The Fleet05 Total War

by David Drake (ed)

  They were caught, of course—but their midshipman leader managed to put it down to a sophomoric prank that had gone too far. The officers let the rest of the crew off with severe discipline, but the leader was cashiered. He turned his back on the Navy and started trying to figure out how to manipulate those around him into making him rich.

  Georgie woke in the dark, with no light but the faint instruments on the control panel. He yanked the gag from his mouth, found the water bottle in the emergency rations—not easy, with handcuffs—took a couple of gulps, and remembered that he was marooned. He forced himself to cap the bottle and studied the control panel.

  His heart sank.

  When the middies had kicked him out of the ship, the lifeboat had dropped back into normal space. It was thirty light-years from the nearest sun.

  He started the beacon, but with almost no hope. He started a strict rationing program, so his air regenerator gave out before his food and water did, two weeks after he’d been drifting alone in the darkness.

  The loneliness, he was used to. His religious faith sustained him, until the end.

  But, as the excess carbon dioxide muffled his thoughts and he began the slide down into unconsciousness, the despair he couldn’t quite contain opened the channel through which all the resentment, bitterness, and years of repressed anger tore loose into a river of hatred—hatred against all things human, who had been too snobbish to befriend him, had sneered at him all his life, and who could not, when last came to last, even leave him alone. The religious part of him cried in dismay, but finally had to admit that burning, tearing hatred that boiled up in a lust for revenge against all of humanity.

  * * *

  A shrilling pierced Georgie’s ears. He winced and forced his eyes open. He was astounded to realize he was still alive.

  He was even more astounded to realize he was staring up into the face of a Khalian.

  The snout split in a grin—Georgie was flabbergasted; he hadn’t known the creatures could smile—and a furry paw came up to pat his cheek. Then, even more incredibly, the Khalian spoke—in Terran. “Do not be afraid. We have rescued you from your lifeboat—and only just in time, too. Minutes longer, and you would have been dead. You are safe now, and among friends.”

  Georgie could only stare.

  Then sleep claimed him again.

  When he woke a second time, the Khalian in attendance looked up, saw him, and shrilled something into a grille on the wall. Georgie was just trying to struggle up to a sitting position when the Khalian he’d seen before came in and pushed him gently back. “Please, not yet. Give your body time to recover.”

  Georgie sank back, realizing that the Khalian was much bigger than most of his kind, and wondering why he was wearing a bright, gaudy necktie. “But—why would you save me? I’m . . . not even your kind. . . .”

  Captain Goodheart grinned, all the more widely because that was the same question Throb had posed. “We cannot but admire the valor with which you strove to survive in that lifeboat, when all must have seemed hopeless. We Khalians understand valor. How long were you adrift? A week? Two?”

  “Two,” Georgie agreed.

  “And how did you come to be there? Shipwreck? Accident?”

  “Exile.” Georgie’s jaw firmed. “My own kind threw me out.”

  “Ahhhh.” Captain Goodheart lifted his head. “Then we are alike, you and we.”

  Georgie frowned and asked, “How can that be?”

  Goodheart began to explain.

  * * *

  “But, Captain! How can a human choose a Khalian name?”

  “In the same fashion that you and I have, Throb. And for much the same reason—he renounces his kind. He says that we are his kind, now.”

  * * *

  It made sense, from Georgie’s viewpoint. He was dead to the human race, and by their own doing. Sure, only a few spiteful young men had actually thrown him out—but the Navy itself hadn’t shown much concern, surely not enough to come looking for him. As to the rest of the race, why, they scarcely knew he existed, even though most of them were already benefiting from the improved hyperspace communications link he had invented.

  And the Khalians didn’t care what he looked like.

  In fact, they seemed very friendly, treating him like one of their own. Which he was; he would willingly have done anything Captain Goodheart asked now, up to and including suicide. After all, he owed his life to the captain; surely it was his to call in, whenever he chose. Besides, there seemed to be neither Khalian nor human here—only pirates, together. True, he heard one or two now and then joking about “the captain’s pet human,” but Throb and the other officers were quick to punish the offender.

  Georgie had never had a friend stick up for him before. The total lack of interest in athletics, though, they could not abide. They were, after all, medieval warriors, no matter what their technological skills. But Goodheart tutored Georgie himself, slowly and with immense patience and good cheer, gradually teaching him how to defend himself, then turning him over to Throb, who coached him with equal patience into learning to attack—until, after a year’s time, Georgie actually knew how to fight and was amazed to find he was physically fit. He had even learned to endure pain without flinching.

  And if, between sessions, Throb stormed and ranted to the captain about what a worthless being Georgie was—why, Georgie had no need to know it. And the captain didn’t mind. He knew Georgie’s true worth—at least, to himself and his raiders. And if, in his most secret heart of hearts, he thought of Georgie as a traitor, he was quick to counter it with the charitable thought that this genius of a human was really only a poor, gullible fool.

  * * *

  Sales had almost had him. That slimy pirate had almost been in his grasp! He felt it as failure, of course—but he had saved the merchantman, damaged the raider, and at least proved he knew how to find Goodheart. So the admiral gave Sales a dozen ships, and Sales stationed them at the points Goodheart was most likely to raid.

  Of course, the pirate never showed up—near any of Sales’s ships. He appeared in plenty of other places, gutted merchantmen and passenger liners by the score—but never where Sales expected him to be. He detected the cruisers in ambush, somehow, or maybe he had agents in the Fleet—now that they had Khalian allies, it was impossible to tell. Not that barring Weasels from the Fleet would have done any good—there had been traitors enough during the war, and Syndicate humans still didn’t look any different from Fleet humans.

  Would a Syndicate agent work for Captain Goodheart?

  Of course—since he was fouling up Terran-Khalian traffic. Any little bit that weakened the Fleet was in the Syndicate’s interest.

  Sales considered the possibility that Goodheart might be a Syndicate agent, and decided against it. The Weasel simply had too much hatred for humans.

  Then ships dropping out of hyperspace began to be boarded, light-years away from Khalia. There was either a research genius among the pirates, or the Syndicate saw a great deal of potential in Goodheart’s activities. They would have had to have spirited the gadget in to Goodheart by a secret agent, of course—but that wasn’t impossible.

  Nor was the possibility of accident, Sales reminded himself. If the pirate had captured a ship with such a weapon aboard, he wouldn’t have hesitated to use it—or duplicate it. His value system might have been medieval, but his technicians were modem.

  Sales increased the scale on his holotank exponentially; the three-AU sphere shrank to the size of a baseball. He began plotting Goodheart’s new strikes in red dots, then connecting them with very thin lines.

  Gradually, a lacy red sphere grew around Khalia, about twelve light-years out.

  He had to have a base, Sales knew—and it had to be inside that lacy sphere. It couldn’t be outside, or he’d have had double transit time to the ambush sites on the far side of Khalia fro
m wherever he’d set up housekeeping—and the reports of attacks came too frequently for that.

  He had to have a base—but where?

  * * *

  “There! It is perfect!”

  Throb frowned at the image on the viewscreen. “It is bleak and pitted, Captain. What can be perfect about a huge asteroid?”

  “What! Can you not see?” Goodheart spun about to Georgie. “Perhaps you, adopted one! Is not my asteroid perfect?”

  “Perfect, yes, as an asteroid,” Georgie whistled. His Khalian was horribly accented, but comprehensible. It gave his shipmates much material for broad jokes—but at least he could understand the punch lines. “For a pirates base, it is large enough to house the warriors of the cruiser, and a dozen ships more.”

  Throb and the other Khalians lifted their heads.

  “Some of those pits may be tunnel mouths,” Georgie went on, “and the rest could become so. Caverns could become ammunition dumps and hydroponic gardens. Then it is a small matter to close those mouths with walls or locks, and you have your base.”

  “You see?” Goodheart shrilled to his crew. “You see? Even the outlander sees what you could not!”

  Georgie blushed, feeling the resentment rise around him. “By your leave, Captain . . .”

  “Anything! To one who can see so clearly—anything. What would you say, Hemoglobin?”

  The crew relaxed a little, smiling, and Georgie was glad he had chosen a foolish scientist’s name—it let the Khalians feel comfortably superior, in the ways they believed really mattered. So like humans . . . “Good Captain, would it not be better to have a planet? A base that cannot run out of oxygen or water?”

  The ship became very quiet. Georgie twitched under the weight of their stares, but held his gaze even with the captain’s.

  “Why, it would be so,” Goodheart said evenly, “but how would you defend it?”

  “With the ships that form your current lair, the old merchant hulks, each mounted with many cannon and set in orbit.”

  “Well thought,” Goodheart purred, “but where would we find these cannon?”

  “On the small ships of the Fleet that we have never bothered with.”

  An appreciative whistle passed through the crew.

  Goodheart grinned. “Well thought, Globin! But to take off or land from such a world requires great stores of fuel! Where shall we find it?”

  Georgie hid his irritation at the blindness of people. “Our engines are fueled by hydrogen, great Captain, and water is hydrogen bonded to oxygen. We can loose it easily with small amounts of electricity. Choose a water world—with seas, to provide your hydrogen, and rivers, to turn the turbines that will make your electricity.”

  The surrounding whistle increased in shrillness, and even Goodheart seemed a little shaken as he laughed and said, “He does not dream small dreams, our Globin! But where are we to find such a world?”

  “In Virgo,” Globin answered, “not far from Spica.”

  And he gave them the coordinates. He did not tell them that this was his own world, the one that he had gleaned from the records of many, many exploration missions, sifted in the library in the long, lonely hours of college weekends. His own world, the one around which he had built his fantasy, his dream of escape from all the sarcastic people who belittled and insulted him, from the athletes who punched him around for fun, from the beautiful and condescending girls. He gave it to them without reluctance or hesitation, for he had found his escape—but with friends.

  It grew in the viewscreens, a jewel of a world, a semiprecious stone polished to an oblate spheroid, a turquoise banded with white—too small, and too mineral-poor, to have been of interest for colonization, and too far from Terra.

  But close enough to Khalia, and to the route from Khalia to Target.

  The ship landed, the machines sampled atmosphere and water for chemical oddities and microorganisms, and pronounced the planet safe—as the records had said it was.

  “Go and frolic!” Goodheart cried. “But stay close to the ship—we know not what monsters may lurk nearby!”

  The hatches opened, and the crew boiled out in a manic tide.

  “Some few must stay and guard, must they not?” Goodheart glanced from screen to screen. “You and I, Globin.”

  It warmed the human’s heart immensely. “Will you show me how to fight on land?”

  “Haw!” Goodheart swiped at the human. “He who had no love for the things of the body! Yes, Globin, I will fight you—without claws.” His eye gleamed as he watched the screens. “See them rejoice! Thank you for my world, Globin. “

  “You are welcome, Captain.” Globin would have given his hero anything.

  Goodheart’s eye was still on the screen. “What would you name it, Globin?”

  “Name?” Globin looked up, surprised. “Why, New Khalia, of course!”

  Goodheart shook his head. “The past is closed to us, Globin, and must be forgotten. Give me a new name, for a new world!”

  “Why,” said Globin, “Barataria, of course!”

  * * *

  Globin was sweating. He had always been uncomfortable among his own kind, but had never realized it so thoroughly before. He missed his friends, his Khalian pirate comrades—but the captain wanted it done, so Globin would do it.

  He stepped into the little town on Target, reminding himself that he could fight now, if he had to—but no one looked twice at him.

  He could scarcely believe it. He bucked his spirits up and walked on down the street into the depot, feeling as though all eyes were on him, but seeing not a single glance, no matter where he looked. Perhaps, after all, the little, funny-looking man in the gray ensemble wasn’t worth looking at.

  He bought a ticket for the hover to the capital, where he checked into a hotel room, then booked passage for Terra.

  * * *

  “He will betray you, Captain! He is among his own kind once again! He will tell the Fleet where we lair!”

  “He dares not.”

  “But he may be taken! He may be given drugs!”

  “Ah, Throb! Have you no confidence in our own forgers? We duplicated exactly that passport we took from a human—except in changing the name and the holo.”

  “Of course,” Throb grumped, “but I have no faith in the ‘merchant’ Globin goes to meet. He may be an agent of the fleet come to bait a trap!”

  “If so, we will lose our dear Globin—but the humans will not be much the wiser, for Globin knows nothing of us but the inside of our ship and the coordinates of Barataria. That, I would begrudge—and I daresay I would truly regret Globin’s passing. But at least, it would not be a Khalian whose death I mourned.”

  “We will steer our ship into a trap, when we come to take the weapons the merchant has promised you,” Throb grumbled.

  “Perhaps—so there will be only two pirates who go to load the consignment.” Goodheart took out the pasteboard with the human’s name on it—“Seth Adamson, Expediter.” The gall of the human, to press a business card on him in the midst of a raid! I can be of service to you, Captain. We can be of service to each other. Again, Goodheart squeezed the corner and saw the surface of the card change, displaying weapon after weapon, up to cannon and tanks, while a mouse’s voice touted their virtues. “Is there no treachery too great for these humans,” Goodheart murmured, “so long as it enriches themselves?”

  “Why should that be any less true of Globin, Captain?” Throb demanded.

  “Because, good Throb, we are his enrichment.” Goodheart flipped the card into the air and watched it spin slowly down.

  * * *

  As Globin went through the whole process, the meeting in the Terran restaurant, the discussion under the privacy screen, the haggling over price, and the listing of the order, a part of him sat aside and marveled. He would never have had the nerve to do su
ch a thing if Captain Goodheart had not asked it. He would never have had the confidence if Captain Goodheart and his crew had not given it to him.

  * * *

  The freighter dropped into normal space, shed velocity, and drifted, lights blinking in the prearranged signal, waiting. Goodheart’s crew scanned the vicinity, but saw no trace of ships.

  “Wait,” said Globin. “Let me try my new detector.”

  Goodheart whistled with respect. “How can you detect masses in hyperspace, Globin, when we are in normal space?”

  “By the interaction of interference waves between the two continua, Captain. . . . No, so far as I can tell, there are no other ships except the freighter, and us.”

  Goodheart pressed a patch. “Then go, Plasma and Saline!”

  The small courier shot out from the pirate ship. It docked at the great ship’s port, and the crew settled down for the long wait while the two Khalians inspected the cargo with a life-detector.

  Finally, a smaller ship shot away from the freighter. Sometime later, a twinkle in the distance announced its departure from normal space.

  “Terran yacht in hyperspace,” Globin announced.

  Goodheart hit the com patch. “Saline! Are you in possession of the ship?”

  “I am, Captain. The merchant pronounced himself satisfied with the bonus.”

  “Then guide the freighter toward the rendezvous asteroid and begin testing weapons.”

  “How long until we are sure the whole ship will not blow up on us, Captain?”