One Clay Foot

Jack Wodhams

I was not entirely a neophyte when I was transferred to his fleet. I already had three kills to my credit, one in particular that had earned me a commendation "for courage and innovative enterprise". That phrase might have caught the eye of Commander Beeschopf Praze. It was known that he tried to cull only the most promising to his squadrons. What was not so well known was how he spent that promise.
He did not keep us waiting long before putting us to the test of duty. We were assigned our craft and were going through familiarization and briefing within two hours of our arrival. It was quite hectic, deliberately made so. We had been chosen; we were supposed to be a little better than most; therefore we should be able to adapt more readily than plebeians.
When we reached our first sleep-slot that day, we welcomed it, believe me. But hardly had we rested, it seemed, than the reveille was playing quick alert, to hurry us up, and out, and away, to perform our first patrol as an arm of Beeschopf's Buccaneers. The title suited him, his group. It was an openly cultivated facade of swashbuckling.
The sector battleground was the notorious non-world of Breaker. As armies might have once fought to possess a starkly unproductive crag for its sole use as a dominating eminence, so our military now fought to lay claim to the veritably useless but strategically vital territories that could be employed as bases to guard the passes of the Universe.
Our first two patrols were anti-climactic. Our brushes with our enemy were distant and unproductive of contentiousness.
However, our third outing was more demanding.
Praze took us by a circuitous route, curbing the exponential of our acceleration, bringing us in behind the smaller of Breaker's two moons. We stayed with him all the way, so close that we could maintain twinkle visual contact, which was always curiously comforting.
Human psychology has its amusing side. Everything could be done on the boards, by the comps, and possession of an actual visual ability was not at all necessary. Yet it was there, incorporated to satisfy a need, and no craftsman ever came into The Web blind, for instance, even though sights could play no part in our docking. Likewise, every craft continued to be stocked with some surface armament, short-range direct line-of-fire pieces purely intended to enable an astro, force-landed into some hostile environment, to ward off any ground-crawling horrors. We even still carried a Beamer, presumably just in case a craft should be sent to some area where the technique for reflecting deadly rays had yet to be perfected, or even thought of. I am sure that we still also would have carried parachutes if some legitimate rationalization could have been conceived to suggest their retention to be advisable.
It seemed strange sometimes how mobile everything was, how mobile everything had to be. Mobility meant survival. Yet here we were, as though by mutual consent, descending to dispute ownership of a huge immobile.
It had to be. We had no choice. They had no choice. The desolate world trapped us both, to dictate the terms of limitation.
We hung high. Always, it seemed, there had to be a hesitation, an instinctive reluctance to go in. I felt that our relative speed was not fast enough. But Praze gave no hint of any such sensitivity. Certainly the panels read out no warning signals of detected anomalies in our immediate huge arc of the heavens.
Space was beautiful. The machine was a powerhouse and a cocoon, to represent an ultimate in security. Perversely we deliberately sought to place it under threat.
Now I guessed that Praze was going to take us down, to where there was a down. Down towards the planet, down to experience some drag of gravity, even down into some of the restricting density of an atmosphere perhaps.
My mouth went dry in anticipation. I took some gluquen to moisten my throat. This was where the big boys played. The closer to the planet, the greater shield it provided our opponents, if any. The closer to the planet, the slower we must be obliged to go, a complex balancing of forces to directional desirability, compellingly mandated by it.
I was right. Praze did decide, was decided, to close with the planet. Here the nerves tightened up, and the senses became hyper-alert. Breaker loomed, a black blob wearing a crescent of orange that reflected one of its year-long days.
We all knew Breaker by repute. There had been times when one side or the other had gained ascendancy, and had attempted to construct ground installations. It was not known how many tunnels had been drilled, how much secret equipment shipped in, how advanced either side might be in some well-concealed location. It was not known how much might have been destroyed, just how long it might take to convert Breaker into a defendable bastion. Or perhaps it was known, which was why it was fought over so fiercely.
We slowed and slowed, until at less than five-squared-tens out we were doing no more than a world-relative pace that would surface us in an hour. Praze instructed a release of three decoy cappacks on a specific comp delay of 145 minutes. It was a significant clue to his anticipations.
And still we closed. I sucked more gluquen.
We angled to slide into the upper fringes of the atmosphere, Praze running us along an edge below a sighting of Breaker's sun. Lower and lower, and slower and slower, we descended into the near-permanent rim of dawn-twilight of the world below. Praze's mastery of pace ensured that our craft warmed less than dull red, to afford scant chance for any visual sighting of our presence. All our negatives were full on, of course, yet we all felt that these precautions were more a ritual to be performed rather than truly effective counters to detection. They would know that we were here. We were expected to arrive here, perhaps not known precisely when and where, but any gain of surprise was ever marginal, tactical, fleeting.
Speed — so much hinged on speed. The right speed, at the right time, in the right direction. And we seemed to be travelling awfully slowly now, the world beneath making us feel that we were standing still, ten kays above its surface, dawdling across its face at a mere couple of three-squared-tens.
I didn't like it. It made me feel clammy, waiting to be struck by God-knew-what, my boards being rendered half-blind by the blocking mass that we were circling. Breaker was bigger than Old Home Earth, so I understood, but only by a factor of a shade under .1. My blooding had taken place at amuch smaller point of contention, at a brief but intense Moon of Icarus Conflict. The atmosphere on Breaker was much like that encountered during training at Home. I had felt the envelope of gas to be an encumbrance then, and I felt Breaker's vapours to be a hindrance now. Although I had the theory, I had never actually known combat under conditions that added such an invisible soup to the considerable tug of a planet's attraction.
Situations can have unreality, and unreality is linked to dreamtime. Tenseness maintained becomes unreal, and cruising, follow-my-leader, blunts the edge of personal perception. Follow-my-leader creates the bad habit pattern of waiting for orders, of unconsciously placing too great a reliance upon a leader's assumed superior responsibility. Our previous patrols had provided little to sharpen me.
Before me the code read 50° —45-43, and for a vital moment it did not register. An automatic, startled re-check with the visuals, and the screen was empty. The boards were displaying my comrades rapidly spilling away, and in one more second I should be alone.
Just short of panic I took full control of the overrider, and slammed my craft onto its new bearing. Now my tenseness was of a different calibre. Now I became sharply aware, and swore at myself for being lulled by an hour's idle-seeming drifting. Contact! I swore again. Such a lapse of concentration could carry a deadly price.
They knew we were coming. Even as we knew that they would be here. I wondered if they felt much the same as we did, whether they knew the fear. I wondered if they were wishing themselves elsewhere, acid in their stomachs, afraid to face off, but even more afraid not to face off.
My comps registered them, and our comcomp totalled our opposition to outnumber us by two. The chart registered two fanning into my sector, with another two periph to be presently of secondary consideration. No hope of visual here. We were lost to each other but on our coded grids.
The leader had led. Now we were alone, booted out hellbent that we might ourselves try to prove the advantage of his ploy.
They were coming at us from the dark side.
This was interesting. More, was fascinating. My absorption in the boards before me became complete. Within the sphere each controllable object had its own relative horn of mobility, a bent cone that could itself pass its outermost curve through 360° . The limits of this curve were dictated by its angular velocity in respect to another object, and to the degree of control that might be placed upon that velocity. In the trade, to have "Cs", or CornuCopias, was to have horns aplenty; that is to say, was to possess more than adequate directional choice, to have the whole blown-out umbrella as a field for selection. The craftsman's art was to keep available the wide part of his own funnel, the maximum options, for himself, while seeking to curtail an opponent's outlet to as narrow a pipe as could be engineered.
It was a fascinating business. Every curve was a straight line. Every straight line was a curve. Speed was so very important. I believed that Praze had brought us in too close to the planet; its pull and friction constituted a minor irritation. But my angle, the course Praze had proposed, presented me the initial course of action that I might take.
Again I cursed the inattention that had cost me a vital two seconds of self-determination. Praze could not have guessed that it would be my luck to have to engage two at once on this sortie.
They were mine. Even at this distance it was more than instinct that told me that they had jointly chosen me for their prey. Perhaps, with that finesse won by successful combatants, they had spotted my late break from our pack, to gamble on my being but a fledgling, and perhaps just that little more twitchy than most. How strangely the brain works.
Speed, planet, atmosphere, fledgling. I read my boards, and I could read theirs. My computers said everything and knew nothing. Only the superior computer that was my brain could convert their messages into sense. They were not coming in fast enough.
I deviated and picked up, to effect evasion, to hope at least to draw one side only. And they picked up and mutualized in an outswinging that might lead them to triangulate me ideally.
It is very difficult to explain the emotions felt, the singularity of being involved in so intimately dangerous a pastime. My mind summed up so many things with greater than lightning speed, and I made adjustments, and checked. and corrected, and re-corrected, without really thinking about it, virtually automatically. But it came from my own inspiration, and ever less from training.
Now I was not scared. I had no plan, no concept of an end result, and yet I had a knowledge, a subconscious certainty of. .. of what? Of survival? Of superior craftsmanship?
What was I doing? I was watching my boards and playing. It was an electronic game. The one who got the highest score was the winner. I was good at electronic games.
I read the factors, and was surprised at my own coolness. The periphs had gone, and the other engagements had become much too distant to record with my area. Just the three of us.
Speed, deflection, shadings. I could read their boards as though I were sitting in their cocoons. And to read their boards was to read them. Finesse. Fledglings do not make master touches. Now I had worked them up to as fast as I might hope them to allow their eagerness to overcome their caution. Another delicately precise course correction fractionally tightened my gradually descending curve into the atmosphere, and they now had me almost in range, and surely could taste my blood, as surely as their risk would seem minimal.
Now I de-acced even more, to tighten my long downward curve even further. Speed. My combat experience in atmosphere was limited; my experience in factors was extensive. Fear=escape=speed — to get the hell out, back into the safety of space in the greatest hurry. To slow down, to actually drop towards the increasing density of the hostile world below was either very foolish, or ...
One of them had a sense of smell and almost imperceptibly altered tack, enough to instantly tell me that he wanted to buy just a little more time. The other came on, correcting his arc even as I hugged into my curve further yet, forcing him to adjust, adjust, adjust, fighting to line me, to de-acc sufficiently. I could almost see his fingers flying and his lips cursing as he strove to achieve what quite suddenly had become less of a likelihood.
The margin was very slim, but it was an irrefutable margin nonetheless. And now I chose to show some spite. Here I dropped an already well-programmed missile of my own, and it tracked beautifully, slanting ahead of me, racing ahead on my course, and concealed by my own emanations. And he unleashed at me, while his partner on reappraisal slewed away to detour, to seek an improved approach. To cover the curve of my grenade, I swirled my seat as I plus-acced, up away from the planet, to even congratulate myself upon my timing, that the stress forces upon my physique at no time so far had been severe.
Judging from my board readings, my leading foe at least was not so fortunate. He appeared to be making the most strenuous efforts to correct his errors. In fright, and anger, perhaps, he was inclined to over-correct. From my reading I could guess that he was subjecting himself to a maximum of inertial distortion. His speed was excessive for a grazing contact with the atmosphere, quite likely to impose some unwanted and agonizing counter-thrust upon his strained frame, and also possibly to flare him off, to mangle his communications during the period he strove to regain control. Could I have spared the time, I would have liked to have tried to visually spot his glow, but the luxury of such a break in my concentration was something that I simply could not afford.
He had ambitiously launched a double-double salvo, the second as back-up maybe to repair blunders made by his first. Neither pair posed any real problem to me, for however he had programmed them, he was in no condition to give full attention to any modifications that their guidance might require.
I suffered no such handicap. My missile was on course, surely to be showing on his monitors by now. His partner might have spotted it sooner, but if any warning passed between them, I saw no effort being made to take evasive action.
I was on full plus-acc now, weaving out to that partner, straining to match him and to claim equal advantage before he could shape to dress me with any form of pre-emptive.
There is a point passed by two converging chunks of matter at which a lethal rendezvous may no longer be avoided. It was awesome, and therefore irresistibly distracting. On my panels my missile and my foe became irrevocably fated to cohabit a pool of detonation. He had been incredibly slow, or blind, or stupid. At the last he tried a fiendish twist, but was far too late.
I was happier to be going away from the planet. A star appeared on my board. Again I had no time to spare for visuals. One missile. A low-cost victory indeed. So many favoured multiple-missile attacks that they tended to launch more than they could handle. A single missile at times might not be too easy to spot, especially if its deflectors were aided by some ground radiation. Lucky. I had been lucky.
Now how might I deal with his friend? But his friend had changed his mind. He altered his course again, and on my charts I saw him drawing out of the arena, treading on plusacc to get himself out of the field. I did not know whether to be glad or disappointed. I toyed with the thought of giving chase — everybody does — but I was suffering more from
Breaker's drag than he was and, unless he stopped to fight, I could not catch him before pension time.
So he quit. This was no disgrace to him. This was flattery to me. Having deceived and wiped out his friend, I must be someone other than a novice. The thought was tickling. A reaction from stress.
I bottled my elation and returned to my boards. I opened and scanned the limits, to try and deduce how others might be faring elsewhere, that I might take my presence to where it would be most helpful. I stayed high and prickly, vectoring for anything loose. A good mood was dangerous. I determinedly remained sober, to save the champagne for when I got back to base.
By sheer chance I contacted Rede Scylia, who seemed to be having some trouble holding his own in a duel on the dark side. I arrived too fast to be actively helpful, but my appearance scared off his opponent, who made a creditably exact exit that defeated any attempt to impose restraint.
With Rede catching up, I hunted further but, though we traversed the planet once-and-a-half, we encountered no more argument. What others we had luck to contact were off on token pursuits, or were returning to base.
This was the way it was. We could not stay. To go down to land upon the planet was not recommended. There was no rest to be had down there. Down there was to be a stationary target that would be sure to receive some sort of attention within the hour. We brawled, to prove that we cared, and then we went home to The Web, to wherever it now strove to be inconspicuous as well as indestructible.
We used Rede's clocked coordinates for The Web, and I covered his tail as he led the way home. We caught up with nobody, and nobody caught up with us. It was nice to be Out There again, and free, leaving combat behind, especially after a satisfactory engagement.
I was quite relaxed and smiling by the time we reached the outer check-points of The Web.
Praze, too, was relaxed and smiling, the same light deprecating smile that seemed never absent from his face. He had, it appeared, made yet another kill. With my hit, the score had been three to two in our favour.
One we had lost was Yahi Kahiki, and this at once robbed my success of its savour, subduing my good humour. Yahi had been a big, amiable fellow. We had done a lot of learning together; had been of the same induction. We hadn't exactly been special friends. Rather, he had been the type to treat those in his peer group as friends regardless — an outgoing, undemanding man who gave first, but left nobody in debt. He had played a very fair board.
An overlapping record showed Yahi engaging an opponent. He went off the periph in a deadly chase, never to be seen again. It pained me to lose him. He had been a tempering force. Our other loss was a man called Bab Washitt, or Washill. He hadn't been a newcomer in my contingent, and I had hardly known him.
Yahi gone. It hurt.
Beeschopf Praze was talking in the mess. He had his admirers. And he had made yet another kill. Wonson Moy was passing him a drink, and asking him how it felt to gain such mastery. Stupid question. But Wonson played a defensive board. He would never understand aggression that was directed against the strong rather than the weak. Yahi had died. Wonson Moy had lived that he might try to find with questions those answers he could not find with guts.
"I am not a hero, Ablethree Moy," Praze said, reflecting his calculated geniality, "I am a psychopath." It was an underemphasized admission. "I enjoy it Out There. I welcome the challenge. I enjoy having Death at my shoulder, that I may borrow his scythe."
"We have seen the replay of your action, sir," Moy said. "It was quite brilliant."
"It was elementary," Praze mildly disparaged, "although it is not easy to convey this sense. I have tried to teach, but you must possess the talent in the first place, and developing the knack is almost entirely a matter of experience. Some are more temperamentally suited to the role than others."
"Your action was so smooth, sir, your positioning so perfectly timed." This was Garrald Frandby. He sounded a mite envious. "It seemed so . . . so cool, if I may say so, sir. Are your nerves really uptight at the time?" The lips smiled, the eyes derided. "I have seen men crack up. Some of them have been quite good but, after a few or a number of sorties, they got jumpy, and began to drink too much, and to talk louder, and to laugh longer at sillier and sillier jokes. When you get such symptoms, I shall tell you. When I get such symptoms, you can tell me." And he sipped his drink and viewed us with that friendly cynicism that discounted our chances of ever equalling his own qualities. "I'm sorry we lost Yahi Kahiki," I said. "He was a good man, sir." I don't know what I was looking for. Acknowledgement, maybe. Some concession to the dead man's ability, perhaps.
"He had some promise," Praze conceded with unchanging affability, "but he made a foolish mistake. We could see that he had not overcome their equality. They probably made him eat the cheese in his own trap. And it has cost us a valuable craft."
As I said, I didn't know what I expected. After all, Praze hadn't really known Yahi who, like me, had been a newcomer. Lost on his first real action. Praze could hardly have been effusive with sympathy, and yet, somehow .
The taste in my mouth at the end was sour.
I did not enjoy dinner that night.
There were more patrols, but there was a period just then of fewer skirmishes. Such states occur from time to time. Sometimes their cause would seem to be a psychically shared reluctance by both warring parties to push or shove too hard for a while. At other times its cause could be political, the word going out to keep rattling the sword, but not to slash too nastily for the moment.
I did not have another kill for some time. What engagements I did undertake proved abortive. On three separate occasions encountered opponents consented merely to spar with me from a judicious range, only to decline to accept any lure to a more serious confrontation. I concluded that the other side probably had more Wonson Moys than we had.
And in the debriefings it was I who suffered most from Praze's seemingly well-meant advice. While nodding at the efforts made by others, Praze would suggest that my tactics might have been improved if I had done such-and-such, that I might have stalled a getaway if I had tried this, that I might have surprised my opponent by attempting that. He acquired the habit of preferring to use the record of my mission to demonstrate various points of error, and to indicate what might have been.
He was never savage with me, never bit too deep, and never used blunt teeth. I am not sure that even he knew what he was doing. On the one hand he did not appear to comprehend my style, my method, my necessary individuality at all. At the other extreme, it was possible that he understood too well.
A special mission came up, and I was included in the group assigned to carry it out. It was an intercept that was to take place so far from our home area that two sub-bases had to be introduced to serve as RRR — re-orientating, relay, and rest-stations. These served a vital function to short-hoppers. The Universal scenery was never still and, when travelling great distances, virtually always over previously unspanned regions, it was by no means impossible to get lost. A constant trick practised by both sides was star-blotting, and "star"-making, or shifting, to screw up crucial navigational fixtures.
The intercept was a very carefully planned and quite intricate procedure. A great deal depended on the craftsmen. It was anticipated that our relative speeds might differ so acutely that communication between our sections would be too delayed to be useful.
Broadly, what was to take place was a shepherding hunt pattern. My task, with two others, was to jump the escort and keep them occupied, while frightening the key fish to plus-acc the hell out and seemingly escape on his way. Others would then intercept him on the road, knowing where to look, and what for, to hopefully frighten him still further and sheer him into a desired direction. His actual taking was to be done by Praze, who would no doubt receive most of any congratulations that fell due.
I didn't think much of our part. It was the most dangerous, as the initial encounter, and was the most likely place where the whole plan could fall apart. In my opinion, it was where Praze should have been. If all went according to plan, it would not require an expert to deliver his coup de grace. The escort would not be composed of amateurs.
It was a most unusual attack — Out There. It made all the difference knowing exactly where and when our target would be. If our intelligence was accurate.
We three interceptors each adopted a star, to wear a matching radiation to our fore. The three-point triangulation of our alignment would curve us in like spokes to meet the party of the third part. It was considered that our disguise was to be effective right down to the advantage of close-range surprise. Providing that our intelligence was a hundred per cent correct. Any deviation from the itinerary and our quarry would soon remark three strange new stars in the heavens, and the joke would be on us.
Frankly I did not think much of the scheme. The imponderables of advancing successfully behind a star facade persuaded me to the greater odds that some minor misplacementwould simply make us look like idiots coming forward behind flashlights. But my view was discounted, and Praze himself expressed disappointment at my misgivings. Vigilance Out There was customarily slack, he averred and, in the time allotted, differentiating between real and dummy stars, and their purpose, would itself cause sufficient confusion to be to our benefit as we pressed home our attack. We were not to take the key fish. We were to split the escort from its charge, to prevent any re-uniting, and to drive at least one of the escort back rather than to annihilate them all completely. Skulduggery was going on there.
In the event, it took us over 140 hours to get into position, and we spent another thirty checking and re-aligning, and winding ourselves up for the showdown.
I disliked the entire affair. We hung Out There, and Breaker's sun was but a midget. I wondered if we were being missed over that scarred landscape. The giant red they called Gumboil looked nearer, almost the size of a red little fingerprint. It was extremely deceptive. Nothing else was nearer. Except the fish and its escort.
We hung Out There — what an odd expression, but very common. This was always the way it seemed. For matter has, of itself, no intrinsic capacity to go anywhere. Matter itself lacks the quality of mobility, is a static substance always, and has motion that may only be measured in its relationship to other static matter. Light has a finite speed, so it follows that matter must possess a finite inertia.
I hung Out There, sensationally, obviously, going nowhere. Actually, I was tangentially leaving Breaker's sun — or it was leaving me — at close to 200,000 kps. It was leaving me. That's how it looked on my sub-major board.
And the fish was coming. And according to us he was pretty near right on schedule, and giving us our cue to start building up a nice plus-acc of around .5 to press us comfortably into our seats.
Starshine. I plotted, and plotted, and double-plotted to perfect my arc to their sighting of my chosen start. Identifying them positively, I stringently monitored their progress, grudgingly admiring the quality of the espionage that could so exactly pinpoint a time and place in nowhere. I shivered. It was uncanny. It was unfair. Their security Out There should have been inviolable. A traitor had betrayed them with a most vicious precision.
Inexorably we closed with our target. Speed. It is the speed of matter in relation to the speed of other most local matter which is important. We closed with our quarry at an optimum of 10,000 kph on reverse acc, Rede Scylia fractionally tardy.
Eight blobs on the board — our three, and their five — one large, one smaller, and three scragwagons. Time running out. Comp-identification labelled the large one as a Crevillion, an armoured supply and planet blaster, a spoiler that could throw out missiles like confetti, and which carried enough techs to steer sufficient of these to make life interesting. This had not been mentioned in our briefing. The Crevillion's main disadvantage, as with most fat things, was its poor manoeuvrability. Even if all its personnel were properly seated in their gyros, the difference in potential between one end of the craft and the other, and even from side to side, could be critical in an emergency.
The lesser craft was decided to be a sixleaguer, a sleek and special vessel of a type favoured by the wealthy, a trader's flagship, a minister's public-yacht.
Time, speed, closing. Distance to range perimeter narrowing. Which one was the fish? The Crevillion could not match our acc — therefore we were unlikely to chase it. It would stand and fight. The sixleaguer, on the other hand, was probably sprung-tubed for super-acc. Given a break, it could probably pump itself up to leave us without actually popping out the eyeballs of all on board.
The sixleaguer was the fish, had to be. So many things in so few moments. Pity.
They held unvarying course, totally unsuspecting. The temptation was too great. I risked to attempt a visual sighting. Sheer useless, wishful, human stupidity. Folly. God! but it was always the way. A "ping" announced a missile launch, and it was not one of ours. Two, three, four, five missiles in quick succession from the Crevillion. On the board, in range now, just.
Swearing. But the missiles, though in a defensive pattern, were clearly headed only one way. It was Otterheim who had been spotted. Five missiles only. A detected anomaly. A reaction less alarmist than cautionary automatic. They were too late; we were in.
I slammed off five shots of my own, timed to perfection. Then I was swinging in my seat, and was sweeping away, monitoring them home at my ease, and already second-guessing ahead to just how long we might play the Crevillion. Scylia also had unleashed, and was running clear. Otterheim had only let go two, and even this early his concern to take evasive action was apparent on the board.
It was not fair. I felt sorry for the scragwagons. Their astros could have been reading, or listening to music, or visually playing chess, or using their boards in coded competition, or tubbing in the black slot with an exerciser, or . . . or anything, even sleeping. They didn't have a chance. Scylia and I covered any slim avenue of getaway, and our boards registered two double strikes and a single. Otterheim's shots slid by unattended. He was angling and gaining, and was plainly unhappy to be singled out so soon for retaliation.
One of our spare shots was sent to spark the sixleaguer, and the remaining four were curled into the Crevillion.
I feared our surprise to have been too complete. The six-leaguer was supposed to get away. We had eliminated the outriders. Our victims' response to the panic button appeared to be sluggish.
But now the Crevillion bristled. Anti-missiles snapped out of her in profusion; panic indeed, and by no means quite soon enough. I viewed my boards. It was tremendous how impersonal a man could feel at a time like this. I could well imagine their goggle-eyed horror at being so unmercifully caught.
The sixleaguer was putting on pace at long last. I was obliged to destroy their missile from its destiny. It surely had come close enough to give them grey hair and an incentive to spurt more lively. With luck they would credit the Crevillion for the intervention.
Otterheim had just about shaken his worrisome but overexcited pursuers, had depleted his own arsenal to eradicate the most persistent. His position placed him to be the one most suited to take up the hunt of the sixleaguer. So this he was coded to do, as convincingly without success as possible.
This left Scylia and I like sharks to circle and hamper the whale, and to decide just how much more damage we might inflict. For one missile had completely breached its defences, and another had been halted so near that it had registered on the board as a rattler, or indeterminable.
The Crevillion Class were built to withstand some tough punishment, and our armament was never intended to be deployed against so prickly a fellow. The Crevillion was compartmented and had a multi-layered skin, and possessed a capacity to absorb blows by peeling and crushing, to then stagger through with whatever might be left, and to continue in menace. A crew of six, possibly eight, possibly augmented by specialist techs, super-cargo, ordinary cargo, anything. It had the room to accommodate any number of extras and modifications.
It was after us. A trifle belated, but otherwise I could not fault its choice of course, to interpose itself most ably between us and the departing sixleaguer. Now things were working out more as we desired. The Crevillion was crippled. The sixleaguer would surely leave it behind to hold the rear. Otterheim was the sixer's only danger. With him the six-leaguer would have to take its chances.
The Crevillion shaped over to challenge us, clearly displaying that it had no intention to run. Speed, the squaring of the circle, the coefficient of the straight line that was a curve. Everything was a straight line. Everything was a curve. The right speed, the righ acc, was always so crucial. Closing with an opponent, his speed was my speed, and my speed was his. It was acc that made the difference, that determined the sheer physical limits of possible manoeuvrability.
Misjudgment meant missing. The faster the meet, the greater the probability for error. Everybody wanted to in and kill fast. Everybody wanted his opponent dawdling nicely on matched full acc, a sitter with limited forward options. It could never be done. The computations were marvellously limitless. An astro always had at his disposal a combination that had never been used before.
I coded Scylia. I did not care to underestimate the Crevillion. In fact, the more I thought about it, the less I relished again entering its protective orbit.
The sixer was now off the action boards, with Otterheim wrapping his guts around his backbone trying to match pace. Already the Crevillion was beyond rejoining its charge in any near-future time. But we had to make sure. And this meant harrying the monster a little, and drawing it even further aside. Had we a planet beneath us, our task would have been somewhat easier. Gravity imposes its own uncompromising demands upon bulk. Out There, the Crevillion was less fettered. I could not recall any incident where one had been attacked Out Deep before. There was novelty about the whole affair. And such novelty could be dangerous.
They were awake now all right. They countered our pattern, and we altered our offensive line, thinking again. Our hits seemed to have slowed the brute, but nevertheless the boards showed it building up a rush. We matched, keeping our distance. It had no hope of catching us, not with anything. We, on the other hand, had no real desire to win glory by trying to shard it into meteorites.
It was a stalemate. And anyway, our instructions permitted for survivors. But they did not know that.
It was gloriously free Out There. Small as we were, we posed a threat. We had an enormous amount of room. We decided, Scylia and I, on wide-ranging teasing runs, and truthfully it turned out to be quite fun, an exercise in maximizing our superior mobility. We tantalized and drew fire that fell short of creating anxiety, and we seized the opportunity to ourselves practise steering single missiles through the defensive systems of our adversary. And we had more luck than our foe. We each scored another rattler.
Altogether the engagement transpired to be a very rewarding experience. When we finally wearied of the game, we simply broke off and went home. And here 1 remembered the sixleaguer, and wondered whether the rest of the enterprise had gone so well.
"It was the wrong choice," Praze said. "You didn't think it out well at all." He was never acid in his censoring, just maddeningly chiding.
"It was my decision, sir," I said. "In my view, the scrag-wagons could have made the outcome completely indeterminate. Their astros wouldn't have been novices."
"Agreed. But you had the advantage of surprise. A tussle with them would have been logical, and to have broken off leaving a survivor or two would have been sensible." He should have clucked. "You missed a golden opportunity." "I didn't see it that way, sir."
"Obviously. The Crevillion was a gift on a platter. Your initial concentrated fire could have wiped it. It could have been seen to have been your intended target. You could legitimately have overlooked the sixleaguer slipping away, to take on the scrags for a spell, but to be content to quit, having achieved your objective. You could have made it look so much better."
"If we had taken on the scrags, there might not have been any survivors."
"That's not a real possibility, is it?" he discounted. "Anyway, you would have accomplished your mission, which was the most important thing."
"We did accomplish our mission, sir."
"Yes, yes, I know," Praze smiled, "but the Crevillion" — he shook his head — "that was a bonus that should never have been passed up. It was bound to have been carrying .. other important people, most probably a key officer or two. What a chance." He sighed. "Never mind. It's done now."
He was so regretfully pitying without rancour, that I could feel myself beginning to choke. They had wanted the other side to have a survivor. Logic dictated that that should be the strongest. I had decided the Crevillion to be the most likely to get back. God damn my hide, if they hadn't worried too much if anybody got back, why hadn't they said so?
Disgruntled, I made my excuses. Disgruntled? Away from the group I seethed. It was infuriating. And Praze, of course, had nailed the sixleaguer properly. He had had it driven squarely straight into his arms, and he had hit it with a neutpack, to take the craft intact. The entire project was a part of some clandestine scheme that I guessed would involve substitution of the original occupants of the sixer for purposes beyond the imaginings of ordinary mortals.
Blast him! The golden opportunity had been to test the Crevillion out. Our unhindered engagement had provided us an invaluable exploratory exercise. Blast him again!
I spent more time in the Simulator than most. I worked out several patterns, and a couple were especially promising. The Conical Corkscrew was one of my devisings.
As with tic-tac-toe, the Conical Corkscrew required a first "X" to be in the right place in order that the rest might be aided to be put in line. It was several sorties later that a suitable opportunity occurred.
We had sparred, this scragwagon and I, and he was no fool. He must have known that I was no fool either. However, he concluded that he just might be able to take me, and he took up an interesting acc in a sweep that must have flattened his bellybutton, to give that extra little punch to his launch. And he only sent out two, and his chosen deflection was not at all bad.
It was a good fight. We were in orbit over Breaker, with clear perimeters on our boards and interruptions unlikely. At once the situation had a familiarity, and I was reminded of my ploy.
I could evade his two, and I programmed my anticipations, while he, also anticipating, started taking appropriate defensive action even before I fired. Practised, knowing what I was doing. I punched out the sequence and launched my three in two seconds flat. I smiled as I guessed his puzzlement at an oddity in the pattern I chose. I could hopefully presume that he might think that at least one of my shots was malfunctioning.
Speed, always speed. No calibrations can be prophesied perfect. Had his reaction been as unorthodox as my launch, my game would have been much harder. But — one — he had two of his own to home in on me, and — two — with two of my shots apparently already going wide, his need for concern was not great.
He made the mistake I wanted him to make. He took the most obvious evasive action against my most threatening warhead. Good. I cut my margins to hold his interest, taking an avoidance angle that might excite him and hold his attention, and to help me judge how good his coordination was.
His coordination was very fair. His position on my boards was approaching ideal. He evaded my first easily. It was likely that he thought I was being kept too busy avoiding him.
We danced, his missiles and I, and I realized here that one fault in my plan was that playing a goat could become tedious. He had had seven passes at me to my one at him, before he noticed my second shot curling in. Like my first, he found it easy to evade. I was worried that he might knock it out, for it passed through a clear area of vulnerability. But he let it go, fearing it not.
Now I did my most spectacular change of pace and direction, crushing the breath out of me and realigning to a vector that would force him to twinkle his fingers if he were not to lose me altogether. And at the same time my third pacer came back into play, and it was fast and true, and he plusacced to get out of its way, persisted to chase me, and found my first coiling back into him.
From here it was about all over. I calculated him to be on full plus-acc which, normally, was a satisfactory enough breakaway manoeuvre. But, rather than criss-cross, I had bracketed him with a tightening variable three. On plus-acc he only had forward options.
Awake to his peril, he opened up. I modified my weapons accordingly. My triple spirallings began to shrink.
I felt sorry for him. He abandoned his shots. I could imagine him suddenly being very fully aware of his danger, to be anxious all at once to get away. But my shots tracked him with a matching magnetism, the fastest wide, the slowest shallow, projecting a defeat of whatever speed he elected.
The four formed a funnel of doom. He blasted out counter-shots, but their speed at point-blank was too great, and they whisked away worse than useless. He de-acced frantically; the whip of his seat could have uncoupled his brain. I was poised and ready, and transmitted duplication in an almost simultaneous split second.
I don't know if the de-acc killed him first. Plastered back in his seat, I do not know if he started screaming. All I saw, on my board, was that he made no more variations. The Conical Corkscrew ended in an inevitable point. It was sobering.
I did not look too hard for more trouble before going home.
Beeschopf Praze felt sorry, sometimes, too, but with him it was different. I thought it was different.
As he spoke of his latest conquest, his dry, insincere empathy churned my stomach. We listened because he was our mentor, and our respect for him was to assist him in his indoctrinating instruction. He ran the replay and pointed out each telling feint.
"From the very outset, as you can see, he displayed a curious mixture of tentativeness with bravado," Praze said. "So I did a run, to test him out, and to encourage him. He had read his text-books. He was obedient to the rules."
Already I could see the picture, the story that the boards were beginning to tell. The perpetual self-effacing smile grotted me. Even here I could sense what was coming.
"He was a very good student. As you can see, I began to take him through his paces." Praze paused. "He presents us with a fine example of the difference between knowledge and intelligence. Demonstrably he had the knowledge. His tactics, indeed, are difficult to fault; are the moves advised by the best manuals on the subject, complete with recommended variations. If nothing else, he appeared to have a very good memory."
I watched the board, and my palms were moist. It should not have been so. I was never as tense as this in actual combat. Copybook. As Praze said, his opponent had slid from move to move, virtually, patently, agonizingly as might be according to the Regulations of Orbital Engagements.
"My successive counterings of his moves should have told him that he was up against someone . . . capable." Praze reflected a fainty despairing incredulity. "Had he been intelligent, at this stage he should have been well awake and backing off. He must have attributed my passive subjection to his vain overtures to his own skill at intimidation. He perhaps persisted in thinking of me as a running novice, attributing his near-misses more to my good luck than to his inexpert judgement."
I glanced at the others. They, too, were watching fascinated, but open, seeing no deeper than the lesson being detailed.
The boards continued to tell the remorseless story. Praze turned patsy, leading his foe on, taking him through every ritual that he might know. And then, in a subtle, masterly, refined, and superbly executed manoeuvre, the hunter and the hunted changed roles.
It was sickening. On the excuse of "demonstrating", Praze toyed with his victim. Where he had let the man run the gamut of assault practices, now he led him through the variety of defence procedures, noting the faults of each such manoeuvre, countering, and keeping on the pressure. I wanted to scream for the idiot to use his own brains, but the fool persisted in taking evasive action like a robot, standard specified reaction, as though he had nothing else to turn to, as though he had to believe that only by saying the stipulated prayers would his promised salvation ever come to pass.
The numbskull. He filled my gorge.
"As you can observe, after trying everything that he knew, and nothing at all that he didn't, his position finally became quite hopeless. I felt sorry for him. I could imagine him being young, and by now utterly exhausted. For a fleeting moment I knew compassion — a twinge, a thought to spare him."
Liar! I looked away, that Praze's eyes might not meet mine.
Praze went on: "But in that same instant I knew that if I allowed him to escape he would at once become more dangerous, to become at once more experienced, to become at once a more wary and less careless an enemy, and so to become a much greater threat than he was before. A tyro excused is a learner survived to take a further step towards becoming truly knowledgeable. He would have become less of a tyro against our tyros,"
I watched the boards, the glims sliding to an irrevocable climax, a last humiliation, a classic Golden Corridor, a run through a lethal gauntlet that only a dumb amateur would permit to happen. Those who live by the book shall die by the book.
"I had to finish him off." Praze was wry. "I felt some reluctance, as I say, after such intimacy, but the risk of him having another chance to think for himself was too great."
The glims closed. I sat in the fool's seat and could see him gibbering, his dreams of glory imminently to be snuffed. Praze had tortured him. Praze could have taken him in the very beginning. Certainly Praze could have taken him at any time during the later stages. It knotted my guts. It was sadism. As a salutory illustration to our beginners, he was so clever, the Simulator could have been programmed to perform the entire schedule. No doubt Praze considered a real-life orchestration, with himself the fearless maestro, to be more significant and efficacious.
The scragwagon became a broken egg, to be scrambled and shredded, to become meaningless particles in an abyss. It nauseated me.
I never said anything. I never did. He was a living superlative. Others discussed aspects of Praze's engagement with him afterwards, but I took my leave as soon as I could. I always did. They could call it conceit if they liked, to jibe that I thought that there was nothing more that I could learn. Me. I spent more time in practise than any four of them put together.
The only thing that I kept learning from Praze was of the ruthless superiority that more and more made his facade of modesty insufferable. The fool could have got him. Just by using a little bit of gumption, the fool could have got him. It upset me. It had been for real. I had ached to have been able to take over — ached. Poor green bastard, he had never earned such contempt.
Strange effect. Whether from this or another cause, I took ill, and had a 48 on sick leave.
Maybe I chose the wrong time to go broody. Commonly after an energetic sortie there came a period of relative calm, for the licking of wounds and yet another reassessment. The next two or three patrols would be quiet, the sparring somewhat mutually token and warily resentful.
This time it was different. Whether my presence would have altered things is purely speculation, of course, but the news at once made me regret my absence from the fray.
To make up the complement, Mirkiss Gourboudin, a newcomer, had been led out on his first foray over Breaker by our glorious leader. Beeschopf Praze had personally had him under his wing. But Praze had not kept him there.
I could read the boards. Their initial intercept had been a single. This meant a reconnaissance, a lost sheep, or a trap. Praze read it to be the former. Even at that stage I read it as the latter.
Some easy meat to practise on. Praze detailed Rede Scylia to take care of the solo, and coded Gourboudin to accompany him and assist.
Rede left the formation. Gourboudin followed. The solo was no lost sheep. At best it was out spotting. I had worked often enough with Rede to know that he, too, smelt a rat. It was instinct. The replay on the boards was impersonal, expressionless pinpoints. But shadings in change of position, a zeroes-one shift in angular degree, to me spoke volumes.
The solo took evasive action. It was to be expected but, again, a slight imperfection in choice of course did not fully maximize his escape opportunities. A minor carelessness, was it? There were some clever ones who flirted with dangers, possessed of a confidence that sliced thin margins.
Scylia recognized him so, it seemed, and adroitly, slyly compensated, almost in a reflex action. Already their play had told them much about each other.
But Gourboudin was not so wise, and here he made an elementary mistake, plus-acting suddenly over and away towards what he saw to be an obviously more advantageous shepherding position. He meant well, not needing to be told, not deeming it necessary to get a scolding from Rede. And shortly now, crucially, the rest of the patrol slid off the work boards.
Rede coded Gourboudin, correcting, trying to make the best of the move. Gourboudin complied. The solo made good use of the error, and tacked himself to swing even further out.
Rede Scylia wanted to let him go. I knew Rede. The odds were too even. The craftsman in the scragwagon was no dummy. He was taunting, rather than shaping up for a fight. The whole thing was screaming.
They held a fateful delaying pattern, and the coding flew between Rede and Gourboudin. Gourboudin hungered to prove himself, and Rede hedged, unable to explain his feeling of their situation. Only to at last relent, and almost savagely punch the keys to programme a lure and attack approach of his own.
The plan that sprang from Rede's fingertips gave full value to the meaning of the word "experience". It was there on the boards — the proposal, the alternatives, the modifications, the corrections, the counters, counter-counters — summed up and outlined in an instant display of perception and utterly professional grasp. This was what it was all about. Patience and determination. They would hunt the damned scrag-wagon, and give him something to be clever about.
It might have worked. But then the others appeared. There were eight all told, and their timing was faultless. They popped over the periph within seconds of each other, and they commanded the sphere coordinates at speeds established by their decoy.
Such things happened. I could swear even as I watched. Neither of ours should have stood a chance but, as with controlling missiles, numbers can sometimes be a hindrance. They all wanted to taste blood.
Never had I known Rede to be so brilliant. He could have got away had he wished, and here he was most foolish. Here he directed and took over Gourboudin's frantic play, to mesh it with his own, decisively double-integrating, to himself create a hole through which Gourboudin might crack his bones in reverse-acc and escape, howling head-shredded. Rede Scylia was still fighting when the play left Gourboudin's board, but he was doomed.
He did not return. Rede Scylia did not return. Instead we had Mirkiss Gourboudin still with us, and already he was behaving like an overworked veteran, and had a bad tic in his left eye. It was a poor exchange. Rede had been a reliable comrade, a first-class craftsman. I felt his loss bitterly. It should never have happened.
Beeschopf Praze took leave to be with a favoured mistress while she gave birth to his brat. I went back on patrol, leading the patrol, back into the routine, and now, for a while, contentiousness abated.
I fretted. I wanted someone to try to lure me into a trap. I wanted action. I wanted things to move, to be challenged, to have my claim to dominance defied. Maddeningly, our enemy declined to oblige.
We roamed 'way above Breaker, sunside, nightside, spoiling for trouble, and being unopposed. We? I. Perhaps I was too keen. At what contacts we did make, I deployed my forces in so gritty and businesslike a manner that my would-be opponents were deterred from going beyond the formalities. It was the wrong temper for success, and was a departure from my own stated accent upon wiliness.
It was a period, having responsibility for the group, that I was adapting to, just beginning to get familiar with, and to appreciate its potential, when Praze restored himself to us, and resumed his pre-eminence. Ideas that I had begun to develop became aborted. Methods that I had worked out, that we might try, became so much psychological mumbo-jumbo again. I could not communicate with Praze. He had his way of doing things and, from past experience, I knew his reaction to any novel approach that I might suggest.
I chafed, enormously frustrated. There was nothing I could do. There was no ear that I could gain, to bypass this man. He was the authority here, the acknowledged and proven expert, one of the most famous and outstanding craftsmen of the war, modest, still insisting on going out with his men, still insisting to lay his life on the line for The Cause. He was a formidable force, a living legend. What could I do? What could I do?
Action was consuming. Engaging an enemy freed me. Every problem extraneous to the play became totally irrelevant. And on this particular patrol there was enough confrontation to satisfy the most ardent knight.
For a start we met them head-on, a most unusual circumstance that must have surprised them as much as it did us. Secondly, we were both travelling comparatively low over Breaker, both seemingly using it as a shield, that we both consequently had our speed somewhat governed thereby. We were like two people who were trying to sneak up on each other upon opposite sides of the same wall.
Initially, unbelieving, there was a strong tendency to panic. To add to the confusion, I hit the buttons to code procedure orders, instinctively, forgetting that I was no longer commanding, and simply knowing the fastest, sanest, coolest thing for us all to do. This encoding tangled with that issued just as immediately by Praze, and which detailed a divergent line that contained few coincidences. It could have been disastrous but, in the event, the uneven break-up of our pattern did not suggest disorder so much as evidencing individual decision, a calm unpredictability that our opponents might not have foun d heartening.
Their reaction was quite some seconds slower and, as we closed, they were behind us in their countermandings, and an idiot on their side had already launched three torpedoes that would not have a hope. Whatever advantage there was to be gained was ours.
At this stage both patrols were virtually still complete and converging from both sides of the key-board, twenty-seven in all, fifteen of ours to twelve of theirs. It was incredible. I had never seen anything like it. If we all remained confined to the same area, and we each launched five missiles, this would produce a fantastic interplay of one hundred and thirty-five shots. My God! What boards those would be!
But it could not happen, of course. A head-on convergence was startling, but was not by any means a desirable angle to approach battle. Looping back failed shots was too time-consuming and telegraphic to be worthwhile. Already both formations were mushrooming out, and I became obliged to centralize myself in my own sphere.
With what seemed remarkable rapidity we were upon each other, and going through each other, with a curiously mutual amazed helplessness. Our proximity was such that I scanned for visual contact, but was disappointed, naturally. It was nightside but, even so, the distances between us were still great. It was strange that, in the very midst of enemy scrag-wagons, I felt it perfectly safe to take time out to try and actually see my opponents. It was the situation. At that point there was not much that either of us could do.
But the shock was wearing off, and the boards began to shape up even as the contestants continued to disperse. There were the runners, and the chasers, and those willing to snarl and bare their teeth.
The numbers on my board dwindled to nineteen, to fifteen, to eleven. They scattered up and down and sideways, to slide off my perimeter and into exclusive zones of their own.
Like a cheetah, I had selected my target from the outset. The processes that prompted my choice would be impossible to define; there was some "click" that took place, that determined that I should concentrate on that one. His movement, his line, his speed — there was something there that triggered me. I never failed to intrigue myself with my own mystery.
He knew that I was after him. Only nine on my board now, and his moves were most pertinently related to mine. And he was slowing, and steadily dropping into Breaker, into atmosphere.
I felt an odd sensation in my gut. A scragwagon chasing me fired a couple of poorly judged shots, which he did not follow up very well, and which amounted to little more than a gesture. I fancy that he did not care for the mass of Breaker, and the steady slowing of his comrade and myself, for he turned away, possibly nervous of two more of our side between him and the security of Out There.
This was the way it was. One minute full boards, and the next hardly anybody. My choice was not running from me. If vulnerability is sought, then it has to be offered. Again the sensation in my gut. What conceit. It was more than possible that I was his choice.
And so it proved. I learnt a tremendous amount that day. He was quite exceptional. He put Breaker to his service in a manner that I had never imagined. Twice I failed to compensate adequately for the added force of Breaker, and was constrained to abandon the missiles concerned. Passes became limited by Breaker's nearness. It was like a flat plate that cut off the bottom of our sphere of operation, a plate that gave us a bottom and a top, a gigantic impassive material presence that was ever ready to snatch us to itself should we but be so careless as to lose control.
Slower and lower. Again I knew that unfamiliar sensation. Instinct, instinct — instinct! My fingers flew even before my conscious mind could dictate the reason why. I guessed his attack fractionally before I was totally committed, and was evading fast, and countering fast, my mind yelling me to plus-acc the hell away, my will clamping me to an unreal lucidity that held me to match him still, to lower yet.
The sensation was fear. My face and neck were damp, my palms moist. Fleetingly I was concerned what it would be like to lose; in actuality, whether it was possible. Lower still. We were locked. To try a breakaway meant doom.
The atmosphere felt like glue. It was really not so thick but, after vacuum, its effect was subtle and somehow not pleasant. We were some five kilometres above the surface. It was intimidatingly close. And my opponent knew the terrain. Never before in battle had I been brought to consider mountains. Such things have no significant consequence upon the normal boards. And he was taking me lower.
I escaped his shots by twin margins that I could hope never again to need to shave so fine, and the sweat dripped from my chin, and he was hunting me, and now I was taking a desperate refresher course in ground appraisal, and was incorporating the information into all other considerations.
And from terror I clawed out to anger, and from anger to an icy concentration that was not to leave me.
He had beguiled me, and he had very nearly succeeded in nailing me. It was a prepared trick, admirably performed. Did he have another trump? I doubted it. Thinking, thinking, learning. Now he launched a salvo of five at me, and I nearly shouted my elation at the sight. He had missed his certainty, and his salvo told me that he knew anxiety and that I might yet elude him.
It was his error. He had the advantage of me, but the five would betray him, would be too much. I would make them be too much, to switch his preferences until he was dizzy. And better yet, I sank further towards the planet, now testing his nerve, and making him sweat.
High risk. I turned back into the mountains, and he had to pull his shots high as I careered along valleys. It troubled me to lose his shots from my board where the ranges intervened. Higher than me, I could imagine him programming a reception to meet me where I might most likely come out.
Now I hit the skids, zapping my body about and laying on the pressure as much as I could bear. Had I nicked my chin shaving that morning, my whole damned skin would have peeled back. I arced, angling hard and fast to complete the split-second move, to gamble a choice to skim a peak on a side opposite to that which might have been anticipated. It was a hair-raising switch executed with calculated precision by a man who demonstrably had not yet lost his nerve.
Still climbing, the full field came back onto my boards, for his play to at once become more apparent, and I spun again, to complete my "S", to re-match him, not to lose him, to show him that I had plenty of fight left. His shots were off-beam, were very well placed to cover every manoeuvre except the one that I had taken. Near misses took longer to retrieve and re-programme than wider swings, and even the best tended to be too eager in their closing of the gap between shot and target.
He was not happy. He loosed off a couple more grenades. Now he had seven to manage. I judged him to be tiring, not panicking, but harassed into doing a lot more work than he desired. I had only two missiles out, both lurking wide and waiting to be coordinated to a play that even then was formulating in my mind.
But just at that moment, into our sphere, a third party appeared, high, and detecting us, altering course, to slide down to examine the situation and plainly to join us.
I swore. The pattern was broken as surely as a mirror met by a rock. My opponent broke just short of conforming to an enfilading corridor that I might have exercised, to virtually abandon his play temporarily, recognizing discretion to be the better part of valour, and preferring not to take on two of us at once. For the fresh intruder was one of ours. It was, indeed, Beeschopf Praze.
It was extraordinary. It was uncanny. It was a strange and uncommon eventuality. It bumbled me to be coded, to be distracted just as I was about to go into my end play.
Praze took over. My opponent, my honourable opponent, should never have had such bad luck. Praze came in pouncing upon a wearied man. He coded me orders. He was my superior. He was Our Commander. My play was shattered. Praze's play supervened, brisk, decisive. Between the two of us, the poor bastard never stood a chance.
We brought into play an extra two shots from me, to make it four shots each. In view of our combined skill, this was a fifty per cent excess in deployed armament.
Our opponent was no greenhorn. In short order he was made aware that his chances of escape had become negligible. I knew him. I sat in his seat and could comprehend the behavioural reaction that prompted his signals of defiance that registered on my boards. He was concerned. He was dangerous. He would prove it.
He let go everything he had left, plus recalling his wanderers, to give him a total of eleven weapons ranging. He had hope, perhaps, to confuse his way out.
Praze was deadly. I could sit in his seat also, and I knew that he was smiling. There was an authoritarian note in his codings, and I received the impression that he was attempting to encourage me, even in one part to urge me to relax, and to say that everything was now under control.
Instructions. He kept telling me what to do. It was not my play any longer, not in any way. I had become a supernumery. Now it seemed that I filled the role of a rescued useful aide and, if I attended closely, I could be shown how to participate in a butchery.
I cannot describe my feelings. I went onto automatic, doing what I was told, so far relinquishing concerned personal involvement as to be sharply warned to properly correct the pace and deviation of my shots. Curiously, for a while, I became a dispassionate observer of myself, watching myself obey, seeing myself paying attention.
Our foe's eleven shots were not so badly placed after all, for they came curling in in a novel criss-crossing formation, concentrating entirely on Praze, and creating a cover to separate himself from me. Praze was diverted. I was interested. It was a bold extravagance surprisingly well unified considering the numbers involved, and had his target been a lesser man than Praze, his strategy could well have succeeded.
It was an understandable error. Praze had not been on the boards long enough to be read. My man knew me, possibly thought that I was still commanding the play, and so had chosen the newcomer as likely to be easier to cripple. I could pity him for his sheer bad fortune.
Praze steered through the storm, eluding disaster by narrowly trimmed margins, and for a while I did not know whose side I was on. Then Praze was through, and our opponent spent out, and we had nothing left to do but hunt him down with our own unopposed eight.
Our nominated enemy sloped down towards Breaker, seeking thicker atmosphere, perhaps in a last vain hope to find some kind of sanctuary below. Relentlessly we pursued him, Praze at leisure having us bracket him with our shots, with an exactitude of patient savagery, to savour the moment, to linger to relish the absolute inescapability of our hexoid squeeze.
I felt nothing at the triggering, not any least sense of exaltation, or triumph. Nine points of reference on our boards coalesced into one, which in turn powdered out into stardust, a spreading, fading cloud.
Praze was well pleased. The bombardment had exhilarated him and given licence to his viciousness. He coded me: "One of the fellow's Ms was almost a rattler!" He said other things, but my replies were desultory. I could not share in his shop talk, not with the attitude that his words revealed.
Then I caught something. He mentioned a malfunction. I queried this. The code came back. It was nothing serious. He had had a slight drop in cabin pressure, which he had so far been unable to restore, but which appeared to have stabilized adequately.
What prompted me to express concern, caution, I cannot say. Instinct. An intuition to pay heed, entirely spontaneously. I coded him my reply, reminding him that we were in atmosphere, which could be providing a compensating density that would lower the stress placed upon any plugged It was possible that he had been badly holed by the near rattler that he had experienced. If such was the case, and the gash was severe, a blow-out could occur Out There and, depending upon its location, could have some crippling effect that just could be disastrous. I told him that it was worrying that it was his cabin pressure that was affected, and suggested that it might even be better to land, to check, to see if repair could be managed.
Landing on Breaker did not appeal to him, but he stayed in atmosphere, even to dropping a little lower, retesting his systems. I followed him, closing the distance between us.
I signalled him that we could both ride in my craft if we decided that his was unserviceable, but he was unenthusiastic about scrapping his machine, which was the most superlatively well-appointed fighting craft in the fleet. In his opinion, if he were holed, the ritepunc-gunc would be unlikely to tear out, would be like cement already, and any further leakage would be minimal.
1 said okay, but conveyed my continued unease, and further suggested that I might approach near enough to make a visual inspection. I could scan him, I proposed, to probably be able to detect if, and just where, he might have been hit. lie was agreeable, and apparently amused to indulge the fussing anxiety of a grateful disciple.
The situation was unreal. Two craft never drew so close to each other, not even in formation.
I picked him up on my visual, and he grew and grew. I was in full forward alignment. It has a strange psychological effect, to actually see a craft travelling ahead. It never happened in fighting. It was something that I regretted, something that I always missed. The opponent was always anonymous, even as a craft. To actually witness a disintegration, a result, was never more than a poor resolution of one bright light.
Praze hung before me. I brought the cross-hairs of my visual targeter into play, to examine his hull, to measure the location of any discovered flaw. The manual sighting, the range-finding, was quite absorbing. My remembering of an unused technique was surprisingly complete and satisfying.
I was very close now, and slowed exactly to matching, and he filled my screen. I said that I could spot a defect already. And my fingers keyed to pass details and to hold his attention, while my mind, as in a separate compartment, considered many other curious things. There were The Others, those who never did survive to become peers. Rede Scylia.
Praze would see me killed also before ever I should challenge his rank. A legend. The ground weapons system could be manually operated, to so bypass the flight record. The Crevillion was recalled. Ground weapons were not checked unless the craftsman requested it. It was a maintenance chore left entirely to the degree of a craftsman's wish for total all-round mental comfort. My premature assumption to give orders surely would occasion reproach. Oh, Big Yahi Kahiki. A mistress and another baby. An opponent snatched from me, an honourable opponent, who became almost literally crucified by our shots, to be so ignobly despatched. Beeschopf Praze.
The circumstances would never occur again. Such opportunity would never again arise. I opened the ground-weapons ports. To use such in a space action was unthinkable, ludicrous. The limited range, the straight-line firing pattern, was purely for platform shooting at a fixed target. No one would ever use such weaponry against a distant and highly mobile foe. To shoot another craft into oblivion by such means would be totally unbelievable.
The range was precise, the cross-hairs centred upon a most vulnerable spot. I triggered the guns. Point blank. I saw the shells punching holes in him, and for critical seconds he hung there, soaking up my primitive barbs. Then he heeled, quite suddenly, to fall away to my left, and down towards Breaker, sucked by gravity.
I went down after him, keeping him close in my visual, loosing more fire at him, not wanting him to get away, letting him have everything I had, seeing pieces begin to fall off him. And he began to roll, slowly at first, over and over, and to pitch into a steeper curve yet towards Breaker's surface.
It was then that I knew positively that he was finished. I felt most odd. I followed him down. He seemed to fall forever, a silent spiral plunging to the planet beneath.
When at last he struck, he smashed and burst, and the inner command capsule wrenched out like an egg, and bounded off on its own, to crunch and slam and batter itself into a grotesque distortion.
I landed. I dug into my emergency kit and suited up. I went out to inspect the crash site.
The legendary figure was truly dead.
I collected those items of his personal identity that I could retrieve. These would be souvenirs. I did not dawdle. The surface of Breaker was dangerous. The wreckage was sure  to be blasted again as a precaution against subterfuge. I lifted off, took a last look, then headed for Home Base as fast last as I could.
I had done a service for The Cause. The replay, my replay, would show our engagement with an enemy. The replay would show his close call. The replay would recount his malfunction, and my concern. Then the replay would show him going out of control, and not responding to my call any more.
The replay would end with a splatter. The rest would be applied by me, my account of what I had been able to see on the visual. Even use of my ground weapons could be excused, if it were claimed necessary, to ensure certain destruction of our specialized equipment, records, etcetera, that they might not fall into enemy hands. Yes. I would do a King David. I would lament. I would be most distressed. I would be the instigator of, and the first to chip in credits to, a memorial to the legend.
The legend should live. I could see to that. It could be useful, very useful, I knew him; he was my friend. He taught me all I know. He was the greatest. Or one of the greatest. There was room for me, now. And there would be a little more discipline, and a little more training, and a lot more survivors. lust as soon as I came to take over the command.