A Talent for War

by Jack McDevitt

  “Okay, Alex, I’ve got it. These are final entries.” She paused momentarily to heighten the tension, or perhaps to allow me to entertain second thoughts. “The next voice you hear—”

  —Was certainly not that of Christopher Sim. Zero six fourteen twenty-two, it said. Abonai Four. Repair categories one and two completed this date. Repair category three as shown on inventory. Weapons systems fully restored. Corsarius returned to service this date. Devereaux, Technical Support.

  “That’s probably the chief of a maintenance crew,” I said.

  “If they’re returning command of the ship to its captain, there should be more.”

  There was. Christopher Sim had delivered few speeches, had never spoken to parliaments, and had not lived long enough to make a farewell address. Unlike Tarien’s, his voice had never become familiar to the schoolchildren of the Confederacy. Nevertheless, I knew it at once. And I was impressed at how cleverly it had been reproduced by actors.

  Zero six fourteen thirty-seven, it said in a rich baritone. Corsarius received per work order two two three kappa. Note that forward transformers check out at nine six point three seven, which is not an acceptable level for combat. Command understands that the port facility is under pressure just now. Nevertheless, if Maintenance is unable to effect repairs, they should at least be aware of the deficiency. Corsarius is hereby returned to port. Christopher Sim, Commanding.

  Another round of entries announced restoration of transformer power, and Sim’s crisp voice accepted without comment. But even over the space of two centuries, one could read the satisfaction in his tone. He loved having the last word, I thought, amused.

  “This would be the completion of repairs at Abonai,” I said. “Just shortly before the crew mutinied.”

  “Yes. The dates check.”

  “My God,” I said. “The mutiny, the Seven, we’ve got everything. Run the rest of it!”

  She turned slowly toward me, with a pale smile. “That’s the last entry,” she said. “There is nothing after it.” Her voice was hollow, and beads of sweat had appeared on her upper lip, despite the fact that the air was still cool.

  “Then the Tenandrome people did take it!” I said, a little too loudly.

  “This is a ship’s log, Alex. It can’t be erased, can’t be doctored, can’t be removed, can’t be changed in any way without leaving a trail. The computer says it’s intact.” She bent over it, stabbed at the keyboard, looked at the results, and shrugged. “It’s all here.”

  “But Corsarius went into battle shortly after that! There must have been log entries! Right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I can’t imagine a naval service trying to function with arbitrary log-keeping. For whatever reason, Christopher Sim took a volunteer crew into the climactic battle of his life, and neglected to enter any of it into his log.”

  “Maybe he was too busy,” I suggested.

  “Alex,” she said, “it could not have happened.”

  She settled herself with some diffidence into the captain’s chair, and punched fresh instructions into the computer. “Let’s see what we get if we back up.”

  Christopher Sim’s voice returned. —I have no doubt that the destruction of the two battle cruisers will focus enemy attention on the small naval bases at Dimonides II, and at Chippewa. It can hardly do otherwise. Those sites will be perceived by the enemy as a bone in their throat, and will be attacked as soon as they can concentrate sufficient power. The Ashiyyur will probably divert their main battle group to the task—

  “I think this is early in the war,” I said.

  “Yes. It’s good to know at least that he uses his log.”

  We listened while Sim described the composition and strength of the force he expected, and launched into a detailed description of enemy psychology, and their probable attack strategy. I was impressed that he seemed to have got most of it right. Chase listened a while. Then she got up, and announced that she wanted to explore the rest of the ship. “Want to come along?”

  “I’ll stay here,” I said. “I’d like to hear more of it.”

  Maybe that was a mistake.

  After she left, I sat in the half-light listening to projections of energy requirements and commentary on enemy technology and occasional crisp battle reports, describing Sim’s hit-and-run tactics against the big enemy fleets.

  No wonder Gabe had been excited! I wondered whether he had known precisely what he was stalking.

  Gradually, I was drawn into the drama of that long-ago struggle, and I saw the monster Ashiyyur formations through the eyes of a commander who consistently succeeded in scattering, or at least diverting, them with a handful of light warships. I began to understand the importance of his intelligence-gathering capabilities, the listening stations along enemy lines, fleet movement analysis, even his awareness of the psychology of individual enemy commanders. It appeared they could not void themselves without Sim’s knowledge.

  The individual accounts were riveting.

  Off Sanusar, the Dellacondans, assisted by a few allied vessels, ambushed and destroyed two heavy cruisers at the cost of a single frigate. I listened to Sim reporting his coup in the Spinners. There were other actions, many of which I had never heard. But always, despite the long line of victories, the result was the same: withdraw, count losses, regroup. The Dellacondans could never stand and fight: time and again, Sim was forced to pull back because he lacked the sheer force to exploit victory.

  And then came Ilyanda.

  We think we can beat them here, he announces cryptically. If not here, then I fear it will be nowhere. In that moment. I understood that Kindrel Lee’s story was true.

  He names, but does not describe, the instrument of execution.

  Helios.

  The sun weapon.

  He pauses, almost uncertain. As surely as I sit in this chair, history will judge harshly what I am about to do. But, God help me, I can see no other course.

  At Ilyanda, the evacuation goes slower than anticipated. Some people are resisting, demanding their right to stay behind. I cannot permit it and, where necessary, we are resorting to force. And later: It’s unlikely that we will succeed in getting everyone off. We will do what we can. But whatever our circumstances when the mutes arrive, we will detonate on schedule!

  Tension mounts, and units of the Ashiyyurean armada appear among the outer worlds. We must have everything away from here and all unusual movement stopped before they get within scanner range. There’s talk of sacrificing some frigates to delay matters, but Sim concludes that he cannot allow the Ashiyyur to guess that their presence has been detected. Meantime, some of the hoped-for transports have not arrived. The Dellacondans respond by padding the freight compartments of the shuttles. (which are, of course, capable only of interplanetary travel) with blankets and mounds of clothing. Then they load the final evacuees, and clear out.

  With luck they won’t be seen. They’ll get hungry, and a few of them may get blistered. But they have a chance.

  With five hours remaining to his escape deadline, Sim withdraws the operations teams that have been coordinating the evacuation and salvaging as much of the art and literature of Ilyanda as possible. Tarien says no price is too high to stop the mutes. I suppose he is right.

  At the last minute, more people are found at Point Edward. They are hustled up on the remaining two shuttles. Sim’s small fighting force has been leaving in single units, in an effort to create the smallest possible scan target. Finally, only Corsarius remains. Most of the late arrivals are packed on board, and they are quickly underway.

  I hurried through the next few entries. Corsarius withdraws to a distance of about a half parsec, where they pause to watch. The Ashiyyurean fleet closes in, transmits warnings to the Dellacondans, and offers Sim a chance to surrender.

  Sim captures the recording for his log: Resistance is useless, the voice of the enemy says. It is mechanical, matter-of-fact, eminently reasonable. There is no hint of exultation. Save the lives of you
r crews.

  I looked around the bridge. Hard to realize it had all happened here. Outside, the planetary rim, hazy in bright sunlight, was coming into view. Where would Talino have been while they waited?

  The station has opened fire on the enemy ships with its meagre batteries. The weapons are taken out quickly, and Sim reports that several destroyers have accomplished a forced docking.

  Now, he adds. And there is an unspoken question in his tone.

  Now.

  It is a bad moment, and I can read his anguish.

  And I thought: Matt Olander is sitting in a bar at the spaceport. He has taken the trigger off automatic, and his attention has been distracted.

  The Corsarius debarked its passengers on Millenium four days later. I checked the tables. A modern liner, traveling between Ilyanda and Millenium, would spend about eight and a half standard days in Armstrong space alone. How had he done it?

  There was something else, another log entry following a series of maintenance reports: We have to find out what happened. The thing might still go off. It has to be disarmed and made safe.

  After that, the record garbles. I was trying to read it when Chase came back. “There are no remains anywhere,” she said.

  I told her what I’d found. She listened, made an effort of her own to clear the transmission, and shook her head. “It’s a security code of some sort. He didn’t want just anybody to read it.”

  “The phrasing bothers me,” I said. “‘Disarmed and made safe.’ It’s a redundancy. Sim is usually very precise. What does one do after disarming a sun weapon to make it safe?”

  We looked at one another, and I think it struck us both at the same instant. “He’s talking about security,” Chase said. “No one is to know they have the weapon.”

  “Which means they have to explain the evacuation.” I sat down in Sim’s command chair. It was a bit tight for me.

  “Wasn’t it fortunate,” she said quietly, “that the mutes acted so untypically at Point Edward. It saved Sim from having to answer so many questions.”

  She looked at me a long time. And I understood, finally, why there had been an attack against the empty city. And who had conducted it.

  I found more log entries further on. Sim and the Corsarius were plunged again into engagements in a dozen different places across the Frontier. But he had changed now, and I began to read, first in his tone, and then in his comments, a despair that grew in proportion with each success, and each subsequent retreat. And I heard his reactions to the defeat at Grand Salinas, and the loss, one by one, of the allied worlds. It must have seemed as though there was no end to the black ships. And eventually, there came the news that Dellaconda, too, had fallen. He responded only by breathing Maurina’s name.

  Through all this, there was no further mention of the sun weapon.

  He railed against the shortsightedness of Rimway, of Toxicon, of Earth, who thought themselves safe by distance, who feared to rouse the wrath of the conquering horde, who perceived each other with deeper-rooted jealousies and suspicions than those with which they regarded the invader. And when he paid for his victory at Chapparal with the loss of five frigates and a light cruiser manned by volunteers from Toxicon, he commented that We are losing our finest and bravest. And to what point? The remark was followed by a long silence, and then he said the unthinkable!: If they will not come, then it is time to make our own peace!

  His mood grew darker as the long retreat continued. And when two more ships from his diminished squadron were lost at Como Des, his anger flared: There will be a Confederacy one day, he says wearily, but they will not construct it on the bodies of my men!

  It is the same voice that indicted the Spartans.

  XXIII.

  Solitude holds the mirror to folly. One cannot, in its cold reflection, easily escape truth.

  —Rev. Agathe Lawless,

  Sunset Musings

  WE RETURNED TO the Centaur for a meal, and some sleep. But the sleep came late: we talked for several hours, speculating on what had finally happened to the captain and crew of the Corsarius. Had the Tenandrome found remains on board? And possibly conducted a funeral service? A ritual volley, report home, and forget it? Pretend none of it ever happened?

  “I don’t think so,” said Chase.

  “Why not?”

  “Tradition. The captain of the Tenandrome would have been bound, if she took such action, to have closed out the Corsarius’s log with a final entry.” She looked out at the old warship. Its running lights glowed white and red against the hard sky. “No: I’d bet they found her the same way we did. She’s a dutchman.” She folded her arms tightly across her breast as though it were cool in the cabin. “Maybe the mutes captured the ship, spirited away the crew, and left it here for us to find and think about. An object lesson.”

  “Out here? How would they expect us to find it?”

  Chase shook her head, and closed her eyes. “Are we going back over?”

  “We don’t have any answers yet.”

  She moved in the dark, and soft music crept into the compartment. “There may not be any over there.”

  “What do you think Scott’s been looking for all these years?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He found something. He went through that ship, the same as we did, and he found something.”

  While we talked, Chase took us out another few kilometers, smiling ruefully, but admitting that the derelict made her nervous.

  I could not get out of my mind the image of a Christopher Sim in despair. It had never occurred to me that he, of all people, could have doubted the eventual outcome of the war. It was a foolish notion, of course, to assume that he’d had the advantage of my hindsight. He turns out to be quite human. And in that despair, in his concern for the lives of his comrades, and the people whom he tried to defend, I sensed an answer to the deserted vessel.

  There will be a Confederacy one day; but they will not construct it on the bodies of my men.

  Long after Chase had gone to sleep, I tried to tabulate everything I could recall or guess about the Ashiyyur, the Seven, Sim’s probable state of mind, and the Rigellian Action.

  It was difficult to forget the guns of the Corsarius turning in my direction during the simul. But that, of course, was not how it had happened: Sim’s ploy had worked. Corsarius and Kudasai had succeeded in surprising the attacking ships. They’d done some serious damage before Corsarius had been incinerated in its duel with the cruiser. That at least was the official account.

  It obviously hadn’t happened that way either. And I wondered, too, why Sim had changed his strategy at Rigel. During his long string of successes, he’d always led the Dellacondans personally. But on this one occasion, he’d preferred to escort Kudasai during the main assault, while his frigates drove a knife into the flank of the enemy fleet.

  And Kudasai had carried the surviving brother to his death only a few weeks later at Nimrod. But Tarien lived long enough to know that his diplomatic efforts had succeeded: Earth and Rimway had joined hands at last, had promised help, and Toxicon had already joined the war.

  The Seven: somehow it connected with the tale of the Seven. How did it happen that their identities were lost to history? Was it coincidence that the single most likely source of their names, the log of the Corsarius, was also mute on the subject, and in fact mute on the battle itself? What had Chase said? It could not have happened!

  No: it could not.

  And somewhere, along the slippery edge of reality and intuition that precedes sleep, I understood. With a clear and cold certainty, I understood. And, had I been able, I would have put it out of my mind, and gone home.

  Chase slept fitfully for a couple of hours. When she woke, it was dark again, and she asked what I intended to do.

  I was beginning to grasp the quandary of the Tenandrome. Christopher Sim, however he might have died, was far more than simply a piece of history. We were embroiled with the central symbols of our political existence.
“I don’t know,” I said. “This place, this world, is a graveyard. It’s a graveyard with a guilty secret.”

  Chase looked down at the frosty, cloud-swept rim of the world. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “All the bodies are missing. The bodies are missing, the names are missing, the log entries are missing. And the Corsarius, which should be missing, is circling like clockwork, every six hours and eleven minutes.”

  “They intended to come back,” I said. “They put the ship into storage. That implies someone expected to come back.”

  “But they didn’t,” she said. “Why not?”

  During the entire history of Hellenic civilization, I know of no darker, nor more wanton crime, than the needless sacrifice of Leonidas and his band of heroes at Thermopylae. Better that Sparta should fall, than that such men be squandered. “Yes,” I said, “where are the bodies?”

  Through a shaft in the clouds, far below, the sea glittered.

  The Centaur’s capsule was designed to permit movement from ship to ship, or from orbit to a planetary surface. It was not intended for the sort of use I proposed to put it to: a long atmospheric flight. It would be unstable in high winds, it would be cramped, and it would be relatively slow. Still, it could set down on land or water. And it was all we had.

  I loaded it with supplies, enough to last several days.

  “Why?” asked Chase. “What’s down there?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I’ll keep the videos on.”