Anvil of Stars

Pan was in charge of general planning. No votes would be taken after the judgment had been made by all the children; Pan and Christopher Robin would have complete control, acting through the division leaders, the five former Pans. Each division leader would oversee a team of fifteen or sixteen children; each team would be assigned a task. Two teams would stay with the Hare. Three teams would fly Tortoise.

Tortoise would accomplish the main objective. Makers cast into the pre-birth cloud would use the available raw materials to manufacture weapons, gravity- or proximity-fuse neutronium bombs that would comprise a second automatic assault, in case the initial assault failed.

Tortoise would launch small craft. Their task would be to divert and/or destroy any defenses and accomplish reconnaissance. Two ex-Pans would lead these small craft teams.

Martin suffered a deep conflict when studying strategy and tactics. Too many possibilities occurred to him; he could not see his way through to a clear line of attack. With some chagrin, he knew the reason for his conflict: he regarded the massive destruction of space war, the necessary total vanquishing of an enemy, as an essentially immoral act. Yet he desired justice for the Earth’s murder as much as any of the children.

Clear thinking on the matter was very difficult; he simply did not trust his own instincts.

Many children had created and filed theoretical tactics over the years; Martin had consulted nearly all of them, particularly those created by Theodore Dawn.

Theodore had been a kind of brilliant child, wise in some respects, but supremely strong willed and irresponsible in others, a complement to Martin’s indecision and second-guessing. More effectively than Martin ever could, blithely ignoring questions of morality, Theodore had created a mathematics of space war tactics that used nearly all the features of the momerath to great advantage. His schemes covered many contingencies, all suggested by the principles taught by the moms. Basics of space warfare, as taught by the moms, had flowered in Theodore’s mind into a graceful dance devoid of consequences.

In Theodore’s plans, concealment was the only armor. Concealment, what Theodore called “silence,” was a fine art among high-technology civilizations. Silence meant complete damping of radiation; invisibility meant unaberrated replication of incident radiation. Advantages over an adversary could be measured mathematically by how silent each was. Silent delivery of weapons—and the silence of the weapons themselves—was next in importance.

Theodore had studied manuals of submarine warfare on Earth. But space was far more dangerous than a deep sea, because it was vast, transparent to all radiations, and a perfect medium for weapons delivery. Yet space had many advantages over ocean; it was three-dimensional without limit, travel paths were limited to orbits, and even the largest unconcealed weapons platform, given sufficient distance, was tiny compared to the background.

Interstellar space had no weather, and rarely changed its character during a period of confrontation. Interplanetary space—the region most likely to be assaulted and defended—was subject to the vagaries of stellar atmospheres and stellar particle streams, but advanced spacefaring civilizations were not bothered by them.

Interplanetary space was extremely difficult to guard. When assault could come undetected from almost any angle, the best defense lay in deceit—either camouflage or outright disguise. What did not attract attention was not attacked.

The libraries told them that only primitive civilizations, such as Earth’s, blatantly announced their existence.

If deceit and camouflage failed, space warfare was comparatively clean and dependent on initial conditions. Knowing the differences in technology suggested probable outcomes for most confrontations even before battle began.

For an invader, this could be turned into an advantage. If an invasion force was discovered within a system, it could “pigeon puff: provide misleading evidence of overwhelming superiority, thus forcing its adversary into ineffective and energy-wasting tactics accompanied by a sense of certain defeat. Psychological weapons were difficult to design because the psychology of an adversary might be unknown or, when facing machines, virtually nonexistent. Even the methods of perception of an adversary might be problematic.

More effective sometimes, Theodore postulated, was an appearance of weakness, of lesser technological ability. One part of an assault could perform deception while other parts deployed silently. If the adversary were deceived by this “lapwing,” it might exert its forces prematurely, inappropriately, or not at all.

These were solid but not brilliant reflections of what the moms had taught them. Where Theodore Dawn’s genius truly shined was in describing an adversary’s course of actions under the imagined circumstances of confrontation. Theodore seemed to have an aptitude for creating alien psychologies, and applying them to space warfare.

He created four categories of adversary: inferior, equal, superior, and unknowable. Unknowable could encompass any of the other categories; for example, a weak, low-technology adversary might have stumbled onto effective methods of maintaining silence, or of deceiving.

Inferior was easily enough defined, and even dealt with, given due caution; but it was unlikely the Killers were inferior to the Benefactors. Theodore outlined a few simple instances, warned of dangers, and went on to equality and superiority.

Equality was most difficult to plan for, simply because it could be planned for. Martin, choosing the most likely scenario, studied Theodore’s writing and displays on the tactics of attacking equals. What he was concerned with was not equality of force, but equality of technology and intelligence; not equality of desire or fear, nor even the sameness of creativity, but equality of the raw materials of warfare, in terms of capabilities. Thus, a torpedo was smaller and perhaps less complex than the submarine it was designed to destroy, yet it was equal in technological origins.

A simple device could be made clever at the same level as a more complex, far more powerful or forceful device; it could be effective against the greater force, preventing its use or destroying it.

A superior adversary was best not confronted directly, or at all (though that was not a choice here; they must bat against such a force like a moth against a glass window, if necessary, dedicated but all- uncomprehending). But the superior adversary was likely also best at concealment, deception, and diversion. A far superior adversary might not be an adversary at all, as much as a supernatural force, a Godlike potentiality that could brush aside the most careful planning and the most concerted assault like the whims of a child.

Still, the moms insisted—and Theodore agreed—confronting a technologically superior adversary was not necessarily folly. Killing Captain Cook.

The tactics of dealing with superiority were largely those of silence and attrition, like an infected flea creeping into a human’s clothes to spread plague. The makers and the doers could act as bacilli.

But repeatedly, Martin was reminded by Theodore’s writings that any comparisons they made—even the comparison to killing Cook—were faulty.

It was possible the superior adversary could nullify or escape any of their weapons.

Martin closed his eyes and tried to subdue his frustration, his conflict. There would never be enough information. And he—Martin—would never be sufficiently prepared…

The Dawn Treader used every method at its disposal to slow over the long days of space, and to conserve its fuel, girding for battle.

Martin led the children outside the ship again, and this time he felt they were prepared. He had set up a particularly nasty adversary—one suggested by Theodore years before.

Martin stayed within the ship, directing the efforts of this adversary with two others—Harpal Timechaser and Stephanie Wing Feather.

Outside, forty of the children flew their craft around the Dawn Treader, preparing for entry into a simulated system configured very much like Wormwood.

The five unknown masses around the yellow star were hidden defense stations, in Martin’s plan; and Theodore’s adversaries, pure machine intelligences that had long since replaced their biological creators, were in command.

Martin watched the scenario play itself out.

Planets met their end in compressed time, surfaces molten slag, and most of the children survived. Hare, portrayed by the still-intact Dawn Treader, came through with minimal damage.