Destiny's Forge

by Larry Niven

  And nothing did, though the first main force engagement came in just twelve hours, in the middle of the next top watch. A squadron of kzinti fighters who must have been boosting hard enough to burn out their polarizers blasted through the destroyer screen to take on the cruisers, salvo launching their missiles at some tremendous closing velocity. The UNSN Vengeance took the brunt of the attack, lacing the incoming formation with her lasers and evading hard. Her screener canisters reduced the missiles to so much junk, though a few detonated early to degrade her sensors. None did enough damage to take her out of the battle, and then the fighters, those who might have survived, were through the formation and out the other side, braking hard but out of the fight for another thirty hours, according to the combat computer’s best guess. With no missile rounds left the best they could do on their next pass was ram. Voortman was all too aware that they would if they could, but that was a problem for later. Admiral Mysolin was back on the viscom, reorganizing the attack fleet in accordance with the latest intelligence. He had a dolphin tactical team aboard Atlantic, and no doubt his deployments were several layers deep in their sophistication. Voortman didn’t have a lot of faith in either combat computers or dolphins. As a source of information they were fine. When it came time to position his ship for battle he preferred to trust his own instincts. In this case his instincts disagreed with Mysolin’s plan, whatever its source. The admiral sent scoutships back along the fighter’s attack course to search out the carrier that must have launched them. A cruiser and four destroyers shaped course behind them to deliver the coup de grace, if and when they found it. At least Oorwinnig continued uninterrupted on her maximum acceleration infall to loop around A-M II in attack orbit. In Voortman’s mind, there was no need to do anything other than close with the enemy as fast as possible. The kzinti didn’t have enough strength in the system to seriously interrupt the human fleet. It was why A-M II was chosen in the first place. It was important that the first test of the charge suppressor weapon be a success.

  It’s a waste of resources to go hunting for a now fangless carrier in the vastness of the outer system. Even if they found and destroyed it there would be little advantage compared to the risk posed by the defenses closer in. The human fleet had numbers enough to pursue such luxuries, but war was not about luxury. To Voortman war was about annihilation as Schlieffen had used the word, victory so complete that your enemy could never again pose a threat. It was something Genghis Khan had understood, and perhaps no one since.

  But that would come soon enough, and if the fleet was the Admiral’s to direct, Oorwinnig was his to command. And then the kzinti will know annihilation, as God struck down the Cities of Sin with fire from heaven.

  There was a lull then, and he went back to his dayroom to grab a nap. Several hours later Kirsch woke him up. A kzinti destroyer squadron, the main enemy force in the system, was boosting to intercept. Unlike the fighters, whose trajectory would take them nowhere near his ship, the destroyers clearly intended to make it past the cruiser screen to cripple the battleships. Com traffic was crackling and Voortman ordered the ship’s cameras zoomed to the battle, but the range was too great and there was nothing to see save the occasional brief flash of light. A flash that was over in seconds was a warhead, a flash that lingered was the death of a warship, and almost certainly all aboard her.

  Suddenly a face in the viscom, voice and image distorted by the storm of charged particles left behind by the warheads. “They’ve got a cruiser…”

  The image vanished, and in the battle view another flash flared, and slowly faded. Voortman stabbed a finger on the icon and got the dead ship’s details. The cruiser Aurora, destroyed in action. The kzinti had camouflaged their strength, overloaded the defenses and managed to get a dangerous unit through. The particle storm left by the warheads had replaced the neat trajectory trails on his battle plot with expanding course funnels. He zoomed the view, scanned the threats. There…One of them was narrower than the others, a ship with more mass and less thrust, a kzinti heavy cruiser. Another warhead winked in the darkness, a large section of the screen went orange. The kzin had launched screeners and then ionized them with a conversion blast to blank out the human sensors. The kzinti captain was covering himself, and he would be somewhere behind the screen, decelerated just enough to let it race in front of him as he closed to firing range. Even a heavy cruiser couldn’t stand up to two battleships in a standup fight, but if the ratcat got a missile through their screeners it would do a lot of damage. And if he rammed…

  Voortman set target lines to stitch the particle cloud and keyed his com. “All turrets, engage at five light-seconds. Countermeasures to free mode. He’s going to be coming fast.”

  “Engagement parameters set.” Marxle, the weapons officer, clicked keys.

  “Navigation, plot an intercept…” The viscom flashed Admiral Mysolin’s face, interrupting him. “Oorwinnig, maintain your course and prepare to fire.”

  “Acknowledged.” Voortman ground his teeth. Why does he waste time with the obvious? “Navigation, prepare to evade.” The Flatlanders were going to take the engagement. Atlantic rolled to put her thrust vector ahead of the oncoming warship and boosted hard. On the battle plot her icon slid past Oorwinnig, set for the intercept that Voortman wanted for himself. Long minutes dragged past as Atlantic positioned herself, and then suddenly a grid of flashes winked in the darkness. The kzin was attacking behind a wall of conversion detonations, trying to saturate Atlantic’s defenses. More flashes blossomed, then a final, double flash that faded slowly. Had the kzinti gotten through?

  “Oorwinnig, you are clear.” There was no image to go with the voice, so static torn as to be barely recognizable, but the message was what was important. Voortman felt a mild disappointment. His ship was strong, she could defend herself, and now the battle honors would fall to Atlantic. Focus on the mission, focus on the enemy.

  Hours ahead the scoutships were already at the planet, skimming down in provocative passes to identify the space defense positions for the oncoming cruisers. Voortman didn’t go back to his dayroom, though they were still fourteen hours from attack position. Instead he waited and watched. The distant destroyer screen picked up a few laggard kzinti thrusting in from the edge of the system, too distant to influence the battle in time, too scattered to have any effect when they got there, but screaming and leaping nonetheless. There were no more serious threats; the human fleet could do what they wanted in Alpha Mensae system.

  Four hours to attack position. He ordered his engineers to check the weapons systems one last time. The cruisers closed and targeted the ground based gamma ray lasers to clear the way for his attack. A-M II had no space based defenses except the ships that had been in orbit, and they had already come out to be destroyed by the in-falling humans. Oorwinnig needed to get close to bring her main armament into play. Next time she could fight her way in; this time her success was too important to risk an engagement.

  Two hours to attack position. They’d lost another cruiser and a handful of scouts, and the planet lay open, its defenses stripped. Voortman paced the bridge impatiently while Kirsch took over navigation to make sure their attack orbit was set correctly. They’d have one pass, and the kzinti would learn a lesson they wouldn’t forget. A few ships boosted from the planet’s surface, couriers and cargo lighters pressed into service as last ditch defenses, but the orbiting cruisers swatted them down. Damn ratcats never give up.

  And then it was time. A-M II had grown from a point to a disk to a recognizable blue and white sphere. The kzinti had a major base down there, and quite a few support facilities scattered about the planet. Oorwinnig would end that.

  “Target on the horizon, sir.” Marxle had the firing solutions plotted, the main spinal mount weapon charged and ready.

  “Fire.” Voortman spat the word.

  The twin disintegrator beams lanced down to the planet’s surface, one positive, one negative. At first the effects were invisible from orbit, though on
the ground the rocks exploded as suddenly charged atoms repelled each other with violent force, fountaining monatomic dust hundreds of meters, and then kilometers high. Between the two touchdown points a potential field measured in teravolts developed, and a current began to flow. City-sized sheets of lightning arced between the twin columns of charged atmosphere that marked the beams passage to the ground from space. The ground between the impact points began to heat. The base the kzinti had called Warhead was gone.

  “Target destroyed.” Marxle’s voice was clipped.

  “Keep the beams on it.”

  “But sir…”

  “Keep the beams on it!” Voortman’s words were harsh.

  “Yes, sir.”

  On the ground the disintegrator beams stabbed remorselessly at the planet’s surface, and between the impact points the rock began to melt and flow. The effect on the planet’s surface was now visible through the bridge transpax, a glowing, boiling cloud already causing a visible bulge in the atmosphere. Subsurface water flash boiled, blowing cubic kilometers of rock into the sky. Anything that lived within a hundred kilometers of the base would be killed by blast and shock.

  “Sir, the dust cloud is starting to interfere…” Voortman cut the weapon’s officer’s not-quite-complaint off with a gesture. Today I wield the fist of God. For you, Vati, I will not falter.

  “Traverse the beams.”

  “Sir…”

  “You heard me.”

  “Yes sir.” Marxle clicked keys, slid a finger. Oorwinnig’s stabilization system had been set up to hold the impact points as steady as possible as the planet spun beneath them. Now that calibration was offset, and the relative motion of the ship and planet caused the beam impact points to slide clear of the roiling dust that had started to block them. They found new rock to chew at, exploding more of the planet’s crust into the seething black mass. What had begun as a linear crater became a canyon, torn from the surface by twin pillars of fire from heaven.

  “Sir, the superconductors are quenching…”

  “All available power to cooling.” Voortman kept his eyes locked on the planet’s image below as his weapon devoured everything it touched. The beams dragged a molten scar across A-M II’s larger continent, ten kilometers, twenty, fifty, a hundred, and the boiling dust cloud left in their wake glowed red as it reached into the stratosphere.

  “Sir…” Now Kirsch too was objecting. A series of shudders rocked the ship and the lights flickered, went down, came back. The tremendous power flux through the disintegrator had overheated the liquid hydrogen that kept it cool, the superconducting coils had quenched, and the tremendous back-current had surged the ship’s generators.

  “Cooling offline…” Marxle’s voice held resignation.

  “Cease fire. Damage report.” Voortman kept his voice under control. The beams had already stopped. His ship would need maintenance, that was certain. But what matters is that the kzinti will see what I have done and know that God will have no mercy for them.

  The viscom blinked, and Admiral Mysolin was looking at him. “What was that, Captain?”

  Voortman saluted. “Sir, I report the enemy base destroyed.”

  “That and a lot more. Did you have a weapons malfunction?”

  “No malfunction. We may have some damage to our superconductors. Our main weapon is offline for now. Repairs are underway.”

  Mysolin’s eyebrows went up. “Is there a reason you maintained fire for as long as you did?”

  “With due respect, sir, you are responsible for fleet strategy. I am responsible for fighting my ship.”

  “And as fleet commander I am now questioning your decision making. I expect an answer, Captain.”

  Voortman looked at him in silence. He does not understand.

  “I want to know why you kept firing when the military objective had already been achieved.” Mysolin would not be dissuaded from his question.

  After a long pause Voortman answered. “Have you read Clausewitz, Admiral?”

  “Don’t change the subject, Captain.”

  “I am not, sir. I am explaining my point. Clausewitz said, ‘War is diplomacy continued with other means.’ I continued firing because the diplomatic objective had not yet been achieved. To destroy a base from orbit, this is trivial. Had I stopped firing that is all we would have done. Instead we have sent the kzinti a message today. We have shown them we have the power to exterminate them. We have shown them that their Judgment is coming. They will fear us now.” Captain Voortman smiled a predatory smile. “They will feel our hands on their throats. This was my objective, Admiral. This was Wunderland’s objective, regardless of how the UN feels about it. And this is what we have achieved today.”

  “You have exceeded your orders and your authority and hazarded a major war vessel.” Mysolin’s voice was cold.

  “I have done what was necessary. Sir.”

  Mysolin looked at him, features cold, but when he spoke it wasn’t to Voortman.

  “Commander Kirsch!”

  “Sir.” Kirsch stepped forward.

  “Captain Voortman is relieved of command. Oorwinnig is your ship. Take her back to Tiamat for repairs.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The image in the viscom vanished, and Voortman wheeled to face his subordinate. “Kirsch! Don’t you move a muscle. This is my ship. He isn’t a Wunderlander. He has no authority here.”

  Kirsch stepped closer, spoke in low tones. “Sir, perhaps it would be easiest if we went along with the admiral for now. The battle is over, and we do need to go back to Tiamat.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Kirsch.”

  “Sir…Cornelius…” Kirsch didn’t finish the sentence. He was clearly torn between orders and loyalty. Equally clearly he was going to follow his orders, no matter how unpleasant he found them. Voortman looked around the bridge, met the eyes of his weapons officer, his sensor team. All of them kept their expressions carefully blank. He would find no support there.

  Voortman raised his voice. “You have the bridge, Commander Kirsch. Make sure I’m called for the top watch.” He stalked off to his dayroom without waiting for an answer. He already knew he wouldn’t be called. At Tiamat there would be a court-martial, perhaps. But I have done what I set out to do, and history will thank me for it.

  Ten thousand kilometers below him the dust cloud left on A-M II’s surface continued to rise and spread, blotting the sun from the skies. By the time the planet had gone around its star again it would be enveloped in a gray funeral shroud that would reflect enough light to bring perpetual winter even to its equator. Before enough dust settled to let the sunshine back in again the shallow seas would be frozen to the bottom. The fragile beginnings of life would be completely snuffed out, and the only sign that intelligence had ever visited the planet would be a canyon two hundred kilometers long and eighteen deep.

  Blood is the strength of the Pride.

  —Wisdom of the Conservers

  The sun was high as Pouncer pulled his tuskvor to a halt and surveyed the ground. Mrrsel Pride’s den was farther into the canyon lands than Ztrak Pride’s, at the far end of a steep walled box canyon, a natural fortification. There would be watchers high on the red cliffs on either side of the canyon entrance. He raised his binoptics and scanned for them but saw nothing. They were well concealed. Best then to leave the tuskvor here and advance openly on foot until he was challenged. Mrrsel Pride were his mother’s kin. He had kills in battle, and he was First-Son-of-Meerz-Rrit. He could claim his place here, and a name. He needed to do that before he could take on the Tzaatz. The czrav prides were a tremendous resource, fanatic fighters, and with their high proportion of natural telepaths, able to communicate and organize beneath the notice of the rest of the Patriarchy, bound as they were to the limitations of the electromagnetic spectrum. More importantly the Telepath War aligned their interests with his. Kchula-Tzaatz himself had shown him how to take the Citadel. Surprise from within, and a small, elite force coming over the wall under the rules
of skalazaal. The czrav would form the elite force, if he could convince them to follow him, and there would still be some in the Citadel who remembered their fealty pledge to the Rrit.

  He put his weight on the harness bar to move the tuskvor’s head down and waited while the beast slowly yielded to the pressure. Once it was all the way down he tied it off so the beast couldn’t wander away, and then dismounted.

  He’d expected to be challenged at the canyon entrance, but he wasn’t. He moved confidently, but kept his eyes open. It was possible he’d come to the wrong canyon, although Kr-Pathfinder’s instructions had been quite clear. There was only one way to find out.

  His tail was already twitching with concern by the time he reached the den mouth unchallenged. There were no harnessed tuskvor, either outside the canyon or inside it, though their spoor was everywhere. It was possible they had moved, but why? He stood at the empty den mouth and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light. The charcoal of the pride circle fire was there; this was not the wrong canyon.

  “I am First-Son-of-Meerz-Rrit, son of M’ress of Mrrsel Pride!” His call echoed from the distant cavern walls. He listened for a response, ears swiveled up and forward, but none came. “I come to your circle with news from Ztrak Pride.” Again there was no answer.

  He knelt to look for spoor. Marks in the sandy floor of the cavern, where something heavy had been dragged, many somethings. Cautiously he followed them. The footmarks of kzinti, impressions of prrstet pads around the pride circle. Other footmarks, something small and four legged with three clawed toes per foot. Deeper in the cavern was tiled with stone slabs, and the easy spoor vanished. A smear on the stones. He sniffed it. Kzinti blood. The direction of the smear aligned with the drag marks. A bleeding body had been dragged from the den. He found more bloody drag marks. Many bodies. With mounting alarm he turned and continued deeper into the cavern. At the entrance to a side passage a flow sculpture of ancient stone was cut in half on an angle, the bottom still standing on its base, the top on the floor beside it. He examined the almost mirror-smooth cut. A variable sword, but the czrav don’t use variable swords. At least, Ztrak Pride didn’t, but they used hunt cloaks and other technological impedimenta. They could make variable swords if they wanted to, and perhaps Mrrsel Pride did.