Warworld: The Lidless Eye (22 page)

The sounds of explosions outside affected him little; he was, after all, nearly deaf. Looking back along the steepening angle of the beams, he found their source, the great tapered cruciform shape of a starship, long end forward. It was gliding almost directly overhead now, seeming to be moored to the surface of Haven by threads of destructive energy connecting it to the carnage there.

Flynn could just discern the huge device of the flaming eye on its underbelly, but he recognized the general construction style and displacement of weapons. As a former Imperial Marine, he was not fooled for a second.

“Saurons,” he whispered, more in wonder than fear or loathing. “I’ll be a sonofa—”

The last particle weapons discharge from the
Dol Guldur
was a direct hit on the Uossi Suomi airfield office. Master Mechanic Flynn died in despair, sure that the Saurons must have won the war if they were down to annexing places like Haven.

John Claude Hamilton woke up very slowly, feeling unusually content and at peace with the world. He cracked open his eyes to find himself in an unfamiliar room. The smell of perfume and musk lay heavy in the air. No, he amended, the room was familiar, but changed. It was his grandmother’s old room—
What am I doing here?

My God!
he thought, as realization of where he was sunk in. It took all his willpower to keep himself from bolting straight up. He looked at the antique dresser and saw a picture of a young Brigadier Cummings in an Imperial Marine uniform. He slowly turned his head to the other side of the bed where the covers were bunched up over an unmistakably female form.
What have I done now?

A very nice, slender female body, if memory served him right…
Stop that, you idiot! That’s what got you into this mess in the first place. Ingrid Cummings is not some serving wench from the White Tamerlane or a
kitchen maid you can just use and then forget. She is the daughter of the most powerful man on the planet. And his Grandfather’s best friend. If they found out, it could mean—marriage!

He’d leave his ancestral home first. Marriage was completely out of the question.

How had this happened? Memories of last night suddenly came flooding back: Kanter telling him about the Sauron invasion, the journey into the Tower, the bomb—

Sweet Lord, the Saurons were here.

Then Ingrid bursting into tears, worried sick about her mother and father. Him comforting her, kissing her, their bodies pressing against each other in a primal rhythm. A torturous trip in the dark, down the Tower stairs, with Ingrid in his arms. A mad dash across the courtyard and into her room…taking, no tearing off their clothes, then a wild coupling, meshing of two bodies. Later another, slower this time and more tender—

How could I have let this happen? I am almost forty T-years old, not some green kid. Right, but the world doesn’t get invaded by Saurons every day, old boy! Settle down, the question now isn’t what you’ve done. That’s a
fait accompli.
The question is: What are you going to do about it? Who saw you carry Ingrid into her room?

He thought as hard as he ever had:
No one, or everyone. I can’t remember running into or seeing anyone, but then I wasn’t paying attention to anyone but Ingrid at the time. What have I done?

That, he realized, was no longer important; what he had to do now was to get out of this room, preferably without waking—he hadn’t the faintest idea of how he could talk his way out of this mess. As for Ingrid, maybe she’d be as ashamed as he was and forget the whole thing—talk about wishful thinking! Well, he was
pretty
sure that she was no more anxious to marry him than he was to marry her. Hell, they’d never had a nice word for each other until last night. And there hadn’t been much talking then.

John glanced over at the blanket-covered, sleeping form and noticed
the covers had shifted, exposing her slim, silky thigh—

Damn it, enough of that already, fathead!
He slowly pushed his way out of the covers and into the chilly night air.
It was the best
, came unbidden into his mind.
Out, treacherous thoughts! I don’t even like the lady.
Lady, that was the key.
One did not ravish Ladies.
God’s Teeth, was he in trouble!

He slowly rolled out of the bed, quickly pulled his clothes on and slipped out the door like a thief.
Oh, I’m that and worse.
It had been sheer good fortune that the Baron hadn’t been home.

As he made his way down the hall toward his room, John heard voices downstairs. One was the gruff tones of his Grandfather’s voice.
I’d better get down there, I’m supposed to be in charge here!

The Baron and his closest advisors were in the study, crouched around a pile of maps on the table. As he came in, his Grandfather looked up at him, saying, “I hope we didn’t disturb your sleep.”

He knows
, was John’s first thought. But when the Baron turned back to the map, he realized that the Old Man thought he’d spent the night with one of the serving maids. A wave of relief flooded through him.

“Almost all radio communications have been cut off,” the Baron said, “just a few ham operators, mostly those with vacuum tubes, are still on the air. Castell City, Falkenberg, Tampa, Lermontovgrad, Redemption all nuked. Mostly tactical and neutron bombs, though. Killing people with minimal property damage, and to hell with any hope of bomb shelters saving anyone. Still, that’s not standard Sauron raiding tactics.

“And no confirmation concerning Saurons, except from Cummings. Everyone else is talking about pirates, but why would pirates bomb cities which hold potential wealth? Even clean nukes spoil loot.” He shook his head. “It’s got their footprints all over this; nothing else makes any sense. Tactics that don’t fit Sauron raid profiles fit very well into descriptions of Sauron invasions.”

“Your Lordship, what are the odds of them, Saurons I mean, coming here to Whitehall?” Master-at-Arms Jubal Leonard asked.

“As long as we keep radio silence and don’t do anything stupid to
call attention to ourselves, I’d say quite slim at the moment. If there’s more than one ship, a major invasion, we’ll see them soon enough. If it’s only a single ship—and I’m not sure they’d waste more than one on an iceball like Haven—then we may never see them again.”

“So everything will stay the same, Baron?” the Steward asked.

“Didn’t say that. There’ll be changes aplenty, whether they come to Whitehall or not. That’s why we’ve got to be careful.”

“I think we ought to help organize some kind of resistance,” John volunteered. “We have a secure position and lots of neighbors and allies. None of whom want to see Saurons on Haven.”

“John, you are talking as if the Saurons were just another band of brigands, better armed and organized than, say, the Fleming Gang. They’re not. I fought them on Tabletop. They’re a whole other order of bad news. Each Sauron Soldier is worth a score of real humans, or ‘cattle,’ which is what
they
call us. If it truly is Saurons who have attacked Haven, this entire world will never be the same. The last thing we want to do is give them a reason to come here.”

“But, those bastards nuked Redemption and Castell and Hell’s-a-Comin’—”

“I know,” the Baron said, his voice growing in volume. “I don’t like it. I despise what they’ve done to our world. And there is much worse to come. However, if we draw attention to ourselves, how will that help Haven? It’s not as if we have the means to destroy a pinnace full of these Super Soldiers—much less a ship full of them.

“If Cummings and his Militia can’t do the job—and there’s no reason to think that they can—we certainly can’t. The Haven Volunteers don’t have the ordnance or the facilities to successfully engage a man-of-war. I know; I spent ten years in the Imperial Navy aboard the
Wellington
. I’ve seen firsthand what a Sauron warship is capable of. Brigadier Cummings, God Bless his heart, doesn’t stand a chance.”

“So we pull the shades down and hide in the dark!” John couldn’t keep the scorn out of his voice.

“Exactly, and pray to God that the Saurons don’t decide that they
want to settle in this part of the Shangri-La. This is a big valley; if we’re lucky we may live out our entire lives and never see a single Sauron.”

“I don’t call that a life!”

The other advisors turned away, embarrassed by John’s outburst. He was too angry to care. This was a cause he could believe in, die for if necessary.

He could see his Grandfather visibly rein in his temper. In a cold, controlled tone of voice he said, “In this small part of the Valley we are a big-sized fish, but compared to the Saurons we’re a minnow. In a world quickly sliding its way back to the Middle Ages, we were a military power. Now we’ll be lucky to maintain our local autonomy. The Saurons can rip through these walls like a drillbit through a cardboard outhouse.”

“But how can we just pretend that nothing is happening?” John asked. “There’s a war for the heart and soul of Haven being waged beyond these castle walls!”

“We can and we will. That’s an order!”

The other men looked down at the floor.

“This includes all of you. Understood?”

The Baron’s eyes bored straight into John. He nodded his head, but felt sick inside. He needed this, needed something to make up for the mess upstairs, the mess of his whole life.
When will I ever learn?

Captain Aram Mazurin, John’s brother-in-law and local liaison with the Militia, broke into the room. John gave a guilty start.

He paused, his lungs laboring like bellows. “Sauron ship. Big mother! Just passed over the Miracles, must be coming from the Redfield Satrapy. It’s passing overhead with two dozen fighters in tow! Better come out or you’ll miss it.”

“Is it firing?” the Steward asked, obviously he had never been in combat.

Captain Mazurin shook his head. “Not much to shoot at around here, just farms and this old castle—I don’t think we’re big enough to qualify as a military target to a warship. I pray we’re not. Otherwise, it’ll be the last thing we ever see.”

The
Dol Guldur
maintained its orbital strike on the surface of Haven for nine days, at intervals. During that time, it began sending down Commandos and assault teams to the surface to secure and inspect the areas Survey had reported as suitable for long-term occupation. When the fires below began to burn out, Diettinger ordered the area to be given another pass. If an area sent out so much as a transmitted appeal for mercy, he ordered it nuked.

Tight-beam laser communications were the only form of contact between the ship and groundside Saurons. Not so much as a radio wave was to leave Haven’s surface. Every identifiable radio source was pinpointed for bombing or ground action.

Diettinger held no animosity for the Haveners; one did not hate cattle, after all. Nor was he by nature a cruel man. He had fought in many battles, and had always shown courtesy to his foes whenever possible. One such act had cost him his eye. But before you could show courtesy, both sides had to understand the rules of the game, and the only rule the Haveners needed to know right now was—
Don’t Talk.

As of now, courtesy did not enter into his equations, or mercy. This battle was far more important than even the defense of Homeworld had been. For this battle could be won.

And would be.

By the end of the first day of the bombardment, Colonel Aden Kettler, late of the Redfield Satrapy Air Force, had used up every bit of pilot’s luck he felt he had. No matter. The airstrip at Fort Fornova had not been touched by the Sauron bombardment and was lined up neatly below him. His landing was perfect. On solid ground again, he eagerly accepted the jolt of brandy offered him by one of the militia watch commanders, a husky sergeant-major in a gleaming breastplate.

Twenty-four hours from bottle to throttle
, he thought, remembering the ancient flyer’s admonition against mixing liquor with aviation fuel. “The hell with that,” he muttered. If ever there were extenuating circumstances, these were it. He caught his reflection in the non-com’s flawless armor.

Until the Empire had abandoned Haven, taking along most of its technical support, people would have laughed at the notion of using such archaic armor. The Redfield Satrapy and the Haven Volunteers had had their disagreements in the past, however. Kettler did not laugh.

“Right this way, Colonel,” the Sergeant-Major said, gesturing toward a small jeep idling at the side of the runway. “The Brigadier’s expecting you.”

The driver threw the car in gear the moment Kettler hit the seat. He had thought flying through turbulence and updrafts generated by the strikes was bad, but good God, this road!

As he became accustomed to the jolting ride, he began to wonder about the fort. Why hadn’t Fornova taken any strikes from the invaders? It didn’t seem possible that Cummings would ever sell out to the Saurons,
but it was strange. Maybe it was his own paranoia, from living in a police state ruled by a man who saw treachery behind every footstool? As far as he knew, Cummings had been awarded the Imperial Cross; Kettler would not believe such a man would ever work with the enemy.