A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows

XIX

The raiders from Dennitza met the guardians of the red sun, and lightning awoke.

Within the command bridge of the Vatre Zvezda, Bodin Miyatovich stared at a display tank. Color-coded motes moved around a stellar globe to show where each vessel of his fleet was—and, as well as scouts and instruments could learn, each of the enemy’s—and what it did and when it died. But their firefly dance, of some use to a lifelong professional, bewildered an unskilled eye; and it was merely a sideshow put on by computers whose real language was numbers. He swore and looked away in search of reality.

The nearest surrounded him in metal, meters, intricate consoles, flashing signal bulbs, dark-uniformed men who stood to their duties, sat as if wired in place, walked back and forth on rubbery-shod feet. Beneath a hum of engines, ventilators, a thousand systems throughout the great hull, their curt exchanges chopped. To stimulate them, it was cool here, with a thunderstorm tang of ozone.

The Gospodar’s gaze traveled on, among the view-screens which studded bulkheads, overhead, deck—again, scarcely more than a means for keeping crew who did not have their ship’s esoteric senses from feeling trapped. Glory brimmed the dark, stars in glittering flocks and Milky Way shoals, faerie-remote glimmer of nebulae and a few sister galaxies. Here in the outer reaches of its system, the target sun was barely the brightest, a coal-glow under Bellatrix. At chance moments a spark would flare and vanish, a nuclear burst close enough to see. But most were too distant; and never another vessel showed, companion or foe. Such was the scale of the battle.

And yet it was not large as space combats went. Springing from hyperdrive to normal state, the Dennitzan force—strong, but hardly an armada—encountered Merseian craft which sought to bar it from accelerating inward. As more and more of the latter drew nigh and matched courses with invaders, action spread across multimillions of kilometers. Hours passed before two or three fighters came so near, at such low relative speeds, that they could hope for a kill; and often their encounter was the briefest spasm, followed by hours more of maneuver. Those gave time to make repairs, care for the wounded, pray for the dead.

“They’ve certainly got protection,” Miyatovich growled. “Who’d have expected this much?”

Scouts had not been able to warn him. The stroke depended altogether on swiftness. Merseian observers in the neighborhood of Zoria had surely detected the fleet’s setting out. Some would have gone to tell their masters, others would have dogged the force, trying to learn where it was bound. (A few of those had been spotted and destroyed, but not likely all.) No matter how carefully plotted its course, and no matter that its destination was a thinly trafficked part of space, during the three-week journey its hyperwake must have been picked up by several travelers who passed within range. So many strange hulls together, driving so hard through Merseian domains, was cause to bring in the Navy.

If Miyatovich was to do anything to Chereion, he must get there, finish his work, and be gone before reinforcements could arrive. Scouts of his, prowling far in advance near a sun whose location seemed to be the Roidhunate’s most tightly gripped secret, would have carried too big a risk of giving away his intent. He must simply rush in full-armed, and hope.

“We can take them, can’t we?” he asked.

Rear Admiral Raich, director of operations, nodded.

“Oh, yes. They’re outnumbered, outgunned. I wonder why they don’t withdraw.”

“Merseians aren’t cowards,” Captain Yulinatz, skipper of the dreadnaught, remarked. “Would you abandon a trust?”

“If my orders included the sensible proviso that I not contest lost cases when it’s possible to scramble clear and fight another day—yes, I would,” Raich said. “Merseians aren’t idiots either.”

“Could they be expecting help?” Miyatovich wondered. He gnawed his mustache and scowled.

“I doubt it,” Raich replied. “We know nothing significant can reach us soon.” He did keep scouts far-flung throughout this stellar vicinity, now that he was in it. “They must have the same information to base the same conclusions on.”

Flandry, who stood among them, his Terran red-white-and-blue gaudy against their indigo or gray, cleared his throat. “Well, then,” he said, “the answer’s obvious. They do have orders to fight to the death. Under no circumstances may they abandon Chereion. If nothing else, they must try to reduce our capability of damaging whatever is on the planet.”

“Bonebrain doctrine,” Raich grunted.

“Not if they’re guarding something vital,” Miyatovich said. “What might it be?”

“We can try for captures,” Yulinatz suggested: reluctantly, because it multiplied the hazard to his men.

Flandry shook his head. “No point in that,” he declared. “Weren’t you listening when he talked en route? Nobody lands on Chereion except by special permission which is damn hard to get—needs approval of both the regional tribune and the planet’s own authorities, and movements are severely restricted. I don’t imagine a single one of the personnel we’re killing and being killed by has come within an astronomical unit of the globe.”

“Yes, yes, I heard,” Yulinatz snapped. “What influence those beings must have.”

“That’s why we’ve come to hit them,” the Gospodar said in his beard.

Yulinatz’s glance went to the tank. A green point blinked: a cruiser was suffering heavily from three enemy craft which paced her. A yellow point went out, and quickly another: two corvettes lost. His tone grew raw. “Will it be worth the price to us?”

“That we can’t tell till afterward.” Miyatovich squared his shoulders. “We could disengage and go home, knowing we’ve thrown a scare into the enemy. But we’d never know what opportunity we did or did not forever miss. We will proceed.”

In the end, a chieftain’s main duty is to say, “On my head be it.”

“Gentlemen.”

Flandry’s word brought their eyes to him. “I anticipated some such quandary,” he stated. “What we need is a quick survey—a forerunner to get a rough idea of what is on Chereion and report back. Then we can decide.”

Raich snorted. “We need veto rights over the laws of statistics too.”

“If the guard is this thick at this distance,” Yulinatz added, “what chance has the best speedster ever built for any navy of getting anywhere near?”

Miyatovich, comprehending, swallowed hard.

“I brought along my personal boat,” Flandry said. “She was not built for a navy.”

“No, Dominic,” Miyatovich protested.

“Yes, Bodin,” Flandry answered.

Vatre Zvezda unleashed a salvo. No foes were close. None could match a Nova-class vessel. She was huge, heavy-armored, intricately compartmented, monster-powered in engines, weapons, shielding fields, less to join battle than to keep battle away from the command posts at her heart. Under present conditions, it was not mad, but it was unreasonable that she fired at opponents more than a million kilometers distant. They would have time to track those missiles, avoid them or blow them up.

The reason was to cover Hooligan’s takeoff.

She slipped from a boat lock, through a lane opened momentarily in the fields, outward like an outsize torpedo. Briefly in her aft-looking viewscreens the dreadnaught bulked, glimmering spheroid abristle with guns, turrets, launch tubes, projectors, sensors, generators, snatchers, hatches, watchdomes, misshapen moon adrift among the stars. Acceleration dwindled her so fast that Yovan Vymezal gasped, as if the interior were not at a steady Dennitzan gravity but the full unbalanced force had crushed the breath from him.

In the pilot’s chair, Flandry took readings, ran off computations, nodded, and leaned back. “We won’t make approach for a good three-quarters of an hour,” he said, “and nothing’s between us and our nominal target. Relax.”

Vymezal—a young cadre lieutenant of marines, Kossara’s cousin and in a sturdy male fashion almost unendurably like her—undid his safety web. He had been invited to the control cabin as a courtesy; come passage near the enemy destroyer they were aimed at, he would be below with his dozen men, giving them what comfort he could in their helplessness, and Chives would be here as copilot. His question came hesitant, not frightened but shy: “Sir, do you really think we can get past? They’ll know pretty soon we’re not a torp, we’re a manned vessel. I should think they won’t be satisfied to take evasive action, they’ll try for a kill.”

“You volunteered, didn’t you? After being warned this is a dangerous mission.”

Vymezal flushed. “Yes, sir. I wouldn’t beg off if I could. I was just wondering. You explained it’s not necessarily a suicide mission.”

The odds are long that it is, my boy.

“You said,” the earnest voice stumbled on, “your oscillators are well enough tuned that you can go on hyper-drive deep into a gravity well—quite near the sun. You planned to make most of our transit that way. Why not start at once? Why first run straight at hostile guns? I’m just wondering, sir, just interested.”

Flandry smiled. “Sure you are,” he replied, “and I’m sorry if you supposed for a minute I suppose otherwise. The reason is simple. We’ve a high kinetic velocity right now with respect to Chereion. You don’t lose energy of relativistic motion merely because for a while you quantum-hop around the light-speed limit. Somewhere along the line, we have to match our vector to the planet’s. That’s better done here, where we have elbow room, than close in, where space may be crammed with defenses. We gain time—time to increase surprise at the far end—by A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows posing as a missile while we adjust our velocity. But a missile should logically have a target. Within the cone of feasible directions, that destroyer seemed like our best bet. Let me emphasize, the operative word is ‘bet.’ ”

Vymezal eased and chuckled. “Thank you, sir. I’m a dice addict. I know when to fade.”

“I’m more a poker player.” Flandry offered a cigarette, which was accepted, and took one for himself. It crossed his mind: how strange he should still be using the box which had snapped shut on his son, and give it no particular thought.

Well, why throw away a tool I’d want duplicated later? I’ve been taught to avoid romantic gestures except when they serve a practical demagogic purpose.

Vymezal peered ahead at the ruby sun. Yes, his profile against the star-clouds of Sagittarius was as much like Kossara’s as young Dominic’s had been like Persis’. What can I write to Persis? Can I? Maybe my gesture is to carry this cigarette case in my pocket for the rest of my days.

“What information have we?” the lieutenant almost whispered.

“Very little, and most we collected personally while we approached,” Flandry said. “Red dwarf star, of course; early type, but still billions of years older than Sol or Zoria, and destined to outlive them. However, not unduly metal-poor,” as Diomedes is where I put her at stake for no more possible win than the damned Empire. “Distribution of higher elements varies a good bit in both space and time. The system appears normal for its kind, whatever ‘normal’ may mean: seven identified planets, Chereion presumably the only vitafer. We can’t predict further; life has no such thing as a norm. I do expect Chereion will be, m-m, interesting.”

And not an inappropriate place to leave my bones. Flandry inhaled acridity and gazed outward. With all the marvels and mysteries yonder, he wasn’t seeking death. In the last few weeks, his wounds had scarred over. But scar tissue is not alive. He no longer minded the idea of death. He wished, though, it had been possible to leave Chives behind, and Kossara’s cousin.

A magnifying screen emblazoned the Merseian destroyer, spearhead on a field of stars.

“Torpedo coming, sir,” Chives stated. “Shall I dispose of it?” His fingers flicked across the gun control board before him. A firebolt sprang hell-colored. Detector-computer systems signaled a hit. The missile ceased accelerating. Either its drive was disabled or this was a programmed trick. In the second case, if Hooligan maintained the same vector, a moment’s thrust would bring it sufficiently close that radiation from the exploding warhead could cripple electronics, leave her helpless and incidentally pass a death sentence on her crew.

“Keep burning till we’re sure,” Flandry ordered. That required a quick change of course. Engines roared, steel sang under stress, constellations whirled. He felt his blood tingle and knew he was still a huntsman.

Flame fountained. A crash went through hull and flesh. The deck heaved. Shouts came faintly from aft.

Gee-fields restabilized. “The missile obviously had a backup detonator,” Chives said. “It functioned at a safe remove from us, and our force screens fended off a substantial piece of debris without harm. Those gatortails are often inept mechanicians, would you not agree, sir?” His own tail switched slim and smug.

“Maybe. Don’t let that make you underestimate the Chereionites.” Flandry studied the readouts before him.

His pulse lifted. They were matched to their goal world. A few minutes at faster-than-light would bring them there, and—

“Stand by,” he called.