Rogue Powers

by Roger MacBride Allen

  Mac was, therefore, left with a bit of challenge.

  George and Randall had arrived with a list of thirty-one star systems that were: distant binaries with rotation periods of at least seventy years; thus far unexplored; and having at least one star of a brightness, age, and mass that could support life. At first glance, the job was simple: Send a ship to each system until one of them found Capital. In practice, things were a lot trickier. Any attack on Capital would benefit greatly from the element of surprise, which meant the search ships could not risk being detected themselves. If the Guards didn't know they had been found, they might be less on the alert. It made an optimistic sort of sense. Besides, the Guards would be sure to go nuts trying to blow any search ship they spotted. Of course, a ship that didn't come back would tell the League something, but not as much as they'd like to know. Mac wanted the ships to come back with concrete information—and no doubt the ships' crews would agree with that part of the plan.

  But the Guards had shown just how good they were at ship detection back at New Finland. So the search ships had to look for signs of civilization from extreme distances and, obviously, using only passive systems—monitoring radio frequencies, telescopic observation, infrared checks, neutrino detectors. No active radar. Fortunately, a world-sized civilization was a lot easier to detect than a ship, or even a fleet of ships. But not by so much. Oh, the planet itself would be spotted instantly, but it could be tricky to spot a civilization on it that wanted to hide.

  It all depended on how hard the Guards worked on camouflage. No search ship could possibly risk getting close enough to observe a planet optically and, for example, detect the lights of cities. But there were other things that could be spotted from fairly extreme range. Heat, radio, neutrinos, fusion flames would all be giveaways. The trouble was, the Guards could shield themselves pretty effectively if they were willing to expend the effort. Power sources could be disguised, all-but-impossible-to-detect laser communication and transmission over cable could be substituted for radio broadcasts, neutrinos were tough to stop but they could skip fusion power plants and use chemical rockets, as inconvenient and expensive as all those moves would be. There were lots of concealment techniques. But none of them could hide the planet itself, or long fool anyone observing with sensitive equipment, unless the Guards were willing to forego anything past 19th-century technology.

  On the plus side, George was pretty definite the Guards didn't make extreme efforts at hiding, and trusted to isolation (and, until recently, the feet that no one knew they existed) to hide themselves. Another plus: The odds were against a given star system having a planet in its "eco-sphere"—that range of distances from the star where a planet would get the right amount of light and heat from the star to support Earthlike life. On average, about one G-class star in twenty had a planet in the right place. That was the figure for single stars, and the odds were somewhat worse for binary star systems. So. If any of the target stars had a properly located planet, the odds were that it was the planet, Capital.

  Mac, after considerable thought and a hard look at all the facts, concluded that the Guards would be best served if they hid themselves well enough to hide from a ship just happening by and taking a cursory look, but not well enough to hide from a ship deliberately arrived in the system and intent on a thoroughgoing search. Concealment of a whole civilization from someone who knew what they were looking for, someone who was determined to find—that would be impossible, or at least impossibly expensive. So the search was do-able, and could be done with off-the-shelf gear.

  Thirty-one star systems, scattered far and wide. The closest: ninety light years out from Earth.

  Driscoll had figured months ago that the Survey ships would be needed in the search for Capital, and had grounded the ships as they came in. Now she turned the Survey's small fleet over to Mac to deploy as he saw fit. It didn't leave him with much. Six of the Survey Service's ten fast frigates were in home port orbit around Columbia. The Joslyn Marie was still undergoing repairs in the New Finland system. She wouldn't be available for service anytime soon. Spotter was expected to return from a Survey mission around now—though you couldn't exactly set your watch by an exploration ship's arrival. The Ismene Schell had been launched just before Driscoll had shut down the Survey project for the duration, and Vasco da Gama was overdue and feared lost. Mac had the other six ships to count on, and possibly two more drifting in, someday. Maybe three, if Vasco showed up. He needed more. Unfortunately, the moment when the whole League was finally scared into mobilizing wasn't exactly the moment when there were a lot a lot of other ships available for duty.

  He needed some sort of authority, some piece of paper to wave around that would convince people to loan him ships and crews. He asked Pete for help on that, and Pete said he'd see what he could do. Mac was sure that meant a fire would be lit under the right people, and fast.

  In the meantime, the six ships in port needed to be cranked up for detection duty.

  Spotting habitable worlds was the original prime task of the Survey, and the ships had been outfitted accordingly. Spotting an industrial civilization required somewhat different instrumentation. Optical and spectroscopic devices would still be handy, but Mac discovered his hidden skill as a scrounger, as he dug up neutrino spotters from New Harvard University, infrared sensors that could be patched into the fast frigate's telescopes from a mining company working the Kennedy's system outer planets, bits and pieces from all over.

  Mac even beat Pete to the punch in scraping up more search ships. He spotted a brief article in Aviation Week and Space Technology that gave him ideas. The war scare had driven the Earth nations into close cooperation on intruder-detection, but the very act of merging the various systems had made some units redundant. The Brazilian stations were ideal for the Capital-search mission. They were designed to run at very low power, for long periods of time. And, since they were meant to be deployed quickly, they were fitted with C-squared generators and fusion engines. The Brazilians had an embassy on Kennedy, and Mac spent three days there, trying to wheedle five of the manned ship-detection stations out of them for the duration. The ambassador was willing to help, but it would take time to get word to his government.

  In the meantime, Mac wanted to get his frigates out toward their first targets. He spent days studying the star charts, playing with a dozen variables in his head, trying to figure which were the most likely stars to harbor Capital. Distance from Earth, distance to suspected hijack points, the limits of space technology at the time the Guards had left Earth—he even dug up the specs on their colony ship, the Oswald Mosley.

  And thinking about history brought up something he had almost dozed through in lecture, years before, a factor that hadn't been considered before: With the C-squared drive, it wasn't the distance between stars that mattered so much, but their velocity, relative to each other as they moved through space. A century before, with far less powerful and less efficient ship's engines, and with ships that tended to have much more mass than modern designs, that had mattered a great deal more than it did now. Crudely put, the Mosley couldn't go very fast, and so couldn't catch up with a star system that was moving more than about one hundred twenty kilometers a second, relative to Earth.

  Mac had never actually believed that those History of Astronautics classes would have the slightest practical application, but he was beginning to appreciate the benefits of a well-rounded liberal education. He did the velocity calculations, which led him to throw out four of the target systems altogether—the Mosley couldn't possibly have matched velocity with them. However, it also pulled five new systems out of Randall and George's "lower probability" list and into the prime running. Now he had thirty-two target systems.

  Finally, he had sifted the data and made as many hunches and badly-educated guesses as he could. It was time to send some ships out.

  Three hundred fifty hours after Pete had brought news of the Imp, the first frigates headed out across the sky.

&nbs
p; CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Guardian Contact Base, Outpost

  The forklift rolled another crate of rifles out of the cargo hold. Romero, watching from the viewport of his private office, smiled at the sight. Contact Camp was growing by leaps and bounds now. It was no longer a mere research station—it was a trading center, with warehouses and shipping clerks and inventory control. The Nihilists and the Guards were making lots of deals.

  Romero had a letter in his tunic, tucked inside a pocket next to his heart, from Jules Jacquet himself, crediting Romero with the idea that had led to the destruction of three of the enemy's largest ships at Britannica. The foam worms had done their work. Romero smiled at the thought of the letter, and resisted the temptation to pull it out and read it again.

  Promotion. Promotion was in the air for one Captain Lewis Romero. Things were breaking his way. That suicidal escape attempt by that half-breed Calder was the turning point. That had given Romero the excuse to yank that damned Gustav out of the Contact Camp and put him in charge of that dreary orbital station. Captain Lewis Romero was forced to take charge of the now all-important Contact Camp himself.

  Across the camp were the labs that made it important, where the Nihilists brought their horrors to explain and demonstrate to the men of the Guardian Navy's new BioWeapons Command.

  The Nihilists were smart—all of the bios they brought in were "ecologic engulfers," as the BioWeapons men called them—once the first generation hatched, that was it; the things would breed and breed and breed to the limits of the ecology's carrying capacity—and beyond, until the only things left were the bios, and the bios would starve, eat each other's dead bodies, and finally die in their own waste products. Nothing but death could halt the cycle.

  The Nihilists showed the Guards how to trigger breeding, how to bring the horrors out of dormancy so they would hatch from their eggs or pods or whatever—but not how to stop it again. Once the things had started breeding, the only way the Guards could stop them was to kill them, wipe them out to the last. There was no way for the Guardians to set up controlled hatches or breeding groups independent of the Nihilists. They would always have to go back to their hosts for more.

  The Guards, in their own way, played the same game. They practically gave away their rifles, their lasers, their heavy weapons—and then traded hard for ammo and power packs, once the 'Posters had seen the value of their new toys.

  Romero had been worried a bit when he learned that the Nihilists already had projectile weapons—slug-throwing guns, cannon, and so on. But the native-built guns weren't as sophisticated or accurate as the Guards' stuff—and the native weapons barely had any range at all. From the largest to the smallest, they were made for stopping power, the ability to throw a round hard at short range, elephant guns in all calibers. All were intended for defense against animals, not warfare.

  And it seemed the source of supply for native-built weapons was limited for a very good reason. The Outposters who made the gun would certainly stop trading with the Nihilists when the Nihilist started their attacks.

  The Guards had more to sell than weapons. The 'Posters had fought among themselves in the past, but their tactics had never gotten much past the two sides slamming into each other for an all-out brawl. The Guardians taught them strategy, and military formations, and the concept of specialized troops.

  Romero felt pleased with himself. Things couldn't be going any better. Except—

  Except now there was a new element. Jacquet, in his letter, had instructed Romero to show the Guardians' gratitude to the Nihilists for their aid against the League. Romero was to modify the controls of a small passenger lander so Outposters could fly her. Romero was then to train a crew of 'Posters—and present the ship to the Nihilists. Jacquet made it very clear that the Outposters* ship was to be capable of no more than the roundtrip to Capital. No C2 unit. No navigation system capable of plotting interstellar journeys. It was to be an embassy ship, a dramatic way to convey an invitation to the Outposters to visit their friends on Capital.

  Romero had hesitated as long as he could before obeying the order. It worried him a bit to give the Nihilists the power of spaceflight. It might be wiser to keep them safely on Outpost without giving them ideas. Definitely it would be smarter. And safer. But Jacquet had ordered it, and Jacquet was backing Romero at the moment. It was no time to rock the boat.

  He picked up his phone and asked the Camp's chief engineer to his office. He could find no good reason to delay any longer. The Nihilists would have their ship. What harm could one little inter-system lander do?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Survey Service Base, Columbia

  The ballistic shuttle settled down on its landing legs; the pilot throttled back thrust to zero and quickly set about securing the ship. Outside, the ground crew was already operating the remote equipment, rolling out an access tunnel, the autofueler wheeling itself into position.

  Mac Larson stared out the port at the grounded ship, beside himself with excitement and anxiety. Why couldn't they hurry with that damn access tunnel? No, finally they were pressurizing it—all linked at both ends, it'd open any second.

  But there was some unexplained delay, and the airlocks on the lander and the terminal building remained stubbornly shut. A small crowd shuffled around inside the terminal, held back by the rope barrier, patient for the moment but annoyed by the wait. Nothing happening. Mac rushed back to the viewport. The ship just sat there.

  Was she even aboard? All the communique had said was that Admiral Thomas was arriving with staff Mac had still gotten no certain word that she had survived the attack. Was this even Thomas's lander? This was supposed to be her, but schedules had been hashed up before. The clunk, clunk thud of a hatch opening came from behind him. He rushed back to the airlock, peered along the access tunnel as far as he could, until it curved away to hide the rest of its length.

  There she—no, his imagination was playing tricks on his eyes. How could so many people fit on such a small lander—

  And he was over the silly rope barrier and hallway down the access tunnel before his conscious mind registered that his eye had spotted her.

  "Mac!" Joslyn dropped her bags and leaped up into his arms.

  "Joslyn, you really are alive!"

  "Mac, how did you know I was—"

  "I didn't. I just hoped. Oh, thank God. Lord, you look good."

  "Mac, I would have sent word, but they've gone absolutely potty with paranoia back home, not that I can blame them—" She looked up into his eyes, heedless of all the people coming past them from the lander, and the two of them were in a passionate embrace. Finally, almost reluctantly, they ended the kiss. She reached out and touched his face. "Oh, Mac. Let's get out of this tunnel and get home. With all these personnel coming in, it must be crowded here—"

  "Swinging from the rafters."

  "—But if we can't get nice, private married-couple quarters, I think I'll scream."

  "Cancel the scream. I managed to wangle us our old stateroom and even the adjoining compartment. Just like before. Being XO has its advantages."

  ^You're Base XO?"

  "Flying the second-biggest desk in the place. Privacy I had covered, but I wish I'd had some notice so I could have gotten some kind of meal—"

  "Oh, Mac, I've got you, who needs food? But I wanted to send word. I'm sorry, I tried like mad to write and say that I was all right, that I was coming, but Uncle George ordered everything shut down. No mail, no nothing."

  "Well, you can tell your dear old Admiral Uncle Sir George Wilfred Thomas that he's taken five years off my life worrying."

  "No need/' came a deep and cheery voice behind him. "He's heard already."

  Mac let go of Joslyn, turned, and found the admiral grinning at him. He saluted and took the admiral's preferred hand. "I beg your pardon, sir, I—"

  "Never mind. To offer a scandalous suggestion, if I was married to my great-niece here and some old duffer kept her away for this great length of time, I'd box his ears instead of saluti
ng. Glad to meet you, Lieutenant Commander."

  "Ah, actually, it's captain, sir, but currently serving as a commander. Full commander."

  "Mac! Not again! You never could have just one rank!" Joslyn said happily.

  "Congratulations, then. But let's get out of this mob. The regs say all these people have to salute me and this tunnel's not wide enough for all these flying elbows. Come along."

  Mac was worried that his reunion with his wife would be interrupted by a nice visit with the admiral, but fortunately the admiral had his own reception committee decorously waiting at the roped barrier. Thomas's ship had arrived in orbit under tight security, not identified as his flagship, and the lander had come down with twenty minutes' notice. Captain Driscoll was tied up at the other side of base, but her aide had been able to get away and meet the admiral and see him to his quarters. Thomas was led away from the terminal and into the base proper, and Joslyn and Mac were left to their own devices for the first time in far too long.

  For their sake, Thomas was glad to be steered clear of the reunited couple. If ever a pair of young people needed some private time together—and deserved it—they did. In any event, he had his own concerns. "Ensign—I think I'd prefer to go straight to the situation room. I'd like to get right down to business."

  "Certainly, sir."

  The Survey Service base was a maze of corridors that looked like any base built on a tight budget. The situation room was behind an unmarked, double-locked door, guarded by a beefy marine who demanded Thomas's credentials before she let him through.

  Inside, in holo tanks and displays and printouts, the story was told: The Combined League Fleet was slowly, quietly, with as much secrecy and misdirection as possible, drifting into Kennedy's star system. No large concentrations of ships this time—they were dispersed throughout the system, with small formations orbiting every planet in the system, and some ships in free orbit of Kennedy's sun. The neatly labeled spots of light moving in their displays hid no chaos, the calm of the situation room was reflected in the real world this time. No raiding fleet would be able to hit them all at once, worms or no worms.