Ecolitan Prime (Ecolitan Matter) (52 page)

T
HE SPECIAL ASSISTANT
waited for the secure link to unscramble and the image of the Grand Admiral to slip into place before she spoke.

“Did you get my latest?”

“Yes. I got the report from your tame Ecolitan—and the former I.I.S. agent. My analysts and D.I. both agree that it’s first rate, and probably on target, especially the apprendices. I took the liberty of sending a copy to the External Affairs Committee. They’ll have trouble with that message to Tinhorn, though. They won’t believe that it’s anything but rhetoric.”

“Even now?” asked Marcella.

“It’s been too long since the Secession, and they don’t want to remember. In time, it will make your life easier.” The Admiral shrugged.

Marcella paused, then asked, “I assume that means there is no change in the plan to send the Eleventh Fleet along the Rift? Or to move the Third and Ninth Fleets?”

“As I told you earlier, Marcella, I cannot comment on rumors, not even on a secure link. As you know, I must follow the directives of the Imperial Senate.” A faint smile crossed the Admiral’s lips. “And, as I indicated earlier, such repositionings do take time, and we have uncovered several logistical problems that may add to that.” A nod followed. “But, after a meeting called by the Senate Pro-Consul, I was able to assure them that the Ministry of Defense will indeed be able to carry out their directives, and stands ready to implement the wishes of the Senate…whatever they may be.”

“Translated loosely, the idiots are convinced, despite all factual evidence to the contrary, that Accord is engaging ecological warfare on the Empire. That’s even after a clear statement with evidence from the Ecolitans that the Fuards are behind this?”

“There isn’t enough evidence, Marcella, not the kind that they can parade before their constituencies. Nothing that will satisfy the Senator from Heraculon, who reports more than five million deaths from energy shortage-related starvation. Of course, he also won’t admit that he supported energy monoculture because of the contributions from the Agricultural Technology Alliance. Nothing will satisfy the Senator from Squamish, where deaths are nearing two million with the failure of the fisheries. Tell me. Can you transport that much food?”

“You know we couldn’t, not even across a system, let alone transstellar distances. We’ve diverted everything we can, and it’s changed almost nothing.”

“Then how can I brook the will of the Senate?” The Admiral shrugged a last time. “Unless something changes the political dynamic. Right now, it’s still easier to oppose Accord than the Conglomerate.”

“They really would rather be reelected and see the Galaxy in flames.”

“Hasn’t it always been that way? Do you really expect them to behave any other way?”

“I could hope.”

“Hope does not vote, Marcella. Remember that.” With a swirl of colors, the Admiral’s image disappeared, leaving a dark screen.

T
HE
S
MITH
DROPPED
out of its jumpshift into normspace, and Swersa looked up from the screens before her to Nathaniel. “The screens are skewed. Where are we?”

“We’re actually below Tinhorn’s ecliptic. No one looks out here. Or down here.”

“Can you explain this in simple terms?” Sylvia twisted in the second pilot’s seat, but she kept her hands clear of the manual controls.

“Application of the anthropomorphic principle number three.”

Both looked at him blankly.

“Nathaniel,” began Sylvia. “I know what you’re trying to do. That’s clear. And it’s clear that you’re worried. But there’s no one close to us—even I can see that on the screens. So, could you explain? Why are we trying to attack from here, when the system is up there—if up is the right word?”

The pilot forced himself to take a deep breath, leaving his eyes and senses on screens and shipnets. “Everyone looks up, scans up…or out. But we’re coming in perpendicular to the ecliptic from below. By the time we register on the EDI screens, our TIV will be too high for them to have much time to react.” Nathaniel smiled grimly. “And even if they do, they won’t have more than a few ships with which to do it. No one puts big lasers in orbit around inhabited planets. Or large fleets. They can’t intimidate other systems there. Also, people are afraid of that much power too close to home.” He coughed, hoping he wasn’t getting something, or that there wasn’t some allergen in the ventilating system.

“In theory, anyway, it’s very simple. Large and small objects at excessive rates of speed have a tendency to create large craters when they impact immovable objects. They also create great heat and climatic violence when they impact comparatively shallow bodies of water. The Fuard military command is on a planetoid which was laboriously dragged into orbit around Tinhorn. I have made some major modifications to the drives on the mining boats, and to the directionality of the shields. There are similar modifications to the drives on the
Smith
. The courier is for our departure.”

“They won’t let you get that close,” pointed out Swersa.

“That’s why we’re here. Down here—anthropomorphic principle number three. Nobody looks underfoot.”

“Which you just made up,” quipped Sylvia.

“Right. But I’ll stand by it.”

“Economist and now anthropologist.”

“No. Anthropomorphic principles were developed by cosmologists and physicists to explain what cold, hard science couldn’t. Something like that, anyway.” His eyes went to the EDI screens and the glitter of energy points surrounding Tinhorn…so many that, at the scale showing, the area around the planet was more of a glow than a sharp image.

They still had a long way to go, and they needed more velocity. He checked the power situation. Fifty-eight percent. Forest lord! The cargo carrier was definitely an energy guzzler, not that he’d expected anything much different, and close to sixty percent would be more than enough. More than enough, indeed.

He eased more power into the thrusters, setting the acceleration on the high end of the expected commercial range, just slightly high. Then his senses dropped back to the shipnets to monitor the stresses on the
Smith
. Outside of a faint creaking, and increased pressure on aft retaining bulkheads—compensated for, he hoped, by the internal grav-fields—nothing seemed to have changed.

Tinhorn remained a point of light, not measurably closer, nor did the EDI patterns around the Conglomerate Centre planet change as the
Smith
—the erstwhile
Turner
—lumbered “upwards” through the darkness toward the plane of the Tinhorn system. The three Ecolitans sat and watched, sat and watched.

One Ecolitan occasionally made minor power and course adjustments as slowly, ever so slowly, the blue dot that was the
Smith
on the representational screen crept closer to the red dot that Nathaniel had placed over the planet.

The nearer the
Smith
came, the more often he scanned through the frequencies, mentally regearing his mind to think in Fuardian, trying to match those on standing wave and those with direct radiation.

After a time, the signals seemed to bounce through his thoughts, as well as through the net, none quite steady enough…yet. The
Smith
only seemed to creep toward Tinhorn and the metallic asteroid that was Tempte, and their target, but Nathaniel had no intention of boosting acceleration since that much of a power increase could trigger increased attention. He merely wanted to create the impression, were anyone even looking, that the cargo carrier was the victim of poor piloting or jump error, and struggling back toward the ecliptic on a standard power curve.

Finally, he verified the signals he wanted, and locked them into the net. Then he turned in the pilot’s couch. “Swersa?”

“Sir?”

“I want you to maintain this heading. I’ll be aft. Let me know if anything strange occurs. Anything.” He slipped out of the couch, and started aft.

“Are you hungry?” asked Sylvia before he reached the hatch.

“Ah…actually, yes.”

“How long will what you’re doing take?”

“Half a stan, could be a little longer.”

“I’ll have some of our class-one fare waiting. It’s one of the things I can do for you ship jockeys.” She smiled.

“Thank you.” He smiled back. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right, but I want to learn how to pilot one of these. You aren’t doing this again.”

“You will.”

“Promise?” she asked.

“Promise.”

“Good.”

Nathaniel paused, then turned to Swersa. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I’ll be opening the boat ports. Leave them open.”

“Yes, sir.”

He climbed back into his space armor and checked the tool set but left the face plate open. Again, he started with boat ten, the farthest aft.

The drill was simple enough. Enter the boat, open the port, tune the homer, set the makeshift cutout to leave the autopilot on the last homer course, leave the boat.

Nine boats and nearly a standard hour later he slumped onto the plastic chair in the crew lounge. His class-one fare—and Sylvia—were waiting.

“Just eat. You’re turning white.”

“Swersa all right?” He took a bite of yet another mystery protein swathed in a cheese sauce.

“She’s worried. I can tell that.”

“So am I.” Two more bites of mystery protein vanished.

“Do we have any chance to get out of this?” Her gray eyes met his. “Straight talk.”

“If things go as planned.”

“If? How likely is that?”

He swallowed some of the metallic lime drink. “You need to eat, too.”

“I did already, while you were working. I took some to Swersa, also. How likely?” she asked again.

“I don’t know. What I’ve rigged up
ought
to work. But like a lot of things we do, you can’t test them in advance. And I don’t have the experience for this sort of thing. No one does, these days.” He lifted his shoulders, then dropped them. “I’m hoping.”

She reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “We don’t have any choice, and I think you’re doing the only thing we can.”

“It’s not the right thing,” he said slowly. “We did all the right things, and no one listened. So we have to do this. But it still bothers me. It bothers me that numbers don’t matter, that reason doesn’t matter, that only force matters. And I can’t tell Swersa that. I’ve pushed her too hard anyway.”

“Greed and force—that’s all most people listen to,” Sylvia said.

“This is definitely force.” He took the last bites of his class-one ship’s fare. “I have to keep telling myself that five million innocents have already died, and several million more will die, even if we succeed. If we don’t, the number goes to hundreds of millions.”

“I know. Do you feel better?”

“Close to human…for now. I guess we’d better get back up front. Before long, things are going to get messy.”

“They’ve been that way all along.” She bent closer and kissed his cheek.

He turned and held her, more tightly than he’d intended, despite the armor he wore. He just held on as if the moment would never end—as did Sylvia.

Finally, he let go, reluctantly, and so did the gray-eyed woman. After a last kiss, they headed forward.

He dropped into the first’s seat and donned the input set, setting the helmet in the holder to his left. All the boat doors remained open. Pressure leakage from the aft section had increased slightly, which probably meant the leak was in one of the boat ports, not that it would matter, not much longer.

“Nothing new, sir,” reported Swersa. “Chatter, but that’s been it. Seems like a lot of in-system traffic.”

“It is a military base, even if most of the ships are elsewhere.”

He studied the screens…less than an hour at current acceleration. He shook his head. They still hadn’t been spotted, not yet.

Pursing his lips, he ran through what seemed to be the Conglomerate tactical bands, finding nothing of interest, not for another quarter stan when a higher-powered standing wave transmission caught him.

“CommCon…energy source plus ten…apparent heading into the red zone…below the ecliptic.”

Nathaniel nodded and eased a trace more power to the thrusters. Total power load was down to thirty-eight percent.

“…interrogative any delta vee…delta vee…on low ecliptic…”

“…unknown vessel…matches cargo-carrier, class super one…drives tuned to Alpha scale…”

“That’s GraeAnglo comm scale.”

“…delta vee is three plus gees…”

Nathaniel checked his own figures. The
Smith
’s actual acceleration had crept up to nearly four plus gees. He shuddered to think of the catastrophe that would occur should the grav-fields fail.
Then don’t think about it
, he reminded himself.

Two points of light on the rep screen veered slowly on an intercept course, almost casual in their convergence.

“Interrogative your last…”

“This is Nordel one, correction to my last, CommCon, target at four plus gees.”

Nathaniel eased more power into the thrusters, balancing the acceleration against the stress on the grav-field generators and the
Smith
itself. A momentary heaviness pressed him into the couch as the grav-fields readjusted.

“CommCon, one, target continues to accelerate.”

“Unknown ship entering Tinhorn control. Request you decel immediately. Request you decel immediately.”
The signal smashed across all the normal traffic frequencies, as well as the emergency band.

Nathaniel winced. The same message appeared in the comm window of the EDI screen.

“They seem upset, sir,” observed Swersa hoarsely.

Nathaniel swallowed, realizing he wore armor and they didn’t. “LuAn, Sylvia…you should…suit up. Right now. You can leave your helmets cracked, but suit up. We’ll probably lose our atmosphere sooner or later, and it could be before too long.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sylvia eased herself out of the second pilot’s couch, her hand squeezing his shoulder as she passed.

“CommCon, two here. Intruder remains on constant bearing, decreasing range, Prime one, zone one.”

“This is CommCon. Scramble all hornets this time. Scramble all hornets.”

“CommCon, Hornet leader. Scrambling this time.”

Nathaniel glanced back to the boards, watching as the EDI tracks of the additional interceptors began to separate from the small circle on the rep screen that represented Tempte—the asteroid base housing Conglomerate military headquarters.

“CommCon, we have intruder. Course unchanged, velocity increasing…mass indications off the scale…”

Nathaniel continued to ease power up on the thrusters, although he couldn’t go much farther, because each increment also increased the grav-field drain even more proportionately, and the
Smith
was down to just above twenty percent and burning more power than a battlecruiser pushed to max gee. Then, the
Smith
massed more than any mere battlecruiser, considerably more.

Sylvia, in full suit, slipped into the couch paralleling his.

“Unidentified ship, halt and identify. Halt and identify.”

Ignoring the request, the Ecolitan dropped into the datanet, running his own computations. Already, they were heading into the dilation zone, and that meant he had to think faster than the Fuards.

Before the ship came anywhere close to Tinhorn he was going to have to reduce the thrust, because the grav-fields would have to go to the shields for the
Smith
to get past the torps of the Fuard corvettes and close enough to Tempte. There was little point in getting squashed—or releasing multiple thousands of tons of steel and iron from grav-field restraint.

“Hornet leader, this is CommCon. Authentication follows. Attack at will. Attack at will.”

Nathaniel snorted to himself and began to ease back on the thrusters. The Fuards were rattled—as if he could have halted. The old cargo boat didn’t have enough power left to reverse the velocity she’d built, and she was centered on Tempte’s underside.

The shields flared into the amber, then eased back into the green. Nathaniel frowned. The hornets, corvettes from the EDI indicators, weren’t close enough for torps, even boosted torps. The shield flare had to have been space debris—a big chunk to create that much strain on the shields.

“Suited, sir,” reported Swersa.

“Stand by, no. Swersa, would you go back to the lifeboat bay and power up the courier? Get it ready for launch?”

He eased the ship’s shield into more of a point, focusing the energy diverted from the thrusters into the forward shield.

“Yes, sir.”

He could detect a shade of relief in the white-haired Ecolitan’s voice, he thought.

Two sets of dashed lines flickered from the lead interceptors, already almost flanking the
Smith
. The torps arrowed straight toward the cargo-carrier. Because of the relative velocities, Nathaniel could see that the
Smith
would probably clear the fire zone of the first two Fuardian ships without affording another shot.