Easy to Be a God, page 34
The sampo-sithu, or the leader of all leaders, arrived at Treb’aldaledo two days earlier and was now leading the Gurdian armies toward the Valt Aram. He wasn’t in a hurry, knowing that the victory was certain. One hundred thousand inkblots armed with the most modern firearms could not lose to three times smaller forces of Suhurs.
The clans, alerted by the scouts, gathered slowly on their side of the river. The Congregation, deliberating almost constantly, finally decided that the enemy had to remember how the last of the bravest departed from this world. Making Gurds cross the riverbed seemed the ideal way to inflict heavy losses on them. Suhurs could not know, however, that the enemy wasted no time, and that their latest-generation weapons had now a much greater range and accuracy than the previously used firearms. From a human point of view, the Gurdian weapons were still primitive, but many Earthian armies of the mid-nineteenth century would give a lot for the rifles and cannons constructed in Gurdu’dihan. That’s how they had been classified, although Darski couldn’t see any similarities with the archaic products of Mauser, or Springfield Armory.
The riverbed, though wide, was no longer an obstacle to shooters, especially that Gurds possessed aircraft—a kind of zeppelins, or dirigibles—which floated thanks to the fruit of the lek’ter, one of the most common plants in Gurdu’dihan. Before the flight, large leather hulls were filled with tens of thousands of these strange fruits. The sectional structure of the lifting part allowed inkblots to survive even the heaviest fire. Lek’ter fruits were very durable, and the arrows released in the direction of airships pierced only a few at a time, not doing much harm, as it had happened in the case of Earthian balloons. The only problem was that lek’ter fruits maintained airtightness only for several hours after picking, so the aircraft filled with them couldn’t harass the enemy for too long. Just filling the hulls took the airmen almost half of the available time, and then they had yet to reach the front line and retreat behind their own lines. Nevertheless, thanks to the plantations of lek’ter trees that savvy Blueblooded had started on the plains on their side of the river, alag’terysms—as these pseudo-airships were called—would certainly create havoc in the ranks of the Warriors of the Bone.
Suhurs were screwed, just like Henryan, but their fate was not sealed yet, even if the probability of a turn of events favorable to them seemed very small.
Darski, fascinated, watched the march of long columns of Gurdian soldiers, who looked like characters from the pages of a ghostly fairy tale. The incredible ecosystem of Beta was so different from everything that people had found on the planets discovered so far, that he wasn’t surprised by the enthusiasm with which Godbless and her colleagues explored the mysteries of both continents. Especially that the recently started excavations began to provide scientists with the evidence for existence of other, not less developed civilizations here in previous cycles. Henryan regretted that he would not be able to see the results from these studies. As recently as yesterday, Valdez told him that Gorelic, the head of the archaeological department, had made some breakthrough discoveries during excavations conducted in Gurdu’dihan. Everything pointed to the fact that in the previous cycle, the two continents were inhabited by a highly advanced race that could know technologies enabling interstellar travel, and all this more than five hundred million years before the first hominid stood upright.
Although the mission of this station wouldn’t come to an end anytime soon, Henryan had no illusions: his fate was inextricably linked to Suhurs’, and maybe not so much to them as to the upcoming battle, which would end the stage—of red flickering?
Henryan blinked, coming back to reality. Indicators on the hyper’s panel flashed like mad. A quantum message … High priority … He glanced at the display. Quite a few hours remained till the evening transmission, plus this message had been sent from the Admiralty. A couple of gestures later he was positive that he was right. It was a cryptogram from the central sector’s headquarters. He preferred not to think how much energy had been used to transfer this data packet over a distance of a thousand two hundred and sixty light-years.
For a moment he wondered if it was Draccos’s doing, but soon rejected the idea. The scrooges from the Admiralty wouldn’t support the crusade of a mad warden so generously. Especially since it was about an insignificant man, whose name didn’t ring any bells, and who wouldn’t have threatened the cushy jobs of the bigwigs, even if he had slaughtered half the crew of the station.
Henryan glanced at the lieutenant. Valdez looked surprised, too. The old man disappeared behind a wall of the force field as soon as he received the information about the transmission. For thirty seconds only the murmur of routine exchanges could be heard in the command center. None of the crew knew about the arrival of an urgent message. Only two people handled transmissions at this level: the deputy commander and the communications officer, which in this case meant Lieutenant Valdez and Sergeant Prydeinwraig.
It was the last thirty seconds of the lull before the storm, but for the time being only Rutta knew this.
Then, suddenly, came the sound of sirens, and red lights flashed throughout the room. Everyone broke their eyes from the displays. Red alert?
“Pry!” Valdez shouted a moment later, calling Henryan over. “The colonel wants us.”
They ran up the stairs shoulder to shoulder, the barrier of the force field switched off when they reached the penultimate step, and turned back on when they barely passed it.
Rutta’s face was gray. He looked at them as if he couldn’t believe the message he had been sent.
“Is there a problem, sir?” the lieutenant asked him.
The colonel looked at him strangely.
“There is,” he muttered. Then he swallowed loudly, and added, “A big one … In a moment I will proclaim evacuation. Make sure the dunderheads serving under you don’t panic and take care of all the procedures.”
“We’re evacuating the station?” Valdez asked.
“We’re evacuating the whole system,” the old man growled, turning his back to them. “You will soon receive the schedules sent by the Admiralty. Distribute them among your men according to the attached clearance key. And one more thing … I don’t want any delays, understood?”
They clicked their heels, saluted, but before they left the dais, the lieutenant asked again, “Is this an evacuation drill?”
Rutta turned slowly. He looked as if he wanted to curse them, but eventually he did not. When he spoke, they could barely hear his words.
“No. It’s a war. We have been attacked by Aliens.”
Returning to their workstations, they were as pale as their superior. The sirens no longer howled, but the emergency lights were still flashing. The confused crew looked in their direction, not knowing if these were unplanned maneuvers, or perhaps a disaster had happened. Darski and Valdez couldn’t afford a mistake. They had two minutes to transfer the orders to their subordinates so that they could start implementing the evacuation procedures as soon as possible, which was not at all easy in the station of this size.
Henryan was done with his duties a few seconds before the deadline. He glanced toward the still busy lieutenant, and then looked at the dais surrounded by an opalescent wall of the force field. The chatter around him gradually faded, as the surprised soldiers were getting acquainted with the orders. All at once, pandemonium broke loose. Few men remembered to isolate their workstations, so in a moment they began to shout over one other in panic. Valdez had predicted as much. With one gesture he made all the workstations disappear behind the glittering energy barriers, and blissful silence returned.
Darski looked at the list of tasks, assigned to him. For the most part, they were of a technical nature. The transports of the Fleet were supposed to leave the anchorage in four hours. By this time, all equipment from the Beta’s orbit would have had to be sent onboard them, including the Cerberus. Henryan kept checking off each item on his list, sending the codes and commands, and then making sure the devices reacted properly and moved toward the ships. The evacuation plan for this system had been developed many years before, when the observation of Beta’s both civilizations began. The military liked to have procedures for every eventuality—and although they were rarely used, on that day they turned out to be really useful. The Admiralty bureaucrats had it worked out down to the tiniest detail, and the station’s computers quickly generated the schedules for smooth execution of orders within the time limit. The only uncertain factor was, as usual, man. Specifically—Sergeant Darski.
The alarm messed up his plans. The elaborate scheme to leave with a bang would come to nothing if the evacuation went as smoothly as could be expected. But Henryan couldn’t do anything about it. Any derogation from the schedule would be noticed by the system and reported to the superiors. He had to come up with something before the equipment he needed disappeared from the Beta’s orbit—
Suddenly, the lush green light lit up on his console. He glanced at the display. Godbless. No wonder she began storming the center. She got cut off from Beta as soon as the first orders came. Henryan reached for the key, but he didn’t touch its surface, shimmering in the air. He withdrew his hand, smiling to himself. This might be interesting …
She appeared in the command center a few minutes later, marching unusually briskly for almost three hundred pounds of flesh and fat. She was followed by her inseparable entourage in blue jumpsuits of the scientific department. Her arrival was announced by dreadful racket at the entrance. The gendarmes quickly gave up when throwing insults, she made them realize that it was her who commanded this operation, including the military. However, she soon felt the bitter taste of defeat when it came to climbing the stairs, although none of her ass-kissers dared to overtake their boss. As soon as she paused to rest about halfway up, Rutta deactivated the force field. He stood with his legs wide apart, blocking access to the dais as if he wasn’t going to let the scientific plague into his sterile kingdom.
Henryan didn’t know whether Godbless got red in the face with effort, or rather with rage.
“Are you out of your fucking minds, you clowns?” she gasped venomously. “What’s the meaning of this? I demand―”
“We’ve received an evacuation order,” the colonel interrupted her unceremoniously.
“Get lost then, even to the neighboring galaxy, but leave me my equipment!” Godbless immediately went on the offensive.
“The equipment is owned by the Admiralty.” Rutta couldn’t let her have her way, even if she begged him on her knees, and he was not going to.
“You got your shit mixed up, you dingbat in a ridiculous hat!” Godbless roared, apparently not realizing that the war with Aliens completely changed the balance of power, and her situation.
But Colonel Rutta knew exactly what was coming. And that day he had a stronger hand. He thus decided to put everything at stake. He raised his hand, momentarily silencing the head of the scientific department. She paused, surprised, but immediately opened her mouth again to start another tirade.
“According to you, saying that I am old, ugly, and not very bright, would be an insult or rather the confirmation of the truth?”
His question was so absurd that she needed a moment to understand what he meant.
“Answer, Dr. Godbless. Please …” he urged.
“What is this nonsense?” she grumbled, still confused.
“I would like to hear the answer to my question.” Rutta seemed the epitome of tranquility, which further enraged her.
“According to me, this description fits you perfectly!” she snapped, turning to her entourage.
The scientists behind her laughed unconvincingly.
“Excellent!” Rutta was pleased as if he’d heard a compliment. “Then you won’t be offended, Dr. Godbless, if I tell you to get your old, fat, and sagging ass out of here! Get the fuck out of my command center!”
She just stood there and boggled. Henryan had never seen her speechless before. Dr. Godbless’s face turned purple, then blue in the blink of an eye. He even began to fear that this was the first sign of a heart attack or a stroke, but the med on her forearm was still green, although now much paler than a moment before.
“What … ?” she gasped. “What did you say, you twerp?” She was getting her groove back with each word. “Admiral Okonera will know all about it!”
“About the fact that you call him a clown in a ridiculous hat, too?” the colonel scoffed. “This will do you more harm than good, you old bag.”
“It’s outrageous. Outrageous!” Godbless shrieked. Her entourage looked equally indignant. “You will not get away with it, you turd! I’ll destroy you! I will!”
“You have ten seconds to leave the command center.” Rutta said casually.
“Or what?” she mocked, albeit a little less confident.
She was surprised by this sudden change of attitude of the usually docile colonel.
“Or you will be arrested and accused of sabotaging the important military operation,” he explained, pointing to a platoon of gendarmes entering the command center at this very moment.
“But … but …” Godbless completely lost her head. “But we are doing extremely important research here. You can’t … I’m in charge here—”
“You were,” Rutta corrected her. “With the outbreak of the war, the Fleet has taken over the command of all operations in deep space. That makes me commander in chief. We have to leave the system in eighteen hours.”
“It’s enough to deploy equipment to—”
“Get your head together, you dumb hag!” The colonel yelled at her, gesturing to the gendarmes to lead the intruders out. “Your … our equipment is going to the holds of the transports as we speak, because all our ships need to leave the Beta’s orbit in less than four hours if we want to disappear from this system in time.”
“And what about Suhurs?” she groaned before two gendarmes took her elbows.
“Who cares?!” Rutta snapped. Had it not been for the outbreak of the war, this evacuation would be his salvation. He no longer had to worry about Gods pulling a stunt on him at the end. He looked down at her triumphantly. “You have freezers full of their bodies and storerooms stuffed with artifacts. What else do you want? Haven’t you seen enough death for the last six years? Let them at least die out in peace.”
“It was you, you bastard!” she yelled as she fought to free herself from the gendarmes’ grip. “I knew it!”
“Shut the fuck up, you moron!” he shouted, giving her tit for tat. “I had nothing to do with this asinine game, but I’ll be honest with you: with your every visit here, with each rebuke via holo I was losing any will to catch the jackasses who were screwing with your research. Take this crone away!”
“Let me go!” she yelled when the gendarmes tried to get hold of her again. “Up clone’s—Get off my ass, you—”
Rutta didn’t let her finish.
“That’s right, if you didn’t have your head so far up your own ass, you would fit in a normal chair! Take Dr. Godbless to her cabin, pack her things, and put her onboard the first shuttle. And after reaching the Nexus, immediately lock her up in the brig.”
She struggled and swore when she was being escorted away, and he followed her with his eyes, smiling as if he’d just won the first battle of the coming war. He nodded, looking in the direction of Valdez and Darski. Henryan decided it was the perfect moment to push forward his own agenda.
“Sir!” he called out, before the satisfied colonel returned to his seat.
“What do you want?” Rutta was once again the caustic, demanding jarhead he was.
“I have a little problem with some equipment, sir …”
“Report directly to my reader. In short order.”
Darski had been prepared for it. The colonel received a short list, which contained one of the Cerberus’s satellites and one capsule with nanocameras. In both the maneuvering thrusters couldn’t be started.
A moment later a bust of the old man appeared on his holopad.
“The equipment which fails to reach the transports must be destroyed. See to that, Pry. No trace may remain of it.”
“Yes, sir. Shall I report if I come across another failure?”
Rutta thought for a moment.
“No. I won’t have time for this crap. Neither will Valdez. The Admiralty is prepared for some equipment losses. The priority is to evacuate people, ships, and the station itself. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!”
Henryan was delighted. He couldn’t have heard better news. There was still a lot of equipment in orbit that he would need. His only regret was that the senators wouldn’t see the surprise being prepared for them.
FORTY-EIGHT
Two hours later, he got off the train. The corridors in his residential area were almost empty. Most of the staff had been evacuated to the hub, where all were now waiting in long lines for the shuttles, moving back and forth between the anchorage of the Fleet and the spaceport. The operation was running smoothly; if nothing disturbed it, in seventy minutes the observation deck would be automatically ejected, and replaced by a drive module, until now orbiting near the station. The gigantic structure will embark on a journey to the entry point before the last ship of the Fleet leaves the anchorage, except that before that, its deserted interiors would become the scene of the last act of a one-actor drama: the former captain, now a sergeant, who will do anything not to give satisfaction to his pursuer.
Walking along the corridors, Henryan smiled at his thoughts. Almost three centuries of space exploration. Several thousand star systems surveyed, more than a thousand inhabited planets, and no trace of alien intelligence. Then suddenly, in just a few years, and for him in less than two weeks, three civilizations appeared on the horizon. Two totally different and still quite primitive and the third one, about which virtually nothing was known—except that it was powerful enough to declare war on the race in command of the fiftieth part of the arm of the Galaxy.
