by David Drake
Then the Merchantman spat its full charge, a column of red–but where it lanced, there was nothing but empty space. Hemo was gone.
“He cannot jump into hyperspace!” Throb realized what had happened. “Not for such a short distance! It is so hazardous as to be fatal!”
But Hemo’s ship had already appeared at the edge of the screen, behind the Merchantman but in range. “Fire all!” Hemo screamed, and ruby light lanced out, seemingly from every inch of the pirate’s hull, the yellow streaks of torpedoes among them. The Merchant turned ruddy, then orange, as his screens overloaded. Two feeble beams reached out toward the pirate, but winked out as, inside the yellow bubble, the Merchantman began to turn, to bring a broadside to bear on the pirate, but the globe of overloaded shield was growing lighter and lighter, hotter and hotter, almost white . . .
White, pure white, expanding, fountaining, an incredible skyrocket, silent in the endless night.
Then it faded, and Hemo’s ship alone drifted in the screen.
Its crew cheered. They howled. They sang.
Hemo screamed with triumph, as loudly as any of them. Then he spun to the screen, eyes alight, caroling, “Thank you, Globin! I never thought to say it to you–but, thank you! My rockets were disabled, but not my FTL drive! I jumped half a degree toward the Merchantman, and half a degree to the side, half a degree up–half a degree, cubed! I might have died, but I was doomed if I did not! Yet I lived, we all lived–and he is deadl You are truly one of us, truly of the captain’s men! You are a noble pirate indeed!”
“Not so noble as yourself,” Globin returned, eyes aglow. “Your valor humbles me, Hemo. We cannot lose you. Endure, till we have sent a man to bring you home!”
“I shall endure! For my captain is avenged!”
“Yes, we have drunk of revenge.” Throb’s paw was firm on Globin’s shoulder. “Is the taste sweet, Globin my friend? Does it satisfy your thirst?”
“It is a beginning,” Globin answered.
Articles of War
Article II
Every Flag Officer, Captain, Commander, or Officer commanding subjectto this Act who upon Signal of Battle, or on Sight of a Ship of an Enemywhich it may be his duty to engage, shall not,
(1) Use his utmost Exertion to bring his ship into Action;
(2) Or shall not during such an Action, in his own person and according to his Rank, encourage his officers and Men to fight courageously;
(3) Or shall surrender his Ship to the Enemy when capable of making a successful defence, or who in Time of Action shall improperly withdraw from the Fight, shall, if he has acted traitorously, suffer Death; if he acted from Cowardice shall suffer Death, or such other Punishment as is herein-after mentioned; if he has acted from Negligence, or through other Default; he shall be dismissed ... without Disgrace, or shall suffer such other Punishment as is herein-after mentioned.
Heroes are an asset. It is one of the ironies of war that the greatest heroes are often too valuable to risk in combat. A modern war needs heroes, live ones, who can spread the word to the taxpayers about the good work being done with their credits. Even more than atrocities, heroes inspire the civilians to produce, donate, and even enlist.
Roj and Minerva were heroes. They had survived in situations where they should have been destroyed. They had opened the way onto Target by destroying its protective net of robot satellites. Most importantly, they had blundered into the combined Family fleets and survived. Therefore they suffered the traditional fate of heroes. During their thirty-fifth omni interview in two weeks Roj began to giggle. Even more surprisingly Minerva, linked from orbit by a narrow tachyon circuit, actually began encouraging his mirth with a string of highly esoteric puns. Having handled heroes before, the Fleet propaganda experts knew that it was time to get them off the air and into some safe, isolated position.
In a moment of uncharacteristic shortsightedness, Minerva agreed to do a calculation for Roj. At the top speed that the functional, if almost obsolete, dreadnought they now flew could fly, the Fleet Academy on Port was exactly two months, four days, five hours flying time from the nearest point any Syndicate ship had ever been seen. Roj often quoted this figure after spending several hours numbing his frustration with ethanol. They were in about as safe a location as was possible.
Unfortunately, in a modern war no place is really safe.
“SPEEDBIRD one-niner to Dock Control; requesting release clearance.”
“Control to One-Niner, you are cleared for launch at this time.”
“One-Niner confirms release. Switching to Launch Control, frequency two-zero-zero-decimal-three-zero. Speedbird One-Niner out.”
“Have a nice one, Roj, Minerva. Dock Control out.”
“One-Niner out. All right. Retract docking booms.”
“Docking booms unlatched, retracting ... Docking booms secured.”
“Release umbilicals.”
“Release. Ship is floating free.”
“Mr. Peason?”
“Sir?”
“You have control. Take her out. On manual.”
“Manual? Oh, shi—I mean, yes, sir. I have control, sir. Setting maneuvering thrusters to station-keeping.”
“Mr. Peason?”
“Sir?”
“If the maneuvering thrusters are at station-keeping, why are my repeater screens showing a three-degree yaw to port?”
“Sir?”
“Correct it, mister.”
“Sir!”
“Mr. Peason?”
“Sir?”
“I said correct, not overcorrect. My screens now show a seven-degree yaw to starboard. Tell me, Mr. Peason, why is the docking bay getting closer?”
“Warning, proximity alert, warning, proximity alert!”
“Oh, bugger. ... Thrusters ahead one-third.”
“No, asshole! Not yet . . .!”
“Warning, collision alert, impact imminent! Warning, collision alert!”
Olympus-class brainship RM-14376 hit one of the main support pylons on the orbital dock facility at a glancing, forty-degree angle. It was enough. Her hull began to buckle, and the brainship’s twelve thousand tons of mass was still accelerating at four G right up to the instant that her main drive went critical. The frightful screech emitted by her onboard warning systems cut through even the rending sound of the collision, but by then it was far too late. Her main screen flared white in the instant before a rolling fireball of thermonuclear detonation consumed the ship, the dock, and everything else for six cubic kilometers of space around Port.
Senior Captain Roj Malin stared at the blank, sputtering repeater and then clenched his fists, hearing only the drumming of blood in his ears as he tried to put what he had just seen into some sort of perspective. There were a great many things that he might have said, and a great many others that he might have wanted to say, but knew he should not. Opening his mouth without due consideration had gotten Roj in trouble before, and would probably get him in trouble again when it was reported back. Even so–he drew a deep breath as he swiveled his seat around and stood up–there were some things that had to be said, and right now he was in just the mood to say them.
“Goddammit! If you think that’s the way to handle a brainship, mister, then you’ve got another think coming! I’ve seen better navigation from a crew of stoned-out Weasels! Suffering Christ on a crutch, how many times do you need to be told, you set the maneuvering thrusters first and stabilize the bloody things before you touch anything else! You may have broken this ship and you may have broken this docking facility and you may have broken your mother’s heart, but by God you’ll not break mine! Reset the simulator, Mr. Peason, and then the entire student group will do it again for your benefit, and you’ll keep doing it until you get it right, and if you make just one more mistake like the last one, I’m gonna climb up the front of your tunic and I’m gonna pry your nostrils open with this datapad and I’m gonna crawl inside your pointy little head and I’m gonna kick some fuckin’ sense into it!”
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He glowered at the row of shocked baby faces staring at him from above the collars of their squeaky-clean new uniforms, and guessed from the expressions that at least some of his annoyance was finally sinking into whatever the Fleet Academy was passing as good brain material these days.
“Mr. Gillibrand,” snapped Roj, “you have the conn. Repeat the exercise and remember this, I don’t care if your father is a sodding general, you’re in my class, not his! Carry on.”
He flopped back into his command chair and kicked it back around to face the simulator repeaters, breathing hard. Though neither his students nor the rest of the Academy staff would have believed it for a minute, Roj really didn’t like having to bawl his classes out for their mistakes; but there were times when only full-throated abuse could dispel the aura of hero worship that hung around the simulator tank and got in the way of education. Rank, so the saying went, hath its privileges. Roj hadn’t seen any sign of it being true, either in his case or in Minerva’s. Between the pair of them, they had picked up every decoration, commendation, and award that the Fleet could offer to a brain-brawn team, but not a single one of those awards had been enough to keep them on anything approaching active duty. “Too valuable,” one staff officer had said. “Irreplaceable knowledge and experience,” said another. “Invaluable assistance during training,” from a third.
Even before their last mission Roj and Minerva had seen the way the wind was blowing. The Academy’s principal combat simulator system had been outdated by the Khalian war, and now the tutors were pressing for something not only more up-to-date, but more realistic as well. Their choice had been live pilots, those who had survived a full tour of duty against the Weasels and who, for the most part, were only too glad to be pulled from front-line duty to confront nothing more dangerous than a class of inexperienced students.
In Roj Malin’s view, there was definitely nothing more dangerous than a class of inexperienced students, especially those who couldn’t see what they were studying because of the stars in their eyes through having an accredited Hero as a tutor, and since he and Minerva had taken up their duties at the Academy; his doubts had been confirmed a dozen times. And now they had just been confirmed all over again. At least where the Khalia had been concerned, he had known that they were actively trying to kill him. The students weren’t so safely predictable.
Gillibrand, whose father was indeed a general; approached the command console at first as though it was made of eggshells and broken glass, but Roj had already seen him twiddling his fingers in the air like a virtuoso concert pianist, and had a sneaking suspicion that the simulator’s reset button was going to be needed again. And again. And again. They should never have put a loud pedal on that thing.
“How much more of this have I got to put up with?” said a plaintive voice in his secure-circuit earpiece. “This class hasn’t gotten beyond orbit yet and already I’m getting fed up with being crashed into things.”
Oh, boy, thought Roj. Now Minerva’s pennyworth as well, The brain-core’s voder was capable of many sensitive nuances of speech, and right now it was managing to sound bored, irritated, put upon, and generally insulted all at once.
“Cheer up,” said Roj. “It’s only a model.”
“Maybe. It feels more like a wax doll with pins stuck in it. Why doesn’t the simulator tank make up a model of you and let them wreck it just for a change?”
“Wouldn’t look the same at all.”
“Of course not. I’ve seen the ads on the omni. For a bigger bang, blow up a brainship.” Minerva uttered an irritable little snort that more usually heralded incoming fire. “So when do we rotate classes and get some capable students for a change? Next week? Next semester? Next year?”
“Take it up with Colonel Fotherington-Thomas,” said Roj, a little weary with the argument that had been going on ever since they were seconded to the Combat Training Faculty of the Academy. “If anybody knows stuff like that, it ought to be the principal of the Staff College.”
“Ought to, maybe. But he won’t tell me anything!”
“I don’t know that—Wait one.” Roj paused, staring narrowly at the repeater screen while Ensign Gillibrand actually succeeded in maneuvering the computer-generated brain ship clear of drydock without hitting anything. He smiled hastily and punched in a couple of variables so that at some stage in the next five minutes, Gillibrand would end up confronted by a pukon-class dreadnought already well inside orbital traffic separation. There were a great many incorrect methods of handling a proximity alert—as recently demonstrated by Ensign Timothy Peason—and three that were correct and by the book. Roj was curious to see which Gillibrand would choose.
“Sorry, Minerva. You were saying?”
“The Honorable Colonel Basil Fotherington-Thomas would rather talk to the clouds or the sky than listen to what I have to say.”
“Because he doesn’t want to lose us.”
“Because his views on what he terms artificial intelligence are, ah, somewhat archaic.”
“Then he should get on nicely with this class.”
“Very amusing.”
Roj shook his head and glanced at the lens from which Minerva was watching him. “Too easy, Minerva. Baz F-T’s no bigot. For one thing, he hasn’t got the brains for it.”
“And for another ... ?”
“It’s our old friends in Research and Development again. We may not be on active duty, but we’re still testing things for them. That new maths coprocessor for one.” There was a pause of several seconds, while both considered the problem.
“SIGISMUND? I know it—but not what the acronym stands for,” Roj asked.
“Neither do I, Roj dear. As I told you, nobody in this damned faculty tells me anything.”
“Including what’s happening elsewhere?”
“Oh, now that they told me. ‘Don‘t mention the war,’ they said. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.”
“Yeah. You don’t want to annoy the Weasels, not now that they’re on our side.”
“That,” said Minerva, weighing her words carefully, “is a matter of opinion. There are times when I wonder if Project Firefrost wasn’t a better idea than we thought at the time.”
“Unternehmung Endlosung,” said Roj, and there was a vicious edge to his voice. “No. It was never a good idea. And I’m glad it didn’t work. We weren’t dealing with Weasel civilians, but with their military–and the ones who supplied them.”
“Warning, proximity alert!” yelled the verbal alarms, beginning to whoop as their simulator-slaved sensors were advised of a dreadnought closing fast. Roj gave his full attention to the repeater screens as he watched what happened next. Gillibrand hammered desperately at the manual-control console like an inebriated musician trying to play “Fairy Bells,” so that the simulator cage lurched sideways and its screen image showed the million-ton mass of the pukon-class battlewagon slipping out of their path and out of danger.
“Not bad,” said Minerva in Roj’s ear. “He shows definite promise.”
“Except that I’ve never been quite sure what he’s promising,” said Roj with a smile. “Intelligence–artificial, military, or otherwise–has never played a great part in the Gillibrand family.”
“Or any family with a long military background,” returned Minerva with a smile that was no less poison-sweet for being heard and not seen. “Like the Malins, the Martins, and the Moleswor—”
“Warning, general alert,” said the bulkhead speaker, making Roj jump in his seat. Normally the damned thing said nothing unless he had programmed it for the students’ benefit, but right now it was blaring a klaxon warning as though the sky was about to fall in on their heads. And perhaps it was. The computer-generated signal choked off with a sound like a cat drinking treacle through a straw, and was replaced by the voice of Colonel Basil Fotherington-Thomas. Which was, if anything, worse.
“Staff and students of the Fleet Academy!” he said. “Perimeter sensors have picked up a conta
ct that refuses all identification hails. We must therefore assume that this is an enemy sneak attack. It will enter weapon range in twenty-plus minutes. I am calling battle stations.” (Stations-stations-stations, said the PA system’s internal reverb.)
Roj blinked once, twice, glanced at his students–who were acting with commendable restraint under the circumstances, Gillibrand having even remembered to flip the simulator over to standby hold–and then stared at Minerva’s primary lens as he would have looked someone more human in the eye. “An enemy sneak attack I can accept,” he said. “But which enemy?”
That, right now, was the problem. The Khalian Weasels had not only sued for peace and thrown themselves on the mercy of the Alliance and its Fleet, their High Council had gone further and declared that any foe strong enough to defeat them was strong enough to deserve their active support. So there were Weasel ships–at least, those who hadn’t turned privateer rather than surrender–flying in formation with those of the Fleet nowaday’s, despite the misgivings of old campaigners like Roj and Minerva.
(And those misgivings might well have been another reason why they were pulled out of the first line of battle. A certain lack of selectivity in someone’s fire-control could put the new Armistice alliance back to the beginning again. Something nobody wanted, not on either side. Not with the Syndicate to deal with.)
Minerva had been the first of any Fleet ship to encounter the Syndicate, and had it not been for another R&D experiment–fitting a scoutship’s brain-core into the hull of a light cruiser–neither she nor Roj would ever have escaped with their information. And even despite the urgency of their mission, blowing a metallic planetoid apart to provide screening chaff was considered just a touch excessive…
“What say,” Roj was smiling as he spoke, “we go to standby all by ourselves, just as a precaution?”
The irises deep within Minerva’s primary lens contracted, and then expanded again. That was one reason why she had insisted that all her brainship manifestations have the primitive iris shutters, rather than a phototropic filter. So that she could wink. “Why not?” she said. “If it does nothing else, it should give the kids a thrill. And break the monotony of this goddamn training routine!”