Empire & Ecolitan

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Glad to hear that Helen and the kids had a chance to take home leave and trust they will be able to enjoy it for a while…a good, long while.

  If anything definite occurs, I’ll let you know. Hang in there.

  Blaine

  LXIX

  “THERE’S ANOTHER REASON why you can’t afford to be a hero.” Thelina looked pale under her bronzed complexion.

  “I’m not trying to be a hero.”

  “You’re not? Then why did you try and hide this mission? Like the one that took out the Haversol System Control? Why have you put off discussing it for the past tenday?” She glanced across the deck into the late fall afternoon.

  Jimjoy followed her glance, wondering where the year had gone. The sky was a crisp blue, cloudless, and the sun hung over the western mountains. With all the time he had spent on Thalos, it seemed as though he had been in some sort of suspended animation so far as the seasons at the Institute went.

  He sighed softly. “I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “Going off in the middle of the afternoon to get yourself killed isn’t going to make me worry?” She twisted in the hard chair.

  “Let’s stop arguing.” He straightened. “You said you had a reason. Not an emotional reaction, but a reason.” He paused. “And why haven’t you come to see me? It’s no harder for you to get to Thalos than for me to get here.”

  Her green eyes met his green eyes. “Sometimes, even though you try so hard…sometimes…”

  He sighed again. “Sometimes—sometimes what?”

  “Sometimes you are so predictably male and dense.”

  His guts twisted, like they had at the formal under-the-stars luncheon, and he found himself moistening his lips, squeezing them together, then moistening them again. He swallowed. “That bad?”

  “You can’t help it, not yet. Not when you see the truth and don’t want to face it.” Thelina turned even paler. “Excuse me…just a—”

  She was gone toward the facilities.

  Jimjoy looked after her then out through the open slider, swallowing as the breeze ruffled his hair. Despite the unseasonable warmth, the air held a hint of chill. His stomach churned, though not nearly so badly as he imagined Thelina’s was doing.

  He understood now, but was it better to be understanding or dense? Most times he would have said understanding, but he still had to go. What was worse was that he might have to do it again, when the Empire returned the favor.

  Standing up from the uncomfortable chair, he paced over toward the deck, half listening for Thelina’s return.

  With the slightest of whispers of boot leather on polished wood, he turned and hurried toward her. Taking her hands before she could draw them from him, he met her eyes.

  “Do you want to tell me? Or me to tell you?”

  She looked down.

  “You…we’re going to have a child. Is that so bad?”

  Thelina’s eyes charged his. “You said ‘we.’ Will it be ‘we’ if I’m left like Carill, like Kerin? How many times can you go out there and come back?”

  “Who else is there? It won’t work if we can’t deliver it to Earth itself. And let them know we can.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Why didn’t you train anyone else?”

  “I’ve been training all year. So has Analitta. So has Imri. So has Broward.”

  Her hands squeezed his. “Don’t you understand? I refuse to be a single parent so that you can be a hero.”

  He sighed. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to be a hero. But I have to act like one. That’s my only chance of getting back.” He remembered what Kerin had said to him nearly a year earlier, about his having no hostages to fate. No hostages to fate?

  “I did want to ask one question,” he added, knowing he was changing the subject, and knowing he was being extraordinarily unwise. “How…?”

  “I lied. Just like you did. For a good reason.”

  “A good reason?” He bit off the retort he almost made.

  “Would you listen?” Her voice was as gentle as he had ever heard it.

  He shrugged. “I have been listening. I’ve been listening to you for two years. You’re usually right.” Except about military tactics, he thought.

  “I love you. I love you, not the hero image that isn’t you. I want you to want to come back.”

  He looked down. There it was…what he’d been looking for through three lifetimes, what he had refused to admit he wanted. And he’d set it up so that he had to risk losing it, because everything rested on his being able to deliver one ship full of the deadliest biohazards ever developed to the most heavily guarded planet in the human Galaxy.

  “I…want…you. Have to…come…back…” He shook his head.

  This time, Thelina, pale and trembling, drew him to her.

  LXX

  “WHY YOU?” SHE had asked.

  Who else had there been? A year of training wasn’t enough. His own ten-plus years might not be enough.

  She had sighed and turned and looked out into the woods behind the deck.

  Now he was in the best of the Accord couriers, a ship stripped of everything but minimal screens, overgeneratored, overpowered, and underprotected. A ship carrying two hundred minitorps filled with the nastiest of self-reproducing biohazards possible, and two thousand shells filled with the hardiest versions of the nasties. All because…because…why? Because he had to strike the heart of the Empire before the Empire struck Accord? That was what he had told the Council, and Meryl, and Thelina. Now he wasn’t exactly sure of that any longer. Or was that because he really didn’t want to be in the courier, screaming down from above the ecliptic on Old Earth?

  He forced himself to concentrate on the audio channel, flicking from one frequency to another.

  “Satcom five…EDI register Hammerlock one…”

  “Belter three…ETA is five plus…five plus…”

  With a frown, he keyed in the Imperial tactical frequencies, hoping that the comm guard this close to Old Earth was more lax than in the Arm and toward the Rift.

  He could smell his own sweat. That and an odor of fear. His fear.

  “Artac…monitor three, inbound…sitmo…”

  “Clearance amber three…”

  “Stet…monitor three…”

  In some ways, coming to understand Thelina, and himself, had just made things worse. He was thinking about the future, and thinking about the future could be fatal when he needed to concentrate on the present. He wiped his forehead and tried another band.

  …scccrtitiss…

  With a tight grin, he touched the on-board scrambler and entered a code-breaking program.

  …sccctrtttscchhh…

  He tried a second. And a third.

  …tresascrrtttsss…

  It took another thirty minutes and most of the descrambler program before he got something intelligible.

  “Ellie five taccon, Turtle three. EDI scans normal. Continuing this time.”

  “Stet, Turtle three.”

  “Turtle four, this is taccon. Interrogative scans. Interrogative scans.”

  “Ellie five, Turtle four. Scans negative.”

  The Impies could have used tight-beam lasers, but lasers were limited by speed-of-light considerations, unlike standing jump wave. The compromise was usually scrambled standing wave.

  Jimjoy listened as he wiped his forehead and studied the readouts on the board in front of him. The Greenpeace was damped tight, coasting at an angle to the system plane, like an anomalous piece of cosmic junk, emitting no radiation except a minimal amount of heat.

  His chances—not exactly good—depended on the accuracy of his initial course plot and on his ability to use the earth’s atmospheric shield. The reentry course had been designed to let the ship coast at high speed until it intersected the normal out-system shipping points serving the L-5 nexus. But no courier carried equipment sophisticated to plot and set that precise a course from a third of a system away with only one of
two bursts of energy. The idea was that he would be able to make an adjustment or two near the shipping levels without creating immediate attention.

  He could have done the job by setting a real cometary orbit and letting the ship drift into position. The problem with that was he would have died of old age before the courier reached Old Earth, and Accord would have long since lost.

  The compromise was a ship with no radiation leaks, no outside energy expenditures, sprayed with nonreflective and energy-absorbing coatings, but traveling at high speed. All he had to do was make one or two course changes, swing around Old Earth, and launch a mere two hundred minitorps, followed by two thousand shells which would light up every satellite detection system possessed by New Augusta.

  Of course, there was the small problem of getting the ship back above the ecliptic before the Imperial Forces could react.

  He checked the readouts again, then the screens. Old Earth was showing a disk, as was the moon. So far, so good.

  Strange, to look at them from above. The techs had initially protested his determination to rely on sampler densities and an average of precalculated values to determine jump and entry points as far in-system as possible.

  Thelina had worried right along with them. “What if you’re wrong?”

  “A little bit won’t matter. A lot and I’m dead. Nothing else will work.”

  “Will this?”

  He had shrugged. There hadn’t been much choice, not after the stinks he’d made. Besides, of all the Ecolitans, only Broward and Analitta had experience equivalent to his. And Broward wasn’t at ease in small ships.

  There was a risk in everything. He had awakened with cold sweats, thinking that Thelina had fallen back into the Hands of the Mother on her Halston mission. Now, with the diplomatic recognition from Halston, followed by Tinhorn, Accord was receiving more independent shipping, and access to the high-tech designs and critical microblocs necessary to complete outfitting the needleboats. Thelina had made it all possible, but he still had nightmares.

  Wiping his forehead again, he waited, listening.

  The courier’s velocity was too high to be natural, even for the oddest cometary, but before he was detected, he hoped to make the last course change to set his final-approach angle.

  “Ellie five, Turtle two. Negative on scans.”

  The courier pilot checked his own passive EDI readouts. The spread of the outer orbital picket was wide enough. Not a real detection line at all—but a mere precaution. The real detection arrays, the ships he had bypassed by his angular approach, were farther outsystem and concentrated on the possible standard approach corridors. An above-ecliptic approach like Jimjoy’s was neither practical nor advisable in most circumstances. Since the calculation of jump points was problematical at best, nonstandard approaches would, over time, destroy a lot of ships.

  Jimjoy wiped his forehead again to keep the sweat from his eyes. The control area temperature was normal, about fifteen degrees centigrade, but it seemed hotter, and the moisture endless.

  He laughed, abruptly, and unstrapped, heading for the small fresher unit. Last chance he might have to relieve himself before he discovered whether he was a lucky fool or a dead idiot. As he left the controls, he twisted the audio up to full volume, then half pulled, half floated toward the fresher. The grav-field generators had been pulled to allow for beefing up the drives and more converter power.

  “Turtle three, Ellie taccon. Interrogative screens.”

  “Ellie five…negative this time.”

  “Turtle three, we have enhanced negative optical at plus five. Coordinates follow. Plus five point four three. Sector red. One eight three relative. Direct feed to your taccomp.”

  “Stet, Ellie. Receiving feed. No EDI from sector red. Plus ten to negative ten. Interrogative negative optical.”

  “Negative optical—no radiation, no emissions. Detected from crossing other optical sources.”

  “Stet, Ellie.”

  “Turtle three. Understand no EDI.”

  “That’s affirmative. Negative on EDI this time.”

  Jimjoy took a deep swallow of metallic-tasting water before heading back to the controls. His mouth was dry even after he drank. He listened while he strapped back in and readjusted the audio. They had him. But did they know it?

  He wiped his forehead again, glanced at the elapsed time clock, and took a deep breath. The next few hours would be long.

  With a sigh, he began recalculating his options. If…if the Impies decided he was the space junk he looked like, in another hour he might be able to pull off a quick burst to adjust course.

  “Ellie taccon, three here. Negative on EDI. Negative on RAD. Negative on enhanced optic.”

  “Stet. Request you continue monitoring area. Probably essjay.”

  “Stet. Will continue periodic sweeps.”

  Jimjoy let out his breath, wiped his forehead. He was temporarily safe, until he had to make a course correction. He began to plot out the alternatives available for the spacing and timing of the second correction, displaying them on the navigation plot. He shook his head as he studied the courses.

  No matter which one he took, the gee forces required would be close to his tolerances…and the ship’s.

  “Turtle four, Ellie taccon. Request sweep in sector green, two seven three relative, negative point three.”

  “Stet, Ellie five. Sweeping this time. Initial negative on EDI or enhanced optical.”

  Jimjoy wiped his forehead with the back of his nearly soaked sleeve, studying the course options again.

  “Turtle three, Ellie taccon, interrogative status of essjay.”

  “Three here. Status is constant. No EDI, no optical on heat, conforms to hard cometary profile.”

  “Ellie taccon, Turtle four. Have reading at two six nine relative, sector green, coordinates to your taccomp.”

  “Stet, four. Stand by.”

  “Standing by.”

  Jimjoy moistened his lips. The Impies were jumpy. Too jumpy. He looked at the options, selecting one, the one holding off the course change until the last possible moment. Then he ran the inquiry through the plot computer.

  “Probability of success exceeds point nine eight.”

  He winced. Someday, those two-percent chances would turn on him. Still, the representation screen showed him “above” and fractionally inside the orbit line of the Imperial ship that seemed to be Turtle three. Every minute counted now, because a torp would be on a stern chase, rather than a closing vector.

  “Turtle three, this is Ellie taccon. Interrogative peacekeeper status.”

  Jimjoy’s stomach twisted. His fingers reached for the controls, plugging in the contingency course he had hoped not to use.

  “Ellie five, three here. Status is green at point eight. Interrogative status check.”

  “Stand by, three.”

  Jimjoy watched as his own screen sketched out the near-suicide course line. The basic idea was simple enough—full power straight at Earth. Full decel just before hitting the edge of the extended radiation belts, and then using the planet to sling the Greenpeace at right angles to the ecliptic, distorting the magfields and hopefully messing up communications and detection long enough for Jimjoy to reach low-density space and jump.

  “Turtle four, Ellie taccon. Interrogative peacekeeper status.”

  “Ellie five, status is green at point nine.”

  “Turtle three and Turtle four, stand by for peacekeeper release.”

  Jimjoy squinted, touched the control to bring the variable stepped acceleration program up from standby. Finger poised, he watched the representation screen. He had needed another twenty standard minutes, and he wasn’t going to get them.

  “…sssssss…”

  Jabbing the acceleration controls, he keyed in the variability. The abrupt frequency shift told him enough.

  “…oooofffff…” The sudden power surge drove him back into his couch.

  On the screen three blue dashed lines flicked from
the picket ship closest to him toward his position.

  Jimjoy blanked the screen receptors, moistening his lips. For a moment he hung weightless as the courier dropped its acceleration to zero and changed course line. Then he was jammed back into the couch even more forcefully. Each course led to Earth, not always directly, with ever-increasing speed.

  His fingers called up the scrambler program and the frequency hunter. He might as well try to find out what they were up to as the courier scrambled sideways at an acceleration well outside the standard Imperial profile.

  “…sccctttcchhhh…”

  Using the fingertip controls, he tried one of the earlier programs.

  “…sctttccchhh…”

  And another.

  “…sctttchhhh…”

  Then he punched out the analysis. He had to squint against the acceleration to try to read the figures. The pattern seemed logical, and he tried another combination. Just then, the acceleration stopped. His stomach lurched upward in the weightlessness.

  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeee…

  He felt that the courier ought to be shaking, even as he knew tacheads in space didn’t create atmospheric effects.

  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeee…

  The courier was programmed to halt all acceleration at tachead detonation, as if to indicate to the Impies their efforts had been successful.

  EEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeee…

  One glance at the representational screen told him that either Turtle three had incredibly poor tracking or the courier had been extraordinarily effective in evading the three-torp spread. His fingers dropped the evasion system into standby and called up a course line recalculation.

  He pulled at his chin as he noted the courier course and speed. Course was fine—directly at the northern hemisphere of Old Earth. Speed was well above the minimum necessary to turn both Jimjoy and the Greenpeace into the finest of interstellar dust.

  He noted the resumption of audio lock as he began to refigure power outputs, trying to determine the range of escape options.

  “…status…”

  “Ellie five, EDI traces lost at time of detonation. Scans reveal no EDI, no optical, and no enhanced heat.”