Battlestations

by S. M. Stirling

  The days passed quickly, and the weeks. They might have dragged, but Globin saw to it that his lieutenants kept their men busy with fighting practice and lessons in business and accounting. He often stopped by the practice cavern to watch the training, and took his turn in the classroom, explaining the intricacies of finance to a group of youngsters who hung on his every word. Their excitement, their enthusiasm, their restlessness, made him feel years younger. He had recruited a force of young Baratarian Khalians who did not remember the Family war, except as stories their grandsires told them—but those tales had filled them with a burning desire for glory, and their youthful lust for females stirred them with ambition for reputation and wealth, that they might each attract the female he longed for, and have the right to mate. Globin watched them hone themselves in mind and body, and beamed with pride upon them.

  They asked him to teach unarmed combat as well as commerce, but he declined on the grounds of age. Still, they did notice that he practiced, too, and they strove all the harder to emulate him in both book and boot.

  “But how shall we need skill in combat as well as commerce, Globin?” Plasma asked him. “Must we fight even as we bargain?”

  “We must be prepared to do so,” Globin answered. “We must be prepared for anything, for there is no predicting the customs of truly alien species.”

  Privately, though, he doubted that they would encounter any completely incomprehensible behavior. He had a notion that the principles of commerce were as inherent and universal as those of physics. He was eager to find out if he was right.

  The personnel of the Stephen Hawking were all subdued and angry at the horrors they had just seen, as the battlestation accelerated and made the transition back into warp drive. They had expected to find a thriving planet, geared for war, perhaps even under attack by an Ichton horde—but they had not expected to find the barren cinder of a planet that had once been the Gerson home world. The Ichtons had come and gone, and where they had passed, only rubble remained.

  In the caverns devoted to their own environment, the Gerson envoy moved in a daze, seeking to help the few dozen survivors the Hawking’s people had discovered. Elsewhere in the ship, all the other inhabitants of the battlestation discussed what they had seen, in tones of outrage.

  “How vile can they be, Globin! How insentient!” Plasma was beside himself, burning in agitation.

  “It is thoroughly inhumane,” Globin agreed, his face stony. “The planet completely bald! Scarcely a living being left!”

  “And the Gerson emissary is a noble being,” Plasma snapped, “good-hearted and valiant. How foul to exterminate so fine a race!”

  “At least a few survived, and had the sense to activate their beacons when they saw our scouts.” Privately, though, Globin wondered how many more survivors had not dared take the chance, and still hid on the remains of the Gerson planet, doomed to slow starvation. Certainly Brand had not taken any great amount of time to search for survivors; he had been too angry, too eager to go seek out the battle. “How are the men enduring?”

  “In rage and ranting, Globin. They are young, they are warriors—and they are furious that they were not allowed to join the expedition down to the surface.” He snorted with exasperation. “What did Brand think we would do—steal?” He turned to glare at Globin. “Could we not have invoked our contract, and insisted on our right to visit any planet at which the Hawking stops?”

  “We could,” Globin admitted, “but it did not seem politic, to seem to think of gain in the midst of such tragedy. That is, after all, the reason behind that contractual right—to search for marketable commodities.”

  “Commodities!” Plasma snapped, exasperated. “On a world milked dry, shorn clean, picked bare? What could we have found there?”

  “Survivors,” Globin muttered. He did not mention that he himself had been too stunned by the enormity of it, the scale of the inhumanity of the Ichtons.

  But then, they were inhuman, were they not?

  A new word was needed—“insentient.” Any species capable of such unfeeling destruction could barely make claim to sentience itself. It was more like a natural force, a climactic disaster, unfeeling and uncaring for anything but its own goals. Globin began to wonder if “sentience” involved more than intellectual capacity.

  Beside him, Plasma shuddered. “The tales those survivors tell! The vastness of the machines of destruction, the rolling mines and refineries, that gobbled up every trace of their civilization, all their antiquities, all their greatest works!”

  “And the complete lack of feeling with which they treated the Gersons.” Globin’s mouth tightened. “To not even bury the dead! To do nothing but hurl them into those all-devouring machines! What do the young warriors say of this, Plasma?”

  “What would you think they would say, Globin? They are unnerved, as are we; they are angered and appalled, as any feeling being might be! They speak already of revenge, Globin, though it is not their own race that has suffered!”

  “Well, we can all see something of the best of us in the Gersons’ emissary,” Globin allowed, “and the fate of his home world has too many echoes of the defeat of Khalia; we cannot wonder if they feel the need for revenge as though it were their own.”

  The Stephen Hawking dropped out of warp drive, slowed over a period of days, and swung into orbit around the planet Sandworld (a very rough translation from the tongue of its dominant—nearly only—species, the Ekchartok). And they seemed to be not only the sole species of their world, but also the sole survivors of that species.

  The alien emitted a high-pitched, keening sound as the screens of the Hawking’s briefing room showed them view after view of a barren, featureless plain.

  “This is not as your world always was, then?” Captain Chavere, the chief of the Fleet xenologists, tried to word the question as gently as possible.

  “No, never!” answered the flat, bland tones of the translator, though the sounds the Ekchartok were emitting were ragged as gravel, and its surface vibrated with contrasting wave patterns. “There were mountains at this latitude, with lakes and streams.”

  There was no water visible any longer, no mountains, and only vast raw gouges of valleys here and there, where titanic machines had chewed away bedrock to break out minerals. And nothing moved.

  “The Ichtons have been and gone,” the centauroid, amphibious Silber said. “Nothing survives in their wake; all life is eliminated, all growing things are eaten. They have scoured this world to draw from it every ounce of mineral they seek. Even their own body wastes have been processed to draw from them every molecule they can use; all that is left is the waste of their waste.” It pointed, almost touching the screen where a flat, dark surface glimmered with sunlight.

  “We must land and search,” Chavere said, his face grim. “There may be an individual, perhaps a dozen, even a hundred, who have escaped the Ichtons’ notice.”

  “There will be nothing, nothing!” the Ekchartok keened. “The Ichtons miss nothing; every gram, every grain, will they have sought out.” Then suddenly it went rigid, totally quiescent.

  The Silber stepped forward, reaching out a hand, then drew it back. “It is quiescent,” said the translator. “Its suit will provide for it.”

  Captain Chavere hovered, almost frantic, at a loss. “What is the matter with it?”

  “Shock,” Globin answered. “It has gone into its equivalent of a coma, and the suit’s life-support systems will sustain it.”

  Chavere favored him with a glare. “How would you know? This is not your field!”

  “Personal experience,” Globin returned. “I recognize the stimulus, and the symptoms.”

  Chavere reddened, but “It is logical,” grated the arachnid alien, and the captain had to suppress his annoyance.

  “We must search the planet! We must do that, at least!”

  “Indeed,” Globin murmured. “Indeed we must.”

  Chavere rounded on him. “You have no business in this affa
ir, Chief Merchant! You will remain aboard ship!”

  Globin had finally had enough. “I invoke the Landing Option clause in our contract, Captain. According to the terms of the agreement, when there is no condition of battle, we have the right to accompany every expedition to the surface of every planet visited by the Hawking’s personnel, for the purpose of investigating resources for trade.”

  Chavere’s eyes narrowed. “Your contract? Why, what would you do on this planet?”

  “Why, as our contract says,” Globin murmured, “search for resources.”

  “But there are no resources left!”

  “Nevertheless, we have the right to search,” Globin reminded him.

  Chavere locked gazes with him. Globin stared back, unperturbed. Finally, Chavere turned away with a snarl.

  Globin permitted himself a small smile, gave a minuscule bow, and turned away to the drop shaft, Plasma behind him, showing the snarl that his chief suppressed.

  As the door closed behind them, Globin said, “Select a landing party.”

  Chavere touched his helmet to Globin’s; without a radio betraying him to eavesdroppers, he said, “There was no need for you to accompany the expedition.”

  “But there was,” Globin returned. “I understand the need for vengeance.”

  Chavere scowled through his faceplate. “There is no one here on whom to revenge the Ekchartok, Chief Merchant.”

  “No,” Globin agreed, “but there is information to be found that may show us the means of defeating the Ichtons when we find them.”

  Chavere’s mouth flattened with disgust. “The contract only permits you to search for trade goods.”

  “Oh, we will,” Globin assured him. “We will.”

  His helmet speaker demanded, “Globin? Is all well?”

  Looking up, he saw Plasma with a dozen young Khalians behind him, devoid of weapons—except for the steel claw casings at the ends of the mittens of their spacesuits. Globin gave a fleeting smile to Chavere, and his smile was not pleasant. Then he turned back to his adopted children. “Nothing at all, Plasma—only myself and Captain Chavere, agreeing on disposition of personnel. Let us take our places on our sled.”

  “Behind us,” Chavere’s voice snapped through his headphones.

  “Of course, the rear guard,” Globin replied, amused. “Always the last.”

  A low growling filled Globin’s helmet, coming on the private Baratarian communication channel. The young Khalians were experiencing the devastation of war for the first time, and were angered.

  “But this was not war.” Plasma shuddered. “This was a cold-blooded processing of life into death.”

  “They could not have defended themselves!” a young Khalian was saying to another. “With their cannon and ships gone, they are nothing, the slowest of the slow, small and weak!”

  “But hard,” his fellow demurred.

  “Hard, and brittle,” a third chimed in.

  “But where are they all gone?” the first demanded. “To slavery? Or death?”

  “If it was death,” the second said, “where are the bodies?”

  They were silent for a moment, considering the question. Then the first said, “Globin? Where are the bodies?”

  Globin thought he knew, but he didn’t want to say. “I can only conjecture.”

  “Then do, we beseech you!” said the second.

  Reluctantly, Globin gestured toward the bare ground around them. “See how it glitters?”

  There was an appalled silence. Then a young voice demanded, “Do you mean they ground them up and strewed their remains about?”

  Globin was silent, not wishing to shock those he was beginning to think of as his children.

  “Globin?” the first pressed. “Did they grind them to powder?”

  “Worse,” Globin said, as though the words were torn out of him. “They were silicate beings, after all, and pure silicon is the stuff of solid-state circuits.”

  This time the silence was the young’s. At last one spoke, his tones filled with horror. “Do you mean they melted them down and strewed the ground with the parts of their bodies the Ichtons had no use for?”

  “It is only conjecture,” Globin reminded.

  A low growling answered him, not of nervousness or apprehension but of mounting rage.

  “What monsters can these Ichtons be, to place so little value on sentient life?” one demanded.

  “Monsters indeed!” said another. “Pray we come to grips with them!”

  “There is a whole planet here cries out for vengeance,” a third agreed.

  Globin reflected on what was not said, more sure than ever that the vision of a conquered species ground into dust awakened schoolbook memories of Khalia’s defeat by the Fleet. He wasn’t even sure his young warriors were even aware of this wellspring of their anger, but he was sure it was there.

  An electronic tone sounded.

  Amazed, Globin looked down.

  “Globin!” Plasma cried. “There is a blip on the life detector!”

  “I see it,” Globin confirmed. “It is very faint, but it is unmistakable.”

  Plasma looked up and saw the other sleds speeding away. “They are going on by!” he shrilled. “Are they in so great a hurry that they cannot spare minutes to seek out a living being?”

  Globin pressed down with his jaw, toggling the transmission switch inside his helmet. “Chief Merchant to Surveillance Captain. Our life detector shows a trace from the northwest.”

  “Too faint,” Chavere answered. “We can dismiss it as background noise.”

  Globin glanced again at the trace. “It is a regular wave form, though it is of a much lower frequency than that belonging to any life-form we know. It should be verified.”

  “Look for it yourself!” the captain snapped. “We have a whole planet to cover! We can’t go kiting off after every off-phase signal!”

  Plasma snarled, his neck hairs lifting.

  Globin glanced at him, his own face hardening. “As you bid us, Captain.” He toggled his audio pickup closed and nodded to Plasma. “West-northwest.”

  Plasma pressed the stick, and the sled veered away from the expedition’s line of travel. “Why is he so rude? By the stars, if he faced me now, I would . . .”

  “Baratarians!” Captain Chavere’s voice cracked like a whip. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Globin keyed the audio. “Just as you bade us, Captain—tracking the trace ourselves.”

  There was a pause, and Plasma hissed amusement.

  “All right, go, and to blazes!” the captain snapped.

  Globin hurried to close the pickup before it could send Plasma’s snarl. “Such discourtesy should win him the death of five cuts!” the secretary snapped.

  “It should,” Globin agreed, “but in addition to his dislike of us, he is apprehensive—he and his crew grow nervous in the Valley of Death.”

  “Here is no valley, but an endless plain,” Plasma growled.

  “And endless death,” Globin agreed.

  “How shall we be revenged on them, Globin?”

  “Why, by finding a survivor, of course.” Globin leaned forward to peer more closely at the screen. “The trace is growing weaker, Plasma—we have passed it. Go back.”

  The sled swung about in a half circle.

  “Holding constant.” Globin frowned. “We must be at the circumference of a circle, of which it is the center.”

  “There is no pivot in sight but a slag heap,” Plasma objected.

  Globin looked up; the blue-black slag glinted in the sunlight. “It seems glassy,” he said. “Perhaps it is silicon.”

  “Is there anything else on Sandworld?”

  “It could hide a being made of silicon,” Globin pointed out. “Surely it would not lack for food. Plasma, move toward that heap.”

  Frowning, Plasma turned the sled, then shouted with delight, for the trace was growing stronger.

  It was quite strong as they settled to the gr
ound beside the hill of glassy waste. As Globin climbed down, he glanced after the expedition’s file of sleds, just in time to see the last slip over the horizon.

  “How now, Globin?” Plasma asked. Behind him, the crewmen muttered.

  “We take it apart, bit by bit,” Globin answered. “Slowly, my children, and gently—do not dismember an ally as you seek to demolish its prison.”

  They whittled away at the huge hill with lasers, a slice at a time. After fifteen minutes, Globin called a halt, feeling apprehensive. “Plasma,” he said, “take the sled to the crest, and tell me the reading.”

  Obediently, Plasma flowed back into the sled. It rose up, leveling off at the top of the hill. “The trace diminished as I rose, Globin!”

  “Then it is beneath the heap,” Globin interpreted. “We do not need to cut, but to tunnel. Take the portable detector, my children, and dig.”

  Three youngsters leaped forward faster than the rest, then hesitated. “What tools shall we use, Globin?”

  “Those you were born with,” Globin returned. “If you feel something hard, desist and bring the detector. Begin, now. To the center first.”

  The three spread out to the points of the compass as a fourth jumped around to the far side. Dirt flew; their remote ancestors had dug into burrows to follow their quarry, and the Khalian children tunneled for pleasure as human children climbed trees. A fifth followed with the portable detector that relayed its information back to the main screen in the sled.

  They dug radii like the spokes of a wheel, first four tunnels, then triangulating from the circumference and two of the tunnels. The huge mass above them might have come grinding down if they had dug too many, but the detector showed them where to dig, and Plasma himself took the final tunnel directly to the spot. There, digging very delicately, he touched something hard with his claws. Carefully, ever so carefully, he dug it loose and bore it out.

  It was oblong, it was flat on the bottom, it had antennas folded flat. It was unconscious, but the life detector showed it to be the source of the trace.

  The Khalian warriors shouted with triumph, and Globin keyed for transmission. “Chief Merchant to Surveillance Captain.”