The Stone Dogs (72 page)

Decision firmed.

"Order to Ground Command," she said. That was the Army CINC here in Aresopolis—
what's left of it,
her mind japed at her.

The Damage Control board's schematic of the city showed nearly half red; the residential sectors were mostly still blue, but much more of this and there wouldn't be enough afterwards to maintain the people. And there would probably be very little help from Earth. "Activate Contingency Horde-Two."

"Ma'am?" The Tac officer looked up from his board.
"Now?"

Yolande keyed the releases of her combat cradle and stood, pushing herself up with a brief shove of one hand. "The troops will be safer dispersed on the surface," she said dispassionately.

Her chin jerked toward an overview of this area of Luna.

"Most of this garbage is comin' from New Edo. It must be civilians or reservists, takin' over from incapacitated military personnel; we didn't get complete exposure fo' this Stone Dogs thing. That's why it's so irregular an' uncoordinated, we can
almost
handle it even crippled up as we are. That bein' so, they can't noways be in a position to stop us if we go in, dig out their perimeter on the surface, an' then blast down to get at the inhabited levels."

She thought of forests frozen-dead in the dome, and then of ghouloons hunting the enemy through their own tunnels. There was a certain comfort in it, dry and chill though it was.

"Oh, and please to info'm Strategos Witter that I'll be with the assault brigade." The Tac officer made to protest, shrugged, fell silent. "Don't worry, Merarch, he'll object, too, but all the policy level decisions've been taken. This is our last throw. I'm certain-sure not needed here."

CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE

ARCHONA

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

NOVEMBER 4, 1998

1700 HOURS

"Excellence, they're getting some of the birds away," the liaison officer said pleadingly. "Please, it's important that yo' get to the shelter."

Eric von Shrakenberg shook his head. "We didn't expect to disable all the submarine launchers," he said quietly. "But if they get Archona, then it's pointless anyway. I'll live or die with my city… Call it an old man's fancy. Status report."

The Palace infosystem was excellent. Not that he was in the command loop, of course. Today he was a spectator.

Have I ever been anything else?
he thought wearily. The lines traced over the globe. Somewhere outside there was a mammoth
crack,
like thunder. Manmade thunder, a laser burning a trail of ionization through the atmosphere, and a particle beam following it.

"We got the sub!" someone shouted. Lines were spearing out from somewhere off the Cape of Good Hope. "Four skimmers away." Hypervelocity, low level. "Sweet mercy of the White Christ, that's Mournblade's sector."

"The close-in will stop it… One down. Two. Three. Come on, baby, come on —"

The voices cut off, as if sliced. An awed voice spoke. "That's Cape Town gone."

The mother city,
Eric thought.
Cradle of the nation. Taste
victory, old fool. Savor it.

"Status," he said, without opening eyelids that felt heavier than worlds.

"Excellence, we've lost… Wotan, we've lost nearly half the discrete platforms out to L-5. Alliance, ninety percent down an'

falling fast. Freya bless, Excellence, if it hadn't been fo' the Stone Dogs,"—a quaver, hastily surpassed—"there wouldn't be anythin'

left
, Excellence."

Another stone-shaking roar of manmade thunder through the walls. Eyes darted to the screens, relaxed; the last salvo had been at low-orbit targets, ones that were unlikely to respond. Eric forced his eyes open, onto the screens. Forced his mind to paint the full picture of what the bloodless schematics meant, through the hour that followed.
Your doing, our responsibility.

A man was cursing softly. "Oh, shit, oh, shit, that's Shanghai.

Penetrator. Two. Another."

"Northern hemisphere stations report high-incidence cloud cover—"

"I don't believe it," somebody said. Eric looked up; that had been soft awe, not the hard control that had settled on most.

"London's gone."

Eric slammed a hand down on the arm of his chair. "Who ordered that? Get me their name!"

"Excellence—" the operator looked back over his shoulder; the New Race control of hormone levels must have slipped, inattention, because there was a sheen of moisture across his forehead. "Excellence, they did it themselves."

Eric sighed and sat back, reluctantly letting go the balm of anger. "It'll happen, if yo' inflict insanity on those in charge of nuclear weapons," he said quietly.

"Multiple detonation, Japan." A toneless voice, lost in procedure. "High-yield groundbursts. Sublevel." A pause.

"Jacketed bombs. Prelim'nry sensor data indicate radioactivity—"

The Archon listened through the figures. "Schematic on distribution, given projected wind patterns," he said. "Give me an intensity cline, geography an' timewise." The deepgraven lines beside his beak nose sank a little deeper as the maps twisted themselves. "Note to Plannin' Board: we'll probably have to evacuate the survivin' shelters from the Korean peninsula up through the Amur Valley, minimum. Draw up estimates." The Japanese had been true to their tradition, and had taken a good deal more with them to the land of the kami than their home islands.
They never liked the Koreans, anyhow,
he thought.

Minutes stretched into hours, as the quiet voices and screens reported. The thunder spoke less often now, outside; more of it was being directed offensively, into space, to make up for battlestations left derelict. More and more often his eyes went to the screens that showed the cumulative effects, graphs rising steadily towards the red lines that represented estimates of what the mother planet's biosphere could stand.
Conservative
estimates… we think,
he reflected.

At last he spoke. "Strategos, a directive to the Supreme General Staff. No mo' fusion weapons within the atmosphere.

Kinetic energy bombardment only, on Priority Three targets and above." Active military installations. "Throw rocks at them."

"Excellence—" A glance of protest from the Staffs representative.

Suddenly Eric felt life return, salt-bitter but strong. "Gods damn yo', that's
our planet
yo' fuckin' over, woman!" A dot expanded over the Hawaiian islands. "There goes 25% of Earth's, launch capacity! Do it, get them on the blower, do it!"
What's a
few more million lives in this charnel house?
he asked himself mockingly.
Go on, finish the job.

"If only it were that easy," he muttered to himself. "If only."

Aloud: "I'm goin' to catch some sleep." Chemicals would ensure that, and these days they could bring true rest. Whether you deserve it or not. "Wake me immediately if we get any substantial info'mation on the Trans Lunar situation."

Even this day had to end, sometime.

BEYOND THE ORBIT OF MARS

ABOARD DASCS
DIOCLETIAN

NOVEMBERS, 1998

The bridge was still chaotic, but it was a more orderly confusion now. Merarch Gudrun von Shrakenberg took another suck at the waterbulb and glanced over at the console that had housed the main compcore; there was an ozone and scorched-plastic stink from it even hours after they had crashed it with two clips from a gauntlet gun. A bit drastic, but it had worked… Now the circular command chamber was festooned with jury-rigged fiber-optic cables, and a daisy chain of linked perscomps floated in the center.

"Ready?" The Infosystems Officer looked up from his task.

Goddam New Race bastard still doesn't look
tired
, she thought, then caught herself. It was amazing how habits of mind stayed with you, long after the circumstances had made them irrelevant.
Now everything is irrelevant, with two exceptions,
she mused.

"Ready," he affirmed, and looked down, flexing his hands.

"Sensor Officer?"

That one spoke without taking her eyes from screens that had to be manually controlled. "They're still matching at what they think is a safe distance." There was a vindictive satisfaction in the tone, and Gudrun nodded in agreement. Safe distance from the standard suicide bomb, but not from everything on the cruiser rigged to go at once.

She felt very tired, herself. "The rest of the squadron?"

"Still acceleratin', Cohortarch; looks like they'll be able to break contact."

The Stone Dogs had scourged the enemy fleet even more drastically than the comp-plague had crippled the Draka; it was the Alliance's civilian jackals who were closing in on the helpless
Diocletian
now. Miners and haulers and prospectors, fitted with a few haphazard weapons and crewed by irregulars . . leathering like buzzards around a prey they would not dare to approach if it were hale.

"Cleon," she said conversationally, "yo' were at Chateau Retour last leave, weren't yo'? Met my mothah?"

"Yes, Cohortarch," he said, making a final adjustment.

"Always admired her paintings." And he was probably sincere, considering what they were about to do.

That had been a good leave.
It would be good to see home
again,
she thought. The vintage would be in; the fruity red of Bourgeuil, the Loire Valley Pinot Noir that smelled ever so faintly of violets.

"Actually, I was thinkin' of somethin' she told me about the Eurasian War. She was in tanks then, the Archonal Guard."

"Oh?"

"Yes, they had a sayin'… Is that damn fool still comin' in to board?"

The Sensor Officer nodded. "Makes sense, actually. We've been givin' a pretty good imitation of a dead ship. Be quite a prize if they could get it."

The Infosystems Officer made an affirmative sound, then asked: "About that sayin', Cohortarch?"

"Oh.
'If yo' tank is out of fuel, yo' becomes a pillbox.'
" Her hand closed on an improvised switch, and her eyes went to the screen. Nothing fancy, someone had chalked a line on the surface. When the blip crossed it…"
'If yo out of ammunition,
become a bunker. Out of hope, then become a hero.'
Service to the State!"

Her finger clenched.

"Glory to the R—"

CENTRAL OFFICE, ARCHONAL PALACE

ARCHONA

DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA

NOVEMBER 14, 1998

"So," Eric said, looking at the head of Technical Section.

The table was more crowded for this conference than it had been for the final one on the Stone Dogs. "Strategos Snappdove, what yo' sayin' is basically that we in the position of a man in a desert with a bucket of water. There's enough to get us to safety, but we got a dozen holes in the bucket and only one patch."

Somebody actually managed to laugh, until Eric stared at her for a moment with red-circled eyes.

The Militant Party's man frowned. "None of the problems seem insoluble, on the figures," he said suspiciously.

Eric kept his face impassive; somewhere within him, teeth were barred.
You'll be dancing to our tune
for some time,
headhunter,
he thought coldly. The wall-screens were set to a number of channels; one showed the streets outside. Rain was falling out of season, mixed with frozen slush…
We humans may
have
earned this,
went through him.
The plants and the beasts
did not
. His hand gestured to the scientist.

"Ah." Snappdove tugged at his graying beard. He looked as if he had not slept for a week, and then in his uniform, but that was common enough here today.

"Hmm," he continued. "Strategos, you are missing the, ah, the
synergies
between these problems." His hands moved on the table before him, calling up data. They scrolled across one wall, next to a view of Draka infantry advancing cautiously through a shattered town. The troops were in full environment suits, ghosting forward across rubble that glistened with rain. It was raining in most places, right now.

"We lost some fifteen percent of our Citizen population," he went on.

Unbelievable
, Eric thought.
Worse than our worst
predictions.

"And twenty-two percent of the serfs. Three hundred million in all. But these losses are concentrated in the most highly skilled, educated components, yo' see? Then again, half our Earth-based manufacturin' capacity is still operable. But crucial components are badly hit. And to rebuild, we need items that can only come from zero-G fabricators: exemplia, superconductors and high-quality bearings. Not to mention the electronics, of course."

"Ghost in the machine," the Faraday exec half-mumbled. They all glanced over at her. "We
still
haven't gotten certain-sure tracers on that comp-plague," she went on, and returned her gaze to her hands. "May have to close down all the fabricators commissioned in the last decade—what's left of them—an' start from scratch."

Snappdove nodded. "So we need the orbital fabricators. But we lost mo' than
eighty percent
of
those
. And of our launch capacity. We must rapidly increase our launch capacity, but—"

he spread his hands. "— much of the material needed for all forms of Earth-to-orbit launch is space-made. And so it goes."

"Not to mention mo' elemental problems. Miz Lawrence?"

The Conservancy Directorate chief raised her head from her hands. "We stopped short of killing the planet," she said dully.

There's someone who looks worse than I do,
Eric thought with mild astonishment. "Just. Lucky the worst effects were in the northern hemisphere, where it was winter
anyways
. Even so—"

she waved a hand to the screen that showed freezing rain dripping on the jacarandas and orange groves."—damn-all crops this year from anywheres. Not much in the north fo' one, maybeso two years. Oceanic productivity will be way down, we got ice formin' in the
Adriatic
, fo' Freya's sake. Even half normal will take a decade; it'll be a century befo' general levels are back to normal." A death's-head smile. "That's assumin' some beautiful synergism doesn't kick us right ovah the edge."