Dogs of War Page 11

  Jolober kicked his throttle as he rounded the aircar. The fans snarled and the ride, still on ground effect, became greasy as the skirts lifted undesirably.

  The office rocked in a series of dense white flashes. The room lights went out and a large piece of shrapnel, the fuze housing of a grenade, powdered a fist-sized mass of the concrete coping beside Jolober.

  His chair's throttle had a gate. With the fans already at normal maximum, he sphinctered his skirts into a nozzle and kicked again at the throttle. He could smell the chair's circuits frying under the overload as it lifted Jolober and Red Ike to the coping—

  But it did lift them, and after a meter's run along the narrow track to build speed, it launched them across the black, empty air of the alley.

  Red Ike wailed. The only sound Horace Jolober made was in his mind. He saw not a roof but the looming bow of a tank, and his fears shouted the word they hadn't been able to get out on Primavera either: “No!”

  They cleared the coping of the other roof with a click, not a crash, and bounced as Jolober spilled air and cut thrust back to normal levels.

  An explosion behind them lit the night red and blew chunks of Red Ike's office a hundred meters in the air.

  Instead of trying to winkle out their quarry with gunfire, the assault team had lobbed a bunker-buster up the elevator shaft. The blast walloped Jolober even though distance and the pair of meter-high concrete copings protected his hunching form from dangerous fragments.

  Nothing in the penthouse of the China Doll could have survived. It wasn't neat, but it saved lives where they counted—in the attacking force—and veteran soldiers have never put a high premium on finesse.

  “You saved me,” Red Ike said.

  Jolober's ears were numb from the final explosion, but he could watch Red Ike's lips move in the flames lifting even higher from the front of the China Doll.

  “I had to,” Jolober said, marveling at how fully human the alien seemed. “Those men, they're line soldiers. They think that because there were so many of them involved, nobody can be punished.”

  Hatches rang shut on the armored personnel carriers. A noncom snarled an order to stragglers that could be heard even over the drive fans.

  Red Ike started toward the undamaged aircar parked beside them on this roof. Jolober's left hand still held the alien's wrist. Ike paused as if to pretend his movement had never taken place. His face was emotionless.

  “Numbers made it a mutiny,” Jolober continued. Part of him wondered whether Red Ike could hear the words he was speaking in a soft voice, but he was unwilling to shout.

  It would have been disrespectful.

  Fierce wind rocked the flames as the armored vehicles, tank in the lead as before, lifted and began to howl their way out of Paradise Port.

  “I'll take care of you,” Red Ike said. “You'll have Vicki back in three weeks, I promise. Tailored to you, just like the other. You won't be able to tell the difference.”

  “There's no me to take care of any more,” said Horace Jolober with no more emotion than a man tossing his uniform into a laundry hamper.

  “You see,” he added as he reached behind him, “if they'd killed you tonight, the Bonding Authority would have disbanded both units whatever the Placidans wanted. But me? Anything I do is my responsibility.”

  Red Ike began to scream in a voice that became progressively less human as the sound continued.

  Horace Jolober was strong enough that he wouldn't have needed the knife despite the way his victim struggled.

  But it seemed like a fitting monument for Vicki.

  Betsy Mitchell, now Editor-in-Chief of Warner Aspect, once was Senior Editor of Baen Books and while there edited a number of volumes of original novellas, each around a single theme. I wrote Liberty Port for one of these, and Betsy asked me to reprint it here when she commissioned Dogs of War. There's a story to the story, though.

  I usually didn't—and don't—get written contracts from Jim Baen, at least until well after I've been paid and the work delivered. Betsy was determined to do things right, however, and sent around a formal contract stating the terms and conditions on which I was writing the novella.

  So far, so good; but there was a blank for the title of the piece. I called Betsy and told her I didn't have any idea what the title would be. I wouldn't even start thinking about it till I'd started work on the story itself, and that wasn't my next project. “Well, just put something down,” Betsy said.

  And I thought, “OK, honey …,” and put in the title of a real work of necrophiliac pornography: Screwing Bloody Dead Bodies.

  “Eeou!” Betsy recalls saying when the contract came back.

  In good time I wrote the story; but as I was doing the final pass—a little flaky, as I always am at that stage of a significant project—it occurred to me that circumstances had offered me an opportunity I'd hate myself for if I didn't seize. I thereupon wrote 500 words in normal submission form and laid those two pages on top the complete manuscript of Liberty Port. The two pages were titled “Screwing Bloody Dead Bodies,” and they involved a pair of soldiers at the scene of a massacre of civilians. One of them is having sexual congress with the corpses, and the other snatches disturbed blowflies from the air and eats them, claiming they taste like shrimp. I mailed off the combined manuscript and waited.

  Of course I wasn't there to watch what happened in NYC, but I'm told by Betsy and others that the scene went something like this: the receptionist tore open the envelope, pulled out the manuscript, and said, “Eeou! ‘Screwing Bloody Dead Bodies’!”

  Betsy walked over, saying, “Oh, he didn't really use that title, did he?” and started reading the manuscript. She says the next thing she thought * was that because Jim Baen and I are such good friends, she was going to have to publish the piece in an anthology with her name on the cover.

  Page three of the manuscript revealed the truth, and everybody had a good laugh. Betsy's laughter may have been more restrained than mine was.

  Before you ask, I didn't keep a copy of the dummy text, and Betsy lost the original. This is a Drake manuscript that isn't going to make its way into anybody's archives. That's a good thing.

  But it was really funny if you have the right sense of humor.

  —DAD

  Straw

  Gene Wolfe

  Yes, I remember killing my first man very well; I was just seventeen. A flock of snow geese flew under us that day about noon. I remember looking over the side of the basket, and seeing them; and thinking that they looked like a pike-head. That was an omen, of course, but I did not pay any attention.

  It was clear, fall weather—a trifle chilly. I remember that. It must have been about the mid-part of October. Good weather for the balloon. Clow would reach up every quarter hour or so with a few double handsful of straw for the brazier, and that was all it required. We cruised, usually, at about twice the height of a steeple.

  You have never been in one? Well, that shows how things have changed. Before the Fire-wights came, there was hardly any fighting at all, and free swords had to travel all over the continent looking for what there was. A balloon was better man walking, believe me. Miles—he was our captain in those days—said that where there were three soldiers together, one was certain to put a shaft through a balloon; it was too big a target to resist, and that would show you where the armies were.

  No, we would not have been killed. You would have had to slit the thing wide open before it would fall fast, and a little hole like the business end of a pike would make would just barely let you know it was there. The baskets do not swing, either, as people think. Why should they? They feel no wind—they are traveling with it. A man just seems to hang there, when he is up in one of them, and the world turns under him. He can hear everything—pigs and chickens, and the squeak the windlass makes drawing water from a well.

  “Good flying weather,” Clow said to me.

  I nodded. Solemnly, I suppose.

  “All the lift you want, in
weather like this. The colder it is, the better she pulls. The heat from the fire doesn't like the chill, and tries to escape from it. That's what they say.”

  Blond Bracata spat over the side. “Nothing in our bellies,” she said, “that's what makes it lift. If we don't eat today you won't have to light the fire tomorrow—I'll take us up myself.”

  She was taller than any of us except Miles, and the heaviest of us all; but Miles would not allow for size when the food was passed out, so I suppose she was the hungriest too.

  Derek said: “We should have stretched one of that last bunch over the fire. That would have fetched a pot of stew, at the least.”

  Miles shook his head. “There were too many.”

  “They would have run like rabbits.”

  “And if they hadn't?”

  “They had no armor.”

  Unexpectedly, Bracata came in for the captain. “They had twenty-two men, and fourteen women. I counted them.”

  “The women wouldn't fight.”

  “I used to be one of them. I would have fought.”

  Clow's soft voice added, “Nearly any woman will fight if she can get behind you.”

  Bracata stared at him, not sure whether he was supporting her or not. She had her mitts on—she was as good with them as anyone I have ever seen—and I remember that I thought for an instant that she would go for Clow right there in the basket. We were packed in like fledglings in the nest, and fighting, it would have taken at least three of us to throw her out—by which time she would have killed us all, I suppose. But she was afraid of Clow. I found out why later. She respected Miles, I think, for his judgment and courage, without being afraid of him. She did not care much for Derek either way, and of course I was hardly there at all as far as she was concerned. But she was just a little frightened by Clow.

  Clow was the only one I was not frightened by—but that is another story too.

  “Give it more straw,” Miles said.

  “We're nearly out.”

  “We can't land in this forest.”

  Clow shook his head and added straw to the fire in the brazier—about half as much as he usually did. We were sinking toward what looked like a red and gold carpet.

  “We got straw out of them anyway,” I said, just to let the others know I was there.

  “You can always get straw,” Clow told me. He had drawn a throwing spike, and was feigning to clean his nails with it. “Even from swineherds, who you'd think wouldn't have it. They'll get it to be rid of us.”

  “Bracata's right,” Miles said. He gave the impression that he had not heard Clow and me. “We have to have food today.”

  Derek snorted. “What if there are twenty?”

  “We stretch one over the fire. Isn't that what you suggested? And if it takes fighting, we fight. But we have to eat today.” He looked at me. “What did I tell you when you joined us, Jerr? High pay or nothing? This is the nothing. Want to quit?”

  I said, “Not if you don't want me to.”

  Clow was scraping the last of the straw from the bag. It was hardly a handful. As he threw it in the brazier Bracata asked, “Are we going to set down in the trees?”

  Clow shook his head and pointed. Away in the distance I could see a speck of white on a hill. It looked too far, but the wind was taking us there, and it grew and grew until we could see that it was a big house, all built of white brick, with gardens and outbuildings, and a road that ran up to the door. There are none like mat left now, I suppose.

  Landings are the most exciting part of traveling by balloon, and sometimes the most unpleasant. If you are lucky, the basket stays upright. We were not. Our basket snagged and tipped over and was dragged along by the envelope, which fought the wind and did not want to go down, cold though it was by then. If there had been fire in the brazier still, I suppose we would have set the meadow ablaze. As it was, we were tumbled about like toys. Bracata fell on top of me, as heavy as stone: and she had the claws of her mitts out, trying to dig them into the turf to stop herself, so that for a moment I thought I was going to be killed. Derek's pike had been charged, and the ratchet released in the confusion; the head went flying across the field, just missing a cow.

  By the time I recovered my breath and got to my feet, Clow had the envelope under control and was treading it down. Miles was up too, straightening his hauberk and sword belt. “Look like a soldier,” he called to me. “Where are your weapons?”

  A pincer-mace and my pike were all I had, and the pincer-mace had fallen out of the basket. After five minutes of looking, I found it in the tall grass, and went over to help Clow fold the envelope.

  When we were finished, we stuffed it in the basket and put our pikes through the rings on each side so we could carry it. By that time we could see men on horseback coming down from the big house. Derek said, “We won't be able to stand against horsemen in this field.”

  For an instant I saw Miles smile. Then he looked very serious. “We'll have one of those fellows over a fire in half an hour.”

  Derek was counting, and so was I. Eight horsemen, with a cart following them. Several of the horsemen had lances, and I could see the sunlight winking on helmets and breastplates. Derek began pounding the butt of his pike on the ground to charge it.

  I suggested to Clow that it might look more friendly if we picked up the balloon and went to meet the horsemen, but he shook his head. “Why bother?”

  The first of them had reached the fence around the field. He was sitting a roan stallion that took it at a clean jump and came thundering up to us looking as big as a donjon on wheels.

  “Greetings,” Miles called. “If this be your land, lord, we give thanks for your hospitality. We'd not have intruded, but our conveyance has exhausted its fuel.”

  “You are welcome,” the horseman called. He was as tall as Miles or taller, as well as I could judge, and as wide as Bracata. “Needs must, as they say, and no harm done.” Three of the others had jumped their mounts over the fence behind him. The rest were taking down the rails so the cart could get through.

  “Have you straw, lord?” Miles asked. I thought it would have been better if he had asked for food. “If we could have a few bundles of straw, we'd not trouble you more.”

  “None here,” the horseman said, waving a mail-clad arm at the fields around us, “yet I feel sure my bailiff could find you some. Come up to the hall for a taste of meat and a glass of wine, and you can make your ascension from the terrace; the ladies would be delighted to see it, I'm certain. You're floating swords, I take it?”

  “We are that,” our captain affirmed, “but persons of good character nonetheless. We're called the Faithful Five—perhaps you've heard of us? High-hearted, fierce-fighting wind-warriors all, as it says on the balloon.”

  A younger man, who had reined up next to the one Miles called “lord,” snorted. “If that boy is high-hearted, or a fierce fighter either, I'll eat his breeks.”

  Of course, I should not have done it. I have been too mettlesome all my life, and it has gotten me in more trouble than I could tell you of if I talked till sunset, though it has been good to me too—I would have spent my days following the plow, I suppose, if I had not knocked down Derek for what he called our goose. But you see how it was. Here I had been thinking of myself as a hard-bitten balloon soldier, and then to hear something like that. Anyway, I swung the pincer-mace overhand once I had a good grip on his stirrup. I had been afraid the extension spring was a bit weak, never having used one before, but it worked well; the pliers got him under the left arm and between the ear and the right shoulder, and would have cracked his neck for him properly if he had not been wearing a gorget. As it was, I jerked him off his horse pretty handily, and got out the little aniace that screwed into the mace handle. A couple of the other horsemen couched their lances, and Derek had a finger on the dog-catch of his pike; so all in all it looked as if there could be a proper fight, but “lord” (I learned afterwards that he was the Baron Ascolot) yelled at the young man I
had pulled out of his saddle, and Miles yelled at me and grabbed my left wrist, and thus it all blew over.

  When we had tripped the release and gotten the mace open and retracted again, Miles said: “He will be punished, lord. Leave him to me. It will be severe, I assure you.”

  “No, upon my oath,” the baron declared. “It will teach my son to be less free with his tongue in the company of armed men. He has been raised at the hall, Captain, where everyone bends the knee to him. He must learn not to expect that of strangers.”

  The cart rolled up just then, drawn by two fine mules—either of them would have been worth my father's holding, I judged—and at the baron's urging we loaded our balloon into it and climbed in after it ourselves, sitting on the fabric. The horsemen galloped off, and the cart driver cracked his lash over the mules’ backs.

  “Quite a place,” Miles remarked. He was looking up at the big house toward which we were making.

  I whispered to Clow, “A palace, I should say,” and Miles overheard me, and said: “It's a villa, Jerr—the unfortified country property of a gentleman. If there were a wall and a tower, it would be a castle, or at least a castellet.”

  There were gardens in front, very beautiful as I remember, and a fountain. The road looped up before the door, and we got out and trooped into the hall, while the baron's man—he was richer-dressed than anybody I had ever seen up till then, a fat man with white hair—sent two of the hostlers to watch our balloon while it was taken back to the stableyard.

  Venison and beef were on the table, and even a pheasant with all his feathers put back; and the baron and his sons sat with us and drank some wine and ate a bit of bread each of hospitality's sake. Then the baron said, “Surely you don't fly in the dark, captain?”

  “Not unless we must, lord.”

  “Then with the day drawing to a close, it's just as well for you that we've no straw. You can pass the night with us, and in the morning I'll send my bailiff to the village with the cart. You'll be able to ascend at mid-morning, when the ladies can have a clear view of you as you go up.”