Mav laughed like six people laughing. “Then perhaps we should be happy that they were not. The danger lasts for thousands of years, you say?”
She nodded, “Base nine or base ten. My mother’s culture never did invent them, not for warfare, anyway. But my father’s did. We’ve seen lots of them out here. Or at least their leavings: millions of minds and everything else on a planet, dead above the evolutionary level of a—”
“Des,” all three lamviin supplied at once.
“I’ll bet that’s Fodduan,” Owen Rogers suggested, “for Senator.”
“Here we go!” said Koko between her teeth.
The mighty vessel banked, bringing us out of the sun from the point of view of the two fleets. They were too far apart to see one another, although their aircraft had begun engaging, but they could certainly see us. The shadow cast by the great starship was dozens of kilometers in extent, a gigantic ominous footprint, precisely as her captain had intended it should be. Smoke poured from boiling places in the shallow sea where otherwise intelligent beings had died for their countries.
Fire lashed from Tom Paine Maru’s underside, millions of thumb-sized emitters creating a column of raw searing energy many meters in diameter.
“They were just about to throw out the first ball of the season,” Koko explained, “employing the biggest artillery I think I’ve ever seen.”
Koko’s Podfettian victim began to settle slowly, rher bow burnt off where a cannon loaded with a nuclear bomb had been. We were low enough now to see crew-beings scrambling over the sides into the hated sea.
Instantly, another burst of energy leaped out from the starship’s lower hull. An enormous Fodduan dirigible suddenly flashed out of existence.
“Gas-bags to deliver nukes?” Couper shook his head sadly.
“Maybe the last,” said Koko. “I’m hearing from the broach crews, now.”
The tidy patterns of each fleet had begun disintegrating as commanders realized the new threat they were facing. Despite the gorilla’s words, there was a third flash—not from Tom Paine Maru’s particle emitters this time—within a kilometer of the starship.
“Whew! That was sure close. One of those would’ve ruined our whole day!” Rogers wiped imaginary sweat from his brow. Personally, I could not help admiring the courage—Fodduan or Podfettian—that had launched that weapon against what must have seemed an invincible new enemy.
“Attention!” Koko demanded suddenly. I looked up, wondering what was going on, only to realize that her eyes were still closed. She was concentrating on her implant readings. “Attention all ships of both fleets! The war is over! Cease your hostilities immediately! This is the Solar Confederacy’s starship Tom Paine Maru ordering you to cease hostilities or perish! The war is over! I repeat, the war is over!”
Another flash! as a Podfettian cruiser emptied its artillery at us. The war might well be over, but it was going to be a long, noisy peace.
-4-
The decoratively-enameled deck pitched slowly beneath my feet in a languid swell that was all the thick, blood-colored seas of Sodde Lydfe were capable of generating. Allowing for the traditional lamviin attitude toward water, it may have seemed like a sizable storm to the frightened sailors who had been forced to abandon their vessel at the height of an engagement that had turned, for them, into a nightmarish fantasy.
Adjusting the soles of my feet for medium adhesion, I looked aft, through the haze of battle. Tom Paine Maru’s tachyon “cannon” (the same devices that drove her through space) had burned a blackened pit three meters across, straight through the Amybo Kiidetz, from rher ornately-decorated upper deck to rher specially-stiffened fighting keel.
Rhe was a comparatively new vessel, crisply painted where fire had not blistered the shocking pink that, on this world, served as naval camouflage. Smoke drifted from the smoldering hole that had been rher death wound. From time to time, I heard a muffled sound of small explosions. Only rher deeply-carved water-tight doors kept the vessel afloat this long.
Lucille stepped through the broach behind me.
“Wow, art deco militaire! I’ll bet that, if Aubrey Beardsley had been a nine-legged furry pseudo-crustacean, he’d approve. Too bad about all this damage, though. She’s absolutely beautiful, isn’t she, Whitey?”
“Rhe,” I corrected automatically.
But Lucille was absolutely right. From rher breathtakingly lovely, dramatic, downswept ramming-prow—embellished with floral scrolls ground deeply out of living stainless steel—to the upswept, equally figured cowling wrapped around rher gigantic pusher-fan, rhe was some three-eyed architect’s vision of harmony. Even rher gun-turrets flowed into the structure of the ship without interrupting those graceful lines.
Somewhere below, I knew, there would be a massively-shielded fission powerplant to drive the fan, crew-quarters, officers’ country, galleys, messrooms, communications shacks, every one of them alien in design, yet streamlined sufficiently in concept to be recognizable, admirable.
I was finding that I liked the lamviin, Fodduan or Podfettian. Maybe saving them from their ultimate fate was a presumptuous intrusion, as the Lieutenant had said, but I was glad we were doing it.
Time enough later for feeling guilty.
Lucille consulted her implant: “Through this door here, across to the other side of the deck, down three flights, and a left turn. Why do you suppose they bolted the nuke so firmly into the ribs of the ship?”
That, of course, was why we were here.
“Upstairs”, a dozen very busy technical squads were confiscating nuclear weapons via broach—then slapping them into stasis until somebody figured out what to do with them—those that had not been vaporized hastily because they had been armed. This particular bomb was presenting problems that called for a “primitive expert” once again.
One with training in dismantling the things.
Armorer-corporal Guess Who.
Poking the muzzle of my Dardick through the rainbow-enameled steel hatchway, I bent halfway over, then followed it into a big, deserted, low-ceilinged cross-corridor. Colors really got bright, once you were inside.
“Well, I can see now that my first theory was no good, after all, that rhe was intended as a giant manned—or make that ‘lammed’—torpedo ... ”
“Fire-ship,” Koko said. “A nuclear fireship.”
Lucille was right behind me, her suit-top brushing the overhead. I was having second thoughts about that pair of plasma-guns at my back. They did not have a “line” of fire, they had a field, a broad one, at that.
“Rhe is not a fire-ship, then,” I said. “Rhe is much too new, much too pretty. Also, it is much too early in the war. Later on, perhaps, when one side or another begins to get desperate ... But just look at how clean rhe is. Rher crew took pride in rher, Lucille. I feel awful about having done this to them. This is an absolutely gorgeous machine.”
Traversing the corridor, we passed several open doorways. Bending forward, I examined what could only be an auxiliary bridge: three massively ornate wheels, a clever periscope, binnacles for navigation in the shapes of mythical characters, radar set in expensive-looking framing, etched embellishments encompassing the telecommunications screens.
Aft, across the corridor, was a chart-room.
Lucille said, “It’s only a murdering-machine, Whitey, however well-gilded. What do you think, then, that it’s a self-destruct mechanism?”
“Not with that yield, the biggest fission-bomb I ever heard of, enough to vaporize a dozen ships this size, along with a major city for dessert. A bomb like that could turn even Tom Paine Maru into junk.”
“I wouldn’t have known. I’ll try to remember once we get the thing aboard.”
I said, “Do that—also, in case you forget, I will disarm it here.”
Stepping cautiously over the low doorsill, we found the ladder, a broad-treaded affair with short risers. We followed it through the smoke, down into the bowels of the vessel. As we went, visibility got steadil
y worse, even with the contrast enhancement provided by our suits. Occasionally, we passed a video unit, its screen still ablaze with the bright green Fodduan letters that apparently meant “abandon ship”.
These lamviin really knew their electronics, I thought, yet they still mixed animal-powered vehicles with motor carriages in their city streets. The sugar-based equivalent of black-powder still found favor in their small arms, although this vessel’s artillery seemed to run on natural gas. Mav said his people had not even conceived of surgical anesthesia, yet. Progress in different fields proceeds at different rates, I supposed, depending on the interests of the culture making it.
Rounding the corner, we discovered the remains of a crew-being, recently dead, its carapace perforated, leaking emerald-colored ichor onto the deck plating. We stepped carefully around it, to negotiate the next set of uncomfortably-proportioned stairs.
WHAAANG!
What must have been a thirty-gram projectile flattened itself on the bulkhead next to my shoulder. I ducked back, stomping Lucille’s feet, peered out from behind the doorway’s protective steel in time to see a pair of lamviin in battledress peering out at us from the next doorway.
One of them had a weapon with a bore the size of my fist.
So did the other one.
“Surrender, monster, or die! Your Podfettian masters will pay for this!”
Before I could answer, there was a roar beside my ear. A ball of white hot plasma streaked toward the Fodduans. One stood up, firing at Lucille. I heard her scream, looked back in time to see her slammed against the opposite bulkhead. I snapped a shot at the rifle-barrel, getting a slug down the center of the enormous bore—it was not very difficult. The weapon exploded in its user’s hands, killing him instantly.
His partner retreated out of sight. Keeping a cautious eye behind me, I knelt down beside Lucille where she lay crumpled against the bulkhead, not two meters away from the first dead Fodduan we had found.
“I’ll be okay, Whitey,” she gasped. “It just knocked the wind out of me, that’s all.” Her suit-arms both shrieked with blinking scarlet lights.
“Call the ship, Lucille! Bomb or not, we are getting you back upstairs!”
There was a long pause. “I can’t raise them. Something’s happened to my—Whitey, look out!”
Blam! Blam! Blam!
I had learned by now to aim for the few vulnerable places that a lamviin possessed. He dropped his bigbore weapon, pitched over onto the edge of his carapace. His legs crumpled underneath him. He was still. I felt terrible. I liked these people. I had no desire to kill them.
Stabbing the buttons on my own suit-arms, I was dismayed to discover that I could not reach Tom Paine Maru, either. There was probably too much metal wrapped around us this deep in the Fodduan ship.
“We must disarm the bomb,” I told Lucille. I could not even strip her helmet away. This atmosphere had plenty of oxygen, but it would suck the moisture out of her tissues in minutes, even this far out to sea. Instead, I used the manual controls of her suit to produce a true image of what lay beneath the silvery rubber. Her face was deathly pale.
“I must go now to disarm the bomb, Lucille, it is being watched by Tom Paine Maru on instruments. Then they will know to haul us in, okay?”
She put a weak hand on my arm. “Whitey, please don’t leave me ... I—”
I nodded, understanding. “Do not worry, love, I will not leave you.”
If I could believe it, her suit was telling me she had no serious internal injuries, no broken bones. Whatever the damage, it would be nothing, compared to being abandoned again on Sodde Lydfe. I collected both her pistols. She would not want them left here. Tucking an arm between her legs, I grabbed the back of her neck, stooped down even further, levered her onto my shoulders. I then gathered ankle to wrist together in my left hand. This would leave me one hand free for fighting.
I stood up, only halfway, naturally, as the ceiling was too low, thinking about the Scavian dungeon where I had met Lucille. Pointing my gun ahead of me, I trudged to the ladder, began taking the steps one by one. At the foot, I rested for a moment, trying to catch my breath.
“Lucille?”
No answer.
Only one more flight, if I could just find where it began. I cast around in the smoky darkness, wishing now I had undergone the implant. As light as Lucille was, not more than forty-five kilos, strain was beginning to hurt me in this cramped, bent-over position. I kept imagining nine-legged things with guns coming out of the blackness at me.
Instead, I saw an angel.
With a blue halo. A broach-circle opened in front of me, its edges glaring brightly like neon in the dim light. Out of the broach stepped little Elsie Nahuatl, fully suited up, a pistol in one hand, a dagger in the other. The broach snapped closed behind her with an explosive pop!
She sheathed her knife—it was of the pattern called “rezin”—but kept her pistol handy. “I thought I’d find you here, Whitey. How come you haven’t disarmed the bomb ye—oh, boy, are we ever in a mess!”
That was how long it took her to see Lucille’s condition.
“Are you in communication with the ship, Elsie?”
“Not exactly, see, I—”
“Get that way! Tell them to get us out of here. Lucille’s been shot!”
“Whitey, they’re all busy now, and nobody’s listening. Besides, I can’t communicate through this metal! I came to tell you that they’re going to Broach the whole Amybo Kiidetz. It’s the only thing we can do—”
WHIRRINGGG!
A heavy-caliber bullet ricocheted off the bulkhead from behind us. I fired half a dozen random shots in that direction, grabbed Elsie, found the ladder. We climbed down. At the bottom, a door opened onto a large, high-ceilinged hangar-like hold where I could finally stand up. I was glad we had our suits. The smoke in here was even thicker than above.
THUMP!
A dull explosion. The blow took me full in the face. There was a sickening, disorienting sensation as the ship lurched. I fell atop Lucille—who only managed a little moan at the impact—I felt Elsie’s hand wrenched from mine. Her gun clattered to the floor. She screamed.
The hold filled with the sound of tearing metal, as a shaft of daylight burst in upon us. Through a brand new hole in the hull, I could make out the outline of a helmeted head. The smoke was emptying rapidly.
“Whitey! Whitey! It’s me, Owen Rogers! Have you seen Elsie? We think she came to find you. Have you wrecked that bomb yet? Where’s Lucille?”
I opened my mouth to speak—
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
I knew by the sound that it was a Dardick pistol. Rogers ducked as the bullets ricocheted noisily off of the metal plating around his head.
Far away, at the other end of the hold, Sermander stood straddling a bulge in the floor where the atomic bomb had been welded. In front of him, he held Elsie. She screamed and struggled. He slapped her on the side of the head with his pistol. She stopped struggling and was silent.
“Hold still, damn you! It will not be very much longer. Corporal, leave that baggage and get on your feet. Come over here to me. We are going to blow the starship—with everyone aboard it—to kingdom come!”
the teddy bears’ picnic
Slowly gathering my feet beneath me, I stood. Lucille still lay unconscious on the deck. Whatever might happen, I would never abandon her.
Tom Paine Maru - Special Author's Edition Page 33