Hunted Earth Omnibus

by Roger MacBride Allen

  And if they could not see the CORE, then the CORE could not see them. They were safe for the moment, barring accidental collision. For the moment. Never mind that. They had a fight to fight. “Tracking Officer, what have you got on visual and IR?”

  “It’s a little murky, ma’am, but clear enough for our purposes.”

  Dianne pulled up the visual image and was presented with a cloud of murk, filled with shimmering bits of blur, the millions of bits of chaff shining by reflected light as they tumbled through space, the camera shuddering and bouncing as its shielded housing took repeated hits from the chaff. In short, the imagery was a mess. Good thing the Tracking Officer could make sense of it, because she couldn’t.

  “The CORE just went right past us,” the Tracking Officer said. “No sign that it spotted us at all.”

  “Second chaff should be blowing now,” the Defence Officer called out.

  “Good. That will keep the damned thing blinded longer. Just a few seconds longer,” Dianne said. Of course, she was damned near close to blind herself at the moment. She struggled to make sense of the visual display.

  “Hamato, can you clean this imagery up a little? I can’t make heads or tails of it.”

  “What? Oh, ah, ma’am, you must have punched up the raw data image. Pull up the NVIRTH screen.”

  “NVIRTH being what?” Gerald asked.

  “Noiseless Visual-Infra-Red Tactical Hybrid,” Hamato said. “It subtracts the noise elements out of the visual and IR, pulls in the course projections from tactical and corrects—”

  “Shut up, Hamato,” Dianne said. Some of these kids got too involved with the tricks the hardware could do. Results were what mattered. She punched up the NVIRTH channel and was rewarded with a crystal-clear display, the CORE and the decoys neatly labelled. The CORE was moving at terrifying speed, the decoys rushing about the sky in all directions, just the way they had for Cargo 43.

  Dianne leaned in and stared at the screen, holding her breath, knowing it was bare seconds now. Either it would work, and they would live, or it would fail, and the CORE skymountain, the CORE hunter-killer asteroid, would kill them.

  “Decoys switching from evasive to homing mode,” Reed called out, but Dianne could see that, too. They were turning, coming about, moving in on the CORE instead of running away.

  The CORE had to go for the decoys. If it understood in time, it could escape, get away, turn and search for the Terra Nova just as the ship came out the other side of the chaff cloud. And then they were all dead.

  The CORE came out of the first chaff cloud and moved straight on, deep into the second cloud. Maybe it was moving so fast it had no chance to react to the brief moment of clear skies. Damnation, that thing was moving fast! It was already out of the second cloud now. At best, two or three seconds to traverse it. Would that be enough? Would it confuse the CORE just enough that it would not think to look back the way it had come?

  “CORE manoeuvring! Diving down, negative y axis,” Hamato called out, but Dianne could see it too. Turning, down hard about, almost at right angles, aiming toward the rearmost decoy, the one where Cargo 43 had been.

  Yes. Yes. They had won! Unless the blast was not powerful enough. Unless a CORE could take even that much punishment—

  “CORE closing on Decoy Seven. Collision imminent—”

  And the screen vanished in a flare of brightness, a dazzling glare. The proximity bomb in Decoy Seven detonated at the programmed ten meters from its target, and CORE 219 flew straight into a fusion explosion, a blare of stellar power tearing a hole in the middle of the darkness.

  The CORE was lost to sight, stopped almost dead in its tracks by the force of the blast, but still moving slowly forward, into the heart of the explosion, into the furnace.

  The other decoys moved in, accelerating toward the explosion, diving for the CORE.

  “We are approaching edge of chaff cloud,” Hamato said.

  With the suddenness of someone snapping on a light, the Terra Nova came out of the chaff cloud, rushing away, quickly moving far enough off to get a clear line of sight on the death of the CORE.

  For death it was. Now there could be no doubt.

  Someone slapped a switch, and threw the imagery from the hi-res cameras onto the main screen, zoomed in on the fast-receding end of the battle. Another explosion, and another, and another, flared in the sky, blinding the screen. Then, out of the glare, tumbling end over end, lumbering through the darkness, the CORE emerged from the fireball.

  Another decoy homed it, slammed into its target, and the darkness blazed again. The CORE cracked open, splitting along its long axis. A huge chunk of material sheared off, and a something squirmed free, a great grey oblong shape, surrounded by a cloud of lesser shapes— all of them, the big one and the small ones, shuddering, twitching, spasming in their death throes.

  A cheer went up, the bridge suddenly full of people clapping each other on the back, shouting, laughing, yelling. Dianne did not join in. Instead she sat there, stock still, staring straight ahead, letting the celebration go on without her. One of them. They had got one of them.

  First blood, she told herself. The first tiny victory, the first time anyone in the Multisystem had managed to so much as muss the enemy’s hair.

  Now all they had to do was do it about another hundred thousand times, and they’d all be safe.

  The last of the decoy bombs homed in, and exploded, and the thing from inside the CORE vapourised. She turned and looked toward her second-in-command as he watched the death—not of an enemy, but of a complex and ancient life-form. She could see that in his eyes. All the Charonians were trying to do was stay alive, just like anyone else. That’s what he’d tell her. Maybe there was something wrong about celebrating a death—any death, even a CORE’s.

  “Gerald,” she said.

  “Hmmm? What?” He blinked, turned toward her, his face pale and quiet. He knew how close it had been, too. He knew it could have been the ship that died, probably would be the next time. “Yes, I’m sorry. What it is, ma’am?”

  “Secure the ship from battle stations,” Dianne said. “Prepare to return to previous course.” She punched up the shipwide intercom circuit. “All stations,” she said in a tired quiet voice. “Now hear this.”

  How to say it? What was it they needed to hear?

  “Now hear this,” she said at last. “We are still alive. Repeat, we are still alive. That is all.”

  chapter 21: Acceptable Losses

  “When we repelled the attack on the Solar System, we destroyed Pluto and Charon as a way to save all the other worlds, and lost all contact with Earth as a consequence. We told ourselves that half a loaf—the seven surviving worlds of the Solar System—was better than none.

  ”But suppose you were part of the half a loaf that got sacrificed? For you, it wouldn’t seem like that much better a deal.“

  —Memoirs, Dr. Jane Webling, Science Director, Gravities Research Institute (retired)

  The Ring of Charon Command Station

  Plutopoint

  THE SOLAR SYSTEM

  The Autocrat moved his pawn forward to the third rank and leaned back in his chair. Sondra Berghoff did not react, did not lean forward, or rub her hand on her chin. Instead she stared, motionless, at the board. She had always regarded herself as a pretty fair player, but the Autocrat was head and shoulders above her. And yet there were flaws, weaknesses in his game. She had never met his equal for being able to think three—or five, or eight—moves ahead, and he was remarkably skilled in seeing the board as a whole.

  But for all of that—perhaps because of all that—the Autocrat often failed to see the small details, the little things, sometimes even the obvious things. If it did not lead to infinite opportunities in five moves, he paid it little mind. The only times she had managed to beat him had been the times she had found the little moves that did not seem to lead to many possibilities—for sometimes one possibility was all that mattered.

  She moved her sole surv
iving rook down the length of the board and set it down in the eighth rank. “Checkmate,” she announced. The Autocrat looked up in surprise. “So it is,” he said. “So it is indeed. I must say it is a pleasure to get a real game out of someone. Almost worth the trip to Plutopoint all by itself.”

  “Why can’t you get a good game of chess back on Ceres?” Sondra asked.

  “People are afraid I’ll execute them if I lose,” the Autocrat said, in a calm, matter-of-fact way as he set the board up for a new game.

  Sondra was not sure whether to laugh or to be shocked. Was he joking, or had he or some predecessor established a reputation as a terrible loser? She never quite knew what to make of the Autocrat. Well, she had to say something in reply, and somehow, professing shock did not quite seem polite. “Well, then,” she said, in as light a tone of voice as she could manage, “I suppose it’s lucky for me I’m outside your jurisdiction.”

  “Ah, but you are well inside it,” he replied. “The Autocrat’s jurisdiction has no set bounds or borders. I am required to see after the good of the Asteroid Belt and its people in all times and all places. I assure you that, if I ordered you executed, being outside the Asteroid Belt would be no defence for you at all.”

  “For the crime of beating you at chess?”

  “For any reason, if I judged you to be a danger to justice or peace. On at least one occasion one of my predecessors executed a man for precisely the crime of winning at chess, under rather peculiar circumstances involving a dishonoorable wager with a third party. Not a pleasant story, and not one with which to mar the present evening.” It was not the first time that the Autocrat had tossed a story of mysterious death and execution into the conversation, and Sondra could not help but notice that the Autocrat had never offered any assurance that he would not order someone executed.

  Quite the contrary, she had been left with the clear impression that the crew of the Autarch was trained and ready to shoot holes in anyone at a moment’s notice, should the Autocrat give the order. No doubt it was all meant to be very unsettling, and it certainly was.

  But for all of that, she liked the Autocrat. There was something a bit sinister about him, but so too was there something warm and approachable. He reminded her of a strict but fair father, relentlessly firm with his children, quite ready to give them a dispassionate spanking if they needed it. “Another game, Autocrat?” she asked.

  “No, I think not,” he said, standing up. “You are improving a trifle too quickly for me,” he said. “You are learning how to beat me, and I think perhaps I should give you a day or so to forget what you have learned.” He crossed the wardroom and looked out the porthole to the huge and gleaming oval of the Ring of Charon, now almost edge-on as seen from the Command Station.

  “Do you think I plan to take over this station?” he asked in a rather casual tone of voice.

  “Sir?”

  He turned and looked back at her. “You heard the question. Surely the possibility crossed your mind when a heavily armed and uninvited guest overstayed his welcome. I was supposed to leave here quite some time ago. Do you think I plan a takeover?”

  “The possibility has occurred to me, yes,” Sondra said, choosing her words very carefully. “Some of the staff are more than a little concerned. But I think you wish us to fear you, wish our backers on the Moon and Mars to fear what you might do. You want to show that you could take this station, control the Ring of Charon. But you do not—and did not—intend to carry out the threat.”

  “I see,” the Autocrat said. “And why would I pursue this course of action?”

  “To strengthen your hand at the bargaining table. To make everyone else a bit more eager to please you. To force everyone to come up with a solution to the problem of a monopoly source of gravity beams.”

  “Will your friends in the Inner System now come to the table before there is a crisis?”

  “I think so. You certainly have their attention.”

  “And have I come up with a solution? Have I found a way to parcel out this resource?”

  Sondra was scared, very scared indeed. Some games she did not wish to play with the Autocrat. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

  “You are quite correct,” the Autocrat said. “I as yet have no solution. But it will come. It will come.”

  “So you don’t intend to seize this station?” Sondra asked.

  The Autocrat looked her straight in the eye and gave her one of his finest non-answers. “That is not my current plan,” he said. “But that is of no consequence. I believe I have the answer to a more interesting problem. I think now I know why I came here,” he announced, staring out the port.

  “What? I’m sorry? What do you mean, Autocrat?” Sondra asked. She got up and went closer to him—but not too close. “I thought you were here because of the gravity-beam issue. I thought you came out here with some very specific political ideas in mind.”

  “Oh, yes, indeed. Quite so. And I have thought of some very promising avenues, even if I have not come up with an ultimate solution. But that is as may be. There are reasons and reasons for doing a thing, you know. Making sure that the Ring does not fall under unilateral control is important, that gravity-beam technology does not set off an interplanetary war is likewise vital. I think that my coming here has alarmed our friends on the Moon and Mars enough that we can now resolve those issues and keep you independent. Useful stuff—but it is not why I came. Not really.”

  “Then why are you here?” Sondra asked. But she barely heard her own words, her heart was beating so fast.

  “To see this,” he said, gesturing toward the Ring. “To be reminded what real power is, and how small I really am. I have the power of life and death over any number of people, but out there is the most powerful machine ever built by humanity—and it is as nothing compared to the might of the Charonians. They have the power of life and death over whole worlds—and yet they lay hidden here in the Solar System. They feared some other, greater power, and did all they could to hide from it. I knew all that, I suppose, and I’ve seen my share of Charonian power, but this—” he gestured toward the Ring “—this is ours. And it was powerful enough to destroy two worlds.”

  “But you knew all that before you came here,” Sondra said. What was all this? He came out here, not to do a little sabre-rattling, but as a tourist?

  “I knew Earth was a place with fresh breezes and open skies and wild animals,” the Autocrat said. “But I did not understand it, deep in my heart, deep in my soul, down at the level of instinct, until I had been there. Now I am as far as I can get from where Earth was and still be in the Solar System. I had to come here, too, before I could really understand.”

  “You’re doing better than I am, Autocrat,” Sondra said. “At least I know I’m never going to understand you.”

  The Autocrat smiled at Sondra, a warm and open expression that nonetheless scared the hell out of her. “Good,” he said.

  Dreyfuss Memorial Research Station

  North Pole

  THE MOON

  Larry Chao opened his eyes to a room full of faces. Tyrone Vespasian, Selby Bogsworth-something, Marcia MacDougal, a nurse, Lucian Dreyfuss, all of them staring at him.

  Wait a second—Lucian? That was impossible. Larry shut his eyes, shook his head, and opened them again. He was relieved to see the imaginary Lucian was gone—but also more than a little disappointed. Lucian. Lucian was going to be with him for a long, long time.

  “Hey,” Vespasian said. “He’s awake. Hey, Larry. You okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I guess.” Larry shifted position just a bit to sit up in bed, and instantly regretted it. His body was a solid mass of sore muscles. “Well, I will be all right, anyway. Pretty stiff just now.”

  “I’ll bet you are,” Vespasian said, his enthusiasm and sympathy sounding more than a bit forced. Clearly he was not here because he cared about Larry Chao’s health.

  Larry decided he was not much in the mood for small talk hi
mself. “So,” he asked, swinging his feet around and putting them on the floor. A real, solid, floor, and not a computerised pressure simulator. “Did you get it all?”

  “We got it,” Vespasian said. “But we’re not sure what it was. We were hoping you could tell us more about it.”

  “I have the feeling you saw less than I did,” Larry said. “Things got rather… strange… after Lucian and I started flying around. I don’t think you could have gotten the feel of it off a simple video link. So what did you see?”

  “A video sequence,” Marcia said. “It showed something attacking a Sphere, and then what happens when the Sphere is shattered. It had the Shattered Sphere images we got five years ago in the middle of it. The Sphere dies, its gravity systems fail, all the Captive Suns go flying off into space. The old Shattered Sphere images must have been some sort of shorthand version of the sequence we saw today.”

  Larry nodded and stood up. A robe was hanging by the bed, and he pulled it on, wincing a bit. Lots of stiff muscles. Damn it, why couldn’t they give him a few minutes by himself? A chance to go to the toilet, wash, get dressed? Well, it was important. He knew that better than they did. But he still needed a little bit of time alone. “Shorthand is about right,” he said, trying to keep his temper. “If you showed the shorter sequence of a Sphere getting smashed to any high-level Charonian, it would know what it means.”

  “But what the hell does it mean?” Vespasian asked. “Why did Lucian show it to you? Was it history, or legend, or a warning?”

  “All three,” Larry said, a bit sharply. “But wait a second. That’s all you saw? You didn’t see the rest of it—what I saw?”