Colin Kapp - The Ion War by Colin Kapp

Author:Colin Kapp [Kapp, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER XVII

In many respects Lightning had been more fortunate than many of the other worlds Terra had chosen to attack. The defenders normal mode of living, massively insulated from the great storms which racked the planet's surface, had caused them to develop living conditions incidentally well suited to withstand all but the most dedicated space bombardment. Their extensive use of tunnels deep beneath the mountains rendered most of their installations proof against even nuclear attacks. Furthermore, the rising generations had grown to accept the violence of the planetary atmosphere as part of their natural environment; whereas units of the Terran occupation force had no such background, and viewed the dark and turbulent wastes of the surface as a region akin to Hell.

A further factor working in favour of the defenders of Lightning was the fact that, owing to her relative isolation even from the Hub communities, very little was known either about the size of her population or its distribution. Although a military government had been installed, the deposed planetary administration had so successfully sabotaged the record systems that whole townships, especially some of the submarine food-farm complexes and subterranean mining colonies, had remained effectively unknown to the new rulers. The smallness of the cities had led the Terrans into the error of believing the entire population was probably less than fifty million. A true count which would include the small enclaves scattered around the black and jagged coastlines would have returned a figure nearly four times as great. The magnitude of the error was due to the Terrans habitual assumption that most people live in cities; it needed long familiarity with the way of life on Lightning to appreciate that on the planet of storms the reverse was true.

The apparent pockets of resistance against which the Terrans had moved their lost ghost-squad had in fact been deliberately contrived by Garside Raad, and the main elements of the real resistance force had been persuaded to remain concealed against the time of Liam Liam's promised return to give them some coverage from space. Nobody, least of all the inhabitants of Lightning, held any illusions about the full weight of the holocaust which would arrive if the commander of the ships in orbit decided to seek the ultimate solution to the Lightning 'problem' and put a few planet-breaking hellburners down on the surface. Thus the Terrans were pacified by an uneasy simulation of conquest; while beneath, around and above them, shadowy forces were being carefully arranged.

Such was the subtlety of these forces that the action actually began not near to Lightning but halfway towards Terra, where the communications ship handling the FTL relay link between Terra and the Hub reported intruders in her sector of space, and appealed for assistance. Shortly a report was broadcast that the intruders had passed without incident, and that assistance was no longer required. Units of a Terran ship-chain which had started to her aid were recalled: had they continued, they would have found the original relay

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