Rogue Powers

by Roger MacBride Allen

  One evening, Sir George invited Robinson to dinner in the admiral's cabin. It wasn't until the mess steward had cleared the last of the dishes and left them to their port and cigars that Thomas really spoke. "We've managed to outflank ourselves, Captain Robinson," he said cheerfully. "We've hopped smack into the middle of it, and now the enemy has us surrounded without moving at all." He paused for a moment. "Things look good. We outgun them, we have more ships, we have the resources of every world in space to draw on. There are only two things to be afraid of. The unknown is the first. Something could happen; God knows what. And the second is the more dangerous, the more likely. If they have a genius for a commander. A genius, a truly great admiral and not a tired-out old man like me, he could wipe us out more certainly than a planetload of worms and ten thousand nuclear weapons.' He was silent for a long moment, and then slapped his hands together and spoke again, in a louder, more cheerful voice. "So—we prepare to defend ourselves once the Guards arrive, plan our next attack, and give praise for the rarity of genius."

  Sir George reached for the port decanter again, a bit too eagerly, and filled his glass to the brim for the third time, while Robinson stared hard past him at nothing at all. How the hell do you keep an admiral dried out?

  Aboard G.O.S. Ariadne

  Schiller had waited twelve long hours before he had a chance to talk with Wu in private. Work schedules and sleep shifts had conspired to slow him down. Finally, he caught her as she was heading back on shift. He cornered her in a bend of the corridor and set her heart racing with two words.

  "They're here."

  Wu looked up at him sharply, her eyes opened wide. There was no point in asking who "they" were. That was in his tone of voice, the gjeam in his eye. "Oh, Sam! Thank God." She grabbed his arm and looked up at him.

  "When? How long ago? What are they doing? How do you know?"

  "Quiet, calm. Take it easy. We're talking about how bad the coffee is here. Okay? Good. Now, I've been tracking the construction of the anti-ship missile system at the barycenter—and all of a sudden the center is full of flashes of light, fusion engine lights, the x-ray and gamma detectors start doing a dance—don't ask me who's winning, but there's a pitched battle going on out there. No other possible explanation."

  "Who else knows?"

  "I haven't told anyone, and I haven't made any records. We've got to let this out slowly, carefully, or else this crowd is going to mutiny and get itself killed to no purpose. You and I need to talk, figure out a plan of action. Once we decide what to do, then, when we spread the word, we're doing more than starting a riot."

  "So why pick me to tell?"

  "I need help with this from somebody. You've kept your lip zipped over that Lucy-and-the-lander bit, never mentioned it again. And besides this dull-witted Iowa farmboy, the lady from the inscrutable East seemed the most levelheaded type left in the crowd."

  Wu gave him the ghost of a smile, started to speak, but then he shushed her. "Meet me for a nice cup of bad coffee at your lunch break. Think on it all between now and then. So will I. Then we make a plan."

  Cynthia Wu wasn't capable of much thought for a while. After so long, the League—their rescuers! She could dare to think of home again—family, friends. . . .

  She went through the motions of powering up her console on automatic, not really thinking about the dull housekeeping chores that went with running the system. Check the power source, check the comm links, test antennae control, test beacon—

  Beacon! It had almost ceased to have meaning for her, the hidden beacon she bade the computer check every morning. At first, the signal had sat tight in one spot for a long time, and Cynthia had assumed that Lucy was in the lander, staying safe. At least Cynthia had been able to mark the lander's location. But then the beacon had started moving, and Cynthia couldn't make sense of what the beacon signal told her. Lucy was supposed to be on the other end of that link, and if she was, she was moving endlessly about the surface of Outpost, why and toward what Cynthia didn't know. It was perfectly possible that Lucy was dead, and the beacon was transmitting its signal from inside the belly of the beast that had eaten her. There was no way to know.

  But if the League was here—then Lucy would be damned important. She knew more about the 'Posters than anyone. Cynthia would have to get a message to her somehow.

  Cynthia called up the computer's tracking report of the beacon's movements, and got the second biggest shock of the day.

  Lucy, or at least whoever had the beacon, had been moving at high speed straight for the lander for the last twelve hours.

  Outpost, North of Contact Camp

  A thing like a six-legged elephant with saber-toothed fangs blew up in a bloody pink fog, and the three wagons kept rolling down the Road at top speed, not even slowing as they ran over pulped carcass. The gunner on the lead wagon reloaded his cannon and got ready for the next one. ' Your lander is close now, Lucille M'Calder," C'astille said in her own tongue. "We will be with her in a few more hours." C'astille had grown more formal in her speech with Lucy, more careful to say the right thing. They were too close to what might be a last goodbye to risk hurting her friend with the wrong words. The two friends rode atop the second wagon, Lucy in her pressure suit, both of them too keyed up and excited to sit inside the wagon. The lead and rearward wagons were the Refiner versions of battle tanks, capable of killing anything that moved.

  They might actually be used as battle tanks, soon. There were frightening reports that the Nihilists had begun their attack on other Groups.

  C'astille hesitated for a moment, then spoke. "Still it is possible for me to be with you on this skyroad."

  Lucy sighed deeply. "C’astille, it would make my job easier if you could come—they’d be forced to believe me. But you can't come along. There's no crash couch to fit you, and when I take off I'll be doing six-gees. You'd be crushed. And no offense, but you're just too damn big and heavy! I must travel as fast, as hard, as I can. I will throw everything I can off the lander, make her as light as possible, to let me go fast and save on fuel. I may not have the fuel for such a trip as it is—and with two along— besides, I have no food for you, no device to make our air breathable to you."

  "All this can be solved—"

  "No! Much as I want you to come, I can't risk failure, or everything has been for nothing. I'm sorry." She patted C'astille's muscular shoulder and stared down the road, straining for a view of the lander she knew perfectly well was out of sight. What sort of shape would it be in. Had some local hungry managed to take a bite out of it? Had some bug-eyed monster torn the hatch off and turned it into a nest?

  If she managed a launch, would her luck go the wrong way? Would the Guards nail her, return her to Outpost very soon—as part of a cloud of radioactive isotopes? She prayed for Gustav. If he had survived, she might.

  Lieutenant Johnson Gustav was alive, and he knew things. He was ex-Intelligence. It was his job, his profession skill, to know things. Wu was unaware of it, but Gustav also watched Lucy's beacon. Schiller didn't know it, but Gustav watched Schiller and monitored his use of the astronomical instruments. He knew when Schiller found Earth, and now, when Schiller found the League battle fleet as they cut the Guards' barycenter into pieces, Gustav knew that too.

  And he knew that this was the day he had dreaded all along. It was time to pay the piper. It would be so easy to turn back. Push a few buttons, call in a few of the troopers, have Schiller and Wu and the rest of the schemers arrested. Call Nike Station and Lucy's lander would be dust settling into a crater an hour later. A soldier's job. None who lived would reproach him for fighting on his own side.

  Easier still to do nothing, to let Lucy take her chances when she boosted and ran through the Guard ships around Outpost, heading for the barycenter and the League, to let the CIs on Ariadne stage some hopeless and bloody revolt to liberate the station once they knew their friends were here.

  But then how many would die? How long could Jacquet and his thugs bleed
the people of Capital white before they inevitably lost? How many dead? How many ships, factories, families smashed? What nightmare bioweapons were the Nihilists cooking up, and what horrible vengeance would the League exact for their use? The Guardians could not win. And the longer the Guardians fought, the more likely Capital was to be but a smoking ruin.

  He had to act. But he had to act carefully. And privately.

  It was toward the end of the morning. Cynthia hadn't had a chance to talk with Schiller yet, when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

  She had almost gotten used to the sudden, bottomless fear at the pit of her stomach that came with any sudden, unwanted attention from the Guards. It had happened so many times before. When it did, you acted calmly, didn't turn around immediately, and innocently hit a few keys, so that whatever the hell you had been working on vanished off the screen. Then you turned around calmly and asked the sentry what was up. Usually it was nothing at all; the sentry wanted to borrow a book or a cigarette or wanted you to cover for him while he ducked down to the head. So this time, she casually cleared her screen, turned around—

  —And there was Gustav himself. "Ensign Wu. Good day. I was just passing, and it occurred to me there were one or two questions about the comm schedule I wanted to talk with you about. Why don't you step down to my office with me?"

  "Yes, of course, sir." Already her coverall was damp with sweat. She followed him through the corridors and into his office. He was very casual, calm; all was routine. It scared the hell out of Wu.

  He went behind his desk and took his chair. "Sit down, Ensign. I need to tell you a few things. First, in case he hasn't told you, Schiller found Earth some time ago. Did he tell you? Or anyone, to your knowledge?"

  Wu was too shocked to think up a lie. "No . . . he—he didn't."

  "Good. I suspected he had good sense. That confirms it. Let me tell you some other things. I know you assisted in Lucille Calder's escape some time ago. But you should know that / helped too—in feet she and I plotted that escape together. At a guess, Schiller has told you that the League has taken the barycenter. Don't bother to answer, your face just did. Luc—Lieutenant Calder seems to have already discovered that fact for herself. She would have no other reason for heading for the lander. This saves us the trouble of trying to contact her. She too has a good deal of sense, so she won't try to make a run for it until both Ariadne and Nike are below her local horizon. The two stations are in fixed orbits; her lander's computers will know where they are. It's Guardian ships that are the danger. But you know how to check the orbits and figure out which will be where, when. Can you hit the lander with a tight radio beam on a frequency she'd be likely to listen on."

  Cynthia caught her breath and said, "Yes."

  "Good. Note that I have given you no instructions as to what to do. You should know that you must assume normal surveillance of your activities, whatever they should be. If you are caught, you might be able to avoid implicating me under mild interrogation. If you are caught, I cannot try to defend you, or else I will be caught and shot as well. And if you fail, I can still try to help. But you are in a better position for covert acts. So be careful. I will say one more thing. Ariadne will be of much greater value in saving lives if it holds together. A revolt here, and more people—League and Guardian—die. You must try and keep the lid on things here. Now take a moment to calm yourself, then go."

  Cynthia wasn't much use until the lunch break. When she carried her tray over and sat by Schiller in the mess hall, he immediately noticed something was wrong.

  "Cynthia, have you got some kind of flu? This is one hell of a bad moment to get sick."

  "No, no. Sam. Is there a word for—I don't quite know how to put it—for when the officers or the captain mutinies?'

  "Yeah, it's called barratry. Any court of inquiry treats it as about twice as slimy and rotten as mutiny or treason. You won't even find it listed in the Bluejacket's Manual. The Navy leaves it out of the glossary with the other dirty words. Why?"

  "It came up in a crossword puzzle."

  "Oh. But let's get to the serious stuff then. What do we do about welcoming the new neighbors?"

  "I think it would be wisest if we didn't do anything at all."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Outpost

  The dear old lander was still there, God bless her, squatting in the middle of the field she had come down in. Tarnished and entangled in undergrowth, half hidden by vines and her once-gleaming hull begrimed and dull, but there—and whole. The Z'ensam from the lead and follower wagons started firing blank rounds to scare any squatters away from the lander. There was a brief stampede out from under the belly of the small ship, and the Z'ensam from the lead wagon got down and cautiously poked around the strange machine from the skies. Finally, they signaled all clear and Lucy climbed down from her own wagon.

  "We'll need long knives or something to hack all this plant life back," Lucy said.

  "That job is ours," C'astille replied. "You must be in that thing and see if it is ready to go."

  Lucy walked up to the side of the stubby little ship and patted its hull affectionately. A ship, a ticket out, a way back to the clean skies and her proper life. "Aboard," she said to C'astille in English. "You don't say 'in,' you say 'aboard.' And never 'it'—this is a 'she’."

  "Someday I'll actually understand your pronouns," C'astille said. "That will be a great day."

  Lucy grinned at her. "This is a great day. I'm getting back into space." The ladder to the personnel hatch was still extruded from the hull, and Lucy scrambled up it. There was a reason right there that C'astille couldn't come along. Maybe the descendants of apes and monkeys could climb that ladder, but the descendants of what must have been like six-legged horses certainly couldn't.

  Even ten meters off the ground, thick creepers had grown up to ensnare the little ship, and one of them had grown straight over the personnel hatch. Lucy wrapped her arm around the top rung of the ladder and pulled her knife out of its belt sheath. It was a copy of the classic Bowie knife, forged of a steel that would never lose its edge, but Lucy didn't know that. She was just careful with its sharp point around her nearly decrepit pressure suit. She wouldn't need that suit much longer, but that would be no comfort if she ripped it and died of carbon dioxide poisoning three meters from breathable air.

  The upper rung of the ladder was just to the left of the hatch itself, and the manual controls for the airlock were placed so they were right in front of Lucy's face as she stood at the top of the ladder. But vines blocked the hatch itself. Leaving her left foot on the ladder and hanging on to the top rung with her left hand, Lucy calmly swung over and hooked her right foot through a loop of vine that hung free of the ship, unaware of the fact that she was scaring the hell out of the distinctly non-arboreal Z'ensam below. Lucy got her leg around the vine and gave it a good yank. Enough of it came free so that she could get her knife underneath and saw through it. She re-sheathed the knife and peeled back the lower end of the vine from the lower lip of the hatch, then pulled the upper half off the hatch itself with one good tug.

  Lucy got herself back onto the ladder, pulled the cover plate off the manual crank, unfolded the handle, and started cranking. Probably there was plenty of power aboard, but if some fluke had drained the batteries, she didn't want to find out she had wasted three ergs too many and so had three ergs less than she needed to start the generators.

  Hanging onto the ladder, cranking the awkwardly placed handle, starting to work up more of a sweat than the worn-out suit could handle; peering through the world through the scuffed and dirty glass of her bubble helmet, breathing air that smelled of a mixture of unwashed Lucy and the moldy-bog aroma of Outpost, First Lieutenant Lucille Calder was happier than she had been since the Venera was peacefully cruising through space, two or three lifetimes ago. She was going home. The League was out there, past an obstacle or two.

  And better still, there was an honest-to-God shower aboard the lander. A fresh pair of coveralls, and cof
fee. Even the Guardians' emergency field rations would taste better than the nutritious glop the Refiners gave her. You'd think an advanced culture might have invented cooking instead of eating raw what they foraged and hunted. But there was no accounting for taste.

  The hatch, hinged at its base, slowly swung down from the vertical to form a platform she could step onto easily from the ladder. She hopped across, stepped into the airlock, and used the inner manual to crank the outer door shut.

  From the base of the lander, the watching Z'ensam realized the acrobatics were over and got back to clearing the vines and undergrowth away from the lander.

  C'astille, standing on guard against any Hungry Ones that might come for a visit, snorted, lashed her tail, and gripped her long-gun harder. She had forgotten the way humans climbed and jumped and scrambled to reach a height. They thought nothing of it all, seemed to have no fear of Ming. It was a little thing, but it reminded them that Lucy M'Calder wasn't just a mutated Z'ensam with the back half missing. She was alien—a mystery so complete that she could never be solved.

  And C'astille called her friend, and aided her cause against her own kind.

  Something big growled at the edge of the clearing. C'astille fired a few rounds at it on general principles, and as the roaring boom of her gun faded she heard a heavy body slump over and collapse into the brush.

  There was electric power. Plenty of it. The cryo-stable tanks had lived up to their name and held the liquid oxygen and hydrogen at temperature all this time. The air, which was probably a little musty in reality, was totally, blissfully odorless to Lucy's Outpost-acclimated nose. Lights came on at the flick of a switch, and Lucy had forgotten how friendly a warm yellow light could be, after so many days of Outpost's too-white sun.

  So the lander had held together. The next jobs she could do better if she was clean. The shower. Clean clothes. Food.