An immense five-sided building in Arlington, Virginia, had once housed the U.S. armed forces' supreme headquarters. To those who had eventually formed the Earth First Party, that building had been a focus for their national self-loathing, its very name a byword for everything to which they deemed themselves morally superior. So after taking power the Party had made a great public show of demolishing it, to the accompaniment of speeches replete with mold-encrusted antimilitary boilerplate and announcements that a New Age had dawned. At the same time, with no show at all, the old Air Force facility under Cheyenne Mountain had been vastly enlarged to accommodate a high command that was more top-heavy than ever.
It was there that a gaggle of the generals and admirals who constituted that top-heaviness now stood under the leveled guns of hard-faced, combat-dressed young junior officers. They stood on the balcony of the command center, their backs to the railing that overlooked an auditoriumlike expanse of consoles, whose operators had continued without a hiccup to function under the new command structure.
General Hardin attempted bluster, with a vigor that set his belly jiggling. "For the last time, Lieutenant Cady, I order you and your people to lay down your arms and place yourselves under arrest, by the authority vested in me as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff!"
The Navy SEAL's face revealed no emotion, not even contempt. "You no longer hold that post, General. You have been relieved by the President."
"The President?"
"Yes, General: the President. He is, as you may recall, the commander in chief of the armed forces, under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitutionwhich has never been officially abrogated."
"Well, er, no . . . but . . . "
"But for almost thirty years the office has been held by people who exercised their authority only at the behest of the Central Committee. Well, that's over now. President Morrison has appointed a new JCS, with General Kruger as its chairman."
"Kruger?" blurted the six-star Commandant of the Marine Corps, to which Kruger belonged. "But he's only a brigadier general!" It was the highest rank to which a nonpolitical officer had been able to aspire for a generation.
"Not anymore. He's had a rather abrupt promotion to full general. You see, we're going back to the normal rank structure, in which four stars are as high as it gets in peacetime." Cady finally let his disdain show as he surveyed the absurd constellations of stars on the shoulders of these Party hacks.
Hardin turned to wheedling. "Look, Lieutenant, let's be sensible about this. We're all, uh, patriots, of course. But we can't forget to put number one first, can we? After this has all blown over and things get back to normal, I can be a help to your career. A big help. So let's just . . . I mean, why don't we . . . ?" His voice died a slow death, killed by what he saw in Cady's eyes.
Before the SEAL lieutenant could speak, a voice rang out from one of the consoles below, charged with urgency. "Lieutenant, the early warning system is picking up something odd. In fact . . . Oh my God!"
The strike cruiser Krondathu had approached undetected even by Lokaron instrumentation, by the simple expedient of killing its orbital velocity and letting Earth's gravity pull it inward. Now, nearing the planet and with the time for concealment past, it deployed a weapon it had spent its time at Luna's leading-Trojan point preparing in secret.
From fore to aft along the great ship's ventral spine, a series of superconducting magnetic coils had been riggedthe physical manifestation of a colossal mass driver, most of which lay in domains of pure force. At the instant Krondathu reached a computer-decreed point in its trajectory, titanic banks of superconductor loops released their hoarded energy. A carefully reshaped nickel-iron asteroid flashed along that line of coils, accelerated to a velocity which, piled atop Krondathu's, sent it curving down toward Earth. Presently, it entered the outer reaches of the atmosphere and began to glow from the friction that would burn most of it away. Most . . . but not all.
"Do something!" screamed General Hardin.
But it was already apparent that nothing could be done. That projectile's preposterous velocity made it impossible for America's antiballistic defensesall surface-based, of courseto even try to stop it or deflect it. Indeed, there had just barely been time for the computers to project its impact point.
"Shut up!" Cady snapped, dropping all pretense of respect for Hardin's rank. "That uniform you're wearing is supposed to mean you're prepared to die in the defense of your country. Well, you're about to get the opportunity to be worthy of it. Maybe no one will ever know how you diedbut try to do it right!"
It was all he had time to say. And it may be that, in the instant they had left, Hardin met his eyes silently and stood a little straighter.
To an outside observerhad any such observer lived to tell about ita solid bar of light, eye-hurtingly intense in the predawn darkness, speared the Earth at Cheyenne Mountain. But there would have been barely enough time for that image to register, before the eye that had seen it was burned out forever by a fireball of inconceivable energy-exchange. Then the fireball itself was only a rapidly fading glow inside a cloud of dust that boiled outward and mushroomed upward.
In short, that hypothetical observer might well have thought himself in the presence of a nuclear detonation. But Cheyenne Mountain was designed to withstand nukesit might even have survived one placed with the precision of Lokaron computers programmed with the data Henry Havelock had supplied. This multiton mass of metal and rock smashed through the Earth's crust, shattering by concussion those portions of the base it didn't obliterate outright, and releasing a flow of magma which erased all evidence that there had ever been any work of Man in this place.
Too stunned for nausea, Roark and Katy stared at a screen displaying the imagedownloaded from a satellite in low orbitof America's central Rocky Mountains region. Infrared enhancement stripped away the veil of night, revealing the violation of their world.
"A deep-penetrator kinetic weapon," Svyatog's translated voice explained from behind them. "Useful for taking out hardened targets whose location is precisely known."
They barely heard him as they watched the expanding ring of dust move rapidly outward from the glowing ember where Cheyenne Mountain had been, like a ripple from a pebble hurled into a pond.
"First the dinosaurs," Katy whispered, "and now us."
"Scarcely." The translator reproduced Svyatog's attempt at a reassuring tone. "As I indicated, this is a precision weapon, depending on its extreme velocity rather than its mass. It is not to be compared to the kind of ecologically catastrophic asteroid impact that occurred sixty-five million of your years ago."
From the bottom of a well of nightmare, Roark heard his own mechanical voice. "Still, I'll bet a bunch of them could create something just like nuclear winter."
"Undeniably. But I am confident that the Rogovon don't intend to employ them in such numbers. It would be a singularly inefficient approach, when it would be much simpler to . . . " Svyatog stopped awkwardly. He looked uncannily similar to a human who realized he'd put his foot in it.
The cruiser's captain provided a merciful interruption. "Factor, Krondathu and the Rogovon shuttle are making rendezvous."
Svyatog gave the equivalent of a curt nod. The Lokaron lacked the naval tradition that made a ship's captain its absolute despot. And although the military was the province of the gevahon pseudogovernments, there was no question in anybody's mind as to who was in charge when a hovah bigwig like Svyatog was aboardespecially when the hovah in question was Hov-Korth. "Come," he said, leading the two humans to the holo tank.
The control room they crossed wasn't too large. Boranthyr was, Roark thought, probably the equivalent of a light cruiser in human wet-navy parlance, though she was the largest Harathon warship in the Solar System. But her navigational holo tank was quite up to displaying the situation in which they found themselves.
In the center of the circular well hung a small blue marble representing Earth. Near the outer rim, at twelve o'clock (Roark automatically superimposed a clock face on the display) and creeping slowly counterclockwise was a smaller bone-white one: Luna. Sixty degrees "ahead" of it, at ten o'clock, a purple symbol denoted the leading-Trojan point from which Krondathu had departed. A trail of little green dots marked the strike cruiser's course, curving inward toward the center and terminating with the green arrowhead of Krondathu's current position, at about six thirty and halfway in. A red arrowhead marked their own ship, accompanied by two little diamonds of the same color that denoted the Harathon picket vessels that had been available in orbitcapable of obliterating any merchant ship, but useless in a clash of real warships. Their course, commencing in a low orbit around the blue Earth symbol at eleven o'clock and sweeping outward around the planet to the left, had now brought them to a position at about the same bearing from Earth as Krondathu but well inward. Ahead of the two ships, little hollow circles of green and red showed their projected courses. Those courses converged.
The important thing to remember, Roark told himself, was that the Lokaron space-drive wasn't magic. It cheated Newton and enabled ships to accelerate for lengths of time undreamed-of by human spacecraft designers, but it didn't exempt them from gravity and inertia. They had to follow trajectories (albeit breathtakingly fast ones) subject to the same basic laws . . . like the one along which Boranthyr was now boosting.
They'd rendezvoused with her after their manic departure from the Enclave, and then immediately accelerated outward into an orbit intended to intersect the incoming Krondathu's course. The Rogovon shuttle had followed such an orbit earlier, and now they watched the shuttle's very small green dot mate with the larger arrowhead of the same color, and vanish.
"Captain," Svyatog ordered, "have communications raise Krondathu. I want to speak to Valtu'Trovon as soon as he's available."
It seemed longer than the couple of minutes it actually took before Valtu's green face appeared on the com screen. Roark and Katy stood aside from the pickup and listened as Svyatog's translator pendant interpreted Valtu's side of the conversation for them as well as his own.
"Ah, Svyatog," Valtu began. He looked rushed, as though he'd hastened from his just-docked shuttle to answer the unexpected hail, but he attempted urbanity. "I can't tell you how happy I am that you got away from the Enclave in time! I myself was fortunate in having departed on routine business shortly before the natives attacked. Appalling! As soon as I heard the news I ordered Krondathu to Earth to help with rescue operations and . . . whatever else seems indicated."
Against his will, Roark found himself admiring Valtu's sheer chutzpah. Even more impressive was Svyatog's smooth reply. "Thank you for your concern, Commissioner. But no rescue will be necessary. The situation at the Enclave is now under controldue in no small part, I believe, to the Gev-Rogov security personnel, whose response to the crisis was remarkable. Indeed, anyone who didn't know better would have thought they'd had forewarning."
It took about one-third of a second for the radio waves to wing their way from Boranthyr to Krondathu and back. Valtu's pause was just a trifle longer than that could account for. "Ah. Well. As you are aware, we Rogovon have for some time taken the potential threat from these natives more seriously than have certain others."
"Like Gev-Harath?"
"I was thinking more in terms of decadent Gev-Lokarath and infantile Gev-Tizath. But . . . well, admit it, Svyatog: events have proven us right, and you wrong! These humans, like all natives, are nothing more than dangerous animals! Their relative technological sophistication doesn't change thisit merely makes them more dangerous. We of Gev-Rogov recognize this reality, and have the means at hand to deal with the crisis your fatuity has created."
"Such as the kinetic weapon you've just used on the military headquarters of the principal human power?"
"Yes! The American government is obviously implicated in what has occurred, and must therefore be regarded as an enemy. We have prevented it from coordinating any military action against usan entirely legitimate precaution." Valtu inflated himself in a vaguely toadlike way, and it occurred to Roark that this was the first time he'd seen Lokaron sanctimoniousness. "We feel we're acting on behalf of all Lokaron, not just ourselves."
Svyatog gave to the clicking sound of Lokaron laughter a harshness Roark had never heard before. "Enough of this farce! We're well aware that you engineered the attack on the Enclave through your human agent Havelock, precisely for the purpose of justifying the coup you've now set in motion. But the attack has failed, thanks to two humans in my service." He motioned Roark and Katy forward into the pickup. "All the resident commissioners now recognize the truth. They will support Gev-Harath in demanding sanctions for this attempt to monopolize the human market in violation of intergevahon agreements. Gev-Rogov will stand alone."
For a moment, Roark thought Valtu was still trying to brazen it out . . . but it was only the communications delay. At first the alien face merely went expressionless. Then its green skin began to darken, and the almost nonexistent lips drew back to reveal the serrated ridges which chewed meat. And Roark, who'd fancied that he had gotten used to the Lokaron, felt a chill slide along his back.
"So be it, Svyatog." All pretense was gone from the strangely metallic Rogovon voice. "As for Gev-Rogov standing alone, when has it ever been otherwise? But I must tell you that you're wrong about a couple of other things. First of all, our aim isn't to `monopolize' this world. We're not interested in it as a market, which is how your limited mind has always seen it, but as a colony. The rest of you have never really appreciated Earth's potential. We do, because it's like our world, only better. You might say it's like our world should have been. It's a simple matter of" (the translator, for the first time in Roark's experience, simply went silent for the space of a couple of words, defeated) "as anyone with any perceptiveness can intuitively grasp. Earth is the natural second home of the Rogovon subspecies, the living space where we can grow to our full potential and assume the primacy to which" (the same two Rogovon words, and the same brief silence from the translator) "entitles us."
"The present inhabitants might disagree." Beneath Svyatog's dryness, Roark could tell he was shaken. I keep forgetting how different the various Lokaron subspecies are from each other. Maybe the Rogovon conceptreligious, philosophical, whateverthat stopped the Harathon-programmed translator cold is as alien to him as it is to me.
Valtu gave the two humans a look whose contempt transcended cultures and worlds. "Earth is wasted on these vermin. Actually, the entire ecology of which they are a part is merely a bothersome irrelevance to this world's true destiny. After this ship assumes low orbit, we will neutron-bomb the planet down to about a meter's depth. Later, it will be seeded, using biological packages from the Rogovon homeworld."
"You're mad! The gevahon you've already antagonized will never stand for this. We're dealing with a living worlda cosmic rarity, as we all knowand, what's even rarer, a sentient race!"
"I've never understood why you're so attached to them, Svyatog. Perhaps you could use these two as breeding stock to reestablish their species somewhere else . . . except, of course, for the second thing you were wrong about. You see, there will be no coalition to demand sanctions against us, because there will be no witnesses. All the gevahon will be saddened to learn that the humans struck so cleverly as to destroy all Lokaron on the planet and in orbit, leaving only Krondathu to exact vengeance."
"You are insane, Valtu! No one will believe this story!" Svyatog's translated voice held a new dimension of alarm. Yeah, Roark thought, this is different. We're talking Lokaron lives now. But his sardonicism lasted only an instant. Come on, can you really blame him? Especially when one of those Lokaron lives happens to be his own?
"Oh, they'll suspect. But will anyone go to war over a suspicion? I doubt it."
"It will be more than mere suspicion! This ship will bear the word that you've murdered all the Lokaron in this system."
"If you examine the relative vectors of your ship and ours, you will find that there is no way you can escape. My computer analysis assures me of this; otherwise . . . well, surely you don't imagine I would have told you all this. And in the time I've kept you talking, it has grown even less possible." Once again, Valtu's face wore that disturbingly predatory look. Like the Cheshire cat's smile, it seemed to linger after he broke the connection and the screen went blank.
The two humans stared at Svyatog, waiting for him to say something that would awaken them from this evil dream. He showed no sign of noticing. His aspect was one which they'd never seen before, and which discouraged any inclination they might have felt to interrupt his introspection. Finally, he straightened up and addressed the captain. His words were as decisive as ever, but even the translator conveyed a certain hollowness in his tone. "Captain, calculate a course change which will take us far enough from this system's sun to engage our transition engine. Assume the highest acceleration endurable by personnel, and ignore all other considerations."
"Yes, sir. But . . . " The captain's eyes went to the holo tank, where Krondathu's dark-green arrowhead pursued its Earthward course.
"All other considerations, Captain!"
"Yes, sir." The captain busied himself, and presently the ululation of a high-gee warning reverberated through the ship.
"Uh, Svyatog," Roark ventured as they all strapped themselves into acceleration couches. "What, exactly, is happening?"
"Our one advantage," Svyatog began, speaking as much to himself as to the humans, "is that this is a military ship, with its own integral transition enginethe only such ship in this system other than Krondathu. Thus we need not shape a course for Gev-Harath's transition gate; we can enter overspace anywhere beyond a certain distance from the local sun. So we are, of necessity, Valtu's first priority"
Conversation ceased as the g-forces pressed them down into their couches.
Aboard Krondathu, Valtu'Trovon was paralleling Svyatog's thoughts closely as he watched Boranthyr's course change in his own holo tank.
"So," he rumbled, "they're actually trying it." He didn't deign to notice the look that Wersov'Vrahn doubtless thought was surreptitious. He knew the underling wouldn't dare criticize him openly for telling Svyatog his real aim. Nor should he, came the defensive thought. It was a harmless bit of self-indulgence on my part. "Wersov," he said aloud, "tell the captain to alter course to overhaul Boranthyr."
"Yes, sir." Wersov passed the order on instantly. Then, as they lay in their acceleration couches, he spoke in tones of diffident inquiry. "Ah, sir, this will draw us away from Earth, greatly delaying the commencement of"
"Of course, you idiot! That can wait. Nobody still in the Enclave is going anywhere. They'll still be there when we finally execute the bombardment." One of whose neutron bombs, Valtu reminded himself, was due to burst directly above the Enclave. "And all the merchant ships and pickets can only get out through the transition gates, which are now guarded by our pickets. Boranthyr is our only worry. Svyatog knows that, and he's using it in a desperate attempt to draw us after him, in hope of a miracle."
Valtu studied the holographically projected miniature of the tank's display that floated before his eyes. Boranthyr's boost was resulting in a new trajectory, no longer curving outward from Earth to meet Krondathu but lining outward in a flat hyperbola. Krondathu was now following an equally flat intercept course.
What, he wondered, does Svyatog hope to gain? It was as he'd told Wersov: they could deal with Earth, including the Enclave, at their leisure after disposing of Boranthyr.
As we will dispose of it! That ship couldn't get away even if it could match our acceleration. The chief limitation on both ships' ability to pull sustained gees was crew endurance . . . which was less limiting for the Rogovon, bred for a planet of very nearly Earthlike gravity. And their firepower is inferior to ours, even counting those two pathetic pickets Svyatog has with him.
So, Valtu asked himself once more, what does he hope to gain?
Roark was wondering much the same thing as he lay on his acceleration couch in Boranthyr's control room. He turned his headcarefully but without undue hazard under an acceleration of 1.44 Gto face Svyatog. "Why are we keeping the pickets with us? They don't mount transition engines, do they?"
Svyatog replied with some difficulty. This was twice his normal gees for him, and he wasn't a trained military spacer. Only the time he'd spent adjusting to Earth's gravity enabled him to endure it on an extended basis. "No. The pickets, like civilian ships, have to use the transition gate. But it's pointless to send them there. The Rogovon must have it covered, to keep everyone bottled in this system."
"But why not detach them as decoys to get Krondathu off our backs?"
"It wouldn't work. Valtu knows as well as I do that they can't escape. Only this ship can. So he'll pursue us until he catches us . . . which he will. And then we'll need every quantum of advantage we can possibly muster."
"But Svyatog," Katy protested, "you keep talking as though this ship was hopelessly outmatched. Surely that can't be so! I mean . . . well . . . " She gave a vague gesture that encompassed the control room around them and the ship around it. Roark understood. He, too, had stared through the shuttle's viewports, openmouthed, as they'd rendezvoused with the apotheosis of transcendent engineering that was Boranthyr.
Svyatog also understood. With great caution, he turned his head around on a neck that had much the same vulnerabilities as a human one, until he could meet Katy's eyes. "You must understand that this ship, while a perfectly well-designed and up-to-date example of its class, is nothing special as warships go. In point of fact, it is the smallest class that mounts transition engines for independent operations. There's never been any need for anything larger in this system, where we never expected to have to fight any real battles. It was only stationed here to . . . to . . . "
"Show the flag?" suggested Roark.
"Yes," agreed Svyatog after a brief pause. He activated a holographically projected display in front of them. They recognized its outlines from what they'd glimpsed through the shuttle's ports. "This is a schematic of Boranthyr." Another glowing display joined the first in midair. "And this is Krondathu."
"Uh . . . are these to the same scale?" Katy sounded faintly ill.
"Svyatog," Roark began hesitantly, "I know there isn't time to cover all the technical details, but can you give us some notion of how a space battle is fought? It's a little outside our experience. Are we talking about kinetic-kill weapons like the one the Rogovon just used on . . . " His voice trailed off, and he gestured "down" toward the receding Earth.
"No. Those are for fixed planetary targets. For interspacecraft combat, nothing that strikes more slowly than light will serve." As the Lokar spoke, color-coded indicators awoke within the three-dimensional displays at his mental command, denoting the weapon systems of which he spokemore of them, and often larger ones, in Krondathu. "The basic offensive weapons are lasers. For longer-range engagement, missiles are used. But"
The Lokaron equivalent of "general quarters" sounded, reverberating through Boranthyr's hull. In the tactical display, tiny green dots separated themselves from Krondathu and raced ahead.
"It appears," Svyatog said calmly, "that we're now within range of the missiles I was just discussing. Their drives are overpowered, quickly burning themselves out to produce extreme accelerations."
"You ain't just whistlin' Dixie," Roark murmured. With alarming speed, the green dots closed the range on the red icon that symbolized, among other things, his and Katy's bodies. But Svyatog remained composed. Then a series of commands rang out, indicator lights flashed like Christmas decorations . . . and, fractional seconds later, the green dots began going out.
"It is a tactical truism," Svyatog resumed, "that shipboard laser installations, using artificial gravity-based techniques to enhance their range, can engage missiles before those missiles' bomb-pumped X-ray lasers can be employed."
But one dot kept homing in relentlessly. Roark began to see in Svyatog what he'd come to recognize as the signs of fraying calm. When the dot burst into a cascade of green, he didn't bother to ask what it meant.
Alarms sounded, more indicator lights flashed . . . and everything was as before save for a palpable air of relief in the control room. The two humans gave Svyatog questioning looks.
"The deflection shields held," the Lokar explained. "They, too, depend on the space-distorting properties of artificial gravity. Unless overloaded by an overwhelming attack, they make precise targeting solutions difficult. For that reason, ships try to close to shorter ranges. They also employ fighter craft that seek to get closer still and perform precision strikes." Rows of launching cradles appeared in the holograms. As usual, there were more in Krondathu than in Boranthyr. "These fighters also have high-powered, short-duration drivesthough not as extreme in either respect as the missiles. They have crews of two, as well as the highly sophisticated navigation computers necessary for piloting at extreme speeds over relatively short distances. Indeed, the living crew members' functions are largely concerned with weapons delivery."
"How can the crewsespecially Harathon crewsstand that kind of high acceleration?" asked Katy.
"They are specially picked and trained people. But you have correctly pinpointed a limiting factor. Crewless, fully computer-controlled fighters have been tried, with unsatisfactory results."
"Doesn't that give the Rogovon an advantage?"
"To a certain extent. But our defensive fire-control computers take into account the g-forces the Rogovon can standas theirs do those that our personnel can stand. It's not so much a matter of the absolute accelerations involved as it is of the element of surprise, or lack of it."
There seemed nothing more to be said as the clocks crept inexorably on and Krondathu drew abreast of its prey. Boranthyr's captain tried a salvo of missiles, but to no one's surprise they perished without effect. Next he tried evasive course changes, but Krondathu's computer matched them effortlessly. Svyatog grew more and more visibly tense. He's not a military officer, Roark reminded himself. Still, a little of the old stiff upper lip, or whatever, would do wonders for my morale.
Then, abruptly, things began to happen. Alarms gave tongue, the light show resumed on the readout boards, and the tactical display became more crowded as the ships' icons gave birth to litters of smaller ones: fighters and then missiles.
Roark and Katy made eye contact. No words were needed. They were united in their helplessness, unable to do anything but represent, in some fashion, the now-distant blue world whose fate was being decided by aliens.
They watched as the ships poured laser energy into each other's deflection shields, which shed it. They watched as the two pickets peeled off and flung themselves at the Brobdingnagian strike cruiser, only to be contemptuously speared by lasers which killed one and sent the other limping off. They watched as the fighters worked their way inward, some dying and others avoiding the defensive laser fire by maneuvers and boost variations the tactical display was too large-scale to show.
Then Boranthyr's deflection shields began to flicker and fail, the ship began to take physical hits, and the battle was no longer just an extremely high-tech video game with colored lights crawling prettily around the holo tank.
Boranthyr shuddered and bucked like an abused animal as segments of hull vaporized explosively. They'd felt sickening tugs and shifts from the evasive maneuvers; these now paled in comparison to the shock waves that flung them against the restraints of their crash couches.
The control room, buried deep in the ship's bowels, wasn't hit. But the incalculable tons of metal and composites wrapped around it couldn't keep out the noise, and acrid smoke began to seep in through the vents.
Until I get to hell, thought Roark, stunned and nauseated, this will do. He spared a glance for the schematic of the ship. His training as an employee in the Enclave enabled him to take a stab at reading the legends that accompanied all those stroboscopically flashing scarlet indicators. Much of the vocabulary and symbology was beyond him. But he had a pretty good idea he was watching Boranthyr die.
The worst of it was the sense of passive uselessness. These aliens are defending my world, and there's not a damned thing I can doexcept, I suppose, die with them, which it looks like I'll be doing soon enough. I'm not even as uncomfortable as they are, because I can handle g-forces better
The idea exploded in his brain.
"Svyatog!" he yelled above the cacophony, not pausing to think it through because there was no time. He pointed at the schematic, indicating a row of the launch cradle symbols. "Those fighters haven't been launched."
"No. It is established tactical doctrine to hold some of them in reserve . . . although, in this case, the captain considered launching the ship's entire complement at the outset, due to"
"Never mind that!" He couldn't read the Lokar's expression, but Katy looked shocked at the brusque interruption. "Listen: let me take one of them out!"
"What did you say?" Katy's voice rose to an incredulous squawk.
"But you don't know how!" Svyatog's words came out in a less flabbergasted way than his body language suggested they should have. Roark suspected a case of translator overload. "You have no training!"
"No, but I was an employee in the Enclave, which means I'm familiar with your neural induction headbands. I'll bet the fighter pilots use them, to interface directly with the controls."
"But surely you remember, from that very experience, the inherent limitations of the technology."
"That's right!" Katy's voice held an urgency just short of panic. "It won't magically turn you into some kind of top gun fighter pilot!"
"It won't have to. You heard Svyatog: a fighter practically flies itself. The so-called pilot and copilot are there to give it general directivesand, once it's gotten in close enough, to ram the weapons down the enemy's throat and cut loose." Roark turned back to the stupefied-looking Lokar. "Svyatog, I may not be a space pilot, but I do know weapons. All rightnot these weapons. But I've got the trained reflexes, the . . . mind-set. That ought to provide a foundation for the neurally fed information to build on. Anyway, that was how old Koebel explained it to us."
Svyatog seemed to pull himself together. He took advantage of a lull in the noise to give Roark a steady regard. "Even assuming that you could do this, we already have fighter pilots. Professional ones. What would be the purpose of this exercise in quixotry?"
"You said it yourself: fighter-versus-ship combat is a guessing game in which the ships have the advantage of knowing how much acceleration the fighter pilots can handle. The Rogovon fire-control computers are programmed with the figures for Harathon pilots. But I can throw a monkey wrench into the works! I can gun a fighter faster than they think is possible, without passing out. I'll have a better chance than your professionals of living long enough to get in close."
Svyatog opened his mouth, but then closed it, and nothing came from the translator. He tried again, and this time his words held anger. "No! This is ludicrous! What about command-and-control? How will you be able to understand orders from this ship's fighter-coordination center? No, I cannot permit"
The din of tearing metal bellowed through the ship, followed closely by a concussion that flung them sideways, and the telltale boards went wild. A new alarm began whooping, and Roark recognized the "abandon ship" signal.
He met the slit-pupiled alien eyes and spoke as quietly as conditions permitted. "I don't think you have anything to lose, Svyatog. And as for command-and-control . . . it looks like this ship's fighters are going to be on their own pretty soon."
Their eye contact held for a moment longer, as the control room crew hastily departed after turning their functions over to the computers that could, unaided, continue to fight the ship for a little while. They were almost the only ones left when Svyatog finally spoke briskly. "Come! We must get to the lifeboats." He pointed to the still-functioning schematic, indicating their assigned life craft and the flashing dotted route that led to it.
That route led past the reserve fighters' launch cradles, which blinked their readiness.
They hurried along the passageways, past Lokaron crew members too rushed to spare Roark and Katy more than a passing glance. Presently they were abreast the fighter bays.
"This way," said Svyatog, gesturing them down a side corridor.
They found themselves on a kind of mezzanine, overlooking a row of cradled fighters. Their entry created a double sensation among the personnel crewing the control consolesfirst at the sight of the humans, and second (and more profoundly) at the recognition of Svyatog. There was a quick, hushed colloquy between Svyatog and the individual in charge. Then Svyatog addressed Roark.
"I didn't even bother asking the captain, knowing what his response would be. But the fighter-control officer here is descended from a long line of Hov-Korth retainers. He has accepted my authority in this matter. He will get you secured in a fighter."
"What about you?" asked Katy in a small voicethe first sound she'd made in a while.
"You and I will continue on to the lifeboat."
"What's the use? Where will it go?"
"Remember, one of our picket craft still survives. It will retrieve this ship's survivors."
"After which Krondathu will vaporize it!"
"Perhaps. Or perhaps simply leave it to wander this system until its life-support is exhausted, knowing it can't escape through the transition gate. But what other choice have we? And we won't even have that choice if we don't hurry. Come!"
"No. I'm going with Ben."
"What?!" Svyatog's translator and Roark's voicebox formed the word in unison.
"The fighters have a crew of two, and I assume there must be a reason for it. Ben will need a copilotone with human acceleration tolerance, or the whole thing is pointless. And I'm precisely as qualified as he is: zero equals zero."
"But . . . but . . . " The translator managed a highly creditable stammer.
"Forget it, Svyatog," Roark said resignedly. "Her mind's made up. Believe meI know."
"You humans are mad." The slit-pupiled eyes flicked from one of them to the other and back again, and they held an expression that neither of them had ever seen in Lokaron eyes. "Simply mad," Svyatog repeated. Then he was off, leading the way down a ladder to the level where the fighters waited.
A technician got them situated, as Svyatog's pendant provided translation. The side-by-side acceleration couches were, as usual, not to human proportions; but they were designed ergonomically to adjust to occupants varying through the entire Lokaron range. Likewise the headbands were flexible enough to adjust, more or less, to human crania. There was the usual lack of perceptible sensation when those headbands were activated.
The technician finished his hurried instructions and departed. Svyatog lingered. "As soon as I've left, give a mental signal and the controller will launch you. After that . . . "
The ship shuddered under them. "Get your blue butt out of here, Svyatog!" Roark started to utter some bravado of the "see you later" variety, but thought better of it. Svyatog also seemed to stop himself short of saying something. He turned away and was gone. The cockpit clamshelled shut around them, and they were alone in a world of deceptively simple-looking alien technology.
"Svyatog's right, you know," Roark grumbled. "We're out of our fucking minds." Even as he spoke, he thought a command. The curving canopy that had closed over them became a receiver for outside visual pickups, and seemed to vanish. Their eyes told them they were sitting in an open cockpit, gazing down the launch tunnel at a small circle of star-studded blackness.
At Roark's next thought, they were pressed back into their cushioned seats. The tunnel's walls flashed past in a blur and the fighter shot out into infinity. Astern, Boranthyr was a toy damaged by a petulant child, dwindling into the distance.
Valtu glared at the icon of Boranthyr. That ship had done more damage than it should have. But now it was blinking in the holo tank, indicating a ship clearly abandoned and under computer control.
"Tell the captain to finish it," he grated.
The command was superfluous. Even as he and Wersov watched, the icon flickered and went out. Krondathu's was the sole cruiser-sized icon in a display consisting otherwise of the damaged Harathon picket and the midgelike swarms of fighters.
"Recover our fighters." It was another order that Wersov quietly did not pass on. He was a former military officer, an area of expertise which helped make him valuable to Valtu, and he knew the captain would have found the command's obviousness insulting. At any rate, Krondathu's fighters were already on the way back to their mother ship. There was nothing more for them to do. The English word the translator programs had assigned to them was actually somewhat deceptive; they weren't intended to fight others of their own class. Instead, their targeting systems were designed with large ships in mind. The surviving enemy fighters would be taken care of by the ship's defensive lasers, or else to left to lifesystem failure.
Wersov was about to suggest the latter, but the final squadron Boranthyr had launched continued, irritatingly and irrationally, to press the attack.
"Kill those insects," Valtu ordered.
This time Wersov did transmit the command. But then he paused, studied the display, and made a suggestion. "If you'll note, sir, the last fighter they launched, shortly before Boranthyr's destruction, is behaving a little oddly . . . hesitantly, one might say, as though there's something wrong with its flight controls. I suggest we concentrate on the others, as that one probably presents the least threat."
"Very well," Valtu acceded. This was, after all, Wersov's field. The order was passed, and the fighters began to die.
Valtu turned away from the display, bored. "I'm going to my quarters. Tell the captain there's no hurry after we finish the fighters; we'll let the picket finish hauling in the survivors before obliterating it. Then we'll return to Earth and get on with the main business."
A little display screen to Roark's left showed the position of the fighter and its squadron mates. Only two of those blipstheir own and one otherstill flew.
They were still well behind the other fighter. Partly this was because Roark's mental commands, despite the training he'd received in the Enclave, still had an awkward and tentative quality. But mostly it was intentional.
"Can't we apply some more thrust?" asked Katy, who had watched in horror as the rest of the squadron had perished. So far, they were quite comfortable. "Take some of the heat off that last fighter?"
"No." Roark struggled to hold his mental concentration as he spoke. "Remember what we decided. Our ability to pour on more boost than they think is possible is our only advantage. We've got to hold it in reserve until the decisive moment."
As he spoke, the other blip went out. They were alone in the squadron display.
"I think that moment is here, Ben."
They spared the time to meet each other's eyes. Then Roark settled into his acceleration couch as comfortably as possible. "Okay. Hang on tight."
Using all the mental discipline he'd learned, he commanded the fighter to accelerate to seven Harath-Asor gravities. He remembered to repeat for verification, thus overriding the automatic safety cutouts.
The fighter plunged ahead.
Wersov stared in horror as the holo tank reported impossibility.
"Get Valtu back up here!" he yelled. "And kill that fighter!"
Krondathu's defensive systems tried to obey. Lasers stabbed through empty space where computer analysis told them a Harathon-crewed fighter was supposed to be.
Roark and Katy had agreed on the maximum acceleration under which they could function, based on things they'd read. Now, Roark wasn't so sure. You're not a young hotshot anymore, he gibed at himself as he felt the flesh of his face sag sideways. Actually . . . was I ever a young hotshot?
But, he told himself firmly, five Earth gravities were perfectly acceptable for a fairly extended period, if one was in good health. Miserably uncomfortable as he was, he wouldn't pass out.
He stole a glance at Katy. She seemed to be doing all right. He recalled reading that women held up well under high g-forces. Still . . . If she can do it, I can do it! Idiotic though it was, the thought was useful.
He dragged his eyeballs away to study the two displays that, for now, made up the sum total of his existence: the tactical one that showed their approach to Krondathu; and the schematic of the enemy ship which, while less detailed than the one they'd studied in Boranthyr's now-vaporized control room, showed the crucial points which were the targets for close-in fighter attacks.
"What is this?" bellowed Valtu as he strode, disheveled, up to the holo tank.
"That enemy fighter, sirthe one we decided to leave for last," Wersov explained, his usual equanimity in abeyance. "We're experiencing difficulty stopping it because"
"Well, use all laser armament against it, including the ship-to-ship ones. Yes, I know, it's not what they're designed for. But there's such a thing as a lucky hit." He looked at the display, but lacked the background to interpret everything in it. All he saw was the one fighter icon left, pathetic in its aloneness. "What was I called up here for, Wersov? Does a strike cruiser need my personal supervision to deal with one miserable fighter? One which you suggested we ignore?"
"Our targeting solutions have been thrown off by this fighter's accelerations, sir. Our data indicate that Harathon crews should have lost consciousness, at least."
"Then something is obviously wrong with your computer models! Tell the captain to" Valtu stopped as, belatedly, Wersov's precise wording registered: Harathon crews. And he recalled the two humans who'd stood beside Svyatog in Boranthyr's control room.
"No," he said, too low for Wersov to hear, and stared at that onward-hurtling blip. "It isn't possible."
Krondathu wasn't visible to the naked eye, of course. But when Roark willed the sensors to light amplification, a little gleam of reflected sun shone dead ahead.
He'd told the fighter to attempt a random set of evasive maneuvers, and the variable g-forces were sickening. But, he told himself, it wouldn't last. Soon they'd begin their attack run.
"Katy," he said with difficulty, "at the last ten seconds I'm going to pile on a couple more G's. Do you think you can take it?"
"Sure," she replied with more confidence than she felt. "Question is, will you have enough blood in your brain to do the targeting?"
"I think so. The computer does most of it. I just tell it where I want the stuff delivered. And I've pretty much got that worked out. So"
It was only a glancing, fleeting brush by a laser pulse from Krondathu. But Roark's console exploded in a shower of electric sparks as the fighter lurched to starboard, buffeting them against their enclosing harness. Then a secondary explosion shook the little craft.
Katy shook her head to clear it, then looked at Roark. He wasn't moving, and the flesh of face and right hand she could see were blackened.
She forcibly emptied her mind of all save its neuroelectronic communion with the fighter, letting that fighter become her body and forgetting she had another onea body of vulnerable flesh and pain-transmitting nerves. She ran a diagnostic check: the drive still functioned, as did her controls and most of the weapon systems. It was enough. She commanded more thrust, and the universe began to darken around the periphery of her vision. It was so hard to concentrate. . . .
Yes! Krondathu was a visible spark of reflected sunlight up ahead. It grew with impossible rapidity, hurtling at her.
The computer knew the details, the precise targets Roark had programmed onto the schematic. She had only to think the command at the precise time, a command that boiled down to kill.
A trio of small missiles leaped ahead, their tiny drives destroying themselves to produce a brief acceleration of space-distorting intensity and a velocity that was a significant fraction of light's.
Only then did Katy let an extraneous thought enter her mind: the dying face of Ada Rivera. She sent that thought out with the missiles, on wings of vengeance.
A defensive laser managed to catch one of those missiles, blasting it off course. The deflection shields sent another veering away. But the third impacted at the precise ninety-degree angle at which the shields were useless.
The warhead was small, and vacuum does not transmit shock waves. But this was, in effect, a contact nuclear explosion.
In Katy's fading vision, the oncoming Krondathu vanished in a universe-filling fireball that blew out the visual pickups and left her in darkness before her eyesight could be permanently destroyed.
Then the expanding wave front of gas, dust and occasional chunks of debris reached the fighter, sending it into a mad tumble and flinging its occupants about with a violence that was beyond the crash couches' ability to protect them. Katy's consciousness mercifully fled. Roark's was already gone.
Curving metal segments slid up from the deck and down from the overhead and clamped together, enclosing the two badly damaged humans in escape pods which the dying fighter ejected into space as its final act.
Those pods' homing beacons were still feebly broadcasting, and their lifesystems still barely functioning, when the Harathon picket finally found them. The search would have long since been terminated, save that a certain very high Hov-Korth executive would not permit it.