Starplex (24 page)

Name: 'house arrest." Authorizing authority, Lansing, G. K.

Parameters: Individuals under house arrest are denied access to all work areas; PHANTOM will not open doors for them to such. areas. They are also forbidden to use external communication equipment and to give PHANTOM

commands above level-four housekeeping. Understand?"

"Yes. Protocol established."

"Record the following: As of this moment--0752 hours-- and effective until terminated personally by me, Jag Kanclaro em-Pelsh is under house arrest."

"Acknowledged."

Keith's voice was controlled. "Now you may leave the bridge."

Jag folded both sets of arms behind his back again. "I don't believe you have the right to bar me from this room."

"A moment ago, you wanted to leave," said Keith. "Of course, that was back when you had the authority to launch a shuttle, and escape to the armada."

Rhombus had left the External-Ops station and had rolled near to the director's console. Lights played over his sensor web, and the web's strands had turned yellow, the color of rage. "I support Keith," said the cool British voice. "You have undermined everything we have worked for. Leave the bridge voluntarily, Jag, or I will eject you."

"You can't do that. It is against the operating code to assault a fellow sentient."

Rhombus began rolling toward Jag, a living steamroller.

"Just watch me," he said.

Jag stood defiarit a moment longer. Rhombus closed more of the distance between them, his quartz-rimmed wheels glinting in the starlight of the all-encompassing hologram. The Ib's ropelike tentacles were lifted from their usual bundle, darting in the air like angry snakes. Jag finally turned on his heel. The starfield in front of him split open, and he marched out. The door closed.

Keith nodded thanks to Rhombus, then: "Thor, status of the Waldahud ships?"

Thoraid Magnor looked over his shoulder at Keith. "Assuming they've got nothing better than standard police lasers, they will be within effective range in three minutes."

"How long until our own ships are ready for launch?"

Rhombus's lights blinked out a reply as he rolled back to his workstation. "Two are ready to go now; the other three--grant me another four minutes."

"I want to launch all five at once. Everything goes out the door in two hundred and forty seconds." '

"Will do."

"We'll still be outnumbered, eight to five," said Thor.

Keith frowned. "I know that, but it's only our five fastest ships that are set up for dolphin pilots. Rhombus, as soon as our ships are clear of our docking bays, I want full power to our force screens. Cut the engines; divert everything to the screens.

"

"Will do."

"Lianne," said Keith, "I want to put a message for Tau Ceti in another watson. Shoot this one out a mass-driver tube. Send it on a transfer orbit that'll take it to the shortcut under momentum only; I want it to fly all the way there without using power."

"It'll take a watson three days to get to the shortcut that way;" Lianne said.

"I'm aware of that. Calculate the trajectory. How long do I have until our ships launch?"

"Two-point-five minutes," said Rhombus.

Keith nodded, and touched the privacy button that erected four double force-screen walls around his workstation, creating a sound-killing vacuum gap.

"PHANTOM," he said, "search all computer records for research done by Gaf Kandaro em-Weel and his associates, especially for material that's never been translated from

Waldahudar."

"Searching. Found."

"Display titles and abstracts in English."

Keith scanned the screen in front of him. "Download into a watson articles two, nineteen, and--let's see, better add twenty-one, as well. Encrypt everything under the password Kassabian: K-A-S-S-A-B-I-A-N. Record the following, and add it to the watson as an unencrypted message:

"Keith Lansing to Valentina Ilianov, Provost, New Beijing.

Val, we're under attack by Waldahud ships, and I wouldn't be surprised if you're under attack soon, too. I have learned that there is a theoretical way to destroy a shortcut, by flattening spacetime around it, preventing it from anchoring in normal space.

If a Waldahud invasion force seems likely to over- whelm your fleet, perhaps you will want to consider destroying your shortcut exit.

Doing so will, of course, effectively isolate Sol/Epsilon Indi/Tu Ceti from the rest of the galaxy, and give the Walciahudin forces no way to retreat. Think long and hard before you do this, old end. The procedure can be gleaned from the articles appended to this message.

I've encrypted them. The key is the last name of that woman we both fancied on New New York all those years ago. End."

"Done," said PHANTOM.

Keith tapped a key. The privacy force screens vanished.

"Launch the watson, Lianne, he said.

"Doing so."

Keith watched the tiny canister drift away from Starplex.

His heart was pounding. If Val decided to use the technique, there was one other consequence that Keith hadn't spelled out: he and Rissa and the rest of those from Earth aboard Starplex would never see home again.

"Here we go," said Rhombus. "Five. Four. Three. Two.

One. Launching' PDQ. Three. Two. One. Launching Rum Runner.

Three. Two. One. Launching Marc Garneau. Three.

Two. One. Launching Dakterth. Three. Two. One. Launching Long March."

The fusion flares of ten twin engines lit up the holographic sky as the five probeships shot away from Star-plex's central disk. The approaching Waldahud ships were now close enough that they could be seen directly, rather than as colored triangles.

"Force screens to maximum," said Rhombus.

"Open windows in the force screens and send the following via scrambled comm laser direct to each of our ships," said Keith. "No one is to fire unless the Waldahudin shoot at us first. Maybe a show of strength will be enough to get them to back down."

"They already creamed one of our watsons," said Thor.

Keith nodded. "But if shots are going to be taken at sentient beings, the Waldahudin are going to have to start it."

,,incoming message," said Lianne.

"Let's see it."

Gawst's face appeared. "Last chance, Lansing. Surrender "No reply,"

said Keith. He glanced at one of his monitors.

Starplex was still oriented with its lower telescope array facing the green star, and toward the approaching fighters.

"Gawst's ship is coming toward us fast," said Thor. "The other seven are holding position about nine thousand klicks away."

"Steady, everyone," said Keith. "Steady."

"He's firing!" said Thor. "Direct hit on our force screens.

No damage."

"How long can we keep deflecting his lasers?"', asked Keith.

"Four, maybe five more shots," said Lianne.

"the other Waldahud ships are moving in, trying to Surround us," said Thor.

"Do you want our probeships to engage them?" asked Rhombus. Keith said nothing. "Director, do you want our probeships to engage them?"

"I--I didn't think Gawst would really fire," said Keith.

"qThey're taking up equidistant geodesic positions around us," said Thor. "If all eight ships shoot at us simultaneously and at the same wavelength, it will overload our shields.

There will be nowhere to shunt the energy."

Holograms of the dolphin pilots and their gunners were floating above Keith's console. "Let me take out the ship nearest us," said Rissa, flying with Longbottle aboard the Rum Runner.

Keith closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, he had found his resolve. "Do it."

"Shooting for the engine pod," said Rissa.

PHANTOM drew a red line in the holo sphere to represent the invisible output of the geological laser, lancing from the bow of the Rum Runner to the Waldahud craft. The beam sliced along the length of the engine pod, and a plasma tongue shot away from the ship.

"Hey," said Rissa, with a triumphant smile. "Guess all that time playing darts was good for something after all."

"Gawst is firing on Starplex again," said Thor. "And one of the other ships is going after the Rum Runner."

"Get out of there, Longbottle," said Keith. The Rum Runner did an arcing maneuver, exactly like a dolphin doing a backflip. It completed the move with its laser firing in the direction of the incoming ship, which swerved to avoid contact with the beam.

"Gawst's ship has two lasers, one port and one starboard," said Thor.

"He's pounds ring them both at our lower radio telescope--man, he's good. He's letting our antenna's parabolic dish focus his beams onto the instrument cluster."

"Rock $tarplcx," said Keith. "l.os him."

The stars in holographic display danced left and right.

"He's still on us," said Thor. "I bet--yup, he's done it.

Even with full shields, enough of his laser leaked through, and the dish antenna foeused it. He's taken out the deck-seventy sensor array, and--"

Starplex shook. Keith was startled; he had never felt the ship shake before. "The seven remaining Waldahud craft are firing on us in sequence," said Thor.

"Keith to probeships: engage the Waldahudin. Get them to stop their attack on us."

"They'll overload our shields in sixteen seconds," said Lianne.

In the holo display, Keith could see the PDQ and the Long March firing on two of the Waldahud ships. The Waldahudin were trying to keep a single force screen to their attackers while continuing to fire on Starplex, but the probeships were maneuvering wildly, making it hard for the Waldahudin to keep the screen positioned. Glancing blows were making it through.

An alarm started sounding. "Force-screen failure imminent," said PHANTOM's voice.

Suddenly one of the Waldahudin ships exploded silently; the Marc Garneau had wheeled from firing on one ship to firing on the same one that the PDQ had engaged. The target ship had had no force screens deployed along its bow. Keith lowered his head. The first casualties of the battle--and, with hand-aimed lasers, no one would ever know if gunner Helena Smith-Tate had aimed for the habitat, or had simply missed when shooting at the engine pod.

"Two down, six to go," said Thor.

"Force-screen failure," announced Lianne.

The five dolphin-piloted ships began swooping wildly, their weapons firing at' random. The holographic display was crisscrossed with animated laser beams, red for the Commonwealth forces, blue for the attackers.

Suddenly Gawst's vessel began revolving around its bow-stern axis, spinning like a corkscrew. "What the hell's he doing?" asked Keith.

It became apparent as PHANTOM drew in the two beams from Gawst's twin laser canons. With the ship rotating, the beams were forming a cylinder of coherent light--turning twin pinpoint weapons into effectively a wide-beam device.

Gawst was aiming up, toward the underside of Starplex's central disk, beneath one of the ship's four main generators.

"If he does it right," said Thor, impressed despite himself, "he'll be able to carve out the number-two generator, like a geologist taking a core sample."

"Move the ship!" snapped Keith.

The starfield wheeled. "Doing so--but he's got a tractor beam locked on us. We--"

The ship rocked again, and a new alarm started wailing.

Lianne swung around to face Keith. ""There's an internal hull breach on deck forty, where the bottom of the ocean deck joins the central shaft.

Water is pouring down the shaft into the lower decks."

"Christ!" said Keith. "Did the Ibs screw up when they installed the replacement lower habitats?"

Rhombus's web turned yellow with rage again, and the dots on it flared brightly. "Excuse me?" he said sharply.

Keith raised his hands. "It's just that--"

"The work was done perfectly," said Rhombus, "but this ship's designers never thought we would be in a battle."

"Sorry," said Keith. "Lianne, what's the procedure in a situation like this?"

"There is no procedure," said Lianne. "The ocean deck was considered unbreachable."

"Can the water be contained with force fields?" asked Keith.

"Not for long," said Lianne. "The force fields we use in the docking bays have enough strength to hold air at normal pressure against vacuum.

But each cubic meter of water masses a full ton; nothing short of the ship's external forcefield emitters could hold back that much pressure, and even if Gawst hadn't overloaded those, there's no way to aim them inside the ship."

"If you turn off the artificial gravity in the central disk and on all decks below it, at least the water won't flow down," said Thor.

"Good idea," said Keith. "Lianne, do that."

"Security override," said PHANTOM's voice. "Command disallowed."

Keith shot a look at the PHANTOM camera pair on his console. "What the

--?"

"It's because of the Ibs," said Rhombus. "Our circulatory system is based on a gravity feed; we'll die if you turn off the gravity."

"Damn! Lianne, how long to move all Ibs from decks forty-one through seventy to the upper decks?" ' "Thirty-four minutes."

"Begin doing that. And get all dolphins out of the ocean deck--but tell them to stand by with breathing apparatus, in case we have to send them below into the flooded areas."

"If you evacuate starting from deck seventy," said Thor, "you can turn off the gravity there first, and work your way "That won't make any difference," said Lianne. "By the time the water has fallen that far, it'll have enough momentum to continue on downward even if gravity is no longer pulling

"What about electrical shorting?" asked Keith.

"I've already shut off the electrical systems in flooded areas," said Lianne.

"If the ocean deck were to drain completely, how much of the lower decks would it fill?" asked Thor.

"One hundred percent," said Lianne.

"Really?" said Keith. "Christ."

"The ocean deck contains six hundred and eighty-six thousand cubic meters of water," said Lianne, consulting a monitor screen. "Even including all sealed interdeck areas, the entire enclosed volume of the ship below the central disk is only five hundred and sixty-seven thousand cubic meters."