“After we take care of the command center we’ll finish off the smaller ships before they can move in and attack Rylos itself, then return to take care of the command ship before they can move the mass driver within precision range.”
“Seems to me they were precise enough from farther out when they destroyed the base.”
“They need to drop into low orbit to make their threat as believable as possible. It is one thing to be on the receiving end of such a weapon, quite another to be able to look up in the night sky and watch it cross over your head. The Ko-Dan do not really want to destroy Rylos; they want to conquer it. There is no glory in ruling rubble. So psychological weapons are as important as technological ones.”
“I see.” Alex did some mental figuring. “Wait a second. We knock out the control center to prevent the fighters from acting in concert, but to get to the command center we gotta get through the fighters.” He slumped. “That makes it simple. We’re dead.”
“Don’t fret. I’ll have it all figured out by the time we reach attack position.”
“Sure you will. While you’re making notes, keep in mind I’d like any remains sent to . . .” He broke off as a steady humming noise suddenly penetrated the cockpit. “What’s that?”
“Sensor. We’re nearing the outer limits of Rylos’s inner defensive shield.”
“I thought the Ko-Dan already broke through that.”
“Temporarily, long enough for them to destroy the base. Now the shield is back in place again, until they break through the next time. They are playing with us, I fear. This time the armada itself will come through, convinced they’ll be doing so unopposed.” He emitted an alien chuckle. “Aren’t they going to be surprised!”
“Oh yeah,” Alex agreed flatly. “They’ll be terrified out of their socks.”
Another buzz replaced the steady humming. Grig’s main monitor screen came to life. Two images appeared off to port.
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure.” Grig studied the screen. “Highly irregular to see cargo ships this far above the ecliptic. I can’t imagine where they’re headed. They may not be aware of the Ko-Dan presence.”
“How’s that possible? Surely everyone within communications range knows about it by now.”
“Everyone within range, yes, but these visitors may be on their way in from outsystem and may have just emerged from supralight drive. I’ll try hailing them on sealed beam.” His hands worked instruments.
“This is gunstar one out of Rylos. Identify yourself, please. You are in a combat area. Ko-Dan armada is close at hand. Repeat, identify yourselves. You should leave this sector immediately and proceed in to Rylos.”
“Can’t the Ko-Dan pick that up?” Alex asked anxiously, watching his own screen. Indeed, he couldn’t take his eyes off it. Literally.
“Not unless Xur’s spies have burrowed deeper into League technology than so far suspected.”
Abruptly space lit up outside the ship, bright silent flares erupting off to their left.
“What was that!”
“Contradiction of my aforementioned,” said Grig as he threw the ship onto a different course and boosted their speed. “Unless they have simply been ordered to attack any vessel not attempting contact on an approved Ko-Dan channel.”
Alex stared at the battle screen. “Hey, they’re coming toward us! Shouldn’t we take evasive action before they catch up to us?”
“They are not catching up to us,” Grig replied as he concentrated on the controls. “We are catching up to them. They are trying to get away.”
“Uh . . . maybe we should let them?”
“This is no game, Alex,” Grig admonished him. “These are not Ko-Dan fighters. They are Xurian ships, traitors, Ko-Dan allies. I’ve jammed their transmissions so they can’t report back to the rest of the armada, but we have to stop them quickly. Stand ready, Alex. There are your first live targets.”
“Live?”
Grig didn’t reply. He was too busy trying to run down the two retreating ships.
“Gee, Grig, I’m not sure I’m ready to . . .”
“Within range in five milliparts. Get ready.”
Ahead, the two Xurian ships suddenly disappeared, vanishing from their screens.
“Where’d they go?” Alex wondered.
“Only one place to hide from scanners at this range. Hang on.”
The gunstar dipped as Grig flung it toward a large asteroid drifting nearby. Alex flinched, but there was no rending crash. Grig had plunged them into the center of a large crater, close on the track of the fleeing Xurians. He slowed immediately, knowing their quarry would be forced to do likewise or risk smashing into the walls of the volcanic vent.
The cockpit was full of beeps and clicks as he navigated a course through the asteroid. The tunnel down which the Xurians were fleeing was curved and smooth-sided.
“Three milliparts to kill zone. Weapons systems armed. Defensive screen armed.”
Alex leaned forward. “Grig, wait!”
“Fire when ready.”
The images of the two Xurian ships were sharp on the screen floating in front of Alex’s face, both of them pinned against the firing grid like tired butterflies. Alex stared blankly, suddenly conscious of what the pair of points represented. This was no two-dimensional microchip-generated picture. Both of those ships were filled with intelligent beings not unlike themselves.
Dimly a voice was shouting at him.
“Fire, Alex, fire!”
“It’s no good, Grig. I can’t do it. Turn back, get us out of here, I can’t!”
“You can and you must.” Grig blinked as the gunstar scraped a barely sensed projection sticking out into the tunnel. “Steady now, steady. We’re still on them, still in range. Use your sensors.”
“It’s no good, Grig.”
The tunnel ahead ballooned into a vast open airless cavern. The Xurians whirled and sped back straight toward their pursuer. The cavern was a dead end and further retreat was blocked.
It took only a second or so. “Shoot, Alex!”
“Grig, I can’t!”
If the pilots of the Xurian ships had ignored the gunstar they might both have escaped, shooting past their pursuer on either flank. Instead, they panicked and fired their own weapons. It was just enough to galvanize Alex into action. His fingers danced on the fire controls. Energy shot from the gunstar and the ship rocked as it passed between two expanding spheres of hot gas and vaporized metal.
Grig slowed and turned easily in the cavern. “You did it! I never doubted for a moment, Alex.” He dropped their speed to a crawl, let the gunstar coast on maneuvering thrusters.
Alex sat stunned in the gunnery seat. “I did it? You did it. You almost got me killed. I said I was willing to help fight, but not a suicidal battle against impossible odds. If this is how it’s going to be, I withdraw the offer. I volunteered to contribute to a defensive effort, not be the defense. I’m not cut out to be a martyr, Grig. I’d rather face Xur’s assassins one at a time. The odds are a damnsight better. Take me home!”
Grig was silent a long time before asking quietly, “Are those your final words on the matter, Alex?”
“I hope so!”
Grig made a gesture of acknowledgment and spoke quietly as they cruised the tunnel. “My humblest apologies, then. I had hoped that by putting you in the thick of battle, a great Starfighter might emerge, the polished gem from the rough Centauri was so certain he’d found.
“Alas, perhaps there was never one within you to begin with. So it would seem. I cannot make a Starfighter of you against your will, Alex. I will take you back, as you request. You may still be able to live out a long and comfortable life on Earth before the Ko-Dan reach it. Then again, you may not.
“You may relax now. Keep your fingers clear of the fire controls until I can deactivate our weapons systems. There’s no need to alert any other Xurian or Ko-Dan vessels to our presence through a burst of unintentional fire.” A sensor be
eped, nudged the ship around a large floating chunk of torn ceramic plating.
“Also, I am not trying to make you feel guilty. That would be impolite.”
“I don’t feel guilty,” Alex insisted guiltily.
“That is good. I do not have the right to manipulate your emotions, no matter how worthy the cause. Let us talk about something else.” He let his gaze take in the smooth ceiling of the tunnel.
“Cheerful, roomy place,” Grig said. “With air and gravity and heat it could be made almost homey. Rather reminds me of the town I was raised in.”
Alex frowned as he studied the stone tube. “This reminds you of home?”
“Oh yes.” Grig made an effort to appear cheerful. “My mate and I live below ground with our sixty little Griglings. We’re very comfortable. Living below the surface of a world has many advantages, Alex. Stable climate, unvarying scenery, the feeling of your friends constantly around you.”
“Sixty, huh? That’s quite a family. I guess you didn’t spend all your time preparing to be a Navigator/Monitor.”
“We tend to have large families. The fertile period among us is brief, but most births that occur are multiple. Would you like to see?”
Alex wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond. “I’m not sure I follow you.”
“My family.”
Alex relaxed. “Yeah, sure.”
Grig fumbled with his flight suit and harness and extracted a strip of dark plastic. He ran a finger along the right-hand edge. An image appeared on the smooth, thin surface, lit from within. As Alex watched the picture change automatically, each of Grig’s numerous offspring appearing in a predetermined sequence. The images changed quickly and it didn’t take too long to run through the entire oversized family.
When the last one had faded, Grig slipped the plastic back inside his suit.
“Very nice,” Alex admitted.
“They are a joy to me,” the Navigator confessed. “I have high hopes for them. That is, until Xur makes them slaves.” This was said in a flat, unemotional tone, which did nothing to lessen its impact on Alex.
“Now tell me, where do your kind live, if not beneath the undisturbed and insulating surface of your world?”
“In houses, mostly. Caves above ground.” Suddenly he shoved a hand into his right-side pocket and removed the contents. He’d switched them from his jeans to the uniform when he’d changed clothes back on Rylos.
Sitting in the fire control seat of a gunstar they looked very out of place. There was his wallet, with its limp, useless currency; a few keys, some coins, a paperclip, a couple of stamps (how much was postage from Rylos to Earth, he wondered?), and a few bits of gravel. Of all of it, he most prized the few fragments of decomposed granite. They were pieces of home.
He returned everything to the pocket but the wallet, unsnapped the catch on the vinyl and flipped through the pictures as he showed them to Grig.
“See, here’s where I live. And that’s my family. It’s a lot smaller than yours.” The picture showed happy younger children gathered around a barbecue. A smiling older man and woman stood together next to the metal utensil. The man had his arm around the woman’s shoulder while hers was around his waist. Distant, half-remembered images of an ancient time. Even there, in that alien planetoid, they conjured up rarely felt emotions.
“See, that’s my mom and my dad before he died. The one with the wrinkled face and the dumb expression is my little brother Louis. The girl, that’s Maggie.”
“Your wife?” Grig’s interest was genuine as he glanced up and back toward the picture.
“Uh, no, just a friend. A very close friend.” Alex swallowed hard. “My family lives above ground in a mobile home cave that goes anyplace you want it to. Only we never went anyplace.”
Grig nodded politely. Alex wondered if the gesture stood for the same thing among his people or if, having seen Alex utilize the gesture, the Navigator was simply displaying his courtesy through the use of it.
“A mobile cave that never went anywhere. Fascinating, if something of a contradiction in terms. Why call it mobile if it never goes anywhere?”
“That’s our fault, not the trailer’s,” Alex explained. Aware he’d been staring at Maggie’s face for a long time, he removed the picture from his wallet and placed it on a nearby console, copying a gesture learned from watching old black-and-white war movies. The familiar snapshot was an island of sanity among all the smooth Rylan technology. He put the wallet back in his pocket.
“We do have caves, though. Some of them are pretty big. People used to live in them a lot. A few still do.”
“Ah, then we are not so very different.”
“No, I guess not. We have a lot of below-surface caves near our trailer park. Me and Louis used to play hide and seek in them.”
“Hide and seek?”
“A kid’s game. You’ve probably played it yourself, only you call it something else. Or else it’s not translating properly. See, one person or more runs and hides and . . .” He hesitated, thinking.
“Hide and seek,” he mumbled again.
“Alex, what is it?”
“Oh, nothing, Grig. Nothing.”
“Tell me. Anything worth labeling nothing has to be composed of something.”
“Yeah, right. I was just thinking, though. We could hide inside this asteroid and let the Ko-Dan armada pass by on its way to Rylos. It would shield us from their detectors just like those Xurians were trying to hide from us. Then after they’ve gone by we could come out fast and hit them from behind.”
Grig nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, it would give us the necessary element of surprise. It might actually have worked. I do not think the Ko-Dan would run an extensive survey of all the asteroids. Any such survey would surely exclude time-consuming internal examinations. The rock here is more than thick enough to block out their sensors. Yes, it might well have worked. What a pity there are no Starfighters left to carry it out.”
“Yeah, but we . . .”
“Please. It is a waste of time to discuss plans one has no intention of putting to use, and I am not in the mood to discuss tactical theory when reality is at stake. I will take you home now, Alex.”
The gunstar accelerated very slightly. Grig was turning toward another exit. The instant they reached the broken upper lip of the crater the cockpit came alive with half a hundred warning lights.
Neither of them had to resort to instruments to see the Xurian ships resting on the surface of the planetoid. At the same time their presence was detected by the five vessels they had surprised.
“A Xurian base!” Grig exclaimed. “This must be one of their rendezvous points with the Ko-Dan, or else I was wrong and they’re checking out the asteroids after all.” The gunstar rocked as the first wave of fire from the ships below passed close by. The Xurians were too startled by the unscheduled appearance of a stranger in their midst to take accurate aim.
Alex’s fingers flew over the fire controls. Grig had not yet deactivated the ship’s weaponry and the Xurian vessels exploded silently in sequence. Two of them rose just far enough from the surface for their debris to be scattered out into emptiness.
It was all over so quickly, the fire control computer responding flawlessly to Alex’s directions. Now he sat back in his seat as Grig moved them away from the asteroid. Expanding gases burned themselves out. Once again the only external light came from the stars and Rylos’s sun.
“That was superbly done, Alex.” Grig was as unperturbed as ever. “Even taking into account the fact that we caught them unawares and resting on a solid surface, your reaction to their fire was all that could have been expected. Please accept my compliments.”
“I didn’t mean . . .”
“Of course you did,” Grig said, correcting him before he had a chance to finish. “They were shooting at us. They would have destroyed us without a second thought, so you did not permit them second thoughts. Or yourself, either.
“Now that we are safely away, I wi
ll program a course for Earth. We will make the jump before any other Xurian or Ko-Dan craft can detect our presence.”
Alex had gone quiet. He was remembering. Remembering the Rylans he’d talked to, the room full of Starfighters who’d never had the chance to fight. Remembering the faces of Grig’s offspring, small alien images that came and went in joyful, rapid succession on a strip of plastic. What would their lives be like under Ko-Dan rule?
“Say, Grig?”
“What is it, Alex?”
He was wonderfully calm now that he’d made the decision. He knew he was going to die. Of that he was confident. The knowledge gave him an inner peace he’d never felt before. He was going to shake hands with death. Knowing that the meeting was inevitable, it no longer concerned him. It wasn’t important. Grig had told him that. It was only a question of time.
Still, he’d do his damndest to put off the meeting as long as possible. He would . . . and he had to smile to himself . . . he would make a game of it.
“Maybe,” he finished, “there is a Starfighter left.”
Grig did not turn to look at him, did not smile. Not outwardly, anyway.
“Am I to understand that you are changing your mind again? You do not wish to return home at this time?”
“No, not just yet. You know, it’s strange. All of you have such confidence in me: Starfighter command, Centauri, yourself. I figure it’d be a real waste if I never found out if that confidence was justified or not.”
“A terrible waste,” Grig agreed, nodding.
Alex looked past him, staring out past the fire control screen at the strange constellations. So far from home. He was so far from home.
“Let’s find out if Centauri was right or wrong.”
“As you wish, Alex.” Grig jubilantly reprogrammed the ship’s course.