Each victory gave the other positions a chance to strengthen themselves more, but each also allowed more wizard power to be concentrated and even projected into the remaining expanding bubbles. Forty-six minutes after the penetration began, Tila, one of those wizards who had joined Suzl and her spell voluntarily, was aboard her own projector. That left only the position almost on the Liberty border—ironically, the same position plus or minus some meters that the raiders had used after escaping from New Eden with their prize.
All, however, could not be brought to bear on that. The generals, apparently grinding their teeth in frustration at the lack of news and the inability to get any, sent two more projectors into positions between the far east point and the center.
Matson wasn’t even concerned with them, except peripherally. The early successes were gratifying, and testified to New Eden’s lack of real experience in this kind of thing against this size enemy, but in the face of obviously superior numbers and power, committing those two was akin to ritual sacrifice to no real purpose. Good officers, and they were good officers, simply wouldn’t do that kind of thing without a reason.
“Suzl and the others! Forget the two outbreaks. Minimum force to contain them or break them! Everybody over to the far western area as quickly as possible!”
“What’s the matter?” Morgaine came back. “Problems?”
“No! That’s why they held off! They must have managed to get a couple of those things off their powered wagons and onto lorries! They’re gonna hit us hard out of Liberty!”
“But—”
“Don’t argue! Just do it! We could lose this thing yet!”
As quickly as possible, the projector operators notified the allies in flight, and they came down to carry those of Suzl’s earthbound crew that could be spared to the west. Matson, in the meantime, committed the reserve troops along a line almost due west of their rear position.
And even as they were beginning to shift, the enemy did come out of the west, with all five remaining projectors backed by a force that stunned and bowled over the wizards there concentrating on what they believed were the last of the enemy. Although it was reinforced by others, its heart was much stronger, better disciplined, and far more experienced than anything New Eden had thrown at them so far.
There had obviously been an armistice of sorts in the north. Somehow, perhaps merely by scaring them with the enormous power of New Harmony next door, the New Eden leadership had convinced the Fluxlords of Liberty to join in the attack, and they were something else: Five Fluxlords who were capable of maintaining a Fluxland as large as an Anchor, all the while fighting a long and protracted Flux war.
The four New Harmony wizards then on the scene had been caught from behind in sweeps and deactivated, but this new alliance of New Eden and Liberty had a new trick up its collective sleeve. One by one they were reactivated, and from the grid beneath them the force of at least five wizards to the one standing there literally forced up a complex program. The Liberty Fluxlords had determined that there were binding spells on the wizards and knew they could not fly up and away. Each in turn screamed and fell off her horse, then writhed for a moment. Then, after lying there a few more heartbeats, they got up, holding their heads and looking around, confused. None of them any longer had grid contact.
Now, across a twenty-kilometer front out of Liberty, the new alliance pushed not a shield but a program, engulfing almost a thousand New Harmony ground troops. Helpless against Flux without wizard protection, the program dematerialized all clothing and weapons and left them standing or sitting there, looking puzzled but not at all threatening.
“They’re running that fucking Fluxgirl program!”
Morgaine practically screamed into the radio. “They’re gonna turn us all into dumb little Fluxwives!” A collective shield went up, blocking the program’s further progress, but an assault against it began immediately.
‘”Like hell they are!” Suzl came back, the force of her comment causing radio speakers to vibrate well beyond their reception. “Matson warned us not to get trapped on the defensive! All wizards—as soon as you can, don’t reinforce the shield! Repeat—do not reinforce. Push. Everyone not involved in those two rear outbreaks behind it! Advance as it does!”
“Negative!” Matson responded. “Hold that shield and concentrate on breaking that last bubble on the border! As soon as our shield reaches that point, I want everyone available in ground support to push right through and shoot everything that moves! Take whatever wizards we can spare!”
“But that’ll throw them into Anchor against New Eden forces!” Jodi objected.
“Only briefly. Just tell ’em to shoot whatever moves or looks nasty. The reason why that shield of theirs is so strong is that it’s a sheet! It’s got no back or sides! If they can flank us, then, damn it, we can flank them! The rest keep the pressure on here and follow that shield in! Those Fluxlords and those projectors just got to be right in back of that border! I’m going in with the flank!”
“Matson! No!” Morgaine cried. “We need you here, not as some Fluxgirl!”
“If this doesn’t work, I’m gonna be one anyway. I might as well see if I can take some of those bastards with me!”
The air was thick with orders and assorted comments.
“Don’t try and undo that spell for now!” Tila warned. “It’s full of traps on each one! I think if you tried to undo it now the spell would transmit to you!”
“Those bastards!” Suzl snarled. “They’ll pay for this. They’ll all pay dear for this!”
Twelve of the flying allies came close enough to give real push to the shield, and it moved slowly back, but it neither buckled nor broke. The bubble for the fifth projector, however, went quickly, and they picked up another projector. Now all five were available for sweeps if they could buckle and break that shield.
New Harmony’s troops moved through, less a disciplined group than a huge mob of thousands out to shoot anything in a black uniform. For Matson, it was a unique way to ride into a shooting war: bare-breasted, wearing nothing but a bikini, gunbelt, and leather boots, a gun in each hand, shooting down bewildered and stunned rear troops. It was a grand experience.
Gabaye, Tokiabi, and two of the others had an idea and didn’t wait to clear it with Suzl. Their large forms, monstrous hybrids of human and leathery bird or bat, would not support their weight in Anchor, but they still had shape and momentum on their side. “I wonder how thick that shield is!” Gabaye shouted.
“No more than a meter, from its consistency,” Tokiabi responded.
“Then follow me, darlings! We’re going to flank, too! Wide turn and real drag coming up! Whee!”
Matson had some problem, along with the other officers, in turning the horde back into Flux, but they did so with all possible speed. Just as they started on the Anchor apron they saw and heard the four monstrous forms come in and then circle around while dropping rapidly. It looked for a moment as if they weren’t going to make it, but all four did, and it cheered the troops who now followed confidently back into Flux—this time on the other side of that shield.
The Liberty-New Eden forces knew when they entered, but the shock was still great and they were slow to react. Not that they could have done much. They now had four flying and two ground wizards on their side of the shield, while a dozen more pushed them back from the other side. The Fluxlords of Liberty panicked, and withdrew all their power to a shield around themselves, leaving the New Eden ground forces, their wizards, and their three projectors at the mercy of five projectors and close to forty enraged wizards. The projectors were plucked almost as quickly as they appeared, leaving only the ground forces for serious fighting. These could have been taken out by Flux power, but instead the wizards gave protection to the New Harmony troops on the ground, both those who had successfully flanked the shield and those now pouring in along the front.
Matson was finally wrong about something. Twenty-six hundred of New Eden’s finest male specimens would too surrender to five thousand Flux-guarded and well-armed Fluxgirls.
Not knowing what was happening many kilometers away with the flanking maneuver, the two diversionary projector outbreaks had continued to enlarge and expand and even take some toll, but Suzl now had more than enough wizard force to press in on the Liberty shield and released the flyers to take care of the other two.
The assault on the Liberty shield was powerful and emotional. As the shield began to contract prior to buckling, a message was pulsed out asking for terms.
“You are in no position for terms,” Suzl pulsed back to them. “Drop your shield and surrender to us now or we will squash you like the bugs you are. We respected your neutrality and you stabbed and gravely harmed us. You must answer for it. At the moment, with our power divided, we outnumber you four to one. That number will increase, as other business is finished, up to nine-to-one. Surrender and we will promise only to hear you out. The attack continues. We estimate you have about fifteen more minutes at most to live.”
There wasn’t much discussion inside. The shield went down and the five stood there, hands raised, offering no further resistance, knowing that anything would get them, at best, shot to pieces.
The big shock from the New Harmony side was that three of the five Fluxlords of Liberty were women.
Suzl did not want them in camp yet, but she surveyed the other parts of the line and felt that things were secure at the moment. They had killed or captured the cream of New Eden’s relatively small crop of wizards, and they had eleven out of twelve projectors, if indeed there was a twelfth to get. It didn’t matter. It would take New Eden half a year just to replace the hardware, and longer to train new wizards to properly use them. New Harmony did not intend to give them that time.
“Jodi!” Suzl called. “Right now I don’t want this base fouled with them. Transmit me to them, projector and all.”
“Are you sure? There’s still some scattered resistance in that area and it’s not void. It’s trees and hills.”
“Just do it. I’ll be all right. We own that Fluxland now.”
The five, held by wizards and guns, looked defeated and depressed, but they still managed to also be shocked when the area right in front of them suddenly shone with Flux, and Suzl and the projector materialized right in front of them.
These were defeated gods: people used to having their own way in all things and simply wishing for whatever they desired. This was a strange and humiliating spot for them, but they gazed up at the strange woman on the projector like petitioners at the throne of the queen. They still had their powers, having surrendered, and were thus potentially very dangerous, but it was this very thing that gave Suzl some sense of security. She would be speaking as first among equals, yet there was enough power around that if they tried anything they would die, and horribly. Gods fear death more than the mortals do, because with them it is not a foregone conclusion.
“I’m waiting for an explanation,” said the electronic speaker in a voice so eerie and inhuman it sent chills up their backs. It was not the voice Suzl usually used; she’d been itching to try this one out at a suitable occasion.
The five wizards looked at each other and decided that one tall, slim, dark-haired woman would be the speaker for them all.
“It wasn’t personal, it wasn’t something we wanted to do,” she began, searching for the words. “We were locked in an endless, no-win war with Hoghland. You know that. We were fending off revolts from within by associations of young wizard officers sick of the war, but Hoghland wouldn’t settle, wouldn’t even agree to a draw and some concessions on our part. It couldn’t go on. A couple of weeks ago, New Eden made us an offer. They promised to deliver a cease-fire, an armistice, as mediators in the war. They also offered the support of their wizards and the new projectors they were developing to secure it. We know what they’re like. We despised them. But with their huge armies, their Anchor base, their technology, they are a force to be feared.”
“Go on.”
“We knew what they planned for Flux. We also knew we couldn’t stop them, not indefinitely. They made— promises. We had a population trained in Flux war backed by more wizards than they had. They had ambitions, but they needed us. In our own self-interest, it was easy to strike a deal.”
“A deal condemning the rest of World, us included, to permanent slavery. Your half-million people, and your own lives, would be bought with the futures of forty-seven million others.” Suzl paused a moment. “You make me sick. You say you hate them, yet I can’t for the life of me see any difference between you and them when it comes down to the basics. Maybe they’re a little better. They were raised to think what they’re doing is right, that it’s God’s will. More injustice seems to be caused in the name of religion than the mercy and compassion the religions supposedly represent. Still, they have a culture and a cause. You know better. You’d let millions go down just to save your miserable necks and preserve a little of your power. All you Fluxlords make me sick. Scratch even the nicest of them and deep down you find a misshapen, egomaniacal, amoral monster.”
Again she paused, her mind trying to keep her emotional revulsion down so she wouldn’t become like them.
“I’m a monster,” Suzl told them. “See me? Gross, misshapen, blind, forced to use an electronic voice. Lately I’ve been feeling sorry for myself, wallowing in self-pity. In a way, I suppose I should thank you. Thank you for re-teaching me a lesson I once knew well but seem to have forgotten. I can’t see you, except as electronic representations, but I know you all have pretty outsides. All you Fluxlords do. Your bodies are as perfect as mine is gross and misshapen. Yet you are the monsters, not me. Not even most of those poor people in New Eden. That’s what this power really does to you sooner or later. Body. Mind. Soul. Pick any two, but the third always is a monster. I think I prefer a monstrous body to a monstrous soul.”
They not only didn’t like the speech, but their ultimate tragedy, as Suzl well knew, was that they didn’t really understand what she was saying. That was all right; she wasn’t saying it for them, or her own people, either. She was talking to herself.
“May we know what you intend to do?” the Fluxlord asked nervously.
“I intend to conquer New Eden, then establish a strong, secure Fluxland, the largest and most powerful ever known, and develop my own ideas—I hope for a higher purpose than yours. Eventually, perhaps, the world will get my system, which is far better than New Eden’s. As for you—I have a couple of thousand troops turned into the dumbest Fluxgirls I ever knew, and four wizards equally debilitated mentally. Those spells have traps on them. The five of you helped cause it. I expect you to undo those spells as much as can be done.”
“But those aren’t our spells!” another of the women cried. “We don’t know how to get around those traps!”
“Well, break one and you can break them all. You’re wizards. Try it. Those of you who succeed will keep your powers and perhaps join us in New Harmony. Those who fail—well, you will still have enough wits about you to prepare our meals and clean up after us.”
They were nervous and indignant. “And if we refuse?”