“What do we do now?” he asked.
Which was when the bullet hit him squarely in the back.
Chapter 42
Daffodil hung just outside the effective radius of the Waypoint, awaiting its commander’s final go-ahead for crossing. There was no visible sign that this region of Uxmal interplanetary space was any different from the rest of the system. In fact, none of Daffodil’s conventional sensors could detect that the Waypoint was even there. Only the Waypoint pilot could tell, and relay his instructions to the ship’s conventional pilot, who gently pushed the picket ship with occasional bursts from the reaction control thrusters.
Admiral Mikton’s stomach was beginning to recover, despite the lack of gees. She watched the tactical hologram over her head—reclined as she was, sitting forty-five degrees to the angle of the deck—and pondered what she was about to order Daffodil’s commander to do. Once they executed the Slipway crossing, there would be no going back. In an instant, they’d be over the light-years of distance separating Uxmal system from Jaalit system. Sitting squarely in Nautilan space. A Constellar ship pretending to be a Nautilan ship, which she clearly wasn’t to anyone who could make a visual inspection. She’d be depending on her dummied-up identification system telling the Jaalit security flotilla that Daffodil was another vessel entirely. That, and having enough distance between herself and the flotilla proper that visual identification would be impossible before Daffodil was on her way.
The new plan had seemed even more straightforward, in Admiral Mikton’s mind, than the old plan. Instead of trying to fake out the security flotilla with nine bogus signatures, Daffodil would try to do it with just one. And—assuming they passed out of range of the flotilla unscathed—get a chance to penetrate deep into Jaalit system. Which Constellar intelligence actually knew very little about, beyond the usual planet-finder charts which every Starstate military kept on every other nation’s planetary systems. You could tell a lot about a place, even at light-years of distance, as long as you had the correct satellite telescopes for the job.
Once they’d penetrated to the inner planets, there would be targets of opportunity. Including Jaalit itself, which was not—so far as any Constellar chart showed—clement. It was a small, rocky planet perhaps two-thirds the size of Planet Oswight, and possessing negligible atmosphere. Which meant most of Jaalit’s vulnerable infrastructure would be subterranean. Beneath hundreds or even thousands of meters of rock.
So, skip Jaalit. Focus on hitting something else. Where would the shipyards be? All systems had them, either for routine docking and repair or for large-scale construction, as was the case with Planet Oswight and its moons.
Anything big and soft—meaning, it had a high potential price tag attached to it, and it wouldn’t fight back—would be begging for Daffodil to shoot one of her nuclear-tipped launches. But of course, once that happened, the ruse would be over. Daffodil would be exposed. And while her ability to wreak havoc might go unchecked for minutes, or even hours, eventually Jaalit’s comprehensive defense network would catch up with Admiral Mikton, and that would be the end of the mission.
Mission, she thought, almost laughing at the word. It wasn’t any kind of mission. It was a stunt, designed to spook Starstate Nautilan so badly they would delay sending more ships to Uxmal space before Starstate Constellar had sent additional reinforcements to Oswight and Uxmal space alike. Zuri had no official approval for her plan. No one outside of Daffodil’s captain and crew knew about it. If the captain and crew were nervous, they kept their anxiety to themselves. She would not—could not—blame them. After all, she would be taking them on a one-way trip. Daffodil was too small and fragile to survive the pounding of an extended interplanetary fight. It would take just one nuke, with not even a particularly high yield, to blast the picket ship to bits.
So, Zuri hesitated. At the final moment of maneuver execution. With Daffodil’s captain peering at her from his own gee chair, where he floated gently against his restraining straps.
“Problem, ma’am?” he asked.
“We never did identify the ship ahead of us,” she said.
“No, ma’am,” Captain Garmot said. “Does it really matter at this point?”
“Probably not,” Zuri replied. And kept staring up at the tactical display.
Ordering the ship home would be easy. Simply instruct the Waypoint pilot to choose Oswight space, versus Jaalit space. Let the Daffodil link up with Iakar’s force once again—for the first time in weeks—and allow herself to be transferred to one of Iakar’s corvettes, which would speed her back to Planet Oswight for treatment at a DSOD groundside facility with all the drugs Constellar’s DSOD medical procurement officers could buy. To sit comfortably in a gurney, day after day, waiting for her body to recover from the brutalization it had received. As damaged nucleotides potentially spawned little cancers, over and over again, until one day, her immune system would no longer recognize friend from foe, and the cancer would be allowed to grow. Spread. Make her sick. Put her back in the hospital again, until they could dump even more drugs into Admiral Mikton’s body, trying to fight a disease of its own making.
Or…
Daffodil would go out with glory. She’d talked Garmot over to her way of thinking, and Garmot’s word was law on the picket ship. Once Zuri told the Waypoint pilot to execute, it would happen.
But there had already been so much death. Multiple ships and crews lost. Men and women who would never go home to see their families again. Daffodil’s modest compliment was all that remained of Zuri’s force—save for the Antagean liners, which were still taking their chances in the inner system, with Nautilan’s destroyers. Was it worth it to take these men and women to their graves? Such a tiny crew. Not like Catapult’s, which had been far bigger. What did the lives of individuals matter, weighed one for one? And would Zuri be judged rightly or wrongly for her decisions, when it came time for her to answer? Whether it was an actual God with a beard and robe—as imagined by some of Chaplain Ortteo’s contemporaries—or the consciousness of the universe itself, as Zuri sometimes imagined it. The ebbing and flowing of so much life energy. Countless organisms being born, living, and dying. Short lives. Long lives. Each and every bit of it cosmically connected to all the rest somehow. The universalists insisted that it was possible. The Waywork itself was possible only because a kind of space literally above and beyond ordinary space existed. Was that where souls came from, and to which souls eventually returned? Zuri couldn’t make herself believe it all ended with nothing. She refused to accept the model of a pointless universe, where entropy and randomness ruled. But she wasn’t convinced it was a designed thing, either, with some supernatural version of a human being perched on a throne, overseeing the entire thing. Picking and choosing sides. That didn’t seem enlightened at all.
So, if God did exist, what was a third option? Could God at once be a real manifestation of the sum total of the universe’s living essence, but also a unique, individual mind capable of seeing, hearing, and feeling what was going on in the cosmos? Even down at the granular level, where ordinary men and women dwelt? Little people with little lives, who were just trying to get through their days?
Would God notice, or appreciate, what it was Zuri was about to do?
Or were the radiation meds simply playing with her emotions, making her giddy at the moment of truth?
“Admiral,” Captain Garmot said sternly.
“My mother always said the universe hates a coward,” Zuri whispered to herself, then she sat up straighter in the gee chair, cleared her throat, and ordered, “Captain, begin broadcasting identification codes on Nautilan bandwidth. Waypoint pilot, execute Slipway crossing to Jaalit space.”
As had happened during the crossing from Oswight space, the moment of travel—one place in the galaxy to another—was accomplished in less than the blink of an eye. Which left a kind of false afterimage in the mind, like a funny taste that’s barely eluded the tongue.
“Did we come out wher
e we think we should?” Zuri asked.
“Checking the stars now,” Captain Garmot said. His command module crew was silent, their faces stoic. A few of them were sweating, even though the command module wasn’t warm.
“Yes, ma’am,” the conventional pilot reported. “Charts indicate we are in fact in Nautilan territory, vicinity of the Waypoint in Jaalit space.
“Passive scan,” Captain Garmot ordered. “Tell us what the situation is.”
The tactical hologram over their heads remained blank for a few moments, then began to slowly populate with signatures. Many more than Zuri would have expected for a security flotilla guarding a system like Jaalit. Unless—
“Damn,” Zuri said, instantly intuiting what had happened.
“Four cruisers, four destroyers, at least a dozen support craft.” Captain Garmot read off the bad news as their tactical computer figured out the configuration for the new ships.
“How close?” Zuri asked, and used her gee chair keyboard to zoom the tactical display view in until it focused exclusively on their immediate vicinity.
“Good God,” Garmot said, “they’re almost collocated with us.”
“We’re getting screamed at to vacate the Waypoint,” the communications officer reported. “And on open channels too.”
“If we can make them out, they can make us out,” Zuri said. “But they haven’t fired yet. The code box is confusing them. They’re seeing one thing, but their computers are seeing something else. Captain, deploy the launches. I don’t care what you shoot them at, just shoot them!”
“Copy that, Admiral!” the Daffodil’s skipper said.
In the void of space, weaponized, automated, miniature interplanetary spacecraft—originally intended to be messenger ships—split away from the Daffodil. At a distance measured merely in thousands of miles, the launches ignited their fusion motors, and flashed toward their targets. Which did not, at first, recognize the launches as hostile. Daffodil had literally popped out of the Waypoint into the middle of the Nautilan follow-up force, which was getting ready to make the crossing to Uxmal space—having aggregated over the past few weeks at Jaalit’s Waypoint. It had taken major logistical muscle movements to shuffle so many big ships in such a short span of time. And it was, Zuri suspected, merely the first of many such relief efforts, designed to solidify Nautilan’s hold on the Uxmal system.
Antagean’s starliners would never have a chance.
Suddenly Daffodil’s threat alert began to blare across the command module.
“We’ve got weapons in space, hot,” said the tactical officer—the only one aboard the ship, who often did double duty as a reactor specialist.
“Targeting us, or the launches?” Captain Garmot asked.
“Impossible to say at this distance, sir.”
Zuri watched the tactical hologram. The launches raced to meet their targets, like spears thrown with the fury of tiny suns. Their signatures mingled among the many red icons which identified the various pieces of the Nautilan fleet.
Suddenly, a cloud of antimissiles cluttered the tactical view.
“We’re too close,” Captain Garmot said. “All of us packed in too tight.”
“Which hurts them, and helps us,” Zuri said.
“Antimissiles!” Garmot commanded. “Deploy at will!”
Daffodil’s supply was relatively miniscule. Nowhere close to the number necessary to eliminate all the warheads which appeared to be incoming. But with so little space between all the individual ships, the chance that one or more of the Nautilan warheads would proximity-detonate next to a Nautilan ship was tremendously increased.
“Give them something to really panic about,” Zuri said. “Dump the rest of your nuke magazine!”
Garmot opened his mouth to give the order, but the single man at the weapons station had already done the deed. Daffodil’s remaining warheads—just ten total—were hurled into space, seeking randomly assigned large targets. With this many Nautilan ships so close, it was going to be almost impossible to miss. The point-defense systems would be firing like crazy.
Balls of light bloomed in the tactical display.
“Hit, and hit, and hit,” said the tactical officer.
“Which ships?” Zuri asked.
“Uhhhh,” the officer said, and couldn’t answer.
Individual, much smaller spheres of light appeared, and were gone, as Nautilan antimissiles and Constellar antimissiles sought out and destroyed their targets.
“Hit again,” the tactical officer said.
“That’s four,” Garmot said. “Any kills?”
“Impossible to say, sir. We’re continuing to score hits. Five. Six. Seven…”
The number of inbound warheads looked like a wall of wasps constricting on the Daffodil. Garmot’s antimissile barrage would thin them out somewhat, as would the railguns. But there were simply too many. Meanwhile, Zuri could see two of the Nautilan cruisers, three of the destroyers, and at least two of the other ships blinking in the tactical hologram—as the computer tried to figure out their status. The launches had worked. As in Uxmal space, Nautilan’s antimissile and point-defense computers weren’t programmed to recognize anything as large as a launch as a weapon.
If any of the follow-on nuke launches had done the Nauties damage, that was to be determined. Daffodil’s ten-warhead volley was still tied up with the cloud of antimissiles. With so many large and small contacts so close together, it was a wonder the antimissiles could function at all. Zuri had never engaged so many ships, so abruptly, in such a small area.
In the relative darkness of deep space, at the edge of Jaalit’s domain, the Jaalit Waypoint had become a tiny pocket of hell. Debris from destroyed and damaged ships, missiles, antimissiles, the repeated firing of railguns, all expanded outward from the sphere of battle, like a smoke ring. The Nautilan fleet, which had been tidily formed and queued for Waypoint crossing, was now in disarray. Surviving ships had fired their main reactors and were attempting to clear the area. Especially the support ships, which were more ill-prepared than any for the unexpected fight.
Daffodil was only moments from certain obliteration.
Zuri hoped desperately that it would be worth it. She used her gee chair keyboard to activate the shipwide speaker network.
“This is Admiral Mikton.” Her voice reverberated throughout Daffodil’s interior. “Thank you for your service, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of my command. And also on behalf of the DSOD. Starstate Constellar survives, because people like you are willing to hold the line. Be proud of yourselves, in this moment. Be proud of who and what you are.”
“Victory with honor!” Captain Garmot shouted.
“Hurrah, hurrah!” the command module crew responded back.
Five different Nautilan nukes simultaneously made it through Daffodil’s point-defense, and detonated within a hundred meters of the hull. There was no moment of terrible realization for the crew. One instant, the ship was there. The next? She became a white-hot point of fusion fire in the vacuum of space. The shockwave traveled outward, taking the molecules of vaporized steel, titanium, aluminum, polymer, flesh, and bone with it. Other nukes in the relative vicinity, sympathetically detonated. Competing shockwaves roiled the mix. Which didn’t touch the Waypoint at all. But simply added to the existing mess of debris which would make the space in the immediate vicinity of the Waypoint a dangerous mess for weeks. Possibly months? Eventually the Waypoint would shift beyond the battle site, since it did not orbit Jaalit’s home star the way everything else did. But until that happened, any ship attempting to cross was going to wind up with a severely compromised shield dome. Not to mention secondary damage from anything that hit below.
Chapter 43
Wyo had never been shot before. The sensation, through his armor, felt like being clubbed in the spine. He went down hard, gasping. Other shots filled the hall with loud echoes, and the little group of Constellar people scattered. Wyo himself barely had the sense to drag himself behind
one of the motionless machines—the sentinels, as the Nautilan colonel had called them. Peering past, it was difficult to tell from where in the hall the shots were coming from. It was a big space, and the acoustics didn’t lend themselves to identifying a specific direction in which to look. His ears rang badly. The shots had seemed impossibly close!
There, he could see a small group of Nautilan troops hiding behind one of the machines, just as Wyo was. He thought he saw a single woman with them. Though he couldn’t be sure. If they’d been unarmed at the pyramid entrance, they were apparently armed now.
Looking in a different direction, Wyo could see Lady Oswight and Elvin Axabrast crouching at the top of the ramp, using the ramp’s wall for cover. Lady Oswight was hurt. How badly, Wyo couldn’t tell. She clutched at her side, and there appeared to be blood on her fingers.
The Nautilan colonel was dead. A bullet had burrowed into his skull. He lay motionless on the floor, the light from the hexagonal pattern illuminating vacant eyes.
Lethiah and Zoam Kalbi were gone.
A bullet suddenly panged off the metal of the machine behind which Wyo lay. The alien device didn’t move, but Wyo did. He got on all fours and bolted across the hall—over the dead colonel’s body—and rolled to the top of the ramp, where he joined Axabrast.
“Where’s Lethiah?” Wyo asked.
“Bloody hell, lad, Kalbi’s got her! He’s the one who shot you and the Lady, here. As well as killed our former prisoner.”
“Kalbi?” Wyo said incredulously. “He wasn’t even armed!”
“Son of a bitch pulled out a small pistol and started pulling the trigger. If I’d not grabbed Lady Oswight and thrown us both back toward the ramp, she’d be dead now.”
“Lady, how badly are you hurt?” Wyo asked.
“I’m in a lot of pain. I think a couple of ribs might be broken. But the zipsuit kept the bullet from fully penetrating.”
A Star Wheeled Sky Page 36