He'd observed AAnn occupation forces in action before. No doubt by now the members of the first assault wave were resting comfortably in their respective holds, humming softly to themselves and waiting for the "battle" to begin, masking sure their armour was highly polished, their nerve-prods fully charged ...
He slammed a fist down on the duralloy board, scraping the skin on the soft underside of his wrist. There were ten stingers and a cruiser in the humanx force ... more than a match for the AAnn, even without the dubious "help" of the locals. But he knew even before the pathetic debate of a few moments ago that Major Gonzalez would never stir from his wood-panelled cabin on the Altair to intervene in any conflict where humanx interests weren't directly threatened. He paused at a. sudden thought. Of course, if a confrontation could be forced to the point that such a threat occurred ... still no certain guarantee ... definite court-martial ... dismissal from the Corps ... 300,000 sentient beings ... processing camps... He suddenly wasn't so sure that he wanted to make captain after all. Still, he'd need the concurrence of...
"Bran, our drive appears to lie malfunctioning."
"Wha? I don't..."
"Yes, there is no question about it. We appear to be drifting unavoidably into the area of incipient combat. At top speed, no less. A most unusual awkwardness, wouldn't you agree?"
"Oh. Oh, yes." A pseudo-smile sharp as a scimitar cut his face. "I can see that we're helpless to prevent it. God damn unfortunate situation. Naturally we'll have to make emergency preparations to defend ourselves. I don't think the AAnn computers will be overly discerning about ships which float into their target area."
"Correct. I was just about to commence my own injections."
"Myself also." He snuggled back into the reaction seat, felt the field that enabled them to maneuver at high speed and still live take hold gently. "Best hurry about it."
He followed accepted procedure and did his best to ignore the barely perceptible pressures of the needles as they slipped efficiently into the veins on his legs. The special drugs that heightened his perceptions and released the artificial inhibitions his mind raised to constrain the killer instinct immediately began to take effect, A beautiful rose-tinted glow of freedom slipped over his thoughts. This was proper. This was right". This was what he'd been created for. Above and behind him he knew that Truzenzuzex was undergoing a similar treatment, with different drugs. They would stimulate his natural ability to make split-second decisions and logical evaluations without regard to such distractions as Hive rulings and elaborate moral considerations.
Shortly after the Amalgamation, when human and thranx scientists were discovering one surprising thing after another about each other, thranx psychologists unearthed what some humans had long suspected. The mind of Homo sapiens was in a perpetual state of uneasy balance between total emotionalism and computer like control. When the vestiges of the latter, both natural and artificial, were removed, man reverted to a kind of control led animalism. He became the universe's most astute and efficient killing machine. If tile reverse was induced he turned into a vegetable. No use had been found for that state, but for the former ...
It was kept fairly quiet. After a number of gruesome but honest demonstrations put on by the thranx and their human aides, mankind acknowledged the truth of the discovery, with not a small sigh of relief. But they didn't like to be reminded of it. Of course a certain segment of humanity had known it all along and wasn't affected by the news. Others began to read the works of ancients like Donation Francois de Sade with a different eye. For their part human psychologists brought into clearer light the marvelous thranx ability to make rapid and correct decisions with an utter lack of emotional distraction and a high level of practicality. Only, the thranx didn't think it so marvellous. Their Hive rulings and complicated systems of ethics had long kept that very same ability tied down in the same ways humanity had its killer desires.
The end result of all the research and experimentation was this: in combination with a ballistics computer to select and gauge targets, a thranx-human-machine triumvirate was an unbeatable combination m space warfare. Thranx acted as a check on human and human as a goad to thranx. It was efficient and ruthless. Human notions of a "gentleman's" war disappeared forever. Only the AAnn had ever dared to challenge the system more than once, and they were tough enough and smart enough to do it sporadically and only when they felt the odds to be highly in their favour.
It was fortunate that thranx and human proved even more compatible than the designers of the system had dared hope - because the nature of the drug-machine tie-up resulted in a merging of the two minds on a conscious level, it was as if the two loves of a brain were to fight out a decision between themselves, with the compromise then being paused on to the spinal cord and the rest of the body for actual implementation, Some stingship pilots likened it more closely to two twins in the womb. It was that intimate a relationship. Only in that way would the resultant fighting machine operate at 100 per cent effectiveness. A man's partner was his ship-brother. Few stinger operators stayed married long, except those who were able to find highly understanding wives.
The tingling mist flowed over his eyes, dimming and yet enhancing his vision. The tiniest things became obvious to his perception. Specks of dust in the cabin atmosphere became clear as boulders. His eyes fastened on the white diamonds on the battle screen with all the concentration of a starving cobra. All stinger pilots admitted to a slight but comforting sense of euphoria when under battle drugs. Bran was experiencing it now. For public relations purposes the enforcement posters insisted it was a beneficial byproduct of the HIP drugs. The pilots knew it for what it was; the natural excitement that overtakes most completely uninhibited humans as they anticipate the thrill of the kill. His feelings whirled within, but his thoughts stayed focused.
"Up the universe, oh squishy bug!" he yelled drunkenly. Off from never-never land Truzenzuzex's voice floated down to him.
"Up the universe, oh smelly primate!" The ship plunged towards one corner of the AAnn tetrahedron.
The enemy force stood it as long as possible. Then three ships broke out to intercept their reckless charge. The rest of the formation continued to form, undaunted. Undoubtedly no one in a position of command had yet noticed that this suicidal charge did not come from the region of the pitiful planetary defence force circling below. And having all heard the interfleet broadcast they knew it couldn't possibly be a Commonwealth vessel. Bran centred their one medium SCCAM on the nearest of the three attackers, the pointer. Dimly, through the now solid perfumed fog, he could make out the outraged voice of Major Gonzalez on intership frequency. It impinged irritatingly on his wholely occupied conscious. Obviously Command hadn't bought their coded message of engine trouble.
"You there, what do you think you're doing! Get back in formation! Ship number ... ship number twenty-five return to Formation! Acknowledge, iih ... by heaven! Braunschweiger, whose ship is that? Someone get me some information, there!
It was decidedly too noisy in the pod. He shut off the grid and they drove on in comparative silence. He conjured up a picture of the AAnn admiral. Comfortably seated in his cabin on one of the troop carriers, chewing lightly on a narco-stick ... one eye cocked on the Commonwealth Force floating nearby. Undoubtedly he'd also been monitoring the conversation between the planetary governor and Major Gonzalez, Had a good laugh, no doubt. Expecting a nice, routine massacre. His thoughts must now be fuzzing a bit, especially if he'd noticed the single stinger blasting crazily towards the centre of his formation. Bran hoped he'd split an ear-sac listening to his trackers.
His hand drifted down to the firing studs. The calm voice of Truzenzuzex insinuated itself maddeningly in his mind. No, it was already in his mind.
"Hold. Not yet," Pause. "Probability."
He tried angrily to force the thought out and away. It wouldn't go. It was too much like trying to cut away part of one's own ego. His hand stayed off the firing stud as the cream-coloured dot grew mad
deningly large in the screen.
Again the calm, infuriating voice. "Changing course ten degrees minus y, plus x two degrees achieve optimum intercept tangent."
Bran knew they were going to die, but in his detached haze of consciousness it seemed an item of only peripheral importance. The problem at hand and the sole reason for existence was to kill as many of them as possible. That their own selves would also be destroyed was certainty, given the numbers arrayed against them, but they might at least blunt the effect of the AAnn invasion. A tiny portion of him offered thanks for Truzenzuzex's quiet presence. He'd once seen films of a force of stingships in action with only human operators. It had resembled very much a tridee pix he'd seen on Ten-a showing sharks in a feeding frenzy.
The moment notified him of itself. "Firing one!" There were no conflicting suggestion from the insectoid half of his mind. He felt the gentle lurch of his body field as the ship immediately executed an intricate, alloy-tearing maneuver that would confuse any return fire and at the same time allow them to take the remaining two enemy vessels between them. Without the field he would have been jelled.
The disappearance of a gravity well from the screen told him that the SCCAM projectile had taken the AAnn ship, piercing its defences. A violent explosion flared silently in space. A SCCAM was incapable of a "near-miss." The SCCAM system itself was a modification of the doublekay drive that powered the ships of most space-going races. When human and thranx met it was found that the human version was more powerful and efficient than the thranx posigravity drive. It also possessed a higher power-conservation ratio, which made it more reasonable to operate. Working with their human counterparts after the Amalgamation, thranx scientists soon developed a number of improvements in the already remarkable system. This modified propulsive drive was immediately installed in all humanx ships, and other races to order the components which would enable them to make their own modifications. A wholely thranx innovation, however, had been the adaption of the gravity drive as a weapon of irresistible power. The SCCAM projectiles were in actuality thermo-nuclear devices mounted on small ship drives, with the exception that all their parts other than those requiring melting points over 2400 degrees were made of alloyed osmium. Using the launching vessel's own gravity well as the initial propelling force, the projectile would be dispatched towards a target. At a predetermined sate distance from the ship, the shell's own drive would kick in. Instantly the drive would go into deliberate overload. Impossible to dodge, the overloaded field would be attracted to the nearest large gravity well in this case, the drive system of an enemy ship. Coupled with the uncontrolled energy of a fusion reaction, the two intersecting drive fields would irrevocably eliminate any trace of the target. And it would be useless for an enemy vessel to try to escape by turning off its own field, for while it might survive impact with the small projectile field, the ship had not yet been constructed that could take the force of a fusion explosion Unscreened. And as the defensive screens were powered by the posigravity drives ...
He felt the ship lurch again, not as violently this time. Another target swung into effective range. He fired again. Truzenzuzex had offered a level-four objection and Bran had countered with a level-two objective veto. The computer agreed with Bran and released the shell. Both halves of the ship-mind had been partially correct. The result was another hit ... but just barely.
The AAnn formation seemed to waver. Then the left half of the tetrahedron collapsed as the ships on that side sought to counter this alarming attack on their flank. More likely than not the AAnn commander had ordered the dissolution. Penned up in a slow, clumsy troop carrier he was by now likely becoming alarmed for his own precious skin. Heartened by this unstrategic move on the part of their opponents the native defensive force was diving on the broken formation from the front, magnifying the confusion if not the destruction and trying to avert the attention of the AAnn warships from their unexpected ally. Bran had just gotten off a third shot -amiss- when a violent concussion rocked the stinger. Even in his projective field he was jerked violently forward. The lights flickered, dimmed, and went off, to be replaced a moment later by the eerie blue of the emergency system. He checked his instruments and made a matter-of-course report upwards.
"Tru, this time the drive is off for real. We're going to go into loose drift only ... be paused. A typically ironic reply was not forthcoming.
Tru? How are things at your end?" The speaker gave back only a muted hiss. He jiggled the knob several times. It seemed operative. "Tru? Say something, you slug! Old snail, termite, boozer ... god damn it, say something!"
With the cessation of the ship's capacity for battle the HIP antidotes had automatically been shot into his system. Thank Limbo the automedics were still intact I He felt the killing urge flow out of him, heavily, to be replaced by the dull aftertaste and temporary lethargy that inevitably followed battle action.
Cursing and crying all at once he began fighting with his harness. He turned off the body field, not caring if the ship suddenly decided to leap into ward rive and spatter him all over the bulkhead. Redfaced, he started scrambling over broken tubing and sparkling short-circuits up to where Truzenzuzex lay in his own battle couch. His own muscles refused to respond and he damned his arms which persisted in slipping off grips like damn hemp. He hadn't realized, in the comfort of hypnosis, how badly the little vessel had been damaged. Torn sheeting and wavering filaments floated everywhere, indicating a loss of shipboard gravity. But the pod had remained intact and he could breathe without his hoses.
The thranx's position was longer and lower than his own, since the insect's working posture was lying prone and facing forward. Therefore the first portion of his fellow ensign's body that Bran encountered was the valentine-shaped head with its brilliant, multifaceted compound eyes, The familiar glow in them had dimmed but not disappeared. Furiously he began to massage the b-thorax above the neck joint in an operation designed to stimulate the thranx's open circulatory system. He kept at it despite the cloying wetness that insisted on floating into his eyes. Throwing his head back at least made the blood from the gash on his forehead drift temporarily backwards.
"Tru! C'mon, mate! Move, curse you! Throw up, do something, dammit!" The irony of trying to rouse his companion so that he could then be conscious when the AAnn disruption beams scattered their component parts over the cosmos did not interrupt his movements.
Truzenzuzex began to stir feebly, the hissing from the breathing spicules below Bran's ministering hands pulsing raggedly and unevenly.
"Mmmfff! Ooooo! My friend, I hereby inform all and sundry that a blow on the cranium is decidedly not conducive to literate cognitation! A little lower and to the right, please, is where it itches. Alas, I fear I am in for a touch of the headache."
He raised a truehand slowly to his head and Bran could see where a loose bar of something bad struck hard after the body-field had lapsed. There was an ugly dark streak in the insect's azure exoskeleton. The thranx organism was exceptionally tough, but very vulnerable to deep cuts and punctures because of their open circulatory system. When their armour remained intact they were well-nigh invulnerable. Much more so than their human counterparts. The same blow probably would have crushed Bran's skull like eggshell. The great eyes turned to face him.
"Ship-brother, I notice mild precipitation at the corners of your oculars, differing in composition from the fluid which even yet is leaking from your bead. I know the meaning of such a production and assure you it is not necessary. Other than injury to my immaculate and irresistible beauty, I am quite all right ... I think.
"Incidentally, it occurs to me that we both have been alive entirely too long, As I appear to be at least momentarily incapacitated I would appreciate it if you would cease your face-raining, get back to your position, and find out just what the hell is going on."
Bran wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes. What Tru said was perfectly correct. He had been so absorbed in reviving the insect be bad failed to notice t
hat by ail reasonable standards of warfare they should both have been dead several minutes now. The AAnn might be unimaginative fighters, but they were efficient. He scrambled back to his seat and flipped emergency power to the battle screen. What he saw there stunned his mind if not his voice.
"Oooo-wowwww! Pibbixxx! Go get "em Sixth, baybee!"
"Will you cease making incomprehensible mouth-noises and tell me what's taking place? My eyes are not fully focused yet, but I can see that you are bouncing around in your seat in a manner that is m no way related to ship actions."
Bran was too far gone to hear. The scene on the screen was correspondingly weak, but fully visible none the less. It resembled a ping-pong game being played in zero gravity by two high-speed computers. The AAnn force was in full retreat, or rather, the remainder of it was. The bright darts of Commonwealth stingships were weaving in and out of the retreating pattern with characteristic unpredictability. Occasionally a brief, terse flare would denote the spot where another ship had departed the plane of material existence. And a voice drifted somehow over the roaring, screaming babble on the communicator, a voice that could belong to no one but Major Gonzalez. Over and over and over it repeated the same essential fact in differing words.
"What happened what happened what happened what...?"
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