And … by the God, by all the pagan gods of the forefathers—he was about to!
“Goal attained,” he said flatly into the outercom, while joy sang in his blood. “Fire by the numbers.”
His flyer threw the first missile. It flashed in the sun, it smote, it blossomed as blue-white as Alpha Crucis. Dust, smoke, vapor rose in a column that swelled as it grew, reached the bottom of the stratosphere, smeared itself across heaven. Megaton after megaton followed. In the end there lay a monstrous crater, incandescent until its sides cooled to glass. The canals ran dark and poisoned. Everywhere around, the crops were afire.
“Arrach, let’s go!” Uroch shouted.
How he and his males fought their way through vengeful metal swarms; how they won back to Tryntaf; how Tryntaf and her sisters returned to Gadrol’s victorious fleet; how the Merseians, who had taken few losses, eluded Terran search and returned home without further combat—this is the stuff of epic. Yet behind it lay always a cool intelligence, whose painfully garnered knowledge and carefully crafted schemes made the heroism possible.
For Uroch, sufficient was that he came back to his wife, his sole wife thus far, and to the first son she had hitherto borne him, with a tale that would ring the lad on to achievements of his own, in those unbounded years that reached before the Race.
After the raid, night fell. A full moon rose above that which had been the villages. Light rippled bleak, shadows moved, under the hastening white shield. Wind rustled. It was cold, harsh with ash; the lethalness was not perceptible.
Big and shaggy, a Gorrazanian female sat beneath the remnant of a wall. In her four arms she rocked her dead child. In her rough voice she sang it a lullaby that it had always liked.
Chapter 12
Miriam Abrams Flandry started home barely in time. Although news of civil war was recent, and nothing untoward had yet happened in the lanes between Sol and Niku, already apprehension pervaded the entire Empire. Word came in that, here and there, malcontents of many different sorts were proclaiming themselves adherents of would-be Emperor Olaf and making trouble or outright disaster for local authorities. Insurance rates had begun to skyrocket, which caused shipping firms to abandon route after route. It was natural to cancel service to the planet Ramnu, Niku IV, early on. There was no economic incentive to continue, after the quick announcement that the climate modification project was suspended for the duration of the emergency.
The woman had been on the surface, in the field, isolated among primitive autochthons. She just managed to catch the last liftoff for Maia. Of course, had she been stranded, Fleet Admiral Sir Dominic Flandry would have taken steps to get his wife back. He might well have unlimbered his speedster Hooligan and gone after her himself. But her survival meanwhile, on the grim world she loved, would have been doubtful.
As was, Maia III—Hermes—continued important enough that she could book passage from there directly to Terra. The vessel being a luxury liner which numbered noblefolk among her passengers, she had armed escort all the way, never mind how useful those ships might have been on the battlefront.
The xenologist kept to herself during the voyage, taking no part in its entertainments and intrigues. At meals she was minimally civil to her tablemates. It wasn’t only that they and their games bored her. (Attractive and alone, she could have had a succession of bed partners; and after weeks among nonhu-mans, the physical sensation would have been welcome; but she would have had to talk with them> even listen to them. She’d rather wait for Dominic. The fact that he had probably not been waiting for her, in that sense, made no difference.) It was that she was full of grief and fear.
Grief for her dear Ramnuans, who had given her the name “Banner” that she still bore. She had come to see how the project was progressing, that would put an end to the planet’s repeated civilizations-destroying glaciations, and how it was affecting the cultures she had studied for so long before her retirement. Shortly after she arrived, the order to shut down came in. Considering how bureaucracy operated, if Magnusson’s insurrection were crushed immediately, which it obviously could not be, months must pass until work resumed. Ramnuans would perish by the additional thousands, or worse.