Another Word for Magic

by Mackey Chandler

  The second station was orbiting the Elves world. They caught it with no USNA ship in attendance and the station was more a scientific outpost than a military. The station was supposed to have a ship there to protect it, though ships of other flags were welcome. It was missing. The aboriginal natives were as indifferent to their protection as everything else Human. Lloyd and Huma saw no point in making the few naval members of the station take a shuttle down to the world. They could just come back when they left, and the last thing they needed was prisoners. They just left it as no danger to their nation.

  After two easy operations, they knew their main objective, Survey System 4803, might be more difficult. It was the furthest North American operation that approached being what one could call a base or a depot. There would be no system scan broadcast for incoming ships like a civilian system. It was strictly military and nothing else was welcome there even if technically they couldn’t keep you from transiting.

  The two ships jumped into the outer fringe of system 4803 and listened. There was a low-power radar operating. The power level indicated it was for use local to the base. There was no long-range high-powered search radar in use. What light radio traffic existed was encrypted. They recorded and analyzed for an hour and jumped in deeper ahead of the wavefront of their entry emissions before they became detectable at the base. Base operations were sited on a large moon of a gas giant that supplied the fueling operation. There were no radio or radar emissions from behind them. Lloyd and Huma detected no system picket behind them to warn the base. They still seemed to be safe from detection.

  “I’ll go in to a light minute from the base, pop a drone in a couple of light seconds from them to locate everything. If there is anything bigger than a destroyer or frigate I’ll go back in, safely off of my previous position, and hole it through the drive spaces, access the damage, and come back to share it with you.” Lloyd said.

  “I don’t like being blind to a cone on the other side of the moon,” Huma said. “This action will be so brief we could have an unseen ship in orbit opposite your drone. I suggest you jump a second drone to the other side of the moon and sweep space there from another angle for any traffic.”

  “That’s good thinking,” Lloyd agreed. “After we assess the damage and make sure we have disabled any larger vessels I’ll transmit an order to evacuate the facility to them. You keep an eye out-system behind us and watch for any bolters. Is that agreeable?”

  “Works for me. Next stop we reverse roles,” she insisted.

  “Absolutely. I don’t intend to hog all the action,” Lloyd assured her.

  Lloyd’s Lady jumped in close to the moon and released drones. There were two destroyers in orbit and a heavy cruiser. There was also something that from its size and shape was probably a supply vessel, not a warship.

  Lloyd sent a drone back after looking at the radar scan and holed the cruiser. If they had any kind of watch it didn’t respond in the twenty seconds he took to read the scan, make up his mind, and send the drone back to lance the cruiser. The drone emitted radar, shifted location to avoid loitering until it was a target, examined the radar return from the shifted location, and returned to Lloyd.

  Lloyd moved his vessel back by Huma’s ship to share the data, before he could become a target too. The last image showed a fan of debris out the other side of the cruiser. The ship couldn’t possibly be operational. He composed a short ultimatum to the base.

  “This is the Kingdom of Central vessel “Lloyd’s Lady” acting for our sovereign. A couple of days ago subjective time your nation attempted to destroy the trio of Home habitats. We are serving you notice your military presence outside the Solar System will no longer be tolerated. We have disabled your cruiser. Your smaller vessels remain to you for evacuation to Earth. Reply that you accept these orders and surrender on this frequency with a reasonable timeline to evacuate your base and exit the system. Refusal will result in the destruction of the remaining vessels and facilities on the moon. We have no interest in negotiating or discussing this. Attempts at a delaying discussion and any obstruction will be taken as a refusal.”

  After five minutes there was no response. “I take it they are going to be difficult about this,” he told Huma, exasperated. “Perhaps I should hole that freighter to demonstrate we mean business. It isn’t likely they could haul much in the way of passengers on it anyway.”

  “There is a bolter!” Huma called, sharing the data from a surveillance drone. “It’s coming out from behind the moon. Look at the track data on him. It looks like a frigate or a system cutter. I swear there was nothing in orbit. He must have been sitting on the surface.”

  “Had to be,” Lloyd agreed. “But what in the world is he doing? It doesn’t appear he’s making a run to jump to get away.

  “No, he seems to be making a slow long burn to assume an orbit around the gas giant,” Huma said. “Surely he isn’t going to conduct normal mining operations while we are in his sky threatening them?”

  “He could have been in the radio shadow of the moon for my transmission,” Lloyd speculated. “They don’t appear to have any relay satellites up. However, they could recall him now. Unless he had no watch set at all he should have seen our radar survey. Even then, he should surely have noticed by now that the normal radio traffic from his base is absent. It makes no sense.”

  “I’ll jump ahead of him and inform him the base is being forced to evacuate and order him back to the moon. If he is jump capable, he can take passengers. If he refuses, I’ll lance his engine spaces and leave the burden to rescue him on his mates.”

  “OK, I’ll wait to say more to them until you determine what is going on with this rogue ship,” Lloyd said.

  When there was no drone back from Huma after thirty seconds Lloyd started getting antsy. At a minute he couldn’t abide sitting any longer with no information. He’d also have to move soon for his safety and Huma wouldn’t know where to send her drone to report to him then. He sent three drones spaced out several light seconds apart in the rotational plane of the gas giant along the path of the fleeing vessel to scan and report.

  Lloyd only got two drones back. One found nothing happening in the volume it surveyed. The other recorded the dissipating fireball of the X-head missile that destroyed Huma’s Improbable almost the instant it emerged from jump. The same drone recorded a fresh X-head detonation two and a half seconds after it emerged. That would be the destruction of the drone he didn’t get back. Lloyd sat shocked, his stomach knotted up and he felt sick. He jumped another drone back and confirmed there was only a dispersing cloud of ionized gas where the first detonation occurred.

  There was radio traffic too but encrypted. Lloyd could imagine the content. It would be something like: “Good job, you sucked him right in.”

  It hadn’t taken Lloyd long to realize what happened. The USNA had never publicly acknowledged the jump ship technology Central used. Their ships and drones could make a static jump without any significant velocity along the jump line. However, they must have seen enough unexplained exit emission bursts and impossible passage times to know it existed. Even if there was no official notice, certain crews must know of it from experience.

  There was no way a USNA run-to-jump ship could get close enough to a Central vessel to release weapons. Somebody high up in the line of command on this base had figured out how to position X-head missiles or just their warheads like a minefield and sucker them into jumping right into the middle of it.

  Lloyd recorded a new message on a drone and jumped it in near the moon.

  “Well, some very bright boy figured out how to set a no lag ambush and destroyed my companion vessel,” Lloyd said with deceptive calm. “Have you thought far enough ahead to figure out that brilliant tactic will only work once? Are you prepared for the consequences?”

  There was a pause of dead air time while they absorbed the bad news that he wasn’t dead. Then the reply the drone brought back was in the clear and the speaker didn’t bother to
identify himself. He sounded as strained and sick at the revelation as Lloyd felt about Huma.

  “You didn’t say you had more than one ship. In that case, I surrender the entirety of my command to you,” he said.

  “Too late,” Lloyd said. “That was a one-time offer for which you breached the conditions. It expired.” There was nothing to add to that and the unnamed commander didn’t bother to grovel or beg.

  The same drone that delivered that message holed one of the destroyer’s drives rather thoroughly. It jumped to a safe point and perforated the other destroyer as well. A different drone materialized close over the base and kicked out three weapons in a spread pattern over the target. It only lingered a few milliseconds to let each ejected weapon get far enough away from the drone not to be dragged along when it jumped back out. They were only a hundred meters off the surface and didn’t have time to fall very far before they all detonated together. They were relatively small, only ten kilotons each, but entirely sufficient to destroy the installation.

  Lloyd considered the Judas goat ship moving away around the gas giant. If it was jump-capable it could return to Earth as Heather intended. Who knew how many warheads they’d laid out from the base depot or in what sort of a pattern? It would be folly to risk everything over such a minor prize. He wasn’t disposed to risk either his ship or even another drone to try to destroy it. He was certain the mind that devised his friend’s death died with the base and wouldn’t be on that lure of a ship. If it wasn’t jump capable, and nobody appeared in this system to rescue them before their life support and supplies ran out, they always had the option of scuttling the ship themselves. The fact they might have some time to reflect on it no longer concerned him at all.

  Just to be sure, he sent a drone in close and examined the remains of the base. He was certain all the structures were damaged and pressure breached. If there was some deep bunker surviving or a few survivors who happened to be in suits it was no danger to him. His drones retrieved, Lloyd was about to leave the star system when a yellow icon appeared on his radar screen. There was a burst of exit radiation several light minutes away on a vector unassociated with the base or the direction of the surviving ship. It was barely detectable, especially with the noise the gas giant generated, but there was no target painted by his radar there before or after the burst. There was no chance another Central ship would be in the area unknown to him.

  Before leaving the system, he jumped within a light minute of the exit whisper and examined his instruments. There was a trace of other emissions and he jumped in half the remaining distance before the signal had time to disperse. It was the characteristic pattern of a search radar, but strange. It was about the power of a hand-held radio, totally useless as far as having any range. Still, it would go in his report. Heather was death on neglecting to mention any detail even if he couldn’t explain it.

  He started setting up his board to jump towards home and the incident was an itch that bothered him even while in his disturbed state from the death of his friend and her ship. If he kicked a drone out right now without making it jump anywhere it would be in a long-term stable orbit far above the gas giant. He set one up to simply listen, record, and respond to an inquiry to find it again before jettisoning it. That removed one problem tickling his brain. Reporting bad news to Heather was the other thing he had to do now.

  * * *

  “That’s the village a couple of kilometers to the west that I stayed at with Gordon the first time I visited the Mothers,” Lee said. “Let your eye follow the road until you see roofs.”

  “I’d have never noticed it if you hadn’t said something,” Jeff admitted. “The road is barely a crease in the trees without much pavement visible, and there aren’t any open areas or things like water towers sticking up.

  “It’s almost a tunnel,” Lee agreed, nodding. “We took a taxi there and then stayed at a cute inn overnight. It’s a trade town but it never took off and got very big like Fishtown. There’s nothing very big or special like fishing or mining to do there. The next morning, we rode with the mailman on his route to get to the Keep mailbox. It was still a bit of a hike in from there. It was educational to see how the country people live. We rode along and carried pies from one farm to another. There was even a goat tied up behind the mail truck for a few kilometers going to a new owner.”

  “What did they do, slap some stamps on his forehead?” April asked.

  “No that’s not official business. It’s a little something on the side. He wears a couple of hats to act for the package delivery companies too. Literal hats. He thinks it’s funny to put one on when he has a box from that carrier. Gordon assures me he gets treated very well once a year when there’s a holiday and he gets a ton of tips and gifts. Good thing, because the far end of the route is just wheel ruts and he can’t run it in the winter.”

  “It gets that cold here?” Jeff asked.

  “You wouldn’t be aware of it flying, but the land has been rising. Riding in a taxi you are much more aware you keep climbing hills but never go back down. From the village back there to the Keep you see a big difference in the trees and fields. Then, when you hike up from the mailbox to a saddle and look down on the Keep, the trees on the hilltops on each side and around the old fort are bent from the wind and stunted.”

  “I’m glad we don’t have to climb those,” Jeff said, sweeping a finger along the far horizon. It was dominated by a wall of mountains still snow-capped this late in the season.

  “Red Tree goes to the peaks of those mountains,” Lee told them. “It used to go partway, to a river you can’t see from here. Most Derf clans are defined by natural boundaries. They don’t have borders that are an abstract line across a plain. The river is such a natural line and they put a huge bronze chain across the river anchored to points cast right in the bedrock to symbolize the lands were joined.”

  “Was it once wilderness and Red Tree annexed it?” April asked.

  “It belonged to another clan. They got into some sort of dispute and Red Tree went to war with them and killed them all. That’s how they did things, though they haven’t had a war for over a thousand years. They eliminated their Keep, let their fields revert to wild, and wiped out every emblem and memory of their name,” Lee said. “They don’t keep trophies like humans who will keep a flag or banner of the defeated. They burn or bury it all. If that hadn’t happened the history of Human contact might be very different.”

  “Why is that?” Jeff asked.

  “The first Human landing was on the far side of the river. Who knows how the other clan would have received them or if they would have been subjugated like the Hin?”

  “I suspect that even if they got a toe in the door early, the Derf might have been a lot more difficult to subjugate than the Hin,” Jeff said.

  “True, but they would have destroyed the Keeps which pretty much define the Clan system,” Lee said. “It might still be a long time before you’d want to wander around the woods though. I’ve tracked a hostile Derf through the dark forest. They blend in and don’t make a sound. Imagine the woods full of Derf guerrilla fighters,” Lee said.

  “I’d rather not,” Jeff assured her.

  “If Red Tree goes clear to those mountain peaks why doesn’t it go all the other way to the ocean?” April asked. “I see no natural barrier like a river.”

  “They are on a plateau,” Lee said. “The clan has never favored living in the lowlands. I asked the Mothers pretty much the same thing one time and they said the coast is too hot, full of vermin, and people get sick there more often.”

  “Those are complaints I’ve heard about Earth’s tropical regions too,” April agreed.

  The aircar got noticeably quieter even though they had ear covers to block the noise and allow them to talk. As the power was eased off, it headed down. a flat valley appeared below the last ridge of hills at which they seemed aimed.

  “Hang left and come in over the saddle next to the old watchtower and fort,” Lee tol
d the pilot. They tilted slightly in direction and the power eased on just a hair to make up for their increased drop as they slipped sideways.

  “That’s a pretty impressive fortification,” Jeff admitted.

  “The Keep is much bigger but it goes way down,” Lee said, “It’s as big on the surface as they ever intend it to be but they keep tunneling.”

  “That’s similar to Central,” April said.

  The bump in the middle of the plain resolved to terraces and gates in a mound that covered the true form of the structure beneath. It was hard to tell if it was all earth-sheltered and artificial or if it had started as a natural hill. Smaller buildings became visible until finally, they were close enough to see individual Derf. There were paths but no roads or any vehicular traffic.

  “Aim for the edge of the big apron in front of the main gate and doors,” Lee instructed.

  “Gotcha,” the pilot said in their ear covers and shifted aim a little, the rear of the aircar dipping a little as the glide path steepened. The very few Derf loitering around the plaza looked up and walked away clearing a spot on the stones.

  “You don’t have to shut down,” Lee said. “just cut to an idle and you can lift as soon as we are clear. Thanks for a smooth ride.”

  “Thanks for the fare,” the pilot acknowledged. They touched down with no jolt and the roar of the fans dropped to a loud hum.

  The door that dropped formed a ramp and everybody hurried down with their minimal luggage. When they were fifty meters from the car the pilot cranked the power up again. Lee and her friends stopped, backs to the machine, and put their hands over their ears. A brief gust of wind blew over them from behind and the noise dropped off sharply when the car was a couple of hundred meters up and well away from the landing spot. Then the noise went back up again as the pilot poured on the power. He’d eased away at first out of courtesy for them.

  When Jeff and April looked around, Derf everywhere had stopped or come out of the buildings to watch the car depart.