“That’s the experimental, untested weapons system you mentioned? You think it’ll work?”
“You have another suggestion?”
“Uh, not at the moment,” Alex confessed as he stared at the slowly shrinking sphere of Ko-Dan ships all around them. “What do I do?”
“You use your same fire controls, only use them fast. Don’t even stop to think. At kill range you’ll have sixty seconds of overfire . . . theoretically. The blossom has never been battle tested, only demonstrated in simulations. Use of it could overload the ship’s drive, and . . .” he hesitated.
“And what?” Alex prompted him. “What are you worrying about now?” Alex was amazed at how matter-of-fact he sounded. “Theoretically we should already be dead.”
“I cannot argue with your logic, but your attitude has turned flippant.”
“Has it?” Alex was feeling euphoric, blindly indifferent to whatever fate the universe had cooked up for him. “The hell with it.” He flipped open the protective plate that arched over the red button controlling the blossom. Not that he felt half as confident as he sounded. A gentle shudder passed through the ship. Opening the plate had activated something, but from his position in the gunnery chair he couldn’t see what. He had the feeling that the contours of the gunstar had been altered somehow.
He wiped his palms against plastic, wishing he could free his arms from the control sleeves but not daring to spare the time.
The images forming the deadly spheres on his screen began to close toward one another. The englobement was tightening. A somnolent green dot lay trapped in the center of the screen their own ship.
The first fighters came within range and Alex began firing selectively with standard defensive weaponry. He was precise in his choice of targets, trying to take out ships coming from every direction instead of concentrating on one sector. That would be what they’d be expecting him to do. His football coach had always told him to run the unexpected play, and the same strategy seemed to apply now.
Ko-Dan ships vanished from the screen, obliterated by the gunstar’s superior weaponry and Alex’s methodical aim. The survivors ignored the losses in their midst and closed up in preparation for the final, overwhelming attack.
“Hold them off a little longer.” Grig was fastened to his instrumentation.
Alex continued to fire, spoke without turning from the display screen. “How much longer?”
“Wait ’til they’re well within the blossom’s kill zone. We have to wait, else we may as well give up now.” An explosion rocked the dancing gunstar as Grig fought to confuse the incoming attacks while his area of maneuverability continued to shrink. Soon part of their defensive screen would fail and one shot would get through. That would be enough to destroy them.
“Grig . . .?”
“Easy, easy.”
“Now?”
“Steady . . . hold on, Alex.”
On the display screens the green dot appeared about to be swallowed by a swarm of red gnats. “Now Grig?” Alex asked anxiously. “Now?”
“Now! Fire!”
Alex’s thumb hit the forbidden button while his other fingers became a blur on the rest of the fire control panel.
The gunstar became a dervish of destructive energy, throwing off energy bolts and heavy particles in all directions. It was as if a small sun had suddenly gone nova in the midst of the incoming Ko-Dan ships. That wash of unbelievable destruction swept them away as though they’d never been, vaporizing all before they had a chance to escape.
Alex kept firing even though his screen was rendered useless by the quantity of energy being dispersed around the gunstar, kept firing until the brief period of usefulness ended. A warning buzzer sounded loud in the cockpit. Lights dimmed, the ship resumed its standard fighting configuration, and space was once again visible outside and on the screens.
The latter were blank save for a single steady green dot hanging lazily in the centers.
“Engines down, power down,” Grig announced, studying his readouts. “Except for life support and communications, we’re dead.”
Exhausted, Alex pulled his arms out of the control sleeves, indulged in the ultimate luxury of wiping his face and rubbing his eyes. He was utterly drained, physically as well as emotionally.
“It doesn’t matter, Grig. We did it. It’s over, and we did it.”
“Yes, we actually did, didn’t we?” He continued to take readings of ship functions. “I’ll attempt to contact Rylos control. They’ll send something up to pick us up and recover the gunstar.” He started to spin his chair.
Near explosions suddenly rocked the ship, stopped as abruptly. Grig hastily swerved back to battle position while Alex thrust his arms back into the fire control sleeves.
“Now what?”
“I don’t know. Did we miss any? I thought we got them all.” He studied his console.
The oversized image appeared simultaneously on both screens.
“The command ship!” Alex yelled. “But they’ve stopped firing at us. Why?”
“Maybe they can sense that our drive is dysfunctional. Maybe they’re going to put a tow beam on us and pull us in.” He worked frantically at his instruments. “Plenty of evidence of damage to their exterior. We hurt them bad on our initial attack.”
Indeed they had. Kril raged at his fire control officer. “Why have you stopped firing? They are not even trying to evade. They must have engine damage. Fire!”
The officer in charge turned to face Kril. “Commander, all our weapons systems are down now. It will take time for damage control to repair even the least damaged of them.”
Kril whirled back to face the main screen. It clearly showed the gunstar drifting aimlessly above Galan.
“Sensors?”
“They have minimal power remaining, Commander,” came the reply. “I would imagine they retain life support since there is no visible sign of hull damage. But all other energy readings are minimal at best.”
“Could it be a deception?” wondered another officer. He was patched from where he’d struck the deck hard during an earlier explosion.
“Why bother?” Kril exclaimed. “They must know how badly we are hurt. If they could mount the most minimal attack they would be coming straight for us. We must therefore assume they are incapable of attack and cannot even manage their own escape. Could we put a tow beam on them?”
Again the disheartening reply. “That system is also down, Commander.”
Kril fumed silently. The opportunity was present to snatch victory from defeat, and he was helpless!
Or was he?
He turned to navigation. “Plot an intercept course. Even at our mutually reduced speeds the impact should be sufficient to reduce them to scrap. Clear all forward compartments of crew and seal off the forward section of the ship.”
“Yes, Commander,” came the replies from the appropriate stations.
Kril was able to regard the screen with satisfaction. This would be like the ancient battles, when Ko-Dan warred against Ko-Dan on the surface of the mother world for control of tribal territories. With the advanced weaponry of both vessels crippled, he had the advantage. He had no intention of waiting until his own weapons were fixed. The gunstar might regain the use of her drive and escape, or worse, mount her own attack.
No, the final outcome of the battle for Rylos would be determined by raw basics: mass against mass. In that primitive equation, the Ko-Dan led.
Alex stared at his screen. “Grig, they’re moving toward us.”
“I know, Alex.”
“What are they doing?”
“I think they are actually going to try and hit us with their own vessel. What a remarkable notion.”
“Remarkable, hell! Do something!”
“I am trying, Alex.”
Hesitantly, Alex touched one of the fire controls. All his effort produced was a red warning light on the readout and monitoring system. He tried another. Two red lights glared angrily at him, fiery hostile ey
es in the dim light of the cabin.
“Grig, we need power. I’ve got nothing back here.”
“All systems were drained by the use of the blossom, but I’m trying to override the emergency safety system. It’s not designed to be overridden, Alex.”
“Well, do something. Another minute and we’ll be overridden!” The Ko-Dan command ship was clearly visible on the screen, leaking glowing gases from the gaping wounds inflicted earlier by the gunstar. It was moving at an infinitesimal speed straight toward the gunstar.
Grig worked with quiet determination. Something behind Alex’s seat vibrated awkwardly, stopped.
“All we have left is a little stored power for communications and life support maintenance.”
“Switch it through to the drive and hold your breath!”
Grig tried to do so. The temperature in the cabin began to fall rapidly. No longer continuously recycled and freshened, the air started to foul.
“Hurry, hurry!” Alex yelled, though he knew he shouldn’t have wasted the oxygen.
“Power . . . on!” Grig gasped as a battery of lights sprang to weak life on his console. He immediately switched it to the gunstar’s maneuvering thrusters, not daring to try activating the main drive.
The little ship moved. Very slightly and very slowly. It just did dip below the immense ship bearing down on it. There was actual contact between the hulls, a rarity in space, unheard of in combat. The screeching sound produced by the scrape of metal against metal was deafening in the cockpit of the gunstar.
Then they were clear and moving steadily away. The red warning lights above fire control fluttered, went out. Alex pounced on the possibility and hit everything at once, hoping something might work.
Something did. The gunstar’s weaponry raked the underside of the command ship one final time before burning out. Explosions, vast and silent, erupted from the target.
Grig cut the power to the thrusters and rechanneled back into life support and communications. The air began to clear immediately. Feeling like a scuba diver who’d stayed down too long, Alex inhaled deep gulps of the refreshened air. The cabin temperature, which had fallen below a hundred, climbed steadily back toward the comfort range. Only Alex’s flight suit had kept him from freezing solid, but he was still shivering even after the temperature had returned to normal. His body remembered.
“What was that?” Kril demanded to know as a violent trembling ran through the deck under his feet. He gazed up at the screen. “Did we hit them?”
Panic built at the consoles. One officer turned a frightened face toward his Commander.
“I don’t know, sir, but our guidance system is gone! We’re locked on course.”
“Notify the nearest Imperial ship of our situation and give them our speed and heading. They will rendezvous and help us initiate repairs.”
“You don’t understand, sir,” said the officer, all pretense at courtesy swamped by his fear. “Our present course is not directed outsystem. It’s . . .”
He didn’t have to finish. The main screen still functioned and Kril could see as clearly as anyone else where the great flagship was heading when drive control had been lost.
All the odds had favored them from the beginning, he mused while the panic spread around him. He ignored it. Xur and his traitors with their precious secrets to sell, the easy destruction of the Starfighter base; everything had been too easy.
And now this. To perish because the cosmos had finally determined to even out those odds. With all of immensity open to them, all space to escape into until repairs could be made to the guidance system, they had inadvertently chosen the one wrong heading to take. Had they retained control of the ship it wouldn’t have meant a thing, of course. But they had not.
Through the shouting on the bridge another voice reached him faintly. “Commander, the Rylan gunstar is now astern of us, still drifting. She must have regained power temporarily and fired on us in passing.”
Kril had already reached that conclusion. He just nodded, smiling to himself. Truly the odds had evened out. The cosmos does not play favorites.
He was still laughing at the irony of it when the command ship plunged into the surface of the moon called Galan, briefly but spectacularly changing a section of the desolate surface from coppery green to a bright, intense hot yellow.
14
The ceremony was more than a little overwhelming. Previously, all Alex had seen of Rylos had been clouds and forest, distant oceans and extensive mountain ranges.
Now, with the gunstar resting in the central square of the capital city, he had the chance to see what really had been at stake. It was much more than the idea of a Frontier, of a League of united worlds and races. People had been at stake, their lives and future. Even if most of them did look a little funny.
There were representatives of many peoples standing with him inside the building. Grig stood nearby as the ceremony concluded. Alex blushed at the effusiveness of the translation, until one Rylan official was compelled to wonder aloud if the change in skin color wasn’t due to some allergic reaction to something in their atmosphere. Blushing even redder, Alex assured him that it wasn’t.
“Thank you, Ambassador Enduran,” he was finally able to mutter, making the Rylan complimentary sign with his hands as Grig had taught him. The gesture must have gone over well with the onlookers, because there was an alien murmur of approval.
“Thank you, Starfighter,” Enduran replied. He turned and gestured, whereupon the assembled officials, administrators, and directors of the government of Rylos, in concert with the visiting representatives of the League, performed a half-bow toward Alex that left him feeling very strange indeed.
To escape the attention, he paid a little homage of his own, turning to Grig and saluting. Grig didn’t respond in kind. Instead he chose to make a small modification in the carefully rehearsed ceremony, and stuck out his hand. Alex took it and they shook warmly, sharing the private joke.
“Well, Alex, you mustn’t keep the rest of the crowd waiting. People have come from great distances to honor you. It’s the sort of thing heroes have to tolerate,” Enduran told him.
“I’m no hero,” he said softly.
“Whether you are or not doesn’t matter.” He nodded toward the doorway. “They think you are. As such, you have certain responsibilities. You will stay, won’t you?” Alex hesitated, looked over at Grig, who nodded.
He paused long enough to hug the tough-skinned alien, not giving a damn what any of the exalted spectators might make of this peculiar human gesture. Grig understood its meaning readily enough, though, and so did Enduran.
Then the two of them started out the doorway. The crowd of representatives and officials made way for them. As the door opened, an alien fanfare greeted their appearance. They found themselves on a balcony, looking out across a sea of enthusiastic alien faces.
He’d been ready for this. Enduran and the others had told him what to expect. What he was not prepared for was the sight of the elderly figure seated on a nearby mobile platform. Two uniformed Rylan medics stood at attention on either side of the tiny vehicle. Ignoring the crowd, Alex ran toward the newcomer.
“Centauri! You’re supposed to be dead!”
The old man grinned. “I’m supposed to be a lot o’ things, my boy, but deceased ain’t one of ’em. My people are a tough bunch, and I’m the toughest of the lot, even if I am what your kind would call a cantankerous old coot.”
“What means ‘coot’?” Grig asked.
“It’s a bird that can make a living just about anywhere,” Alex explained.
Grig nodded knowingly. “How appropriate.”
“But I saw you die . . . after you brought me back to the base,” Alex insisted. “The medic working on you . . .”
Centauri shook his head. “Oh, I was good and dead, all right. Let me tell you, being dead’s no picnic, boy. But my people are tough. The body can expire, but it takes the brain a long time to die. They were able to bring the re
st of me back. The important thing was that the memory patterns stayed intact. Just like puttin’ a puzzle back together, except the medics had to build me a few new pieces.” He looked Alex over thoughtfully, taking in the new uniform, the new attitude, the recently bestowed decorations. “What about you? What are you going to do now, Starfighter?”
Alex turned to gaze out across the cheering sea of alien faces, at the impossible skyline of the capital city of Rylos beyond. Everything had happened so quickly. Events had swept him up in their grasp and left him with little time for thinking about such things as “after.”
“I don’t know,” he whispered.
It was cold out. Or maybe it wasn’t, but it felt chilly to Maggie. She sat on the edge of the porch that ran across the front of the general store.
Where are you, Alex? Too far away for me to imagine? That’s what the machine that looked like you said. Where is that? I don’t even know what part of the sky to look at.
“Alex?” another voice called out.
A light breeze stirred the dust in front of the store. A hunting spider scrambled across the open space, searching for some unfortunate arthropod smaller than itself.
“Alex?” the voice called again, a note of concern attached to it now. That was Mrs. Rogan. How much should she be told? The Beta Unit hadn’t forced any guidelines on Maggie, had told her to use her own judgment. It was her world, her people. Her life.
She rose. It was time for Alex’s mother, at least, to learn the truth. Mrs. Rogan might throw her and her incredible story out of the trailer, but she felt bound to try. She patted Mr. President and left.
Behind her: lights, sounds, movement familiar and yet different. The videogame on the porch was going gently berserk, humming and flashing, vibrating on its levelers. Maggie didn’t see, concentrating on how she’d tell Mrs. Rogan.
Just as she didn’t see the old weathervane atop the store begin to spin wildly, even though there was hardly any wind. It picked up speed, soon was rotating fast enough to be little more than a blur in the night.