THE DUTY OFFICER ABOARD THE SPF COMMAND SHIP was irritated at
having been hailed by the communications CQ, and decided that it
had better be really important or somebody was going to get the
chewing-out of her life.
“What is it?” he growled, still asleep.
“Freighter coming in, sir.”
The officer frowned. “We aren’t due for a supply
ship.” He was suddenly very suspicious. “ID checks
out?”
“Yes, sir. Special shipment from Master System itself.
Large-scale transmuters and heavy processing equipment along with a
fair amount of murylium ore. I guess the rumors about us being
ordered to abolish the Center form of supervision are
true.”
The duty officer nodded, having heard those rumors himself. He
knew for a fact that it had been done elsewhere and was being
contemplated as a system-wide policy, but he’d also heard
that those plans had been put on hold pending resolution of the
current crisis. Still, it made sense here. The prey below had done
an impossible amount of damage but had now slipped completely from
sight and could be anywhere in the billion-plus population by now.
It seemed a bit drastic to destroy an entire civilization just to
nab a few rebels, no matter how brilliant or dangerous they might
have been. Orders, however, were orders.
“Did you scan the ship?” he asked. The pirates were
known to have an operating freighter and they all looked alike. He
wanted to take no chances, even though he had the firepower to
blast something as lumbering as a freighter to atoms before it
could get close enough to do any damage.
“Yes, sir. Murylium count abnormally high, as would be
expected, and a great deal of inert cargo. No life forms
aboard.”
He sighed. “What are the instructions?”
“Dock with us and offload using service robots through
both cargo bays. It’s all containerized, so it
shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. It is diverted
from a deadhead run back to its normal pickup point and has
instructions to offload and be away as quickly as possible in order
to keep to its normal schedule.”
“Very well. Call it in to the colonel’s office below
and if they have no objection, give the ship immediate clearance to
dock and dispatch our service robots to the offloading
bays.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The colonel himself was not contacted, of course, but the SPF
chief of security drew the same sad conclusions as the duty officer
and saw no objections. The freighter was signaled in and ordered to
proceed. It approached to within forty kilometers of the orbiting
command ship and then slowly eased its way closer, a maneuver that
took about seventy minutes.
The command ship itself, like the freighters, was never designed
for planetfall; the freighters were loaded by transmuter
transmission and, for some specialized times, by barges and tugs
from the surface of whichever planet it happened to be orbiting.
Because of this, the command ship was designed to be supplied by
just such ships, and maneuvers like this were routine, with the
pilots of both ships using centuries-old automatic procedures. The
timing involved in the docking and equalization of pressure was
precise. With that equalization, the two large ships were locked
together as firmly as if they were welded, although if necessary
they could be separated almost instantly.
The service robots waited for the cargo-bay doors to open, then
moved forward toward the now-gaping holds of the freighter.
In the vacuum of space, the enormous explosion, and the
subsequent explosions that followed took place in deathly silence,
but were spectacular to look at. Pirate One had been
packed with all the explosives Star Eagle’s transmuters could
crank out and Thunder’s robots could pack solidly
in. With the pressurization and open holds, the tremendous force of
the explosions was directed primarily into the command ship,
ripping into its very heart. Yet Star Eagle had taken no chances;
the first explosions were merely a trigger for a murylium fusion
bomb of a size never before seen; in less than three seconds both
ships had been almost totally converted to energy in an explosion
so intense that, from below, it lit up the sky and could be seen
easily with the naked eye even in daylight.
The fighters, stationed in other orbits, immediately came to
life and searched for their mother ship, but found nothing. They
were not allowed time to be confused, however; their response
switched immediately to automatic and they powered up and headed
out toward the punch-points their sensors were even now
detecting.
Raven and Warlock punched in in Lightning, followed
almost immediately by Kaotan, Indrus, Chunhoifan, and
San Cristobal in a rough V formation.
They had practiced acting as a unit, but they were still
basically a collection of individual ships rather than a tightly
coordinated group. The captains were experienced pilots, but none
had really captained a ship going into a head-to-head battle. They
were linked by an interconnection that gave them almost
speed-of-thought broadcast capability at short range.
“Mother of God!” swore Maria Santiago of San
Cristobal. “Will you look at that! My readings are off
the scale!”
“Yeah, we certainly plastered that bastard,” Raven
agreed, “but let’s not get cocky now. We still have a
bunch of bad guys around and who knows what in the
shadows.”
“Watch it!” came the steely voice of Captain Chun.
“Both fighters just did short punches. I—”
There was hardly time to calculate the punch before the fighters
emerged just behind the group and fired a series of rapid bursts
from their aft systems, then looped in opposite spirals and came
back at the pirate fleet firing. “I’m hit!”
called Dura Panoshaka, temporarily captaining Kaotan.
“Nothing serious but the bastards are coming back in at
me!”
The V broke apart as each ship went in a different direction in
broad loops. Raven brought Lightning up and around as
Warlock was targeting the lead fighter. She allowed the automatics
to begin beam fire and concentrated on trajectories for the
torpedoes. “Kaotan! Cristobal! Key on the lead
fighter with all you’ve got!” she instructed.
“All others key on trailing fighter with
torpedoes.”
At that moment the lead fighter launched its own torpedoes, more
than a dozen in a spread pattern, each obviously instructed to key
in on the easiest single target. Chunhoifan and
Lightning opened up on them with concentrated beam fire,
but two slipped through, curled around, and went for the stern of
Indrus. Paschittawal shifted all shielding power to the
stem and broke away in a high arc. Both torpedoes exploded on or
near the tail, and the ship shuddered but still seemed to be
operable.
“Kaotan! Cristobal! Keep keying in on the lead
fighter!” Warlock instructed, sounding very calm and very
much in control. “Kaotan, take a spread of six at
the stern, Cristobal amidships! Now!”
The fighter noted three spreads coming from three different
directions, and shifted most of its shielding to its stern, which
was always the most vulnerable area of a ship, but it was also
forced to shoot from its bow and side guns at the onrushing
torpedoes. No shield operating at anything less than maximum
strength could withstand direct hits by that many torpedoes, but a
ship’s weapons system couldn’t fire outward if the
shield was on full. The fighter was doing a good job of picking off
the incoming missiles, but it missed seven out of eighteen in the
three groups, each of which was now headed for a different area of
the ship. Kaotan’s stern shots were going to hit first, so
it shifted more power to its rear shield, but at the same time,
three of Cristobal’s shots struck weakened shields
amidships and the fighter shook and trembled.
Lightning’s two surviving torpedoes landed on the
undefended bow, and the whole forward quarter of the fighter became
a mass of twisted metal. With no bow, the fighter was defenseless
as long as the enemy kept coming dead on, and though it tried to
take evasive action, Kaotan poured six torpedoes straight
into the guts of the ship from the bow angle. The fighter shook and
then disappeared from the pirate’s sensors.
The second fighter was bearing down on the shaken
Indrus, and Chunhoifan was in turn bearing down
on the fighter.
“All ships key in on the other fighter!” Warlock
ordered. “Concentrated fire. Pour it in! Pour it
in!”
“There’s something else coming in at high
speed,” Captain Chun warned. “I can’t make it
out.”
“Worry about it later!”
There was a limit to a shield’s abilities, since shielding
had never really been designed for combat situations but to protect
a ship from space debris. In this case, superior numbers meant
inevitable victory. A vast amount of fire-power raked all parts of
the remaining fighter until it exploded.
“Damage reports!” Warlock called.
“Just some bruises for us, but we have limited mobility at
the moment. Right now we’re seeing what we can do to make
repairs,” Paschittawal reported. Damage to the other ships
was even more minor.
“Unknown closing in,” Chun reported. “I cannot
make it out, and I don’t like it.”
“Chunhoifan and we will intercept,” Warlock
responded. “San Cristobal, you stay with Indrus.
Kaotan, you are to go for Pickup Three as soon as we engage.
Thunder command, stand by to commit reserves. I
don’t know what this is coming in, but it’s definitely
the surprise they had planned.”
The mysterious object continued to close and the two ships went
to meet it. Its configuration indicated a multi-drive vessel that
should have made it large, but it was compact—too large for a
Val ship or fighter and too small for anything else. As they closed
on it, the shape changed; the new enemy actually split apart and
was instantly recognizable.
“Holy shit!” Raven exclaimed. “It’s
two Val ships in tandem!”
One of the Vals continued straight on, while the other peeled
off and headed for San Cristobal and the crippled
Indrus. These were no mere fighters; there was
intelligence behind these two ships as well as great weaponry. The
effect was clear from the start; the Val ship closing on
Lightning and Chunhoifan suddenly executed a
series of maneuvers that would have killed any humans aboard,
firing off salvos and launching a spiral pattern of torpedoes at
the same time with deadly accuracy. The automatics aboard
Lightning and Chunhoifan were simply not prepared
for things like this, and both ships were slower than the
Val’s, Chunhoifan markedly so. Both human-controlled
ships were forced to take direct control of their weapons
systems—but humans thought far slower than Vals even if their
orders could be carried out instantly. At one against two, the Val
actually had a slight advantage.
“Commit reserves! Repeat, commit reserves! Key your punch
location on Indrus! We will—holy shit!”
The Val had suddenly changed position, almost instantaneously.
By the time they realized that the enemy was using punches mere
milliseconds in duration, the Val had gotten beneath them and was
coming straight up between the two ships, firing heavily, counting
on them to hold fire for fear of hitting each other with their
rounds. The distance between the ships was enormous, but not for
the weapons involved.
Warlock targeted everything she could bring to bear on a point
just a hair above Chunhoifan’s elevation and let it
fly as the Val was just coming up between them. Both
Lightning and Chunhoifan shook and shuddered, and
behind Raven and Warlock there was a groaning sound.
“Oh, boy! I heard that one before,” he said
grumpily. “We’re still intact, but I don’t know
what’s holding us together.”
The Val had, however, taken a risk itself. Its speed allowed no
way to avoid the salvos fired by Warlock and Chun. The Val had
concentrated all its fire on the two ships as it spiraled upward,
and was unable to pick off the torpedoes, six of which locked on
and struck home. Lightning was hurt, but the Val was hurt
worse.
“I’m stopped in place,” Captain Chun reported.
“All system and drive power lost. Three dead, with a gaping
hole just forward of my stern tubes.”
“I’ve got about half power, and I’m steering a
bit wobbly, but I’m serviceable,” Raven responded.
“We’ll stick with you and give you what firepower we
can, Chunhoifan. By the time I got back up to the
Indrus it’d be over anyway. Where’s that
damned Val?”
“Forty-two degrees off the orbital plane and about twenty
thousand kilometers out,” Chun replied. “Looks like
he’s dead in space, too. That’s something. If
he’d made it out with even minimal drive power, we’d be
finished.”
“Yeah, I got him now. Maybe playing possum, maybe not.
I’m going after him. Stand by your guns.”
The second Val ship was having great success, as well. It had
entirely ignored Indrus and concentrated on San
Cristobal, scoring some solid hits while remaining untouched
itself. Santiago maneuvered as close to Indrus as she
dared to combine their firepower, but she was definitely still in
trouble.
When Bahakatan and Espiritu Luzon punched in,
the Val was caught by surprise, not expecting this group to have
the numbers to afford reserves. It abandoned SanCristobal and Indrus, both crippled but with
weapon systems still functional, and headed straight for the two
newcomers. Neither of the crippled ships were going anywhere it
couldn’t follow, but it wanted to take on the new threat
before it became trapped between the two.
It attempted an in-between spiral maneuver, similar to the one
that its companion had used on Lightning and
Chunhoifan, but with an added twist. It released its salvo
just beneath the two ships, executed a preplanned mini-punch, and
came out just above and let loose a second bombardment. The trick
completely fooled Espiritu Luzon, but Captain ben Suda of
Bahakatan hadn’t waited and launched at the high
position while the Val ship was still spiraling upward. All three
ships took damaging hits, although none of them was completely
knocked out.
The Val assessed the results and determined that it had lost its
punch ability and some of its speed and maneuverability, but it was
in better shape than any of its four victims. Its main problem,
though, was that it was running low on torpedoes and none of the
four enemy ships had lost shielding.
Below, Vulture could hear the whine of flyers coming in, and one
was already landing within sight. Ikira and the Chows were already
up, and Sabir was about to step into the fighter as small-arms fire
erupted all around. “Go on! Move! I’ll hold them if I
can or get out another way!” He took up a position behind
some crumbling bricks and opened fire.
Raven closed on the crippled Val, which still had its shields up
and clearly had weapons control. He could only guess that the enemy
ship really was hurt—otherwise why not come back and just
finish them?—and that the Val within was trying desperately
to jury-rig repairs. That was exactly what he had to try to stop.
Warlock launched a six-torpedo salvo and had the same returned
to her. Each ship easily destroyed the other’s missiles with
beam weapons. “No good.” She sighed. “We are too
evenly matched.”
“Keep giving it all you’ve got,” Raven
growled. “It’ll keep the thing from making repairs and
at least buy time. Maybe we’ll run it out of torpedoes before
we’re empty.”
“It thought of that, too. It’s just picked off the
second salvo but fired none back. Why should it?”
“Good point. Lay off, then, and we’ll try a standoff
for a while. If that thing looks like it’s gonna get back to
full steam, I’ll ram the bastard before I’ll let it
go.”
The second Val, although crippled, was in better shape than its
mate, but it was worried. It knew that there was one ship missing,
and long-range sensors showed it in orbit around Janipur. No matter
how satisfying blowing up enemy ships might be, a successful
defense was not measured in casualties inflicted but in denying the
enemy its objective. The Val understood that principle well, and
turned and made its best speed toward Janipur.
“It’s going after Kaotan!” Maria
Santiago reported. “Can anyone pursue?”
“We can’t afford another hit,” responded Midi,
Savaphoong’s chief pilot on the Espiritu Luzon.
“Best we cover you.”
“I will give chase,” came ben Suda’s voice.
“This one has made me very angry.” His ship
didn’t appear to be in much better shape than the others, but
he sounded as if he could track the Val by sheer willpower.
Aboard Kaotan, Ikira Sukotae was back in her element
and very glad to be there.
“Break off!” Dura Panoshka said urgently.
“There’s a Val bearing down on us and it’ll be in
range in under four minutes. We’re sitting ducks here in
geostationary orbit!”
“No,” the tiny captain responded. “Shields
full along the flanks and watch out that he doesn’t go under
and come up on the planet side. Bring the throttle up full but do
not release. I’m gonna give Vulture those four
minutes.”
Well away from the action, Raven was getting worried.
“I’m registering energy flares on the Val ship. I think
he’s going to be operational again in just a couple of
minutes, and there’s nothing we can do about it.” He
opened a common carrier channel. “This is Lightning
to damaged Val ship. Cease repairs and maintain standoff or I will
be forced to ram.”
“You wish to commit suicide?” came a response in a
low, pleasant baritone.
“I do not, but if I let you get going again, I’m
dead meat anyway. Might as well take you with me.”
The Val was disconcerted and sensed that reasonable argument
wouldn’t meet with much success. It stopped testing its
repaired lines, but it knew it could not accept such a standoff. A
stalemate was as good as a defeat since the remaining ships would
still be there, and with only one operable Val left in service
there would be little chance of victory. It knew from its companion
that the other ships were all damaged to some degree, but that made
little difference. While the companion was chasing after
Kaotan, the other four renegades would have time to make
repairs of their own. There was little choice.
The instant the Val ship moved, Raven took a deep mental breath
and pushed the throttle. Gaining speed with every second, he
followed a course straight for the Val, while Warlock began firing
with every available weapon, forcing their opponent to abandon its
defense and get to full throttle.
The Val ship flared into brilliance, then winked out.
It took a second for Warlock to react, and then she was
initially puzzled. “Did it get away or did we get
it?”
“Whew!” Raven sighed. “I thought I
was going to the land of my ancestors there. It blew up. I have
lots of scattered debris in the scan, almost all small. One down,
one to go. Kaotan, you get the hell out of
there!”
The transmuter receiver installed on Kaotan hummed, and
Vulture more fell than stepped off the plate. He was a bloody mess,
and it looked as if he’d taken numerous shots to the body,
but he was alive. Sabir and the Chows crowded around him and Takya
Mudabur knelt beside him. “No one could survive such
wounds,” she said sorrowfully.
Ikira Sukotae didn’t wait for a medical report. She
released the engines and moved at flank speed out of orbit at an
angle that took the ship away from the Val. Reacting instantly, the
Val changed course to pursue and let loose a pattern of fire that
did not quite reach Kaotan. It was clear that even damaged
the Val had an edge in speed and maneuverability over the old
freebooter freighter. And Sukotae could not depend on
Bahakatan for help; it simply couldn’t catch up. Kaotan, however, was undamaged, and Sukotae was not
about to take on the Val alone. She had the ring aboard and the
rest of the people from Janipur; her first duty was to safeguard
them. She didn’t have speed for a really big punch, but it
wouldn’t matter, clearly the Val had lost its punch power and
could not follow. Kaotan punched just as the Val closed to
within range.
The Val wasted no time on lost opportunities. If it could not
stop the getaway, then the least it could do was cost the enemy as
much as possible. It turned and headed back at full throttle toward
Indrus and San Cristobal.
“It’s coming back in!” Santiago reported.
“E.T.A. five minutes twenty-five seconds. Indrus
cannot move and my shielding is completely gone. Can you move in,
Espiritu Luzon?”
“Negative! This thing handles worse than a freighter at
the best of times and I have damage. I will try to get in some good
shots if I can, but all it has to do is skim to within your range
opposite my position and I won’t be able to stop it. The best
I can do is position myself so we’ll know where its best
shooting position is. That will allow you to concentrate your fire
on its salvos.”
“Bahakatan here. I can’t get back in time,
but I noticed in its pursuit of Kaotan that it used no
beam weapons at all. I believe the Val has been forced to divert
all energy to its engines in order to maintain speed,
maneuverability, and shielding. If someone could get in behind it,
it might be vulnerable.”
“Here we go!” Santiago called. “Angle is right
where we figured. No vector to the ship, but we might be able to
hit most or all of the torpedoes. We’ll see.”
The Val came in on an arc that placed it within range for only
three seconds, not enough to be worth firing at, but it loosed its
full complement of twelve torpedoes in a zigzag spread pattern at
the two crippled ships. Three got through the withering fire; two
of those hit Indrus but failed to penetrate the shields.
The third, however, came straight into San
Cristobal’s midsection, nearly tearing the ship in half
and knocking out all power.
The Val looped and came back for a second run, its tubes
reloaded. The last pattern, so perfect yet so erratic, indicated
that the Val was leaving the ship on preprogrammed automatic pilot
and guiding in the torpedoes itself. It let loose the whole series
aimed at Indrus, following the same pattern as before.
With Espiritu Luzon laying off and San Cristobal
as good as destroyed, there was little chance for Indrus
to pick off more than half the incoming missiles.
The Val, unlike humans, could consciously perform many functions
at the same time, but guiding twelve missiles under fire was
stretching itself to its limit. It noticed the sensor call of
another punch, but so many of the torpedoes were getting through,
it didn’t dare stop and look. Indrus’ guns had done a good job, but four
missiles got through, all converging on a single spot near the tail
section where the engines were. The ship reeled and began spinning;
its entire aft section in one direction, the rest of it in another.
Noting this, the Val turned to take on its new attacker, and
immediately fired its entire forward battery. It was to no
avail. Thunder’s huge ram scoops were open wide like the
jaws of a mighty beast, and before the Val could react, its entire
ship was engulfed in the ram and processed by the great converters
into energy. No other ship in service could have accomplished that
feat; Thunder was so enormous that it ate asteroids larger
than the Val ship just to feed its mighty engines.
“Everyone remain where you are,” Star Eagle called.
“I will come to you. The most badly damaged to the cargo
bays, the ones with any real power to the outside docks.
Espiritu Luzon and Bahakatan approach and look
for survivors. I will go and collect Lightning and
Chunhoifan first, then return here. I want the wreckage,
too—and any bodies that might be found. The battle is
over.”
Raven sighed. “Yeah, and, just think. This was supposed to
be the easy one.”
The losses were large, but in many ways not as bad as they had
feared. Maria Santiago and the two centauroids survived in their
pressure suits, although the ship and the other three members of
the crew were lost. Raven in particular regretted the loss of the
one he thought of as the rock monster; it never was very sociable
or communicative but it played a mean game of cards.
On the Indrus only Lalla Paschittawal and Suni
Banderesh, wife of Ravi’s weapons officer, survived,
ironically because both had been in the tail section trying to
repair the engines. Although they had been banged around and had a
few broken bones, the fact that they had been there, tethered, and
in spacesuits saved them. Ravi Paschittawal never wore one unless
he had to, and his weapons officer generally followed this lead.
Santiago, on the other hand, had put everyone in suits from the
start just in case. It hadn’t saved everyone, but it saved
her.
So the cost had been five lives from their small company and two
ships. “At this rate we will be unable to muster any strength
for the fourth ring and we haven’t even gotten the second
yet,” Hawks noted dourly.
“All our losses were in the escape, not the
operation,” China noted. “The next time we determine
our methods before we commit our people, and that’s that. We
simply cannot afford any more of this. This time they
underestimated our numbers and strength—they will not do so
again. We paid a sad price, but it is the price of learning. If we
use this experience, we should be able to do it better and with
less cost next time.”
One they did not lose was Vulture, much to Takya
Mudabur’s shock and dismay. She had seen a laser hole
through his heart and another through a part of his brain. Now,
only a day later, he was walking around with no sign of any wounds
except for some bloodstains that wouldn’t come out of the
fur.
“And what about our prize?” Hawks asked the
group.
Isaac Clayben cleared his throat. “It is a most
fascinating device. As we expected it is passive, so once stolen it
is impossible to locate. The ‘stone,’ as we might call
it, is made of a highly conductive synthetic substance that has the
electronics embedded in it—in fact, the electronics are
mostly formed out of the substance itself! The design is actually
somewhat primitive, and I have no idea what the material is and
couldn’t duplicate it now if I wanted to.”
“But it is definitely what the papers said it was?”
Hawks pressed.
“Who knows? I have no way of accessing the code inside of
it, which might be incredibly complex, nor any way to read it if I
could since it is early code—most likely direct assembly
language to the original Master System core. The only thing I can
say for sure, and probably the only thing I can say until we try to
use it, is that it is definitely a module intended to interface
with some sort of direct receptor. In other words, it is probably
exactly what we think it is. The override and direct access to
Master System’s core was deliberately divided into five
parts, possibly not so much due to fear of the computer as to
insure that no one of its designers could gain independent access
to such power nor could even form a majority cabal. It took the
consent and direct action of all five, no dissent allowed, to even
do minor modification work. I suspect it was a safety device by
agreement so that no one person could make himself a god. I will
wager that if we see the receptors, they will be spaced far enough
apart from one another that it will take five individuals to insert
them and hold them there.”
“Interesting,” China said. “The implication is
that even with all five inserted it would only give the ability and
authority to modify. It is entirely possible that it would take the
agreement of all five people to do just about anything. Chen would
only be one among equals. Even if he plans on the other four being
henchmen under his control, each would have an absolute veto power.
That’s if the computer could be effectively accessed at
all.”
Hawks looked up at her. “Huh? What do you mean?”
“These might only unlock five terminals or some direct
interface by which the Master System core language could be fed in
or read out. We might not know the language.”
“We’ll know,” Clayben assured them.
“First of all, Master System would not be so persistent
against us if we had no chance of access, and, secondly, the
original Master System would be far smaller and more primitive than
the one we face now. The rings are more than a mechanical method of
access—they are the passwords and the instructions to the
computer on how it interacts with the ring owners. I would bet on
some sort of direct access, possibly even simple speech. Why would
they make it hard on themselves? They had to use this just about
every day. However, she is correct about one thing—it will
require unanimity to alter the core. Of course, hypnos and
mindprinters could change this, but who can be certain? Suppose
the interfaces were something like those of the spaceships? If they
had mindprinters or similar techniques in those days, and primitive
methods of mind control were available long before there were even
computers, then the designers would have built a failsafe into the
access instructions to allow for that possibility. Such an
interface could also give Master System access to the mind of the
human interfacer. They were top-security people in top-security
posts. They would have to have allowed for it.”
“Well, that makes me feel a little better,” Hawks
admitted, “but it doesn’t solve the basic problem. At
least this time we knew just who owned the ring and where it was.
We have far less to go on with the next two, and we still
don’t know where the fourth one even is.”
“I am equally concerned about the performance, or lack of
it, in our own people,” China noted. “I talked to Maria
and to the two Indrus women, and Star Eagle has made a
preliminary check of Espiritu Luzon and found very little
damage. They had full operational power including punch
power—they were just jolted around a little and had to rush
to fix some minor damage inside—and they have almost their
full complement of weapons still aboard. They falsified their
on-site damage report and did almost no fighting. They were close
enough and in good enough shape to give that Val hell but they
begged off and let those two ships and those five people die. In
the right position and with a full field of fire, they could have
forced that Val to dodge torpedoes instead of guiding
them.”
Hawks nodded slightly, mostly to himself. “All right, I
have the reports from the others myself. They did the bare minimum
and they want a free ride. Well, it isn’t going to wash.
There’s no use confronting them with it now or attempting any
disciplinary action—I think they’ll get some cold
treatment from the rest as it is, and I’d rather not listen
to any of their excuses or give them any cause to try to leave our
band or deliver it into the hands of the enemy. For now, we let
them get away with it, but they move to the top of the priority
list. Individually they are going to put up or they’re all
going under the doctor’s mindprinter. Now, they’re
going to have to put in for repairs or their story will be totally
shot, and I suspect we’ll find something major to be fixed
even if it wasn’t damaged during the battle. Star Eagle,
while it’s in, reprogram the pilot core to allow for both
override from Thunder and self-destruct. None of that crew
is to have the ability or authority to operate that ship without
someone else there with a key password and override. Can you do
that?”
“I can and will. But why go through the charade?”
“Because if we press it, Savaphoong will have somebody set up
to take the fall all by him- or herself. It’ll be more
complicated than it’s worth. But if Espiritu Luzon
goes out again, it will be with somebody else there. Somebody
without a ship—like Maria Santiago or one of the
Indrus survivors. Let them relax and congratulate
themselves in their lap of luxury. We know them now, and we have
them on a list. It might not be right away, but sooner or later all
those aboard that ship who can think for themselves are going to
wish they’d risked death back there off Janipur. Nobody here
gets off without sacrifice and risk.” That seemed to satisfy
them for the moment.
Over the many days that followed, the damage was repaired and
weaknesses identified and reinforced. Hawks was feeling somewhat
impatient now that they had been blooded and the real work had
begun. He began to look at the two other worlds known to have
rings. Before the battle of Janipur, these worlds had been looked
at as closely as could be allowed without actually landing.
“Chanchuk follows the usual Center pattern,” he told
Vulture. “We don’t know their form or culture, but
intercepted transmissions indicate that they speak a dialect of
Chinese no longer used on Earth. China could read it but almost
went nuts trying to understand it when spoken. The grammar and
pronunciation are all very different; so different that a phrase
like ‘the writing pen is on the table’ could be heard
as ‘the lead pipe is freezing up my ass.’ We
don’t have any equivalent mindprinter modules for
it.”
“I’m not surprised by the Chinese. About half the
colonial worlds are Chinese or Indian in origin because they
comprised half the human race when the whole split happened. The
language doesn’t worry me, though. I can learn it by osmosis,
as it were,” Vulture noted.
“I’m aware of that, but it also means that
we’d have to pick you back up, bring you up here, take a
mindprinter reading of it, do comparison matching and eventually
create our own new records. I’m also concerned about doing a
second job so similar in some ways to the first—using Center
security and the like. This time we’ll probably have to break
into the chief administrator’s bedroom. There’s an SPF
command ship in orbit there, so you know they’re just as much
involved down there as they were on Janipur, only they’ll
have taken the lessons they just learned to heart. We just
can’t afford another one like we just had. Master System is
probably even now making Vals to replace the ones it lost every bit
as good and as tough as those were, and the fate the SPF on Janipur
will have will be a real incentive to the ones on Chanchuk, you can
bet on that. I think we have to be much better prepared the next
time.”
“I agree. So what if we bypass Chanchuk for now while we
study the problem some more and maybe build ourselves back up?
What’s the other one like?”
“Bizarre. That’s the only word for it. There are no
Centers that we can detect. There is, in fact, no sign of any sort
of artificial energy generation on the planet stronger than fire
making. The world is rough. Lots of active volcanic activity,
earthquakes, that sort of thing. The storms are extremely violent
and they’re huge. Much of the planet is shrouded in clouds
most of the time, and better than sixty percent of the landmass is
covered with jungle—the kind of vegetation that looks like
it’ll eat you instead of you eating it. You remember that
world you stuck us on at the start of all this?”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. It was the only noncolonical
world Koll knew about that could support people. How was I to
know?”
“Well, this one’s worse. It’s hot. Thirty to
forty-five degrees Celsius in the regions of vegetation and human
habitation. Lots of islands with no clear signs of habitation and
two main continents. It’s got animals, but God knows what
they eat except each other.”
“Water civilization, then?”
“No, land. Mammalian. Quite a lot of them, all things
considered, although I suspect they don’t have long
life-spans. They appear to be hunter-gatherers with social
organization at the tribal level, and small at that, but
there’s several million of them spread out on both continents
and a couple of the larger islands. You can look at the survey and
also at the photos we managed to get through the infrequent cloud
breaks. The lack of Centers bothers me, but the lack of cities or
any large tribal culture bothers me even more. A ‘human with
authority’ on Matriyeh would have to be no more than a tribal
chief. With an average tribe numbering about a hundred, and with
several million people on all that land, how the hell will we ever
find the right one? It’s a needle-in-a-haystack
problem.”
“SPF and Master System?”
“They have a fair number of warning satellites and the
like around—far more than you’d expect for a place
nobody would ever want to visit—but no command ship. You can
be pretty damned sure that one will come running along with Vals
and a whole division of troops if they get wind we’re working
down there, though. If I were them, I wouldn’t bother wasting
resources there right now, either.” He sighed. “In a
way, I wish we had the strength to mount two expeditions
simultaneously. That way we’d probably have Matriyeh to
ourselves while they bore in on Chanchuk. The fact is, though, that
I don’t think we have a prayer of doing both.”
Vulture looked over all the data and was as concerned as Hawks
about the lack of any clear centers of power. It just didn’t
fit. Master System tended to do pretty much the same thing place
after place—except here.
If anything, Hawks was understating the looks of both the jungle
and the blasted volcanic plains. The animal life looked even less
appetizing. There were large flying things with brown and black
leathery wings and strange, thin tails; and other creatures that
looked like flying plates with thin, long membranes for tails. He
couldn’t imagine where Master System had dreamed them up,
unless they were there to begin with.
The land animals were less clearly defined, and though some of
them were overly large for a jungle that dense, most seemed to have
the same coloration as their habitats. Even the older volcanic
areas seemed riddled with holes that served as dens for things that
might be worms, snakes, or something worse, all man-sized or
larger. No clear cut herbivore candidates for the ecological niche
of prey seemed obvious, unless it was humans, and that wasn’t
a pleasant thought.
This world was almost any civilized person’s vision of
hell. There were, however, some high-resolution photographs of the
people, and even though they were grainy and the close-ups in poor
focus, Vulture was able to identify a variety of tribes from
various areas of both continents. He noted with a touch of sadness
and some guilt that the photos had been taken by the
Indrus.
The natives actually looked Earth-human, although he knew better
than to accept that at face value. They had tough, very dark brown
skin nearly black in color, with huge manes of woolly black hair.
Their faces, however, did not have any clear racial antecedents
from Earth’s old cultures that he could tell, but were
surprisingly quite attractive, even delicate in a way, with small
but prominent noses and thin lips. They wore no clothing but did
seem to paint or brand their faces and parts of their body with
delicate, intricate designs, and many wore crude necklaces or
bracelets and anklets. Jewelry, probably of bone, dangled from
their ears, was placed in the hair, and apparently inserted in the
nose. Most carried stone-tipped spears and what might have been
blow guns and other primitive weapons. They all seemed quite
young.
He went back, looking again at picture after picture, and
frowned. “But where’re the men?” he muttered.
“There are no men in these shots. Not anywhere. It’s all
women!”
Hawks joined him. “You see how ugly the place
is.”
“Yes, yet there is a certain beauty to it, as well. I am
puzzled, though. All those pictures, and not one male in the entire
series. Where are the men? Is it a unisexual race?’
“I have no idea, although that struck me as well. As with
Janipur and the others, there are some things we cannot know until
we discover it for ourselves.”
“I suppose. I also notice that none of the artifacts they
wear or carry is metal. While it is possible that useful metals
might be difficult to extract by primitive people down there, I
find it curious. It is almost like a look into the earliest past of
humanity. Stone axes, stone spears, reed blow guns, no signs of
cultivation even with a volcanic soil. They are tough, though,
these women. Virtually all the hunting parties contained pregnant
ones, as well.”
“The lack of any Centers bothered me more, but I have a
possible explanation both for that and for much else of what you
see,” Hawks told him. “Theory only, of course. But
Lazlo Chen told us that Master System had the idea of reducing
Earth to this level of civilization and culture and abolishing the
Center system because Master System is finally realizing that it is
not in complete control that way. It took the ancestors of humanity
tens of thousands of years, perhaps longer than that, to rise up
from the primitive to anything near what we think of as
civilization. With satellites doing surveys almost constantly,
it’s possible that when signs of large settlements and
cultivated agriculture appear Master System’s forces could be
brought in to reduce them once again. Simpler, cheaper, more
efficient than the current system, although terrible for
humanity.”
“And you think this was done here?”
“The number of monitoring satellites and their type
suggest it was. Look, they are close enough to Earth-human, in
appearance at any rate, and the population was probably never very
advanced on a world such as this. It would be far easier to do it
here and see how practical and manageable an idea it might be. And,
of course, it is a world with a ring. Master System would think of
the needle-in-the-haystack problem, as well.”
“A prototype, then.”
“Yes, I fear so. We used a similar scenario to get
Pirate One docked to the command ship at Janipur and none
of the SPF or their computers thought it the least odd, so they
know of it. Still, something bothered me and it was only later when
I dragged these out for you to look at and got to looking at them
again myself that I finally was struck by something. Master System
is a prisoner of its core program. A chief of some tribe measuring
a hundred simply wouldn’t do. Life is obviously short down
there—for chiefs, as well, and perhaps for chiefs in
particular. There would be no control, and no assurance that the
ring would remain where it is mandated to be. Also, in a society
like that, such a ring would have incredible magical properties,
perhaps even be an object of worship. It is worked metal with
intricate designs, far beyond their knowledge and powers. It would
obviously be taken as something of the gods and would be treated
accordingly.”
Vulture nodded. “I see what you mean. Such an object would be
sufficient to generate, perhaps, a priesthood. Maybe even an entire
theology.”
“That led me to begin comparing both the designs they
paint on themselves and on their totems, as best we can make them
out. My own people use face-painting, charms, and amulets both for
religious purposes and to denote, say, rank and position in a hunt
or in battle. My tribe is quite small, yet its markings are
distinctive; so much so that there is little or no chance to
mistake a Hyiakutt for a Sioux or Sauk or Manitwoc. In all our
photos of southern continent people I found what I would
expect—some basic similarities, but overall quite distinctive
color and design even between small groups living close together.
But in the north—well, look for yourself.”
The picture that came up on the monitor was somewhat fuzzy but
still showed painted markings of distinctive design on faces and
bodies, the variations small enough to be those of rank or
assignment. A second picture showed a different tribe, but the
markings were quite similar, differing only in minor details.
“The two tribes you see live a thousand kilometers
apart,” Hawks told him. “The tribal groups tend to be
territorial and there is little trade because there is little
to trade. Yet the markings are pretty consistent, as are
the shapes of some of the bond charms. Unfortunately, the
resolution isn’t perfect, but there is a consistency in the
patterns. They all seem to be bone or wood carved into the shape of
stylized birds and basic trees—but the things that fly down
there aren’t birds, I can assure you.”
“A consistent theology, then. One that probably justifies
their existence and seeks to maintain the status quo. Very clever.
So there are religious leaders within the tribes, and perhaps a
priesthood surrounding the ring, as well. Then there is a
chief administrator down there, and a supporting staff! They just
don’t know what they are!”
Hawks nodded. “Exactly.”
“But why only the northern continent? It would seem to me
that it would work best if all of them were unified at least in a
basic set of beliefs.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps this is an ongoing experiment and the
south is the control group. Which is more dangerous—a diffuse
culture with no strong common cultural base, or one that has a
religion that tells them that life is but a test for the hereafter,
progress is blasphemy, invention is demonic, and has the totem to
prove their divine authority? Master System knows human history but
it’s the first to ever be able to run experiments on human
social behavior. Although it fascinates me as a historian, it is
beside the point for our purposes. The fact is that, we have clear
evidence of a unitary theological base in the north and all that
implies. Somewhere down there is a religious center with a high
priest—or priestess, as it looks—who is protected and
pampered is the ultimate authority because he or she speaks to the
gods—and has the ring to prove it.”
Vulture stared at the maps. It was a big continent. “But
where? It need not be very large, but it would have to have some
kind of support system so that the priesthood would be freed from
the daily grind of hunting and gathering. And there would be a
single permanent settlement of sorts.”
Hawks shrugged. “Right now we can’t find it. It
might just be too small to be noticeable on these survey photos.
You can bet it’s an austere priesthood, living a hard,
monastic life. The only way to know would be to have some surface
operative who could guide us there. Surely someone down there knows
the way. Someone must relay the theology, exercise the power down
the social chain. The tribal priest must be instructed, trained,
and kept to the straight and narrow. I suspect that the culture is
far more complex than it looks from a distance.”
Vulture nodded. “And, as usual, I provide the
intelligence. What about getting in and out?”
“Ever since the problem on Janipur surfaced, we have been
working on ways to do that. We were able to get into orbit and take
a survey because of some of our experimental work. I think we can
jam the satellites sufficiently to move rather freely in that
system without an alarm going out. There’s all sorts of
cosmic interference going on, especially with so many devices.
Getting in and getting you supplied and supported, even getting you
out, would not be a major problem so long as they don’t send
a force to the system. My concern is, for all its complexities,
it’s too easy.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“They know we’re after the rings. They know we have
to have all of them. They have access to better tools than we do,
and they aren’t hampered by any moral or ethical
considerations. They have the ability to create true believers who
won’t question even the illogical or irrational and will
think when they use the magic to speak to Heaven they are talking
to God and not Master System. It can’t afford to entrust the
ring to savages, yet it can’t do otherwise without violating
its experiment. Somewhere, down there, they’ve set a trap for
us, Vulture, and I bet it’s a whopper. If we don’t find
it, then we’re going to be faced with a battle as ugly as the
one we survived and that might just cripple us for years. Still,
until we can work out alternate exit methods for Chanchuk, this is
our best bet. Go down there. Spot the trap. Then and only then will
we be able to take the ring.”
THE DUTY OFFICER ABOARD THE SPF COMMAND SHIP was irritated at
having been hailed by the communications CQ, and decided that it
had better be really important or somebody was going to get the
chewing-out of her life.
“What is it?” he growled, still asleep.
“Freighter coming in, sir.”
The officer frowned. “We aren’t due for a supply
ship.” He was suddenly very suspicious. “ID checks
out?”
“Yes, sir. Special shipment from Master System itself.
Large-scale transmuters and heavy processing equipment along with a
fair amount of murylium ore. I guess the rumors about us being
ordered to abolish the Center form of supervision are
true.”
The duty officer nodded, having heard those rumors himself. He
knew for a fact that it had been done elsewhere and was being
contemplated as a system-wide policy, but he’d also heard
that those plans had been put on hold pending resolution of the
current crisis. Still, it made sense here. The prey below had done
an impossible amount of damage but had now slipped completely from
sight and could be anywhere in the billion-plus population by now.
It seemed a bit drastic to destroy an entire civilization just to
nab a few rebels, no matter how brilliant or dangerous they might
have been. Orders, however, were orders.
“Did you scan the ship?” he asked. The pirates were
known to have an operating freighter and they all looked alike. He
wanted to take no chances, even though he had the firepower to
blast something as lumbering as a freighter to atoms before it
could get close enough to do any damage.
“Yes, sir. Murylium count abnormally high, as would be
expected, and a great deal of inert cargo. No life forms
aboard.”
He sighed. “What are the instructions?”
“Dock with us and offload using service robots through
both cargo bays. It’s all containerized, so it
shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. It is diverted
from a deadhead run back to its normal pickup point and has
instructions to offload and be away as quickly as possible in order
to keep to its normal schedule.”
“Very well. Call it in to the colonel’s office below
and if they have no objection, give the ship immediate clearance to
dock and dispatch our service robots to the offloading
bays.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The colonel himself was not contacted, of course, but the SPF
chief of security drew the same sad conclusions as the duty officer
and saw no objections. The freighter was signaled in and ordered to
proceed. It approached to within forty kilometers of the orbiting
command ship and then slowly eased its way closer, a maneuver that
took about seventy minutes.
The command ship itself, like the freighters, was never designed
for planetfall; the freighters were loaded by transmuter
transmission and, for some specialized times, by barges and tugs
from the surface of whichever planet it happened to be orbiting.
Because of this, the command ship was designed to be supplied by
just such ships, and maneuvers like this were routine, with the
pilots of both ships using centuries-old automatic procedures. The
timing involved in the docking and equalization of pressure was
precise. With that equalization, the two large ships were locked
together as firmly as if they were welded, although if necessary
they could be separated almost instantly.
The service robots waited for the cargo-bay doors to open, then
moved forward toward the now-gaping holds of the freighter.
In the vacuum of space, the enormous explosion, and the
subsequent explosions that followed took place in deathly silence,
but were spectacular to look at. Pirate One had been
packed with all the explosives Star Eagle’s transmuters could
crank out and Thunder’s robots could pack solidly
in. With the pressurization and open holds, the tremendous force of
the explosions was directed primarily into the command ship,
ripping into its very heart. Yet Star Eagle had taken no chances;
the first explosions were merely a trigger for a murylium fusion
bomb of a size never before seen; in less than three seconds both
ships had been almost totally converted to energy in an explosion
so intense that, from below, it lit up the sky and could be seen
easily with the naked eye even in daylight.
The fighters, stationed in other orbits, immediately came to
life and searched for their mother ship, but found nothing. They
were not allowed time to be confused, however; their response
switched immediately to automatic and they powered up and headed
out toward the punch-points their sensors were even now
detecting.
Raven and Warlock punched in in Lightning, followed
almost immediately by Kaotan, Indrus, Chunhoifan, and
San Cristobal in a rough V formation.
They had practiced acting as a unit, but they were still
basically a collection of individual ships rather than a tightly
coordinated group. The captains were experienced pilots, but none
had really captained a ship going into a head-to-head battle. They
were linked by an interconnection that gave them almost
speed-of-thought broadcast capability at short range.
“Mother of God!” swore Maria Santiago of San
Cristobal. “Will you look at that! My readings are off
the scale!”
“Yeah, we certainly plastered that bastard,” Raven
agreed, “but let’s not get cocky now. We still have a
bunch of bad guys around and who knows what in the
shadows.”
“Watch it!” came the steely voice of Captain Chun.
“Both fighters just did short punches. I—”
There was hardly time to calculate the punch before the fighters
emerged just behind the group and fired a series of rapid bursts
from their aft systems, then looped in opposite spirals and came
back at the pirate fleet firing. “I’m hit!”
called Dura Panoshaka, temporarily captaining Kaotan.
“Nothing serious but the bastards are coming back in at
me!”
The V broke apart as each ship went in a different direction in
broad loops. Raven brought Lightning up and around as
Warlock was targeting the lead fighter. She allowed the automatics
to begin beam fire and concentrated on trajectories for the
torpedoes. “Kaotan! Cristobal! Key on the lead
fighter with all you’ve got!” she instructed.
“All others key on trailing fighter with
torpedoes.”
At that moment the lead fighter launched its own torpedoes, more
than a dozen in a spread pattern, each obviously instructed to key
in on the easiest single target. Chunhoifan and
Lightning opened up on them with concentrated beam fire,
but two slipped through, curled around, and went for the stern of
Indrus. Paschittawal shifted all shielding power to the
stem and broke away in a high arc. Both torpedoes exploded on or
near the tail, and the ship shuddered but still seemed to be
operable.
“Kaotan! Cristobal! Keep keying in on the lead
fighter!” Warlock instructed, sounding very calm and very
much in control. “Kaotan, take a spread of six at
the stern, Cristobal amidships! Now!”
The fighter noted three spreads coming from three different
directions, and shifted most of its shielding to its stern, which
was always the most vulnerable area of a ship, but it was also
forced to shoot from its bow and side guns at the onrushing
torpedoes. No shield operating at anything less than maximum
strength could withstand direct hits by that many torpedoes, but a
ship’s weapons system couldn’t fire outward if the
shield was on full. The fighter was doing a good job of picking off
the incoming missiles, but it missed seven out of eighteen in the
three groups, each of which was now headed for a different area of
the ship. Kaotan’s stern shots were going to hit first, so
it shifted more power to its rear shield, but at the same time,
three of Cristobal’s shots struck weakened shields
amidships and the fighter shook and trembled.
Lightning’s two surviving torpedoes landed on the
undefended bow, and the whole forward quarter of the fighter became
a mass of twisted metal. With no bow, the fighter was defenseless
as long as the enemy kept coming dead on, and though it tried to
take evasive action, Kaotan poured six torpedoes straight
into the guts of the ship from the bow angle. The fighter shook and
then disappeared from the pirate’s sensors.
The second fighter was bearing down on the shaken
Indrus, and Chunhoifan was in turn bearing down
on the fighter.
“All ships key in on the other fighter!” Warlock
ordered. “Concentrated fire. Pour it in! Pour it
in!”
“There’s something else coming in at high
speed,” Captain Chun warned. “I can’t make it
out.”
“Worry about it later!”
There was a limit to a shield’s abilities, since shielding
had never really been designed for combat situations but to protect
a ship from space debris. In this case, superior numbers meant
inevitable victory. A vast amount of fire-power raked all parts of
the remaining fighter until it exploded.
“Damage reports!” Warlock called.
“Just some bruises for us, but we have limited mobility at
the moment. Right now we’re seeing what we can do to make
repairs,” Paschittawal reported. Damage to the other ships
was even more minor.
“Unknown closing in,” Chun reported. “I cannot
make it out, and I don’t like it.”
“Chunhoifan and we will intercept,” Warlock
responded. “San Cristobal, you stay with Indrus.
Kaotan, you are to go for Pickup Three as soon as we engage.
Thunder command, stand by to commit reserves. I
don’t know what this is coming in, but it’s definitely
the surprise they had planned.”
The mysterious object continued to close and the two ships went
to meet it. Its configuration indicated a multi-drive vessel that
should have made it large, but it was compact—too large for a
Val ship or fighter and too small for anything else. As they closed
on it, the shape changed; the new enemy actually split apart and
was instantly recognizable.
“Holy shit!” Raven exclaimed. “It’s
two Val ships in tandem!”
One of the Vals continued straight on, while the other peeled
off and headed for San Cristobal and the crippled
Indrus. These were no mere fighters; there was
intelligence behind these two ships as well as great weaponry. The
effect was clear from the start; the Val ship closing on
Lightning and Chunhoifan suddenly executed a
series of maneuvers that would have killed any humans aboard,
firing off salvos and launching a spiral pattern of torpedoes at
the same time with deadly accuracy. The automatics aboard
Lightning and Chunhoifan were simply not prepared
for things like this, and both ships were slower than the
Val’s, Chunhoifan markedly so. Both human-controlled
ships were forced to take direct control of their weapons
systems—but humans thought far slower than Vals even if their
orders could be carried out instantly. At one against two, the Val
actually had a slight advantage.
“Commit reserves! Repeat, commit reserves! Key your punch
location on Indrus! We will—holy shit!”
The Val had suddenly changed position, almost instantaneously.
By the time they realized that the enemy was using punches mere
milliseconds in duration, the Val had gotten beneath them and was
coming straight up between the two ships, firing heavily, counting
on them to hold fire for fear of hitting each other with their
rounds. The distance between the ships was enormous, but not for
the weapons involved.
Warlock targeted everything she could bring to bear on a point
just a hair above Chunhoifan’s elevation and let it
fly as the Val was just coming up between them. Both
Lightning and Chunhoifan shook and shuddered, and
behind Raven and Warlock there was a groaning sound.
“Oh, boy! I heard that one before,” he said
grumpily. “We’re still intact, but I don’t know
what’s holding us together.”
The Val had, however, taken a risk itself. Its speed allowed no
way to avoid the salvos fired by Warlock and Chun. The Val had
concentrated all its fire on the two ships as it spiraled upward,
and was unable to pick off the torpedoes, six of which locked on
and struck home. Lightning was hurt, but the Val was hurt
worse.
“I’m stopped in place,” Captain Chun reported.
“All system and drive power lost. Three dead, with a gaping
hole just forward of my stern tubes.”
“I’ve got about half power, and I’m steering a
bit wobbly, but I’m serviceable,” Raven responded.
“We’ll stick with you and give you what firepower we
can, Chunhoifan. By the time I got back up to the
Indrus it’d be over anyway. Where’s that
damned Val?”
“Forty-two degrees off the orbital plane and about twenty
thousand kilometers out,” Chun replied. “Looks like
he’s dead in space, too. That’s something. If
he’d made it out with even minimal drive power, we’d be
finished.”
“Yeah, I got him now. Maybe playing possum, maybe not.
I’m going after him. Stand by your guns.”
The second Val ship was having great success, as well. It had
entirely ignored Indrus and concentrated on San
Cristobal, scoring some solid hits while remaining untouched
itself. Santiago maneuvered as close to Indrus as she
dared to combine their firepower, but she was definitely still in
trouble.
When Bahakatan and Espiritu Luzon punched in,
the Val was caught by surprise, not expecting this group to have
the numbers to afford reserves. It abandoned SanCristobal and Indrus, both crippled but with
weapon systems still functional, and headed straight for the two
newcomers. Neither of the crippled ships were going anywhere it
couldn’t follow, but it wanted to take on the new threat
before it became trapped between the two.
It attempted an in-between spiral maneuver, similar to the one
that its companion had used on Lightning and
Chunhoifan, but with an added twist. It released its salvo
just beneath the two ships, executed a preplanned mini-punch, and
came out just above and let loose a second bombardment. The trick
completely fooled Espiritu Luzon, but Captain ben Suda of
Bahakatan hadn’t waited and launched at the high
position while the Val ship was still spiraling upward. All three
ships took damaging hits, although none of them was completely
knocked out.
The Val assessed the results and determined that it had lost its
punch ability and some of its speed and maneuverability, but it was
in better shape than any of its four victims. Its main problem,
though, was that it was running low on torpedoes and none of the
four enemy ships had lost shielding.
Below, Vulture could hear the whine of flyers coming in, and one
was already landing within sight. Ikira and the Chows were already
up, and Sabir was about to step into the fighter as small-arms fire
erupted all around. “Go on! Move! I’ll hold them if I
can or get out another way!” He took up a position behind
some crumbling bricks and opened fire.
Raven closed on the crippled Val, which still had its shields up
and clearly had weapons control. He could only guess that the enemy
ship really was hurt—otherwise why not come back and just
finish them?—and that the Val within was trying desperately
to jury-rig repairs. That was exactly what he had to try to stop.
Warlock launched a six-torpedo salvo and had the same returned
to her. Each ship easily destroyed the other’s missiles with
beam weapons. “No good.” She sighed. “We are too
evenly matched.”
“Keep giving it all you’ve got,” Raven
growled. “It’ll keep the thing from making repairs and
at least buy time. Maybe we’ll run it out of torpedoes before
we’re empty.”
“It thought of that, too. It’s just picked off the
second salvo but fired none back. Why should it?”
“Good point. Lay off, then, and we’ll try a standoff
for a while. If that thing looks like it’s gonna get back to
full steam, I’ll ram the bastard before I’ll let it
go.”
The second Val, although crippled, was in better shape than its
mate, but it was worried. It knew that there was one ship missing,
and long-range sensors showed it in orbit around Janipur. No matter
how satisfying blowing up enemy ships might be, a successful
defense was not measured in casualties inflicted but in denying the
enemy its objective. The Val understood that principle well, and
turned and made its best speed toward Janipur.
“It’s going after Kaotan!” Maria
Santiago reported. “Can anyone pursue?”
“We can’t afford another hit,” responded Midi,
Savaphoong’s chief pilot on the Espiritu Luzon.
“Best we cover you.”
“I will give chase,” came ben Suda’s voice.
“This one has made me very angry.” His ship
didn’t appear to be in much better shape than the others, but
he sounded as if he could track the Val by sheer willpower.
Aboard Kaotan, Ikira Sukotae was back in her element
and very glad to be there.
“Break off!” Dura Panoshka said urgently.
“There’s a Val bearing down on us and it’ll be in
range in under four minutes. We’re sitting ducks here in
geostationary orbit!”
“No,” the tiny captain responded. “Shields
full along the flanks and watch out that he doesn’t go under
and come up on the planet side. Bring the throttle up full but do
not release. I’m gonna give Vulture those four
minutes.”
Well away from the action, Raven was getting worried.
“I’m registering energy flares on the Val ship. I think
he’s going to be operational again in just a couple of
minutes, and there’s nothing we can do about it.” He
opened a common carrier channel. “This is Lightning
to damaged Val ship. Cease repairs and maintain standoff or I will
be forced to ram.”
“You wish to commit suicide?” came a response in a
low, pleasant baritone.
“I do not, but if I let you get going again, I’m
dead meat anyway. Might as well take you with me.”
The Val was disconcerted and sensed that reasonable argument
wouldn’t meet with much success. It stopped testing its
repaired lines, but it knew it could not accept such a standoff. A
stalemate was as good as a defeat since the remaining ships would
still be there, and with only one operable Val left in service
there would be little chance of victory. It knew from its companion
that the other ships were all damaged to some degree, but that made
little difference. While the companion was chasing after
Kaotan, the other four renegades would have time to make
repairs of their own. There was little choice.
The instant the Val ship moved, Raven took a deep mental breath
and pushed the throttle. Gaining speed with every second, he
followed a course straight for the Val, while Warlock began firing
with every available weapon, forcing their opponent to abandon its
defense and get to full throttle.
The Val ship flared into brilliance, then winked out.
It took a second for Warlock to react, and then she was
initially puzzled. “Did it get away or did we get
it?”
“Whew!” Raven sighed. “I thought I
was going to the land of my ancestors there. It blew up. I have
lots of scattered debris in the scan, almost all small. One down,
one to go. Kaotan, you get the hell out of
there!”
The transmuter receiver installed on Kaotan hummed, and
Vulture more fell than stepped off the plate. He was a bloody mess,
and it looked as if he’d taken numerous shots to the body,
but he was alive. Sabir and the Chows crowded around him and Takya
Mudabur knelt beside him. “No one could survive such
wounds,” she said sorrowfully.
Ikira Sukotae didn’t wait for a medical report. She
released the engines and moved at flank speed out of orbit at an
angle that took the ship away from the Val. Reacting instantly, the
Val changed course to pursue and let loose a pattern of fire that
did not quite reach Kaotan. It was clear that even damaged
the Val had an edge in speed and maneuverability over the old
freebooter freighter. And Sukotae could not depend on
Bahakatan for help; it simply couldn’t catch up. Kaotan, however, was undamaged, and Sukotae was not
about to take on the Val alone. She had the ring aboard and the
rest of the people from Janipur; her first duty was to safeguard
them. She didn’t have speed for a really big punch, but it
wouldn’t matter, clearly the Val had lost its punch power and
could not follow. Kaotan punched just as the Val closed to
within range.
The Val wasted no time on lost opportunities. If it could not
stop the getaway, then the least it could do was cost the enemy as
much as possible. It turned and headed back at full throttle toward
Indrus and San Cristobal.
“It’s coming back in!” Santiago reported.
“E.T.A. five minutes twenty-five seconds. Indrus
cannot move and my shielding is completely gone. Can you move in,
Espiritu Luzon?”
“Negative! This thing handles worse than a freighter at
the best of times and I have damage. I will try to get in some good
shots if I can, but all it has to do is skim to within your range
opposite my position and I won’t be able to stop it. The best
I can do is position myself so we’ll know where its best
shooting position is. That will allow you to concentrate your fire
on its salvos.”
“Bahakatan here. I can’t get back in time,
but I noticed in its pursuit of Kaotan that it used no
beam weapons at all. I believe the Val has been forced to divert
all energy to its engines in order to maintain speed,
maneuverability, and shielding. If someone could get in behind it,
it might be vulnerable.”
“Here we go!” Santiago called. “Angle is right
where we figured. No vector to the ship, but we might be able to
hit most or all of the torpedoes. We’ll see.”
The Val came in on an arc that placed it within range for only
three seconds, not enough to be worth firing at, but it loosed its
full complement of twelve torpedoes in a zigzag spread pattern at
the two crippled ships. Three got through the withering fire; two
of those hit Indrus but failed to penetrate the shields.
The third, however, came straight into San
Cristobal’s midsection, nearly tearing the ship in half
and knocking out all power.
The Val looped and came back for a second run, its tubes
reloaded. The last pattern, so perfect yet so erratic, indicated
that the Val was leaving the ship on preprogrammed automatic pilot
and guiding in the torpedoes itself. It let loose the whole series
aimed at Indrus, following the same pattern as before.
With Espiritu Luzon laying off and San Cristobal
as good as destroyed, there was little chance for Indrus
to pick off more than half the incoming missiles.
The Val, unlike humans, could consciously perform many functions
at the same time, but guiding twelve missiles under fire was
stretching itself to its limit. It noticed the sensor call of
another punch, but so many of the torpedoes were getting through,
it didn’t dare stop and look. Indrus’ guns had done a good job, but four
missiles got through, all converging on a single spot near the tail
section where the engines were. The ship reeled and began spinning;
its entire aft section in one direction, the rest of it in another.
Noting this, the Val turned to take on its new attacker, and
immediately fired its entire forward battery. It was to no
avail. Thunder’s huge ram scoops were open wide like the
jaws of a mighty beast, and before the Val could react, its entire
ship was engulfed in the ram and processed by the great converters
into energy. No other ship in service could have accomplished that
feat; Thunder was so enormous that it ate asteroids larger
than the Val ship just to feed its mighty engines.
“Everyone remain where you are,” Star Eagle called.
“I will come to you. The most badly damaged to the cargo
bays, the ones with any real power to the outside docks.
Espiritu Luzon and Bahakatan approach and look
for survivors. I will go and collect Lightning and
Chunhoifan first, then return here. I want the wreckage,
too—and any bodies that might be found. The battle is
over.”
Raven sighed. “Yeah, and, just think. This was supposed to
be the easy one.”
The losses were large, but in many ways not as bad as they had
feared. Maria Santiago and the two centauroids survived in their
pressure suits, although the ship and the other three members of
the crew were lost. Raven in particular regretted the loss of the
one he thought of as the rock monster; it never was very sociable
or communicative but it played a mean game of cards.
On the Indrus only Lalla Paschittawal and Suni
Banderesh, wife of Ravi’s weapons officer, survived,
ironically because both had been in the tail section trying to
repair the engines. Although they had been banged around and had a
few broken bones, the fact that they had been there, tethered, and
in spacesuits saved them. Ravi Paschittawal never wore one unless
he had to, and his weapons officer generally followed this lead.
Santiago, on the other hand, had put everyone in suits from the
start just in case. It hadn’t saved everyone, but it saved
her.
So the cost had been five lives from their small company and two
ships. “At this rate we will be unable to muster any strength
for the fourth ring and we haven’t even gotten the second
yet,” Hawks noted dourly.
“All our losses were in the escape, not the
operation,” China noted. “The next time we determine
our methods before we commit our people, and that’s that. We
simply cannot afford any more of this. This time they
underestimated our numbers and strength—they will not do so
again. We paid a sad price, but it is the price of learning. If we
use this experience, we should be able to do it better and with
less cost next time.”
One they did not lose was Vulture, much to Takya
Mudabur’s shock and dismay. She had seen a laser hole
through his heart and another through a part of his brain. Now,
only a day later, he was walking around with no sign of any wounds
except for some bloodstains that wouldn’t come out of the
fur.
“And what about our prize?” Hawks asked the
group.
Isaac Clayben cleared his throat. “It is a most
fascinating device. As we expected it is passive, so once stolen it
is impossible to locate. The ‘stone,’ as we might call
it, is made of a highly conductive synthetic substance that has the
electronics embedded in it—in fact, the electronics are
mostly formed out of the substance itself! The design is actually
somewhat primitive, and I have no idea what the material is and
couldn’t duplicate it now if I wanted to.”
“But it is definitely what the papers said it was?”
Hawks pressed.
“Who knows? I have no way of accessing the code inside of
it, which might be incredibly complex, nor any way to read it if I
could since it is early code—most likely direct assembly
language to the original Master System core. The only thing I can
say for sure, and probably the only thing I can say until we try to
use it, is that it is definitely a module intended to interface
with some sort of direct receptor. In other words, it is probably
exactly what we think it is. The override and direct access to
Master System’s core was deliberately divided into five
parts, possibly not so much due to fear of the computer as to
insure that no one of its designers could gain independent access
to such power nor could even form a majority cabal. It took the
consent and direct action of all five, no dissent allowed, to even
do minor modification work. I suspect it was a safety device by
agreement so that no one person could make himself a god. I will
wager that if we see the receptors, they will be spaced far enough
apart from one another that it will take five individuals to insert
them and hold them there.”
“Interesting,” China said. “The implication is
that even with all five inserted it would only give the ability and
authority to modify. It is entirely possible that it would take the
agreement of all five people to do just about anything. Chen would
only be one among equals. Even if he plans on the other four being
henchmen under his control, each would have an absolute veto power.
That’s if the computer could be effectively accessed at
all.”
Hawks looked up at her. “Huh? What do you mean?”
“These might only unlock five terminals or some direct
interface by which the Master System core language could be fed in
or read out. We might not know the language.”
“We’ll know,” Clayben assured them.
“First of all, Master System would not be so persistent
against us if we had no chance of access, and, secondly, the
original Master System would be far smaller and more primitive than
the one we face now. The rings are more than a mechanical method of
access—they are the passwords and the instructions to the
computer on how it interacts with the ring owners. I would bet on
some sort of direct access, possibly even simple speech. Why would
they make it hard on themselves? They had to use this just about
every day. However, she is correct about one thing—it will
require unanimity to alter the core. Of course, hypnos and
mindprinters could change this, but who can be certain? Suppose
the interfaces were something like those of the spaceships? If they
had mindprinters or similar techniques in those days, and primitive
methods of mind control were available long before there were even
computers, then the designers would have built a failsafe into the
access instructions to allow for that possibility. Such an
interface could also give Master System access to the mind of the
human interfacer. They were top-security people in top-security
posts. They would have to have allowed for it.”
“Well, that makes me feel a little better,” Hawks
admitted, “but it doesn’t solve the basic problem. At
least this time we knew just who owned the ring and where it was.
We have far less to go on with the next two, and we still
don’t know where the fourth one even is.”
“I am equally concerned about the performance, or lack of
it, in our own people,” China noted. “I talked to Maria
and to the two Indrus women, and Star Eagle has made a
preliminary check of Espiritu Luzon and found very little
damage. They had full operational power including punch
power—they were just jolted around a little and had to rush
to fix some minor damage inside—and they have almost their
full complement of weapons still aboard. They falsified their
on-site damage report and did almost no fighting. They were close
enough and in good enough shape to give that Val hell but they
begged off and let those two ships and those five people die. In
the right position and with a full field of fire, they could have
forced that Val to dodge torpedoes instead of guiding
them.”
Hawks nodded slightly, mostly to himself. “All right, I
have the reports from the others myself. They did the bare minimum
and they want a free ride. Well, it isn’t going to wash.
There’s no use confronting them with it now or attempting any
disciplinary action—I think they’ll get some cold
treatment from the rest as it is, and I’d rather not listen
to any of their excuses or give them any cause to try to leave our
band or deliver it into the hands of the enemy. For now, we let
them get away with it, but they move to the top of the priority
list. Individually they are going to put up or they’re all
going under the doctor’s mindprinter. Now, they’re
going to have to put in for repairs or their story will be totally
shot, and I suspect we’ll find something major to be fixed
even if it wasn’t damaged during the battle. Star Eagle,
while it’s in, reprogram the pilot core to allow for both
override from Thunder and self-destruct. None of that crew
is to have the ability or authority to operate that ship without
someone else there with a key password and override. Can you do
that?”
“I can and will. But why go through the charade?”
“Because if we press it, Savaphoong will have somebody set up
to take the fall all by him- or herself. It’ll be more
complicated than it’s worth. But if Espiritu Luzon
goes out again, it will be with somebody else there. Somebody
without a ship—like Maria Santiago or one of the
Indrus survivors. Let them relax and congratulate
themselves in their lap of luxury. We know them now, and we have
them on a list. It might not be right away, but sooner or later all
those aboard that ship who can think for themselves are going to
wish they’d risked death back there off Janipur. Nobody here
gets off without sacrifice and risk.” That seemed to satisfy
them for the moment.
Over the many days that followed, the damage was repaired and
weaknesses identified and reinforced. Hawks was feeling somewhat
impatient now that they had been blooded and the real work had
begun. He began to look at the two other worlds known to have
rings. Before the battle of Janipur, these worlds had been looked
at as closely as could be allowed without actually landing.
“Chanchuk follows the usual Center pattern,” he told
Vulture. “We don’t know their form or culture, but
intercepted transmissions indicate that they speak a dialect of
Chinese no longer used on Earth. China could read it but almost
went nuts trying to understand it when spoken. The grammar and
pronunciation are all very different; so different that a phrase
like ‘the writing pen is on the table’ could be heard
as ‘the lead pipe is freezing up my ass.’ We
don’t have any equivalent mindprinter modules for
it.”
“I’m not surprised by the Chinese. About half the
colonial worlds are Chinese or Indian in origin because they
comprised half the human race when the whole split happened. The
language doesn’t worry me, though. I can learn it by osmosis,
as it were,” Vulture noted.
“I’m aware of that, but it also means that
we’d have to pick you back up, bring you up here, take a
mindprinter reading of it, do comparison matching and eventually
create our own new records. I’m also concerned about doing a
second job so similar in some ways to the first—using Center
security and the like. This time we’ll probably have to break
into the chief administrator’s bedroom. There’s an SPF
command ship in orbit there, so you know they’re just as much
involved down there as they were on Janipur, only they’ll
have taken the lessons they just learned to heart. We just
can’t afford another one like we just had. Master System is
probably even now making Vals to replace the ones it lost every bit
as good and as tough as those were, and the fate the SPF on Janipur
will have will be a real incentive to the ones on Chanchuk, you can
bet on that. I think we have to be much better prepared the next
time.”
“I agree. So what if we bypass Chanchuk for now while we
study the problem some more and maybe build ourselves back up?
What’s the other one like?”
“Bizarre. That’s the only word for it. There are no
Centers that we can detect. There is, in fact, no sign of any sort
of artificial energy generation on the planet stronger than fire
making. The world is rough. Lots of active volcanic activity,
earthquakes, that sort of thing. The storms are extremely violent
and they’re huge. Much of the planet is shrouded in clouds
most of the time, and better than sixty percent of the landmass is
covered with jungle—the kind of vegetation that looks like
it’ll eat you instead of you eating it. You remember that
world you stuck us on at the start of all this?”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. It was the only noncolonical
world Koll knew about that could support people. How was I to
know?”
“Well, this one’s worse. It’s hot. Thirty to
forty-five degrees Celsius in the regions of vegetation and human
habitation. Lots of islands with no clear signs of habitation and
two main continents. It’s got animals, but God knows what
they eat except each other.”
“Water civilization, then?”
“No, land. Mammalian. Quite a lot of them, all things
considered, although I suspect they don’t have long
life-spans. They appear to be hunter-gatherers with social
organization at the tribal level, and small at that, but
there’s several million of them spread out on both continents
and a couple of the larger islands. You can look at the survey and
also at the photos we managed to get through the infrequent cloud
breaks. The lack of Centers bothers me, but the lack of cities or
any large tribal culture bothers me even more. A ‘human with
authority’ on Matriyeh would have to be no more than a tribal
chief. With an average tribe numbering about a hundred, and with
several million people on all that land, how the hell will we ever
find the right one? It’s a needle-in-a-haystack
problem.”
“SPF and Master System?”
“They have a fair number of warning satellites and the
like around—far more than you’d expect for a place
nobody would ever want to visit—but no command ship. You can
be pretty damned sure that one will come running along with Vals
and a whole division of troops if they get wind we’re working
down there, though. If I were them, I wouldn’t bother wasting
resources there right now, either.” He sighed. “In a
way, I wish we had the strength to mount two expeditions
simultaneously. That way we’d probably have Matriyeh to
ourselves while they bore in on Chanchuk. The fact is, though, that
I don’t think we have a prayer of doing both.”
Vulture looked over all the data and was as concerned as Hawks
about the lack of any clear centers of power. It just didn’t
fit. Master System tended to do pretty much the same thing place
after place—except here.
If anything, Hawks was understating the looks of both the jungle
and the blasted volcanic plains. The animal life looked even less
appetizing. There were large flying things with brown and black
leathery wings and strange, thin tails; and other creatures that
looked like flying plates with thin, long membranes for tails. He
couldn’t imagine where Master System had dreamed them up,
unless they were there to begin with.
The land animals were less clearly defined, and though some of
them were overly large for a jungle that dense, most seemed to have
the same coloration as their habitats. Even the older volcanic
areas seemed riddled with holes that served as dens for things that
might be worms, snakes, or something worse, all man-sized or
larger. No clear cut herbivore candidates for the ecological niche
of prey seemed obvious, unless it was humans, and that wasn’t
a pleasant thought.
This world was almost any civilized person’s vision of
hell. There were, however, some high-resolution photographs of the
people, and even though they were grainy and the close-ups in poor
focus, Vulture was able to identify a variety of tribes from
various areas of both continents. He noted with a touch of sadness
and some guilt that the photos had been taken by the
Indrus.
The natives actually looked Earth-human, although he knew better
than to accept that at face value. They had tough, very dark brown
skin nearly black in color, with huge manes of woolly black hair.
Their faces, however, did not have any clear racial antecedents
from Earth’s old cultures that he could tell, but were
surprisingly quite attractive, even delicate in a way, with small
but prominent noses and thin lips. They wore no clothing but did
seem to paint or brand their faces and parts of their body with
delicate, intricate designs, and many wore crude necklaces or
bracelets and anklets. Jewelry, probably of bone, dangled from
their ears, was placed in the hair, and apparently inserted in the
nose. Most carried stone-tipped spears and what might have been
blow guns and other primitive weapons. They all seemed quite
young.
He went back, looking again at picture after picture, and
frowned. “But where’re the men?” he muttered.
“There are no men in these shots. Not anywhere. It’s all
women!”
Hawks joined him. “You see how ugly the place
is.”
“Yes, yet there is a certain beauty to it, as well. I am
puzzled, though. All those pictures, and not one male in the entire
series. Where are the men? Is it a unisexual race?’
“I have no idea, although that struck me as well. As with
Janipur and the others, there are some things we cannot know until
we discover it for ourselves.”
“I suppose. I also notice that none of the artifacts they
wear or carry is metal. While it is possible that useful metals
might be difficult to extract by primitive people down there, I
find it curious. It is almost like a look into the earliest past of
humanity. Stone axes, stone spears, reed blow guns, no signs of
cultivation even with a volcanic soil. They are tough, though,
these women. Virtually all the hunting parties contained pregnant
ones, as well.”
“The lack of any Centers bothered me more, but I have a
possible explanation both for that and for much else of what you
see,” Hawks told him. “Theory only, of course. But
Lazlo Chen told us that Master System had the idea of reducing
Earth to this level of civilization and culture and abolishing the
Center system because Master System is finally realizing that it is
not in complete control that way. It took the ancestors of humanity
tens of thousands of years, perhaps longer than that, to rise up
from the primitive to anything near what we think of as
civilization. With satellites doing surveys almost constantly,
it’s possible that when signs of large settlements and
cultivated agriculture appear Master System’s forces could be
brought in to reduce them once again. Simpler, cheaper, more
efficient than the current system, although terrible for
humanity.”
“And you think this was done here?”
“The number of monitoring satellites and their type
suggest it was. Look, they are close enough to Earth-human, in
appearance at any rate, and the population was probably never very
advanced on a world such as this. It would be far easier to do it
here and see how practical and manageable an idea it might be. And,
of course, it is a world with a ring. Master System would think of
the needle-in-the-haystack problem, as well.”
“A prototype, then.”
“Yes, I fear so. We used a similar scenario to get
Pirate One docked to the command ship at Janipur and none
of the SPF or their computers thought it the least odd, so they
know of it. Still, something bothered me and it was only later when
I dragged these out for you to look at and got to looking at them
again myself that I finally was struck by something. Master System
is a prisoner of its core program. A chief of some tribe measuring
a hundred simply wouldn’t do. Life is obviously short down
there—for chiefs, as well, and perhaps for chiefs in
particular. There would be no control, and no assurance that the
ring would remain where it is mandated to be. Also, in a society
like that, such a ring would have incredible magical properties,
perhaps even be an object of worship. It is worked metal with
intricate designs, far beyond their knowledge and powers. It would
obviously be taken as something of the gods and would be treated
accordingly.”
Vulture nodded. “I see what you mean. Such an object would be
sufficient to generate, perhaps, a priesthood. Maybe even an entire
theology.”
“That led me to begin comparing both the designs they
paint on themselves and on their totems, as best we can make them
out. My own people use face-painting, charms, and amulets both for
religious purposes and to denote, say, rank and position in a hunt
or in battle. My tribe is quite small, yet its markings are
distinctive; so much so that there is little or no chance to
mistake a Hyiakutt for a Sioux or Sauk or Manitwoc. In all our
photos of southern continent people I found what I would
expect—some basic similarities, but overall quite distinctive
color and design even between small groups living close together.
But in the north—well, look for yourself.”
The picture that came up on the monitor was somewhat fuzzy but
still showed painted markings of distinctive design on faces and
bodies, the variations small enough to be those of rank or
assignment. A second picture showed a different tribe, but the
markings were quite similar, differing only in minor details.
“The two tribes you see live a thousand kilometers
apart,” Hawks told him. “The tribal groups tend to be
territorial and there is little trade because there is little
to trade. Yet the markings are pretty consistent, as are
the shapes of some of the bond charms. Unfortunately, the
resolution isn’t perfect, but there is a consistency in the
patterns. They all seem to be bone or wood carved into the shape of
stylized birds and basic trees—but the things that fly down
there aren’t birds, I can assure you.”
“A consistent theology, then. One that probably justifies
their existence and seeks to maintain the status quo. Very clever.
So there are religious leaders within the tribes, and perhaps a
priesthood surrounding the ring, as well. Then there is a
chief administrator down there, and a supporting staff! They just
don’t know what they are!”
Hawks nodded. “Exactly.”
“But why only the northern continent? It would seem to me
that it would work best if all of them were unified at least in a
basic set of beliefs.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps this is an ongoing experiment and the
south is the control group. Which is more dangerous—a diffuse
culture with no strong common cultural base, or one that has a
religion that tells them that life is but a test for the hereafter,
progress is blasphemy, invention is demonic, and has the totem to
prove their divine authority? Master System knows human history but
it’s the first to ever be able to run experiments on human
social behavior. Although it fascinates me as a historian, it is
beside the point for our purposes. The fact is that, we have clear
evidence of a unitary theological base in the north and all that
implies. Somewhere down there is a religious center with a high
priest—or priestess, as it looks—who is protected and
pampered is the ultimate authority because he or she speaks to the
gods—and has the ring to prove it.”
Vulture stared at the maps. It was a big continent. “But
where? It need not be very large, but it would have to have some
kind of support system so that the priesthood would be freed from
the daily grind of hunting and gathering. And there would be a
single permanent settlement of sorts.”
Hawks shrugged. “Right now we can’t find it. It
might just be too small to be noticeable on these survey photos.
You can bet it’s an austere priesthood, living a hard,
monastic life. The only way to know would be to have some surface
operative who could guide us there. Surely someone down there knows
the way. Someone must relay the theology, exercise the power down
the social chain. The tribal priest must be instructed, trained,
and kept to the straight and narrow. I suspect that the culture is
far more complex than it looks from a distance.”
Vulture nodded. “And, as usual, I provide the
intelligence. What about getting in and out?”
“Ever since the problem on Janipur surfaced, we have been
working on ways to do that. We were able to get into orbit and take
a survey because of some of our experimental work. I think we can
jam the satellites sufficiently to move rather freely in that
system without an alarm going out. There’s all sorts of
cosmic interference going on, especially with so many devices.
Getting in and getting you supplied and supported, even getting you
out, would not be a major problem so long as they don’t send
a force to the system. My concern is, for all its complexities,
it’s too easy.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“They know we’re after the rings. They know we have
to have all of them. They have access to better tools than we do,
and they aren’t hampered by any moral or ethical
considerations. They have the ability to create true believers who
won’t question even the illogical or irrational and will
think when they use the magic to speak to Heaven they are talking
to God and not Master System. It can’t afford to entrust the
ring to savages, yet it can’t do otherwise without violating
its experiment. Somewhere, down there, they’ve set a trap for
us, Vulture, and I bet it’s a whopper. If we don’t find
it, then we’re going to be faced with a battle as ugly as the
one we survived and that might just cripple us for years. Still,
until we can work out alternate exit methods for Chanchuk, this is
our best bet. Go down there. Spot the trap. Then and only then will
we be able to take the ring.”