Faith (25 page)

She was gone, too. Past them, and into Horus system.

There were several distinct kinds of silence. Joser’s was one of inadequacy, Kaang’s of puzzlement, Thahl’s of no comment, Cyr’s of accusation (You said She’d go closeup, Commander. You
said.
) and Smithson’s, of something unspoken but obscene. Put together, they made an ugly shape in the dark air of the Bridge.

Foord laughed, softly and knowingly. At least, that was what he intended. The sound he actually made was high-pitched and uneasy, which surprised him because he felt less uneasy now. He was beginning to understand Her, though only in minor things, and only in penny pieces.

“It’s alright,” he said; then, catching sight of the glances around the Bridge, he went on quickly “I mean it, it’s alright. This part is over, that’s all… Joser.”

“Commander?”

“Would you please confirm something for me? She should have started to slow down by now.”

“Slow down? But She’s just got past us and into the system! She’ll be heading for Sakhra!”

“Your scanners won’t have enough power to put an exact value on it,” Foord continued, as if Joser had said nothing, “but there should be a perceptible slowing.”

More glances around the Bridge.

“We must go after Her,” Smithson said. “I need to start damage repairs now.”

“Commander,” Joser said suddenly, “You were right. It doesn’t make any apparent sense, but She is decelerating.”

“And,” Foord resumed, “She’ll continue to decelerate. I expect Her to switch down from photon to ion drive within the next minute; though there’s no need for a countdown, thank you, Joser.”

He gazed around the Bridge. One by one, they fell silent.

“She isn’t going to Sakhra, not yet. She knows we can’t follow until we’ve made repairs. She knows this will be fought all the way back to Sakhra, so She’ll wait for us. When we’re ready we’ll find Her there, in the Belt, waiting. Now…. Thahl, please cancel battle stations, and go back to secondary alert. Smithson, how long will a full damage repair operation take?”

“Four hours if we hurry, Commander.”

“Take five, and don’t hurry.”

“You realise the MT Drive is permanently down until we make port again?” He hesitated on Until; Foord knew he had been about to say Unless.

“Yes, I realise that.”

“And you’re serious about not hurrying?”

“Yes. Five hours, six hours, She’ll wait.”

“Commander,” Joser said, “She’s just switched down from photon to ion drive. Still decelerating, and heading into the Belt.”

“Good…. Smithson, we owe you.” He left a short pause, so Smithson could play out his usual game.

“You should have seen it earlier, Commander, what She was doing. I can’t always be the first to see things.”

“I did see it, eventually.”

“Eventually.”

“Tell me, do you think that inside Her there was someone like me who asked someone like you to think up something like your Breathtaker? Something unusual, to mark the start of the engagement?”

“You’d better hope not, Commander. Because if there was, Her version worked.”

“It didn’t, because you saw it in time and disabled it. Perhaps it was like ours. Not made to succeed, just to make us wonder.”

“You’re wrong, Commander, and you’re self-indulgent. Ours got snuffed out, and we don’t even know how. Hers started working, and we only just stopped it. Don’t have any illusions about what happened here. It was a near disaster.”

The alarms stopped murmuring. Red telltales disappeared one by one from the consoles, impact harnesses retracted, and the Bridge lighting increased from near-darkness to its more customary twilight. Thahl, Smithson and the others began implementing damage repair operations. Muted conversations between the Bridge and other parts of the ship restarted, like conversations at a restaurant after an altercation.

“Commander,” Smithson said, “how did you know She wouldn’t attack ?”

This time, when Foord laughed, it came out precisely as he intended.

“Because we were defenceless.”

“You gambled that She wouldn’t attack if we
made
ourselves defenceless.”

“Yes. She even glanced at us, to make sure. Did you see?”

“You gambled
the ship
that She wouldn’t…”

“Undefended civilian targets, She doesn’t attack. Undefended warships, who
make
themselves undefended? Yes, I gambled. Work out the odds for yourself. But only for the next five hours or so. Then we go after Her.”

•

Four hours fifty-one minutes later, Thahl announced completion of damage repairs. Foord immediately insisted on a further series of external working parties to check the hull’s integrity, even though the original repairs included external working parties, and even though the hull’s sensors confirmed no breach of integrity. He also requested a further systems overhaul to ensure the MT Drive was irrevocably dead and could never, as Smithson said, be reactivated. These operations took a further eighty minutes before they were completed to Foord’s satisfaction. Almost completely restored, he told himself; except, of course, that one of its nine sentience cores, the one controlling the MT Drive, was dead. Along with the Drive itself.

He spoke to the ship’s Codex, the agregation of its sentience cores, to verify that it understood. It told him it did, that nine were now eight, that one was amputated, and the eight would go on without it.

Status reports were taken, battle stations resumed, and the
Charles Manson
moved off for the Belt at an unhurried thirty percent ion speed. It arrived without incident and found Her waiting—waiting almost politely, just as Foord had expected—and the second phase of the engagement began.

PART SIX

1

T
he weapons core instructed the computers which served it to configure themselves to Attack, SemiManual. A warning harmonic warbled politely through the Bridge. Headup displays and target simulations were superimposed on the Bridge screen.

Cyr sighed; she had been grooming her nails. She rested her right hand palm down on a panel, and pressed. The
Charles Manson
’s particle beams lanced out. Target Destroyed, said the headup display redly; it was referring to AN-4044, a minor asteroid near the outer rim of the Belt, scarcely larger than a small city and only just large enough to merit a classification number. Faith had been using it as cover for the last five minutes, which was all the weapons core had instructions to allow. Now it was vaporised, neatly and hygienically, by the beams; reduced to almost nothing. She was running again, and the Bridge screen simulation depicted Her movements. She was too distant for a visual, and in any case was still shrouded. It did not matter. Shrouding could not hide Her drive emissions, despite Her occasional half-hearted attempts to disguise them.

Kaang now joined in. Her instructions, like Cyr’s, had been pared down by repetition to an unfailing routine. The manoeuvre jets fountained and the ion drive played up and down the register as she made the
Charles Manson
parallel exactly Faith’s ducking and weaving. The
Charles Manson
’s particle beams had superior range, and Kaang kept Her always at an exact distance.

For six hours they had bombarded Her monotonously through the Belt. It seemed like six days. She had not succeeded in hitting back, though the constant use of Her flickerfields would be draining Her more than the constant beam-firings were draining the
Charles Manson
. Her counterattacks had been irregular, and were dwindling.

Cyr fired the beams again. Target Reached, said the screen headup. The weapons core predicted where She would go for cover, ignoring the evasive manoeuvres, and aimed the beams accordingly. As usual, the prediction was correct, and as usual Her flickerfields held; just. She made cover again, a small unclassified asteroid this time, and the weapons core started counting off another five minutes. The headup display dimmed. Kaang brought the ship to rest, still exactly at maximum beam range, and Cyr resumed grooming her nails. It was not a theatrical gesture; there was little else to do. Their tactics had been successful, but grindingly repetitive.

Most asteroid belts were sparse and meagre, but this one was huge, and it teemed. Horus 4 had created it by destroying two, maybe three, giant planets, leaving the Belt crowded with surrealist shapes and quivering with gravity. Its outer rim areas, where they were stalking Her, consisted mainly of smaller and more irregular asteroids, hanging in space at contradictory angles, like rock formations growing out of nothing. Parallax made some of them look so close they were about to collide. Gravity in the Belt was a latticework of forces, near and distant, small and large. The asteroids exerted it on each other, and had it exerted on them by Horus 4 and Horus 5 and the sun Horus. They moved in whole or partial orbits, balancing and counterbalancing each other like one of Foord’s brass clockwork mechanisms.

Smaller asteroids crowded the rim areas of the Belt. Larger asteroids, the largest as big as small planets, crowded the middle. There were so many asteroids that only those about the size of a city, or larger, had classification numbers. Even then, there were hundreds of thousands; and ten times as many unclassified.

Five minutes later the weapons core instructed the computers which served it to configure themselves to Attack, SemiManual. A warning harmonic warbled politely through the Bridge. Headup displays and target simulations were superimposed on the Bridge screen. Cyr fired once (Target Destroyed) and twice more (Target Reached) as She started running and Kaang parallelled Her movements. Cyr was about to resume grooming her nails, but this time there was a slight break in the usual pattern. The warning harmonic sounded again, louder.

“Counterattack coming,” Joser said. “She’s charging down our throats, like She did with the
Cromwell
.”

“That’s the second time in two hours,” Cyr said, with a trace of irritation.

But it was now only a matter of standard procedure. It was dealt with routinely, as on the previous occasion; Foord’s preparations included an array of counters to the Cromwell Manoeuvre. By the time Cyr finished complaining, it was over. The
Charles Manson
’s weapons had refocussed on Her without difficulty as She rushed towards them; Kaang had matched Her course and speed, but in reverse, to maintain beam range; She had slowed, realising the manoeuvre was compromised, and Cyr had beaten Her off with a succession of beam-firings. Her flickerfields held and She retreated deeper into the Belt, to find fresh cover. Kaang moved them slowly forward, maintaining range. The weapons core started counting another five minutes.

“I wonder,” Kaang said, to nobody in particular, “why Her fields aren’t energy absorbent, like those on that missile?”

“The missile was unmanned,” Joser said. “Maybe energy-absorbent fields are harmful to living things.”

“Are you assuming,” Cyr asked, “that there are
living things on that ship?”

“Are
you
assuming,” Smithson asked, “that it’s a ship?”

“I hardly think,” Foord murmured, “we have time for metaphysics.”

“Yes we do, Commander,” Cyr said. “If it goes on like this, we do. I’ll start on my toenails next.”

Almost unnoticed, one of the ship’s other sentience cores updated the navigation files by deleting various numbered asteroids from the Belt. It was a thoughtful and necessary exercise; the
Charles Manson
had already rewritten the map of a substantial part of the Belt’s outer rim, and would probably continue to do so. Proper and accurate records had to be kept.

Five minutes later the weapons core instructed the computers which served it to configure themselves to Attack, SemiManual. A warning harmonic warbled politely through the Bridge. Headup displays and target simulations were superimposed on the Bridge screen. Her cover was AL-4091, a mid-sized asteroid whose destruction took two beam-firings. She broke and ran, again deeper into the Belt, and Cyr reached Her with four shots before She found cover. Kaang took the
Charles Manson
forward sufficiently to maintain beam range.

The second phase of the engagement had now lasted six and a half hours. Foord called a short break for status reports; they were duly made and he duly listened, though they revealed nothing more than the quietly satisfactory situation of which he was already well aware.

“Thank you,” he murmured. “No further orders.”

He nodded to Cyr, and the weapons core started counting another five minutes. Allowing for the taking of status reports, it was eight minutes elapsed time when the core instructed the computers which served it to configure themselves to Attack, SemiManual. The break in the rhythm was noticeable, like a delayed heartbeat, but the iterative cycle easily reimposed its pattern. The warning harmonic warbled politely, and the headup displays and target simulations reappeared on the Bridge screen. Her cover was AK-5004, another mid-sized asteroid whose destruction took two firings. She broke and ran, still going deeper, and Cyr reached Her with five shots before She found fresh cover. Kaang parallelled Her movements, maintained beam range, and brought them to rest again. Another five-minute count began.

“Cyr.”

“Commander?”

“If we were Her, how much more of this could we take before the use of our flickerfields started to drain us?”

“Fifty hours before actual danger, but noticeable impairment after thirty.”

“Smithson, can we assume…”

“If She’s a ship like us, and not something else, Her flickerfields are likely to drain Her at a similar rate. Say impairment after thirty hours. But we’ll bore Her to death in ten.”

And that, thought Foord comfortably, would be just as acceptable. He had entered the second phase strangely unaffected by the near-disaster of the first, yet he entered it with the most ordinary and commonplace of strategies: careful, dogged, monotonous, unvarying attrition. After nearly seven hours the advantage it yielded was still only slight; but it was measurable, like a pile of shopkeeper’s pennies. And it was growing, in penny pieces. There had been no
sudden
realisation that they were the first opponents ever to gain any advantage over Her; like the advantage itself, the realisation came gradually and without drama.