The Gentle Seduction (11 page)

The walls were studded with readouts and mechanical arms; the central workbench was littered with parts and patching. Veddin saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned and gasped. "Squishies!" With a vicious tug he pulled Autumn behind him, and from the bench he grabbed the longest tool he could reach. "Get down!" he ordered Autumn, then leaped at the two purplish, jelly-soft humanoids who stared at him with unreadable expressions.

"Wait!" Autumn screamed in his ear, then grabbed at his drawn-back arm. Veddin, surprised and off balance, tumbled to the floor. "They're not Diorecians!" Autumn cried. "They're our friends!"

Veddin rolled catlike to his feet. He paused just long enough to see that indeed these were not quite like the Squishies he'd fought at Kaylanx. The noses were flatter, the arms longer, and the faces held flecks of green.

Autumn blocked his path. "It's all right. This is a Couple from Tarca. The Tarcans are on our side: though they think we're deformed mutants, they're more amazed than horrified. Hydra is crawling with Tarcan scientists who're studying us like crazy. We're the most interesting puzzle to come along in millennia."

As Autumn spoke, the aliens moved very slowly, their outside hands raised in weaponless greeting, their inner hands clasped together. When they were close, one hand reached out to Veddin. His muscles writhed in horror, but he let the alien touch him.

He came into direct mental contact with the Couple. Since they had also touched Autumn, he had indirect contact with her as well.

"Aha," the aliens thought. "Another powerful resonance broken asunder." The mind held a moment of puzzlement, then expressed understanding. "No—two isolates who would be Coupled, but not yet. Am I right?"

Autumn and Veddin agreed, as two separate voices. The two alien personalities were for all practical purposes just one being, but Veddin could tell Autumn's thoughts very distinctly.

Veddin's foremost thought was astonishment that this alien Couple was still able to transmit.

"Yes, though human pairings come apart, our bond is unharmed," the Couple continued, amused. "Obviously."

Again, Veddin and Autumn thought the same thought, though again they were distinct thoughts. "How can that be? Only the most multiply resonant of the human bonds have even a scrap of Coupling left."

Again the Tarcans were amused. "Yes, this seems quite a puzzle. Human Couples are so powerful, yet so . . . fragile. We believe the difference must be evolutionary. In our species, the bonds were tested for millions of years under harsh conditions: other species on our planet also had psi, and any Couplings that could be broken were, during that time."

Veddin saw an image of Autumn s parents, and Autumn thought at the aliens, "Can you find the source of the interference?"

"No," was the sad response. "But we see you came seeking machines to do such seeking. We have no direction-finding mechanisms, but we do have several units that can detect psifields and measure their local strength."

"What good will that do? If psifields don't lose strength with distance, how could we even tell if we were getting close?"

The aliens projected no thoughts for a moment. "It is true that psifields attenuate very slowly, but they do attenuate."

"We'll use my ship," Veddin realized. "Would interplanetary distances be enough to detect changes?"

The aliens assented.

"Then we should at least be able to tell whether the source is on Hydra or not."

"Yes." The Tarcans looked at an instrument on the bench; as Veddin saw it through their eyes they explained its operation to him. "It's strictly experimental, so treat it gently," they warned.

"Like a kitten," Veddin promised as he reached to pick up the gadget. He pointed at another piece of equipment. "That looks like another model of the same thing."

The Tarcans agreed. "But don't try to move it; that was the first one, and it s tuning is not adjustable. Even a tiny jar could break it."

"That's all right." Veddin turned his thoughts to Autumn. "I want you to stay here and use the old one. We need a detector permanently stationed to watch in case the jammer moves. Somehow, I suspect that when he sees my warship dropping on him, he may try to get away, or something silly like that."

Autumn raised her eyebrows. "No way. I'm going with you. These people can watch the detector."

Veddin snorted. "Great. How will I talk to them? I can talk to you via Hemten"—he nodded at the robot, now sitting quietly in the corner—"but not with the Tarcans. They don't even have vocal cords, do they?"

"They know how to read and write. They can communicate with the robot just fine—better than most of the native Hydrans," Autumn retorted.

Veddin shook his head. "Besides, things may get nasty after I find the jammer. I
still
think it's the Squishies. And whoever it is, he's bound to be armed to the teeth."

Even under normal circumstances Autumn's anger was hard to bear; but now, through the Tarcan linkage, Veddin could
feel
her anger in his mind. It was a palpable, relentless force. Veddin started to succumb when an alarm went off in his brain.

It took him a second to realize that the alarm was from the
DareDrop
, rather than from one of the people in mental linkage. "My Lords," was his last oath before breaking contact with the Tarcans.

With a bound he was at the door. "A Squishy fleet just skipped in," he explained rapidly, though Autumn had seen the images in his mind as well as he had. "They'll destroy the whole system if we don't stop them." He took a deep breath. "It's a big fleet." Numbers and descriptions were already pouring into his brain, and every second the prospects turned bleaker; the Squishies must have stripped their worlds raw to bring these fleets here. Lords, how Veddin hated fanatics! "I can't hold them for long. We have to find the jammer and destroy him, so your people can deal with the Squishies. I'll still take readings on the jammer's strength; I'll just do it while I'm shooting missiles and commanding a fleet." With that, he was running down the hall as fast as he could go. "Tell the robot to link to the
DareDrop
!" he shouted over his shoulder.

He was being crushed to death by the fury of his own acceleration when he got the first message from Autumn. "Veddin, my detector reads 7.9."

Veddin scowled at his own detector, sitting on his copilot couch. He remembered the Tarcans warning to treat it gently. "Gently," he muttered. He eased up on the acceleration enough to reach over and switch the thing on. "Mine reads 8.8," he radioed back to Autumn. "Obviously, our detectors aren't calibrated with each other. I guess it was silly to hope this would be easy." If his own detector was even still working correctly.

Once out of the atmosphere he started warming up his shields and beamers. The ships in his robot fleet did the same even as they sailed into position to met the titanic swarm of enemy. For a moment he considered telling Autumn to peek out a window, to see the most incredible light show in the universe, then shrugged the idea aside. She probably wouldn't be impressed; or worse, she would be scared for his own safety in the hell that would soon evolve.

Veddin pulled a tight orbit around Hydra and headed for the fleets.

Autumn's voice came through again. "I'm sorry, Veddin. More news. Veddin, my reading has changed. It's dropped to 7.7. The jammer's moving."

Veddin didn't have the time to be upset; the battle had already been joined. The Squishies were blasting into the system at an acceleration much too great for them to stand for long. Fanaticism was at work again. Veddin's fleet was only partly gathered, and they were retreating as fast as they could, waiting for reinforcements.

Fortunately the robot ships eould maneuver rings around the Squishies; but if they couldn't slow the Squishies down soon, there wouldn't be room to fight before Hydra was overwhelmed. Veddin inched his acceleration up another notch, and started skipping in and out of normal space like a drunk star racer; he was too far away, the lag time for his communications was crippling his fleet.

And then he decelerated as viciously as he had accelerated: the Squishies had already launched a salvo of planetbreakers! Veddin's own ships were strewn too thinly to catch them all; he would have to get them himself. The Squishies must have had planetbreakers to waste, to start shooting them already. Well, they'd keep Veddin tied down by Hydra, anyway.

"My detector is still reading 8.8," he told Autumn. "I'm gonna veer off now and get a third reading from another direction." He didn't tell her that he was heading that way primarily to stop the Squishy missiles.

There was something funny about the missiles; some of them didn't generate the radiation trace of planetbreakers. One of the senships he'd left in orbit around Hydra scanned them quickly; they were full of electroptics, but there was no warhead. Damn! "Autumn, the Squishies are shooting some strange missiles. I'll bet they're full of psi-jamming equipment." If he were right, the whole nightmare on Hydra
was
a Squishy plot. The ramifications were endless, but he didn't have time to think about them now. With several brief sweeps of his weapons this first flock of missiles disappeared, far in front of his own ship, very very far from their target. Veddin headed back out toward the battle.

And another volley of planetbreakers screamed toward Hydra.

Even as he turned his ship to intercept them, he received an image from one of the senships he'd put around Hydra. The image was of hellfire rising from the ocean. One of the fusion reactors had just blown sky high. Even as he watched, the senship's computers analyzed the tidal wave and calculated its future path; Pyrta, the island where Autumn waited, would be destroyed within minutes.

Veddin screamed in primeval rage, as he had when his sister died. "Autumn! Is there a plane around? There's a tidal wave coming toward you. You have to get off the island!"

"My detector reading has dropped to 7.6," she said. Obviously, she wasn't going to budge until they found the jammer.

Hardly coherent as a thinking entity, Veddin directed his ship to destroy the second wave of missiles. As he calmed, he looked back at the glowing readout on the psi detector. "It's still 8.8," he almost howled.

They now had six readings from two machines at three locations, at roughly three times. He shifted the numbers to the
DareDrop
's computer, but without much hope of a fix on the jammer. There were too many imponderables; and the jammer was moving! They might never get enough readings! Where could the jammer be?

Even as he realized where the jammer had to be, Autumn came to the same realization. "Veddin! The jammer is you!"

Of course! How else would the Squishies get something close enough to Hydra? Somehow they'd planted one aboard his own ship in that last battle.

Wait, there was another explanation. "Unless my detector's broken," he countered in misery. "I wouldn't be surprised if it's just junk now, after all that acceleration." To check, he'd have to go back to the island, to see if Autumn's readings went back up. Or scan the
DareDrop
in minute detail.

There was no time. Before he could get back to Pyrta he'd have lost them all: The island, the detector, and Autumn would all be gone.

A third salvo of planetbreakers came flashing toward Hydra.

A swarm of Squishy ships blasted their way through the screen of Veddin's fleet at last, and plunged toward the planet only seconds slower than the missiles.

Veddin cut power and unsnapped his webbing. "Autumn, listen carefully." He stepped free from his couch, and ducked out of the control room. "Go get the Shaylohs; you know, the Couple down the hall. Tell them that if we're lucky they're gonna get their powers back suddenly—but
tell them
that they don't have a moment to waste celebrating. First, they have to stop that tidal wave before it kills them and you."

"Okay."

"I'm not through yet." Veddin pulled down his space- suit. "Next, there's a bunch of missiles loaded with jammers, and if the jammers get close enough, you're dead. You have to stop those." He struggled the last inches into his spacesuit. He wondered how great the range of those jammers was; if it was as great as the jammer on board the
DareDrop
, Hydra was sunk. Fortunately, there wasn't enough room on each missile for a big power plant. Probably the one on the
DareDrop
had tapped into the
DareDrop
's engines.

"Okay."

"Wait. There's a bunch of planetbreakers coming with the jammers. If any of those get to your planet, there'll be nothing left but a dozen small moons." He plunged through the narrow passage to the airlock.

"Okay."

"Shush. There's a fleet right behind them, loaded to the gills with more of the same. And the rest of the fleets are breaking through now." The outer port opened up, and Veddin poised at the opening. "And Autumn, I love you," he sobbed.

"Veddin!" He heard her cry before he leaped from the ship.

He pointed his retrojet at the ship and pushed himself away as fast as he could accelerate; minutes before, when he first knew what he had to do, he'd had his fleet fire a dozen missiles at the
DareDrop
. Even one hit would obliterate the ship and any jammers that she might carry.

He didn't really have a chance of getting far enough away; the missiles were just seconds from contact when he jumped through the portal. One after another, twelve explosions sent blinding pulses of light that his helmet filters could only partially block off.

It had been stupid to try to escape, Veddin now realized. His radiation meters leaped to frenzied peaks. At least on board the ship his death would have been quick and painless. He sighed.

With faint curiosity, he turned toward the planet. There was no way he could see from here whether the tidal wave had struck.

He turned back toward the fleets and the volleys of missiles, glowing brightly as they needled toward Hydra. They were beautiful needles, quite hypnotic in their movements as they slowly bunched together.

The widespread points of light came together, and dissolved in a titanic explosion of brightness that excelled even the brilliance of the
DareDrop
s demise.