"We'll get back there," he said. "After this is over. Go down to the Cape, open up the beach cottage, drink beer…
"… put our feet up on the rail, watch the sunset over the Sound and belch contentedly," finished Zahava.
He looked at her and sighed. "Said that a little too much, have
I?"
"No more than twice a watch."
They were an odd contrast, she a dark-skinned, lissome Sephardic Jew with a faint Israeli accent, he a sandy-haired WASP of medium build and a barely discernible New England accent. Ex-Mossad and ex-CIA, they'd married after the Biofab War, then shipped out aboard Implacable into Quadrant Blue Nine, battling corsairs, mindslavers, AIs, and helping take Devastator from her AI crew. Now they were on board for the final confrontation.
"You really think we'll get out of this alive?" said Zahava, turning to him.
"Talk like that you won't," said a new voice, echoing in through the dome. The two
Terrans turned, hands dropping to their holsters.
"Bill!" they both said, then hurried to greet Sutherland. The CIA director returned Zahava's kiss, then shook John's hand.
"¦What are you doing aboard this monstrosity?" asked John.
Sutherland shrugged. "S'Rel wanted me up here to gauge their sincerity, or something. A symbol of goodwill, I suppose. This war is long past any Terran government's influence." He glanced up at the board with its image of the planet. "Mostly, though, I came to say good-bye to two homesick friends and to wish you Godspeed."
"How's McShane?" asked John.
"The old codger's well," said Sutherland. "I got a postcard from him last month. Bought a big sailing ketch, hired a crew and took the kids and grandkids off to the South Pacific." Bob McShane, a retired professor, had been with John, Zahava and Sutherland since Implacable first reached Terra, playing a decisive role in both the Biofab War and the battle for Terra Two.
"So tell me, how did you acquire this homey ship?" asked Sutherland, leaning against one of the consoles.
"Ask Zahava," said John. "She took it. I just wandered around lost, playing tag with those flying blades the AIs use for security."
Sutherland looked at Zahava.
"We stormed it," said the Israeli. "One assault team infiltrated, took out the shield power, my group came in and stormed the Tower, pulling out the AI gun crews, then D'Trelna brought Implacable in and it was all over."
Sutherland snapped his fingers. "Just like that?" he said with a grin.
"Not really," said a new voice.
This time the long-barreled blasters came out of their holsters as Guan-Sharick appeared, standing on the other side of the nearest consoles. The blonde ignored the blasters, looking instead at Sutherland. "They came under fierce blaster fire and nerve gas attack. Zahava's assault force sustained over seventy percent casualties, John and L'Wrona's over ninety-percent. R'Gal was badly wounded. And still they were lucky."
"Long time," said Sutherland softly. "I'd hoped you were dead."
"I'm on the side of the angels now," said the blonde, walking around the console, "or haven't you heard?"
"And I'm a Trotskyite," said the CIA director.
"What I did on Terra," said the transmute, green eyes looking into Sutherland's a meter away, "was necessary. What I did to galactic humanity by instigating the Biofab War was necessary-a vital conditioning exercise." She shook her head, throwing the long golden strands back over the shoulder of her white jumpsuit.
"You wiped out much of galactic humanity," said John. "A lot of people want a piece of you."
The blonde looked at him, a beautiful young face with old, old eyes. "Nothing can be done to me that hasn't already been done, Harrison. Believe me." Her gaze shifted to a blank screen, seeing something the other three couldn't. "To be honest, I don't expect to survive this mad expedition. Death would be a welcome release."
Guan-Sharick looked back at the three Terrans. "S'Yatan, the captain of the Victory Day, is an AI," she said briskly. "He's making off with the portal device and will reach jump point before we can overtake him. I can, however, transport two of you and myself to his inhospitable bridge and do battle with the slime. Like that," added the transmute, snapping her fingers.
Sutherland was suddenly alone in the observatory. He stood perfectly still for a moment, then shook his head, lips pursed, and left the room.
On the screen, the image of Terra was just another dim point of light.
9
"Cci works flawlessly," said Dad as another small asteroid shattered from a red fusion beam.
"Make for final jump point," L'Wrona ordered the computer. The asteroid belt was a well-known target practice area, just off the principal ship path from K'Ronar to U'Tria. Three jump points-those unseen but well-charted points from which a ship could jump most accurately to another specified point -lay behind them, one ahead. It was here the captain expected trouble-even looked forward to it. After ten years of battlecruisers, he was reveling in the immediate response his hands brought from the sleek little ship, the almost forgotten thrill of piloting a one-man scout. Only the lack of his father's voice would have made it more enjoyable. Why ever did he impress his persona on the computer? wondered L'Wrona, not for the first time. Did he really think he was doing me a favor, or did he do it for himself, assuaging some secret guilt about being away so much when I was young?
Just before the war, after an especially long and argumentative trip aboard Toy, L'Wrona had consulted a ship's cyberneticist about having his father's persona and voice removed from Toy's computer. The man had glanced at the system specs, then at the programming overlay specs. "Voice is no problem," he'd said. "The personality, though.. ." He'd shaken his head. "Might as well scrap the whole system and start with fresh gear."
"How much?"
The cyberneticist shook his head again. "Can't get a replacement-system specs are unique to this series-start substituting, you're asking for big trouble a long way from home. You'd have to find another O'Lan in private berth, buy it and switch hardware -seeing as how you've made certain modifications." His finger delicately traced the schematic of the CCI interface.
Then the war had started, U'Tria had fallen and L'Wrona had forgotten all about it-until now.
"A ship has just appeared at jump point," said Dad. "ID'd as a nova-class Fleet destroyer."
The projection appeared on the tacscan -the red of the destroyer moving toward the green of Toy as it approached the pulsing red circle of the jump point.
"Ship-to-ship," said the computer.
A man's face appeared in the commscreen, the silver starships of a captain on his collar. He was in his middle years, graying at the temples-and he looked most unhappy. He nodded at L'Wrona. "My Lord," he said with a faint nod. "Captain Z'Than, commanding A'Lan's Hope. We are ordered by FleetOps to take your ship aboard and return with you to K'Ronar."
L'Wrona's hand tapped the joystick, taking Toy off automatic, moving the ship forward at standard. "I invoke the immunity of the Covenant," he said. On the tacscan, the distance between the two ships was quickly shrinking.
"I'm sorry, but they said you'd do that," said Z'Than, "and that it was a procedural matter best decided by a tribunal. As a Line officer, I am merely to bring you in."
A line of text appeared beneath the captain's image, moving slowly across the screen. "H'Nar. He's armed his weapons batteries. Tacscan locking on. Touch your left earlobe if you want me to open fire now, while we still have a chance."
L'Wrona kept his left hand on the chairarm. "Z'Than," said the margrave. "You're from U'Tria, aren't you?"
The captain nodded.
"Do you have a signed order from Fleet ordering my arrest?"
"I have verbal authorization, My Lord." Even in the small pickup, L'Wrona could see the sweat on the other's brow. He and his family had been liegemen of the margrave since before the Fall.
"You can only bring me in with an order signed by the Grand Admiral, or an order signed by the full Council
. Do you have either?"
Z'Than shook his head.
"Then get out of my way, sir. As first ship insystem, we have prior navigation rights. You are between us and our jump point." gods! h'nar, jump now! flashed the screen. deviation will be only. 00032. we can make it up in a few weeks.
"Cut your engines and prepare to be taken in on tractors," said Z'Than. On the tacscan, what little space there was between the two ships was vanishing. L'Wrona could see the destroyer through the armorglass now, a mile-long black hull bristling with weapons turrets and instrument pods. They were within seconds of colliding.
"Too easy," said L'Wrona. Pulling up on the stick, he sent the scout knifing up and over the destroyer's bridge, down along its hull and then off toward jump point, the big tri-tubed engines shrinking in the rearscan.
The destroyer commander's image vanished as the commlink broke. "He's switched off," said Dad as L'Wrona moved the scout up to flank speed. "And he's suspended weapons tracking. You won."
Reaching jump point, L'Wrona engaged the drive, feeling his stomach churn as space twisted in that crazy, familiar way, then it was over-they were in U'Tria system. Home.
Sighing, L'Wrona dropped Toy's speed down to standard.
"Mines!" shouted the computer. "All around!"
Cursing, L'Wrona cut speed, tried to nullify forward thrust, even as an alarm sounded. "Incoming missiles!" warned Dad. "Move and the mines get us, don't move and the missiles get us."
"Missiles from where?" said L'Wrona.
"Two heavily armed commercial vessels." It all came up on the tacscan then: the red of the minefield surrounding the jump point, the incoming red streaks of the shipbusters, the yellow Xs of the two hostiles, and standing well outside the minefield, the small, fragile green of Toy.
"Origin of vessels?" said L'Wrona, seeing only one way out.
"ID'd as Combine T'Lan," said Dad.
The missiles penetrated the minefield and were destroyed-as planned. Noiseless, a spectacular wave of overlapping orange-red explosions licked toward the scout, a chain reaction racing from mine to mine.
"Short jump, backside," snapped L'Wrona.
Toy disappeared as the blast reached her.
"Yes or no?" said the face in the commscreen.
The man wearing the uniform of a Combine merchant captain shrugged. "Maybe yes, maybe no. We think we got him, but the tacscan shows no ship residue. There should be at least some traces of the drive isotopes."
"He may have blind jumped. If so, he's as good as dead," said the other. "Remain on station until you hear from me again, Captain."
"Yes, Goodman T'Lan."
As the Combine captain's image disappeared, T'Lan, neither good nor a man, turned to the other human-adapted AI, one who could and did pass for his son and heir. "That's L'Wrona's home system. He probably jumped, but I doubt it was blind. We'll just have to watch and wait, strike when it shows."
The two stood in the underground command center of one of the Federation's wealthiest industrial combines-a combine created several hundred years ago by beings from another reality, intent on infiltrating and ultimately destroying the Confederation. The big room bustled with activity, coordinating the far-flung merchant fleets and maintaining communications with distant points in this and one other universe.
"One of our units has the humans' only portal device," said the younger T'Lan.
"S'Yatan?" asked T'Lan senior, glancing at the status boards. Everything was on schedule -forward battle units of the Fleet of the One were approaching the Rift, about to penetrate into the K'Ronarins' Quadrant Blue Nine -the Ghost Quadrant.
The other AI nodded.
"He's had it since his ship was assigned to Terra," said T'Lan senior. "His crew's human and loyal. He can kill them but he can't run the ship by himself. And there's always an escort vessel. So…?"
"He's convinced the crew they're fleeing an unlawful order, heading back for K'Ronar. The instant he leaves the Terran system, he can kill his crew, and one of our ships will meet him."
T'Lan senior nodded. "Having that device, we'll use it to bring in a second force, augmenting the one coming through the Rift. Nothing can stop us." A sudden thought gave him pause. "What unlawful order was he fleeing?" he asked, frowning.
The other AI looked at his senior nervously. "You recall Binor's advance force? The one we thought the mindslavers wiped?" "Thought?"
"It seems that R'Gal, Guan-Sharick and some humans actually captured the flagship. It's at Terra now, and has been granted the device by the insystem commander."
The senior AI was absolutely still for a moment, absorbing the data. "No one," he said finally, "has ever taken a battleglobe. Not in all the long years of the Fleet of the One."
"Shall I alert home?" asked T'Lan junior, nodding toward a console manned by an AI wearing a terminal coupler plugged directly into his temples.
T'Lan senior held up a hand. "Not yet. Not until we've some success to report. That battleglobe can hurt us far worse back home than it can here-which is why R'Gal's trying to take it there."
Toy's jump drive was a creation of the High Imperial epoch. Unlike contemporary star-ships, the little scout was capable of low-risk, insystem jumps-and had just made one.
L'Wrona looked down on the rugged highlands of the S'Htil, one of the planet's three continents and its commercial hub.
In the old days, before the war, the tacscan would have picked up hundreds of space- and atmospheric craft, coming and going from U'Triaport or traversing the planet. Now the tacscan was empty.
"Set us down in the old s'hlar grove, across the lake from the Hall," said L'Wrona as the ship plunged into the atmosphere, taking a sharp evasive tack against hypothesized missiles.
"Acknowledged," said the computer.
Unchallenged, seemingly undetected, the little ship sat down at dusk in the wooded hills just outside L'Yan, ancestral home of the Margrave of U'Tria. The sere autumn foliage was just catching the last rays of sunset when L'Wrona clambered down Toy's boarding ladder and stepped onto his home soil for the first time in ten long years.
Breathing deeply of the crisp, fresh air, he bent and picked up some leaves and dirt. Rubbing them slowly between his hands, he let them fall back to the forest floor, brushed his hands gently, then made his way toward the faint ruts of the old vehicle trail and the distant village.
10
"Here we sit," said L'Guan, sipping his brandy, "two flag officers without a single ship, aware of enemies within and without, and reduced to the status of observers."
"There are the commtorps," said D'Trelna. The two men sat at a small table on the blue-tiled patio overlooking the waterfall, two glasses and a crystal decanter of S'Tanian brandy between them. Below, the mist from the tumbling water prismed the artificial sunlight into a rainbow.
"What, the ones Implacable launched coming in?" asked the admiral.
D'Trelna nodded.
"Line," said L'Guan, "what's the status of those commtorps?"
Ill
"All but one is intact, Admiral," said Line, its voice coming from beside the table. "They can be activated only upon signal from Implacable, though. Absent Implacable, they cannot be utilized."
"Surely the signal could be duped?" said D'Trelna.
"Authentication signals of a L'Aal-class cruiser-indeed, of most Imperial-made battleships-to any of its indiginous equipment is code-based upon the matrix set of jump drive impulses unique to that particular vessel," said Line primly. "The chance of our successfully emulating it during your lifetime, Commodore, is insignificant."
"I had to ask," sighed D'Trelna.
"And what good would it do?" said L'Guan, looking at the Commodore.
D'Trelna's head jerked up, eyes narrowing. "The people would rise," he said, stabbing a thick finger at the admiral. "Fleet would join them, and Combine T'Lan-its bases, its ships, its agents-would disappear overnight. They're large, but they can't hope to stand against an aroused people backed by their military."
"Chaos is what you're describing, Commodore," said the Admiral. "Our ships scattered, our cities burning, fighting in the streets -just as the AI invasion force sweeps in."
"I disagree," said D'Trelna. "But it seems a moot point for now.
The Final Assault "So what do we do?"
"We could wait," said L'Guan, restopping the decanter. "If there is an AI invasion coming, it'll come out of Quadrant Blue Nine. Automatic pickets have been posted at all known jump points leading from there toward the Confederation. When and if they come, we'll know, D'Trelna."
"You know I made a deal with the mindslavers," said the commodore. "They're waiting in Blue Nine, ready to take on the AIs in return for
…"
"In return for dangerous concessions from us," said L'Guan. "I know. If they can stop the AIs-and we and they survive-those concessions will probably be granted. But chances of that are slim to none."
"So you plan for us to just sit it out, Admiral, safe in the heart of Line?"
L'Guan smiled wryly, shaking his head. "Not even this charming sanctuary will be safe when the Fleet of the One gets here, D'Trelna." He sat looking at the waterfall for a long moment. "An admiral without a fleet and a commodore without a flotilla." He looked back at D'Trelna. "I've always rejected the desperate over the safe. But there are no safe moves left."
"I didn't know we had any moves left," said D'Trelna, staring glumly into the tropical twilight now falling over the jungle glade.
"Let's be thankful we survived today," said
L'Guan, rising. "I'm going to bed. You might do the same."
"Admiral," called D'Trelna.
L'Guan turned.
"Thank you-for getting me out."
L'Guan shrugged. "How many times have you and Implacable saved our lives, D'Trelna?"
"You'd have gotten me out if I were a first-year cadet," said the commodore.
"No one gets at my people," said the admiral, shaking his head. "Not if I can stop them. Good night, J'Quel."
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