Poul Anderson: The People of the Wind

Rochefort regarded him closely. “You want to invade, don’t you, sir?” he asked.

“Of course. I’m not a murder machine. Neither are my superiors.”

“I want us to. Body of Christ” — Rochefort signed himself before the crucifix — “how I want it.” He let his glass stand while he added: “One request, sir. I’ll pass on everything I can. But if you do elect this operation, may I be in the first assault group? You’ll need some Meteors.”

“That’s the most dangerous, Lieutenant,” Cajal warned. “We won’t be sure they have no hidden reserves. Therefore we can’t commit much at the start. You’ve earned better.”

Rochefort took the glass, and had it been literally that instead of vitryl, his clasp would have broken it. “I request precisely what I’ve earned, sir.”

The Imperial armada englobed Avalon and the onslaught commenced.

Once more ships and missiles hurtled, energy arrows flew, fireballs raged and died, across multiple thousands of kilometers. This time watchers on the ground saw those sparks brighten, hour by hour, until at last they hurt the eyes, turned the world momentarily livid and cast stark shadows. The fight was moving inward.

Nonetheless it went at a measured pace. Cajal had hastened his decision and brought in his power as fast as militarily possible — within days — lest the enemy get time to strengthen that vulnerable country of theirs. But now that he was here, he took no needless risks. Few were called for. This situation was altogether different from the last. He had well-nigh thrice his former might at hand, and no worries about what relics of the Avalonian navy might still skulk through the dark reaches of the Lauran System. Patrols reported instrumental indications that these were gathering at distances of one or two astronomical units. Since they showed no obvious intention of casting themselves into the furnace, he saw no reason to send weapons after them.

He did not even order the final demolition of Ferune’s flagship, when the robots within knew their foe and opened fire. She was floating too distantly, she had too little ammunition or range left her, to be worth the trouble. It was easier to bypass the poor old hulk and the bones which manned her.

Instead he concentrated on methodically reducing the planetary defense. Its outer shell was the fortresses, some great, most small, on sentry-go in hundreds of orbits canted at as many angles to the ecliptic. They had their advantages vis-a-vis spaceships. They could be continually resupplied from below. Nearly all of them wholly automated, they were less versatile but likewise less fragile than flesh and nerve. A number of the ferst had gone undetected until their chance came to lash out at a passing Terran.

That, though, had been at the first battle. Subsequently the besieging sub-fleet had charted each, destroyed no few and forestalled attempts at replacement. Nor could the launching of salvos from the ground be again a surprise. And ships in space had their own advantages, e.g., mobility.

Cajal’s general technique was to send squadrons by at high velocity and acceleration. As they entered range of a target they unleashed what they had and immediately applied unpredictable vectors to escape return fire. If the first pass failed, a second quickly followed, a third, a fourth… until defense was saturated and the station exploded in vapor and shards. Having no cause now to protect his rear or his supply lines, Cajal could be lavish with munitions, and was.

Spacecraft in that kind of motion were virtually hopeless goals for missiles which must rise through atmosphere, against surface gravity, from zero initial speed. The Avalonians soon realized as much and desisted for the time being.

Cajal’s plan did not require the preliminary destruction of every orbital unit. That would have been so expensive that he would have had to hang back and wait for more stocks from the Empire; and he was in a hurry. He did decide it was necessary to neutralize the moon, and for a while Morgana was surrounded and struck by such furies that mountains crumbled and valleys ran molten.

Otherwise, on the whole, the Imperials went after those fortresses which, in their ever-changing configurations, would menace his first landing force on the date set by his tactical scheme. In thus limiting his objective, he was enabled to focus his full energies sharply. Those incandescent hours, running into a pair of Avalonian days, were the swiftest penetration ever made of defenses that strong.

Inevitably, he took losses. The rate grew when his ships started passing so close, above the atmosphere that ground-based projectors and missile sites became effective. The next step was to nullify certain of these, together with certain other installations.

Captain Ion Munteanu commanding fire control aboard H.M.S. Phobos, briefed his officers while MES ship rushed forward.

“Ours is a special mission, as you must have guessed from this class of vessel being sent. We aren’t just going to plaster a spot that’s been annoying the boys. We’re after a city. I see a hand. Question, Ensign Ozumi?”

“Yes, sir. Two. How and why? We can loose enough torps and decoys, sophisticated enough, that if we keep it up long enough, a few are bound to duck in and around the negafields and burst where they’ll do some good. That’s against a military target. But surely they’ve given their cities better protection than that.”

“I remind you about eggs and grandmothers, Ensign. Of course they have. Powerful, complicated set-ups, plus rings of exterior surface-to-space launchers. We’ll be firing our biggest and best, programmed for detonation at high sub-stratospheric altitude. The pattern I’m about to diagram should allow one, at least, to reach that level before it’s intercepted. If not, we start over.”

“Sir! You don’t mean a continent buster!”

“No, no. Calm down. Remember this ship couldn’t accommodate any. We have no orders to damage His Majesty’s real estate beyond repair. Ours will be heavy brutes, true, but clean, and shaped to discharge their output straight ahead, mainly in the form of radiation. Blast wouldn’t help much against the negafields. We’ll whiff the central part of town, and Intelligence tells me the fringes are quite flammable.”

“Sir, I don’t want to annoy you, but why do we do it?”

“Not wantonly, Ozumi. A landing is to be made. Planetside warfare may go on for a while. This particular town, Centauri they call it, is their chief seaport and industrial capital. We are not going to leave it to send stuff against our friends.”

Sweat stood on Ozumi’s brow. “Women and children—”

“If the enemy has any sense, he evacuated nonessential persons long ago,” Munteanu snapped. “Frankly, I don’t give a curse. I lost a brother here, last time around. If you’re through sniveling, let’s get to work.”

Quenna flapped slowly above the Livewell Street canal. Night had fallen, a clear night unlike most in the Delta’s muggy winters because of that and the blackout, she could see stars? They frightened her. Too many of the cold, nasty little things. And they weren’t only that, she was told. They were suns. War came from them, war that screwed up the world.

Fine at first, lots of Ythrians passing through, jingle in their purses, moments when she forgot all except the beauty of the male and her love for him; in between, she could afford booze and dope to keep her happy, especially at parties. Parties were a human idea, she’d heard. (Who was it had told her? She tried to remember the face, the body. She would be able to, if they didn’t blur off into the voices and music and happy-making smoke.) A good idea. Like war had seemed. Love, love, love, laugh, laugh, laugh, sleep, sleep, sleep, and if you wake with your tongue tasting bad and needles in your head, a few pills will soon put you right.