Hunters of the Deep mda-12

by Randall N Bills

  Though Petr fought his mind’s impulse to drift, the man’s technical jargon made him glassy-eyed; instead, he gave his attention to the display, concentrating on remembering the information gleaned from progress reports.

  The initial challenge was to understand the need to create standard gravity. Though literally millions of Fox Clansmen lived most of their lives in microgravity, there was a significant enough number of downsiders who lived on Fox-controlled Inner Sphere worlds that large-scale, movable simulated gravities needed to be built for training these personnel. This goal had proved elusive as a result of technical and structural limitations.

  Until today—at least, that was scientist Kif’s claim.

  The Invader hovering in the air before him represented the quintessential JumpShip: bulb at the front end, connected to a five-hundred-meter, relatively narrow length ending in the stationkeeping drive and solar sail array, giving rise to the ubiquitous description “needle thin.” Close to the middle of the vessel, a narrow, collarlike structure circled the diameter of the JumpShip, housing cargo holds, docking collars for DropShips and small-craft launching bays. Nearly four months of in-transit reconstruction had radically modified that section.

  The previously flat plane of the collar was now broken in two, a fifteen-meter gap between each overhanging outer section providing a view of the interior section in the middle. Petr knew from the reports that that central, mostly hidden section now spun. Those extensive modifications, however, did not captivate him so much as the four monstrous cables anchored to the central trough that swung out to where four DropShips lay tethered.

  Two Mules, a Mammoth and a Behemoth kept station at different distances, the twin Mule s and their 11,200 tons of empty weight tethered at equal distances of just more than a kilometer. The 52,000-ton Mammoth was tethered at less than half that distance, and the gargantuan 100,000-ton Behemoth at half again. As the DropShip’s cargo weights shifted, their tethers would adjust in length, automatically compensating (that much came through from Kif’s endless talking).

  The whole thing suddenly reminded him of a child’s toy he’d seen on some forgotten downside years ago: a top, with four strings attached, metal beads at the end of each. If spun correctly, the beads created a counterbalance, increasing how long the top would spin, while eliciting oohs and ahhs from the gathered children as the sun glinted off the solid-appearing line of metal spinning in a flat arc around the top’s center. Yet if spun poorly, those strings would tangle hopelessly, stopping the top before it could even begin spinning. As he stood arrested for that moment, Petr watched a half dozen children try to spin the top, and only one of them succeed.

  Jesup’s words filtered through the memory, giving Petr a moment of disquiet. Is Kif that child to set it spinning correctly, or will it be hopelessly tangled?

  “By your leave, ovKhan?”

  For an instant, Kif’s voice held the timbre of a small child; then Petr shook himself from his reverie. Concealing his unease, he nodded. “Proceed.”

  With a smile almost childish in its glee at the coming victory, Kif nodded to his scientists, who fell to their tasks, entering alphanumerical sequences only they could understand into several remote command consoles.

  Though he knew what to expect, Petr still felt disappointed as long minutes passed and apparently nothing happened. The grins and nods of the scientists, however, told him they were excited about something he could not see.

  Petr decided to focus on the monitor showing the interior of cargo hold 1 of the distant JumpShip. A giant skein of wires spun into view, connecting the control monitors to the bulkhead of the Invader and the housing for the mammoth axle. He had a sudden image of a living, breathing machine, the scientists tapping into the mechanical beast with their devices in an attempt to control it. He shook his head at this flight of fancy.

  “So exciting,” Jesup commented. Kif looked at Jesup as if he had just become aware of his presence, then nodded firmly before returning to his work.

  Petr smiled at the scientist’s obliviousness to the sarcasm. Another handful of minutes bled away, and finally he could see a change. The holographic display showing the entire vessel and the visual feeds from numerous shuttles arrayed around the ship revealed movement.

  The cable’s length required the DropShips to spin up at a glacial pace, or his tangling top image would prove all too accurate. The experiment should have bored Petr, but the scientists’ ability to be mesmerized by the minute shifting of objects hundreds of kilometers distant kept him enthralled. The minutes ticked into hours as the DropShips showed visible movement. Petr still did not understand the technology, but he did understand the potential of such technology.

  A little more than four hours after the experiment began, a terrible Klaxon began to blare, demanding immediate attention. Petr quickly found the monitor displaying the warning, but he could not make sense of the information cascading across the screen.

  “Scientist Kif, what has occurred?” Anger began to burn as the scientist ignored his question. As he opened his mouth to demand an answer, Jesup laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “They have enough to worry about, ovKhan. Let them work,” Jesup advised.

  His aide’s serious tone jarred him more effectively than harsh words. Petr nodded his understanding. There would be enough time for trials later.

  Another handful of minutes passed as the scientists moved at what could have been light speed in their attempt to rectify the problem. In the exterior views, Petr could make out the blazing plumes of attitude jets firing on all four DropShips; they were trying to stop the spin, and quickly.

  He clenched his fists, the biting pain of his nails digging into his flesh keeping his anger at bay. Petr rarely sat on the sidelines, unable to affect unfolding events. The forced inaction scraped his nerves and mashed him flat with suppressed rage.

  Finally, even Petr could see the problem: one of the cables was oscillating. Where the movement originated or why it had begun didn’t matter at the moment. What mattered was that, as the vibration undulated up and down the cable, one of the Mule s began to swing as the energy peaked. The interior view of the Invader leaped and the entire ship shuddered as the sine wave slammed into it; the horrific energies built.

  Despite firing the attitude jets, they would not stop the experiment in time.

  Petr stepped forward and Jesup grasped his arm once more. He wrenched his arm away and spun toward his aide, eyes blazing.

  “There is nothing to be done,” Jesup stated simply. “Let them salvage what they can. After all, there will be a lot to salvage.”

  Petr allowed himself to be calmed, and they turned to watch the conclusion, as inevitable and unavoidable as the tides.

  The views of the exterior began to shift as the shuttles obeyed orders to remove themselves from near space. Twin shuttles launched from the Invader, carrying away the few personnel on ship.

  The energy in the cables continued to crescendo exponentially until the cable began whipping the DropShip at its end back and forth, like a frustrated child banging that long-ago-seen top on the ground. The destructive energy bled into the other three cables until all four wove a pattern that could not last.

  Horrified, but unable to look away, even most of the scientists stopped working to watch the coming end.

  It came quickly and with brutal efficiency, as the sine waves on three of the four cables momentarily matched rhythm and descended to the anchor points at roughly the same moment. Unimaginable kinetic energy tore into the anchors, which were not designed to withstand even a fraction of such stress, buckling and snapping meters-thick composite plates with the ease of a child breaking the wooden top.

  The JumpShip’s spine snapped in a glittering blizzard of shattered metal and composites, three of the four cables tearing completely away and slithering into the silence of space like snakes escaping their confines; the fourth continued to hammer the mortally wounded ship, jerking as though desperate to join its now-fre
e comrades.

  Even after a lifetime in the soundless vacuum of space, witnessing such horror in absolute silence still created a surreal sense of distance: as though events were not real, but unfolded only within a reality created by the digital display unit.

  But Petr knew it to be all too real: the cost in the destroyed JumpShip and its expensive KF drive; the failure of hundreds of thousands of man-hours of work. Petr’s mind always fell to the bottom line.

  For the length of several labored breaths, the room held motionless. Then the scientists dove back to their work, attempting to salvage what they could of the information deluge. Everyone except Kif. The scientists subordinate to Kif would suffer no adverse consequences from the experiment’s failure. Kif, however, stood fully responsible.

  Like a deer caught in headlamps, Kif turned glassy, stunned eyes toward Petr.

  “There will be time for trials later,” Petr said, forestalling the man before he could speak, pleased with his lack of anger (it happened so seldom these days). “Now your duty is to determine exactly what occurred and why. You have fourteen days until a Trial of Grievance”—he paused a moment—“to be fought by scientist Jonnic. You will prove to Jonnic’s satisfaction that your design can succeed, or you will be reassigned to the technician caste.” The man flinched as though struck by a micrometeor. He just might have an answer by then, faced with such an incentive.

  “Quiaff,” the scientist barely managed.

  He turned to Jesup and speared him with a raised finger. “And I have no wish to hear of failures from you.”

  “I would never speak to you of your failures.”

  Petr held his gaze, a contest of wills. No, but you would remind me without a word. Remind me of past failures and my hatred… and rage.

  Breaking eye contact, Petr unclamped his magnetic slips and arrowed toward the exit hatch. Tried to forget the look in Jesup’s eyes.

  You cannot compare scientist Kif to me. When I reach to achieve my vision, it will not end in failure.

  2

  Clan Sea Fox CargoShip Talismantia

  Non-Standard Jump Point, Vindemiatrix System

  Prefecture VIII, The Republic

  20 June 3134

  The infrared signature of an incoming JumpShip spiked into existence, spreading out like waves from a rock dropped in a pond. Generated just less than eight hundred million miles from the inhabited planet, the signature from the emergence point would take seventy minutes or so to reach the planet; by then, of course, it would be indiscernible from the soft roast of background radiation.

  In one of the universe’s most delicious jokes (it surely laughed uproariously at the frail human minds that strove to comprehend), the infrared spike blossomed in the target system before the Kearny-Fuchida hyperdrive of the imminently arriving ship even initiated the jump sequence some thirty light-years distant.

  To detect the IR spike, a monitoring vessel or station needed to be within fifty thousand kilometers of the emergence point. In a backwater system whose star could already feel the oppressive weight of its corona and the coming frost that would extinguish its nuclear fire, imminent arrival should’ve gone completely unnoticed.

  It didn’t.

  A JumpShip waited in the void, its micron-thin solar sail already spread like angel’s wings, greedily gulping solar energy given freely to any willing to seize it. A Scout–class, its single DropShip complement bore the same marking as was reflected on the prow of the giant, needle-thin starship: a jade falcon in flight, a katana clutched in rapacious claws. The activity on the bridge crested as fingers flew and instruments probed the darkness in anticipation. They came here in answer to an offer they could not refuse. Now they’d learn if the gypsies were honorable, or if they deserved the Abjurement discussed for so many years by the remaining true Clans.

  The fabric of existence screamed, its walls shredded by unfathomable energies wielded like a quantum blade. A JumpShip, which moments before floated two hundred and eighty billion kilometers distant, flashed into being in the here and now.

  It began.

  The small craft clanged as it settled onto the hull of the Scout ; the snapping of metal grips announced a successful mating. Unbuckling himself, Sha Clarke slowly floated up a few centimeters, as the last vestiges of kinetic energy washed away.

  “Prepare for pressure equalization.” The toneless, mechanical voice seemed too loud for the small, ten-passenger S-7A Bus. Of course, with an elemental in full battle armor as an honor guard, almost any shuttle would seem small. His ears popped as the pressure thickened for a moment before his body acclimatized. Tucking his legs up toward his chest, he tapped lightly against the armrest and sent himself in a short spinning arc over two rows of seats. In midflight, Sha extended to his full height and spun three revolutions before coming within reach of the bulkhead and the hatch, which would open to a whole new world of possibilities. With languid grace he lifted a thin arm, snagged the edge of the bulkhead buttress, flexed whipcord-strong muscles to straighten his body perpendicular to the floor and brought it to a standing position; his magnetic slips immediately adhered.

  “We are doing right, quiaff?” Sha glanced over his shoulder at one of his most trusted Star colonels, Coleen Nagasawa. Her overlarge eyes held a doubt mirrored in the wrinkling of her expansive forehead.

  “Aff,” Sha responded softly. “How can bringing glory to Clan Sea Fox not be right?”

  “But are we bringing glory to the Clan? Or only to Spina Khanate? Only to Beta Aimag?” She moved down the short aisle and stopped just out of touching distance. Sha entertained an errant thought; her neck appeared too thin to support such a massive cranium, and he wondered if she could only survive in the relatively gravityless environment of space. Her longish hair, having slipped from its coil, floated lazily.

  Sha eyed the hair disapprovingly. “Is it the Falcons? I know your particular… distaste… for them, but we cannot choose where the next deal may take us, or who may sit across from us at the table.”

  “I know that as well as you, ovKhan,” she responded; her momentary anger did not touch him. “I may wish their genetic material flushed out the nearest airlock, but I will deal with them and take their honor and resources like any other.”

  “Then what?” The genesis of the goal toward which he had worked so long and hard now lay just behind several centimeters of metal; after all this time, suddenly she became timid, like a first-year trader?

  “What we are about to do…”

  Sha saw the struggle of her thoughts as clearly as if a Star of ’Mechs battled across her face.

  “What we are about to do is prove, in a way none can deny, that our Khan has become a weak old man whose only desire is to suck the rest of the Khanates dry, while his ilKhanate feasts on the fatted calves of our labor.” Though his voice never wavered from its soft, low-pitched cadence, Coleen’s jaw snapped shut like the clink of a Gauss rifle cycling its last round into the chamber. Power swam in his words.

  He turned away, moved forward and undogged the hatch. Pulling it open, he ducked through before his security detail could protest. Stepping out on the other side, he straightened to see three individuals sheathed in the formal black and jade uniforms of Clan Jade Falcon. The Falconers’ almost ostentatious dress made his own deep blue single-suit seem shabby by comparison; their eyes confirmed this impression. He bowed low in the tradition of all Sea Fox Clansmen in the opening salvos of negotiations and his lips twitched in a smile his adversaries could not see; their arrogance would be their undoing.

  Blood in the water.

  3

  Clan Sea Fox CargoShip Voidswimmer

  Nadir Jump Point, Savannah System

  Prefecture VII, The Republic

  4 July 3134

  Petr once again entered the Scientist Quarter, this time wearing his ceremonial leathers. The detailed sea fox stitched across the torso of his suit conveyed dignity and power; he’d need both in officiating this trial.

  Mov
ing through the corridors of the scientists’ berths, he could feel the wash of babbling voices eddying around him as he drew near the main conference room. Grasping the handhold at the entryway, he tucked his knees up, spun himself through the opening and performed a half twist to plant his legs against the bulkhead on the inside; he paused a moment to make sure his path lay clear, then pushed, shooting toward the central dais at the top of the inverted half-sphere.

  With practiced ease, he grasped the pole set into the armrest of the ovKhan’s chair (only used for such occasions), spun around once to slough off extra inertia and expertly settled himself into the seat; nodules across the surface felt his presence and turned on their static charge, lightly but insistently pulling at his suit, keeping him stationary.

  The half-bowl held a panoply of scientists, all adhered to their seats by static charges, each wearing the single-suit of a Sea Fox Clansman. The shoulders of their suits were colored to match their subcastes: yellow for teachers, green for doctors, red for the eugenics specialists and so on—a flowering bed of the Clan’s brightest minds, filled with equal parts genius, their own kind of arrogance and naiveté.

  That last quality, of course, was the reason Petr found himself here.

  At times Petr thought perhaps all castes should undergo the same rigorous training the warriors endured. Naiveté did not last long under the grueling physical and mental exercises begun at the age of seven, or the ruthless pummeling of a shiv-trainer molding a new warrior to suit his ultimate calling.

  Jesup flowed into the room. The man arrowed toward him, grabbed the same pole Petr used, then spun around to the back of the chair, coming to rest with his magnetic slips adhering to the deck.