Poul Anderson: The Long Night

Turning to Kathryn: “Get on a suit of armor and wait down here. The radioactivity is bad, but I don’t think it’ll prove harmful in the time we need. Shoot anyone who comes in.”

“I—” Her voice was faint and thin under the rolling echoes. “I don’t want to hide—”

“Damn it, you’ll be our guard. We can’t let those monsters recapture the engine room. Now, null gravity!” And Manuel switched off the generator.

Free fall yanked me with a hideous nausea. I fought down my outraged stomach and grabbed a post to get myself back down to the deck. Down—no. There was no up and down now. We were floating free. Manuel had nullified the gravity advantage of the Gorzuni.

“All right, John, let’s go!” he snapped.

I had time only to clasp Kathryn’s hand. Then we were pushing off and soaring out the door and into the corridor beyond. Praise all gods, the Commonwealth navy had at least given its personnel free-fall training. But ‘I wondered how many of the slaves would know how to handle themselves.

The ship roared around us. Two Gorzurd burst from a side cabin, guns in hand. Manuel burned them as they appeared, snatched their weapons, and swung on toward the slave pens.

The lights went out. I swam in a darkness alive with the rage of the enemy. “What the hell—” I gasped.

Manuel’s answer came dryly out of blackness: “Kathryn knows what to do. I told her a few days ago.”

At the moment I had no time to realize the emptiness within me from knowing that those two had been talking without me. There was too much else to do. The Gorzuni were firing blind. Blaster bolts crashed down the halls. Riot was breaking loose. Twice a lightning flash sizzled within centimeters of me. Manuel fired back at isolated giants, killing them and collecting their guns. Shielded by the dark, we groped our way to the slave pens.

No guards were there. When Manuel began to melt down the locks with low-power blasting I could dimly see the tangle of free-floating naked bodies churning and screaming in the vast gloom. A scene from an ancient hell. The fall of the rebel angels. Man, child of God, had, stormed the stars and been condemned to Hell for it.

And now he was going to burst out!

Hokusai’s flat eager face pressed against the bars. “Get us out,” he muttered fiercely.

“How many can you trust?” asked Manuel.

“About a hundred. They’re keeping their heads, see them waiting over there? And maybe fifty of the women.”

“All right. Bring out your followers. Let the rest riot for a while. We can’t do anything to help them.” The men came out, grimly and silently, hung there while I opened the females’ cage. Manuel passed out such few guns as we had. His voice lifted in the pulsing dark.

“All right. We hold the engine room. I want six with guns to go there now and help Kathryn O’Donnellthold it for us. Otherwise the Gorzuni will recapture it. The rest of us will make for the arsenal.”

“How about the bridge?” I asked.

“It’ll keep. Right now the Gorzuni are panicked. It’s part of their nature. They’re worse than humans when it comes to mass stampedes. But it won’t last and we have to, take advantage of it. Come on!”

Hokusai led the engine room party—his naval training told him where the chamber would be—and I followed Manuel, leading the others out. There were only three or four guns between us but at least we knew where we were going. And by now few of the humans expected to live or cared about much of anything except killing Gorzuni. Manuel had timed it right.

We fumbled through a livid darkness, exchanging shots with warriors who prowled the ship firing at everything that moved. We lost men but we gained weapons. Now and again we found dead aliens, killed in the rioting, and stripped them too. We stopped briefly to release the technicians from their special cage and then shoved violently for the arsenal.

The Gorzuni all had private arms, but the ship’s, collection; was not small. A group of sentries remained at the door, defending it against all corners. They had a portable shield against blaster bolts. I saw our flames splatter off it and saw men die as their fire raked back at us.

“We need a direct charge to draw their attention, while a few of us use the zero gravity to soar ‘overhead’ and come down on them from ‘above,’ ” said Manuel’s cold voice. It was clear, even in that wild lightning-cloven gloom. “John, lead the main attack.”

“Like hell!” I gasped. It would be murder. We’d be hewed down as a woodsman hews saplings. And Kathryn was waiting—Then I swallowed rage and fear and lifted a shout to the men. I’m no braver than anyone else but there is an exaltation in battle, and Manuel used it as calculatingly as he used everything else.

We poured against them in a wall of flesh, a wall that they ripped apart and sent lurching back in tattered fragments, It was only an instant of flame and thunder, then Manuel’s flying attack was on the defenders, burning them down, and it was over. I realized vaguely that I had a seared patch on my leg. It didn’t hurt just then, and I wondered at the minor miracle which had kept me alive.

Manuel fused the door and the remnants of us swarmed in and fell on the racked weapons with a terrible fierceness. Before we had them all loaded a Gorzuni party charged us but we beat, them off.

There were flashlights too. We had illumination in the seething dark. Manuel’s face leaped out of that night as he gave his crisp, swift orders. A gargoyle face, heavy and powerful and ugly, but men jumped at his bidding. A party was assigned to go back to the slave pens and pass out weapons to the other humans and bring them back here.

Reinforcements were sent to the engine room. Mortars and small antigrav cannon were assembled and loaded. The Gorzuni were calming too. Someone had taken charge and was rallying them. We’d have a fight on our hands.

We did!

I don’t remember much of those fire-shot hours. We lost heavily in spite of having superior armament. Some three hundred humans survived the battle. Many of them were badly wounded. But we took the ship. We hunted down the last Gorzuni and flamed those who tried to surrender. There was no mercy in us. The Gorzuni had beaten it out, and now they faced the monster they had created. When the lights went on again three hundred weary humans lived and held the ship.

We held a conference in the largest room we could-find. Everyone was there, packed together in sweaty silence and staring at the man who had freed them. Theoretically it was a democratic assembly called to decide our next move. In practice Manuel Argos gave orders.

“First, of course,” he said, his soft voice somehow carrying through the whole great chamber, “we have to make repairs, both of battle damage and of the deliberately mishandled machinery. It’ll take a week, I imagine, but then we’ll have us a sweet ship. By that time, too, you’ll have shaken down into a crew. Lieutenant Reeves and Ensign Hokusai will give combat instruction. We’re not through fighting yet.”

“You mean—” A man stood up in the crowd. “You mean, sir, that we’ll have opposition on our return to Sol? I should think we could just sneak in. A planet’s, too big for blockade, you know, even if the Baldics cared to try.”

“I mean,”—said Manuel calmly, “that we’re going on to Gorzun.”

It would have meant a riot if everyone hadn’t been so tired. As it was, the murmur that ran through the assembly was ominous.

“Look, you,” said Manuel patiently, “we’ll have us a first-class fighting ship by the time we get there, which none of the enemy has. We’ll be an expected vessel, one of their own, and in no case do’ they expect a raid on their home planet. It’s a chance to give them a body blow. The Gorzuni don’t name their ships, so I propose we christen ours now—the Revenge.”