Star Bridge (25 page)

“True,” Sair said. “It won't be an easy job—others will have the same idea—but that will be chiefly a military operation. I won't be much use there. I must make myself felt in Eron.”

“And you can't do that until we capture the control room,” Horn said. “Let's go!”

He tapped the keys with practiced fingers. The ship slid forward into the lock. Horn waited while the red light on the panel turned to gold. He tapped the keys once more. There was a brief surge of power that pressed them back into their seats—

They blinked. The ship thumped gently into the cradle. Horn glanced at the clock on the panel. It was moving, but no time had elapsed, according to its stiff hands. The cradle was moving with them now; it slid them out of the air lock.

They had returned to Eron.

“No time,” Horn said wonderingly. “It is as if within the Tubes wasn't a part of our universe at all.”

He hadn't time for any more reflections. Redblade was pointing at the screen. It was directed toward the floor beneath the cradle, and the floor was a battlefield for ants. Masses of them swayed back and forth, became detached, joined back together. Slowly it separated itself into a battle between drab little ants and large green ones.

A few faces had been turned up toward them and then more. It spread, like a white sea, across the floor.

The drab ones were slaves. Somehow they had fought their way here from the lower levels. Battling in from the wide doorway were giant Denebolan lancers in the green uniforms of Transport. That was Fenelon. Did it mean that Fenelon was alive, Horn wondered, or had these mercenaries found another master?

The battle was going against the rabble. The huge Denebolans were mowing the undisciplined horde down like ripe grain, using pistols where there was room, swinging clubs and swords when they were closed in. Many of them were dragged down and swarmed under, but the rabble was doomed. Hundreds of them died for every Denebolan.

Through the hull Horn heard the whine of ricocheting bullets. Shouts came from the rear of the ship. Horn was on his feet and racing toward the port before they started. It was open. The escalator was in front of it, but no one was climbing down. Through the oval door came a rain of bullets.

Several men were huddled against the corridor wall. “We can't get out,” one of them shouted. “They've killed two of us already. In a minute they'll be climbing up here.”

“Who's shooting?” Horn demanded.

“The damned slaves!”

“We'll have to make them understand that we're trying to help them,” Horn said impatiently.

“After ten centuries of betrayal,” Sair said softly from behind, “do you expect them to recognize assistance when they see it?”

“I'll have to tell them,” Horn said. He started for the deadly opening. “Hold your fire!” he shouted. “We're friends—”

It was useless. The sound would never carry through the clamor below. Sair's gentle hand drew him back.

“Come on, you dead men!” Redblade shouted. “We'll fight our way out!”

“That's not the way either,” Sair said. “This is my job: diplomacy. This is why you needed me.”

Before anyone could stop him, he had slipped past. He stood unarmed and alone in the empty oval, looking out over the sea of faces, calmly.

A bullet whistled past him. He didn't flinch. Slowly quiet spread out over the faces. Through it came a mutter. The mutter became a shout from a thousand throats.

“SAIR!”

The old man raised his hand toward the distant door. “Let us fight the enemy!” he shouted. His voice was loud and clear and strong.

Horn leaped toward him as a volley of bullets streamed through the door.

 

THE HISTORY

Creation.…

It is its own nemesis. Success is temporary, and idolization will not make the ephemeral permanent. Decay is implicit in the birth of any organism.

An empire is an organism.

Leadership is admired and imitated while it is creative. As a substitute, force is self-defeating. The consequences are inevitable. Outside the organism, resistance to incorporation grows strong; inside, rebellion begins.

Creators are always a minority. Geniuses, saints, supermen, they rise in response to the challenge of conditions. They leave the mass of the people behind them. They must transform the world or perish.

Eron's answer to the rhythmic repetition of challenge and response had become fixed: force. And force must always give way to a greater force.…

 

 

18

WAR

Horn's momentum carried Sair to one side out of the path of the bullets.

“They shot!” Sair exclaimed softly.

“The Denebolans,” Horn said. “That had to be. If one side is your friend, the other is your enemy. Somebody shoots at you all the time.” He rolled over and started crawling back. “Redblade! Sharpshooters!”

Three short-sleeved guards came forward on hands and knees. They lay full-length below the level of the port. Their pistols lifted; they sighted toward the wide doorway. In a few seconds bullets were streaming toward the tall lancers.

“Let's go back to the control room,” Horn said. “It'll be a few minutes.”

In the screen, the change was obvious. The ragged rebels were attacking with a maniac frenzy, and the Denebolans were falling back before it. The wide doorway was being cleared by the sharpshooters' deadly accuracy. The size that made the lancers such dangerous fighters made them easy victims to ambush. They were men and mortal; one bullet was enough. Hundreds died. Those who could not retreat were torn apart.

When the lancers were gone, the rebels turned their white faces to the ship once more.

“Sair!” they shouted.

The fighting men from the naked plains of Vantee raced down the motionless escalator and cleared a semi-circular area at the foot of it. Sair followed, slowly, and the mob grew silent. Behind him came Horn and Redblade. With him the pirate carried a hastily improvised, portable amplifier. He held it under his arm for Sair to use. It thundered the soft voice through the towering room.

“Rebels! Soldiers of freedom! As you recognized, I am Peter Sair, once president of the Quarnon League, most recently a prisoner of Eron on Vantee. Like me, these other men in the captured uniforms of Security agents were prisoners. With courage and desperation, they fought their way to freedom and brought me with them. They are fighters and leaders. We will have need of them.

“You, too, are fighters. But you have no leaders, and leaderless men are weak. There is no time for democratic processes. I ask you to recognize me as your leader and to name me as your leader to all other rebels, wherever you meet them. I do not ask this because I am eager for glory or hungry for power. I have had enough of both; they are fleeting and worthless. I ask this because I am Peter Sair; my name and face are known.

“Eron must fall, but it must fall without breaking apart. That means there must be leadership. I ask your allegiance; I ask your unquestioning obedience.”

As the echoes died away, there was silence, and then the room rocked once more with the shout of “SAIR!”

Horn realized, as he had realized above in the ship, what had made Sair great. His talent was people; the thing to do and the thing to say that would move them—that was sure instinct.

“Agreed!” Sair said, and there was a touch of wistfulness in his titan's voice. “I am bound, as you are.” His voice grew strong again. “Let us get down to business. My lieutenants are Redblade and Horn. Obey them as you would obey me. Under them will be the men who came with us from Vantee. As experienced fighters, they will lead you; each of them will command fifty men.

“They did the impossible: they escaped from Vantee. With your help they will do the impossible again!”

Redblade took over the amplifier and, holding it easily at mouth level, began barking commands. The men from Vantee moved out and began splitting the mob into groups. It was quick and efficient. Soon there were almost seventy groups being inspected for arms, ammunition, and physical condition. While they were being organized, instructed, and drilled, guards were posted at the door and up and down the corridor.

Redblade called for any of the rebels with information to come forward. Out of the few who made their way slowly across the floor, Horn picked one whose eyes were bright and intelligent. In response to their questions, his story came out in brief spurts of words that they pieced together into coherence.

His group of rebels had seized a ship at the warehouse level. With a fantastic idea of reaching another planet, they had forced the pilot to take them out of Eron. Once in space, they had been helpless and confused; the pilot took advantage of their indecision to slip the freighter into a north cap lock. Instead of help, he found a quick death. The rebels spilled out into the cap, raging back and forth aimlessly as groups attacked them and they attacked others.

Inside Eron rebellion was general. The slaves had poured up into the forbidden upper levels. Sometimes the gray guards fought against them; sometimes they joined the ragged mob. Often they found gray guards fighting with the personal guards of the various Directors; most prevalent were Duchane's black agents. But the golden blood had run thick, and it was red, like that of other men.

The battle had seemed to be going against the rebels when they had fled into space, but it might have been just a local action. There was no pattern to it, no order, no easy victor.

Yes, they were hungry. They hadn't eaten since they left the warehouse level. But it helped to think that the Golden Folk and their guards were hungrier. The warehouses had been the first areas seized by the rebels; they would be the last surrendered.

They had seen other rebel groups during the fighting in the cap, but had been unable to join forces with them. Most recently, these Denebolan giants had charged out of one of the Tube rooms and forced them back into this one. Such reinforcements were coming frequently, but there was no way of predicting from which room they would come or from what world or on whose side they would fight.

No, he hadn't seen Wendre Kohlnar. Some of the golden women had been killed; he had seen it happen in the early hours of the uprising. The madness had wanted to drown itself in blood; they had taken no prisoners. Later they had been too desperate and afraid to do anything but defend themselves.

Horn's eyes were distant and unhappy as he turned to Redblade. “Are we organized?”

“As much as possible. Most of it will have to be done under fire. That'll shake 'em down. So far they've been a mob; now they'll learn what it is to be an army.”

“What do you think? Will they have a chance against trained guards?”

Redblade squinted speculatively at the milling men. “These men have something personal to fight for—over and above their lives. The guards are fighting for money. I'll take these, puny lot though they are.”

“How many are armed?”

“More than I thought. Over fifty percent.”

They went over their plans in the light of the forces they had gained. The chief goal was the control room, which was down the corridor to the left. Twenty groups would be sent in that direction with instructions to take and hold all Tube rooms as they came to them. Five of the fastest men in each group would be designated runners to report new developments to headquarters. No group was to move forward until its sides and rear were protected.

Fifteen groups would start down the corridor to the right, with the same instructions. The rest would stay at headquarters as guards and reserve.

Each group leader would receive instructions to give opponents a chance to join them. Again with any survivors. The battle cry would be “Sair!” All recruits would cut or tear off their sleeves.

Above all, communications. Group leaders would keep in constant touch by runner—

“I'll go with the group to the left,” Redblade said, showing his teeth in a ferocious grin.

“You'll stay here!” Horn snapped. “You'll coordinate information from the runners and dispatch assistance and supervise organization of new—”

“But the control room,” Redblade pleaded; “we can't hope to take the cap and hold it unless we can isolate it. We need the communications. We need to cut individual Tubes and close air locks and—”

“That battle, like all the rest of them, will be won and lost here,” Horn said firmly. “A staff operation may not be glamorous, but it's vital.”

Like all staff operations, this was blind; like most, this was confusion. Horn fought for eyes and after that for order; he never got either one satisfactorily. There was never time to do anything thoroughly or well. Impressions swarmed about him; decisions pressed in on him. He snapped off answers and orders by instinct and impulse and a vague sort of pattern that grew unconsciously at the back of his mind.

While Redblade bellowed commands through the amplifier, calling off names and assignments, Horn turned to the floor. As the room cleared, he drafted a group to begin laying out a map of the north cap. When the runners began streaming back, Horn was ready. Slowly the map was clarified and filled in. This room was taken; that one clear. Here a desperate battle with Denebolan lancers or gray guards or blue guards or green guards.… So many casualties. Send more men. Send more guns. Send more ammunition. Send—

The groups that had been drilling under their black-uniformed leaders began to thin out. Soon there were only ten groups left to run and throw themselves flat, dry-fire, and take cover. Horn glanced around worriedly. In a few minutes, there would be too few for safety.

A mass of ragged recruits streamed through the door and went wild at the sight of Sair. When they were quieted, they began to drill. Leaders for them came from the remnants of previous groups.

Perhaps that was the turning point. Horn was never able to pin it down. It might have been earlier when Sair appeared at the ship's lock and the ragged mob shouted his name. But if anything was the key to victory, it was Sair and the name of Sair.