Divine Wind
THE EIGHT APPROACHING KAMIKAZES became visible in the T’ran flagship’s telescreens. Interceptors had already been dispatched. Seven of them found their mark. The eighth missed, and the surviving Kamikaze came through the distortion field and by sheer chance caught the T’ran hospital ship. Missile and ship bloomed into a great red rose, then the remnants of each raced one another down to the ice-mantled surface of the planet Ozar, round which the T’ran space fleet was orbiting.
The T’ran commander convened her highest-ranking officers on the flagship’s bridge. The decision they arrived at had been in embryo stage since the T’ran-Pwalm battle had begun. After dismissing the officers, the commander summoned Gunther Kenyon, missile man first class, to the bridge.
The commander’s name was O’Malley, and she was as tall as Kenyon was. Her resplendent white uniform lent width to her shoulders and accentuated the trimness of her hips. Kenyon had heard it said that hair grew on her chest.
Her gelid eyes impaled his soft brown ones. She said, “Perhaps you’ve guessed why I sent for you.”
He shook his head. “No, Commander.”
“I will enlighten you. Kamikaze originally referred to the pilot of a sacrificial war craft. We now use the word to designate unmanned missiles. Had the Pwalm Kamikaze that just struck the hospital ship been manned, the pilot could easily have made a last-minute course correction and destructed its true target.”
“The flagship?”
“Yes. By this time their spy-beams must have relayed back to them that we’ve committed the age-old blunder of massing the brains of our war machine in a single ship. They know that once that ship is knocked out they can risk a frontal attack on the remainder of our fleet. Just as we know, from our own spy-beams, that they also have committed the age-old blunder, and that once their flagship is knocked out, we can risk a frontal attack.”
“But even without a flagship, either fleet would fight, Commander.”
“Yes, but deprived of intelligent leadership, neither could survive. . . . This has been an exasperating battle. The Pwalmians orbit the fourth planet from the sun, we orbit the fifth, and the planet we’re fighting for is the next one out, a blue jewel in the sky to be awarded to the winner. Hiding behind distortion fields that misrepresent the true positions of their ships and disorient target sensors, the two sides hurl explosive stones at each other and on occasion, through chance alone, obtain a hit. A most ridiculous battle. Perhaps, in a hundred years, one side or the other might find its true target and be able to move in for the kill. But we do not have a hundred years, and neither do the Pwalmians. What we are about to do tomorrow, they would undoubtedly do the day after.”
Kenyon said nothing. He waited, as he had always waited throughout his life.
“Tomorrow,” the commander said, “we will launch a true Kamikaze.”
Her ice-blue eyes were locked on Kenyon’s. He knew what her next words would be before she spoke them. “And you, Gunther Kenyon, because of your years of dedication to the service and because of the courage and level-headedness you have exhibited so many times under fire, have been chosen for the role.”
“A Divine Wind,” Kenyon said.
“Yes. A Divine Wind. You have been nominated to enter the ranks of the Honored Dead.”
She picked up a pointer and stepped over to an illuminated holo-map that covered part of the port bulkhead. The map reduced the actual scale of distance so that the entire theater of operations could be shown. Even on such a reduced scale, this would not have been possible had not the three planets involved been on the same side of the sun.
With the end of the pointer she touched a glittering little world near the base of the map. “This is Ozar, Karowin’s fifth planet, round which we are in orbit. This”—she moved the pointer’s end a considerable distance up and to the left and touched a blue world—“is Blazon, Karowin’s sixth planet, which this battle and the entire war are all about. And this”—she moved the pointer’s end far to the right and much higher on the map and touched a brown world that had two moons—“is Mitar, Karowin’s fourth planet, round whose face and moons the Pwalm fleet is in orbit.”
“No-man’s-space,” Kenyon murmured.
The hairy tildes of the commander’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re a student of history, Gunther Kenyon?”
“Only in the sense that I’ve read about the ancient wars. It’s necessary to go only one World War back from the one that gave the common language Kamikaze to find no-man’s-land.”
“A commendable intellectual feat, nonetheless, for an enlisted person.” The commander laid the pointer down. “My reference to the map was to point out that Blazon is so remote from the trajectory you’ll be following tomorrow that only the wildest deviation from your course would put it in jeopardy. I felt you should be reassured in this respect, since the warhead you’ll be carrying will be vacuum-shielded anti-matter.”
Kenyon was stunned. “I thought there was a mutual agreement between both sides to refrain from using H-bombs, laser rays, and anti-matter.”
“There was. But such agreements are adhered to only by losers. A war has only two objectives: One, to win it in any way possible; and two, to keep intact that which you are fighting for. Tomorrow a wave of unmanned Kamikazes will precede you. They will be knocked out by Pwalm interceptors, but by then you’ll be almost to the distortion field. After you slip through it, you will go on manual, search out the flagship and ram it. Your trajectory will take you to that part of the field our sensors indicate the flagship to be. It won’t be there, of course, but it won’t be far away. Your warhead will not only destruct the flagship but all the other ships in the area, thereby assuring our ultimate victory.”
Kenyon thought of a number of things to say, but he dared say none of them, so he said nothing.
“Launch time will be 0600.”
Kenyon saluted and left.
* * *
On his way down the free-fall tube he was seized by two female officers, drawn into a storeroom, and raped. It was not a new experience, but it sickened him because of the subjugation it implied. When he reached his tiny cabin, he lay upon his bunk and stared at the gray ceiling. Formerly, enlisted men had been provided with armed guards when they were summoned topside, but since the last T’ran-Pwalm engagement there had been a shortage of enlisted personnel, and armed guards could no longer be spared. For this same reason the fraternization parties formerly held at monthly intervals in the main rec hall had been discontinued, augmenting the likelihood of rape.
In addition to his bunk, his cabin contained a footlocker and a bench. Although small and Spartan, it was a sizable cut above the fetid common quarters shared by the enlisted men beneath his rank. He was in charge eight hours a day of one of the flagship’s Kamikaze launching stations. He had just completed a tour of duty when the commander had summoned him to the bridge.
* * *
END OF SAMPLE
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