Even a small, short blink is a long distance. The wave front of a ship coming out of blink at any distance would take days, weeks, or months, standard, to be detected. If Fleet knew the Invincible’s escape vector, they could take short hops to catch the wave front. But that tactic would mean waiting in each location for the wave front to hit them. That was a waste of precious time. By the time they detected anything, Invincible would have long departed.
The only hopes they had to catch Invincible, or any other rebel ship, was to keep watch near the planets. Every ship had to refuel, restock, and deliver or pick up cargo. Cargo was the main reason for the ships to ply the ways and cargo had to be delivered. That’s what the damned war was all about, wasn’t it?
Earth’s own ships, like Faradaddie’s, were no different. She was a Fleet ship, but she carried substantial cargo as well. She still had to service those colonies that remained loyal.
At the same time, they had to protect Earth’s ships from harm, make deliveries to the loyal outposts, and the get back to the home planet.
“I guess we lost them, didn’t we?” the Chief asked.
Faradaddie didn’t need to reply. Whether the Chief was asking about the Invincible or those poor damned marines mattered little. He had lost both. “We’ll get another chance,” he promised.
Sergeant Tsu tried to figure out what had gone wrong and how he had managed to survive with only a busted leg. He’d been told that most of the damned rebels couldn’t fight worth crap and much of what they had as weapons were pathetic.
These guys, the ones who’d chopped his troops into mincemeat, were nearly as good as his marines. They’d made effective use of cover, managed to force him into a defensive, but escape-proof, position, and were preventing him from doing anything less than suicide.
At the moment they were at a stalemate. He had twelve centimeters of hardened armor at his back, a narrow field of fire before him, and enough weapons left to hold this position for days, if need be. They could only get to him in single file, allowing him to pick them off at leisure. Impasse. Yeah, that was what the Captain would say. How much time was left now? Had they blinked already?
He didn’t expect the stomach churning, wrenching, dizzying wave of nausea when it hit. Damn, they must have spun up again, he thought, and a big blink too. Shit, caHenrath was down again, puking her guts on the deck. Shilling was look-ing blank. There was a line of drool coming from the corner of his mouth. Wilkerson was completely out—dead or unconscious.
“We’ve blinked a full light year,” a voice blared over the emergency channel. “Your ship will never be able to find us now.”
“What the hell?” he said in reply. “How did you manage to get on a secure channel? Screw you.” But had the voice said a full light year? Holy crap. He was right. There was no point fighting any longer. They’d never get back now.
He tried to hold back the tears he felt for all those damned wasted deaths, all those dead marines and rebels. It had all been for nothing - a pointless battle in a fucking trade war. He was sick of it.
“Listen. You don’t have choices. You either give up or you’ll die.”
“Who the hell are you, anyhow? How did you manage to tap into this channel?” Was this the end? Was he actually going to die?
“This is the Captain,” the voice responded. “Name’s Zaggat.”
Tsu started. His leg really hurt bad. “I shipped under a Captain with that name. Big ugly sucker, thought he was so damned smart.” Were the defenders going to rush them now?
“And wouldn’t let the marines piss in the corridors, is that right?” the voice chuckled. “Yeah, that was me.”
Tsu was taken aback. His entire worldview turned over. How could one of Fleet’s officers go over to the rebel side? No, it had to be a trick.
“I don’t want to see any more people die,” Zaggat continued. “All I want is to get Invincible’s cargo delivered.”
Tsu considered his options. Wilkerson was still down, he didn’t like the way caHenrath was looking, and Shilling had gotten a wild look in his eyes and was stroking his rifle like it was a payday whore. “My men need medical attention.” He didn’t mention his own shattered leg.
“They’ll get it. Throw out your weapons if you mean it.”
Tsu carefully peeled Shilling’s hands off his rifle and then plucked the torch from the ineffective caHenrath’s hands. He skidded both along the deck and then tossed his own with them. “There you go,” he said and crawled out, leaving a trail of blood behind him. As far as he was concerned, the war was finally over.
And he was still alive.
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THRESHER
Lawrence M. Schoen
MERCUTIO’S GHOST CHECKED ITS MATH AND MUSED THAT A LIFE OF PIRACY IN THE MIDDLE OF AN interplanetary war was no life for a physician. The math checked; the Folio’s outbound course from Varuna would carry it through the Kuiper Belt, with an eye toward creating the appearance of just another transNeptunian object, too small for even a MarzCraft with full sensorial to bother noticing. Its piracy piloting done, the doctor portion of the ghost took over and accelerated its time sense several hundred fold. This burned up the larger share of its temporary lifespan, but gave it the next ninety subjective hours to search for a cure for the Captain.
In the war between Erth and Marz, the Old Man had put himself smack in the middle. Only ErthCraft sported ghost crew. Their ships could produce key decisions several orders of magnitude faster than MarzCraft. Only MarzCraft pilots had access to the sensorial that let them see and taste and touch and hear every iota of infor-mation within an AU with utter clarity. A sensorial ship could usually see an enemy vessel coming with enough lead time to get away safely. A ghosted vessel almost in-variably outgunned an opponent running with real-time targeting. All that fine tech-nology was proprietary, and neither side had both kinds, at least as far as anyone knew. But Captain Book had both the knack and the means to acquire tech through unscrupulous channels, which made him a natural to command a pirateship.
Mercutio’s ghost’s current medical effort failed, as all its predecessors had. Disappointed but unsurprised, it dilated its time sense back out to human norm. Varuna had receded far behind the Folio. The ghost once more reviewed the course Mercutio had prepared to Ixion, then fired off an acknowledgment to the First Mate’s ghost lurking elsewhere in the system.
The MarzGov mining ship Declaration would soon be leaving Ixion, its holds laden with tholin and other precious heteropolymers not found on either Marz or Erth. The Captain wanted those heteropolymers, and by extension so did Mercutio, which meant his ghost did too. Time then to get to it. The ghost hurtled back through the system arriving at the interface plate that led to its origin, jumped the gap, and merged its memories with its flesh and blood creator.
In his cool bunk, Mercutio, pilot and ship’s doctor, blinked and yawned as his ghost roused him from the chill of suspension and dumped the experience of its brief life into his mind. Piracy wasn’t his first calling, it wasn’t even his second, but circum-stance had taken him this way and complaining wouldn’t change things. His body warmed to real time and he winced as he reviewed the particulars of another unsuc-cessful research session. He could only try again; so long as the Captain lived, it was his duty. Mercutio pressed his face firmly against the activation plate, generated a fresh ghost, and unhooked himself from the harness of the ghosterizer. He swung himself out of his bunk and went to check on the Captain.
“Still no luck?” said the speaker grid on Captain Book’s cool bunk as the doctor entered the tiny ship’s infirmary.
Mercutio stepped within range of the Captain’s acuity sensors and nodded. The Old Man’s bunk was colder than his own, though not so cold as the crews’. The First Mate had rigged it to chill the Captain’s brain, but allow him to remain conscious all the same. “No, Sir, but I’ve started another run. Meanwhile, I wanted to see how you’re doing.” More than two dozen ceramo-magnetic diagnostic beads c
overed the Captain’s body, like glowing red eyes that gave the darkened bunk a demonic feel. Each beamed its readings to the infirmary’s computer, which in turn displayed a sum-mary to a wall display. Mercutio studied that summary and frowned. Despite the trick-ling pace of the Old Man’s metabolism, the meds he’d administered had already stopped working.
“I have faith in you, son,” said Book. “But then, what other choice do I have?” “You could abort this run, Sir. Tell the First to let me plot us a course out of the Belt. We can run the distance to Erth or Marz on hard shields. You’ve got letters of marque from both sides. You’ll get a parade as a privateer either place.” “What do I need with a parade? And I’m only a privateer because neither side knows I work for the other. We have business to do out here, Mercutio, pirate busi-ness. I’ll see Erth, sure, but not before we liberate all the Ixion tholin on that MarzCraft.”
“You’ll never see Erth then, Captain. The thresher will kill you long before then.” “You’re sure of that?”
“I am. Even with maximum chill slowing your body, the drugs haven’t been able to suppress your reaction to the field. I’ve already had to amputate your left leg. An-other limb could develop Sagan’s fasciitis without warning, and only the cool bunk is keeping organ failure at bay. As long as we’re in the Belt we can’t turn off the thresher without killing everyone. The hard shields aren’t enough to protect the ship here.”
Book whistled faintly, summoning a glowbug from the communication console and directing it to land on the trio of gold rings hanging from his left ear. “Then you’d best set aside my share of the haul for my funeral costs,” he said. “I want to go out in style.”
Every ship in space, whether ErthCraft, MarzCraft, or Indy-made, used a thresher. The machine was as ugly and awkward a sight as a lust-crazed bull mounting a groundcar, and about as big, but the field it generated made space travel possible. The thresher pushed a ship out of Probabilistic space, freeing it from the constraints of Euclid, Einstein, and Chaos. As an added bonus it laughed in the face of conser-vation and boosted velocity without any messy acceleration issues. And all the while the field protected everything within it from radiation and normal matter up to the mass it contained.
Transition back to Probability dumped the gained velocity but otherwise had no effect on inorganics. Usually it didn’t affect flesh and blood either. But every now and then, one time in ten billion, a body came back into normal space changed. The smarties they called it, and the luckless spacers who got it had the choice to either leave space quickly or die there. You could live, assuming you never stepped inside a thresher field again. Otherwise the disease progressed with light-ning speed, killing you in a burst of brilliance as your brain spun off millions of new connections while every organ in your new genius body failed. Smart death, but death all the same.
Mercutio had diagnosed the Captain’s condition before they’d gone to ground on Varuna, and immediately put the Old Man in a cool bunk. Then he’d set about using the limited resources of the Folio to do what the best medical minds on two worlds hadn’t been able to do. He’d failed. The ghosterizer had only let him fail faster and more thoroughly.
Mercutio owed the Captain his life ten times over, and the most he could do for him now was to plan his funeral party.
“That’s it then,” said Prospero as he and Mercutio sat in the mess. The man fastidiously nibbled the full crust perimeter of a toasted cheese sandwich as he spoke. “We make way near Ixion as planned, liberate the tholin as planned, and leave them Marzies with the final tale of Captain Book.”
“And then what?” said Mercutio. He sniffed and frowned, the First Mate had engineered the foodstation to manufacture curds that went beyond pungent and well into stench.
“Then I’ll be captain,” said Prospero, “and you’ll quicken such crew as need it. Those that choose to sign on under me, as they did for Book, can stay and it will be as it has been. Those what don’t, can leave the Folio with their full shares as ex-pected.”
Mercutio sighed. “Then off we go, on another thrilling pirate adventure.”
Prospero finished the last of the crusts and smushed the remainder of the sandwich between his hands, rolling it into a tight ball of melted, smelly cheese and toasted bread. He popped it into his mouth as he regarded the pilot. He chewed silently for a full minute, swallowed, and pointed a greasy finger at Mercutio. “What about you? I know we haven’t gotten on well, but I’m hoping you’ll stay. You’re a passable doc and a better pilot, and I’ll need both.”
“Right now you’re still just ship’s engineer and first mate,” said Mercutio. “The Captain’s not dead.”
The First nodded. “Not yet, but my ghosts are in the system same as yours, and they talk to one another, usually more than we manage face to face. I know the status of things same as you. We’re cruising your camouflaged route through the belt towards Ixion, the thresher’s running at full, and if the Captain ain’t dead by the time we crack open that MarzShip, it won’t be for lack of trying.”
Sixty-seven hours and a dozen failed medical simulations later, tumbling along its seemingly haphazard route, the Folio fell into position an hour away from where it would cross Declaration’s vector and rendezvous with the unsuspecting mining ship. Mercutio informed the Captain, who in turn ordered the First to prepare an assault, who then sent word to Mercutio to quicken a boarding party.
As both pilot and ship’s physician, moments like this required Mercutio to be in two places at once, a situation which the ghosterizer made possible. He spun off a pair of them, one to actually pilot the Folio, and one to stand ready to relay messages between that spectral pilot and himself as near to instantly as human synapses could manage. Then he went to thaw the crew.
He quickend MacBeth first. While not an officer, the man had seniority among the crew, and at one time or another had beaten each of them senseless as part of some initiation ritual they all seemed to regard as a rite of passage. Mercutio didn’t pretend to understand; he’d merely set the bones and provided the necessary stiches. If it contributed to crew loyalty and boosted morale he had no cause to complain. The cool bunks accelerated healing anyway.
MacBeth, like half of the crew, was classic Marz stock, and stood a foot taller than Mercutio. Generations of Marzian eugenics had made him lean, muscled and golden-skinned. The Captain had named him MacBeth, just as he had given all the crew their names. It didn’t do for pirates to know one another’s birth name. The nominal Scotsman quickened swiftly and with none of the grogginess that the cool bunk often imparted to the Erthborn. The instant his eyes opened he locked Mercutio’s gaze and asked, “How soon?”
“Less than an hour. Give me a hand rousing the others.”
MacBeth rolled naked from his bunk, and pulled open the storage locker with his gear. He dressed with quiet efficiency while Mercutio moved on to the next cool bunk, and then joined him. Over the next five minutes they revived the others, Horatio, Benedict, Katrina, Antony, and Romeo.
“Look lively you lot,” said MacBeth to his men. “Don’t be thinking it’s only a mining craft and going all soft. We’ll be giving them the hard bump this day, same as we’d give any vessel as Captain Book sets his desire upon. Clear?”
“Aye,” said Romeo, and Katrina and Antony nodded in time.
“Bump,” said Benedict, who’d taken a blow to the head during their last raid and hadn’t been quite right since. He grinned and punched his brother, Horatio, in the shoulder.
“Hard bump, aye,” said Horatio, and punched him back.
“Anything else we ought to be knowing, doc?” asked MacBeth.
Mercutio shook his head. “It’s a big ship, but mostly automated for all that. A MarzCraft, so no ghosts. Three man crew, according to specs. If they’ve picked us up on their sensorial, they’re still thinking we’re a small rock that will pass right through them without touching.”
Horatio barked with laughter. “Until our thresher bumps theirs.” “Hard bump,�
� said Benedict, and punched him again.
“All right you lot, head for the lock and suit up.” MacBeth waved them toward the exit. “Every man carries a grapple, two cables, and a stunner. No one tries anything fancy and we all come back richer than when we woke up. Now move.”
They shuffled out, amidst a raucous chorus of “Bump! Bump! Bump!”
Mercutio put a hand on MacBeth’s arm, holding him back a moment. “Why ‘bump’?” he asked.
“Cuz the good lord won’t be delivering them,” said MacBeth. “Huh?”
“I don’t know from ghoulies, but you officers are ghosties and we’ve our share o’long-legged beasties. And space is as dark as any night I know of.” “Huh,” repeated Mercutio, finally recognizing the reference. “I’ve always thought of space as daytime. The sun’s always shining.”
MacBeth grinned at him. “You think too much, doc,” and he turned to follow his men.
The boarding was especially anticlimactic. Trusting to their own thresher field to spare them impact from anything smaller than themselves, Declaration didn’t clue to the Folio being more than a stray stone until the pirate vessel tumbled within a kilometer and matched vectors. By then it was too late. As the Folio drew closer, the two thresher fields merged, pulling the ships together. Mercutio’s ghost had used the sensorial on precision settings to line up their locks with perfection. It signaled the First’s ghost to begin the swiftly completed raid.
It was over almost before it began. MacBeth and company forced the lock, boarded the ship, rounded up, and efficiently disarmed the trio of personnel by the time Prospero and Mercutio followed them onboard. The doctor set the men to con-verting Declaration’s ward room into a temporary brig, while the First began preparing their prize for transit.
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