The Shadow and Night (85 page)

As their footsteps faded away, Merral sat down heavily in a chair.

“I do not want to do this!” he whispered, and his voice seemed to echo about him. His memories of the battle at Carson's Sill came flooding back. He even half wished he had not found the ship.
Why am I so reluctant? Is it cowardice or something else?

Suddenly, the answer came to him abruptly and clearly. It was not cowardice, or not entirely.
I'm reluctant because with this we would lose our innocence. With this action we will put the clock back twelve millennia. At a stroke, we would unleash all the ghosts of the past: the deceitful vocabulary of war, the dreadful concepts we have forgotten, those horrors disguised as “chivalry,” “patriotism,” or “valor” that lurked in the very oldest books, the laments like that of David over Saul and Jonathan, the grieving of the widows and orphans.

Then a new and darker thought struck him. If it happened, he could become known to posterity—for however many ages there were yet to run—as Captain Merral Stefan D'Avanos of the Farholme Defense Unit.

The man who brought war back to the human race.

32

S
uddenly anxious to talk to Vero, Merral strode out of the room to the walkway in the cavern. At the railing, he paused and gazed into the space beyond. He stood there, his eyes caught by the angry flashes of yellow and white light and his ears assailed by the cacophony of noises: the conflicting rhythms of hammering and the roar and hum of engines and machinery, all echoing and reechoing off the rock walls. Now all this bustle of activity made sense. Vero was preparing to launch an attack against a vastly superior foe in a week's time.

As Merral stood there, he found that all this activity buried in this vast, half-lit cavern saddened him.
Where is our openness and our innocence? Have we lost it so soon?

He looked around for Vero and found him standing by one of the gray hulls of the gravity-modifying sleds in insistent conversation with a man in overalls. He clattered down the stairway and walked over to the sled.

As he approached, Vero dismissed the engineer, then came over and took his friend's shoulder in an understanding grasp.

“I'm sorry,” Vero said, speaking loudly to make himself heard over the scream of a drill that had just started up.

“Yes, so am I,” Merral answered, feeling a strange mixture of emotions. “They want me to lead the fighting.”

“I know,” Vero said, his face lit by flickers of light. “Have you agreed?”

Merral said nothing for a few moments. “No. I'm thinking about it. There are lots of issues. It's not an easy decision. But you think it will come to fighting, don't you?”

Vero gave an almost imperceptible nod. “I fear so.”

Merral looked at the gray sled perched on trestles, noticing the benches that were being welded to the frame.

“Let me ask: what do you plan to do with these?”

“These? The two sleds are the main attack vehicles. Thirty men on each. The hoverer—over there—we will use for the negotiating party. These sleds are quieter and we may be able to get in faster. We are working on them to make them more suitable.”

Merral was suddenly aware of his ignorance. “Tell me, Vero, what's supposed to happen. If I am to lead people into this attack, I ought to know.”

“Yes,” Vero agreed, leaning back cautiously against the polished hull of the sled. “Well, once the order is given—”

“Wait, who gives the order?”

“You . . . or whoever the commander on the ground is. We can't assume that we will be able to keep a link to Isterrane going. They may be able to block it, just as they did with our transmissions.”

“So the decision to fight—that may be mine?”

“Yes. But, I mean, there is hardly time for the representatives to debate the matter. Is there? Seconds may count here.”

“I see. So if—or when—I say go, what happens?”

Vero's face acquired an unsettled look. “Well, it's still fluid. The idea is to get in quickly and disable the ship somehow. Perena suggests we blow open a hatch or some doorway. All we have to do is stop it from leaving the atmosphere. The intruders can't breathe in a vacuum. Of course, it would help if we knew exactly what the ship looked like, but there must be doorways, landing gear, that sort of thing. . . .” He pointed a thumb over at a nearby pallet where some lurid red boxes lay. “We have had some fast-expanding polymer cut into wedges; when you trigger the reaction, they triple their volume inside a second. They will stop a door from closing. There are also some planar explosives safe down another tunnel. With them we can blast off an entire landing leg.”

“I see. You know that they aren't going to stand by while you put these charges down?”

Vero pursed his lips. “No. Of course not.”

“So have you weapons?”

“Nothing fancy, but we have some things. Better than just bush knives. Although we will be issuing those—it's a tried-and-tested weapon. But the new weapons . . . do you want to see them?”

Merral suppressed his dislike. “No . . . But I'd better, I suppose.”

“Over here,” Vero said, motioning him to the corner from where Merral had seen the flashes of light earlier. In the corner, two men and a woman in thick overalls were working on some tubular parts at a bench.

As Vero introduced him, Merral was struck by the look of recognition that his name drew.
They know who I am; my reputation has gone ahead of me.
Was this also why they wanted him to lead? A man who had already fought and won once. Yet the next time might be different.

Cautiously, Vero picked up one of the dull gray tubular objects off the bench. “Recognize this?” he asked. “Careful, the barrel's hot.”

“Yes, it's a rock cutter,” Merral answered, seeing the handle and the shoulder rest. “I've seen my Uncle Barrand use one in the quarry work.”

“Exactly,” Vero answered. “The XM2 model. We have been modifying some to give a pulse of energy. We have adjusted the beam focus and put an easy-to-operate switch on. What's the range now, Salla?” Vero asked the woman.

Merral, glancing at her, noticed the beads of sweat on her face, the stains on her hands, the disheveled and dusty blonde hair.

Salla nodded at the rock cutter in a detached way. “Well, with the hundred millisec pulse we have settled on, we can get fifteen meters with a tight beam and fifty meters on the broad focus. Broad focus is lower temperature. Below a thousand Celsius at the center. It's the best compromise at the moment. . . .”

Her tone seemed as clear and precise as if she expected Merral to take notes. He wondered what she had been previously; an engineering lecturer, perhaps?

“I see,” Vero said, standing back. “I'd like to show Merral how it works. Give him a demonstration, please.”

Salla picked up the weapon. “It's too heavy really, but the XM2s were not designed to be carried about quickly. I wouldn't like to carry one for a long time.” She slid a toggle on the side. “Another innovation—a safety switch. Technically, a fascinating compromise.” Merral noted her keen gray eyes staring in his direction. “You have to balance the need to stop it going off accidentally against the need to switch it on fast.”

Merral merely nodded, his mounting unease warring against his urge to understand.

She pointed it toward the chamber wall, and Merral noticed for the first time a series of colored concentric rings painted on a plastic screen perhaps twenty meters away.

“With the safety switch off,” she said, lifting the gun up and squinting along the barrel, “the power comes on instantly with the first pressure on the trigger.” There was a faint hum and a red light on the side glowed. “A further press and you fire.
Thus.
”

There were three soft hisses from the barrel and three small crimson flames flared briefly in the center of the target. As the wisps of smoke faded, three blackened holes appeared in the target, each large enough to put a finger in.

As Salla lowered the gun carefully onto the bench, her smile seemed uneasy, almost guilty. “And then, you put the safety back on. Always.”

“Impressive.” As he said the word, Merral realized he wasn't sure what he meant by it.

Vero nodded. “Yes, these are the final adjustments being made. We have over a hundred of these ready. What are you working on now?”

“Calibrating the focus switch,” one of the men said.

“A focus switch? Why do you need it?” Merral asked.

Salla answered him. “A tight-focus beam will cut through most metals and polymers,” she said, “but it's got to be precisely aimed. The broad focus gives a wider burn zone: say a hand's width.”

Merral looked at her, suddenly curious whether this woman was married or not, and if she was, whether she had children.

“You'd use that for what?”

Without hesitation came the answer. “For soft targets.”

“For soft targets,” Merral echoed, trying to conceal his feelings. “I see. Thank you for the demonstration, Salla. You have worked hard. Excuse me.”

He turned sharply and walked away a few paces, urgently gesturing for Vero to follow him.

“Let's go back to the room with the maps. We need to talk.”

Back in the room, Merral closed the door and sat at the table. Vero sat opposite. “You seem upset,” he said.

I
am
upset.
Merral tried to contain his emotions. “Vero, let me ask you a single question: What is a soft target?” His voice sounded hard and cold.

“Ah. Yes, well . . . a soft target . . .” Vero seemed to stare at the desk as if an answer was inscribed on it. “Well, it is . . . what shall we say? An objective . . . an opponent perhaps, that is, well, unarmored.”

“Who.
”

“Who?”

“You used the word
opponent.
An opponent is not an
it,
it is a
who.
Opponents are personal.”

“Ah yes,” Vero replied, intertwining his fingers nervously, “we mustn't lose our grammar.”

“The grammar is not the point. As well you know.” Vero stared at his interlocked hands in embarrassment, and Merral thought that he was blushing.

“Vero,” Merral said, almost horrified at the sharpness of his own voice, “let me suggest that a soft target is unprotected organic tissue. Right?”

“Er, right.”

“Do you see what worries me?”

“Yes . . . I'm sorry.”

“Vero, that charming woman, Salla, who is, for all I know, a wife and a mother beyond reproach, and the men with her, were happily talking about maximizing the potential for efficiently burning holes in the flesh of living, intelligent creatures. Is this what we have come to?”

Vero rose to his feet and paced the room before stopping, turning, and answering.

“I suppose so,” he said, clearly discomfited. “It's just that we have been in a hurry; we've only been going perhaps four weeks here. We have been just too busy to consider some of the issues. Like ethics. And, I suppose, you have to distance yourself. Really.”