Migraine?

He knew the effects, and a blind spot was now developing so that when he looked at the mannequin's face it folded into non-existence. Next the mannequin itself disappeared and something slammed into his face.

I fell over…

He was down on all fours when the star flashed bright white light through his mind, and everything went away for a time. It was an experience to which he never grew accustomed.

McCrooger

Brumal hung there in the blackness like a mouldy apple, a glittering ring encircling it. Red and green predominated on the surface, and cloud masses the colour of iron and cheese mould swirled over this. A greenhouse effect raised the surface temperature here which, were this world like Earth and possessed of a moon to strip atmosphere, would have been cold enough to freeze brine. I studied the planet long and hard, finally discerning the mountain ranges like raised red scars in the green. Many of those were not there just over twenty years ago. In their place once lay cities—nest-like arcologies spreading underground. Those peaks now stood like tombstones over mass graves containing over a hundred million crushed and suffocated dead.

"So what made him decide to open up this?" I gestured down the corridor lying alongside the hull, from whose windows armoured shutters had been raised.

Duras grimaced. "Despite your request and my request, First Lieutenant Drappler was not prepared to do anything that lay outside Fleet regulations. He has not taken too well to such a level of responsibility, and is not comfortable giving orders while his captain is still aboard, though confined to his cabin. I rather suspect he contacted Fleet Command for guidance."

Upon learning of the presence of this viewing gallery aboard, I had immediately tried to gain access to it for, being accustomed to Polity ships with their chainglass screens, panoramic windows and virtual displays providing you on request the illusion that you stood out in vacuum, I was growing claustrophobic.

"There, do you see it," Duras pointed, "just coming into silhouette?"

With the raised light sensitivity and magnification of my augmented eyes, I'd noticed it much earlier, but was waiting for Duras to apparently spot it first. This was not because I didn't want to give away too much about my enhanced abilities, but because I did not want to hurt the man's feelings, did not want to make him feel inferior.

"So that is a hilldigger," I said with due reverence.

From this distance all Duras himself must be seeing was something like a black finger passing across the face of Brumal. I could clearly see its long rectangular body, the big fusion engines to the rear, the weapons blisters spaced evenly down its two-miles length, and the larger Bridge and command area positioned at the nose, and directly behind and below that, the two fins that were the business ends of a gravity-disruptor weapon. Yes, there were Polity ships large enough to store hilldiggers in their holds, but the vessel in front of us seemed no less formidable for that. I just needed to look at those mountain ranges behind it to be reminded.

"Yes," sighed Duras, with satisfaction.

The Sudorians were proud of their hilldiggers, an attitude especially prevalent amongst Fleet personnel, and present in both Yishna and Duras though their interests conflicted so violently with those of Fleet. But I understood that, because Yishna had told me she was born during the war, and Duras informed me he had once been a Fleet conscript. It is too easy for those standing at a distance to question such pride. As anyone ever involved in a war would say: "You just had to be there." The hate may eventually evaporate, but the pride and the grief remain. And, in the end, all Sudorians rightly believed that the hilldiggers ended a conflict that could have dragged on indefinitely exacting a huge Sudorian death toll. I considered parallels to this throughout human history, especially the first use of nuclear weapons on Earth over a millennium ago. Of course those weapons were used against the bad guys—but here that matter had recently become debatable.

"What were the enemy's warships like?" I asked.

"Big, like this," Duras sketched a teardrop shape in the air, "and in their space stations they were able to manufacture them faster than we could make ours." He glanced at me. "They just kept on getting closer and closer to Sudoria. By the time we manufactured the first hilldigger they'd managed to get eight thermonukes past our planetary defences."

"Fifteen hilldiggers were constructed?" I observed.

"Eventually." He paused thoughtfully, then went on, "They weren't called hilldiggers at first—that nickname came after. We didn't have gravtech weapons until after twelve ships were manufactured." He closed his fist and cracked it into the palm of his other hand. "Then we went in and smashed them."

I knew the details. The big ships had at first complemented planetary defences to stop anything getting through. At that time Brumal was lying a full third of its planetary orbit—of about three solstan years—away from Sudoria, whose year is only a thousand hours longer than that of Earth. The first big push came when the two planets drew athwart each other, about a solstan year later, but it proved inconclusive. The next pass, a year later, decided matters.

With their new weapons the hilldiggers clocked up victory after victory. Three of them were destroyed in the conflict, but all the enemy ships were turned to twisted wrecks and the large space stations about Brumal were smashed—hence that glittering ring of debris. Then Fleet moved in to hit the population centres below. The destruction continued because, with the infrastructure of Brumallian society so devastated, methods of communication were knocked out and they themselves so bewildered by what was happening they were unable to negotiate terms of surrender. I rather suspect Fleet would have ignored them anyway during the assault on Brumal itself. Absolute surrender ensued when communications were finally restored.

During the twenty years from then until now, the Sudorians established bases down on Brumal and kept a close watch on the remains of Brumallian society. The hilldiggers were used twice more: once after it became evident the old enemy was building nuclear power plants, and again when a nuclear explosion destroyed one of the Sudorian bases. Subsequent investigation revealed that the explosion was caused by a Sudorian terrorist group who felt sympathy for an old enemy they considered as oppressed as themselves. That was a sure sign of attitudes slowly changing under a regime becoming more liberal after the oppressive restrictions of a century of war. Advanced human societies, go figure.

Our own ship would continue decelerating around Brumal for the next ten hours, before coming in to dock with Ironfist. I chatted for a little while longer with Duras, then headed first to the refectory for something to eat—finding myself ignored as usual by the Fleet personnel there—then to my cabin to get some sleep. Later, as we came in to orbit Brumal, I stood again at those windows observing those mountain ranges rucked up along shores where cities once bored deep into the ground, beside the blue-green oceans over which storms now swirled—the environmental fallout from the carnage still evident.

I didn't see the approaching missile, for the armoured shutters slid closed. The impact buckled the floor, flinging me from my feet, and fire sheathed the ceiling before air screaming out of a nearby breach sucked it away.

I didn't need the wasp-lights to tell me we had a problem.