by John Grant
"That wasn't us," said Feefaar. "Was it?" she added doubtfully.
Nerita gave a soft whistle—the Spindrift equivalent of a shrug. "Not unless the puters have independently developed an invisible beam or missile and decided to launch it themselves. I think you may unnecessarily have been maligning the Humans," she said.
"Then they're adding themselves to our grave," said Feefaar. "Even with the Images' help, their technology is several orders of magnitude behind what the Autarchy has at its disposal."
"I have a salvo of five direct ballistics available for launch," said Nerita. "What do you think?"
"I think, let the carnivores have it," said Feefaar emphatically.
In a galaxy where warfare was carried out using the most sophisticated technology available, defenses were designed accordingly. The Spindrifters were gambling on the fact that the Autarchy's defenses were too advanced to recognize that one way of destroying a spaceship is simply to fire something very hard very quickly at it. Expecting something complex like an intramolecular disrupter, a clever defense shield might let slip through what was effectively a very large bullet . . . which would puncture the craft's hull and break its spine.
All five of the ballistics effectively did just that.
"I deplore the loss of sentient life," said Feefaar, "but personally I found that rather pleasing."
"Leaving aside my obvious guilt," replied Nerita, "I am ashamed to confess that I too derived a deal of satisfaction from the episode. Shall I prepare another salvo?"
#
"Are you sure you're prepared to risk yourselves this way?" said Strider. "Some of the species on those cruisers might be able to see you in clear."
All four of the Images warbled together. IT IS UNLIKELY THAT WE CAN SAVE SPINDRIFT, BUT THE VERY LEAST WE CAN DO FOR HAVING BROUGHT THIS UPON THE SPINDRIFTERS IS TO CAUSE THEIR ENEMY AS MANY CASUALTIES AS POSSIBLE. THERE IS ALWAYS A CHANCE THAT THE AUTARCHY FLEET MIGHT RETREAT FOR LONG ENOUGH TO ENABLE US TO RESCUE MORE OF THE SPINDRIFTERS.
"How much of a chance?" said Strider, staring into a Pocket that displayed what the armada was doing to the Spindrifters' pink screen. Why the hell hadn't the fleet despatched just a couple of its vessels to make easy mincemeat out of the Santa Maria?
EXPRESSED AS AN ESTIMATED PERCENTAGE?
"No. Just a guess."
THERE IS THE SLIGHTEST POSSIBILITY THAT BETWEEN OUR EFFORTS AND THOSE OF THE SPINDRIFTERS THEMSELVES, THE ENEMY MIGHT BE REPELLED.
"Then, if you think it's worth the gamble, go ahead." She twisted her face. Even if she'd instructed them definitely not to, they'd probably still have gone ahead. The Images were always punctilious about asking her permission to do something, and then she told them to do what they were going to do anyway. One of these days she'd find the courage to countermand them and see what happened.
I WILL GO INITIALLY, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free. IF I PERISH, THE REST OF US WILL KNOW THAT THE ENTERPRISE IS INDEED FOOLISH.
Strider knew it was an illusion, but there was a sensation of loss as Ten Per Cent Extra Free departed, as if she could feel him going. It seemed that a little bit of herself had disappeared.
Yet again she asked herself: why had the Autarchy's starfleet so far spared the Santa Maria?
#
Ten Per Cent Extra Free slid through several layers of reality back to The Truthfulness, maintaining only the slightest pseudopod-like connection with The Wondervale. Briefly he saw several different versions of the way the cosmos might have been, had its initial creative spark been otherwise: one cosmos resembled a burning tree, and was no larger than that; another was nothing but timeless emptiness, a place where the omnipresent particle sea had never chanced to launch itself into the explosion of creation; yet another was a place where he found himself momentarily inside the form of what seemed to be a young woman who in blindness was being buffeted by pangs of undiluted emotion. At last, in his own reality—The Truthfulness—he was an energy matrix moving among other matrices.
He returned through the disparate realities to be aboard an Autarchy starcruiser.
Ten Per Cent Extra Free soaked himself into a wall and travelled easily along it between the atoms until he came to the drive chamber. Gratefully he soaked up some of the enormous energies that were being released by the drive even though the starship was moving at such a tiny fraction of the velocity of light.
THANK YOU, he said politely to the drive unit.
MY PLEASURE, it responded. I have plenty to spare.
BUT I'M AFRAID THAT I HAVE TO END YOU, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free. THE ENDING OF YOU WILL DESTROY THE SHIP YOU HAVE BEEN POWERING FOR HOW MANY YEARS?
More years than I have been able to count. Yes, I knew you had come here to destroy me. I do not resent the fact.
NEVERTHELESS, FELLOW-CREATURE, I APOLOGIZE FOR WHAT I HAVE TO DO.
DO IT QUICKLY.
Ten Per Cent Extra Free drew all of the energy out of the drive, so that its components froze—so that its very core died. He couldn't hold this much energy inside himself for more than an instant, but that was long enough to divert it into the main body of the starcruiser, while at the same time withdrawing himself through the realities once more to the safety of his own cosmos.
Even at this sidewise distance there was a flicker of pain at the edge of his consciousness as the energies of the starship's drive died a second time, this time in a pyre of their own making. He had a millisecond's guilt over having killed another sentient creature of energy, but that soon passed: the drive had confronted its own death with equanimity, and he had been courteous with it to the last. By now it would be awakening, in entirely different form, in some remote probabilistic reality; it might or might not retain its memories of its previous existence. If it did, then at least its demise had been as painless as any could possibly be.
It took Ten Per Cent Extra Free some little while to recover himself from this first destructive venture. As a rule, when in The Wondervale the Images never destroyed, they only created: they created communications nexi of various sorts, or they infiltrated technology to bend it towards something better—another creative act.
Destruction was emotionally difficult for Ten Per Cent Extra Free, as it would be for the other Images.
He contacted them now, across the bridge of the intervening realities, informing them—all within the compass of a single thought—of the depth of the hurt he had received through his act of annihilation. Each of them must decide whether the pain of such an action was justified—or even if the action itself was, in hindsight, ethically acceptable. There would be no recriminations among the Images afterwards if one or more of them decided not to assist in this venture.
Ten Per Cent Extra Free didn't wait for the others' thoughts to come back to him. Fully recuperated, he slid once more through the nests of the realities that separated his own comfortably radiant cosmos from that of The Wondervale until he located another Autarchy warship . . .
#
Strider staggered back from the Pocket.
"Shit! Those poor bastards!"
She felt tears coming to her eyes, and blinked them back.
Polyaggle was by her side, and made some whispering noises that meant nothing to Strider—with all the Images off on their destructive course through the Autarchy armada, it was impossible to understand what the Spindrifter was saying: it could have been a message of hate, or of loss, or of any of an infinitude of emotions that no human had ever felt.
The blue maxbeams sprang from every surviving vessel in the armada and plunged into the Spindrifters' defensive shield. Strider felt as if she were watching a supernova. Nothing—nothing—could sustain such a barrage. The Universe itself had decided that the Spindrifters should be extinguished. The pinkness paled to white, retreated, and then was gone. The planet was naked and defenseless.
The vessels of the armada—even though, here and there in a random and unpredictable pattern, one after the other of them spontaneously exploded thanks to the efforts
of the Images—moved into a tighter formation, ready for the kill. There was nothing she was able to do about it.
But there was something she could do.
"Power the drive," she said to O'Sondheim.
He looked at her, startlement visible in the eye that wasn't covered by a secondary retinal screen.
"We're going," she said.
"Just leaving these people?" he said.
"We can't save them. If we run now, we might with a bit of luck be able to save ourselves."
He snorted.
"There are five kids down there"—she pointed a thumb towards the main body of the Santa Maria—"and a couple of them haven't learnt to walk yet. If it were just you and me I'd say fuckit, let's go out in glory, you go first Danny because I've got to comb my hair so I look my best—all that. But we haven't the right to throw away other people's lives. Now fucking power that fucking drive."
"I . . . I won't do it."
Her elbow struck him in the side just below the ribcage, so that he staggered away across the command deck, half-gagging, half-gasping. She took over the Pocket at which he'd been working, analyzed the situation within seconds, and fed the necessary instructions into the Pocket.
"Nelson," she yelled, removing her head from the Pocket as little as she could. "Commline the personnel that we're moving under five gees within the next minute. Tell 'em to spread themselves flat. Leander—get to the intercom and do the same."
Yeah, it felt bad: running when the people who had helped you were about to be massacred. It'd feel even worse knowing in your dying moments that there just might have been a chance you could have saved a few human beings but you hadn't done that because you wanted to make a macho display of martyrdom. To hell with that. Strider thought it unlikely they'd escape with their lives, but she was going to give it a try.
The graphic display told her everything was ready for a fusion launch. There was every chance, whatever the Images had promised, that this moon was going to be little more than a heap of garbage once the Santa Maria's drive had finished with it—but anyway there weren't going to be any young night-walking lovers looking up from Spindrift hoping to compare it to a silvery spoon.
She stuck her head back into the Pocket.
"Move it."
Not the most dignified of commands, but the Pocket knew what she meant. It transmitted the essence of her instruction to the drive.
Strider threw herself to the floor just in time. Then there was a brontosaurus standing on her back.
She felt glued down, but knew that somehow she had to get herself up to at least her knees—not later, but now. O'Sondheim and Leander were screaming; she hoped Polyaggle was surviving somehow. She could hear Nelson shuffling somewhere near her as he too struggled to cope with the gees. Strider told herself not to worry if she broke a few bones—the medbots could splint those up, and maybe even mend them. This was likely to hurt a lot but . . .
She not only felt but heard her kneecap crack. The pain was enough to make her bite right through her lower lip. Something extra for the medbots to do. The drops of blood hit the floor with unnatural speed. She made it to the whereabouts of the Pocket somehow. It adjusted its height to meet her, but she still had another few meters to go. The world was filled with a red that was encroaching into black, but she was aware that Nelson was doing his best to copy her feat.
"First one there gets a free trip home to Mars," she croaked, her throat feeling as if it were made of red-hot lead. "Posh hotel, little tablets of soap, curious gunk I've never worked out what to do with in the shower . . ."
"Don't forget the trouser press," gasped Nelson. "And the holo that doesn't work properly. If I get a clear picture I'm gonna complain to the management. Say, Strider, you ever get your hand caught in one of those fucking trouser presses?"
She was inching herself closer to the Pocket.
"No," she said.
"I did once. I was trying to work out what the fuck the thing was. Hey, you didn't mention the too-small kettle that takes so long to heat up that eventually you forget you switched it on, so when you get back to the room you find everything's damp except the kettle, which is kind of a lump of molten plastic."
"OK, Nelson, if you get to your Pocket before I get to mine, I'll even make sure your hotel room has a dud kettle."
"'Kinell, sweetest in all creation, I never thought I'd hear you talk dirty like that." It sounded as if Nelson were smiling, but Strider didn't have the strength to turn and look. A few more centimeters and . . .
"Bad luck," she said. "I'm the winner of the luxury holiday. I even get the shower-rose coming away in my hand."
Strider slumped her head into the Pocket.
"Shift into tachyon drive," she said with the last of her strength, "and give me a superfluity of those white towels that are too small to do anything useful with."
#
Nightmirror kicked at the flagship of the Autarchy armada, trying desperately to download the energies of its drive into the rest of the vessel. He had destroyed three other vessels so far, but the Blunt Instrument was proving more difficult. In the other vessels the drive had been unshielded—what mortal being would want to come into the drive chamber?—but in the Blunt Instrument extra defensive screens had been erected.
He kicked again, hoping that he could find some way through the forcefield. The kick wasn't a physical movement, rather an electromagnetic manipulation of the forces surrounding the drive unit. Nightmirror's latest attempt was as useless as the others had been—the flagship was shaken, but undamaged.
No. Wait a moment. There was a chink in the drive unit's defenses. He had kicked open the slightest of cracks. If he could edge himself through there . . .
No sooner thought than done. He faced the intensity of the reactive core. From here on it should be easy.
The crack in the defensive shield behind him closed again. He was trapped here with the core.
He could destroy the core, probably, but at the same time destroy himself—and without doing any major damage to the Blunt Instrument. Although driveless, the vessel could easily be taken in tow by one of the other ships in the fleet until it could dock and have a new drive installed.
There was a better thing Nightmirror could do. Assuming the Humans could survive this massacre, it would be good for them to have an ally among the enemy. It wasn't the best of all possible options, but it was the best that was open to him right now.
He opened himself, and allowed his own energies to be swallowed into those of Kaantalech's drive unit.
The pain was exquisite for a long nanosecond or so, but then he was there.
Nightmirror stretched himself out in the drive's core, feeling the ecstasy of the energy pulses moving through him. If it was going to carry on being as good as this, he was going to have difficulty persuading himself to assist the Humans when the time came.
HI THERE, said the drive unit. WELCOME ABOARD.
THIS IS GOING TO TAKE A WHILE, said Nightmirror to the other Images, BUT I HOPE IT'S GOING TO BE WORTH IT.
#
There was the sensation of glorious freedom aboard the Santa Maria. The abrupt imposition of five gees had killed three people, including one of the children. Strider would doubtless have to do some fast talking soon to save herself from the attentions of a lynch mob, but just now she was happy enough to have removed her ship from the vicinity of the Autarchy fleet. She'd lost three: she could have lost everybody. For the moment, though, there was that delicious feeling of liberation from the crushing gees.
Polyaggle uttered a further stream of noises which Strider found totally incomprehensible. The Images were clearly still doing their destructive worst among the ships of the Autarchy. Strider assumed they would be able to find their way back to the Santa Maria.
Would they? It was a question that hadn't occurred to her before. She'd become so accustomed to the Images being capable of doing anything they wanted to do that it had been easy enough to make the assumption they could
track down the Santa Maria, wherever in The Wondervale it went. Now she began to worry. She knew so little about the nature of the reality that the Images inhabited. If she'd managed to lose them, the Santa Maria was dead—sooner rather than later.
"Images," she said despairingly to the air. "Images—are you there?"
There was no reply.
She didn't want to repeat the question. Sometime soon the others on the command deck would begin to share her apprehension. O'Sondheim was already beginning to glance over his shoulder as if in dread of finding that, for once, there wasn't anything there. She'd be best to put off the moment as long as possible.
Polyaggle moved up to the Pocket next to Strider's and edged her head forwards into it. At once the scene around Spindrift sprang into existence.
Of course, thought Strider, all this time I've been thinking about us, and more particularly me. Poor Polyaggle has a whole species to think of. She called up the same image in her own Pocket.
The first thing she saw was that the pink deflector screen was still down. The fleet was forming a sphere around the naked planet. As she watched, yet another ship went up in flames, but there were still hundreds left. In the vista displayed by the Pocket they were just little gleaming needles, but she knew that each of them packed more firepower than anything that had ever been dreamt of on Mars.
It was good, in a way, seeing each one of them being blown to bits, because that meant there was one less that would be able to rain destruction down on Spindrift. The other side of the coin was that the explosion was proof that her Images were still back there among the Autarch's forces. She'd been too blase about the Images' abilities. Were they invulnerable? For all she knew, they were offering up their lives for the cause of trying to save Spindrift—a cause that Strider was beginning to believe was hopeless.
Words were starting to form in the graphic display behind the likeness of Spindrift and the slowly contracting sphere of cruisers.