Free Five to Twelve by Edmund Cooper

were at war with each other. The victory was a foregone conclusion.
    Silently, almost submissively, Juno jetted down into the darkness.

Fourteen

    T HE Hallowe’en party which had threatened to hit an all-time nadir in the international social limbo had, in fact, turned out to be quite memorable. Victoria the Second delicately adjusted the bandage on her head as she sipped her iced Polish white spirit and surveyed the general wreckage with some satisfaction.
    Great flaps of metal foil, torn from the megaliths, rustled complainingly in the light breeze. Strips of transpex drifted through the air like half-materialized ghosts. A couple of dead white cocks glared malevolently at each other on the now frosty ground; and somewhere in the outer darkness a few traumatized sports and wounded Peace Officers were drinking and singing themselves into oblivion. The Russian ambassador had retreated into hysterics, the European Proconsul had been carried off and doubtless raped by the pirates, the prime minister had a broken arm and a laser burn on her breast, and Victoria herself had been hit by a falling broomstick… Yes, it had been a memorable occasion.
    Victoria had not yet received the casualty list; but there could hardly have been more than a dozen absolute deaths and perhaps four or five temporary deaths. The surgeons were already at work in the resuscitation unit; so it should not be long before a few lucky Peace Officers and less lucky pirates received the resurrection and the life.
    At one stage it had seemed a cast titanium certainty thatthe party would never jet. The professional witches hired for the occasion had produced nothing more shattering than the ritual defloration of an infra virgin by six Happyland-inspired warlock zombies, a group hypnosis that was less spectacular than the cabaret at the old Cafe Royal, the sacrifice of a goat and two cocks, and a ninety foot tri-di projection of Lucifer taking dreary liberties with an old-fashioned nun.
    The beer was good. So were the black sausages, the ox blood cocktails, the corps de ballet and the gladiators who had been bribed to fight to a temporary death. But, somehow, the whole thing had begun to fade.
    Until, at midnight, when the programmed thunder and lightning had finished, the pirates came jetting down from the black sky with laser guns in their hands and sportive dreams of destruction in their retarded I.Q.’s.
    Victoria was delighted by the diversion. Left to her own devices, she would have knighted every single one of them. However, the conventions had to be observed—particularly when four of the intruders swooped on the European Proconsul, scooped her up in a large fishing net just as she was sampling the barbecued black cat, and zoomed up into the night sky again for a destination unknown.
    It had been quite an amusing sight. The pirates had kept perfect formation, the net had been cast expertly; and, before she realized what was happening, Josephine found herself swinging crazily at five hundred feet, her life depending on the formation jetting of the four grade one aspirants who each held a corner of the net.
    Since the abduction clearly came under the heading of diplomatic incidents, Victoria was reluctantly compelled to do something about it. In response to her signal, the sovereign’s escort—which on this occasion happened to bea squadron of life Guards—got itself airborne and in hot pursuit.
    But by that time, the pirates had mounted the second phase of their attack. Their laser beams cut the high transparent tepee into a mad carnival of whipping strips of trans-pex. At least a couple of the pirates, caught in the contorting tentacles of plastic, were snatched out of the sky and dashed to destruction against the ancient columns of stone.
    By that time, even the Peace Corps had realized that this was not just another of Victoria’s surprise diversions. One by one, the Peace Officers who had come as guests sped to the Reception area, snatched