A Larger Universe

by James L Gillaspy

  Tommy began typing on one of the keyboards. "Maybe not," he said. "We have one advantage. Our forward guns are pointed at them and one is already loaded."

  The loaded rail gun fired. Even on a ship the size of the Nesu Tol, they felt the recoil. The indicators for the other three forward guns cycled from dark to bright green and fired together. This time the ship shuddered and rocked beneath their feet. The first rail gun indicator had changed to bright green again, but the ship's pilot, whoever he or she was, had turned the ship away, trying to dodge what had to be coming. Tommy had expected the pilot's actions and had already turned on the power for the other guns. As the ship turned and drove at an angle from their entry vector, most of the rail indicators in the four circles on the display and for the rear guns changed from gray to amber to dark green to bright green. No way to fix the ones that are dark for now, he thought. That all of the guns would cycle ready had been on the list to test after the initial firing exercise.

  The radar screen indicated the other ship had gotten its first shots away. The center of the spread moved toward where they had been. Soon they would know if a projectile in the spread's edge would catch them.

  Tommy designated the other ship as the target for all available guns. As the computer beneath Tommy's feet calculated the best firing solution, each gun on the Nesu Tol--his Nesu Tol--that was able to shoot launched its projectile. The shuddering came more often.

  Without thinking of what he was doing or who or what he was talking to, Tommy turned to Lord Ull. "You must tell the pilot to spin the ship. I know I can do it from here, but I cannot evade at the same time, and I do not want to interfere with the pilot."

  When Lord Ull didn't respond, Tommy said. "Please, we need to be able to shoot every available gun."

  A moment later, Ull gave the command to spin the ship, freeing the computer to fire each gun whenever it turned toward the target.

  Tommy sat back in his chair; one made for lords, with an opening from one side for a tail he didn't have. Now, all they could do was wait.

  Ull

  Ull paced frantically, as close to panic as she had been her entire adult life. She wanted to hide at the bottom of her pond and wait the destruction she knew must be coming. Instead, after ordering the pilot to spin the ship, she returned to the open doorway and clung to its frame as the ship shook. That, too, fed her drift toward hysteria.

  No one in her generation had endured the ship's guns firing.

  The ship's insystem drive and internal gravity cushioned course changes from detection by its occupants. Even a reasonable amount of spin on the ship was imperceptible as long as the drive and gravity systems operated, and they always had. They could not compensate, however, for tons of metal launched from many different angles at over seventeen hundred meters per second.

  The feral human boy's face was set in the snarl humans called a smile. He is enjoying this, she thought. He is too young to imagine his own death. Kits of her own species were the same.

  Her misgivings before about the feral were trivial now. If they survived this, he would be a much bigger problem than she could ever have imagined. He had given her an order! Well, almost an order, and she had obeyed! He must be killed, of course, but to kill him would jeopardize all he had done.

  She watched as the boy leaned forward in his chair and did something with the buttons in front of him. "We can get a better view of this, I think," he said.

  One of the marvelous screens the boy had attached to the walls displayed a strange mixture of moving lines and figures in shades of red and blue that seemed almost familiar.

  "The same artisans who converted the video feed helped me with this," the boy said. "The video is not good in the first place, and a magnified image is even worse. You are getting more resolution on your radar than you are using, so I decided to see what I could do with that." He turned toward Ull and offered her a pair of goggles with a strap. "Anyway, I made a special pair of these for you, since your ears are flat against your head. Your eyes are in the front and I'm hoping you can see in red and blue. If you can and would like a better view of what is happening, the best distance is from one of these chairs."

  The boy continues to talk to me as if he were one of The People. This must not be tolerated.

  The railguns launched again, throwing her forward from the door into the chair. I can always kill him later, after this is over. She grabbed the chair back with one hand and reached for the goggles with the other.

  The boy put a similar set on his face. Similar, except they were held on his head by hooks over his ears. "Yes! This is great! I was not absolutely sure this would work!"

  Ull held the red and blue lenses in front of her eyes and looked again at the screen. At first, she could make nothing of the colored lines that danced across the screen’s face, and then she understood as the lines coalesced into a three-dimensional image. The Extended Claws leaped out at her. Smaller objects moved toward the enemy ship. She could almost reach out and touch them.

  "How did you do this thing?" she asked.

  "I got to thinking the radar installations spaced around this ship were a lot like eyes. Eyes that wide apart should give great depth perception. I am using the radar on each end of the spin axis, but any two will do as long as they are on opposite sides. The signals from one side of the ship are converted to shades of blue and from the other side to shades of red. The glasses force each one of your eyes to see one color, and your brain builds a three-dimensional image. I just adapted an old idea from Earth, but I was not sure your eyes and brain would work that way."

  He chatters as if nothing is happening! She leaned toward the screen. "How close to The Extended Claws are those first four missiles you fired?"

  The boy fingers clicked the buttons in front of him. "I will add time to target to the display. Misses will show negative." He clicked some more. "The first four are circled."

  On the screen, the four circled darts merged with the large round target that represented The Extended Claws. Two darts disappeared from the screen; the other two appeared on the other side of the target, dragging rapidly changing negative numbers alongside.

  The enormity of two hits in the first four shots made Ull forget whom she was talking to. "They came straight toward us. They expected us to be defenseless. They had to have thought our guns were useless, and when we did not shoot back in the first encounter, they were sure of it. They did not try to evade until too late."

  Where there had been a perfect edge to the sphere before, a ragged tear appeared. The screen showed irregular chunks flying from The Extended Claws on that side. More darts hit the target. More pieces flew away.

  Ull turned to the boy. "Stop shooting! Stop shooting, now!" When he moved to comply she said, ”We will get nothing if that ship is destroyed."

  When the shaking stopped, the boy turned back to her. His reply overwhelmed the part of her mind reacting to his looking straight at her eyes. "It is probably too late. We shot 156 projectiles. Almost half are projected to hit. Explosive shells would have done more damage, but that ship will be full of holes."

  Ull watched in horror as the boy's prediction came true. On the screen, dart after dart merged with the image of The Extended Claws. Large pieces flew off until it no longer had any appearance of being spherical. In the end, his prediction was too high because the space through which the missiles were flying no longer contained anything solid.

  This was a disaster. The only greater disaster she could imagine would have been the destruction of her own ship. Every spare part they needed would have been found on that ship.

  The Extended Claws hunted The People's Hand for spare parts and supplies. Long ago, The Extended Claws' crew chose to prey on others of its kind rather than trade. The gunner on The Extended Claws would have managed one or two hits, no more. Her ship, her home, would have been disabled, but not destroyed. Their conquerors would have taken what they needed and left those on board to die or survive with what remained.

/>   Had The People's Hand won this battle in the old way, the simple fact that they were traders and not hunters would not have kept them from taking what they needed in return. Except for the effectiveness of this lair-shitting boy. She ground her fangs together. Something must be left in the wreckage.

  From the wall speaker came, "We are clear."

  Every enemy missile had missed the The People's Hand.

  Chapter Nine: A Disagreement

  Tommy turned from the keyboard to find Lord Ull out of her chair and standing behind him.

  She leaned over, her clawed hands extended. "You fool! I will kill you! You have destroyed everything!"

  Tommy cowered down in his chair. Seth and Baek had spent the entire battle crouched under the desk. Now, they flattened themselves on the floor.

  "But we won!" Tommy said. He glared up at Ull. "I won! You ran and waited for them to destroy you."

  "Your animal insolence is past bearing. I will shred your meat from its bones and feed the pieces to my fish!" she shrieked as she leaned over and grabbed his tunic with her left hand, scraping her claws across his shoulder. She jerked him toward her and drew her right hand back to strike.

  In that instant, Tommy knew he was dead and how he behaved didn't matter, if it ever had. What had he done wrong? Why was Lord Ull reacting this way? He had done his best. He had saved everyone on board, and his reward was to be attacked. This creature had called him an animal. She had no respect for his life--or any human's life.

  She might kill him, but he wasn't going to just take it.

  As far as he was concerned, she was the animal.

  Tommy's legs had been drawn to either side and under him, beside the low, narrow, lord's chair. As she pulled him up and her right arm went back, Tommy thrust up and toward her, his movement following her pull, pushing her away from him. While she struggled to regain her balance, her right arm now flailing, Tommy's right hand came up, grabbed the hand holding his tunic, and twisted outward. He turned forcefully to his right, inserting his left hand under her palm, lifting the claws from his tunic and clamping her wrist and hand in a hard grip with both his hands. Then, using all the strength he had gained from months of hard labor, he continued to turn, twisting her forearm across her body and backward to her left.

  Lord Ull shrieked again, this time in agony, as she felt the bones in her forearm grind against each other. Pain and momentum sent all seven feet of her flopping to the metal floor, her head and tail smacking hard as she hit. With her arm leveraged against his body, Tommy stepped across her chest and put his foot on her serpentine neck.

  He took three deep breaths. She was strong and tall. Against those claws and muscular tail, he wouldn't have this advantage again.

  "I think we need to talk," he said.

  "You are dead," she spat.

  "You already said that. What we need to talk about is whether you are dead, too."

  She glared at him. "Feral human animal. Your meat will be stripped from your bones and..."

  "You already said that, too. I wonder if you have considered what would happen to you if I stepped down hard on your neck."

  "You would not kill me. I am one of The People."

  Tommy weighed her objection, and smiled at her. "How many of The People did I kill on The Extended Claws? That was a ship of The People, was it not? You knew it by name. Were humans on that ship, too? I had no choice about killing them to protect the humans on this ship, so why should I care if I killed a few of you? Why should I care if I kill one more?" He pressed on her neck. "Give me a real reason not to kill you. Or do you care whether you live or not?"

  She made a gurgling sound and waved her other arm until he let up a little. "If you kill me, you will be hunted down and killed by my warriors."

  "I see that. I am dead. You are dead, too. I will just get this over with, and go to my cabin and wait for your killers. I have time to smash a few computers first. Come to think of it, that should not matter much. They will fail soon enough without me here to fix them." He pressed again on her neck.

  Ull's eyes bulged. She waived her arm again.

  Tommy released some pressure on her neck. "You have something more to say? Something different? Before you start talking about your warriors again, I bet they are busy. This ship got a hard shaking. Your warriors are, no doubt, helping restore order."

  Ull grabbed his leg with her free hand. "You began by saying we should talk. I will talk."

  "I am not sure we have anything to talk about," Tommy said. "You are determined to kill me or have me killed, like an insect or an animal."

  Ull struggled under his foot. "We have always been your masters."

  "So you have shown me. My fate after I repaired your ship would be death. That is my fate now. Do we have anything, really, to discuss? Whatever you say to me now, if I let you live, I will be dead."

  Tommy leaned down on her neck.

  Ull

  As the human stopped the air from her lungs, Ull knew she wanted to live. She wanted to live more than she wanted her position on the council. She wanted to live more than she wanted her share of the riches in this ship's holds. And she wanted to live more than she wanted to vent her rage on this dwarf warrior human.

  She again grabbed his foot with her free arm and lifted enough to gasp, "Whatever I agree to, I will do. We are traders, and our word is our contract."

  She felt the boy ease a little. "You would make a contract with a feral human? With an animal?"

  "Yes.” Her voice came out a wheeze. “We have had contracts with feral human families on Earth for generations. They would not continue to trade with us if we did not honor our relationships."

  The boy grunted and tightened his grip on her hand and twisted more. "I have heard that story. You had no problem giving them worthless printed paper instead of what they asked for."

  She slapped at her arm. "No. No. We try to make the best bargain we can, but they knew what they were getting. The rejected the first fifty thousand the artisans printed. On the face of the sheets are numbers that must be different for each. When we changed the numbers, they accepted the sheets."

  She again felt the boy's foot lift slightly from her neck. "What contract can we make together that will allow us both to live?" he asked.

  She was a trader from generations of traders. Even flat on her back with a foot on her neck, she must make sure everyone understood the terms of the agreement. "First, I must tell you what I cannot do." Her voice hissed under the way of his foot. "I cannot free you. The council would not allow it. I would be dismissed from the council, or worse, for even suggesting it. I cannot return you to Earth, though I might agree to help you escape when this ship goes there again. I can agree to act as if this never happened. Let me up. Take your foot from my neck, and all will be as before."

  The feral human stood motionless for a long time. His braced foot and hands never wavered, but he seemed to be thinking over her offer. She had never been able to understand the emotions behind those flat faces. She had once believed that she could read the snarl they called a smile. The show of teeth usually meant that the human was happy, or that it was trying to be ingratiating.

  When this human smiled, she was certain he did not mean either of those.

  "Not good enough. Everything as before means you will dispose of me as soon as I have completed installing computers on this ship." The feral human stared down the length of her arm. "Not good enough for me, and not good enough for you, either. You should hear my proposition. How do we make a preliminary bargain ensuring my life and yours but postponing our final arrangement?"

  A mewling sound came from under the control desk. Ull had forgotten the other two humans. Losing the human Seth would be a shame, she thought. He had been a good servant. The human kit will not be missed.

  The feral human must have forgotten them, too. She saw him turn his head in their direction, then look down at her. "Their lives are important, too."

  "They saw you strike me. Whateve
r we do, they must die."

  The human shook his head from side to side. What did that mean? His snarl got bigger. "Well, I suppose that is it. You must kill someone, so I suppose I must kill you," he said.

  The pressure on her neck became unbearable. The room turned black. She felt her body thrash about. The weight on her neck lifted enough for her to take a deep, rasping breath.

  Through the ringing in her ears she heard the boy's voice. "Were you trying to say something?"

  "Yes! Yes! No one has to die! Our contract can include them, too!"

  "Well. My question was, how we make a preliminary bargain that ensures my life and yours but postpones our final arrangement?"

  "Would my promise of everything being as before for you and these other two, along with a promise to discuss more, be enough for a start?" she rasped. "You also have my word you will continue to live when you have completed your tasks.” She struggled to take a breath. “In return, you and the other humans must also agree to be silent about what has happened here. If your further proposals have merit, it should be possible for me to agree, but I cannot promise to. Of course, you could keep pressing my neck to the floor until I have agreed to everything."

  His face showed fewer teeth. "I'm not sure we have enough time for that," he said. "All right. That will do for me if I have your promise as you just stated. I will speak for these other two. I am sure they understand what would happen if they revealed any of this."

  She drew a deep breath as he released his foot a bit more. "I give my word and my word is my contract," she said.

  She felt her heart throbbing under his foot. Finally, he said, almost in a whisper, "Well, we do have the problem that you agreed to the contract under duress--I think that is the term--and we have no witnesses acceptable to you, but what choice do I have? I have never done anything like this before. Your word is either good, and we both live, or it is not, and I die, or I kill you, and I die, too." he released her arm and removed his foot from her neck. In a louder voice he said, "May I help you to your feet, Lord Ull?"