Rogue Powers

by Roger MacBride Allen

  "I can't blame you. Okay, I'll start the tape." The lights went down and a meter-wide viewscreen on the side wall came on. After a warning that the contents were Top Secret, a line drawing of the Impervious came up on screen. "Okay, this is the way the Imp looked a week or so ago. Big cylinder. Here's a phantom view. Note the four hangar decks that take up the whole outer circumference amidships."

  Suddenly, one of the hangar decks turned black, and a thick line of black bored straight through to the heart of the ship. "Blammo. A rock, launched from a linear accelerator that has since been captured, hits the Imp at extremely high velocity. A big rock, moving very fast. Hulls the hangar deck and keeps right on going, ripping deep into the ship, opens the bridge to vacuum and a lot of compartments in between. Kills people, wrecks equipment, tears up the ship's internal communication and life support. They lose more people before they can get backups going. And practically every Britannic line officer ranking captain or above was at a ball in that hangar. Plus many distinguished guests."

  "Including my executive officer," Driscoll said grimly.

  Pete Gesseti hung his head for a moment and sighed. So many losses. But there was no time to grieve them all. "I'm sorry. I didn't know. There were no survivors from

  0Hangar One. But by sheer chance, Captain Thomas and Commander Joslyn Larson, his chief fighter pilot, weren't in the hangar at that moment. Anyway." More lines of black bored into the image of the Imp on the screen. "More rock impacts. None of them do anywhere near the damage of the first. It seems like it was chance, not planning, that made the first strike so bad. The Imp wasn't even in her present orbit when the rocks were launched, weeks before. The Guards just threw a lot of rocks to soften up the Brit fleet and got lucky. Crippled the Imp. The damage control officer, a Commander Higgins, has been recommended for the Elizabeth Cross for his work in getting her back in shape to fight. A posthumous recommendation. With all his superiors dead, Captain Thomas, quite correctly, took command of the fleet and led a brilliant defense. The enemy ships only got in a dozen shots or so at the larger Brit ships before the Guards were destroyed or chased off. A long, complex battle. And Mac, the report makes clear that Joslyn was okay to this point. Afterwards, we just plain don't know. I'm sorry.

  "As I was saying, the Guards only made a few shots at the Brits. But some of those shots impacted on target, and they carried these little wonders, or rather eggs, that hatched and grew into these bastards." The meter-wide screen was suddenly filled by the image of a foam worm. Its body was a glistening, sickly pinkish-gray, the color of meat that has begun to rot, covered with thousands of stubby hairs, cilia. It had no eyes, no apparent sense organs of any kind. "That nightmare is really only about four centimeters long. It can crawl. It has a toothless mouth that secretes God knows what, but it can dissolve practically anything. It has an anus that excretes nightmares. And it can lay eggs. God can it lay eggs. Asexual. It comes close to laying before it's finished hatching from its own egg. A generation about every two hours! No one can figure out how it can have that fast a metabolism without literally burning up. They sent a robot camera aboard the Imp, and it radioed back these images. Before the worms ate the camera."

  The scene shifted again. It was a zero-gravity charnel house, an abattoir, the signs of death all around, lit with the reddened gloom of emergency lighting. A blob of what might be machine oil, or blood, or something else, drifted into a wall and splattered there. Corpses and wreckage floated through the murky, poisoned air. The eye looked for signs of movement, life, in the bodies of the dead that drifted past the camera, and seemed to see it, strangely distorted, until suddenly it was clear what that movement was. Everything, everywhere, was covered with a writhing, twisting, mass of tiny gray-pink bodies that crawled and slithered and fed indiscriminately on human dead and plastic wallboard and clothing. The camera moved in on a swollen, horribly distended corpse—its skin roiling, knotting and unknotting, moving with the horrid mass of things that had eaten their way inside. The camera turned to look up at the overhead bulkhead. Blobs of the worms' foamed excrement had accumulated over and in an air vent, clogging it hopelessly. The camera found a junction box, and looked at it, its cover eaten away, the wiring inside sparking and melting, shorted out by the corpses of dozens of the worms. And live worms were feeding on the dead. One of the ghastly little destroyers lost its hold and drifted off the pile of its fellows, came floating straight at the lens, wriggling, struggling in midair to find a foothold, turning end over end, closer and closer, until it landed square on the lens, blacking out the scene—

  The tape ended, the lights came up, and Pete suddenly was aware of a gagging noise coming from the office's head. George was crouched over the toilet, being hopelessly sick. Randall's skin had turned a greenish-white, and he looked close to joining George. Mac and Driscoll stared, grim-faced, at the blanked-out screen.

  Pete retrieved the tape from the playback unit. "The camera lens was plastic, so the worm ate it." He shoved the tape in his pocket, turned, and faced the others. "Now

  0imagine how happy and relaxed they are on Britannica right now. It might be an official secret, but try keeping that kind of disaster quiet. The Guard fleet didn't get within three quarters of a million kilometers of the planet itself, but suppose, just suppose, one missile with those things aboard was fired at the planet, or that one egg got out of the Impervious and re-entered somehow, or got aboard a ship that landed and came out on someone's clothing—how doesn't really matter, but suppose those nightmares got loose and started breeding on the planet . . . Hysteria is barely the word for it. And the one piece of good news that makes that impossible is also the worst news. They've found out the things can't survive except in zero-gee. They caught some worms and put 'em in sealed glass containers to study in one of the orbital stations. As soon as they carried the worms into the spin section, they died. They've checked it other ways: The eggs can survive massive acceleration, but the worms die in anything but weightlessness."

  "Why is that bad news?" Driscoll asked. "It means Britannica is safe."

  "Because it makes it even more certain that these things are artificial."

  "The Guards bred them?" she asked.

  "Not bred," Mac said. "Manufactured. Invented. Jesus. Those aren't animals. They're weapons. Bioweapons? I don't know what the term would be. The old tired joke about designer genes. They decided what they wanted, drew up some blueprints, and either created a whole new creature or vastly modified an existing one. We can modify, say, a cow's genes enough so that it can digest Kennedy's indigenous plant life. That's about it. We managed to grow K-cows, but it strained our abilities to the limit—and killed a lot of cows before we got it right. Something like these worms is as far beyond what we can do as faster-than-light drive was beyond the Wright brothers. And if they can grow things that only live in zero-gee, they can grow things that endure gravity as well as we do—or breed an entirely different kind of creature that can attack us in a completely different way."

  George rinsed out his mouth and staggered back from the head. "Artificial life is absolutely brand new, so far as I know," he said. "I never heard the slightest hint of any such thing. And if they had had those horror things a year or two ago, they'd have used them at New Finland."

  "Pete. The genes of these things. Are they Earth-descended? DNA, RNA?" Mac asked.

  "No. A completely unfamiliar genetic structure. Not Earth-based, or from any other planet we've ever got data from. Brand new. They got this far starting from scratch. Real smart guys."

  "This is all obviously very important," Driscoll said. "But why the big rush to see that / knew about it?"

  "I suspect the same reason that Commander Metcalf and Mr. Prigot are here," Pete said. "Some set of powers-that-be decided to hand the project of physically searching through Mr. Prigot's list of star systems to you. Another set is going to call you and tell you the League's combined fleet is going to be headquartered right here. Or at least, in this star system, with Bas
e HQ right here on Columbia. They're going to pull in every ship they can. This raid scared the pants off the Brits, and they'll be able to sign up every government who gets a look at that tape. We're both here to warn you that company's coming."

  Randall Metcalf stared at Pete. "You do good guessing. You must be a real smart guy yourself."

  Mac grinned. "He is. Every once in a while I get the idea he's running the universe for his own personal convenience."

  "Hey, somebody finally caught on," Pete said in mock surprise. "But seriously, Captain Driscoll. Columbia is a natural for an HQ. The reason for putting the search team here is obvious—you guys run the Survey Service already, and that's a lot like what the search team here will be doing. And there are good reasons to put the fleet here as well. It's near enough Kennedy so you've got an easy job

  0supplying the place with foodstuffs and so on, there's an intact crew and base here and in orbit that knows how to handle ships—and your people are used to spacers from every planet and language wandering through—and here on the surface of Columbia is an atmosphere that's not only poisonous, it's unique. Unless the Guards breed something specifically intended for this moon's air, Columbia's own weird half-way terraformed air, the atmosphere would kill it."

  "And if they breed something that can survive here, the air anywhere else would kill it, and the rest of the League is safe. It makes a grim kind of sense," Driscoll conceded. "Is this an official message to the effect that the combined League fleet will be here?"

  "More sort of semi non-official. All the delegates back at Earth's moon will bicker and scream for a while, but the fix is in. The U.S., the Japanese, the British and the Brit Commonwealth nations are going to say Columbia—and Kennedy will agree, and all the other planets will be glad to stick someone else with it. Especially Earth. Who the hell would want to tempt the Guards into a raid on good old Mom Earth? You'll probably get the official orders cut for you in about two hundred hours.

  "But why does Kennedy's government want the fleet right next door? The same dangers of drawing fire apply here as Earth," Randall asked.

  "I think they figure we must be next on the list anyway, after Britannica," Pete said. "The Guards would probably hesitate about hitting Earth—the Yanks, the Brits, and the Japanese cut a deal with the Brazilians and the czar and linked all the space defense and detection systems—and that means coordinated listening posts on moons of all the outer planets, and in deep space. Their spotting is probably ten times as good as Britannica's, and you can bet there's lots of firepower to back it up. So if Earth is too scary for the Guards, Kennedy's the next juiciest military target. Couldn't hurt to have a great big combined fleet in the system."

  "Uh huh. What about a commander?" Randall asked.

  "You're going to love it. Politics again. The Brits insisted on naming one of their own as commander. They've been hit the hardest, except for the Finns, and the Finns don't have the pull—or the amount of hardware—the Brits do. The Brits are very concerned that the show be run the right way—their way. So they said, you want to play with our ships—and our battle data—fine, but we get to be team captain or we take our ball and go home."

  "Wait a minute, Pete," Mac said, "you just got through telling us all their senior line officers were killed—"

  "Except Captain, and soon to be Admiral, Sir George Wilfred Thomas. Right."

  Randall's mouth fell open, he closed it, opened it, spluttered a bit and finally said, "Thomas? The man's a world-class drunk. You can't take a Brit into a U.S. Navy officer's club without someone telling a Thomas joke. And the man's nine thousand years old."

  "He's only sixty-seven, Earthside. I'll grant you, the poop is they were going to put him out to pasture before all hell broke loose. But now he's all they got left. And he did damn well against the Guards in that raid."

  "I notice he lost three major combatant ships."

  Pete pulled out the tape he had shown and waved it in the air. "To the crawlies. He beat the Guard fleet. The worms took out the ships. So you tell me how he should have defended against them."

  "Well, I don't have to like it," Randall said.

  "No, just get used to it."

  Mac glanced at his wristband. "It's so late it's about to become very early, and we've got a lot to work on. Can we keep talking in the officer's mess, and maybe throw some eggs in a pan and get some coffee? If I can't sleep, I want to eat."

  Driscoll shrugged. "Why not? But if we want to talk we can't have the cooks around. We use my private galley.

  And Mac, since it's your idea, you do the cooking."

  * * *

  The informal rituals of morning—breakfast getting ready, coffee brewing, a brightly lit wardroom—cheered the group, relaxed and revived them, just as Mac had intended. And a change of scene from the room where they had seen the tape of the worms didn't hurt either. Everyone was surprised to find they had an appetite.

  The breakfast table was more conducive to light banter and jokes than to political talk. Even Captain Driscoll relaxed a little. "You're not a captain yet,' she said to Mac, "so I can still order you around. I’ll take four eggs, over easy."

  "Three eggs for me," Pete said. "Sunny-side up, and don't break the yokes."

  "Two for me, soft-boiled," Randall put in.

  "Civilians and everybody who doesn't outrank me will get scrambled eggs and like them," Mac said warningly. "The boss, I have to take care of. And you can all make your own toast." Mac enjoyed cooking, and he was good at it, or at least good at producing simple, hearty fare. His scrambled eggs turned out to be a huge omelet with half the contents of the refrigerator thrown into it, good enough to tempt Driscoll into changing her mind about taking her eggs over easy.

  It was good to see old friends again, even in the midst of war and politics. No one wanted to mix business talk with the meal anyway, so Mac spent most of the meal catching up with Randall and George, hearing about Bandwidth and how they had figured out Capital's sky—and trying not to think about Joslyn. Randall wanted to hear about the court-martial, but Mac was quite firmly not interested in discussing it.

  Finally the meal was over, the dishes cleared away, and the five of them sat and talked over one last cup of coffee. There was a lot of news, a lot to think on.

  "Mac," Captain Driscoll said. "When your captain's bars come through, would you mind terribly hanging them up for a while? Very temporary, a brevet demotion?"

  "What? Now what have I done?"

  Driscoll smiled and shook her head. "Nothing like that. It's my problem. If we're going to have half the ships in space descending on us, this base has got to be run right. And Commander Ortega, my executive officer, got killed on the Imp. I want you in there as a brevet commander, my XO, until we can get things a bit sorted out. It's no time to bring in an officer who doesn't know the layout. You know the base, the way things run, who the right people are—and you're a name, and people will listen to you, respect you. I need you, at least until the fleet sails. Then you'll be wanted there, with the fleet. Will you do it?"

  Mac sighed and stared at his coffee. He was just starting to get used to the idea of being a captain, the respect, the rank and privileges. And, though he had never been overly ambitious about rank, there wasn't a naval officer anywhere who could hear the word "captain" without thinking "admiral." It wasn't impossible. Well, yes, it nearly was, after the court-martial. Conviction overturned or no, it wasn't the sort of thing that impressed a promotion board. Still, being a captain was no bad thing in its own right. He was being paid as a lieutenant commander at the moment. A captaincy would practically double his current salary, for starters. The system owed him a little something, and the captaincy was a way to pay him back. And he was entitled, after all he had been through. Why settle for a commander's pay? No, wait, Driscoll had thought of that. She wanted him to take the permanent grade before the brevet move to commander—so Mac could draw pay at his new permanent rank, captain. But still, how would yet another brevet move look
on his record? It seemed to Mac he never retained one rank long enough for the ink to be dry on the paperwork.

  Ah, hell, his military career was a crazy hodge-podge already. One more cobbled-together assignment wasn't going to hurt. And besides, if the Navy owed him one, then he owed one to Driscoll. He knew damn well she had pulled strings to get him assigned back to the Survey base after he was convicted and demoted. Being in a place he knew, where he was a familiar face and not a face in the news—that had helped him a lot.

  "Sure, Captain," he said at last, very slowly. "I'd be glad to."

  "Thanks, Mac. I appreciate it."

  Mac drank the last of his coffee. The dregs of the cup were bitter, and that seemed about right. Mac had never asked for reward or recognition for his part in the war. That was for others to offer, not his to demand. But he had always trusted people when they had offered. And somehow it was always snatched away; he was always asked to do one more thing he couldn't say no to, he was always shunted to one side for the very best of reasons. He was slowly starting to realize that the arrears would never be paid to him in full. And if the damnable war had killed Joslyn, they could never even begin to pay them.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN Survey Service Base, Columbia

  Mac might have found ways to worry himself to death over Joslyn, but there was work to do, a great deal of it. Suddenly everything had to be done at once, and there wasn't time to think of anything but work. Mac knew he wasn't the first—or last—man to hide from his fears in the exhaustion of overwork, but he was grateful for that exhaustion anyway.

  There was the fleet's arrival to prepare for, the search for Capital to plan. Driscoll, concerned with the task of providing facilities for hundreds of ships, put Mac in charge of the search for Capital while she worried about everything else. There should have been a dozen officers, all kinds of specialists on call to plan the search, but there simply weren't enough warm bodies, or enough time, to allow such luxury. And Driscoll liked it that way—she was a great believer in lean, mean organizations. She wanted the search operations underway before the League brass could wander in and strangle it in months of studies on how to do it quickly.