Paradise Drift

  “Go ahead, fool, I want them to blow up,” muttered Tyr.

  Moments later the seeds exploded, transforming the vacuum between the attackers and the Andromeda into a tenuous gas rich in the isotopes needed to encourage fusion when the ship was at high-fractional cee. Moments later, on his tactical screen, the Bushi entered the red teardrop of light that indicated the scoop field’s effective range.

  “Initiate ramscoop.”

  “Sparkplug firing,” replied Rommie. Against Guderian they’d not used the fusion seeds, for then they’d needed the scoop only for defense against the plasma cannon on the Orca Asteroid. Here, it had a different purpose.

  As the scoop energized, most of the tactical screens collapsed to simpler charts as sensors went offline, blinded by the intense energy. But the visuals worked fine, and Tyr watched avidly as the Bushi suddenly found themselves accelerating through a million-degree plasma.

  But that was the least of their worries. There was no heat transfer to speak of; the plasma was far too tenuous. Instead, their high velocity through the incredibly strong magnetic fields of the ram-scoops induced tremendous currents in their hulls, and suddenly the Bushi, already wreathed in coronas, were linked by tremendous lightning discharges.

  And the glow of their engines blinked out. Then, as Rommie had calculated, the tremendous magnetic force bent their trajectories into a kind of crude laminar flow over and past the Andromeda’s hull, sending them tumbling helplessly into space astern.

  They might, Tyr thought, recover their engines in time to escape the vengeance of the Paradise Drift’s defenders, but he wondered what their fate would be upon return to the Bushido.

  He smiled.

  Tokugawa’s choice of heirs was getting narrower.

  Prinzeugen out of Freya by Augustus Odin-Thor eased his hand on the piloting sticks, taking up position directly behind Otomo, his cousin.

  They’d exchanged fire with the first ranks of Drift slip-fighters just so Otomo could gauge weaponry and speed.

  Then, on Otomo’s signal, they pulled back. Otomo knew that the Than knew better than to assume a retreat. He smiled at the notion of bugs sweating.

  Aboard the ship positioned in the place of honor on Otomo’s wing, Prinzeugen grinned down at his console, where his small crew could not see him. Perhaps, at last, a chance to move up in the Pride, and to become Otomo’s man. There was little hope of ever catching the Alpha’s eye. Seii Taishogun paid no attention to the mere sons of his brothers or sisters unless they really excelled, and the way to excel in this Pride was through alliance with one of the Alpha’s sons.

  The side screen blinked, and there was Otomo, clad in battle-black, his pale eyes wide and manic. Prinzeugen sat up straighter, giving the samurai bow that the sons preferred when in battle.

  “Ready?” Otomo said.

  “For the honor of the Pride,” Prinzeugen declaimed, as he’d been taught.

  Otomo snorted. “There’s no honor here,” he said. “Or, not until I attend to family business on this Drift. What we have before us is mere target practice.”

  Prinzeugen bowed. Though he’d been well trained, he was only twenty, and this was his first actual battle as a lieutenant. If it was a battle.

  “Otomo-san?” he asked.

  Otomo in the screen waved a hand. Prinzeugen could just make out the black handle of his katana, lying on the piloting console where it had been placed.

  Otomo wore a severely cut black tunic; despite his words of disparagement, the Odin-Thor Pride wore black to war. He lifted a hand, indicating the Drift, which was rapidly growing in his own viewscreen. “The Than are bugs. That Drift is their hive. Their strategy is obvious—defend the hive—which means they’ve already lost. We can assume they are taking up position right now to keep us from approaching.”

  Prinzeugen glanced at his scan tech, saw a single nod, and punched up the view: yes, there were the Than fighters converging in a defensive wall.

  Otomo sat back. “So we break it in pieces, and I want you to go in and shoot randomly. Don’t breach the Drift itself. I want it intact. Just take out small ships, large ones. Whatever strikes your eye.”

  Prinzeugen bowed.

  “Lieutenant,” came the voice of his second-in-command. “We’re within striking range….”

  The next few minutes were a haze of battle fury, missiles arrowing out from his ship as he piloted it towards the defenders. It soon became apparent that Otomo’s understanding of the Than was sound. Prinzeugen found that if he attacked a Than defender between him and the Drift, they were slow to jink away, fearing the impact of the Nietzschean missiles on the fragile station. He threw his ship in pursuit of a damaged enemy, and yelled in triumph as his missiles battered its shields down. As he piloted his ship through the expanding cloud of plasma that had been a Than fighter he felt the ship shudder.

  “Lieutenant!” exclaimed his second. “Our shields are down ten percent!”

  “We won’t need them now,” he replied fiercely. “We’re inside their cordon, and they’ll be afraid to fire at us for fear of hitting the Drift!”

  And so it proved. He drove his ship inward, leaving defense to the aft missile pod; the Drift swelled alarmingly in his viewscreen. Pulling his fighter into a sharp turn he skimmed along bare meters from the Drift’s hull, a moored ship square in his sights.

  He clenched his hand on the fire control; a single missile blazed out, and the ship blossomed into flame, debris spinning away from it as he pulled his ship up sharply. Again gases buffeted them, but his second said nothing.

  Looping the ship around, he dove back for another run. Plasma beams reached out for him; he heard the shields resonate as they bled off the energy, and then another ship was in his sights. Again, a ship died under his missiles.

  In the aft viewscreen Prinzeugen saw two Than fighters following him; they fired as he looped away again but missed, and then he was too close to the Drift again. He lost himself in a orgy of destruction—how long it was before Otomo’s voice recalled him to sanity he didn’t know, and didn’t care—but the carnage he’d wrought surprised him as he brought his ship around and took up position again off Otomo’s wing. The Than defenders were now nowhere to be seen, the Drift’s weapons silent.

  Otomo laughed, then hit the general comlink.

  “Paradise Drift,” he said. “You will prepare for boarding. Perhaps it will ease your minds if I tell you I am here only to fetch what is ours; I have no desire to take possession of this…structure. I will give you ten minutes to decide.”

  As Otomo fell silent, waiting for the panic-stricken kludges on the Drift to let him in, aboard his brother’s slip-fighter, much farther out in space, there was silence, except for the muted ticks and bleeps of systems slowly coming back online.

  Minamoto could not yet give the command to return to the Bushido, for the damage the Andromèdes ramscoop had done to his fighters had not yet been fully repaired by the damage control systems. Defeated by a ramscoop! No ship had been built with such a thing since, well, since the fall of the Systems Commonwealth. Only too late had he remembered Guderian’s fate. And his father would accept no excuse.

  He checked his console once more: twenty-two minutes to full function. The remainder of his force similarly dead in space, no chatter even though their corns were back online, for he might be listening. They waited: What now?

  Minamoto fingered the weapon holstered in his sleeve. Defeated. Had Pimiko plotted this with Tyr Anasazi, she could not have more effectively contrived her brother’s ruin even though she failed to return with the bones of the Ancestor.

  And if Otomo was successful, there on the Drift, even greater defeat—the extra by contrast.

  Defeat, in a stupid cause. Meanwhile, here he was with the elite Bushi, the best fighters in the Odin-Thor fleet, in or out of their ships.

  The truth, any way he looked at it, was this: he was stupid and defeated only if he permitted it.

  Now was the time for the Alpha to
retire to the Long Night, and a new Alpha to take place. And things would change, oh yes, they would.

  He punched up the plans for the flagship, looking at the internal defenses he’d discovered with much effort and even greater patience. He knew the warship’s capabilities, and he knew Rommel. The key would be surprise, so they must not come in as an attack force.

  But if he waited any longer, his father would be demanding a report, and a reason to be thus hanging in space.

  He leaned forward, tapped the control for all-ships, limited to the Bushi, no outside links. “It is time,” he said, “to take promotion.” And then he began to speak rapidly, outlining his plans.

  And while he spoke, and the pilots responded, onboard the Bushido Ashikaga was ignoring Takauji’s derisive commentary on the report of Otomo’s actions.

  The timing of that one made sense. The timing of Minamoto’s disengagement and then defeat seemed…odd.

  Without listening, he rose and left Takauji’s cabin, leaving Taka midsentence.

  Taka watched him leave, then sighed, and reached for the sake. Brigga wouldn’t answer a com—everyone was in a vile mood.

  That meant it was time to get drunk.

  Ashikaga, on the other hand, had stopped drinking sake when he realized that their father was still not on the Command Deck, and the flagship was not moving. He kept mentally reviewing that strange conversation on the white pillow.

  All right, a little test, then. If the old man was on the Command Deck, he was wrong.

  He reached the Command Deck, tabbed the access key, and there was Rommel, still in command, watching several screens. The command pod empty.

  Test. The best test is that administered to those who do not know they are being tested. It all fell into place now, how this entire exercise was not just an expensive effort to recover Daigo-Ujio but in reality a test of the rest of them.

  A test—but was the old man seeing the mirror result… he whirled around, and sped down the corridor to his father’s cabin. Tapped.

  “Enter.”

  If his father had moved, there was no evidence. He still knelt on his own black pillow, the katana stand behind him, the ebony table before him, a long scroll spread out. No wrinkle in his kimono, no evidence of time, or thought, in that profile, though he sensed a banked intensity in his father that had not been there before. And the white pillow still lay before the table.

  “Father, you are not going to the Command Deck?” Ashikaga asked, wishing he had not been so generous with the sake earlier.

  “No. I wish to bring this poem to its conclusion. There is a time for everything, and right now is the time for contemplation,” Tokugawa said, as on the averted vidscreen Daigo-Ujio fought, laughing, against a swarm of those white-haired genetically enhanced kama.

  Ashikaga could not see the screen, nor would he have recognized his unknown brother if he had. He was too tired, his mind too divided, for verbal swordplay. “I think Minamoto is going to attack the Bushido”

  For a long moment Ashikaga thought he was being ignored. He gripped himself internally, and waited as Tokugawa made one long, smooth brushstroke. Then reached to touch one of the inset controls, and on the opposite side of the austere, white-walled cabin, a vid flickered to life.

  “That is not attack formation,” Tokugawa said, not even looking up.

  Ashikaga looked. No, the Bushi were not spread in attack formation, which would of course be an instant tip-off. They were clumped together, a return flight. Except the formation was tight, very tight.

  Tight enough for almost simultaneous debarkation and deployment, for an elite squad.

  “They’re not going to attack the ship but take it from the inside,” he said, and turned to his father, waiting for agreement—disagreement—any reaction at all.

  But Tokugawa dipped his brush in the paint.

  “If you think so,” he said, examining the artwork—evidence of the superior mind—before him, “then see to the defense.”

  Ashikaga bowed, left, and then stood, frowning, in the corridor. Test indeed.

  So…why not set one’s own tests?

  He had a personal comlink, though until now he’d seldom used it. That was about to change. Walking swiftly toward the lifts, he tabbed his link. “Rommel? This is what I want, now….”

  THIRTY-TWO

  I within did flow, with seas of war,

  Like wine

  —PRIVATE COLLECTION OF TOKUGAWA ODIN-THOR

  In the command center of Paradise Drift, Reflections of the Sun and Vandat looked at each other in sick dismay. Overhead, Blossoms on the Wind stared into the vid pickup from the command seat, eyes reflecting the lights from her console. Far too many emergency lights.

  “The Nietzschean hive-fouler wants an answer now,” she said.

  “But we cannot possibly let the Nietzscheans land on the Drift,” Vandat said, wringing his hands together. “If we do, we may as well surrender now.”

  Blossoms on the Wind turned to face his hive-mate in the vidscreen. “The Perseid director speaks truth,” he said.

  “It’s either that or let them blow the Drift apart,” Reflections of the Sun said. “I will assume, in my turn, that in this one thing the Nietzschean also speaks truth: he is here for a single purpose. These Nietzscheans do not have any interest in Drifts, in gambling, in bontemps, even in the wealth we obtain. They are after other things, and do not care what they destroy to get them.”

  “They want Alphyra Kodos’s secret lab data,” Vandat stated.

  Both Than hummed in agreement.

  The subtech seated beside Reflections of the Sun murmured, “With all respect, O Director, if we do let them land, who’s to say they will go away again, once they get here?”

  Reflections of the Sun turned to address his comlink, using one of the Than-Thre-Kull languages. “Have you broken the firewalls around the labs yet?”

  “Still working, O Director,” came an answer. “We as well as the neural divers we identified as being part of the Andromeda. We have isolated these, and they try nothing else, so we permit them their attack, and we commence ours, but nothing has sufficed.”

  Reflections of the Sun felt sick at the idea of that data being loosed into the universe. He blamed Vandat and the Perseids for looking the other way while these perfidious humans carried out their wicked experiments. Though they had yet to broach the subject—Perseids were so very roundabout in any matters of importance—he knew what they would say: it was their own kind that Kodos and her lab geneticists experimented on. They confined their experiments to the arena, thus gaining wealth for all. And it had all been done in the name of science, of learning, of knowledge—three jewels in the crown of civilization.

  Reflections of the Sun looked up, to see Vandat’s black eyes staring sightlessly at the vidscreen.

  “You have an idea,” he prompted.

  “I need an answer,” Blossoms on the Wind said over the comlink.

  Vandat taped his chin. “I think—” He turned to face the screen, and then Reflections of the Sun. “Why not let them land, but contain them?”

  “How?” Blossoms on the Wind exclaimed. “You do not know what weaponry we will face—these hive-foulers will blast holes clear to space, if we try to stop them!”

  Vandat swept one console clear, and then hit the single tab for the schematic of the Drift. “They will, of course, want to come to us here.” A smooth gray finger touched the central node, the command center. “Why don’t we lead them away?”

  Reflections of the Sun stared. “Where?”

  “The best-protected place on the entire Drift is Kodos’s arena. Why not lead them there, and contain them, until we can get Kodos to them? And then keep them contained, as best we can, until they leave?”

  “Containment? How are we to do that, lacking Alphyra’s cooperation?” Blossoms on the Wind exclaimed.

  “It is not Alphyra we must deal with now but Torbal,” replied Vandat. “Do you not think he may be looking for ways
to survive this disaster?”

  Blossoms on the Wind hummed. “I must be getting old. That is certainly the case.” He stood up straighter, his carapace glinting coolly in the subdued lighting of the defense center. “But the Nietzscheans are so arrogant that even with Torbal’s cooperation, if we attempt any limitations at all, they are far more likely to go rampaging about causing damage, just to prove their superiority.”

  Reflections of the Sun tapped the schematic. “Not if they think they are going to the command center, but in fact all ways lead to the arena. After all, the maps do show what we wish them to show.”

  “And we have control of the lift accesses and corridors,” Vandat said, whirling to face the vidscreen.

  “It must not seem too easy,” Reflections of the Sun warned.

  “They will move fast,” the security chief said over her link.

  “We might have to be reprogramming right ahead of them,” Reflections of the Sun agreed. “But if we lead them on—”

  “—with what they think is a defensive party,” Blossoms on the Wind finished.

  Vandat clapped his hands. “Let us reluctantly, ever so reluctantly, agree,” he said.

  He turned to a comscreen and tabbed a combination. It was not long before Torbal’s face appeared.

  Vandat said, “The Nietzscheans demand a landing. We think of sending them to you. Can your forces contain them?”

  Torbal’s apprehension changed to a smirk, then hastily smoothed to bland cooperation. “We will do our very best to cooperate,” he said. “And as for the Nietzscheans—” He shrugged. “We do have our own weapons.”

  Vandat knew a hint when he heard one, but he made no reference to the illegal lab experiments. Time enough to negotiate if they came to it. For now, keep the pressure on.

  “Then you must lift your force field on our signal,” he said, and out the connection before Torbal could speak.

  “Well, now we can contain them if we can get them to the arena, but we have taken damage,” Reflections of the Sun declared, busy sending orders to his team of design techs. He could almost feel them gleefully beginning to create an artistic disarray.