Exodus: The Orion War Read online

  Several warships chance “flying the gap” over the city anyway, to drop kinetic ice-rounds or spray down ‘gougers’ like those used over Southland. They score some hits in the outer city, but pay a high price in broken armor plating, smashed engines and dead crew.

  The warships pull back, too.

  “What now, shōshō?”

  “Wreck the city with our heavy artillery. I don’t want to hear about their shields. Bring down those fucking towers on their heads. Then we’ll go in on the ground. Fuck casualties.”

  One of his staff officers wonders. ‘Does he mean civilians inside the city or out here among his own troops when he attacks?’

  He means both.

  “There’ll be heavy casualties, sir.”

  “What of it? It’s what Pyotr’s army’s for. My men are the scum of all the worlds, mere scum of the worlds. It’s a wonder we can accomplish anything with them.”

  “Agreed. Still …”

  “I want blunt force trauma.”

  “This will slow things down, shōshō. It will wreck the city, too.”

  “What must be done, must be done. Start the drills, colonel. Practice them up. Get all brigades ready to assault the berm when I give the word. We’ll go for three breaches at once.”

  It will be up to the Rikugun’s overwhelming ground forces to take Toruń in the old-fashioned way. With brute force and raging murder, face-to-face with hand weapons and blood splattered on their combat weaves. They’re on their way in huge numbers, encircling the city.

  Tramp, tramp, tramp.

  Black boots pound the roads in unison.

  Rat-a-tat-a-tat.

  Snare drums call and mark the pace.

  Tramp, tramp, tramp.

  The RIK is snaking over Northland in long green columns. It’s coming ever closer to Toruń Wood, driving all before it. The first scouts have reached the forest edge. Hear the drum call the grim battalions into staggered firing lines? Hear the sergeants bark out brutal orders?

  “Oh my gods, no!”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Run! Run!”

  Too late.

  Listen to the soldiers shooting.

  ***

  That same moment Raptors and Jabos strafe and bomb and burn out the five Old Forest Roads, setting Toruń Wood ablaze along with all the people trapped and pressed, crushed and panicking inside. With no way out. That’s the day the Jabos start the “Great Fire of Toruń.”

  “It’s just as well,” whisper safe cynics and realists inside the city, sharing a rare private agreement among many of those safe inside, “to end it fast.” One fat man says it right out loud.

  “The Great Fire will melt five swollen glaciers of refugees flowing along the forest trails to just a trickle arriving at our berm and Gate. Once the dam holds, we can negotiate an end.”

  He likes to use overly colorful metaphors in his everyday speech. He thinks it marks him off as a great wit and intellect. Afterward, he sits down and eats another mockmeat pie.

  The skycraft pass overhead, heading back to base. The great fires move in from the roads into the deep woods. Tens of thousands of survivors stumble among the dead and dying along five charred paths. Most drop within a day or two, too burned and dismayed to continue.

  Only those at the top of the burned-out funnels reach the berm, staggering out of ragged smog that covers all inside the city in layers of snowy ash and fine black soot. The soot settles over everything, like Harmattan dust. It’s a little gritty. It’s inescapable. Take a duster, wipe the black powder off the kitchen table, swipe away a dusky mix of what was just a few days ago a forest, animals and people. It won’t make any difference. In half-an-hour you must do it again.

  Red-faced and dehydrated, many also badly burned, the last arrivals stand before guilty guards. Look plaintively out of scorched and scarred faces with no eyebrow sentries left above their haunted, unblinking looks. A final phalanx of gray ghosts assembles outside the city, rank upon rank pressing forward, huddling, whimpering, crying, dying. Pushing futilely on the backs of others locked outside by order of a mayor acting on fear of a mob. It has come to this at the Gate blocking access to Arbor City, the last free standing community and refuge on Genève.

  After nine days of rising fury General Amiya Constance, Toruń Garrison commander, has seen and heard enough. When Jabos return on the tenth day to hurtle missiles and drop ball plasma into hapless civis too crowded and crammed to escape another hard rain of death, when the Berm Gate still stays closed on mayoral order, she declares martial law. Squads are sent to arrest the startled, protesting mayor and each and every councilor who voted to bar the Gate.

  An angry mob that gathers to free its mayor is rapidly dispersed by a scorching whiff of maser fire General Constance orders sent low over the protestors’ heads, with the next volley held ready to fire at chest and face height. A few fools think she won’t do it and rush the Toruń jail. They fall in smoking piles of astonishment and disbelief. The mob dissolves and runs.

  Her first edict is to “redouble the berm guard and clear the bridge and approach streets on this side of the Gate.” Her second is to “raise the portcullis for two days, then one hour each day after that. Screen all applicants for entry. Refuse any who fail. Let in all the rest.”

  Over 200 are crushed against the Gate or trampled the first time the portcullis goes up, before angry guards shoot down the most panicky offenders pushing too hard from behind, and regain control. Fast but orderly screening resumes as a surge of refugees squeezes through and over the bridge. Eager to get under the city’s bombardment shield to escape the darting and diving Jabos that are growing ever more daring in their attacks, urged on by an angry shōshō.

  As the Gate lifts each morning for just one hour, more pitiable supplicants are vetted. Any small suspicion, and some guard turns away a crying petitioner with a hard thump, warns off two more with a threatening wave of his maser pistol. Others pass through as quickly as they can, never once looking up or back. Wild rumors say that Krevan-speaking infiltrators are trying to get into Toruń to burn the city down, that ethnic arsonists who speak Genèven dialects and know local places, foods and folkways, are sneaking into the city.

  “Filthy traitors. Fifth columnists!”

  Maybe it’s true, or maybe not. Guards take no chances. Anyone without authenticated Genèven ID is turned back. No appeals. General Constance is absolute about enforcing that.

  The last arrivals are all badly burned, straining Toruń’s medical resources. Food’s not a problem though. Huge granaries along the export quays that served this agrarian world in better times heave with the spring harvest, even though the last collections of summer crops were left unclaimed with the arrival of the Kaigun in orbit and the Rikugun ground assault. Too many youths were pulled from the summer harvest to don uniform and head out to die at the MDL.

  Despite towering granaries and the luxury craft and tourism trades that built up over centuries, at its core Toruń is still an old-fashioned garrison town. That history and tradition shows up in an unusual discipline that marks the families of garrison soldiers and the “jacks and jennies” of the local KRN flotilla. They’re all 100% behind the general and martial law.

  Support for the new military government also comes from refugees with family ties to Silver or Gold Divisions. Military families organize as only they can do, helping the city police force keep order. Sometimes rules are enforced with quick, rough justice in overcrowded inns, or down some darkened arboreal street or alley, or inside the several sprawling lakeside refugee camps. No more mobs of Toruń isolationists dare show up outside Governance Hall. Hospitals and morgues instead see a fairly brisk trade in unexplained beatings that military police ignore.

  The space dock is off-limit to all civis. Even so, tens of thousands crowd below its high perimeter wall each day, hoping to beg or bribe a ride off this doomed and burning world. It’s pointless, as no ships leave the docks anymore and haven’t for months, with th
e Kaigun above.

  Civilian cargo craft and two big Grün luxury liners are grounded and under strict navy control. Meanwhile, the last KRN warships are secretly making ready for an all-out suicide attack on the powerful Kaigun fleet in orbital patrol overhead. All seven little ships sport the KRN emblem on their prow, a teak roundel of a carved sunflower, under transparent armor.

  The tops of Toruń’s buildings are daubed with dark red ‘detector,’ a chemical coating to warn of falling poison gasses. The tallest bristle with multiple tubes of anti-skycraft guns, even though the “archie” won’t make a difference by the end. For once the city’s shields collapse, as they must under the hard bombardment hitting them daily, once Jabos break though the smoke cover and overwhelm the berm defenses, the last defenders will fight to the death in a wooden city whose towers shall burn down around them. Ash to ashes, dust to dust. No phoenix rising.

  Garrison families and a few others will find brief refuge in deep bunkers dug by KRA engineers beneath the lakes the last time Grünen were on Genève, and expanded for this new war. Their certain future is still to grieve lost fighters and dead family, then to be rousted and rounded up themselves by RIK ground troops as the burned-down city is overrun.

  Already, ashes of military dead are laid down in an ancient marble quarry tucked into a silent corner of the city. Over the entrance someone erected a laser-cut stone: “Their honored place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” No one remembers who said it or knows who etched it, but the bold words seem fitting and right.

  ***

  KRA fighters from across Genève who crowd into Toruń never wanted this war, never wanted any of this. But they’ll fight to the last if they must. They know that terrible things are happening all over Genève and on four other Krevan worlds invaded all at once in a stunning wave of orbital assaults that began the new war without warning, just a few months back.

  Or is it six worlds invaded now? Seven? Eight? All 24 inhabited worlds of the harmless United Planets of Krevo? It’s only a matter of when, not if, war comes to them all. Wild rumors are everywhere, raising fear and despair about everything. They’re hard to track, harder to confirm. And impossible to suppress. The military government tries and fails.

  Sometimes the rumors sound good, instead. Not so perfect as to be unbelievable. Just good enough and real enough to bring fresh hope to a known hopeless cause. A new one is doing the rounds today. It’s really good. It’s the best one yet.

  Is it an alchemist’s tale slithering around Toruń’s streets like the chemist’s familiar, a whispering cat or serpent, transmuting into gold hope the hard leaden bars of the city’s reality? Or is the latest exciting story just another lying spread of quicksilver, oozing from superheated cinnabar? No one knows the truth of it, though everyone knows and tells and retells the story.

  It’s a rumor of swift counterstrokes by hidden Krevan fleets and armies. Best of all, it’s a promise of imminent military intervention by righteous forces of the alliance Krevo had with the mighty Calmar Union in the last Orion War, and the one before that. The ‘Auld Alliance.

  “They’ll soon be here to lift the siege! Hurrah!”

  “This is just a cruel trick by Grün intelligence, a tall tale to deceive and torment us.”

  “No, no! It’s true, it’s true! Why would anyone lie about it?”

  Even the sensible wonder if it’s a deliberate confusion of the quick to jig the dead. Does General Constance have any plan at all? Does Toruń dare hope to have a future? Surely not.

  “No, it’s true. The city will survive. The siege of Toruń will be lifted by our old allies.”

  “Rubbish! It’s all a lie spread by our own commanders, trying to keep hope alive and our children still doing their military duty outside the berm. They should die with us in here.”

  “Arrest that man! He’s spreading sedition against the military government!”

  “Bah! Go ahead, arrest me! It’s still a big lie! We’re all gonna die soon, even you!”

  It’s not that at all. It’s not a lie. It’s just another rumor. No one knows who started it or why, or when or how. They just can’t take any more bloody rumors! Until the next one arrives.

  A very fat one started in a military canteen at first-light one morning, spurred on by an excited orderly with real connections at HQ Coms. He whispered to two mates over breakfast.

  “I know for sure it’s true.”

  He means the latest wild tale about an unfolding battle plan. A new hope. There are always rumors of new battles and plans. What makes this time different is his connections.

  “My friend overheard the War Council discuss it. It’s true, I tell you!”

  It is true. At least the part he tells about an optical-coded dispatch that arrived by bohr-zone laser relay, addressed to: “General Constance. Eyes Only.”

  It came from outside Genève system, from the capital of Yalto on Aral. It took hours at light-speed to climb up to the outer Lagrange area and bohr-zone in Aral system, then made an instant bohr or quantum jump of information to the outer Genève system, then took more slow hours moving only at light-speed as a laser-encoded message down to receivers in Toruń. By all known physics and interstellar coms standards, that’s as fast as it gets anywhere, or ever.

  Even the Kaigun that now controls all Genève system space needs that vital interstellar relay to the rest of Orion, which is possible only through outer system bohr relay-stations. KRA Special Branch taps in to that weak link in the Grün coms blockade, right into the core Rikugun Security Unit feed. That’s how Constance stays in contact with the central government on Aral, by piggy-backing an undetected micro-stream of info onto the strong and constant RSU signal.

  It’s a bit like a sunbeam riding along with a solar flare: it’s fragile, erratic, interrupted, unreliable, intermittent. But if it ever gets through, it gets the job done. This one was boosted. It’s so important Aral risked the secrecy of its last link to Genève to get the message through.

  RIK Fourth Army HQ duly intercepted the boosted message. RSU was a little surprised but not all that worried about the piggy-back system it only just discovered. The war is all but over on Genève. Toruń will fall, sooner rather than later. What can a message or two achieve? Some final gesture? Still, Main HQ sets its senior cryptanalysis staff to the task of breaking the code. They’re working at a fever pitch to decipher it, but it’ll be a miracle if they succeed.

  It takes even General Constance half-a-day to read the code into Universal from the ‘spooky’ quantum cloud it traveled inside, and she uses the highest security key there is and every bit of computing power available. No way the RSU can crack it in time. Or maybe ever.

  The jubilant rumor-monger knows all about the secret link. Knows the message was boosted and therefore that it’s real big stuff. He just doesn’t have a clue what it really says and so makes up all the rest. All that good stuff about rescue and reconstituting the ‘Auld Alliance.

  The dispatch is from the War Government in the capital of Yalto on Aral, still holding out planetside after losing a long naval fight for the system’s asteroid belt and several ground fights on its ice moons. The excited soldier working on the inside at HQ Coms isn’t wrong about that, even if his equally excitable friend got nowhere near the War Council chambers.

  And yes, it does communicate a new plan. But it says nothing about the ‘Auld Alliance. The message is full of much grimmer news. It reaffirms that Krevans are entirely on their own.

  Just as General Constance deciphers the message and absorbs its import, Jan and Zofia and the survivors of Madjenik reach the botanical barrier between the Gold Oak Forest and the Toruń Wood ash lands. Even as they hurry across the flower field under an unnerving open sky, just as they see the gaunt dead trees and smell the ash zone, the general orders an assembly.

  All KRA not on active duty defending the berm perimeter or working archie on the rooftops, as well as all KRN jacks and jennies
from Toruń Spaceport, are told to assemble.

  “General Constance will speak to you, and to the city, on a matter of great import. You will assemble outside in Governance Square at 0:400 hours tomorrow. That’s an order.”

  ‘Gods help me. Help us all. It’s time to break this long silence and let all Toruń know what’s coming. What we have to do. The terrible thing I must order, and the price to be paid.’

  Constance

  General Amiya Constance is a real presence. Decades of command responsibility are etched in taut lines around her hazel eyes and in fine whisker-like indentations at the corners of her mouth. Her face is older, but almost absent the deeper creases of early middle-age that a woman in her eighties normally displays. Not even regular dispensation of the dilute civilian form of the life-lengthening drug ‘suspensor,’ used also by combat medics, stops all fletchings of Time’s Arrow. Her just-starting-to-silver hair is worn in a traditional low-cropped style.