by B. V. Larson
Zye fell upon his back and held him down. The Stroj heaved and bucked under her, but was unable to dislodge her weight.
“That was unnecessary,” she said, breathing hard, “but thank you.”
“You’re bleeding,” I said, looking over her forearms where Lorn had gripped her.
“It’s nothing.”
In the end, we had to chain Captain Lorn with thick force-bonds and frog-march him to a cell in the brig. The stasis-generator stayed outside his cell, just out of reach. He glowered at us, angry and soundly humiliated.
As a peace offering, I brought his lower leg to the bars and passed it through. He grabbed it.
“Here,” I said, offering him a set of basic tools.
He took the tools and hopped to the back of his cell. There, he began to reattach the limb.
“Why did you take me aboard, Sparhawk?”
“Because I wanted to exchange valuable information.”
He snorted. “What, in your fevered dreams, do you expect to extract from me? Surely, even a foolish Basic such as yourself must know I’ll do everything I can to slay you.”
“You’ve made that abundantly clear, yes,” I agreed. “But I still hold out hope for an exchange of value to both of us.”
“You’re a dreamer. You should listen to that pet Beta of yours. She knows my kind all too well—as I know hers. I’ve killed no less than six of her sisters personally, you know.”
“Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t share that information,” I suggested.
“Get to the point then, man. You’re wasting what little lifetime I have left.”
I cocked my head curiously. “Why are you so sure it’s limited?”
“Because of that dreadnought out there. Surely, you’ve noticed her? She’s a predator. A shark where your ship and mine were only minnows. She’ll come for us, and catch us, and mangle us in time.”
“You’ve struck upon an area in which we might be able to cooperate,” I said, “privately, of course.”
He looked at me quizzically. His expression was one of irritation mixed with curiosity.
“I get it. You want a way out of this system. I led you here as part of a trap—but you know that, don’t you?”
“I figured it out eventually. But you’re trapped as well.”
He shrugged and snorted. “What of it? I’m screwed regardless. For a Stroj who’s been defeated, the only final act that makes any sense is to damage or kill the enemy who bested him. Now, you’ve denied me even that small pleasure.”
“What if I offer you survival?” I asked.
“In exchange for what?”
“There must be a way out of this system. A way to redirect the artificial bridge, for example.”
He shook his head. “No, not that one. It’s been shut down. You sent a probe through to check, didn’t you?”
We hadn’t of course. After a brief pause during which I considered lying to him, he shouted with laughter.
“You didn’t know, did you?” he demanded. “You had no idea you couldn’t go back the way you came!”
One of our viable options had been to circumnavigate the central binary stars and come around to escape through the same portal where we’d entered the system. Lorn had just dashed that hope.
“Listen, Sparhawk,” he cackled. “Before this is over, you’re going to wish you’d let me blow us both up. That would have been a kindness. You’re going to watch your entire crew die, knowing that afterward scraps of their flesh will be hunted for within the wreckage by a thousand greedy Stroj spacers from that dreadnought.”
“We’re still alive now,” I told him. “You and I both. I repeat: let’s come to an understanding.”
He approached the bars, carrying his severed foot. “Really? Am I detecting a craven side of you I hadn’t suspected? You’d perform a treasonous act to save your skin?”
“That’s not how I’d describe it. What I’m proposing is that you help this ship exit the system, and I’ll drop you off in your lifepod there, or wherever you might want to be released on our return journey to Earth.”
His eyes were calculating. I could see he was interested, but he was probably also trying to figure out how to screw me in the bargain.
“All right,” he said. “Free me from this cage. I’ll accompany you to the command deck and direct you to the exit from there.”
Shaking my head, I chuckled. “I’m a gullible man,” I said, “but there are limits. You will give us the data we need and we’ll check it out. If we escape with your help, I’ll honor my bargain and free you.”
He made a dismissive gesture and returned to a small stool at the back of the cell. He sat on it and tinkered with his damaged leg.
“No, I’ll pass,” he said.
“Really? There’s no other way either of us will survive. You said so yourself.”
He shrugged. “No matter. I was willing to die to take you with me just an hour ago. Or have you forgotten?”
“Fine,” I said, walking toward the guards. “Attendant, it’s time to flush this cell. Are the evacuation hatches in working order?”
The man looked surprised, but he nodded.
“Good. Let’s clear the chamber and—”
“Hold a moment,” Lorn said behind me.
I ignored him. “We’ll have to secure the stasis unit to the deck first,” I told the guard. “I wouldn’t want to lose it when we space the cells.”
“Sparhawk!”
Slowly, I turned toward him. “Is there something you wish to say, Lorn?”
He was breathing hard and his face was pressed against the bars. I could see he’d been reaching, straining to touch the stasis unit. But I’d made sure it was beyond any hope of retrieval.
“Are you a man of your word?” he asked, eyes rolling toward me.
“Yes, I am, actually.”
He nodded. “I thought as much. Only a true fool would have picked me up at all. Fine. I’ll tell you how to get out of this system—but you’re not going to like it.”
Curious, I approached the bars again.
-42-
As it turned out, Lorn was correct. I didn’t like the method of escape he described to me.
“You’re sure there’s no other way?” I asked him.
“Positive. We’ll both live, but only if you follow my instructions explicitly.”
“This doesn’t seem quite above-board,” I observed. “Why would you agree to harm your own people this way? I thought a Stroj was down for the cause with his life. That he would sacrifice anything and everything for his homeworld and brethren.”
Lorn laughed at that. “How greatly you misunderstand us. We’re not mindless soldiers. Robots march in a perfect hive-mind—not the Stroj. We’re quite the opposite, in fact. We are individualistic to a fault.”
Honestly curious, I pressed him further. “I’ve always wondered about the philosophy and psychology of your culture,” I admitted. “What keeps you together if not a sense of devotion to a cause?”
“We are devoted to a cause—ourselves!” he explained. “You see, it’s all about status. It’s rather like being a committed capitalist. Think, what drives a narcissist?”
“Self-aggrandizement?”
“Yes,” he said. “We Stroj like to one-up each other. Nothing makes us feel better than that—to know we’ve dominated a rival. Among our own people, this takes the form of being promoted over one another. If one commands a ship, that captain takes great pride in the trophies he has carried home with it.”
“What about a Stroj who commands a mop?”
“That’s even more clear. We’re all concerned with our status among our peers. A man with a mop wants to put all other mop-men to shame. Perhaps even to rise above all others utilizing that very mop.”
“I see,” I said, “you’re individual warriors, rather than soldiers in formation.”
“Exactly. Cheating is therefore acceptable, as long as that cheating is never discovered. Since you’re
a man of honor, I can be assured you’ll never tell another of my people. I’m free to invent whatever story I want about my daring escape. Your silence will support my case, and my status will be elevated.”
I could tell he was salivating at the deal. He’d been assured of a defeat, but now, he thought he had a way out.
“I still don’t understand one thing, however,” I said, “why were you so willing to die to kill me?”
“Again, you have to understand our perspective is different than your own. We fight like wolves, but when we see our final moments are upon us, we stretch our minds to find the best way possible to die. Killing one last enemy is often the best choice that can be made—particularly if it’s an exceptional kill.”
Nodding slowly, I was reminded of the nihilistic culture of the Vikings. They, too, would rather die with a sword in their hands, fighting to the death. Any other way out was disgraceful.
“All right then,” I said, “as strange as it may seem, we’ve struck a bargain. How shall we proceed?”
He began to tell me, and it got worse as the discussion progressed. Before we got to the end of it, the cellblock hatchway opened.
I frowned at the guard. “I gave explicit instructions we weren’t to be interrupted.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said sheepishly. “Her excellency refused to be put off.”
My aunt slipped past him, appearing far more hunched than usual. She hobbled toward me with a cane rapping loudly on the floor and looking quite angry.
“Have you been injured Aunt Helen?” I asked.
“Don’t ‘Aunt Helen’ me, William,” she said. “As if you care about my health. That last stunt you pulled, zipping by the dreadnought, that nearly killed me!”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Oh, by the way, this is Captain—”
“I know who he is! Do I understand correctly that you’ve been conducting unsanctioned negotiations down here with this creature?”
“I’d hardly describe them as negotiations. Our discussions have been of a personal nature.”
“What?” she demanded. “Are you going to marry this monster?”
Captain Lorn laughed then. “Sparhawk! You’ve been holding out on me. Such a ravishing beauty. She’s full of fire and spunk, too.”
She turned each of us a baleful eye. I noted that one of her eyes wasn’t opening properly. It was bloodshot and weeping. I thought that was probably a side effect of our violent maneuvering earlier. High-G accelerations took a toll on oldsters, but she was still kicking.
“This fiend is my responsibility now,” Lady Grantholm insisted. “I’ll handle all further negotiations.”
I threw up my hands. “Fine, but I suggest you don’t get too close to the bars.”
She watched me leave.
“Kind Lady,” Lorn said, “would you be so considerate as to switch off that abominable box? It’s making it hot in here, and I’m very uncomfortable.”
My Aunt leered at him. “Don’t take me for a fool. Stroj,” she said. “I’ve been talking to monsters like you since before your planet was discovered.”
This seemed to surprise and amuse Lorn. I left the two of them together. Their personalities were more alike than they were different, after all.
“Command staff, report,” I ordered when I stepped onto the command deck.
Durris lurched up from my seat with a painful jerk. I could tell his broken neck was still bothering him.
“No major changes, sir,” he said.
“How’s that spine of yours?” I asked, trying to hide my dismay at his odd appearance.
He seemed surprised at my question. “It’s not bothering me much right now. I’ve got neural pain-clamps and nano-strings holding together the vertebrae—thanks for inquiring, sir.”
Modern medicine allowed spacers to walk away from injuries that would have taken months or years to heal in the past, but there were always alarming side effects. It was disconcerting to watch his head loll and twist, despite the fact I knew the artificial fibers in his vertebrae were strong enough to keep him from further damaging his spinal cord.
“Excellent,” I said, trying not to wince as I looked at him. “Now, proceed to these coordinates.”
I handed him a computer scroll. Frowning, he unrolled it and tapped at the data he found there. He looked up at me in alarm.
“Captain...? This will take us to their base—to the spot where we first spotted the dreadnought.”
“Exactly. That’s the only way out.”
I explained in detail, leaving out any mention of my bargain with Lorn. He already thought I was a madman for following this scheme, there wasn’t any point to confirming his suspicions.
After several baffled looks, he moved to his nav table and tapped in the data. “Here,” he said, “there’s a small nickel-iron moon around the second planet in the system. It’ll be hot and highly radioactive.”
Nodding, I examined what little data we had on the region. We had more than when we first entered the star system, but it still wasn’t much.
“Surface temperature around the boiling point of water,” I said. “Atmosphere made up primarily of carbon dioxide mixed with nitrogen and other trace elements. Upper cloud layer is sulfuric acid, and it rains acid on a daily basis. Sounds like a vacation spot.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You think the Stroj really live on that burning rock?”
“I don’t think they’re here for the gardening, but that’s where the majority of them are—on that moon.”
Durris shrugged. “We can get there, but the dreadnought will gain on us. We’ll only have a few hours’ time to spare before we’ll have to get underway again. Otherwise, she’ll catch up to us and pound us with her big guns.”
“All right. Set the course and give it to Rumbold. I need to go talk to Lieutenant Morris.”
He watched me leave with a strange look on his face. I thought maybe he suspected—not much got past Durris.
When I explained the situation to Morris and described his role in the scheme, he expressed disbelief.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Captain!”
“Sadly, I’m not.”
He strutted around the room, waving his arms and shouting at the walls.
“We can’t do it. The mere suggestion is crazy. You expect us to raid an enemy base—after they watch us fly right into their teeth? When we get down there we’re to capture some kind of computer code key and escape? It would take ten thousand commandos, not a handful of marines.”
“I’ll bolster your ranks with regular spacers,” I suggested.
“No, no, no,” he said, waving away my offer. “Don’t screw me further with baggage. We’ll have to move fast. We’ll have to get in and get out within ten hours.”
Sucking in a deep breath, I told him the rest of it. “We don’t have ten hours over the site. We’ve got three and a half—tops. After that, the dreadnought will be all over us.”
“You can’t be serious. Captain, I can’t land a force, run across a dozen craters, then penetrate a defended base—”
“You won’t have to do all that,” I told him. “We’re taking the pinnace. Lorn will get us down by spoofing their friend-or-foe recognition system. Then we’ll steal the key and run for it.”
His eyes narrowed. “We?”
“Lorn and I will be coming along. He has to identify and secure the code-key, after all.”
He stared at me. “You trust Lorn?”
“Certainly not.”
“He’ll bolt the first chance he gets. He’ll give us away—something like that.”
“He may try to go off-script. But he has a strong reason for not doing so: he wants to live and collect trophies.”
Morris shook his head. “Trophies? What trophies?”
I told him, and he was even more incredulous than before.
But also, he was somewhat intrigued.
-43-
Reaching the moon was simple enough. We swooped down out of deep
space, took up a position in orbit near and began bombarding it. They had defensive batteries, but they were nothing that could stand up to a battle cruiser.
The pinnace was our sole landing transport. We hadn’t anticipated needing a flotilla of small invasion craft for this duty. As a result, I was forced to make do with what we had and wait until we’d been ejected directly over the target. The Defiant was our only cover fire, but I wasn’t complaining.
As time was of the essence, we launched the pinnace the moment we were on the far side of the moon. Then when Defiant swung around again, the defenders had their attention diverted. They were too busy trying to survive to concern themselves much with the pinnace that zoomed down and unloaded its tiny complement of marines onto the rocky, airless surface.
We landed in a crater about two kilometers from the main enemy base. It wasn’t far, but far enough to avoid their anti-space weaponry due to the sharp curvature of the small moon.
Deploying a landing vehicle, we rolled forward on spinning balloon tires. The wheels were laced with magnets and hooked spikes so they could cling to the surface of a low-gravity planetoid like this one.
A few minutes later we found ourselves at the base of an escarpment.
“Okay,” Morris said, “on the far side of this ridge is the enemy base. It’s in a crater, and this rise in the land is where the enemy fire might find us. The plan is to scramble over the edge and rush down while they’re still firing up at Defiant.”
Lorn shook his head and laughed. “You’re a fool if that’s your plan.”
“What have you got, pirate?” Morris asked angrily.
“Brains,” he said, limping up to the top of the crater and then hunkering down at the lip. He peered over the side, absorbed.
Morris and I scrambled up the shifting rocks and dust to join him.
“See that?” he asked, indicating a hexagonal structure. “That’s a defensive bunker. A pillbox. The domes beyond it comprise the base itself.”
Morris stared, aghast. “Defensive bunkers? You never mentioned anything of the kind.”
Lorn shrugged. “Any commander worthy of the title would have assumed this base would be defended.”