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  If Scott lived, it was probable that he would be elected cinc.

  It was, therefore, decidedly to Mendez's advantage to kill the prisoned man.

  A shadow crossed the doorway. Mendez, his back to the newcomer, did not see Commander Bienne halt on the threshold, scowling at the tableau. Scott knew that Bienne understood the situation as well as he himself did. The commander realized that in a very few moments Mendez would draw his gun and fire.

  Scott waited. The cinc's fingers tightened on his gun belt.

  Bienne, grinning crookedly, said, “I thought that shell had finished you, sir. Guess it's hard to kill a Dooneman.”

  Mendez took his hand off the gun, instantly regaining his poise. He turned to Bienne.

  “I'm glad you're here, commander. It'll probably take both of us to move that beam.”

  “Shall we try, sir?”

  Between the two of them, they managed to shift the weight off Scott's torso. Briefly the latter's eyes met Bienne's. There was still no friendliness in them, but there was a look of wry self-mockery.

  Bienne hadn't saved Scott's life, exactly. It was, rather, a question of being a Dooneman. For Bienne was, first of all a soldier, and a member of the Free Company.

  Scott tested his limbs; they worked.

  “How long was I out, commander?”

  “Ten minutes, sir. The Armageddon‘s in sight.”

  “Good. Are the Helldivers veering off?”

  Bienne shook his head. “So far they're not suspicious.”

  Scott grunted and made his way to the door, the others at his heels. Mendez said, “We'll need another control ship.”

  “All right. The Arquebus. Commander, take over here. Cinc Mendez—”

  A flitterboat took them to the Arquebus, which was still in good fighting trim. The monitor Armageddon, Scott saw, was rolling helplessly in the trough of the waves. In accordance with the battle plan, the Doone ships were leading the Helldivers toward the apparently capsized giant. The technicians had done a good job; the false keel looked shockingly convincing.

  Aboard the Arquebus, Scott took over, giving Mendez the auxiliary control for his sub-strafers. The cinc beamed at Scott over his shoulder.

  “Wait till that monitor opens up, Captain.”

  “Yeah… we're in bad shape, though.”

  Neither man mentioned the incident that was in both their minds. It was tacitly forgotten—the only thing to do now.

  Guns were still bellowing. The Helldivers were pouring their fire into the Doone formation, and they were winning. Scott scowled at the screens. If he waited too long, it would be just too bad.

  Presently he put a beam on the Armageddon. She was in a beautiful position now, midway between two of the Helldivers’ largest battleships.

  “Unmask. Open fire.”

  Firing ports opened on the monitor. The sea titan's huge guns snouted into view. Almost simultaneously they blasted, the thunder drowning out the noise of the lighter guns.

  “All Doone ships attack,” Scott said. “Plan R-7.”

  This was it. This was it!

  The Doones raced in to the kill. Blasting, bellowing, shouting, the guns tried to make themselves heard above the roaring of the monitor. They could not succeed, but that savage, invincible onslaught won the battle.

  It was nearly impossible to maneuver a monitor into battle formation, but, once that was accomplished, the only thing that could stop the monster was atomic power.

  But the Helldivers fought on, trying strategic formation. They could not succeed. The big battlewagons could not get out of range of the Armageddon's guns. And that meant—

  Cinc Flynn's face showed on the screen.

  “Capitulation, sir. Cease firing.”

  Scott gave orders. The roar of the guns died into humming, incredible silence.

  “You gave us a great battle, cinc.”

  “Thanks. So did you. Your strategy with the monitor was excellent”

  So—that was that Scott felt something go limp inside of him. Flynn's routine words were meaningless; Scott was drained of the vital excitement that had kept him going till now.

  The rest was pure formula.

  Token depth charges would be dropped over Virginia Keep. They would not harm the Dome, but they were the rule. There would be the ransom, paid always by the Keep which backed the losing side. A supply of korium, or its negotiable equivalent The Doone treasury would be swelled. Part of the money would go into replacements and new keels. The life of the forts would go on.

  Alone at the rail of the Arquebus, heading for Virginia Keep, Scott watched slow darkness change the clouds from pearl to gray, and then to invisibility. He was alone in the night. The wash of waves came up to him softly as the Arquebus rushed to her destination, three hundred miles away.

  Warm yellow lights gleamed from ports behind him, but he did not turn. This, he thought, was like the cloud-wrapped Olympus in Montana Keep, where he had promised Ilene—many things.

  Yet there was a difference. In an Olympus a man was like god, shut away completely from the living world. Here, in the unbroken dark, there was no sense of alienage. Nothing could be seen—Venus has no moon, and the clouds hid the stars. And the seas are not phosphorescent.

  Beneath these waters stand the Keeps, Scott thought. They hold the future. Such battles as were fought today are fought so that the Keeps may not be destroyed.

  And men will sacrifice. Men have always sacrificed, for a social organization or a military unit. Man must create his own ideal. “If there had been no God, man would have created Him.”

  Bienne had sacrificed today, in a queer, twisted way of loyalty to his fetish. Yet Bienne still hated him, Scott knew.

  The Doones meant nothing. Their idea was a false one. Yet, because men were faithful to that ideal, civilization would rise again from the guarded Keeps. A civilization that would forget its doomed guardians, the watchers of the seas of Venus, the Free Companions yelling their mad, futile battle cry as they drove on—as this ship was driving—into a night that would have no dawn.

  Ilene.

  Jeana.

  It was no such simple choice. It was, in fact, no real choice at all. For Scott knew, very definitely, that he could never, as long as he lived, believe wholeheartedly in the Free Companions. Always a sardonic devil deep within him would be laughing in bitter self-mockery.

  The whisper of the waves drifted up.

  It wasn't sensible. It was sentimental, crazy, stupid, slopping thinking.

  But Scott knew, now, that he wasn't going back to Ilene.

  He was a fool.

  But he was a soldier.

  When Kuttner and Moore wrote Clash by Night, they created a sub-genre of SF about mercenaries based on the condottieri of Quattrocento Italy. Hammer's Slammers and my career as a professional writer stem more or less directly from the fact I read this story when I was thirteen. Gordy Dickson, Jerry Pournelle, and I suspect many other writers could say something similar.

  —DAD

  About the Author

  Raymond Banks was known for intricate, well-plotted science fiction stories that appeared in a variety of science fiction magazines, including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Galaxy, during the 1950s and 60s. Some of his notable stories are “The Short Ones,” “The Littlest People,” and “The City that Loves You.”

  James Blish (1921–1975) spent his career writing stories about certain aspects of science fiction, psychic powers, miniature humans, and antigravity, for example, and then expanded those stories into longer pieces with the broader scope of a novel. The finished pieces The Seedling Stars, A Case of Conscience, and Jack of Eagles are prime examples of how his novels grew from short stories. He also produced excellent television novelizations, most notably the Star Trek logs 1–12 and the classic novel Spock Must Die!

  David Drake writes, “I was born in 1945, got my under graduate degree at the University of Iowa, and was in the middle of Duke Law School when I was drafted
and sent to Viet Nam. I came back, finished law school, and became for eight years Assistant Town Attorney for the Town of Chapel Hill. I'd never thought of being a writer, but I've always loved to tell stories. I'd sold a few stories before I was drafted. After I came back to the World I started writing seriously—as therapy, I now believe, though at the time I loudly told myself that I was fine, perfectly normal. (Thank goodness the way I was then isn't normal, at least for human beings.) The Hammer's Slammers series, of which this is an example, resulted from that focus on writing after my return.”

  Joe Haldeman's first science fiction novel, The Forever War, won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards when it was published in 1974. Since then, he has returned to the theme of future war several times, most notably in his trilogy Worlds, Worlds Apart, and Worlds Enough and Time, about a future Earth facing nuclear extinction, and Forever Peace, a further exploration of the dehumanizing potential of armed conflict Other novels include Mindbridge, All My Sins Remembered, and his alternate world opus The Hemingway Hoax, expanded from his Nebula Award–winning novella of the same name. His powerful non-science fiction writing includes War Year, drawn from experiences during his tour of duty in Viet Nam, and 1968, a portrait of America in the Viet Nam era.

  Harry Harrison has turned out many multi-layered science fiction novels that examine the evolution of war, bureaucracy, and society while masquerading as comedic space opera adventures. His series characters include interstellar thief, con man, and troubleshooter “Slippery Jim” DiGriz, from the Stainless Steel Rat series, hapless soldier Bill in the Bill the Galactic Hero novels, and numerous others. He is also a renowned editor, having worked with such luminaries in the field as John W. Campbell, Brian Aldiss, and Bruce McAllister. He has also edited his own anthologies, including the acclaimed Nova series.

  Henry Kuttner (1914–1958) was primarily known for his work in science fiction, but occasionally turned out a witty dark fantasy or horror story like “Masquerade.” The best of his short fiction can be found in the collection A Gnome There Was, No Boundaries, and Return to Otherness. He cut his teeth writing for Weird Tales, but his inventiveness and explorations of themes such as the robots, wonder children and madmen from the future soon had him contributing to many of the most popular magazines of the Pulp era. Working with his wife and writing partner C.L. Moore, he revisited the setting of “Clash by Night” in their excellent novel Fury.

  Keith Laumer (1925–1993) was best known for his series of stories and novels about the interstellar, diplomat Jaime Retief, but he had written all types of science fiction in his career, from razor-sharp military fiction in his Bolo series to alternate reality fiction in his Imperium novels. His experience in the U.S. Army and Air Force served him well in extrapolating what the military of the future might be like. His diplomatic Retief stories were also grounded in real life experience from his tour of duty as a Foreign Service Vice-Consul in Rangoon.

  Richard Matheson is one of the most respected dark fantasy and horror writers of the past forty years. His novel I Am Legend is considered one of the seminal vampire novels of the 20th century, a classic tale of the last man on an Earth that is populated entirely by the undead. His books The Shrinking Man and Hell House also broke new ground in the horror field. His work has been adapted for television as well, most notably as several episodes of original Twilight Zone series, and also made into several recent motion pictures, including What Dreams May Come and The Haunting.

  C.L. Moore (1911–1987) never gained the critical or popular acclaim she deserved as one of the earliest female science fiction writers. She was often an uncredited coauthor with Henry Kuttner, combining on books that crossed the boundary between science fiction and fantasy such as Valley of the Flame and Well of the Worlds. However, the short fiction she wrote alone deserves recognition on its own merits of strong character development and psychological motivation of those characters. The two stories she's best known for are her first published tale “Shambleau,” which introduced her hero Northwest Smith, and “Vintage Season” which details a group of tourists from the future watching the past unobserved, the latter considered a classic tale of speculative fiction.

  David Drake writes, “Mark L. Van Name, born in 1955, is Executive Vice President and General Manager, eTesting Labs Inc., a Ziff Davis Media company. He's a geek, which isn't uncommon today, and he's highly literate; which has never been common. The combination is close to unique; it made Mark one of the top computer journalists in the world before he moved into upper management. He's sold over a thousand computer-related articles, a couple dozen essays, and nine SF stories. For reasons that may become evident in this story, Mark is one of my closest friends. If we were either of us different people, that would scare the hell out of us.”

  As a small boy, Gene Wolfe used to bide behind the candy case in the Richmond Pharmacy to read the pulps—and in a sense, he says, he has never come out His wife, Rosemary tries to keep him out of mischief … still unaware—they've been together for more than 40 years—that he is it. He's written “No Planets Strike,” which was nominated for a Hugo, plus a couple of hundred other stories. Also some books, he says with grand understatement, including Operation Ares, The Fifth Head of Cerberus and Shadow & Claw. The most recent is Exodus From The Long Sun … part of The Book Of The Long Sun, a tetrology.

  “Straw” by Gene Wolfe. Copyright © 1974 by UPD Publishing Corporation. First published in Galaxy, January 1975. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, the Virginia Kidd Literary Agency, Inc.

  “Tomb Tapper” by James Blish. Copyright © 1956 by Street & Smith Publications, renewed 1984 by James Blish. First published in Astounding Science Fiction, July 1956. Reprinted by permission of Executrix for the author's Estate, Judith Ann Lawrence Blish.

  “A Relic of War” by Keith Laumer. Copyright © 1969 by Street & Smith Publications. First published in Astounding Science Fiction, October 1969. Reprinted by permission of the Executor for the author's Estate, Jim Baen.

  “Basic Training” by Mark L. Van Name. Copyright © 1998 by Mark L. Van Name. First published in Armageddon. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Witch War” by Richard Matheson. Copyright © 1951 by Richard Matheson. First published in Startling Stories Magazine, July 1951. Reprinted by permission of the agent for the author's Estate, Don Congdon Associates.

  “Transstar” by Raymond Banks. Copyright © 1960 by the Galaxy Publishing Corp. First published in Galaxy, June 1960. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Time Piece” by Joe Haldeman. Copyright © 1970 by Joe Haldeman. First published in Worlds of If Science Fiction Magazine, July 1970. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Clash by Night” by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore. Copyright © 1943 by Street & Smith Publications. First published in Astounding Science Fiction, March 1943. Reprinted by permission of the agent for the author's Estate, Don Congdon Associates, Inc.

  HERE'S TO THE HELLIONS AND THE BATTLE HOUNDS!

  From the lowest grunts to the most decorated generals, true warriors always answer duty's call. And from Stone spears to cyborg starships, the materiel of battle accompanies them. In this stunning, explosive collection, David Drake—author of the classic Hammer's Slammers and one of the foremost figures of military science fiction—gathers the finest tales of martial danger and human drama in desperate futures. DOGS OF WAR includes timeless stories by:

  JOE HALDEMAN

  GENE WOLFE

  KEITH LAUMER

  HARRY HARRISON

  DAVID DRAKE

  RICHARD MATHESON

  …and many more.

  * When she was next capable of thought … —Betsy Mitchell (back to text)

 

 

 
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