He looked at the black robot. It held a foreleg up and raised it so slowly that the human eye could barely discern the motion. Tarkos frowned. Maybe he talked to nothing, to an inert machine. Like talking to a tree or stone. Tiklik might ignore everything he said now. It might not bother to buffer what Tarkos spoke and transmitted.
But he had to try. “You said we make up stories about what we have done. Maybe that’s right. That’s all I am, I think. The stories I tell myself about me, and the stories I tell myself about what I’m trying to do and what I want to do. And here is that story, Tiklik. I want to help the Alliance survive, and spread life in the Galaxy, but life in balance, not life at war. I want to have peace with the Machines of the Lost Zone. I want you and your kind—the machine intelligences among us—to be free equals again. And right now, I want to find out what Pala Eydis died discovering, so that we can save Neelee-ornor, which is the first thing we have to do if we are going to do any of those things.”
Tarkos dropped his voice to a whisper. “I loved Pala Eydis. I know that. That’s not a story I made up after her death. If I’m free or not, if I make choices or not, even if I am just matter bouncing randomly in space—I still loved Pala Eydis. That’s certain. And you liked her, Tiklik’al’Takas. Do it for her.”
But the robot did not move. Tarkos watched it a long while, and then he stood and carefully walked back to the ship’s cockpit.
_____
The Sussurat ship gave up pursuit when the cruiser entered the empty volume of space between Neelee-ornor and the oncoming Ulltrian wedge. The cruiser moved alone, a single ship while the rest of the Alliance defense closed in from farther reaches of the system on trajectories that would flank the Ulltrian fleet.
Over the long hours of their flight, they watched the battle unfold from the trickle of data they could intercept. The outcome seemed certain, and bad. The huge wedge of Ulltrian ships moved quickly and inexorably toward Neelee-ornor. The decision to disperse the fleet seemed a fatal error: the Alliance had more ships in system, but few had the opportunity to match the heavy vector of the incoming attack. Tarkos had participated in only one space battle before, at a fraction of the scale of this one, but he felt again that crawling frustration and eerie sense of helplessness that came from understanding what had happened already: all the fleet ships in range would have launched their highest speed weapons hours before. The battle was largely already decided. If the ordinance fired by the Alliance fleet evaded defenses and hit all or most of their targets, the Ulltrians might be stopped. On the other hand, if many Ulltrian ships survived, then Bria and Tarkos’s small cruiser would be little more than a gnat against a pack of hyenas. Only if just a few Ulltrian ships managed to survive would Bria and he be of use. Which of these three scenarios came to pass, fate and physics had already decided. Now they could only be ready and wait, to see how useful they would be.
The first explosions came when they nearly had reached their planned position, between Neelee-ornor and the Ulltrian ships, in direct line of the incoming vector. The light remained seconds away, but hyper-radio tactical intercepted by the cruiser showed Ulltrian ships flaring into bright stars, the progeny of fusion weapons or anti-matter impacts. Tarkos and Bria watched as ship after ship died. Some of the Ulltrian ships began to jump, committing hyperspace leaps in a gravity well, an act almost as likely to destroy their ship as the weapons that scorched through their formation. But of these, several appeared far ahead in the vector, survivors of the incoming volley.
Tarkos turned the cruiser’s shielding to full power in expectation of the gamma radiation that the battle now sent shrieking through the system. In less than a minute it hit them, making the ship’s warning systems blare in protest. But as they watched, the explosions reached a crescendo, and then died away. The first volley of the attack seemed to be complete.
The Ulltrian fleet formation had the shape now of loose swirl of ships. The cruiser’s AI reported that at least half the Ulltrian ships had been destroyed. But the wedge remained. Dozens of Ulltrian ships began to disperse now, accelerating. In less than an hour they would pass the cruiser’s position.
“Weapons check,” Bria said.
Tarkos nodded and began another systems check, running initialization for each weapons system, getting all systems hot. Given the odds, he started to think that within an hour, he and Bria would be dead. He could only hope that they could take a few ships with them. That would be something.
Battles like this raged now, had raged, at other worlds, Tarkos thought. And people like him and Bria had died fighting Ulltrian attacks. Many more would die. But if the Alliance survived, it would be worth the price. And Earth would survive, also.
“Prepare stealthing,” Bria said. Tarkos loaded the quantum computation reversal program in the cruiser’s skin that would cool their ship to invisibility as it nearly matched the cold of space. He reached for the manual switch, about to make them disappear, when a message lit the board. Tightbeam laser, from down system, a location near Neelee-ornor.
“Incoming signal,” Tarkos said.
“Display,” Bria said.
No visuals came, only a repeating written and vocalized message in the soft urgent barking of a Neelee. “Unidentified Harmonizer cruiser, you are in a targeting pathway. Move immediately or be destroyed.”
The message looped. Tarkos looked at Bria, mouth open. “Targeting path?” He told the computer to draw a line from the surviving Ulltrian ships to their ship, and project it back into the system. Most of the lines went into uninteresting, empty space. But one group of lines went through the L1 point for Neelee-ornor: a highly stable orbit location where ships could be parked indefinitely. Tarkos turned the ship telescopes on the L-point.
“Oh, Bria, you’d better look at this.” He projected the image into the cockpit.
In artificial coloring that moved infrared up into visual spectrum wavelengths shared by Bria and Tarkos, a large structure slowly began to appear. A station more than a kilometer long, shaped like nothing so much as a gargantuan cannon, a huge gun barrel floating in space. It had turned off its stealthing, and now warmed into visibility. As they watched, one end of it grew bright with heat.
Bria did not hesitate. She engaged the engines on emergency acceleration, setting a path orthogonal to the line between that station and the incoming fleet.
They had travelled only a few minutes at three apparent S-gees, with Tarkos squeezed down in his seat and nearly blacked out, when the radiation and the virtual particle spill-over from the beam washed over the cruiser. All the controls went dead.
_____
The waves of radiation continued, unabated. There was no point in rebooting the cruiser’s systems. Tarkos and Bria pulled their helmets on and waited. The engines sputtered on a few times, only to die again when the next beam passed, its particle discharge generating a wave front of electromagnetic energy, followed by stray quantum virtual-particle wash so strong that the ship’s shields held back only a fraction of the impact. Tarkos’s suit shrieked alarms but maintained its own shield integrity. Without that, he would have been killed by the radiation.
When the beams stopped, it took an hour for them to restart the systems. The tactical data came in first. Two thirds of the Ulltrian fleet had been nearly annihilated in converging heavy particle beams, each beam dozens of kilometers wide by the time it reached its targeting range.
“Peaceful little Neelee-ornor had a secret defense system,” Tarkos said. He reviewed the data coming into their recovering tactical systems. “We should have known that the Alliance had something special in waiting. But how did they hide six—no, eight giant weapon platforms in such a busy system? There’s two of those weapons at each of the primary four Lagrange points.”
Bria said nothing, pouring over data. Seventeen Ulltrian ships had survived, and were still racing down system.
“What’s this?” Tarkos asked, indicating a graph he pulled up in the space before them. “All these ships are b
lasting Neelee-ornor with a radio signal, using a lot of energy.”
Bria squinted at the image. “Activation code.”
“Activation? Of what?”
“Secret weapon.”
Tarkos frowned. If there were a weapon already in the system, it might indeed need some kind of signal to activate it.
“Wait a minute,” Tarkos said. “What do you know?”
But Bria did not answer him. Instead, she pointed at the two ships bringing up the rear of the Ulltrian attack. “Engage these.”
“Can’t do it directly,” Tarkos said. “We have no AI. The heavy particle beams are down. The lasers don’t have aiming systems. And we sure as hell don’t want to get back in the way of those big Neelee guns again. We don’t know how long they take to recharge but it might be just minutes.”
“Missiles,” Bria said. “Target and fire.”
Tarkos nodded and obeyed. In a few minutes he had launched their entire package of missiles. The missiles had little maneuvering room at this range, but they were fast. They streaked away, six aimed at each of the trailing Ulltrian ships.
“That’s it,” Tarkos said. “We’re done. All we can do is aim the ship and set the engines off, and hope we get our trajectory near enough to correct.”
The ship chimed. Another incoming signal. Bria piped it to the cockpit. This message had visuals. A Neelee appeared, with a crisply trim command symbol of the Savannah Runner emblazoned on its vest. Tarkos thought he might recognize the Neelee: the second in command aboard the flagship.
“Commander Briathursiasalientiormethesess, Harmonizer Amir Tarkos, you are charged with dereliction of duty and negligent interference with defense of the Alliance. Report to Executive station for processing. Records show that you were assisted by the Human ship Zoroastrian. This human ship is required to leave Neelee space immediately. A formal complaint will be filed with the Earth embassy and a full description of events will be included in the compact of the Earth request for Alliance membership.”
“Shit,” Tarkos said in English.
The message ended. Bria stared at the wall, saying nothing. Tarkos swore again. While they sat there, stunned, the tactical display continued to unreel around them. The Ulltrian ships had passed them, moving downsystem at speeds so great now that they would have only a single pass at Neelee-ornor. One of the two Ulltrian ships that Bria had targeted exploded. An icon blinked, confirming that their own missiles had caused the destruction.
Neither of them reacted to that: it was too little, given that sixteen ships still raced toward Neelee-ornor. These ships had already passed within the orbit of Neelee-ornor’s only moon. As Tarkos and Bria watched, one of the big guns in Neelee-ornor’s orbit fired again. Three Ulltrian ships were destroyed. But the Ulltrians had deployed stealth missiles, only visible now as they impacted orbital structures. One of the Neelee weapons stations exploded. A second weapon station was hit, and though it remained intact, its icon in the map changed from red to white, indicating it was out of commission. A third weapons station fired, destroying two more Ulltrian ships.
Eleven Ulltrian ships remained. They incessantly blasted the strange, incomprehensible radio message.
The only thing between the ships and Neelee-ornor was the Savannah Runner. It glowed like a hot red star on their tactical display, releasing dozens of hypermissiles, projectiles accelerating at hundreds of e-gee equivalent. The Ulltrian ships did not fire countermeasures. They fired at the Savannah Runner. When the Savannah Runner’s missiles neared their targets, Tarkos was surprised by the read-outs showing incoming waves of radiation. Fusion bombs. The Neelee had surprised him, using large fusion bombs within the orbit of Neelee-ornor’s only moon. But the bleaching glare of light and radiation dissipated enough for probes in system to hyper-radio to them and the other ships in the fleet the remaining disposition of the Ulltrian attack. Nothing remained. The Ulltrian ships had been destroyed.
“We survived it,” Tarkos said. “Neelee-ornor is safe.”
“Wait,” Bria said.
As they entered the sensor-rich space closer to Neelee-ornor, Ulltrian stealth weapons appeared in tactical view. A huge cloud of weapons rained down. The Ulltrian ships had launched vast ordinance, before they were destroyed. Many aimed at the Savannah Runner, which released a spray of countermeasures. Fission explosions frizzled the space before the flagship, as the incoming missiles chose to explode and spread radiation when their computers decided they could not escape destruction. Again the cruiser’s tactical view bleached away, lost in the noise of radiation. Tarkos grit his teeth. When the interference cleared, the Savannah Runner blinked white in the tactical view. The ship had been hit. Bria expanded the view: a quarter of the crystal branching and flowering of the ship was gone. Atmosphere and detritus floated into space.
Countermeasures in high orbit blazed, firing at the remaining weapons. In the confusion, Tarkos could not tell whether any weapons got through. Then a light blinked on the surface of the planet.
Tarkos checked the tactical information from the surface.
“Rohilleres,” he whispered. “An antimatter bomb just hit the city of Rohilleres. It’s completely gone.” He looked at Bria, stunned by the horror of it. “They used antimatter on a planet surface….”
The tactical display beeped. Hyper-radio transmissions were coming down from the high system. Another group of Ulltrian ships entered normal space. A second wave of attack. The Alliance had spent nearly everything it had on the first wave and it had been enough. But a second wave? Those ships might just glide straight into Neelee-ornor’s orbit.
“That’s terrible,” Tarkos whispered.
Bria said nothing. Like Tarkos, she stared in shock.
Tarkos startled when something moved by his side, at the edge of his field of vision. He turned.
Tiklik’al’Takas floated in the doorway, its legs spread wide to touch all the walls.
“The message given to you by human Pala Eydis refers to four hundred different ice spheres in the rings of Neelee-ornor. They are nearly equally spaced in the rings, and all have above average mass.”
Tarkos met Bria’s eyes.
“Ice sky storm,” he whispered.
_____
“They had centuries to prepare, while we believed their race extinct,” Tarkos said. “With help, they could have hidden weapons in the rings.”
“OnUnAns,” Bria said, naming the most likely traitors that could infiltrate the rings unnoticed and plant the Ulltrian weapons.
“Right.” Tarkos thought of what Pietro Danielle had said, that the symbionts could not work as a weapon on the planet surface. But what if they got a foothold in the rings first? What might they do then?
Most of the Alliance’s defense fleet was still far out system, reforming to meet the second wave of attack. Of the eight hidden weapons platforms, it seemed only four still functioned: the platforms at the L4 and L5 points. These were stable orbit locations farther from the planet, and therefore they had been far from the main focus of the Ulltrian attack. But their beams would also be weaker hitting ships closing on Neelee-ornor.
Of the larger ships, only the Savannah Runner was close to the planet, still accelerating in a sling around the world’s one moon. It looked like the flagship intended to loop back, and return to a tighter orbit. Bria sent a request for communication, first in radio, then on hyper-radio. Radiation washed out the radio signal, and the hyper-radio was nearly as distorted by virtual particles. The cruiser managed to piece together a short, repeating message from the flagship’s AI that communications were intermittent. They forced through a priority request, and received back after long minutes of waiting a message that none of the leadership staff of Savannah Runner were available.
Tarkos frowned. “Can we talk with Pietro Danielle?” Tarkos asked Savannah Runner’s comm AI. Danielle had the Captain’s ear. If Nereenital were too busy managing a damaged ship to answer their call, Danielle might be able to do better. But after another lon
g wait, Savannah Runner sent back a failed message reply.
That could just be because the flagship was awash in radiation, damaged, and not a hand had liberty to hear their call. But Tarkos wondered also if it meant the worst: Danielle could be dead, a casualty of the attack that had destroyed a quarter of Savannah Runner.
Tarkos and Bria floated there, listening to the hiss of radio and hyper-radio noise.
“It’s all over,” Tarkos whispered. “We’ve got no navigation. The Savannah Runner is badly damaged. Our attempt to help just put us in the way. And we finally figure out Pala’s puzzle—the Ice Sky Storm is an attack on the rings, rings of ice in the Neelee-ornor sky—and we can do nothing. And if we had this cruiser under control, what could we do anyway? If the Ulltrians have spread self-replicators in the rings, it will be like their biological weapons, the KunPaTel weapons. Once those are in an ecosystem, you can’t undo the damage without hurting the ecosystem. Even then it may not be possible. And just so, if there are self-replicating machines in the rings, and they start to spread, and what can we do? The Ulltrians outsmarted us.”
We’ve come all this way, Tarkos thought, and suffered all the deaths. Pala Eydis. Ki’Ki’Tilish. Thousands of Neelee above Neelee-ornor and on Neelee-ornor. And now all those deaths could come to mean nothing, because the Ulltrians have shown greater cunning than the Alliance. His eyes burned with tears of frustration.
Bria growled impatiently. “Burn rings,” she said.
“What?” Tarkos said.
“Burn rings.”
“How? Those are planetary rings. They’re huge.”
Bria reached forward in their tactical display and pointed, with a single claw, at the disabled weapon station, drifting but not destroyed, at the L1 point.
Ice Sky Storm Page 7