Starfist: Kingdom's Fury (37 page)

Zechariah peered through the tall grass. Yes! "Oh, dear God, they're using them as beasts of burden," he whispered. Then to the others, "Stay still. Do not move. Not a sound from anyone!" Off to his left he heard Comfort sobbing quietly. He rested his head on his arms as Joshua watched him nervously. The people were carrying various unrecognizable objects from one of the caves to what appeared to be a flying machine. Little devils were acting as guards, but it was too far away to see what condition the humans were in. The figures staggering under their loads were clearly men, and the weariness of their movements was evidence of abuse or exhaustion.

"There is nothing we can do," Zechariah said. "We shall stay hidden here until dark and then move on. Do not mention this to the others until we're safely home."

"It looks like they're leaving, sir," Joshua said.

"Yes, I pray to God that they are," Zechariah answered. "Now, Josh, you get some sleep. I'll watch. Take your eyes away from that sight. Empty your mind of it.

We must survive."

That day seemed to drag on forever.

Exhausted and starving, but spirits high, they reached New Salem just before dawn on the third day. Zechariah had maintained strict discipline during the trek, demanding from each person the utmost in self-control, and such was the force of his personality that he had gotten it. Now they all lay flat on a slight rise above the town, waiting for the sun to come up.

New Salem was deserted, and in the days since they had abandoned the place wild cattle had invaded it. In the dim predawn illumination they could clearly make out small groups of the animals bedded down along the streets and in the yards of the abandoned homes. But nothing else stirred down there. "If they're all we have to worry about, we have no worries," Consort Brattle whispered to her husband.

"I can see our home!" Comfort whispered. Zechariah put his arm around her shoulders. There were tears in her eyes but she gripped her shot rifle tightly before her, ready to bring it into action. In those desperate days that lay just behind them, his daughter had become a soldier. He wondered idly what kind of man Samuel would have been had he lived, but he put that thought out of his head as soon as it came to him. No use going down that path. Samuel was with God. Comfort would be his staff now.

The sun broke over the horizon. "It'll be a clear day," Zechariah said. The others along the ridge murmured softly among themselves as they watched the sky lighten.

Gradually the rays touched the roofs of the houses, throwing the yards and streets into dark shadows, but as the sun climbed, these faded too, revealing New Salem, a bit shabbier after being abandoned, but otherwise undamaged. When the sun was full up over the horizon, Zechariah stood. He drew his hand-blaster and held it over his head. "Friends, let us go below and take back our lives!" he shouted, starting down the ridge. Despite their weariness, the others raised a loud cheer and followed him down.

Suddenly, Zechariah felt better than he had in days. The fatigue seemed to flow out of him, to be replaced by exuberance. They were home at last! They had met the enemy and defeated it and avoided detection, and if they must make a stand, at least it would be in defense of their homes. He lifted his voice in an old, old hymn, and the others, experiencing the same rush of elation at having survived the ordeal, took it up. Their voices echoed through New Salem's empty streets. The wild cattle, alarmed at the villagers' approach, stirred and then rumbled off into the surrounding fields, leaving piles of dung steaming in the early morning sunlight.

But in his heart Zechariah Brattle knew it would be a long, long time, if ever, before they would take back their old lives.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The pings, metallic groans, and sharp cracks that reverberated throughout the
Grandar Bay
almost drowned out the alarm klaxons and the huge ship shook violently. An electrician's mate in the radar department had overridden the timers on the clasps of his transition harness so they would release the instant the jump was completed. The shaking threw him from his couch into a power block. The pain in his shoulder had time only to force the beginning of a scream from his mouth before his head slammed into the same power block. His scream cut off when the concussion knocked him out. The ship's shaking tossed him about then slammed him into more hard-surfaced and sharp-edged equipment. He was the only casualty.

Commodore Borland and the bridge officers and crew struggled to gain control of the ship and smooth its passage into Space-3 while Navigation worked feverishly to calculate a course that would use the force of the destabilizing gravity well to stabilize the ship. In the engine rooms, crews struggled valiantly to modulate the inertial power plant to counter the shakes of the ship. The chief-of-ship roared commands to the deck crews, whose men always made jumps wearing vacuum suits. Most of the deck crews shuffled unsteadily on magnetic shoes to the tween'ulls to repair patches broken loose by the violent shaking. Other deck crews answered calls to repair damage wherever the violent shaking had broken things loose.

Elsewhere, officers and crew who weren't involved in bringing the ship under control or repairing damage stayed strapped down in their jump couches. Those who had duty stations during jumps did what they could to operate their systems while strapped in. The Marines in their compartments remained locked in their jump webbing. Here and there voices rose in prayer and supplication to whatever gods the praying crewmen and Marines thought might give a damn about what happened to them.

Over a period of minutes that seemed much longer to the officers and sailors working on controlling the ship, and longer yet to the crew and Marines strapped helplessly in place, the bucking starship was calmed down. The Marines were kept strapped in to keep them out of the way while the ship was hurriedly inspected and all damage categorized, repaired, patched, or ignored.

The Radar Division aimed detectors at Society 362 and searched the electromagnetic spectrum around it. Passive instruments picked up emanations and fed them into computers for analysis. The computers spat out their results: three ships in orbit, no weapons activity discerned, no active search pings. Neither were the ships broadcasting ID signals.

Commodore Borland ordered the course set not to Society 362, but sunward, to use stellar radiation to mask the
Grandar Bay
. The ships in orbit would pick up signals from the
Grandar Bay's
maneuver, but wouldn't be able to track it once it was in the stellar background. Or at least they shouldn't be able to; nobody knew if the Skinks had detection capabilities well beyond those of the Confederation.

Shielded, they hoped, by local stellar radiation, the
Grandar Bay
approached at half speed, to have as much time as possible to gather intelligence about what awaited. They still detected only three ships in orbit. None had been found orbiting on the other side of the planet. The Lagrange points were unoccupied as well. The
Grandar Bay
trained its optics on the orbiting ships.

"That's the one from Kingdom!" shouted the astronomy mate second class who manned the optic focus. "It's got the same markings."

"How can you be sure?" the astronomy chief asked as he peered at the ship on the main display. "Those markings aren't all that sharp."

"Take a look here," the second class said. The chief joined him and looked at the second class's personal pocket computer. "I captured enough images off the string-of-pearls during the fight to give me the whole thing," the mate said. "When I got this ship focused," he nodded at the display at his station, "I called up my image and matched 'em up. See?"

The chief carefully compared the live image on the station display with the image on the mate's comp. The markings looked the same.

"Look at that." The mate pointed at a fuzzy spot of the hull shown on the live image. "That looks like damage."

"Could be," the chief agreed. "Could be. Let me borrow this." He snatched the mate's comp and headed for the astronomy officer.

Three hours later they could make out considerable damage to the large starship's hull and what must have been repair modules crawling over the damaged area. One of the smaller ships had left orbit and jumped. Shuttles were transiting between the ships and surface.

"I don't know how that ship survived the jumps with that much hull damage," the astronomy officer observed.

"Triple hulling, reinforcing beams between hulls, some kind of inert stuffing in the tween'ulls," said the astronomy chief. "It's expensive, but it can be done."

"I guess they think the expense is worth it."

"The way they attacked out of nowhere, I expect they have the kind of experience that tells them they need it." The chief had never been able to bring himself to believe that just because humanity hadn't had any contact with alien sentiences—before the Skinks—meant that there weren't any. He knew that when two species tried to occupy the same ecological niche, they fought until one fled or was wiped out.

An hour later the optics showed the remaining smaller ship well enough to determine that it was not a destroyer or other fighting ship but an amphibious landing barge.

The Skink ships weren't in geosync orbits; the Crowe-class ship was higher than the landing barge. If there were satellites in orbit, they were not transmitting data.

Every time the Crowe-class ship's orbit took it behind Society 362, Commodore Borland had the
Grandar Bay
adjust orbit. He wanted to be in maximum effective laser range when the alien ship appeared above the planetary limb. Provided they didn't maneuver, he would know exactly where to expect the Skinks to appear. Also, if they knew the Confederation ship was approaching, they wouldn't be sure exactly where it was, if the
Grandar Bay
adjusted its orbit.

"Movement in the pods," Radar reported just before the Skink ship disappeared below the horizon. Several protrusions on the hull of the ship had been tentatively identified as weapons pods. "We've been pinged."

"Adjust," Borland ordered. The helm made a prearranged course adjustment to throw off the aim of weapons that might fire at it when the ship reappeared. The
Grandar Bay's
weapons weren't in range yet, and Borland hoped they were still outside the Skinks' range. He took it as a positive sign when the Skink ship didn't fire when it reappeared. More shuttles rendezvoused with it. An hour later it dropped below the horizon again.

The next time it appeared, it would be in range of the
Grandar Bay's
modified lasers. The orbit after that, the Crowe-class ship would be in range of the Confederation ship's missiles.

"Lasers, prepare to lock on the pods," Borland ordered. The
Grandar Bay
made another course adjustment, a fairly large one. Minutes ticked away. The smaller ship dropped below the horizon. The
Grandar Bay
adjusted vector again. It would see the Skink ship from south of its orbit; its previous maneuvers had all been from the north. "I always did want to command a cruiser," he murmured. The Skink ship blipped on the limb of Society 362.

"Locking," the Laser Gunnery Division reported.

"Locking," Borland acknowledged.

"Receiving emanations similar to the rail guns from the ship," Radar reported.

"Fire now," Borland said calmly.

The
Grandar Bay's
lasers fired at the Skink ship, which was less than its own diameter above the horizon. In the visual display, puffs rose on its surface; some on the pods, some near them.

"Rail emanations ceased," Radar reported.

The Skink ship fired its inertial drive and moved out of orbit, tangential to the
Grandar Bay
. If it stayed course, it would be in range of the missiles in less than half an hour. Borland ordered the Orbital Missile Division to lock on and prepare for launch. The lasers fired another salvo. More puffs appeared on the surface of the Skink ship. Shuttles that were rising to rendezvous turned about and headed planetside.

"Vector on enemy ship," Borland ordered. That would cut down the time before he could launch missiles. He checked the time; the smaller ship should have reappeared. It hadn't. The larger Skink ship accelerated. The
Grandar Bay's
lasers fired again. More puffs, too many.

"Missiles launched," Radar reported. "Receiving pings. Enemy missiles locked."

"Fire defensive missiles," Borland ordered. "Maintain course." He badly wanted the big Skink ship that had killed the
Admiral J. P. Jones
, and kept his attention fixed on it so he didn't see his defensive lasers kill the missiles fired at the
Grandar
Bay
.

But he wasn't going to get the Skink ship; it jumped. One second it was on a closing vector, the next the very fabric of space-time seemed to be rent. The
Grandar Bay
shuddered. Then the Skink ship wasn't there.

Borland shook himself. He'd never before been that close to another ship making the jump into Beamspace.

"Damage Control, report."

"Damage Control, checking," came the reply.

"Put us into geosync orbit," Borland ordered the helm while he waited for Damage Control to report. "Radar, find out what happened to the small Skink ship."

"Bridge, Damage Control. Only minor breakage of loose objects. Appropriate crews are cleaning up. Chief-of-ship has his teams inspecting for hidden damage."

"Thank you, Damage Control." Borland switched his comm to the all compartments channel and pushed the bosun button.

A whistle sounded throughout the ship, followed by a carefully modulated, computer-generated female voice saying, "Now hear this, now hear this . . . All hands, now hear this . . ."

"This is the commodore," Borland said after the voice called for attention. "The enemy has departed Society 362. Well done, everybody. Especially the Laser Gunnery Division and the engineers who worked to modify the lasers. The major Skink ship suffered possible damage before it jumped. That is all."