The Death of Wisdom

by Paul Brunette

  Bingo, Coeur saw Drop Kick send by sign language a few seconds later. One air raft, one hovercraft, five men, camouflage netting, laser uplink, and portable sensor— range two kilometers, And trouble—antitank missiles.

  "There goes the frontal assault," Whiz Bang said.

  "Go topside," Coeur instructed the gunner, "and ask if he sees any survivors."

  Whiz Bang complied, and Drop Kick answered the signed question succinctly.

  Negative—all armed—no civilians.

  "Understood," Coeur sent to Whiz Bang, through the fiber-optic link in the hatch. "Ask if he thinks we can take 'em."

  Tricky, Drop Kick sent back, have to toast missiles first.

  "Whiz Bang," Coeur said, "we're moving up closer. Tell them to stand by until we reach their position."

  Drop Kick's reply was an upturned thumb.

  Affirmative.

  "Navigation solution," Deep Six stated suddenly, "Target is a 400-ton craft closing from 120,000 kilometers at 4Gs, with a transient velocity of 720,000 kph."

  "Good God! That's way too fast to enter orbit."

  "Correction. Target is five bodies—she may have launched missiles,"

  "Oh, fikken," Gyro swore, signaling the engine room to prepare for evasive maneuvers and bringing the ship around, "All hands, battle stations! Sixer, retract passive array and plot best intercept course."

  "Array retracting—switching to full active. Solution is changing...the ship is veering off, and missiles are angling for the pole. If they are targeting the surface, they will impact within three minutes."

  "But there's nothing at the pole, except—"

  "—except Gypsy Station, our off world unfriendlies, and the captain's party."

  "Oh, hell—Snapshot, you there?"

  "Roger, Bridge."

  "Snapper, we've got trouble. In about 30 seconds we're going to plow into a whole mess of missiles. None—I repeat—none—can get through."

  "Understood, Bridge."

  "Gyro," Deep Six said, after Snapshot cut the communications link, "I doubt that even the very best gunner could intercept that many missiles."

  "I'm aware of that. Contact the skipper and advise her to take cover."

  "Cover may not be possible," Deep Six said, as he worked to re-establish contact with Coeur, "if those missiles are armed with nuclear warheads."

  "Just do it," Cyro said, gripping the pilot's joystick with her right hand, and digging into the left-hand arm rest with the other, "We don't have time to debate about it."

  At the edge of the plateau, Coeur saw for herself the camp that Drop Kick had described minutes before. Down at the bottom of a two-kilometer gorge, a party of five had erected effective camouflage netting over an air raft, light hovercraft, and tent, leaving only a laser uplink and a single portable EMS sensor out in the open.

  Another detail was even more troubling than these— one that Bonzo had caught after careful scrutiny of the camp. While Bonzo remained outside watching the camp, Drop Kick relayed the information to Coeur and Whiz Bang inside the tank.

  "It's a crunch gun," Drop Kick said, taking off his helmet so he could look down at Coeur more easily from bis turret seat. "Bonzo and I saw at least one of them in the camp."

  "A Guild antiarmor weapon," Coeur said, looking up at Drop Kick and Whiz Bang. "Or at least one distributed by them. That's good."

  "Good, sir? One of those would peel open battle dress like a can opener."

  "No, I don't mean good like that. I mean good, at least we can link these clowns to some outside entity."

  "Good point," Drop Kick said, "but we've still got trouble. If their portable EMS sensor is anywhere near as good as the type we use, they'll spot us the moment we move off this plateau."

  "That is a problem," Coeur agreed. "Think you could nail it with the LSW?"

  "The laser can opener?" Drop Kick said. "No, not in this dense an atmosphere."

  "How about this, then. You and Bonzo advance up the outer slopes of the valley, one north and one south, then wait for my signal. After I contact them—assuming they refuse to identify themselves and surrender—we'll hit 'em together from three sides."

  "Messy," the sergeant major said. "Bonzo and I would have to initiate our attack from beyond the effective range of our weapons."

  "On the other hand," Whiz Bang said, "we could just pop up and waste the lot of 'em with the cannon and machinegun."

  "A surprise attack?" Coeur asked.

  "Why not?" Whiz Bang said. "They don't deserve any mercy."

  "Your point is taken," Coeur said, "but we need them alive to question. At least one anyway."

  Drop Kick made a determined face.

  "All right, skipper. Bonzo and I'll flank the valley and wait."

  "God, give us luck," Coeur muttered.

  Sudden beeping of Coeur's communications panel halted Drop Kick, however, as he put his helmet back on and reached for the turret hatch.

  "Go ahead," Coeur said, thumbing the radio switch.

  "Captain, this is Deep Six. Listen closely; Four space combat missiles are converging on your approximate position. You must seek cover."

  In her chest, Coeur thought she felt her heart flip over.

  "What the hell? Are you certain?"

  "Affirmative," Gyro broke in. "We're maneuvering to intercept, but any that get through will be on your position inside three minutes."

  "Understood, Hornet."

  "Gotta go, skipper—missiles in sight. Hornet out."

  Without a moment's hesitation, Coeur looked back toward Drop Kick, pointed a finger toward Bonzo outside and then jerked her thumb backward.

  Get him inside!

  Drop Kick understood, throwing up the hatch and catching Bonzo's attention. Startled, Bonzo paused a moment wondering why the sergeant was gesturing for him to get inside urgently, then hastily abandoned his position to clamber back through the bow hull hatch, "What's up?" he asked.

  "We're getting the hell out of here," Coeur answered, activating the sled's contra-grav and gunning its thrusters before Bonzo and Drop Kick had even closed their hatches. "Drop Kick, what's the secondary blast radius of a 500-kiloton warhead?"

  "Five hundred kiloton—?" Bonzo blurted.

  "I don't know—maybe two klicks in an air burst,"

  "That's about the biggest warhead I've ever seen on a space missile," Coeur said, turning them around and vaulting them off the plateau with wrenchingly sudden acceleration. "Bonzo, time to the edge of the island—due west, best speed."

  "Uh—about two minutes," the sensor tech estimated. "Are we gonna be nuked?"

  "Don't know," Coeur answered. "Drop Kick, can this thing swim?"

  "It should, yeah. The power plant's self-contained." "Good," Coeur said, focusing her gaze on the ocean 20 kilometers distant and reactivating the radio link to Hornet.

  "Hornet, this is Red Sun. What's your status?"

  "Bad news, skipper! Two got past!"

  "Time to impact!" Coeur snapped. "Assumes ground burst!"

  "25 seconds," Deep Six said, with unnatural calm.

  "Understood," Coeur snapped. "Bonzo, time to the coast"

  'Twenty seconds...deep water, though, if you steer right a bit."

  "Roger, Bonzo. Hornet, we're going to be going off the air."

  "Why is that?" Deep Six asked.

  "Because we're hitting the water. Red Sun out."

  "Understood, Red Sun. Hornet—"

  Deep Six's sign-off was cut short, however, as the rocketing support sled hurtled over a sea cliff and into the sea with far more speed than was safe.

  And the sky behind blazed suddenly like the heart of a sun.

  "Detecting two detonations," V-Max said.

  "Good," Vega Zorn said, glancing a moment at her own sensor screens, then returning her attention to the flight controls of Vi Et Armis. "I wasn't counting on the freighter trying to shoot them down."

  "Maybe the ground party was discovered," Zom's navigator speculated. "If that
were the case, the Coalition ship might've been trying to cover its own agents." "I don't know if I like that Zorn said.

  "What are you saying? You just nuked five of our own people!"

  "No Zorn corrected her navigator. "Not our people— Guild agents. Our people are the crew of this ship, safely jumping out of the system,"

  "Skipper, sometimes I just don't know about you,"

  "I didn't come here to kill Coalition humans," Zorn said. "Just Hivers, That was the agreement."

  "All the same, the Guild won't be happy about its agents being lost."

  "It'll be happier," Zorn retorted, "than if they were grilled and spilled the location of their base."

  "True."

  "Money's all that matters to those people, V-Max. They won't lose any sleep over a few dead agents."

  "You know," V-Max said, "the way you talk, I'd almost say you weren't too sad about nuking those agents yourself."

  Zorn shot a direct and piercing stare at V-Max.

  "And I'd say you talk too much, mister. Time to jump point?"

  "Twenty minutes, skipper."

  "Good. The sooner we leave this place, the better."

  The first thing Coeur felt was pain—all through her shoulders, waist, and neck. Then she heard the voice of Bonzo, and suspected that she probably wasn't dead.

  "Skipper? Skipper, you ail right?"

  "Ooh..." Coeur moaned, opening her eyes and wincing. "What the hell happened?"

  "Short answer: We hit the water going about 100 kph. Concussion knocked you out and blew out all the drives,"

  That, Coeur suspected, explained why she was sitting in a cabin that was almost completely dark. The only light she saw was issuing from the dial of the medical diagnostic computer in Bonzo's hands and a light stick somewhere to her rear. Those indirect light sources gave the unhelmeted head of Bonzo a vaguely sinister appearance.

  "We were actually pretty lucky," Coeur heard Drop Kick say from above and behind her. "We actually kept a secure environment and floated back up to the surface,"

  "The up side to having light armor," Whiz Bang added.

  "Damn," Coeur said, closing her eyes again, "I feel like somebody smacked me in the head with a lead pipe. How long was I out?"

  "About 10 minutes," Bonzo said. "I'm no doctor, mind you, but this gadget says you're all right. Probably just sore from the safety restraints, and getting your head bonked against the seat frame."

  Hearing this, Coeur remembered the last words she'd had with Mercy, before they'd launched.

  "Skipper, maybe you'd better take my bottle dress."

  "No, I'd rather you kept It. I'll feel better leaving Physic and Scissor here with a fully armed trooper."

  "Drop Kick, the next time Mercy tries to talk me into wearing a suit of battle dress, remind me to agree with her."

  "Maybe you're just too used to flying things with inertia! compensation," the sergeant major said.

  "Maybe. Do we have contact with Hornet?"

  "Negative," Bonzo said, "No power to the radio. But even if we had power, the static from the bombs and the static from the island wouldn't help reception much."

  "Don't we have battery power for communications?" Coeur asked.

  "Check. But the impact must have jarred the power cables loose from the communications suite, so I'll have to go topside to reconnect it."

  "Right," Drop Kick said. "We've been waiting for you to wake up, so we could get you into a vac suit and safely open the top hatch. Given our cramped quarters, you'd pretty much have to put on a vac suit yourself,"

  "Ah," Coeur said. "Fallout."

  "Right," Bonzo said, passing Coeur's crumpled vac suit and helmet into her lap.

  Seeing that she'd have to release her seat restraints to get into the suit, Coeur balled her right hand into a fist and punched the release over her chest. When it released, the pain in her bruised shoulders was almost overwhelming.

  "You okay?"

  "Yeah, Bonzo," Coeur said, wincing. "No problem,"

  From the turret, Coeur then heard a comment from Whiz Bang to Drop Kick, probably louder than the gunner realized, "Tough old girl, isn't she?"

  "Affirmative, corporal. Tough as a boot in the head."

  That, Coeur suspected, passed for high praise In the RCMC, and she began to pull on the lower half of her vac suit, not feeling quite as sore as she had a moment before.

  Though they were 2000 kilometers from the nearest settlement, rescue was not long in coming. Hornet, having entered Ra's atmosphere and commenced a low- altitude search of Gypsy Island's coastline with active EMS and neural activity sensors, found the sled floating 500 meters off the coast just half an hour after it crashed Into the sea.

  Standing in the open turret hatch, Drop Kick was the first to see Hornet, and used the repaired laser communicator to signal that all hands were well—and the sled was probably wrecked. Given the latter fact, Gyro set Hornet in the water beside the stricken AfV and opened her starboard air lock. There Drop Kick spotted Crowbar, prudently attired in his own vac suit and holding a plasteel rope In his hands.

  "Ahoy there!" the engineer called to Drop Kick by suit- to-suit radio, across a distance of less than 20 meters. "Catch!"

  Drop Kick caught Crowbar's thrown line the first time, and secured it to the handholds on the side of the turret. With the other end secured to Hornet, that gave a safe lifeline for the three Marines and Coeur to use in returning to their ship.

  Outside the tank for the first time, and the first to leave the sled, Coeur paused a long moment before pulling herself over to Hornets air lock, staring at the pillar of cloud stabbing into the brilliant blue sky above the island.

  Given her weakened state, Coeur accepted Drop Kick's suggestion to dip a lanyard between the belt of her vac suit and the lifeline—a suggestion that may have saved her life. Dunked into the water several times as Hornet and the sled tossed on the waves near the island, Coeur nevertheless managed to pull herself into the starship's air lock.

  "Okay, skipper?" Crowbar asked, extending a hand to help her out of the water.

  "Just wet. Were there any survivors on the island?"

  "We don't think so. According to Sixer, ground zero was right on top of the place where the air raft was parked."

  "Any idea how big the blast was?"

  "About a megaton, between both missiles,"

  "Good Gaia."

  Ten minutes later, the three Marines were aboard the pitching freighter as well, and Crowbar released the line to the sled so he could close the outer air lock hatch. Drop Kick, the last off the sled, closed its top hatch so it would remain afloat—though he couldn't imagine how long it would be before they could conveniently return to recover it.

  "All personnel recovered," Crowbar sent to Gyro on the bridge.

  "Roger, Crowbar. We'll leave the tank here and return to orbit. Begin decontamination procedure."

  "So," Whiz Bang said, "what's the state of the art in decontamination?"

  "Oh, it's very modern," Crowbar replied, drawing a hose from a socket in the wall of the sealed air lock, "Soapy water."

  When Coeur finally returned to the bridge, her first task was making contact with Seabridge Nest again. Gyro, who'd taken the ship to a low orbit of 350 kilometers in the interim, explained that Physic was extremely concerned for all of their safety—particularly since Hornet had relayed the report that a megaton blast had rocked the heart of Gypsy Island—so Coeur made a point of contacting her first. As Deep Six established the link, Gyro sat behind Coeur at the rear of the bridge.

  "Red Sun! Thank God—we thought you were dead."

  "I did, too, for a while. What time is it there—0800?"

  "That's about right. It's been daylight a few hours."

  "I'd like to get that redistribution of Hivers under way as soon as possible. The governor said it would be all right, just as soon as his bases were alerted in the morning."

  'That's affirmative, Hornet. The first vehicles left before dawn." />
  "Good. How's the casualty situation?"

  "Red—it's awfui. You know those patients we saw in the medical lab yesterday? All of them are dead."

  "Good Lord." "It's a massacre, skipper, pure and simple. But Florence and I are still going to keep plugging away."

  "Do you think you'll need any supplies from the ship?"

  "No, we've got good facilities down here. Why do you ask?"

  "Because we're going to be staying in orbit for a few days. A couple of reasons for that—one, the ship's caked with radioactive dust, and I don't want to bother a ground crew scrubbing it clean while you've got more important things to worry about; and two, we want to keep an eye on the planet while Asp Alpha returns from her deep system patrol. Even though the ship that bombed Ra jumped out of the system, there might be other hostiles lurking around, and I'd like to have an orbital over watch for the immediate future."

  "Sounds fine. We'll just be here, working in the lab."

  'There's more, Physic. As soon as Asp Alpha arrives— about three days—I'd like to leave the system."

  "You mean to go home?"

  "No. I mean to go after whoever planted this virus."

  "Are you serious?" Physic asked. "How much did you learn in this morning's trip?"

  "Not much, but enough to suspect enemy powers are involved—not just your husband."

  "Sounds mighty thin. Space is pretty big."

  "I've noticed. But all the same, unless you can come through with a major discovery in the next three days, I'm willing to gamble that some coreward power is responsible—either the Guild, or equipped by the Guild."

  'Three days. Well, all right, I'm sure we'll know more then than we do now."

  "Roger, Seabridge Nest. Hornet out."

  Coeur turned so she could see both Deep Six and Gyro.

  "For what it's worth," she said, "you guys did good."

  "I don't know about that," Gyro said. "I almost got you killed, and I certainly got our only suspects in the investigation killed."

  "Gyro," Coeur said, "we're not in class anymore. All I can expect is you'll keep your head in a crisis. You did that pretty well,"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Now, a question. How were those bombs targeted? They obviously weren't following us, since we're still here."