When Fighting Monsters, page 23
part #5 of The Maauro Chronicles Series
“I’ll tell you something else that isn’t very scientific. When the Murch first emerged in our universe, I think they brought in an element of non causality, a bit of magic if you will. You are that magic.”
She smiled widely. “Ok, Wrik, that was poetic.”
I stroked her hair. “I have my moments.”
“What are we to do with this newfound font of knowledge that you have discovered?”
“I was thinking of making love to the magical part of it.”
Maauro slid onto the bed next to me. “Good thinking.”
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
In the morning, mentally recovered from the impossibilities of the prior day, we held a counsel of war aboard Stardust. I could not help feeling oppressed by time and the roof of the sky over us. Somewhere beyond the blue, death was hunting for us.
Ferlan attended. I went and fetched the elderly Guildmaster and brought her to our ship. Maurice clearly didn’t like it, but was in no position to dispute me. We looked stone-faced at each other as Ferlan, bundled in expensive, warm clothes and furs, rested a delicate hand on my arm and followed me down the ramp to our ship.
“Ah,” she said. “So cold, and I do so hate the cold, but I should not complain. By any rights, I should be long dead. Now, I may even have a last chance to do some good in the world.”
I gave her a lop-sided smile. “Curious ambition for a Guild chieftain.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But now at the end of my life I find myself only interested in things that may give me peace in the long rest, if there is anything after.”
She looked up at me. “Do you believe in an afterlife, Wrik?”
“I do, in a nonspecific way. I’ve never found an answer in any church, but I guess I can’t understand the purpose of our existence if this one life is all there is to it. I guess one might as well believe, given the fact that if there is no afterlife, we’ll never know it.”
She chuckled. “How very sensible of you, I suppose I should adopt your point of view.”
We traveled the rest of the distance in amiable silence and both entered the warmth of Stardust riding up on the open, unrailed elevator holding to the stability pole. The others awaited us in the galley. Dusko and Ferlan eyed each other and settled on mere nods. Maauro gestured at a chair at the galley table before which steamed a cup of tea.
“Ah,” Ferlan said. “How thoughtful, thank you.”
“It is only a common tea,” Maauro said.
“No matter, some things are common because they are so good that many recognize the virtue in them,” Ferlan said.
Delt handed me a cup of coffee.
We settled in around the table.
“Whatever we are to do,” I said. “Speed is clearly needed. We can’t remain onworld, risking the Beast catching us on the ground. We know that it can handle a 1G field easily enough, but it is leery of higher gravity. We’ve tossed a nuke at it in jumpspace, which hurt it, but not much. We have no idea of how close that weapon was went it went off. It fought a heavy cruiser, again hurt, this time by direct-fire energy weapons. But each time it has had an ace in the hole, a hole we believe is its connection with jumpspace, something that allows it to hide its essential life force in a pocket of jumpspace proof against our weapons.
“The answer,” Maauro said, “seems to be gravity, or a combination of gravity and radiation. The creature abandoned its pursuit of Taiko when it assumed low orbit of a super gas giant which had abundant supplies of both. It went so far as to even venture out of the system, looking for easier prey, destroying Fetch III in a fit of pique. It may have used its telepathic power to keep track of Taiko, or it may have just lost interest for a while.
“Is it keeping track of you?” Ferlan asked.
“I do not believe so,” Maauro said. “I am a different form of life, with no subconscious mind to access. All of my thought is conscious volition, and I believe this allows me to control whether we become aware of each other. I shielded myself far better in the second encounter, though the experience is one of the most distasteful of my existence, worse by far than being in contact with the Infestors.
“So it does not know where we are, only that we preceded it to this system.”
“Can it pick up on those of us that it has not contacted before?” Olivia wondered.
“Again, I do not believe so,” Maauro said. “This is just an interpretation of its actions, I have no way to be sure, but it did not seem aware that there were others on this ship. Once my connection with it was shut off, it seemed to lose track of us. I believe that in normal space its sensor capacities are similar to ours.”
“Then why not launch and try and get past it to the jump point,” Olivia said. “It’s a big system; it can’t look for us and guard the jump point. We’ve found a marginal earthlike moon in orbit of a gas giant. Our preliminary scans shows there were two worlds inward of us in the Goldilocks zone. Won’t it search there first?”
I shook my head. “We don’t know if either is an earth-type world, spectrometry showed some oxygen on both, but that doesn’t make either one livable. We can’t discount that the Beast may have come this way heading for the Piola sector. It may know this system far better than we. We can’t count on it to move the way we want it to.”
“More caution,” Olivia sighed. “Consider taking the initiative for once.”
I raised an eyebrow. “When we need a bayonet charge, I’ll call you.”
We stared at each other for a moment. In the background, Delt sighed. Maauro and Dusko just looked at the table top.”
“So if we launch an attack in open space,” Olivia said, returning to the main subject, “it’s not likely to work, unless we can lure it near a super giant.”
“As a solid object in 1G field it would also be more vulnerable.” Delt said, running his hand through his blonde hair. “Maybe destroying the part of it that is in our space-time suffices for our purposes.”
“Still leaves it haunting the jumpspace lanes,” Dusko said, “most notably ours on the way out of this system.”
I sighed. “One could wish for the Skurlock gravity weapon.”
Olivia snorted. “Sure, got a black hole and a technology that disappeared down the same?”
I looked at Maauro. “You must have all the records of the gravity lens the Skurlock used—”
“Yes, but Wrik, that technology was lost. Though I could reverse engineer some of the principles, it required a black hole from the collapse of a thirty-four times Sol-size star to power it. There is no answer there.”
“Or is there?” I said. “Vast black holes are rare but every starship generates a small singularity with its drive when it enters jump space, the same thing that gives us artificial gravity.”
“I see where you are going,” Maauro said, with that pleased look she had when I was being clever. “Yes, a ship generates a small singularity in the attenuated field density of a jumpspace entrance, but how would it help us here?”
“The higher the field density,” I said slowly, “the more difficult the calculations for maintaining a singularity. It’s considered impossible over 1.73Gs, but we are in a 1G field here. Maauro can you do the calculations and stabilize a singularity on the ground?”
“Theoretically, to do the actual calculation to see if it is possible I must divert most of my power to the question. Forty-three minutes should do for a calculation, but to do it for real, I would have to be in the engine room of a ship, adjusting the controls from microsecond to microsecond. A singularity in this much field density is too unstable to last without such control, it will become unstable and implode.”
“Well, I don’t see where you are going,” Olivia said, with asperity.
“A singularity drive going out of control would generate a huge blast,” I said. “We don’t use them for bombs because they don’t do anything that you can’t do easier with a regular nuke or even a dropped asteroid. The one thing it would do that a normal weapon wouldn’t is generate an intense local gravity field.
Delt snapped his fingers. “A combination of bear trap and landmine.”
“Yes,” I said. “Horribly dangerous to use, if it is even possible. But, if we can fix it in place by a sudden application of gravity in the middle of an explosion, we might kill it.”
“It is the best chance,” Maauro added.
“If it is possible,” Ferlan said. “One presumes you will use my ship.”
“You’ll let us?” I asked.
Ferlan gave me an ironic smile as if to say, how nice of you to preserve the fiction that you must ask. “I am sure it will not be a popular decision with my crew, but never-the-less I make the ship yours.”
“I see where you are going,” Maauro said. “If I can work out the math, balance the drive field long enough for us to lure the Beast in and then explode it.”
“The plan is mad,” Delt said heatedly. “Maauro luring it down. She’d have to stay at the reactor controls until the last few minutes. Wrik, you’re not giving yourself much of a safety margin.”
“We cannot afford to,” Maauro argued. “We have one strike at the Beast and must maximize our attack. Blasts will not injure it without the paralyzing effect of gravity preventing it from withdrawing into jumpspace. There is no matter, as such, in jumpspace underlying our space-time. It may be able to retreat directly from the planet’s surface. We must gain every fraction of G that we can.”
“Which would leave us with a shipful of Guilders if you don’t succeed in escaping,” Olivia said, “not to be selfish or anything.”
“An unpleasant prospect,” Dusko agreed.
Everyone looked at him.
“What?” he added. “They’re no friends of mine.”
“And we are?” Olivia said, eyeing him narrowly, arms crossed.
“As long as Maauro lives,” he relied, “I have no other Alpha. The Guild has repeatedly failed against her, and these certainly aren’t a match for her. Hell, I don’t think they’re a match for her shipboard AI.”
“Good to know,” I said dryly
“I cannot see another way of doing it,” Maauro said. “While Hummel is as computerized as any other ship, she was designed to be used by living beings and is not fully automated. Nor do we have time to alter her that much. Even if we could, her computer systems are not capable of the reaction speed required. We cannot afford any atmospheric distortions, or electromagnetic effects, interrupting my control from a distance. I must be near the instruments.”
“Regrettably, I believe you are correct,” Ferlan said. “None of my more expendable people can handle the calculations even with a pre-prepared computer. This is beyond our computer science, at least with what we have here. Nor would they be eager, or willing. Willing could be overcome, but a lack of alacrity, no”
“In any event, it is so far beyond biological capability as to be unworthy of further consideration,” Maauro added.
“We’ll have to move the remaining Guilders aboard,” I said. “I won’t maroon even Guilders this far out. So get them settled, Dusko. They will have access to their bottom hold cabins, galley and sickbay. They go anywhere else the ship AI will let them have it.”
Dusko nodded and left.
After Dusko left, Ferlan turned to look at Olivia. “You realize that should Maauro die, you must immediately kill Dusko.”
“What?” Delt said. “Oh, come on. He’s—”
“Yes, I know,” Olivia said.
“In fact you should dispose of all of us,” Ferlan added.
“Very altruistic of you,” Olivia said, looking sidewise at her.
“I have no illusions about the value of my crew to the universe at large. As for me, I am an old woman. Should Maauro and Wrik die, I will have failed in the purpose for which I believe I was spared. There will be no reason for me to linger further in the universe. And I cannot imagine that a practical young woman, like the major has not already considered such a detail like myself.”
“Detail?” Olivia said with a wolfish smile. “You’re the one real danger on Hummel.”
Ferlan smiled coolly back. “Don’t underestimate Maurice. He only looks like a gorilla.”
“Not so keen on your former team?” Delt snapped.
“I’m Guild,” Ferlan replied. “We have few saints and many sinners in our ranks.”
I stirred, breaking the lethargy that threatened to overcome me. “I don’t care what you do with the others, particularly Maurice, but I would take it as a personal favor if we don’t make it back, that you give Madame Ferlan a lift back to civilization.”
Ferlan gave me a bemused look.
“For old time’s sake,” I said with a shrug. I turned to Maauro. “And Dusko?”
“He goes home, too,” Maauro stated, in a voice that brooked no argument. “If I am gone, you must recognize that his nature as a Dua is that he will be a free agent. Attach him to you, Olivia, you are strong and ruthless enough.”
“That’s enough,” Delt said, standing. To my surprise, he looked as angry as I’d seen him.
Maauro looked up startled.
“You’re making plans to fail and to die,” he snapped. “That’s not what we’re going to do here. We are going to whip this thing, and then we’re going home.” His eyes locked with mine. “Do you have that, Ncome?”
His use of our squadron name took my breath away. For a second, I was eighteen again, looking at Delt and the other members of our doomed squadron, back before Delt had ever lost anything, back before we knew fear. I swallowed. “Yes, Squadron Leader.”
“Delt,” Maauro began, “we must be realistic—“
He turned his hot gaze on her. “Do you have that, Ncome?”
Maauro hesitated. I knew she treasured that Delt had made her an honorary member of Ncome, then, “Yes, Squadron Leader.”
He faced Olivia, who, seeming to like what she saw, simply nodded.
“When we flew in here we all made a decision,” Delt continued, “all stand or all fall. I meant it when I said it. I led a group of people into danger once and I didn’t bring most of them back. It’s not happening a second time. We either upship together, or Stardust stands guard over our bones, and no other way.
“As for you,” he said to Ferlan, “Wrik says you ride home with us, so you do, and that’s an end of it. I don’t much care for Guild, but if the others behave, they ride back too. They don’t and they get spaced. That goes double for the monkey-man. Don’t like him anyway.
“Is everyone now clear on what the rest of this expedition is going to look like?” he demanded.
Everyone, including Ferlan, nodded.
Ferlan’s announcement that a monster was coming, and that Hummel would be expended in an attempt to destroy it, did not go over well with her remaining crew. Maauro’s presence at her side, and my promise that they would ride back in Stardust, reduced it to dark looks.
Darkest among those looks was Maurice, whose expression, before he shuttered it, was a mix of surprise, anger and, I felt, betrayal. His only comment was to ask for a power line to be extended to Hummel. Their auxiliary power reactor was fluctuating and he wanted to shut it down for repair. We didn’t need the APU for the plan, but we had no idea how long it would be before we encountered the Beast. Hummel needed to be kept livable and in case our plans changed, flyable. Maauro and one of the crabs ran a heavy duty power cable from the exterior coupling of our ship to theirs.
Ferlan’s collection began moving into Stardust, carefully and under Maauro’s supervision, though the grunt work of shifting it fell on the Guilders. They seemed jealous of this privilege, probably knowing that her prospects for reestablishing herself in the Confederacy and possibly still needing her retainers, rested with the treasure house. Much of the collection are small artifacts, some of which would be ancient even by Maauro’s standards. She and the Collector seemed to enjoy discussing the particulars of the oldest artifacts, especially the ones whose purposes and origins were the least understood.
I did not move the Guilders into Stardust yet, not wanting the security risk. This meant that though Maauro and Ferlan chose and decorated a cabin for the elderly Guilder, she remained on the Hummel, offering at least some assurance that the others would be taken off when she herself left. It seemed a low cost alternative to having to watch fifteen Guild operatives, particularly Maurice.
The prospect of a long voyage back to the Confederacy with him aboard did not cheer me, but I kept this to myself. In the presence of the Guilders, Maauro was her stern warbot self, mechanical and abrupt, and I found that oddly disconcerting now. I knew that a request from me would end the apeman’s existence, but what concerned me was, if I displayed too much unease in his presence, she might act on her own. Despite all she had learned and grown through, when Maauro felt there was a reason to kill, she simply killed. I didn’t want that for her, so I kept my peace around the Guilder and ignored him as much as possible. Wary of Maauro, he did the same. With these preparations made, Maauro retreated to Engineering, going so far as to lock them down. “These calculations are almost as monstrous as the thing chasing us,” she’d said. “I cannot afford any diversion of processing power if I am to solve them.”
I sit in the Engineering room and once again secure myself to the floor, placing a power tap on my midsection to draw directly from the main reactor. The calculations I must do are on a level that I have rarely tried before, even more complicated than the ones I used when we set out to find Sedon and rescue Shasti’s grandchild. I shut down as many exterior connections and awareness as I can; I will be working well into the subatomic, even into theoretical levels. As I do not know if the task is even possible, I cannot estimate the time out of contact with the world.
