The Battle for Terra Two (15 page)

"So if there's no crisis, off they go?"

"Correct," said D'Trelna. Finishing the last piece of steak, the commodore leaned back in his chair, eyes half closed, hands clasped over his belly. He sighed contentedly.

"You're taking this all very well, D'Trelna," said McShane suspiciously.

"I think I know how we can get
Implacable
and any fresh ships to Terra Two." Pushing back his chair, he walked to the armorglass. Hands behind his back, he stood looking out into space. "Or rather, I know who may know the way." He turned back to Bob. "I'd like you to come. It may involve some risk."

Bob sipped his wine. "Tell me about it."

Startled, K'Raoda looked up to see a warsuited D'Trelna at his elbow, belted MK 1A blaster at his waist, M32 blastrifle slung over his right shoulder. "Commodore! What
..."
he said, swiveling in the command chair.

"Should anyone ask, T'Lei," said D'Trelna, oblivious to the stares of the bridge crew, "especially Ambassador Z'Sha or FleetOps, I am indisposed. A raging fever of unknown origin has left me a useless, gibbering mass. Sick Bay has logged the necessary entries. As acting captain you have, of course, quarantined
Implacable.
Oh, and Bob McShane," he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, to where McShane stood, armed and suited, "Bob McShane is still deathly ill. Clear?"

"Quite. May I ask where you're going?"

"Ghost hunting on Terra's Moon. We hope to be back."

"Luck," said K'Raoda as the two left. D'Trelna waved absently.

"There's only one thing left down there," said T'Ral as the bridge doors slid shut.

"I know," nodded K'Raoda.

"But it's dead. Dead and empty."

K'Raoda smiled thinly. "Empty of people, certainly. Dead . . ." He shrugged. "That's a lot of fire power to take into a tomb."

He waited until the shuttle cleared hangar deck, a stubby silver craft flashing past the bridge.

"Computer. Senior officer designating medical emergency."

"Nature of medical emergency?" said the pleasant contralto.

"Crew member stricken by fever of undetermined origin."

"Medical department corroborates," said computer after a second. "Fever of undetermined origin. Advise general quarantine."

"Agreed," said K'Raoda. "Shipwide," he said. Computer switched him into
Implacable's
general address net.

"Alert. Alert." K'Raoda's voice echoed through the great old ship. "This is Commander K'Raoda, Acting-Captain. Medical quarantine is now in effect. Medical quarantine is now in effect. We have a minor contagion of Terran origin. Until it's diagnosed, there'll be no more shore leave." He could almost hear the groans sweeping the corridors. "Crew now on Terra will have to remain there. Weekly leave party having just left, we'll be on double watches until Medical gives the all clear. Out."

"Whatever D'Trelna's up to," said T'Ral, "better be worth it. This leaves half the crew on Terra, the rest of us up here on double watch. If anything happens
..."

K'Raoda turned, blue eyes meeting T'Ral's gray ones. "Reinforcements will be here soon. Meanwhile, if anything— untoward—happens, we can always do a computer tie to weapons."

T'Ral frowned. "You know what Fleet Regs say on that." The Fourth Dynasty forward had avoided problems with intelligent machinery by carefully restricting AI to necessary uses. Computers processed data. And there were no robots. Period.

"The option exists," said K'Raoda, keeping his voice low. "This is an Imperial warship. If you can't get our programming overlay to selectively revert, Y'Tan, I can."

The tactics officer shrugged. "We're beating a corpse, T'Lei. It's not going to happen."

"Let's hope not. Meanwhile, you have the pleasure of telling Ambassador Z'Sha that we've a quarantine." He stifled the other's protest with upraised palm. "No, no. I've got to compose a message about this to Fleet."

"But, T'Lei . . . !"

"Just tell him that the two junior officers whom he called 'Filthy, revolting animals' during the UN victory reception
..."

T'Ral closed his eyes, pained. "I swear, all I remember is our dancing naked. I can't recall the women, the fountain or the horse."

"Assure him that these same two junior officers have the defense of the planet well in hand." T'Ral opened his eyes. "He's going to go crazy."

"I know," smiled K'Raoda, nodding.

Some wiseass NASA cartographer had named it the Vale of Kashmir.

Geologically and topographically, it resembled any one of a thousand valleys on the Moon's Earth side; a dusty stretch of ancient, scarred basalt, pockmarked by eons of meteor showers, flanked by the impossibly sharp slopes of the Taurus Mountains.

Another time, McShane would have delighted in the stark moonscape, the deep, twisted shadows thrown by pure sunlight across ageless boulders. Not now. His full attention was on the immensity filling the Vale of Kashmir. "I'd forgotten how big it was," he said.

D'Trelna nodded, head bobbing inside the warsuit's helmet. "You need the contrast to appreciate its size," he said, voice crisp and clear in Bob's communicator.

The mindslaver filled the valley, hovering just above the surface on n-gravs, twenty lethal miles of gray battlesteel bristling with fusion turrets, missile batteries and instrument pods. Her upper hull was almost even with where the two men stood, high on a ridge beside their shuttle.

"How'd you get her down with the brainpods destroyed?" asked Bob, carefully, avoiding the issue of who had destroyed the brainpods. That was a question now in the hands of Fleet Security.

"Central computer," said D'Trelna. "She has one. A very formidable one."

McShane shook his head. "J'Quel, that's
rNil's Revenge,
greatest and last of the symbiotechnic dreadnoughts— a great, bloody mindslaver. Disembodied human brains ran her—living minds ripped from healthy bodies to run the Empire's war machines. A computer would have been superfluous."

"Backup," said D'Trelna. "For mundane tasks and in case the brainstrips failed." Taking a small black cylinder from his belt pouch, he pointed at their feet and twisted it.

The broad band of green light flashed from the ship, arching into the ground before them in a tall geyser of dust.

Startled, McShane had stepped back. The dust settling, he stepped forward, next to D'Trelna.

"I submit," said D'Trelna, "that the computer works."

"Don't tell me," said Bob. "It's a light bridge."

"How did you know?"

"It's a popular fictional device." Bob peered down the jagged cliff that fell thousands of feet to the valley floor, then looked up at the frail, shimmering ribbon of green that spanned the gap. "I'm not trusting my life to a fictional device."

"It is real," said D'Trelna. "It works—you don't even have to walk. Watch."

Stepping onto the light bridge, he moved across it, reaching the dreadnought in a few seconds, never lifting his feet. "Nothing to it," he said, turning to drape an arm over the protruding muzzle of a small fusion cannon.

"So say you, D'Trelna."

"Come on. Let's get inside."

McShane hesitantly stepped onto the thin beam of translucent light. Soft but firm, something enveloped him to the waist even as it slid him across the light bridge. Something that brought him safely to the dreadnought, releasing him as the light bridge vanished.

"I'll be damned," he said as D'Trelna tucked away the control rod. "How far from the ship will that work?"

D'Trelna shrugged. "Who knows? There's been no research team out here yet. What with war recovery and mop-up operations, everyone is busy elsewhere. They'll get back to her, though. The variety and degree of Imperial technology in this horror is impressive."

"That's a very small cannon for such a very big ship, J'Quel," said McShane, pointing to where D'Trelna's arm rested.

D'Trelna stepped back, looking at the weapon and the small turret housing it. "Anti-personnel," he said. "To repel boarders." He turned, sweeping his arm along the seemingly endless expanse of
Revenge.
"Look around. The hull's littered with them."

McShane looked. The turrets went on forever, spaced every hundred or so feet, nestled between larger weapons and instrument pods. "Good God! People stormed these monstrosities?"

"Unbelievable, isn't it? Flesh and blood against miles of battlesteel and flawless latticefire.

"Shall we go in?"

"How? Last time here. I came through the hangar deck."

"Hangar deck," said the commodore, taking the rod from his pouch, "is only a few yards above the surface, blanketed in an n-grav field that would turn your body to protoplasmic mush.

"As for the door . . ." he said, thumbing the rod. A broad circle of hull, pods and turrets vanished. A wide tunnel slopped gently into the ship, lit soft yellow by hexagonal wall cubes. A distant gray smudge marked the passageway's far end.

D'Trelna led, stepping onto the steel flooring. Following, Bob staggered as the ship's gravity field clamped down, then recovered, catching up with D'Trelna. "Isn't it dangerous, J'Quel, having that bloody great hole in the ship?"

The commodore's shrug was visible through the thin miracle of the warsuit. "The shield would stop any space crud."

"Yes, but if enemy boarders knew where these tunnels were ..."

"Those gently glowing cubes on the wall," said D'Trelna, not breaking stride, "are disintegrator pods. We're in a giant ionization tube. A simple command to computer and . . . phhht!"

"Phhht, indeed," said Bob, glancing uneasily at their light source. "And where does this . . . tube lead?"

"Into a reception area. We'll pick up a shipcar there."

"This just goes through the hull?" He stopped, regauging the tunnel's length. "That's over a quarter mile of battlesteel!"

"Yes." D'Trelna twisted off the warsuit's bubble helmet. "Atmosphere curtain," he explained, jerking a thumb back at the entrance.

Removing his own helmet, Bob took a breath of chill, metallic air. "Even smells like battlesteel.

"So, tell me," he said as they walked, helmets under their arms, "how did blood and flesh take a mindslaver?"

"Penal brigades were used to sop up the hull fire, fight off counterassaults and plant charges. If any lived long enough to blow a hole in the hull, assault boats would come in and Imperial marines would storm into the ship."

"Casualties must have been awesome."

"Tens of thousands."

"Why didn't the defenders just blow the ship up?" asked Bob as they reached the end of the tunnel and the inner door.

"Cost money. 'A' starts blowing up his mindslavers, then 'B' is blowing up his. The only thing left then is to destroy each other's ships. And that, as you may guess
..."

"Cost money." Bob shook his head. "Whole economies must have been based on this bloody swapping."

"Oh, they were," said D'Trelna, frowning at the gray battlesteel door. "One could build a certain number of them, at great expense. Keeping a war going at just the right pace provides industrial growth and a certain hollow prosperity."

"The trick was not to lose many ships?"

D'Trelna nodded. "That would have been mutually ruinous. Mindslavers fought it out only twice—when they were invented and fielded by the R'Actolian biofabs, and when the Empire was in its final agony. The rest of the time—a long, long time—those tacit rules of engagement were followed."

"And life was cheap."

"Never so cheap as then."

Another ten minutes brought them to the end of the tube and a thick gray slab of battlesteel.

"Why isn't this door opening?" said D'Trelna after a moment.

"Problem?"

"Yes." He nudged the door with his boot. "It's supposed to open when someone stands here."

The disintegrator pods began humming.

D'Trelna turned, looking back down the tube. The pods were oscillating from soft yellow to a fierce white. Each cycle was shorter than the last, more white than yellow. "It's going into destruct mode! Something's triggered it."

"How long?"

"Not long. When it slips into pure white, we're dead." The commodore slipped off his rifle. "Fire at the door." Aiming carefully, he pulled the trigger, sending a raw beam of energy splashing against the door. The thick battlesteel lapped it up, not even glowing.

"Hurry!" he shouted above the blaster's shrilling.

McShane stood unmoving, right hand on the rifle's brown duraplast sling, eyes fixed, unblinking.

Suddenly he moved to the right, six practiced, economical steps that brought him to the wall, hands pushing four widely separated blocks just so, each on a different edge.

Dimming, the cubes slipped back into yellow as the door slid noiselessly open. Three broad corridors ended in a wide circle before the tunnel. Small shipcars rimmed the circle, fronts tucked into power niches.

"Bob!" D'Trelna shook McShane by the shoulder.

"What . . ." He blinked, dazed. "The door's open!"

"You don't remember?"

"No. Except . . ."He shook his head.

"What?"

"I was back in that pit of a room . . ."

"The mindslave chamber, here on
Revenge?"

"Yes. Back in that room, mindlinked with those things, hearing their frenzied buzzing, feeling them rip at my mind, when the whole thing froze, became a sort of mental tableau and a voice, very calm, very slow, said, 'We gave even as we tried to take. The pattern of the cubes, sally portal one-four-two.' "

He looked at the commodore. "You said we were here to consult the ship's computer. Not quite true, is it?"

"Let's take one of those cars. I'll explain as we go."

"Very well."

As they stepped into the ship, the door closed behind them. Reaching the nearest car, Bob sank into the front passenger's side, rifle between his knees, helmet on the floor. D'Trelna tossed rifle and helmet into the back seat, climbed in and backed the noiseless car from its berth.

"We're here to see the overmind," said D'Trelna. Bringing the car up to speed, he turned down the left corridor. Doorways and side corridors flashed by.