The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century Read online

  The Overman snapped his fingers. Someone glided up with wine in a glass. He sipped for a while before answering: “Yes. By all means. Let us reach an executive agreement now and wait for our hirelings to draw up a formal treaty. But it seems odd, sir, that after all these months of delay, you are suddenly so eager to complete the work.”

  “Not odd,” said Rusch. “Earth is rearming at a considerable rate. She’s had almost a year now. We can still whip her, but in another six months we’ll no longer be able to; give her automated factories half a year beyond that, and she’ll destroy us!”

  “It must have been clear to you, sir, that after the Earth Ambassador—what’s his name, Unduma—after he returned to your planets last year, he was doing all he could to gain time.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Rusch. “Making offers to me, and then haggling over them—brewing trouble elsewhere to divert our attention—a gallant effort. But it didn’t work. Frankly, your dominance, you’ve only yourself to blame for the delays. For example, your insisting that Earth be administered as Kolreshite territory—”

  “My dear sir!” exploded Belug. “It was a talking point. Only a talking point. Any diplomatist would have understood. But you took six weeks to study it, then offered that preposterous counter-proposal that everything should revert to you, loot and territory both—Why, if you had been truly willing to co-operate, we could have settled the terms in a month!”

  “As you like, your dominance,” said Rusch carelessly. “It’s all past now. There are only these questions of troop transport and prisoners, then we’re in total agreement.”

  Klerak Belug narrowed his eyes and rubbed his chin with one outsize hand. “I do not comprehend,” he said, “and neither do my naval officers. We have regular transports for your men, nothing extraordinary in the way of comfort, to be sure, but infinitely more suitable for so long a voyage than…than the naval units you insist we use. Don’t you understand? A transport is for carrying men or cargo; a ship of the line is to fight or convoy. You do not mix the functions!”

  “I do, your dominance,” said Rusch. “As many of my soldiers as possible are going to travel on regular warships furnished by Kolresh, and there are going to be Double Kingdom naval personnel with them for liaison.”

  “But—” Belug’s fist closed on his wineglass as if to splinter it. “Why?” he roared.

  “My representatives have explained it a hundred times,” said Rusch wearily. “In blunt language, I don’t trust you. If…oh, let us say there should be disagreement between us while the armada is en route…well, a transport ship is easily replaced, after its convoy vessels have blown it up. The fighting craft of Kolresh are a better hostage for your good behavior.” He struck a light to his pipe. “Naturally, you can’t take our whole fifty-million-man expeditionary force on your battle wagons; but I want soldiers on every warship as well as in the transports.”

  Belug shook his ginger head. “No.”

  “Come now,” said Rusch. “Your spies have been active enough on Norstad and Ostarik. Have you found any reason to doubt my intentions? Bearing in mind that an army the size of ours cannot be alerted for a given operation without a great many people knowing the fact—”

  “Yes, yes,” grumbled Belug. “Granted.” He smiled, a sharp flash of teeth. “But the upper hand is mine, your lordship. I can wait indefinitely to attack Earth. You can’t.”

  “Eh?” Rusch drew hard on his pipe.

  “In the last analysis, even dictators rely on popular support. My Intelligence tells me you are rapidly losing yours. The queen has not spoken to you for a year, has she? And there are many Norrons whose first loyalty is to the Crown. As the thought of war with Earth seeps in, as men have time to comprehend how little they like the idea, time to see through your present anti-Terrestrial propaganda—they grow angry. Already they mutter about you in the beer halls and the officers’ clubs, they whisper in ministry cloakrooms. My agents have heard.

  “Your personal cadre of young key officers are the only ones left with unquestioning loyalty to you. Let discontent grow just a little more, let open revolt break out, and your followers will be hanged from the lamp posts.

  “You can’t delay much longer.”

  Rusch made no reply for a while. Then he sat up, his monocle glittering like a cold round window on winter.

  “I can always call off this plan and resume the normal state of affairs,” he snapped.

  Belug flushed red. “War with Kolresh again? It would take you too long to shift gears—to reorganize.”

  “It would not. Our war college, like any other, has prepared military plans for all foreseeable combinations of circumstances. If I cannot come to terms with you, Plan No. So-and-So goes into effect. And obviously it will have popular enthusiasm behind it!”

  He nailed the Overman with a fish-pale eye and continued in frozen tones: “After all, your dominance, I would prefer to fight you. The only thing I would enjoy more would be to hunt you with hounds. Seven hundred years have shown this to be impossible. I opened negotiations to make the best of an evil bargain—since you cannot be conquered, it will pay better to join with you on a course of mutually profitable imperialism.

  “But if your stubborness prevents an agreement, I can declare war on you in the usual manner and be no worse off than I was. The choice is, therefore, yours.”

  Belug swallowed. Even his guards lost some of their blankness. One does not speak in that fashion across the negotiators’ table.

  Finally, only his lips stirring, he said: “Your frankness is appreciated, my lord. Some day I would like to discuss that aspect further. As for now, though…yes, I can see your point. I am prepared to admit some of your troops to our ships of the line.” After another moment, still sitting like a stone idol: “But this question of returning prisoners of war. We have never done it. I do not propose to begin.”

  “I do not propose to let poor devils of Norrons rot any longer in your camps,” said Rusch. “I have a pretty good idea of what goes on there. If we’re to be allies, I’ll want back such of my countrymen as are still alive.”

  “Not many are still sane,” Belug told him deliberately.

  Rusch puffed smoke and made no reply.

  “If I give in on the one item,” said Belug, “I have a right to test your sincerity by the other. We keep our prisoners.”

  Rusch’s own face had gone quite pale and still. It grew altogether silent in the room.

  “Very well,” he said after a long time. “Let it be so.”

  WITHOUT A WORD, Major Othkar Graaborg led his company into the black cruiser. The words came from the spaceport, where police held off a hooting, hissing, rock-throwing mob. It was the first time in history that Norron folk had stoned their own soldiers.

  His men tramped stolidly behind him, up the gangway and through the corridors. Among the helmets and packs and weapons, racketing boots and clashing body armor, their faces were lost, they were an army without faces.

  Graaborg followed a Kolreshite ensign, who kept looking back nervously at these hereditary foes, till they reached the bunkroom. It had been hastily converted from a storage hold, and was scant cramped comfort for a thousand men.

  “All right, boys,” he said when the door had closed on his guide. “Make yourselves at home.”

  They got busy, opening packs, spreading bedrolls on bunks. Immediately thereafter, they started to assemble heavy machine guns, howitzers, even a nuclear blaster.

  “You, there!” The accented voice squawked indignantly from a loudspeaker in the wall. “I see that. I got video. You not put guns together here.”

  Graaborg looked up from his inspection of a live fission shell. “Obscenity you,” he said pleasantly. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “I executive officer. I tell captain.”

  “Go right ahead. My orders say that according to treaty, as long as we stay in our assigned part of the ship, we’re under our own discipline. If your captain doesn’t like it, let him come down he
re and talk to us.” Graaborg ran a thumb along the edge of his bayonet. A wolfish chorus from his men underlined the invitation.

  No one pressed the point. The cruiser lumbered into space, rendezvoused with her task force, and went into nonspatial drive. For several days, the Norron army contingent remained in its den, more patient with such stinking quarters than the Kolreshites could imagine anyone being. Nevertheless, no spaceman ventured in there; meals were fetched at the galley by Norron squads.

  Graaborg alone wandered freely about the ship. He was joined by Commander von Brecca of Ostarik, the head of the Double Kingdom’s naval liaison on this ship: a small band of officers and ratings, housed elsewhere. They conferred with the Kolreshite officers as the necessity arose, on routine problems, rehearsal of various operations to be performed when Earth was reached a month hence—but they did not mingle socially. This suited their hosts.

  The fact is, the Kolreshites were rather frightened of them. A spaceman does not lack courage, but he is a gentleman among warriors. His ship either functions well, keeping him clean and comfortable, or it does not function at all and he dies quickly and mercifully. He fights with machines, at enormous ranges.

  The ground soldier, muscle in mud, whose ultimate weapon is whetted steel in bare hands, has a different kind of toughness.

  Two weeks after departure, Graaborg’s wrist chronometer showed a certain hour. He was drilling his men in full combat rig, as he had been doing every “day” in spite of the narrow quarters.

  “Ten-SHUN!” The order flowed through captains, lieutenants, and sergeants; the bulky mass of men crashed to stillness.

  Major Graaborg put a small pocket amplifier to his lips. “All right, lads,” he said casually, “assume gas masks, radiation shields, all gun squads to weapons. Now let’s clean up this ship.”

  He himself blew down the wall with a grenade.

  Being perhaps the most thoroughly trained soldiers in the universe, the Norron men paused for only one amazed second. Then they cheered, with death and hell in their voices, and crowded at his heels.

  Little resistance was met until Graaborg had picked up von Brecca’s naval command, the crucial ones, who could sail and fight the ship. The Kolreshites were too dumbfounded. Thereafter the nomads rallied and fought gamely. Graaborg was handicapped by not having been able to give his men a battle plan. He split up his forces and trusted to the intelligence of the noncoms.

  His faith was not misplaced, though the ship was in poor condition by the time the last Kolreshite had been machine-gunned.

  Graaborg himself had used a bayonet, with vast satisfaction.

  M’KATZE UNDUMA ENTERED the office in the Witch Tower. “You sent for me, your lordship?” he asked. His voice was as cold and bitter as the gale outside.

  “Yes. Please be seated.” Margrave Hans von Thoma Rusch looked tired. “I have some news for you.”

  “What news? You declared war on Earth two weeks ago. Your army can’t have reached her yet.” Unduma leaned over the desk. “Is it that you’ve found transportation to send me home?”

  “Somewhat better news, your excellency.” Rusch leaned over and tuned a telescreen. A background of clattering robots and frantically busy junior officers came into view.

  Then a face entered the screen, young, and with more life in it than Unduma had ever before seen on this sullen planet. “Central Data headquarters—Oh, yes, your lordship.” Boyishly, against all rules: “We’ve got her! The Bheoka just called in…she’s ours!”

  “Hm-m-m. Good.” Rusch glanced at Unduma. “The Bheoka is the superdreadnought accompanying Task Force Two. Carry on with the news.”

  “Yes, sir. She’s already reducing the units we failed to capture. Admiral Sorrens estimates he’ll control Force Two entirely in another hour. Bulletin just came in from Force Three. Admiral Gundrup killed in fighting, but Vice Admiral Smitt has assumed command and reports three-fourths of the ships in our hands. He’s delaying fire until he sees how it goes aboard the rest. Also—”

  “Never mind,” said Rusch. “I’ll get the comprehensive report later. Remind Staff that for the next few hours all command decisions had better be made by officers on the spot. After that, when we see what we’ve got, broader tactics can be prepared. If some extreme emergency doesn’t arise, it’ll be a few hours before I can get over to HQ.”

  “Yes, sir. Sir, I…may I say—” So might the young Norron have addressed a god.

  “All right, son, you’ve said it.” Rusch turned off the screen and looked at Unduma. “Do you realize what’s happening?”

  The ambassador sat down; his knees seemed all at once to have melted. “What have you done?” It was like a stranger speaking.

  “What I planned quite a few years ago,” said the Margrave.

  He reached into his desk and brought forth a bottle. “Here, your excellency. I think we could both use a swig. Authentic Terrestrial Scotch. I’ve saved it for this day.”

  But there was no glory leaping in him. It is often thus, you reach a dream and you only feel how tired you are.

  Unduma let the liquid fire slide down his throat.

  “You understand, don’t you?” said Rusch. “For seven centuries, the Elephant and the Whale fought, without being able to get at each other’s vitals. I made this alliance against Earth solely to get our men aboard their ships. But a really large operation like that can’t be faked. It has to be genuine—the agreements, the preparations, the propaganda, everything. Only a handful of officers, men who could be trusted to…to infinity”—his voice cracked over, and Unduma thought of war prisoners sacrificed, hideous casualties in the steel corridors of spaceships, Norron gunners destroying Kolreshite vessels and the survivors of Norron detachments which failed to capture them—“only a few could be told, and then only at the last instant. For the rest, I relied on the quality of our troops. They’re good lads, every one of them and, therefore adaptable. They’re especially adaptable when suddenly told to fall on the men they’d most like to kill.”

  He tilted the bottle afresh. “It’s proving expensive,” he said in a slurred, hurried tone. “It will cost us as many casualties, no doubt, as ten years of ordinary war. But if I hadn’t done this, there could easily have been another seven hundred years of war. Couldn’t there? Couldn’t there have been? As it is, we’ve already broken the spine of the Kolreshite fleet. She has plenty of ships yet, to be sure, still a menace, but crippled. I hope Earth will see fit to join us. Between them, Earth and Norstad-Ostarik can finish off Kolresh in a hurry. And after all, Kolresh did declare war on you, had every intention of destroying you. If you won’t help, well, we can end it by ourselves, now that the fleet is broken. But I hope you’ll join us.”

  “I don’t know,” said Unduma. He was still wobbling in a new cosmos. “We’re not a…a hard people.”

  “You ought to be,” said Rusch. “Hard enough, anyway, to win a voice for yourselves in what’s going to happen around Polaris. Important frontier, Polaris.”

  “Yes,” said Unduma slowly. “There is that. It won’t cause any hosannahs in our streets, but…yes, I think we will continue the war, as your allies, if only to prevent you from massacring the Kolreshites. They can be rehabilitated, you know.”

  “I doubt that,” grunted Rusch. “But it’s a detail. At the very least, they’ll never be allowed weapons again.” He raised a sardonic brow. “I suppose we, too, can be rehabilitated, once you get your peace groups and psychotechs out here. No doubt you’ll manage to demilitarize us and turn us into good plump democrats. All right, Unduma, send your Civilizing missionaries. But permit me to give thanks that I won’t live to see their work completed!”

  The Earthman nodded, rather coldly. You couldn’t blame Rusch for treachery, callousness, and arrogance—he was what his history had made him—but he remained unpleasant company for a Civilized man. “I shall communicate with my government at once, your lordship, and recommend a provisional alliance, the terms to be settled later,” he said.
“I will report back to you as soon as…ah, where will you be?”

  “How should I know?” Rusch got out of his chair. The winter night howled at his back. “I have to convene the Ministry, and make a public telecast, and get over to Staff, and—No. The devil with it! If you need me inside the next few hours, I’ll be at Sorgenlos on Ostarik. But the matter had better be urgent!”

  Philip K. Dick

  Regarded as one of the most important writers of science fiction in the twentieth century, Philip K. Dick built his reputation on subtly complex tales of intersecting alternate realities. His novel The Man in the High Castle, set in a future where Japan and Germany emerged victorious from World War II, won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1963 and is regarded as one of the best alternate history tales in science fiction. Dr. Bloodmoney offers a vision of American society in the aftermath of nuclear war. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Ubik, both set in worlds where time slips and reality shifts are the norm, crystallize the mood of paranoia and often comically chaotic instability that characterizes much of his writing. His Valis trilogy, comprised of the novels Valis, The Divine Invasion, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, has been praised for its use of science fiction and fantasy tropes in the service of philosophic and cosmologic inquiry. Several of his best-known stories have been successfully adapted for the screen: his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was filmed as the blockbuster movie Blade Runner in 1982, and his short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” was adapted as Total Recall in 1990. Revival of interest in Dick’s work after his death in 1982 led to the publication of his many mainstream novels, several volumes of his collected letters, and the five-volume Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick.

  Philip K. Dick

  THE RUSSIAN SOLDIER made his way nervously up the ragged side of the hill, holding his gun ready. He glanced around him, licking his dry lips, his face set. From time to time he reached up a gloved hand and wiped perspiration from his neck, pushing down his coat collar.