Tatja Grimm's World

“I guess that is all I could hope for. As to your cooperation, I—Listen.” Across the night, the sounds came unnaturally clear: voices, occasional screams. The sounds were so precise and yet so faint. They reminded Svir of a miniature painting seen under a glass—small and yet filled with complicated details.

The nylon curtain moved, and someone entered the room. “Sir, we have action at Backtrack Five. We believe more enemy troops are moving into that area.”

“Very well, Stark, you may initiate Olive Bat. And send the signal officer in here.”

“Right.” As the chief of staff left for the map room, Cor struggled to her feet. For a moment she sagged against him, but she wouldn’t sit back down. He helped her to the sand-bagged wall, where she leaned against the damp bags and looked out the slits. On the other side of his wife he could hear the signalman taking his position.

The window slits were cunningly constructed to protect against a wide range of art’ry bursts and still allow good visibility. Except for a scattering of stars in the narrow strip of visible sky, there was no light.

“There’s nothing to see yet,” commented Jolle. “And if we’re lucky, the actual fighting will stay below our line of sight.”

Svir noticed the flickering light of first one signaler and then another. “The third, fourth, and seventh art’ry batteries acknowledge our command,” said the signalman.

Jolle spoke to Svir and Cor. “See, that first flicker was the command from this post. We can’t afford to give away our position—in case Profe has a suicide squad or a couple of art’ry pieces—so we use runners to take messages from the map room to our signaler. That’s about a hundred yards down the hill from here. Then the command is flashed to our units.” The explanation had been purely for their own edification, Svir realized.

Then came the crump of a single art’ry piece firing. Seconds passed, and suddenly there was green daylight over the valley. Back in Bayfast Svir had seen art’ry flares fired over the inland cliffs during maneuvers, and this was much the same. The light moved slowly, dimming and then glowing brightly. But this was not Bayfast. Here the mountains extended thousands of feet above the top of the flare’s arc. The otherworldly green light illuminated the sides of the gorgelike valley, and in a distortion of perspective the light seemed a tiny green match flickering in a darkened room, casting shadows upon the walls and floor. It was nearly as bright as quarter- phase Seraph, and he wasted several seconds watching the shadows slowly shift as the flare drifted across the sky. But even the flare couldn’t reveal the extent of the mountains that shouldered over it. To those hulks it was indeed a tiny match flame. As the light dimmed for the last time, Svir looked at the ground below. The terraced fields stretched down a slope of nearly thirty degrees for a distance of some two thousand feet. Beyond that he could see the road that led from the Picchiu River. The road stretched transversely across the face of the slope. Beyond it, the ground dipped out of sight. Except for the flare moving across the sky and the sounds of battle below, there was no sign of human activity.

The flare dimmed, winked out. All was dark again; Svir couldn’t even see the stars now. Signal lamps flickered as the crown’s observers reported on enemy positions they had sighted. He judged that most of the signalers were near the edge of the drop-off. In the bunker, the signal officer was scratching away. He spoke to Jolle. “Sir, they say—”

“Never mind, Captain. Just take it into the map room. The men who are going to use this information already have it.” As he spoke, the men he referred to took action. In a space of fifteen seconds, the art’ry pieces of the combined crown and provincial forces fired. It was no longer necessary to whisper. Though the firing was a couple of thousand feet away, the racket was loud enough to cover most other noises. As the barrage continued, Svir noticed pale lights flickering in the darkness below their position. Even with fiashless powder, the guns emitted a pearly, oval radiance when they fired. It was probably invisible from below the guns’ positions, but the command bunker was in line of sight with most of them. They must be well camouflaged; when the flare had shined, he had looked at the road and seen no sign of them. “He’s way ahead of the reports,” Jolle said mildly.

A second flare went up. This time there was more to see. At the edge of the drop-off, several hundred Rebels were in contact with friendly forces. It was impossible for Svir to tell whether the loyal forces were Provincial, crown, or Celestial Servants. Even after the barrage, the noise of their fighting was loud—they were within fifteen hundred feet of the command post itself, though still considerably below it. He realized that even with the flares, the art’ry wasn’t very effective. The flares had pinpointed the enemy, but only after they were almost on top of the guns. In daylight, the enemy could have been destroyed while still several miles away, but now the friendly troops had to fight just to protect their guns.

That defense was not entirely successful. There was an ear-popping concussion, and the floor of the bunker rapped their feet. At same time, a minor avalanche of dirt sifted down through the timbered roof, and fine dust filled the air. Svir and Cor held onto each other, coughing in the smoke-like dust. Ancho cringed at Cor’s feet. As the floor steadied, she bent down and picked him up, trying to brush the dust from his coat. Svir could feel heavy dirt in his hair and down his neck; the dust stuck to his skin everywhere.

“Damn,” spoke Jolle. “T hey’ve captured one of our own guns. Unless—” In the green flarelight, Svir saw him pick up a pair of binoculars and inspected the terrain before them. He didn’t look at the fighting men moving toward them, but concentrated on the lip of the drop-off, further away. The flare burned out, but he kept watching. The FAO lights flickered back to the art’ry and command positions.

The signalman stepped back into the room. “Captain,” said Jolle, “the enemy has broken our art’ry direction code. The following FAO positions—” he rattled off some map coordinates “—are enemy men pretending to be ours.” He paused and watched the messages flickering up from below. “They are directing shells toward our own men. Have those positions shelled.”

“Yes sir.” The signalman started for the curtain. “We’ll throw an acknowledge test at them just to make sure.”

“You’ll destroy them immediately, mister.”

“But sir, if they have the main code, how can you tell who the impostors are? And you’re just estimating their position. You at least need a—”

Jolle’s voice seemed quiet next to the art’ry fire below, but it cut through all the random noises with a cool deadliness. “Captain, I gave you an order. Obey it, or join the enemy.”

For a moment the captain struggled to find his voice. “Y-yessir. They’ll be destroyed immediately.” He disappeared.

“That was a clever move,” continued Jolle, “though I’m sure Profirio knew it would be obvious to me. But then, what he really wants is confusion, so he can escape from his own forces—which are sure to lose—and insinuate himself into the Doomsday group.” Why did the alien trouble to explain these intrigues to mere playing pieces? Did he really think such apparent frankness would convince them of his sincerity?

More enemy forces had cleared the drop-off; now shells were landing on the terraces in sight of the bunker. They lit the battlefield with stop-action flashes. Red, orange, even blue glimmered in the bursting shells—and there seemed to be a fiery structure inside the explosion. The shrap’ bombs were less impressive, but from the screams and turmoil, Svir guessed they were doing more damage. A third flare arched across the valley. Several thousand more enemy soldiers had passed the road. They were close! Somehow they had made it to the lip of the drop-off. But this was no unstoppable horde: these men were in the open now. They ran across the terrace, their only cover an occasional tree. Fire fell, burning the fields, torching the trees. The gunmen didn’t need any directions to bring their fire directly in on the enemy troops, though many guns were too near to be effective.

And only two men knew what the soldiers were dying for—knew whether they were dying to save the world or to destroy it.

The army that was now a mob swept past them, and the art’ry fire followed. The shell bursts still cast light across the fields, but they were not directly visible. The noise was muted, coming through the dirt behind them. There was a strange sound he hadn’t noticed before. It was a snapping, popping, like the clatter of a broken printer. The sound came from the left side of the front. He leaned forward, and saw a white flashing. It was something like a signaler, but faster and without the dots, dashes, and intermeds of a signaling pattern. Jolle saw the white flickering too. “He’s bringing on his secret weapon, but it won’t help him.”

“Yes, but what is it?” To Svir, the flashing light seemed innocuous.

“It’s, uh, a handheld gun. Profe looted the warehouses in Kotta-svo-Picchiu. He got something like a thousand ounces of iron there. Apparently he used some of it to make a repeating gun that’s small enough to be carried. I don’t think he’s actually built a nonmetallic repeater—I tried that, couldn’t do it. He has at least five men down there—” He stopped as art’ry shells blossomed over the twinkling lights, outshining them. When the orange