The Overlords of War

Chapter 11

He was awakened by cries, grinding noises, the clumping of boots on a rough surface, orders shouted in a snarling voice, the spiteful clatter of weapons. It was absolutely dark. The floater was swaying from side to side. He turned toward Antonella, whose face he could not even discern in the inky blackness.

“Has there been an accident?”

“No, we’re being attacked. I didn’t cog anything but this black cloud, and I couldn’t work out what it was.”

“And what’s going to happen next?”

“I can’t see anything. Just darkness, utter darkness.” There was despair in her tone.

He reached out and squeezed her shoulder for reassurance. But in this total obscurity, no contact, however intimate, could dispel the sense of separation.

He whispered, “I’ve got a gun, you know!”

And in a single continuous movement he drew the weapon from its holster and swept the space around, trigger hard down. Instead of the fierce silver ray he was used to, a weak beam of violet shone from the muzzle. Two hands’ breadths away, it faded into nothing. This must be a force field, tuned to absorb not only light but even the most penetrating types of radiant energy. Within his very body Corson felt a nasty prickling sensation, as though his cells were threatening to lose their grip on each other.

A voice so deep and powerful it was like a blow in the belly boomed from an incredibly distant cave.

“Corson, don’t shoot—we’re friends!”

“Who are you?” he cried, but the words were as shrill as though he were hearing through a tiny, tiny spy mike.

“Colonel Veran,” the voice answered. “You don’t know me, but that doesn’t matter. Hide your eyes—we’re going to lift the screen.”

Corson put away his gun and in the darkness felt for Antonella’s hand.

“Do as he says. Does the name mean anything to you?”

She whispered, “I don’t know anybody called ‘Colonel’!”

“That’s a rank, a military rank. His name is Veran. I don’t know him any more than you do, but—”

Like a lightning flash. Between his fingers Corson saw at first only a blank whiteness, which shortly dissolved into a horde of needles as red as blood that drove through his closed lids. When he was able to open his eyes properly he saw that the floater was hovering in a forest glade. It was broad day. They were surrounded by men in gray uniforms, carrying unknown weapons. Beyond the ring of soldiers he could make out two machines, or two mounds of something, whose details were blurred to his suffering eyes. There were two more like them on each side, and when he turned his head he found two more still at his back. More soldiers were standing guard on them.

Tanks?

Then one of the things moved, and Corson almost cried out.

Those “mounds” were Monsters!

Monsters exactly like the one which the Archimedes had been sent to turn loose on Uria. Creatures so terrifying that human beings of Corson’s day, in that age when war had impoverished language, had been able to invent no other name for them but Monster.

Corson glanced at Antonella. Tight-lipped, she was keeping up a pretty good front.

Now a man in a green uniform left the group of gray-clad soldiers and approached the floater. Three meters away he drew himself up stiffly and said in a sharp voice, “Colonel Veran! Miraculously escaped with the rump of the 623rd Cavalry Regiment from the Aergistal disaster. Thanks to you, Corson. Your idea of setting up a beacon saved our lives. What’s more I see you’ve managed to get hold of a hostage. Fine. We shall interrogate her later.”

“I was never—” Corson began. Then he fell silent. If this alarming person felt he owed Corson a debt, let him go on thinking so.

He jumped down from the floater. It was only then that he noticed the soldiers’ uniforms were torn and stained, and there were deep dents in the blackened masks which covered their faces. Oddly, none of the men in sight appeared to be wounded, even slightly. The reason sprang to Corson’s mind from his past experience.

Casualties get finished off…

That name “Aergistal” meant nothing to him. These uniforms were none he recognized. The rank which translated into Pangal as “colonel” must have been used for fifteen thousand years at least. This Colonel Veran might have emerged from any battle fought between Corson’s time and the present, although the fact that his men used trained Monsters did indicate that he must come from a period fairly long after Corson’s own. How long would it have taken to communicate with the Monsters, train them, following the first tentative experiments by the Solar Powers—ten years, a hundred, a thousand?

“What was your rank?” demanded Colonel Veran.

Instinctively Corson straightened to attention. But he was grotesquely aware of the unmilitary nature of his dress. And of the situation. He and Veran were no more than ghosts at this point in time. As for Antonella, she had not yet been bom.

“Lieutenant,” he said in a dull voice.

“I promote you captain,” Veran said solemnly, “by virtue of the authority bestowed on me by His Serene Highness the Ptar of Murphy!”

His voice became relatively cordial as he added, “Of course you’ll be made a field marshal when we’ve won the war. For the moment I can’t grant you a rank higher than captain because you’ve served in a foreign army. Speaking of which, you must be very pleased to have found a proper army again, a bunch of tough and reliable men. The short time you’ve spent by yourself on this world can’t have been much fun for you.”

Leaning close to Corson, he spoke in a lower tone.

“Do you think I could pick up any recruits on this planet? I could do with about a million men. And I’ll also need two hundred thousand pegasones. We can still save Aergistal!”

“I don’t doubt it,” Corson said. “But what’s a pegasone?”

“Our mounts, Captain Corson!” With an expansive gesture Veran indicated the eight Monsters.

“Oh, I have some great projects in mind, Captain,” he went on. “Great projects! I’m sure you’ll want to join me. In fact, after I’ve retaken Aergistal, what I plan to do is land on Naphur, take possession of the arsenals there, and dethrone that lousy crot the Ptar of Murphy!”

“To be quite candid,” Corson said, “I can’t see you finding many recruits on this planet. As for pegasones, though… Well, there’s one roaming around in the forest, but it’s completely wild.”

“Wonderful!” Veran said. He took off his helmet. His scalp had been shaved; now the hair was starting to grow again, it looked like a pincushion. His gray eyes, very deep-set, made Corson think of hard stones. His face was brown with a lifelong tan, crossed here and there by the marks of old scars. His hands were hidden by gauntlets of shiny flexible metal.

“Let me have your gun, if you please, Captain Corson,” he said.

Corson hesitated a moment. Then he offered the weapon butt-first to Veran, who took it with a brusque gesture. He looked it over, weighed it in his hand, and smiled.

“No more than a toy!”

He seemed to ponder awhile. Then he tossed it back to Corson who, taken by surprise, almost dropped it.

“In view of your rank and the signal service you performed for us, I think I can let you keep it. It goes without saying that it will be useless except against our enemies. But as I’m afraid it may not be enough to protect you, I’ll assign you two of my men.”

He beckoned, and two soldiers wearing light metal collars tramped forward and stood to attention.

“From now on you’re under the orders of Captain Corson here. Make certain he doesn’t fall into an ambush if he leaves the camp perimeter. And as to this hostage of his—”

“She will remain my responsibility, Colonel,” Corson cut in.

Veran’s hard eyes rested on him for a second.

“For the time being that is doubtless preferable. Just make sure she’s not allowed to wander around the camp. I don’t like breaches of discipline. Good, you may go.”

The two soldiers flanking Corson spun on their heels. Helpless, he copied them, giving Antonella a shove for the sake of appearances. They started to march away.

“Captain!”

The harsh voice of Veran stopped them short. It was tinged with sarcasm.

“I must say I wouldn’t have expected to find a soldier of your caliber so… sentimental! I’ll see you tomorrow.”

They moved on. The soldiers walked like robots, their rhythmical paces showing how their discipline was surviving their fatigue. Unconsciously Corson fell into step. He had no illusions about his status, despite his weapon and his escort—or rather because of them. He was a prisoner.

The soldiers led them toward a group of gray tents which men were setting up with brisk well-drilled movements. Beforehand, they had carefully sterilized the surface of the clearing. The dry ground was covered with a thin carpet of ash. Where the Ptar of Murphy’s troops had passed, grass must have a lot of trouble growing again.

One of the soldiers lifted the flap of a tent which had already been guyed and indicated that they were to enter. Inside, the furniture was basic. Inflatable chairs surrounded a metal plate floating on air which served as a table. Two narrow bunks completed the list. But the sparseness of this setting made Corson feel more at ease than the luxury of ornate Dyoto.

He let his mind wander for a moment. How would the inhabitants of Uria react to this invasion? Although Veran’s troops were few in number, it was certain they would meet with no serious resistance. Naturally, by one means or another the news would reach the Council in the future, but they had no army. Perhaps they had already been wiped out. Question: how could a government survive in the future when the past it sprang from had been effectively annihilated? The Urians might never have considered that problem, but it looked as though they were going to find out the answer even before they realized it was a problem. In some ways this immediate threat overshadowed the menace of the Monsters which Veran’s civilization appeared to have tamed under the name of—what was it?—“pegasones.”

And here was something else far too extraordinary to be a coincidence. Veran had popped out of nowhere, claimed to know him, and said he needed two hundred thousand pegasones. In less than six months, if he managed to catch the offspring of the Monster which Corson himself had helped to dump on Uria, he would have eighteen thousand of them. In less than a year he could have even more than he was asking for. Under favorable conditions Monsters reproduced rapidly, and took only months to reach full growth.

No, there wasn’t a chance in a billion that Veran had arrived here by accident. But why should he need a wild pegasone?

Ah! Maybe because…

Maybe tame pegasones couldn’t reproduce? Back on Earth, long ago, oxen had been used for pulling carts and plows. Thanks to a minor operation, they were far more docile than a normal bull, which was a ferocious beast. It would account for everything very neatly if Veran’s pegasones had undergone some similar treatment. Certainly it would explain why he needed a wild—undoctored—Monster.

At last Corson turned his attention back to Antonella. She had sat down on one of the inflatable chairs. She was staring at her hands. Flat on the metal plate, they were trembling slightly. Now she glanced up and waited for him to say something.

He sat down opposite her. Her face was drawn, but she was showing no sign of panic. Altogether she was behaving much better than he had expected.

“There’s a good chance that someone’s eavesdropping on us,” he began abruptly. “I’ll say this to you anyway. Colonel Veran strikes me as a reasonable type. This planet needs to be put to rights. I’m sure nothing will happen to you so long as you respect his authority, and mine. Moreover your presence may be useful to his plans.”

He hoped she understood that he was not betraying her and that he would do all he could to get them out of this with whole skins, but that he could not say anything else for the time being. Veran would have other matters on his mind apart from spying on them, but he was not the sort of person to take risks. If Corson had found himself in Veran’s shoes, he would certainly have bugged this tent.

A soldier lifted the entrance flap and cast a suspicious eye around the interior. A second wordlessly brought in two platters and set them on the table. Corson recognized their contents at once; military rations had scarcely changed. After a couple of false starts he showed Antonella how to heat the cans by breaking a seal and then how to open them without burning her fingers. Cutlery was built into the cans, and he ate with a good appetite. To his great surprise Antonella copied him without hesitation. He was beginning to develop a certain respect for these Urian civilians.

Naturally their precog talent must help them to keep their heads. It warned them of imminent danger, so perhaps they could cause Veran’s soldiers more trouble than they were expecting.

Having finished his meal, Corson rose. He made for the exit, but glanced back at Antonella before leaving.

“I’m going to take a turn around the camp and see if Colonel Veran’s principles of site defense agree with what I was taught. Maybe my experience will be useful to him. Don’t leave this tent on any account. Don’t show yourself, even. Don’t turn in before I get back. The—ah—necessary conveniences are under the bunks. I won’t be gone for more than an hour.”

She looked at him without speaking. He tried to read from her expression whether she had mistaken his intentions. He failed. If she was pretending, then she deserved an acting prize.

As though they had been waiting for him, the two soldiers were standing by the exit. He stepped forward and let the flap fall without provoking the least reaction.

“I’m going to tour the campsite,” he said in an arrogant tone.

Instantly one of the soldiers clicked his heels and fell in at his side. Discipline was plainly well in force among Veran’s men. That reassured him about Antonella’s immediate fate. This camp was on a war footing and the commander would not let his control slacken by a single notch. He had acted sensibly in forbidding Antonella to move around the camp and leaving her in Corson’s charge. He had other concerns than erecting a prison for a single captive. Besides, the sight of a woman might cause trouble with the rank and file. If he hadn’t hoped to make use of her, Veran would have liquidated Antonella right away. Later, when the camp was properly secure and the men were off duty, it would be a different matter.

Corson drove away that unpleasant thought and looked about him. The blackened soil of the clearing formed a circle several hundred meters across. Around the perimeter soldiers were hammering in stakes and linking them together with a glittering wire. An alarm system? Corson decided not. The men who were unreeling the wire wore heavy insulated clothing. So it must be a defensive barrier, then—and, despite its apparent fragility, no doubt a formidable one.

About a hundred tents occupied most of the space this enclosed. Corson searched with his eyes for a tent larger than the rest, or flying a command pennant, but in vain. Veran’s headquarters post was indistinguishable from the tents of his men.

A little farther on, a dull vibration made the soles of his feet tingle. Veran must be digging out an underground refuge. No doubt of it: this man knew his job.

On the far side of the clearing Corson counted twenty-seven pegasones. Judging by the number of tents, Veran had about six hundred men with him. If the rank of colonel was to be taken in the same sense as it had been in Corson’s time, at the start of his campaign Veran would have had a force of between ten and a hundred thousand. Aergistal must really have been a disaster. The 623rd Cavalry Regiment of the Ptar of Murphy must have been virtually wiped out. Veran must have displayed inhuman determination to reestablish control over the survivors and make them set up this camp as though nothing had happened. And he must be possessed of phenomenal ambition—to say nothing of limitless arrogance—if he thought of continuing the fight.

The fact that he was letting Corson inspect his defenses unhindered indicated pretty clearly the type of man he was. So did his expressed intention to muster a million men and enlist them in his phantom army. Was he bluffing? Perhaps. Unless he had unsuspected resources. Which brought Corson to a question he was astonished at having neglected for so long.

Whom had Veran been fighting against at Aergistal?