I oughtn’t to hear this, Flandry thought. She wouldn’t speak of it if her self-command had entirely returned. How can I leave?
“My lady,” he attempted, “you said a fact, that it wasn’t you. You shouldn’t let it count. If your husband’s half the man you claim, he won’t.”
She sat motionless a while. The stimulol acted faster than normal on her; evidently she wasn’t in the habit of using chemical crutches. At length she raised her head. The countenance was deeply flushed, but the big body seemed in repose. And she smiled,
“You are a strider,” she said.
“Uh … feeling well now?”
“Better, anyways. Could we talk straight business?”
Flandry gusted a secret sigh of relief. A touch weak in his own knees, he sat down on the bunk and began another cigaret. “Yes, I rather urgently want to,” he said. “For the proverbial nonce, we have common interests, and your information might be what lets us carry on instead of scuttling off for home and mother.”
“What d’you need to know? I may not be able to answer some questions, and may refuse to answer others.”
“Agreed. But let’s try on a few. We’ve caught no trace of astronautical activity in this system. A fleet the size of Hugh McCormac’s should register one way or another. If nothing else, by neutrino emission from powerplants. What’s he done? He might be fairly close to the sun, keeping behind it with respect to us; or might be lying doggo a goodly distance out, like half a light-year; or might have hauled mass for some different territory altogether; or — Have you any idea?”
“No.”
“Certain you don’t?”
She bridled. “If I did, would I tell?”
“Sizzle it, one destroyer doesn’t make a task force! Put it this way: How can we contact him before battle commences?”
She yielded. “I don’t know, and that’s honest,” she said, meeting his stare without wavering. “I can tell you this, whatever Hugh’s plannin’ ’ull be something bold and unexpected.”
“Marvelous,” Flandry groaned. “Well, how about the radio silence?”
“Oh, that’s easier to ’splain, I think. We don’t have many stations broadcastin’ with enough power, at the right wavelengths, to be detectable far out. Virgil’s too apt to hash them up with solar storms. Mainly we send tight beams via relay satellites. Radiophones’re common — isolated villages and steadin’s need them — but they natur’ly use frequencies that the ionosphere ’ull contain. Virgil gives Aeneas a mighty deep ionosphere. In short, ’tisn’t hard to get ’long without the big stations, and I s’pose they’re doin’ it so enemy navigators ’ull have extra trouble obtainin’ in-system positions.”
You understand that principle too — never giving the opposition a free ride, never missing a chance to complicate his life? Flandry thought with respect. I’ve known a number of civilians, including officers’ spouses, who didn’t.
“What about interplanetary communications?” he asked. “I assume you do mining and research on the sister worlds. You mentioned having been involved yourself. Do you think those bases were evacuated?”
“N-no. Not the main one on Dido, at least. It’s self-supportin’, kind of, and there’s too big an investment in apparatus, records, relationships with natives.” Pride talking: “I know my old colleagues. They won’t abandon simply ’cause of an invasion.”
“But your people may have suspended interplanetary talk during the emergency?”
“Yes, belike. ’Speci’ly since the Josipists probly won’t find any data on where everything is in our system. And what they can’t find, they can’t wreck.”
“They wouldn’t,” Flandry protested. “Not in mere spite.”
She retorted with an acrid: “How do you know what His Excellency may’ve told their admiral?”
The intercom’s buzz saved him from devising a reply. He flipped the switch. “Bridge to captain,” came Rovian’s thick, hissing tones. “A ship has been identified at extreme range. It appears to have started on a high-thrust intercept course to ours.”
“I’ll be right there.” Flandry stood. “You heard, my Lady?” She nodded. He thought he could see how she strained to hold exterior calm.
“Report to Emergency Station Three,” he said. “Have the yeoman on duty fit you with a spacesuit and outline combat procedure. When we close with that chap, everyone goes into armor and harness. Three will be your post. It’s near the middle of the hull, safest place, not that that’s a very glowing encomium. Tell the yeoman that I’ll want your helmet transceiver on a direct audiovisual link to the bridge and the comshack. Meanwhile, stay in this cabin, out of the way.”
“Do you ’spect danger?” she asked quietly.
“I’d better not expect anything else.” He departed. The bridge viewscreens showed Virgil astonishingly grown. Asieneuve had entered the system with a high relative true velocity, and her subsequent acceleration would have squashed her crew were it not for the counteraction of the interior gee-field. Its radiance stopped down in simulacrum, the sun burned amidst a glory of corona and zodiacal light.
Flandry assumed the command chair. Rovian said: “I suppose the vessel was orbiting, generators at minimum, until it detected us. If we wish to rendezvous with it near Aeneas” — a claw pointed at a ruddy spark off the starboard quarter — “we must commence deceleration.”
“M-m-m, I think not.” Flandry rubbed his chin. “If I were that skipper, I’d be unhappy about a hostile warship close to my home planet, whether or not she’s a little one and says she wants to parley. For all he knows, our messages are off tapes and there’s nobody here but us machines, boss.” He didn’t need to spell out what devastation could be wrought, first by any nuclear missiles that didn’t get intercepted, finally by a suicide plunge of the ship’s multiple tons at perhaps a hundred kilometers a second. “When they’ve got only one important city, a kamikaze is worth fretting about. He could get a wee bit impulsive.”
“What does the captain mean to do, then?”
Flandry activated an astronomical display. The planet-dots, orbit-circles, and vector-arrows merely gave him a rough idea of conditions, but refinements were the navigation department’s job. “Let’s see. The next planet inward, Dido they call it, past quadrature but far enough from conjunction that there’d be no ambiguity about our aiming for it. And a scientific base … cool heads … yes, I think it’d be an earnest of pious intentions if we took station around Dido. Set course for the third planet, Citizen Rovian.”
“Aye, sir.” The directives barked forth, the calculations were made, the engine sang on a deeper note as its power began to throttle down speed.
Flandry prepared a tape announcing his purposes. “If discussion is desired prior to our reaching terminus, please inform. We will keep a receiver tuned on the standard band,” he finished, and ordered continuous broadcast.
Time crept by. “What if we are not allowed to leave this system afterward?” Rovian said once in Eriau.
“Chance we take,” Flandry replied. “Not too big a risk. I judge, considering the hostage we hold. Besides, in spite of our not releasing her to him, I trust friend McCormac will be duly appreciative of our having gotten her away from that swine Snelund … No, I shouldn’t insult the race of swine, should I? His parents were brothers.”
“What do you really expect to accomplish?”
“God knows, and He hasn’t seen fit to declassify the information. Maybe nothing. Maybe opening some small channel, some way of moderating the war if not halting it. Keep the bridge for ten minutes, will you? If I can’t snake off and get a smoke, I’ll implode.”
“Can you not indulge here?”
“The captain on a human ship isn’t supposed to have human failings, they hammered into me when I was a cadet. I’ll have too many explanations to invent for my superiors as is.”
Rovian emitted a noise that possibly corresponded to a chuckle.
The hours trickled past. Virgil swelled in the screen
s. Rovian reported: “Latest data on the other ship indicate it has decided we are bound for Dido, and plans to get there approximately simultaneously. No communication with it thus far, though it must now be picking up our broadcast.”
“Odd. Anything on the vessel herself?” Flandry asked.
“Judging from its radiations and our radar, it has about the same tonnage and power as us but is not any Naval model.”
“No doubt the Aeneans have pressed everything into service that’ll fly, from broomsticks to washtubs. Well, that’s a relief. They can’t contemplate fighting a regular unit like ours.”
“Unless the companion—” Rovian referred to a second craft, detected a while ago after she swung past the sun.
“You told me that one can’t make Dido till hours after we do, except by going hyper; and I doubt her captain is so hot for Dido that he’ll do that, this deep in a gravitational well. No, she must be another picket, brought in on a just-in-case basis.”
Nevertheless, he called for armor and battle stations when Asieneuve neared the third planet.
It loomed gibbous before him, a vast, roiling ball of snowy cloud. No moon accompanied it. The regional Pilot’s Manual and Ephemeris described a moderately eccentric orbit whose radius vector averaged about one astronomical unit; a mass, diameter, and hence surface gravity very slightly less than Terra’s; a rotation once in eight hours and 47 minutes around an axis tilted at a crazy 38 degrees; an oxynitrogen atmosphere hotter and denser than was good for men, but breathable by them; a d-amino biochemistry, neither poisonous nor nourishing to humankind — That was virtually the whole entry. The worlds were too numerous; not even the molecules of the reel could encode much information on any but the most important.
When he had donned his own space gear, aside from gauntlets and closing the faceplate, Flandry put Kathryn McCormac on circuit. Her visage in the screen, looking out of the helmet, made him think of warrior maidens in archaic books he had read. “Well?” she asked.
“I’d like to get in touch with your research base,” he said, “but how the deuce can I find it under that pea soup?”
“They may not answer your call.”
“On the other hand, they may; the more likely if I beamcast so they can tell I’ve got them spotted. That ship closing with us is maintaining her surly silence, and — Well, if they’re old chums of yours on the ground, they ought to respond to you.”
She considered. “All right, I trust you, Dominic Flandry. The base, Port Frederiksen” — a brief white smile — “one of my ancestors founded it — ’s on the western end of Barca, as we’ve named the biggest continent. Latitude 34° 5’18” north. I’spect you can take it from there with radar.”
“And thermal and magnetic and suchlike gizmos. Thanks. Stand by to talk in, oh, maybe half an hour or an hour.”
Her look was grave. “I’ll speak them truth.”
“That’ll do till we can think of something better and cheaper.” Flandry switched off, but it was as if her countenance still occupied the screen. He turned to Rovian. “We’ll assume an approximate hundred-minute orbit till we’ve identified the base, then move out to a synchronous orbit above it.”
The exec switched his space-armored tail. “Sir, that means the rebel ship will find us barely outside atmosphere.”
“And it’s useful to be higher in a planet’s field. Well, didn’t you last inform me she’s coming in too fast to manage less than a hyperbolic orbit?”
“Yes, sir, unless it can brake much quicker than we can.”
“Her master’s suspicious. He must intend to whip by in a hurry, lest we throw things at him. That’s not unnatural. I’d be nervous of any enemy destroyer myself, if I were in a converted freighter or whatever she is. When he sees we’re amiable, he’ll take station — by which time, with luck, we’ll be another ten or fifteen thousand kilometers out and talking to the scientific lads.”
“Aye, sir. Have I the captain’s permission to order screen fields extended at full strength?”
“Not till we’ve located Port Frederiksen. They’d bedbug the instruments. But otherwise, except for the detector team, absolute combat readiness, of course.”
Am I right? If I’m wrong — The loneliness of command engulfed Flandry. He tried to fend it off by concentrating on approach maneuvers.
Eventually Asieneuve was falling free around Dido. The cessation of noise and quiver was like sudden deafness. The planet filled the starboard screens, dazzling on the dayside, dark when the ship swung around into night, save where aurora glimmered and lightning wove webs. That stormy atmosphere hindered investigation. Flandry found himself gripping his chair arms till he drove the blood from his fingernails.
“We could observe the other ship optically now, sir,” Rovian said, “were this disc not in between.”
“It would be,” Flandry said. The exec’s uneasiness had begun to gnaw in him.
An intercom voice said: “I think we’ve found it, sir. Latitude’s right, infrared pattern fits a continent to east and an ocean to west, radar suggests buildings, we may actually have gotten a neutrino blip from a nuclear installation. Large uncertainty factor in everything, though, what with the damned interference. Shall we repeat, next orbit?”
“No,” Flandry said, and realized he spoke needlessly loud. He forced levelness into his tone. “Lock on radar. Pilot, keep inside that horizon while we ascend. We’ll go synchronous and take any further readings from there.” I want to be under thrust when that actor arrives in his deaf-mute role. And, oh, yes, “Maximum screen fields, Citizen Rovian.”
The officer’s relief was obvious as he issued commands. The ship stirred back to life. A shifting complex of gravitic forces lifted her in a curve that was nearer a straight line than a spiral. The planet’s stormy crescent shrank a little.
“Give me a projection of the rendezvousing craft, soon as you have a line of sight,” Flandry said. I’ll feel a lot cheerier after I’ve eyeballed her. He made himself lean back and wait.
The vision leaped into the screen. A man yelled. Rovian hissed.
That lean shape rushing down the last kilometers had never been for peaceful use. She was simply, deceptively not of Imperial manufacture. The armament was as complete as Asieneuve’s, and as smoothly integrated with the hull. Needle nose and rakish fins declared she was meant to traverse atmosphere more often than a corresponding Terra warship … as for example on her way to loot a town—
Barbarians, flashed in Flandry. From some wild country on some wild planet, where maybe a hundred years ago they were still warring with edged iron, only somebody found advantage — military, commercial — in teaching them about spaceflight, providing them with machines and a skeleton education … No wonder they haven’t responded to us. Probably not one aboard knows Anglic! “White flare,” he snapped. “ ‘Pax’ broadcast.” They must recognize the signals of peace. Hugh McCormac couldn’t have engaged them, as he doubtless had, unless they’d been in some contact with his civilization. The order was obeyed at once.
Energy stabbed blue-white out of the mercenary. Missiles followed.
Flandry heard a roar of abused metal. He struck the combat button. Asieneuve’s response was instant. And it was the ship’s own. At quarters this close, living flesh could not perceive what went on, let alone react fast enough. Her blaster cannon discharged. Her countermissiles soared to meet what had been sent against her. A second later, tubes opened to release her big birds. Nuclear detonations raged. Electromagnetic screens could ward off the sleet of ions, but not the heat radiation and X-rays, nor the thrust of energy lances and the assault of material torpedoes. Negagrav forces could slow the latter, but not stop them. Interceptors must do that, if they could.
The barbarian had the immense advantage of high speed and high altitude relative to the planet. She was the harder target to come near, her defenses the harder to penetrate if you did.
Nonetheless, Rovian’s work of years bore fruit. Abrupt flame seethed around the e
nemy. White-hot shrapnel fled from a place where armor plate had been. Twisted, crumpled, blackened, half melted, the rest of the ship whirled off on a cometary path around the world and back toward outer space.
But it was not possible that the Terran escape free. Tactical experts reckoned the life of a destroyer in this kind of fight as less than three minutes. Firebeams had seared and gouged through Asieneuve’s vitals. No warhead had made the direct hit that would have killed her absolutely; but three explosions were so close that the blast from their shaped charges tore into the hull, bellowing, burning, shattering machines like porcelain, throwing men about and ripping them like red rag dolls.
Flandry saw the bridge crack open. A shard of steel went through Rovian as a circular saw cuts a tree in twain. Blood sheeted, broke into a fog of droplets in the sudden weightlessness, volatilized in the dwindling pressure, and was gone except for spattered stains. Stunned, deafened, his own blood filling nose and mouth, Flandry managed to slam shut the faceplate and draw on the gloves he had forgotten about, before the last air shrieked through the hole.
Then there was a silence. Engines dead, the destroyer reached the maximum altitude permitted by the velocity she had had, and fell back toward the planet.
VIII
No boat remained spaceworthy. Where destruction was not total, crucial systems had been knocked out. Time was lacking to make repairs or cannibalize. One of the four craft offered a weak hope. Though its fusion generator was inoperative, its accumulators could energize the two drive cones that seemed usable; and the instruments and controls were undamaged. An aerodynamic landing might be possible. Every rated pilot was killed or wounded — but Flandry had flown combat aircraft before he transferred to the Intelligence Corps.
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