Claire shook her head. “Never.”
Martin did the same. “Whither thou goest, love.”
She gathered them into her arms.
* * *
The old speaker looked massively incongruous beneath the array of modern equipment at the control board. Martin glanced up at Althea, shrugged, mated it to the cable that dangled from the underside of the console, rose and wiped his hands theatrically.
“Sorry, love. I forgot to connect Probe’s comm line to the console.”
Althea snorted. “No big deal. Is everything else set for travel?”
He nodded.
“Claire?”
The bioengineer failed to respond. She appeared fascinated by the weapons system before her. Althea rose from the command chair and laid a hand on her shoulder, and she started and looked up sheepishly.
“Claire, are you satisfied that we’re ready to cast off?”
She nodded vigorously. “All my systems show green. There’s nothing more to be done with the nanites. What’s there to keep us here?”
My fear that I’m about to lose you both.
Althea forced a smile. “Just trying to show a wee bit more caution than my usual, love. Probe, what’s your status?”
“No diagnostic reports. All my systems are functioning at their design optima. I am ready, Althea.”
Spooner’s beard, it actually sounds eager. Can a machine intelligence feel a desire for vengeance?
“Excellent, Probe. In case I forgot to say so before, welcome to Liberty’s Torch. I hope you enjoy the ride.”
“I expect to do so, Althea. Yet there is a thing that remains unaddressed. Who is to command?”
“Hm?”
“This is a military mission, is it not? Such a mission must have a designated commander. To omit that step is to risk chaos in action. My records are explicit on that point.”
“Uh, yeah. But...well...”
“Probe,” Martin said, “Claire and I have submitted ourselves to Althea. She is the mission commander, by reason of superior conversance with its necessities, with the Loioc system, and with Liberty’s Torch overall. We have agreed to follow her orders without question.”
No you haven’t...have you?
“That is for the best. Althea, I submit myself to you as well. In light of our divergent origins, please make your tactical directives as clear as possible, especially any that alter our attack plan in real time.”
“Certainly, Probe.” Althea pulled herself as erect as possible, returned to the command chair, and laid her index finger on the stud that would release and retract the docking clamps. “Brace for cast-off in five...four..three..two...one.”
Her finger came down sharply.
==
Between The Stars
Liberty’s Torch’s time between suns was not a vacation idyll. It was far more ecstatic than that.
Althea kept her crew as busy as she could. They spent many hours reviewing the approach and attack plans, organizing the ship’s stores, especially its inboard weapons, for ease of access, and learning how to use the ship’s hull-mounted heavy weapons should the need arise. Althea had put a considerable amount of time and ingenuity into that last desideratum. The suite of simulation software she’d crafted coupled the ship’s scanning and weapons control systems into an instructional system that invented one scenario after another and provided meticulously detailed feedback on the gunners’ efforts.
There was much more to do. Shortly after Liberty’s Torch went superluminal, Martin and Claire found that they had been involuntarily enrolled in Miss Althea’s Academy of Advanced Quantum Physics for the Unspeakably Bright. She and Probe took turns conducting the sessions, expounding on the remarkable properties of various combinations of fundamental particles, many of them found nowhere else in reality. Martin kept his head above water only with grimly determined effort; Claire merely listened politely, occasionally threatening to subject Althea to a course in nanodesign and nanoengineering by way of reciprocation.
All three spent hours on the four exercise machines that were all the starship, once provisioned for a three-year journey for three people, could accommodate. Althea’s and Martin’s bodies were already as tight as biology allows, but Claire benefited hugely from the regimen. Her traditionally womanly beauty morphed from its previous expression into a sculpted, springy concerto of muscle that nevertheless retained all its femininity. She was particularly gratified by the consequences for her sexual responses.
“How long has this been going on and why wasn’t I told?” she asked Althea after a particularly explosive session.
Althea giggled. “I had to get you primed, love.”
“Also,” Martin said, “fear.”
Claire frowned. “Of what?”
Martin grinned naughtily. “Of you two wearing me out. The way things are trending, I’m not sure I’ll survive the trip.”
Claire returned the grin. “But what a way to go, eh?”
They worked. They studied. They practiced with the mass driver and the laser cannons. They beat themselves senseless on the machines. They swapped jokes, tall tales, recipes, and fighting moves collected over thousands of years of human history. They read to one another from tomes old and new, striving to discover new patterns and meanings in even the most venerable texts. Probe taught them all it knew of metareality and the ingenious methods the Loioc used to alter it. In exchange, they taught Probe all there was to know about Hope’s origins, geography, history, economy, and society. They prayed. And of course, they made love.
They lived joyously, wholly absorbed in each moment and in one another. Though confined in an environment even starker, more isolated, and more limiting than Thule, they lived as gods might live, each with his own universe to toy with and study, if they knew that any instant might be their last.
A war awaited them.
==
Duember 27 , 1329 A.H. (Estimated)
The densitometers reported the advent of the heliopause. The cometary belt around the Loioc system lay just ahead. Fourteen months of superluminal travel had come to an end.
Althea brought Liberty’s Torch out of superluminal state, laid a hand on the igniter for the reaction drive, and halted.
She peered intently at the video monitor, but could discern nothing. The sensors could detect only monatomic hydrogen and the micro-particulate detritus of extreme circumsolar space. It appeared there was nothing ahead but dust and gas.
Martin laid a hand on her shoulder. “Worried?”
She nodded. “I told them I’d be back. With an armed fleet.”
“What possessed you to do that?”
She scowled. “Anger of the moment. I told you what Efthis tried to do to me.”
“Actually,” Claire said from behind them, “you told us what she did do to you. Was there more?”
“Yeah.”
Claire moved up beside her and slipped an arm around her waist. “Well?”
“It was ugly, love.” Althea felt her bloodlust rise at the memory, as hot and urgent as it had been at the moment of her confrontation with the Loioc gaoler. She forced it down and took a long, deep breath.
“She had a device. It was to go around my neck. She said it would prevent me from saying or doing anything that would compromise her intentions for me.”
“You said something about that once before,” Claire said. “I thought you were being metaphorical.”
Althea shook her head. “No metaphors, love. Just the facts. I couldn’t afford to bet the future of Hope that she was wrong, or bluffing. They know more about the human body than we do. And a lot more physics.”
“My records indicate that their assumptions about certain aspects of metareality must be flawed. If they were correct in all details, you would not have been able to propel your vessel past the lightspeed limit in the first place.”
Althea grinned crookedly. “Thanks, Probe. I appreciate the reassurance. But it still wouldn’t be smart to assu
me they shrugged me and Hope off like a bad dream. I did coldcock their gaoler and dispatch her planetside two years early.”
She gazed at the video monitor again.
“There are defenses further in. There must be. And they’re waiting for us to traipse on into their system like a bunch of brainless turkeys, all ready to be slaughtered, gutted, roasted, and served for Sacrifice Day dinner. Probe?”
“Yes, Althea?”
“Are you ready to detach and deploy?”
“I am.”
“Probe,” Martin interjected, “may I ask if you still concur with the wisdom of this mission?”
“You may.”
Martin winced. Althea chuckled.
“Well, do you still concur with the wisdom of this mission?”
“If you mean the overall mission of this expedition, the answer is yes. A race as xenophobic and morally flawed as the Loioc must be corrected and deterred, lest it repeat its crimes against another race less able to respond as we are about to do. If you mean my individual role in it, the answer is also yes. It doubles the probability of success.”
“What of the risk to you?” Claire murmured.
“Compared to the well-being of many millions of organic sentients, both already in existence and who will exist in the future, that is of little moment.”
“Probe,” Althea said, “I don’t consider your well-being to be of little moment.”
“Neither do I,” Claire said.
“Or I,” Martin said.
“I appreciate that and am grateful for it. But a decision such as this is one I could make in no other way without scrubbing my entire metaphysical base. I am unwilling to do that for any reason. Therefore, let us proceed as planned.”
“Probe,” Martin husked, “you are not a mere tool in someone else’s plans—not theirs, and not ours. You are the highest creature your world—your original world—has ever produced. You are superior to your makers in every way. I thank God that you came to us and befriended us, and I will pray that you return with us when this mission is done.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Thank you, Martin. All systems nominal. Stealth module activated. Ready to detach and deploy.”
Althea put a finger to the release trigger, hesitated, and pressed it firmly.
* * *
Liberty’s Torch edged into the system on reaction drive, its own stealth module at full power. Althea could not help a twinge of nervousness about the thing. Probe had cautioned that its effect was both incomplete and nonisotropic. It had estimated that the reduction of the starship’s electromagnetic cross-section would be about eighty-five percent head-on, a few percent less from the sides, and no better than fifty percent to a rearward observer. Assuming that estimate to be accurate, any radar or lidar scanning for it would perceive Liberty’s Torch to be a ferric ovoid of modest size, possibly a very small asteroid. Althea had to hope that the reduction in apparent size would fool the watchers sufficiently to deflect their attention, despite the starship’s lack of proper motion.
The laser cannons were also at full power. Their automata scanned the forward environment continuously, searching for anything that might present a threat.
Neither the defense system nor the surveillance system detected anything of significance outside the orbit of the fourth planet. Upon crossing that boundary, Althea damped the starship’s velocity to a bare fifty miles per second.
“Pretty slow,” Martin murmured.
“I’d rather crawl for a few days than be detected and attacked as a threat before we can answer them back.”
“Al—”
“I do trust your work, Martin. And yours, Claire.” She waved at the video display. “What I don’t trust is out there. Whatever it is.”
* * *
Six days of inching inward brought them to within half a million miles of the Loioc homeworld: Martin’s outside estimate of feasible attack distance for the mass driver.
“From here,” Martin said, “we’d put at least half of the assault packages into their atmosphere. Half of those would survive re-entry, and three quarters of those would find a water landing.”
Althea scowled. “I want better penetration. At least half the assault modules have to go into the water, or I won’t be satisfied.”
Claire smirked. “I wouldn’t be happy, either. A lot of hard work went into those little gems.”
Martin snorted. “Interstellar warfare reduced to educated guesses about throwing rocks. Newton must be whirling in his grave.”
“Not Einstein?” Claire said.
Martin chuckled. “We’re not going fast enough. “Einstein won’t even turn over at less than ten percent of lightspeed.”
A high, shrill siren filled the cabin space of Liberty’s Torch. Three pairs of eyes swerved to fix on the threat board. The defense system had alerted.
“Looks like they think this is max feasible attack distance, too,” Althea said. She damped the reaction drive still further. “Get on the guns, you two. Things are about to get interesting.”
* * *
For nearly three hours they advanced further toward the Loioc homeworld. There were no more blared warnings from the defense scanners, no challenges to halt and state their purpose, no barrages of hostile fire. Liberty’s Torch continued its steady inward progress without experiencing the smallest indicators of an imminent attack. Yet as they advanced, the lidar scanner detected an object in Loioc-synchronous orbit likely to be an artifact: an object it hadn’t perceived in prior scans. What it was and what it could do remained unknown.
At eighteen thousand miles’ distance from the planet, the defense system shrilled another alarm. Althea brought the starship to a planet-relative stop as Martin and Claire scanned their threat boards.
“Incoming,” Martin said. “About the size of a refrigerator. Range sixty-three hundred miles. No proper motion. Closing at about a hundred miles per second. Scanners say...” He frowned. “The scanners say its mass, luminance, and albedo are all zero.”
“How did they detect it, then?”
“Had to be contrast against the background.”
Althea felt herself entering into battle lust. “Martin, fix on it and put a bolt into it.”
“Locked on. Range thirty-five hundred miles. Still no proper motion,” Martin droned. “Firing.”
Liberty’s Torch surged as the giant capacitors discharged into the starboard laser cannon.
“No effect,” Martin shouted. His voice filled with panic. “It’s still coming. Al, get us out of its way!”
Althea slammed open the baffles on the starboard jets, pushed them to maximum thrust, and held her breath.
Liberty's Torch experienced no impact. Her planet-relative position remained as it had been. Yet as the projectile passed the starship’s hull there was an event, though not one to be described in terms of the motion of particles or waves.
Althea felt the whole of reality convulse, as if the laws of the universe had been hailed into some metaphysical dock and compelled to face a charge of irrelevance. Matter and energy were ruled out of order. Time stood accused of being a mere convention for the comfort of matter-based minds, easily reversed, turned inside-out, or banished altogether. For an instant it seemed that existence itself had incurred the displeasure of an unappeasable Power disinclined to tolerate it.
She gasped repeatedly for breath but was unable to draw one. A glance at her spouses indicated that the disruption of reality had affected them with equal force.
The vise that threatened to crush all of existence waned slowly and faded away.
“It’s past us,” Martin breathed at last. “Too close, but it’s past us and still going. Pure ballistic weapon, not a target seeker.”
“What was it, love?” Claire said tremulously.
“Nothing.”
“What—”
“Literally nothing,” Martin croaked. “No, that’s not quite right. It was a sphere of nullity...anti-existence, not jus
t emptiness. There wasn’t even any space in it.” He turned a pallid face upon the others. “I think it would have bored a channel right through us.”
“Rothbard, Rand, and Ringer,” Althea breathed. “That had to be the metareal weapon Probe warned us about.”
“Lasing it had no effect,” Martin said. “We have to neutralize the launch platform.”
“Martin, keep looking for another round. Claire—”
“On it, love.” Claire’s fingers danced over the controls of her scanners. Seconds ticked by in agonizing uncertainty.
“Locked on,” Claire announced. “It’s very small. Range to target seven thousand, eight hundred miles. Negligible proper motion. Firing.” She laid a hand on the firing stud.
“Wait,” Althea shouted. Claire jerked her hand back. “That station might be manned. I want to avoid killing anyone, if we can. Give me a minute.”
“You’d better need less than that,” Martin said. “It just launched another null-ball.”
“Claire, you have the conn. Get on the maneuvering jets and do as Martin directs.” Althea backed away from the control console. “Martin, I’ll get right back to you.”
She closed her eyes.
* * *
Vellis knew his task. He sat staring at the controls before him, his hands flat against his thighs. When a certain light turned on and showed red, he was to flip the leftmost switch to its upright position. When that light turned yellow, he was to flip the rightmost switch similarly. When it turned from yellow to green, he was to press the circular red stud directly before him. Should the light become yellow again, he was to repeat the sequence exactly. When the light that illuminated his little cabin went out, he was to sit quietly until it lit again.
He did not reflect on the reasons for those actions. He lacked the capacity. He had been carefully trained, with ample administrations of both pleasure and pain, in exactly what he was to do, and firmly inhibited against doing anything else.
To be conditioned in such a fashion was the pattern of Vellis’s existence. For him as for all Loioc males, life was about pleasing the Mistresses, especially the one to whom he’d been permanently assigned. The void in his skull allowed no other impulses to travel through it.
Freedom's Fury (Spooner Federation Saga Book 3) Page 32