Oberheim (Voices): A Chronicle of War by Christopher Leadem (to read list txt) 📗

Shannon's ship.

The weathered vessel landed between the two armies. Shin wanted to run to it wildly, with tears in his eyes. But a voice spoke inside him, saying simply:

"Peace. Your master is dead."

The hatch of Bota's machine had been opened, and now he clambered out, his face red with rage. "Shannon!" he shouted, as if his voice could penetrate steel. "Whatever trick this is, it won't work!" He barked an order to one of his lieutenants, who threw him a weapon and assembled one full company behind him. The marshal clambered down the vehicle's tracks and leapt to the ground. Collecting himself he strode forward, with half his men behind him.

Shin looked on, puzzled, ordered his own people to stay back. As Bota drew to within fifty yards of the vessel, Simin opened the hatch. The Canton raised his rifle, then lowered it in sudden dismay.

Simin stepped out onto the threshold, and with a short burst of wings, stood on the ground beyond it. Again Shin heard a voice. "Remain. This is not your fight."

Those who did not know Shannon well could not have seen his imprint on the creature's stark, intimidating face. Shin had seen it, though unwillingly. The Force Marshall had not. Simin came to a level in front of him, then stopped. He said nothing, stared with an unreadable expression.

"What are you?" demanded Bota, trying not to be unnerved.

"What do you want?" Simin answered him without haste.

"I have come to fight you. To kill you if I can."

"WHAT?" Bota forced himself not to take a step back. "What quarrel have you with the Republic of Cantos?" Then seeing no change: "My men will burn you to ash."

Simin responded slowly, not to be dramatic, but because he wanted the exchange to mean something. He soon saw that it would not.

"No, your men are powerless." He paused. "You seem to have little respect for the one called Shannon. This I do not understand. Even as an enemy, could you not see the courage he possessed?" It was useless. "You think that you are stronger. You have only to fight as well as he, and his cause will be vanquished….. Prepare yourself!" He could not submerge his anger, knowing what Shannon had known, and reading the thoughts of this proud and willful man.

He stepped back, and the weapon in Bota's hands was changed to a long knife. Then, no longer an illusion, the marshal was given a physical prowess equal to his own. But remembering the Cherokee, Simin gave him still greater advantage.

As Bota stood bewildered, a deep murmur grew in the air all around him, a rising chant, descending from the sky like a fall of cloud along the way the ship had come. Those of his soldiers who looked behind them saw the lesser ridge at its distance appear to grow, layered with the ghost image of a high, terraced precipice, with statued spires rising from its base.

The refugees saw these things as well, as the chant became mixed with the sound of drumming wings. And it seemed to them that their own numbers grew, or they were suddenly aware, of a vast multitude around them. The marshal looked about him and at Simin, as if slowly descending into Hell. The drone felt no pity for him.

"Fight for your life, if you are able!"

The mai began to circle with all the disciplined fire of his heart, and Bota had no choice but to submerge his fear. He fought. He swung his weapon tentatively at first, not believing it real. But this thought, too, was soon of little avail. He slashed and dove, summoning all the strength and endurance of his kind: the wakened animal, fearing death. As the sound closed around them like witness to every struggle of good and evil ever fought.

Their battle was even at first, with the Canton's fierce, desperate will so confronted. Their battle was even.

But after a time that will began to waver, and his fear to grow to a weakness inside him. Almost he sensed that the creature could not beat him, had not the strength. Yet his fear formed an equal voice, lamenting that its spirit fought on so, and would not be cowed. Both were cut and bloodied, and weary to the point of exhaustion.

Simin, his own being stretched to the limit, sensed the other's weakness and made it his island of hope. He continued.

And at the last, driven to a supreme and final effort, he drove his foe to the ground in a shallow depression, and with a trembling foreclaw, slashed his throat.

The man looked up with terror in his eyes, which slipped to sorrow, then to death. His body lay still, and the sound was gone. The landscape was as before.

Not only the Marshall, but all his men lay dead. The Armadillos were as shadows of a dark, machinated dream. His orbiting fleet, as well as the landing craft, stood emptied of life.

Simin crawled slowly out of the depression, and turned to Shin.

"Shannon's life has bought your freedom. Go, then find some way to fight them again."

His life and energies spent, his quest ended, Simin opened his foreclaws to the sky in a gesture of invocation. The body split apart, and his spirit flew toward the stars.

Battle Plan

THE STAGE IS SET FOR CONFRONTATION: 1) P-K4*

*Chess moves. For greater understanding, may be read in conjunction with a chess board.

The Belgian-Swiss Alliance had entered the movement on the side of the Cantons. Indeed, they had taken it over. Those of broader vision had suspected such a move was possible. That Cantos, a single planet-colony of sixty million inhabitants, could hope to make more than minor gains in that newly settled quadrant was somewhat doubtful. The known galaxy was expanding, and the Cantons themselves had been little more than blind, eager puppets, fed and encouraged from outside, closely watched to see how far they could bend (or simply ignore) the precepts of International Law. Though the damage they did was all too real.

P-K4

As the inhabited regions of Space spread out and became more remote, so the rules and niceties which had guided earlier colonization grew thin and wore away. It was merely a question of how much aggression the reigning superpowers would allow. The Four were still a force to be reckoned with.

2) N-KB3

In the current balance the United Commonwealth held the greatest sway, its advanced technology and more plentiful resources always keeping it one step ahead of Soviet Space. The Americans had been the first to colonize, and first in deep-space exploration, the advantages of which were still paying off.

N-QB3

The New Japanese Republic—-Empire, in everything but name—-was strong, but surprisingly benevolent. For the first time in its modern history this serious, hard-working nation had the room and resources to keep its naturally overachieving peoples busy and content. There was no longer any reason for the underlying brutality of earlier Japanese culture, and in truth many of the more aggressive social and political stances had begun to lose favor among the masses. How long this relative inner calm would last none could say, and few thought to cross them. In romanticized histories of the second World War the saying, "Let sleeping dragons lie," had been used to refer to the United States. It now applied with equal and ironic aptness to the Japanese.

3) B-N5

But the fastest growing, and to many the most frightening of the Space giants, was the metal-churning monster known simply as 'The German States'. Their technology and industrial determination once more bringing them to the fore of the political arena, this born-again superpower, in the eyes of many, was the card on which the growing instability would turn. And the Germans themselves, for reasons not entirely clear, seemed to savor this new role, and to do everything possible to enhance it. Most had believed (not without cause) that it was they who encouraged the Cantons, and therefore they who would soon be making their presence felt in the outlying sectors. But when the time for such a move had come—-the ruthless destruction by mercenaries of half the Canton fleet at Centaurus (so read the propaganda line)—-they had shown no such inclination, choosing instead to remain neutral. True, their moneys and weapons were sometimes involved; but by all legitimate intelligence not a single German squadron or military adviser had been seen within the whole of Andersen sector during the dispute. There could be no denying, however, that their geological fleets had moved in quietly after the destruction of the Laurian ore-planet, recovering valuable mineral wastes that the Cantons could not. The mysterious 'gravity station' had also disappeared.

P-Q3

Historians and sociologists who studied the German peoples had found themselves in sudden demand among the politicians and media of the smaller, more skittish nations; and their separate conclusions had been nothing if not ambiguous. The general consensus among the most respected, however, had been that history's "romantic Huns" were as mysterious and unreadable a people as God ever put on the Earth. No one could know what the Germans were capable of, for good or ill, until they did it. In World War II they had played the part of heinous villains (and done so with terrifying cruelty); in the reshaping of Europe after the collapse of the Communist Bloc, they had acted as generous unifiers, and staunch defenders of the lesser democracies. That this latter posture had finally and decisively cut the political binds and military restrictions imposed by the Allies after the fall of the Third Reich, was a fact that some (though not all) tended to overlook. The one consistency throughout had been an aggressive and self-righteous pursuit of nationalistic goals, based partly, but not solely, on a continuing discomfort with Western humanitarian ideals. "The Germans don't want freedom," the 20th Century author had declared. "They don't understand it. What they want is a strong leader, and a cause worth fighting for." But here again, words could never quite capture the stubborn fiber of the German spirit.

And, of course, those who did not fit the negative stereotype—-there were many—-were human beings just like any other, complete with their share of artists, dissidents, dreamers, idealists and alternative politicians. That those in power continued to be for the most part conservative, flag waving nationalists (as indeed had become the case in the United Commonwealth) did not mean that the Germans had no heart. Many quiet, everyday working people secretly hoped for the emergence of a more moderate geopolitical stance; and few would deny that a truly good German was as unselfish and compassionate an individual as one could ever hope to find. Unfortunately, fierce nationalism remained, and the end result was always the same: subtle but continuous expansionism.

4) P-Q4

But by all appearances this was not to be a (directly) German war.

B-Q2

Yet the shadow of her past, and continued arms build-up, bred little trust among her neighbors.

5) N-B3

There was nothing particularly unique about the Belgian-Swiss Alliance—-the most integral of the 'intermediate' powers involved—-although to themselves it seemed a thing of great importance, occupying countless hours of thought and preparation. Formed out of mutual colonial interest scarcely a dozen years before, it had since made substantial (if in the eyes of the affluent, still modest) gains in and around the Berlioz Quadrant, and was currently exploring the regions that lay beyond—-the limits of man's domain in that direction.

Left behind by the sweeping, mechanized changes of the past two centuries, these proud and businesslike peoples, not wholly dissimilar, now seemed resolutely determined to improve their lot, to gain respectability, and to leave their mark on future histories of the era. Whatever that might mean.

P x P

The Belgian Empire of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had long since past into dust like the ruins of Ozymandias, leaving it a diminutive, unimportant nation of temporal and unstable affluence, subject to the whims and power-plays of its larger, more industrialized neighbors. Like the Germans of the late 1930's, their aggression began with a legitimate (if distorted) complaint.