Battlestations

by S. M. Stirling

  He could be a bad Muslim. He could violate every stricture in the Koran. But he could not accept that God would give those, those bugs a victory over men. That was beyond comprehension. That was a bad dream.

  He gave up on sleep, got up and washed and put on the civilian dress of his home. The plain white robe and headdress were exotic on the Hawking, but it still was more comfortable to Hassan than the dark trousers and shirts that felt like just one more uniform. The long white dishdasha made him feel connected to the person he used to be, not the amalgamation of characters he found himself playing now.

  He left the military levels and wandered down onto Green Three where some of the more affordable shops were clustered. He wanted to look at the people more than the goods, at the relaxed cheer that pretended normalcy. As if anything here was normal. As if it was normal to be shopping quite securely in the middle of a war zone where people were running out and dying.

  “Hey, Hassan, I owe you a drink, boss.” Marty Hong came over, clapped Hassan on the shoulder, and tried to steer him in the direction of the Emerald Isle, Marty’s favorite watering hole, the only Irish pub on the battlestation.

  But something had snapped inside Hassan. He felt isolated, outside Marty’s camaraderie. Suddenly it seemed like everything here was as alien as what he found on the planets of the Core. The corridor of Green looked dirty, full of the refuse and detritus of another culture. Alien, not for him. He shook his head. Marty shrugged and went off, confusion on his face at Hassan’s refusal. For the smallest fragment of time Hassan wanted to run after Marty, say it was just a joke, and join whoever was off duty down at the watering hole.

  Something held him back. From the very depths of his mind came a word he had not heard in a very long time. A word he had not heard since he had joined the Fleet. Haram. Forbidden.

  It made him think of the clean places back home, the expanses of shoreline rippling pristine in the sun. Or not so clean. There had been bright filth all over Al-Shabir, hard glints from the litter, the beverage cans and food tins strewn over the sand reflecting in the moonlight. That night he had gotten drunk with Farid and Rashid they had sat out on the rocks and watched the warm ocean tide, emptied the bottle of imported whiskey that Farid had brought back. Haram. Emptied it and thrown it out into the sea where it had floated and glittered in the dark water. It had been ugly and small and unclean, just like everything in his life.

  He turned sharply and went directly back to the hull elevators, muttered “Orange Four” at them, and waited. The doors opened silently and he was back on the barracks level again. He was only glad that being a group leader, he had private quarters even though his rank didn’t rate the luxury.

  It was thought that group leaders might need some privacy to talk to members of their groups, and they surely didn’t rate private offices. The one overcrowded space they shared to do the required records work and sign in for their briefings was never quiet enough for a serious discussion, let alone secluded enough for one that would go better without others present.

  Now he was glad only that he had a place to go to be alone. Completely alone. He walked the nearly half klick of corridor around to his door and sealed it shut behind him. The panel would have the privacy indicator lit so no one would interrupt.

  It had been a long time since Hassan Ibn Abdullah had said the required prayers, had found that need in himself. He had spent too many years trying too hard to be the proper Fleet group leader. On Fridays he went for public services at noon, but otherwise was more concerned with fighting than with other obligations. After all, he was a warrior. He was guaranteed Paradise.

  Now, however, he felt overwhelmed. He had not come to terms with the enemy before, with their enormity and the strength of their drive. They could not be the Chosen of God, the ones assured of victory. And yet, and yet . . .

  He could not clear the vision from his mind. Hundreds, thousands of the tiny fighters. Each one armed better than the SBs. All of them swarming together around a nucleus of destroyers and frigates marching out under orders. Marching across the sky, marching in the dark masked by the myriad planets and stars of the galactic core.

  He tried to drive the image from his mind and concentrate only on the words that flowed from him. Verses of the Koran came unbidden, the language rippling like flowers in a breeze. Like the enemy convoy stealing around in secret.

  And it all came together, a single inspiration. He rose from his prayer rug with a more grateful heart than he had ever experienced. The vision was complete, perfect, and it encompassed him. Hassan knew the keen pleasure of it even though the image was hideous, frightful. He could see the beauty because he could see past it and into what it meant.

  God had spoken to him, directly. He had no doubt. Now he only had to get the tracking from Astronomy.

  Not even bothering to change out of the white dishdasha and headdress, he ran out of his private quarters and to the lift as if he were on first assault and they were under attack.

  He got down to Astronomy in the Civ sections and started banging on the indigo door with Rhys Davies’s name lit on the plate. He slammed his fist against the steel until his hand ached.

  Davies opened the door. “Why can’t you use the bell like a normal person?” the scientist groused. “Did you find anything useful?”

  Hassan shook his head. “What happened?” he asked Davies as if the other understood everything that had gone on in the past sixteen hours. “Why didn’t you find the convoy in your data?”

  “What convoy?” Davies asked, then turned his back on the pilot without inviting him into the office.

  Hassan didn’t bother waiting for the invitation, but pushed his way through the closing door and after the planetary specialist. “There’s an Ichton column moving through that system,” he informed Davies hotly. “Bleeding radiation all over the place. You should have been able to spot them in your observations. You do make observations, right?”

  Davies turned suddenly and cocked his head. “A column movement that we didn’t see?” he asked, ignoring Hassan’s anger. “Let me pull the records.”

  He touched a keypad on his desk and the wall display lit with a bright orange backdrop, then dissolved into star fields Hassan didn’t recognize. In fact, they changed and became something else entirely, graphic plots of color that didn’t make particular sense to the pilot.

  “These are the spectrographic prints,” Davies said. “Now, let’s try again. You said that the convoy was coming around LLR-1182?” The display shimmered and changed again. Now hot yellow filled the screen with streaks of blue and green and pink smudges across the face of it.

  Davies ignored him. “Hmmmm. Yes. Yes.” The astronomer’s face glowed with excitement.

  “Yes, what?” Hassan demanded. He couldn’t make any sense of the display.

  “I’ll have to do some more looking,” Davies said.

  Hassan was so curious and frustrated that he wanted to shake the heavyset older man. “What? What is it? What do you see?”

  Rhys Davies licked his lips. “I never thought it would be a practical application. Of course, I’m not in stellar architecture. We’ll really have to do a full departmental study to get the complete picture. I’m not sure really . . .”

  “Please, please tell me,” Hassan begged. This man was going to make him crazy.

  “We may have a signature for the Ichton drive,” Davies said simply. “It’s dirty, you’re right. But against LLR-1182 the element signature is hidden under the star’s own element band. Every star has a spectrographic signature. Elements exist in different proportions everywhere, and each one has its own color. But against that signature the drive emissions are masked. Wait.”

  The screen became more yellow and the green, blue, and pink moved around. The colors started to flash. Hassan felt a little dizzy. The scientist said nothing but “Hmmmm.” And then Davies smiled.

  “I can see it,” he said finally. “They’re using the stellar radiation to mask their move
ments. You wouldn’t think they’d be able to. And they don’t do it all the time. I wonder . . . Only certain stars would be suitable. It wouldn’t be hard to check.”

  Hassan thanked Davies emphatically and then hurried out. He understood. There was more and no doubt the astronomers and the intelligence analysts aboard would create a detailed picture. Maybe it would even indicate something far different from what Hassan saw in his own moment of inspiration. But he didn’t think so.

  The Ichtons had a camouflaged route. Possibly it could even be traced back to their home planet. Even if it wasn’t quite that direct, they had worked out this area to keep their movements hidden. Secret.

  Hassan could barely keep from dancing in the corridor. The idea overwhelmed him. There were indeed more than enough bugs to go around. It would be a charity to them to remove them from the universe. From harming decent species’ lives and homes. Surely this was the greatest charity of all.

  In the sudden extreme clarity that surrounded his thoughts, Hassan Ibn Adbullah realized perfectly why the warrior merited Paradise. It was not fearlessness or commitment or any of the things that he had thought. It was charity. In the truly just, war was the highest expression of charity to others. And everyone in Mr. Ali’s class knew that God loved charity above all other virtues.

  Hassan managed to get back to his own quarters and change into his working blues. He didn’t think he would impress the tactical staff in his native dress. And this had to be done right. He was anxious and excited, but to hurry wouldn’t help.

  So he made a proper appointment through the proper channels, filed the paperwork with more routings than strictly necessary, and changed. The duty roster on his screen rippled as the new appointment came through. He had a meeting in twenty minutes with the division’s tactical superior and staff. But Hassan Ibn Abdullah was perfectly calm as he took the lift from Orange down to a Briefing Red on the operational front.

  “This could be part of an overall assault plan,” the tack said softly. There was no denying the interest in his face; Hassan felt more than vindicated.

  “I would expect it is, sir,” he agreed. “It seems that they are trying to bring in more ships and fighters behind cover and converge on us without us expecting them. I think we’ve got them a little frightened.”

  The tack smiled without humor. “Very possibly. That would be the way we would do it. Only the Ichtons aren’t us. And I’m not sure we have any idea of what they would do or why. Although that’s my best guess. Astronomy promised they’d have the readings up to us as soon as they’d isolated the pattern. But that could take days.”

  Hassan nodded. “I realize that, sir. Dr. Davies briefed us. But maybe in the meantime we could make life a little less comfortable for the bugs.”

  “Ichtons, Mr. Ibn Abdullah. Our enemies are sentients, not bugs, and the minute we forget that we’re in trouble,” the tack repeated by rote.

  Hassan ignored the routine warning and went on. Only the high tacks ever bothered with those fine distinctions. He knew perfectly well what he meant and he wasn’t about to underestimate the enemy even if he used the wrong terminology. “Well, sir, they were sticking pretty tight in formation. They wouldn’t even follow us out to the moon we hid behind. They’re avoiding the rocks and keeping to empty space. And staying between the orbits and the sun, for camouflage I’d guess. But they aren’t expecting to be hit out there. They’re just sitting begging for an ambush there.”

  The senior tack shook his head. “That convoy will be nearly through by now,” he said. “And since you already engaged with them they know that we know . . . And, honestly, we can’t afford the forces to sit and wait until another convoy tries to come through using the same trick. We don’t have enough manpower as it is, and we’re short on armed SBs. Which you should know. Hell, we could hardly spare the garbage scow.”

  Hassan had known and ignored the fact. Sebeng always managed to make sure the Dawn Riders were equipped to the teeth. He had been so certain, so clear about what needed to be done.

  In his mind he could hear the voice of Mr. Ali chanting over and over again, It is charity to remove something harmful from the way. The garbage scow. The empty Johnnie Walker bottle floating in the tide, reflecting light like a beacon to the thing that was unclean. And Hassan Ibn Abdullah began to laugh.

  “Sir, could I take the garbage scow out for a run?” he asked when he got his breath back.

  The tack officer’s eyebrows went up abruptly. “Why, Group Leader?”

  But Hassan Ibn Abdullah was laughing so hard that it took several moments to catch his breath to explain.

  There was a convoy. Maybe not the same one. Hassan Ibn Abdullah couldn’t be sure. But there were Ichtons out there, using the masking radiation of this star to keep their movements out of sight.

  Only now Astronomy knew what to look for. Astronomy even found a fun problem in the tracking, something that could interest theorists like Rhys Davies.

  Not that Hassan cared. He only cared about what he was doing, about this moment. The garbage scow was large and unwieldy. It had not been made for a human driver in general, but the calculations were too intuitive to be left to a machine. Hassan didn’t even know how to explain it properly.

  The dark folded around him. He took the tug out slowly, dragging it around the column from the orbital side. And he opened the hatches. Refuse from the Hawking spewed into space. Beer cans and bottles from the bars, bits of meal covers and shiny wrapping paper from the rich inhabitants of the south pole. He guided the barge gently forward, running it out as fast as he could, trying to outdistance the column.

  There were fighters after him. He tried to jink but the scow balked and bucked under him. Damn. He pushed on ahead, continuing to spray the entire sector with debris, waiting for the hit.

  Only it didn’t come. He saw them in the scan between the slivers of bright garbage, saw them coming straight in on him and then fluttering around, lost. A few feeble attempts to fire and a single smart missile dropped into the dump and was unable to fix on a target. Was unable to find a target.

  He pushed forward, hoping there would be enough. That Sebeng had packed the hauler as full as she did the SBs’ holds. Already his plan was working, was beautiful. So beautiful that he could barely contain his pleasure.

  He came around full and cut off the front of the convoy. Here they had better shots at him as he upped the pressure in the refuse chamber. Pieces shredded finer with the higher energy surge and the whole segment of his own position between the planet and the star had blotted into garbled haze.

  The garbage was all reflective. And it was shining all that energy back at the enemy. The radiation from the star and the nearby planet, the power leaking from the Ichton drives, the communications bands and all the scanners, everything was being broken and bounced among a billion billion crashed fragments of landfill. Like grains of sand, each one a mirror on the shore, the chaff drifted into eddies and rifts, spread and spun insanely through the Ichton convoy.

  The enemy tried to fight back. They fired energy weapons that were immediately dissipated by the chaff. They tried smart missiles whose targeting devices were completely stymied. Even their navigation and orientation were affected and what had once been a neatly purposeful convoy through camouflaged space started to resemble the kiddies’ bumper car ride at the Eid Al-Fitr fair.

  Hassan could appreciate the view only through the windows in front of him. This was no fighter, it wasn’t even a patrol SB and so his own screens were as confused as the enemy’s. And so he never saw the large Ichton destroyer that was on his tail and that ripped the garbage scow neatly in two down the keel, adding even more to the confusing backwash.

  “Dawn Riders, open fire,” Dawn Leader commanded. They came from behind a chunk of moon, something irregular that had most likely been an asteroid captured by the planet’s gravity. They had ridden this way before.

  Solange des Salles, acting group leader, read out the coordinates. That was un
necessary. The attackers could see targets strewn across the environment like loose cut gems on a jeweler’s velvet. Targets that lay drifting helplessly, surrounded by chaff, unable to navigate or fire. Blind.

  “It’s almost a pity to just pick them off,” Marty Hong said.

  Three SBs, even loaded with all the ammunition Sebeng could pack into their holds, could only account for three quarters of the disabled Ichton column. The Dawn Riders didn’t protest when the frigate Viceroy arrived on the scene and began mopping up the remains.

  That night the Dawn Riders bought all the drinks in the Emerald Isle in the name of Hassan Ibn Abdullah. They drank and threw the glasses against the wall to commemorate his victory. And his death. Credit for the full column, by popular demand, was given to him alone.

  “And he can’t enjoy it,” Marty said, trying to keep sentimental and drunken tears from his eyes. “He’s dead.”

  “I don’t think so,” said a stranger in a white robe. “But he wouldn’t enjoy the beer. He died properly, and in Paradise no one is ever drunk.”

  Des Salles listened, and then ordered another round. “Here’s to you, Hassan,” she said as the rest of the Dawn Riders raided their final round. “Looks like we’re gonna have to do all your drinking for you now. Looks like you got to be a good Muslim in the end anyway.”

  RX

  A massive Ichton force had gotten between the Hawking and their strongest ally, the Emry. Anton Brand reacted by attempting to call all the Fleet and the allied race’s ships back to the station, a difficult task considering how thinly they were spread. As the Hawking gathered its strength, it began to edge slowly toward Emry. Isolated and outmaneuvered, the crew of the Battlestation Stephen Hawking fought two battles. The first was against hundreds of small and large Ichton units. The other battle was against themselves.