The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III

by David Drake

  “Shields up and operational. One decoy is inside shield perimeter, the other is outside and compromised,” the weapons officer announced. “Missile impact with shield in ten seconds, barring evasive action. Deploying additional decoy under cover of shield. Stand by for missile impact.”

  Spencer felt his breath come in short, gasping wheezes as his lungs tried to catch up with his oxygen-starved body. It was impossible to keep breathing properly for long under six Gs, and he was glad of the relief.

  But there was the taste of fear in his mouth as well. If the missile was smart enough, and quick enough, it would know that Banquo would have to come out from her shield sooner or later. A smart missile would maneuver into a station-keeping position with the ship, just outside the shield—and then rocket inside the shield perimeter just as the electromagnetic screens came down. That would leave Banquo like the proverbial fish in the barrel, with no escape possible.

  Or else, of course, the damn missile could simply be big enough, fast enough, well-armored enough to punch through the shield and be done with it.

  Spencer watched the chronometer. Only five seconds had passed. If the missiles were unable to maneuver in time, if it could not dodge the deadly scything blades of intersecting magnetic fields that made up the shield—then they were safe.

  But a Pact missile could have dodged the field at that range, Spencer thought. Why not this one? The tactical computers seemed to be thinking the same way. It abruptly snapped the brightest, highest-probability course projection away from the shields, diving away on a tight tangent, then braking to hover in space a few kilometers away.

  It’s only a guess, Spencer told himself. A computer with its sensors jammed playing guessing games. That trace of light has no concrete reality. The thought was neither convincing nor reassuring.

  And then the ship lurched hard to one side. Every sensor screen on the bridge flared into blinding brightness and went dead. The lights faded, dimmed down to nothingness, and then recovered slightly. Spencer’s safety harness held him down, but two or three crew members were thrown about.

  But we should be dead, Spencer thought, numb with fear, shock, exhaustion. It hit us. We should be dead. Then he noticed the cheering around him. The naval veterans around him were wild with relief. They understood and he did not. Some part of him told Spencer to keep silent, retain his dignity, not look stupid by asking—but he could not stand not knowing. “What happened?” he asked the grinning Tallen Deyi. “That thing hit us! How did we survive the impact?”

  Tallen’s broad face creased in laughter. “Never got near us.”

  “But the whole ship tumbled!”

  “Newton’s third law at your service,” Tallen said. “Or whatever the physicists are using instead this week. The missile slammed into our magnetic shield, deformed it, knocked it around. We’re magnetically linked to the shield by the generators. When the field got kicked, it dragged the ship along with it. The generators are still drawing surplus power to rebuild the magnetic fields.”

  “And the missile?”

  “Smashed like a bug on a windshield. That light flash was the shield absorbing and dumping the impact energy.”

  Spencer looked around the bridge. Sensor screens, dazzled by the energy overload of recording a missile smearing itself across the inside of the shield, began to reset themselves.

  “Shields to stand-by power,” the weapons officer announced.

  Spencer checked the main viewscreen and then the tactical plot. At standby, the shields allowed some light energy to come through, enough for the tactics computers to work with—and you could even fire the main engines at low power, in a pinch.

  They were getting a good tactical plot again. Spencer scanned the display carefully, and let out a sigh of weary relief. Space ahead was clear now. All three destroyers had left the freighters behind. None of the enemy craft stood any hope of catching the Pact’s ships.

  ###

  “Shields down to zero, throttle-up to previous acceleration, adjust previous course for deviation,” Tallen Deyi ordered. The oppressive weight slammed down on them again, and the destroyers accelerated anew.

  And Spencer knew they had won this fight, by running fast enough. They had broken out of the attempted blockade. It was not a question of distance anymore, it was velocity. The Pact Navy ships were racing away from the freighters at such a ferocious speed that the enemy could never dream of catching them.

  At least, that would be true if the destroyers simply kept accelerating forever. Spencer knew that was not going to happen, and presumably so did the parasite minds controlling the freighters. The destroyers were going somewhere—to the command asteroid—and it would do them no good at all to arrive there at this sort of speed. The Pact ships would have to shut down their engines and coast, and then turn over, bring their engines to bear in their direction of travel and fire their engines in a braking maneuver.

  The parasite minds would know that the destroyers would have to slow down, know the Pact ships must either come to a full stop in space relative to the asteroid, or at least brake enough to make a worthwhile attack pass.

  Presumably, the freighters would want to do something about that. Unless they got interested in revenge on the Dancing Bear instead. But no, there would be no point to that. Think like a robot, he told himself. How would they play this one?

  “Weapons, maximum range, get the best data you can get on the command asteroid coordinates and throw it on the screen,” Spencer ordered. “And keep an eye sternward on our friends behind.”

  “Sir, there’s no way they could catch us now.” the youthful officer protested. “Not even their missiles could catch us.”

  “Just give me the plot,” Spencer said edgily. “Navigation, how much longer at six Gs?”

  “Eight minutes, twenty seconds. Then a long run at zero G, then the braking run into the asteroid’s vicinity.”

  “How long a run?” Spencer asked.

  “Just under 200 hours, Sir. A shade over eight standard days.”

  Spencer was not surprised. At the end of this burn, they would be going hellishly fast, over 250,000 kilometers per hour—but on the other hand, the command asteroid was nearly fifty million klicks away. They might get there a trifle faster by boosting harder or longer—but it would cost them dear in fuel and kill the crew.

  Eight days. A lot could happen in eight days. Arid the next move was up to the parasites. They could pursue the destroyers, shaping their orbits to catch up with them either at the command asteroid, or some point close behind. If the freighters accelerated at only one G, and kept it up for six hours, they’d be moving faster than the destroyers.

  But no intrasystem freighters could carry that much fuel, or have engines capable of that kind of sustained boost. Not without the engines wrecking themselves. Maybe the freighters could rendezvous, and have some ships transfer their fuel loads to the others—maybe even strip engines from one hull and pack them as spares aboard another. Would the parasites be good enough ship handlers, have the kind of manipulators aboard their ships, to do that land of job? It seemed like a long shot, at best.

  Besides, once the souped-up freighters arrived, they still would be overmatched in a fight with Pact destroyers. The only hope for the parasites would be in overwhelming numbers, swamping the destroyers with too many targets, too many missiles to counter. Stripping their surviving fleet of seventeen craft just to get four or five craft close enough for the Pact to vaporize wasn’t very smart.

  Think like a robot, Spencer told himself. Think with the absolute ruthless logic of a machine. Think—

  And his mind went back to the way the marines had thrown him off the Bremerton. Not because they were angry with him, not because the Pact was angry at him, not because the Pact even cared. But because it was necessary as a matter of cold, mechanical calculation, that he be out of the way. He wondered how much difference it would really make if the parasites, and not the Pact, were running the universe.

&nb
sp; He shook himself. That was the wrong thing to think about now. Probably that was the wrong thing to think about, any time.

  “Very well,” he said at last. “Order all ships to stand by for further maneuvering orders, but now steady as she goes and let’s watch the screens. They should tell us a great deal in the next few minutes.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jump

  In his mind’s eye, Ensign Peever could see the two ships, the Fleance and the Dancing Bear, docked together, a big bright obvious target in enemy radar. The enemy knew where they were, knew that the Bear had given up her secrets. The parasites would have their revenge. There could be no question of that. Feebly, pointlessly, Peever willed the two ships to make themselves invisible.

  “They have us if they want us,” Wellingham announced in a stage whisper, a strange sort of gallows glee in his voice. He sat over the Flea’s compact detection screen, watching the images of the enemy fleet. “There’s no question of that. But will they want us?”

  Peever felt ready to scream. Didn’t any of these maniacs have enough sanity left to panic? There was no time for such level-headed cool. They had to get ready to fight. Somehow, he kept his own voice calm and asked “Ah, shouldn’t we, ah, ready our weapons, Chief? Get ready for them?”

  “No need,” the chief replied quietly. “If it comes to that, we can cast off from the Bear and be ready for battle in thirty seconds. Right now they must be wondering if we’re worth the bother. Or maybe machines don’t think that way—oh my God in the stars.”

  The chief’s body stiffened over the detection screen, and the others all looked at him in alarm. “Wha—what is it, Chief?” Destin asked at last. “Are they gonna—”

  “Shut down,” Wellingham replied. “Total, absolute shutdown. They’ve all cut engines. None of them turning, none of them accelerating any further. When they shut down, all of them were more or less moving toward their home base. If they don’t maneuver again, the last of them will pass us by in about six hours’ time. I think we’re going to make it.”

  ###

  A ragged cheer erupted in Banquo’s bridge, but Spencer did not allow himself to join in.

  The civilians aboard the Bear were safe, and that was something. Allison Spencer felt some strong pangs of guilt for being concerned with other matters. Once he had made his decision to leave them behind, he had almost forgotten about the freighter and the gig, trapped in the center of the blockade sphere. He had been concerned only with neutralizing the freighter fleet, relegated the trapped human ships to the status of pawns he was forced to leave in a vulnerable position.

  Think like a robot, Spencer told himself again. Which way does a robot jump when none of the choices are good? Answer: a robot doesn’t jump at all. The sort of optimism, or desperation, or stubborn pride that would have made a human captain battle on when it was pointless—the parasites didn’t work that way. Once the odds on benefiting from combat were significantly lower than the odds of failure, or of being destroyed, the freighters simply gave up.

  Or at least appeared to give up. Their velocities varied enough that some would arrive at the command asteroid days, and others weeks, after Banquo and her sisters got there. But the freighters would be behind the Pact ships the whole way. And they could relight their engines, play catch up, whenever they liked . . .

  Maybe, from their point of view, we’re being herded, Spencer thought. Herded straight toward their main base. He would have to do something about that. But not yet. Not quite yet.

  “Coming up on main engine shutdown,” the navigation officer announced. “Commencing throttle-down. Zero thrust in ten seconds.”

  Spencer allowed himself a sigh of relief as the fearsome pressure of six-G boost eased off to nothing.

  “Secure from boost stations,” Deyi ordered, and then undid the straps that held him to his acceleration chair. He guided himself along by handholds until he was right next to Spencer. “And now what, Captain?” he asked in a quiet voice.

  “Now we do what we’re all best at,” Spencer replied. “We wait. It’s still their move. It might take a minute, or an hour, or a week for them to make it, but we wait until then. Wait and let our speed carry us closer to the command asteroid.” And then we find out who is playing a trick on whom, he thought.

  ###

  Silent as ghosts, the images of the last of the freighters passed out of range of Fleance’s detectors. “We’re alone,” Bothu announced. “They don’t care about us. Not even enough to waste a missile on us as they pass.”

  “I’m willing to live with the insult,” Peever muttered, but no one paid him any attention.

  Chief Wellingham was already getting into his pressure suit. He sealed himself in and gathered up his parasite-detection gear. He headed into the air lock that led to the Dancing Bear. Destin made a move as if to join him, but the chief shook his head. Wellingham simply wanted to do this thing alone—either that or he didn’t want Destin to foul up the gig’s cabin again by pulling his stinking suit back in from the spaceward air lock.

  No one spoke as Wellingham stepped into the lock and closed the hatch behind himself.

  Twenty minutes more passed in silence, each person alone in thought, before anything else happened. Then, the environment gauges on the air lock began to twitch upward. Captain Destin scrambled over to the lock and peered at the instruments eagerly. “Power’s back, air temp and pressure goin’ up, carbon d’oxide falling! The man did it. My ship’s alive!”

  The others aboard congratulated Destin, but there was something muted, half-hearted about it. After all, the chief was over there interfering with the one thing that still might bring the enemy fleet wheeling about to attack them. Suppose the freighter fleet felt one parasite was worth a pitched battle?

  The hatch clanked open and the chief returned, the visor of his suit open, a transparent plastic cube in his hand. “There it is, Captain Destin,” he said. “This is what shut down your ship. I found it inside the environmental circuits.”

  Destin took the cube warily, and examined its contents carefully. Peever found himself drawn to it as well—he had never actually seen a parasite.

  A silver blob oozed and ambled over the interior surface of the cube. A small thing, a dollop of mercury. A nothing, a tiny, trifling, pretty thing.

  And two or three just like it had destroyed a cruiser.

  Peever suddenly felt cold, as if a freezing wind were blowing against him. Whether it was his imagination or a true empathic reaction, he felt a malevolent hatred throbbing out from the parasite. This thing was death.

  Wellingham dug into his equipment bag and pulled out a small radio beacon. He sprayed some adhesive on the side of the cube and slapped the beacon in place. He handed Bothu the cube. “Put that in the disposal lock,” he said. “Dump it off the ship, and get it well clear.”

  “What’re ya goin’ to do?” Captain Destin asked. “Ya can’t just dump it.”

  “I know that,” the chief replied coolly. “But we need to know just how hard these things are to kill. We think they can survive a lot of stress. I don’t think you could kill one with a repulsor gun. We know we can destroy them with a high-yield fusion bomb—but if I were Captain Spencer, I’d like to know if I could use some method that was a bit more delicate. Like maybe a plasma gun. Not as energetic as a fusion bomb, but I’ve got a feeling it could do the trick. Jettison it out the disposal chute, Bothu, and let’s get in some target practice.”

  The marine grinned eagerly, crossed the small cabin, and tossed the cube into a small hatch set into the gig’s hull. She sealed the hatch, ran the scavenger pump, and hit the jettison button. A simple spring-loaded device kicked the cube clear into space. Bothu was already at the plasma cannon controls, while everyone else watched on an external camera monitor. The targeting computer locked onto the radio beacon. Bothu waited until the cube was a safe minimum distance away. “Let’s try it on minimum power,” she said, and fired.

  A slender, sun-brigh
t lance of light flashed from the cannon, gone almost before the eye could detect it. There was a silent red flash of light where the cube had been, and then nothing. Wellingham bent over his detection instruments, and then turned to the others with a broad grin. “No G-wave activity,” he announced. “Not even a baby black hole. It just sort of disintegrated. A single parasite isn’t massive enough to form a black hole, I guess. The thing’s dead.” He turned to Captain Destin, who stood with unashamed tears in his eyes. “You’ve got your ship back, Captain.”

  “Wonderful,” Peever said. “Now can we all get the hell out of here?” The enemy freighter fleet was still too close for his comfort.

  ###

  Spencer heard the results of the chief’s experiments a few minutes later and relayed his effusive thanks back through the comm officer. It was heroism, courage that won medals, and certainly the chief had proven that he had those things; but it was clear-headed thinking that won battles. Chief Wellingham had gotten the answer to a vital question that no one else had even thought to ask.

  Spencer ordered the Fleance to ride shotgun on the Dancing Bear, escorting her into Mittelstadt. The chief and his whole team had earned a few days’ sampling of Mittelstadt’s fleshpots.

  None of that, however, was solving Spencer’s more immediate problems. He was waiting for something, something from the command asteroid. He ordered a full set of sensors directed on the coordinates provided by Destin. So far they could tell him little more than that there was a lump of rock hanging in space in the right place.

  They were still too far distant to be sure of much more than that. Even at this velocity, it would be another two or three days before they’d be close enough for even the longest-range G-wave detectors to see anything.