“Be my guest,” Jon said.
Oslo eyed him warily. “You no longer object to that?”
“I’m a prisoner, remember?”
Oslo held out his good hand. “Give me your gun.”
“Sure,” Jon said, stepping closer. “I’m going to use the butt to hit you in the head. Will that work for you?”
Oslo dropped his outstretched arm, hopping away from Jon.
“Have you changed your mind about the battlesuit?” Jon asked in seeming innocence.
“Mentalist,” Oslo said. “Do you see what you’ve unleashed?”
Gloria crouched underneath a control panel, having removed a bottom plate. “Please,” she told Jon. “We need him, remember? You must hold your bloodthirsty nature in check for now.”
Jon laughed at Oslo, raising the gun, aiming it at the secret policeman. “If you try any of your tricks…BAM. You’re dead. Do you understand?”
Oslo turned away as if Jon was beneath his notice.
For an instant, Jon put pressure against the trigger. The arbiter was a snake. If he dropped his guard, Oslo was sure to kill him. Given such a situation, it was just a matter of time before the secret policeman aimed a gun at him. Neither a man, nor a regiment nor a country could win if it played defense all the time. To win, one had to take the offense eventually.
Why risk this needless danger with a known ungrateful cur?
“No!” the mentalist said, looking up from where she worked. “How many times must I tell you that we need him?”
Reluctantly, Jon lowered the gun and waited. Oslo waited as well, and the mentalist worked.
Suddenly, the main screen flickered into life.
“I think I have it,” Gloria said. She stood, tapping the controls and twisting a dial.
The main screen showed space with myriads of stars. The blue object was bigger than when Jon had seen it from the observation dome.
“That’s the ice giant Neptune,” Gloria said. “If I speed up the recording, you’d see it dwindle in size. The Brezhnev was accelerating away from the gravitational system at the time I downloaded the data.”
She looked up at the screen as if waiting. “There,” she said suddenly. “Do you see it?”
Both Jon and Oslo looked at her in confusion.
She twisted her mouth and manipulated the control board. The image on the main screen froze. Slowly, a red circle surrounded a bright dot that could have been a star.
“You both notice that, I hope,” she said.
“What is it?” Jon asked.
She examined the control panel with its green and red lighting. With some care, she tapped here and there.
The bright dot grew in size, becoming fuzzier as it did. Finally, it became evident that a dark, undeterminable spaceship ejected a massive and hot exhaust.
“When did you record this?” Oslo asked.
“As I said earlier,” Gloria replied, “I downloaded this from the sensors just before the computer started attacking us.”
“The vessel seems to be approaching Neptune from deep space,” Oslo said.
“That is correct,” the mentalist said.
The arbiter’s features became thoughtful. “Am I to presume you’ve discovered the relevant data regarding the unknown vessel?”
“I know a little bit about it,” she admitted. “Would you like to hear what I’ve learned?”
“By all means,” Oslo said. “You have my undivided attention.”
“The exhaust is from a matter-antimatter reaction,” she said.
“Impossible,” Oslo said. “No one has such a propulsion system. Our fastest ships used fusion power. It’s the same with the Neptunians.”
“Precisely,” Gloria said. “No human group has built a matter-antimatter propulsion system. I have numbered that as the first datum point. The second is the vessel’s size. I would have worked that out immediately, but we had other things on our mind. Roughly, the ship is a spheroid with a one hundred-kilometer diameter. That is datum point number two.”
“One hundred-kilometers?” asked Oslo in amazement.
The mentalist nodded.
“That is the second impossibility,” the arbiter declared. “The Brezhnev is less than a kilometer long, and it is the largest military vessel in existence. Only a few of the biggest freighters have more interior volume.”
“Now are you beginning to understand why I suspect this is an alien vessel?”
Oslo rubbed his jaw. “It could be a Neptunian ship,” he said. “It could be a secret-project spaceship.”
“I know you’re privy to the secret intelligence files concerning the NSN,” Gloria said. “Those files contain nothing regarding a secret-project super-ship.”
Oslo looked at her sharply. “How would you know what the files hold?”
“I wouldn’t tell you under different circumstances,” Gloria replied, “but I’m privy to those files as well.”
“Explain how this happened.”
“Please,” Gloria said. “That should be obvious.”
“She hacked into the GSB security files,” Jon told the arbiter. “Even I can see that.”
“Is this true?” an outraged Oslo asked the mentalist.
“More or less,” she said.
“But…that’s espionage,” Oslo declared. “You must be a foreign agent.”
“I have a fault, I’m afraid,” Gloria said. “I have a hole in my mind. The hole represents the things I do not know, which leaves me feeling barren and unsatisfied. I desire to fill the hole with figures and endless facts. Thus, I learn whatever I can. That would include all the secret files aboard the Brezhnev’s former computer system.”
“You will be shot,” Oslo told her. “First, you will undergo intense interrogation so the GSB can discover your accomplices.”
The mentalist stamped a foot. “Would you use your mind for once? Look at the screen. You’re likely viewing an alien spacecraft, an immense vessel with superior technology. Certainly, it has a superior propulsion system. You don’t think such a craft would take two years to reach Earth, do you?”
Oslo stared at the main screen. Slowly, his anger and disgust transformed into worry. “Do you have anything more?”
“I do,” Gloria said. “But it isn’t normally visible. Hmm…Let me turn radio signals into yellow lines.” She sat at the panel and began to adjust the settings. Finally, she looked up.
Wavy yellow lines appeared. The locus was the shadowy spaceship. Those lines reached out to the Brezhnev. They also reached out to the Neptune Gravitational System, splintering to reach innumerable points.
“I don’t understand,” Oslo said. “Those yellow lines are radio signals?”
“Yes,” Gloria said.
“The aliens tried to contact us?” the arbiter asked.
“I don’t think so,” Gloria said. “If the Brezhnev is an example, the aliens attempted to contact our computer. They successfully did so, setting the computer against us.”
“Why would aliens do this?” Oslo asked.
Gloria gave a sharp bark of amusement. “If we once again use the Brezhnev as the example, the alien desire becomes obvious. They wanted our computer to kill us, to render the battleship inoperative.”
“Is that true?” Jon asked her.
Gloria gave him a penetrating stare. “Do you have another theory?”
“I don’t know if you’d call it a theory,” Jon said. “The computer tried to kill us, right? That doesn’t necessarily make the Brezhnev inoperative. Couldn’t that also turn an SLN warship into a possible drone-ally for the aliens?”
Gloria seemed to stare into space. “Yes,” she said a moment later. “But that makes the aliens even more dangerous than I suspected.”
“Wait a minute,” Oslo said. “You said you detected jamming before. Who was doing the jamming? It couldn’t have been the alien vessel.”
“Why couldn’t it?” the mentalist asked.
“Notice the ship’s distance from the N
eptune System—”
“Hold it,” Gloria ordered. She began manipulating the control panel in earnest. The circle left the bright object as the entire stellar image shrank back to its normal size. The star scene changed quickly now.
“What are you doing?” Oslo asked.
“Trying to gauge the vessel’s velocity,” Gloria said. “The Brezhnev only had this momentary glance of it. Ahhh. Look.”
“What have you discovered?” Oslo asked.
“Given the bright exhaust from the matter-antimatter engine and the distance moved from one scene to the next—it’s decelerating at something around 75 Gs.”
“That’s impossible,” Oslo said.
“It would be, if the ship had human passengers,” Gloria said. “Those are aliens. Can they withstand 75 Gs? That seems highly unlikely. Yet, who knows what other kinds of technological advances they have? Why not something that can control apparent gravity within the ship? My point is the alien vessel appears—or appeared—to be moving at a fantastic velocity. It must have waited for the last moment to decelerate. It must have done so in order to remain hidden from our sensors for as long as possible.”
“You think these aliens are trying to hide a spaceship one hundred-kilometers wide?” Oslo jeered.
“Compared to the volume of space,” Gloria said, “one hundred-kilometers is nothing. As long as the vessel remains dark, how would any human notice its advance? No. The aliens meant to get in close, unobserved. The aliens sent messages—we must assume—to all the various computers in the Neptune System. Did the aliens cause the other computers to turn on their humans as well?”
Oslo grew pale. “That would be a disaster.”
“Yes,” Gloria said. “Their vessel was decelerating at 75 Gs. Given its distance from the ice giant at the time I recorded this…the giant warship should almost be within the Neptune System by now.”
The arbiter kept staring at the main screen. Finally, he turned to Gloria. “What are we going to do?”
“That is an excellent question. I propose we weigh our choices carefully. But I don’t know how long we’re going to have to do that.”
“What?” Oslo asked. “Why?”
“I told you before,” she said. “The Brezhnev has been decelerating for some time. Soon, we will no longer have any velocity inward. Instead, we will begin to accelerate, heading back for the Neptune System and the alien super-ship waiting there.”
-12-
“I have the answer,” Jon said.
The arbiter spun toward him.
“I don’t know how many of us you put into deep freeze,” Jon said, “but it’s time to thaw out the regiment. There’s the Brezhnev’s new crew.”
“Never,” Oslo declared. “This is an SLN battleship. I will never willingly give it over to the NSN.”
“You’re wrong on two counts,” Gloria said. “This was an SLN battleship. It’s the next thing to a space hulk now. You won’t be giving up anything anymore.”
“The weapons systems still work,” Oslo said.
“Without the computer, how do think you’re going to fire at anything over a few kilometers away?”
“What is the second problem?” Oslo asked.
“You no longer have a choice,” Gloria said. “You’re no longer in control. He is. He has the gun and the willingness to use it.”
Oslo stared at her for some time. Finally, he shook his head. “You chose to come out of the battlesuit at an interesting moment. You did it so you would no longer be in charge. You have dodged your responsibility because you wanted to thwart me but didn’t have the courage to do it yourself.”
The mentalist looked down.
“This is treason,” the arbiter declared.
“No,” Gloria said, looking up again. “If I’m right, aliens have invaded the Solar System. That changes everything.”
“And if you’re wrong?” Oslo asked.
“Tell me who owns the asteroid-sized spaceship. I was born and trained to reach rational conclusions, even those conclusions that others cannot conceive.”
The arbiter didn’t stare at her as long this time. “You told the space marine I’ve memorized critical ship codes. That wasn’t a slip on your part, was it?”
“I told him so he wouldn’t shoot you,” Gloria said.
Sapir Oslo made a weird rhythmic noise. Jon finally realized it was laughter.
“No, no, no,” Oslo said, wagging an index finger at her. “You are cunning, and you are hyper intelligent. But you are a poor liar. You need the codes so the Brezhnev can fight.”
“The Brezhnev is practically useless…unless you want to ram it against something.”
Oslo’s eyes narrowed as he regarded the mentalist. “If the Brezhnev can’t fight, why do you need my security codes?”
“I’ll tell you why… First, we need to thaw out the other space marines.”
“I’ll never agree to that.”
Gloria thought about it. She shook her head after a time. It almost seemed as if she argued against herself. Finally, she sighed and turned to Jon.
“You might as well kill him,” she said. “He’s no more use to us like this. In fact, he’s only a danger now.”
Jon smiled grimly, raised the gun, aiming it at the arbiter—
“Wait!” Oslo cried. “Perhaps…perhaps I was hasty. Let us see these space marines. Maybe you have a point after all. If aliens have invaded, no matter how reluctant I am to the idea, we must unite against them.”
Jon glanced at the mentalist.
“I, too, may have judged too hastily,” she said. “Let us return to the cryo chamber and see what we can accomplish.” She turned to Jon. “I won’t last long under these Gs. Do you mind if I reenter the battlesuit?”
Jon considered the request, wondering if her words just now were a blind. Maybe she’d come out of the battlesuit by mistake. Maybe she was more emotional than she let on. Now, she needed the suit to overpower him.
The Martian waited as if letting him figure things out for himself. That proved a more powerful argument than if she’d tried to talk him into it.
Jon believed in trusting his gut. He believed she believed that hostile aliens had entered the Neptune System. Given that, they needed each other.
“Go ahead,” he said.
She climbed in through the back of the suit, shoving her legs in first. After putting her head and arms in, she activated the controls. The suit closed, and its locks snapped shut. Soon, the battlesuit righted itself, and the assault rifle rose.
Sapir Oslo grew keenly interested.
The helmet speaker crackled. “Do you want a lift?” she asked the arbiter.
His narrow shoulders deflated. He nodded a moment later. Maybe he’d been wondering the same thing Jon had. The rising rifle might have led the arbiter to believe the Martian had tricked the space marine. Now, the secret policeman realized she’d spoken honestly.
Together, they marched out of the command chamber and headed for the cryo chamber.
-13-
Jon was sweating again from the grueling pace. The battlesuit clomped remorselessly down the corridors ahead of him, with the arbiter cradled in her powered left arm.
Jon debated calling out, asking for a lift. Sitting like that, though, against the battlesuit’s arm, grated against him. He was a soldier. Before that, he’d been a stainless steel rat in the deep tunnels of New London Dome. Neither soldier nor gang rat would willingly consent to ride like a baby in a woman’s arm.
Thus, Jon Hawkins pushed himself, finding the Gs difficult. How long were they going to leave the engines roaring so strongly?
As he collected himself, letting his stubbornness gather strength, more of Jon’s memories flooded back into his consciousness.
He remembered what the regiment had become. The Neptune War Council had decided on the coming strategy. A swift comparison between fleets had shown the council the hopelessness of winning a direct ship-to-ship engagement. The SLN task force had more warsh
ips and of greater individual tonnage and weaponry. The NSN would be badly outclassed.
That meant that the Neptune System Navy would have to employ other means to win. Stealth seemed like a key ingredient for whatever they decided. They would use cunningly placed stealth mines. The NSN had sheathed thermonuclear warheads in black ice, which lacked a thermal signature. The black color would hinder any SLN teleoptics from spotting it. That should mean the task force would not spot the mines until they exploded.
The second stealth attack would come from space marine assault-shuttles. The assault-shuttles would secretly maneuver from behind various moons, sliding near the targeted warships. Space marines would gather on the attack-shuttles’ hulls and leap for the nearby enemy, using thruster packs to close faster and brake right at the end. Like ancient pirates from Earth’s history, the space marines would land on enemy hulls, force the outer hatches and enter the vessels. Then, it would merely be a matter of overpowering the surprised crew. The stealth boarding was supposed to serve a double purpose. The space marines would knock out an enemy vessel and add it to the NSN fleet.
Unfortunately, such a risky maneuver had little chance of success. Thus, the NSN War Council had decided to use foreigners as the space marines instead of native Neptunians. The Black Anvil Regiment had seemed perfect for such a task. Thus, once inducted into the Neptune Navy, the regiment had found itself engaged in battlesuit and assault-shuttle practice under zero-G conditions.
As one of the better-rated units, the regiment had found itself in a reserve formation. Before they entered their stealth shuttles, the colonel had requested an update on the fleet action. When he’d come back from the briefing, the colonel had given a hidden signal.
The regiment implemented an emergency drill, taking over the hidden base. The captured and collected Neptunian MPs had called the drill treason.
The colonel had appeared unfazed by the accusation. “The NSN has already lost the battle. You can see that easily enough.”
Cybership Page 6