The Spectre General. Theodore Cogswell

Tell me,” he said suddenly, “where did the battalion come from?”

      “We’ve always been here, I guess,” said Kurt. “When I was a recruit, Granddad used to tell me stories about us being brought from someplace else a long time ago by an iron bird, but it stands to reason that something that heavy couldn’t fly.”

      A far away look came into the colonel’s eyes. “Six generations,” he mused, “and history becomes legend. Another six and the legends themselves become tales for children. Yes, Kurt,” he said softly, “it stands to reason that something that heavy couldn’t fly, so we’ll forget it for a while. We did come from someplace else, though. Once there was a great empire, so great that all the stars you see at night were only part of it. And then, as things do when age rests too heavily on them, it began to crumble. Commanders fell to fighting among themselves and the Emperor grew weak. The battalion was sent here to operate a forward maintenance station for his ships. We waited, but no ships came. For five hundred years,” said the colonel somberly, “no ships have come. Perhaps they tried to relieve us and couldn’t, or perhaps the Empire fell with such a crash that we were lost in the wreckage. There are a thousand perhapses that a man can tick off in his mind when the nights are long and sleep comes hard. Lost . . . forgotten . . . who knows?”

      Kurt started at him with a blank expression on his face. Most of what the colonel had said made no sense at all. Wherever Imperial Headquarters was, it hadn’t forgotten them. The I.G. still made his inspection every year or so.

      The colonel continued as if talking to himself. “But our operational orders said that we would stand by to give all necessary maintenance to Imperial warcraft until properly relived, and stand by we have.” The old officer’s voice seemed to be coming from a place far distant in time and space.

      “I’m sorry, sir,” said Kurt, “but I don’t follow you. If all these things did happen, it was so long ago that they mean nothing to us now.”

      “But they do!” said Colonel Harris. His eyes focused on Kurt once more. “It’s because of them that things like your rediscovery of the tableland to the north have to be suppressed for the good of the battalion. Here on the plateau the living is hard. Our work in the fields and the meat brought in by our hunting parties give us just enough to get by. But here we have the garrison and the tech schools and, vague as it has become, a reason for remaining together as the battalion. Out there where the living is easy we’d lose that. We almost did once before. A wise commander stopped it before it went too far. There are still a few signs of that time left—left deliberately as reminders of what can happen if commanding officers forget why we’re here.”

      “What things?” Kurt asked curiously.

      “Well, son,” said the colonel, picking up his great war bonnet from the desk and gazing at it quizzically, “I don’t think you’re quite ready for that information yet. Now take off and strut your feather. I’ve got work to do.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      At War Base Three, nobody was happy. Ships supposed to be light-months away carrying on the carefully planned search for General Carr’s hideout were fluttering down out of the sky like falling leaves, disabled by blown jets, jammed computers, and all the other natural ills that worn-out and poorly serviced equipment is heir to. Technical maintenance was quietly going mad. Director Krogson was being noisy about it.

      “Schankle!” he screamed. “Isn’t anything happening anywhere?”

      “Nothing yet, sir,” said the little man.

      “Well, make something happen!” He hoisted his immaculately polished black boots onto the desk and called up the holographic map of his sector. Tiny stars winked into existence. “How are the others doing?”

      “No better than we are,” said Schankle. “Director Storch of Sector Six tried to set himself up as a hero, but didn’t get away with it. He sent his troops to a plantation planet at the edge of the Belt and had them hypno the whole population. By the time they were through, they had fifteen million greenies running around yelling, ‘Up with General Carr!’ ‘Down with the Lord Protector!’ ‘Long Live the People’s Revolution!’ and things like that. Storch even game them a few interplanetary missile launchers to make the threat look more realistic. Then he sent in his whole fleet, tipped off the press at Prime Base, and waited. Guess what the Bureau of Essential Information finally sent him?”

      “What?” said Director Krogson.

      “One lousy cub reporter. Storch couldn’t back out by then, so he had to go ahead and blast the planet down to bedrock. This morning he got a three-line notice in Space and a citation as Third Rate Protector of the People’s Space Ways, Eighth Grade.”

      “That’s better than the nothing we’ve got so far!”

      “Not when the press notice is buried on the next to last page, right below the column on ‘Our Feathered Comrades,’” said Schankle, “and not when the citation is posthumous. They even misspelled his name; it came out Stooch!”