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The Battle for Ayers Rock
by Rob Furr
Copyright © 1991


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From: U.N.S.S. ORLANDO, Captain Pappas commanding
To: Current U.N.C.O. administrators


Sirs,

By the time you read this, I will have been dead for fifty years.

Perhaps I should have put that first sentence another way.

As soon as I finish this message, I will take the Captain's skiff and enter
the atmosphere without power. By doing this, I hope that I will die. If, by
some miracle, I survive, it shall not be for long.

The planet you sent us to will kill me, and, even though this has the outward
appearance of a suicide, I will believe to the end that it is not.

It is murder.

You killed us.

This planet you sent us to will kill us all, in time. I believe that this will
be yet another colony whose name will be engraved in stone on a monument in
Berne, one line of barren inscription to mark the passing, fifty years ago, of
twenty thousand men and women.

If you have any questions as to why I say this, I suggest you look at the
information that accompanies this message. Human life cannot survive on a
planet where the deserts are larger than the oceans, where the icecaps are
larger than the deserts, and the food algae won't grow.  We will die of
thirst, and if we don't die of thirst, we will die of cold, and if not cold,
starvation, and if, through some wild chance, or through intercession by a
sadistic God, we do not starve to death, we will surely die when the
technology taken from the Orlando wears out.

In agreeing to captain the Orlando, I took responsibility for the twenty
thousand people on board. I still have that responsibility, but I haven't the
power to help them.

It was my responsibility. I abdicate it. I now lay the blame at your door, and
I hope that at least one of the men who sent us here is still alive to hear
what his decision did to us.

I am going now, to die on the planet below. I always wanted to be buried at my
home in Greece, but if I cannot have that, then I will at least die in a place
with the right name. I will still die on Thessaly.

                                                          Captain N. J. Pappas
                                                   1/67 Thessaly Standard Date


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The first thing I heard when I woke up that morning was an explosion. So was the second, and the third. Dull, flat explosions, their sounds muffled by the dust and distance around the Rock. I couldn't see anything, but since I was still in my duster's tent, that made a lot of sense. You can't see much when you're in a little canvas tube that you covered with dust the night before. So, I crawled out of my tent, and kicked it until it collapsed. I'd set it up again at night, but I couldn't leave it up because of the dayhiders. The dayhiders around the Rock are bigger, meaner, and more poisonous than the ones that wander into houses near Celton. Their front four legs have stingers, not just the front two, and they don't run away from humans. They fight back if the human wants his tent back, and nine times out of ten, the human doesn't win. 

I hate dayhiders. 

Anyway, I picked up my issues, and shook them to get rid of all the little nasties that crawl in clothes at night. No nasties fell out, so I pulled them on. If no bug wanted to sleep in my issues, that was fine with me. My climbing rig was just a cow leather vest with about twenty pounds of climbing spikes hung on it, so I didn't need to shake it too hard. I slung that over my shoulder, and went to eat. 

The explosions continued, but I knew that sound...those were Celton ballista rounds, little rockets with compressed fireweed oil in their tips. The ballistas fire them twenty at a time, and they make big, hollow explosions when they hit. 

The chow line was behind the bombshield, the big net hung between the Rock and the main camp, and I walked around it, looking around for anyone else that I might want to eat with. That is, anybody who might have some news about what was going on, and why we were here, and all that. But nobody but the usual boring crew was in the mess pit, so I grabbed a loaf of peelbread and a bottle of water, and sat down (I really wanted a beef sandwich, but beef was too expensive to give to people in Service.) I still ate better then than I ever had at home, but the time the Servicegroup had been in Celton had given me some expensive tastes. Like cow beef. Cows didn't live anywhere except right along the Sea. There was land near the Ocean where people thought they could live, but nobody had ever managed to get a cow across the Dust. And so, there were maybe ten thousand cows on Thessaly, along with maybe another ten thousand sheep, and I don't know how many tens of thousands of camels, and I can't eat camel beef. So, most of my pay that doesn't go home goes to monthly trips to the beef house, when I'm in Celton (when I'm in the field, it all goes home.) 

After I finished the dry peelbread, I stood up and wandered over to where the captain was. I wouldn't have done it in town, but in the Dust things get a little less formal. And, besides, my watch wasn't for another four hours. I looked at the captain, a tall, fat man with the sort of build that makes you think that there's a skinny man inside trying to get out. His issues' sleeves were pushed back, and he was staring at the base of the Rock. I sat down and looked where he was looking. 

The ballistamen were pinned down right at the base of the Rock, and they couldn't get their gear set up, much less do any good up there. The Landingers were dug in far enough back that the ballistas couldn't get a good angle, and they were tossing boomite bottles over the lip every time the explosions stopped. 

Which meant one thing. 

I knew what it meant, so I sat there looking like I didn't know what it meant, in the hopes that the captain wouldn't notice that I knew. Right. Whatever I say. 

"Macklamore, get your scrawny duster butt up that rock. Now." The captain was a career Serviceman, muscles gone almost to fat, sloppy in a dirty gray shipsuit, but that didn't make him blind. 

There I was, sitting down right next to the captain, on a pile of rope, making little jingling noises with my climbing spikes every time I breathed, and I was hoping he wouldn't remember the fact that I was the only duster in the watch who knew how to climb Ayers Rock. 

Like I said before: Right. Whatever. 

I stood up. The captain looked at me, looked up the sheer sides of the Rock, and turned his attention back to getting the ballistamen out of danger. He knew that if I didn't go up the Rock, he'd shoot me himself. And since he knew that I knew that, he didn't have to watch me. 

The captain is smarter than he looks. 

Anyway, I started picking up the ropes and the chunkers and the sliders, and tried to spot a way up the Rock that the Landingers weren't covering. 

That's not true. 

I stood there and looked at the Rock. 

The Rock is funny, there's nothing like it for klicks and klicks to either side on the coastline, and there's a wide plain behind it full of morons and not much else inland, but there it sits. Six hundred meters tall. Six hundred meters wide, too, which makes it look like half of a pair of craps from the right angle. The damn thing is flat on top, with a little pit perfect to store food in, and it's got total arty coverage of the entire western march down to Port Landing, if you can get a catapult up there. Best damn layout on Thessaly, and the Landingers got to it first. And since the western march is five days shorter than the east march, we've got to go to town this way. 

But we can't without taking out the Landingers on Ayers Rock. 

I grew up on a little island near here, so I'm not a duster by birth, but since earth fish don't hang out near the old homestead, my family had to come in past the Rock about every month to hunt, if we wanted to eat. If we wanted good food, we had to climb the Rock, to get at the earthbirds that nested on top. After Jerm took the dive off of it, I had to climb the Rock for the family. (Jerm was my brother.) I hadn't been back since I'd joined the Service. 

Which makes these homecoming memories kind of out of place. 

The Landingers were dropping their bombs with the fuses cut to go at like ten meters off the ground, and since they were wrapping the bombs in glass, it was really ripping into the ballistamen. They couldn't retreat, they couldn't go forward carrying their tubes. 

Fine. Fine and dandy. I had to figure out a way to climb the damn Rock without getting my ass nailed in the first fifteen meters. 

There was the old creek bed on the inland side of the Rock, that got you pretty close to the base...but the Landingers weren't stupid. They had to have someone watching it. 

Didn't they? 

I couldn't figure out anything better to try. Might as well give that a go. If I bit dust, then I bit dust. So what. I picked up the last of my ropes, grabbed my autoslot,and trotted off around the Rock. 

I stopped off at the ammo dump. Grench was there, sitting on top of a pile of slotter ammo crates and whittling away at a bolt for a roper. He looked just like he always did, sleeveless Service shirt, dull gray after a week in the Dust, wide ripper-leather belt with more knives and ammo slung than I usually carry into a slotfest, and looking half-asleep. I knew it was all a cover. He liked being the quartermaster, so he never looked like he gave a damn about it. If they knew he liked it there, they'd move him out, because anyone who likes being quartermaster is probably selling half of his inventory to the highest bidder. So, they left him there. Smarter than he looks, our Grench. 

"Grench!" I said. "The captain says I gotta go talk with the Landites upstairs. Can I snag a rack of ballista?" 

"All the ballista ammo is over with the tubes." Grench said, never even looking at me. Right next to the pile he was sitting on was a siege roper, the big sort they use to put a fireweed net over a wall. Nine tubes were full. The one left was primed, without a bolt, and it was aimed at the top of the Rock. I looked at Grench a little more closely. He was staring at the top of the Rock, too. 

"Grench, you can't torch the Rock!" 

"Why not?" 

"You'll fry the ballistamen!" 

"Only if they're alive to fry. If they're dead, I don't need to worry." Grench wasn't much for honoring the dead. And Grench didn't like Port Landing much. And Grench really didn't like Landingers. I don't know why. Grench won't tell, either. 

"Okay, whatever. You don't have any ballista racks?" 

"Nope." Grench was in his 'I don't want to talk' mood. "Fine. Got anything else explosive I could take?" 

"Um." He looked around, and pointed at a large box over to the side. "You can take those." 

"What are they?" I'd never seen that box open. 

"Ship rounds." 

"Ship rounds. Great. Fine." Ship rounds weigh ten kilos apiece, and they go off on impact, scattering burning fireweed everywhere. No fuses. Built to make life on a ship impossible. Normally, they're fired from a ship's main cannon, so nine times out of ten the person popping one off won't see the explosion. So the armsmen make them as big as they want to...one is supposed to be enough to cover an entire ship. I didn't want to think how far I could throw one, but I didn't want to bet I could throw one far enough. Even if I had to use them, I probably wouldn't survive it, but they were better than nothing. I broke open the box, and stared at the big, glass-slick cylinders that I was going to have to climb six hundred meters with. One slip, and either I went boom or half the Celton force did. 

I took two. 

They fit in the canteen pockets on the back of my issue vest, but the flaps wouldn't button. Which wasn't a problem. If I was upside down, I was screwed up a moron's ass anyway, and I didn't figure on drinking much on the way up. 

The last thing I did before hauling dust over to the creekbed was to look at where the ballistamen were down. The bombing had stopped, and the surviving ballistamen were cruising out of there like a banshee on homebrew. They'd left their tubes behind. I saw them running, about a half a klick or so away from where I was, they were almost to the bombshield. And then I saw a huge package tumble down the side of the Rock. 

So did everyone else. As that thing bounced its way down to the ground, everyone dropped to the ground, or ran, or anything, away from anything that might explode. 

They knew as well as I did that something that big had to be a fireweed bomb, and one that size could cover the whole encampment in fire. Those people who were behind the bombshield would be all right, but I wasn't going to put bets on anyone else's survival. Except mine. I was out of range. I had to be. 

I ducked behind a boulder anyway. 

Then the explosion came. 

I didn't feel anything hot anywhere near me, so I stood up. 

None of the fireweed had landed anywhere near the bombshield, not much had landed on the slotter's line, and a whole big slab had landed on the ammo dump, and was burning merrily away. The whole face of the Rock was on fire, pretty much, and nobody was going to be getting anywhere near the tubes for a while. 

The ammo dump. Grench. 

I ran a little ways back, but then I saw what had to be him, standing and watching the Rock, about thirty meters away from the dump. He wasn't running, so I knew that he hadn't loaded the charges into his roper, just the fireweed. Which meant that the ammo dump was gone. There's enough fireweed in a ten-barrel siege roper to keep it burning for days. If he'd loaded the charges, the charges would have cooked off and the fireweed would have gone everywhere, but it would have been scattered, and we might have been able to save some ammo. 

No ammo meant that we were damned screwed. Each Serviceman had sixty slotter rounds, maybe ten bolts, and a grenade. That's all we had for the next three days. We were screwed. 

I turned back to the Rock. 

We were screwed, unless I could climb the fucking Rock and dust the Landites. Nobody else we had on hand was a rock climber, much less a Rock climber. I couldn't take anyone with me, without both of us getting killed by me trying to shoot and shepherd a newby climber at the same time. If I did it right, we could take the top of the Rock and hold it until the rest of the troop came. If I didn't, they could hold it until their relief got here. 

I hate responsibility. 

The creekbed was in sight, so I dropped and rolled in the dust, all over. I rubbed dust in my hair, over my ropes, my face. I spat and rubbed dust and spit on the metal gear. Then I ran like brickfield and jumped into the creek. 

Then I waited. 

Nobody dropped a bomb on me, so I figured I hadn't been seen. 

The creekbed was about two meters deep, mostly, maybe less, and dry as the Duster. Been a dry summer around here, I guessed. My folks were probably starving back home, they couldn't get a crop in, and now we were over here playing Serviceman on their hunting grounds. 

I ran towards the rock, keeping low. As I got nearer, I dropped further and further, until I was crawling at the very end. 

Looking up, I swung out of the creekbed, and ran right towards a little indentation in the Rock face. I looked up again. No Landinger faces looked back. 

Originally, when I started writing this, I was going to tell everything, but now that I think about it, I'm going to skip over the climb. I can't really explain how I climb, or what happens during a climb. There's no space left in my head for memory, or thought, or anything. The world narrows down to me and the next handhold. Nothing else. 

Nobody dropped anything on me, nobody shot at me. I made it to the top all right. I heard explosions on the other side of the Rock, but none near me. Anything else...well, the Rock is still there, and I've told you enough so you could probably find where I started. Go climb it yourself. If you want real fun, do it when someone's dropping a few hundred kilos of boomite near you. 

At any rate, I pulled myself over the top, and looked around. It's a great feeling, unlike anything else on Thessaly, to actually stand on top of The Rock. 

But I don't recommend it while there's a war on. 

The top of the Rock looked just like it had last time I'd been there. Same birds, same rocks, same everything, except for a little tent, and three hungry-looking men watching me, two with slotters, one with his hands still on the crate that he had just emptied down onto the Celton force. 

"Hi." I said, and dropped my slotter. 

"You're a Celton." one of the ones with slotters said. This one had more of a uniform than the other two. His still had the sleeves. And if the Landingers used the same system we do, he was a sergeant. He looked like one, I guess. Older, balding, a little more heavy set than the other two. 

"Right." I said. 

"You came to kill us." said the one with the crate. He was young, maybe sixteen, and gaunt. 

"Right again." I put my hands behind my head. 

"With that?" the sergeant said, pointing at my slotter on the ground. 

"Nope," I said, moving my hands just a little. 

"Then how?" said the sergeant. 

"With this." I said, and pulled one of the ship rounds up and over my head, and I'm sure I sprained my wrist doing it. I pulled the arming key. "You shoot me, this drops, and the entire top of the Rock goes bye-bye. "That won't do it." the sergeant said, not moving his slotter an inch from its aim right at my forehead. 

"No, but the second one on my back, and the ballista rounds I've got in my pockets, will." I figured a little extra threat would help, even if I had to make it up. Actually, even with the second one, the blast wouldn't be that big. Big, yes, but if they managed to find cover, and there was a lot of it around, they could survive. But I hoped they were a little out of it. They looked hungry, and desperate, and if I offered a way for them to get out of this alive, maybe they'd take it. 

"Josephi, Saunders, go stand over there. Behind those rocks." said the sergeant, and the other two went. Out of range. Damn. "Look," he continued, to me this time, "We can't let you move us. Now either you disarm that round or you and I go over the cliff together." He looked like he meant it, too. The factual type. I sighed. 

"All right," I said and pushed the arming key back in. I hoped it clicked. 

"Sit down," he said, pointing with his slotter. 

I sat. 

"Now, we talk." 

"Why?" 

"Because I want to. Because I want to ask a real-live Celton a few questions. Because I want..." 

"I'm not a Celton." I interrupted. 

"What?" he looked confused. 

"I'm not a Celton." I repeated. 

"You're wearing Celton gear." 

"So I work for them." 

"That's a good enough reason to kill you." 

"Fine. Go ahead, kill me." 

He stopped, looked confused some more, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He closed his eyes, and breathed in. Then he opened them again and said "What are you, if you're not a Celton?" 

"I'm from a little town on the Styx, upriver from Detroit, but my family made a port on a little island about thirty klicks that way when I was little." I pointed out to sea. 

"Then why'd you enlist?" he asked. 

"Enlist?" 

"You know, join up." 

"Oh...Join the Service. Yeah. Well, my parents had four other kids to deal with, the earthlife fishing was off, and they could have used the bounty money. So I got it for them. Two years ago." 

He paused. "Do you know why you're invading?" 

This was a big change in conversation. "No. I figure it's something stupid as always." 

"Not this time." 

"No?" 

"No. The last metsat report. There's a storm whipping up in the Dust, heading this way across Ocean." 

"So?" 

"It's a really big storm. It'll pick up strength as it crosses Ocean. And they think that by the time it hits here, it'll be strong enough to break Ocean through to the Sea." 

I blinked. "Ohhhhh damn. Brickfield and damn." 

"That's right. The Celton earthfarms are between Ocean and the Sea. Once it breaks through, there won't be any food that a human can eat anywhere in Celton. Or Chunglyng. Or Dustsown. No food anywhere except Landing and Detroit and a few other minor ports. And we don't especially want to share." 

"Why not?" I wasn't pissed, I was just annoyed. 

"Because our harvest is smaller than last year's, and last year we almost had food riots anyway. Before this is over, more than half of the people on Thessaly will have died of starvation." 

"The...the fisheries?" 

"Some killed by the new water. Some eaten by new Thessalife. And the rest so dispersed that they probably won't be able to breed." He paused, looked up. "I don't especially want my kids to starve, Serviceman." 

"I don't want my family to starve either, muckhead." 

"Nobody does. Nobody can win this war, and only about a third of us will survive it. Besides, this area of the Sea is under Landing control." 

"So?" 

"Landing will try to send food to anyone they can...under Landing control. We can't try to feed everyone. We can try to feed our own." 

I just sat there for a while. 

They hadn't told us. Any of us. 

"Can't we do anything?" 

"We?" he asked back. 

"Celton." 

"I don't know. I guess the Portmaster is probably doing everything he can, harvesting early, moving as many farms as he can. I don't think it'll be enough." 

"No. Probably not." 

I stood, numbly, at the time not thinking about the slotter aimed at me. And then I walked over to the edge of the cliff, and looked towards home. 

I looked down, at the Servicemen I'd served with for a year. 

I looked back at the sergeant. This man could have surrendered before now, but he hadn't. He was still here, starving slowly. Surrendering isn't a problem, you just wait three months and then you're back at home. No problem. 

We hadn't been told why we were invading this time, either. Normally, we get a big speech about why we need to invade, or why we have to defend against this invasion. Not this time. I looked north, towards Celton. It had to be my imagination, but I saw clouds on the horizon. Dark ones. 

"How long?" I asked, without turning around. 

"Eight to ten days," the sergeant said. 

Grench would survive, I knew him, he would always survive, and he was the only Serviceman with whom I was friends. And if this man was telling the truth, I had to go tell my family, had to help, had to try and save what I could. I removed the other ship round from my vest, handed both to the sergeant. "Here." I said. "I don't have anything else. You can catch the birds here by putting out your water decontamination pills in little balls of bread. They explode, and they taste better than nothing." 

"I've got to go home," I said. 


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