The Fleet 01

by David Drake (ed)

  “I actually have Captain Agberea to thank for inspiring the whole plan. He reminded me I was a quartermaster, not a combat officer.”

  Agberea blushed, not sure how to take the comment.

  “It seemed to me that as a quartermaster, I had to use the resources I was familiar with. It seemed easier to paint our way to victory than to blast our way. I have put the chief in charge of the paint locker up for a Silver Galaxy.”

  No visuals, no blazing fleets. Commander Kanard fought down growing resentment. Why couldn’t Meier have fought at least one real battle? Just one tiny battle, swarms of ships exchanging fire while Meier stood valiantly on the bridge. But no, that quartermaster had to do things the easy way.

  Discovering he had developed a literal, as well as figurative headache, Gill punched in a request for an endorphine accelerator. Four seconds later an envelope containing two pills slid out of the delivery chute in the left corner of his desk.

  “The Med Corps,” the PR man mused aloud. “They’re safe. I’ll find a hero in the Med Corps, saving others at the risk of his own life and all that. Even the Friends on Erdonis would pay taxes to save lives.”

  Once more Gill seated himself in the center of his control array and began searching the almost immeasurable files of the Fleet. Somewhere out there was a doctor who deserved to be a hero. A nice, clean, valiant hero.

  DR. MACK DALLE kicked the metal box containing the serum back under his seat and straightened up. With a swipe at the wing of dark hair that had fallen into his eyes, he peered out the scoutship’s forward port at the steadily growing grey and green disk of the planet 7B-E, named Basilisk. Dalle was stiff from the flight. His long bones and broad shoulders had deceptively little meat on them, and the Fleet made the pilots’ seats for somewhat shorter and better-padded men. He felt as though he had sat round-shouldered the whole two days. Now as they were approaching, he forgot his discomfort long enough to look out at the planet. Even dulled by the thick blanket of atmosphere, Basilisk was more green than grey; most likely because of its sun, a small green-yellow star, which lit the scout’s silver skin with a brassy glow. Portions of all three of Basilisk’s three major continental masses were visible. Two of them, elongated triangles set edge to edge, receded over the curve of the planet as the ship turned toward the third and largest, which telemetry revealed as a rough hexagon lined through and through with mountain ranges and rivers.

  “Everything’s in order,” Dalle told Lieutenant Patrick Otlind, the scout’s pilot. “Serum, formulae, test strips. Everything the well-dressed planet needs to innoculate itself against Maculocolitis.”

  “You wonder where these damned diseases come from,” Otlind said speculatively, his light eyes reflecting glints from the LEDs dotting his control panel. His hands moved lightly across studs and switches, only the last joint in each finger flexing to close connections. He pushed back uncomfortably in his seat, running a hand under the tight impact straps belted over his shoulders. He was a much shorter man than his friend, though they probably weighed the same. Patrick Otlind was not stocky, but sturdy. His hair was an interesting silvery tan which made Dalle think irresistibly of mineral salts.

  “Every month, another alert, a hustle to synthesize vaccine, another hustle to distribute it. You can’t keep immunizing needlessly. Oh, I agree—Maculocolitis is nasty. Anything that attacks your eyes is really dangerous. They had just better start working on quicker diagnosis or quarantine, or something. One day the vaccines’re going to start reacting with each other, and there’ll be nothing we can do.”

  Dalle nodded. “And I wonder why I’m not getting any research done nowadays. I used to think planet-hopping was good for intragalactic relations. Well, I’m off medical courier duty after this mission. I’m going to go planetside somewhere and lie in the sunlight.”

  “Dustbowler. I never figured out your type’s fascination for sitting out in the radiation and frying. You’re gonna grow up to be topsoil, you know that? You’d have a better time if you’d just let me show you the ins and outs down in Dylan Thomas Settlement. Everything you could want, and you never have to step outside into the cold air to get it. Girls, entertainment, liquor ...”

  “Oh, no.” Dalle shook a finger at his friend. “I like my fun the way I’m used to it. There’s no difference between my ‘type’ and yours. I notice you don’t object to exposure to solar rays when you’re on leave. Your people live in limestone caverns because the weather pattern on Basilisk is so rotten. Thunderstorms out the wazoo, right? Well, hiding like animals in burrows isn’t for everyone, especially not me.” He leaned confidentially over his armrest toward Otlind. “I’ll tell you a secret: I’m not too crazy about little dark places.”

  “Uh-huh.” Otlind wrenched a control around, and the scoutship changed direction. Dalle slid back into place in his seat and the cushions under him wheezed. His bruised bones complained. “That’s why you work in little boxes in deep space, right?” Otlind patted the shiny beige impact quilting that lined the walls of the bridge.

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, you gopher, it is rarely completely dark in deep space. I’m a damned good doctor and diagnostician. And a claustrophiliac. So are you, or you wouldn’t be assigned to flying scouts. Drop it, Pat. I’m not going to let you start an argument about underground living this time, not when you’re about to have your whole planet’s population backing your side in ten minutes.”

  “Yup,” Otlind said with satisfaction. “Going home. I haven’t been back in eons. I’m out of approved leave. Do you know how many favors I had to call in to get to come with you, just to get some home time?”

  “Yes.” Dalle grinned across at him. “You owe me one, too, for not protesting your assignment with me. I have full pilot qualification, and you know it. I don’t need a driver. That’s why I spend so much time doing med-courier, It saves one man. On the other hand, it’s nice to have company.” He took a quick glance over at the instruments. “Um, Pat, do you want to call someone down there? We’re so close they could pick us out of the air with beanshooters.”

  A quick look at the screen showed that their entire forward view was filled with planet. The lighted indicator on the comlink blinked urgently: an incoming message was being received. Otlind hit himself in the side of the head. “Yow! Sorry. You’re right. I’d better dump velocity. I bet that’s Senior Leader Morak on the com right now. He might already be aiming ‘em our way.”

  “Sorry, he says.” Dalle sighed and pulled the impact straps tighter around his chest.

  “Surprise, Fritz!”

  “Who—?” the thickset man demanded, leaning so close to the video pick-up that Dalle could see bristly black hairs growing out of his ears. The young pilot grinned.

  “Patrick Otlind, Fritz.”

  “Well, well.” The big figure relaxed and drummed a broad hand on his console. “Hello, kid. You’re looking good. Welcome home.” The bushy eyebrows drew humorously together over a broad nose. “To what do l owe the pleasure?”

  “Fleet Scoutship FS-2814, carrying Medical Courier Dalle. We’re on another shot run. This one’s for Maculocolitis, which is breaking out in Central and in the Brektonne system. Estimate our time of arrival fourteen minutes.”

  Morak shook his head. “Dammit, can’t they keep their bugs to themselves? I’ve got enough problems to look after. I hear you, FS-2814. Acknowledged your ETA of fourteen minutes. Confirm, please,” Fritz Morak asked, formally acknowledging the Fleet’s ship code. “And don’t mess up the crops on the way in, huh?”

  The crisp air-noise rustled in the speaker like paper. “Confirmed, Basilisk. Be down in a minute. It’ll be good to get home.”

  “Right, kid. I’ll notify your mother and father you’re here. Oh, and you, too, Doctor. We’re happy to have one of the genuinely useful members of the Fleet visiting, anytime.”

  “Thanks, I think,” Dalle said, with a rueful smile that
drew creases down his narrow face.

  “’Scuse me, Fritz,” Otlind interrupted, hands playing out the landing sequence on the controls, “are you expecting anyone else? I’ve got another blip on my scope, about 20,000 clicks behind me.”

  “No ...” The leader wrinkled his brows so close together that they rubbed, squinting at a screen off to the left of his video pick-up. “Yes, I see it, too. I have no idea who’s out there. No communications signal from them. I’m putting us on Alert.” He gave orders to an overalled technician in the room, who dashed out of pick-up range.

  “Telemetry coming in, Basilisk.” Suddenly, Otlind was all business. “Alert planetary defenses. I read a Khalian pirate behind me. Just one ship. My guess is it’s a slaver. Leader, I’m dropping into atmosphere to evade. Prepare to repel intruders! FS-2814 out.”

  The little ship dove, but not soon enough to avoid a salvo from the Khalian ship. Dalle and Otlind were thrown sharply back and up into their seats, forcing groans of protest from the restraining straps. The stabilizers on the starboard side had been destroyed, causing the scout to jerk hard to the right and start a broad spiral just under the first ceiling of atmosphere. Otlind’s head impacted with the edge of his pilot’s cradle as he tried to bring her up, and he was knocked unconscious.

  Dalle, unable to draw in air, plastered as he was to his cradle by sheer gees, tried to grab at the controls. He could smell something burning. His vision shrank to a narrow tunnel as his brain ran out of oxygen. He found he couldn’t tell one button from another. Another brilliant explosion of energy on the nose of the craft from the pirate guns and the ship lurched under them. The forward screen flared and temporarily blinded him. The ship, glowing an iridescent bronze, spun into the envelope of air around Basilisk and vanished in the glare of atmosphere. The Khalian ship descended gracefully behind it.

  Leader Morak switched the com-unit over to ‘receive,’ and leaned back into the message wall to give the Alert. The wall was an adaptation of a natural underground feature, a perfect circle five hundred meters across, expanded and smoothed by the settlers over the thirty years the planet had been inhabited. Basilisk was rich in minerals; not gross building materials, but luxury minerals, like onyx, jade, all grades of quartz crystal, and marble. What it lacked in granite, or even deciduous trees for construction, it made up in profit. A mineralogist with an ear for harmonics, Morak himself had discovered the unique quality of the echoes the exposed arc produced, and had insisted on expanding and incorporating it into the structure of the underground settlement when the colonists moved into the caves. What could be better, he had insisted, than a mass communication system that never needed power to run, and never broke down? As the planet’s population had increased, and groups broken away from the main system to form smaller settlements of their own, they had carved echo walls in the huge caves of onyx and quartz crystals which provided their shelter and their livelihood. The walls stood only four meters high, barely a fraction of the height of a typical cavern. Functional walls for offices and homes were constructed to accommodate the arc of the wall’s passage. All the rooms, including those built within the ring, were joined to the message system by electronic connection, which Morak playfully considered ‘cheating.’ As a mining colony Basilisk prospered, running rings, so to speak, around rival systems.

  “This is Morak,” he announced, enunciating clearly. There was no need to shout; the wall picked up the merest whisper and carried it 180 degrees around the circuit on both hemispheres. Still, he had to strain to keep his voice level. “Clear the air. This is a planetary Alert. There is a Khalian pirate ship on the way down. Begin evacuation procedures immediately. Drop everything you’re doing—carefully,” he corrected himself with a small smile, “and take your assigned places. We haven’t got long before they get here. Repeat, there’s a Khalian ship landing. Move!” A communications tech had already arrived and had taken over the com-unit to alert the other settlements planetwide. The low console defense computer in the corner of Morak’ s office was already flashing notices of Alert-readiness from the other settlements. Its scarlet LEDs made the golden onyx of the walls look like living blood. There was no way to tell which lifesigns would attract the damned pirates. Morak only had an intuition that they would strike at Dylan Settlement.

  The colony had never before had to defend itself from outside the Alliance, in spite of its placement on a frontier planet. The planetary defense systems had been used against pirates and cargo thieves. Morak was gratified how quickly his people responded to the alert. Replies from the various stations in Dylan began to come in immediately. Defense groups were forming as per instructions, and evacuation of children and the elderly to the lower caverns was getting under way.

  “Why now?” demanded Ivor Mulligan, administrator of the settlement infirmary. The hospital center was in the third level of the caverns, its message wall connected to the main one by bounced echo. His voice was faint, but Morak could hear how annoyed he was, and understood. Mulligan had dozens of patients to move.

  “They heard the Mushroom Festival was starting, Ivor. I don’t know why. Just get ready! We’ve got to pull the plugs soon. By the way,” Morak added, with a hint of malice, “your next shipment of serum is out there with the raiders. The Weasels’re looking for extra-healthy slaves.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear,” Mulligan groaned, and tapped the out-code.

  Morak shook his head and bent over the flat console to concentrate on coordinating settlement defense. The cross-chatter of echoes rang in his ears.

  When Mack Dalle opened his eyes, he was on his back, staring into Basilisk’s greenish sun. He blinked at the dazzle, listening to the rustling sounds of wind through trees, but all the ship noises were gone. Where was Otlind? In fact, where was he? A hairy claw interjected itself between him and the sky, and he was wrenched to his feet and jerked close to a furry face that contained gigantic sharp teeth. He cringed. A KhaIian pirate. A particularly large and ugly one, too.

  “Khralith na houstay?” the Khalian demanded, shaking him for emphasis on every syllable. This one was obviously the pirate leader. The straps clasped around its fur-covered body were decorated with gold and shards of crystal. And human teeth. The others ignored them and patrolled the clearing around the body of the scoutship. They had hauled everything moveable out of the scout, and were going through it for weapons and valuables. So far they hadn’t seemed to have found the weapons locker, for which Dalle was thankful. Otlind was nowhere in sight. Dalle swallowed.

  “I can’t understand you,” he explained, stammering. “I’m a doctor. A medic—a healer.”

  With a snarl, the pirate threw Dalle to the ground and made a gesture. It didn’t understand him, either. One of the others, a mean-looking little Weasel whose breast-pelt was dyed red, picked him up again and chained his wrists together. With a vicious tug, she indicated that he was to follow her, and no nonsense. Dalle stumbled after the raiders, twisting his head around hoping to catch sight of his pilot.

  He was dragged down a wooded slope on his knees and forced to stand up again before the pirates made him ford a shallow but fast-flowing river. The flat brown stones along the bottom were worn smooth and slippery. Dalle tried to take care crossing, but his arms were jerked painfully forward. His thin flight boots quickly filled up with water, and he squelched after his captors. They were following the directions of one pirate, who held what Dalle recognized as an infrared detector. The raider directed them through blue-and green-leaved undergrowth. Long trailers covered with invisible thorns hooked themselves into the fur on the pirates’ legs and dragged behind them, gay streamers decorating grim figures. The Khalia were not bothered by the needlelike hooks that pierced right through Dalle’s pants legs.

  The ground cover was thin in the shade, revealing broad patches of Basilisk’s grey clay-soil face. Tendrils of tough prairie grass snaked over and through the dirt, trying to join clumps of green
plants, creating loose, natural triplines for the unobservant. The captain stumbled over one and fell flat. Instantly, silently, the whole pirate crew dropped to the ground, guns pointing outward. Dalle’s guard pulled him down with her, a clawed hand over his face. He breathed, wide-eyed, over the sharp talons digging into his cheeks. With a hissed curse, the captain sprang up, angrily wrenching a two-meter trailer out of the ground. He threw it down and walked over it. His crew rose and cautiously followed, watching where they stepped. Dalle followed, wondering if they had been observed.

  Behind the next thicket, a cliff-face appeared in which had been drilled, either by nature or by man, a circular thirty-foot hole, the entryway to Otlind’s precious labyrinthine home. Moisture gleamed on its white- and brown-streaked limestone facade, and moss and birds’ nests were picked out in deep blue green here and there. The captain snarled another command, and his crew spread out into three lines, looking for sentries. There was no human around but himself, even atop the cliff. No light showed in the doorway, not even a safety indicator. Without a doubt, the Basiliskan colonists were watching them from concealed points. There was no need to risk a human when electronics would do the same job. Hoping that the Khalian captain hadn’t seen it, Dalle turned casually away from the sight of a communications pick-up concealed in a brown trace of ore in the wall. He spared a moment to hope that his friend was still alive. There were rumors in the Fleet that the pirates ate human flesh. He felt nauseous just considering the possibility.

  Just before they descended into the darkness beyond the opening, two of the pirates switched on dim, red lanterns. It occurred to Dalle only then that these would probably be their sole source of illumination. Dalle felt himself beginning to sweat. Red-pelt yanked at the flex, and he followed.

  There was no sound inside the cavern except their own footsteps, and an occasional low hiss from one of the pirates. The daylight disappeared with alarming speed only a short way inside. The grey darkness ahead began to develop features in the bouncing red light of the lanterns—threatening features. Nervously Dalle cleared his throat—Hh-hmm!—and listened to the sharp echo from the ceiling. He wondered if the colonists knew that the raiders were entering at this place? With a deep breath, he began to talk. If there was anyone within range of his voice, he should be able to give them information they could use. If the pirates didn’t shut him up first.