Best Science Fiction of the Year

by Neil Clarke

  “Evasive response in progress,” Tyrant said. “Normal safety thresholds suspended. Manual override available, but not recommended.”

  “What?” Baskin grimaced.

  “We’re being shot at,” Merlin said.

  Tyrant was taking sharp evasive manoeuvres, corkscrewing hard even as it was still engaged in a breakneck deceleration.

  “Impossible. We’re still too far out.”

  “There’s nothing coming at us from Mundar. It’s something else. Some perimeter defence screen we didn’t even know about.” He directed a reproachful look at Baskin. “I mean, that you didn’t know about.”

  “Single-use kinetics, perhaps,” Baskin said. “Free-floating sentries.”

  “I should be seeing the activation pulses. Electromagnetic and optical burst signatures. I’m not. All I’m seeing are the slugs, just before they hit us.”

  They were, as far as Tyrant could tell, simply inert slugs of dense matter, lacking guidance or warheads. They were falling into detection range just in time to compute and execute an evasion, but the margins were awfully fine.

  “There are such things as dark kinetics,” Baskin said. “They’re a prototype weapon system: mirrored and cloaked to conceal the launch pulse. But Struxer’s brigands have nothing in their arsenal like that. Even if they had a local manufacturing capability, they wouldn’t have the skills to make their own versions . . . ”

  “Would the Tactician know about those weapons?” Teal asked.

  “In its catalogue of military assets . . . yes. But there’s a world of difference between knowing of something and being able to direct the duplication and manufacture of that technology.”

  “Tell that to your toy,” Merlin murmured. He hoped it was his imagination, but the violent counter-manoeuvres seemed to be coming more rapidly, as if Tyrant was having an increasingly difficult time steering between the projectiles. “Ship, recall six of the charm-torps. Bring them back as quickly as you can.”

  “What good will that do?” Baskin snapped. “You should be hitting them with everything you’ve got, not pulling your punch at the last minute.”

  “We need the torps to give us an escort screen,” Merlin said. “The other six can still deal with all the batteries on the visible face.”

  It had been rash to commit all twelve in one go, he now knew, born of an arrogant assumption as to his own capabilities. But he had realised his mistake in time.

  “Struxer again,” Teal said. “He says it’s only going to get worse, and we should call off the other missiles and give up on our attack. Says if he sees a clear indication of our exhaust, he’ll stand down the defence screen.”

  “Carry on,” Baskin said.

  “Charm-torps on return profile,” Tyrant said. “Shall I deploy racks for recovery?”

  “No. Group the torps in a protective cordon around us, close enough that you can interdict any slugs that you can’t steer us past. And put in a reminder to me to upgrade our attack countermeasures.”

  “Complying. The remaining six torps are now being reassigned to the six visible targets. Impact in . . . twenty seconds.”

  “Struxer,” Merlin said, not feeling that his words needed any translation. “Get your people out of those batteries!”

  A sudden blue brightness pushed through Tyrant’s windows, just before they shuttered tight in response.

  “Slug interdicted,” the ship said calmly. “One torp depleted from defence cordon. Five remaining.”

  “Spare me the countdown,” Merlin said. “Just get us through this mess and out the other side.”

  The six remaining charm-torps of the attack formation closed in on Mundar in the same instant, clawing like a six-taloned fist, gouging six star-hot wounds into the asteroid’s crust, six swelling spheres of heat and destruction that grew and dimmed until they merged at their boundaries. Merlin, studying the readouts, could only swallow in horror and awe, reminded again of the potency of even modest Cohort weaponry. Megatonnes of rock and dust were boiling off the asteroid even as he watched, like a skull bleeding out from six eye-sockets.

  Three of the cordon torps were lost before Tyrant began to break free into relatively safe space, but by then Merlin’s luck was stretching perilously thin. The torps could interdict the slugs for almost any range of approach vectors, but not always safely. If the impact happened close enough to Tyrant, that was not much better than a direct hit.

  They were through, then, but not without cost. The hull had taken a battering from two of the nearer detonations, and while none of the damage would ordinarily been of concern, Merlin had been counting on having a ship in optimum condition. Limping away to effect repairs was scarcely an option now.

  The consolation, if he needed one, was that Mundar had taken a much worse battering.

  “Is Struxer still sending?” Merlin asked.

  “He’s trying,” Teal said.

  Struxer’s face appeared, but speckled by interference. He looked strained, glancing either side of him as he made his statement. Teal listened carefully.

  “He says they’ve still got weapons, if we dare to come any nearer. His position hasn’t changed.”

  “Mine has,” Merlin said. “Ship, send in the remaining torps, dialled to maximum yield. Strike at the existing impact sites: see if we can’t open some fracture plains, or punch our way deep inside.” Then he enlarged the asteroid’s schematic and began tapping his finger against some of the secondary installations on the surface—what the intelligence dossiers said were weapons, sensor pods, airlocks. “Ready nova-mines for dispersal. Spread pattern three. We’ll pick off any moving targets with the gamma-cannon.”

  Teal said: “If you hit Struxer’s antenna you’ll take away our means of communicating.”

  “I’m past the point of negotiation, Teal. My ship’s wounded and I take that personally. If you want to send a last message to Struxer, tell him he had his chance to play nicely.”

  Baskin leaned forward in his seat restraints. “Don’t do anything too rash, Merlin. We came to force his hand, not to annihilate the entire asteroid.”

  “Your primary consideration was stopping the Tactician falling into the wrong hands. I’m about to guarantee that never happens.”

  “I want it intact.”

  “It was never going to work, Prince. There was never going to be any magic peace, just because you had your battle computer back.” A sudden indignation passed through him. “I know wars. I know how they play out. Squeeze the enemy hard and they just find new ways to fight back. It’ll go on and on and you’ll never be any nearer victory.”

  “We were winning.”

  “One tide was going out. Another was due to come back in. That’s all it was.”

  The charm-torps were striking. Set to their highest explosive setting, the bursts were twenty times brighter than the first wave. Each fireball scooped out a tenth of the asteroid’s volume, lofting unthinkable quantities of rock and dirt and gas into space, a ghastly swelling shroud lit from within by pulses of lightning.

  Lines of light cut through that shroud. Kinetics and lasers were striking out from what remained of the asteroid’s facing hemisphere, sweeping in arcs as they tried to find Tyrant. The ship swerved and stabbed like a dancing snake. The edge of a laser gashed across part of its hull, triggering a shriek of damage alarms. Merlin dispatched the nova-mines, then swung the nose around to bring the gamma-cannon into play. The flashes of the nova-mines began to pepper the shrouded face of Mundar. The kinetics and lasers were continuing, but their coverage was becoming sparser. Merlin sensed that they had endured the worst of the assault. But the approach had enacted a grave toll on Tyrant. One more direct hit, even with a low-energy weapon, might be enough to split open the hull.

  Tyrant had reduced its speed to only a few kilometres per second relative to the asteroid. Now they were beginning to pick up the billowing front of the debris cloud. Tyrant was built to tolerate extremes of pressure, but the hot, gravelly medium was nothing l
ike an atmosphere. Under other circumstances Merlin would have gladly turned around rather than push deeper. But Tyrant would have to cross the kinetic defence screen to reach empty space, and now he had used up all his charm-torps. If the Tactician had indeed been coordinating Mundar’s defences, then Merlin saw only one way to dig himself out of this hole. He could leave nothing intact—even if it meant butchering whoever was left alive in Mundar.

  Debris hammered the hull. Merlin curled fingers into sweat-sodden palms.

  “Merlin,” Teal said. “It’s Struxer’s signal again. Only it’s not coming from inside Mundar.”

  Merlin understood as soon as he shifted his attention to the navigational display. Struxer’s transmission was originating from a small moving object, coming toward them from within the debris field. The gamma-cannon was still aimed straight at Mundar. Merlin shifted the lock onto the object, ready to annihilate it in an instant. Then he waited for Tyrant’s sensors to give him their best estimate of the size and form of the approaching object. He was expecting something like a mine or a small autonomous missile, trying to camouflage its approach within the chaos of the debris. But then why was it transmitting in the first place?

  He had his answer a moment later. The form was five-nubbed, a fat-limbed starfish. Or a human, wearing a spacesuit, drifting through the debris cloud like a rag doll in a storm.

  “Suicidal,” Baskin said.

  There was no face now, just a voice. The signal was too poor for anything else. Teal listened and said: “He’s asking for you to slow and stand down your weapons. He says we’ve reached a clear impasse. You’ll never make it out of this area without the Tactician’s cooperation, and you’ll never find the Tactician without his assistance.”

  Merlin had manual fire control on the gamma-cannon. He had settled one hand around the trigger, ready to turn that human starfish into just another crowd of hot atoms.

  “I said I was past the point of negotiation.”

  “Struxer says dozens have already died in the attack. But there are thousands more of his people still alive in the deeper layers. He says you won’t be able to destroy the Tactician without killing them as well.”

  “They picked this fight, not me.”

  “Merlin, listen to me. Struxer seems reasonable. There’s a reason he’s put himself out there in that suit.”

  “I blew up his asteroid. That might have something to do with it.”

  “He wants to negotiate from a position of weakness, not strength. That’s what he says. Every moment where you don’t destroy him is another moment in which you might start listening.”

  “I think we already stated our positions, didn’t we?”

  “He said you wouldn’t be able to take the Tactician. And you can’t, that’s clear. You can destroy it, but you can’t take it. And now he’s asking to talk.”

  “About what?”

  Teal looked at him with pleading eyes. “Just talk to him, Merlin. That woman you showed me—your mother, waiting by that window. The sons she lost—you and your brother. I saw the kindness in her. Don’t tell me you’d have made her proud by killing that man.”

  “My mother died on Plenitude. She wasn’t in that room. I showed you nothing, just ghosts, just memories stitched together by my brother.”

  “Merlin . . . ”

  He squeezed the fire control trigger. Instead of discharging, though, the gamma-cannon reported a malfunction. Merlin tried again, then pulled his shaking, sweat-sodden hand from the control. The weapons board was showing multiple failures and system errors, as if the ship had only just been holding itself together until that moment.

  “You cold-hearted . . . ” Teal started.

  “Your sympathies run that deep,” Merlin said. “You should have spoken up before we used the torps.”

  Baskin levelled a hand on Merlin’s wrist, drawing him further from the gamma-cannon trigger. “Perhaps it was for the best, after all. Only Struxer really knows the fate of the Tactician now. Bring him in, Merlin. What more have we got to lose?”

  Struxer removed his helmet, the visor pocked and crazed from his passage through the debris cloud. Merlin recognised the same drawn, weary face that had spoken to them from within Mundar. He made an acknowledgement of Prince Baskin, speaking in the Havergal tongue—Merlin swearing that he picked up the sarcasm and scorn despite the gulf of language.

  “He says it was nice of them to send royalty to do their dirty work,” Teal said.

  “Tell him he’s very lucky not to be a cloud of atoms,” Merlin said.

  Teal passed on this remark, listened to the answer, then gave a half smile of her own. “Struxer says you’re very lucky that the Tactician gave you safe passage.”

  “That’s his idea of safe passage?” Merlin asked.

  But he moved to a compartment in the cabin wall and pulled out a tray of coiled black devices, each as small and neat as a stone talisman. He removed one of the translators and pressed it into his ear, then offered one of the other devices to Struxer.

  “Tell him it won’t bite,” he said. “My ship’s very good with languages, but it needs a solid baseline of data to work with. Those transmissions helped, but the more we talk, the better we’ll get.”

  Struxer fingered the translator in the battered glove of his spacesuit, curling his lips in distrust. “Cohort man,” he said, in clear enough Main. “I speak a little your language. The Prince made us take school. In case Cohort come back.”

  “So you’d have a negotiating advantage over the enemy?” Merlin asked.

  “It seemed prudent,” Baskin said. “But most of my staff didn’t see it that way. Struxer was one of the exceptions.”

  “Be careful who you educate,” Merlin told him. “They have a tendency to start thinking for themselves. Start doing awkward things like defecting, and holding military computers to ransom.”

  Struxer had pushed the earpiece into position. He shifted back to his native tongue, and his translated words buzzed into Merlin’s skull. “Ransom—is that what you were told, Cohort man?”

  “My name’s Merlin. And yes—that seems to be the game here. Or did you steal the Tactician because you’d run out of games to play on a rainy afternoon?”

  “You have no idea what you’ve been drawn into. What were you promised, to do his dirty work?”

  Teal said: “Merlin doesn’t need you. He just wants the Tactician.”

  “A thing he neither understands nor needs, and which will never be his.”

  “I’d still like it,” Merlin said.

  “You’re too late,” Struxer said. “The Tactician has decided its own fate now. You’ve brought those patrol groups closer, with that crude display of strength. They’ll close on Mundar soon enough. But the Tactician will be long gone by then.”

  “Gone?” Baskin asked.

  “It has accepted that it must end itself. Mundar’s remaining defences are now being turned inward, against the asteroid itself. It would rather destroy itself than become of further use to Havergal, or indeed Gaffurius.”

  “Ship,” Merlin said. “Tell me this isn’t true.”

  “I would like to,” Tyrant said. “But it seems to be the case. I am recording an increasing rate of kinetic bombardments against Mundar’s surface. Our own position is not without hazard, given my damaged condition.”

  Merlin moved to the nearest console, confirming for himself what the ship already knew. The opposed fleets were altering course, pincering in around Mundar. Anti-ship weapons were already sparking between the two groups of ships, drawing both into closer and closer engagement.

  “The Tactician will play the patrol groups off each other, drawing them into an exchange of fire,” Struxer said, with an icy sort of calm. “Then it will parry some of that fire against Mundar, completing the work you have begun.”

  “It’s a machine,” Baskin said. “It can’t decide to end itself.”

  “Oh, come now,” Struxer said, regarding Baskin with a shrewd, skeptical scrutiny. “
We’re beyond those sorts of secrets, aren’t we? Or are you going to plead genuine ignorance?”

  “Whatever you think he knows,” Merlin said, “I’ve a feeling he doesn’t.”

  Struxer shifted his attention onto Merlin. “Then you know?”

  “I’ve an inkling or two. No more than that.”

  “About what?” Teal asked.

  Merlin raised his voice. “Ship, start computing an escape route for us. If the kinetics are being directed at Mundar, then the defence screen ought to be a little easier to get through, provided we’re quick.”

  “You’re running?” Baskin asked. “With the prize so near?”

  “In case you missed it,” Merlin said, “the prize just got a death-wish. I’m cutting my losses before they cut me. Buckle in, all of you.”

  “What about your syrinx?” Teal demanded.

  “I’ll find me another. It’s a big old galaxy—bound to be a few more knocking around. Ship, are you ready with that solution?”

  “I am compromised, Merlin. I have hull damage, weapons impairment and a grievous loss of thruster authority. There can be no guarantee of reaching clear space, especially with the build-up of hostile assets.”

  “I’ll take that chance, thanks. Struxer: you’re free to step back out of the airlock any time you like. Or did you think all your problems were over just because I didn’t shoot you with the gamma-cannon?”

  Tyrant began to move. Merlin steadied a hand against a wall, ready to tense if the gee-loads climbed sharply.

  “I think our problems are far from over,” Struxer answered him levelly. “But I do not wish to die just yet. Equally, I would ask one thing.”

  “You’re not exactly in a position to be asking for anything.”

  “You had a communications channel open to me. Give me access to that same channel and allow me to make my peace with the Tactician, before it’s too late. A farewell, if you wish. I can’t talk it out of this course of action, but at least I can ease its conscience.”

  “It has no conscience,” Baskin said, grimacing as the acceleration mounted and Tyrant began to swerve its away around obstacles and in-coming fire.