Starfishers Volume 3: Stars End (3 page)

“How long till those destroyers are pushing us?” von Staufenberg asked.

“They’re humping it in Norm. Four or five minutes for the closest. Looks like some other stuff starting to move, too.”

“Can’t we do anything?” the D.N.I. demanded.

Von Staufenberg replied, “We could bloody a few noses. It wouldn’t change anything. We couldn’t do that with a hundred Climbers. There’re just too damned many of them. Okay, let’s give the people in the other compartments a look. I want everybody to see it. We’ll have some decision to make on our way home.”

“The Warriors have decided,” said the Star Lord of the Marine Toke Legion.

“He speaks for Toke,” his non-Service superior added. “For Toke there can be but one decision. We will come to them here. Alone if we have to.”

“It’s not that easy for me, Manfred,” Melene said. “We’re an adventurous species but I’m handicapped by democratic traditions and faith in peace. We don’t organize quickly or well.”

Von Staufenberg chuckled. “You did before.”

The Defender was older than he. She had been a soldier throughout the Ulantonid War.

“I expect we will again. We can do anything when we decide to pull together. It’s the decision process that’s so abominably slow.”

“Your decisions were made years ago, Melene,” Beckhart growled from his radar boards. “Don’t try to snow us. I can give you the names and hull numbers of a hundred new construction ships you’ve got tucked away in places you never thought we’d look.”

“Admiral Beckhart?” von Staufenberg queried.

“I have my sources, sir. They’re rearming as fast as their shipbuilding industry can space hulls. They come off the line looking like commercial ships, only they’ve got drive potential up the yang-yang, and they never get delivered to any of the transport outfits. They disappear for a while, then turn up somewhere else with guns dripping off them.”

“Why wasn’t High Command informed of this, Beckhart?”

“Because my sources are in the Defender’s office. And I knew why they were rearming. You wouldn’t have bought it. Half of High Command is still trying to refight the Ulantonid War. I let it go on playing that game because people were seeing enough of those new ships to get nervous and start us a secret building program of our own. So we’re on our way too.”

“Beckhart . . . Your logic baffles me. Totally baffles me. I have the distinct feeling that you’ll have to explain it to a Board of Inquiry. What else have you hidden from us?”

“You want an honest answer, or one that will please you?” Beckhart did not make many friends. He retained his position principally because no one else could do his job as well.

“Beckhart!”

“Several things, sir. Ongoing operations. If they work out, we’ll be in good shape for meeting these monsters.”

“Monsters?” Melene demanded. “There’s no evidence . . . ”

“Melene, the Admiral is a xenophobe. In fact, he doesn’t like people very much. Tell me what you’re doing, Beckhart.”

“There’s a chance I’m on the threshold to the solution of the Sangaree problem. Some new data was on its way in before we left. I’ll probably want to borrow von Drachau again.”

“What else?”

“Still too tentative for discussion. A possible breakthrough in communications and weapons technologies. I won’t discuss it now. Not here.”

“Beckhart . . . ”

“Security privilege. Sir. Log it if you like.”

Von Staufenberg wheeled on the Director of Naval Intelligence. She shrugged. “You won’t get anything from me, either, Manfred.”

“Damn! All right, let’s get moving. Time’s running out, and everybody’s got to have a look at this.”

Cumbers were the most cramped vessels since Gemini. Circulating the forty-odd beings aboard was a slow, uncomfortable process.

“She’s about to start shooting,” Beckhart said of the nearest destroyer. “She has. Missile swarm. We have four minutes to hide.”

“How do you like that? Didn’t even try to find out who we were or what we wanted.”

“This is the Ship’s Commander,” von Staufenberg said into the public address system. “We’re under fire. Engineering, stand by to go Null.” Thirty seconds before the swarm arrived, he ordered, “Take her up to ten Bev. First Watch Officer, a gesture is in order. Program me an attack approach on the vessel shooting at us.”

The Ulantonid’s feathery antennae stirred, quivered. The action was comparable to a human’s pleased chuckle.

The Star Lords were in Weapons Department already, hoping they would be allowed to play with their deadly toys.

“One missile,” said von Staufenberg. “Right up her wake.”

It was the classic Climber attack strategy. Drives were a warship’s soft spot. They simply could not be designed so that thrust apertures could be shielded as well as the remainder of the vessel.

The dust in the crater flowed together suddenly, smashing in like the Red Sea on Pharaoh’s chariots. The doughnut ship had vanished.

“Take her all the way to forty Bev,” von Staufenberg ordered. “I doubt they know enough to look for our Hawking Point, but let’s get that cross-section down anyway.” One of the curiosities about the Climber was that no other race known to humanity had ever developed it. And for humans it had been an accidental by-product of other research.

Twenty-three minutes passed before the First Watch Officer reported, “Attack position, Commander.”

“Weapons, Ship’s Commander. One missile. Stand by. Detection, when we go down I want you to get the ranges and vectors on everything you can see. We’ll do what we can. And I want the tape rolling. Ship’s Services, vent heat while we’re Norm. All right. Everybody ready? Take her down, Engineering.”

Heat accumulation was the biggest weakness of the Climber. There was no way to shed heat in Null. And a Climber often had to stay up for days while enemy warships hunted her.

The Climber was no warship in the slug-it-out sense. She was a hit-and-run fighter dependent on surprise for her effectiveness.

The Defender Prime brought them down just four kilometers behind the destroyer. The Climber rocked. The missile accelerated at 100 g. It arrived before the destroyer knew it was coming.

“One for the good guys,” Beckhart grumped as the Climber went up again.

“What was that?” von Staufenberg demanded.

“Admiral, you’re giving them valuable information just by blowing them out of space. You’re telling them we can do it. You’ll get them wondering how. Head home before we give them any hard data. Let’s save the surprises for when they’ll do some good.”

Von Staufenberg reddened. There was no love lost between him and Beckhart.

“He’s right, Manfred,” the Defender Prime interjected. “You almost wasted the Climber advantage by committing them piecemeal during the war. They would have more effective if whole fleets had appeared suddenly. We would not have had time to adapt.”

“Of course. Of course. I was thinking with my guts. Program a course for the mother, Melene.”

Climbers did not have a long range. A mother ship awaited this one a hundred light-years homeward. A small armada protected her.

This Climber’s crew regarded themselves highly.

Three: 3049 AD
The Main Sequence

BenRabi slammed his scooter through the entrance to Control Sector. Seconds later the massive shield doors rumbled shut behind him. The section was totally self-contained now. No one could come in or leave till those doors lifted.

Moyshe stopped in a long, squealing slide. He jumped off, slammed the charger plug into a socket, ran through the hatch to Contact.

“You made it,” Clara said. “We didn’t think you would. You live so far away. Here. Catch your breath.”

“My scooter was smoking. Better have it checked, Hans.” He settled onto a fitted couch.

“Ready?” Clara asked.

“No.”

She smiled at him. Hans started massaging an odorless paste into his scalp. Clara slipped her fingers inside what looked like a hairnet.

“You never are. I thought you liked Chub.”

BenRabi chuckled. “Chub, I like fine. He’s good people. But I’d like him a lot better if he could walk in the door, stick out a hand, and say, ‘Hey, Moyshe, let’s go grab a couple of beers.’ ”

Chub was the starfish with whom benRabi usually linked.

“Xenophobe.”

“Crap. It’s not him. It’s that out-of-body feeling . . . ”

“Wrong, Moyshe. You can’t fool old Clara. I was babying mindtechs before you were born. And you’re all alike. You don’t want to go out because it hurts so much to come back.”

“Yeah?”

“Ready,” Hans said.

Clara slid the net onto Moyshe’s head. Her fingertips were soft and warm. They lingered on his cheeks. Momentary concern clouded her smile.

“Don’t push yourself, Moyshe. Get out if it gets rough. You haven’t had enough rest.”

“Since Stars’ End there isn’t any rest. For anybody.”

“We won,” Hans reminded.

“The cost was too high.”

“It was cheaper than losing.”

BenRabi shrugged. “I guess you people see things different. I never would have gone in the first place.”

“You took your whippings and smiled, back in Confederation?” Hans asked. “I never heard of that.”

“No. We calculated the odds. We picked the right time. Then we ganged up. We didn’t just go storming around like a rogue elephant, getting hurt as much as we did hurt.”

“Oriflamme,” Hans countered.

“What?”

“That’s what they call Payne sometimes. It’s something from olden times that has to do with not taking prisoners.”

“Oh. The oriflamme. It was a special pennon that belonged to the King of France. If he raised it, it meant take no prisoners. It had a way of backfiring on him.”

“Hans,” Clara said, “Moyshe is an Academy man. He can probably tell you how many spokes in the wheel of a Roman war chariot.”

“Take Poitiers, for instance . . . ”

“Who?”

“It’s a place. In France, which is on Old Earth . . . ”

“I know where France is, Moyshe.”

“All right. One of the big battles of the Hundred Years War was fought there. And you could say that the French lost because of the oriflamme. See, they caught the English in a bad spot. Outnumbered them like ten to one. The Black Prince decided to surrender. But the French raised the oriflamme. Which pissed the English, so they proceeded to kick ass all over the countryside. When the dust settled, the French were wiped out and Louis was in chains. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, if you want to look. Namely, don’t ever push anybody into a corner where he can’t get out.”

“You see what he’s doing, Hans?” Clara asked.

“You mean trying to educate us until the all-clear comes through? You’re out of luck, Moyshe. Lift your head so I can put your helmet on.”

BenRabi raised his head.

His scalp began tingling under the hairnet device. The helmet devoured his head, stealing the light. He fought the panic that always hit before he went under.

Hans strapped him in and adjusted the bio-monitor’s pickups.

“Can you hear me, Moyshe?” Clara asked through the helmet’s earphones.

He raised a hand. Then spoke: “Coming through clear.”

“Got you too. Your boards look good. Blood pressure is up, but that’s normal for you. Take a minute in TSD. Relax. Go when you want.”

His, “I don’t want,” remained unspoken.

He depressed the switch beneath his right hand one click.

The only senses left him were internal. Total Sensory Deprivation left him only his aches and pains, the taste in his mouth, and the rush of blood. Once the field took hold, even those would go.

In small doses it
was
relaxing. But too much could drive a man insane.

He flicked his right hand again.

A universe took form around him. He was its center, its lord, its creator . . . There was no pain in that universe, nor much unhappiness. Too many wonders burned there, within the bounds of his mind.

It was a universe of colors both pastel and crisp. Every star was a blazing jewel, proclaiming its individual hue. The oncoming storm of the nova’s solar wind was a rioting, psychedelic cloud that seemed to have as much substance as an Old Earth thunderhead. Opposite it, the pale pink glimmer of a hydrogen stream meandered off toward the heart of the galaxy. The surrounding harvest-ships were patches of iridescent gold.

A score of golden Chinese dragons drifted with the fleet, straining toward it, yet held away by the light pressure of the dying star. Starfish!

BenRabi’s sourness gave way to elation. There would be contact this time.

He reached toward them with his thoughts. “Chub? Are you out there, my friend?” For a time there was nothing.

Then a warm glow enveloped him like some sudden outbreak of good cheer.

“Moyshe man-friend, hello. I see you. Coming out of the light, hello. One ship is gone.”

“
Jariel.
They’re still evacuating.”

“Sad.”

Chub did not seem sad. This fish, benRabi thought, is constitutionally incapable of anything but joy.

“Not so, Moyshe man-friend. I mourn with the herd the sorrows of Stars’ End. Yet I must laugh with my man-friends over the joys of what was won.”

“The ships-that-kill weren’t all destroyed, Chub. The Sangaree carry their grudges forever.”

“Ha! They are a tear in the eye of eternity. They will die. Their sun will die. And still there will be starfish to swim the rivers of the night.”

“You’ve been puttering around in the back rooms of my mind again. You’re stealing my images and shooting them back at me.”

“You have an intriguing mind, Moyshe man-friend. A clouded, boxy mind, cobwebby, atticy, full of trap doors . . . ”

“What would you know about trap doors?”

“Only what I relive through your memories, Moyshe man-friend.”

Chub teased and giggled like an adolescent lover.

By starfish reckoning he
was
a child. He-had not yet seen his millionth year.

BenRabi simply avoided thinking about starfish time spans. A life measured in millions of years was utterly beyond his ken. He only mourned the fact that those incredible spans could never touch upon worlds where beings of a biochemical nature lived. The stories they could have told! The historical mysteries they could have illuminated!