover her face with a bloodied right hand. She stared for a second at a young man in the front rows, but he did not see her, so intently was he regarding the Ship.

Shan tried to call to her, but all he could feel was a thin stream of warm blood forcing its way between his lips.

Coral faced her, a curious smile on his face as if he were happy at her leaving. He gestured and a dark coach and two horses trotted up. She boarded and the coach moved off. It was now virtually night, half the sky being richly strewn with stars.

Shan began to forget the girl and worry about his own impending death.
No need to trouble myself about that,
he thought,
here it comes now.
A short stocky man in white was moving along the line of bodies that marked the defense perimeter; he held a pistol and his chest was strung with clip bandoliers. A lime truck and crew followed at a distance.

At each corpse he bent down and felt about the neck for a pulse. If none was found, he passed on; if he found a living Techno or soldier he put the gun to his head before going on to the next. Shan saw only two of the quiet muzzle flashes as the man approached; Shan wondered if a gun were capable of killing someone if he could only see and not hear its shot.

The man was in front of Shan, but all the Techno could see from his position was a pair of boots, painted a dirty white. A hand reached down, but Shan could not feel it touch his neck; he expected the gun to follow but instead the man's tired face came into view. The face saddened and Shan thought he might be saved. The face and boots disappeared. The man moved Shan around, settled him back against the pile and carefully adjusted his head until he was staring almost straight up.

In front and rising out of sight was the ship, now a pale bronze in the twilight, completely filling the world. The starboard wing root began at his extreme left, more than a thousand feet above the Yards; the constellation of Eringold was dimly reflected on the Ship's polished hull.

Shan waited, trying to decide whether to hate or love the
Victory.
At last the man came back, looking as if he had just granted the Techno some divine favor. The man placed himself squarely in front of Shan, his skin now the same color as the Ship's. With an air of infinite benevolence he swung his gun up until it was within six inches of Shan's face. The next thing the Techno saw was a noiseless flash spreading outward from the gun, hiding the man and his Ship behind its brilliance.

In the two years that followed the Grand Revolution—as one chronicler so admiringly named it—the
Victory
increased its bulk by a good ten percent. The People worked around the clock and a decade of scheduled work was compressed into those two years.

* * *

The sole refugee from the Yards, the girl, had started out not having the slightest idea of where she would go. Transportation was provided as far as the Yuma border, but beyond that no help was offered. She struck out to the north, desiring only to escape the Caroline where black and silver uniforms had acquired an unhealthy reputation.

In the third Spring after the Grand Revolution, she landed at Duncarin, capital of the Dresau Islands.

At that moment, Admiral Radlov was probably the most powerful man in the World, west of the Tyne delta. And so had been his predecessors, the Admirals of the Fleet, down through a thousand years of history. Under them the Dresau Islands had become mighty beyond all measuring and had imposed their wise rule over seven hundred miles of eastern coastline and thirty major islands. The Islands were also the last archaic holdout of the First World.

Captain Pendred commanded the most powerful weapon in this most powerful of nations, the cruiser
Havengore.
This ship, along with the frigates
Blackthorne
and
Frostfire,
composed what the World called either in legend or in direct report, The Fleet.

It was a bright morning in early Spring when the Tal-bight estuary was ridding itself of ice, and the mountain streams on Guthrun, the main island, were flushed from the first thaws. The girl had just been escorted from Radlov'soffice after an extensive interview.

Pendred was then summoned. Although almost twenty years the Admiral's junior, his counsel was often asked in matters of pressing import.

Pendred left his greatcoat in the foyer and entered the office. Admiral Radlov was seated behind a large oaken desk carved from the transom of the ship of the line
Hell Hawk,
of Blackwoods Bay fame. Radlov was an old man, and he showed it more than he cared to admit. The Sea had been a cruel companion to him and had sapped his strength until he could only stand "like a piece of driftwood" and watch the ships. Most of his hair had been torn out by the northern gales and the salt water had eroded his skin until he looked like an abandoned hulk rotting on the mudflats south of Duncarin.

Pendred was merely Radlov twenty years before.

After the preliminary pleasantries and the compliments on the
Havengore
's recent expedition against the corsairs of New Svald, the Admiral confronted Pendred with the Ship. The Myth of the Ship, the
Victory
itself, the Grand Revolution, and the state of the western World were all related to Pendred from the written testimony of the girl. Pendred, of course, expressed the predictable amazement and then the rapture that most men experienced when they were told of the real and/or professed aims of the Ship. But the delight was not all that Toriman would have wished it to be, because Pendred and the Dresau Islands still lived, albeit tenuously, in the First World, and they retained that age's fierce confidence in itself; what Toriman had sought to resurrect in the Caroline had not yet died on Guthrun.