The Sea is Full of Stars

Ochoa, at the Zone Gate

It was cloudy, not only at the middle levels but across the entire sky, casting a gloomy pall over the whole central island.

The island of Bateria was dead center in the middle of Ochoa, and appeared to be one massive volcanic peak. Even underwater, where it went down almost seven kilometers into the sea bed, the great mountain called Sochi Makin, or the “Yawning God,” resembled an ancient peak of the sort that truly created the others and occasionally created new ones. It came up into the air and rose across an almost sixty kilometer stretch to a collapsed crater twenty kilometers across. Inside was still a volcanic moonscape, colorful but desolate, baked in the hot sun of the day and plunging to icy cold at night, when the elevation alone controlled its temperature. In the center, though, was a single unnatural feature, a hexagonal area planted horizontally inside the crater and resembling a bottomless hole, as indeed it was.

The Royal Palace had been hewn into the side of the crater facing the rising western sun. Its spires and colorful rock made it seem a part of the mountain itself, and it stretched several kilometers across the eastern wall and rose up above the level of the crater itself, in a departure from the Ochoan norm. The way up on that side was steep and rugged, and who would dare attack the residence of the King?

Opposite, on the western wall, was the Great Hall of the Council, where the elected representatives met a few weeks out of every year to decide what needed to be decided, and which was home to a surprisingly small bureaucracy that mostly issued permits and saw to it that fees for ships’ provi-sionings and for transit of goods were in order.

In one sense, the palace was the most vulnerable position of any important structure in the kingdom, but the Royal Guard was housed within the castle, and the National Guard—which primarily handled Customs duties, chased down disputes involving multiple districts, and the like, had received some military training and retained a military style structure—was headquartered in a village along the eastern slopes below the Grand Hall. Under normal circumstances, about 2,500 regular troops of the army and perhaps 1,500 of the National Guard were at hand, the largest single force anywhere in Ochoa and probably the only one that trained for the job.

Ochoans had fairly good eyes, but the Baron and Grand Duchess Comorro, General in Chief of the Royal Guard, as well as General Zaida, who ran the National Guard, wore special goggles with easily adjusted binocular lenses, and they could see quite well across the expanse of the crater. The Baron stood outside some small buildings just north of the Well Gate used for customs; the Grand Duchess was in full resplendent war paint and medals on the battlement atop the palace, the General on the flag court just above the entrance to the Great Hall. Each had a signalman with him or her, and each was in constant contact, all being more or less in line of sight.

A dark shape came in toward the palace below the clouds, only a few meters above the highest of the terrain, flew into the crater and landed on the Duchess’s parapet. About thirty seconds later the semaphore flashed, “The most reassuring thing about the enemy is that he follows our script.”

The Baron laughed. He wasn’t going to kid anybody that he wasn’t scared to death, but if they were forced into a fight, then so be it. The others felt the same way. In Ochoan culture it was the women who did the fighting, but he was determined that they would sing no songs of battles and bravery without his name included, even if he didn’t know whether he had the nerve to stand. The King sure hadn’t. He and half his entourage were cowering deep in the lava caves right now over on Island Biana.

He eased himself back into the special chair atop the customs house and raised his feet, which were also for all intents and purposes his hands, and placed them on the control bars and twin triggers of the rapid-fire, air-cooled machine gun. He’d had only a couple of days’ practice on one, and they ran hot and noisy and smoky and smelled awful, but he could say it didn’t take an expert to hit something with them when they put out a hundred rounds per second in a spread pattern.

The portable emplacement was similar to the permanent ones along the whole chain of castles and fortresses, designed specifically for the Ochoan anatomy and easily rotated a full 360 degrees with just a shift in body weight. In a smaller chair below him, but on the same pivot, Gia, daughter of the Lady Akua (and his) fifth wife, sat ready to feed the strips of ammunition along the belt, clear jams, and change and reload ammo canisters. Two others weren’t on the pivot but were on her level on a catwalk, and could jump in and help with any operation as needed or have new canisters ready.

There were no permanent emplacements here, in the royal center, but there were quite a number of temporary ones.

Baron Oriamin felt quite proud that the Lady Akua had not been one of those who’d refused the gun tests, but was now running the defense of their castle. It wouldn’t be an easy fight; although the castle was well-defended and extremely well-provisioned, that beach and port below was a real prize, and he worried a lot about rockets. He’d seen now what they could do.

He wished he was there, where he felt he should be, defending his home and family and the islanders who considered him their protector. He wished he had Nakitti here at his side, preferably at the next gun, but even as the partial architect of this entire plan, her status made it impossible for her to directly participate. She was only fifty meters or so away, and a matter transmission through the device called the Well Gate, it was true, but concubines did not fight. It simply wasn’t done.

“Bombardment of sixteen ports commenced,” came the word from the General’s position. Each time a courier came to either of them, the relevant news was put up as quickly as possible. “Extremely heavy fighting along the coast and in immediate inland waters. Flying creatures are being employed as rocket platforms. Much loss of life. Most fliers not engaged by enemy.”

Damn! He wanted to be with his own! It was frustrating sitting here, hearing all that, powerless to do anything, unable to know how much of his own holdings and how many of those he loved were still alive. He prayed that Castle Oriamin wasn’t one of those being engaged, but deep down he knew it was. The enemy had seen him all too publicly at the conference. But Nakitti and that bizarre Kalindan had been right. The key wasn’t in the castles nor on the beaches, the key was right here.

“Send to both positions,” he commanded his own semaphore operator. “Any word from our aerial scouts?”

He knew that if there had been, they would have told him, but he just couldn’t sit there and do nothing!

“No, Highness. No reports, but they are circling just out and above us, above the clouds. The first one that sees or hears anything will report instantly.”

“I know that!” he snapped, then caught himself. “My apologies. I would rather they just show up than sit here and hear of others bleeding while we do nothing!”

They didn’t reply. They understood. They were feeling much the same way themselves, and had families no less close back there.

The prediction had been that there would be concentrated attacks on the castles and positions controlling the best ports, leading to the set-down of enemy special military teams above which would establish siege lines. As messages came in, this appeared to be precisely what was happening, which was why the Duchess seemed so pleased. If they were operating as predicted, then the rest would develop, too. It was deviations from that prediction that would cause serious problems.

There were sudden sounds from above, reverberating across the crater.

“Sounds like thunder,” his wife commented, looking up. “I think I can see some lightning over there.”

At that moment, toward the north wall, three black shapes fell out of the clouds and plummeted to the ground.

“That’s not thunder!” the Baron shouted. “Everybody to posts! Stand by! Those were some of our scouts up there dropping dead for us!” To himself, although he was never much of a religious man, he muttered a slight but fervent prayer and then thought, Here we go!

To have seen the pictures, and even the few training pictures taken at great risk from enemy ships and their monstrous bugs, was one thing. To see massive, shiny black triangular shapes bigger than houses drop out of the sky in vast numbers was terrifying.

“They’re all around us!” somebody screamed. “By the gods! How many of those monsters are there?” It was a cross between total fear and a lament.

There were whole squadrons of the things, each arranged in triangular groups of five, and they started coming in from both the north and south, cleverly skirting what they anticipated would be big guns on the main buildings. The light artillery, however, had managed to turn the guns and were opening up all along the ridges on both sides of the Baron’s position. They had a fair range and seemed to be having some effect; a few of the formations still descending suddenly saw one or even two creatures wobble and then drop out of formation. Some began crashing to earth inside the crater. Most of the occupants appeared either stunned or dead, and when the big insects hit they blew up like gigantic bombs, the shells shattering pieces in all directions.

But for every one they hit, three or four landed, their soldiers and cargo containers coming off with amazing speed and forming up into larger units as more and more landed.

Now, from the Grand Hall’s entryway and the castle battlements, soldiers from both units took off, low, letting the cannon try for the creatures above the crater walls while they concentrated on the ones unloading. The Baron could see they had underestimated the efficiency of these troops and that ground time was amazingly short, but it was ground time, and that allowed the waves of Ochoans to swoop down with great speed and accuracy and each fire two small rockets down into the landing areas. Most missed, and the first troops to organize down there were already providing a withering covering fire for the others landing and disembarking, but the rockets blew up with a lot of fire and smoke, and whenever they hit one of the monstrous triangular bugs the resulting explosion was worth five direct hits by the rockets themselves. Whatever was inside those things was under tremendous pressure!

“What’s our range?” the Baron shouted to anybody listening over the now ferocious din.

“They are still too far!” his wife screamed back at him. “Why not try shooting a single pass in each direction and seeing if we can’t make our own target?”

He saw what she meant and cursed that neither he nor any of these military “experts” had thought about simply painting the range in.

The pattern kicked up a lot of dust at about fifteen hundred meters. Not a bad range, but then he realized that when they got within his range, he was probably within range of at least their best marksmen.

“They’re bombing the palace!” somebody shouted! “Oh, and the Great Hall, too!”

They were surprised and more wounded than they had anticipated by the coordinated fire and the rocket bearers. Somebody had gotten back up and given a signal to bring some of their own flying rocket platforms in.

The attacking force was far more ungainly and not nearly as accurate as the Ochoans, who were intelligent, small, native fliers, not domesticated bugs being steered by drivers, but it was like the machine gun versus the rifle. You could hit something far better with a rifle, but if you could fire enough bullets in the right general direction, you could do more damage. This wave of rocket-launching bugs let go with twenty, thirty rockets almost at once, then veered off and up. Again, several were knocked down, but it was daunting to see some explosions strike on or very near the things, who nevertheless kept coming.

The two buildings were engulfed in smoke and flames, and outer walls shook and crumbled. The columns of the Grand Hall began to give way, and with them the flag deck above them as well.

There was now so much noise and smoke that it was impossible to tell what was happening. There was a brief break in the smoke just off the now smoking and battered palace, and a series of quick coded lights. “Still functioning,” it said. “Most guns out, but they will have to dig us out.”

The Baron and his unit felt some strength and confidence from that, but it didn’t mean a thing in the end. A large number of the great black carriers were landing just over the wall, and on any ledges and smoothed-out areas they could. The smaller intelligent bugs, the Jerminians, were almost certainly forming into formidable units there and having no problems marching right up the sheer sides of the thing. They knew, however, that unlike those damned transport bugs, Jerminians were as susceptible to bullets and blasts as Ochoans were.

So far it was still playing out, but the Baron began to doubt the result. The sight of so many Ochoans dropping from the skies, and of his two national symbols being blown up and burned, gave him no comfort at all.

Were they all that confident still? They moved like it. Did they think they had large forces pinned down in the castles and the rest sealed up here, or had they suspected or seen what they should not, or had their spies tipped them? Their allies in Zone certainly had it all figured out by now, probably earlier, but how could they get the message here? Did they have the way to do it?

“In range!” somebody shouted. “Fire!”

The Baron didn’t even look. He galvanized into action, put the sights on maximum range and began a back and forth 180 sweep out there in the crater. The other portable emplacements did the same, overlapping their fire, creating a deadly curtain.

In what seemed seconds he was empty, and felt panic and confusion. His wife was on it in a minute, throwing the old canister out and inserting a new one. “Closed! Fire!” she screamed, ducking down.

They were not only firing now, they were getting return fire. It sounded like a child playing with some musical toy as the bullets went ping! ping! PING! all around and ricocheted all over. The Baron felt a slight sting in his left side but ignored it; he kept firing, firing, and finally, through the smoke and haze, he saw the enemy advancing and the bright flashes of his and the other’s fire against their shell shields. He saw many of them crumple in place and seem to collapse like a balloon with the air rushing out of them, to be walked over by others in disciplined ranks. The hard rock was creating deadly ricochets for them as well, and there were far more of them to hit.

His blood was up. He would never have suspected this feeling, this enormous rush that for the moment put fear aside because there simply wasn’t time for it. “Gia! What’s keeping the ammo?” he shouted, then saw her, slumped, eyes wide open but seeing nothing, her pretty body bleeding from a dozen wounds.

“Gia!” he shouted in anguish. You didn’t die at that age, that pretty, with that much position and wealth. You didn’t die save perhaps from accident, or you died ancient with your hundreds of descendants around you. People didn’t die like this! People he knew and loved didn’t die like this!

Two of the runners reached up and pulled her body unceremoniously out of the cage, and one of them leaped in and fed the next canister into the gun. “Highness! You must fire!” she screamed at him, but he just stood there, watching Gia’s crumpled body below, like some horrible rag doll.

There were sudden explosions all around him, and one was so close it shook the gun and almost toppled him. He started swinging around, unable to stop or catch his balance. They were all above him, all around him! These—These things!

One of the runners managed to catch the lower ammo feeder and they stopped the merry-go-round, but more and more explosions were shaking them. At the far end, a bomb from one of the dark shapes above struck a gun just like his and he saw it rise into the air, as if in slow motion, and pieces of it and pieces of Ochoans flying all over, all over…

The runner reached up and used a wing to shake him. “Highness! We cannot stand! You must retreat! There is no purpose to your death at this point!” she shouted. Almost immediately something shot from the advancing troops struck her and he saw her chest almost explode as the projectile continued through her and opened a horrible, fatal wound. Her blood splattered all over him, and he screamed and was out of there.

As soon as the few surviving others saw the Baron leap out and glide down almost automatically to the ground, unable to fly well, and literally run right into the Well Gate, they abandoned their positions and followed suit.

An eerie, terrible clicking sound now began all around the Gate, echoing back and magnifying itself as it hit the walls and bounced back again and again. There were still some explosions, and some fire, but it was slowly coming to a halt.

The clicking grew even louder, more rhythmic, coming from the great beetlelike troops of the Jerminians. A cheer of sorts, made with stiff flightless wings and hard mandibles, a terrible, mechanistic cheer…

There was some fighting, apparently fierce fighting, still going on in the room-to-room conquest of the two great buildings on the inside walls, but for the most part it was over.

The forces of the New Empire held the center, and the only escape route, of the Ochoan nation.

At that news, one of the Jerminian officers left his position at the rear and moved quickly up and toward the Well Gate. “We want a basic report from all the units in immediate engagement here,” he told his aides. “As soon as possible, bring in the main supplies and fortify both this area and the four points on the crater rim. Any dead bodies nobody wants to eat, our or theirs, should be thrown into the Gate. Dead, they won’t be transported, they will simply be returned to energy. Move! I want you, Captain, to go through the Gate and report as quickly as possible to our ambassadors, who will be waiting there eagerly for your report.”

“At once, Excellency!” the officer responded, and junior officers were suddenly on all fours, at great speed trying to reach the key battle points.

It took about an hour just to compile the handwritten preliminaries, but the results were quite good. Even so, the losses were far above expectation.

“These creatures fought extremely well and with much bravery,” the General heard over and over. “Not a one surrendered. Some of the ones in the buildings used underground escape routes, and the last detachment here at the Well Gate got some of its survivors back into Zone, but that’s about it. Our casualties, though, were over thirty percent. Much higher, and against what appears to be far lower numbers than we anticipated.”

“That just means they sent off brigades to reinforce the castles under siege as we planned,” the General reassured them. “Even so, I agree. When we completely subdue this place, the survivors—and there will be a surrender sooner or later if only to save the race from extinction—will make up the nucleus of what we’ve lacked up to now—a flying division.” He looked over the reports, initialed them with his own distinctive digestive spit, then handed them back to the Captain. “Go now. Others will be sent as progress reports come in from elsewhere. I’d say that this is probably sufficient, though, to have one of our ambassadors serve a formal demand for unconditional surrender at the Ochoan Embassy.”

The Captain gave a salute with six of its eight limbs, men walked with the dispatches toward the Well Gate, past the ruins of the last gun emplacements. It made him feel proud to see this, the absolute, total victory after only a few hours’ hard fight! He was certain that the whole of his hive would also be proud, and that Her Majesty would have great rewards for the officers, perhaps even taking them into the consort, since only she could bear young. It would be an honor to consummate and then be eaten by the queen; such a one would be reincarnated as a potential queen itself!

Without hesitation, the Captain walked into the Well Gate, passed through the sensation of falling and arrival, and walked out, still going, yelling excitedly for any and all to hear, “The Imperial Army and Navy have won a great victory at O—” He suddenly slowed, looking first to one side of the corridor, then to the other. “—choa,” he completed, the last almost dying in his thorax.

The corridor was lined with Ochoan soldiers looking very healthy and fully armed. They flanked both sides of the corridor and had closed in behind him, and now they seemed to stretch on and on…

He had no choice. Besides, he was on neutral ground, by treaty and by right. He reached the end of the corridor and turned toward the Jerminian Embassy, wishing it were a lot closer, and found his way blocked by, of all things, a Kalindan in some kind of wheelchair. He did not know it was a Kalindan, but he recognized it as a water creature.

“Come ahead, Captain,” the Kalindan said. “Please, go on. We all want to hear your report.”