War World VII: Blood Vengeance by Jerry Pournelle

Author:Jerry Pournelle [Pournelle, Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction; American, Science Fiction; Canadian
ISBN: 0-671-72201-8
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2008-10-01T06:00:00+00:00

Everything had gone wrong—the Citadel bypassed, the Gatling nests that should have warded the pass blasted by the cursed mortar the Bandari had fetched, Nûrnen burning, works going up to keep the Regiments now in the west end of the Valley from rescuing the town or the Citadel . . . all in all, it was enough to drive a man mad, especially when that man was the one who had ordered the Regiments away from the Citadel in the first place.

Carcharoth's smile stretched slowly across his face. Nothing could drive him mad, not now. He was mad already.

Part of his mind knew it and still struggled against it. The rest, though, the rest had tipped onto that slippery slope the moment he realized the TAC, in which he'd placed his trust, proved fallible after all. Let a Cyborg's most basic assumptions be overthrown and everything they supported would eventually crash down with them.

The outer shell of the Battlemaster's persona still held, though even it had cracks—he'd seen white all around the edges of Dagor's eyes, as if they were those of a spooked horse. Still, the wild Soldier clung close to him; he'd done a good job of establishing a master/disciple relationship before his own degeneration had made further advance along that front difficult. Now, even while Carcharoth paced the battlements of the Citadel's outer walls, in his own mind he moved more through the misty world of legend than the mundanity of the siege. As reality faded within him, the archetypes of the mythos the Soldiers—the Saurons—had fostered reached upwards into his consciousness. The flame thrower he often carried seemed more and more a part of him. It was right that he should have the power to enforce his will with a whip of fire.

His eyes went to the mountains on whose skirts the Citadel sat. He laughed. A sentry—a youth who might make a Soldier if he lived—gaped at the spectacle of a Cyborg snickering. Carcharoth turned on him. "What would you have me do, boy? Bury myself with vain labor at the Threat Analysis Computer like that fool of a Breedmaster?"

"N-no, sir," the boy stuttered.

Carcharoth laughed again. You'd have to be a madman to think anyone would climb those peaks and take the Citadel from behind. Who would bother even to scan them, when the air ran out before the mountains did?

And yet, high on the slopes of the Atlas Mountains, where only a madman would think to find enemies, he spied motion. Even he doubted it. But where common sense had run out of him like beer from a cracked cup, his senses still functioned on a level of animal perfection. He saw what he saw: men, attenuated by distance even to his Cyborg's sight, toiling upwards.

What are they after? So small a force could scarcely endanger or even distract the Citadel in direct assault—and there were five thousand meters of sheer cliff between their position and the Inner Keep. Too many were up there to make a reconnaissance party; a handful would have sufficed for that.

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