Lloyd Biggle Jr - The Cronoside Mission

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The Chronocide Mission

Wildside Press

www.wildsidepress.com

April 2002

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or

distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print

out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or

imprisonment.

OTHER BOOKS BY LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.:

The Angry Espers

The Fury Out Of Time

The Light That Never Was

Monument

Alien Main (with T. L. Sherred)

Jan Darzek Novels:

All the Colors of Darkness

Watchers of the Dark

This Darkening Universe

Silence Is Deadly

The Whirligig of Time

Cultural Survey Novels:

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The Chronocide Mission

The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets

The World Menders

Short Story Collections

The Rule of the Door

The Metallic Muse

A Galaxy of Strangers

Nebula Award Stories Seven(Editor)

MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE NOVELS:

Pletcher and Lambert Novels:

Interface for Murder

A Hazard of Losers

Where Dead Soldiers Walk

Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

The Quallsford Inheritance

The Glendower Conspiracy

In memory of

JOHN FLORY,

who asked for it.

THE CHRONOCIDE MISSION

All of the characters and localities in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or

dead, or to actual places, is purely coincidental.

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The Chronocide Mission

An original publication of

Wildside Press

P.O. Box 301

Holicong, PA 18928-0301

www.wildsidepress.com

Songs Quoted in the Text:

“We'll All Remember Janie,” words and music

“Counting All the Stars,” words and music

NOTE FOR THE READER

Much of this book's action takes place in the future, and the characters taking part in that action are, of

course, future characters. In the more than three hundred years postulated between the present and the

novel's setting, with a massive catastrophe in between, a great deal would have happened to our language.

It may well have become unrecognizable to the reader of today.

As a reminder of this fact, fabricated words (some will look like typos or misspellings!) are used for

flavoring throughout to remind the reader that a different—or greatly modified—language is being

spoken by people living in, or originating in, the future. (This of course will not be true of the present-day

characters who appear in the final chapters of the book!)

In the “future” language:

Day, daysare rendered asDae, daez.

Night, nightsareniot, niots.

These words hold in combinations:middae, midniot, dae-light, overniot.

Sikeis used for year;tenite , meaning ten nights, is the unit of temporal measurement used instead of

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The Chronocide Mission

“week.”Mont is used instead of month.

Lensandlenses becomelen andlens .

Some changes in common punctuation practices are also employed to contribute to that future

“flavoring.”

—Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

BERNAL

Bernal awakened suddenly to the drumming of horses’ hoofs on a forest road. “Some idiot peerlings on a

drunken frolic,” he told himself indifferently. He had spent more than half of his life deep in this enemy

Peerdom of Lant, and he was fond of telling young scouts he survived only because he was most alert

when he was sound asleep.

He raised up briefly to determine where the horses were and what direction they were going. Then he lay

back, stretched his arms and legs luxuriously, and considered the one serious problem he faced at that

moment, whether his beard needed trimming. The niot was only half advanced, the weather mildly warm,

and his bed, fashioned of a chance accumulation of leaves in the shelter of an enormous, drooping prickle

bush, the most comfortable he had experienced in more than a tenite. He loved the forest's pungent scents,

loved living in the open. For the second time that niot, he composed himself for sleep.

The distant horses rumbled across a bridge and left the main road for a little-used branch that led to a long-

abandoned lumber camp. Bernal continued to listen with closed eyes. An experienced scout in a thick

forest was in no danger from a rackety enemy on horseback. Almost subconsciously he analyzed the

sounds he heard and pondered the question of whether there were four horses or five. He decided on five.

He had begun to doze off again when his ear caught the yapping of dogs, andthat brought him tensely to

his feet. Dogs meant the riders were Lantiff, the vicious, mounted warriors of Lant, and the yapping

meant they were on leash. The Lantiff used dogs for only one purpose, tracking, and they leashed them

only when someone wanted a fugitive taken alive—which never happened when the ferocious beasts ran

loose.

A runaway worth that much trouble to the Lantiff would be worth the loss of a little sleep to him. If

nothing else, the fugitive might have useful information. Bernal gave no thought at all to the odds he

faced in taking on five Lantiff with dogs. Everything one did in life involvedsome risk.

He unsheathed one of the two long knives he carried, his only weapons, and moved like a flitting shadow

through the dense undergrowth toward the approaching horses. He had the confidence of long experience,

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The Chronocide Mission

but the silent, swift sureness of his movements through a dark and dense forest was purely instinctive.

The Easlon scout in Lant who could not move with silent swiftness did not survive to acquire experience.

A full moon, shining brightly in a clear sky, had ruined many a hunt for Bernal, but on this niot it would

not be a factor. Only where roads and widely scattered clearings had made rents in the dense overhead

canopy could the moonlight penetrate the forest.

The sound of the chase altered abruptly, and he paused for a few seconds to listen. The hunters had

dismounted to follow their dogs on foot. The advantage now belonged to Bernal, for the squat, muscular

Lantiff were clumsy in foot combat and bunglers in a dismounted chase. They crashed through

undergrowth, got caught up in vines and bushes, and soon were adding their curses to the dogs’ yapping.

The dogs’ killing instinct rivaled that of their masters, and both knew that a panicky, exhausted fugitive

could not outdistance them for long. The Lantiff's course shouts became frenzied; so did the dogs’

yapping, and they snapped at their leashes as they hauled their masters forward. The Lantiff were trying

to whip them into line for a methodical search.

Listening alertly as he ran, Bernal used an angling approach that would overtake them from behind and

downwind. He would attack one Lantiff and dog at a time, beginning with the pair on his right—the man

first, before he could sound an alarm. His death grip on the leash should hold the dog long enough for

Bernal to deal with it.

Then he would circle and take the pair on the left, leaving the odds tilted in his favor. He had the

advantage of surprise and a fight on his own ground and terms, and the dogs, straining as they were to

overtake their prey, would be a deadly encumbrance when their masters were attacked from behind in

thick undergrowth. On horseback, the Lantiff's most effective weapons were their long-handled, flesh-

ripping, multiple pronged and barbed lances. These were left with the horses when they fought

dismounted, and their clumsy, curved swords were of no use at all in a dense forest.

Bernal slowed his pace and began stalking his first victim, moving with long, silent strides.

Suddenly a beam of light cut through the darkness, passing over his head with a deafening crash, severing

branches, searing the foliage, and leaving in its wake tiny flames that flickered momentarily on the leaves

it had touched.

Bernal sank to one knee and froze there. The light stabbed again and again with the same violent clap of

sound. A dog screamed, and a man, and Bernal caught the revolting reek of burnt flesh. Then the air was

rent thunderously just above his head, leaving him momentarily deafened, and he ducked as flames

enveloped a dead bush close behind him. There were more screams. A beam of light bored into the

ground almost at Bernal's feet, and the thick forest humus emitted a rancid cloud of smoke.

Keeping low, Bernal began to edge forward.

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TheChronocideMissionWildsidePresswww.wildsidepress.comCopyright©2002byLloydBiggle,Jr.April2002NOTICE:Thisworkiscopyrighted.Itislicensedonlyforusebytheoriginalpurchaser.Makingcopiesofthisworkordistributingittoanyunauthorizedpersonbyanymeans,includingwithoutlimitemail,floppydisk,filetransfer,paperpr...

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