by Vernor Vinge
“Ah.” Finally some unexpected good news. Now he could limit the destruction necessary to regain control. Except this is Pham Nuwen you’re up against, and almost anything is possible. This could be some incredible masquerade. “Very good, Podcorporal. But for the moment, don’t use that automation.”
“Yes, sir.” Marli sounded puzzled.
Nau looked out the taxi’s window. Strange to be seeing raw nature with no enhancement. The L1-A lock was about seventy meters away now, deep in shadow. There was something strange about it…the lip of metal was highlighted in red. But I’m not wearing huds.
“Qiwi—”
“I see it. Someone is—”
There was a loud snapping sound. Marli screamed. His hair was on fire. The hull by his seat was glowing red.
“Shit!” Qiwi boosted the taxi up. “They’re using my electric jets!” She spun the taxi even as she jinked it back and forth. Nau’s stomach crawled up his gut. Nothing is supposed to fly like this.
The glow on the L1-A lock, the hot spot in the hull behind him—the enemy must be using all the stab jets within line of sight. Each jet by itself could only be an accidental, local danger. Somehow, Nuwen had ganged dozens of them to shine precisely on the two targets that mattered.
Marli was still screaming. Qiwi’s piloting jammed Nau up into his restraints, turned him as he came back down. He had a glimpse of the podcoporal in the arms of his fellows. As least he wasn’t burning anymore. The other guards’ eyes were wide. “X rays,” one of them said. The splash from those electron beams could fry them all. A long-term peril, all things considered—
Still spinning the taxi, Qiwi swung them close to the hillsides of Diamond One. The craft was precessing now, a wild triple spin. No way could the enemy keep their guns on one spot. And yet, the glow in the wall grew brighter with each rev. Pestilence. Somehow Nuwen had full system automation.
The nose and then the butt of the taxi smashed into the ground, splashing snow up from the surface. The hull groaned but held. And now, in the floating haze of rising volatiles, Nau could see the beams of the ejets. The ice and air in their way exploded into incandescence. Five beams, maybe ten, they shifted in and out as the taxi spun, and several were always on the glowing spot in their hull.
Around them the swirl of vapor and ice grew thicker. The glowing spot in the hull began to dim as the snows soaked and diffused the murderous beams. Qiwi damped their spin with four precise bursts of attitude control, at the same time snaking their craft over the boiling snows toward the L1-A airlock.
Peering forward, Nau saw the lock approach from dead ahead, a certain crash. But somehow Qiwi was still in control. She flipped the taxi up, slamming the docking collar into its mate on the lock. There was the sound of bending metal, and then they were stopped.
Qiwi tapped at the lock controls, then bounded out of her chair, to the forward hatch mechanism. “It’s jammed, Tomas! Help me!”
And now they were locked down, trapped like dogs in a pit shoot. Tomas rushed forward, braced himself, and pulled with Qiwi at the taxi hatch. It was jammed. Almost jammed. Together, they pulled it partway open. He reached through, spent precious seconds clearing security on the L1-A hatch. All right!
He looked over Qiwi’s head at the hull behind them. The red spot was more like a bull’s-eye now, a ring of red, a ring of orange, and glaring white in the middle. It was like standing in front of an open kiln.
The white-hot center bubbled outward, and was gone. All around them was a cascading thunderclap of departing atmosphere.
Things had been very quiet since Victory Lighthill took the Command and Control Center. The Intelligence techs had been moved away from their perches. They and the staff officers had been herded back against Underville, Coldhaven, and Dugway. Like bugs at a slaughter-suck, thought Belga. But it didn’t matter. The situation map showed that much of the world was going down to slaughter now:
The tracks of thousands of Kindred missiles curved across the map, and more were being launched each second. There were target circles drawn across every Accord military site, every city—even the trad deepnesses.
And the strange Accord launchings that had showed just after Lighthill arrived—those had disappeared from the maps. Lies, no longer needed.
Victory Lighthill walked up and down the line of perches, gazing briefly over the shoulders of each of her techs. She seemed to have forgotten Underville and the others. And strangely, she seemed just as horror-struck as CCC’s proper occupants. She wheeled on her brother, who seemed quite in another world, entertaining himself with his game helmet. “Brent?”
The big corporal groaned. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Calorica is still down. Sis…I think they hit Dad.”
“But how? There’s no way they could know!”
“I dunno. Only the low-level ones are talking, and by themselves, they’re never very helpful. I think it happened a while ago, just after we lost contact with the High Perch—” He paused, communing with his game? Light leaked from the edges of his helmet, flickering. Then: “He’s back! Listen!”
Lighthill brought a phone to the side of her head. “Daddy!” Joyous as a cobblie home from school. “Where—?” Her eating hands clasped each other in surprise and she shut up, listening to some extended speech. But she was almost bouncing with excitement, and her renegades were suddenly pounding on their consoles.
Finally: “We copy all, Daddy. We—” She paused, watching her techs for an instant. “—we’re getting control, just like you say. I think we can do it, but for God’s sake, route through someplace closer. Twenty seconds is just too long. We need you now more than ever!” And then she was talking to her techs. “Rhapsa, target only the ones we can’t stop from above. Birbop, fix this damn routing—”
And on the situation map…the missile fields across High Equatoria had come alive. The map showed the colored traces of dozens, hundreds of antimissiles, the long-range interceptors arcing up to meet the enemy. More lies? Belga looked across the suddenly joyous aspects of Lighthill and the other intruders, and felt hope climbing into her own heart.
The first contacts were still half a minute away. Belga had seen the simulations. At least five percent of the attacking missiles would get through. The deaths would be a hundred times more than during the Great War, but at least it wasn’t annihilation… But other things were happening on the map. Well behind the leading wave of the attack, here and there, enemy markers were vanishing.
Lighthill waved at the display, and for the first time since the takeover addressed Underville and the others. “The Kindred had callback capability on some of their missiles. We’re using that wherever we can. Some of the others, we can attack from above.” From above? As if by an invisible eraser, sweeping northward over the continent, a swath of missile markers disappeared. Lighthill turned toward Coldhaven and the other officers, and came to full attention. “Sir, ma’am. Your people might be best at managing the amissiles. If we can coordinate—”
“Damn, yes!” chorused Dugway and Coldhaven. The techs rushed back to their places. There were precious lost moments, re-upping target lists, and then the first of the amissiles scored.
“Positive EMP!” shouted one of the AD techs. Somehow it seemed more real than all the rest.
General Coldhaven dipped a hand at Lighthill, an odd sort of reverse salute. Lighthill said quietly, “Thank you, sir. This isn’t quite what the chief planned, but I think we can make it work… Brent, see if you can make the situation map completely truthful.”
…Hundreds of new markers glittered across the board. But they weren’t missiles. Belga knew the tags well enough to recognize satellites, though these looked like broken graphics. There were missing data fields and there were fields that contained nonsense strings. Moving off the north edge of the display was a strange rectangle. It pulsed with chevron modifiers. General Dugway hissed. “That can’t be true. A dozen size-chevrons. That would make it a thousand feet long.”
“Yes, sir,�
�� said Lieutenant Lighthill. “The standard display programs can’t quite handle this. That vehicle is almost two thousand feet long.” She didn’t seem to notice the look that came over Dugway. She contemplated the apparition a second longer. “And I think it has just about outlived its usefulness.”
Ritser Brughel seemed pleased with himself. “We’ve done pus good even without Reynolt’s people.” The Vice-Podmaster came over from his Captain’s chair to hover beside his Pilot Manager. “Maybe we launched a few more nukes than precisely needed, but that balanced your botch of the amissile fields, eh?” He slapped Xin familiarly on the shoulder. Jau had the sudden realization that his single, frail treason had been detected.
“Yes, sir” was all he could think to say. Ahead, the curve of the planet glittered with a web of lights, the cities they had come to call Princeton, Valdemon, Mountroyal. Maybe the Spiders weren’t the people Rita imagined, maybe that was a fraud of translation. But whatever the truth, those cities were in the last seconds of their existence.
“Sir.” Bil Phuong’s voice came across bridge-wide comm. “I’ve got a high-level ack from Anne’s people. We’ll have full automation in a matter of seconds.”
“Ha. About time.” But there was a note of relief in Ritser Brughel’s voice.
Jau felt a thutter of vibration. Again. Again. Brughel’s head snapped up, and he gazed off at a virtual display. “That sounds like our battle lasers, but—”
Jau’s eyes flickered across the status listings. The weapons board was clean. Core power had jagged as if charging capacitors—but now that was level, too. And, “My pilots aren’t reporting any fire, sir.”
Thutter. Thutter. They had passed over the great cities, were coasting north into the arctic, over tiny lights scattered across an immensity of dark, frozen land. Nothing there, but behind them…Thutter. The sky lit with three pale beams, diverging, fading…the classic look of battle lasers in upper atmosphere.
“Phuong! What the fuck is going on down there!”
“Nothing, sir! I mean—” Sounds of Phuong moving among his zipheads. “Uh, the zips are working on valid target lists from L1.”
“Well, they’re totally out of synch with my target list. Pull your head out, man!” Brughel cut the connection and turned back to his Pilot Manager. The Podmaster’s pale face was ruddy with building anger. “Shoot the bloody zips and get new ones!” He glared at Jau. “So what’s your problem?”
“I—maybe nothing, but we’re being illuminated from below.”
“Hunh.” Brughel, squinted at the electronic intelligence. “Yeah. Ground radars. But this happens several times on every rev…oh.”
Xin nodded. “This contact has lasted fifteen seconds. It’s like they’re tracking us.”
“That’s impossible. We own the Spider nets.” Brughel bit his lip. “Unless Phuong has totally screwed up the L1 comm.”
The radar tag faded for a moment…and then it was back, brighter, focused. “That’s a targeting lock!”
Brughel jerked as if the image had turned into a striking snake. “Xin. Take control. Main torch if it will help. Get us out of here.”
“Yes, sir.” There weren’t many missile sites in the Spiders’ far north. But what there were would be nuke armed. Even a single hit could cripple the Hand. Jau reached to enable his pilots—
—and the rumble of auxiliary thrusters filled the bridge.
“That wasn’t me, sir!”
Brughel had been looking right at him when the sound began. He nodded. “Get through to your pilots. Get control!” He bounced up from his place beside Xin and waved to his guards toward the aft hatch. “Phuong!”
Jau pounded frantically on his controls, shouted the command codes over and over. He saw scattered diagnostics, but no response from his pilots. The horizon had tilted slightly. The Hand’s auxiliaries were being run full-out, but not by Jau. Slowly, slowly, the ship seemed to be coming back to a nose-down, cruise attitude. Still no response from his pilots, but—Jau noticed the rising trace from the power core.
“Main torch burn, sir! I can’t stop it—”
Brughel and his guards grabbed for hold-ons. The torch subsonics were unmistakable, vibrating out from bones and teeth. Slowly, slowly, the acceleration ramped up. Fifty milligees. One hundred. Loose junk floated faster and faster sternward, spinning and bouncing off obstacles. Three hundred milligees. A huge gentle fist pressed Jau back into his chair. One of the guards had been in open space, unable to reach a hold-down. He drifted past now, he fell past, crashing into the aft wall. Five hundred milligees, and still increasing. Jau twisted in his harness and looked back, up, at Brughel and the others. They were pinned aft, trapped by the acceleration that went on and on…
And then the torch sound faded, and Jau floated up in against his restraints. Brughel was shouting to his guards, gathering them together. Somewhere in the action he had lost his huds. “Status, Mr. Xin!”
Jau stared at his displays. The status board was still a random jumble. He looked out, forward along the Hand’s orbit. They had passed through a sunrise. Dim lit, the frozen ocean stretched to the horizon. But that wasn’t what mattered. The horizon itself looked subtly different. Not your classical de-orbit burn, but it will do. Jau licked his lips. “Sir, we’ll be in the soup in one or two hundred seconds.”
For a moment, horror registered in Brughel’s face. “You get us back up, mister.”
“Yes, sir.” What else was there to say?
Brughel and his goons coasted across the bridge to the aft hatch.
Phuong: “Sir. I have a voice transmission from L1.”
“Well, put it on.”
It was a woman’s voice, Trixia Bonsol. “Greetings to the humans aboard Invisible Hand. This is Lieutenant Victory Lighthill, Accord Intelligence Service. I have taken control of your spacecraft. You will be on the ground shortly. It may be some time before our forces arrive on the scene. Do not, I repeat, do not resist those forces.”
Stark, gape-mouth surprise held everyone on the bridge…but Bonsol said nothing more. Brughel recovered first, but his voice wavered. “Phuong. Shut down the L1 link. All the protocol layers.”
“Sir. I-I can’t. Once up, the interconnect—”
“Yes you can. Get physical. Take a club to the equipment, but get yourself offline.”
“Sir. Even without the local zipheads…I think L1 has workarounds.”
“I’ll take care of that. We’re coming down.”
The guard by the hatch looked up at Brughel. “It won’t open, sir.”
“Phuong!”
There was no answer.
Brughel jumped to the wall beside the hatch, began pounding the direct opener. He might as well have been pounding a rock. The Podmaster turned, and Jau saw that the red was gone from his face. He was dead white and his eyes were wild. He had a wire gun in his hand now, and he looked around the bridge as if in search of a target. His gaze locked on Jau. The gun twitched up.
“Sir, I think I’ve gotten through to one of my pilots.” It was an absolute lie, but without his huds, Brughel couldn’t know.
“Ah?” The gun muzzle slipped a fraction. “Good. Keep at it, Xin. It’s your neck, too.”
Jau nodded, turned back to diddle fiercely with the dead controls.
Behind him, the search for the hatch’s manual override was frantic and obscene and incompetent…and finally terminated by the chatter of gunfire. Tumbling wires caromed around the bridge. “Bloody hell. That won’t do it,” Brughel said. There was the sound of a cabinet opening, but Jau kept his head down, doing his best to look desperately busy. “Here. Try this.” There was a pause, then a string of ear-numbing detonations. Lordy! Brughel kept that kind of ordnance on a starship’s bridge?
Triumphant shouts were faint behind the ringing in his ears. Then Brughel was shouting. “Go! Go! Go!”
Jau turned his head slightly, got a sidelong look at the bridge behind him. The hatch was still closed, but now there was a ragged hole punched
in it. Twisted metal and less identifiable junk floated up from it.
And now Jau Xin was all alone on the Hand’s bridge. He took a deep breath and tried to make sense of his displays. Ritser Brughel was right about one thing. It was Jau’s neck on the line here.
The core power trace was still high. He looked out across the curving horizon. No question now. The Hand was down, consistent with the eighty-thousand-meter altitude on the status board. He heard the rumble of the aux thrusters. Did I get through? If he could orient properly and somehow fire the main torch…But no, they weren’t turning in the right direction! The great ship was aligning on their direction of flight, rear end first. To the left and right of the aft view, parts of the starship’s outer hull could be seen, angular spidery structures that were meant for the flows of interstellar plasma but never the atmosphere of a planet. Now their edges were glowing. Soft yellows and reds splashed out around them, cascading like glowing ocean spray. The sharpest edges glowed white and sloughed away. But the aux thrusters were still firing, a pattern of tiny bursts. On off. On off. Whoever was running his pilots was making a perverse attempt to keep the Hand oriented. Without such precise control, the flow past the ship’s irregular hull would send them into a long tumble, a million tonnes of hardware torn apart by forces it had never been designed to face.
The glow across the stern was a spreading sheet of light, clear only in a few places where the shock was not hot enough to vaporize the hull. Jau drifted back into his chair, the acceleration growing gently, inexorably. Four hundred milligees, eight hundred. But this acceleration was not caused by the ship’s torch. This was a planetary atmosphere, having its way with them.
And there was another sound. Not the rumble of the aux. It was a rich, growing tone. From its throat to its outer hull, the Hand had become a vast organ pipe. The sound fell from chord to chord as the ship rammed deeper, slower. And as the glow of ionization trembled and faded, the Hand’s dying song rose in a crescendo—and was gone.
Jau stared out the aft view, at a scene that should have been impossible. The angular hull structures were smoothed and melted by their passage through the heat. But the Hand was a million tonnes, and the pilots had kept it precisely oriented in the flow, and most of its great mass had survived.
