Voyage Across the Stars

by David Drake

  Ned opened the front of his tunic and shrugged to loosen the fabric where sweat had glued it to his skin. He felt good. Better than he’d felt since he’d last been home on Tethys.

  Ajax Four wasn’t a seaworld like Tethys, but the Swift had landed on the shore a few klicks south of Quantock, one of the planet’s larger human settlements. The air was clean, and a storm had passed recently enough to give it the familiar tang of ozone.

  Ajax Four wasn’t home, but it reminded Ned of home; and that was a good thing just now.

  The Swift had set down in a scallop several hundred meters across. Originally the landing site had been a miniature crater, but the sea had carved away the western third of the cone.

  Lava within the volcano’s channel had cooled into a basalt plug far sturdier than the cone of compacted ash. The plug provided the Swift with a surface as solid as Landfall City’s concrete spaceport. At low tide the basalt would be a shelf well above the sea, but at the moment surf pounded its edge.

  Herne Lordling had ordered six men to string a line of medium-distance sensors around the crater’s lip, thirty to forty meters above the plug. Because the soft rock was weather-checked, the inner wall wasn’t as difficult to climb as it appeared to be from a distance. The exterior of the cone would actually be a more difficult proposition. A climber’s weight would crumble the slope into gravel with neither handholds nor footholds.

  A team of ship’s crewmen had unslung the pair of air-cushion mini-jeeps from the blister on the Swift’s hull astern. The jeeps would only carry two people apiece, so most of the personnel would have to hike or borrow vehicles from the colonists if they wanted to leave the vessel.

  “Sir, I still can’t raise the settlement,” Dewey reported. “Over.”

  He was using the general push rather than a command channel, so everyone could hear him through their commo helmets. With the exception of Dewey, whose duties kept him in the navigational console, the whole complement was outside on this, the Swift’s first landfall since Telaria. Everyone wore his helmet visor down and polarized against the brilliant sunlight doubled by reflection from the rocks.

  “All right, Dewey,” Lissea replied. “Have one of the teams on the ridge relay the call. Use Yazov. He’ll know what to do. Out.”

  Ned knelt and peered into a crack deep enough that spray or possibly ground water kept the interior damp. He locked his visor out of the way for a better view. There was a smudge of green against the rock. “Hey, Tadziki,” he called. “Plant life!”

  “It’s not the plants that worry me, Slade,” the adjutant said as he wandered over, faceless behind his visor. “It’s the Spiders and the big nasty guns they’re supposed to carry.”

  “Wouldn’t mind having something to shoot,” Deke Warson said idly. “It’d make a change.”

  Lissea walked over to the adjutant. “Tadziki!” she demanded. “There was no place nearer to Quantock?”

  “We could have tried landing in the settlement itself,” Tadziki said calmly. “The settlers here have a great deal of trouble with pirates and the interloping traders who sell weapons to the Spiders. I was concerned that if they saw an unexpected vessel coming in to land, they might shoot first and ask questions later.”

  Lissea raised her visor and rubbed her face with her palm. “Sorry,” she said. “I feel like a fish in a barrel in this place. I—”

  “Sir, I’ve got them on Channel Seven!” Dewey reported. “Do you want me to patch them directly to you? Over.”

  “No, hold them for a moment,” Lissea replied as she strode back up the ramp. “I’ll take it at the console. Out.”

  Apart from algal smudges like the one Ned had noticed, the only land-dwelling life form on Ajax Four when humans arrived was a creature whose males averaged three meters tall and a hundred and fifty kilograms. They were bipedal but four-armed. The colonists called them Spiders, though they were warm-blooded and had internal skeletons.

  The Spiders ranged the interior in bands of a dozen or so individuals, living on creatures teeming in the freshwater lakes and streams. They were relentlessly hostile to the colonists, which wouldn’t have made any difference—had the Spiders not also been highly intelligent.

  Humans settled Ajax Four with two separate commercial purposes. The ocean provided protein, some of it of luxury quality, and algal carbohydrates which could be processed into basic foodstuffs. Oceanic aquatic fed the colonies from the beginning. It now provided most of their export earnings as well.

  According to the original plan, analgesics processed from several varieties of freshwater coral would in a few years pay back the cost of settling Ajax Four. Thereafter the colonists should have become as wealthy as the citizens of any human planet. When Spiders with weapons made of seashells and obsidian had attacked settler foraging parties, the humans’ guns cut the aliens down without loss.

  Human interlopers landed on Ajax Four to scoop up coral and flee before the settlers could stop them. The Spiders traded with the interlopers instead of fighting them: traded coral for guns, and used the guns to bloodily ambush the next group of colonists who had ventured into the interior.

  Since that day, the interior hadn’t been safe for the colonists. They swept the vicinity of their settlements in large parties, killing the Spiders they found and accepting the inevitable sniping casualties as a cost of remaining on Ajax Four. Though the Spiders held the interior, they rarely ventured against the sensors and heavy weapons which protected the coastal settlements.

  The parties’ modus vivendi wasn’t perfect, but life was rarely perfect. Since the situation hadn’t changed significantly in a hundred years, it had to be considered an acceptable one.

  Lissea stepped out onto the ramp. “Captain to crew,” she called on the general push. “There’s a party coming along the coast from Quantock. The settlement’s control center has told them we aren’t hostile, so they won’t be shooting. Don’t let’s us have any problems either. Out.”

  Ned looked in the direction of Quantock. Surf had battered the volcanic rock into a cornice, which except at the very highest tides, overhung a narrow shingle beach. Air-cushion and perhaps tracked vehicles could drive along the shore, though to Ned that didn’t seem a safe way to approach an armed enemy. Perhaps the locals had hoped to take the presumed interlopers unaware, but that was a very risky bet.

  For want of anything better to do, Ned walked toward the edge of the crater, where the settlers would be appearing. His submachine gun flopped against his right hip, so he tightened the sling. His bare forearm brushed the iridium barrel. The metal was searingly hot. Ned yelped and rubbed the red splotch which would shortly be a blister.

  “What’s the matter?” Lissea Doormann asked.

  Ned jerked his head around. She was only a half-step from him. A commo helmet’s ear-pieces cut off enough of the wearer’s peripheral vision to hide nearby objects surprisingly.

  “Lissea, where are you going?” Herne Lordling shouted from the hatchway.

  “To make sure the first person to greet the welcoming committee isn’t shooting!” Lissea called back.

  “I just burned myself on my gunbarrel,” Ned muttered in embarrassment. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were there.”

  “Company coming!” Josie Paetz called in a clear, terrible voice. He stood on a ledge just below the crater rim. His submachine gun was pointed in the direction of the beach, and he was sighting along the barrel.

  “Captain to crew!” Lissea said. “Everybody take your hands off your weapons. Now!”

  She deliberately lifted her empty hands in the air with her elbows at shoulder height. Ned started to do the same then realized he’d feel like an idiot. He crossed his hands behind his back instead.

  An air-cushion truck of 5-tonne or greater payload whuffled into sight. Its skirts cast up spray on one side while the other ricocheted pebbles between the cliff and the vehicle’s own flank. A civilian manned the tribarrel on the truck cab’s ring mount, while other armed men—no women th
at Ned could see—peered over the front of the cargo box.

  The tribarrel’s gunner waved enthusiastically at Ned and Lissea. He was shouting something, probably a greeting, but the truck’s roaring lift fans overwhelmed the words.

  Though the fellow clearly wasn’t hostile, it didn’t occur to him to point his weapon up at a safe angle. Stupid mistakes had probably killed as many people over the years as aimed shots.

  The vehicle slowed but didn’t stop. Ned hopped out of the way, touching Lissea’s arm to bring her with him. There was a second truck behind the first, and the vehicles had to get onto the basalt plug to be out of the surf. The first pulled far enough forward to let its companion past; then they both shut down. Though the surf instantly filled the relative silence, it was now possible to talk again.

  The gunner slid down into the truck cab, opened the passenger door, and jumped to the ground. He was thirty or so, a handsome man with tawny hair and shoulders broad enough to make his waist look falsely narrow.

  “Hello there, welcome to Quantock!” he called, waving his right arm like a semaphore. “I’m Jon Watford, the governor here, and I can’t tell you how happy my wife’s going to be to meet another woman from off-planet! Who’s in charge?”

  The truck tailgates banged down and the remainder of the locals began to get out. The insides of the cargo boxes were armored with thin concrete slabs, sandwiched three-deep to give protection against multiple hits. It struck Ned as a reasonably effective makeshift.

  The men were a heavily armed militia instead of a trained military force. They carried a variety of weapons, with powerguns in the majority.

  Nothing is ideal under all circumstances, but powerguns were more effective over a wide range of conditions than any alternative Ned knew of. Ajax Four had to be tied firmly into the interstellar trade network in order to be able to buy and maintain hardware so sophisticated. Of course, a gun is only as good as the gunman using it. Most of the Quantock contingent looked at least reasonably competent.

  The truck bodies bore cratered splash marks from where they’d been struck by powergun bolts. As the Swift’s pilotry data indicated, the Spiders too were involved in interstellar trade.

  “Very glad to meet you, Governor Watford,” Lissea said. She extended her hand. “I’m Captain Doormann, Lissea—”

  “You’re in command, then?” Watford said in something between interest and amazement. He shook Lissea’s hand.

  Militiamen traded glances with the Swift’s complement. The locals were obviously taken aback by their heavily armed visitors, but they didn’t seem really concerned. There were fifty-odd Quantock militiamen. They didn’t have enough experience of real warfare to realize that the dozen expert killers surrounding them could have blown them to sausage before the victims could fire a shot in reply.

  “Yes,” Lissea said crisply. “I’m on a . . . an embassy to Pancahte. We’re prepared for trouble on some of the wilder worlds, of course, but I assure you all we ask of you is the opportunity to purchase supplies at market value. We won’t impose on Quantock in any way.”

  “Sure wouldn’t mind having a decent meal, though,” said Toll Warson, who’d drifted up behind Lissea.

  “You’ll have every facility we can provide!” said Watford. “Why, Mellie would never forgive me if I didn’t bring you—and your crew, of course—to the settlement for a feast. Do come back with us. We’ve got room in the trucks if you don’t mind squeezing a bit.”

  Lissea turned and looked at Tadziki. He shrugged and said, “I don’t see why not. We’ll leave an anchor watch, of course, but now that the sensors are in place, four men ought to be plenty.”

  “Might even be a woman or two looking for company,” Deke Warson said to his brother in a tone of consideration.

  “Warson—both of you,” Lissea said as though Deke’s words had thrown a switch in her tongue. “You’ll provide the anchor watch with Ingried and—someone from the ship’s crew . . .”

  “Bonilla,” Tadziki suggested.

  “Right, Bonilla,” Lissea said. “If I feel like it, you’ll be relieved at around midnight. The rest of you, get aboard the trucks.”

  As Ned climbed into a truck box, using the latch of the tailgate as a step, he heard Toll Warson say, “You know, brother, you always did have more mouth than sense.”

  Jon Watford drove the leading truck and carried Lissea in the cab with him. The previous driver stood in the center of the bench seat to crew the tribarrel. There was no gun-shield. Even if there had been, the gunner’s lower extremities were exposed through the windshield.

  The tide was going out, exposing enough dry land for the trucks to start back without adding to the spume. The cargo boxes were comfortably roomy for thirty-odd men on a three-klick excursion, though Ned sure wasn’t going to stay aboard if shooting started.

  “Do you have much trouble with the Spiders this close to the settlement?” he asked the local who was pressed against his right side. Like Ned, the man carried a submachine gun—which might even have been of Telarian manufacture.

  “What?” the fellow said. “Spiders? No, no. We sweep the coast every couple months. They keep out of our way.”

  The deck appeared to be sheet metal. Ned toed it with his boot and grimaced when his suspicions were borne out. An air-cushion vehicle wasn’t likely to set off a mine by direct pressure, but that wouldn’t save this truck from a command-detonated or rod-fused mine. There ought to be floor protection—and not concrete, which would shatter into deadly shrapnel in the initial shock wave.

  Tadziki, on Ned’s left, noticed Ned’s examination. The adjutant clung to the side of the truck with his right hand to steady himself. He raised the other hand and ostentatiously crossed his fingers while giving Ned a wry smile.

  Ned looked down at the beach. Weed and occasional lumps that could be either animal or vegetable splotched the shingle, but there were relatively few signs of life. The broken tuff was too loose to anchor the shellfish and other sessile life-forms which would have populated a more resistant shore. One blob of protoplasm a meter in diameter was surrounded by hand-sized things which waved forelegs as the truck bellowed past.

  When the trucks got to the fortified settlement, Ned might check the shore life more closely for old times’ sake, but the Spiders weren’t going to spring an ambush from the surf. Ned turned, leaning his back against the side of the truck so that he could view the corniche. He wished he’d worn body armor, to spread the jolts to his rib cage as well as for protection.

  The cliffs generally ranged two to five meters above the beach’s high-tide mark. One tongue of particularly refractory rock thrust so far west that the trucks had to drive around in a vast explosion of spray. Rainbows ringed the vehicles, and the salty mist cooled Ned’s lungs refreshingly.

  The trucks’ ground pressure was too high for them to skim the wave-tops as lighter air-cushion vehicles could have done. The headland would be dangerous during the journey from Quantock at high tide.

  A number of gravel-bottomed ravines drove deep into the interior. They were dry now, but they certainly held raging torrents when they carried storm water to the sea. The barren, rocky soil would do nothing to slow runoff.

  The gullies were an obvious means of approach for Spiders who wished to reach the seacoast while remaining below the horizon of active sensing devices. The colonists probably planted passive sound and motion sensors in the low spots, but such gear would take a beating during every downpour.

  There was nothing sexy or exciting about the business of maintaining detection apparatus. Ned doubted whether the colonists had the discipline to keep it up as religiously as safety required.

  The colonist manning the cab’s tribarrel raised his muzzles to a forty-five-degree angle and ripped off a burst. The cyan bolts were nearly the same hue as the sky, but their brilliance—pure energy instead of merely the diffraction of sunlight—made them stand out like pearls against linen.

  All eight mercenaries in the leading tru
ck—and probably the contingent in the second vehicle also—had their weapons raised and off safe. Lissea poked her semiautomatic 2-cm shoulder weapon out of the cab, searching for a target like the rest of them. The colonists were grinning.

  The man beside Ned leaned over and shouted, “We’re just letting them know in Quantock that we’re back. Nothing to get concerned about.”

  To underscore his words, he aimed his submachine gun skyward and fired half a magazine. The pistol-caliber bolts were pale compared to the tribarrel’s heavy charges. Empties spun from the ejection port, disks of half-molten plastic matrix whose burden of copper atoms had been converted to energy in the weapon’s chamber. The hot plastic reeked, and ozone from the discharges bit the air.

  “I prefer flares,” Tadziki said with a cold disdain which probably passed right by the local.

  “I told you, the Spiders don’t come around here,” the militiaman said.

  Watford drove the truck up a concrete ramp and down into a vast polder whose floor was below water level at high tide. A seawall, anchored at either end on the cliff face, looped far into the ocean. Within the protected area were a series of square-edged ponds, some of them greenish or maroon from the crops grown there. Several hundred buildings sheltered beneath the corniche.

  The polder was defended from enemies as well as the sea. Every hundred meters along the seawall and on the corniche across the chord was a fully enclosed turret. For weather protection, the weapons remained masked until use. From the size and design, Ned judged that each emplacement held a tribarrel in a fully automated or remotely controlled mounting.

  People stepped outdoors as the trucks pulled up in front of the long building in the center of town. The sign over the main doors read Civic Hall.

  The hall was a two-story structure ornamented with whimsically angled ‘exposed beams’ painted white against the pale blue of the rest of the facade. The whole Quantock community was decorated in pastels, and most of the residences had window boxes or planted borders.