by Glen Cook
“What?” And he realized, for the first time, that he really was talking with his mind.
“Ships-that-kill, evil ones, return.”
“Sangaree. How do you know?”
“No way to show, tell. Is. They come, hyper now. Your people prepare.”
BenRabi did not want to be out here during combat. He felt exposed, easy prey. Panic began to well up.
The starfish’s control did not slacken. He soon forgot the danger, became engrossed in the wonders around him, the rippling movements of retreating sharks, the ponderous approach of dragons, the maneuvers of the shimmering service ships as their weary crews prepared for another battle. The galaxy hung over everything like a ragged tear in the night, vast in its extension. How much more magnificent would it be if it could be seen without the interference of the dust that obscured the packed suns at its core? Nearby, Stars’ End waited, a quiet but furious god of war as yet unconcerned with the goings-on around it. Moyshe hoped no one aroused its wrath.
“Coming now,” his dragon told him. Spots appeared against the galaxy as Sangaree raidships dropped hyper. Down in his backbrain, behind his ears, Moyshe felt a gentle tickle. “More power,” Chub told him.
The raidships radiated from their drop zone in lines, like the tentacles of a squid. They soon formed a bowl with its open side facing the harvestfleet. It was an obvious preliminary to englobement.
The distant, decimated shark packs milled uncertainly. They withdrew a little farther. They were not yet wholly defeated.
A ball of light flared among the Sangaree. A lucky mine had scored. But it made little difference. The power and numbers remained theirs.
Only a handful of service ships remained combat-worthy. Even the halest of the harvestships had lost some main power and drive capacity to shark attack. Minddrive and auxiliary power were insufficient for high-stress combat maneuvering.
BenRabi sensed something changing. He cast about, finally saw the great silver sails that had been taken in before the earlier fighting spreading between Danion’s arms and spars. The ship looked so ragged, so injured, so vulnerable . . . A blizzard of debris drifted about her, held by her minuscule natural gravity.
The Sangaree maneuvered closer but held off attacking.
“Trying to talk First Man-friend into surrender,” Chub to benRabi. “Creatures of ships-that-kill want herd without fight.”
“Payne won’t give up,” he thought back.
“Is true, Moyshe man-friend.”
The starfish drifted closer. They were almost upon the Sangaree. They meant to join the battle this time, though cautiously. Their enemies still watched from afar, looking for another chance to savage fleet and herd.
“Fight soon, Moyshe man-friend.”
The slow, stately dance of enmity ended. The negotiations had broken down. The Sangaree struck fast and hard, firing on the service ships to show their determination. The service ships dodged. Suddenly, there were missiles everywhere, streaking around like hurrying wasps. Beam fire from the harvestships wove gorgeous patterns of death.
And Moyshe became depressed. He had done his Navy fleet time. He could see the untippable balance written in the patterns. There was no hope of victory.
Chub chuckled into his consciousness. “You see only part of pattern, Moyshe man-friend.”
In the far distance a starfish crept close to a raidship. The vessel’s weapons could destroy the dragon in an instant—but the ship stopped attacking. It simply drifted, a lifeless machine.
“We do mind thing,” Moyshe heard. “Like Stars’ End, with much power. We stop ships-that-kill like human eyeblink, so fast, if no guns, no drive field to fear.”
A second raidship fell silent, then a third and a fourth. Moyshe felt less pessimistic. The raidships would be locked into an overcommand directed by a master computer aboard the raidmaster’s vessel. That master computer would be burning up its superconductors trying to adjust fire fields to accommodate the losses. If it became the least hesitant, the least unsure of its options . . .
A too-cautious starfish burped a ball of gut-fire. The micro-sun rolled through space sedately, devoured another raidship.
“Bad, Moyshe man-friend. Old Ones angry. Will give away unsuspected attack.”
The Sangaree hemisphere closed steadily. Its diameter rapidly dwindled. The harvestships threw everything they had, fire heavier than anything benRabi had ever witnessed, yet were barely able to neutralize the incoming. Offensive capacity seemed to have been lost.
The starfish mindburned another raidship, and proved Chub and the Old Ones right. The fireball had given them away. Moyshe felt the deep sadness of his dragon as one of the herd perished beneath Sangaree guns.
The starfish threw a barrage of fireballs before beating a hasty retreat. Sangaree missiles broke up most of them.
The globe closed around the harvestfleet. It tightened like a squeezing fist. A desperate ship’s commander, piloting a three-quarters dead service ship, knocked a small hole in the globe by ramming a raidship and blowing his drives.
“They’ll know they were in a fight,” Moyshe thought. There was no response from Chub.
The Sangaree stepped up the attack. Their ships began piling up toward Stars’ End. Moyshe suddenly intuited their strategy. “They’re going to push us into the sharks!”
Again there was no response from his dragon, unless it were that wind-chime tinkle he caught on the extreme edge of his sensitivity.
The Sangaree seemed to have managed some equipment adjustments during their absence. They appeared to have no trouble detecting the sharks now. And, since detecting the starfish attack, they were having no trouble keeping the dragons at bay.
Chub returned to his mind suddenly. “It works well, Moyshe man-friend. Be patient. Will have little time to chat. Is hard to think thoughts in commanders of ships-that-kill, and in machines-that-think. Sangaree minds twisted. Different than man-minds.” The dragon faded away.
What was this? he asked himself. Were the fish trying to control the Sangaree?
The raidships massed thickly, then pushed hard. The sharks grew agitated, as if dimly aware that they were about to be drawn into the inferno. The starfish began drifting their way, as if to cover the fleet’s retreat.
“Be ready, Moyshe man-friend!” It was a sudden bellow, and all the warning he received.
The trickle in the root of his brain suddenly became a flaming torrent. It hurt! God, did it hurt! Searing, the power boiled through him, into whatever Danion used to control and convert it, and out to the silvery sails. Moyshe followed the flow for an instant, then became lost in an ocean of pain.
The harvestship began moving toward the massed raidships, all weapons firing, not aiming, simply trying to erect an irresistible wall of destruction. The compacted Sangaree were unable to bring all their firepower to bear. They wavered, wavered.
A raidship blew up. It left a momentary hole in the fire pattern. Another vessel began to come apart.
Service ships were doing the same. One harvestship ceased firing. Her auxiliary power was exhausted. Sangaree missiles began picking her apart.
BenRabi felt that infinite sadness again.
The enemy drifted backward, not really retreating, just being pushed inexorably. It could not last, but the harvestfleet’s ferocity, for the moment, was greater than the raidfleet’s.
Afar, the starfish suddenly struck at the sharks, who scattered in dismay. The strike was pure bluff on the dragons’ part. A determined shark attack would have destroyed the herd in minutes.
Something screamed across benRabi’s mind, a mad voice babbling, shrieking fear and incoherencies. Its power was such that it inundated his pain. He made no sense of the mind-touch, other than warning and terror.
Phantoms, grotesqueries from the most insane medieval imagination, gathered in space around him. Things that might have been gargoyles and gorgons, Boschian nightmares writhing, all fangs and talons and fire, became more real than the battleshi
ps. Every one of them shrieked the message, “Go away or die!”
I’ve gone completely insane, he thought. My mind has snapped under contact pressure. They can’t be real. He screamed.
Then the warm feeling came, soothing, gently calming his terror, pushing the madness away. His dragon told him, “We succeed, Moyshe man-friend. Maybe win.” Then, darkly, “Monsters are Stars’ End sending. Fear and visions are Stars’ End mind-thing. Planet machine is mad. Mad machine uses madness weapons. Soon, other weapons.
“Look, Moyshe man-friend!”
Shielded by Chub’s touch, Moyshe turned his attention to a Stars’ End grown huge with their approach. The Sangaree were silhouetted against the glowing planetary disk. The face of the world had become diseased behind them. It was spotted blackly in a hundred thousand places.
The disk was receding. The harvestfleet was on the run, scattering as fast as it could. Moyshe suspected that, had any been able, the harvestships would have gone hyper. That could not be accomplished on minddrive.
The Sangaree could not jump out while locked into their master battle-computer. Breaking lock and getting up influence took time.
Two thousand kilometers closer to the fortress world’s weapons, they were trying. With the desperation of the condemned they were breaking lock, scattering, throwing out defensive missiles, trying to get up influence.
They did not have time. The mad world’s weapons reached them first.
“Close mind!” Chub shrieked. “Get out! Not need power now. Save mind!”
How? He couldn’t remember. It became another nightmare, of the sort where all efforts to elude pursuit were vain.
Feeling returned to his left hand. Another hand rested upon it, pulling upward. The reality of the Contact Room returned.
He could feel his helmet, the couch beneath him—and a tremendous sense of loss. He missed his dragon already, and in missing Chub he understood Starfishers a little better. Maybe the contact was one reason they stayed so far from the worlds of men. The fish-Fisher thing was a unique experiential frontier.
Perhaps only one in a thousand Fishers would ever experience contact, but that one could share the vision with his blind brethren . . . He had suffered a range of emotions out there. Only one thing had been missing while Chub was in his mind. The ordinary, everyday insecurity which so shaped human life.
He was drowning in his own sweat. And he was shivering cold, as if his body temperature had dropped while he was linked. The room surrounding him was silent. Where were his technicians? Was he alone? No. Someone had helped him get out.
The thoughts, reflections, fears flashed by in scant seconds. Then:
His head exploded in a thundering migraine, the most sudden and terrible of his experience. It obliterated all conscious control and thought. He screamed. He fought the straps that held him, the helmet that stole his vision. He became pure trapped animal.
Danion shuddered, staggered, staggered. Vaguely, through the agony, he heard screams. Loose objects rattled around. Gravity surged and faded. Mind monsters momentarily broke through the pain, taunting him with visions of Hell.
The Stars’ End weapons had found the Sangaree. The fringes of their fury had brushed the harvestfleet like the cold breeze of the passing wings of death. And he was pinned here, helpless, in agony.
Slowly, slowly, the breeze faded. The screams died with it—all but his own. Excited chatter surrounded him. He could distinguish no words. His head was tearing itself apart. Once, when he was a kid, it had been almost this bad. He had nearly killed himself smashing his head against a wall.
Someone finally noticed him. His helmet came off. A needle stung his arm. The pain began fading.
The room was nearly dark, so weak were the lights. Gravity had been reduced to half normal. Danion was rationing power.
The faces crossing his field of vision seemed unconcerned with Danion’s condition. They were exuberant. There was laughter. Little jokes flew.
“We’ve won!” motherly Clara told him. “Stars’ End killed them.”
Not all, Moyshe thought, though he said nothing. One or two had made hyper in time.
The Seiners had just moved up the Sangaree vendetta list, perhaps surpassing Jupp von Drachau.
“But we lost four harvestships,” the younger half of his tech team told him. “Four harvestships.” He was having a hard time believing that.
It was a victory day, all right, but one which left the Seiners little to celebrate.
Blessed darkness enfolded Moyshe. He fell into the blissful sleep of the needle, a sleep untroubled by fearful dreams.
Eighteen: 3049 AD
Operation Dragon, the Change
He ignored the shoulder-shaking as long as he could. Finally, sleep-slurred, he muttered, “Wha’d’ya wan’?”
“Get up, Moyshe. Time to go to work. There’s a million things to do.”
So. Amy, he thought. Altogether too businesslike for a girl who thought she should be a wife. He opened an eye, checked the time.
“Five hours? What the hell kind of rest is that?” he grumbled. “How the hell did I get here? I was in Contact.”
“It’s been eleven hours. The clock’s unplugged. To save power. They brought you down on a stretcher. I thought you’d been mind-burned . . . ” She threw herself on top of him, clinging with desperation. “Moyshe, I was so scared . . . ”
“All right. All right. I survived,” he grumbled. He still was not accustomed to the Seiner habit of showing emotion.
She reached under the sheet, tickled him. “Come on, Grump. There’re things to do.”
He threw his arms around her and rolled her over, his mouth seeking hers.
“Moyshe!”
He smothered her protest with a kiss. “It’s been a week, lady.”
“I know. But . . . ”
“But me no buts, woman. The hump-backed crocodiles of entropy are gnawing at the underbellies of our allotted spans. I’m not going to waste an opportunity on tinkering with a piece of pipe.”
“Moyshe! What kind of talk is that?”
“Shut up.”
“Yes, Boss.”
They dressed hurriedly afterward. Amy decided on a fresh coverall.
“Now, what’s the hurry?” Moyshe demanded.
“You’ve got to get back to work. Moyshe . . . We really are desperate this time. We’re in a decaying orbit around Stars’ End. The mindsails went in the spillover from whatever killed the Sangaree. We’ll hit the boundary in two days unless we get the drives working.”
“Boundary?”
“Limit of approach. Stars’ End starts shooting if a ship passes it.”
“I wondered why we’re alive.”
“Only the Sangaree violated it. The machine is very literal. Anyway. We’re due on shift in three hours, and Jarl needs you to take some tests first.”
“Can’t they wait?”
“He said today.”
“Might as well. I’m awake now. Where’s Mouse?”
“Hospital block. He’s doing okay.”
Hospital block was fifteen kilometers away. Maybe more if there were detours. Moyshe knew he had to move fast. “We’ll go there first.”
“Why?”
“To see Mouse.”
“But the tests!”
“Damn the tests. I want to see Mouse. You coming?”
“Not anymore. Hey! Wait!”
They ran to a scooter, laughingly fought for the controls. Moyshe made a point of winning. He did not trust her to take him where he wanted to go.
He whipped down the passageway, scattering cursing pedestrians. The wind in his face exhilarated him—till he remembered what had happened. Memories of what he had done kept him quiet till he reached the hospital block.
Bluff and bluster got him past nurses who believed they were running a monastery.
They wandered the ward where Mouse was supposed to be confined, unable to find him.
Feminine laughter suddenly rippled through t
he passageway. “What do you think?” Moyshe asked.
“Wouldn’t bet against it,” Amy replied. Her good cheer had not faded.
Moyshe followed the laughter to a small private room where he found Mouse making friends with his nurse. BenRabi began to wonder why he had come. It did not look as if Mouse needed him. Then he understood. He had not come for any good, businesslike reason. He just wanted to see how Mouse was. And that was silly. Landsmen did not behave that way.
Mouse was fine, needless to say.
“What’re you doing in here?” Moyshe asked, embarrassed because he was interrupting. “There’s work to do.”
Mouse grinned, winked. “Moyshe, everybody gets a vacation. Besides, I had to meet Vickie here. Darling, say hello to my friend Moyshe.”
“Hello to my friend Moyshe.”
“Isn’t she something? Been trying to find out if those long lean legs are as fine as they promise to be. Those work outfits just don’t do a thing for a woman.”
“How are you, Mouse?” benRabi asked.
“Like the man said before they closed the coffin, as well as can be expected under the circumstances.” He whipped his top sheet back. His arm and shoulder were heavily bandaged and in a partial cast. “They’ll have me back on light duty in a couple of days. Unless I can blow in that dainty ear there and get somebody to keep me here.”
Vickie giggled.
“Well, good. I just wanted to check. Sorry I interrupted. Behave.”
“Don’t I always?” Mouse chuckled. “Hey, Moyshe, go by my cabin and make sure nobody’s run off with the silverware.”
“All right.”
“See you in a couple days.”
“Yeah.” BenRabi withdrew, Amy on his heels. “Damn!” he told her. “I feel silly.”
“What? Why?”
He shook his head. He could not explain. Not to her. A Seiner would never understand what he meant when he said he and Mouse had passed a point of no return and become genuine friends. Amy did not have the background to comprehend what that could mean to a landsman.
She was worried. “Thinking about what Jarl is going to say when we show up late?” he asked.
“Uhm.” She remained thoughtful as they stalked the sterile white corridors.
