Web of Worlds

by Michael Atamanov

  “Gerd Gnat here number fourteen seventy, over. Second Legion! I’m in orbit directly above you. Shoot up flares to mark targets! Hold the hill and clear the brush and vegetation from a one-hundred-by-fifty-foot landing zone. Pack all valuable equipment into the remaining Peresvet and prepare for extraction.”

  Authority increased to 51!

  Authority increased to 52!

  “Gnat!!! You can’t even imagine how happy we are to hear you!!!” I don’t know who’s voice it was, but the young man’s joy was entirely sincere. Then what followed...

  “Ro’ti part Gerd Gnat La-Fin, prolo’un mi wayedde Minno-O. Avari riko inti un waye Geckho.”

  The strong confident voice belonged to a middle-aged man. Princess Minn-O had started teaching me the language of her people, I’d done a whole three lessons already, but my knowledge was still very far from perfect. All I could understand was an official greeting and that I had been addressed as a respected member of house La-Fin and spouse of Minn-O. Then... I had to admit I didn’t understand. Something about the Geckho, but what? I covered the microphone with a hand and whispered for Dmitry Zheltov to bring my travelling wife Minn-O La-Fin here at once to help with translation.

  While the pilot ran off to get Minn-O, in the complete silence of the common channel, which was thought to be basically secret and secure, I tried to address the unexpected guest:

  “Ro-ti part Gerd Ui-Taka. Yenu po tim (I presume)?”

  Astrolinguistics skill increased to level eighty-four!

  In response came satisfied laughter, then he confirmed his identity, I was not wrong. After that came a long phrase or more like a monologue. I couldn’t quite get it. Fortunately, Minn-O La-Fin came in to translate:

  “Gerd Ui-Taka admits you managed to surprise him, which very, very few have done before. Now that you’re here the balance of forces has changed and both sides of the conflict can inflict very severe and even irreplaceable losses, which will weaken Earth as a whole in face of an external threat. So General Ui-Taka suggests we return to an earlier offer to meet on neutral territory. For example, the Geckho spaceport in three hours. That is the fastest the General can make it there, unfortunately. If Gerd Gnat agrees to negotiate, the Dark Faction will allow the Second Legion to leave the trap unimpeded and even to evacuate their damaged vehicles. They will also cease the attack in Karelia, even though the node is already de-facto captured. And from that moment on the cease-fire shall be renewed for twenty-four hours. General Ui-Taka suggests the Geckho be brought in as guarantors.”

  Such weighty decisions probably warranted a chat with faction leadership. But on the other hand, I was just as much a Gerd as Ivan Lozovsky, and I was the one invited to negotiate, not him. So I answered the Dark Faction leader that I would agree to meet, but I did add some conditions:

  “In the room on the second floor of the Geckho spaceport in three hours. Unarmed, and no more than three members per delegation. Also, Geckho Diplomat Kosta Dykhsh will be present as an observer.”

  Chapter Eleven. Crash Landing

  THERE WERE a few points of view on the renewed ceasefire. Sure, the Second Legion was truly delighted. They were encircled and on the verge of dying for good, totally without ammunition. Escaping that was a small miracle, and the channel reverberated with their cries of joy for a long time. But Imran, Eduard Boyko and Dmitry Zheltov didn’t understand one bit. The Starship Pilot, with all possible respect when appealing to a high-profile player, asked a logical question:

  “Captain, why not first shoot down all enemy antigravs and destroy everything we can, then agree to peace negotiations?”

  That was approximately the same question I was asked by faction leader Gerd Ivan Lozovsky, but he didn’t even try to hold back and told me how mad he was in fairly sharp terms, calling me ambitious and overly independent. The Diplomat had one other reason to be upset, too: he couldn’t get to the spaceport in three hours, so the negotiations with the Dark Faction would be taking place without him.

  And I answered both my crew and the director approximately the same way. It was a great shame, but in practice the frigate proved ineffective for orbital bombardment. The enemy had no good reason to know that, but it wasn’t like I had a battleship or heavy cruiser with powerful cannons. My starship had just three laser turrets, and they were not powerful enough to take out anything more stronger than a lightly armored aircraft. Even the Sio-Ku-Tati tanks had to be shot a few times before they exploded, while destroying pillboxes and reinforced concrete fortifications would take upwards of an hour. In that time the Second Legion would have been wiped out along with the loyal Centaurs and Dryads helping us on defense.

  What was more, destroying the enemy antigravs was much easier said than done. Using scanning systems, I fairly quickly found three of the Dark Faction’s remaining eight Sio-Mi-Doris, but they were parked... at the Geckho spaceport! The suzerains would never allow me to make an attack on their node. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find the remaining five antigravs. They weren’t in the Dark Faction central node, nor in the aerodrome in the Golden Valley hexagon, or any of the neighboring nodes. Perhaps they had been hidden somewhere in deep underground hangars for the night. The Dark Faction’s lands were chalk full of craggy cliffs and narrow crevasses, perfect for such structures. Or maybe they were quick on their feet, had learned their lesson from their five shot-down ones and removed the rest from the conflict zone as fast as possible.

  I had a third possibility in mind as well, but I didn’t voice it over the airwaves. To my eye though, it was even more important than the two previous. I sent Eduard Boyko out of the game to tell our directors that the Dark Faction had levers of influence in our real world as well and the current crisis under the Dome served as a good example of it. The next vial of deadly disease could be opened anywhere, including any of Earth’s mega-cities. And if peace talks were an impediment to that, we needed to take advantage of it. As the Space Marine said when he got back to the starship, although the leader of the faction was gritting his teeth in vexation, he confirmed my authority to conduct negotiations.

  And I had one other reason I wasn’t determined enough to tell even my closest friends. Princess Minn-O said General Ui-Taka wanted to give me control of the Dark Faction at these negotiations. And if the negotiations were a success... why destroy my own property?!

  When I got confirmation from the ground that the swamp island was no longer under siege, and repair brigades were on the way from the Antique Beach with powerful all-terrain tow vehicles built on Peresvet bases, I cancelled my previous order to land in the swamp.

  “And thank God!” Dmitry Zheltov breathed a sigh of clear relief. “I have never landed such a big starship on a massive planet with a dense atmosphere. There are lots of complications and nuance I couldn’t predict without practical experience. It’s one thing to land in a space port with a dispatcher watching, and even that can be hard. But in an unprepared landing zone...” the graduate of the Mozhaysky Space Military Academy shook his head doubtfully. “Gnat, when we practiced on the landing simulators in the Academy, at best one out of four hundred students wouldn’t crash on their first try. And that was with a trainer drilling highly detailed instructions into us every day about what to do and when, and how the thrusters and control systems behaved in various conditions.”

  “That’s all correct,” I agreed with the pilot. “But also consider that psionic mages could be mind-controlling you during the landing, and that the ship would be under intensive fire from all kinds of weaponry... It was definitely lucky the Dark Faction suggested negotiations!”

  My chat with Dmitry was interrupted by the Navigator. Old Ayukh removed the huge headphones, turned and reported that he had received a message from the space port. Free Captain Gerd Gnat was expected on the top floor of the dispatcher tower, where they were already preparing a secure bug-proof room to conduct negotiations with outer space.

  Fame increased to 72.

  “Captain, do you
know anything about this?” the furry Navigator juted out his lower jaw and squinted his eyes, demonstrating surprise.

  “Yes, Ayukh, I do. As far as I understand, Commander of the Geckho Second Strike Fleet Kung Waid Shishish wants to speak with me. It seems the offer from Uline and I caught his interest. Uh... what do you want, Jarg?”

  I asked, seeing the level-59 explosion-risk just stroll onto the bridge. In response the eight-armed armadillo put the Universal Translator around its thick squat neck and gave a very, very fast gurgle, inflating and deflating his throat sac:

  “No can to rest. Alarm. To consider. Pirates to know home of people. Know Gnat to want going back. Pirates no can patience. They insult. Shame. Probability bad to be high. To shoot down starship for revenge. Chance attack extremely high. To jump is message.”

  Of course, there really wasn’t anything to digest here, I knew this already. The alien Analyst, whose unpronounceable name I didn’t even attempt, had come to warn me of a risk he determined in his calculations. The Miyelonian pirate Pride of the Bushy Shadow was thirsty for revenge and knew perfectly well where the person who slighted them, Gerd Gnat, came from. Obviously, one of their captains had flown to Earth for a contraband shipment of platinum, so they knew where it was. After hearing from Miyelonians on Kasti-Utsh III, or perhaps other sources, that I was going to return soon to Earth, the pirates might have put some dastardly plan into action. For example, sending high-speed starships to intercept my frigate in orbit and destroy it. In the words of the Analyst, the chance of such an event was “extremely high.”

  I didn’t know where the new crew member had heard the little-known biographical facts he’d used to reach this conclusion. But in the best case it would have been stupid to ignore the warning from the Analyst, who had previously demonstrated a surprising ability to make far-reaching conclusions from disparate facts. So I didn’t hesitate for even a second:

  “Dmitry, emergency acceleration, let’s get out of here! Enter the atmosphere, don’t wait for permission from space port dispatchers!”

  Minn-O was still on the bridge next to me and suddenly shuddered and latched her fingers painfully into my wrist. The Princess’s scream was ear-piercing:

  “We won’t make it! Go down now! Into the dense atmosphere!”

  I had already noticed that my wayedda had a much stronger Danger Sense than I did. Only two or three seconds later, a wave rolled over me as well. My heart was stinging with the presentiment of some horrible catastrophe, and it was growing stronger with every heartbeat. My eyes went dark. I wanted to repeat what Minn-O said, but noticed the pilot had already activated the thrusters and was making dodging maneuvers. So I gave a totally different order:

  “Denni Marko, to the cannons!!! Turn the turrets! Risk is from the rear hemisphere! All crew! Prepare for a crash landing!”

  Danger Sense skill increased to level fifty-three!

  Ow! I was too busy giving orders to care of myself. Even the grav compensators didn’t help me stay on my feet when the frigate gave an especially sharp jolt, quickly gaining speed and rushing toward the planet’s surface. I rolled on the floor and finished a series of painful somersaults in the corner of the room with a detached armchair and the bristly slimy Jarg.

  Medium Armor skill increased to level fifty-six!

  Woah! I seemed to have contusions and bruising over my whole body despite my armor. Even my Hitpoints bar had gone down fifteen percent. But the alien Analyst was unharmed, and actually quite happy:

  “Human soft. Especially Cartographer.”

  As it turned out, I wasn’t the only person in the heap of bodies and furniture. Minn-O was in the mix as well, also having fallen off her feet despite her high Agility. And though I could only be called soft conditionally, because the Jarg was protected from true impact by the ductile Listener Energy Armor forcefield, the princess in her house clothes really was “soft.” Not anymore though. One second was enough for my wayedda to suit up in her armored space suit and even arm herself.

  Through painful ringing in my ears, I could hear the Starship Pilot saying he had put the thrusters into emergency mode and two of the four grav compensators blew in all the force.

  “There they are!” a simultaneous shout from Denni and Ayukh made me stand up, overcome the pain and grab onto hard elements to crawl to my captain’s seat.

  I got into the chair and buckled up. What was happening? First of all, I wanted to see the image on the external cameras. Woah! Just where our frigate was two or three seconds earlier, the bright flower of a powerful explosion blossomed, then the camera went out. The frigate gave another jolt and twist, but this time I was held down and didn’t get hurt.

  “Gravity torpedo,” Ayukh commented unflappably. “In the very epicenter of the explosion there are really extreme forces, like what you find inside a neutron star. Hard metal tears like thin cloth. But the power falls quadratically over distance, so we were practically unaffected.”

  “What do you mean ‘unaffected?!’“ Dmitry Zheltov couldn’t believe what his furry partner was saying. “It tore off our left stabilizer, and f-ed up our third grav compensator. How am I supposed to land now?!”

  I quickly looked over the data on the captain’s tablet. The Starship Pilot wasn’t exaggerating. Our frigate’s left stabilizer was damaged and split to a few layers down, but not fully detached.

  But for now, landing with a damaged wing was not our biggest problem. The pirate ships were not going to let a wounded bird get away. The frigate shook from a series of blows, and Engineer Orun Va-Mart told me our forcefield was down by a third. I then, having given up hope of seeing anything through our apparently destroyed external cameras, ran a general low-distance scan and brought up the results. Three small and highly mobile aircraft were going away simultaneously and making an arc to come back for another run. And the middle starship was three times as large as the others.

  Tiopeo-Myhh II Miyelonian Long-Distance Interceptor.

  Big Abi. Tikon-Mra V Miyelonian long-distance scout ship.

  Tiopeo-Myhh III Miyelonian Long-Distance Interceptor.

  Big Abi? Well, well. The leader of the Pride of the Bushy Shadow himself, Gerd Abi Pan-Miay had deigned to fly here to Earth! I remembered the blood-thirsty pirate once boasting that he wouldn’t get his ass out of his seat for less than two hundred thousand crypto. I guess he put a high value on slights against the Pride of the Bushy Shadow, because he not only came personally but brought in two other captains as well.

  “Denni, new targets!” I lit up all three ships for my gunner as they were finishing their turn and coming in for another attack.

  Denni tried very hard to predict the agile targets’ trajectories and shot long bursts from all cannons, but they all missed. On the other hand, the pirates weren’t expecting resistance from the damaged and basically falling starship and mostly also missed. Although the main reason for such poor shooting on their part was the cascade of turns and twists our pilot was carrying out, making dodging maneuvers at huge G-forces and putting our last grav compensator at risk.

  “Street walking woman! They to be clever, like parasite jumping insects!” Denni Marko’s emotional voice rang out in the headphone. “I alone three cannon no can hit. Gerd Gnat, for to good, need another gunner and electronic master.”

  “I can’t find you a second gunner, so you’ll have to manage there. But I can take the combat electronics systems myself! The targets are already marked, and if they come that close again, I’ll try to hit one of the enemies with a stasis net.”

  “Forcefield at forty-seven percent...” in his turn the Engineer commented on the status of our frigate. “We may not survive another attack.”

  Yes, it was a very worrying situation. Although, on the other hand, it could have been much worse. If our Engineer hadn’t insisted back on Medu-Ro IV that we buy only the best equipment for our frigate, not cheaping out or falling back on compromises, we would already have been shot down. But what to do? My brain was fe
verishly searching for a way out. Ask the spaceport for help? After all, it was strange they weren’t supporting us against pirates from their terrestrial cannons. Go even lower, risking wrecking our already damaged frigate?

  The answer for the most part came from our pilot, who had a better idea of starship classes. While the enemy ships were moving away, Dmitry Zheltov hurriedly clacked sliders and changed our aerodynamic configuration for increased resilience in dense atmosphere. Then he simply grumbled or explained to no one in particular:

  “They attacked a wounded bird, the jackals... If we had an intact ship and full crew, we’d best these pirates for sure! Against our frigate, they’ve got just two weak little interceptors and a cloaker that’s no better than the small fry...”

  Exactly! That was exactly right! I had seen the Engineer’s calculations when we selected configuration for my modular frigate! An invisibility system, which by the way worked poorly in dense atmosphere, required lots of energy to bend space. There was no way to have both cloaking and a strong energy shield. Also, apparently, the pirate leader Gerd Abi Pan-Miay had opted for maximum lightness, speed and maneuverability for his frigate, given his larger ship was only somewhat better than the interceptors in terms of speed and maneuverability.

  “Denni, ignore the interceptors! Concentrate all your fire on the larger frigate! It has a weak shield!!!”

  Just then I realized what seemed to be heresy at first: what if we just turned off the enemy ship’s energy shield altogether, making it vulnerable? No, for real, there were a few ways! For example, my Machine Control skill. Sure, I agreed it was a stupid idea. The enemy was far away now and I couldn’t catch them in a scan. Then during an attack I wouldn’t have time to tell which marker I was seeing in my scan. But we could try another way, like giving an order to their pilot mentally!