Ben Bova - Test of Fire

“But why did you set up this battle? Why couldn’t we have done this peacefully?”

Douglas’s smile turned into a sardonic grimace.

“Would you have believed me? I tried to tell you. And do you think those barbarians out there would have kindly consented to work together in sweet brotherhood for the furtherance of an ideal they can’t even imagine? They have no conception of what civilization means, you know. Not even the best of them. Oh, they’ll follow a leader they can trust or someone who brings them victories and loot. But all they really understand is survival, and survival means fighting.” He paused, but only for an instant. “What brought all those fine fighting men here? A yearning for culture or the chance for loot?”

“Loot, of course,” Alec answered.

“Damned right. And you’d better keep them happy, too, until you can halfway civilize them. Get them up at least to the standard of loyalty the old Mongol hordes had. You can build a civilization with warriors like that, even though they themselves are barbarians.”

But a new thought was burning through Alec’s awareness. “You…” he said. “What am I supposed to do with you?”

Douglas snorted. “Kill me, of course! I’m superfluous now. I’m a problem for you. My men will stay loyal to me as long as I’m alive, and the people in the settlement won’t trust you if you let me live.”

“But your men won’t follow me if I have you executed.” It’s insane! You don’t sit in a bedroom and talk with your father about killing him!

“They’ll follow Will, and Will is fully aware of the plan. If he’s loyal to you, the rest of my people will be, too. That’s why it was important for both of you to survive the battle.”

“It’s crazy,” Alec muttered.

“No,” Douglas corrected. “It’s politics. A little rougher than the polite debating orgies you’ve seen in the settlement, but basically the same thing. To make yourself leader of the whole coalition, you’ve got to get rid of me.”

“I came to Earth to kill you.”

“I know,” Douglas said, softly, kindly. “Now you can get the job done.”

Alec jumped up from the chair, knocking it over backwards behind him. “No, I can’t do it! I can’t!”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Douglas snapped. “You’ve got to.”

But Alec bolted from the room and ran down the stairs and out into the night.

Ferret had spent the day hiding in the woods, terrified by the horrendous sounds of explosions and gunfire that rocked the world and made the very air taste of burning, acrid fumes. He knew that Alec was there in the midst of the fighting, and all the others. But he clung to the safe, living earth, deep in the brush that grew among the younger trees along the edge of the forest. Instinct told him to run away, to go deeper into the mottled shadows of the woods, to hide so far away that the guns and explosions would never reach him.

Yet he stayed at the edge of the trees, despite his terror, held in an agonizing balance between his fear and the dim, wordless loyalty he felt for Alec.

The Sun was halfway down the western sky when the fighting stopped. Curled up behind a sturdy oak, half buried in the brush at its base, Ferret waited for the better part of an hour after he realized that the gunfire and explosions had ended. He listened intently, heard nothing but the renewed chirp of birds, the buzz of insects. A squirrel popped out of the bushes a few feet in front of him, stood on its hind legs and sniffed the air, nose twitching. It looked around hesitantly, then scampered up the tree that Ferret hid behind.

The world had gone back to normal. It was safe to come out. Ferret took a few hesitant steps out into the slanting light of light afternoon. The sky over toward the valley was gray with smoke. That was where Alec would be. He started walking toward the smoke, toward Alec. Maybe he would find a rabbit or squirrel along the way and bring it to Alec. It would be good to eat.

A truckload of jubilant troops rattled by on the road leading into the valley, slowed down, and he clambered aboard. They were strangers to him, but they were all laughing and whooping with relieved excitement. Ferret laughed with them, feeling relieved too.

By the time they reached the base it was full night. The truck squealed to a halt in front of one of the big warehouses, near the airfield. Troops were milling everywhere, still full of energy, still adrenalin-high.

“Where’s th’ fuckin’ women?” one man yelled.

“There was supposed t’be gold in the streets here,” someone else bellowed. “I don’t see no gold.”

“Hey, never mind that!” said an excited, high pitched voice. “They found booze over in that warehouse! Real stuff! Wine and liquor and all! C’mon!”

With a ragged roar, the soldiers of the victorious army surged toward the warehouse, carrying Ferret along with them the way a tidal wave carries a bit of flotsam.

Jameson was waiting outside Douglas’s house when Alec came running blindly from his meeting with his father. He pointed wordlessly to the sullen red glow lighting up the night sky.

“They’re torching the warehouses,” Jameson said. “Kobol’s barbarians.”

Alec stared at the glowering light. Sparks shot up. He said nothing, desperately trying to focus his concentration on what was happening. But his mind was still filled with the image of his father calmly discussing his own execution.

“We’ve locked up all the weapons, ammo, and vehicles,” Jameson was telling Alec. “And the prisoners are under guard by our own men. But those warehouses…” Jameson shook his head.

“We just don’t have enough reliable troops to keep the barbarians away from everything.”

With an effort, Alec made himself ask, “What’s in those warehouses?”

“Machinery, spare parts… one of them has several hundred crates of wine and grain alcohol, from what Will tells me.”

“They won’t burn that,” Alec said.

Jameson turned his bird-of-prey visage toward the glowing flames. “Might be a good idea to let them have their fun tonight.”

“And let them destroy everything they can get their hands on?” Alec shook his head. “Get fifty men and four laser trucks. Find Will and ask him to join us, with as many reliable men as he can muster.”

An instant of skepticism flashed across Jameson’s face.

Alec said, “If we let them dissolve into rabble they’ll be killing each other before sunrise.”

“There is that,” Jameson admitted.

Within half an hour they met at the motor pool, an ancient garage where voices boomed hollowly off the metal walls and silent trucks. Alec laid out a battle plan for the men who assembled there.

“They’re rampaging through the warehouses, burning whatever they can’t drink or carry. We’ll converge on the warehouse area from three different directions,” he traced lines with his finger on the street map spread across the oil-smeared table before him, “and get them under control.”

Jameson looked doubtful. “If they decide to fight us…”

“They won’t if we work things properly,” Alec said.

Will Russo agreed with a nod. “Especially if we pack them in pretty tight here, where the streets converge. They won’t be in a fighting mood.”

His hand sliding to the pistol strapped to his hip, Alec added, “And if we grab the ringleaders and make examples out of them, the rest will calm down fast enough.”

Three columns of heavily armed troops converged on the burning warehouses and the drunken, rampaging men. In the guttering light of the fires that crackled through the warehouse windows and roofs, the looters slowly realized that they were being hemmed in, herded toward the open area where the streets came together.