Transhuman (18 page)

The enemy ship slowed, apparently crippled, giving Revenge an easier target. A tight salvo straddled it, scoring two or even three hits, and it came apart in a shower of silver shards.

"I've lost track of the fourth," said Revick. "It must have dived very deep."

"Yes," said Revenge. "I lost contact with the torpedoes as well."

"Do you think that the bugs hit?" asked Revick.

"I don't believe so," replied Revenge. "They switched to self-guidance and then vanished. We have sustained almost no damage, an astonishing outcome. The hull may never be quite the same again but at least it is in one piece."

The mentality paused for a moment and then said quietly, "How did you work it out? How do humans make these decisions? Your minds work ridiculously slowly, so how did you calculate where to position us like that for a perfect ambush?"

"I don't know," said Revick. The mentality clearly meant the question seriously so he tried to answer.

"It's like seeing a pattern in my head and knowing where everything will be. I really don't know how it works; I just do it."

"You just do it," said Revenge in a sarcastic voice that imitated the human's. While they talked, it had maneuvered the cruiser back up to the convoy, which had resumed its original heading. "Your new biological friends want to talk to you."

A window opened to show the Goblin spokeswoman. "We couldn't follow the battle after you screened us. What happened? Where are the enemy ships?"

"Oh, we destroyed three, but I am afraid the fourth may have eluded us," said Revick, with mock annoyance.

"You destroyed three?" said the Goblin, faintly. "But your ship is unmarked."

"They missed and we didn't," he said, terminating the connection. It would not hurt to give the Goblins something to think about.

The convoy crawled on, the cruiser following its Bayesian programmed course. Revick grew bored with watching the bioships and retired to a pool hall that he frequented, located in a zone that he called downtown. He drank a few beers, hustled a few players, got into a fight, and pulled a dangerous-looking brunette with whom he shared a taxi home.

Revenge woke him earlier than he had anticipated. "A ship is approaching on the port bow."

"What?" he said, hitting his head on the bedpost, to the amusement of the brunette. She blew him a kiss and faded away, her pursed lips and hand being the last to go.

"I should never have suggested that overgrown bloody computer read
Alice In Wonderland
," he said, rubbing his forehead.

"No worries, though," said Revenge, with sadistic satisfaction. "It's one of ours."

"You bastard," replied Revick.

By the time he reached his study and plugged in, the new ship was cruising alongside. Her design was not dissimilar to the cruiser, but she was smaller and more flattened dorso-ventrally.

"That's the light cruiser,
Belle Isle
," said Revenge.

"Any humans onboard?" asked Revick.

"A single pilot, called Bryseis," replied Revenge.

"A woman pilot," Revick said, with a hint of anticipation.

"It really makes no sense exposing human females to the dangers of the dark," said Revenge. "The Council tried to forbid it, but humans made such a fuss that it had to concede under the terms of The Covenant."

"Could you, um, set up a communication link to Belle's pilot," said Revick, trying to speak casually.

"I anticipated your interest and have already done so," said Revenge, dryly. "Hold on, I'll ping her." A small opaque window opened in Revick's mind and he waited and waited.

"Are you sure that this link is working, Revenge?" asked Revick.

"Absolutely, I am in contact with the mentality, Belle Isle, and it assures me that its pilot knows you are waiting."

Revick kept the link open but reduced it to a small square in the top left of his vision and got on with the important job of piloting. Actually, he kidded himself, as Revenge was perfectly capable of running the ship without him.

The communications window flashed green, so he expanded it to fill his vision. There was a click, and he found himself looking at the head and shoulders of a slim woman with short-cut, light brown hair and pale gray eyes.

"Well?" she asked, favoring him with a quizzical glance.

"Ah, um, hello," he stammered.

She raised an eyebrow. "That's it, is it? You dragged me away to say hello?" He had been out in the darkness so long that he had almost forgotten how to talk to real women, who behaved so less compliantly, and so much more interestingly, than computer simulations.

"Um, no," he said. "I thought we should discuss tactics." She refocused sideways on something, before looking back at him. "Revenge has already updated Belle on the situation. You have something else useful to say?"

"I notice that you are junior in service to me," he said, sounding pompous, even to himself.

"That's right. Do you intend to pull rank on me often?" she asked.

"Someone has to be in command," he protested. She did not reply and the silence stretched on. "That will be all for the moment," he said, escaping by severing the connection.

The two cruisers prowled around the slow-moving convoy like stags around a herd of does. They were now deep in Terran Territory, and Revick thought it extremely unlikely that the convoy would be attacked again. Admiralty House, at Port Luna, had dispatched a number of deep space cruisers to beef up the frontier defenses in this zone, as well as putting Belle Isle under his command. He had made a number of efforts to chat to Bryseis, without noticeable success. The woman pilot was punctilious about observing naval niceties, but gave him the impression that she regarded him with amused contempt. A few more days and the Goblins would be out of their jurisdiction and the light cruiser would be reassigned.

Revenge broke into his deliberations. "Belle Isle has picked up what might be the sound of engines."

"Where? Whose?" asked Revick.

"I have analyzed the data, and they could be enemy engines down in the higher dimensions, and behind us," said Revenge.

The two Terran cruisers turned and raced like terriers to the rear of the convoy.

"Do we have a triangulation?" Revick asked.

"To an approximate degree," replied Revenge.

The cruisers slowed down and began to search, moving around each other in complex patterns. Revick listened intently but could hear nothing of any significance. Eventually, the cruisers made a parallel run across the suspected zone, dropping buoys that sank swiftly into the higher dimensions. Revick switched to the detection equipment in the buoys and was rewarded by the sound of a faint judder of engines. Then, the devices dropped away into the depths and disappeared out of range.

"Gotcha," said Revenge. "I have a triangulation on a target off to port." The two cruisers accelerated into a turn and made a second run, each ship dropping more buoys in an
X

-shaped search zone. The sound of enemy engines was much stronger when heard through the second buoy pattern. Revenge triggered charges that destroyed the devices in a designated sequence of energy bursts, illuminating the target to the cruisers' passive detectors.

"That was a powerful bounce back off the target," observed Revick. "It's either extremely reflective—"

"Or very large," interrupted Revenge. "I had worked that out." The two cruisers each turned 180 degrees and retraced their path back over the target position. The discharger under their hulls began to thump, firing patterns of "divers" that sank swiftly. The dischargers stopped when the area was saturated, and Revick watched the last few divers disappear into the depths. Revenge opened a window in his vision that counted off the seconds to a potential hit. The counter had switched into negative numbers when the first burst of energy release indicated that a diver had found the enemy. Two more divers exploded in quick succession.

"They were on the edge of the pattern," said Revenge. "I hadn't anticipated that the target was so deep."

"It must be even larger than we thought," said Revick, unable to keep the concern out of his voice.

"We'll soon know," said Revenge. "We've driven it up. You should see it soon off the starboard bow."

"Bryseis, talk to me," said Revick.

A window opened to show Belle's pilot. "Let me lead us in," ordered Revick.

"Aye, aye, admiral," she said, touching her brow in an exaggerated salute. A leviathan emerged from the deep, trailing a wake of broken strings that slid around its stern in a froth of recombinant energy. It was silver and shaped like a slightly flattened cylinder with blunt ends. Pylons projected from the front and rear, a design feature that Revick had begun to associate with the enemy's ship designs. The two cruisers dived down to meet it.

Two large turrets, each with three projecting stubby pylons, faced fore and aft on the top surface of the enemy warship, separated by a square bridge that sprouted various arrays. The enemy ship moved ponderously toward the attacking cruisers, its bow turret swinging to point at the cruiser.

"Surely, we are out of range," said Revick.

"Our weapons are out of range at this depth," Revenge agreed. "But are theirs?" The enemy ship fired a blue-white triple salvo, causing Revenge to make an abrupt course change. The three shots raked down the cruiser's side. Even attenuated by distance, they rocked the ship. There was no point in hanging back, as the enemy could bombard them from out of reach of their own weapons, so the cruisers raced towards the foe at their best speed. The leviathan fired again, and, again, it missed. Revenge tried a five-shot salvo, but it was difficult to get a targeting solution at this range, and so the shots went wide. Revenge corrected and fired again. This time, one of the salvo struck the leviathan on the stern, splashing across its silver hull, but it slid on, untroubled by the impact. It must have armor thicker than a bureaucrat's hide.

The leviathan put its helm over and turned parallel to the cruiser's course, rotating both turrets toward the cruiser.

"For what we are about to receive . . ." said Revick, repeating a prayer that was old when sailors crewed King Minos's black ships.

Revenge went into an evasive corkscrew, closing the range all the time. Belle duplicated the maneuver, sticking to Revenge like an ex-wife who hadn't yet had the alimony check. The leviathan's turrets steadied on the cruiser and let rip a full salvo. Six blue-white energy lances fired in sequence, streaking across the energy matrix. One hit the cruiser on the bow.

The cruiser's defensive energy pulse detonated the lance away from the hull but, even so, a great clang rang around the ship, and it staggered. A number of systems flickered before rebooting. Revenge plastered the leviathan with fire, scoring several hits, but without any noticeable effect.

"Bryseis?" Revick pinged the light cruiser.

"Here." A window opened to show Belle's pilot.

"Break to port to distract it. Those weapons are powerful, but their weakness is that they only have six projectors that are slow to recharge. The low rate of fire means that they have trouble scoring hits, so let's give them two targets to split their fire further," said Revick.

"Acknowledged," Bryseis winked out.

The light cruiser turned sharply and accelerated, racing at an angle toward the stern of the leviathan. The turrets fired again at the cruiser, two lances striking the defensive pulse and blasting the ship in secondary radiation. Trips failed all over the vessel, causing many systems to splutter and fail. Power dropped off, and the ship slowed as Revenge rerouted energy from the drive motors to the armor and gun. Revenge's salvos bracketed the leviathan, scoring hit after hit, but it shrugged them off. The light cruiser had worked its way to where its lighter weapon would bear, and it opened fire as well. The leviathan was lit by explosions, the energy matrix around it boiling with reflected energy.

"The bastard is slowing," said Revick, who was watching the tactical combat readings. "We are getting through."

The enemy vessel seemed to hesitate before swinging both its turrets on Belle Isle.

"Attack, Revenge, pull the bastard off Belle," said Revick. The cruiser straightened its course and raced straight at the enemy, firing continuous salvos. Belle initiated an evasive corkscrew as the enemy fired a six-shot salvo. The enemy misguessed the energy flows in the matrix, and the shots went wide of the light cruiser. Both cruisers bracketed the leviathan, subjecting it to a stream of fire that caused it to shudder, but they weren't eroding its heavy defenses fast enough. The turret pylons glowed blue as they recharged.

"This isn't working, Revenge," said Revick.

"Launching torpedoes," said Revenge. The familiar
thump, thump, thump
sounded as the cruiser fired its remaining stock of flutterbugs.

The leviathan fired another salvo at the light cruiser, getting the range exactly right so that two lances struck and penetrated its defenses. Energy bursts rocked the smaller ship, breaking pieces off it.

"Bryseis, Bryseis," yelled Revick, opening a communication channel that allowed him to see the woman. She looked down, clearly engrossed. "Bryseis, can you hear me?" he asked.

"What?" she said, looking up at him. "I'm busy."

"Are your drives functioning?" Revick asked.

"About sixty percent," she replied.

"Then run," he said. "We can't beat this thing, so you get out and report back to the Admiralty." She looked as if she was about to argue but then nodded. "Good luck," she said, and the window closed.

The flutterbugs ran in on the flank of the leviathan, which was generously equipped with point defenses that shot the bugs down one by one. The light cruiser limped away to the rear of the battle, where it would be safe from enemy fire. The last surviving flutterbug hit the leviathan, but it must have been damaged because, instead of sticking, it rammed itself to destruction against the target's armor.

"Combat simulations show that we have a ninety nine pecent chance of being destroyed within seven minutes," said Revenge, unemotionally.