Jack Chalker - The Sea is Full of Stars

For a while the High Commissioner said nothing, but finally he responded, “Yes, we do see the same things. I hadn’t been as aware of the circumstances as you have outlined, but I noticed from the recordings and from his and his brothers’ actions that they seemed to be rather well-organized for those who just drop in here. It’s not unprecedented to wind up in the same race, provided such a race is still one of the active ones here and also certain very strict conditions are met. Usually it’s when someone has a well-established pregnancy. The Well is programmed to safeguard life, and adapting someone to a whole different race while also adapting a still developing fetus is simply not done. But the Haduns were all male when they arrived. Josich is the only female after processing, in fact, although the Quacksans are asexual. I had to believe it was coincidental, but there were always those doubts deep down, no matter how much I didn’t want to think on it.”

“Josich was definitely born a Hadun in the pre-Realm Confederation,” O’Leary assured them. “His birth and upbringing, his entire history, was quite well known.”

Core was equally skeptical. “Josich could not have interfaced with the core computer of one of the worlds of the Ancient Ones,” it maintained. “I was as well-equipped as any in all creation to do so, and the basics of it were so far beyond anything our advanced civilization understood it bordered on magic.”

“You were a computer,” Ming pointed out. “Maybe you still are, I think. You can’t believe in magic!”

“Magic,” Core responded, “is anything observable and perhaps repeatable that cannot be explained in terms of any existing knowledge on the part of the observer. To your own ancestors, all this would be magic. To us, well—we have an excellent example right here. The Amboran is magic. Some of her remarkable abilities are easily explained, of course— a natural telepathy, an uncanny ability to identify an individual from the data in our own minds and then identify him in a vast location like Zone, and who knows what other attributes? The radiant glow—hardly a defensive condition, but one that can inspire fear, awe, respect, if that one does not need a defense. A unique multigenerational evolutionary advance in her species? Perhaps. But since all of this is conjecture and leaves some holes, right at the moment she is magic.”

The point was taken.

“Well, enough of this,” Nakitti said grumpily. “It’s good to see you all, but none of you have the enemy at your gates and a native population where most of them are so fat and corrupt they won’t even realize they’re conquered when they lose. We had military commanders who refused to test-fire coastal guns because it would make the guns dirty! Can you imagine such a thing? I tell you, if I had more time I know enough chemistry that I have a whole raft of nobles I could cheerfully poison in the old-fashioned Ghoman way! Instead I’ve got the ear of the only man with common sense in the whole damned kingdom, and he and I have two weeks to come up with a defense against a concerted land-sea assault.”

“You seem convinced they are coming your way,” Dukla noted. “Others do not think so.”

“One look at the map and the composition of the enemy so far, not to mention all those shiploads of refugees passing through who now have established nice fifth columns in friendly other countries all over the Overdark region, and you’ll see it can’t be anywhere else. It’s far enough, and Chalidang so far has conquered only neighboring hexes, so others can’t see it. It is an ancient game, but very much in the traditions of great generals. Josich has her most dedicated forces. Now she takes control of all shipping on the world’s largest ocean. The few Well Gates here can’t handle but a trickle of supplies. Most of the high-tech hexes are so comfortable by now that they can’t even repair breakdowns. They import what they need. But they can produce massive quantities of gas-powered crossbows and ultralight machine guns and billions of bolts and bullets for them, so that semi-tech and nontech hexes don’t need to make them. Cut all that off, and everybody can be absorbed at will. Those who won’t, fall into line and embrace the new conqueror and yell ‘Comrade! Lover! I was always with you!’ Then, with their agents mixed in with the real refugees and now well-established, they can reach out to the mainland.”

“But why not just go the other way?” O’Leary asked. “In a sense there are more prizes to his west and to his north in particular.”

“Because Chalidang is a water breathing hex, for one thing, and most water breathing civilizations are the other way— my way,” the Ochoan replied. “But, as important, when you run the hexes and the Overdark trade through the computer here you see how interdependent the whole region has become and how self-sufficient, say, the water hexes to the west are. The only major worthwhile target there is Czill, and it would serve Josich just as well if she could simply blow it up and deny its knowledge resources to the world. The rest? Well, in time, but those will be continental land campaigns. A different sort of fight with real extremes. No, she’s going east because that’s the only logical thing to do. She’s practically advertised her moves and they still don’t see it!”

“And you do,” Ari commented skeptically.

Core shifted in its bath. “The Ochoan is correct. Do not confuse the utter insanity of Josich with the Hadun capability to wage logical war. Even in Realm history, Josich’s campaigns were utterly ruthless, often genocidal, but brilliant. His failure then was in not reading other histories of conquerors, particularly those of other races. When you show this kind of genocidal lack of regard, then those who might normally turn and join you, or at least not oppose you, will fight to the death because they have nothing to lose. He lost almost a quarter of his fleet because desperate people of many races and from many worlds hurled themselves at them with total disregard for life or casualties. I believe he might have learned from that here, but it is difficult to say. I can say, Ochoan, that I believe I can help you.”

“You! You’ve never been in a battle or off a fixed structure buried deep inside a mountain on an isolated and barren planet,” Nakitti noted. “What can you do for me?”

“I cannot explain how Josich knew this world or how to make it all work to advantage,” Core admitted, “but I can already see how he will try and conquer your land. It is absurdly easy if a major first step, the kind of step you would never plan for, works out. Now that I know the broad outline and consider it logical, I would need to do some research to tell you precisely how Chalidang will do it, but it is more a matter of knowing the enemy’s strengths and limits than the actual method. That is obvious.”

“Yes? And what might that be?” the Ochoan prompted, as skeptical of Core as Ari had been of her.

“A siege. They will take the center of the country, keeping out of range of your coastal defenses but ensuring that you do not harvest from the waters. With the center, they will control the Zone Gate. If you attack them, they will slaughter you. If you defend only, they will reinforce until they can reach your fortresses on the mountains and on the coasts from above. It will be ugly and cost them a terrible number of lives, but that was never a factor to Josich, and those who survive will be rewarded handsomely. You will not be able to afford even lesser losses. They will starve you and bleed you and then, when you are weak and out of ammunition and low on food, your water poisoned, they will conquer.”