Darklight Pirates

by Robert E. Vardeman

  The thought turned him cold inside, not being lost for millions of years if the Lift wasn't properly computed but any major mistake─even a minor one costing them years─and he would never be able to find Kori and Bella. His wife and daughter would have aged horrifically and been in their graves by the time the Shillelagh found its way back.

  If they were alive. He let resolve take him over. They were alive. He permitted no doubt to creep into thoughts that they were not refugees in the forest and safely hidden from Weir's forces.

  "I calculated our Lift to Far Kingdom," Sullivan said. "Captain Sorrel performed the Drop into Ballymore orbit."

  "I'm sorry to question your training, Captain." Donal hesitated, then asked, "What were the error parameters?"

  "Captain Sorrel was off by three seconds." Sullivan stared straight ahead.

  "And your error parameter?" Donal waited for her to answer and almost asked again when she blurted out her answer.

  "I was three microseconds off."

  "Remarkable, Captain. Why so hesitant mentioning it?" As Donal held the auxiliary control helmet in his hand, he stared at the approaching destroyers on the viewscreen. He wanted to know.

  "I used a technique he considered untried and put me on report. I don't know if it was recorded in the ship's log."

  "He─never mind." Donal heard Cletus snort in disgust. His son and Sorrel had never agreed on policy or procedure. "Begin the StringSpaceLift immediately for Babylon, Captain Sullivan."

  She leaned back in the captain's chair with the control headset in place on her shaven head. Her eyes glazed over, the viewscreen flickered, then she looked up.

  "Drop completed into the Babylon system, sir."

  "Error parameter only a half second. You're slipping, Captain." Donal smiled, trying to keep the tone light. Under the circumstances he would have said that if she had been a month off. He hadn't even felt the Lift or Drop transits.

  "We have two vessels within our detection range," Leanne said. "I am unfamiliar with the class. They appear larger than destroyers, smaller than a cruiser, yet their engine signatures are equivalent to a dartabout."

  "Oversized and underpowered," Cletus said. "What do they fly here, Father?"

  "Those, whatever those are. I've never visited this system officially, though we have regular contact through trade representatives. Babylon is a poor system producing little we can use in Burran. I remember a report asking for greater latitude in establishing relations. Ambassador Petersen? Yes, it was Petersen."

  "He's been dead for over a year. I went to his funeral as your representative," Cletus said. "Was a replacement sent?"

  "I don't remember, and it's not in the Shillelagh's database. I'll have to tread carefully until I find out."

  "Sir, the ships are powering up their lasers. I've sent a recognition signal but nothing was pinged back."

  "Attempt to contact the ships again."

  Donal fitted his helmet and sucked in his breath as his mind meshed with the ship's neural net. Off in one corner he "saw" the attempt to forge a solid comlink proceeding. Repairs were rushed through the Shillelagh, but most attention went into repair of the external sensors and laser turrets. Neither showed any real progress. The swarm destroyed faster than RRUs repaired. He let his scan flash through the cargo bay. Both warbots were being repaired. Given a few days or even a week, both would be fully functional again.

  Only he wanted them to be useful now. The exoskeletons worked against the Highlander, but they had almost bumped hull to hull. The two Babylonian ships were too distant for such boarding.

  "They're firing, sir. We're under attack!"

  Sullivan didn't need to inform him. He saw that. He also saw that the dreadnought had no effective firepower left, thanks to the swarm blanketing their hull. The damage reports began flooding in until he felt as if his eyes would explode in his head.

  The Shillelagh was dead in space and unable to repel the attack from the two ships.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Goram Weir ripped off the sweat-crusted electrodes on the control helmet and threw the spidery device onto his desk where it scattered dozens of small holograms. Like his problems, the holograms reformed, seemingly more substantial than before. His temples throbbed, and his head felt twice its normal size. Worst of all, taking off the helmet did nothing to change the patterns he saw in his mind. If anything, those lingering routes and roads and twisting patterns only became more confusing. Running Burran had proven more difficult than he had thought. Worst were the phantom "What-ifs" that formed constantly, hints, threats, promises of what could be. The Blarney Stone created scenarios at a mind-crippling rate and expected him to choose from them.

  Choose well and prosper. Choose poorly and suffer the result.

  "How did Tomlins do it without AI to help him?" He spoke rhetorically, but his auto secretary answered, as it always did in that damnable neutral voice.

  "Genetically bred for the job, Donal Tomlins trained all his life for the role of Programmer General. His daughter, Bella, was the heir apparent and was also genetically patterned. Before her death, her training─"

  "Shut up. Shut down. Oh─" Weir slammed his hand onto his desktop in frustration. That only added to his pain. Not only his head hurt but his hand did now. "Turn back on. I need you to assemble my cabinet officers. Get all the directors now for a meeting."

  "The civil unrest is growing exponentially in Eastminster. The city director has flown there to be available for meetings with the protestors. All other cabinet officers are in the capital and can be summoned for a three o'clock physical-presence meeting."

  Weir glanced at the readouts on his desktop. That gave him two hours to prepare a plan for dealing with the water shortages along the border and to pump up food shipments to Eastminster. That ought to settle them down without upsetting other provinces. Always a balancing act, always....

  "Programmer General, your one o'clock appointment is waiting."

  Weir couldn't find the notation on the desktop. He had stopped using a HUD, although that provided added access to the master computer. After a few minutes, it had caused his eyes to blur to the point where the correction program no longer focused it properly for him. He started to ask who he had scheduled, then realized it didn't matter.

  "Send in whoever it is. Give us five minutes."

  The auto sec made a sound like a tongue clucking. A tiny pop followed as the device turned off and opened the office door. Weir sagged a little more when Riddle marched in, came to a halt, stood at knee-locked attention and actually saluted. The man pretended to have a more military bearing than was humanly possible. Weir saw how his eyes darted about, hunting for any scrap of information that might be used.

  Used against him? Weir thought that was possible. With his head threatening to blast into orbit, he toyed with the idea of giving over control of the nation to Riddle and seeing how he liked the burden. Even as he thought this, Weir knew it was a foolish idea. He had the citizens' best interests at heart. That was the reason for the coup. Tomlins had become increasingly distant from the populace and less of a leader than a manager. Riddle would be even worse, a dictatorial leader and not a manager. Burran would fall apart in months with him at the helm. Weir wanted improvement, not a military dictatorship and certainly not one with Aaron Riddle giving the orders.

  Weir touched a spot at the corner of the desktop. The holograms representing half a hundred problems winked out of existence. The scroll of numbers and newsfeeds continued unabated on the flat surface, but Weir was better able to read them, unless Riddle had practiced speed reading upside down. Even if he had, the angle kept him from deciphering the importance of any given data feed.

  "What good news are you bringing me now?" Weir settled back in his chair. His back ached as the firm cushions molded to his contour. Using the control helmet forced him to lean forward, which put strain on his entire body. Why hadn't Tomlins altered the configuration? Why didn't he do it?

  When there
was a spare moment, he would see that the technicians repositioned the control helmet and its data feed and allowed him to relax more. When there was time.

  "Not much, Programmer General. The Eastminster riots are spreading, becoming more violet and destructive."

  "I'm diverting luxury goods and more food items to help tamp that down."

  It was as if Riddle never heard.

  "I've cordoned off the city, ringed it with soldiers and placed tanks on all the roads to restrict travel. Rabble rousers were coming in from other cities. I suspect a goodly number of them are from Eire, intending nothing more than civil disintegration."

  "So no amount of material goods will solve the disorder?"

  "Disorder? Is that what you call it?" Riddle laughed harshly. "It's insurrection."

  "Hardly that. I see no mention in my reports of anyone demanding that Tomlins be reinstated, as if that were possible. He might not be dead but evidence that he turned tail and ran is too strong to be denied."

  "I'm glad you took my suggestion and held back on the announcement of his death," Riddle said. "Letting out now that he was dead would only increase the violence. Let them think they are fighting against Tomlins for a few more days, then announce you have assumed the post of Programmer General to save them all."

  Weir nodded as he considered this. It showed more subtlety than he gave Riddle credit for. After all, he was the nation's savior, only no one save those few in the capital knew it yet. It was almost as if Riddle worked with him rather than against him.

  "The only problem is that we don't know where he is. The Highlander's destruction showed he had more capability on the Shillelagh than expected. I looked for a sitrep on the two interceptors you dispatched. What happened there?"

  Weir pressed his palms into his temples. He should have asked Riddle about this first rather than letting it come up as an afterthought. He had to show how he was in charge, on top of everything, but the report hadn't been flagged and he had missed it.

  "I marked it for your daily briefing."

  Weir leaned forward now. His briefing wasn't for another half hour and Riddle knew it.

  "You should have marked it priority. This isn't some trivial matter, you know."

  The tiny smile on Riddle's lips warned Weir a new game was being played. Keeping such information from him when he was besieged by the growing problems of the entire nation gave Riddle a lever. He might have casually dropped that into the cabinet meeting to show how Weir was losing control.

  "The Shillelagh Lifted to another system. It won't survive, not after a smother swarm covered its hull." Riddle looked inordinately pleased with himself. Weir had no idea what a smother swarm was but made a mental note to find out.

  "So Tomlins is dead?"

  "When he Drops back into regular spacetime, wherever he went, and from charging levels on his engines it wasn't more than twenty or thirty light years, the ship will be blind and unable to communicate. Unless he is especially lucky, he will be dead very soon. There is even the chance that he will be trapped in StringSpace. Any miscalculation could doom him to a life a hundred or a thousand or a million years in our future. He's gone."

  "I'm glad you are so confident."

  "I am," Riddle said. "I am less confident about the Eastminster uprising."

  "It's nothing but a small concern. With proper asset allocation I can defuse the situation." Weir saw Riddle's skepticism and asked what more he knew.

  "That's why I wanted a meeting with you before the cabinet assembled," Riddle said. "I think Kori Tomlins is behind the revolt. If she isn't found and removed soon, the sore will fester and spread until the entire country is inflamed. Her imprisonment was botched. She should have never left Emerald Isle." Riddle almost grinned as he added, "That would have been such a fine place to bury her and the rest of the Tomlins family."

  "You have proof she is behind this?"

  "No direct evidence. This could be nothing more than giving you a dose of Irish Democracy─simply a work stoppage to hurt productivity. But she escaped from the Cork prison compound. Worse, her daughter might have, also."

  "Bella?" Weir knew the Tomlins family well, had worked with Donal and Cletus for years. The youngster's promotion had hardened his resolve to bring change to Burran. This wasn't a hereditary dictatorship, but Donal was turning it into that, his father passing reins of power to him and Donal intending Bella to become Programmer General after him. Still, in spite of his familiarity, their names echoed in his head as if from years ago, distant memories and not primary concerns. "Why is that worse? With both Donal and Cletus lost in StringSpace, or so you claim, what trouble can the wife and daughter make? Ebony was killed prior to the raid at Emerald Isle, so ..."

  He let his sentence trail off to see how Riddle answered. Again he thought he was missing something. The calculation Riddle showed in most things was elemental, almost primitive. The look in his eyes now belied the rough and ready, frontal attack sort of military man Weir considered him. He worked deeper levels. Weir made another mental note to find who advised his Commander in Chief Armed Forces now. Riddle had been fine with tactics, but the strategic planning aspect of the military had always eluded him. No longer.

  "You are occupied with so much, what can we call it? Bookkeeping? You keep the nation functioning and shouldn't be bothered with the hunt for Kori or Bella." Riddle paused, then added, "She is a threat to your power. Bella. She was being trained to assume the role of Programmer General. If you falter, if you make a single mistake and she is still alive, you will no longer wear the control helmet and ... do what you do."

  Weir weighed every word Riddle said carefully. He hated to admit it, but the man made sense.

  "Kori Tomlins never had ambitions to run Burran. She was hardly a power behind the throne, so to speak. She supported her husband and little more."

  "She has an iron core that you ignored or simply never saw because she never revealed it." Riddle's tone took on a sharpness that alerted Weir. He sat a little straighter. "She has the wit and determination to instigate. Those demonstrations in Eastminster? Those might be her doing, unless you believe the paranoid rumors of alien agitators finally making a run at overthrowing the Blarney Stone. If they aren't Sporr undercover agents responsible, then Kori could be plotting to form an alliance with the Eire guerrillas. Think of that and what it would do to the civil unrest."

  "Your imagination runs away with you," Weir said. "There aren't off-world subversives. There is no evidence at all. And it is only supposition that Kori Tomlins is still alive, much less this evil mastermind intent on destroying the country her husband led for so long."

  "You don't know her."

  "And you do? How is that? What have you learned of her that I neglected to find over years of contact."

  "Your contact was limited to social functions, formal events and nothing more. You never had close contact."

  Weir fell silent now as he wondered if there had been a sexual liaison between Kori and Riddle. Even amid the gossip mongers in the capital, that had never surfaced as a hot topic to whisper about. Certainly Donal had never even hinted that his wife was unfaithful. Knowing Donal as he did, Weir doubted the man would not have taken drastic steps to end it. He was faithful to his wife, his religion, his country, and the only hints that he had not been were all lies intended to gain political advantage. Weir had seen how Donal crushed those making the insinuations. When Pope Seamus had hinted that Burran was a hotbed of sexual license, Donal had wasted no time publicly and forcefully countering such allegations, while hinting that the pope was nothing more than an Eire puppet determined to destroy a more prosperous country. Donal was not a man to cross when it came to his family or his own reputation.

  His defense of the country had been even fiercer. Weir sighed. If only Donal had shown imagination to break free of the status quo and push the country to greater heights. Forcing Pope Seamus to move his compound back to Burran from Eire would have been a strong step.

  "I h
ad limited interaction with her. Yours seems more extensive."

  "I am not wrong."

  Such a flat statement also ran counter to how Weir thought of Riddle. He wondered how he had misjudged the man in so many different ways. Before Tomlins had been driven off-world, probably to his death, Riddle had been a sycophant and little more. He had gained his military rank because there hadn't been any real war to fight, and he was good at making certain the troops had their rations and enough toilet paper. Weir sneered at that. Riddle and Tomlins shared that much. Both delivered supplies, and to hell with progress or higher goals worthy of a nation with the power and potential of Burran.

  "What do you recommend?"

  "Your effort to break the control algorithm must not be disturbed by such unpleasantness as dealing with Kori Tomlins or her daughter. Authorize my full authority so that I can take this load off your shoulders. You should tend what matters most at this turning point in our history."

  "You want complete military command? In a civil situation?"

  "With the unrest so dire in Burran, this would free you to pursue other important civilian efforts. Return to Tomlins' distribution plans, if necessary, while you improve the CA and anything else requiring expert attention. Let me rebuild the High Guard. The Middle Guard is competent enough, and we have fighters and fighter-bombers with trained pilots. After the warriorobot attacks, though, new and more comprehensive plans must be put into place for the Low Guard."

  "More tanks? That can be expensive."

  "Different weapons, perhaps not as expensive. The warbots cut through our ground forces unopposed and, frankly, only luck allowed us to drive them away. They should have been destroyed without waiting for MBTs to reach the theater. Even then we had to retask heavy artillery."

  "You want more Far Kingdom weapons to bolster our home forces? It is far too costly to build our own and would take years of research to develop comparable systems."