by Larry Niven
The ministry vessel also carried tens of powerful lasers. For experiments into long-range communication or improved fusion devices, Louis supposed—or so Achilles, as Minister of Science, might once have justified equipping a research ship. The lasers would make excellent weapons. Puppeteers unwired the lasers and secured them in crates that the humans moved.
Then things got interesting.
At the back of the last cargo hold, looming larger than anything Louis had yet handled, were a dozen or so enormous black slabs. No matter how low they dialed gravity, these things were huge. Inertia did not care about gravity. The monoliths would be tough to move.
“What are these?” he asked Maura.
She looked up and down several slabs. “The labels only say, ‘MAIN EXTERIOR HOLD.’ ”
Near deck level each monolith had what looked like a service bay. Louis released a latch and slid open the access panel. He uncovered fat connectors for power hookups, skinny connectors for fiber-optic cables, and little digital readouts.
Did these slabs get wired together? In his mind’s eye, he pictured something like Stonehenge.
Sigmund, in one of his war stories, had described something like that. A device from the long-ago conflict with the Pak. One of the unsuccessful, homegrown planetary drives that instead tore worlds to gravel.
That Achilles controlled such a device made Louis’s blood run cold.
33
The Fleet of Worlds, slowly but steadily accelerating toward galactic north since the discovery of the core explosion, had attained almost half light speed. (The New Terrans, who had for decades pushed their planetary drive closer to redline to get some separation from their former masters, traveled a bit faster still.)
Remembrance started with Hearth’s normal-space velocity and quickly matched course and speed with the Gw’oth war fleet rushing its way.
Louis’s experience in the Wunderland civil war—greatly embellished, because who could know otherwise?—made him the expedition’s lone military veteran. Enzio remained the leader of the combat crew, but Louis’s veteran status made him tolerated on the bridge. Even when Enzio was not running weapons drills. Even though Clotho, the ship’s hindmost, seemed skeptical about Louis.
It probably helped that after the cargo-loading exercise, Puppeteers and New Terrans alike knew that Louis could not read Citizen writing.
He couldn’t. But Louis had spent a long time on Aegis’ bridge, comparing readouts on his console with the displays on the Puppeteer version, watching Nessus operate his controls.
Louis had a tanj good idea what most of Remembrance’s bridge instruments had to say—
Enough to begin to worry Achilles might actually be able to win his war.
If a sphere could be said to have a midsection, Remembrance’s bridge occupied most of its waist. Concentric circles of consoles ringed the deck. Most consoles and crash couches accommodated Puppeteers, but one cluster was designed for humans. The combat cluster.
Enzio drilled his team two shifts every day. While Remembrance was in hyperspace they drilled with simulators. When Remembrance dropped back to normal space they drilled with live instruments and shot at target drones. They practiced with anti-space-junk systems. They practiced targeting manually. And Louis, to maintain his credibility—and with it, free run of the bridge—had to demonstrate weapons competence.
Why did they keep hopping through hyperspace? The New Terrans claimed not to know and the bridge crew would not say. Whatever the reason, after every emergence Remembrance disgorged squadrons of free-flying spacecraft: most of the probes Louis had helped unload from the Ministry of Science vessel. Hyperwave buoys, Louis guessed, judging from the associated flurries of activity at the bridge’s comm console. He could not imagine why they deployed so many relays, so close together.
“Redeploy drones,” Enzio called for the tenth time that shift.
A small fraction of the little space probes—still numbering in the dozens—were target drones. Each drone carried thrusters, a fusion reactor, and optronics for guidance, comm, and sensing.
“Drones repositioned,” the stringy-maned Citizen named Hecate reported from a supervisory console. He was one of the few Puppeteers aboard who spoke English. “Thrusters active. Stealth active.”
A stealthed General Products hull was very stealthy, actively canceling both neutrino probes and electromagnetic energy across the spectrum. It gave only two hints to its presence.
The first clue, but only in one very specific direction, was a jet of neutrinos. Every GP hull blocked neutrinos to hide the emissions of its onboard fusion reactors—except in one small area left transparent to the particles. Otherwise the neutrino flux from the reactors would accumulate, bouncing inside forever. Over time there might be consequences. Puppeteers built these things, after all.
The Gw’oth had stealth, too, but not impregnable hulls. They had not managed to reverse-engineer General Products hull technology—and the Concordance refused to sell them GP hulls. Lacking GP hulls, the reactors aboard Gw’oth ships spewed neutrinos in all directions.
“Evasive maneuvers,” Enzio ordered. “Begin.”
“Maneuvering,” Hecate acknowledged. “Drones turning.”
For this exercise Louis sat at a sensor console. The drones reoriented, now beaming their neutrino emissions straight at Remembrance, and his display lit up. It was as though the targets had just emerged from hyperspace.
“Six drones,” Louis announced. Hecate varied the number of targets to keep the humans alert. “Weapons lock on four. Five. Five. Still five.”
The sixth drone, jinxing and zigzagging, kept outwitting the targeting software. Space junk did not make evasive maneuvers.
“Fire on automatic,” Enzio called.
“Three hits,” Hecate reported. The lasers had been set to minuscule output levels and the drones carried coherent-light sensors.
On Louis’s display, three of the targets flipped from red, for active, to black.
“Switch to manual,” Enzio said.
Maura and a hatchet-faced man named Rogers started firing short bursts at the remaining “live” drones. And Louis stole a glance at the hyperwave-radar display.
Hyperwave was the other way to find a stealthed GP hull. Anywhere outside of gravitational singularities hyperwaves interacted weakly with normal matter. Had it been otherwise, hyperwave transceivers and hyperdrive shunts would not have been possible. Because hyperwaves traveled instantaneously, the hyperwave echo off an object only revealed a direction. But if one deployed arrays of hyperwave transceivers, and those units coordinated among themselves instantaneously by hyperwave, and they triangulated . . .
Rank after rank of coordinating hyperwave buoys flew in tandem with the Fleet of Worlds, to provide early warning of any visitors. Someone must be giving Achilles real-time access to the Fleet’s hyperwave radar system. Louis wished he could report back to Sigmund and Nessus, to name that discovery and others, and just for the contact.
Achilles’ spy network continued to function flawlessly. Louis, so far, was pretty much useless as a spy.
“Final target still maneuvering.” Louis turned his head to report, sneaking a look at another arc of bridge instruments. In a tactical display, a line of dots pointing more-or-less at the Fleet showed consecutive detections of the Gw’oth armada. Gw’oth needed sanity breaks from hyperspace, too.
Finally, Rogers tagged the last target.
Hecate rotated the drones, hiding their neutrino emissions from Remembrance’s sensors. The targets disappeared from Louis’s console.
“Let’s do it again,” Enzio said. “The Gw’oth aren’t very far away.”
. . .
Louis cornered Enzio in a relax room. “How are these drills useful?” Louis demanded. “We’re practicing against drones, most maneuvering randomly. The Citizens remotely piloting the rest have no combat experience. Nothing is shooting back at us. We’ll be going up against twenty or so Gw’oth warships. You do know las
er light goes right through a GP hull?”
Enzio grinned. “Because the Gw’oth won’t be maneuvering or shooting back.”
So the mercenaries had been promised, and they took the matter on faith. Louis took it as an indicator of Pak fusion-suppression technology to be deployed against the Gw’oth. Achilles had yet to mention fusion suppression, so Louis did not bring it up with Enzio.
Even with fusion suppression, Louis did not get how this operation was supposed to work. He dredged up a line from his brief military training on Wunderland. “The first casualty in any conflict is the battle plan.”
“What do you propose? A different kind of drill? New drones?”
“No,” Louis said. “Let’s you and I have a chat with Achilles.”
“He won’t answer questions,” Enzio said. “I’ve tried.”
“Trust me,” Louis said.
We’ll all be killed got any Puppeteer’s attention. Enzio and Louis were passed quickly up a chain of flunkies to Clotho to Achilles.
Puppeteers worked themselves into a manic frenzy when they had somehow to be brave. Aboard Aegis, Louis had seen mania in Nessus and Achilles both. They developed crazy glints in their eyes. Their speech got loud. They twitched with nervous energy.
When Achilles, wild-eyed, invited Louis and Enzio into his spacious quarters, he quivered with repressed energy. Combat must loom. Achilles said, “I thank you for your concerns, but they are misplaced.”
“Then explain,” Louis answered bluntly.
Achilles looked himself in the eyes. “Why not? Louis, you helped make it possible.”
Enzio glanced at Louis with new respect, while Louis kept his face passive.
“We see the enemy coming,” Achilles said. “From their routine appearances on hyperwave radar, we know they will emerge near here soon.”
Enzio frowned. “Gw’oth are supposed to be smart. Why would they act so predictably?”
Because they weren’t predictable, as Louis knew from his lurking on the bridge. Despite an overall pattern, the gap between consecutive emergence points varied by up to a light-year—and hence, three days. Nor was the armada’s course exactly a straight line. The only absolute consistencies were in normal-space velocity, the number of ships, and that the vessels maintained formation. The better to defend each other against surprise attacks, Louis deduced.
Achilles wriggled a neck dismissively. “They will be sufficiently close. When they emerge near here, we will disable them. I will tell you how.
“With your assistance, Louis, I have discovered the technology to suppress nuclear reactions. Within the projected field, neither fission nor fusion can occur. When we immerse the Gw’oth ships in the field, their reactors will stop. The fleet will be adrift in normal space.”
“Where we can pick them off,” Enzio said. “My apologies, Excellency, for doubting.”
The boast seemed impossible, but Achilles trembled with manic confidence. Louis knew he was overlooking something. But what? “We could be a light-year away when the Gw’oth emerge. They could be back in hyperspace before we arrive.”
“Louis, you think in terms of the design you saw in the Pak Library. To project their dampening field, the Pak used a radio signal. Naturally you assume I do the same.”
Skimming the Library, the text mostly untranslated, the math far beyond him, Louis had scarcely recognized the subject nuclear-reaction dampening. To suppose he had any idea how to project a dampening field? Achilles gave Louis far too much credit.
While he had underestimated Achilles. With fresh dread gnawing at his gut, Louis suspected everyone had.
“But Pak do not have hyperwave technology,” Achilles sneered. “Hyperwaves interact with normal matter, else we could not build hyperwave radios. In a like manner, a properly modulated hyperwave signal of sufficient power can dampen nuclear reactions.”
And the hyperwave beam would reach the Gw’oth fleet instantaneously. “Hyperwave buoys to keep beaming the field continuously,” Louis guessed, “while Remembrance jumps back to hyperspace to get within laser range.”
“Exactly right,” Achilles said. He seemed oddly . . . pleased.
“That’s why this ship has been saturating a small volume with hyperwave buoys.” Small by hyperdrive standards. A sphere more than a light-year across.
Achilles’ heads bobbled, up/down, down/up, up/down. “Very perceptive, Louis. You do not disappoint. The fusion suppression field requires transmission at very short wavelengths, and at those wavelengths interstellar dust and gas scatter the signal. The range is limited. That is why we distribute so many buoys.”
It hit Louis: I’m an audience. A surrogate for Nessus. Achilles wants me to understand. He wants to gloat.
“Are you satisfied now?” Enzio asked pointedly.
With sick fascination, Louis had to know everything. “The field has to be turned off before Remembrance arrives, or our reactors will go offline, too.”
Achilles bobbed heads again in enthusiastic agreement. “We will be finished long before they can get their reactors back online. There have been tests.”
The attack on Jm’ho, Louis realized. That suppressor had been used deep inside a gravity well. That projector must have used radio waves, like the Pak version. Other than from Sigmund, Louis had no way to know about that, and he kept his knowledge to himself. “I see that you’ve thought of everything.”
The worst part was, Louis feared that was true.
34
Singly and in small herds, an unending stream of Citizens sought Baedeker’s ear. Party officials, agency administrators, scientists, celebrities, academicians, counselors, legislators, hindmosts of industry . . .
He listened and assessed, delegated or decided or deferred, all the while indifferent to the issues brought before him. All the while morbidly aware why so many so urgently wanted his attention: to be, should the Gw’oth emerge on the Fleet’s doorstep, among the chosen few invited to the fabled Hindmost’s Refuge.
Millions had fled aboard grain ships to the Nature Preserves and New Terra. Perhaps thousands had abandoned the Fleet altogether on stolen ships. Who could know precisely who had run when billions hid at home, in their own bellies, paralyzed with fear? Other billions thronged great pedestrian plazas around the globe, whether demanding preemptive surrender to the Gw’oth or agitating for Achilles to take charge and do—something. With workers everywhere abandoning their posts to spend what might be their last days with loved ones, every estimate was suspect.
One number was no estimate. He gambled with the lives of all trillion Citizens.
A senior aide appeared to announce another appointment. “Reschedule,” Baedeker said, not caring who this supplicant was. “I am stepping to the residence, Minerva. Arrange for Nike to join me when he can.”
Minerva lowered his heads. “Yes, Hindmost.”
The Hindmost’s personal residence was carved deep into the seaward slope of a coastal mountain. From the long and narrow terrazzo patio, behind a shoulder-high stone balustrade, Baedeker peered downhill to the seething ocean. Nature Preserve One, in full phase, hung just above the horizon. Its reflection, shattered into countless pieces, glistened on the trembling waters.
Shattered or whole? Which was Hearth’s future?
Voices mingled in the vestibule. A moment later, Minerva trotted out. “Hindmost, Nike has come, as you requested.”
“Thank you,” Baedeker answered. “Have him join me.”
Nike cantered through the grand salon, through the weatherproof force field, onto the patio. Despite the crisis, he was immaculately coiffed. “Hindmost. How may I serve?”
Baedeker brushed heads with Nike, waiving formality. “Inform me. First, what of the Gw’oth ships?”
“The same pattern,” Nike sang. “Nearer at each emergence from hyperspace. Ausfaller’s agent on Jm’ho is still told the ships will pass us, maintaining at least a light-year’s distance.”
“What of”—Baedeker’s voices choked—“ou
r deterrent?”
“On its way, Baedeker. The Gw’oth have been made aware.”
If the deterrent did not deter, if a war fleet came too near to Hearth, he would surrender. Any Hindmost would. The herd must survive.
The Pak only trusted in the complete destruction of their enemies. The Gw’oth might follow that policy, too. Baedeker asked, “And our defensive status locally?”
“Automated planetary defenses are fully supplied and ready. We were able to deploy only two armed ships with crew. The New Terrans refuse to provide ships or crews.”
Why would the humans take sides? Baedeker wondered. “What do your analysts deduce of the Gw’oth’s intentions?”
“They believe the normal-space velocity of the Gw’oth ships is significant. At their current course and speed, the worlds least threatened are the worlds of the Fleet. If the aliens mean us harm, it will not come on kinetic-kill weapons.”
“And do they mean us harm?” Baedeker’s tune was rhetorical and Nike did not answer. “On to our other crisis. What of Achilles?”
“Of Achilles,” Nike fluted, “we know nothing. If Ausfaller is correct, and I believe he is, Achilles lurks nearby to intervene—somehow—at the last moment. Hyperwave radar cannot distinguish his ship from the vessels that have abandoned Hearth and await events.”
“And Ausfaller’s new spy, this Louis Wu?”
“Vanished.” Nike pawed the patio tiles nervously. “Ausfaller fears the worst.”
Sigmund always feared the worst. But for his propensity to act, Sigmund would have made an excellent Citizen. For a long while Baedeker stared at the crashing surf and the shimmering sea. Achilles, too, would act. When he did, would he make matters better or worse?
Nike broke the silence. “The time for planning has passed. Perhaps I can serve best on a ship defending Hearth.”
“You serve best assisting me,” Baedeker sang. “If the worst should happen and the Gw’oth come our way, you will step with me into the Refuge.”