Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by J F Bone

  Air screamed around the hull as the cruiser slammed into the planet’s upper atmosphere, her jets thundering to match intrinsics with the planet. Within minutes the banshee screech faded away and the cruiser hung motionless in the upper air. Over the rim of the world behind them an awesome pillar of mushroom capped cloud rose into the sky.

  “Scratch one Eglan base!” an anonymous voice in Fire Control yelped joyfully.

  “Stow that. Silence down there.” Fiske barked.

  “Airboat at 0025,” a spotter announced, “hedgehopping.”

  “Forward batteries ready.”

  “Use a force rod,” Fiske ordered. “I want that ship intact.” The pale lance of a paramagnetic beam clawed through the atmosphere and struck the airboat. Driven by the awesome power of the cruiser’s generators it struck, clung, and wrenched the airship from its slow path through the sky. Instantly all jamming devices in the cruiser flicked on, ripping the air with a blast of interference that filled all the nearer reaches of space.

  “Quarter drive, vertical,” Fiske ordered, and the cruiser leaped upward, dragging the airboat behind it into the airless outer regions where the beam could operate more effectively.

  “Okay, boys, pull her in,” the bored voice of the gunner’s mate in the forward blister came over the intercom, and a moment later the fragile shell of the airboat thudded against the armored hull of the cruiser.

  “Boarders away!” Fiske ordered.

  The boarding party, specifically trained for this operation, opened the airlocks, carved the side off the airboat, and dove into the crowded interior.

  The Eglani, caught without spacesuits, smashed to the floor of their craft by uncompensated acceleration, their air lost in a mighty rush, still tried to resist. Space is not immediately lethal, and by holding their breath several managed to fire a few hand-blasts at the incoming boarders. But it was useless. The beams clawed futilely at the heavy armor and the return fire carved a smoking path through the packed bodies. Then the living died to join the already mutilated dead as tiny explosions limned their heads with momentary brightness.

  Fiske sighed at the familiar carnage visible in the viewscreen. Another abortion. But he had expected it. No one yet had caught a living Eglan soldier and he didn’t think that he’d be the first to do so.

  Young Lieutenant Fitzhugh commanding the party stepped up to the, signalman’s scanner and reported. “They’re all dead, sir. We have no casualties.”

  “All right, disengage and return.” Fiske said as the signalman scanned the piled headless heap of short-legged, long-bodied aliens. One still had a face. The wide mouth, prehensile proboscis and mule ears were still intact, but the back was gone from its head. The face had a masklike quality as it glared up at him with bulging eyes half driven from their cavernous sockets.

  “Aye, sir.” Lieutenant Fitzhugh turned away from the scanner, and one by one the men came back along the boarding line to the cruiser’s airlock. The scanner flicked off as the signalman made his way back.

  “Enemy on starboard beam,” the talker’s voice was lost in a clangor of alarms and a thudding concussion as the entire starboard battery erupted one simultaneous blast of destruction at the Eglan cruiser which had suddenly emerged a scant five miles away.

  The Eglan was quick, inhumanly quick in his reaction. He had broken out much too close, but even so his primary screens flared an instant before the broadside struck. But no primary screen ever built could stand alone against the megatons of energy that instantaneously erupted against it. Screen and ship disappeared in the hellish blast, reduced instantly to glowing radiactive gas. The enormous fireball licked hungrily toward the “Dauntless” as the automatic controls promptly took her back into hyperspace.

  Lieutenant Fitzhugh, still ten feet from the open airlock saw the flare of the explosion and the premonitory, shudder of the ship. He knew that he didn’t have time enough to make it. With the strength of desperation he threw the object he carried toward the rapidly closing airlock as the ship vanished from sight and the searing fireball enveloped his body. He never had time to decide whether his aim had been true or not . . .

  Fiske looked at the Eglan head Lockman Vornov was holding up to his viewplate. The man was talking. “—He was still outside when we hypered, sir, but he threw this in through the airlock. It hit me on the leg, sir.”

  For the first time Fiske really understood the term “mixed emotion.” He was feeling it now. Regret at Fitzhugh’s death was exactly balanced by the wild hope that the impossible might have happened—that the head was that of an Eglan soldier rather than a civilian. Certainly Fitzhugh wouldn’t have brought it back unless he had good reason to suspect that it might be useful—nor would he have tried so desperately to get it aboard ship.

  “Get that thing down to Doc Bonner,” he ordered, “and tell him that I’ll be along in a minute.” . . .

  Old Doc Bonner who derived his nickname from combat rather than chronological age looked inquiringly at Fiske. “Should I post it or pickle it?” he asked.

  “Post it. It might blow up before we reach home. Get to work.”

  “It’s a point,” Bonner admitted, “but it might not be too valid with Headquarters. Since it hasn’t exploded by now it probably won’t.”

  Fiske shook his head. “There’s no sense in taking chances. Besides it might belong to a civilian.”

  “Not this baby,” Bonner said. “It’s military.” He indicated a white line at the base of the skull. “That’s where they blow up,” he said. “There’s a charge implanted there. And besides, it’s as you say, sir, we shouldn’t take chances.” Bonner laid out a row of shining instruments, turned on the visual recorder over the table and went to work.

  “Hmm—must have been quite a bit of dissection here,” he commented as he inspected the back of the head. “Poor job of suturing and lots of fibrous connective tissue, but it’s healed well enough. He cut in delicately with a scalpel. “Oh-oh! Paydirt! Now wait a minute—let’s find out where these leads go—hmm,—that’d be the spinal accessory nerve if this head were human, but with this fellow it might be anything.” He swung an auto-camera into place and took a series of still pictures, probed the skull for a moment with a pair of long-jawed forceps and lifted out a tiny translucent capsule with a fused dark globule dangling below it. “Ah—here we are.” He placed the capsule carefully in a cotton lined pan. “You’d better get that thing down to engineering,” he said. “That’s not my line. I’ll finish this post while you’re gone. I might find something of interest to report in the Medical Journal. Incidentally, that capsule was linked to the nerve over a micropore graft. I’m keeping that part for microdissection. It wouldn’t do you any good.”

  Fiske took the pan and left the surgery. Doc was right. This was the part that was his baby, not that ball of meat in there on the tray . . .

  CHIEF Engineer Sandoval took the pan gingerly. Setting it on a bench he peered at it thoughtfully. “Hmm, a sealed unit,” he said. “We’ll X-ray it first and maybe then we can do something about it.”

  “Better disconnect that detonator, or the damn thing may blow your head off,” Fiske advised.

  “Don’t try to tell me my business, skipper,” Sandoval grinned. “I was doing this when you were in knee pants. You go back and run the ship and me and my boys’ll find out what makes this tick.”

  Fiske grinned with mild embarrassment. “Okay, Sandy, I’m off to the ivory tower. Pass the word when you find what cooks.”

  “Sure thing.” . . .

  Bonner reported nothing new on the brain. “It’ll make a nice paper,” he said, “but that’s all.

  In fact I’d surmise that our own are a trifle more complex than theirs if convolutions have anything to do with mental power. The Eglan brain is rather simple in some aspects. But of course it’s the relative weights of brain and cord that really count.”

  “You’re way over my head,” Fiske said.

  “Incidentally, what did engineering
find out about that gadget?”

  “No report as yet. I’ll let you know if anything develops.” Fiske cut Doc off the intercom as Chief Sandoval came in.

  Fiske looked at his grim face curiously. “What’s the trouble?”

  “Nothing,—that’s the hell of it. I’ve been kicking myself for not figuring it out before. That gadget’s nothing but a fined-up subetheric communicator. We used them before the Lorcom was developed. There’s an explosive charge, but the arming mechanism was burned off. And that’s it.”

  “Not quite,” Fiske said. “There was a direct neural connection. And that’s why they fight as a unit. A ship’s commander would have complete charge of his ship like a brain with a hundred bodies—and he’s probably hooked up with a squadron C.O. And the squadron C.O.—what a system!” Fiske cut off and twisted the selector.

  “Communications!” he said.

  “Aye sir.”

  “Contact Chief Engineer Sandoval, tape his data and send it to Prime.”

  “Sorry sir—can’t be done!”

  “What!”

  “Yes sir—there’s an interference blanket in Cth that you can’t drive anything through. I’ve been trying to raise Base for an hour.”

  “When did this come on?”—Why wasn’t I informed.”

  “It came on about an hour ago, and you were busy. We’ve never had anything like this before, sir. I thought I’d try to punch a beam through it before I quit.”

  “All right—break out the message torps—tape the data and send them off.”

  “But—

  “That’s all, Lieutenant—get cracking.”

  “Aye sir.”

  “Well—that’s a new wrinkle,” Fiske observed. “They’ve figured out our Lorcom—and we’re jammed.”

  Pederson looked up from the control board “Hmm—doesn’t smell so good. They wouldn’t jam us unless they had something else up their sleeves. They’re figuring on stopping us, no doubt.” Fiske nodded. “I thought of that—but how?”

  “Damned if I know—but they’ve got some idea.”

  “Well two can play at this jamming game—and we’ll deal with the other thing when it comes.” Fiske dialed Sandoval “Sandy”—he said as the engineer’s face appeared on the screen. “Can your boys build an all wave subetheric broadcaster?”

  “Yes and no,” Sandoval said. “We can build one—but we’re not able to. No components.”

  “How about modifying the Lorcom?”

  “That wouldn’t be too tough. But you can’t be thinking of—”

  “How long would it take?”

  “Twenty hours minimum. You realize, of course, that it’s going to deprive us of long range communications.”

  “All right, so we lose them. They’re worthless anyway. We’re being jammed. Now get going on that conversion, and cut all the time you can.”

  “Aye sir.”

  Sandoval’s boys must have sweated blood, Fiske thought, for it was barely twenty two hours before the Chief’s heavy voice came over the intercom. “It’s finished, sir.” Sandoval said. “We’re ready to roll.”

  “Good,” Fiske replied. “What’s the output?”

  “A kilowatt across the board.”

  “Hmm—not so good.—We’re not going to blanket much with that.”

  “You’ll get through all right; but you can’t expect any more than that. If you want to jam you’d better concentrate on the 1400 band. You can smother anything in that area.”

  “No. I’d rather have full coverage. I think the noseys are laying for us, and I want something that’ll affect every Eglan in range, not just part of them. If we confuse them enough we can crack straight through before they recover.”

  “What do you intend to use to cause this confusion?” Sandoval asked.

  A grin crossed Fiske’s face. “We might put a signalman on the mike and give them the latest box scores in the Tri World league mixed with double talk. Or our linguist could issue phoney orders in Eglanese.”

  Sandoval grinned in answer. “Sneaky, isn’t it?—this business of hoisting the engineers on their own petards. Personally, I favor music—some of these squirm combos the boys listen to would drive a saint out of Heaven.” Fiske chuckled. “It’s an idea—and not a bad one at that. Angelo Bordoni in the signal section has some progressive squirm recordings that’d make your hair curl. We’ll make him a disk jockey as soon as we have some Eglani to try it on.”

  “You won’t have to wait long, sir,” Pedersen said, as he swivelled his chair to face Fiske. “Detectors report a disturbance in C-green about ten hours ahead. Looks like a couple of class one cruisers. Not ours.”

  “What’s their bearing?”

  “They’re moving along our line slightly under our component.”

  Fiske leaned back in his chair, a thoughtful expression on his face. He looked at Pedersen and nodded.

  “Battle Stations, condition two,” Pedersen said to the talker. “Well, there’s two of them down there to try your gadget on.”

  “Gives us one break at least,” Fiske said “We’re not too outnumbered.”

  Pedersen shrugged off the pun. “In your shoes, sir,” he said, “I’d be tempted to run like hell.”

  “Sure, so am I. But just where could we get a better chance than this? If we’re going to fight we might as well get decent odds.”

  “You call two to one decent?”

  “I’ll tell you more when their drive patterns are analyzed. If they’re cruisers we can outgun and outrun them,—and if they’re battlewagons they’ll never catch us. Not even—”

  “Objects register as enemy heavy cruisers,” the talker said “Drive intensity point oh two over ours.”

  “Well,” Pedersen remarked “You’re wrong on one point. We’re not going to outrun them.”

  “Seems that way,” Fiske agreed. “They must be new models,—probably ones like those that chewed up Ed Albertson’s ship. But they can’t be any more heavily armed than we are.”

  “Maybe not, but there’s two of them,” Pedersen said drily. “I would imagine this changes things.”

  “Naturally. We’ll run for awhile. I’m not risking my ship against those odds if I can help it.” Fiske turned on the command circuit. “One eighty gyro turn,” he said “Execute!”

  The “Dauntless” swapped ends and virtually without delay began backtracking across the warps of Cth space. Since inertia didn’t exist in hyperspace the change in direction was made instantaneously. At maximum blast the “Dauntless” began to put space between her and her pursuers, who at once changed course to overtake the fleeing Confederation ship.

  HOUR after hour the three ships drove through the harsh blue monochrome of upper Cth, and slowly the distance between pursuers and pursued lessened. Travelling in a great curve that would ultimately take them into Confederation territory Fiske and Pedersen watched the telltale dots in the spotting tank come closer.

  “We’re not going to make it,” Fiske said finally. “They’ll catch or pass us before we hit the frontier.”

  “Nice,” Pedersen replied. “With one ahead matching our component and sowing mines, and the other behind and above us just in case we try to drop out. We’ve got about the same chance as a snowball in hell.”

  “It’s not quite that bad. We have weapons and we’ve got the broadcaster. They won’t be expecting it, and if we drop into normal space looking like we want to fight, I’ll bet they’ll follow us.”

  “Sure they will.”

  “They’ll get a surprise then. How’d you like to be wearing one of those cute little communicators and get a blast of Bordoni’s progressive squirm the minute you made breakout?”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “I’m betting that they won’t either.” Fiske turned to the talker—“all hands—Battle Stations! Full armor. Condition one. Bordoni—stand by with your recordings—report when ready.” A cold ball bounced in Fiske’s stomach as the reports snapped in. Up until now the Confederation ships
had been individually superior to the aliens, an advantage that barely counterbalanced the Eglani’s coordination, but these ships were superior to his own in speed at least, and what they might lack in firepower they made up in numbers.

  No skipper in his right mind would tackle two to one odds in favor of the aliens. But it was unavoidable now. Fiske shrugged. If he was right about the effect of his broadcaster, he had a chance—but the chance was a slim one anyway you looked at it. Sure—he knew the secret of Eglan coordination, but could he disrupt that coordination? It was a distinct possibility that his attempt at jamming would only be a minor annoyance, and if it was, the secret of the Eglani would die with him.

  Of course, there was a possibility that one of the message torpedoes would get through—but torpedoes travelling on a fixed course were usually intercepted and destroyed. At best they were a forlorn hope—sent Earthward more as a gesture than with any expectation of arrival.

  And with the Lorcom converted to a subetheric broadcaster he had no exterior communications. The “Dauntless” was on her own—cut off from help—wholly dependent upon the skill of her crew for survival.

  “Stand by for breakout,” Fiske ordered.—“Execute.”

  Smoothly the ship swapped ends, halted instantly, and dropped like a stone through the Cth components as Sandoval cut the converters. With scarcely a shudder the “Dauntless” slipped into normal space.

  “Full ahead,” Fiske ordered and familiar acceleration clutched at the bodies of the crew. With every electronic and visual sense extended, screens glowing on standby, drives flaring a fierce blue against the dark of space the “Dauntless” swept forward toward the frontier far ahead. Her speed was less than a snail’s crawl compared to the inconceivable velocities she had been travelling in Cth but in normal spacetime weapons functioned and sub-etheric communicators worked. Here, fighting was an art—refined by years of drill and practice.

  “Bearing zero two four—enemy cruiser. Range two thousand-closing,” the talker said. Bearing one nine zero—negacruiser. Range fifteen hundred—“extending.”