The Fleet Book 2: Counter Attack

by David Drake (ed)

  “And you get the new one from some other ship,” I said. “Is that correct?”

  “Of course. How else does one get parts?”

  I nodded as if his method were obviously the only one that could be followed. Now I understood the significance of this graveyard for spaceships. It was the closest equivalent to a warehouse the Khalia had. We humans would have put up an automated warehouse which we’d keep stocked with freshly manufactured spare parts ready to be used as needed by the ships of the Fleet.

  It was evident now that the Khalia had no warehouse system, not even for a battle as important as this struggle for Target. There could be but one reason for this: they had no industry with which to manufacture replacement parts. Nor, apparently, did they have an outside source.

  This insight, later confirmed, was obviously of overwhelming importance to Fleet Intelligence. When one of the Khalian ships broke down, all they could do was replace the entire module in which the breakdown had occurred. If they could find one. Otherwise the ship had to stay out of action.

  And the importance of this spaceship graveyard was now clear. Parts from this collection of broken spaceships were probably keeping a major part of the Khalian fleet in operation. Destroy this dump and who knows how far they’d have to travel to find replacements?

  Fixing things—the basis of technological civilization—was of little interest to the Khalian. There was a caste among them who did do a certain amount of repair work. They might, in time, have developed into a guild of scientists and craftsmen. But they chose instead the mystical path, and became the seers and singers of a magical and poeticized pseudo-technology. I was to learn more about this from Homer Farsinger, the Destination Master of Tostig’s band. But all that came later. Now I was just catching up with Tostig, who had come to a stop at last beside a medium-sized spaceship, somewhat smaller than one of the, fleet’s cruisers.

  Tostig turned to me. “Now, my friend, comes a time of decision for you. I have a simple proposal to make.”

  “My mind’s already made up,” I said, “if your proposal is what I think it is.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I figure you want my help in getting these ships working again. So you can fight our Fleet again, and, perhaps this time come out better. The answer is no.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you for refusing that,” Tostig said. “That would be treason, and that’s something no warrior of honor asks of another. But such a task would be beyond any one man’s capabilities, and is not what I have in mind.”

  “What is it then?”

  “Behold this ship,” Tostig said, “It is my own personal ship. You know, perhaps, that we Khalia go to battle under our chosen war leaders, each of whom has his own ship. Actually, we don’t go to war, since that implies a contest that can be brought to a decision. We fight for booty, and above all, we fight for glory. Where neither booty nor glory are to be had, some of us, many of us, consider it no disgrace to break off an engagement and go elsewhere, where things may be more to our liking.”

  “I can assure you,” I said, “I am all in favor of you going elsewhere.”

  I was speaking ironically, of course. But Tostig took it seriously.

  “In that case, Judah, there should be no problem between us. Because, what I want you to do is help me get this ship spaceworthy. As soon as it is, I will load up my men and we will go somewhere else. Some place more amusing than Target has turned out to be, especially in this last phase.”

  I turned it over in my mind. “Would you give me your word that you’d go away from Target?”

  “Certainly. “

  “And that you would not attack humanity again?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Tostig said. “Of course I’m going to attack humanity again. That’s the game, you see. I mean, there’s nothing else for a Khalian warrior to do.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “whether that would be helpful to humanity or disloyal.”

  “Well, you can’t know entirely, can you?” Tostig said. “But it seems to me that this way we both get to keep our lives, and who can say what the future will hold for either of us, or for either of our races? You give up a tricky situation here and maybe it turns up somewhere else. Or maybe not. The point is moot, I think. It will certainly save the lives of your men on Target. But one thing is certain. If you don’t help me, you’ll die in this place before I do. That’s a promise, not a threat. Since I’ve taken a liking to you, I won’t eat you, in the event I must kill you. But die you will if you turn me down. But don’t let that influence you. What do you say?”

  As you can imagine, I did a great deal of thinking in a very short time, there on the chilly cavern floor, beneath the steely loom of Tostig’s spaceship lit vaguely by the cavern’s green phosphorescence. I had a natural desire to stay alive, of course. But my decision was based upon objective considerations.

  As an Intelligence Officer, or just as an intelligence source, it was necessary for me to stay alive, and to bring back this new knowledge which I had acquired about the Khalia. The lack of a manufacturing source for the ship’s replacement parts was crucial knowledge. Given that fact, spaceship graveyards acquired an importance we had not considered before; they were sources of materials that kept the Khalian raiders in action. The importance to them of this spaceship depository was why they were fighting so fiercely for this planet. If I could get back, I could direct the Fleet’s telemetry to the approximate location. They could blow away the spaceship graveyard here in the wilderness without risking any Nedge lives.

  Finally, there was this: if the Khalia were unable to manufacture their own spaceships, as seemed now to be the case, who was manufacturing them? And why were they doing it? This was something the Fleet leaders had to ponder. And to be exposed to the question, I had to get back to tell them.

  Would he actually let me go?

  I hoped he was a weasel of his word.

  I had to take the chance.

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  “Good fellow!” he cried, with evident warmth. “Come along then. You’ll want to meet the Destination Master. He’ll tell you what’s needed.”

  XII.

  Tostig led me down to a crude building which had been set up a few yards from the cruiser. It was a one-room shack, put together from bits and pieces of metal, old doors, metal shielding. Tostig found a patch of ground to lie down in, and motioned for me to put myself at my ease.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “The Destination Master is inside, talking to the gods. We mustn’t disturb him. He’ll come out when he’s finished.”

  “What, exactly, is a Destination Master?” I asked.

  From what Tostig told me, our nearest equivalent would be a navigator. But the Khalian Destination Masters were also in charge of maintaining the navigational equipment through prayers and meditation. Destination Masters, I learned, are always chosen from the Poet Class, since, by common consent, the Poets of Khalia understand about Traveling and Fighting, since they compose the heroic verses which are woven into the Sagas and constitute the soul of the Khalian race. Only this dedicated Poet caste can be trusted to communicate the correct messages to the ship’s computer.

  I was just beginning to grasp the meaning of all this when the Destination Master came out of his house. He was considerably older than Tostig, who was himself noticeably older than most of his followers. His name, translated into our own language, was Homer Farsinger. His fur was a grayish brown, grizzled white at the ends. He walked with great dignity, but with more than a hint of the rheumatism that affects so many Khalia in their old age.

  His voice was-high, quavering, unpleasant.

  “Baron Tostig,” he said, “why have you brought this racially impure human to the Shrine of Communication?”

  At first I thought he was being anti-Semitic, but then realized that he considere
d all humans racially impure. Perhaps from the viewpoint of a weasel that made sense.

  “Now Homer,” Tostig said, his voice conciliatory, “you know we discussed this. Human beings are very good at fixing things. With his help, you’ll be able to sort out the computer in no time and we can be on our way to fresh booty. And glory, too, we must never forget that.”

  “A Poet-Bard of the Khalia is unapt to forget glory,” Homer remarked. “I do not need this creature’s help. I am perfectly capable of conducting the Diving Startup Procedure.”

  “Yes, I know,” Tostig said, “But the fact is, we still can’t get the damned thing going.”

  “The Gods of Communication will grant us passage,” Homer said. “We must not try to rush them.”

  “I must point out,” Tostig said, “that some among the Khalia have come to believe that computers are responsive to straightforward cause and effect principles rather than the purely hypothetical Communication Gods.”

  “Don’t speak sacrilege in my presence,” Homer said. “You may be Baron Tostig, the greatest hero the Inchidian Clan of the West Khalia has yet produced. But religiously, you’re still a pup.”

  “Let’s not get into a huff about it,” Tostig said pleasantly. “I intend to get out of this place with my warriors. This man is the key. You can either let him be your assistant, or l will appoint you his assistant. Let’s have no more discussion about this, Homer.”

  Homer looked as though he had quite a good deal more to say. But he must have gauged the meaning of Tostig’s set expression and the way his right forepaw toyed with the tassel on the end of his laser pistol.

  “Of course he may assist me,” Homer said. “And if he has any worthwhile suggestions, I’ll be glad to follow them. Sometimes the Gods of Communication choose unconventional ways to convey their messages.”

  “Good,” Tostig said, “glad that’s settled. I’ll leave you two to get acquainted, then.”

  And he hurried off, obviously pleased to get away from Homer Farsinger, but not failing to give me a wink to let me know he sympathized. At least, I think it meant that. He was a good sort, Tostig.

  XIII.

  A Khalian baron, invariably an outstanding warrior, is in sole command of a Khalian raid. He gives the orders where to go, and when. But it is the Destination Master who actually implements those orders. The baron wouldn’t dream of taking the controls himself. His business is fighting and giving orders. Someone else actually carries out the orders, doing what is necessary to take the ship from here to there.

  Khalian navigation is simplicity itself, though only the Destination Masters of the Poet’s Guild seem to have caught on to it. What the Destination Master actually does is this: After a long mantric chant, “New direction, pounds of torque,” repeated over and over until the words made no sense (if they ever did), the Master is ready to perform. He takes from its special receptacle the Ship’s Travel Disc. It is a thin plastic rectangle containing a great deal of encoded electronic information, or, as the Khalia would say, it holds much power. The Master puts that into the computer’s slot, and up on the screen comes a directory of destinations. The Master selects the one desired, and punches EXECUTE. The ship gets underway. The remaining procedures are purely automatic. Unless a manual override is employed, the program will execute lift-off, take the ship off-planet by magnetic engines, switch at the appropriate time to FTL drive, and reverse the procedure for the landing at the chosen destination. In actual ship-to-ship combat, the Khalian commanders override the automatics and fly their ships personally, just as we humans do. But aside from that, the computer program handles everything.

  Many variations are possible, but that’s the basic routine.

  A nice, simple, foolproof method, well suited to the bloodthirsty and childish personalities of most of the Khalian race. Just within their intellectual grasp.

  But what happens when that simple, traditional, time-tested method of navigation fails? What happens when, as in the case of Tostig, the computer, when asked to get us out of here, flashes back *System Error*?

  The Destination Master had asked to be alone with his computer, and tried several prayers known only to him, mantras of great power. He emerged after three days, shaking his head. None of his words had had the slightest effect. The machine continued to display its single-minded message:

  *System Error*!

  “That’s fascinating,” I said to Homer, standing beside him and looking at the CRT tube of the ship’s computer. “My people, too, know what it means when God won’t speak to them any longer.”

  “The point is of considerable theological interest,” he said, agreeing with me though that wasn’t quite what I had meant. “System Error is mentioned in our ancient literature, specifically in the teaching story called ‘How System Error Came into the World.’ Briefly, the legend tells that the Gods of Communication gave the ancient Khalia two storerooms. From one of them, they were allowed to take all good things. But the other they were not permitted to touch. But they became greedy, and impious, and opened the second storeroom expecting even greater riches. Instead, out came a forlorn little creature with a long sting in its tail, and this was the demon System Error, and it has been stinging us ever since.”

  “That’s great,” I said, “I love stories like that. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll just sit down at the keyboard and see what I can learn about System Error.”

  “I can show you all the commentaries on the basic text,” Homer said.

  “Thanks, anyway, but what we need is a pragmatic procedure. That’s what’s recommended in the System Manual.”

  He looked at me with fury. “Don’t pretend to knowledge you do not have! Nobody has ever seen the System Manual, and certainly the Communication Gods would never show it to a human. But you may try to influence the machine, if you wish.”

  XIV.

  The running of a ship’s computer, even if it is simplified to a degree just short of automaticity, still requires the operator to indicate to the machine what routine he wants the machine to follow. And in indicating his wishes, the operator must communicate them to the computer in the proper order, and know how to recover if accident befalls. He needn’t know what his maneuvers actually do in terms of bits or bytes. But he must know how to do them accurately.

  Homer Farsinger knew many programming routines by heart, and that was a considerable- achievement for a pre-technological race. He didn’t call them, programs, however. He called them “Stanzas of Instruction,” and they were imbedded in the heart of the Sagas, mixed in with poetical stories of supernatural happenings in the early days of the Khalian race.

  A typical stanza (this is from “The Murder-Rage of Destrid Crazyclaws”) goes like this:

  “Then Destrid toggled once,

  And squeezed the mouse of destiny.

  And lines appeared on the Video Machine,

  And at that moment the Communication God spoke:

  ‘Option, Shift, E, Seven!,

  Do it and all will be well!’

  And Destrid praised the Lord,

  And reverently entered the divine computation . . .”

  Good stuff, no doubt, and useful, too. As long as the actual programming instructions didn’t get twisted around. If the program needed Option, Shift, Seven, E, in that order, then not even the High Lord of Communication is going to get your program running if you entered it wrong.

  The way I figured it, what had originally started as straightforward programming instructions had become poeticized by a race that feared technology and considered it a form of magic. Since they were not considered precise instructions, they were always being improved upon by succeeding generations of Poets. And the new Sagas were being written using many of the old programming formulas, but out of context, merely as a form of poetic speech.

  In one of the old Sagas, “The Threat of Hafeld Alieneater,” the comp
uter is threatened into obedience by its larger-than-weasel protagonist:

  “Hafeld Alieneater, that great warrior,

  Seized old Computer by the powercord,

  And shook it until its pixels winked in agony,

  And System Errors appeared in its screen,

  And the soul of the machine begged for mercy,

  Then Hafeld Alieneater said,

  Take my people home, Computer,

  Or I’ll feed you no more fat electrons,

  And when Computer still hesitated,

  Cunningly counting the nanoseconds

  On its interior clock of gold,

  Hafeld Alieneater grew passing wroth,

  And signaled to his men to engage in rude laughter,

  So that Computer should be discomfited,

  And stop giving itself airs,

  And do what had to be done,

  To bring Ostran and his brave warriors

  Home to the brave campfires of The People . . .”

  It worked in the poem, but nothing Homer could do would duplicate the results.

  I worked at the computer when Homer would allow. But it was not easy, trying to deduce its programming from the few clues available to me. He watched my efforts, but made little comment.

  During our moments of relaxation, when we paced up and down beside Tostig’s battle cruiser, trying to rest our eyes, I prevailed on Homer to tell me legends from the old days. He saw no harm in this. What practical concern could those old stories be? And perhaps he sought to convert me to his own cult of Orthodox Khalian Communicationism.

  Back in the old days, he told me, back in the ancient time before spaceships (a period of about four hundred years back, I estimated through other clues he gave me), The People (The Khalia) were simple barbarians, made up of many tribes and clans continually at war with one another. Then the First Others came from their home beyond the stars, and they gave weapons to the warrior people, and spaceships to the best of the battle group leaders, and sent them out on their trips of fame, booty, glory, and death. And they gave to the Poet’s Guild the task of recording these glories of the Khalian race in the form of Sagas.