“No more Project Cherubim. And we aren’t going to make it to Wunderland or Home, are we?”
“Doubtful. Maybe we can rig up a couple of coldsleep bunks from the autodoc spare parts. We sure don’t have a decade’s worth of recycler or supply capacity.” He brightened a bit. “Maybe another Earth ship will find us while we’re in coldsleep.”
“Or a kzin warcraft, more likely,” she reminded him. “We could wake up a piece at a time.”
Again, silence hung thick in Dolittle.
“All of it was for nothing,” Bruno finally said, his tone black and dead.
“No,” she replied firmly. “Not for nothing. You and I got together, love.”
He squeezed her hand in agreement.
“And,” Carol pointed out, “we waxed three ratcat ships in the bargain. Maybe two hundred kzin flash-fried to vapor. That must be worth something on the scorechip.”
Bruno’s face was suddenly slack, a bit like his Linked expression. Concern flashed through Carol’s mind.
“What is it, Tacky?” she asked lightly, keeping the worry from her voice.
“I hope that we took out all the kzin ships.”
Carol gestured at the holoscreen. “Sure we did. Look at the fireworks.” The antimatter explosion was immense, brilliantly colored. It occurred to her that the garish cloud would eventually be visible across light-years.
“Can we be certain?” Bruno’s tone was odd, a little machinelike.
“Is that a prediction, that we didn’t get them all?” she inquired, frowning.
“I don’t think that I can Link anymore, so I’m just guessing. Maybe I’m just worried.” His tone and facial expression were back to normal.
Carol leaned over and rubbed her stiff strip haircut against his cheek. “You will never guess how attractive I find a simple human guess, my friend.”
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Rrowl-Captain scented his own death in the cramped singleship fighter. He closed his nostrils from the stench of unchallenging prey. The kzin knew that he had taken more than a lethal dose of radiation in the detonation of the monkeyship. The captain was far from the medical tank in the wreckage of Belly-Slasher, and the supplies aboard the singleship were minimal.
There had been little time to plan an escape.
Alien-Technologists warning had come late, too late. Rrowl-Captain and his crew had engaged Belly-Slasher’s gravity polarizers at maximum acceleration, but were only a few hundred kilometers from the human spacecraft when the contra-matter containment fields had failed. Damage had been heavy: his precious spacecraft hulled and broken, his crew torn and bloody and mostly dead. The One Fanged God had inexplicably spared Rrowl-Captain of all but the radiation exposure.
His mind filled with the memories of mewling Heroes in agony—blinded, seared, poisoned by monkey treachery. Even those crewkzin still breathing would, like Rrowl-Captain, soon die of the radiation taint in their blood and bone.
His dreams of regaining his honor and reward, his Warrior Heart, were shattered by monkey perfidy and cowardice.
Rrowl-Captain had managed to seal his space armor in the confusing aftermath of the explosion. He had picked his way through the twisted wreckage of Belly-Slasher, down black corridors filled with the drifting corpses of his Heroes—or worse, the crewkzin not yet dead. Eventually, he had reached a still-intact singleship fighter, Sharpened-Fang. The small warcraft lacked the strong gravitic protective fields of larger kzin spacecraft, and was not designed for individual near-luminal travel.
He had little to lose. And nothing to gain but a Hero’s final vengeance.
Rrowl-Captain knew that he was dying, as he held back the wrenching pain he felt in his innards. It was like shards of broken glass, grinding deep; like the sharp teeth of some enemy at his liver, chewing. The epithelial lining of his stomach and intestines had loosened, leading to the violent nausea of lethal radiation poisoning. He could literally feel the blisters rising on his body, as radiation-outraged skin layers began to die. Fur began to fall from his pelt in handfuls.
Rrowl-Captain hawked and spat blood onto the tiny deck, to mix with the pool of drying vomit already left there. He knew his time was short. At least he had a chance to show his honor, his Warrior Heart, before he met the One Fanged God. The memory of his dead litter-brother would demand nothing less.
Rrowl-Captain would take these despicable monkeys as his honor-slaves into the Hunting Ground Beyond.
He peered into the singleship thinplate screen with damaged eyes, searching. Finally, Rrowl-Captain found the human escape vessel. The coward-vessel had wrapped huge magnetic fields around itself, according to his instruments. Rrowl-Captain snarled as he altered Sharpened-Fang’s course, his mouth dry and scratchy. The air tasted of death and failure, and his very fangs were loosening in his head.
The escaping monkeyship with its queer gossamer wings could not maneuver, and the fusion drive seemed minimal. All that the human ship seemed capable of was magnetic deceleration and minor course corrections. His thinplate screen analysis indicated an impressively high level of deceleration, in fact. The stresses upon the little spacecraft must be tremendous, he mused, hissing in readiness to do battle.
Rrowl-Captain increased Sharpened-Fang’s velocity, pushing the gravitic polarizers to their safety limits, and beyond. The ripping-cloth noise of the drive began to sound like a predatory scream, filling his folded ears. Purple warning lights flashed on the control console and warning tones yowled. His head pounded as the fabric of space itself twisted savagely. The monkeyship grew larger on his screen. Rrowl-Captain readied his weapons panel, his black claws clicking on keypads.
Something nagged at the captain. What, he wondered, could these craven monkeys do with the waste energy from deceleration? Only by draining energy at enormous rates could the strange vessel take significant advantage of magnetic deceleration. The ship was small, and would have little need for prodigious energy sources…
Green hell suddenly filled Rrowl-Captain’s thinplate viewscreen, which went blank in a frying crackle of circuit overload.
He keened in surprise and fear. Alarms shrieked in the tiny cabin. Ablative microconstruction in the hull of the singleship vaporized and shoved Sharpened-Fang violently to one side, out of the deadly beam of the humans’ laser weaponry. Secondary sensors and viewscreens came smoothly on-line.
The alien beam showed itself within the cloud of vaporized hull material surrounding Sharpened-Fang. The laser reached out for Rrowl-Captain again, like the implacable clawed Finger of the One Fanged God.
He squelched his fear with a feral snarl, and initiated further evasive maneuvers. This time, light-speed limitations were on Rrowl-Captain’s side. The gravitic drives screamed with the increased demand. He smelled burning insulation from failing electronic components.
Rrowl-Captain’s claws extended and clicked across his console keypads. Sharpened-Fang began moving randomly, avoiding the deadly spears of laser light that stabbed at him.
What weapons could Rrowl-Captain bring to bear? Particle beams would be near-useless in the face of such magnetic deflection fields. His laser cannon was not formidable at this distance. Sharpened-Fang possessed only a small armament array, being designed for close approach, ship-to-ship assaults.
However, the singleship was equipped with a few special-purpose weapons. Rrowl-Captain reviewed shipboard inventory swiftly, then blinked twice. With a kzin cough of a chuckle, he realized that he knew how to render the monkey escape ship fangless.
The huge but delicate wings of the vessel were superconductive! Their passage through the magnetic fields of interstellar space provided the power for their laser array, little different in principle than the electrical engines of ancient history. The captain licked a crusty tongue across cracked lips, and drooled bloody saliva in anticipation.
The wings were the monkeys’ weakness. Without them, they were powerless—in the literal sense of the term.
Rrowl-Captain knew his strategy w
as dangerous, but filled with honor. He punched in a final sequence of keypads, hiss-spat a prayer to the One Fanged God, and scream-and-leaped Sharpened-Fang toward the alien ship.
• OUTSIDERS THREE
Fury. Observe this gross insult of plasma and sundered field lines! How has this remote lack of action served the Divine Radiants?
Worry. One hotlife craft has been atomized by fundamental annihilation as the other-node predicted. What damage will be wreaked by this event?
Anger. The plasma cloud will be vast, and the twisted force-lines will eventually impinge upon the Sacred Region. The insult to the Divine Radiants and Their Design will be grievous.
Woe. This local-node had hoped…
Impatience. Hope is not sufficient! A great gout of highly ionized plasma grows—directly where it should not.
Grudging-agreement. Once more, this local-node and the other-node concur with One mind. Yet the constraints of the Treaty…
Decisiveness. Treaties with feral heretics are transcended by the Here-and-Now! This local-and-other nodes, as One mind, shall act!
Agreement-with-caution. Truth. Yet the {^^^///} have Sentinels as well. Surely the feral nodes may reach conclusions and act as well as this local-and-other node at One. First, this local-and-other node should determine the nature and potential of this insult.
Irritation-frustration. How does the other-node suggest such a determination be performed? The nature and intent of vermin remains unimportant.
Caution. Yet the actions of the hotlife motes have grave consequences. This local-node argues that the offending vermin be acquired and their inner and external patterns deep-analyzed for action and intent. Consider these facts for congruence to the Great Pattern.
Anger-acceptance. Truth. Such caution is implied from the High Texts. One. Mark this local-node’s arguments, however.
Agreement. This local-node is of One mind with the other-node, including the reservations of the other-node. Perhaps further analysis before the acquisition of the hotlife motes is warranted. The feral {^^^///} may have reached the same conclusions as the Local Nexus.
Resolve. Enough! There has been sufficient debate and discussion. This local-node sends the initiator signal. Muster the many! The Nexus acts!
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Bruno watched Carol’s fingers on the fire-control console with some surprise. It was a delicate, deadly ballet she danced, one hand in a dataglove making delicate adjustments, while the other hand punched and stroked keypads.
In retrospect, it made sense to Bruno that Carol was skilled at battle stations; after all, she was twice a combat veteran. But Bruno had been spoiled by the absolute certainty of Linkage. While Transcended, he simply made things happen with a thought. He didn’t actually have to do anything at all. He knew.
Bruno frowned. Every time he had thought of Linkage since emerging from the autodoc tank, he had developed a pounding headache. Strange images with mixed sensoria intruded. He felt as if he could somehow taste colors, and feel sounds. It was frightening, but somehow familiar. Bruno had convinced himself that the incidents were a by-product of his macrocircuit neuronal matrices rerouting around the nerve damage.
Or, he thought grimly, it could just be the brain damage itself.
He firmly put that thought from his mind; it was unproductive at present. On the holoscreen, Bruno saw the icon of the kzin singleship moving in little jerks and starts across the idealized starscape. Carol kept trying to center the fire-control cursor in front of the presumed path of the alien ship before activating the hugely powerful gas lasers powered by Dolittle’s deceleration.
“C’mere, you little ratcat,” she crooned to herself. “Just hold course a bit longer…”
She missed again. The kzin singleship was closer.
“You want me to try to Link up?” he asked without thinking, even as the pounding in his skull began anew.
Carol didn’t even look away from the holoscreen. “Tacky, dear,” she said in a distracted tone, “you don’t even want to think about attaching that interface socket in your neck to anything with electrical current in it—not until we can do a full autodiagnostic on the rig.”
She was right. Linkage might kill him now.
He just hated feeling stupid and slow. He used to be so much more. Not just a human…
“No,” Carol continued, “you just let old Mumma Carol take care of our little ratcat infestation.” She paused for a moment, stretching her fingers luxuriously. “I have whacked more than one kzin singleship in my deep dark past.”
“So we have a chance?”
“You want to bet every credit in inventory on it, shipmate.” Carol slapped his arm with her free hand and went back to work.
Bruno busied himself by reviewing Dolittle’s diagnostics and spare-parts inventory. If he and Carol survived this dogfight, maybe he really could cobble together some kind of coldsleep chamber. If not, they faced slow asphyxiation in their own waste gases when the recyclers finally failed.
“Heads up,” Carol cried, scoring another hit with the main laser array. Bruno saw the cloud of vaporized ship-material fluoresce in the aftermath of the laser light. “Ah, taxes take ablation shielding,” she swore bitterly as the kzin icon emerged from the cloud under full acceleration, apparently undamaged.
Bruno saw something. “What’s that?” he asked, using his own dataglove to point into the holoscreen. A tiny blinking point of light was moving swiftly toward them.
Carol clucked at her too-focused attention and opened a realtime window in the holoscreen. She magnified and amplified ambient starlight for illumination. A small, glittering globe flew toward them across the relativity-squashed starscape.
“Bomb?” Bruno asked.
Carol shook her head. “I’m getting no readings other than faint and indeterminate electronics leakage. No fissionables, fusion materials, monopoles.”
“How fast?”
“It’s coming in at just under a hundred KPS, relative.” She smiled tightly. “Let’s see how whatever it is likes a little light on the subject.” She started to place the fire-control cursor over the icon representing the mysterious globe in the tactical window of the holoscreen.
“Wait!” Bruno exclaimed, pointing at the realtime window.
As they both watched in surprise, the globe smoothly separated into two hemispheres. The half globes whirled around one another almost too swiftly for the eye to see, then began to slow as the distance between the two hemispheres increased.
“It looks like a bolo,” Bruno breathed, remembering his history chips. “The two pieces have to be connected by something. Can’t you resolve it?”
Carol shook her head. “Negatory, Tacky. Are you sure that there is something between them?”
Bruno was very sure. Physics was physics, after all. “How else can they be swinging around one another so quickly?”
“You have a point. But it’s getting pretty close to us now.” Carol set the fire-control cursor directly between the two whirling objects, which were over a kilometer apart now. “Firing full power burst.”
For a moment, the entire distance between the two hemispheres blazed with a brilliant green line that hurt the eye, almost too thin to see. It vanished instantly. Enhancing infrared did not show anything, either.
Bruno swore another nonsensical oath Buford Early had taught him, something about water birds and sex. “Carol,” he said tensely, “I have a bad feeling we are dealing with monomolecular filament. Shoot for either of the hemispheres, now!”
It took several full-power shots to convince Carol that even the enormous power of their laser array was being leached away by the apparent superconductivity of the filament material, only one molecule thick. The hemispheres seemed to be as invulnerable as the invisible filament between them. Seconds after a direct hit, the slowly twirling hemispheres had cooled to ambient temperatures.
“You had best maneuver us out of the way,” Bruno told her as the alien whirligig drew closer to
Dolittle. “That filament will pass right through the hull like a cutting laser through aluminum veneer.”
“Damn!” Carol’s face was a mask of concentration.
But as Bruno had feared, the twirling hemispheres were guided, not simply ballistic. Further, Carol occasionally had to blast the laser battery at the kzin singleship, which fired off several laser bolts of its own at Dolittle. Damage had been minimal, since the kzin singleship had clearly been designed for close-quarter battles, but the diversion did seriously degrade her performance with regard to what had become the main threat.
Bruno again felt the headache, thinking how he might have handled this situation in Linkage. The ship was after all designed to be operated by a Linker. He stoked up the fusion drive to full power, trying to maneuver Dolittle. The superconductive wings could not be used for course changes, only deceleration or long, slow turns. His course changes were minimal, due to the ungainliness of the wings.
The strange enemy weapon grew closer to Dolittle.
With a sinking feeling, Bruno noticed that the kzin singleship was silent, keeping its distance.
“Impact coming up,” Carol sang out. She roughly swung the ship on its axis.
The twirling hemispheres missed Dolittle, but neatly sheared off the starboard superconductive wing. In one window of the holoscreen, Bruno had a glimpse of the severed gossamer assembly twisting and falling away into the darkness. Half the green telltale status lights on the command console flashed red.
“Close,” Carol breathed.
“Carol, the wing was the target of that weapon, not the ship proper.”
Carol wiped sweat from her brow, and did not look away from the holoscreen.
“Sure, Tacky,” she said evenly. “The ratcat wants us intact. To take us apart piece by piece.”
“Lasers still operational?”