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your land. It is absurdly easy a major first step, the if kind of step you
would never plan for, works out. Now that I know the broad outline and
consider it logical, I would need to do some research to tell you precisely
how Chalidang will do it, but it is more a matter of knowing the enemy's
strengths and limits than the actual method. That is obvious."
"Yes? And what might that be?" the Ochoan prompted, as skeptical of Core as
Ari had been of her.
"A siege. They will take the center of the country, keep-ing out of range of
your coastal defenses but ensuring that you do not harvest from the waters.
With the center, they will control the Zone Gate. If you attack them, they
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will slaughter you. If you defend only, they will reinforce until they can
reach your fortresses on the mountains and on the coasts from above. It will
be ugly and cost them a terrible number of lives, but that was never a factor
to Josich, and those who survive will be rewarded handsomely. You will not be
able to afford even lesser losses. They will starve you and bleed you and
then, when you are weak and out of ammunition and low on food, your water
poisoned, they will conquer."
It was a terrible vision that stunned them. Finally, it was O'Leary who said,
"So how are they going to take the center without a flying race? And seeing
that the Ochoans are fliers, too, they'd be hard pressed to get a force down
in the middle sufficient to fortify and hold. It doesn't hold up, you see."
"I believe it does and will," Core maintained. "I simply need to do some more
research to discover how it will be done. The races themselves are
unimportant. Josich never could travel in air without a suit, none of us could
be in space without an artificial environment, and we couldn't get the
resources to get at the Hadun for a very long time. Planetary invasions and
planetary sieges were a part of his composition. He will do it.
I simply need to fill in a few of the blanks. If, that is, the Kalindan
government will allow me to do so."
Nakitti looked at the High Commissioner. "I can use him, or it, or whatever. I
don't care about whether he has another agenda, he's willing to look at mine,
and I don't have the time to be picky. I believe that bringing in an alien
expert who knows Josich from before will carry more weight than I can, even if
he winds up delivering my scripts. Can I have him?"
"I will see to it," Dukla promised. "I know they will not like it, but after
all, it is only here in Zone, and, of course, any attempt to go through a Gate
will wind up with him back in Kalinda. It does not seem a great risk, and the
Kalindan government is now demanding many resources to look into solutions for
its problem, which is also serious. I believe a trade-off is possible."
"Is there anything we can do to help?" Ari asked Nakitti.
"I I can't see it. I could use you all back home, but not here. Bird Lady, do
you see anything any of the others could do? Or any reason not to borrow this
one's mind?"
Jaysu was actually meditating, the discussion having gone into areas she found
boring and of no interest to her or her people, but she came out of it when
addressed and looked at them. "The issue," she said, "is in doubt. It will
depend on your people most of all," she told Nakitti, then looked at Core.
"This one can help but there is something very wrong with it. It is an enemy
of Josich, as are we all, but beware. You can win a battle and have no effect
on the war. You may win a war, and lose worse than that which you defeat.
Things are not as clear as they seem. And you will win no war without the
Avenger and all of us gathered, and we will not do this soon again. I will
pray for you all. It is the greatest contribution I can make to you for now."
"Then it's settled," Nakitti proclaimed. "For now, if I don't get by the devil
I know, the devil I don't is irrelevant."
Ochoan Embassy, Three Days Later
"there is your answer," core told them, pointing to the computer screen. The
Baron and Nakitti stared at it and their jaws opened almost in unison in
surprise. They had been unnerved that the creature had learned their language
well enough to be understood in about a day and a half, while working on the
problem.
The screen showed a photograph of a huge creature, sleek, glossy black, with a
proboscis and two enormous, padded for-ward eyes on a small, rounded head that
receded to form a near perfect triangular shape.
"What in all the Hells is that
?" the Baron asked him.
"It is called a zi'iaphod. It is a native of a hex called Hovath, and is not
sentient in the sense of being a dominant race. It is, in fact, domesticated.
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The nontech hex uses them to fly people and freight all over.
You cannot get scale here, but one could certainly place a four hundred
kilogram supply container on them plus, oh, fifteen or twenty armed crea-tures
the size of the Baron here with full packs. That is a very light but
incredibly tough exoskeleton; my data sug-gests that while cannons would get
them in direct hits, gunpowder-based rifle and machine-gun fire would mostly
bounce off it. The eyes are a weak spot, as is the center of the proboscis,
and a very small spot in the rear, but the like-lihood of hitting those before
the creatures were down and their passengers and cargo disgorged is slim, and
they cer-tainly have some kind of armor rigged to make that even harder. The
zi'iaphods' range is close to two hundred kilo-meters if the winds are right,
and that would certainly be sufficient to carry them from ships' decks to the
Ochoan center.
Indications are that the Chalidangers have essentially rented them and their
drivers for the duration and much promised wealth to come, and that they have
or will soon have let me see close to two hundred aboard specially adapted
ships. They will eat most anything, so provisions for four or five days is not
nearly as much a problem as simply transporting them."
"They've got those things? And they can transport a couple of thousand
soldiers with added supplies?"
The Baron was aghast.
"I believe it is at least that," Core agreed. "I also believe they know that
some will be killed and in fact are counting on it. They win either way. Once
dead, they have a tendency to sort of crack open. Pressure internally,
perhaps. The frag-ments of exoskeleton will make excellent armor for
tempo-rary fortifications, and if the invaders are Quacksans and Jerminians,
as seems likely, the insides of one of these alone could feed a thousand for a
few days. They are almost the perfect aerial assault device for this sort of
operation."
"It sounds like you're saying they're an invention, not a creature," Nakitti
noted.
"They basically are. They were bred for this sort of thing, and variations are
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