Battlestations

by S. M. Stirling

  Brand’s voice joined the shout of triumph. Then, directly, he said, “Damn fine men you’ve got there, Chief Merchant!”

  “They are my pride,” Globin rejoined—but mixed in with the joy was sorrow for the three who had burned.

  The smaller ships had burst the last of the Ichton attackers. At the planet, a very few Ichton ships sheered away to flee; the rest were cinders.

  Howls of triumph echoed though the vast bulk of the Hawking. Brand’s voice overrode them. “Kill those ships! Don’t let them take word of us back to their command!”

  The bright gnats swarmed after the fleeing enemy, overhauling them easily—what the Ichton did, they did by merciless efficiency and great numbers, not by speed.

  Globin stayed transfixed, watching until each ruby vessel had gone dark, and the surviving destroyers shot home to the Hawking. His heart thrilled with victory even as it mourned the fine young pilots who would not come back.

  Brand’s voice sounded, closer, more intimate, and Globin knew it was a closed channel. “Your men shall have heroes’ funerals, Chief Merchant. I am proud to have them aboard my ship.”

  Globin keyed transmission and answered, “Thank you, Commander.” But he wondered how much of that pride would transmute into trust.

  “But why would Brand summon you, Globin?” Plasma was beside him as they rode up the lift shaft.

  Globin shrugged. “To congratulate us on our valor, perhaps, or our loyalty.” But he had a notion the meeting would test that loyalty, not affirm it.

  There were pleasantries and opening amenities this time, which Globin found agreeably surprising, though boring. Brand actually invited him to sit, and even served coffee. Finally the conversation turned to the recent battle, and the expenditure of energy—and Brand came to the point. “We used a great deal of fuel in that battle, Globin, and it was only a skirmish. We have enormous stockpiles left, you understand, we are in no danger of immediate depletion—but it does remind us that we will need to replenish our supplies continually.”

  “True,” Globin agreed, “but we all knew that when we undertook the mission, did we not, Commander? In fact, the Hawking even has mining machinery.”

  “Quite so,” Brand admitted, “but there is the matter of locating the raw resources. Now, gossip always moves, Chief Merchant, though I presume that, in this instance, it is based more on guesswork than knowledge . . .”

  “Rumors are notoriously undependable, Commander,” Globin said with a smile. “Still, what is the current rumor of interest?”

  “That you and your pi . . . Baratarians have discovered a source, and are stockpiling fuel.”

  Globin’s smile broadened. “The rumor is true.”

  “I am glad to hear it.” Brand’s eyes glowed. “And will you share those stocks with the Hawking?”

  “Why, of course, Commander.” Globin sat up a little straighter. “But you see, we are businessmen . . .”

  When the drop-shaft doors had closed behind Globin and Plasma, Brand stood shaking his head, trying to recover from the price he had agreed to.

  Omera was shaken, too, but he said, “Well, after all, Commander—they are pirates, you know.”

  “Chief Merchant!” The intercom in Globin’s desk crackled. “Communications to Chief Merchant!”

  Globin stiffened; for the communications watch to speak directly to his intercom meant they were using their emergency override. “Chief Merchant here.”

  “We have just received a squeezed message from the colony on Sandworld, Chief! They have detected an Ichton squadron moving toward them from the Core!”

  Globin sat immobile for two seconds, long enough for Plasma to break in: “Is there any reason to think they are targeting our colony? How could they know of their existence?”

  “From our communications with them,” Globin answered. “We have been in contact several times a day. They had only to follow the beam. No doubt that is why our miners have sent the signal squeezed to less than a second.”

  “But why would the Ichtons pursue them? The planet is barren!”

  “Revenge, perhaps,” Globin answered. “It is a way to hurt us, where we are vulnerable. Perhaps to weaken the Hawking’s defenses. Or perhaps they have already deciphered enough of our language to know our people are refining fuel. In any event, we must aid them. All ship crews, prepare for battle!”

  “But Commander Brand . . .”

  “ . . . knows which side of the battle line his fuel is on,” Globin finished. “Leave him to me. Plasma?”

  “Yes, Chief?”

  “Commander Brand, if you please.”

  “Instantly.”

  It wasn’t quite that fast, but it was only minutes. Brand’s voice was guarded, though not overtly hostile. “Chief Merchant?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Your secretary indicates that you have a matter of importance to discuss.”

  “Yes, Commander. Our colony on Sandworld is under attack, or will be shortly.”

  “And our fuel supplies with them!” Brand saw the implications immediately. “But we can’t leave the Silbers, or the Ichtons will be on them like the locusts they are!”

  “Understood. Permission for all Baratarian ships to depart immediately for Sandworld.”

  “Permission granted,” the commander said instantly. “I’ll send a dreadnought to reinforce you.”

  “I . . . thank you,” Globin said slowly.

  “I’m surprised at your reluctance,” Brand snapped. “Would you rather not have their support?”

  “Not if we cannot agree on command, no.”

  There were a few seconds of silence. Then Brand said, “I’ll tell the captain of the Imperious to follow your strategist’s orders. That good enough for you?”

  “More than good enough.” Globin smiled, eyes glinting. “Thank you, Commander. We’re off.”

  He snapped the key, and Plasma frowned. “What do you mean, ‘we,’ Globin? Surely you will stay on the Hawking!”

  “When my warriors are all at risk?” Globin shook his tread. “I have stood my share of watches in battle, Plasma. I will go on our own battle cruiser, the Marco Polo—but I will go!”

  Sandworld loomed in their screens—but there were no silver mites circling about it.

  “Where are the Ichtons, Globin?” Plasma asked.

  A cold chill seized Globin’s vitals. “I shudder to think.” He keyed his audio pickup. “Globin to all captains! Descend at the colony’s location—and descend ready to fire! The Ichtons may all be on the ground already!”

  “It is true,” Plasma moaned. “Our warriors had only the one blast cannon!”

  “Have faith in them,” Globin said grimly. “They may be unblooded, but they have been taught the ways of battle.”

  Nonetheless, he was filled with apprehension.

  “F.S. Imperious to Chief Merchant,” a gravelly voice said suddenly. “We have just dropped into normal drive, and are about one AU from Sandworld. In what way can we assist?”

  Globin was surprised to feel a surge of relief. “Take up station around the planet, Imperious, to defend against Ichton reinforcements. I believe the first wave are all aground. We are descending. Thank you.”

  “Jump!” he heard the gravelly voice calling, just before the connection was broken.

  “A warp jump of one AU?” Plasma stared. “So close to a planet? That is horrendously dangerous!”

  “It is indeed,” Globin said grimly, “but he knows we need him now and is eager for battle. Have respect for our new allies, Plasma.”

  The secretary growled, but turned back to the screen. “I wish we could descend!”

  “As do I,” Globin assured him, “but we had need of one mother ship among our fleet, and it is only fitting that we should . . .”

  “Enemy!” a joyful yelp called from the communicator.

  Plasma’s claw jumped to a key, and an inset appeared in the screen, showing what the fighter’s sensors saw—half a dozen cigar-shaped
ships with faceted sides and ruby light spears stabbing toward the great slag heap on one side and what appeared to be barren stretches of sand on the other. Yellow beams answered them, and each ship had developed a glowing nimbus as its screens drank the energy of those shafts of light.

  “There are Baratarians there, selling their lives dearly!” Globin called. “Ships One, Three, Five, and Seven, all on the enemy! Ships Two and Four, hover in reserve!” He waited a second for the howl of protest to pass, then snapped, “Ship Six, land behind the slag heap to rescue the warriors there!”

  On the larger screen, the ships plunged like falcons stooping on their prey, and inside Globin a crazed voice was crying, What am I doing, trying to direct a battle? I am a merchant and politician, not a general!

  Fortunately, his pilots couldn’t hear. Their beams of light speared down, each striking a ship, and Six fired even as it sank toward the slag heap. Five Ichton ships glowed like candle flames—and Globin saw specks scuttling across the sand between the Ichton ships and the slag heap. They had landed ground troops!

  Then a sentry shrilled, “Globin! Attack from space!”

  “Fire!” Globin shouted automatically, even as Plasma put another inset on the screen, showing three double-convex hexagons swelling as they sped toward Globin’s ship. The screen filled with a glare of light, then darkened as automatic sensors compensated for the glare of the force shield as it drank the energy of enemy fire; the screen flickered.

  “Their beams pulse, they are not steady,” Globin grated, gaze glued to the screen.

  The ship shuddered, and a crewman cried out, “Screens overloaded! We are holed! Breach amidship, in cargo bay!”

  They had no cargo, and one of the hexagonal ships glowed like a gem, first red, then orange, yellow, and on up through the spectrum until it suddenly flared white, and was gone.

  But two more were battering Globin’s ship with pulses of energy, and the deck shuddered under their feet as crewmen called out, “Holed amidships, in bay five! Holed astern in fighter deck! Holed in the bow—blast cannon three out!”

  Globin felt a stab of sorrow for the gun crew that had just died, but his gaze stayed fixed on the screen, where his remaining cannon were pouring all their energy into the two remaining ships.

  Suddenly, another beam lanced down from the corner of the screen, and one of the Ichton ships glowed like a ruby, then an emerald, a sapphire, a diamond—and flashed into an expanding cloud.

  “Thank you, Imperious!” Globin shouted, his finger on the key, and his crew howled victory as the remaining ship swerved aside, turning to run—but the Marco Polo’s beams stayed with it, though a few made the view fuzzy as their focus shifted, trying to follow but not quite matching the enemy’s changes of direction. Then the Imperious hove into view, its beams spearing the remaining Ichton like a specimen pinned to a board. Suddenly it flared through the entire spectrum and exploded.

  “Glad to oblige,” Imperious answered.

  The crew howled with joy, and Globin with them. Then, as his crew quieted, he called out, “Remember your brothers aground, my children!”

  The main screen showed what was happening on the planet’s surface. One Baratarian ship was gone. Two more flew raggedly, but the beams from the six ships could not stay on them as they swerved and dipped, firing bursts at the enemy, whose screens were glowing more strongly. Ships Two and Four had dropped down to join the battle, ganging up on a single Ichton ship and avoiding the beams from the others. Six was shuttling back and forth and from side to side and up and down, playing peekaboo around the slag heap—and whenever it peeked, it spat fire. The Ichton bolts only flashed through the space where Six had just been—those that did not hit the slag heap. Many did; the slag had melted, and was flowing. The Ichton fighters were dancing away from it, still trying to shoot at something within it. Globin went cold at the thought of a gallant fighter half-buried in slag that he knew would kill him with radioactivity, firing burst after burst at the strange beings that strove to reach him.

  A score of other fighters were tap dancing around the beams that seemed to come from the ground itself. Their own beams lanced the sand, but weren’t hitting whatever they were aiming at.

  Then three of the remaining ships glowed blue-white.

  “Chief Merchant,” said Imperious, “I can reach the ground with two beams, and still stand watch.”

  “Can you be sure they will not hit our men?” Globin asked, and several Baratarian voices shrilled, “Yes!” even as Imperious answered, “Yes, if you tell your men to avoid being directly above any of the enemy’s ships, for I am squarely above them.”

  As though it had heard him, an Ichton ship fixed a beam straight up. Two Baratarian fighters took advantage of the opportunity to swoop in and snap solid projectiles at the Ichton—and it exploded as its overloaded screens tried to absorb the impact.

  “Please, Globin!” a Baratarian voice pleaded.

  “Very well. All ships avoid eight o’clock at seventy degrees.”

  On the screen, two of his own ships swerved aside.

  “Fire!” Globin barked.

  Two beams speared down from the corners of his screen to converge on an Ichton ship. It stood like a topaz for a moment, then flared and died—and, suddenly, all the Ichtons on the ground were running toward the remaining two ships. Globin reflected that if he could not hear their command channel, they could not hear his—then noticed that two Ichtons still stood near the slag heap.

  “Magnify enemy at slag heap!” he snapped to Plasma, and an inset appeared with a close view of the two Ichtons. Globin looked, and thought again of the offspring of a lizard and an insect.

  But these insects had sticky feet—they had become mired in the melted slag, that was apparently more akin to tar than lava.

  Then, on the main screen, beams struck down from the Imperious, and the two remaining Ichton ships flared and were gone.

  The sand was strewn with the ashes of dead Ichtons and, outside the blast circumference, a few intact but very dead specimens.

  “Well done, Imperious!” Globin shouted. “A thousand thanks! We have corpses and two prisoners for our scientists! Oh, bravely done!”

  “Our pleasure,” Imperious said gruffly. “Your men are valiant and intrepid, Chief Merchant. Now I know why you call your ship the Marco Polo.”

  Homeward bound, the Baratarians bound up their wounds and counted their casualties. Nine Baratarians had died, three of them miners, and they had lost two of the small fighter ships. But at least fifty Ichton foot warriors had died, along with six ships and all their crews—and the Imperious was bringing home a rich booty of four intact Ichton corpses and two captives.

  Globin had guessed correctly—the Baratarian miners had not even tried to prevent the Ichtons from landing, but had bent their energies toward preparing a mammoth booby trap instead. They had rigged their single blast cannon for remote control and had hidden it in the slag heap with its power supply—it had come dangerously close to blowing up, but had held off the ships. The heap was of their own slag, of course, not the Ichtons—no dormant Ekchartok had been destroyed in the battle. The miners themselves had gone to ground, quite literally, in dugouts walled with five feet of a kind of a cement they had improvised, at the first report of approaching ships that refused to give identity. By themselves, the colonists had killed a dozen Ichtons, and had bluffed the ships until help could arrive.

  It had taken great courage, Globin reflected as he pinned medals to their bandoliers. Then he pinned new rank insignia on their commander, reflecting his excellent choice of tactics, as well as initiative, resourcefulness, and sheer ability to lead.

  Now Globin was bound back to the Hawking in one of the small fliers with Plasma beside him. The Marco Polo remained in orbit around Sandworld with the rest of the fighters, a temporary guard for the invaluable transuranics, half of which reposed in the hold of the Imperious. Globin had taken a calculated risk on entrusting the fuel to the Fleet in advance of
payment, but he did not think there was too great a chance of a bad debt.

  And he was right—humans and Khalians alike thronged the staging chamber behind the Hawking’s landing bay, and a massed cheer went up as Globin stepped out of the airlock; the Baratarian home guard were only a thin line at the front, for behind them hundreds of humans cheered themselves hoarse.

  Globin stood, blinking in amazement, then went rigid as a wave of emotion swept through him, a fierce, incredulous, exultant pride, as he realized that at last, and finally, he had become a hero to his own species.

  THE STEPHEN HAWKING

  Upon its completion the station was christened the Stephen Hawking after the First Age scientist whose theories were the basis for the development of the warp drive. The station itself was a globe over five kilometers in diameter. It left Alliance space with a mixed crew of over ten thousand Fleet and civilian personnel. Also on board were every member of the crews of the alien ship that had begun it all. Their own ship was long relegated to scrap.

  The Hawking was so massive that before completion three construction workers became lost on its hundreds of decks and nearly died. To avoid this happening again, the walls of every deck were color-coded beginning at the top with red and descending through the spectrum to violet. Each color contained five major levels and up to three times that number of subdecks. Fleet activities were concentrated on the upper decks, red through yellow, and the civilians were concentrated on blue and indigo. Violet was almost completely taken with the warehouses packed with goods they expected to barter with the many races in Star Central. The central core of the Hawking was a three-hundred-meter tube running along the decks containing the massive warp drive and magnetic engines. Entrance ports were located all along the hull.