Firstworld

by Paul E. Horsman

  ‘You have the coordinates?’ Captain Joff said, sounding absolutely calm. ‘Port over there and let’s see what is going on.’ Only then he glanced at Kambisha.

  ‘You’re the captain.’ She knew Joff was right—the law of the sea said no cry for help must go unanswered. Well, the same goes for space.

  The second port was very short, and then they emerged into space.

  ‘Armed conflict, Captain,’ No-R said. ‘Dregh frigate and Realmfleet scout ship. The scout must be out of power, her last beam was at nine percent of standard strength. The Dregh’s shield is stuttering. As they do not disengage, I calculate the enemy is unaware of the malfunction.’

  ‘Signal the Dregh to surrender.’

  ‘To Dregh ship, this is No-R 77, High Admiral Kambisha’s flagship. You are to cut your drive, seal your guns and open an airlock, by order of the Realmfleet.’

  ‘No Realmfleet, fool! No flagship, boaster! No surrender.’

  ‘If they don’t surrender, we’ll do it the other way,’ Joff said, his face composed. ‘Fire main beam 1, try for the drive room.’

  A hellishly bright column of energy shot toward the Dregh ship. Its shield held, then flared up orange and failed. The frigate bucked and a large segment of her hull shot away into space, producing a cloud of vapor as the ship’s air disappeared.

  ‘Good shot! They weren’t prepared for that.’ Kambisha turned to Thron. ‘How many Dreghs do you count?’

  The healer stared at the control panel as he sent his mind out. ‘I count four,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Kambisha said. ‘But I wasn’t sure. Four of them left, probably shielded. Lieutenant Ram? Prepare to board her.’

  He nodded and turned to his unit. ‘You heard the High Admiral. We’re going to take the rats.’

  Kambisha got her broom and walked to the airlock. Ram lifted an eyebrow at her coming along, but he didn’t say anything and minutes later, they rode away to the hole in the enemy hull.

  Inside, the Dregh ship was a shambles, with cargo scattered all over the place. There were no air and no heat, but the gravity still worked.

  From nearby, a thin beam glanced off her shield. Kambisha cursed and launched herself at the Dregh who came through the doorway. In a reflex, she slammed a fist at him and to her surprise neither her belt shield nor that of the Dregh prevented her from striking him. The alien crumpled, and she saw purplish blood coming from his nose and ears. She let go of the body and looked around. Ram was banging two shielded Dreghs together, while his guys were ganging up on the last one.

  The fourth Dregh fired his beam gun, but the shot went wild. It hit the wall and dislodged a panel which caught one of Ram’s toughs hard in the back. The boy was launched out of the hole, arms milling and his mouth open in a scream that nearly blew the commset on her belt.

  His momentum and the ship’s inertia made them part ways fast, and his panicked struggling sent him tumbling madly.

  Kambisha had her broom ready before she fully realized the situation and rode after the boy. After a few seconds, she was at his side, but the guy’s flopping about and screaming made rescue difficult. She couldn’t get a grip on him, so she simply pushed him with the nose of her broom back to the Dregh ship and his lieutenant’s arms.

  Ram brought his head close to the boy’s face, and what he said must have penetrated, for the kid stiffened and his screaming broke off abruptly.

  Kambisha made her way forward through the filthy and cluttered corridor to the ship’s bridge. Like the other ships she’d seen, the bridge was connected to the rest by an airlock. Normally the doors were open, but the sudden decompression must have closed them. She tapped the flashing green button to open the outer door.

  ‘Lieutenant Ram, I’m going to the bridge. It’s a one-man airlock, so you guys wait outside.’

  ‘Aye, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Those rats do breathe air, do they?’

  ‘The ones we met before did. If not, I port away in a flash.’

  She started the airlock sequence. It had its own emergency power and after a long wait, the inner lock opened. Beside the door was a panel with several dials registering the bridge climate. All were green, so she switched off her shield. A stench assailed her nose, and she gagged. But the air was breathable... if tasting funny.

  ‘Lieutenant? I’m inside; all is well but the stink.’ She looked around. The bridge looked more or less as it should, if one disregarded the flashing red lights everywhere. ‘No-R? Did you get a command code?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. The recaptured ship is D-Barr 48, code Inot-H6.’

  ‘Thank you, No-R.’ Aloud, she said, ‘D-Barr, Change of Overall Command, Inot-H6.’

  ‘Recorded. Damage! Damage! Hull holed! Enemy contact! No power on engines. Emergency power functioning.’

  ‘Noted, D-Barr. The other ship is a friend. Can you still teleport?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. That will exhaust my emergency power.’

  ‘You have the coordinates of Realmport, Flor 3?’

  ‘Flor 3 is a restricted zone.’

  ‘Not for my ships, D-Barr. My men and I will return to our own vessel. When we have left you, port to Flor 3. Confirm, please.’

  ‘Orders received and understood.’

  ‘Thank you. High Admiral Kambisha, out.’

  Kambisha shielded up again and returned to the Marines. ‘Back to the ship, Lieutenant. Is everybody all right?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Now they are.’

  She grinned at the anger in his mind and ported them back to No-R’s bridge.

  ‘D-Barr left, Captain,’ the AI reported as she appeared.

  ‘What?’ Joff scowled in surprise.

  ‘I sent him to Realmport.’ Kambisha looked around at the bridge crew. ‘I probably smell a little and I’m sure I shall need delousing too. Those Dreghs are filthy. Now that scout ship.’

  ‘We can’t make contact with the scout’s AI,’ Captain Joff said. ‘We managed to reach his pilot, but he sounds in a bad way. He is the Y-Tuc 376, ma’am.’

  ‘Y-Tuc 376, this is No-R 77, High Admiral Kambisha. Report.’

  ‘Lost, ma’am. Where...? I... not well.’

  ‘How is the state of the ship?’

  ‘Unrespppponsive.’

  ‘No-R, can you lock onto her?’

  ‘No, ma’am; Y-Tuc 376 has insufficient power left.’

  What other alternatives are there? Kambisha thought. If we can’t get in and the ship doesn’t work, the pilot will die.

  ‘No-R, how large is your teleport field?’ Kambisha said. ‘Can you take her with you?’

  ‘I do not know, ma’am. I will need shield-to-shield contact for that.’

  Kambisha exchanged a glance with Joff.

  ‘We can try it,’ he said. ‘Make contact, No-R.’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  Through the windows they saw the scout ship grow above them. Then a tremor went through the ship, and somebody hissed in shock.

  ‘I’m in contact, Captain.’

  ‘Port both you and Y-Tuc back to Realmport,’ Joff said, his voice perfectly steady.

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  The ship shuddered as they flashed away, and as they came out, there was a harsh scraping noise overhead.

  ‘Landed, Captain,’ No-R 77 said. ‘No damage.’

  The scout ship was there, too, lying on the field like a stranded lobster buoy.

  ‘Gunild, emergency!’ Kambisha said. ‘Is there a quick way to open the scout’s airlock?’

  ‘There’s a techneer underway; he’ll attend to it.’

  ‘Tell him not to go in; I will do that.’

  Then the airlock opened, she jumped down and ran toward the scout ship. Beyond them she saw the battered bulk of D-Barr.

  A boy in the olive uniform of base staff clambered quickly up the side of the scout ship.

  Scout’s shield is gone; that probably was the noise we heard when we ported. Kambisha followed the techneer until they came to
the airlock on the main deck.

  The tech’s hands flew over a small panel to the side of the door. ‘Ship’s number and the three letters over the door; that does it.’ There was a loud click, and he pulled the door open by hand. A stench met them, and the boy recoiled. ‘Gods’ Mercy!’

  ‘You can go back,’ Kambisha said. She shielded up and entered the little ship’s hold. The bridge with the pilot was normally overhead, but with the ship at a 45-degree angle she had to climb the wall to get at the entry hatch. She looked inside and almost lost the contents of her stomach. It was a two-man ship! There was the scout pilot in his chair, with beside him the rotting body of his partner.

  She enlarged her shield to cover the pilot, picking up the sickly stench of putrefaction as well. Fighting to keep her stomach from emptying itself inside her shield, she dragged the pilot away from his seat, down into the storage hold. Then she ported him out, into the clean air of the dome.

  A girl in healer green came running and put a hand to the pilot’s face. ‘He’s alive. Just.’

  After a long moment the pilot moved. ‘Unrespppponsive,’ he said, hoarse and faint. ‘Jinesey, hold on, guy! No! He is...’

  ‘You’re fine, lieutenant,’ Kambisha said quickly. ‘You made it in one piece.’ The man looked in his early twenties, a round, jolly face that didn’t carry his present, haggard looks well. His eyes were bloodshot, and both his nose and his lower lip were bleeding.

  ‘Where?’ he said, trying to focus his eyes on her.

  ‘Realmport, the new Fleet HQ,’ she said, but he passed out again.

  Two kids came with a stretcher and whisked the pilot away.

  ‘Are you all right, ma’am?’ the healer said.

  Kambisha burped and nodded. ‘There’s a rotting body inside; it looks horrible, and the stench is unbearable. We better let Gunild’s servors handle that.’ Then she went down on her knees and was sick.

  ‘I have the Y-Tuc’s records,’ Gunild said, as Kambisha entered her office freshly douched. ‘There were bits of data lacking, but I managed to reconstruct what happened.

  ‘The scout ship had been on her way home, and low on energy already when the mana quake hit them. Pilot and co-pilot went into stasis, but their ship’s brain stayed awake, though it lost most of its control. They drifted, not truly dead, but not alive either.

  ‘At a certain point several weeks ago, the co-pilot’s stasis suit failed, and he woke up. Their air had turned bad, they had no food and no power, and he soon died. The pilot revived some weeks later. Then the Dreghs found the ship. The AI sent out the emergency signal you picked up, shot off its last beams and then you arrived to take over.’

  Kambisha walked to the windows and looked out at the field and the servors working on the two ships.

  ‘The scout pilot is asleep in the sickbay. I muted some memories, ma’am. He will know his co-pilot Jinesey is dead, but not the details. If he wants, he can have them restored later.

  ‘The other problem is the ship itself. Y-Tuc’s AI is unscathed, but it developed a terrible fear for space. It could serve in some planetary establishment, but no longer as a ship’s brain. I assume you do not want it scrapped, ma’am?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ Kambisha said, shocked at the idea. ‘We’re sure to find a safe place where it could serve.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ Gunild sounded relieved. ‘It must have been a nasty fight?’

  ‘Difficult, mostly,’ Kambisha said. ‘Those belt shields are unsuited for battle. They are much more flexible than those we spell ourselves, but give hardly any protection against violence, while our own shields do but don’t allow us to use weapons or magic.’

  ‘We need a shield techneer for that,’ Gunild said. ‘My courses aren’t specialized enough to train one. Maybe your brother will be successful at the Realm University. They have all kinds of advanced courses. I can make you a battle harness to tide you over if you give me your own spell.’

  ‘I will write it out for you,’ Kambisha said. ‘How is D-Barr 48?’

  ‘The poor fellow!’ Gunild said angrily. ‘I had my servors clean him up, re-charge his power crystals and give him enough emergency repairs to keep him together. Now we’re checking his internal damage. I think I can fix him, but I really need a yard ship. Those big guys can repair and build everything from a tender to a superdreadnought. They would make this girl truly happy, ma’am.’

  Kambisha grinned. ‘Well, I’m not in the matchmaking business, but I shall see what I can do.’

  ‘Matchmaking!’ Gunild said, acting scandalized.

  Kambisha laughed, then shook her head. ‘In the meantime, we still don’t know about the Indron base I was going to.’

  ‘You haven’t seen the images yet, ma’am? Gunild said. ‘No-R had his instruments out and recorded the location of the base.’ Her voice faltered. ‘It is no longer there, ma’am.’

  ‘It’s in ruins, you mean?’ Kambisha said.

  Then a viewscreen lighted up on the desk at the column and showed a sharp image of a wind-swept lake in a rocky desolation.

  Kambisha whistled in surprise. ‘Did the mana quake cause that? But how?’

  ‘I wondered as well, but NavBase told me Indron housed a test center for mana explosives. Even a whiff of that quake would have sent them off.’

  ‘Spirit of the Mountains!’ Kambisha stared at the image and suddenly felt sick as it sank in. The lake was several miles across; a perfect circle following the boundary of its dome. It must have been fast and violent.

  ‘We don’t have those explosives, I hope?’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ Gunild said grimly. ‘Nothing like that. Besides, they were careless. Fleet rules say explosives of any kind must be kept at least a mile from the base, under their own dome. Ours are five miles away, underground.’

  Kambisha rubbed her eyes. The sight of that round, barren lake brought the reality of the quake in focus. NavBase had been a disaster, but at least there the midshipmen had been saved. The fate of Indron 6 was worse; all those people with their families wiped out because some higher-up had disregarded the rules.

  She tore her eyes away. ‘What do you have next? Those yardships you wanted?’

  Gunild sniffed. ‘Son 4. Yes, we need them. But you won’t go there today, will you?’

  Kambisha moved her shoulders. ‘No, Lieutenant Ram’s guy hasn’t finished his punishment.’ She’s seen the kid on his knees scrubbing the spotless floor of the mess, muttering over and over a line about Marines not panicking.

  ‘That Ram,’ Gunild said darkly. ‘Watch out for him, ma’am. He’s got an eye on you.’

  ‘I know,’ Kambisha said coolly. ‘And he’s terribly sexy, but I’m not going to bite. Yet.’

  ‘If he tries anything, call me.’

  ‘If he tries anything, I’ll kick his ass all over the galaxy,’ Kambisha said. ‘I’m enough of an old-fashioned Kell woman to keep the initiative.’

  CHAPTER 11 – REALM UNIVERSITY

  Kyrus watched the planet grow in the viewscreen. It seemed a pleasant world, with vast grassy plains and dark woods, surrounded by high mountains and connected by broad rivers.

  ‘A homely place,’ he said. ‘It reminds me of Vanhaar.’

  ‘Is it me, or does it really look smaller?’ Ginny said.

  ‘This world looks smaller than ours,’ he said.

  ‘It is, ma’am,’ S-Az said. ‘Four-sixth, more or less. Air standard; gravity hundred-and-ten percent standard, temperature twenty standard.’

  ‘The base?’ Kyrus looked at the immense dome covering a whole valley.

  ‘On lockdown, sir. I am establishing contact with the auto-responder.’ The automatic answering machine had its own emergency power and would keep on working under all circumstances.

  ‘Realm University. What ship?’ its genderless voice said over the comm.

  ‘This is S-Az 113, Admiral Kyrus’ flagship.’

  Kyrus grunted. He had liked being a captain. In the comics, they were dashi
ng young men, while admirals were fat and old. To hear himself addressed as Admiral Kyrus was weird.

  ‘No landing permitted; the University is in a state of lockdown,’ the auto-responder said.

  ‘Realm University,’ S-Az said. ‘We bring techs to restart operations.’

  ‘You are cleared to land, S-Az 113,’ the auto-responder replied emotionlessly.

  There was a brief flash of darkness as No-R ported through the shield.

  If we can do this, can our enemies do the same? Kyrus thought. Immediately the answer flashed from the info Gunild’s captain’s course had given him. The dome shield is designed to accept friendly vessels and keep the others out.

  They landed and Kyrus stepped from the airlock, feeling heavy as if his clothes had gained weight and pinned him down.

  ‘Whew! What’s this?’ Then he knew. Gravity hundred-and-ten! ‘Careful, guys,’ he said to the Marines and techs who followed him down. ‘You’re all ten percent heavier.’

  ‘That means you’ll fall ten percent harder too,’ Healer Holyn added. ‘So don’t trip over anything.’

  Carefully they made their way to the main building. It was an immense hall of stern lines and economical design, demonstrating both the rigidity of the state and the dubious wisdom of the ages. Kyrus, homeschooled by the best teachers, sniffed.

  He went slowly up the stairs, past stately trees and flowering bushes. Some machinery at least must be working. The grass looks recently mowed and those bushes and trees have seen their barber not long ago.

  He tried the door. ‘Locked.’

  ‘Not for long.’ Tech Jathra entered a few numbers on a discrete keypad worked into the side of the frame, and the doors swung open.

  Kyrus stared at her and Jathra smiled.

  ‘The number is on the door, sir.’ She looked around and walked to the shiny copper-sheeted column in the center of the hall. ‘I’ll wake up the brain. Why don’t you go read a book or something?’

  Kyrus grinned. He wasn’t the book-reading type, so to do something while he waited, he walked round the hall, getting the feel of the place. This wasn’t a fleet base, but even so the layout was standardized and under its austere veneer almost identical to Realmport.