The Middle of Nowhere

by David Gerrold

  Armstrong unclipped his own air hose and shoved it into Lambda’s emergency intake valve. He gasped for breath, more in sympathy than real need. He began pulling Lambda toward—he wasn’t sure. Everything here below the portside disruptor feeds was blown away. Some of it was still sparking and flashing. There were places that were still glowing hot. He headed back the other way.

  The door was clamped. He fumbled for the security card. It was missing from his belt. He pulled Lamba around and looked for his; his was missing too. He began banging on the door, hoping that someone on the other side could hear.

  That didn’t work. He was getting panicky now. He took his airhose back and sucked eagerly for a few seconds, then gave it back to Lambda. Lambda’s eyes were open and dilated. He looked bluer than usual. Armstrong didn’t know. He’d heard that Quillas were augmented somehow. Maybe Lambda was still alive. He couldn’t take a chance.

  Impatient, Armstrong towed the other back to the hole. He pulled himself out of the hole first and grabbed an external handhold, then pulled Lambda carefully out after him, trying not to catch his starsuit on the jagged metal.

  Towing Lambda, he started pulling him steadily aftward toward the emergency evacuation locks. He had to stop frequently, to share the air from their common tank. The entire time he kept talking, “Stay with me, Lambda. Only a little bit more. Only a little bit. Okay, we’re almost there, almost—”

  And sure enough, they were. By the time they got to the stern of the ship, there were others in starsuits coming out to meet them. They separated Lambda from him, Armstrong didn’t see where they went. They gave him fresh air and pulled him in through the revolving lock and from there to a pressurized bubble inflated in the cargo deck where Doctor Williger waited.

  “Lambda? Is Lambda okay?” Armstrong kept asking. No one would answer, until Quilla Gamma grabbed his arms and held him steady and looked directly into his eyes. “It’s all right, Brian. We’re all right. The Quilla Cluster is fine.”

  “But Lambda—where’s Lambda?”

  “We’re sorry,” said Gamma. “The Lambda body has died. Your efforts were noble, Brian, but Lambda was killed in the explosion.”

  “No, no—” Brian didn’t want to hear it. “No, Lambda was the only one who understood—this isn’t fair! Oh, God, no!” He started to scream his rage and then something hissed on his arm and he went over the top and out.

  The Ops Deck

  Korie took the news grimly.

  “We missed one,” he said. “All right, Brik, how many more have we missed?”

  Brik grunted. “All the rest. This is how we find them.”

  Korie looked at him sharply. And realized something. The big Morthan bulked like an immovable wall. “You know something, Brik—” he said quietly. “There are times when I don’t like you. And then there are times when I really don’t like you. You’re the best officer aboard this ship. And I don’t like you.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” Brik acknowledged.

  “Good,” said Korie. “Let’s keep it that way.” He pulled himself over the railing and down to the Ops deck where the section leaders were gathered. Brik followed. “The imp is still loose, so we’re going to have to be careful,” Korie said. “We can’t afford any more casualties.”

  He glanced around the darkened Bridge. Leen, Tor, Hodel, Stolchak, Hall, Brik, Goldberg, and Green floated around him, hanging onto consoles, stanchions, railings, chairs. Their helmet lamps were muted, so no one would have a beam shining directly in their eyes; still the effect was like faces looking out of the open mouths of a school of pilot fish.

  “I’d like to reactivate the Operations deck,” Korie said. “I hate being blind. And scanners—we’re going to need some kind of scanning. Chief, can we rig a passive lens right away? The imp had fifteen minutes of uninterrupted broadcasting. I figure we’ve got three days before that signal is picked up by a probe. Assuming the probe can generate a hyperstate pulse, we’ve got maybe at most five days before the first Morthan vessel shows up. Assuming it waits for reinforcements, we might have as much as a week. I need to know as soon as possible, how much can we rebuild in five days? Can we continue?”

  “Excuse me?” said Tor. “But . . . we’re docked. Aren’t we? Don’t we have the resources of Stardock?”

  Korie smiled. “Someone want to tell her?”

  Leen was closest. “Hello, Dolly,” he said.

  Tor shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Dolly is a docking platform, and a small life-support module. It’s anchored to a singularity containment to give it roughly the same mass as Stardock. We just used it to trigger all the imp’s traps. Well . . . as many as were set to go off when we docked.”

  “Dolly is a decoy,” Leen explained. “One of several. She makes the same kind of stress field impression as Stardock. If the Star Wolf is decommissioned, her singularity might be used in a dolly too. A Morthan probe doesn’t scan for radio signals; transmitters are cheap; it scans for stress field impressions made by large masses.”

  Tor’s expression changed as she figured it out. She looked to Korie, upset. “You lied to me! Again!”

  “It was a need-to-know basis, Commander Tor,” Korie said. “You didn’t really need to know, did you?”

  Tor held back her words for a moment while she considered the answer to the question. Korie was right.

  “We knew we’d never be able to stop the imp from sending a signal to the Morthan probes,” Korie continued. “So we made sure the signal was sent from a place where there’d be no immediate danger to Stardock.”

  Tor looked confused. “But what about HARLIE? How did you fool him? If he knew about the dolly, then the imp might have known too.”

  “That’s right,” said Korie, unhappily. “Didn’t you think it was a little unusual for us to take Gatineau out for a starboat certification when we did? We dropped a transmitter at the flipover point. Later HARLIE received a signal from it. He reported it. Everybody assumed it came from Stardock, yourself included. I never said differently.”

  “But the signal wouldn’t have had Stardock’s authentication code. HARLIE would have known it was false.”

  “It had my signature,” said Korie. “I was counting on him figuring it out for himself. He did. Did you notice the phrasing of his announcement ? At no time did he say the orders came from Stardock. Neither did I. We just let you and everybody else assume it.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Tor said. “I really hate when you do that.”

  Korie ignored it and continued: “Meanwhile, HARLIE knew he couldn’t discuss anything with anyone until the matter of the imp was resolved. He knew his own security was compromised. Brik didn’t shut him down. He shut himself down. He had to. This wouldn’t have worked any other way.”

  “I’ll be damned,” said Tor.

  “Probably,” agreed Korie. “But not today. Now let’s get back to work. We’ve got a whole Morthan fleet headed our way. How soon can we get out of here? Chief?”

  “That’s the bad news,” said Leen. “We can’t. Not until I rebuild the containment. It’s a week’s work just to get the calibrators refocused.”

  “What about the torches?”

  “We’ll have to check their alignment too. We took some pretty heavy damage amidships. We’re doing hull-integrity tests first; then we’ll see if we can risk firing the plasma tubes. That’s at least a week’s work too. And don’t forget we’re living off our fuel cells until we can tap the singularity again. If you want to fire those torches, you’ll be paying for it with life support.”

  “I figured that,” said Korie. “All right, let’s get those wayward torpedoes back in their tubes. We’ll use the dolly.” To all of them, he added, “And let’s all be careful. Remember, the imp is still out there—”

  And then suddenly they were gone and he was alone, for just a moment remembering the last time he’d floated alone in a darkened Bridge.

  Captain Lowell—

  Lowel
l

  Captain Sam Lowell had found a useful niche in the service, certifying ships fresh off the assembly line and then handing them over to their new young captains. It was an easy duty, but a necessary one; plus, it gave him the opportunity to go to space again. It also gave him an authority that he would otherwise never know. His cards had been dealt and played; he would reach the rank of admiral, but only on retirement. And that was not too far away.

  Lowell was not a bad officer; he just wasn’t an extraordinary one. He had risen through the ranks by being dependable, by doing exactly what he was told, but he had never demonstrated the kind of initiative that set him apart from others, so his superiors rightfully regarded him as a man who was better at following orders than giving them. The navy depended on men and women like Lowell, it repaid them with comfortable responsibilities, not bold ones.

  Despite the popular view of the star navy as a vast fighting force, the great majority of ships were never intended to see battle at all; instead, they were needed to ferry supplies and equipment, to serve convoy duty, to move troops, to carry pilgrims and colonists, to train new crews, to carry mail, to perform research and surveillance missions, to patrol and guard. Indeed, it was estimated that only ten percent of the ships on active duty would ever see combat at all; most of the rest would provide support and service—it had been only in the last three decades that the decision was made to increase the proportion of combat vessels to thirty-three percent. This was accomplished primarily by having the liberty ships designed and built as multi-purpose vehicles. The intended result was a navy that was both powerful and adaptable.

  A not unforeseen side-effect of the increased production of FTL vessels was an increased access to FTL travel. Industrial and commercial interests began leasing more and more transportation services from Fleet command. Some ships were also outfitted for the carrying of passengers, even tourists. Throughout the entire sphere of Terran authority, transport prices fell as access to transport increased. The more that new ships became available, the more demand there was for the services they provided. The economies of the Allied worlds flourished.

  The bad news, however, was that the increasing size of the Allied star navies created significant unease among the worlds of the Morthan Solidarity. The Morthan worldview was already invested with a high degree of self-absorption and paranoia. The highest councils could not help but observe the continuing longterm buildup as a military one—and they could not help but consider themselves the target of such a buildup. Indeed, they were incapable of considering themselves as anything other than a target for the aggression of others; it was the only way they could justify their own aggressive stance. That the Allied military buildup was primarily a defensive reaction to the Morthans’ own increasingly belligerent military posture and growing weapons production was not considered part of the equation.

  On the Morthan side of the rift, well away from the Morthan sphere of authority, lay a cluster of star systems known as Far Cathay. Although it was a six-week journey from there to the closest world of the Solidarity, the Morthans still regarded the human-occupied worlds of Far Cathay as potentially hostile. When the Silk Road Convoys began ferrying equipment for the creation of an industrial base, the Morthans’ most paranoid fantasies came bubbling to the surface. They were certain that the Allied worlds intended to establish a military presence from which a flank attack could be mounted against the westernmost worlds of the Morthan Solidarity.

  The Morthans were correct in their assessment that the Allies intended to establish a stronger military presence on Far Cathay. They were inaccurate in their assessment of its purpose. The actual goal was to provide a base from which to launch a flank attack on the Morthan supply lines, should the Morthan Solidarity attempt to advance into the Allied sphere.

  Although the Allied authorities made it well known that the purpose of the Far Cathay expansion was entirely defensive, this was only believed on the Allied side of the rift.

  Throughout this time, Commander J. T. Korie was well aware of the tactical situation; it validated his earlier extrapolations. War in space was a game of three-dimensional chess played in real time, in the dark. As he and others had predicted, most of the war would be spent jockeying for position. Whoever ended up with the strongest position would win the war before the first shots were fired. The rest would be follow-through and cleanup.

  In the meantime... Korie’s first assignments as a captain had already been determined. He had been briefed by Vice Admiral O’Hara, and the first three years of his command career lay before him as clearly as if they had been mapped out on the holographic display of the astrogation console.

  After a preliminary series of shakedown cruises, the LS-1187—still under the command of Sam Lowell—would join the Silk Road Convoy to ferry cargo and supplies across the rift. Upon the completion of this mission, Captain Lowell would turn the command of the starship over to Commander Korie who would then assume the rank of captain.

  Captain Korie would begin his career assigned to specific patrol and surveillance missions which would give Fleet command an opportunity to gauge his initiative—to see if he would be a captain like Margaret Faslim-Arub or a captain like Sam Lowell.

  That was the game plan. Unfortunately, that was not how events played out.

  The Morthan Third Fleet followed the LS-1187 to the rendezvous point and attacked the Silk Road Convoy as it formed up near a small barren world named Marathon. Captain Lowell was killed, as were eighteen other members of the crew; the LS-1187 was crippled in the assault and left drifting in space like a derelict. Without power. Without gravity. Without a captain. With barely enough oxygen and food to survive long enough to repair the damage.

  Under Jon Korie’s direction, it took the LS-1187 six and a half months to limp home, and when they finally did return to Stardock, they found they were a Jonah. They were blamed for the war that was raging everywhere. Three Morthan fleets had swept violently across the rift and whole worlds had been destroyed.

  Including Shaleen.

  And Carol. And Timmy. And Robby.

  Gone. All gone.

  Korie did what he always did when his emotions were raging out of control. He immersed himself in his work and waited for the storm to pass.

  It never did.

  Incoming

  For three days they worked desperately. The situation was eerily familiar. They had been here before. They had done this before.

  The ship was adrift. It remained unpowered. No gravity, no lights, no air. No HARLIE.

  Reluctantly, Chief Leen had repressurized part of the keel, the Ops bay, the Bridge, the officers’ deck, the ward room, and the mess room. He rigged an emergency airlock at each end, not much more than a series of valve-locks to be pressed through. It provided quick access both in and out. Crew members came in to eat and take short naps anchored to a deck or a bulkhead. Some of them slept in their starsuits, tethered just outside. Most of them worked around the clock, pausing only to eat and sleep.

  Three squads went through the ship doing emergency decontaminations everywhere they could. The imp remained unfound.

  Another team took the starboat and went out to catch the drifting torpedoes. They brought back three of them and lashed them to the dolly. They lashed the starboat to the dolly too. They installed the missiles so that their hyperstate-simulators were focused on the pinpoint black hole within the dolly’s singularity containment shell. They tapped into the dolly’s power supply and fed it to the starboat; they cabled the controls of the torpedoes together and connected them to a jury-rigged board in the flight deck of the starboat.

  But they couldn’t test their construction, not without causing a major stress-field ripple. They had no way of knowing if it would work.

  Aboard the Star Wolf, the crew continued to labor. Their starsuits slowed them down. Zero-gee slowed them down. Their own exhaustion slowed them down. Everything took three times as long. Exhilaration kept them awake. Fear kept them glancing at the
time. They raced the clock. They sat in the center of an expanding sphere of radio noise. The signal swept outward at light speed in all directions. How thoroughly had this sector been seeded with probes? HARLIE had guessed they would have less than three days before the signal was detected by a probe. The probe would then generate a hyperstate bleep. And how long would it take for the warships to come sharking in then? Another day. Maybe two.

  But HARLIE was down, and so were all the sensors. They had no way of detecting the bleep, so they had no way of knowing when exactly they had been spotted. It might be three days, it might be thirteen. It might be never. They wouldn’t know until their passive lens detected an incoming bogey.

  They worked harder.

  The last hour of the third day passed like a kidney stone. It took forever. The crew sweated.

  And they still hadn’t found the imp.

  The fourth day began. The odds continued to shift against them. Morthan warships were coming.

  Korie went out to the starboat and double-checked its controls. Everything came up green. He slipped a memory clip into a reader and copied the latest set of operating programs into the starboat’s intelligence engine. He hadn’t dared risk piping the files across; they still hadn’t detoxed the network on the other side of the umbilicals; the starboat had to stay clean. He ran a viricide suite and scanned the displays. The files had copied green. The starboat was ready.

  Korie’s fingers twitched. He wanted to power up. He wanted to look across the hyperstate horizon. He wanted to go hunting. He held himself back. He didn’t dare take the risk. He knew better. Every hour that passed was one more hour on their side.

  But... he could run simulations.

  These were simple exercises; he’d written them himself; HARLIE could have done better, but they couldn’t risk it, not until the imp was destroyed. And besides, they couldn’t bring HARLIE back online without additional detox first. It didn’t matter. They didn’t need sophisticated simulations. Not for this.