05. Children of Flux and Anchor (37 page)

Staff meetings of brigade-level officers and wizards were called.

"They're coming out!" the forward observers radioed back, the dense Flux of the void shortening their range to only ten meters, but in back of them was another with a radio, and another, and another.

Matson studied the map as the reports came in. With a quasi-Fluxland environment, the radios in the rear could communicate to virtually all of them if need be, and this was the time.

"Five projectors initially, at map coordinates GG-267, IL-109, KB-026, MN-041, and PD-144. Projector ready?"

"Ready!" came Suzl's excited response.

"Wizards deploy with units to each position!" Four each from Suzl's crowd would cover each position, the rest in reserve in case of problems or other breakouts. The fourteen allied wizards were dispersed to get to any position that needed them in the minimum amount of time. New Eden would send its wizards out with a quick shield thrown up, then reinforce it with more wizards. Then the projectors would come through, and the troops behind them. There was a temptation to break the preliminary shield and gobble up the wizards, but then the projectors wouldn't come through. The prizes could not be easily won. The wizards of New Harmony would have to be close enough to actually see the shield to really have a crack at it, and while New Eden didn't have the range or the practice, it had easily discovered how to make a sweep and deactivate a wizard.

Matson was certain they wouldn't fail for lack of trying. Earlier some of the spies who'd managed to make it out had told them all about New Eden's plans for World. They would run a transitory version of the master program in Flux, but amended. There were about sixty million men and women on World, and about five million of them were New Eden men. Each of those men had been promised when it was over that they would get twelve wives as a harem, and that all, even the lowest, would be lords of vast domains to give to their own sons. Only Ayesha needed to have the arithmetic of
that
explained to her, and she already had the general idea. New Eden men would be the
only
men, until they had sons of their own.

More, the program had been altered, thanks to their new research into Flux and its powers, and it had already been tested on large numbers of women inside New Eden: A new standard for female I.Q., setting it at no more than seventy percent of the male average. High enough for all the things a woman was expected to do in New Eden society, but not one bit more. Permanent, total,
inheritable
intellectual inferiority, coldly and scientifically designed to create the perfect harem wife.

If they lost, every one of them who survived, wizard or commoner, would have this program run on them. More, success or failure would probably be determined in the first hour or so.

And they came out, very well timed thanks to internal Anchor communications. Now, however, the initial forces were on their own, cut off from real communication with the rear except by runner. Although the radios had limited use in Flux, the signals broke up into garbage when crossing an Anchor border.

The early shields were almost pathetic. A forward volunteer line of sharpshooters fired into them and they were so flimsy that several men within those first shields actually fell wounded.

Matson had been true to the vow made earlier to Gillian, and had gotten Morgaine to change the Sondra form to that of a Fluxgirl, and a pretty good looking one even by Fluxgirl standards. Still, it was a Fluxgirl mounted on a large horse, wearing boots rather than heels, and wearing a gunbelt and holding a radio.

There was no way to really communicate with the forward units by radio now, not along a nearly-fifty-kilometer fragmented front, but Matson could talk to Suzl, and Suzl with the projector could talk to anybody.

"Don't wait for them all," the stringer warned. "As soon as your scan shows one projector fully in Flux, go for that shield."

"They've got a pretty solid shield now right in the middle," Suzl reported. "I think some of those early shots into the others might have nabbed a couple of wizards. Yeah! In the center! Here it comes!"

The projector only superficially resembled the one New Harmony had. The seat was padded and belted-in, the chassis more stylized, and it sat upon a large flat like a wagon bed, only under it were whole sets of wheels all turning two belts, one on each side, guided by a forward driver. It wasn't fast—it might do two kilometers an hour flat out—but it was effective and highly maneuverable. The shield was extended out in a U-shaped bubble that was growing to be several hundred meters out and about a hundred and fifty meters wide. Since it was open to Anchor at the back, it was nonporous—somebody else had thought of using gas—but that worked against the men inside. A shield that was too solid and too strong limited the effectiveness of the wizards inside, and particularly the projector. A shield drew from the grid squares beneath it; a too-solid and firm one could actually cut signal flow in both directions.

The allied wizards changed form and took to the air, five of them heading for the center position. As soon as they were within range, all nine wizards, the five in the air and the four on the ground, began a concentrated assault on the bubble.

There was no way of knowing how many wizards were inside maintaining the bubble, but they were certainly not prepared for the strength of the assault on their lone position. They had mostly practiced this sort of thing against each other; they were not prepared for the ferocity of skilled veterans with everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Messengers were sent back as the bubble weakened, pleading for more reinforcements from the wizard corps, but the commanders had already sent part of the reserves in to shore up the other positions and were reluctant to commit more. They simply didn't have all that many really strong wizards trained for this, and their best had been the first out. These weren't amateurs at Flux, but fighting as mercenaries in somebody else's static Flux war between two equal teams of Fluxlords was not the same as this. The orders came back: lower the shield strength and use the projector and your own powers to find and disable the wizard attackers.

Suzl pushed first, committing two more allied wizards and her own projected strength just as the shield was being lowered in intensity. All of them had seen shields collapse before, but none of them had ever seen one burst like a soap bubble. The ground troops rushed forward, firing volleys as they advanced, but Suzl didn't wait for them. She ran in and with a shock met the outgoing projector pulse on the same grid path. The two operators were suddenly locked in a wizard's duel as if they were face to face.

Oh, no, you don't, you bastard!
Suzl thought, fury rising to a peak within her.
You're mine!

Abruptly, she broke contact, went over to a side channel, and then down and back over to the projector. The New Eden operator was suddenly stunned by the release, and she had him before he could even check his grid position. The projector, tractor, driver, wizard, and all, shimmered, then vanished. The troops on the ground cheered, but the wizards working with them wasted no time in erecting a vertical shield behind the perhaps six hundred to a thousand New Eden troops who had poured in behind the projector as the shield had weakened. The aerial wizards had already peeled off for the far eastern position, the next to solidify and grow, as two of the four on the ground left for the positions on either side. The two remaining would be sufficient to mop up.

The projector materialized in a preplanned area forward and south of Suzl's position. There, the troops made short work of the two men on it and pulled their bodies off. It would have been nice to save the wizards, but there wasn't really time to be subtle. Jodi climbed on, checked the contacts, and tried it.

"It's no good!" she radioed to Suzl. "The thing works, but the grid positions are all wrong! I don't have the focal point to make sense of them!"

Suzl's electronic voice came back to her. "No matter. Run 'clear memory' and stand by to receive my coordinate map!"

"I'm cleared," Jodi responded, sounding surprised that it worked. "Send."

The new map, identical to the one in Suzl's program module, was the familiar one, and Jodi tested it out. The machine seemed to accept it, and she relaxed. She was in business!

In the center, a couple of wizards survived, offering some protection to the infantry there, and they actually started trying some elaborate spells to stop the New Harmony advance. They were, however, all old tricks out of the standard training bag and easily handled. The tricks the New Harmony wizards showed them, which included illusions of giant lizards, horrible, nightmarish creatures, and which, not incidentally, obscured the very real crevasses forming under them and the equally real heating of the grid to the point where it started to burn combat boots, were far more effective. New Eden's wizards found it difficult to mount an assault involving concentration and mathematical programs while their feet were on fire.

They threw the force of ten wizards against the far eastern position, and it cracked in nine minutes. This time Jodi had the honor on the projector, and ten minutes after that Morgaine was aboard her own.

Each victory gave the other positions a chance to strengthen themselves more, but each also allowed more wizard power to be concentrated and even projected into the remaining expanding bubbles. Forty-six minutes after the penetration began, Tila, one of those wizards who had joined Suzl and her spell voluntarily, was aboard her own projector. That left only the position almost on the Liberty border—ironically, the same position plus or minus some meters that the raiders had used after escaping from New Eden with their prize.

All, however, could not be brought to bear on that. The generals, apparently grinding their teeth in frustration at the lack of news and the inability to get any, sent two more projectors into positions between the far east point and the center.

Matson wasn't even concerned with them, except peripherally. The early successes were gratifying, and testified to New Eden's lack of real experience in this kind of thing against this size enemy, but in the face of obviously superior numbers and power, committing those two was akin to ritual sacrifice to no real purpose. Good officers, and they
were
good officers, simply wouldn't do that kind of thing without a reason.

"Suzl and the others! Forget the two outbreaks. Minimum force to contain them or break them! Everybody over to the far western area as quickly as possible!"

"What's the matter?" Morgaine came back. "Problems?"

"No! That's why they held off! They must have managed to get a couple of those things off their powered wagons and onto lorries! They're gonna hit us hard out of Liberty!"

"But—"

"Don't argue! Just
do
it! We could lose this thing yet!"

As quickly as possible, the projector operators notified the allies in flight, and they came down to carry those of Suzl's earthbound crew that could be spared to the west. Matson, in the meantime, committed the reserve troops along a line almost due west of their rear position.

And even as they were beginning to shift, the enemy
did
come out of the west, with all five remaining projectors backed by a force that stunned and bowled over the wizards there concentrating on what they believed were the last of the enemy. Although it was reinforced by others, its heart was much stronger, better disciplined, and far more experienced than anything New Eden had thrown at them so far.

There had obviously been an armistice of sorts in the north. Somehow, perhaps merely by scaring them with the enormous power of New Harmony next door, the New Eden leadership had convinced the Fluxlords of Liberty to join in the attack, and they were something else: Five Fluxlords who were capable of maintaining a Fluxland as large as an Anchor, all the while fighting a long and protracted Flux war.

The four New Harmony wizards then on the scene had been caught from behind in sweeps and deactivated, but this new alliance of New Eden and Liberty had a new trick up its collective sleeve. One by one they were reactivated, and from the grid beneath them the force of at least five wizards to the one standing there literally forced up a complex program. The Liberty Fluxlords had determined that there were binding spells on the wizards and knew they could not fly up and away. Each in turn screamed and fell off her horse, then writhed for a moment. Then, after lying there a few more heartbeats, they got up, holding their heads and looking around, confused. None of them any longer had grid contact.

Now, across a twenty-kilometer front out of Liberty, the new alliance pushed not a shield but a program, engulfing almost a thousand New Harmony ground troops. Helpless against Flux without wizard protection, the program dematerialized all clothing and weapons and left them standing or sitting there, looking puzzled but not at all threatening.

"They're  running  that  fucking  Fluxgirl  program!"

Morgaine practically screamed into the radio. "They're gonna turn us all into dumb little Fluxwives!" A collective shield went up, blocking the program's further progress, but an assault against it began immediately.

'"Like hell they are!"
Suzl came back, the force of her comment causing radio speakers to vibrate well beyond their reception. "Matson warned us not to get trapped on the defensive! All wizards—as soon as you can, don't reinforce the shield! Repeat—do not reinforce.
Push.
Everyone not involved in those two rear outbreaks behind it! Advance as it does!"

"Negative!" Matson responded. "Hold that shield and concentrate on breaking that last bubble on the border! As soon as our shield reaches that point, I want everyone available in ground support to push right through and shoot everything that moves! Take whatever wizards we can spare!"

"But that'll throw them into Anchor against New Eden forces!" Jodi objected.

"Only briefly. Just tell 'em to shoot whatever moves or looks nasty. The reason why that shield of theirs is so strong is that it's a sheet! It's got no back or sides! If
they
can flank us, then, damn it,
we
can flank
them!
The rest keep the pressure on here and follow that shield in! Those Fluxlords and those projectors just got to be right in back of that border! I'm going in with the flank!"