War World III: Sauron Dominion Page 8

  You do not fear that we will manufacture weapons to use against your own soldiers?”

  “I have the bombs, Abdollah Khan. The first such verified instance will be the last.”

  Abdollah Khan had grown quiet as he considered the offer.

  “We could simply leave our plateau; go down into the valley, or the steppes.”

  “In point of fact, khan, you could not.” Diettinger’s voice held real regret. “There is no food to spare in the valley, and the Chins of the Steppes would hunt you down; they are the masters of the flatlands, even as your people are of the mountains. Worse, should either the valley dwellers or the steppes nomads realize your true value as weaponsmiths, they would wipe you out, for they know they could never truly enslave you.”

  The khan was frowning hard. “Our lands remain our own?”

  “Only make our people welcome in need.”

  “You will dictate none of your laws to us?”

  “Your laws serve well enough to govern your people. We do not attempt to fix things that already work.”

  Abdollah Khan went to look out the window. “Yurek,” he called to his son without turning. “Attend me.”

  Yurek rose and joined his father, looking out at the forbidding peaks of the Wall of Allah.

  “Are you troubled at teaching them the Art, my son?” Abdollah Khan asked in a low voice.

  Yurek thought a moment before answering. “Some will be better at the Art than I am, father.”

  Abdollah Khan shrugged. “Then perhaps it is good that we get along with them.”

  “But what if they break faith with us?”

  Abdollah Khan laughed under his breath. “You have forgotten your lessons, my son. Has anyone ever not broken their faith with us? What difference has it ever made? That is what our people rely on we mujahadin for; to make it too expensive for people to break faith with us. We have never broken faith, not in all our history. But we must always be prepared for those who are less honorable than us.”

  Yurek smiled. “When I was a little boy, you used to tell me to ‘Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.’ I still don’t know what a camel is.”

  “Neither do I, Yurek.” Abdollah Khan laughed. The Khan-of-the-Faithful-on-Haven turned back to the Khan-of-All-the-Saurons.

  “I look for cruelty in your face, Dihtahn Shah; I see none. I look for cunning in your words, and find only cold truth.”

  “I have no gift, nor use, nor time for lies, Abdollah Khan.”

  “I will abide by your terms.”

  Diettinger nodded. “Good.” He gestured to the table of food. “Then let us eat.”

  Abdollah Khan noticed several flasks and shook his head. “Muslims do not drink alcohol.”

  Diettinger pulled a cork and poured water into a goblet.

  “Neither do Saurons,” he said.

  Two months and half a dozen visits after first coming to the Citadel, Abdollah Khan was marching with his men back toward the main gate feeling very pleased. The Khan-of-All-the-Saurons was a man he could deal with, had even come to respect. The Abdollah Khan had finished one of his visits with Dihtahn Shah; they were always by invitation, never summonses, and Abdollah Khan enjoyed them.

  He liked the Khan-of-All-the-Saurons, he had told his men after that first meeting. He liked his eye.

  For his part, Diettinger appreciated the khan’s company. The Afghan was the first human norm Diettinger had met in decades who did not consider Saurons de facto monsters.

  He escorted the leader of the mujahadin to the door, watched as his aide led him outside.

  So our Wall will be built, and built to last, Diettinger thought. And we will all be kept very busy while doing it. Too busy, one may hope, to get into mischief.

  He crossed the room to the table holding the new model of the Wall, the one without a single mark; Denbannen’s computers had tested Yurek s design thoroughly, and found very little room for improvement.

  He thought about his meetings with Yurek and the khan, and what he was learning about both men.

  I wonder what the youth is passing to his father today? His men at the gate always reported it to him; one day a phasing trigger, the next a power cell mount.

  Not that it mattered. Even if Yurek returned to his village and fashioned a Mark VII manpack fusion gun, there were still many more Saurons than mujahadin, and there were still plenty of the nuclear weapons Diettinger had warned Abdollah Khan about. For the first time in their history, the Afghans were contained. The plateau that was their refuge was also their prison, and periodic reconnaissance flights had already mapped the area in detail.

  In a way, Diettinger hoped Yurek would do just such a thing; better weapons for Abdollah Khan’s people would provide a grim surprise for the first Chin raiders in the Spring, and the message would go out that at least one tribe had profited by dealing with the Citadel. As for the Saurons, they now had a guaranteed supply of spare parts for a variety of weapons Diettinger had not thought would last out the decade.

  Diettinger was, if not content, satisfied with the way things had turned out. And more than weapons: by allowing a single “primitive’’ enclave of human norms to indulge themselves, the Saurons will control the door to the Shangri-La, and with it, the destiny of all the peoples within and without that valley.

  Within and without, Diettinger reflected, thinking about the Afghans in their aerie.

  But not, perhaps, above.

  In the courtyard below, Abdollah Khan waved to Yurek, hurrying down a flight of stone stairs to greet his father.

  “My khan,” Yurek said, smiling broadly, “you are well.”

  “I am well, son. How goes your work with the Saurons?”

  Yurek nodded, pleased. “Very well. The Wall progresses ahead of schedule; of course, at this stage that may not seem like much, but there are still so many problems to overcome before we can begin serious construction--” He stopped short. The Khan’s look of pleased interest was severely strained.

  “Forgive me, father; I grow too full of myself.” Yurek realized that he was sounding more like a Sauron every day.

  But the khan dismissed the thought with a shrug. “Youth,” he declared simply.

  They walked on together, chatting.

  “Do they learn?” the khan asked.

  “Slowly, father. But they are grown men; no other people can learn the Art at all once grown.” His voice dropped. “And their children are growing. Soon they will be old enough for some to begin training. The children will learn very quickly.”

  As they reached the main gate, Yurek embraced his father, and slipping a hand into the Khan’s pocket, deposited a finely crafted metal ring. A Sauron guard noted the exchange, and began casually eavesdropping.

  “It’s the fourteenth accelerator, father,” Yurek said in a low voice; “Mark it ‘m.066’ and store it with the others. I’ll need it for the master molds before I start copying.”

  ‘Do you have the spacing rail, yet?” Abdollah Khan asked conversationally as he gathered up his cloak at the gate.

  “Another week. Look for it in a cart of rifled barrels. It will be marked with white at one end.”

  Abdollah Khan mounted his horse and rode out to the trail, turning once to wave at his son by the gate. Looming in the mountains behind the Citadel were the first faint markings of the frame of the great Gate that his son would help the Saurons build.

  A way down the trail, the khan pulled the metal ring from his pocket, idly sticking it to his buttons and a knife blade.

  What was it Yurek had called it? A part of a key, he’d said. A key to the Gates of Paradise, that they may never he closed against his people. He was proud of his son; he would make a good khan, one day, if the people would have him.

  Abdoliah Khan shook his head. Magnets, he reflected with wonder.

  What would people think of next?

  From A Brief Atlas of the Planet Haven by Colin Lyon Jones and Lilya Ivanovich Egorov. Oxford Press, AD 2427, folio:

 
The Shangri-La “Valley” on Haven is more than a valley. It is a great equatorial (but by no means tropical) basin of some 12 million square kilometers, large enough to hold the old United States of America. Ringing it are volcanic mountains which almost define the term “forbidding”. . .

  North of the Shangri-La Valley and high above it--beyond the brutal mountains that rim it--lies the high steppe, a vast, continent-spanning expanse of grassland, using the term “grassland” in the Haven sense. The term moor would be almost as appropriate, because low shrubs are very much a part of it; also tundra, because much of it is underlain with permafrost. But during the long summers it thaws deeply, despite occasional long Truenights that in summer can send the temperature to -15° C and even colder, covering the shallower pools with centimeters of ice. Also, although the atmospheric pressure on the steppe is typically about 700 millibars, the partial pressure of oxygen is only about 120 millibars, less than 60 percent of Terran sea-level normal. The Haven biota, of course, have long since adapted, and in summer the high steppe produces abundant forage for livestock and wildlife.

  The steppe is by no means uniform. Rugged ranges of hills and low mountains interrupt it. Lakes and ponds are more or less numerous in some locales, though many dry up by late summer. Most are more or less drinkable. Elsewhere it is necessary to dig for water, rock permitting, or drill for it. Here and there are raw lava flows, sometimes extending for scores of kilometers, virtually barren of forage or wildlife, their sharp rough surfaces capable of ruining boots and the hooves of horses or muskylope in an hour’s passage. In other areas are badlands--tangles of gullies, many of them blind--almost impossible to pass without guides, and as unpeopled as the lava flows.

  From A Student’s Book by Myner Klint bar Terborch fan Reenan, Eden Valley, Ilona’sstad, 2927:

  . . . Within a few years of arriving on our world, Sauron soldiers had subdued the tribes on areas of the steppe nearest to the main eastern entrance to the Shangri-La Valley. Bit by bit, in the generations since coming here, the Saurons have expanded their hegemony--the area whose people are under their control and required to pay them tribute. This process continues, but it has been difficult and bloody. They could not have done so well, except for their control of access to important birthing valleys. . . .

  MAITREYA AND THE CYBORG - John Dalmas

  Assault Group Leader Borkum lay on thin, dry snow atop a rock pinnacle. Cat’s Eye was a dull and ruddy orb, rimmed on one edge with a sickle of brightness like some enormous new moon, and Borkum peered through its russet light. It was a dimmer phase of dimday, but to his Sauron eyes, the sun might almost as well have been up. Before many hours, Cat’s Eye would set in the east, and Borkum wasn’t sure whether the sun would come up first or not. Judging by the elevation and phase of Cat’s Eye, it would be close.

  In the stone fort he spied on, it seemed the troops were less alert than most cattle fighting men. Looking down at it from his vantage on the pinnacle, he could see no one at all on the battlement. Probably they didn’t expect anyone up the trail in winter; the last time he’d checked, the temperature had been -72°F, and he was glad for electrically heated winter gloves. This had to be the highest, coldest inhabited place on the planet, and he didn’t look forward to the fifteen or so hours of Truenight that would follow the next Trueday.

  Ahead, the trail they’d come up passed through a gate in the fort’s wall, a closed gate. Inside the wall e could see the slanted roofs of buildings built against it, no doubt barracks, armory, stable, and what not. Thin smoke rose from chimneys to settle over the fort--dune smoke by the smell. In a place like this, dung would be hoarded for fuel; there couldn’t be a tree for 400 klicks--nothing this side of Koln Valley, and nothing there but low scrub. His infrared perception told him that some of the smoke came from the gate tower. Whoever was on watch would be holed up there, perhaps asleep.

  If, as seemed likely, these cattle knew nothing of Soldiers, they were in for a surprise. Blow the gate, and the place would be his. There might even be women there. Without turning, he gave instructions to Under Assault Leader Gerrit beside him. Then, still on his belly, Borkum backed away, and deftly, skillfully, climbed down the off-side of the basalt column he’d observed from.

  A cone charge bent and separated the narrow, steel-faced gates, and left them hanging on a single hinge each. Borkum sent most of his men through at once-- all but the weapons section. It stayed outside and fired rockets at the gate tower. Almost at once, one went through a firing slot and exploded inside, followed quickly by two more. It was excellent marksmanship, given their single-shot, shoulder-fired weapons and simple optical sights.

  Then Borkum went in himself, making his command post just inside, beside the gate house. His squads had spread throughout the small fort, each to an entrance in some building. Resistance seemed meager. Enemy gunfire, audibly from black-powder weapons, was sparse; apparently most of the garrison had been caught asleep.

  From where he knelt, he could peer around a corner and see the entire bailey. Except for what appeared to be sheds, the fort’s buildings were of stone, mostly with two low stories, and built with their backs to the wall. Nothing seemed designed for defense against an enemy who’d gotten inside--the type of oversight that few cattle on this world would be guilty of.

  Standard orders were to take prisoners when feasible, and he’d given no counterorder, yet prisoners were not immediately forthcoming. For two or three minutes longer, shooting continued, most of it from the Soldiers nitrocellulose-charged cartridges, but some from primitive gunpowder. There were occasional shouts and screams--not by his men. Then he began to get reports on his belt radio: The enemy had resisted with whatever came ready to hand, mostly with swords, and most had fought till dead, disabled, or unconscious. His men had also had a few casualties.

  He moved into what had been the enemy command room then, a room pungent with dung-smoke and less identifiable smells, and heated by a ceramic stove. Almost nothing was clean. There was a bathhouse, he was told, with a large tub for bathing, but without water. It seemed that the fort lacked a system for melting large volumes of snow.

  The tally of his own dead was two, both killed by gunfire. Four others had been significantly wounded.

  The enemy garrison had numbered sixty. Thirty-one were dead and twenty wounded; only nine had surrendered unscathed. There hadn’t been a woman among them. Now that the fighting was over, the captives seemed entirely docile, showing no sign of defiance or even sullenness.

  Borkum had the wounded of both sides taken to the messroom. Judging from his ornate if grimy uniform, one of the conscious enemy wounded had been an officer, and Borkum tried to question him. The man understood nothing, and made no intelligible reply--merely gabbled. He seemed to know no Anglic at all, or understand anything that Borkum’s Mongol guide said.

  Besides his human prisoners, his men had captured twenty-three muskylopes kept corraled as riding stock, and he ordered two of them butchered. The metabolism of Sauron Soldiers required a lot of food. His force would spend the rest of dimday here, he’d decided, eating and resting, and leave at once when the sun came up.

  There was also a small herd of yaks in the vicinity, and several milk cows in a shed, but the Soldiers didn’t trouble with them.

  He had the able-bodied prisoners stripped of their baggy, padded clothing so he could judge their fitness, and selected the three who looked most able-bodied, to take with him. They’d be useless as interpreters, but they could tell anyone they came to how powerful and dangerous the invaders were, and how quickly they crushed resistance. And no doubt he could get some sort of useful directions from them, even without language.

  He assigned a squad to stay at the fort and take care of his several wounded. The six unwounded prisoners to be left behind would be their servants. Meanwhile he had the wounded enemy taken outside the fort and shot. His remaining prisoners were forced to witness this, letting them know what it meant to resist Sauron Soldiers.

&nb
sp; The prisoners, both those who knelt to die and those who watched, showed remarkably little fear, nor any sign of hatred, open or suppressed. Borkum had experienced a variety of cattle in his years of duty: Mongols, Americans, and Chinese; Uzbeks, Russians, and Armenians . . . but none as peculiar as these. He assigned this no significance, however. They were all cattle.

  The scout fighter settled in a cloud of dirty snow. When it was down, its engines off and the cloud of snow settled, First Cyborg Hammer could see Base First Rank Krell striding toward the pad. The gullwing door lifted smoothly, and Hammer swung down the extruded ladder to meet him. The outside air, thin and frigid, was like a kind of energy sump that sucked warmth from him. Consciously, Hammer ignored it; unconsciously, his body made subtle adjustments. From beneath their epicanthic folds, his black eyes took in the unfinished base around him: the completed command building and fire towers; uncompleted barracks; and the temporary hutments for Soldiers, construction specialists, and impressed laborers. All surrounded by minimal and temporary defensive works. Construction was substantially behind schedule.

  Base First Rank Krell arrived and saluted. He didn’t intend that his resentment show. His threefold resentment. This was not a routine inspection visit, and he was sure he knew why Hammer had been sent: First Soldier Diettinger was not only unhappy with progress here, he was also unwilling to accept the responsibility as his own. Also, this inspection had been unannounced; he’d been told by radio, ten minutes earlier, to meet the First Cyborg at the pad.

  His third resentment was more intimate: First Cyborg was old, even for a cyborg, the only person still alive who’d arrived on the Dol Guldur, sixty-eight T-years earlier. He had to be ninety T-years, or damned close to it. Probably older. Krell himself, on the other hand, was unlikely to reach fifty; some critical organ of his supercharged body would probably break down before he was forty-five. Many died by age forty. And he was forty now, still with the super-humanly strong athletic body of a Sauron Soldier, but without many years left to him.