by Steve White
“All right,” said Valdes to Reislon and Andrew. “Go aboard and do whatever you need to do. One of the guards will accompany you. Ms. Arnstein will remain here with us as a form of insurance.”
Reislon led the way up the short ramp the gig had extended to the deck, followed by the guard. Andrew brought up the rear, casting anxious looks over his shoulder at Rachel, even though he was fairly sure what he’d see if he met her eyes.
The gig was a standard design. There was no airlock, only a hatch suitable for fastening to a larger ship. Within the passenger cabin, there was barely space to move around among the acceleration seats—human-designed ones, so Reislon had been decidedly uncomfortable. Now he wedged himself awkwardly in and proceeded to do something. The guard behind him made it impossible for Andrew to see what that something was, or to get all the way through the hatch.
Suddenly, with a flashing of lights and a whir of power, the gig came to life.
This is impossible, flashed through Andrew’s brain. There’s a checklist to be run through! There’s a sequence! There’s—
Then he had no leisure to further catalogue all the things that weren’t right, for Reislon swung around with remarkable agility in the cramped space, raised the arm that held the weapon implant—and therefore was necessarily heavier than the other one—and brought it viciously down on the guard’s head. There was a sickening sound, and it immediately became obvious that the Kappainu were as fragile as they looked.
Reislon shoved the unconscious form out the hatch. As it tumbled out, it collided with Andrew, causing him to stagger halfway through the hatch, whose frame he grasped to steady himself.
Reislon called to him to get inside. The translator rendered it as a yell.
At the same moment, the guard on the hangar deck outside aimed his laser weapon at Andrew, who was still trying to get his balance—and even if he hadn’t been, he had a realistic appreciation of his chance of dodging a beam that struck at the speed of light.
Rachel, breaking away from Da Silva, tackled the guard, grabbing his weapon and wrenching it aside, while wrestling him to the floor. It flashed through Andrew’s mind that a young human woman—even a slender, not especially athletic one—was probably at least as strong as the Kappainu. But then Valdes and Da Silva both grappled her from behind and dragged her, kicking and clawing, off the guard. They must, Andrew assumed, want her for whatever hostage value she might possess, for future contingencies.
Andrew prepared to launch himself down the ramp at them.
At that instant, with a rise in the volume of the power-whine, the gig lurched as it lifted off the deck, tumbling Andrew back inside just before the hatch clanged shut.
“Strap in!” snapped Reislon as he brought the gig around and gunned it toward the atmosphere curtain. That field of pressure-gravity was impervious to molecules in a gaseous state, but would pass a solid object moving no faster than a brisk walk. Andrew, as he flung himself into a seat, was certain Reislon must be exceeding that limit. But before he could shout at the Lokar to slow down, they were through the curtain and Reislon applied full power
Andrew wondered if the gravity beam that had reeled them through the hangar bay was strong enough to overpower the gig’s engines in a straight game of tug. In the event, he didn’t have to find out. The beam was not currently activated—there was no reason for it to be—and before its stunned operators could bring it on line the straining gig was beyond its limited range. The same, Andrew decided, must be true of the station’s laser weapons; he kept expecting to die in an inferno of coherent energy, but he continued to live as the gig fled at an acceleration that pressed him back into the seat. He wondered how Reislon was holding up under it, jammed uncomfortably into a seat designed for humans.
Then, with the same lack of warning they had experienced before, they were suddenly among the blazing hordes of stars. Astern, where the Kappainu space station had loomed a second before, nothing could be seen.
Andrew realized he had been holding his breath for a long while. He released it with a whoosh. “Reislon—!” he gasped.
The Lokar looked shaken up, but spoke in his usual calm way—altogether too calm for Andrew’s taste. “Yes, I know I owe you an explanation. I did not, of course, actually plant a bomb aboard this gig. I did, however, rig special override circuitry which allows instantaneous powering-up and activation of all systems—a panic button in your parlance. It has its uses in emergency situations, though naturally, such a brute-force approach carries a cost. This gig’s electrical systems will need to be overhauled before—”
“Damn you, Reislon! You left Rachel back there!”
“What would you have had me to do? I would naturally have preferred to get all three of us away. But a hopeless rescue attempt would have had no effect but to prevent the escape I had maneuvered for so carefully. And none of us would have escaped with the priceless knowledge of Kappainu capabilities and intentions that we now possess.
“But even that is secondary. The important thing—no, the essential thing—is to warn Captain Taylor of the trap being laid. I have already activated a homing beacon; we should be able to establish contact with him shortly, and City of Osaka will be able to get clear.”
“City of Osaka? You mean Broadsword, don’t you?”
“I mean City of Osaka. Broadsword’s survival, like Ms. Arnstein’s escape, is of course desirable. But remember what Valdes said: City of Osaka has a concealed access key, like the Cydonia artifact that we’ve now lost. It must get to Kogurche, so Zhygon can examine it and, if possible, reverse-engineer it.”
Andrew drew a breath. “Reislon, I’m just glad that you are—I think—on our side.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As Reislon had foretold, it took very little time to establish contact with Broadsword. Taylor’s bewildered face appeared on the comm screen.
“Andy! What in the hell happened to you? Where have you been? What—?”
“Jamel, there isn’t time for a full explanation. This is urgent. The Kappainu have their base out here, and it’s undetectable—it might as well be in a private universe of its own as far as any outside sensors, including the Mark One Eyeball, are concerned. It can be moved, very clumsily, and they’re now maneuvering it across your projected course so you’ll enter its surrounding field like we did and be taken by surprise. You’ve got to take evasive action at once.”
Taylor visibly forced himself to defer further questions. He turned aside and gave a series of orders. Evasive action was easier said than done for spacecraft, with their inherent lack of maneuverability, but reactionless drives made it less impractical than it once had been. “All right. Done,” he told Andrew.
“Good. Next—and this is just as urgent—you need to detach City of Osaka from Broadsword and have her set a course away from you and away from the area where this gig just seemed to appear out of nowhere, to rendezvous with us. And tell the prize crew we’ll be docking with her.”
“What? I need for you to report back here. Why do you want to rendezvous with City of Osaka?”
“It’s a long story—longer than we have time for. Briefly, we were captured and escaped—at least Reislon and I did. Rachel . . . Ms. Arnstein is still a prisoner. And we lost the Cydonia artifact.”
“You what?”
“But there’s another one concealed somewhere aboard City of Osaka. It’s called an access key, by the way, and it’s the only means by which the Kappainu base can be detected and communicated with. We’ve got to get it to the Rogovon rebels at Kogurche so Zhygon, the scientist we told you about, can study it.”
Once again, Taylor clamped self-control down on his raging curiosity and spoke to his communications officer. “Raise City of Osaka. Tell Lieutenant Morales she’s to break formation and apply a lateral vector of—” he thought briefly and rattled off figures “—and await Captain Roark, who’s approaching in a gig.” Andrew, looking at the gig’s rudimentary nav plot, saw that the orders were being carried ou
t. Then Taylor turned back to him. “All right. Done. But, Andy, do you really need to go to Kogurche? With the evidence you and Reislon now have, surely we can blow this wide open, let everyone on Earth know that—”
“Jamel, there really isn’t time for this. You just have to take my word that we can’t afford to risk trusting anyone connected with the CNE. You have no idea how deep this infiltration runs.”
“But—”
“Jamel, listen to me: Valdes is a Kappainu.”
Taylor’s face was a study in stunned incredulity. “No . . . no, you’re wrong. You’ve got to be wrong! This is too crazy.”
“He’s there, I tell you, on the Kappainu space station. We talked with him. He told us their plan. They want to rule the galaxy—by proxy, because that’s their way of doing things and because they’re cowards. But, as we already know, they can’t use the Lokaron. So they’re going to use us instead. The human race is going to be their puppet. They’re going to engineer a fratricidal general war among the Lokaron, leaving only a crippled Gev-Rogov which humanity—led by President-General Valdes—will finish off and pick up the pieces. Oh, I’m sure it will be all streaming banners and glittering uniforms and monumental architecture and rousing military parades—I’ll bet they’ll mine Albert Speer for stylistic inspiration for the grand and glorious Human Empire. And from behind the stage scenery, aliens will be controlling us for their own purposes, in which our welfare plays no part. Who knows? Maybe they’ll eventually feel secure enough to cut the crap and dispense with us altogether.”
As Andrew talked, Taylor’s features gradually stiffened into a dark gray mask. When he finally spoke, his voice was very controlled. “You’re in possession of knowledge that is just as important as the access key—is that what you called it?—aboard City of Osaka. This makes it doubly essential that you get away. But I see that you’re approaching rendezvous.”
Andrew glanced at the nav plot and then at the view screen, and saw that it was so. The frigate-sized hull of City of Osaka was gliding into view. Neither Andrew nor Reislon was familiar with the gig’s docking conventions, but those were almost entirely computerized. As the gig maneuvered itself toward the concavity of its docking berth, Andrew concluded another hurried consultation with Taylor.
“All right, Andy, I’ve ordered Lieutenant Morales to turn command of City of Osaka over to you, and to be ready for transition as soon as you and Reislon are aboard. You’ll find she’s very competent. When you’ve completed transition, Broadsword will follow and—what?” Taylor’s head turned aside, and Andrew could hear the cry of “Incoming!” and the loudspeakers blaring “General quarters!”
“Jamel, what’s happening?” demanded Andrew as the gig rose into position and the clamps that held it began to descend from above.
“We’re under attack” was Taylor’s terse reply. “The hostile ships are in cloak, but the fact that weapons fire is originating from them partially reveals their locations. We’re returning fire. Make transition fast! We’ll follow. And now . . . I’m a little busy.” he signed off just as the gig completed its docking procedure and the hatch opened. Andrew emerged to find a CNEN officer—young, female, Hispanic-looking, compactly built—awaiting him on the docking berth’s tiny deck.
“Lieutenant Morales, sir. I’ve been ordered to—”
“Yes. You stand relieved, Lieutenant. You’re now my X.O. And now let’s get the hell up to the control room and get this ship out of here!”
As he made his way through the ship with Reislon and his new executive officer, Andrew reflected that what was happening wasn’t the Kappainu’s style. It must show their desperation. Seeing the failure of their ploy to trap Broadsword and City of Osaka, they had launched their warcraft in an entirely out-of-character direct attack. He knew nothing about the capabilities of those warcraft, but he was willing to bet that only their cloaking technology gave even a group of them any chance whatsoever against a CNEN strike cruiser.
It might be enough.
He pounded into the control room, where members of the prize crew were frantically at work. He gestured Morales’s “Attention on deck!” to silence and threw himself into the captain’s chair.
“Get me a tactical plot,” he ordered Morales. “And where do we stand on our countdown to transition?”
“Just about there, sir.”
Andrew studied the tac plot that wakened to life on a holographically projected display screen in midair before his eyes. It immediately became apparent that Taylor’s orders, and Morales’s execution of them, had achieved what Andrew had intended. City of Osaka was headed outward, with Broadsword interposed between her and the region of space where the Kappainu base had its ghostly existence, and from which the attackers were swarming. The plot showed those attackers’ deduced locations, computer-projected from the origins of the beams and missiles that were stabbing at Broadsword. The latter, and her deployed fighters, were returning fire—not without effect, judging from analysis of the debris and the diminished volume of hostile fire, for a couple of the inferred hostile icons were flickering. Andrew wished the status board Jamel Taylor must be intently watching could be downloaded to him so he could see how much damage Broadsword was taking.
“Raise Captain Taylor,” he commanded. When Taylor’s face appeared in the comm screen there was no visible damage in the background, but the entire image shuddered with a near miss, and the damage-control klaxons could be heard in the background.
“Jamel,” he began without ceremony, “we’re about ready to make transition. Start you own sequence and follow us.”
“Negative.” Taylor’s voice matched his face, which was a mask of dark iron. “We’ll stay here and cover your withdrawal. I don’t think you’ll get away otherwise. Look at your tac plot.”
Andrew did. Many of the missiles streaking from the cloaked attackers were now following courses that ignored Broadsword. Some of those attacking ships’ inferred courses also began to change.
“You see, Andy,” said Taylor, and his tone gentled. “They get it. City of Osaka is the ship that matters, carrying an access key and your knowledge. You’ve got to get to Kogurche. CNS Broadsword has just become expendable.”
“Jamel—”
“Signing off. Good luck.” The comm screen went blank.
“Approaching final countdown to transition, sir,” reported Morales.
Andrew barely heard her. He stared at the tac plot.
Broadsword, foregoing self-defense, concentrated her laser fire on the Kappainu missiles targeting City of Osaka, leaving her fighters to frantically seek out the enemy ships. Some of those missiles began to flicker and go out . . . but not all of them. Three came inexorably on, narrowing the gap as Andrew watched with horrified fascination.
City of Osaka’s only armament was a pair of antimissile lasers. What made such laser installations practical was a focusing application of artificial gravity that extended their range beyond that of the bomb-pumped lasers of missile warheads. But these were light versions, and the margin was a narrow one. They both concentrated on one of the missiles at a time. They caught one and then another. But then the third icon flashed stroboscopically, denoting detonation.
At that instant, while the nuclear-pumped X-ray laser flashed across space, the stars in the view-forward began to stream aft.
The space-distorting effect of transition, combined with the ship’s deflection shield, made the hit a glancing one. Nevertheless, the explosive energy-release shook the ship, and for an instant the control room was a hell of concussion and noise.
But then the streaming tunnel of multicolored light was past, and they were in the blackness of overspace, with the deck steady as the ship’s artificial gravity resumed its mastery.
“Set a course for the Kogurche system, Lieutenant,” Andrew ordered as reports began to come in. There were no injuries, and hull integrity was holding.
“Already done, sir,” said Morales with what Andrew was beginning to recognize as her cu
stomary crispness.
“Excellent.” Only then did Andrew let himself lean back, close his eyes, and tell himself, over and over, that when he’d last seen her Broadsword still lived.
He also reminded himself that the same was true of Rachel Arnstein . . . who now despised him.
He finally turned to Morales. “I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to get to know you before this rather abrupt change of command, Lieutenant—Alana, isn’t it? But I assume that you, like all of Broadsword’s personnel, were briefed on the situation as we now know it to exist, including the existence of the Kappainu and their special capabilities.”
“Yes, sir. I don’t mind saying that some of it was difficult to accept.”
“Well, I and Reislon’Sygnath here have been their captives, and we’ve learned things you’re going to find even harder to swallow. You and the rest of the prize crew are also probably going to be taken aback at the nature of the allies we’re going to Kogurche to contact. In short, we have a lot to talk about. But at the moment, exhaustion is finally starting to catch up with me. So for now I’ll turn the con over to you and—”
“Sir!” Something in Morales’s voice made Andrew disregard her unheard-of interruption of the captain. She was staring at the overspace scanner screen. He followed her gaze, and the fatigue toxins seemed to drain out of him as he saw the two red blips that had appeared aft.
“We are being followed,” said Reislon unnecessarily.
The voyage to Kogurche gave them time to organize a stem-to-stern search for City of Osaka’s access key. It was barely enough time, for the thing was so fiendishly hidden that for a while Andrew entertained the possibility that Valdes had been lying for some unfathomable alien reason. But it finally turned up, so embedded in the ship’s navigational instrumentation that they didn’t dare risk trying to extract it while en route.
