Dalmas, John - The Three-Cornered War

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John Dalmas - The Three-Cornered War

THE THREE-CORNERED WAR

John Dalmas

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real

people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, NY 10471

ISBN: 0-671-57783-2 Cover art by David Mattingly First printing, January 1999

Distributed by Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATION

To Gail, Judy, Jack, Jill, Ian, Ryan, and Kristen with love

Acknowledgments

Thanks are especially due to MARY JANE ENG, JIM GLASS, and JIM BURK, for

critiques of an early draft. And to the Spokane WORD WEAVERS for critiques of

several chapters.

To CHRIS O'HARRA, the honcho of Auntie's Bookstore, for her great and constant

encouragement of Spokane area writers.

And to ROBERTA RICE and her jolly crew at Dragon Tales, for their long and firm

support of science fiction authors at conventions throughout the inland Northwest.

Foreword

Twenty-one thousand years before this story, eight large shiploads of refugees fled a

vast war of destruction, an Armageddon in a distant part of the spiral arm.

They were wise enough to realize that being human, they carried with them the seeds of

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future discords and war. And in an effort to avoid those wars becoming megawars, they

developed The Sacrament. This was a powerful system of pain-drug-hypnosis

conditioning for all the refugees, and for all their descendants forever. It was designed

to prevent scientific curiosity and investigation. They also stripped their ships'

computers of scientific and technological information that might lead to development of

megawar weaponry.

For several years the refugees traveled in hyperspace, emerging from time to time to

explore some promising planetary system for a habitable world. Eventually they settled

on one they named Iryala.

Over the following millennia, the Iryalans colonized other planets in their sector of the

arm, always taking with them the Sacrament and its technicians. Their worlds and

progeny remained under the dominion of Iryala, which retained to itself the exclusive

manufacture of spacecraft, space drives, and space weaponry.

Despite new worlds, new conditions, new colonies, the Sacrament resulted in a

technologically and mentally stagnant culture which increasingly stressed the concept

of Standardness. And a shallow view of both past and future, without a great deal more

curiosity about history than about the principles of how the universe works.

Each confederated world had its own ingrown interests and focuses, and they were too

farflung to be closely ruled. What held them together was the Sacrament, and their

dependence on Iryala for technology. Many of the colony worlds never achieved a

central planetary authority, but developed autonomous states separated by rivalries and

grudges.

The Confederation of Human Worlds, in its various historical formats, had never

experienced space warfare. In fact, with one exception, all its wars had been surface

wars between states that shared a common world. And in the more distant past, revolts

against Iryalan authority.

It hadn't even made a show of force in space for over seven hundred years. Its naval

equipment was of inherited designs, modified long millennia earlier to serve police

functions rather than fight wars.

During the exodus, long forgotten now, two large groups of refugees had been purged

for refusing the Sacrament. They'd been put down on two planets so difficult, survival

seemed questionable and civilization impossible. As the Confederation expanded, those

two forgotten worlds had been rediscovered. For a long time their primitive peoples

were treated as anomalies, and not quite human. One of those planets was Tyss, also

known as "Oven." Tyss was so poor that for millennia its only export was superb

mercenary regiments, hired by states on worlds without a central planetary government,

to help fight their many small wars.

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The T'swa—the people of Tyss—had evolved a culture that eventually caught the

interest of a small group of Iryalan aristocrats. Now the Tswa had a new export: ideas.

And those aristocrats formed the opening wedge in the stagnated culture of the

Sacrament. The Confederation began a planned and gradual change, heretical and

covert.

Meanwhile the ancient Home Sector had been terribly ravaged by the interstellar war

the refugees had fled. Some planets had been literally destroyed, physically disrupted.

Others were rendered uninhabitable for most lifeforms. On still others, the environment

was sufficiently degraded that the demoralized humans who survived the war did not

survive its aftermath.

Only three worlds retained human populations, and technology had died on them all.

Eventually one of them, Varatos, reevolved science, redeveloped space flight, and

discovered and subjugated the other two. On eight others, the ecology had adjusted

sufficiently to be habitable again, and the Vartosi colonized them. The result was an

interstellar imperium calling itself the Karghanik Empire.

Exploration had found no further habitable planets in their sector. Their religion

accounted for this peculiarity as the will of God—the same God they believed forbade

birth control.

Eventually, the worlds of the Empire grew seriously overpopulated. Finally one of its

planets, Klestron, sent an expedition years beyond known space. There it encountered

and skirmished with the alien Garthids. Later the expedition discovered and took

possession of a very minor "trade world" on the periphery of the Confederation. Within

months, however, they were driven from it.

But the expedition had broken the ignorance of both human sectors by whetting the

appetite of the Empire, while pressing the Confederation to accelerate change.

And disturbing Garthid isolation.

Prologue

More than two hundred parsecs from Iryala, two figures stood on a high balcony of the

Garthid imperial palace. Over the previous eighteen millennia, it had been built,

damaged by internecine wars, rebuilt and expanded. All without basic change. It was

far more than the imperial residence. It housed and officed the central executive

function overseeing a loose khanate of fifty-three inhabited worlds. There was no

compelling need for its centralization on a single site. Garthid electronics and

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cybernetics were highly advanced. But the palace suited the Garthid psyche.

The seven-sided wall enclosing it was more than six miles around, and tall beyond

need, yet the structures it enclosed rose high above it, an intricately interconnecting

complex of buildings, courtyards, jumbled roofs and high-vaulting towers, often

irregularly stacked. There were arching walkways, some open, some enclosed. Turrets,

landing platforms for floaters and shuttles, and innumerable and often unlikely

balconies, large and small, partly in lieu of adequate windows. The architecture was

more intricate and extreme than any Gothic cathedral, and far less orderly. Yet

somehow stark, brooding, powerful. Nowhere was there a glint of silver, gleamstone,

gilt, or even copper. The structures were black—hardsteel and poured blackstone—

nonreflective as a military gunbarrel. The tall narrow windows were deep-set, of dark-

tinted glass.

It was considered the most beautiful architecture in the Garthid Khanate.

The country surrounding it was a broad, tree-spotted grassland, broken by swales,

shrubby knolls, and forested flood plains. Tradition called it the home of the species—

a sort of racial shrine. Its local climate and ecology were as little changed over the

millennia as Garthid science could keep them. The Garthids, even those whose families

had dwelt for millennia on other worlds, felt a powerful, a compelling attachment to it.

Garthid racial memory insisted that the species had evolved on that plain, lived and

scavenged there. There or in a region and climate much like it. A savage Eden where

predators large and predators fleet had struck down or pulled down hoofed prey. Often

to be harassed and driven from their kill by robber scavengers, among which the

foremost were the pack-roving protogarthids, and later the early Garthids themselves,

tough, aggressive, relentless. Intelligent.

Now, after some two million years, the species looked not so different from its

ancestors. Their crania were notably larger, their heavy fighting teeth a little smaller,

their scaly skin less tough. But except for their crania, they were remarkably like their

forebears—obligatory carnivores with powerful jaws and teeth. Their frames were still

powerful, though their muscles seldom so sinewy and tough.

Two figures stood by the railing. The giant was the Surrogate of God, the smaller his

chief counselor. The Surrogate was of the guardian gender, of course, seven feet tall

and 440 pounds. His pantaloons were a sort of exaggerated plus fours, as wide as a

Varangian's, their vividly colorful pattern at odds with the black motif of the city's

architecture. His only other garb was a sort of vest, resembling a kabe-shima, its

enormous padded shoulders ending in upcurved black horns. His counselor, a foot and a

half shorter and only 40 percent of the

Surrogate's mass, wore nothing below his plain blue-green vest. He was of the healer

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gender, and had risen through the bureaucracy.

The evening was a pleasant 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Their balcony, a thousand feet

above the pavement, overlooked the traditional landscape, its genetically restored herds

of prey vaguely visible in the dusk. To the west, a molten smear showed where the sun

had set. To the east, stars already gleamed. It was on these the two Garthids gazed.

The aliens may not have arrived with bad intentions," the Surrogate said. "But suppose

for a moment they did."

His counselor answered diffidently. "It is possible of course, Your Potency. But the

reports suggest they arrived innocently, lashed out in fear, then fled. I doubt we shall

see them again."

The Surrogate's parietal hood flared slightly, its fringe of vestigial "horns" rigid. There

are passing encounters," he said. "Mere armed incidents. But there are also wars. The

difference is vast. We must be prepared, which includes being informed."

The chief counselor recalled a proverb: He who snoops the canebrake may rouse the

dragon. But he'd said enough.

The Surrogate continued: "We must develop a sentry system which can monitor a zone

at least a parsec across. No such thing has ever been attempted, but I am assured it is

technically and economically possible. I may also decide to scout the intruder's

extrapolated course, and perhaps discover its system of origin or destination. Our

success in that depends on their having followed a constant course over a very long

distance. And we will begin preparation for possible hostilities. To start with, this will

consist of preparing an infrastructure for a full war effort, in case one is needed.

Meanwhile the expansion of existing forces can be moderate."

The two old friends continued to gaze starward. Finally the chief counselor spoke

again: "We have not fought another species than ourselves since we destroyed die Chil-

ness-pakth, in the time of the Ninth Khroknash, more than eighteen thousand years

ago."

The Surrogate nodded. "In the pride of our youth. But perhaps it is time."

"I will pray on it."

The Surrogate grunted. "I have prayed. And it seems to me God had a hand in this. The

probability that an intruder would emerge twice within reaction range of a patrol ship is

extremely small." Laying a hand on the counselor's shoulder, he added: "We shall see.

If God wills peace, we shall have peace. I do not intend to force war on anyone

needlessly."

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Part One

THE GATHERING FORCES

Chapter 1 Return From War

The White Regiment arrived on Splenn with less than half its virgin strength. Arrived

by ship. There Colonel Artus Romlar exercised his influence with the Con-federation

Ministry, and had his three civilians forwarded to Iryala in a ministry courier. The

regiment itself gated to Iryala by teleport, arriving in a security area of the Landfall

Military Reservation. The troopers were quartered there overnight, and the next day

given a reception by the Office of Special Projects. The king himself attended, and a

crew from Iryala Video broadcast the welcoming ceremony.

Interesting, Romlar thought. Apparently the government wanted to add to the

regiment's reputation.

The next day the troopers were given new paycards that accessed the credits they'd

accrued. Then they dispersed for a dek,1 to vacation, and visit their families. It was their

first leave on their home world in more than four years.

Colonel Romlar, however, began three days of debriefing by an officer from the Office

of Special Projects. He'd

*A dek is a tenth of a year, and in the Confederation calendar occupies a role equivalent

to a month. For ordinary affairs, its length varies from world to world. The Standard

dek, like the Standard year and day, is that of Iryala.

expected the OSP debrief. What surprised him was having an audience, all of them

obviously members of the Movement. The general from the Ministry of Armed Forces

asked about the training Romlar had given to Smoleni rangers on Maragor. Apparently

the army planned to overhaul its own training.

On the fourth morning, Romlar was picked up by limousine, for a trip to "the residence

of Lord Kristal." He was delivered, however, to a high-rise government office building

on the extensive royal estate. Lotta Alsnor met him at the broad steps, and they faced

off, holding hands between them, looking at each other. He grinned. "How come I have

such a pretty girl?"

Her laugh was light. "Bullshit, Artus," she said. "I'm a plain and scrawny little minx.

Wiry anyway. I prefer it that way. It holds down the distraction." She grinned. "But say

it again; I like it." She squeezed his fingers. "I suppose you're wondering why you were

brought here. And what I'm doing here."

"It crossed my mind."

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"Let's go see Emry, and we'll uncross it."

She led him into a large reception area where security personnel were conspicuous. The

couple was not stopped; apparently Lotta was known to them. A wide main corridor

took them to a glass-domed rotunda, some eighty yards across and fifty high. There,

small groups of trees were surrounded by lawns, fountains, shrubs, and bright, many-

colored flowerbeds. There was a fragrance of blossoms. Birds darted, twittered, sang.

Apparently, Artus thought, tailored repellent fields kept them inside.

Lotta grinned at him. "Nice, eh?"

"My driver said he was taking me to Kristal's residence."

It was an inside joke, she explained. The building offlced OSP headquarters and labs.

As His Majesty's Governor of Special Projects, and a widower, Kristal lived there in a

penthouse apartment.

So the OSP rates a governor now, Romlar thought. It's risen on either the importance

scale or the PR scale. Or both.

They rode a lift tube to the top floor, where Lotta led him to a large reception room

with offices on two sides. Its windows extended from floor to ceiling.

The receptionist looked up smiling. "His lordship is expecting you," she said. "Just a

moment." She spoke quietly into a commset, then motioned toward a door. "Go right

in."

The old man was on his feet to greet them. Taking one of Romlar's thick hard hands in

both of his thin ones, he shook it. "Artus, it's good to have you back. It's spring where

you've come from, right?"

"Going on summer."

"Well. And here you find summer half used up." His deep bright eyes examined

Romlar's. "I have a new assignment for you. A new and different assignment, to start

after you've had your leave. A short leave, I'm afraid, a few days."

He paused. "I take it your regiment came home in good mental and spiritual condition?"

"Most of them better than I did."

Kristal nodded as if he knew what Romlar alluded to. "The regiment will not be

contracted out again," he said. "The Confederation has its own need for it. An imperial

invasion armada is on its way, little more than two years distant. You'll help develop

strategies and tactics to counter the invasion. Which will mean turning over regimental

command to someone else—whomever you consider best suited."

Romlar wasn't smiling now, but his face was relaxed, his answer casual. "Coyn

Carrmak," he said. "He's my best officer, the best leader, and the smartest man in the

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regiment. And the men know how good he is. Beyond that, he's also the luckiest person

I've ever seen." He glanced at Lotta. "With the exception of your brother.

Jeiym's come through more than anyone else in the outfit, unscratched."

He turned back to Kristal. "I'm not surprised. What specifically do you have in mind for

it?"

"More training. Partly in techniques and tactics no one's invented yet. That's where you

come in. Are you willing?"

Romlar grinned. "I'm your man. It sounds interesting."

"Good. To start with, you'll work right here. Your office will be two floors down."

Romlar put a hand on Lotta's arm. "Does Lotta have a role in this?"

Kristal laughed. "She'll take you to lunch and answer your questions. Meanwhile, I

have a great deal to do here." His gesture took in not only his desk and monitor, but the

whole building. "We'll talk again, very soon."

Lotta took Romlar to the second floor, to a dining room whose transparent inner walls

bordered the Rotunda. There they took a table near a cluster of flowering fern trees,

their fronds soft green through the glass. A waiter brought menus, took their drink

orders and left.

"An impressive place," Romlar said. "What hat do you wear here?"

"I'm Emry's principal psychic resource, and the head of his Remote Spying Section."

"How about getting married then? Take an apartment and be together for a change."

"I'm afraid I can't take an apartment with you."

His eyebrows raised. "Why not?"

She laughed. "Because Emry's assigned me a guest house on the hill. As free from

psychic disturbance as you can get, this near the capital. I'm one of a kind, he tells me.

To be more exact, he said: 'Lotta, you're like Artus. You're one of a kind.' " Her smile

softened. "There's lots of room, if you'd like to share it with me. Our schedules won't

always match, but we'll be together a lot more than once every few years."

Romlar chuckled. "I love you, Lotta. Very much. I suppose I've mentioned that before."

"I seem to recall something like that. In the dim past." She grinned. "Would you like to

see the house first? Before you commit yourself to anything as drastic as marriage?"

He laughed aloud, then leaned across the table and they kissed.

Chapter 2 Wedding

Artus Romlar's twelve-day leave was busy. Lord Kristal had had six days in mind for

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him, but he'd gotten an extension in honor of his forthcoming marriage. He spent a day

in Landfall with Lotta, shopping for civilian clothes, then six days with his parents.

Having their son at home had been a strange experience for them. As a boy, he'd been

considered marginally retarded. Big, fat, and dumb, his schoolmates had put it. But

seldom to his face, because violent could easily have been added. Not that he'd been

truculent. Actually he'd been self-effacing, tried to go unnoticed. But when he was

angered, his big fists flew. It was that which, soon after his seventeenth birthday, had

taken him from public school to reformatory.

Now he stood in their living room, bigger than ever but hardbodied. And even to diem,

charismatic! At age twenty-six, he was by far the Confederation's most famous military

figure in centuries. Not in the army, but commanding the 1st Special Projects Regiment,

the glamorous White T'swa. Still a teenager, he'd led the defense of Terfreya. Then the

regiment's survivors had dropped out of sight for a few years, completing their training

on other worlds.

Seeing him again, his mother was almost unable to speak. Her love for him, her only

child, had been blunted only occasionally by his troubles at school. Despite her usual

meekness, she'd defended him as best she could, even against a father who had

problems of his own. A worrier who sometimes attacked his son with abusive mouth,

and less often with his hands, a troubled man who'd tried but too often failed. Whose

saving grace was appreciation of his wife's goodness, an awareness that kept him from

abusing her physically, and for the most part verbally.

Now Artus's calm, self-assured presence awed them. Years earlier they'd seen action

videos of the guerrilla war he'd led on Terfreya. Now news television was showing

cubeage of the defense of Smolen, in the forests of distant Maragor. They'd viewed a

column of crude sleighs, loaded with munitions and supplies. The gaunt horses pulling

them were coated with rime from their own breath. They'd watched other people's sons

die in battle. Watched their own son, a large and imposing total stranger, leading a file

of deadly White T'swa on skis.

To those who'd known him only as a kid, it was unreal. And more unreal to have him

there live, a smiling man who seemed even larger than he was. At the terminal, he'd

hugged first his mother, then his father. The hug had startled Darlek Romlar, and

triggered guilt. There were no cameras standing by—only his parents had known he

was coming—and Artus wore casual civilian clothes. To better ensure privacy, he'd

arrived on a routine government courier flight.

He'd had few friends in school, but on the second day he'd visited two of them, and two

of his old teachers who had treated him with sensitivity. The visits blew his privacy, of

course, and that evening he was respectfully contacted by local television, which was,

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of course, government controlled. He put them off, scheduling them for his last day

there. On the third day he'd taken his parents for a two-day trip to Cobalt Lake, and the

Great Cascade of the Alvslekk. There they'd seen the sights from a horse-drawn

carriage, and eaten in fine restaurants. His mother adored him, while silently worrying

about the cost. His father began to feel more comfortable with him.

Lotta had stayed at Landfall. The Iryalan culture did not require that fianc6s and

fiancees be approved by, or even meet their prospective in-laws. And on the job there

was always more needing her personal attention than she had time for.

They were married the day after Artus returned. On Iryala, weddings were personal and

intimate. Thus the reception was small but elegant; Lord Kristal had paid for it. The

regiment was widely scattered on leave, and few even knew of it. A dozen attended.

Colonel Voker had flown in from the Blue Forest Military Reservation, along with his

T'swa counterpart, Dak-So. The T'swa colonel was larger than Artus, his scarred black

face set off strikingly by his white dress scarf.

Sir Varlik Lormagen was also there, with his wife and their son Kusu. Kusu was OSP's

Director of Research and Development, while Varlik had been the original "White

T'swi." He'd served as correspondent with the T'swa Red Scorpion Regiment, in the

Technite War on Kettle, more than thirty years earlier. The concept of T'swa-trained

Iryalan regiments had originated with him.

After the reception, the newlyweds left on the tradi-tional "love trip," five days on the

coast, alone at a guest cottage on Lormagen beach property.

That evening, after a swim in a backwater pool, they sat on a split-log bench beneath a

darkening sky, holding hands, and watching the surf crash on massive basalt. The first

stars were appearing in the east. Artus chuckled.

"A beautiful day," he said, and grinned down at the woman beside him. "Who'd have

imagined? It's quite a world, at least for its luckiest man."

"Artus," she answered, "luck is made, more often than not. Remind me to give you my

advanced lecture on 'the parts of man.'"

"Parts of man?" he said. "If you'll give me a lecture, I'll give you a demonstration."

She jabbed him with an elbow. 'That's not one of the parts I referred to." She got to her

feet, then sat astride his lap, leaning against him, her face close to his. "Although if

you're up to it again ..." she purred.

Chapter 3 Briefing

In his office in the OSP Building, Kusu Lormagen touched the switch on his desk

communicator. "What is it, lira?"

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JohnDalmas-TheThree-CorneredWarTHETHREE-CORNEREDWARJohnDalmasThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright©1999byJohnDalmasAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbookorportionsthereofi...

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