by Glen Cook
The pursuit destroyers handled them, as well as couriers coming in.
One by one, Allied warships were destroyed or injured beyond any capacity to continue fighting.
At hour forty of an action originally projected to endure about one hundred hours the Defender Prime instelled Ulant. She expressed her fear that her command was insufficient to fulfill its mission. Effective losses: twenty-four percent of commitment. Current estimated active ratios: 70-1 in the enemy's favor.
Her figures did not take into account displacements. Her ships were concentrating on the more important and dangerous enemy vessels. A significant percentage of the remaining ships were lightly armed troop transports.
The centerward people stubbornly insisted on devoting strength to their assault on the planet.
The Defender's pessimism was not unwarranted. Her one-hundred-hour report showed the Allied fleet over fifty percent neutralized. All missile stores had been expended. Breakdowns were claiming the energy weapons. She had lost the use of the last of her Climbers. Her crews were drained by exhaustion.
She disengaged.
The enemy ignored her departure. They closed ranks and continued their disrupted planetary assault.
The Defender received instructions to stand off and observe. Confederation was sending reinforcements. Convoys bearing munitions and repair spares were in space.
In the end, after a month of brutal fighting, the last centerward warship was annihilated. The Allied fleet returned home, to lick its wounds and reflect on the savagery of the encounter. The Defender departed without contacting the planets she had saved. She wanted no replacement enemy fleet finding any information on the mysterious rescuers.
A great victory, by numbers. A huge slaughter. But a Pyrrhic affair. The carefully husbanded and prepared strength of the Allies had been decimated.
At least four more warfleets were moving out The Arm. Nothing, really, had been won, except the knowledge that such a monster force could be overcome. The victory did not fill the several high commands with joy.
It simply unleashed an even more grim foreboding of things to come.
Twenty-five: 3050-3052 AD
The Main Sequence
McClennon had been relating his memories for months. "Christ, Mouse. I'm sick of it. Why can't people be satisfied with the deposition tapes?"
Mouse moved a pawn, trying to initiate a trade. "Because it's so damned fascinating. It's like meeting somebody who can wiggle his ears. You want to see him do his trick. I can't help it either. I wish I could get inside your head. Man, remembering what the galaxy looked like before Old Sol was formed... "
McClennon refused the trade. He moved a knight to support his own pawn, glanced at the time. "Four hours. I'm beginning to dread it. They'll do the whole debriefing routine. For two years of mission. And they'll stay on me about my starfish memories till they know the whole physical history of the universe."
Mouse glanced at the clock too. Marathon would be dropping hyper soon, preparatory to decelerating in to Luna Command. "Debriefing doesn't excite me either. On the other hand, we'll get to see a lot of people we haven't seen for a long time. They'll all be changed."
"Maybe too much. Maybe we won't know them anymore." McClennon tried to focus on his friends in Luna Command. Max would be older. Greta would be a different animal. He might not recognize her now.
His thoughts kept fleeing to the memories. He found something new each time he checked them. They were intriguing, but he could not shed the disheartening parts.
There were not just five warfleets coming out The Arm. There were eighteen. And the galaxy was infested by not one, but four Globulars. He could not console himself with the starfish view that, in the long run, the enemy was never entirely successful. He did not care that this was their third scourging of the Milky Way, that life always survived, and that sometime between the grim passages, over the eons, new intelligence arose to contest the world-slayers' efforts. He could not be consoled by the knowledge that the enemy would not reach Confederation in his lifetime.
If there was a God, He was cruel. To have allowed the creation of such all-powerful, enduring monstrousness...
"Chub thought he was giving me a gift," McClennon said. "He knew I was curious about the past. And he knew his species had information we wanted. It was a gift of despair. It just showed us how hopeless the whole thing really is."
"I wouldn't say that. You're down too far."
"Why do you say that?"
"You told me the fish said they can be stopped. That it had been done before. The Stars' End people were working on it when the plague got them."
"They were working on us, Mouse. Trying to breed some kind of killer race of their own."
Mouse shrugged. "Hi, Tanni."
McClennon glanced up into laughing green eyes.
Mouse suggested, "Why don't you take my friend for a walk? He's down again."
The woman laughed. "That's what I had in mind. Or would you rather play chess, Tom?"
McClennon grinned. "Let's flip a coin... Ouch! No fair pinching."
"Come on, you. I've got to go on station in an hour." She undulated out of the wardroom.
"Wait till Max gets a look at that," Mouse said.
"Hey. She better not. Not ever. Hear? The fireworks would make the nova bomb look pitiful."
Mouse laughed. "I'm looking forward to it, old buddy. I can't forgive you for snagging that before I did."
"You can't win them all, Mouse." He hurried after Tanni Lowenthal, Stars' End, the mission, starfish, and centerward enemies forgotten.
He spent a month in the bowels of Old Earth's moon. The mind-butchers demolished his soul and on its foundations rebuilt to saner specifications. The first three weeks were horror incarnate. He was forced to face himself by mind mechanics who showed no more compassion than a Marine motor pool man for a recalcitrant personnel carrier.
They did not accept excuses. They did not permit stalling. And even while he slept they continued debriefing him, tapping the incredible store of memories given him by Chub. They were merciless.
And they were effectve.
His sojourn among the Seiners had mellowed his memories of the cold determination of his Navy compatriots. He had come in unprepared. He was less ready to fight the reconstruction.
It went more quickly than his doctors anticipated.
When he was past crisis they opened him up and repaired his ulcerated plumbing.
He was permitted visitors on day twenty-nine.
"Two at a time," his nurse protested. "Just two of you can go in."
"Disappear," Mouse told her.
"Yes sir. Captain. Sir."
Mouse was nearly trampled by two women. He dropped his portable chess set. Chessmen scattered across the floor. "Oh, damn!"
Greta plopped her behind on the edge of the bed, flung herself forward, hugged McClennon. "I'm glad you're back. I've been calling every day since I heard. They wouldn't let me come before."
And Max, the old girlfriend, "Christ, Walter. What the hell did they do to you? You look like death on a stick."
"That's why I love you, Max. You've always got a pleasant word." He squeezed Greta's hand. "How are you, honey? How's Academy?"
She started babbling. Max got on about some new stamps she had at her hobby shop. She had been saving them for him.
Mouse recovered his chessmen, deposited the set on the nightstand, took a chair. He crossed right leg over left, steepled his fingers before his mouth, and watched with a small smile.
McClennon turned his head, trying to hide his eyes.
Softly, Max said, "Walter. You're crying."
McClennon hid behind his hand. "Max... It was a rough one. A long one and a rough one. I was lost for a long time. I forgot... I forgot I had friends. I was alone out there."
"Mouse was there, wasn't he?"
"Mouse was there. Without him... He brought me through. Mouse. Come here." He took Storm's hand. "Thanks, Mouse. I mean
it. Let's don't let it get away again."
For a moment Storm stopped hiding behind the masks and poses. He nodded.
Greta resumed babbling. McClennon hugged her again. "I'm having trouble believing it. I thought you'd have forgotten me by now."
"How could I?"
"What am I? A sentimental fool who helped a pretty girl in trouble. We never knew each other."
She hugged him a third time. She whispered, "I knew you. You cared. That's what matters. When you were gone, your friends were always there to help." She buried her head in his shoulder and blubbered.
McClennon frowned a question at Max, who said, "Your Bureau took care of her like family. She's got to be the most pampered Midshipman in Academy."
"And you?"
Max shrugged. "I did what I could." She seemed embarrassed. "Well, how else was I going to keep track of you? I don't have connections."
"I'm glad you're going to be all right," Greta murmured. "Dad?"
More tears escaped McClennon's eyes.
"Did I do wrong? I didn't mean... "
"It's all right, honey. It's all right. I wasn't ready for that." He squeezed the wind out of her.
"Just get the hell out of my way, woman!" someone thundered in the passageway outside. Beckhart kicked the door open. "See if you can't find a bedpan over around Tycho Crater, eh? Go on. Get scarce."
The nurse beat her second retreat.
The Admiral surveyed the room.
McClennon stared at his professional paterfamilias.
"Looks like everything's under control," Beckhart observed.
"Place is drawing a crowd," McClennon said. "Must be my animal magnetism."
Beckhart smiled with one side of his mouth. "That's one crime they won't convict you of, son. Lay out that board, Mouse. I'll beat you a game while we wait for the females."
The game had hardly started, and McClennon had hardly gotten Greta's eyes dried. The door swung inward again. The nurse watched with a look of despair.
Tanni Lowenthal's face rippled with emotions. It selected an amused smile. "Tom. I thought I'd get here first. I guess you don't run as fast when you've got short legs." She crossed gazes with Max. The metallic scrang of ladies' rapiers meeting momentarily tortured the air. Then Max smiled and introduced herself. She and Tanni got past the rocky part in minutes.
Beckhart checked his watch. "Damn it, they're late. I'm going to have somebody's... "
The harried nurse stepped in. She carried a portable remote comm. "Call for you, Captain McClennon."
"Let me have that," the Admiral said. He seized the comm. "Jones? You find her? Got her on the line? All right. Thomas, your mother." He handed the comm to McClennon and returned to his game.
McClennon did not know what to do or say. He and his mother were estranged. She was Old Earther born and bred, and they had battled fiercely ever since his enlistment. Their last meeting, just before the Seiner mission, had ended bitterly.
"Mother?"
"Tommy? Is it really you?"
"Yes."
"I thought you'd been killed. When they came to the apartment... God. They say you were mixed up in this war business that's got the whole world turned upside down. The spikes are everywhere. They're grabbing people off the streets."
"I was in it a little." She had not changed. He hardly had a chance to get in a word of his own.
"They said you got married. Is she a nice girl?"
"It didn't work out. But yes, she was. You would have liked her." He checked his audience. Only the Admiral seemed to know his mother's half of the conversation.
They did not talk long. There had been little to say since he had gone his separate way. It was enough that, for all their differences, they could show one another they still cared.
McClennon handed the comm to the Admiral when he finished. "Thank you, sir."
"I owe you, Thomas. One mission and another, I put you through hell for four years. I won't apologize. You're the best. They demanded the best. But I can try to make it up a little now. I can try to show you that I didn't take it all away... " Beckhart seemed unable to say what he meant.
"Thank you, sir."
A baffled, resigned nurse opened the door. A youth in Midshipman blacks stepped in. "Uncle Tom?"
"Horst-Johann! Jesus, boy. I hardly recognize you. You're half a meter taller."
Jupp von Drachau's son joined the crowd. The boy had been closer to McClennon than his father since his parents had split. The boy was in his father's custody, and resented him for being absent so much. Thomas did not understand the reasoning behind the feeling. The boy saw Jupp more often than him... He thought of his mother and reflected that children applied a special logic to that species of adult called a parent.
He lay back on the bed and surveyed the gathering. Not a big circle, he thought, but all good friends. Surprisingly good friends, considering what he had been through the past few years... Friends whom, most of the time, he had not known he had.
He really had been way out there, lost in the wildernesses of his mind, hadn't he?
The universe now seemed bright and new, specially made for him. Even his starfish memories and his knowledge of the doom approaching from centerward could not take the gleam off.
Horst-Johann was first to leave, after a promise to visit again come the weekend. Then Mouse, who had to return to his own extended debriefing. Then Tanni, who had to get back for her watch aboard Marathon. She departed after a whispered promise that left him in no doubt that his masculinity had survived the hospital weeks.
Beckhart sat his chair silently and waited with the patience of a statue of Ramses.
A half hour after Tanni's departure, Max announced, "We have to leave, Walter. Greta has to get back for morning muster. You be good. And try not to collect any more little blondes."
McClennon grinned self-consciously. "You coming back?"
"For sure. I'm keeping an eye on you. You're not sneaking off on me again... It's been a long time, Walter."
Greta blushed.
"Thanks for coming. And Greta. Thank you. Come here." He hugged her, whispered, "I'm there when you need me."
"I know."
"It's important to have somebody who needs you."
"I know. I'll be back Saturday."
After the women left, Beckhart sat in silence for several minutes. McClennon finally asked, "Aren't they going to miss you at the office?"
"I'm not as indispensable as I thought, Thomas. I come back after six months in the field and find them caught up and not a problem in sight."
"What's on your mind?"
"I really said it before, about as well as I can. That I'm sorry I had to do what I did."
"Sorry, but you'd do it again."
"If something comes up. I don't think it will. Things are damned quiet now. The war has everybody's attention."
"Will we be able to do anything with Stars' End? Or what I learned from the starfish?"
"About the fish info I don't know. It does prove there's a hope. Stars' End... Our Seiner friends have gotten it straightened out. The place is almost a high-technology weapons museum. Some of the simpler systems will be available when next we engage."
"The gods are dead. Long live the gods," McClennon murmured.
"What?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all."
"A long time ago, in another life, I promised you a vacation. I sent you to Payne's Fleet instead. This time I'm sending you home. I've already sent word to Refuge to get your house ready. Take Mouse along."
"Mouse?"
"Mouse took care of you when it got tough. It's your turn. He's slipping. The Sangaree are gone. That hate kept him glued together since he was a kid."
"All right. I understand."
A mountain of paperwork was needed to close out the mission and put the Board of Inquiry into motion. The latter would be handled entirely by deposition. Thomas rolled through it. Nothing daunted him. The Psychs seemed to have rebuilt him better than orig
inal issue. He worked like a slave, and had energy left to flit from friend to friend evenings and weekends. He reminded himself of Mouse in days gone by, when Storm had been everywhere at once, pursuing a hundred interests and projects.
Mouse was the opposite. He could not finish anything.
Then it was all done. Marathon took them aboard and spaced for the quiet Cygnian world called Refuge, which was home for millions of retired civil servants and senior Service personnel.
But for Tanni Lowenthal the journey might have been depressing.
Going home. His showing for the mission some money, some stamps and coins for his collections, some new and old memories, and an armistice with himself. Somehow, it did not seem enough.
But he had found his friends, the people he had thought missing so long. So why was he disappointed?
There had been one soul-scar the Psychs had not been able to heal completely.
He could not forget Amy.
They had never really finished. They had not said the end. They had just gone separate ways.
He liked things wrapped up neatly.
Time passed. Cygnian summer faded into autumn. Fall segued into winter. Mouse and McClennon played chess, and waited, growing closer, till Mouse revealed the whole story of his past, of the origins of his hatred for the Sangaree. Gently, McClennon kept his friend's spirit from sliding away completely. Gently, he began to bring Mouse back.
The report of the Board of Inquiry, delayed repeatedly, drew no closer.
From Cygnus it did not seem there was a war. Luna Command had expanded its forces six-fold, and had begun building new weapons and ships, but otherwise Confederation seemed to be going on as before.
Tanni visited occasionally. Max and Greta kept in touch.
And yet...
Some nights, when the dark winter skies were terribly clear, McClennon would put aside his stamp collection, coins, or the novel he had begun writing, and would go out on the terrace. Shivering, he would stare up at stars burning palely in unearthly constellations and picture huge ships like flying iron jungles. He would think of swarms of gold dragons, and a million-year-old beast he had taught to tell a joke.
He never loved her more than he did now that she was lost forever. Mouse had told him... She might use his name to frighten his own child. She would not hate him now. She would understand. But there would be appearances to be maintained, and social winds with which to sail...