A Talent for War

by Jack McDevitt

  We were accelerating.

  “Captain, we have a readout on the leading pursuit elements: two cruisers, seventeen destroyers, nineteen or twenty escorts. Additional vessels are straggling, but should not be a factor in the first phase.”

  The two forces were clearly visible in infrared: a fountain of stars forming over the big planet, needling through the dark. It looked like a pair of comets.

  “Destroyer squadron is positioned and ready to join us on signal.”

  The two cruisers were each screened by six or seven escorts, and were now close behind their targets.

  From Corsarius came the voice of Christopher Sim, directed to his fleeing force: “Spirit, this is Truculent. Squadron will brake full thrust on my command. Allow the head of the line to overtake you, engage, and prepare to maneuver out as planned. We’ll extract the sting.”

  We rose out of the debris. The enemy line was immediately in front of us.

  We watched them pass, the Ashiyyur. Their ships were clean points of light, sparkling against the dust and detritus, and the void beyond Barcandrik. “They haven’t seen us yet,” said the navigator. “Everyone lock down.”

  We continued to accelerate. I could feel the gentle push of the engines.

  I checked my harness. The Monitor was silent. I understood some of what was happening. The velocities of the Ashiyyur were so great, that even if they discovered us prematurely, there would be little they could do to prevent our getting a few good shots at the cruisers. On the other hand, we’d get no second chance if we missed, since that same velocity would carry them quickly out of range. Total firing time available to us, according to my screens, would be about eight seconds, with less than half that amount considered a quality opportunity.

  I tried to relax, wondering why I was reacting as though the issue were in doubt. The Dellacondans would succeed in taking the cruisers by surprise. Kudasai would destroy one, and the Corsarius would cripple the other. But a series of strikes would strip her of her screens. And, while the Kudasai hurried to her assistance, the mortally wounded mute warship would finish her off. With a nuke.

  Tarien was absorbed in thought. I watched the Corsarius take station about a kilometer away. Briefly, sunlight flashed on the hull. In some trick of perception, the black harridan strained forward. Her weapons clusters were primed and ready, her sensor dishes rotating slowly, the lights on her bridge dimmed. For all that, there was something almost insubstantial about her, as though she were already part phantom.

  A klaxon sounded, its deep-throated shriek echoing through the ship.

  “Something behind us,” said one of the deck officers. She was barely able to conceal her surprise. “Coming fast. Looks like twelve, maybe thirteen destroyers.”

  “Confirmed,” came another voice. “They’ve locked onto us.”

  “How the hell’d they manage that?” growled the Captain. “Plotting: what’s their arrival time?”

  “If present rate of deceleration continues, eleven minutes.”

  I listened to the ship’s background noises. My overall impression was that the Kudasai was holding its collective breath.

  I was a bit nonplussed myself. I’d had no idea they’d run into this sort of problem. And I wondered how, under the circumstances, they could possibly have executed their designs on the main body of the pursuers. Which, historically, they did.

  Christopher Sim’s voice shattered the stillness. “Mallet, this is Truculent. Break off attack. Withdraw.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Monitor, there’s something wrong here.”

  “Mendel.” Sim’s voice was strained. “It’s essential that we save the Kudasai. Get it out of here. I’ll try to cover.”

  “No!” Tarien’s big fist came down on the arm of his chair, and he glared at the overhead screen, across which the oncoming destroyers were swarming. “Proceed with the attack, Chris. We have no choice!”

  “Can’t do it,” said his brother. “They’ll catch us long before we can get close to the targets. We’re going to fight destroyers today whether we want to or not, and we’d better concentrate on choosing our ground. They’ve got too much here for us to risk getting caught in the open. Head for Barcandrik.”

  “Wait a minute,” I objected. “This isn’t the way it happened.”

  Please do not interfere, Alex.

  “Well, what the hell is going on here, Monitor? I don’t recall ever having heard about a destroyer attack at the last minute.”

  You were not there. How do you know what really happened?

  “I’ve read the books.”

  LeMara’s voice: “Stand by to divert power to Armstrong units. If we have to, we’ll jump out.”

  Tarien shook his head fiercely. “That’ll be the end,” he rumbled. “Don’t do it.”

  We moved away hard, and I was crushed into my seat. The environmental support system, which supplies artificial gravity, also negates most of the inertia caused by acceleration. But it apparently wasn’t quite as good as the equipment they have in the modern interstellars.

  “Alex?” It was Tarien’s voice on my link. It was also something of a surprise: participants aren’t supposed to converse with an observer.

  “Yes?” I said, struggling to form the words. “What is it?”

  “We aren’t going to survive this. Save yourself, if you can.” He looked up at me, gave me a bail-out signal with his hand, and then turned back to his display.

  That did it. “Monitor, pull me out.”

  Nothing.

  “Monitor, where the hell are you?”

  I was getting scared now.

  The captain went to battle mode. I’ve found out since that ships of the period, during emergencies, could boost power temporarily. Systems drained more quickly, but for a limited time you could pour a lot of juice simultaneously into weapons, shield, and propulsion.

  The planetary atmosphere in which we hoped to lose our pursuers looked hopelessly far away. We were picking up speed quickly. But on the displays, the destroyers were coming fast, and fanning out into a wedge.

  I pressed my headband. It was wet with perspiration. “Monitor, get me out.”

  Still nothing.

  A carapace closed over my observation port. Lights dimmed.

  The instructions tell you that if everything else fails, you can escape from the software simply by removing the headband. You’re not supposed to do it, because it’s hard on the equipment, or the head, or something. I don’t remember. But I pulled it off.

  Nothing changed.

  I shut my eyes, and tried to feel the overstuffed sofa in the downstairs living room. I was prone on that goddam sofa, but the only connection I had between this world and that was the headband. Even my clothes were different. (I wore the uniform of the Dellacondans; and they’d given me two silver circlets. I was an officer.)

  Our own rear batteries opened up. The ship shuddered under the discharge. What the hell was going to happen here?

  What I knew: if the ship were ripped open, if I were severely injured in the scenario, or killed, my physical body would certainly go into shock. It had happened occasionally. And people had died. “Jacob! Are you there?”

  “Destroyers commencing evasive maneuvering. At least, we’ll pick up some time.”

  On the overhead, I could see that Corsarius was still with us. Another screen sketched the paths of whatever the Kudasai had fired. Someone was reading off power projections. But most of the talk on the commlink had stopped.

  The weapons tracks passed harmlessly among mute ships.

  “All miss. Charged for second volley.”

  “Wait,” said the Captain. “Hold it until they get closer. I’ll tell you when.”

  For a long time after that no one spoke. The only sounds came from the electronics and the life support ducts and the throbbing of power deep within the ship. The combat officer reported that the destroyers had fired, and that we had enacted countermeasures. They were using nuclear-tipped photels, wh
ich travel at lightspeed and had, fortunately, already missed.

  “We’ll be into the hydrogen in about four minutes,” said the Captain.

  There was a second exchange of salvos, and two of the destroyers blew up. Another wobbled out of formation. Someone cheered.

  “Might make it yet,” said a woman’s voice on the commlink.

  The Captain was frowning. Tarien was watching him curiously. “What’s wrong?” he asked after a moment.

  “Corsarius hasn’t fired yet.”

  “Captain,” said the navigator, “check the port screen.”

  We all looked. It was a visual of Corsarius, and though I saw nothing unusual, everyone else seemed to. At first, there was perplexity, then anger, and finally dismay.

  I looked again: and I understood. The weapons clusters were pointed at us!

  The Captain hit a switch on his chair. “Corsarius,” he said, “What the hell’s going on?”

  No response.

  “Ridiculous,” said Tarien, leaning over his own link. “Chris!”

  “Full power to port shield,” said the Captain. “Evade. Go to autolock. Break the commlink with Corsarius. At my command, come to zero three eight, mark six.”

  “No!” roared Tarien. “We need to talk to him. Find out what’s happening.”

  “We’ll talk later,” said LeMara. “For now, I don’t want a beamrider honing in on us.” He turned impatiently to the officer at his right. “Helmsman, execute!”

  The ship moved under me. I was flattened again.

  “She’s still with us.” The long bullet shape of the Corsarius remained directly outside my viewport.

  “That’s got to be physically impossible.” I breathed the remark into the link, expecting no response. But the voice of the Monitor was back.

  You are correct, he said. It is. Ask the Ashiyyur. They will tell you that the Corsarius is not bound by physical law, and that Christopher Sim is far more than human.

  Sim’s ship rotated, bringing still another line of weapons into play.

  “Pulsers,” said the Captain.

  A distant voice commented: “Point blank range.”

  There was no warning flash. The bolts traveled at lightspeed, so there was only the harsh gutting of metal, sudden darkness, and the howl of escaping atmosphere.

  A scream rose and cut off. A sudden blast of cold ripped through the cabin, there was no air, and something slammed into my ribs. I became intensely aware of the arm of the chair in my right hand. The ship, the cabin, the trouble I was having breathing, everything focused down to that piece of fabric-covered metal.

  “The bastard’s getting ready to shoot again.”

  XIII.

  A mob is democracy in its purest form.

  —Attributed to Christopher Sim,

  The Deflacondan Annals

  MY FOREHEAD WAS cool. Something moved against it, a cloth, a hand, something. I listened to the rhythm of my breathing; a mild vertigo gripped me when I tried to move. My ribs hurt, and my neck. There was light against my eyelids.

  “Alex, are you all right?”

  Chase’s voice. Far away.

  Water dribbled into a basin.

  “Hello,” I said, still afloat in the dark.

  She took my head in her hands, and pressed her lips against my forehead. “Nice to have you back.”

  I reached clumsily for her, to collect a second round, but she pulled back and smiled. The gesture didn’t reach her eyes, though. “How do you feel?”

  “Terrible.”

  “Nothing seems to be broken. You’re beat up a little. What were you doing in there?”

  “Finding out what happens to bystanders,” I said.

  “Do you want medics?”

  “No. I’ll be okay.”

  “Maybe you should. I’m not much at this kind of thing: for all I know, you could have internal injuries.”

  I looked up into her gray eyes. She was no Quinda Arin, but at that moment she looked very good. “I’m fine,” I said. “How’d you get here?”

  “Jacob called me.”

  “Jacob?”

  “It seemed like a good idea,” said Jacob.

  “He noticed you were having problems.”

  “You were flushed,” Jacob said. “And you were breathing irregularly.”

  “So he took a look and brought you out.” She produced a glass of water.

  “Thanks.” I sipped it, and tried to sit up. But everything hurt too much. “How’d it happen?”

  “We’re not sure. The simul was defective.”

  I laughed my way into a spasm with that.

  “Alex,” said Jacob, “I’ve looked at all the scenarios. Much the same thing would have happened no matter which you used. Even the Spinners. Had you gone back to Hrinwhar with Sim’s raiding party, you’d have discovered the plan to draw the Ashiyyur away doesn’t entirely work, and the Dellacondans get decimated. These are not the same simulations that we copied.”

  “The burglar,” I said.

  “Yes,” observed Jacob.

  I was still trying to sit up, but Chase eased me back. “Maybe that explains why they threw the sheets around and stole the book.”

  “I don’t think I see a connection,” said Jacob.

  “What about the sheets?” asked Chase, who looked as if she hadn’t heard correctly.

  “We had a burglar yesterday who did some strange things with the bedding, and stole a collection of Walford Candles.”

  “It was a distraction,” she said. “To hide the real reason for the break-in. Somebody wants you dead.”

  “I disagree,” said Jacob. “I broke off the simul as soon as I became aware of the situation. But, had I not done so, the program would have acted to rescue you within a few more moments anyway. The same is true with all the simuls. It was not the intent that you should die.”

  “Sounds as if they’re trying to scare you, Alex,” said Chase.

  They had. I could see from the way she was looking at me that she knew it as well as I did. “It has to be connected with Gabe.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Jacob.

  I was wondering how I could back out gracefully without having Chase write me off as a coward. “None of this is worth getting killed over,” I said.

  Jacob was silent.

  Chase nodded. “It’s safest,” she agreed, after a long moment. She looked disappointed.

  “Well, what do you want from me?” I demanded. “I don’t even know who the sons of bitches are. How can I protect myself from them?”

  “You can’t.”

  Things got very quiet after that.

  Chase stared out a window, and I put my hand to my head and tried to look battered.

  “Still,” she said, eventually, “it’s a pity the bastards will get away with it.”

  “Someone,” said Jacob, “must think you’re on the right track.” He sounded mildly reproachful.

  “Does anybody know anything about these?” I asked, fingering the crystal in which the simuls were loaded. “How difficult is it to reprogram one of these scenarios? What kind of expertise does it take?”

  “Moderate, I would think,” said Jacob. “One needs not only to rewrite the basic program, but to effect a disjunction that would negate the Monitor’s primary response package, which is aimed toward ensuring the safety of the participant. And it would be necessary to disconnect a series of backup precautionary systems as well. A properly equipped home system could do it.”

  “Could you?”

  “Oh, yes. Rather easily, actually.”

  “So someone learned, probably from the library, which scenarios we’d copied. Then they acquired a duplicate set, reprogrammed them in this crystal, and substituted it.”

  Chase crossed her legs, and kept her eyes averted. “We could query the library and find out who else has been interested in this series of engagements. No one need know we’ve done that.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt,” I said.

  “I’ve alread
y taken the step, Alex. An identical set of scenarios was borrowed two days ago.”

  “Okay,” I said, reluctantly. “By whom?”

  “The record says Gabriel Benedict.”

  Next morning, Jacob commented offhandedly that he’d been reading about Wally Candles, and had uncovered some information during the night. “He wrote prefaces to all his books. Did you know that?”

  “We have—or had—all five of them here,” I said. “I don’t recall any prefaces.”

  “That’s because they’re extremely long. Nearly as long as the books themselves. Consequently, they are never included with the actual volumes. But they were collected and annotated a number of years ago by Armand Jeffries, who is a prominent Candles scholar. ”

  I was enjoying the heat from a thermal-wrap against my bruised ribs. “What’s the point?” I asked.

  “I came across a description by him of the reaction on Khaja Luan after the occupation of the City on the Crag. There’s an interesting portrait of Leisha Tanner in action. Apparently she was a woman of considerable courage.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You remember she mentioned the mobs? Apparently she wasn’t simply a bystander. I have the material set up, if you’d like to see it.”

  “Please,” I said.

  “On the screen?”

  “Read it to me, Jacob.”

  “Yes.” He paused. “There is quite a lot about the political situation.”

  “I’ll look at that later. What does he say about Tanner?”

  “On the evening after they heard that the City on the Crag had been taken, Candles was watching an interventionist demonstration on campus. But he kept a safe distance.”

  They were using the front portico of the dining hall as a stage. Seven or eight people were seated up there, all looking appropriately outraged, and all clearly prepared to cut a few throats in a just cause. Marish Camandero was speaking. She’s head of the sociology department, attractive, big-boned, no-nonsense. Exactly the sort of person you need to teach sociology.

  There were maybe two hundred demonstrators gathered in the Square. That may not sound like many, but they were loud. And active. They’d brought their own music, which was mostly clatter and shrieking, and they were constantly pushing and grabbing one another. There’d been a couple of fights, one young man seemed to be engaged in trying to couple with a marberry bush, and bottles were evident everywhere.