“Okay, we’ll burn one. Punch him out at a steep slant angle away from us. When the Cold Charlie bird detonates, I want eyes far enough out to see around the detonation cloud and assess damage.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Sam felt the deceleration kick in, about a twentieth of a gee. enough to lower their velocity relative to Destie Seven from thirty kilometers per second to half that in about seven or eight hours, enough to match orbit with the Seven-Echo Highstation.
“COMM, get me all ship.”
“You’re live, sir.”
Sam took a moment to compose his thoughts and his voice before he started.
“All hands, this is the captain. We have two situations and I’m pretty sure the timing isn’t coincidental. Our people on the Highstation have come down with some sort of illness, almost certainly inflicted by the Guardian there. At the same time, two more Troatta long ships just exited jump space three million miles above the plane of the ecliptic, coming down after us.
“We’re heading back to the Highstation and we’ll get there about the same time the long ships get within range of their meson guns. That will be in about twelve hours. We’re going to stay at Readiness Condition Two for at least the next eight hours, unless they start accelerating. Catch up on your rest and make sure you get something to eat. If there are no changes before then, we’ll go to General Quarters in nine hours, when Blue Watch is due to come on duty. We’ll take care of these two long ships first, then we’ll sort things out on the Highstation. Carry on.”
Sam hoped that sounded sufficiently confident. He turned to Alexander again.
“Let’s get that ordnance launched, TAC. When you’re done, deploy the big survey sensor arrays. I want as good a look at those bandits as I can get. The ship is at Readiness Condition Two, Material Condition Bravo, bending course for Highstation. Power ring is fully charged, reactor hot, shroud secured, sensors active. Mister Alexander, you have the ship.”
Te’Anna studied the captain as he entered the dining hall and crossed to the table where she and her Marine escort ate their midday meal. His body warmth was normal but his heart rate was slightly elevated, as was his respiration. His blood pressure seemed higher than normal as well, although not dangerously so. It was difficult to tell in this reduced gravity, which altered the distribution of pressure throughout their body. Humans had very limited means of controlling it. You could normally tell so much about them from their blood pressure. Now she could not tell how much of his physiological state was due to anxiety and how much to excitement. There was a muscular tension as well which suggested suspicion or hostility.
He greeted her, sat, and explained the situation. She studied him, pretended to listen, but it was nothing more than what she had expected. K’Irka had prepared a trap and of course their defense mechanisms proved unable to guard against it. Why the Humans had thought their mechanical-based material culture could mount a defense against biological attack from a material culture based on bioengineering was beyond her, but she supposed if she could understand everything about them she would not find them so interesting. But the news that the station had no solution to the problem with their star drive—that was an unexpected development.
“I sent over a hundred people into that station,” the captain said. “Now they may be dying, and it was all for nothing. Why did you tell us the Echo Highstation could repair our drive?”
Ah, that was the basis of his suspicion and hostility. He thought she had led him into a trap. Well, it was a perfectly reasonable belief, wasn’t it? She had done exactly that, but not deliberately.
“Captain, I told you the truth as I understood it. It has been a very long time since any starfaring ships were built in this system, but we do retain the capacity to do so, and that capacity resides in the shipyard complex. It is H’Stus’s responsibility, both the complex and the ability to craft the heart of the drive.”
“There’s no Guardian there named H’Stus. There’s just K’Irka.”
“No H’Stus? That is very odd. K’Irka and he have usually worked together. I wonder where he is. Have you asked?”
“He apparently left the complex by shuttle,” the captain said, “not long after we broke away from the bulk carrier and began heading in this direction. If the complex had any flight trajectory data on his shuttle, we haven’t been able to find it and now our people there are in no condition to keep looking. Lieutenant Ma said something about the New People down in the surface of Seven Echo having the information.”
“Oh, how ironic! Yes, it was a cabal of engineers serving H’Stus who rebelled and who were punished with eternal life on the unpleasant surface of the moon Haydoos.”
Captain Bitka talked more then, spoke brusquely about the condition of the humans on the shipyard complex, what they were trying to do to help them, and what he expected Te’Anna to do, although her mind was elsewhere. He finished talking and was waiting for a reply. She replayed his words: illness, Däng, help. Yes, of course she would help with the disease, but she had to do more than that, had to find a way to insure all these beings escaped P’Daan. She wasn’t yet sure why she felt that need, but she could explore her motives at her leisure. For now, she had to recapture their trust, and that would have to start with helping preserve the lives of the people infected by K’Irka’s plague.
“You understand,” she said, “these microscopic pathogens are not my primary interest. That does not mean I am uninterested in the outcome, only that my knowledge on the subject of gene splicing is limited. But I will do what I can. I feel strange concerning Lieutenant Ma. He irritated me and so I was most unkind to him, deliberately attempted to torment him, and I succeeded. I find I regret that success, and it has been a long time since I have felt regret.”
“You want to make it up to him?” the captain asked.
“Make it up to him?” she repeated, trying to think through the complex weave of meanings that expression must have for Captain Bitka. He had such a bewildering lattice of obligation and responsibility, moderated by formal law, traditional practices, the general Human notions of morality, and his own unique versions of those notions. And the moderators differed in strength and salience depending on the situation.
She had witnessed highly ritualized cultures where actions were constrained to the point of predetermination. She expected something similar from Captain Bitka, but he surprised her. He always surprised her. His life seemed like an exercise in navigating between a black hole and the unpredictable flares of a variable star—sucking, crushing constraint on one side, lancing, terrible danger on the other. And yet he managed to find a way. He always seemed to find the ability to act, to maneuver, to follow his own path, but never by violating those constraints. How? How did he do it? It was by understanding those constraints in meticulous detail, wasn’t it? He must love rules to study them so closely, and yet love finding ways around them even more.
“Make it up to him?” she said again. “I would have no idea how to go about doing such a thing. It is all so complicated. Do you know, Captain, what constitutes the sufficient penance for an injury deliberately inflicted? Have your people codified this?”
“No, Te’Anna. I don’t know how you can atone for a deliberate injury.”
“Oh. What a pity,” she said. She tilted her head to the side to get a different view of the tension of his facial muscles and the dilation of his pupils, and she felt a little puff of breath escape her mouth, a sign of her frustration. Bitka must know but was unwilling to tell her. Who better knew the treacherous waters of their system of ethics and customs than Bitka? Still, he must have his reasons for withholding the answer.
“In any case,” she said, “I will assist Doctor Däng, and we will do our best to save poor Lieutenant Ma and the others. These unexpected complications can add texture to a journey, but K’Irka really is quite difficult to bear sometimes.”
“Difficult to bear?” he said, and she saw, felt the anger rise in him. “You know, Te’Anna
, you Guardians just don’t make sense to me. You’ve been around for thousands of years so I keep expecting to see a glimmer of . . . enlightenment. I know you only remember a few hundred years, but that’s still a long time. Humans—most Humans—acquire at least a little wisdom after half a century or so. But you guys . . . ” He shook his head in frustration and disgust.
“I imagine some Humans acquire wisdom, but not all,” she answered. “I believe one aspect of enlightenment must be the understanding and acceptance of the concept of enough. If enlightenment means accepting that at some point you have had enough life, then after tens or hundreds of thousands of years, how many of our own enlightened ones do you imagine would still be alive? Almost by definition, none. Or did you imagine they would still be playing at being gods, but they would be the good ones? Only the P’Daans and the K’Irkas are left.” She paused and fought her own wave of emotion, swallowed it down as if it were gorge rising in her throat. “And the Te’Annas.”
Sam sat at the desk in his stateroom and looked at the walls, which again showed the exterior view, but no longer a field of dead stars. Instead the upper atmosphere of Destie-Seven nearly filled the wall and floor beneath him. Like many gas giants, a lot was going on down there, including two storms, each one as large as Earth. Ops had done a good job bending orbit to avoid their turbulence in the scoop maneuver.
He turned on the holovid recorder.
“Hey, Cass. Interesting day so far and likely to get more interesting, especially as I have no idea what I’m going to do next. I’m throwing some very stupid tricks at them, desperate stuff, really, just so the crew will know we’re doing something. I don’t really think it’s going to work, though. What it will come down to is brute force: pump out as much ordnance and decoys as we can manage and hope something gets through. If we didn’t have people in trouble on the Highstation, we could just run. Those Troatta battleships have a big head of steam but can’t exactly turn on a dime or slam on the brakes. If we could just lay low for twelve hours, find someplace to hide, we could let them sail past and maybe be on our way before they could turn around. Nothing to hide behind in space, though.”
He stopped and looked at the smartwall again, filled with the enormous bulk of the gas giant Destie-Seven. He stared at it and then shook his head and laughed.
“Nothing to hide behind? Man, am I an idiot!”
S’Bitka’s ship turns away from the shipyard, Ship Ninety-Three’s voice rumbled inside the brain of the Troatta Chief Helm, Kakusa by-Vrook through-Kuannawaa.
“Does S’Bitka run?” Kakusa asked, ashamed that she hoped the answer was affirmative. Let him run away! She and her sister, Helm Tamari by-Vrook through-Kuannawaa on Ship Ninety-Six, had spoken many times together, and with their two Ships. They had experienced the recordings of the disastrous battle of their other sisters, the destruction of two Ships and most of their crews, and had considered how to fight this devil. They kept a wide berth between their Ships so S’Bitka could not mask them both with one hellstar, as he had before, but how many did he have? Lord P’Daan said he cannot have many. How did the Lord know that? If he could look into S’Bitka’s soul, why did he need Troatta battleships to throw at him? Oh, let S’Bitka run!
He does not run, the Ship told her. He makes a polar orbit around the gas planet. It will place him on the far side of the planet as we pass, and his orbit will keep the gas planet between us and him while we are at closest approach.
Her communicator tingled and then her sister’s voice, the Helm of Ship Ninety-Six, chirped in her head.
You have heard?
“Yes, Sister, I have. He turns. At this course and velocity, he will hide behind the planet as we pass. The diameter of the gas planet and its atmosphere are three times the range of our beams. Even were it not there, the distance alone would keep him safe.”
Kakusa’s sister did not speak for twenty beats of the heart.
So. We must either decelerate or weave our course with his.
“That is what our Loan-Lord P’Daan commands.”
Her sister paused again before replying.
My Ship is reluctant. S’Bitka saved the soul of Ship Eight-Seven, repaired it, brought its consciousness back from darkness. He saved our sisters as well.
“Those he did not kill!” Kakusa fired back. “Ship Eight-Seven lives, if you can call that crippled, addled existence life. Ship Eight-Eight is gone forever along with over a hundred of our own nestmates. Shall we congratulate him for not slaughtering them all?”
I say only he is a worthy foe, Sister . . . and a dangerous one. My Ship does not love him, but it does not hunger for revenge either. It fears him. I fear him.
By the Lord Guardians, Kakusa feared him as well! But fear was woven into her life. Fear kept her alive, so long as she did not allow it to master her.
“We are commanded to engage and destroy him if we can, and if not, to damage him, delay him until the others arrive. Deceleration now will not slow us enough. We must bend course toward the gas planet, pass close enough to engage him there, and stagger our formation so he cannot hide from us both.
“He is a worthy foe, and we will give him a worthy death. Our names will be remembered as the slayers of the demon S’Bitka, and if we take care, we will live to share that memory.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Seven hours later, aboard USS Cam Ranh Bay,
in polar orbit around Destie-Seven
14 July 2134 (one hundred forty-eight days
after Incident Seventeen)
“Sir,” Sam heard Homer Alexander report, “the ship is at Readiness Condition Two, Material Condition Bravo, in polar orbit around Destie Seven at an altitude of two hundred twenty thousand kilometers. Power ring is fully charged, reactor on standby, shroud deployed, sensors passive and also receiving passive feed from Drone One.”
“Very well, I have the bridge, Mister Alexander,” Sam replied as he strapped himself into the command chair. “Now tell me something I want to hear.”
Alexander smiled before answering. “You were right, sir. They’ve kept making that same lateral acceleration ever since they saw our orbital shift. Looks like a thirtieth of a gee, same as what we figure their initial burn was. It’s displaced them a little over a hundred fifty thousand kilometers toward Destie Seven, which means they’ll pass well inside the orbit of Seven-Echo. If they keep it up they’ll pass really close to Destie-Seven’s atmo. They’re definitely spoiling for a fight.”
“And?”
“And that displacement has put them well out of range of our decoy attack cluster, and the Cold Charlie bird, but they’re bearing right down on Cold Bravo. It’s going to have a shot in about thirty minutes.”
The first of his stupid long shots, Sam thought. Had they done enough to distract the Troatta admiral that they might get a lick in after all?
“And they haven’t seen it yet?”
“Hard telling, sir. It’s really small, black, and nonreflective. They’re at about a hundred and twenty thousand kilometers, and it’s almost invisible on radar at that distance unless you know exactly where it is and what you’re looking for. HRVS couldn’t see it unless it occludes a star or something. And it’s damn near as cold as the background. But the thing is, it’s got to get to within five thousand kilometers before it can sting him, and that’s a different matter.”
Yeah. Still a long shot.
“Where’s the Cold Alpha missile?”
“Nowhere near firing range, sir. One hundred two thousand from target, already well downrange.”
Sam looked at the battle clock: nine hours eleven minutes. In about thirty minutes the Troatta would be within meson gun range of the Cold Charlie missile and if they saw it, they would kill it. Nine or ten minutes after that, if they hadn’t killed it, Cold Charlie would be able to hit them.
“We’re coming up on the watch change, TAC. Let’s go to general quarters.”
“General quarters, aye aye, sir,” he answered as he leaned forwa
rd and touched his workstation. The general quarters gong sounded throughout the ship, although Sam noticed that most of the stations on the bridge were already manned and the rest of the battle station’s bridge personnel showed up very quickly, probably waiting in the corridor outside or the crew forward break room. Sam waited for five minutes to be sure most of the crew was at their stations throughout the ship.
“Comm, give me all-ship.” When Bohannon gave him a thumbs up he started. “This is the captain speaking. Since I spoke to you last, things have changed. We’ve bent course into a polar orbit around the gas giant Destie-Seven to use it as cover against the two Troatta long ships. They’re going fast enough they can’t actually stop any time soon, so if we could keep Destie-Seven between us and them as they shot past, it would have been a pretty low-risk battle. I can’t speak for all of you, but that’s the kind I prefer. But they’ve decided to come after us and mix it up around Destie-Seven, which should make for a confused knife fight of a battle. We’ll have the edge, though: bigger variety of weapons, time to plant some surprises in Destie-Seven’s ring system, and the fact that all we have to do is stay alive for about ten or twenty minutes and then they’ll be down the road, and they won’t be able to return for a week. They spent over three days accelerating at their maximum thrust to get going this fast. It will take them the same time to decelerate to a stop and then at least as long to get back here.
“But first, we’ve laid a trap for them and now we’ll see if it can take a bite out of them before they get here. Look to your stations. Things are going to be interesting for the next half hour. Then we’ll have some work to do to get ready for the next round. Carry on.”
Sam turned to Alexander.
“TAC, Detonate the Cold Alpha missile and go active with Drone One. I want tight beam radar on those two Troatta ships.”
Alexander touched his workstation.
“Cold Alpha detonated,” he said, and Chief Bermudez in TAC Two added, “Drone One active, painting targets with radar.”
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