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Synopsis
War is becoming increasingly 'SF-ized' with remotely controlled attack drones and robot warriors already in development and being tested. Over the past 100 years the technology of war has advanced enormously in destructive power, yet also in sophistication so that we no longer seem to live under the constant threat of all-out global thermonuclear cataclysm. So what will future wars be like? And what will start them: religion, politics, resources, refugees, or advanced weaponry itself?
Watson and Whates present a gripping anthology of SF stories which explores the gamut of possible future conflicts, including such themes as nuclear war, psychological and cyberwars, enhanced soldiery, mercenaries, terrorism, intelligent robotic war machines, and war with aliens.
All the stories in this collection of remarkable quality and diversity reveals humankind pressed to the limits in every conceivable way.
It includes 24 stories with highlights such as:
The Pyre of the New Day' - Catherine Asaro.
The Rhine's World Incident' - Neal Asher.
Caught in the Crossfire' - David Drake.
Politics' - Elizabeth Moon.
The Traitor' - David Weber.
And others from:
Dan Abnett, Tony Ballantyne, Fredric Brown, Algis Budrys, Simon R. Green, Joe Haldeman, John Kessel, John Lambshead, Paul McAuley, Andy Remic, Laura Resnick, Mike Resnick & Brad R. Torgersen, Fred Saberhagen, Cordwainer Smith, Allen Steele, William Tenn, Walter Jon Williams, Michael Z. Williamson, Gene Wolfe.
Release date: May 17, 2012
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Print pages: 160
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
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The Mammoth Book of SF Wars
Ian Watson
Ian Watson invented Warhammer 40,000 fiction for the Black Library of Games Workshop twenty years ago with his novel Inquisitor, not to mention his notorious Space Marine. His highly successful Inquisition War trilogy omnibus edition was recently reprinted, and Space Marine itself, often hailed as the best ever 40,000 novel, has just been released by the Black Library of Games Workshop as print-on-demand through their website due to overwhelming reader demand. He lives in Northamptonshire, England.
Ian Whates is the author of two novel sequences: the Noise Books (space opera) and The City of a Hundred Rows (urban fantasy with steampunk overtones and SF underpinning). He has also edited several anthologies, including Solaris Rising (Solaris, 2011) and two that specifically feature conflict within SF: Conflicts (2010) and Further Conflicts (2011), both via his own NewCon Press. He lives in Cambridgeshire, England.
Together they edited The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories.
Recent Mammoth titles
The Mammoth Book of Great British Humour
The Mammoth Book of Women’s Erotic Fantasies
The Mammoth Book of Drug Barons
The Mammoth Book of Scottish Romance
The Mammoth Book of Fun Brain-Training
The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards
The Mammoth Book of Dracula
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 10
The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 8
The Mammoth Book of Tattoo Art
The Mammoth Book of Bob Dylan
The Mammoth Book of Mixed Martial Arts
The Mammoth Book of Codeword Puzzles
The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance
The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures
The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction
The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 24
The Mammoth Book of Gorgeous Guys
The Mammoth Book of Really Silly Jokes
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22
The Mammoth Book of Undercover Cops
The Mammoth Book of Weird News
The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Erotica
The Mammoth Book of Antarctic Journeys
The Mammoth Book of Muhammad Ali
The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9
The Mammoth Book of Lost Symbols
The Mammoth Book of Body Horror
The Mammoth Book of New CSI
The Mammoth Book of Steampunk
INTRODUCTION by Ian Whates and Ian Watson, © 2012 Ian Whates and Ian Watson.
PEACEKEEPER by Mike Resnick and Brad R. Torgersen, © 2012 Mike Resnick and Brad R. Torgersen. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the authors.
FROM OUT OF THE SUN, ENDLESSLY SINGING by Simon R. Green, © 2012 by Simon R. Green. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
ALL FOR LOVE by Algis Budrys, © Algis Budrys 1962. Printed by permission of the Estate of Algis Budrys.
THE WAR ARTIST by Tony Ballantyne, © Tony Ballantyne 2011. Published by permission of the author.
THE WAR MEMORIAL by Allen Steele, © 1995 Allen Steele. Printed by permission of the author.
POLITICS by Elizabeth Moon, © Elizabeth Moon 1990. Reprinted by permission of the author.
ARENA by Fredric Brown, © 1944, by Street & Smith Publications, copyright © 1974 by Fredric Brown. Originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction. Reprinted by permission of the Estate and its agent, Barry N. Malzberg.
PEACEKEEPING MISSION by Laura Resnick, © 2008 Laura Resnick.
THE PEACEMAKER by Fred Saberhagen, originally published as “The Lifehater”, © 1964 Fred Saberhagen. Printed by permission of the JSS Literary Productions.
JUNKED by Andy Remic, © 2009 Andy Remic. Published by permission of the author.
THE LIBERATION OF EARTH by William Tenn, © 1953, 1981 by William Tenn; first appeared in Future Science Fiction; reprinted by permission of the author’s Estate and the Estate’s agents, the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.
A CLEAN ESCAPE by John Kessel, © 1985 John Kessel. Published by permission of the author.
STORMING HELL by John Lambshead, © 2009 John Lambshead. Published by permission of the author.
SOLIDARITY by Walter Jon Williams, © 2005 Walter Jon Williams. Published by permission of the author.
THE PRICE by Michael Z. Williamson, © 2010 Michael Z. Williamson. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE HORARS OF WAR by Gene Wolfe, © 1970 Gene Wolfe. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.
THE TRAITOR by David Weber, © 1997 David Weber. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE GAME OF RAT AND DRAGON by Cordwainer Smith, © 1955. Every effort has been made to contact the agent for the Estate.
CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE by David Drake, © 1978 David Drake. Published by permission of the author.
THE RHINE’S WORLD INCIDENT by Neal Asher, © 2008 Neal Asher.
WINNING PEACE by Paul McAuley, © 2007 Paul McAuley. First published in Postscripts 15, PS Publishing.
TIME PIECE by Joe Haldeman, © 1970 Joe Haldeman. Printed by permission of the author.
THE WAKE by Dan Abnett, © 2011 Dan Abnett. Printed by permission of the author.
THE PYRE OF NEW DAY by Catherine Asaro, © Catherine Asaro 2012. First publication, original to this anthology. Printed by permission of the author.
THE ABILITY to make war appears to have been in mankind’s blood from the moment we first began to evolve, violence being an integral part of our heritage. Picture a caveman and invariably we imagine him holding a spear or a club. Yet we call our species Homo sapiens, Intelligent Man, while some have even suggested that Homo faber, Man the Maker (of everything from ploughs to radiotelescopes) might be more appropriate. Perhaps both are misguided. Glance at our history, taking in the past few thousand years right up to the present day, and it would be hard to argue that Man the Warmaker isn’t the most fitting designation of all. Have we outgrown war? Have we left it behind? No, and it’s doubtful we ever will.
Some of the stories in this collection suggest that our warlike tendencies (which of course we all regret, don’t we?) might come in rather useful in the future, supposing we encounter non- benevolent aliens. Just to be on the safe side, of course. After all, it’s perfectly feasible that only general-purpose predators become fully sentient and claw their way to the stars.
As if to demonstrate that even this coin has a flipside, four of our twenty-four tales feature peace or peacekeeping in their titles – fittingly, since this is surely what we really want, or so we like to tell ourselves.
The truth is that there is something about warfare, about Conflict, about violence, that sets the heart racing and the blood singing. Our genre has been responsible for some of the most thought-provoking, challenging, edifying and intelligent fiction of the past century, and doubtless it will continue to be so; but there is another side to science fiction. The tang of weapon-oil, the sleek slide or the grind of metal on metal, the sizzle of an energy beam, the raw ferocity of explosion, and the cunning of a black ops specialist, are just as important an aspect of science fiction as the virtual futures, cybernetic implants, and the nature of the multiverse. The brilliance of a ship’s commander who triumphs against all odds (despite being heavily outgunned and tactically disadvantaged) will raise a cheer as surely as the flash of insight that casts light on a puzzling aspect of the human condition. In fact, the chances are that it was just such stories of bravery and derring-do that drew many of us into science fiction in the first place. We like big explosions and impossible missions, men and women pitted against aliens or against other men and women. We like to read of nobility, treachery, and sacrifice, of triumph and loss. And that’s what this particular Mammoth is all about. Humankind pushed to the limits in every conceivable way.
A problem with tackling a subject as vast as “war” in a genre that has been fascinated by the subject for many, many decades is that there are a whole lot of stories to choose from. No single collection can ever encompass all that merit inclusion and no anthology can hope to satisfy everyone. There are bound to be those who glance down the contents list and think, but what about this story or that one? If we’ve missed out your favourite we apologize, but hope you’ll take a look in any case and discover a few new favourites in the process. As with any anthology, not everything has gone absolutely to plan. Some of the stories we had hoped to include proved to be unavailable, while, despite initially promising signs, Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 proved one universe that was closed to us; alas, the company lawyers declined any reprinting in a non-GW publication.
Thankfully, our successes have far outweighed our disappointments, and we are delighted with both the quality and diversity of tale we have gathered together in The Mammoth Book of SF Wars. We only hope that you, the reader, are too.
Ian Whates and Ian Watson, 2012
Suppose that soldiers of our present day are drafted by advanced aliens as peace enforcers on a distant world in exchange for technology …
In this first of the three original stories commissioned for this book, Mike Resnick teams up with Brad Torgersen, a Writers of the Future finalist in 2009 who then speedily sold stories to Analog, and who has been in the army reserves for twenty years. The amazingly energetic Mike Resnick has collaborated with a bushel of other authors (which turns out not to be a big sheaf but is actually eight gallons; nevertheless we’ll leave this), as well as authoring a library of books by himself and being expert on horseracing, purebred collies, Africa and who knows what else. As of 2009 at least he has the unique distinction (ahem, there can only be one) of being the all-time top award winner for short fiction.
IT WAS A normal duty day in the city until the Earth limo showed up. It glided through the chaotic s’ndar traffic that bustled across my assigned six-way intersection. Flow control was provided by a single s’ndar of the city’s provisional constabulary, who jerked his brightly coloured paddles to and fro over his bug’s head, herding his people this way and that.
Since the ceasefire, my squad and I didn’t mess with the locals unless we had to. We kept out of the way, as backup for the traffic cop in case of real trouble.
I exchanged glances with Corporal Kent, who’d seen the limo. Her facial expression said, You’re the boss; you figure it out.
I sighed, then got up out of my sandbagged security position and began walking towards the vehicle as it ground to a halt a few metres away.
The s’ndar traffic cop watched me, decided it was none of his business, and went back to waving his paddles.
Low-rise commercial and residential structures sprouted around the intersection like mushrooms, their hemispherical roofs designed to shelter pedestrians from the daily monsoon. Along the boulevards poles rose up from the pavement at regular intervals to support endless rows of electrical conduit, phone conduit and fibre optics.
A slight haze of smog hung over the s’ndar city. It was impossible to ignore how similar, and yet also totally different, the scene was from the average urban centre on Earth. Humans and s’ndar had reached roughly equivalent technology levels.
Then the Interstellar Conglomerate intervened.
The smooth hum of the limo’s twin engines quit, and the man who stepped out of the car was someone I was familiar with only from the news feeds. Senator Jeff Petersen had played football in college, and still kept reasonably fit. Tall and broad-chested, his full head of pepper-tinged hair was trimmed close. He had on a khaki field vest – one of the Earth embassy models that contained ballistic armour plating in addition to being festooned with pouches and pockets. He also wore neatly pressed khaki shorts and high-topped boots.
Given the oppressive humidity, I envied his wardrobe.
Two similarly dressed Secret Service personnel – one male, with a pistol on his hip, the other female, with a sub-machine gun in her hands – flanked the senator as he strode towards me. Other Secret Service agents stepped from the car and scanned the surroundings cautiously, their mirror sunglasses and straight faces making them seem somehow robotic.
I saluted the senator when he drew near.
“Sergeant Colford!” yelled Petersen over the din of traffic as he extended his hand. He’d obviously read my name tape on my armour. Good politician’s reflex. Made it seem like he really gave a damn who I was.
I rapidly chow-slung my rifle and shook Petersen’s hand. He had a surprisingly strong grip. Well, maybe not so surprising, given his profession. His smile was amiable, and his nicely capped teeth sparkled in the oppressive sunlight.
I strongly resisted the urge to like him.
“Senator,” I said formally, “I wish I’d known you were coming.”
“You guys always say that,” Petersen said, continuing to smile. “But how am I supposed to talk to you candidly if your commander or first sergeant is warning you at morning briefing?”
It was a good point. But if I knew my corporal, she was already calling in to the Tactical Operations Centre. Headquarters would have our asses if we didn’t report the senator’s arrival asap.
Petersen surveyed my semi-hardened position.
“A bunker and eleven troops. Kind of overkill, don’t you think? The s’ndar in this city are pro-Conglomerate now. They’re our friends.”
“Maybe, sir,” I replied. “But you weren’t here six months ago.”
“I read about that. Did you see a lot of fighting, son?”
Son? Hell, I was almost thirty.
“I saw my share,” I said evenly. “My rifle company trained en route. Our Conglomerate transports already had mock-ups of s’ndar urban terrain on-board. We thought we’d be ready.”
“But you thought wrong,” the senator said.
“Yah,” I replied, grimacing at the memory.
Petersen waited, as if expecting me to say something more. When I didn’t, he ran a hand over his scalp and then folded his arms across his chest.
“So, you’ve seen some rough fighting. OK. Do you at least feel like it was worth it?”
“Worth what, sir?”
“Earth’s involvement in S’ndar-khk’s civil war. America’s involvement in the CEMEF – the Combined Earth Military Expeditionary Force.”
“I don’t make policy, sir,” I told him non-committally. “I just follow orders.”
“Fair enough. But the UN’s bargain with the Conglomerate is costing American lives. Do you think it’s worth it?”
I frowned, remembering my sister Karen. She’d been an officer in the Air Force, and had wanted to be an astronaut too, before the Conglomerate established their first contact with Earth. The interstellar robotic transports the Conglomerate sent to us made Earth’s space stations look like toys. We’d not even put a man on Mars yet, and the Conglomerate was picking us up and hauling us off in whole battalions – over 300 light years to this obscure little planet, where my sister had been thrilled as hell to see actual aliens.
Now she was buried back home, her skull split by a s’ndar bullet. It had been a closed-casket affair, given the damage. Mom and Dad still weren’t over it.
“I’ve lost some friends here,” I said. “And family too. Things were a mess on this planet when we showed up. Lots of killing all over the place. Now there’s not so much. But only because we’re still alert every hour of every day. You ask me if it’s worth it … I sure as hell hope so.”
Petersen’s brow furrowed. He reached out and put a hand on my shoulder, his face turning empathetic.
“I’m sorry for your friends, and whoever else you lost in your family, too. Part of the reason I’m here is to assure you and the other troops that you’re doing truly important work. You’re saving lives. Human lives. We help the s’ndar establish and keep the peace, and the Conglomerate helps Earth. We need the Conglomerate’s clean fusion technology to reverse the economic and political damage from the Oil Crash. You’re standing guard on this intersection so that you – or someone like you – doesn’t have to stand guard over a few barrels of crude in the Person Gulf or Venezuela.”
“Militia coming!” yelled one of my privates.
Senator Petersen and I turned our heads to see a small patrol of s’ndaran-made armoured personnel carriers manoeuvring towards us through the hubbub. The large-wheeled, tank-like vehicles took a few minutes to reach our position, and when they did, several armed s’ndar climbed from the hatch on an aerial-spiked APC, and approached my squad.
The s’ndar in the lead looked older than the rest. It was a female. Hell, all the authority figures in the insectoid race from sergeant on up were females, just like the ants and bees back on Earth. Her chitin was greyed at the edges and had several wounds that had been puttied over with artificial quick-cure ceramic, now weathered. Her thorax bore the militia equivalent of a non-commissioned officer, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out she’d seen her share of combat.
Sergeant to sergeant, we saluted, the s’ndar in its form, me in mine.
As I lowered my rifle from the vertical, my Conglomerate-manufactured Translation Application Device – TAD – began speaking into my helmet’s earphones. Emotionless metallic English filled my ears as the s’ndar’s mandibles clicked and scratched consonants in between flute-like vowels.
“Good morning, Staff Sergeant,” she said.
“Good morning, Primary Sergeant,” I replied, my TAD turning my English into s’ndar words.
“My soldiers and I arrive in coordination with the senator’s visit,” said the primary sergeant.
I studied her. You could never really be sure about the militia. They worked for the provisional government, who worked with the Expeditionary Force. But that didn’t mean much on the street. I’d learned that first-hand. A few of the militia were quality. Many of them were either incompetently hazardous or deceitfully dangerous. It was best to be cautious.
Petersen turned back to me. “Do you mind if I go talk with your people?”
“Feel free, sir,” I said.
I watched Petersen navigate away from my fighting position, chatting briefly with privates, specialists and my corporal.
Finally the s’ndar sergeant spoke. “I apologize for this nuisance,” she said.
“Not a problem,” I answered, grateful my TAD didn’t translate my distaste. We’d come to S’ndar-khk to help, and the various s’ndar hives had fought us tooth and nail – in the middle of their own stupid hive-on-hive war. They might have gone nuclear on each other if the Conglomerate hadn’t established first contact, and intervened for humanitarian reasons.
I heard some loud, rumbling engines, and turned to see a series of large trucks manoeuvring into the intersection. They were flatbeds of s’ndar construction, weighed down with large, square containers. I frowned. Any kind of large-scale commercial traffic like this should have been cleared with the Tactical Operations Centre well beforehand. The native traffic cop out in the intersection knew it too, and began waving his paddles furiously, signalling for the trucks to stop.
Their drivers obeyed …
… and the traffic cop exploded in a spray of barking rifle fire.
After that everything became a blur.
I remember the sides of the shipping containers splitting open and a small swarm of s’ndar pouring out. Civilians on foot began to scatter while vehicles attempted to either halt, or speed off. The air buzzed with countless s’ndar voices which overwhelmed my TAD. I switched over to the squad channel as I brought my weapon from off my back and pulled the charging handle.
The turrets on the s’ndar APCs – armoured personnel carriers – rotated and began hammering heavy rounds towards the flatbeds, only to be hit by rocket-propelled grenades.
The APCs burned.
I couldn’t determine which of the attacking s’ndar had fired. In the panicked crowd, it was impossible to tell the attackers apart from the civilians. I saw the primary sergeant hunched and firing her rifle, so I got down on one knee and began firing likewise. Whoever she shot at, I could shoot at, at least according to the rules of engagement – s’ndar being better able to tell one another apart.
Corporal Kent was taking care of the squad. Her bellowing voice was comforting through the speakers in my headset.
Using the laser sight on my weapon, I drew a bead on a s’ndar moving hurriedly towards me, while the crowd scrambled in the opposite direction. My finger gave a near-motionless trigger pull and my target’s carapace cracked hideously as the jacketed round tore through its thorax.
I fired at another one, also moving against the crowd. And another. And another.
There were so many trying to converge on us at once!
The senator! I thought. They’re after the senator!
His armoured car was in flames along with the militia’s APCs, and I heard the popping of the Secret Service’s pistols, punctuated by the occasional rip of their sub-machine guns.
From somewhere in the chaos of the crowd, numerous small objects catapulted. For an instant they looked like opaque mason jars, then one was smashing onto the pavement two metres from me.
Grenades?
I stopped firing and turned to see other such objects cascading across our sandbagged position.
I crouched down and began to move towards my people when I caught a deep whiff of a sickly sweet chemical. The contents of the mason jars had spilled wetly on the ground, vapours pluming, and I suddenly found myself rolling helplessly onto my side, arms and legs twitching sporadically.
The s’ndar had never used chemical weapons against us before. Neural agents which were effective against s’ndar didn’t work against humans, and vice versa.
Until now, anyway.
My instinct was to reach for the unused protective mask in my thigh pouch, but the pouch was pinned under my bodyweight and I didn’t have the strength to roll over. It was as if all the signals travelling from my brain to my body had been roadblocked.
Darkness began closing in on me from all sides, and I thought about how stupid it was to be snuffed like this.
The screams of my squad fell quickly silent, and the last thing I remembered was the murky shape of a s’ndar leaning over me.
It was not a member of the militia.
* * *
“Staff Sergeant?”
I didn’t move.
“Staff Sergeant!”
I still didn’t move. The neutered voice did not compute.
Something like a tree branch raked my face.
That computed.
I reflexively opened my eyes and tried to bring my arms forwards in self-defence, only to find them shackled over my head. Short, rusted iron chains kept me pinned against a cold wall. A single hole in the high ceiling allowed a broad-based shaft of sunlight to penetrate, forming a too bright circle on the cracked cement floor, and leaving the perimeter of the room in near darkness.
A sudden wave of nausea hit, and I coughed violently, my nose and eyes running – doubtless a final reaction to the residue of the chemical attack.
For a second I thought I was going to pass out again, but the nausea slowly subsided and I began blinking the tears from my eyes.
“He is alert,” said the mechanical voice. “Go inform the others.”
I kept blinking until a s’ndar silhouette took shape before me. The rotund, beetle-like being was resting on its lower motile legs with one utensil arm poised, ready to strike. The stiff hairs along that arm had stung mightily when it swiped me the first time. I’d have been happy to swing back, if only I wasn’t chained.
“Who the hell are you?” I demanded.
My TAD scratched out a translation. I was thankful that both the device and its requisite headset were still on my person. That meant my captors wanted to talk, not just kill me.
“I am not authorized to tell you,” answered the s’ndar, its own TAD turning clickety-clackety mandible movements into human speech.
“The timing of your ambush couldn’t have been accidental.”
“You are correct.”
“What has happened to Senator Petersen and my squad?”
“No one has been harmed,” the creature said. “You must realize that if we’d wanted to we could have killed you where you stood.”
“OK, you could have killed us and you didn’t,” I said. “What now?”
The s’ndar turned and left my cell for a moment, the crude iron door hanging wide open, then returned with several others, including a larger, older female who wore the colourful cloth raiment of a priestess.
Great, I thought. Someone who knows God is on her side.
Among the usual squabbling of the various hives, there was a particularly absolutist sect of s’ndar fanatics who considered the human presence on their world to be a literal desecration. They were the ones still fighting guerrilla-style even when most of the other resistors had been bought off at the bargaining table, or beaten down into submission by the Expeditionary Force.
“We are holding your senator,” said the priestess. “Do you understand what this means?”
“Yes,” I said. Capture or assassination of the leader of a rival hive was a time-honoured tradition among the s’ndar. Kill or incapacitate the queen bee, and the hive falls apart. A simple yet effective strategy – if you grew up in a hive. “But I don’t think you understand what it means.”
The s’ndar remained silent, watching me with alien incomprehension.
“When word gets back to Earth that the senator has been taken hostage or, worse yet, killed, there will be a demand for justice.”
“Justice,” the priestess repeated. “By whose definition? How many thousands of innocent s’ndar are dead because of humans?”
“The Conglomerate seems to think that if we hadn’t been sent in to stop your civil war for you, there’d be millions dead.”
“The human presence on S’ndar-khk is immoral,” she replied. “By intervening in our affairs, you deny us our divine right to order our own lives and our world according to s’ndaran destiny.”
“You won’t get any argument from me,” I said. “I couldn’t care less about you or your fucking planet. But seizing the senator won’t get the Expeditionary Force to budge. They’ll come after you with everything they’ve got.”
My own words surprised me. I didn’t owe the senator anything. But he’d seemed an earnest man, and I’d already seen too many friends die. Somebody had to pay.
As if sensing my rising anger, the two s’ndar flanking the priestess suddenly exposed and charged their weapons.
“Are you threatening me, Staff Sergeant?” said the priestess.
“I’m in no position to threaten you,” I told her. “I’m just stating a fact.”
The priestess stared at me for several seconds then turned and left the cell, guards in tow.
They locked the cell door behind them, and I was left alone.
My left arm ached. It wasn’t from the chains. There was a scabbed set of fresh stitches directly over where my Conglomerate-made ID chip had been implanted before leaving Earth. Every member of the military had one, to prevent us from going Missing-in-Action. But these s’ndar had been smart enough to cut the device out of me, lest it give my position away to the Conglomerate satellites in orbit.
I sighed. No hope of a quick rescue now.
Minutes crept by in silence. I shouted, hoping to get a response from any other human that might hear me.
No response.
It’s amazing how long an hour becomes when you are deprived of typical sensory input. The cell became deathly quiet. There was no noise from beyond the iron door, no music, no human or alien speech, nothing to look at except the circle of light that slowly inched across the cement floor as the day dragged on and turned into night.
I grew thirsty. Only a prolonged and significant amount of clanging with my chains attracted the attention of the guards, who brought me a portable light and two buckets: one to fill up, and one to empty.
Guards removed the manacles from my wrists and ankles, and then brought an even longer chain, which they connected to a collar they placed around my neck. The other end of the long chain was attached to a cleat in the floor, and I was able to walk and move for the first time in almost twenty-four hours.
They left me in the dark again. When the sun came up the priestess reappeared, only this time without her escorts. She kept well away from me, but her posture expressed curiosity.
“What now?” I said.
“If seizing or killing your senator yields an effect opposite of what we desire, consideration must be taken as to how to proceed next. We do not ordinarily keep prisoners.”
“What’s this for then?” I demanded, yanking the chain on my collar.
“Human prisoners,” she replied.
“You have the senator,” I said, “so what happens to the rest of us?”
“We used forbearance during the ambush, at the cost of many s’ndaran lives. Your squad still lives because I wish it, in spite of the feelings of many others who would just as soon see you all dead. After all, you are aliens. Everything about you is alien. You have no business being here. We want you off our planet, but before that can happen there are a few of us who believe we must understand you first. The better we understand you, the better we will be able to determine by what leverage you are moved.”
I stared at her. “Seizing hostages won’t do it, that’s for damned sure. We’ll have every available troop scouring this planet for Senator Petersen. Once they find him, it won’t be very pleasant for his captors.”
“We wi
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The Mammoth Book of SF Wars
Ian Watson
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