by Moshe Ben-Or
It had to be the gift from Prince Khharrq.
The Fleet would fight the great decisive battle at Hadassah, all who’d been there would cover themselves with everlasting glory, and Khurrsayn al-Mrrlikikh would be sitting at Loki scanning for mines and drones and nonexistent ghosts in the darkness.
No glory for him! All over a few hundred kilos of prime mutton and four cases of fine estate valerian!
A pox on that lowborn son of a whore! When he found the spy on his staff, he would personally cut the bastard’s balls off, before he threw him live into the waste processor!
The admiral bit into another hunk of meat as if it was Sayf al-Masrikh’s jugular. The lemongrass-flavored blood trickled pleasantly down his throat. It was, he reflected, a truly fine cut of mutton. He would have to remember to complement the chef.
There was a snarl, and screaming outside. The stateroom hatch burst open.
“Let go of me, you ape!” yelled the boy, literally tripping over his own feet and falling in through the opening.
He looked all of eighteen, going on ten, thought Khurrsayn al-Mrrlikikh, rising from his chair. A petty officer fourth class. Intelligence section, from his ship suit. He was bleeding from the cheek, where Corporal Makhmad’s claws had barely missed an eye, and from a tattered ear. His ship suit was stained with blood and tight about his rib cage. Plenty of torn-out fur and clawmarks under there, no doubt. Enough to need a compression bandage. Maybe a cracked rib, too. Makhmad wasn’t the type to let a trespasser by lightly. It was frankly amazing the boy had managed to get past at all. Surprise, no doubt. The corporal would never expect an actual physical assault from an unarmed, pencil-necked geek less than half his size.
“Saydikh!” screamed the boy, “Saydikh, you must listen to me! They wouldn’t let me through, saydikh! It’s vital! We’re under attack, saydikh! We’re under attack!”
“He’s gone mad, saydikh!” came a voice from the hatchway. “Please, forgive him! He’s my best all-source analyst! He is not himself!”
A terrified intelligence ensign was rushing through the door, a fraction of a second behind the enraged marine corporal who guarded the admiral’s stateroom.
Makhmad had sunk all ten claws into the poor boy’s collar and back, heedless of the flesh beneath, getting ready to lift him right off the deck and pitch him back out the hatch by main force. It was a miracle he still hadn’t drawn his service weapon. Then again, he didn’t need to. He was a four-time regional gold medalist in hand-to-hand combat. The ensign’s best all-source analyst was about to be torn limb from limb. Thirty seconds from now, they would need a mop and a bucket to clean him off the deck.
“No!” screamed the petty officer, scrambling claws closing around a table leg, “Please, saydikh, hear me out!”
“Let him go, corporal,” frowned the admiral.
The boy was either truly mad, thought the commander of Picket 37, or he genuinely believed that the task force was in danger. Sayf al-Masrikh would’ve had his head off by now. But he was not Sayf al-Masrikh. There was always time to chop off a head.
“Thank you, saydikh!” gushed the analyst, scrambling to his feet and pulling out a battered palmtop. “I have proof!”
A blurry black and white 2-D image appeared above his hand. A tiny, meaningless blob. Shades of white and gray on a mostly-black field. Perhaps three dozen pixels, all told.
“The Fahm transmitted this just before the ansible went dead, saydikh. It was the last image in the optical stream. This came from the Fahm’s own sensors, not from one of the detachment’s corvettes.”
The admiral’s frown deepened. He felt his tail beginning to twitch in annoyance.
“It’s a ship, saydikh! Here,” the analyst pointed to an unidentifiable bulge on the shapeless blob, “And here,” another blurry bulge.
“These are torch radiators, saydikh, looking almost head-on.” The analyst’s claws flew around the image as he traced red lines all over the blob. “The torch mast is mostly hidden by the hull, but there’s a little bit of it here. And here, this, right next to the hull, this has to be a torpedo. It’s a torpedo bomber, saydikh! An enemy torpedo bomber!”
“It’s a meaningless blob!” countered the appalled ensign. “An artifact of image processing and random noise produced when the ansibles disentangled, nothing more! There are no astronomical bodies out there. There is nothing to form a jump zone. Nothing at all! There can be no carrier anywhere on that vector, unless it came from right here in the inner system! There can be no torpedo bombers, you madman, without a carrier!”
“The Zulfiqar is the closest vessel to the vector that connects us to the Fahm’s last reported position, saydikh” panted the boy. “Here are the gravitic disturbance readings from the Zulfiqar’s helm, beginning at 14:11:32.”
A bunch of incomprehensible squiggly lines floated in the air above his hand.
“Here,” said the analyst, circling a series of bumps like any other bump. “And here, and here! These are drive signatures, saydikh. Small craft drive signatures. If the bombers are advancing along the vector that connects us to the imagery detachment, then these signatures are an incoming torpedo strike! They were a hundred and twenty-two light-minutes out, twenty-four minutes ago! We only have six minutes, saydikh! Only six minutes left!”
“It’s noise!” screamed the ensign, clearly at wits’ end. “Noise from old wakes, nothing more! Ships’ pinnaces and cargo shuttles and tugs and Allakh only knows what else! Yes, there are torpedo bomber drives in there! Yes, there are fighter drives in there! Of course they’re there! Why wouldn’t they be?!
This is the best jump point between Haven and Hadassah! A high-traffic system on a high-traffic route! You can’t tell where these signals came from or what generated them, or when! It’s an omnidirectional nav detector reading! You can’t tell anything from this mash! Those signals could be years old! Or centuries! They could be from the next system over! They could be from the Great Highway! They could be from the Time of Wonders, or from the Great Catastrophe! Your “incoming torpedo bombers” don’t exist! There’s nothing out on that vector! There can be nothing there!”
“I don’t know how, but it’s there!” answered the analyst. “Maybe they PGS jumped it out there!”
“Oh, yeah,” replied the ensign sarcastically, “eight months ago they looked into their crystal ball and saw us sitting out here and sent a carrier to attack us! It’s been doing flank speed for eight months straight to outrace its own wake! They saw us attacking Haven four months before the Arm of the Ahmirr gave the order, but all they did was send a single carrier to Loki by PGS jump, just so you could find it right now!
“You need a doctor, you lunatic! You need to see the psychiatrist, not the admiral!”
Khurrsayn al-Mrrlikikh’s ears flattened in consternation. His tail was beating half-circles. This was the “proof” to interrupt his lunch with? These random squiggles and a meaningless, blurry blob?
“Kill me, saydikh!” cried the petty officer, falling to his knees. “Strike off my head if I am wrong, but order the task force to action stations!”
The ensign opened his mouth to scream something else.
“Silence,” said the admiral mildly, stilling his twitching tail with an effort of will.
The cardinal virtue of a hunter, he reminded himself, is patience. Patience. If the boy was simply mad, a bit of effort didn’t matter. But if he wasn’t…
The breathless little-kitten delivery didn’t help his credibility one bit, but that was to be expected from his rank and branch. His kind simply couldn’t look and act like Corporal Muscles over by the hatch, nor were they expected to. They were chosen for their brains, not their martial qualities.
Why did the Mace of Battle choose to reinforce this picket so heavily all of a sudden? Why did he send this specific rear admiral? Was it really just jealousy? Or did he suspect something? But if he suspected, why no instructions? Or was it that the Mace of Battle didn’t know what to suspect? He would
never admit not knowing...
The best all-source analyst in the ensign’s section was precisely the kind of clever dork to figure out an enemy trick from nothing but a blurry blob and a few squiggly lines. Say what you will about that arrogant lowborn lout Sayf al-Masrikh, but he was a damned good admiral. A great admiral, sad to say. And he’d suspected. Therefore, however unlikely, however impossible…
How many lives had the enemy’s trickery cost the Ahmirrat already? Had he not seen enough by now to learn a warrior’s healthy respect for these creatures?
These were the Jews he faced! Sons of apes and pigs, treacherous masters of black magic, murderers of prophets, servants of Shaitan from time immemorial, enemies of Allakh and of the Mumineen for all time! He confronted the Jews, and their evil servants!
Did they not already rush forward to their deaths in their tens of thousands, bearing three-hundred-megaton warheads against the ships of the Faithful? Did they not already summon armies of countless millions from beneath the solid ice of a half-dead world? Did they not conjure whole fleets into existence, again and again? Did they not fight like an army of jinn and ifrit? Did they not unleash clever, deadly machines and weapons of horror the likes of which had not been seen since the Great Catastrophe? Did he not wonder, every day, what new trick they would come up with to stave off their inevitable defeat at the hands of the mighty fleets and armies of Allakh?
And now that the victory of the pure mujahideen was near enough to be tasted in the air, were they not desperate? Would they not unleash their mightiest conjuring? Would they not summon even Shaitan Himself? If anyone could cause a carrier to appear out of nowhere, in empty, flat space where no carrier had any right to be, were it not the dark magicians besieged upon the surface of Haven? Were it not the vile masters of the Jews’ Satanic Kabbalah?
“AI,” continued the commander of Picket 37, “get me the Zulfiqar on the ansible.”
“Lieutenant Commander Khimad al-Bakrikh speaking,” came a perplexed yet alarmed voice from somewhere near the ceiling. A personnel file photograph appeared on the wall. “What is your pleasure, saydikh?”
Mentally reeling off anything and everything he and his light cruiser might have done wrong over the past month and a half, no doubt, thought the commander of Picket 37. Rear admirals didn’t exactly call him every day.
“Lieutenant commander, I want an interferometry and wake detection search of...”
“19263+4981 from 113 to 136, cone 2100,” whispered the petty officer.
“19263+4981 from 113 to 136, cone 2100. You are looking for hostile small craft. Right this instant. Drop everything else.”
“At once, saydikh!” replied Khimad al-Bakrikh as his admiral cut the connection.
“If you are wrong,” continued Khurrsayn al-Mrrlikikh in the exact same casual tone, glancing at the petty officer, “I will strike off your head.”
“I am not wrong, saydikh,” whispered the analyst from down on the floor. “I beg Allakh that I be wrong, but I am not.” The wind seemed to have gone right out of him with the words. He was almost sprawling.
The boy was sick, thought the admiral. Simply sick. Unhinged. There was no point in striking off his head. There was no malice in him. He belonged in sickbay, not in the brig.
An alert siren echoed off the walls, loud enough to wake a corpse. The holographic system globe of a top-priority COP update unfolded itself in the air above the admiral’s table. The AI had tagged it as meeting priority intelligence requirements One, Two, Three and Four. Immediate notification criteria had been met. Immediate action was required.
The duty commodore appeared on the wall a split-second later. The task force battle command center had emergency barge-in authority.
“Saydikh...” began the commodore.
“ACTION STATIONS!” roared the admiral, staring in horror at the mess of blue icons and their projected movement cone. “TASK FORCE TO ACTION STATIONS!!! PREPARE TO REPEL TORPEDO ATTACK!!!”
* * *
Jean Leroy watched the COP display. Only moments remained to the release points. The Zin had learned something, somehow. They were reeling in hull radiators and venting compartments. The masts were staying out.
The enemy picket was clearing for action. They knew it was a torpedo strike. But it was simply too late. And they knew that, too.
He could see the desperation in the sudden stagger of their jump patterns away from his approach vector, in the way they bunched together for mutual support, in the airlocks thrown open to belch gouts of precious air out into the vacuum.
They saw their death coming. It was snarling at them across the airless void. It was staring them straight in the face.
They feared. They were so proud to thump their chests and scream about their eagerness to meet Him. But now that the meeting was imminent, oh how they feared!
He’d made peace with it. He’d had almost half an hour to shake the bony hand, and say hello, and ready his soul for the trip across, past the black curtain. His deathword was racing back up the task group’s approach vector at the speed of light. The day would come when a mortuary corvette caught up and recorded, and Margot and Mother would hear his voice once again, for the last time.
He would die here this day, thought Jean Leroy. Not for glory, nor in the name of a bloodthirsty, savage demon who commanded his furry followers to drown the universe in blood. Unlike the creatures he would take with him, Jean Leroy would die for the one thing worth dying for. He would die that those whom he loved might live.
The dice had ever stuck to the wall snake eyes up, sooner or later. The blood of heroes had ever patched the holes in the admirals’ plans. He didn’t seek it, but now that the lot had fallen upon him, he wouldn’t shirk it. He would die the way he’d lived, and do his duty to the last.
On the COP display, the fighter squadrons were peeling off, racing at the scrambling enemy combat patrol. The bomber formation was loosening up. The virtual marker of the next release point was looming just ahead.
“Do you have children, Maurice?” asked Jean over the commanders’ link.
“Five. Three with my wife, and two with my mistresses. Their husbands would be very upset, should they ever find out.”
Jean chuckled. He’d always known that Maurice was a felon, but he hadn’t realized that it was literally true. Illegitimate children! Despite Birthright Registration, despite supposedly-airtight DNA testing, despite everything. The thought boggled the mind.
“I have no one,” he confessed, regretfully. “The Fleet was always my mistress.”
Somehow, there’d never been time…
“You have a sister,” answered Maurice. “She will live on because of you. Something remains.”
“Yes,” agreed Jean Leroy, “she remains. Perhaps she will name a son ‘Jean’, after her brother.”
“She will,” said Maurice Gautier. “And cheer up! Why the glum voice? Do you not want to stay young forever?”
“Indeed!” laughed the task group commander. “All our lives we shall remain forever young! Bon chance!”
“Bon chance!” answered Maurice as the St. Michael Squadron peeled away.
Those cuckolded husbands were probably admirals, chuckled Jean Leroy. And Preferred Shareholders, without doubt. That’s where the man’s mistresses had gotten the money for the ridiculous bribes it would surely take to pull off such a caper.
Well, if they got caught now, there’d be much breaking of fine china, but neither of his floozies would end up in jail. Maurice’s posthumous Légion D’Honneur would surely be good enough to save their hides. They’d get off with a stiff fine, and a scandalous reputation. The unlimited birthrights were retroactive. His parting gift from beyond the grave. An incurable romantic to the last.
Too bad he hadn’t gotten a chance to use any of his own, mused Jean Leroy, but you couldn’t have everything. Margot would sue to get them. She almost certainly would win at least the unused original three. She would be a dead hero’s sister, after all. And s
he would name a son “Jean”. He’d asked, in his deathword. Something would remain.
Jean Leroy crossed himself as the final release point pinged past.
“Viser les cibles!” ordered the commander of the St. Jeanne D’Arc Squadron as he pushed out the final targeting update. “Toujours en avant pour la Patrie!”
The virtual throttle slid all the way forward. The drive sang as the bomber danced amid bursting blue-white suns.
He was lighter than shadow. He was faster than sunlight. Death was snapping at his heels. He could feel the icy cold of the ethereal scythe, rising upward for the sweep, just behind. But the Old Man would have to wait a little longer. They had a deal, the Old Man and Jean Leroy. He wasn’t coming across the black curtain alone.
Looming ahead in his sight, closer than any target of his career, was the gigantic, mirror-shiny globe of an enemy battleship.
The fountains of snow gushing from the open airlocks cut off as if with a knife. Blast doors had slammed shut all through the hull.
When his penetrator hit, thought the torpedo bomber pilot, hypersonic shockwaves from the impact would blow that ship apart like a water balloon, blast doors or no. There simply hadn’t been time enough for the compartments to vent. Not even with the airlocks thrown open to help the pumps.
The helmsman was jinxing his jump pattern for all he was worth. A battleship could never outmaneuver a torpedo bomber, but he was doing his best to buy a few more seconds for the gunners, and for the all-important pumps. His best would not be good enough.
All around the equator and at the poles of the hull, shield generator ports boiled forth hazy fountains of shield matter. Pointless. Not even if the cloud were fully built, would the penetrator care.
At the tip of the mast, the torch gouted pulses of blue flame through a gap in the half-built cloud. Just forward of the shadow shield and all around the hull, attitude thrusters were flaring desperate bursts, throwing the torch vector about at random, this way and that. His sensor package false-colored the eddies, as streams of propellant and electromagnetic afterbursts disrupted the shield. Some of those buffets were pushing nine gee.