Relics of War, page 12
“What?” asked Murdock, hunching back from her in confusion. “Assistance? With what?”
Aiofe sighed. “You lost them. We need to figure out how to find them again. Your help with the military aspects might be useful.” She gestured to his chair. “Don’t you want to catch them?”
“Of course!” Murdock threw himself into the chair, glaring at her. “But they’ve gone, there’s no way.”
“None at all?” asked Aiofe. Her finger passed through the holographic display. “We know their exact speed and trajectory as they entered FTL. Doesn’t that tell us their destination?”
“Normally, yes.” He leaned forward, checking the figures she’d pointed to. “We could plot along their course and find the next system they’d cross. Knowing their ship’s class and range, we could limit it by fuel consumption. But since they knew we were in pursuit, they simply drop into normal space a short distance from the system, change course for their actual destination, and reenter FTL. We’ve no way of predicting that course.” The alarming shade of red receded from his face as he reasoned through Alcazar’s options.
“Fine, but we still know their range, and that they didn’t refuel. We know their last port of call, as well.”
“Ah, we do…” His hands flew over the controls, pulling up information on the carrier. He called up the distance between systems they had traveled since refueling and returned their remaining range. A few commands centered a circle on their position and systems within it blinked for attention. “Their general direction of travel—thus—makes these stations more likely.” A rough quarter of the systems glowed brighter, while a quarter on the opposite side of the circle dimmed.
“Good start,” said Aiofe. “What do we know about these systems? Any chance of narrowing down their choices?”
Murdock shook his head but called up information on all the stations in the brightest quarter. They silently read through the data, looked up, and Aiofe shrugged. Murdock cleared the screen. “No, nothing stands out as a primary destination, and there’s little to eliminate any of them. It would be guesswork.”
“We could break up the fleet, send out ships to all of them.”
“Useless!” Murdock snorted and called up a schematic showing all the ships under his command. “There are so many destinations, including the few very close ones off to each side, we’d be forced to send single Fregattes alone. Even an ancient, obsolete wreck like that one could overwhelm a Fregatte. That’s what made the old carriers so useful. Their complement of fighters can overwhelm a small ship, even a light cruiser. And the fighters were cheap and easy to replace, much easier than repairing a damaged ship.”
“Ah, I see.” She sat back and laced her fingers together, leaving the index fingers extended and touching all along their length. Then she tapped the ends against her chin, thinking. “Tracking them will call for something other than maneuvering the fleet. Assuming we find some other way, what should we do in the meantime? Wait here?”
“Hardly. We still have their general direction of travel. We could shift the fleet to one of these”—he gestured to the brightly glowing systems—“and wait for our alternate search to return some data. We’d be closer to the action and require less travel time after getting a destination.” Leaning closer to the hologram, he entered some new commands, highlighting some additional systems. “We could even jump past their range, get out ahead of them. Or break up the fleet into… three pieces and position us out in this area.”
“I see.” Aiofe swayed her fingertips from side to side. “Splitting the combat power to reduce reaction time. Leave the smaller groups strong enough to overwhelm them. Separate them enough to get one close to their destination. Clever.”
“Perhaps, but it does not answer our basic question: How will we find them? They are sure to disguise themselves to avoid reports of their arrival. And their next port of call after that certainly won’t be the one they report when they leave.” Murdock slumped back in his chair. “If they popped up in the next system over, we might never know.”
“We have a fund for expenses, and authority to do whatever is necessary, correct?”
He nodded.
“Offer a bounty on information from their next port of call. If they can send us sensor records of Alcazar entering the system, we pay them. Simple.”
Murdock rubbed the arms of his chair, thinking furiously. “That might work. There’s always someone ready to take a bribe in these frontier systems. We could send out the sensor readings we took for comparison. Carriers can’t be that common out here.” He slapped the chair arms. “That should work!”
“I think we need something extra, though,” said Aiofe. Her voice dropped lower and slowed. Murdock leaned in as her volume fell. “We could offer to buy the artifacts from them. Specifically, from Hauptmann Ledon. A private message might be best.”
“Buy them?” His face twisted in disbelief. “Buy them? He’s sure to know their worth, and I’m not sure our orders would cover that large an expense.”
“Offer, dear, only offer. A huge price, oh yes. But not too huge. Big enough to tempt him, but only if he kept it all for himself. If he split it, his share would be valuable, but not enough for him or his precious retirement fund. Keeping it all would set him up for the rest of his life, though. But he’d have to leave the rest behind.”
Murdock shook his head, puzzled at her tone. “But if he took it, what difference would it make to us how he split it? We’d still be paying some outrageous amount.”
“Only if we paid. Once he accepts the offer, especially if he doesn’t intend to share it, he separates himself from his support, his crew. He’ll be all alone.” Her smile spread, showing too many teeth. “And that’s when he’ll get what’s coming to him.”
34
EVERYONE HAS A PRICE
Merrok propped his feet up on his console as he watched the bridge crew. They worked smoothly, keeping Alcazar in their assigned traffic lane as they approached the station. There’d been no welcoming committee, or they’d have been in real trouble. Their fuel reserve limited their range dramatically, and he didn’t know if they could have made it to another system still under power. He’d brought a ship in with minimal fuel before and even had one lose power after they’d gotten into the incoming lane. They’d had to use a shuttle comm to contact the station and arrange a tow. Life support had died as well, so they sat around in their suits, waiting for the other ship to arrive and slow them down to rendezvous with the station. It had been an experience he never wanted to repeat.
He watched Kayn’s squadron shepherd them into dock. Kayn’d told him they’d keep up an overwatch with half the squadron out and the other half docked. With that crazy Swiss bastard after them, they’d fuel, load, and go. No waiting around. The squadron could keep two-hour watches while they fueled, and the docked pilots could catnap. He cleared the unusual fighter launches and recoveries with the station using an excuse about training and a veiled threat about docking elsewhere to skirt station rules. He planned for their entire stay in the system, edge to edge, to be just over a day.
Alcazar shivered as the docking clamps gripped them. They were down, and the crew began the fuel and supply transfers. Payment changed hands, a little more of their operating reserve gone, and the station suddenly became more friendly. His comm chimed as messages waiting for them slid into their computers. This brought back a carefully suppressed fear.
During the transit, he’d ordered the engineers and comm staff to change their transponder signal. From a certain point of view, changing your transponder signal might be considered illegal. It certainly skirted the law. But how else would they disguise themselves? He really didn’t want the station announcing to everyone within ten systems they’d arrived. Not with the Swiss on his tail.
But to pick up their mail, theirs and not the fictional ship they impersonated, they needed to tell the computers who they were. It should be a confidential transaction, unlike the transponder, but who knew for sure? Still, they’d be leaving soon, and he thought it worth the risk.
The messages flickered past, his eyes skimming from one to the other without interrupting his train of thought. Until one derailed him. He blinked several times and read it again from the beginning. It appeared the Swiss bastard thought he could buy Merrok off. He wanted the artifacts they’d taken from the pirate, who’d looted them from some Swiss ship, and he was willing to pay. Merrok’s eyes bugged, and his feet dropped off the console and thumped to the deck as he realized how much he’d pay. It was more money than he’d ever seen except on his ship’s mortgage. Obscene might be the best descriptor.
The bridge crew stared at him. He pasted a cheesy grin on his face. “Feet slipped. Who’s been polishing my console?” A mock glare at the others drew a chuckle, and they returned to their work.
A few taps locked the message’s contents with his password. He accessed their navigation data and checked the coordinates of their next port of call. His lips moved as he memorized it. Switching off his console, he plunged his hands into his pockets and sauntered off the bridge, a tuneless whistle barely audible.
35
THE BEST LAID PLANS
“We break up into four groups and rush the Korvettes. Lay down a wave of ballistics, followed by missiles. Follow them in and finish them off with lasers.” Rhonwen grinned at Kayn as she put the fighter’s virtual representations through the maneuver she’d described.
Kayn winced as her face fell. She’d just put the squadron through the wringer, as Merrok would say, and only sixty percent had survived. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her it was okay, but his role demanded he rub her nose in her mess, like an ill-trained puppy.
“That’s great unless there’re other ships to fight. Oh, and you don’t mind killing half your friends. It’s only half in the initial attack. Once you turn and fight the other ships, you’ll lose all the rest, because there’s no time to go back and reload.” He ran the simulation back to her fire plan. “So here you fired off half your load to get sufficient saturation of his defense. You’ve still got half left, right? Good management of your loadout.”
Rhonwen nodded, her expression recovering a little of its enthusiasm.
He crushed it. “But not good enough. With forty percent losses, firing everything off on the next approach gives you only sixty percent of the fire you had before. Not enough to achieve saturation. Instead of ten percent getting through, half a percent get through. A virtually undamaged Korvette picks off your remaining fighters as they plink away at his shields with lasers.”
The simulation ran through the attack to his predicted conclusion.
“Game over,” said Kayn, switching the display to the post-battle summary. “Except it’s not a game. It’s training. Training for the real thing. And if it had been the real thing, here’s what would have happened.” He scrolled through the list of the dead. “Depending on if Alcazar stayed out at the edge of the system, they could be dead, too. With a little warning, they could run for it and survive. Otherwise, it’s a carrier with no fighters up against warships. Not a chance.”
Rhonwen’s face crumpled, eyes squinting, deep wrinkles in her cheeks, her lower lip rippling as she tried to keep control. She turned away and wiped at her face with one jerking hand.
Kayn leaned back, face blank, while inside he cursed. He needed her to be better than this. Even if she lost, she needed to stand up to the strain. Losing forty percent of your force, your friends, in your initial attack could shake your confidence. It had shaken his when it happened to him. But he’d pushed his grief, shame, guilt, and doubt aside, and he’d taken the objective and saved—most of—his men. The emotions he’d suppressed had festered like poison. It took years to work some of it out. Some nights, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, he knew he’d never get it all.
A survivor did what was necessary, when necessary. He was a survivor. Was she? Could he make her into a survivor? Should he try? Was it worth the cost?
She’d regained control before turning back and gave him a sly smile. “But we’ll have you leading us, and you don’t make those kinds of mistakes.”
Sure, I make other kinds, ones that get millions killed, not just dozens. He shook his head. He’d never been in a position where millions of lives were on the line, balanced against his decisions. Was he now? Probably not. He didn’t have the authority to really influence the outcome. Flottillenadmiral Akerman? Maybe. But maybe it was out of all their hands, just the dead hand of fate and the invisible hand of history, conspiring to bury a few million more bodies.
“And then Ambrose leads us to the treasure. Can you imagine? An actual working space station built during the AI Wars. The little gadget he found must be worth a fortune all by itself. And I know a space station costs a mint to build.” She took over the console and began to input numbers. “If a little component for a station costs this much, and the gadget Ambrose has is worth…” She rubbed her lips, trying to decide on a number. “This. Then a station costs this much. Okay, figure that out.” The console chugged away at the problem.
Kayn sighed. The console could solve the math in an instant. For that matter, he could have done it in a few minutes himself. Most of the time the console spent came from figuring out what she wanted to know. Once it figured out the question, it would create the equation and solve it faster than humanly possible.
When the answer came, her eyes widened. “That’s enough to…to…you could do anything with that much money! Even split up with all the crew, I could buy Alcazar. I could have a brand-new carrier built with all new fighters! I could build a fleet!”
“But you wouldn’t need one, because you could buy a system with that much money. Who needs a fleet when you can have a world?”
“That’s right! But you’d still need a fleet to protect it, right? In case anyone came and pushed you around.”
Kayn shook his head. “Or in case you wanted something your neighbor had: a little land, a treasure, whatever was easier to take than to work for.”
“What? No, the military is for defense. Isn’t that what you always told me?”
He had. And he wanted it to be true, needed it to be true. But the real world didn’t work that way. A defensive military always got used offensively. To further national policy, to influence people’s opinions, to cover political mistakes. With piles of bodies. Perhaps it didn’t have to work that way, but his experience said otherwise.
“Kayn, what’s the matter?”
He’d been scowling, sinking deep into the quagmire of thoughts, regrets, anger, guilt, shame…He shook himself, like a dog coming out of deep water, trying to physically fling away the clinging emotions.
“I’m fine. Just thinking, sorry.”
“Thinking? About what?” She grinned at him. “I’d rather think about the ways to spend all the money we’ll get selling off this depot. Hey! What if the AI still works? Would you sell it, or use it to make money, like…” She fumbled around looking for a way to use a superhuman computer program for profit. “Predicting the financial markets, or doing research, or designing new gadgets. I don’t know. What can it do?”
What can it do? An AI from the height of humanity’s skill with computers? With all the repair and manufacturing resources a warship repair depot would need? There weren’t any more like it: they’d all been destroyed after the war. It could do whatever it wanted.
And that’s if the warship Ambrose had mentioned didn’t exist. An AI warship. It could exterminate all humanity. It could conquer and rule. It could unite the Kaiserreich again and expand its borders for hundreds of light-years in every direction.
But that’s if it were uncontrolled. A rogue AI. But this AI would be part of the human forces fighting them. Tightly controlled. Subservient. To whoever got to it first and gave it proper commands. Such as the Swiss. They could use it to crush their enemies, reform the empire under their rule, or just hold their borders and extract tribute. But the Swiss were rational and peaceful, compared to some of the nation-states out there. Better to destroy anything they found than to let some of them claim it.
“Kayn!”
He realized Rhonwen had shouted at him. She’d shouted at him several times and he hadn’t responded. Now she shook him by the shoulders, staring at his face with terror in her eyes.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Sorry, just…I got caught up…I…”
She pulled him up out of his seat and led him to his bed, pushing him over on top of the blanket. Her hands reached past his head and arranged his pillow more comfortably. He smiled up at her, his eyes slipping to the side as he tried to focus on her face. Soft hands patted his cheeks before she turned around and stepped to the door. She hesitated, her hand moving between opening the door and exiting, and locking it closed.
Her eyes met his as she twisted to look over her shoulder. One finger pressed firmly on the lock. She slid the lights down to a dim glow and turned back to the bed. Her slim fingers reached up and unfastened the catches on her shirt, moving down as she approached.
He reached for her.
36
SHARED NIGHTMARES
Rhonwen listened to Kayn’s gentle breathing next to her, his arm slipped under her as she nestled against him. She knew she had poor role models for forming relationships. The other pilots mixed and matched between them, and many had lovers waiting at many of the stations they visited. How they could keep a half dozen or more straight as they traveled between systems intrigued her. Some seemed to take it as a challenge while others just looked tired.
She knew her situation took the worst aspects of all of them. Her lovers weren’t separated by light-years but instead confined on the same ship. And one reported to the other. And she only truly loved one of them.
