by Chris Bunch
Alex noticed that sweat had beaded on Ida's lip hair. Then blinked as salt droplets roll down his forehead, into his eyes. He deliberately looked over at Doc, Hugin, and Munin.
The tigers were pacing back and forth, their tails lashing. Doc sat perfectly still on the tabletop.
"I have a diversion on missile one," Bet called suddenly. "The bassid's turnin'… come on, you. Come on… right on and…" She blanked her pickup as one Goblin, idiot sure its mission was accomplished, blew a meter-long diversionary missile into nothingness.
"Dummy," Bet said triumphantly, pulling off her helmet.
Sten suddenly muttered obscenities, yanked stick and controls back: "Stupid missile's got a misfiring engine… no way to get a track on it."
The second Goblin arrowed straight into Sten's vision— and Sten desperately stabbed at the manual det switch.
The small nuclear head on his missile fireballed… but Sten had already switched "himself" to the second countermissile, spun it on its own axis, and pushed full drive.
"You have a negative hit on that," Ida said, keeping her voice calm.
Sten didn't answer. He was slowly overhauling the Jann missile. He closed in… and his helmet automatically switched him from radar to realtime visual.
Gotcha… gotcha… gotcha… he thought as the blackened drive tubes of the Goblin grew visible.
"Seven seconds till contact." Ida said, wondering how her voice stayed level.
And Sten fired his missile.
Another atomic fireball.
"I still have a—nope, I don't. Radar echo. We got 'em all. Lieutenant, old buddy."
Sten took off the helmet; he blinked around the control room. He'd stayed with his missile right until det point—and his mind insisted that the explosion had temporarily flare-blinded his eyes. Slowly the room went from negative to overexposed to normal.
Nobody applauded. They were, after all, professionals. The only comment was Alex's: "An' noo y'ken whae a Scotsman wearit kilts. It's so he noo hae to change trews when aught like this happens."
"Fine," Sten said. "First problem out of the way. With only two long-range launches, that's probably all they've got. Which means they'll close with us in…"
"Four hours," Ida said.
"Four hours. Perfectly lovely. Find us a place to hide. Preferably some nice world about 6AU wide with one hundred percent cloud cover."
Ida swung the scope console down on its retracting arm and started scanning the space-globe around them.
"Here's the plan. Ida'll find some world where we can go to ground." Sten said, in his best command voice. "Maybe we'll be able to reach it before the bad guys catch up with us. We'll go in-atmosphere, set it down—"
"Set this clunk down in-atmosphere?" Ida asked.
"—then we'll sit on what hopefully is a tropic isle until they get tired of lurking and we can go home."
"You call that a plan?"
"Doc. you got an alternative to sitting around up here and dying a lot?" Sten asked.
The team got to work.
* * *
"The enemy ship has diverted course, Sigfehr," the Jann XO said. "Probability is they are plotting landfall on Bannang IV."
Involuntarily the captain started, then composed himself. "That ship cannot be from any world in Lupus Cluster."
"Obviously not, sir."
"That increases my interest. An out-cluster ship, with enough antimissile capability to deter even us. Obviously a ship with what must be considered a valuable cargo. What is our closing rate?"
"We will be within intercept missile range in three hours, sir."
"And Bannang IV?"
"They could in-atmosphere at approximately the same time."
The captain allowed himself a smile. "Were I not interested in their cargo, it would be tempting to allow them to land on Bannang. It is true—Talamein will revenge his own."
"Your orders, sir?"
"Unchanged. Continue the pursuit. And destroy them."
"It ain't much of a world," Ida said, "but it's the best I can do."
Sten eyed the screen, half-consciously read it aloud: "Single solar system. Sun pretty much G-one yellow dwarf… five worlds…That's too close to the sun. Desert world… two methane giants."
"Unknown IV looks like home," Ida put in.
"Unknown IV it is. Let's see… about twelve thousand km on the polar axis. Spectograph—where the hell—okay: Acceptable minims on atmosphere. Grav's a little lighter'n normal. Mostly land… acceptable bodies of water… single source of electronic emission."
"So it's inhabited," Bet said from the galley area.
"Which is where we won't put it down. Maybe they're related to these clowns on our tail. You're right, Ida. That's our new home."
"Maybe it's our new home," Doc said. "Both screens, you will note, show about the same figure. We'll reach your Unknown Four just about the same time as the Turnmaa. The suspense should be most interesting." He pulled a chunk of raw soyasteak from Munin's plate and swallowed it.
* * *
Sten itemized: ground packs, weapons, surface suits, survival gear, first-contact pouches… as ready as possible.
The computer clacked and spat out seven small cards. Each duplicated the data held in the Cienfuegos' computer—the data the spy ship had been dispatched to gather, an analysis of a mineral found on a world in the now-distant Eryx Cluster.
Sten wondered if he'd ever find out why the Emperor was so interested in the gray rock that sat on the mess table in front of him. His but to do, keep from dying, and not ask classified questions.
He distributed the cards to the team members and tucked one each into Hugin and Munin's neck pouches.
"Ah hae to admire a mon wi' organization," Alex said. "Noo a' wha Ah hae to worry aboot is splittin' yon sample. Ah gie it a whirl an hour ago."
"And?" Sten asked curiously.
"Two iridium drills, two shipsteel crystals, an' one scratch in m' mum's heirloom diamond. It's hard, it is."
Sten's hand dropped, fingers curled. From the sheath in his arm a crystal knife dropped into his hand. Sten had grown it on Vulcan while doing time in the deadly industrial Hellworld for labor sabotage.
Double-edged, with a skeleton grip, the knife had a single purpose. To kill. There was no guard, only grooves on the end of the haft. The knife was about 22cm long and only 2.5cm thick.
Its blade, however, was barely 15 molecules wide. Far sharper than any razor could be. Laid against a diamond, with no pressure, it would cut smoothly through.
Sten carefully held the ore sample in one hand and started cutting. He was somewhat surprised—the blade met some resistance.
"Aye," Alex said. "Ah nae ken whae we're doin' aie this. A substance ae tha'… it's price is beyond reckon."
"Worst abortion anybody's ever seen," Ida said proudly.
"Worse than that," Doc added. "Ugly. Misshapen. Improbable. It should work just fine."
While the others in the team were readying themselves for landing, Doc and Ida had been building the decoy, three Gremlin antimissile missiles. The first was rebuilt to broadcast a radar echo like the Cienfuegos. The second was modified to provide an extremely eccentric evasion pattern, and the third was to provide diversionary launches, much as the Cienfuegos would under direct attack.
Finally the entire team stood around the three welded missiles, deep in the cargo hold of the ship.
"Pretty." Sten said. "But will it work?"
"Who the hell will ever find out?" Bet said. "If it does, we're fine. If it doesn't…"
She turned and headed for the bridge. Hugin and Munin paced solemnly behind her.
"Closing contact," the Jannisar XO reported.
The captain ignored him for a moment. He was running tactical moves through his brain—the enemy ship will (a) engage in combat… and be destroyed; (b) surrender… impossible: (c) launch a diversion and enter atmosphere.
Only possibility…
"ECM room," he called up. "R
eport readiness."
The delay was long. "Most units in readiness, Sigfehr. Interdiction system standing by, target/differ system plus/minus forty percent, blocking at full standby."
His screen broke: 32 MINUTES UNTIL INTERCEPT… 33 MINUTES UNTIL TARGET BREAKS ATMOSPHERE.
The crab Cienfuegos continued its so-far-successful scuttle.
Inside the control room, Mantis troopers were tightly strapped down—including the tigers who, isolated in their capsules, were somewhat less than happy about the state of the world. The battle was, from then on, in the hands of whatever gods still existed in the fortieth century.
Except for the tigers, all were clad in the phototrope camouflage gear of operational Mantis soldiers. They wore no badges, no indication of rank, just the black on their left collar tabs and the flat-black Mantis emblem on their right.
Three screens glowed dully—the proximity detector locked on the Jann cruiser, the main monitor on the upcoming world, whose atmosphere had already begun to show as a hazy glare, and Ida's central nav-screen.
Doc provided the needless and somewhat sadistic commentary: "Sixteen minutes until atmosphere… 15 minutes until the Turnmaa is in firing range… 15 minutes/fourteen minutes… 14.90 minutes… 14.30 minutes, congratulations, Ida, you've picked up a lead."
Alex broke in. The tubby three-gee-world Scotsman was lying on his accel couch. He'd insisted that if he were going to die, he was going to die in uniform. And the others agreed.
"It wae back ae Airt…ane, b'tore the Emp'ror, even. In those days, m'ancestors wae called Highlanders, aye."
"Twelve minutes, even, and closing," Ida announced flatly.
"Now, in th' elder days, tha' Brits wae enemies. E'en tha, we Scots ran th' Empire tha had, wi'out tha' known it."
In spite of the tension, Sten got interested.
"Howinhell, Alex, can anybody run an empire without the boss knowing about it?"
"Ten minutes to atmosphere," Doc said.
"Ah 'splain thae some other time, lad. So, one braw day, there's this reg'mint ae Brit guards, aw braw an' proud in their red uniforms an' muskits. An' th' walkin' along thro' this wee glen, wi' they band playin' an' drumits crashin' an singin' and carryin' on, an' all ae sudden, they hears this shout frae th'crags abouve 'em. 'Ah'm Red Rory a' th' Glen!'
"An' th' Brit general 'e looks up th' crag, an' here's this braw enormous Highlander, wi' his kilt blowin' an' his bearskin o'er one shoulder an' aye this braw great claymore in his hand. 'E has this great flowit beard on him.
"An' yon giant, 'e shouts just again, 'Ah'm Red Rory a' th' Glen! Send oop y'best pickit man.'
"An' so the Brit gen'rl turns to his adj'tant an' says, ' Adj'tant! Send up our best man. Ah wan' tha' mon's head!'"
"Hold on the story," Ida cut in coldly. "We're on launch."
Dead silence in the control room… except for the increased panting of the lashed-down tigers.
Consider three objects, the target/goal, the pursurer, and the pursued. Seconds… now milliseconds in the light-year chase… as the Cienfuegos tries to hide in-atmosphere. Three factors in the equation. And then an unexpected fourth as the decoy-missile launched.
"Captain! I have a double target!"
"Hold course. Repeat, hold course. ECM room, do you have a selection?"
"Negative, captain. We have a negative…Talamein help us… all systems lost in ground-clutter."
The captain closed the com circuit. Forced down the sailor oaths that rose unasked in his regimented memory. Substituted a prayer. "May the spirit of Talamein—as seen in his only true prophet Ingild—be with us. All stations! Stand by for combat!"
The Jann cruiser suddenly looked more like a dolphin school as the Vydal close-range ship-to-ship missile stations fired. Fired, cut power, and looked around for a target.
VYDAL-OPERATOR INPUT: TARGET NO TARGET… CLUTTER ECHO HAVE TARGET TARGET TARGET DOUBLE TARGET... DOUBLE LAUNCH FIRST TARGET NONACTIVE FIRST TARGET POSSIBLE POWER.. TARGET. I HAVE A TARGET. HOMING ALL SYSTEMS HOMING ALL OTHER UNITS SLAVE TO HOMING HOMING...
New, the Vydal-series missiles were not the brightest missiles the Empire ever built. After twenty years' hard service, several in the less-than-adequate maintenance the warriors of the Jann used, they were no longer even what they had once been.
Most of the Vydals obediently followed the tarted-up decoy launch as it blasted into deep space. But one more determined, more bright, or more iconoclastic than its brothers, speared flame from its drive tubes and homed on the Cienfuegos.
In the Jann cruiser, its operator cursed as he tried, without success, to divert the Vydal to its "proper" target. But the lone missile detonated barely 1000 meters from the Cienfuegos as the ship began the first white-hot skip into the atmosphere of the unknown world.
Ida had been trying to bring the Cienfuegos—a vehicle with the glide characteristics of an oval brick—successfully in-atmosphere for a landing, but the one kt detonation of the Vydal put paid to the plan. The Cienfuegos flipped, turned, spun. No problem in deep space—down was only where the McLean generators defined it—but entering a world?
The explosion crushed the Cienfuegos' cargo holds and flipped the crablike ship a full 180 degrees. Top-to-bottom, of course, since disaster never comes as a solitary guest, just as the Cienfuegos finally hit solid atmosphere.
Doc was the only being who might have found the situation humorous as the craft spun wildly out of control, beyond the skew-path Ida had plotted, beyond even a conventional dive, beyond any kind of sanity.
But Doc was not chuckling. He was, after all, seconds from death.
As were Sten and the other members of Mantis.
The ship crackled out of the skies and plunged into the upper atmosphere. Sensors sniffed wildly for surface… any kind of molecular surface at all.
Figures danced and swirled across the ship's computer screen and Sten shouted strings of changing numbers at Ida. Her fingers flowed across the controls, tucking in the impedimenta of the mining ship, sliding out two stubby wings. She tensed, as she felt the beginnings of atmosphere. Brought the nose down gently… gently… The ship hit the first layer of air and spun wildly.
Ida slammed on the right thruster, a short violent flare, then off again. Hit the left. And slowly brought the ship back under control. Nose in again. Just right. Slicing deeper into the air a degree at a time. Then the ship settled out, behaving like a ship again.
Sten glanced around. Bet was pale in her seat, but steady. Alex was flexing excess gees out of his muscles. And Doc had the fixed stare in his teddy-bear face that he got when he was plotting revenge on someone. Ida shot a grin over her shoulder.
"Now let's find a place to hide," Sten said.
She just nodded and turned back to the controls.
Suddenly the jet stream hit them at twice the speed of sound. On the Cienfuegos girders bent and groaned. Cables snapped and whipped, sparking and hissing like electric snakes.
The massive air current tossed the Cienfuegos again, further out of control and driving it helplessly down toward the surface of the unknown planet.
Ida cursed and fought the control board, trying not to gray out. One viewscreen flashed a possible crashlanding site, then blanked out.
Ida jammed out everything the ship had that resembled brakes, from the stubby emergency landing foil to the landing struts to the atmosphere sampling scoops.
The ship juddered and jolted as the little winglets bit into the atmosphere, and Ida punched the nose thrusters, momentarily pancaking the Cienfuegos into something resembling control.
A moment later the Cienfuegos topped the high walls of the huge volcanic crater Ida had targeted on and then was booming low over a vast lake, sonic blast hurling up waves.
Everything not fastened down hurtled forward as Ida reversed the Yukawa-drive main thrusters and went to emergency power.
A prox-detector screen advised Ida that the current landing projection would impact the Cienfuegos against a low clifflet rimmi
ng the lake's edge—something that Ida was quite aware of from the single remaining viewscreen.
Ida did the only thing she could and forced the Cienfuegos into a 10-degree nose-down attitude.
The ship plowed into the lake, slashing out a huge, watery canyon.
And Sten was back on Vulcan, running through the endless warrens after Bet, Oron, and the other Delinqs. The Socio-patrolmen were closing in on him and he shouted after his gang to turn and figtit. Help him.
Something stung at him beyond dream-pain and Sten was clawing his way back up into bedlam. Every alarm on the ship was howling and blinking.
Doc was standing on Sten's chest, methodically larruping him across the face with his paws. Sten blinked, then wove up to a sitting position.
The other Mantis soldiers were scrambling around the room, in the careful frenzy that is normal Mantis-emergency.
Alex was lugging gear to the open port—wrong, Sten realized, it was a gaping tear in the ship's side—and hurling it out into bright sunlight. Bet had the tigers out of their capsules and was coaxing the moderately terrified beasts out of the ship. Ida was piling up anything electronic that was vaguely portable and self-powered.
Alex lumbered over to Sten and slung him over one shoulder. With another hand he grabbed Sten's combat harness and rolled through the tear in the Cienfuegos' side.
Alex dumped Sten on the pile of packs and went back for another load. Sten staggered to his feet and looked at the Cienfuegos. The ship was broken almost in half longitudinally, and various essentials like the winglets and landing struts had disappeared into the lake mud. The Cienfuegos would never fly again.
Sten battled to clear the fog from his brain, trying to conjure up a list of the supplies they'd need. He stumbled toward the rent in the ship.
"Wait. We should—"
But Alex ran out with more gear then spun Sten around, turning him away. "W should be hurrin", lad. Tha wee bugger's aboot t'blow."
Within seconds, the team was assembled, packs shouldered, and stumbling up the low clifflet.
They had barely passed over its crest when, with a rumble that echoed around the vast crater walls, the Cienfuegos ceased to exist save as a handful of alloy shards.
