The Stolen Future Box Set

by Brian K. Lowe

  I firmly believed that I could carry this out without my wife. However, I had a sudden vision of what the remainder of my married life would look like should I succeed without her help.

  “Change of plans. Maire will accompany Vanu’A and me on Gaz Bronn’s ship. I wish I could take Timash, Sanja—and you, Kyle, but you can’t go where we’re going.” Gaz Bronn came in and this point and took his place at the table. “Gaz Bronn, I would like to leave Timash with you. He knows Jhal and your people know him. Can you find a use for him?”

  Gaz Bronn flicked his tongue. “I would be honored to work with him again.” He extended a claw and Timash took it warmly, to all appearances thrilled in his own right to be working with the klurath again. I did not buy it for a minute.

  “Good. When you get back, I need you to mobilize your fleet and assemble it on the surface.”

  “Where do you need it?”

  “As soon as I know, I will let you know. Skull? The last time I flew with you, we saw some isolated settlements where they were using firearms to defend themselves. I assume they were hoping that at some point they could put them to better use?”

  “If you mean, against the Nuum, then, yeah.”

  “I need you to take The Dark Lady and visit as many of those settlements as you can. I am not expecting them to fight, but matters are coming to a head and they should be warned. If Farren and Lobok succeed, the settlers will have to defend themselves without any more help from you.”

  Skull gave me the same look that Timash wanted to give me, but Skull was willing to go through with it.

  “So you’re sending us off to be messengers. I’ve got a crew that knows how to fight, and wants to.”

  I let out a pained breath. “It gets worse. I want you to take Sanja and Zachary Kyle with you.” I anticipated a howl of protest, but none came. Apparently Sanja had made her choice, and she would have protested had I not paired her with Skull. “If there were any better use I could find for you, believe me, I would. But the Lady is not equipped for this kind of battle. And if we lose, those people need to know what to expect.” Not to mention, if we lost, three of my friends would be spared, at least for the moment. Kyle, of course, should have left already, his work being done, but it spoke well of him that he stayed. “I’m sorry, but that is my decision.” I looked around the table, and realized I had overlooked one of my soldiers. “Praja Waluu, thank you for being here, and for what you did for all of us. I believe Gaz Bronn has orders for you.

  “Unless there are any questions, this briefing is over.”

  Zachary Kyle surprised me by raising his hand. “Do you think we can count on any help from the Utopians?”

  “That is an excellent question.” I frowned. “I wish I had an equally excellent answer.”

  That was all. Had the questioning been up to me, I would have had a bushel: Who put you in charge? Do you have any idea what the hell you are doing? Do you even have a real plan? But it was not up to me, and I had no one to ask.

  Chapter 52

  We Gather Our Forces

  “Where I come from,” I said, “the president has a driver.”

  “Usually I do, too. But this is my ship, so I drive.” Gaz Bronn showed a fierce set of teeth that made me lean back despite myself. “Do you like it? I am trying to mimic human expressions.”

  If the human expression he was trying to mimic was homicidal rage, he was spot on.

  “You have the right idea, but the teeth…”

  “Not enough?” He grinned even wider, and I heard a squeak from Vanu’A, for which I did not blame her in the least, even as I caught on. Gaz Bronn was not studying human expressions, he was studying our humor.

  “Yes, now you have it,” I assured him, and was rewarded by hissing klurath laughter.

  “So now that we’re up here, what is your plan?”

  I pointed out the cockpit window toward where the gibbous moon was visible in the waning daylight.

  “Head for that.”

  He stared at the moon. “I can head for it, but I can guarantee you we’ll run out of air before we get there.”

  I waved off his concerns. “We are not going that far. I just need you to take us up as high as you can.” After he made the necessary adjustments, I went into the main compartment with the others.

  “Vanu’A is a very powerful telepath. I think, and she agrees, that she can send a telepathic message to our allies on the moon, but she needs to be as far away from the surface as possible to escape the interference caused by so many minds.”

  Gaz Bronn had stopped in his tracks. “Your allies on the moon?”

  “It’s a long story,” Maire advised.

  “Which Keryl promised he would tell me,” Gaz Bronn replied impatiently. “And it sounds like he’d better get started.”

  Despite appearances, I can condense events into a few sentences when circumstances require, so that by the time we had reached the aircraft’s ceiling, Gaz Bronn had a sketched-out awareness of our adventures, at least so far as I had been concerned.

  “Of course, I need to ask Timash how he and the others got to Utopia in the first place. I think it must quite a story.”

  “Then I’ll have to ask him first, as a condition of letting him work for me. I think I’ll like knowing something you don’t know, for once.”

  Timash had learned storytelling from his uncle, a master of the art. Whatever his tale, the first time he told it would be epic theatre.

  “So the plan now is to have Vanu’A try to contact the Thorans on the Moon and have them turn on the machine to take us back,” I said, hiding a twinge of jealousy. “I had to leave everyone else behind, because we think the machine can only remotely fetch those whose particle patterns it recognizes. But if it works, we can then use it to return us all to the Procyon.”

  The klurath spent a few moments digesting all of this. “Question: How sure are you that you’re the only ones who will end up on the Moon?”

  “We’re almost certain,” Vanu’A said.

  Gaz Bronn returned to his control suite for a moment. “There. Now if I disappear too, the fleet won’t lose another ship. Second question—no, never mind. I already know whether you’re crazy.”

  With that, he and Maire and I crowded into the pilot’s compartment to give Vanu’A as much privacy as possible. We were not huddled together for long.

  “It’s done,” Vanu’A reported. “Father always had a team of engineers standing by when he left, and they’re fixing on us—

  —now.”

  If the distance between one word and another is of any relevance, Vanu’A had just spoke the longest sentence in history, begun on Earth and finished on the Moon.

  The Thoran engineers greeted Vanu’A with a chorus of anxious questions, the whereabouts of Tofan Res foremost amongst them. She broke the news to them quickly and frankly. At least, I thought, she would only have to take on that dreaded duty once; her announcement would be carried throughout the habitat with the speed of thought. It felt like I could sense the mood of the entire community descend as I stood there.

  Vanu’A would have dismissed them to seek solace with their families, but to a man they remained to help. They had been born and bred to war, and they had known that when it started, this would be the result. That the first casualty had been their revered leader was a blow, but one they could suffer and shoulder on.

  There were always, it developed, small squads of soldiers on active duty at all times, and Vanu’A summoned one of these. Of the entire score, none was taller than my breastbone, but all were serious fighting-men, eager to be the first in generations to heed the call to battle. Vanu’A presented me to them as their commander, and although none had ever seen me before, not one batted an eye at her orders.

  “The Procyon has a complement of 300 crew. We have no prayer of taking her by force alone. Our job is to find and free the crewmen who are still loyal to Lady Maire, here.” I had the size of a Nuum, but the merest scan disclosed that I was not, a
nd as the Moonbase personnel were also familiar with the Ancients who had been living in Utopia, I presented no quandary. But twenty sets of eyes flicked to the Nuum noblewoman in their midst.

  “Eyes front!” I thundered, and they obeyed. It would take more than 800,000 years for me to lose my command voice. “Some of the Procyon’s crew are Thoran. Some are Nuum. Once we have freed the crew, they will take the lead in seizing critical shipboard functions. Take no chances, but unless a man is shooting at you or resisting, all are to be treated as friends, not foes. Have no fear,” I finished more colloquially; “you will be able to tell one from the other. Any questions?”

  Being good soldiers, there were none. I allowed them to stand down while we consulted over the final details—which did not please me.

  “This is the only one I could find,” Vanu’A told us a few minutes later. We had found her in her father’s study. She was holding up a retrieval band such as Tofan Res had been wearing when he was killed. “My father must have thought one spare was enough, since he was really the only one who ever went down to Utopia, and he only went occasionally.”

  “It’s going to have to do,” Maire said. “It’s not like we’re going to be commuting anyway.”

  We left it with Vanu’A, for no other reason than it seemed appropriate. Two minutes later, with our weapons at the ready, we found ourselves in an empty storeroom on the Procyon.

  Maire had predicted that with up to half of the ship’s crew locked up, Lobok would have little manpower to spare for non-critical tasks like maintaining storerooms, but I was relieved nonetheless that we arrived unobserved. Vanu’A had been able to locate a good target from the mental map she had constructed after two visits and with hints she had taken (with permission) from Maire’s memory. I was exultant.

  “If your guess is correct and Lobok has stashed your men nearby, we could be in control of half the ship before he knows we are here.”

  And that was when the alarms went off.

  Chapter 53

  Assault on the Procyon

  “There!” someone cried, and I spun about to see a small camera mounted high on the wall. Maire shot it to pieces before I could.

  The hatch slammed closed with an unaccustomed boom. No amount of frantic manipulation could coax the controls to life.

  “That’s not a blast hatch!” Maire shouted, and two Thorans jumped into position with their rifles as the rest of us scrambled out of the way. The door fell back with a mighty whoosh and clanged again the opposite wall, sending up echoes they could have heard in Jhal. Before they had settled another pair of Thorans had slipped through the smoking doorway to take up defensive positions in the hall.

  “This way!” Vanu’A took a right turn in the hallway. “They can hear the alarms!” Her telepathic veils were useless now that the Nuum were alerted to our presence, but it was still her job to lead us to the crew. I motioned for my men to split off and take up defensive posts whenever we hit the occasional cross-corridor, and they responded like experts. Behind us we could hear shots. Ahead, I trusted that Vanu’A would detect any trouble before it detected us.

  She halted abruptly, hugging a section of wall that curved away from us. “Two men,” she whispered. “Guards.”

  “Can you hide us if we try to get close?”

  Vanu’A shook her head. “Maybe. Not if they’ve been warned, though.”

  It was too great a risk. I motioned for my men to start creeping up along the corridor, but out of sight of the guards. I slowly inched forward, as flat against the wall as I knew how, until I could sense their agitated thoughts.

  “Crewmen! This is Admiral Clee. I am reasserting command of the Procyon. If you lay down your arms and surrender, you will not be harmed.”

  My reply was a shot off the wall a foot from my nose. I brought my men forward slowly, counting down on my fingers. As I made a fist, I drove it forward and we burst into view. The exchange of fire was short but brutal. One of my Thorans went down, but the area where the sentries had stood was blackened and blistering. The two bodies lay on the deck.

  I had no time to mourn the brave but useless loss of life. Our wounded man was already been treated; a quick query elicited that he would live. Maire had gone up to the door controls, but stepped back, defeated.

  “He must’ve gotten around to deleting our command codes,” she reported. “I don’t think it’s been damaged.”

  “Vanu’A.” I indicated the fire-scarred hatch. “Tell them to stand far back.” I gave them ten seconds to comply before giving the order to fire again. This time a more surgical approach was required, and I kept a wary eye on the corridor in both directions, but we were not molested. The task probably took the two longest minutes of my life, but then the door fell inward. Crew started erupting from the cabin almost before it hit the deck.

  They were trained sailors, not panicked civilians. It took no time at all before they were lined up on me, awaiting orders, which was good, because I knew how vulnerable we were. Almost all of my assets were concentrated in one place, and most were unarmed. We had anticipated that, of course, and I immediately organized a distribution of additional weapons, but it still left a third of my men unequipped.

  Which, as much as it pained me to say it, was exactly according to plan.

  Most of the Procyon was not fitted with surveillance equipment; it did have cameras covering sensitive areas, but not so many as to be capable of tracking our every move. Such devices were unnecessary when every crewman on the ship was capable of telepathically detecting other human beings in his vicinity.

  Except that no one could detect me.

  As long as I was careful not to be seen, I could go anywhere I wanted without anyone noticing. The last time I had been here, even that had not been a concern, as Vanu’A was able to veil the both of us, but this time she could not. Our presence had been broadcast to the entire crew, and Vanu’A could not shield us from forewarned foes. At least, not under normal circumstances…

  Placing my Thorans in the charge of the senior Procyon officer, with orders to reach the armory, Vanu’A, Maire, and I set our own route—but as far as anyone could tell, none of us had broken off. Lobok’s men would feel a mass of dozens of excited minds making its way exactly where they were expected; they would never think to look for a smaller group of well-concealed minds with its own separate mission. We did not expect our men to reach the armory; their job was to divert attention away from us—and to stay alive long enough to help us later, assuming we succeeded.

  Our job was merely to storm the bridge and take control of the Procyon.

  The moment we breached the command center, we would be under attack. Our ray weapons would be worse than useless in that ray-shielded environment, and we would be severely outnumbered in any hand-to-hand combat. I would dearly have loved to have included Zachary Kyle in my company, but there had been no way to bring him. I rather fancied that Lobok hoped we would try some such foolhardy tactic—but then, I had a secret, a secret so old that the Library itself would have been stymied.

  Traversing a warship undetected in time of emergency is an arduous and time-consuming task, even when you can see the enemy before he sees you. We ducked into so many empty cabins, hiding behind locked doors with our weapons ready, holding our breaths each time in an effort to evade discovery, that I lost count. Once we were forced to conceal ourselves in an occupied cabin, and Vanu’A had to deliver a sharp and immediate telepathic blow to avoid the poor crewwoman giving an alarm. She dropped like a stone. When the danger had passed, I took a moment to attend to her, ensuring she was breathing and placing her in a more comfortable position. Even that earned me glares from my companions, but I ignored them.

  Perhaps I should have allowed them their outlet; after all, they were only here because they were following my plan, and by all lights, my plan was utter lunacy and almost inevitably suicidal.

  Chapter 54

  Outnumbered

  Albert Einstein once defined “insanity” a
s doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. With all due respect to Professor Einstein, in my experience “insanity” might well be defined as how I keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result. As my evidence, I offer you this vision: Keryl Clee, resplendent in his gaudiest admiral’s uniform, marching alone into the foyer fronting the entrance to the Procyon’s barricaded bridge in the face of four Nuum sentries with frighteningly large weapons pointed directly at his head. He has adopted this full-frontal approach on various occasions in the past, and, plainly, against all odds, he has survived each time. Ergo, his continuing to pursue this strategy can only persuade the casual observer that he has totally lost his mind.

  And yet, there he was, that same vision of a man, strolling carefully into the lion’s den of photonic devastation, gambling that his very audacity would stay their telepathic triggers.

  I could feel the emanations of each of their minds, their natural tension restrained only by their professional training. Lobok had put his best on guard. I had to admit that I had calculated he would do no less. What I could not calculate was whether anyone entering this area was to be shot on sight.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, using command voice. “Stand down.”

  No one moved.

  A shrug. “I trust you recognize me. I am here to discuss the terms of Captain Lobok’s surrender.” That garnered no greater reaction than my last pronouncement. I fixed my gaze on the one nearest the communications box to the inside. “Damn it, man! Do you think I came all the way up here just to stare at you? Tell Captain Lobok I am here to discuss terms!”

  In all the eons since the first Sumerian private was dressed down by the first drill sergeant, armies have been built on one inviolable principle: When a man receives an order, he obeys it. And if he cannot, he passes the buck to someone else.