Heritage of Flight

by Susan Shwartz

  Heritage of Flight

  Susan Shwartz

  Author's Note

  Several parts of Heritage of Flight have been modified from their original appearance in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact. These are “Heritage of Flight,” Analog, April 1983, and “Survivor Guilt,” Analog, February 1986.

  Copyright Acknowledgments

  From Wartime Writings 1939-1944 by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, copyright © 1982 by Editions Gallimard; English translation copyright © 1986 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

  From “Ash Wednesday” in Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T. S. Eliot, copyright 1936 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; copyright © 1963, 1964 by T. S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

  To Dr. Stanley Schmidt, editor of Analog,

  with thanks, for patience, hard work, bad puns and making up for the fact that I never got to meet John Campbell.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  I'd like to thank Dr. Dean Lambe, Robert Adams, and Sandra Miesel as well as the following organizations: the information offices of the United Nations, NASA, and the U.S. Army (with special thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Paul Knox); the Futurists II Workshop of 1985, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; and the Schomburg Institute for Afro-American Studies.

  ...We have chosen to save peace. But in saving peace we have harmed our friends. And no doubt, many among us were ready to risk their lives in the interests of friendship and now feel a kind of shame. But if they had sacrificed peace, they would feel the same shame; because they would then have sacrificed humanity: they would have accepted the irretrievable destruction of the libraries, cathedrals, and laboratories of Europe. They would have accepted the ruin of its traditions and transformed the world into a cloud of ashes. And that is why we shifted from one opinion to the other. When peace seemed threatened, we discovered the shame of war. When it appeared that we were to be spared from war, we felt the shame of peace.

  —ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY

  "La Paix ou la Guerre,"

  Paris-Soir, Oct. 2—4, 1938.

  PART I

  Planetfall

  We go to gain a little patch of ground

  That hath in it no profit but the name.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

  Hamlet, IV, iv, 18—19.

  1

  Realspace shimmered, elongated, then twanged back into existence, taking Pauli Yeager with it. The boards of her ridership, too painstakingly maintained to be new, blurred, then solidified once again. Bad transit, she judged. She shook herself mentally, then glanced at the chrono. It should have begun to move as soon as they entered realspace. Reality shimmered for a fearful “instant,” then refocused. There: now the damned chrono had started up.

  She put out a hand to touch the display, which gleamed ice-blue. Three seconds realtime had elapsed. Very bad transit. Jump was—or should be—instantaneous, however long it felt as space curved and light shifted about you. She swallowed hard, and blinked away a treacherous fog that would be the death of her if it hit when she was using armscomp. Despite lifesupport, which allegedly kept her suit at a comfortable temperature, she shivered and sweated simultaneously.

  That actual time had passed ... if Jump had been this bad for her fighter and its host, Leonidas, which had the best of a dying fleet's diminished store of matériel, what had it been like for the refugee ships Daedalus and Sir Jeffrey Amherst?

  Before her transfer to Leonidas as a senior pilot—and that seniority was a laugh, if anything about this damned war qualified as laughable—she'd served aboard the Amherst. That had been temporary duty, another in the frustrating chain of TDYs that cheated Pauli of the advanced pilot training on New Patuxent she'd been wild for since the war had stepped up. New Pax gave pilots the best training, and increased their chances of surviving their first scramble. And if Exploration, the service she had wanted to enter, was no longer an option, the best training was barely good enough to keep her alive.

  Wouldn't you just know that the instant Amherst was headed toward New Pax at long last, new orders would divert them to Wolf IV, one of the slagged worlds, half charnel and half rubble, to rescue and lift out as many survivors as possible for resettlement? She couldn't complain of her luck; it was better than any on Wolf IV.

  Thereafter, it seemed, they were always on the run, retreating world by abandoned world, system by ravaged system in the Net of Worlds that had linked the Alliance with Manhome Earth, a Net the Secessionists had torn through, God only knew why.

  This war made Alliance and Secess’ maniacs even in retreat, fighting with the deadliness of scavengers forced against a cliff face to defend their last scrap of meat. This was not a war you could win, Pauli thought, remembering Wolf IV—the half-melted ruins, the fevered, feral survivors, and the factories stripped by raiders from both sides, desperate for components and supplies now that the production lines were gone, or going.

  She glanced over her boards, which weeks of prayerful labor had raised to a semblance of their old speed. Like Leonidas itself, all the riderships had the best equipment they could scrounge, cajole, or steal. Why was it so important to protect refugees? Why, as the tiny convoy fled farther out and deep into the No Man's Worlds, had security intensified until the pilots rode out Jump in their fighters? At the last planetfall, Federal Security marshals had crammed onto the ships, and the pilots had hoped that they, at least, might offer some answers. But the marshals whose presence strained cramped ships’ capacities to house and feed them were saying nothing. At least, not to the pilots, though they had summoned—by God, they had ordered as if they were cadets—Captains Borodin and Ver from their own ships onto Leonidas for a conference. When they emerged, the captains announced that the marshals would keep order on board and serve as consultants—that elastic, treacherous term for despots pro tem, as impossible to get rid of as to question.

  After that meeting, the convoy altered course. It was hard to escape the conclusion that the marshals had ordered it. Too damned many marshals, eating supplies that the refugees needed, speaking officialese to no purpose but their own, issuing random orders, seemingly for the joy of turning line officers into flunkies.

  Maliciously, Pauli hoped they enjoyed their new duties: mediating between the civs, who suspected anyone in uniform of some past or future atrocity, and their refugee charges, who feared anyone at all. Most of them were children, but they were children who had learned to claw for survival. Rescue parties had found battered adult skeletons in the rubble of Wolf IV; the medics had forbade anyone to question the evacuees.

  Over in the Amherst and Daedalus, refugees slept two and three to a bunk. Even the riderbays emptied by crashes and firefights had been converted to makeshift barracks for the refugees, who crouched among emergency supplies they still did not dare touch as if they hid in caves. Leonidas would set the medics, techs, civs, and their charges down on whatever resettlement world the marshals intended, and then Pauli would transship for New Pax and the business of fighter training. Anything that would extend her life a little longer and give her the chance to strike back at the war that had ended any hope she ever had of growing up happy, or growing up at all.

  Pauli activated communications, taking bleak comfort from the renewed chatter of a ship running in realspace. Comfort that they'd survived Jump. Satisfaction that they'd made it this far. Never mind happy. Happy was a word like peace: it had book definition, but no meaning. At least not for anyone she knew. The psychs had praised her flexibility; if flexibility meant that she could adapt to this, then it was another reason for satisfaction. Happy was a dream she had before she realized how long, and how final, this war looked to be. She had to adjust to it—or die; and the same damne
d psychs said she wasn't a quitter.

  A klaxon brayed over the ship chatter, and red light pulsed in the gloom of her cockpit. Pauli checked her boards again and cursed. So much for careful maintenance! Her ship's alarm buzzer had failed. With luck, the weapons systems wouldn't fail too. She tightened her webs and braced for the launch that hurled her ship out into space. Gravity pressed, then slacked off as she banked into formation with the rest of the riderships. The port darkened to protect her from the actinic glare of the white dwarf that circled a much larger, cooler star. Scanners showed planets in this system, planets and a dense asteroid belt. The system was too crowded to be wholly safe.

  Well, what would it be this time? Secessionist ships, or some Fed Sec marshal gone even more paranoid than usual? Ambush was impossible in Jump, but betrayal—that was feasible. Pauli activated internal security scan. After all, Secess’ and Alliance had been one government once before the damned theories—expansion versus consolidation under human rule—blew apart the government, then started firestorms on the worlds themselves.

  With the Net gone, patrolled by Secess', Earth was a dream of order and prosperity. Ironic, Pauli thought, that Manhome herself now had about as much meaning as the word happy.

  Was it just the Secess', came a treacherous whisper, or had Terra chosen isolation, suspicious of friends who might, suddenly, transmogrify into enemies doubly vicious for the knowledge alliance and kinship had given them? She shivered. If she believed that—let the Secess’ show up soon, she prayed, so I can forget.

  She turned eyes back to her boards. The moments between system entry and attack were always tricky. You could betray a ship, especially as systems lost backups, and even some primaries were scrapped. A hidden transmitter, and there you were, vulnerable after Jump. Then the Secess’ could emerge and strip down your ship, leaving you—if you were lucky and they were feeling kind—to limp back to whatever base might help you refit. There were fewer and fewer such bases on either side these days, Pauli thought.

  She interfaced sensors with the other ships. They pressed forward, scanning, always scanning, so slowly that she felt no acceleration; on the newer riderships, you could feel G-forces build up only as you neared Jump speed. The navigation grids glowed with the patterns of ships on three axes. To her left and “up,” one veered out of formation. A quick warning, and the light that represented it blinked back into its proper position: the shift of that light and the chrono's ordered clicks were the only movements Pauli perceived.

  Her breath rasped in the tiny cockpit, threatening to cloud the visor of her helmet until she adjusted temperature controls downward. Recon felt motionless; it wore on the nerves until you wanted to blast something if only to see the light slash out to break the monotony and the tension.

  Come on, if you're out there! Fire already! No pilot who actually wanted to get out and zero Secess’ with virtuoso laserwork outlived his third battle ... sometimes not even his first. But this damnable prowling, waiting for a strike that might come in a second, an hour, or never, made you want to scream or strike first, blindly, in an attempt to find some clear, safe way. She sweated with the need to see something, anything. It built up, as it always did, to a point where she didn't think she could bear it—and then the moment passed, as it always did; and the ships pressed forward, scanning for enemies.

  Secess’ out here didn't necessarily mean treachery. Attack could even be coincidence, as ships from both sides sought the No Man's Worlds, seeking to survive in these remote spacelanes by turning scavenger, even pirate. So far, she thought with a sort of chill pride, such scavengers only preyed on one another.

  Quickly Pauli ran the armscomp test program again, as she had before Jump and would again, if they didn't suddenly engage the Secess’ and she had to use her lasers for real. Testing was never superfluous. You never knew when your equipment might fail. How long would it be until Alliance ships turned on their own, as well as the Secess', to steal the dwindling supplies of components, concentrates, all the never-to-be replaced stores for which production lines had all but ceased?

  Two of the riderships passed by a massive asteroid with a dense metallic core, a deliberate feint to draw out—there! as if they blinked into existence, there glistened the formation standard to Secess’ pilots, a pentacle arrayed along the three axes of space battle. Then another, and another. And where was the base ship that had released them?

  Predictable, Pauli thought for the thousandth time. But what was never predictable was the speed with which that formation seemed to materialize, the precision with which the Secess’ flew, their cold ferocity, and the deadly teamwork that made each ship of the five react like a finger on the same fatally capable hand. Almost inhuman, it was: never wearing down or fearing, like the pilots she knew. Like herself. Pilots who tired, whose eyes bleared, whose hands shook, and whose breath came hoarse and husky in the fetid cocoons of lifesupport.

  Once, just once, before the captain had entered, wardroom rumor whispered of proscribed biotech, of spies vanished, doubtless suicides or painfully dead on Secess’ worlds in vain attempts to discover whether the babble about clones and augmentation contained even an atom of truth.

  She chilled: even a moment's reflection might prove fatal against Secess’ pilots. Whatever else they were, they were geniuses at seizing the opportunity, yes, and one's life with it.

  And here they came.

  Beyond the five-pointed stars emerged the hull of the Secess’ base ship, not burnished like its riders, but scratched and pitted by micrometeorites into a kind of dullness. At the orders of Leonidas's captain, the riders broke formation, changed attitudes, and engaged the Secess’ pilots. Shrewd targeting set violet-tinged spurts of light ravening into hardened metal and fragile systems. Damn! That one had hit a power source. Scratch one ship. Pauli had known the pilot, who had been no fool, just a little old, a little slow. Too slow for the Secess’ pilots. They were damned fast, like a schizophrenic divided into five separate, murderous intelligences.

  The survivors re-formed and accelerated. A whine underlay the white noise in Pauli's cockpit, and the apparent motion of her companion ships increased. She fired quickly, felt the ship jolt to compensate—and that was the first indication that her ship moved at all. Then Leonidas shot forward toward the Secess’ so rapidly that she saw it both on grid and in actuality.

  Pauli pressed in, one hand thumbing frantically for communications. All around her crackled the chatter of ship-to-ship communications: all chatter from the Alliance side. Never mind jamming: the Secess’ were silent, all save the one cool voice per pentacle that had announced the opening of hellmouth for too many of Pauli's friends.

  "They're on my tail ... cover me-eee!"

  Before a wingman could turn to aid him, needles of violet slashed into the ship and it broke apart, fragments spinning, globing around a central core of fire and instantly freezing vapor. That pilot had been unlucky. Usually the Secess’ struck so efficiently that their quarry hadn't even time to see it coming, let alone scream. So, they could be rattled. That, at least, was something. One listed, attitude wobbling; and she fired, taking a ruthless delight in the way that ship veered off, losing control.

  "Daedalus, Amherst ... ” that was the voice of the Leonidas's captain. “Get out of here. Prepare for Jump."

  "Captain, that last jump ... Engineering reports chip fissures on NavComp. The main boards, not the backups. We can't risk Jump if they melt."

  "Daedalus, retreat and test then! Amherst, prepare for independent Jump. Do you copy?"

  "Negative, Leonidas, negative,” came Captain Borodin's voice in an unusual display of control. Then, more predictably, he roared, “Not goddamned likely, Leonidas. We're backing you up!"

  Not with all those refugees and civs on board, they couldn't. “This is—"

  "Never mind who you are, Captain! My commission antedates yours, and I said I'm backing you up!"

  "—this is Federal Security Marshal Arnaut, Captain. On my authori
ty, you will retreat and prepare for Jump. Or you will consider yourself removed from command."

  In a battle? Pauli could imagine Borodin's snort at the deskflier who would try an empty threat like that. With that snort would come a return to humor, sanity, and craft. Likely, Borodin would bide his moment, then attack. Sure enough, Amherst began a tentative retreat. Pauli signalled her own squadron and accelerated toward Leonidas as she headed toward a deadly interception with the Secess'.

  "Shields on. Daedalus, you too; Amherst, faster now, get back!" Command crackled over the circuits, faltered, then grew loud again as overused commgear achieved a fragile resolution.

  "What kind of people are we if we abandon our own?” came Borodin's voice. Pauli felt an incongruous stab of pride. Despite her promotion—for such it was—to the Leonidas, Borodin was still the captain under whom she'd first survived fire.

  "Smart ones. You have the kids to protect, remember? You really going to let them see battle again, just when they thought they were safe?"

  Pauli grimaced. That marshal was crafty, maybe as smart as Borodin, She wondered if the one on Amherst was that clever, too.

  She got the nearest Secess’ in the armscomp sights, heard the satisfactory beep! of aligned axes, then opened fire. Clean hit! The other three ships in the format flew wide, then re-formed more raggedly as they, and she, rode out the inevitable buffeting.

  She could imagine the chaos on the barracksdecks, and her old friends trying to work with hostile civs to calm them down: Ro, who wore a uniform only because war broke out and she had no choice; Rafe, half a civ himself ... best not think of Rafe or that last fight when she had finally abandoned their dream of becoming a first-in team, or transferring from the Amherst to the more sophisticated Leonidas. The kids screaming and crying, wetting themselves, some of them, maybe; the civs struggling to hold to some sort of order as the lights flickered to conserve power, sending it to armscomp and the shields, and the comfort of yellow light faded to uterine crimson, then to twilight.