Churry nodded his agreement. “After returning here,” Churry concluded, “we disassemble this Door, leaving Hobbs Land without communication for the near future but otherwise essentially unharmed. Our Door, the one we leave there will be well hidden, and later we can sneak back and see what’s happening.”
Mordy nodded. “They’ll be effectively cut off. It’ll take a long time before anyone finds out what happened. By the time it is generally known what did happen, we will have put phase two into action, our propaganda campaign concerning the danger posed by the Hobbs Land Gods. By the time people realize we have killed something that could have taken them over, they will be very glad we did and ready to assist us in doing the same on Ahabar.”
Every member of the Arm was sure of this. Churry himself was sure of it. Churry had computed the time it would take to get another Door built on Phansure and shipped to Hobbs Land. He felt the farm world would be effectively cut off for at least half a lifeyear, plenty of time to confirm the danger posed by the Gods. Everyone would be glad, when they finally found out.
“We can go there anytime we want to,” he mentioned to Mordy Trust. “To collect evidence.”
“Provided they don’t find our Door.” She considered this the weak point in the plan.
“It’s in a broken area where no one ever goes, according to Shan Damzel. They’re unlikely to find it.”
“When we do the raid, they’ll see us flying toward it, or away from it.”
“That’s why we’re using their own fliers. They won’t know who’s inside them. They’re used to seeing their own fliers going back and forth. No one will pay any attention.”
“And then?” she had asked.
“Well, Mordy, we see what happens. The purpose of leaving a Door hidden there is so we can see what’s happening. If these people have been swallowed up and changed, that offers a threat to the rest of us. Shan Damzel is sure they have been and it does, and so am I.” Churry had said this often during training. Though he did not realize it, he had portrayed the Hobbs Landians as monsters, possessed by terrible things. He hadn’t meant that, but it is what his followers had heard, more or less.
“It won’t be necessary to kill anybody,” Mordy said flatly, reaffirming what she’d been told.
“Of course not, Mordy. They’re farmers on Hobbs Land. They won’t put up any fight. They see a fully armed Baidee coming through a Door, they’ll turn tail and run.”
He had often said this also during training. He had visualized the scene frequently, himself at the head of an intrepid band making the strike, finding out what needed to be known with no nonsense about it. There had been many such raids, many such decisive actions in the history of the Baidee. Since he did not know what was in his followers’ minds, he did not see the fundamental dichotomy in his vision. Farmers would run, but farmers would be harmless. Monsters wouldn’t be harmless, and monsters probably wouldn’t run.
Churry had visions of medals and glory, after the fact. System would approve and admire, after the fact. So he assured himself, right up to the moment his hundred and twenty fully armed and equipped Baidee troops stamped their booted feet upon the sands of Thyker, readying themselves to go through the Combat Door into Hobbs Land.
• • •
• Tandle Wobster was the first to see the Baidee invaders. She was also the first to die. She happened to be in the vicinity of the Doors, on her way back from the flier park, when the first Baidee came through. Seeing the weapons, she panicked and ran for the Security building. The young trooper shot her in the back to keep her, he said later, from setting off the alarm. Actually, he didn’t think of anything when he shot her except that this was one of the possessed, possibly a monster. He’d been taught to shoot at anything moving, and he did.
Hearing the weapon, the security people, all three of them on duty, came out to see what had happened, and the same trooper, seeing weapons in their hands, fired again. More monsters, he told himself, without realizing it. One of the security people got off a lucky shot with a stunner and paralyzed the trooper’s right arm. All three of the security people were dead before they hit the ground.
Churry came through in the next bunch, took one look at the bodies, made a thin-lipped grimace, sent the offending trooper back through the Door, and ran for the flier park. Others at CM, alerted by the firing, had peeked out, had seen what was happening, and the more foolhardy among them had found weapons of sorts—power tools or something they could use as clubs—and tried to defend CM. Two troopers dropped, shot through the heads by fasteners
