And Globin, with the utmost courtesy, replied, “Your pardon, Commander, but they wish to remain my guests.”
“The war may be over, Globin, but those women were not residing on any of the planets that surrendered and are not yet included under the terms of that treaty. They may have information about the Core that we need, and may not wish to accept the armistice.”
Globin stood rigid, hoping he was mistaken about what the commander had not said. “Just how strong an interrogation do you intend?”
“What?” Brand stared, taken aback as much by the iron tone as by the words themselves. Then he realized Globin’s meaning and leaned back with a long whistle. “Oh, no, Globin, what do you take me for? Of course we don’t intend torture! But the women are human, and must reside among their own kind!”
Globin relaxed, but only a little. “I would send them in an instant if they wished to go, Commander, but they are . . . apprehensive.”
“Apprehensive? About what?”
“About their reception among Fleet personnel, Commander. Even their doctors treated them with a contempt that was only slightly veiled.”
“We are only human, Globin. You can’t be surprised if the presence of Schlein family members straight from the middle of the war brings back old . . . antagonisms.”
“Not surprised at all,” Globin said dryly. “Under those circumstances, you should not be surprised if they find the company of my young warriors more congenial.”
“We must have them, Globin!”
“They are my guests, Commander. I shall not ask them to leave.”
Brand slammed a fist down on his desk like a gavel. “You are bound by the regulations of the Hawking!”
“As you are bound by the terms of our contract,” Globin returned.
Brand’s face turned stony. “I will convene a formal hearing. The arbitrators shall decide the issue, and their judgment shall be binding upon both parties—as is stipulated in your contract!”
“To arbitration I shall submit.” Globin’s tone made it quite clear that he would not submit to Brand.
The hearing chamber, somewhat ominously, was also the room intended for court-martials and any other legal proceedings that might have arisen during the voyage. However, its architecture didn’t suggest the majesty of the law—more the boardroom of a corporation. There were three tables, joined to form an “I”; the stem, the longest table, was taken up by a double row of officers, corporation executives, and a few high-ranking civilians, such as scientists and doctors. Two of the faces there were Khalian; only one was Baratarian.
At the head of the “I” were Brand and his counselors; it was the head because that was where Brand was sitting. However, an enlargement of the Alliance seal took up most of the wall behind him, whereas the wall at the foot was blank, with a paleness that suggested the holotank it truly was valuable for the conferences for which this room doubled. Even in so large a ship as the Hawking, every space had to be used for at least two functions.
Globin sat at the foot of the table, with Selena Schlein, Lusanne, and Plasma, who was surrounded by a leader and its recordspheres.
Brand brought down a gavel. “This hearing may begin. Let the record show that on this date, the Fleet invoked its authority to take into its care any distressed space travelers taken aboard the Stephen Hawking, and that the Baratarian Corporation has refused to surrender its prisoners.”
“We are not prisoners,” Selena Schlein snapped.
“Objection,” said the military attorney next to Brand, and the commander said, “Sustained.” Then, to Selena, “Please do not speak unless you are recognized. For the record, please tell us your name and—”
The alarm blared.
Everyone sat bolt upright.
“Battle stations!” a voice snapped over the sound of the Klaxon.
“Ichton ship has penetrated inner defenses! Commander Brand to the bridge, please! All personnel to battle stations! Enemy is within range, but his shields are holding, and his fire is concentrated on a single zone of ours! All personnel to battle stations! Conflict is imminent!”
“Adjourned!” Brand struck the gavel down one more time, even as he rose and turned from his seat.
“Back to our quarters,” Globin snapped, and they rose, he and Plasma to either side of the ladies. Dr. Arterial stepped up from the witnesses’ seats to stand in front of them, and the single Baratarian officer fell in behind. In formation, they went out the door and toward the drop tube.
“They cannot really manage to board so huge a ship as this!” Selena protested.
“The Hawking is big, but that only gives it a greater area to defend,” Globin returned, “and the Ichton ships are big, hard, and mean. They have probably spent a dozen ships and all the lives on them, to bring a single cruiser so close—but there are as likely to be three as one, and—”
The floor lurched out from under them.
Howls of anger split the air, and smoke filled the hallway. A huge insectoid form came looming out of that smoke, fire spearing from it.
Their little formation wheeled about; the young Khalian who had been the rear guard was suddenly the point. He drew his weapon in a single clean motion. . . .
A piercing, high-pitched tone stabbed their ears, so loud that it sent a singing pain right through their brains. The young Khalian dropped his weapon, clutching his ears and rolling on the floor in agony. So did Globin, Selena, Dr. Arterial; Globin fought to pull his hands away from his ears, but found he couldn’t bear the shriek emanating from the Ichton.
Lusanne scooped up the young Khalian’s fallen weapon, aimed, and fired. A small box on the Ichton’s front blew into bits.
The shrieking tone stopped.
Lusanne’s fire tore at the Ichton. Terran shouts and Khalian shrilling echoed down the hall, triumphant; a fallen weapon came skidding toward them. Selena pounced on it and opened fire on the Ichton, but it kept coming, looming closer and closer. The fire from its weapon was a mad spray now, tearing at the walls and the floor, battering all about them, but not hitting.
Globin finally managed to draw and fire.
The addition of his weapon was enough; the Ichton dropped. Its body jerked as fire tore it apart. Finally, the pieces lay still.
Another loomed through the smoke behind it.
Their fire tore it to shreds.
That wasn’t all there was to the fight, of course. It raged on for hours, and for the first time in decades, Globin was in the thick of it, trying desperately to protect the women, who were trying desperately to protect him. The other Schlein women caught up discarded weapons and remembered childhood training; they became a battle unit. Decades of daily exercise paid off; Globin’s old heart labored; but it did not fail him. Lusanne, Selena, and the other Schleins fought on by his side with their scavenged weapons, snatching up charge packs from dead soldiers as they came upon them.
The new noise boxes were in constant use; it was an experiment, but more than a dozen Ichtons had them. Globin would hear the shrill screech and urge his little squadron toward it—after all, any direction was as likely to bring the ladies to safety as any other. As they came closer, they were disabled by the piercing tone, but Lusanne, with unerring accuracy, exploded box after box. Globin began to wonder about her hobbies.
Finally they linked up with a squadron of Marines, who formed a circle around them, and Globin and Plasma gratefully let the younger generation take the brunt of the fighting. His young Khalian fell, and until another squadron of soldiers joined them, Lusanne filled his place in the circle, side by side with a young blond giant who fought like a very demon and cheered her on to victory. “After them, woman! Oh, what a lass! Kill every last one of the stinking bugs! Don’t even think about mercy—’cause they won’t! By the stars, I’ve never seen such a woman as you!”
He couldn’t know that the object of his admiration couldn’t hear his praises; she fought shoulder to shoulder, and could not see his lips. She could only sneak quic
k glances at him as he fought—but that she did often, her glances became longer and longer, almost gazes of awe.
When the battle was over, and the amplified voice of Brand told them that surviving enemies had retreated, that all other hostiles were dead, and that the hull was sealed—then, finally, Lusanne could look up in admiration at the big soldier who towered over her and was amazed to see him gazing raptly down at her and breathing, “You are the most remarkable woman who ever lived!”
“But—I am deaf,” she protested.
That rocked him for a second, but only a second. Then he said, “Thank Heaven you are, or we’d all be dead this minute!” And he seized her and kissed her.
They froze, lip to lip, for what seemed an unconscionably long time, and something seemed to unknot and flow inside Globin’s chest as he watched—but he smiled sadly, and nodded, for yes, this was how it should be, youth to youth, without some dried-up old misshapen man in between.
Love inspires trust—and Lusanne was willing to undergo the memory scan, if her Sergeant Barkis was there to hold her hand. Of course, the psychiatrist and the interrogation specialist were much warmer toward her now, and made no secret of their admiration for her courage under fire; that did no harm, either.
Her three aunts who had been on the bridge were interrogated, too, about the few days preceding the attack sixty years before. All their testimony agreed they had discovered a new planet; everyone on the ship had been very excited about it, so the bridge had relayed the pictures from the visual sensors to the big screen in the lounge. They had gone considerably closer to try to determine if the planet could support life. It could; they had come too close, and Ichton ships had boiled out into space to attack them.
That was all the three aunts remembered. But Lusanne’s memory held an extremely clear picture of the viewscreen when the planet was first identified—and the astronomers were able to identify the stars at the outer edge of the screen. From that, they could make an excellent guess at the location of the planet.
“A home world,” Brand said with immense satisfaction. “Maybe not the Ichton home world, but certainly an Ichton home world. Young lady, you have done us an invaluable service.”
“But how?” Lusanne protested, eyes wide in bewilderment. “How can I, when all of us saw it on the big viewscreen in the lounge? Why could I, when my aunts couldn’t?”
“Because they use all their senses, Lusanne,” her sergeant said. He pressed her hand, and she turned to watch his lips. “They don’t emphasize what they see as much as you do,” he explained, “so your visual memories are much sharper, much more detailed.”
Lusanne stared at him, startled. “I held the clue because I’m deaf?”
“Sergeant Barkis may have found the answer,” the psychiatrist agreed.
Globin could see the fear in her eyes, so he hastened to reassure her. “Yes, I know—that makes you an even more vital target for them, you, and you alone. But not if they or their spies discover that your secret is out, and that we all know of the home world now.”
“How can we tell them that, though?” she asked in conster-nation.
“By the most direct message possible,” Brand said, and keyed his intercom. “Bridge! Astronomy is sending up a set of coordinates they got from Psych. Set a course for the Ichton home world!”
“Aye, Commander,” the bridge responded.
Brand sat back, gaze glittering. “Now the Ichtons really will attack!”
They did.
WEAPON OF WAR
With only limited space available there were no ships larger than a cruiser brought to the center of the Hawking. The fact that all the warships and dozens of merchants had to be carried within the Hawking’s hull on the six-month journey to the galactic center had mitigated toward the Hawking carrying a larger number of smaller ships. Many of these were the almost-unarmed scouts, specially equipped to find and warn the races threatened by the Ichtons.
The smallest of the combat aircraft were the Fleet SBs. Designed to serve as patrol ships among the shipping lanes inside the Alliance, the SBs were the smallest ships capable of warp drive. Too small to carry engines capable of powering laser turrets that were effective at anything but near point-blank range, the SBs’ sting came from the two dozen missiles jammed into launchers that occupied nearly half the ship’s length. Individually the SB was little threat to any larger combat ship as both sides protected them by antimissile laser banks. A squad of six to ten SBs could launch enough missiles simultaneously to overwhelm even a small cruiser’s defenses. The cost was often two or three of their number destroyed in the attack. Needless to add, the SBs attracted only the most reckless, and often creative, pilots.
In the six months after the fall of Gerson, the Hawking fought a series of delaying actions against three large Ichton fleets that were moving on parallel courses around the galactic center. The Fleet warships were slowly losing this battle of attrition when two of the Ichton fleets simply disappeared. After a week, Anton Brand ordered all the remaining ships to concentrate on the remaining large fleet. In a number of sharp actions, the Fleet forces joined with those of nearby allied races to shatter this third Ichton force. This victory gave a needed boost to everyone’s morale. Everyone except Anton Brand and those of his staff, who realized that there had been virtually none of the dozen of mother ships normally found at the center of any Ichton formation. The Ichton fleet they had destroyed had obviously been meant as a distraction, one that had succeeded and further bled the remaining Fleet forces as well.
While the larger Fleet ships had engaged the Ichtons, the smaller SBs continued to patrol at the edges of the area of conflict. It was one of these forces that discovered not the new combined Ichton fleet but one of the many supply convoys needed to maintain it.
CHARITY
by S.N. Lewitt
Charity is incumbent on each person every day. Charity is assisting anyone, lifting provisions, saying a good word . . . Removal from the way of that which is harmful is charity.
—Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad
“Dawn Leader, we have bogers four o’clock, axis Z. Repeat, four o’clock, axis Z.”
Dawn Leader didn’t say anything at all. He spun the heavily armed SB as hard around as he could up the axis Z, bringing guns to bear on the enemy. The computer blinked into targeting and then fired the volley on autoselect. Slow, so screamingly slow, he thought. The best they could rig in the limited space and energy requirements of the SBs, but the smart controls weren’t near the reflexes in any true ship of the line.
And it was too late. The SB Dawn Walker exploded in a million colors across ten klicks of raw space. And the shards of that explosion tore up the smart missile he had launched only nanoseconds ago.
Shards that should have torn through the enemy fighter, but instead were directed harmlessly around it. An energy shield, up and in place. Made no sense for the Imps of Shaitan. What did they care for an individual to live or die? They had no concept of Paradise. No, it was all to insult their human prey, to throw a challenge across the battle lines instead of fighting like honest men.
Group leader Hassan Ibn Abdullah was furious, and he knew that was exactly where the enemy wanted him. Angry and ready to make mistakes. He could hear their laughter in his head, if the Ickies laughed at all. And he knew better than to imagine it. The thought only led to mistakes.
“Dawn team, report,” he ordered briskly.
Element one was in good shape; element two was a little too far from the group. Hassan ordered them back. And three, three was gone. Dawn Walker and Dawn Singer both.
The four SBs, even armed as they were, were not the ideal craft in which to fight the Ichtons. SBs had never been designed as primary fighters. They were only scoutships for transport and exploration, and rigging them with the heaviest guns they could carry was not going to make them a match for the Ichtons’ protecting horde.
And Dawn Group hadn’t been on a combat mission. At least they hadn’t thought i
t was a combat mission when the assistant head of Planetary Astronomy had briefed them. In fact, Hassan had been upset at that briefing. He had wanted to be in the attack group, not given some Cub Scout assignment.
“We’ve got some readings that indicate there may be a habitable planet in this system,” Rhys Davies had said softly. Dr. Davies always talked as if he were lecturing undergraduates in the intro class he didn’t really want to teach. “And my department has been asked to find a place to settle the Gerson survivors.” This was said with distinct distaste.
Not that anyone, even Davies, could possibly want not to help the few remaining Gersons. He merely resented being forced to be application-oriented when there was obviously so much more important theoretical work to do. Hassan had come to expect this attitude whenever he had to deal with the Science staff. Which meant that he dealt with them as little as possible.
“In any event, it is well out of the heavily trafficked areas and the military advisors have said it is not in the general thrust direction of the swarm. There is no reason to believe that the Ichtons have ever found this sector, and hopefully they will be eliminated before they do.”
For the first time Hassan found himself agreeing wholeheartedly with Davies. If not with the assignment. He wanted to be out there doing some damage, not playing human probe.
That was an uncharitable thought, he knew. The Gersons had already lost so much, their home world, their people. The few survivors were not particularly happy aboard the Hawking, no matter how comfortable the civilians tried to make them. So Hassan tried not to protest, to hold it in his mind that this was a great service.
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