David Drake - General 01 - The Forge

The General, Vol. I: The Forge

by S.M. Stirling and David Drake (1991)

A Baen Books Original

Second printing, March 1995

[blurb]

"We made it!"

They were still two hundred meters ahead of the first Colonists. Carbines cracked and spat, but

you would have to be dead lucky to hit a moving target from a galloping dog. Of course, once the

platoon were bunched on the slow-moving ferry, nothing would prevent the better than three hundred

pursuers from deploying and shooting their quarry to ribbons long before they moved out of range.

Not to mention the pompom that was bouncing along behind the Colonial cavalry. The

quarter-kilo shells would be more than enough to deal with the ferry even without the carbines of the

riders.

The buildings were blurring by, adobe and pole frames. "Rifles out and take what cover you can

as soon as we get on board," Foley was shouting. Try and take out the pompom crew! The ferry bulked

larger and larger, but the four-meter gap of the loading ramp was an absurdly small target for thirty-odd

men galloping on dogback.

Raj grinned to himself as he thought of galloping toward it without pursuit. It would be terrifying.

Collisions, dogs falling, men being trampled or thrown against wood and machinery with bone-snapping

force. It was wonderful, how circumstances redefined the term "danger."

Chapter one

The rat screamed.

Raj Whitehall spun on one heel, the beam of his carbide lamp stabbing out scarcely faster than

the pistol in his right hand.

"Shit," he muttered, as the light fell on the corner of the underground chamber. The rodent was

dead now, dangling from the jaws of a cat-sized spersauroid, a slinky thing with a huge head and slender

body carried high on four spidery legs. It blinked at them with eyelids that closed to a vertical slit, and

then was gone with a rustle of scales against rubble. Raj grimaced. One of the few pleasant things about

living in East Residence was that Terran life had mostly replaced the local. But not in the catacombs, it

seemed.

Thom Poplanich laughed. "Careful, Raj," he said. "Those bullets will bounce, you know."

Raj grinned back a trifle sheepishly as he holstered the weapon. A genuine five-shot revolver, it

was as much a badge of nobleman's rank as was the saber he carried slung over one shoulder. Both

were as familiar as his clothes; Whitehall had been born in Descott County, hard country two weeks'

journey north of the capital, where men went armed from puberty. The platinum stars and hunting scenes

inlaid in the steel of the revolver were a badge as well, of membership in the Governor's Guard.

"Spirit of Man of the Stars," Raj said, and touched the silver wafer etched in holy circuits that

hung around his neck. "This place makes my skin crawl." Everyone knew the catacombs under New

Residence were ancient and huge . . . but those were just words until you saw it. This complex could

house the whole population of the capital, with room to spare—and New Residence was the largest city

on Earth.

"Not a spot for a picnic," Poplanich agreed.

The abandoned elevator shaft he had found below his apartments ended in this floor of rubble;

from the hollow sounds and the way it shifted, there must have been levels below. Rust-streaks marked

the lines of ancient machinery. Now there was only the cool gray surface of fused stone, and one

half-open door . . . no, wait.

"Look at this," Poplanich said. He walked quickly over the broken rock and flicked his lantern's

beam downward, moving with a studied grace. "That hasn't been here since the Fall."

It was a tallow candle stub, resting in a congealed puddle of its own grease. There was a

smokemark above it, but dust lay thick over all.

"But it's been there long enough," Raj commented, trying the door. It was frozen in its half-open

position, but there was just room for his barrel chest. "Hand me the paintstick, will you, Thom?"

They would need to be very careful not to lose their way, down here in the catacombs. He

touched his wafer again. Everything around them was a product of men who had lived before the Fall,

when the Spirit of Man of the Stars had infused their souls. You could see it in the way the rock was

carved, seamless and even, in the strange bits and pieces of shattered machinery, the very materials

unfamiliar. There might even be . . .

"If we come across any computers, we'll have to tell the priests," he said.

Thom laughed. "They don't need genuine relics any more," he said with easy cynicism. "Haven't

you heard what the last synod ruled about the Miraculous Multiplication?"

Raj flushed; they were both just turned twenty-five, but there were times when Thom Poplanich

made him feel very much the raw youth, a rustic squire in from the provinces. Even in tweed and leather

hunting clothes, the other man had a slim self-assured elegance that spoke often generations of urban

aristocracy. Raj touched his amulet again. It was comforting to know that this was the genuine article,

recovered two centuries ago and blessed by Saint Wu herself. Even if the Church had ruled that belief

made the relic holy, rather than the reverse.

He forced himself into the door and pushed with knees and hands, back braced against the wall.

For a long moment nothing moved, until he took a deep breath and threw the strength of shoulders and

back into it, timing the contraction to the exhalation of his breath the way the family armsman had taught.

A seam parted along the side of his tight uniform jacket, and the thick slab slid open with a protesting

screech of tearing metal. Raj dropped to the floor in a crouch, panting slightly.

"Showoff," Thom said as he sidled past. There was surprise and slight envy in his tone; his friend

grinned.

"A strong back comes in useful for other things than pulling a plow," he said, raising his own

lantern. "Let's keep turning to the right."

-=0=-***-=0=-

Raj genuflected again, touching brows and heart to the ancient, dust-shrouded computer terminal.

"Look, there's not much point in going on," he said. This was the fifth level down from their

starting-point. Emptiness, offices and storage space, eerily uncorroded metal and the smell of damp

stone. And enough computer equipment to stock every church in the Civil Government and the barbarian

lands as well.

Poplanich ran a hand over the swivel chair before the terminal. Dust puffed up behind his hand,

silver-yellow in the light of the lantern.

"Feel this," he said, fascinated. "It looks like leather, but new leather. This area's been

abandoned since the Fall, it should have rotted away to shreds." He swung the chair back and forth. "A

greased axle won't turn that smoothly, and this doesn't even squeak."

Raj shrugged. "They had powers before the Fall. The Spirit withdrew them when they proved

unworthy."

Thom nodded absently; that was from the Creed. "I still think this was a naval installation," he

said, picking up a plastic sign from one desk. It was made of two strips joined at one long edge; one side

was blank, and the other bore black letters in the Old Namerique tongue. Wez cainna bie fyr'd: slavs

godda bie sold. His lips moved silently, construing it first into modern Namerique, and then into his native

Sponglish. He frowned absently. Well, of course, he thought.

"I don't know," Raj replied, heading cautiously out into the corridor again. "The Book of the

Fall—hey, there's a stairwell leading down here, hand me the paintstick again—says the military joined

the Rebellion." They had both sat through enough droning sermons on that.

Thom's teeth flashed in a grin. "Just as my own interpretation—and please keep this from the

Invigiles Against Heresy, will you?—I'd say that the Brigade and the Squadron and the others were

pretty low-echelon units, out in the wilds when the Fall came. They didn't cause the breakup of the Holy

Federation, they just seized power where they could when we were cut off from the Stars."

Raj felt a slight discomfort; that was not outside the canons of interpretation, but it was

dangerously free-thinking. "Come on," he said. "Two more levels, then we go back."

-=0=-***-=0=-

"That's a light," Thom said in a hiss as they turned the corner. His foot brushed aside a crumbling

human femur; they had seen enough skeletons on this level to grow blasé. A brittle pile of brown-gray

bone, hardly marked by the teeth of the rats, bits of rope and stiff leather and rusted metal scattered

about it.

Raj squinted, then turned off his lamp. His friend followed suit, and they waited for their eyes to

adjust. He could feel the darkness fading in around him, and with it the enormous weight of the

catacombs. His mouth felt dry. That is a light, he thought. A soft white light that was unlike anything he

had ever seen; not like sunlight, stars, fire, or even the harsh actinic arclights that you sometimes saw in

the Governor's Palace or the mansions of the very rich. This was the light of the Ancients; the light of the

Spirit of Man of the Stars.

"Live equipment," he whispered, genuflecting again. Blasphemy. Fallen Man's eyes are blind to

the Light of the Spirit. I am not worthy. With an effort of will he relaxed the rock-tense muscles of his

neck and shoulders.

"Thom, we shouldn't be here. This is something for a Patriarchal Council, or the Governor."

There was a slight tremor in his hands as he drew his pistol, swinging the cylinder out and checking the

load. The unnatural gleam shone off the polished brass of the cartridges. He was conscious of the

uselessness of the gesture; what good would a revolver be against the powers of the unFallen? Of

course, it was no more useless than anything else he might do . . .

"Priests . . . " Thom visibly reconsidered. "Priests aren't notably more virtuous than you or I, Raj,"

he said reasonably. His eyes stayed fixed on the unwinking glimmer, shining slightly with an expression of

primal hunger. "Of course, if you're . . . uncertain . . . you can wait here while I check. I wouldn't think

less of you for it."

Raj flushed. I'm too old to be pushed into something stupid by a dare, he thought angrily,

even as he felt his mouth open.

"I'll use the pry bar," he said. "Get it out, would you?"

Thom rummaged in his rucksack, while Raj advanced to examine the door. The feeling in his

stomach reminded him of waiting behind the barricade during the street fighting last fall, when the sound

of the rioters had come booming around the corner, thunder of feet and massed chanting of voices:

Conquer! Conquer! Just like then; he had seen the eyes of the rankers flick toward him, as they stood at

parade rest. He had strolled up to the chest-high barrier of carts and furniture and paving stones as if he

were walking out the front gate of his father's manor, going to inspect the dogs. Sergeant major, first

company to the breastwork; prepare for volley fire, if you please. His voice hadn't been the shaky

squeak he'd expected, either.

You could get through anything, once you'd decided you had to. Look at it as a job to be done,

and then do it, because somebody had to and it cursed well wasn't going to happen if you waited for the

next man. Not to mention that his role in putting down the riots had gotten him a Captaincy and the still

more important position of Guard to the Vice-Governor.

Closer, and the light was a narrow strip along one side of the door rather than a wedge; he

pressed an eye to the crack, but it was reflecting around a tongue-and-groove socket that was almost

closed. The air blew from inside to him, dry and metallic and tasting of . . . old bones? he thought.

"Maybe I can get it open," he said experimentally, trying for a grip with his hands. The crack was

too narrow, but his friend slapped the octagonal steel of the pry bar into his hand as he reached around

behind for it. The metal was as thick as he could comfortably grip and about a meter long; one end

flattened out into a wedge, and the other into a hook. The wedge slipped in easily enough, a hand's

width, and he braced one foot against the jamb of the door.

"Wait a second," Thom murmured. He pointed to a rectangular plaque beside the blank gray

rectangle of the portal. "I've seen an old manuscript that describes doors like these, Annaman's Records

of the Settlement. The inscription said 'touche thi squaire, und recessed it shall by.'"

"But will it work now?" Raj said, a little sharply. A Descott squire had better things to do with his

youth than pour over ancient manuscripts and parse verbs in Old Namerique, to be sure. But it was still a

little irritating, when some city noble trotted out a classical quotation. At least Thom's usually have

something to do with reality, he thought.

For answer, Thom pointed at the light that picked out the highlights of their faces, and then

slapped his hand on the control. There was a chink sound deep inside the wall, and the door shifted

slightly. So slightly that he would not have been conscious of it, except for the tremor of metal against his

palms.

"Well, let me try muscle if scholarship won't budge it," Raj continued, forcing cheerfulness into his

tone. "And hsssssssaaaa!"

There was a moment of quivering tension, and then the door began to move; in a squealing jerk

for the first centimeter or so, then more rapidly. Halfway open it stuck again with a soundless authority

that told him something solid had fallen across the trackway. Raj leaned head and shoulders through,

squinting and blinking against a fall of dust and the dim light.

"I can see where the light's coming from," he said.

Thom crowded up beside him, craning for a look. Beyond the door was a corridor five meters

across, running right into darkness; on their left was a square of brighter light, another door. And the floor

was two meters down from where they stood, the sagging remains of a metal stairway offering more

hindrance than help.

"If you lay and held onto my wrists, I could drop to the bottom, Thom said.

"And how in the Outer Dark would you get back up?" Raj said dryly. "Here, let me have your

belt."

The smaller man handed over the narrow dress belt of his jacket; it was rogosauroid hide traded

down from the Skinner country north of Pierson's Sea, and strong enough to hold four times their

combined weight; Raj's was much the same, except that it was broader and less elaborately tooled. He

looked thoughtfully at the door, tapping the heel of his palm experimentally on the edge. It seemed to

have stuck fast. On the other hand . . . The pry bar was just a little shorter than the width the door had

opened; he laid it in the opening and stamped on it until it seated firmly, the wedge-end driven under the

bottom between runway and door.

"This'll hold the belts," he said, buckling one to the other. "I'd better go first."

Raj took the leather in one hand and his pistol in the other, bracing his boots on the wall and

rapelling down in three bounds. Dust spurted up under his feet and bone crunched, spurting more dust.

He swore and spat, unpleasantly conscious of how long it had been since he had a drink. Then he swore

again, softly, as Thom dropped down beside him and the nature of the floor he was standing on became

plain.

"Bones," he whispered. Thom unshuttered his lantern and swung the beam around, brighter than

the white glow from the doorway and better for picking out detail.

"Lots of bones," his friend agreed, sounding more subdued than usual.

Not quite enough that you could not find clear space for your feet, but nearly, and the crumbled

dust between them spoke of others still older.

"And look," Thom continued. "What the hell's that?" That was a rust-crusted weapon; Raj

picked it up, and pursed his lips in a soundless whistle.

"It's a koorg-rifle," he said. "The Civil Government Armory stopped issuing them two hundred

years ago."

Raj might not have been to the schools of rhetoric, but there was nothing wrong with his grasp

of military history. "Double-barreled muzzle loader with octagonal barrels."

His friend's light picked out other items of equipment; off by the other wall there was what

looked like one of the ceremonial weapons the mannequins of the Audience Hall Guard carried. Raj

looked closer: it was not, it was a real laser, the ancient Holy Federation weapon. The metal men in the

Hall of Audience carried non-functional replicas, but this was the real thing. The soldier's eyes narrowed

as he followed the line of the muzzle; there was a deep pit to the upper right of the door, melted into the

stonework, with a long dribbling icicle of lava below it. Nothing on the metal of door or frame, although

the melt would have crossed it.

"Thom," Raj said briskly. "This has gone too far; this is seriously strange. We should fall back and

report. Now."

Reluctantly, the other man nodded. And—

CRANG. The door above their heads slammed shut so quickly that the huge musical note of the

pry bar breaking was almost lost in the thunder-slam of its closing. A fragment of the steel bar cannoned

across the corridor and ricocheted back, falling at Raj's feet. He bent to touch it, and stopped when his

skin felt a glow from the torsion-heat of breakage. Thom was standing and examining the linked belts; the

buckle that had fastened them to the bar was missing, and the tough reptile hide cut as neatly as if it had

been sliced with a razor. Raj felt a giant hand seize his chest, squeezing, tasted bile at the back of his

throat.

"Well," he said, and heard it come out as a croak. "Well, it is still active."

Thom nodded jerkily. "Notice something about the skeletons?" he said.

Raj looked around. "Pretty dead."

"Yes, and no marks on the bones. Looks like they fell in place, and nothing disturbed them."

Raj Whitehall nodded. The surviving skeletons were eerily complete, like an anatomy model; no

toothmarks, nothing disturbed by scavengers.

"I don't think there's much point in going that way," he answered, waving to the darkness on their

right. The beam of his lamp showed nothing but the walls of the corridor, fading to a geometric point with

distance. "That heads due east, near as I can tell." Out from under the city and towards the hills. "If

there's anything beyond that . . . light . . . we might find another shaft leading up."

Thom nodded, wiping a sleeve across his mouth. "Maybe. I wish we'd brought some water."

Raj grinned. "I wish you hadn't said that," he said. "I really do."

-=0=-***-=0=-

"Mirrors," Thom said. For the first time in Raj's memory, there was real awe in his friend's voice.

"I've never seen mirrors like this.

"I've never seen a light like that, either," Raj said.

The room was circular, floored and roofed with mirrors, and with a single seamless sheet of

mirror for the walls. The center of the circle was a pillar of light; white, glareless, heatless, odorless,

shining on the endless repeated figures of the two men. Raj felt himself stagger in place, lost and

splintered in fractions of himself. It was a moment before he noticed the last, the intolerable strangeness.

"Thom," he said urgently. "Why don't the mirrors reflect the light?" There it was before their

eyes, a column as physically real as their own hands, a light that was all that kept this place from being as

dark as a coffin. Yet in the mirrors there was no trace of it, only the two men and their equipment.

Thom blinked for an instant; then his eyes widened and he turned to run. Did run, one single step

before freezing in place as if turned to stone. Even his expression froze, and Raj could see that his pupils

shared the paralysis. The doorway that had been Thom's goal had . . . not closed, simply vanished; only

the direction of the living statue that had been his friend enabled Raj to tell it from any other part of the

smooth mirror curve. The light-pillar in the center of the room blazed higher.

Raj fired, with his second finger on the trigger and the index pointing along the barrel, the way the

armsman had taught him: at close range, you just pointed and pulled. The five shots rang out almost as

one, the orange muzzle flashes and smoke dazzling his eyes. Almost as loud was the bang-whinnnng of

the soft lead bullets ricocheting and spattering off the diamond hard surfaces of the room; they left no

mark at all. Something struck Raj in the foot with sledgehammer force, a bullet tearing off the heel of one

boot. A long tear appeared in the floppy tweed of Thom's breeches . . . Then nothing, nothing except an

acrid cloud of dirty-white powder smoke that made Raj cough reflexively.

Raj's muscles seized halfway through the motion of reloading. A voice spoke: not in his ears, but

in his mind. Spoke with an inhuman detachment that had a flavor of hard-edged crispness:

yes. yes, you will do very well.

Chapter two

The floor had vanished, and the pillar of light. There was nothing beneath him, although he could

feel the pressure of weight under his feet. The off-white haze of powder smoke cleared rapidly, as if the

air was being circulated without a detectable breeze. Thom hung suspended also, still in the first motion of

flight, as if this was the Outer Dark where those who rejected the Spirit of Man fell frozen forever.

He heard his throat trying to whimper, and that brought him back to himself. He was a Whitehall

of Hillchapel, and a soldier, and a man grown. The worst this whatever-it-was could do was kill him, and

a paving stone in the riots could have done that. Or a scropied in his boot on a hunting trip, or a Colonist

bullet or a Brigade bayonet. His soul only the Spirit could damn or save.

yes. excellent.

"Who the Dark are you?" Raj said, trying for the tone his lather had used on machinery-salesmen

back at Hillchapel. Hillchapel, sweet wild scent of the silverpine blowing down from the heights, the

sound of a blacksmith's hammer on iron—

I am Sector Command and Control Unit AZ12-b14-c000 Mk. XIV.

Awe struck the human; he tried to genuflect, found himself still immobile. "Are you . . . a

computer?" he asked incredulously.

yes. although not in the sense you use the term.

"What do you mean?"

i am not a supernatural being.

"What are you, then?"

i am a sentient artificial entity of photonic subsystems tasked with the politico-military

supervision of this sector for Federation Command.

That's what a supernatural being is, dammit. Raj frowned; that was straight out of the Creed,

and even the phrasing was the archaic dialect the priests used. First it says it isn't a supernatural

being, then it says it's working for the Holy Federation, he thought in bewilderment. An angel.

"What do you want of me?" he continued bluntly. Although the skeletons outside had given him a

few grisly notions along those lines.

observe. think.

Thom and the mirrored sphere vanished. This time Raj did cry out, but it was as much wonder as

fear; he was hanging suspended in air, flying as men had done before the Fall. It took a moment for him

to recognize precisely where; the bird's-eye-view was utterly unfamiliar, and the scene below was not

that which he knew. It was the shape of the land itself that finally shocked recognition out of him, known

from a hundred maps. The New Residence, the city of the Governors and the capital of the Civil

Government. The near-perfect circle of the bay, cut by a single three-kilometer channel; the buildings

were laid out on the Silver Antler hills, just in from the passage to the sea. Off south he could see the

delta of the Hemmar River, misty in the morning light . . .

But it was not his city, not the city that Governor Vernier ruled in this Year of the Fall 1103.

Instead of tight-packed streets within great defensive walls, there were towers and low domed structures

scattered through forest and park, as if the whole town was a nobleman's pleasaunce. The streets were

merely cleared lanes, with vehicles floating along not touching the thick green turf beneath them; and the

city was huge, stretching off into the distance beyond what he could see. Metallic eggs moved across the

map-like landscape beneath him in slow-seeming traceries. A ship was making passage in through the

channel, a slim thing without sails or oars or fuming smokestack—the perspective snapped home, and he

knew it was a thousand meters long or more.

The view swooped down to show people in odd, rich clothing strolling amid unearthly splendors.

In a fenced garden with a strange double-helix sign above the gate children played with fabulous beasts,

griffins and centaurs, miniature bears and tiny dogs no higher than a man's waist; even the ordinary riding

dogs were odd, the usual breeds seeming shrunk to no more than five hundred pounds, smaller even than

a lady's palfrey.

"Holy Spirit of Man of the Stars," Raj whispered. Tears of joy formed at the corners of his eyes

and leaked downward. "I am not worthy!" A vision of time before the Fall! he exulted inwardly. Why

me? I'm just a soldier, not a priest. I . . . I try to live by the Spirit . . . Sins he had neglected to Enter

at the Terminal floated up, making him wince.

no. Was there a trace of exasperation in the passionless non-voice? this simulation is of a

period roughly twenty years after the events you refer to as the Fall, after the last

faster-than-light transit from bellevue. observe.

-=0=-***-=0=-

Something flashed by him in mid-air, something moving too quickly to see as more than a streak.

Fire blossomed below; his heart cried out in shock as the lacy towers crumpled, and he could feel the

small hairs along his spine struggling to stand erect as the ball of flame expanded out toward him like a

soap bubble of orange and crimson. Thunder rolled impossibly loud and long.

Wait a minute, he thought. I don't feel anything different. The air even smells the same as it

did before the vision. Why don't I feel the wind?

this is a simulation. consider it a very good map. you may alter your point of view by

concentrating.

There was a feeling like a click behind his eyes, and the scene swooped dizzily. Raj tumbled for a

moment before regaining control; it was as if he was a disembodied pair of eyes and ears with the power

of flight. Cautiously, he swooped downward. The beautiful ancient buildings lay tumbled, or burning, or

shattered in zones of overlapping circles out from the center of the fading ball of flame. He moved until

the radius of complete destruction was behind him, watching like a god as little swooping vehicles came

to collect the wounded; hideously burned figures writhed or lay still, and the ground-cars that had zipped

along the roadways of turf were tumbled like toys, some driven through the fronts of houses.

There must have been a wind like a hurricano, he thought; the scene matched the description

of the terrible storms of the far southern Zanj Sea. Fire like the heart of a star, then a killing wind.

Raj had received the rudiments of a classical education, despite the pragmatism of his country-gentry

family. There was only one thing that fitted that description: fusion bomb, the agency of the Fall.

Then other flying cars touched down. He grunted in shock as he recognized the blazon on their

David Drake - General 01 - The Forge

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