The Mothership (46 page)

It was then that commander of the
Scutum-Crux squadron, a fragile looking Ornithoid more than two thousand years
old, ordered his nine ships to attack. These were the most advanced vessels in
the Alliance Fleet, even more powerful than the Tau Ceti ships, although of
radically different concept. The Tau Ceti ships were sleek silver darts, while
the Scutum-Crux ships were dark-hulled spheres covered in black spine-like
emitters that generated incredibly resilient shields. Their main weapon was
immensely powerful, but extremely short range, hence their need to withstand
the heaviest fire as they closed upon the enemy. Each of the nine ships could
fire only one blast every few seconds, and could not use any of their other
weapons when they did, so great was the energy required to fire. The weapons
appeared to be torpedoes moving at relativistic velocities, but when they were
still well outside the range of the Intruder Fleet’s point defenses, they
detonated, inflating into glowing spheres far hotter than the core of any star.

The Inter-Command Nexus came as close as it
ever had to a fleet-wide state of panic. The Intruder Civilization had
theorized about the possibility of nova weapons, but had been unable to solve
the tremendous scientific challenges involved in controlling a nova explosion.
Never in their long history had an Intruder ship ever been fired upon by a
weapon beyond their technological reach. The Intruder ships immediately turned
their weapons upon the glowing spheres speeding toward them, but their attacks
only reduced the sphere’s circumference by a few percent. The nova weapons
struck the two Intruder assault transports again and again, burning through
their massive armored hulls like butter. They passed right through the enormous
ships, wreaking terrible destruction, then flew on for several seconds until
their cohesion cores collapsed and they turned into expanding superheated
fusion clouds heading out of the Solar System at a high fraction of the speed
of light. The two crippled assault transports broke formation as they lost
power and guidance, while the Scutum-Crux nova ships kept up a steady, if slow
bombardment. One of the assault transports exploded, sending huge slabs of
armor and superstructure spinning in all directions. Nearby Intruder ships
evaded the wreckage by accelerating away from the stricken ship, leaving the
second crippled mothership behind. The second assault transport tumbled out of
control, venting atmosphere with no power and almost no life signs.

The Inter-Command Nexus immediately
directed all its available weaponry against the nine nova ships. The
Scutum-Crux breeder shields had already endured terrible punishment, and were
beginning to overload from the intensity of the bombardment. When the third
nova ship in line exploded, and four others were approaching the same fate, the
Ornithoid Commander signaled the Alliance ships that they had to withdraw, or
be destroyed. Almost immediately, the Tau Ceti Fleet Commander ordered a
general retreat. The surviving, weaker Alliance ships fell back in disorder,
leaving many glowing lifeless wrecks behind them. The advanced ships from Tau
Ceti and Cygnus covered the withdrawal, while the nova ships from Scutum-Crux
ceased firing in order to power their failing shields and overheating
propulsion systems. Before the nova ships had made good their escape, another
of their number suffered a catastrophic shield failure, and became a miniature
nova itself.

Twelve minutes after the first shot was
fired, the battle was over.

Following the retreating ships were
thousands of life pods filled with the survivors of derelict ships. The life
pods were ignored by the Intruder Fleet, which chose not to pursue the
retreating enemy because the Inter-Command Nexus calculated that was what the
Alliance wanted, to buy time. Instead, the Intruder Fleet resumed its course
towards the edge of the Solar System where it could commence the short flight
to Tau Ceti.

Thirty degrees away from the Intruder
Fleet’s trajectory, the surviving Alliance ships limped towards the orbit of
Pluto. It was clear to all that the Alliance Fleet had been soundly defeated, with
more than half its number lost for the destruction of only two of the Intruder
Fleet’s ten assault transports. All of the twenty escorting Intruder
battleships were fully operational, even though most had taken light battle
damage.

To every member of the Alliance Fleet, it
meant disaster for Tau Ceti’s ancient civilization.

From their distant vantage point, the
Alliance commanders watched thousands of maintenance drones crawl over the
departing Intruder ships like ants, repairing battle damage and readying them
for superluminal travel. They calculated how long it would be before the
Intruder Fleet would be ready to assault the Tau Ceti System, finding the
margins slim indeed. They’d bought time for other allies to gather at Tau Ceti,
and to send a request pleading for intervention from an immensely powerful
First Civilization rumored to have a presence somewhere in the Virgo Cluster,
fifty-four million light years away, yet the Alliance commanders feared it
would not be enough.

The Intruder ships had proven their power
and now knew they faced an alliance. They would be ready to deal with the nova
ships, and the large number of weak escorts when next they met. It was doubtful
whether Tau Ceti’s allies could assemble a force strong enough to defeat the
Intruder Fleet, and even if the enemy were driven back, they could return with
a much larger, more powerful force within weeks. The hope of intervention by a
First was even more forlorn. Even if one of the hundreds of diplomatic ships sent
searching for them among the nearly two thousand galaxies of the Virgo Cluster
found them, they may refuse to become involved in what they would surely view
as a minor squabble among primitives.

Left behind by both fleets was a
radioactive debris field drifting between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune. In
time, the radiation would disperse and the wreckage would be captured by the
gravitational fields of the gas giants or drift out of the solar system
altogether. Beyond the debris field, a lifeless Intruder assault transport
drifted on a trickle of emergency power, spinning slowly toward the Sun. Tens
of thousands of machine workers had been sucked into space, depriving it of
much of its capacity for self repair, while its six million sleeping troops had
been incinerated in the inferno of the sleep chamber by artificial novas.
Perhaps worst of all, the ship’s own awareness, its Command Nexus, had been
damaged. Its connection with the fleet’s networked awareness had been severed
and its physical injuries had disoriented and confused it.

The mothership’s isolated Command Nexus,
alone and nearly blind, knew its mental powers had been impaired, yet through
its dazed state, its mission remained clear. It must unleash its armies upon
the enemy, no matter what the cost. While it survived, it would never cease
striving to fulfill that mission.

It was the purpose of its existence.

* * * *

Three quarters of
the log room surfaces hissed with white noise, where hull sensors destroyed in
battle no longer recorded imagery. The remaining surfaces were like windows
into space, with stars drifting past as the mothership slowly tumbled end over
end.

“They do get the engines working,” Dr
McInness assured them. Overhead, a sheet of white noise blinked out and was
replaced by a star field. “See, it’s repairing itself.”

Beckman paced alongside a wall of white
noise to a functioning sensor view. He peered into space, forgetting for a
moment he was looking at a flat surface, not through a window. “So where are
those fleets going? Why are they at war? And why did they leave this ship
behind?”

“I don’t know the answer to any of those
questions, but I know they’re not at war with us.”

Beckman turned toward the scientist. “Then
why do I get the feeling they are?”

“Paranoia?” Markus suggested.

“Fascinating, isn’t it,” Dr McInness said
absently, “That a war is taking place right above us, a war between immensely
powerful civilizations, and yet the human race is blissfully unaware of it?”

“I’m more interested in who wins,” Beckman
said.

“Let’s hope it’s the good guys,” Markus
said.

“But who are the good guys?”

“The bug-eyed guys with the white hats,”
Markus replied. “The guys who have left us alone for the last few hundred
thousand years.”

“I just want to get this over with,” Nuke
said, “I don’t care who wins.

“You should,” Markus snapped.

“Why? So another bunch of twisted freaks
can turn us into lab rats?”

“They may have kidnapped a few of us, to
see how we tick,” Markus said, “but they haven’t conquered us, or exterminated
us.”

“Yeah, well there’s that,” Beckman said.

“If the political order out there is
changing,” Markus said, “everything down here changes too.”

Virus remembered clouded memories. “He’s
right. The Intruders will do whatever they want.”

“Hmm. ‘The strong do what they will and the
weak suffer what they must’,” Dr McInness quoted thoughtfully. When Beckman
threw him a curious look, he added, “Thucydides. He said it almost two and a
half thousand years ago. Looks like it’s a universal principle.”

“Which is why we want the status quo to
remain,” Markus said. “The Local Powers have left us alone for a long time.
We’re safe inside their borders. We don’t want that to change.”

“Hey man, I get it,” Timer said. “Earth is
Yellowstone and we’re the bears!”

“Or Arnhem land,” Xeno added, glancing at
Bandaka, “And we’re the aborigines.”

Bandaka thought for a moment, remembering
his people had lived in a protected environment since 1931, a stone age culture
safe within the borders of a modern nation. “It is better to be left alone.”

Xeno gave Markus a thoughtful look,
remembering their conversation in the forest. “I guess you were wrong. You said
there were no Nazi Germanies in space, but there are. There were a lot of
different ships on the other side.”

Markus nodded soberly. “Yes, I noticed
that.”

“So?” Beckman said.

“So,” Xeno explained, “Lots of good guys
ally against one bad guy, to survive.”

“Well that sucks!” Nuke said, “The good
guys got their asses kicked!”

“This ship shouldn’t be here,” Markus said.
“But it belongs to the side that might soon be in charge of our little corner
of the universe. We can’t destroy it. We need to study it, to work out a
defense.”

“Not to mention,” Dr McInness cautioned,
“if we destroy this ship and its people up there win, Earth may suffer a
reprisal.”

“We have to destroy it! Vamp declared,
turning to Beckman. “Sir, this ship has factories capable of producing an army
of machines. All it needs is minerals, and it’ll stomp us into the stone age.”
She turned to Dr McInness. “You know I’m right. Tell him!”

Dr McInness hesitated, then nodded slowly.
“It’s true. If this ship were hostile, even in its crippled state, there’s no
way we could defeat it.”

“You don’t know that,” Markus said.

“You haven’t seen their factories!” Timer
said. “This ship could produce a robotic army capable of conquering our entire
planet.”

“All it needs is time!” Vamp said. “It’s
weak now, but it’s recovering. In a few weeks, or a few months, it’ll be
unstoppable!”

“If we blow the ship,” Xeno said, “and the
alliance wins, they won’t care. They might even thank us.”

“And if the alliance loses?” Markus asked.
“Then what?”

“Not my problem,” Beckman declared. “Nuke,
this is as good a place as any. Rig the package to explode, then you all get
the hell out of here. I’ll give you six hours to get clear, unless some of
those tinheads try to get in here, in which case, time’s up.”

“We can make minimum safe distance in that
time, if we go back the way we came,” Nuke said as he slipped out of his
backpack. He pulled the flap back to reveal the recovered antimatter torpedo.
Markus casually let his hand rest on his submachine gun. He didn’t want to
shoot them, but Beckman had left him no choice. He could not allow them to
destroy what might be their only hope of resistance in the future. Markus calculated
he could sweep the room on full auto, taking them all out before they could get
a shot away. He slid his finger to the trigger and his thumb to the auto fire
selector. He coughed once as Nuke began to connect the GE power pack to the
torpedo, masking the click of switching fire selector to full auto.

“Wait!” Dr McInness said.

Beckman glanced at the scientist curiously.
“This is no time to get cold feet, Doc.”

“It’s not that. This ship’s been hit many
times, by incredibly powerful weapons and it’s still operational. Detonating
your weapon here won’t stop it.”

“You know a better place?”

“I do.” He activated the schematic again
and zoomed into the center of the ship where a spherical chamber stood encased
in armor. Thousands of connections fanned out from the chamber to every point
in the ship. “That’s where you have to set it off.”