IronStar (42 page)

“Irshe, what is
that
?” She
pointed southeast toward the O’dai camp. “There! Where the
not-grass
is,
is
changing
…” More eyes followed her gaze. In an arc thirty meters wide,
the low ground cover was shifting subtly from the yellowish-green to the
slightly deeper green of a hoofprint or other disturbance in the growth. The
arc was tracking briskly towards their position.

“And
that
?” She indicated
the two teams of three horses and riders, galloping hard towards them on a
parallel track but over a hundred meters to the left and to the right of the
approaching disturbance. Puzzled mutterings confirmed that this was a new
phenomenon to the Talamae as well. From the main O’dai camp, a line of men was
forming up and beginning to march towards them. Kirrah raised her beamer and
selected magnified view. In it she could see the three riders on her right,
their horses carrying a single gray cylinder as large as her head suspended
among the three by makeshift rope harnesses.

Swinging the small gunsight to the
left she could make out the other team of three horses, linked by a similar
harness, but in this case to a gray ring about twenty centimeter across.
Something invisible was pulling the ring and harness out horizontally from
those horses, towards the other team over two hundred meters to her right.
Between the two teams, the faint discoloration of the not-grass continued its
swift approach, its width varying randomly from second to second. Something
about the sight made Kirrah’s blood run cold. As it passed a low spot where a
few taller reeds and thin brush grew, every last standing plant toppled slowly
in its wake as though before an invisible scythe. Suddenly the penny dropped.

“
Nanowire!
The Kruss gave
them
nanowire
! Run! Run to the river!” Blank stares met her near-panic.
Kirrah realized she had used the Regnum term, there being no Talamae
equivalent.

“It’s an invisible knife! It will
cut through everything between those teams of horses!
Everything!
Men,
horses, armor!”
Even Lieutenants in survival suits! C’mon, people,
ge
t
it!

“Do not let them get you between
them, there is no defense!”
- except another piece of nanowire, or that nano
composite they use for the ends
. “Run for the boats! Swim!
Move!
”
Suddenly everyone began to move at once, running down to the shoreline thirty
meters behind them and splashing into the water. The steamships, standing just
offshore, were already lowering their boarding ramps to receive the men. Four
cargo rowboats were already on the bank, the remaining eight drawing close.
Thank
Murphy the shoreline is convex here,
Kirrah calculated rapidly.
However
they maneuver the ends of that wire, there’ll be a small chord of land for us
to stand on
. A hundred meters up and down river, the lethal trio of horses
was within eighty meters of the riverbank, and the disturbance in the grass
almost as close to the Talamae position.

“Warmaster?” Lieutenant Rash’koi
called. He gestured toward the enemy, miming a bowshot.

“The fourth trebuchet, someone fire
the sappers’ charge!” she shouted. Corporal Hu’dakai and three other archers
and two cavalry reversed their flight and took a position thirty meters from
the still-standing siege engine. The gunpowder charge was strapped to the
bottom of the main support hinge a dozen meters above the beach, its wick wound
around the upper end of the nearest support beam, which still gleamed with
flammable oil.

“Rash’koi, it is too risky! If we
do not kill every horse and man at both ends, they will slay us all, every one,
as fast as they can run to the river! You have no idea what that stuff can do!
Go
!
Go to the boats!”

Two of the fire-arrows launched by
Hu’dakai’s team shattered their flasks of oil on the beach behind the
trebuchet. The two teams of O’dai horses were within thirty meters of the
shoreline, one upriver and one down. Two more incendiaries lofted - one a clean
miss, and one broke against the beam, but too low to ignite the fuse. Inshore,
out on the plain, the disturbance in the grass had disappeared - probably,
Kirrah realized with a terrible insight, because the O’dai were now pulling it
taut and the center of its length no longer dragged along the ground cover. She
could see one team pulling to a halt at the water’s edge a hundred meters
upstream.

One more shot,
there
! The
fire arrow burst directly on the hinge, dripping burning oil onto the charge’s
fuse. The fuse began to sputter and spark. Corporal Hu’dakai turned to salute,
and the archer next to him shouted and fell, blood suddenly gouting from his
severed thighs. The corporal and one of the two other archers jumped toward the
water, as the remaining bowman turned to stare at his fellow writhing on the
ground beside his detached legs. Then the second man’s bow snapped above his
hand. His eyes widened and his free hand swung up as though to swat at something
on his chest. But even as his arm lifted, his hand came away cleanly from his
forearm and slapped him almost comically on the face, and fell back to land at
his feet.

“
No!
” Kirrah screamed.
Stunned, the man leaned forward reflexively to pick up the severed hand, and
his head and upper chest slid horribly away from his lower body, blood spraying
in all directions. The nearest cavalryman shouted a warning and swung his sword
through the air near where the man had fallen. His swing struck nothing
tangible, but to his obvious shock, ten centimeters fell soundlessly from the
end of his heavy blade.

“Back!” Kirrah screamed again. The
man’s horse suddenly reared, and more blood spurted as both the animal’s front
legs parted cleanly, one above and one just below the knee. Desperately the man
stood in his stirrups and lunged up and out, rolling in the air and landing
apparently whole on the soft sand.
Probably on the wrong side of the
nanowire,
Kirrah realized with a sick dread. The horse fell onto both
stumps, then collapsed as its head, with a bloody wedge of neck attached,
rolled half a meter away. The second horseman was backing slowly away from the
carnage.

“
On your life, don’t move!
”
Kirrah ordered. A hundred meters down the beach, she could see one of the team
of O’dai horsemen standing at the water’s edge, laughing and shaking the gray
ring left and right on its harness.

“When I light up the wire, come
over or under, then run for the beach!” Kirrah set her beamer to continuous
cutting and full power, and flicked its beam rapidly up and down through an arc
just to the right of the man. At each flick, the beam intersected with the
nanowire, which flashed a nearly-invisible pale yellow along its entire two
hundred meter length. Kirrah jumped to see how close it was, barely half a
meter from her right shoulder. The thoroughly rattled cavalryman rolled quickly
under the flickering apparition, and everyone made for the water. Kirrah turned
and almost collided with Irshe who was reaching to her. The demolition charge
chose that moment to explode violently, two of the large wooden trebuchet beams
falling toward the water and two falling inland. As the latter two dropped onto
the taut nanowire, each heavy timber parted into two neatly severed pieces.
Irshe practically carried her to the nearest steamship in his haste.

That evening, a somber war council
was in progress in the paneled octagonal conference room in the southwest
corner of the palace.

“On behalf of Talam, Kirrah
Warmaster, you do not need to apologize for your victory. You had no way to
anticipate the Kruss weapon.”
“I know, Lord Tsano, and I know they could have given far worse weapons to the
O’dai. In fact the
nanowire
is not designed to be a weapon at all. It is
a construction material, like beams or bricks, used by both Kruss and Regnum.
It only cuts because it is thinner than the edge of a sharp razor.”

“What would one possibly construct,
using such a terrible material?” asked Delima shu'Maakael, the Guildmaster.
“Would not everyone be at risk?”

“It must be handled carefully, as
many of you have seen earlier today. But with the proper tools and techniques,
it can be used and contained safely. It is dangerous because it is so thin and
so strong, exactly the same reasons that make it so useful. A cable woven of
that material can lift a fully laden ship so high into the sky that it does not
fall back to earth. This is how, if you chose someday to explore the stars, you
will leave your world.”

“How do the O’dai wield it without
harm? My man’s sword…” Major Doi’tam gestured to the ruined weapon lying on the
conference table, its three-centimeter width of tempered, folded carbon steel
still bright and smooth where it was severed.

“The Kruss have given them a spool
and a handle, both made of a material that contains the same substance as the
nanowire
,
and wrapped in a fine mesh of
nanowire
. It is very difficult to
manufacture even for my world, and quite beyond our ability to make here.”

“So we have no defense against
being cut to pieces if we take the field against our enemies again,” said
Irshe.
Ever quick to appreciate the tactical implications of new weapons…

“Irshe-
ro’tachk
is partly
right,” Kirrah replied. “In the Regnum, there are solvents that would dissolve
the
nanowire
in an instant. But here, now, we have nothing capable of
stopping it from passing wherever it is pulled, including through the city’s
stone walls.” Not a few of the faces around the table paled at that image. “But
if we are forced back to the field, we can be alert to their tactics and detail
a squad of archers to kill the men pulling the ends of the wire. If we do that,
it could be just as dangerous for them as for us. No one can even see the
stuff, and it cuts so finely one doesn’t even feel it hurt as his leg comes
off.”

“What a terrible
not-weapon
,”
Delima mused. “I can only wonder what you would consider a powerful,
purpose-built weapon to be, and whether we shall have to experience it when
your
Reg’num
and the Kruss are fighting on our world.”

“You are not the first to feel this
fear, Delima. Both Kruss and Regnum, and many other worlds, belong to a greater
organization, the Civilium. We have spoken of it in the past when we discussed
trade. Since our greatest weapons can destroy whole worlds, the Civilium has
very strict rules, and any world or empire of worlds that breaks them will be
punished by
all
the other worlds. This does not mean we do not have
wars, or do damage. But no living world has been destroyed, not for almost
seven hundred years - sorry, for five hundred years of this world.

“I will not mislead you. The Kruss
and the Regnum have been competitors for three hundred years, and fought a few
wars over worlds and exploration rights and other less-tangible things. By
siding with the Regnum you make enemies of the Kruss, but since they were
already here, the alternative is to make slavemasters of them.”

“In this matter we trust you,
Kirrah shu’Roehl.” Lord Tsano was the only Talamae present, in fact the only
Talamae
period
, who was not obliged to address her as ‘Warmaster’ in
formal circumstances. “But I have a question about the Kruss wire. Perhaps you
could indulge an old blacksmith a moment.” At her nod and quick smile, the big
man continued:

“We have seen what your beamer can
do, against armor - even the Kruss’ armor. Why will it not simply sever such a
wire that is so fine it cannot even be seen?”
Oh sure,
thought Kirrah,
just tell me the Talamae words for ‘Quantum superconductor’, and
‘Unidimensional virtual Bose-Einstein condensate’, and I’ll fill you right in…

“Ah, again I am at difficulty,” she
temporized. “No offense, but the words do not exist in the Talamae language…
let me try explaining this way. My
not-sword
throws heat and light.
Whatever it strikes, a small part of it becomes hotter than the heart of the
best forge-fire.”
Actually, hotter than the surface of your sun, but that’s
for later
…

“But the
nanowire
is not
only very strong and very thin. It has a special property, that every part of
it is always at exactly the same temperature as every other part. In fact the wire
doesn’t have true length as, say, a mooring rope does. It reacts as though it
is all in one place.” Intelligent pale green eyes watched her closely as she
struggled to explain the concepts she had grown up with.

“So when my
not-sword
sends
heat, first, because the
nanowire
is so thin, it only absorbs a tiny
part of what is sent. Second, that small amount of heat is spread instantly
over the entire length of the wire, plus any other wire touching it, including
the handles and spools wrapped with the wire. If I poured all the strength in
my
not-sword
onto that one wire, I doubt I could make any part of it
even too warm to touch. If one could touch it.”

“I am surprised to hear that it was
not hot. From across the river, I could see it flash yellow in the sweep of
your weapon, like a crack into the heart of a furnace.”

“My Lord Tsano is an excellent
observer,” Kirrah replied. “But what you were seeing was a reflection of the
light from my
not-sword
, not its heat. As well as conducting heat
instantly,”
and electricity, and phonons, and quantum states - but let’s not
go there just now…
“the
nanowire
also conducts light along its
entire length. A tiny fraction of that light spills out, which I counted on to
help our cavalryman cross it safely. Not that I have ever tried that before, it
was just …all I could think of.”