Steppe

  "I transferred her to the horse of one of the other men; he's got her on cleanup duty. Don't tell the Khagan!"

  Uga laughed explosively. What an insult to the eavesdropping Chinese! Even though they knew the girl was no princess, Chinese face was being lost, because officially she was Kokachin.

  "I'll catch up on sleep now," Uga said. "We'll just be walking the horses for a while. Don't interrupt me for any reason."

  That was to make sure Alp understood, and kept full alert—and did notify Uga at the first sign of trouble.

  "Right, Chief!"

  Uga's face faded. "Why did you say I was on another ship?" Kokachin asked.

  "So the Chinese won't know how tired my horse is from the extra weight," Alp explained. "That will throw off their calculations when they fire at us."

  "Gee, you're smart," she said admiringly.

  "Better hold the compliments until we come through this alive," Alp said. But he was flattered again. She probably understood the need for such ruses as well as he did, but wanted to make him feel superior. That was a very promising trait in a girl.

  If she had wanted to mess him up, she could have screamed a warning while he had the communicator on, and the Chinese monitors would have picked it up. Apparently she really had thrown in her lot with the Uigurs, hoping for faster advancement that way. A sharp girl, ready to take advantage of any break offered in her quest for Game points. She could be a real help to a man with similar motive, especially one who lacked proper familiarity with Galactic society and conventions.

  Alp knew he was rationalizing, trying to justify his promise to betroth her, since he never broke his given oath.

  This lacked the status of an oath, of course, but the principle was similar. Yet he would not have made that promise had he not liked the look and sound of her, young as she was. The beauty of a nomad girl was a fleeting thing, best caught early so that none of the bloom was wasted. In five years Koka would be lovely; in ten she would be fading.

  Then it would be time for younger, fresher wives.

  Except that it would take her about three-thousand-six-hundred-and-fifty-days to age ten years—and that would bring the Game up to Day 4,500 or so. Even five Years would bring it beyond the present Galactic date!

  Kokachin might flower in some other Game, but hardly this one.

  Alp shook his head sadly. The chances that he would live to see her beauty were not good.

  Chapter 10

  BATTLE

  Now they were upon the nebula. Alp hoped the other Uigur riders had been briefed as he had been, for surely the T'ang trap was about to spring.

  The dust of the interior was not nearly as thick as it appeared from a distance. Stars were visible within the nebula, and at close range space seemed empty. But they had to slow way down to navigate it safely, for as with a river the visibility was deceptive, and it was thick with small rocks that could interfere with the ships. The galaxy outside faded out, and they were in a small private universe.

  Then, in the center, Uga abruptly diverged. Alp started to follow him, but realized after an instant of reflection that he should maintain the original course. The ambushers had to have a fleet to attack, or they would become suspicious and perhaps thwart the counterattack.

  Four ships accompanied Uga, leaving six with Alp. They spread out to approximate the original fleet perimeter

  —but that ruse would soon become obvious when they left the shade of the nebula and engaged the enemy. If the T'ang caught on too soon...

  Alp checked his bow. In a Game like Armada, his memory told him, the ships mounted laser cannon that fired bolts of searing light. This did not actually harm the target, but did stun the occupants, partially or fatally, depending on the marksmanship. It amounted to the same thing: elimination of the inept or unlucky. But this was the Game of Steppe, and this ship was not a boat but a horse, and Alp had to depend on his personal bow, modified for space.

  This meant mounting it at the firing window and changing the arrows to laserheads. A computer-magic screen helped him aim, for no human could approach the precision necessary to orient on a target light-seconds distant.

  "I can read off the chart for you," Kokachin offered.

  "And betray your own Emperor?" So far her cooperation had been passive; could he trust her beyond that?

  "I never saw him. I just made beds for his concubines."

  "Even concubines have beds?" Alp asked, amazed.

  "Sure! And most of them never even get used."

  "The beds? Then where—"

  "The concubines, silly! Big waste, if you ask me."

  This was drifting from the subject. "All right, you can read the chart—if you can read."

  "Numbers I can read, and that's all you need, isn't it?"

  His memory agreed. Galactics were number-literate, after all, perhaps because combinations of numbers were essential for directing the many machines. "But if you call off wrong corrections, they'll shoot us down instead of us getting them, and your part as well as mine will terminate at a loss."

  "I know," she said, for the first time showing nervousness.

  The reduced fleet emerged—and an arrow passed within range of the ship's perceptive field. They were already under fire.

  Alp watched the screen. Two bright lines appeared on it as the computer tracked the paths of the multiple-lightspeed arrows. The enemy could not know the nomad's precise location yet; they must have been firing randomly at the estimated zone. That suggested that they were well equipped, for these were sophisticated and costly arrows. The stun-beams were only triggered when the solid units were proximate to the target, as a lightspeed beam could not hope to catch a ship traveling at hundreds or thousands of light years per hour!

  Alp did not return fire. The ambushing ships had a fair notion of the location and velocity of the nomad fleet because they had been indirectly tracking it all along, and it was Alp's job to be where the nomads were supposed to be. But the Uigurs could not pinpoint the enemy horses until more arrows had been fired. By the time the T'ang ships showed up on the vision screens, they would be far beyond the visible points. It was a tricky business, estimating where a given ship would be and doing it accurately enough to score!

  A third streak registered—and this one projected back to intersect one of the prior streaks. Now Alp had a recent fix on one enemy ship! But still he did not fire, for the moment he did so the enemy ships would correct their markings on him and zero in properly. Tracing arrows was the surest way to nail a horse and rider.

  Alp spurred his mount and the ship accelerated rapidly despite its extra burden. This would make it look helpless and scared, when its jump forward was calculated by the enemy. The six Uigur steeds behind him followed, spreading out further and losing what little formation remained. A mathematical formation would be disaster; the moment the enemy nailed one ship, they would have the others pinned by magic projection.

  The T'ang troops would be closing in now, sure of their prey. The range was too great for either side to operate effectively. Proper combat range was light seconds, not light minutes. And the coup had to be complete within the two-Minute period of Game daylight, when all instruments were functioning efficiently, or the prey would escape in the night.

  It bothered Alp that the ratios were not consistent; a horse could travel at many times the speed of a historical horse, and much farther before resting; yet the time-scale for days and seasons was maintained. But the Game Machine had compromised wherever it had to, limited by human adaptability more than anything else. Alp, like the other players, usually ignored the four-minute cycles of the days, except in specific cases like this where they became critical.

  More blips showed as the misses became nearer. Some were ghosts: unverified locations that the computer projected on the basis of the probable T'ang formation. The Chinese military command never had mastered the strategy of disorder; that was why it was normally so inept in battle against true nomad cavalry.

  T
he jaws of the T'ang trap were closing neatly. But where were the teeth of the Uigur countertrap? These had to bite too, or Alp and his few riders would be finished. As the enemy drew closer, their aim would improve, until finally they would come within a fraction of a light second and in straight visual range. Evasive maneuvers could prolong the battle, but only rank incompetence on the part of the Chinese would allow the Uigurs to escape cleanly.

  Alp's only protection was the T'ang's ignorance of the true disposition of the main nomad fleet. For of course the Chinese were incompetent.

  Alp glanced at Kokachin. Her little face was drawn. Obviously she had never been under fire before, and of course she had the tremendous liability of being female. Adventure in space was fine to dream about, but the reality could be terrifying. Even Alp himself was nervous; he had fought many times in circumstances only superficially dissimilar, springing bandit traps and such, but always felt the tension of incipient injury or death. His old wounds pained him sympathetically.

  He would not be able to spot the horses of Uga and Pei-li when they attacked, because they would be too far away and their arrows would not be directed at him. But he would know by the enemy reaction to the counterambush!

  "What if they desert us?" Koka demanded shrilly. "They could just sneak home while we get wiped out!"

  "That is not the Uigur way," Alp said. But he too felt unease. These were not true Uigurs; they were merely Galactics playing a Game. How could he be sure of their motives? "Anyway, the T'ang would know that not all of our ships were accounted for, so the ruse wouldn't work."

  "The others would still get a good head start," she said, wanting to be convinced it was not so.

  She was right, and it was small encouragement. Alp chided himself for being entirely too trusting. He had let himself become lead decoy on his first mission for Uga, and he was certainly vulnerable. If Uga broke faith, Alp would be finished—and he had no assets to re-enter the Game and seek revenge.

  "Uigurs do not deceive their own," Alp said.

  "They're better than Chinese, then!"

  The enemy bolts abruptly stopped. The screen showed that no further arrows were entering detection range, and the probability of that happening accidentally in such a battle was small. It meant Uga had attacked from the outside! The T'ang fleet, surprised in the rear, was reorienting to protect its flank.

  Alp cut his drive. Now he could rotate his ship, bringing his bow to bear more accurately on the enemy positions while resting his horse—who sorely needed it! He could not afford to drift long, as the enemy could readily orient on him after he fired. But he wanted no distractions the first time he used his bow in space.

  He focused on the lead T'ang ship on one side. The second ship in his formation would orient on the second, and so on as far as they lasted. Meanwhile the formations of Uga and Pei-li would be firing too—and with luck the Chinese fleet would be wiped out. Trap and counter-trap: normal international relations!

  Alp fired and knew that this released the other players in his group to do the same. The twang of his string was a mere formality; it was the aim of his arrow that counted. The head of it passed through the window and jetted away under its own power, accelerating phenomenally. Each arrowhead was a miniature spaceship, unburdened by the weight of a man and his attendant equipment: food, air, communications, safety features, weapons and so on. It could move at a hundred thousand light years per hour, catching any ordinary ship—provided it was properly aimed.

  A shot that missed did not cross the galaxy in an hour; it soon fizzled out and became a dead meteorite, its propulsive and stunner power expended in the futile quest for the target. No doubt the omniscient Game Machine had means to recover and recharge the lost hardware.

  The target screen showed the calculated course of Alp's arrow. That line crossed the indicated T'ang blip, showing Alp's aim had been good—but there was no way to tell whether contact had been made. A direct score would make the enemy ship go dead, and in due course the Game Machine would salvage that too and return the stunned occupant to the mundane galaxy. If the ship did not return fire, Alp would assume he had knocked it out.

  On the other hand, if his shot had missed—as it probably had, for the enemy would be foolish indeed to remain in the same course after firing—there would shortly be more accurate return fire.

  Alp cut in his drive and bucked his horse into a random evasive pattern. This was an uncomfortable type of warfare, when he saw his enemy only through an electronic magic pattern on a screen and had to wait for the other rider's shot before firing his own! How was the superior warrior to prevail, except by blind chance?

  "I can't correct your aim," Koka said. "It was right on."

  FLASH! An enemy arrow passed within half a light second, illuminating his board. Alp felt the momentary vertigo that signified a fringe-range swipe by a stunner. The T'ang bowman was right on the job with a lucky shot.

  Alp watched the line-projection on his screen. It did not appear instantly complete, though the arrow would have passed faster than human perception could trace it. The limiting factor was the small computer's computation of its course. Thus the line extended back to its source and crossed another line three light minutes away. That ship was approaching rapidly, orienting exclusively on Alp now—a bad sign. Had it already dispatched the other Uigur ship, the flank attacker?

  FLASH! Half a light second again—and Alp had not yet returned fire! Such accuracy was impossible, in the face of his random evasive pattern!

  But now Alp had two extremely pertinent fixes on the enemy. He fired his arrow, then cut his automatic pattern and let his horse drift, watching.

  "On target again!" Koka exclaimed. "You're some shot!"

  FLASH! A full light second this time—but still too close for chance. In fact, had he not cut his program, that enemy arrow could have intersected him! That meant—But it was so highly improbable that a random program would be intersected by chance that that possibility was not considered in battle tactics. Space was too large...

  Alp yanked out the program spool. He had set it himself, as another matter of innate caution, before coming to China, though at the time he had hardly understood its function.

  This was not his spool! This lacked the Uigur-script identification. Another had been substituted.

  He stared at Koka. But she could not have done it; she had been with him all the time, she could not have messed with his controls without his knowing it.

  Uga again? For an instant a raging suspicion took him. But it cooled as he worked it out more thoroughly.

  The T'ang had sabotaged his horse. They knew his evasive pattern! Only the slowness stemming from Koka's added weight had thrown the ship off that pattern, making the shots miss. Had Uga changed that pattern, it would have remained random as far as the T'ang were concerned.

  FLASH! Yet another close shot—but two light seconds distant. Because he was drifting, no longer even partially on that deathtrap spool. He had not fired since commencing his drift, so there was no indication the enemy could pick up. By that thin margin also he had averted elimination!

  Now he started up again, throwing his horse into a manual evasion. What, then, of the other nomad ships?

  Were they all vulnerable? No—only the ones that had been left unoccupied. His, Uga's and Pei-li's. Unless the other Uigurs had been put under stasis and released without being informed—difficult, but perhaps possible with contemporary technology. No—the Game Machine would not permit such modern techniques in Steppe! Still, none of the ships could be assumed to be secure!

  Useless to call Uga. Either the chief had been alert enough to catch it himself—or he was already dead. Alp became angry.

  He checked the position board, orienting carefully on the enemy ship whose location was now obvious because of the four fast shots. But he did not fire. He accelerated his own ship there instead.

  "Hey, this is fun!" Koka exclaimed, terrified. "Why don't you fire back?"

  "Becaus
e I'm using original Uigur strategy," Alp muttered grimly. "The T'ang never saw this before..."

  "I have a sudden premonition of futility," she said.

  Fancy language for a little girl! But Alp could not pay attention to her now. In an instant he was there.

  His computer's calculator was pretty good; he passed only a fraction of a light second behind the T'ang ship and was able to pick it up on visual. It could have reached him as readily but obviously had preferred to fire at the unrandom pattern from a secure distance instead of evening the odds through close combat. Immediately Alp set his own ship on inertia, spun its nose around to aim toward the other, and shot his arrow.

  It missed by a tenth of a light second. He had aimed too quickly and made a bad shot, considering his range. A stupid, amateur failing! He had to maneuver again, before the other could reorient. He accelerated—directly toward the enemy.

  FLASH! A bolt passed him, missing by a scant three thousand kilometers, a hundredth of a light second. Sparks danced across his control board and his screen went momentarily blank. For an instant Alp lost consciousness. But he fought out of it; a stun ricochet had struck his spine and deadened his legs, but he could still control his horse!

  Then he was there, a hundred kilometers from the other, so close collision seemed imminent. He read the screen himself, foggily interpreting the indications, drawing back his bowstring. He fired almost without aiming, trusting to his lifetime fighting reflexes; it seemed impossible to miss at this range.

  This time he saw the flash as his bolt scored. The light was for tracing only; the invisible stun-component passed right through the vessel and wiped out the horseman.

  The T'ang ship was dead, its horse riderless. "What do you think of that, Koka?" Alp cried gleefully. "This is just like old times, when I came up behind the Kirghiz—"

  He paused, glancing at the girl who had not answered.

  Kokachin was unconscious, and he knew she was Game-dead. The beam that had struck his back must have been in line with her head.