by B. V. Larson
A few minutes later, Karst had to move out of the way as the Lockstep’s shuttle roared in at low level and set down. Captain Gibson stepped out, compact needler in his hand, and looked around.
Straker met him there after cracking his suit. He made sure his comlink earset was firmly in place before hopping out onto the cold concrete to shake Gibson’s hand.
“Well done, Commodore,” said Gibson, his eyes roving over the camp. He didn’t put away his pistol. “I’d advise you to stay alert. There are usually a few fanatics in these camps, even some willing to suicide if it takes out an enemy leader.”
Straker nodded, unholstering his trusty slugthrower handgun. “Where’s the camp HQ?”
Gibson pointed. “Pretty sure it’s this building. See the crest?”
Straker noticed the Mutuality’s defining symbol, a stylized hammer and carbine against a blood-red field, set over the central door. “It really ought to be a boot on a neck, against a field of dirt.”
Gibson grunted in agreement. “Sir, if you don’t mind, I’m going to find my family.”
“Of course.”
The stout freighter captain hustled off toward the prisoner barracks. Someone coughed behind Straker, and he turned quickly to see Nazario and Redwolf, his occasional bodyguards. Nazario was slim and deadly with a blade. The hulking Redwolf favored the short crysteel rod he carried everywhere like a baton.
Now, though, the smaller man hefted a laser carbine, while the bigger one carried a large-capacity automatic slugthrower usually needing a crew of two.
“Maybe you ought to sling that thing,” Straker told Redwolf. “Firefight’s over.”
Redwolf showed a gap-toothed grin and shouldered it, taking out his signature alloy rod. “Never can be too careful.”
“No worries, sir,” said Nazario, waggling his carbine. “I’ll drop anyone before this sleeping turtle even lines up on them.”
Straker nodded. “Stay alert, but remember, I want them alive.”
“Roger wilco, sir,” said the men in unison.
He strode into the HQ building. “Breakers?”
“Here, sir,” called Aldrik Ritter.
When Straker located the voice, he found the platoon sergeant and couple of Breakers guarding a Lazarus clone, who’d been fibertaped to a chair.
“This isn’t very polite, Captain Straker,” said the Lazarus. “Can’t we speak together like civilized men?”
“It’s Commodore Straker now, Inquisitor,” replied Straker, “and I’m not very civilized, if you’re using the original meaning of ‘living in cities.’ Or, even if you mean ‘sophisticated and urbane.’” He showed his teeth. “But if you mean ‘displaying morals and common decency,’ it’s you that’s uncivilized.”
The Lazarus shrugged within his restraints. “We’ll have to agree to disagree. Now, how can I be of service?”
“You expect me to believe you’re going to help me?”
The Inquisitor sighed. “We Lazaruses are pragmatists, Commodore. We’re driven neither by the emotions of the proletariat nor the functional paranoia of the Party elite. I will not help you harm the Mutuality, but like all my fellow clones of the Lazarus cell line, I have studied your exploits and I believe you might be persuaded to damage our mutual enemies if it seemed in your best interest.”
“Then why the hell did you bring the Lockstep crew’s families here as bait for a trap? Why not let us rescue them easily and be on our way?”
“Actually, I argued for just that approach, but I was instructed otherwise. I’m not one to fall on my sword for a principle.”
“But you’d do it for practical gain.”
The Lazarus shrugged again. “I’m not eager to throw away my life, but if I must pay with it, I am consoled by the fact that my cell line will continue. This is not so different from your Sergeant Ritter here’s devotion to family and clan. I’m sure he would sacrifice himself to save his own people, if it came to that.”
“Great.” Straker paced back and forth. “You’re a lying, murderous torturer with a few admirable qualities.”
“Or perhaps I’m an admirable man who’s willing to be as ruthless as I must…not so different from yourself.”
“Bullshit. I saw the look of cruelty in your eyes—the eyes of the other Lazarus, I mean—when he first introduced himself to me. Pretty soon he had me strapped to a table for torture.”
“Or perhaps he was playing a role in hopes of frightening you into confessing and re-educating yourself.” The Lazarus lifted his chin. “But you don’t frighten, do you?”
“I’ve never been afraid in my life.”
“Now who’s the liar?”
Straker ground his teeth. “All right. I’ve never been afraid of pain or of dying, but my other fears are probably the same as most men. Maybe even the same as you. Fear of failure; fear of those I care about being harmed. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t have those fears. But maybe you don’t have them after all, because you’re not human.”
“I am human, Commodore Straker. I simply have a superior philosophy, one that makes me fit for my role. Have you read the Stoics?”
“Can’t say that I have. My reading’s been confined to military history, strategy and tactics.”
“A well-rounded man must be knowledgeable to be effective. I—”
Straker’s comlink beeped, and he held up his hand for silence.
“Engels to Straker,” he heard.
It was his second-in-command—and lover—Commander Carla Engels, calling from the bridge of the underspace-capable Archer Revenge, which had been lurking out of easy detection range from Prael.
“Straker here.”
“You need to get out of there ASAP. Three Mutuality frigates and a squadron of attack ships just unmasked from behind an asteroid, and they’re heading your way.”
Chapter 3
Prael. Re-education and Training Camp 13.
“Something wrong?” said the Lazarus with a smile like a lizard. “Suddenly worried about your getaway plan?”
“You thought you were stalling me with your patter,” replied Straker, “but my troops needed the time to get things organized anyway. This does mean we’ll have to hurry.”
He activated his comlink. “Listen up, Breakers. We have hostiles inbound. We need to load up and get airborne, double-quick. Spear, get them moving.” He then switched channels back to Engels. “How long do we have, Carla?”
“Half an hour to break atmo, tops, but those attack ships will run you down if missiles don’t.”
“Can you intercept them?”
“Already on my way on impellers, but you know how hard it is to do an underspace intercept against maneuvering ships. You’ll need to fly straight and level to set them up for us.”
“We’ll get moving as fast as we can and start running for flatspace. Straker out.”
The Lazarus spoke. “You won’t make it, you know, unless you have a much larger force than I believe you do.”
Aldrik Ritter set the muzzle of his carbine against the clone’s skull. “I’m tired of this schweinhund’s blather. Let me kill him.”
Straker held up a hand. “No. Tape him up and bring him along. I have uses for him.”
Lockstep lifted in record time.
***
Commander Carla Engels, acting captain of the Archer Revenge, chewed her lip and wished for the impossible. Some kind of sensor that provided information about normal space while her ship was in underspace would give her an enormous advantage, but such a device had never been developed. In fact, according to the Ruxins, they’d tried and failed many times.
There was no point in worrying about that now. She sat in a damp human-shaped chair bolted to the deck of the Revenge’s bridge and put her feet up on the rail in front of her. The octopoid Ruxins surrounding her were perfectly comfortable, but she was, of course, living in a steambath.
It became a cold steambath when they spent much time in underspace, as the strange empty dimension slowly
sucked out all heat from the normal matter intruding on its domain. If its protective fields ever failed, the Archer and everything in it would freeze instantly. Even with the fields, warmth slowly leached out of her bones, despite her suit heaters. It was like being sick, having chills and a fever at the same time.
But they weren’t in underspace yet. She stared at the main display, now upgraded with a fine new holoplate, watching the icon representing Revenge crawl toward a rough point of interception with the attack ship squadron. While the three frigates as a group were much more dangerous, only the attack ships had the speed to run down Straker’s escaping transport Lockstep.
Correction: the attack ships plus any missiles fired by the frigates. But that was a worry for the future. She strongly suspected they would hold off on launching shipkillers until they were sure they couldn’t disable the fleeing freighter to recapture it and those aboard.
“You are frightened,” said Zaxby, her Ruxin acting XO and, if she wasn’t completely mistaken, her friend. The old octopoid had no sense of tact, but she knew he meant well.
“No, I’m worried. We didn’t expect an ambush squadron waiting for our rescue attempt. Makes me wonder if we have a spy in our ranks.”
“If so, it is not among my people.”
“Of course not. It would be one of the humans we liberated. We rescued a lot of them, and they’re all different, from many places and all walks of life. There’s no way to vet every one of them except to wait and watch to see how they behave.” Engels resisted the urge to rub Zaxby’s head as if he were a pet instead of a sentient being. It wouldn’t be appropriate in this setting, but touching the rubbery skin soothed her nerves. She couldn’t explain why, but it did.
Back in the Starfish Nebula, where their secret base lay hidden, she’d spent time in Ruxin nurseries. The immature octopoids delighted her with their inquisitiveness, and seemed fascinated by her in turn. They were also great mimics, and many of the little ones were already learning the Earthan language.
Zaxby said, “More likely than a spy is the possibility that the Lazarus clone anticipated Commodore Straker’s obvious attempt to rescue family members of his subordinates. It would have been much wiser for us to simply leave them to their fate, rather than risk more humans in hazardous missions of liberation. After all, they have no particular value to add to your society. Can those in question not find other mates and spawn more children?”
“You know humans aren’t like that. We value our families highly.”
“Typically irrational. It makes more sense to value those you choose to bond with, rather than those whom the random vagaries of recombinant DNA has associated you with.”
“Maybe it’s because we don’t lay thousands of eggs at a time like you Ruxins do,” Engels said.
“Only hundreds. So you are saying it may be a simple matter of supply and demand? We Ruxins have many siblings, therefore we value them less, but we have far fewer chosen friends, so we naturally value them more? That is one of the more rational hypotheses I have heard come from a human’s mouth.”
“Or maybe only a few of your own people can stand each other,” snapped Engels. “Ever wonder why you like to hang out with humans so much?”
Zaxby rolled his eyes, a mannerism he’d learned from humans. “Every day I wonder about that, yes. It makes no sense to me either.”
“And you claim you’re less rude than the average Ruxin.”
“I am.”
“And I’m more patient than the average human.”
Engels tired of the no-win conversation and leaned forward, examining the holoplate and talking the young Ruxin bridge crew through her tactics. “We started from where we waited at the optimum flatspace transition point. We’re on course directly toward Lockstep, which is heading straight here. The attack squadron is overtaking them, so we’ll have to pass through Lockstep’s position and try to pop up behind them, yet in front of the attack ships. We’ll get a quick update and insert again to deploy float mines in their path. Make sense?”
“I find no fault with that approach,” replied Zaxby. “If they spot us, they will divert or slow, out of concern for the danger we present. If not, they will run into our mines.”
“That’s my plan. Since Lockstep and her fusion flare are right between us and the attack ships, stay in normal space for now. They won’t be able to detect us as long as we use only impellers.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.” Zaxby translated her words into Ruxin for the benefit of the bridge officers, though all of them had a basic facility with Earthan by now.
Less than an hour later, the combined velocities of the approaching ships and that of Lockstep had brought them near the intercept point.
“Comlink to Lockstep, secure ultra-narrow laser,” Engels said.
“Comlink established,” replied her communications officer.
“Straker, you there?”
“I’m here. Go ahead.”
“We’re about to insert under you and try to take out the attack squadron, but our velocity is such that we can’t turn around to help you. Not unless we light our fusion engine, and I’m not willing to give them a beacon to find us. We’ll vector toward the frigates and try to hit them too, but after that, it’ll be at least two hours before we can get back to you. By that time they’ll have caught you or you’ll have transited out. So stay on a steady, predictable course. We need to lull them into the same thing.”
“I understand,” said Straker. “Good luck and good hunting. Don’t worry about us. We still have a few tricks up our sleeves. See you back at the nebula. Straker out.”
Engels sighed. She’d hoped things would go smoothly so the two ships could rendezvous at the transit point. She’d have returned to the freighter and had a nice pleasant sidespace trip in a dry cabin with a warm bed filled with Derek. Now she faced an unpleasantly damp week with a bunch of cold-blooded Ruxins.
“Approaching Lockstep,” said her helmsman. Unlike Straker, who sometimes called that Ruxin his “helmsquid,” she stuck with human titles. She wished she was piloting the Revenge herself, but the controls didn’t lend themselves to human hands. She could fly the Archer in a pinch, but not well.
“Insert the ship,” she replied, and resigned herself once again to playing captain only. She clasped her hands behind her back and wondered if captains everywhere did so in order to still the urge to grab controls and do something.
“Inserting. Steady in underspace.”
The holoplate showed nothing different as the software created predictions of all tracked objects—the attack squadron, the frigates, Lockstep and Revenge, plus a few small asteroids nearby. On the display, it appeared as if Revenge would collide with Lockstep, and Engels held her breath.
The two icons merged, and then Revenge had passed through the other ship in underspace. “Emerge,” she ordered.
“Emerging.”
When they re-entered normal space, the passive sensors updated the predictive software. Normally, Engels would worry about being spotted by the oncoming attack ships, but three things worked in her favor.
First, attack ships had only a few sensors, and they were optimized for short-range targeting. They relied on datalinks from bigger ships for the rest.
Second, she’d had the Ruxins improve the stealth qualities of the Archer when they’d had her in drydock over the last month, applying coatings and minimizing sharp protrusions.
And third, Revenge emerged directly between the attack ships and the freighter’s bright fusion engine flare. For the enemy, it would be like looking directly at a sun.
“They’re still on a straight pursuit course,” she said.
“So it appears,” replied Zaxby. “At current closing speed, they will overrun us in eight minutes.”
“Helm, reverse acceleration, maximum impellers. That will slow us down.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
“An interesting order, Captain Engels. Why have you done this?”
“I’m le
ngthening the time to intercept,” Engels said with a grin. “What’s more, the float mine will have a lower delta to the attack ships’ velocity, so it will be more likely to catch them all.”
“You should have been male.”
Engels stared at Zaxby. “What?”
“You make war like a War Male.”
“I make war like a professional fleet officer.”
“It is a compliment, Captain Engels. I was referring to my own culture, and how the average Ruxin sees you. You know, like your bridge officers.” Zaxby gestured broadly with six tentacles.
Engels realized more eyes than normal were on her. Zaxby seemed to be trying to tell her something. Did the Ruxin crew have doubts about her ability to command because she was female? That must be it.
She spoke loudly and clearly. “Many human females fight, just as many human males govern. You are a neuter, Zaxby, yet you’re a superb ship’s officer in battle, just like the rest of your fellow Ruxins. Your gender doesn’t matter, especially when the war is fought using machines. It’s about brains, not hormones.”
The Ruxins seemed to relax, and many eyes turned back to their boards and consoles. It looked like she’d passed some kind of test of command without even knowing it was coming.
“Insert the ship,” Engels said as her intercept approached.
“Inserting. Underspace achieved.”
“Weapons, deploy one float mine to time-detonate at an optimum location inside their formation, and one to simultaneously detonate directly in front of them. I want microsecond timing to avoid fratricide.”
“Detonation timing set. Deploying float mines.”
Engels didn’t need to order acceleration. The ship was already using retrograde impellers within underspace, slowing the ship for eventually heading back in the direction she had come, so the float mines drifted on a ballistic course, straight ahead toward the oncoming attack squadron.
The holoplate’s icons flashed into detonation, and the Archer rattled with the dimensional bleed-over. The predicted path of the attack squadron passed through Revenge’s location. “Emerge!”