The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III (32 page)

There was a painful moment’s silence, and then Peever went on. “Now, at this point, about four months ago, the
Dancing Bear
put herself in a very long, slow orbit back to the belt, intending to arrive at the asteroid Mittelstadt about a month from now.”

“A five-month journey just to travel from planetside to the belt? That seems strangely long,” Commander Deyi objected.

“Normal procedure for a mining ship. Civilian ships are a lot more stingy with fuel than military craft—plus which they aren’t really built to withstand long periods of constant boost. Most of the time a mining crew spends its transit time in cold sleep. Miners
like
cold sleep. It cuts a lot of dull spaceflight out of their lives—and gives them a longer effective lifespan. While their bank accounts draw interest, for one thing. And, of course, flying with only a skeleton crew alive and active saves life-support too. The strange thing was the
Bear
flying to Daltgeld, instead of shaping for Mittelstadt after they found—ah, what they found. But that’s explained by the value of the cargo, and a desire to cut out any middlemen. Especially since we can assume that the helmet was doing its best to exercise some influence over Destin. Maybe it couldn’t control him completely, but it might have been able to give him a nudge, set him on the way that he was going, or thinking of going. Jameson is the evidence that it can control minds.

“Anyway. As I said, we have standard navigation checks from the
Bear
for some time after she launched from parking orbit around Daltgeld. Then, just at the time we show up in system, the
Bear
stops reporting in.”

“As if someone wanted to be sure we couldn’t find her,” Spencer said. “But why didn’t someone investigate when the
Bear
dropped off the tracking net?”

“There are a lot of ships out there,” Peever said simply. “The local tracking net doesn’t have the ships or the personnel to go out after missing ships. Besides, at the last navigation check-in, the
Bear
was in freefall, precisely on course for Mittelstadt. If the ship lost all power, it would still arrive at Mittelstadt anyway. In the event of a normal,
accidental
failure aboard ship, all Captain Destin would have had to do was sit tight until his ship arrived at port—and Mittelstadt control knew that. If they then saw the
Bear
sailing past without attempting to communicate or dock,
then
they’d send out a rescue party. Even if the ship crapped out completely, the crew could ride it out in their suits, or in cold sleep.

“But, of course, we must assume that it was the parasites that saw to it that the
Bear
malfunctioned. If they wanted Destin to vanish, sailing past Mittelstadt was definitely not on the cards, because Mittelstadt control would send a rescue and salvage crew. And remember, Jameson said Destin was ‘not where he’s supposed to be.’ So we can further assume the parasite has forced the ship off course.”

“Why wouldn’t it just blow up the ship?” Spencer asked.

“Because we’d have spotted a ship blowing up,” Suss said. “Maybe we’d investigate—and then maybe find a baby black hole where the ship had been. And
that
would have made us wonder, to say the least. Or perhaps the parasite aboard didn’t want to commit suicide.”

Peever nodded eagerly. “The same sort of argument applies to boosting the
Bear
at maximum thrust, throwing it violently off course. The more powerful the thrust, the brighter the fusion plume, and the higher the odds that we’d spot it and investigate the ship. We would at least have radioed her, and received a strange reply. And we’d have a track on the ship, and it would have been brought to our attention. Sooner or later we’d discover the link between Destin and StarMetal—and we’d know just where to look for her. Remember, a big burn like that would take most or all of her fuel, and leave her with little room for additional maneuver. And all of this serves to reduce our search area by—well, if I can put it on the screen, Sir?”

“That’s what it’s there for, Peever,” Spencer said mildly.

“Thank you, Sir.” Peever wrestled with an unfamiliar set of portable controls for a minute, and then managed to get a schematic of the Daltgeld system on the main holo screen.

“Here is the orbital track of the
Dancing Bear
up until a month ago, when she dropped out of sight,” he announced. The track popped into being alongside Daltgeld and wrapped itself around and around the planet. “No record was kept of where she came from, just that she reached Daltgeld orbit. Here, the
Bear
breaks
out
of orbit and heads toward Mittelstadt.” The bright green trace crawled out from the planet and made its way toward the asteroid belt. “And here is where the last velocity and position report was made. Just after we popped out of our jump point.” The track stopped, and a pulsing red dot blipped in the screen.

“We of course have the specs on the
Bear’s
ship class. Now, assuming a full fuel load in her tanks at boost from Daltgeld, and empty holds, and allowing for maximum acceleration away from that position and velocity, here is the volume of space the
Bear
could be in by now.”

A huge, misshapen red spheroid swallowed up half the inner system. “But that is an absolutely worst-case scenario. If they had boosted at max power to achieve the limits of this volume, someone would have spotted them. If we adjust the boost maximum to keep it under the limits of visibility, while accounting for the
Bear’s
range from various tracking points, we get a far more promising picture of their likely action radius.”

The red spheroid shrunk to a tenth its former size, and huge dents and dints appeared in it. “The intrusions into the action radius represent the sensor ranges of various ships known to have passed through this volume of space since the
Bear
went missing. If the
Bear
had been within range of those ships, she would have been spotted and reported—to file a salvage claim, if for no other reason. Derelict ships are worth money. Let me throw in the sensor radii of the inhabited asteroids and planets.”

More huge gaps appeared in the blob of red that represented the volume of space that could contain the
Dancing Bear.

Spencer nodded appreciatively. “Nice work, Peever. Add in another factor: Eliminate any trajectories that
will
pass through someone’s sensor’s range within the next month or so. The parasite wouldn’t head toward someone who could spot the ship in future.”

“Yes, Sir!” Peever said eagerly. His hands played rapidly over the controls, his previous awkwardness forgotten. More huge swatches were chopped off the search volume, mostly toward the inner system.

“Anything else?” Peever asked, looking around the conference table.

“Us,” Tallen Deyi said. “Have you factored in
our
sensors? We moved through a large piece of that space on our way in, before we made orbit around the planet—and it seems to me that the parasite wouldn’t want to get too close to Pact warships.”

“How could I have forgotten—” Peever began, but his voice trailed off as he concentrated on logging in the new factor.

The huge ball of red was now a crumpled, dented ruin, less than a hundredth its former volume. A quiet murmur of optimistic whispers played around the table.

“Okay, Peever,” Spencer said, “give me a mean-time-to-search.”

Peever ran the query, and his face fell. “Assuming use of all three destroyers and all auxiliary vehicles, doing a coordinated sweep search at optimized distance—ah, hell, with all the technical rigmarole figured in—the odds are it will take us three months to find him.”

“Why so long?” Tallen protested. “The way you were running that constriction of the search volume, it looked like we had a pretty serious detection radius.”

“We do—if we’re looking for a fusion flame. No one saw the
Bear’s
fusion drive, and for that to be true she
has
to be in that volume of space,” Peever said. “If she would
relight
her drive, we could spot her right now. The trouble is, she’s powered down, basically a cold, inert target—which will be much tougher to spot. It’s the difference between searching for a dark-colored rock and a flame in the darkness. One is a beacon, and the other blends into the background.”

Spencer sat up suddenly. “Wait a second. If our assumptions are right, the
Bear
does have a beacon aboard. A very powerful gravity-wave generator. Suss, how long to track that volume of space for a parasite-sized gravity-wave source?”

“Yes!” Suss said eagerly. “The G-wave detectors we’ve got now should have at least a ten-million-kilometer range. Let me see . . .” She ran the problem and looked up with a grin. “Using all ships, and factoring in all the technical rigmarole—mean-time-to-search should be fifty-eight hours, once we’re in zone. Maybe two days transit time to the search volume.”

A glint came into Spencer’s eye, and he leaned forward eagerly. “I want us boosting on a fast course for the search volume in thirty minutes.”

###

The little fleet of destroyers raced back across the inner reaches of the Daltgeld system, ranging themselves into a search pattern. As they traveled, technicians aboard the three ships refined and optimized the search plan, finding that the probe volume needed to be expanded in certain dimensions and reduced in others. Chief Wellingham and Dostchem got into an endless series of vituperative and highly productive arguments over the design of the G-wave detectors. By the time the search commenced, they had more than doubled the sensitivity of their long-range gear, and vastly improved the backpack unit used for an interior search of a ship. The fleet arrived in the search volume and began its scan. A mean-time-to-search merely provides a crude statistical guide of the average time it should take to find a given-sized needle in a particular haystack. After all the tweak-ups were cranked into the search plan, the MTTS was down to fifty hours—but in the statistical universe of the MTTS algorithm, it was precisely as likely for the search to take ten minutes, or five days.

It would take time, to Spencer’s obvious frustration.

Enforced waiting is hard on everyone—but especially hard on a commander who is feeling a trifle redundant anyway.

Tallen Deyi was doing a fine job running his ship, likewise the commanders of the other two destroyers. Spencer found himself wondering what they needed a task force commander for—particularly one who had already lost his own ship?

Spencer had at least come out of his shell. Work was a good therapy, and at first Spencer tried to spend every moment he could on the bridge of the
Banquo,
making himself useful. It was perhaps fortunate that he rapidly relearned one of his earliest lessons of command: Competent people do not respond well to commanders breathing down their necks; and the
Banquo
bridge crew was certainly competent. Furthermore, Spencer wanted to avoid even the
appearance
of second-guessing Tallen Deyi.

Which led to Spencer spending a lot of time in the captain’s cabin. It was not a good situation for a man who was already feeling lonely and useless.

Suss likewise found herself at loose ends—but it was more than chance or boredom that led her to call on Spencer in his cabin.

Aboard a ship in space, security was far more relaxed than on a planet’s surface. A simple knock at the unlocked door and a muffled “Come in,” were all it took to gain entrance to the task force commander’s presence.

Suss stepped inside and looked around Tallen Deyi’s modest—even dowdy—idea of a commander’s cabin. She smiled to herself, and couldn’t help but think of that ridiculous boudoir aboard the
Duncan,
where she had dressed—or undressed—in the role of a captain’s courtesan.

Looking back at that moment, she was shocked at herself—though not for displaying a little skin. Suss had played many parts in her time, in many places, where both local climate and mores dictated more or less display. Nudity as such meant nothing to her. Symbols, feelings, context meant a great deal. Teasing a man, making a joke of him, when his wife had just been stolen from him was unforgivable. And yet, Spencer had never mentioned the incident.

She looked at him, perched uncomfortably at the edge of his bunk, tense and uneasy, as if the ship’s acceleration was unreliable and might not hold him down. He looked not the confident warrior of the war council, but a bit forlorn, lost and forgotten.

Those
were two sensations Suss knew well. “Hello, Al,” she said at last.

“Hi,” he said. “Thanks for stopping by.”

She sat down on a chair as far across the room from him as possible, and watched him. His right hand was working furiously, as if it were straining to perform some reflex action that Spencer didn’t want to happen. He noticed her watching, and smiled sadly.

“That was my feel-good hand,” he said. “When I’m scared, or upset, there’s still a big part of me that wants to jump back inside myself, get lost in a few millivolts of joy. So I guess I’m scared or upset now, huh?” He tried to laugh, but the attempt didn’t come out too well.

He sighed and flopped back on the bed in a most unmilitary manner, reminding Suss of a baffled teenager wondering what the world was all about. “It’s just that I feel so damned
useless.
”

“Useless you ain’t,” Suss said playfully. She hesitated for a long moment, then stood up, crossed the room, and sat down on the bed on the edge furthest from Spencer.

“It’s just the waiting. A slight case of command twitch,” she said. “You’ve done your part; you’ve made the decisions, spoken the orders. Now the others have to carry out your decisions. They still have to do
their
jobs.

“But you. You’ve done
your
bit.
Now
you have to wait and see if you guessed right, wait and think about all the lives that are in the balance.

“Just remember you
have
guessed right this time. That much I can tell you. I know it, because you’ve guessed right every step of the way so far. You’re smart. You’re good. Without you, the damned parasites would have won long ago—and we might even have known that we had lost. Not bad for a decoy target.”