Starquest: Scourge of the Spaceways, page 3
In this case, however, the astronomy dishes of the Devil's Delight could not see any ships in the inner system.
3. Gambling with Death
Gravitometers detected the mass of a terrestrial planet an hour's flight away under tachyon drive, or six hundred million miles. This was on the far side of the dead sun from their position.
With no ansibles operating in this system, there was no hyper-wave chatter to overhear.
What warships or orbital fortresses might be defending the planet could not be seen. Despite the muttering of his impatient crew, Athos had ordered a stealthy approach. He had ordered the rogues to find a planetoid or centaur, a bit of space rubbish, in the outer asteroid belts. The ignition of two or three carefully placed nuclear warheads had imparted velocity enough to alter its orbit, and send it drifting toward the inner system.
So they had been drifting for several watches. Athos sat, still as a statue, ignoring the discomfort of his lacy coat and cravat.
Athos thought his youth spent among aristocrats had equipped him with few useful skills. Sitting in silence without fidgeting while overdressed now proved to be one of them. He sat. As Captain Rackstraw, he would not show any sign of impatience, not to scratch himself nor to yawn nor to drum his fingers. No provender, no grog, did he order brought to him when the mess bell rang.
It was Dudd, the gunner's mate, who broke the silence. He had been one of the bridge crew assigned look out duty, for the sniper scope slaved to the main axis mass-driver gun was as sensitive as any scope aboard, or more so.
"Captain! Ho! Blue tachyon burst! Say again, blue burst!" This was the shockwave caused by the formation of a hyperspace channel exit point, as tachyons escaping the lip of the hypertube lost velocity but were doppler-shifted to higher frequency. On the other hand, the point when a ship entered hyperspace imploded, releasing a red burst.
"Where away, gunner?"
"Dead ahead, near enough, Cap'n! Zero hours one minute right ascension, three degrees twelve minutes north. Radial velocity minimal."
"Distance?"
"Two thousand."
That was two thousand light-seconds. Roughly three hundred seventy million miles. That meant it would be a half an hour before the visible lightwave shed by the re-entry shock would reach their lenses for analysis, allowing an estimate of the ship's length, displacement, and class. The hypergravitic sensors acted instantaneously, faster-than-light, and detected the spacewarp, but told them nothing of the ship's mass passing through it. This could be anything from a jolly boat to a superdreadnaught.
The bridge crew were gazing at him, half in hope, half in hostility.
Captain Rackstraw straightened up. His voice rang. "And now the devils of space have given a golden opportunity to the Devil's Delight, gentlemen! Mark me! This is some straggler separated from the convoy, playing quick-catch-up, I warrant. She is too near to see the flare from our blue burst — and so does not know yet we are here. She cannot lasercast her position to the convoy, if she does not know the convoy location. And ansible is non-operational. That means broadcast. That means our good Signal Master can triangulate." He raised a finger and pointed at the images projected on the deck. "She is very near the dead star, and will raise shields to ward off x-ray radiation. That means energy use. That means she's visible. If we get closer."
Sureshot the master gunner, like all the crew, was itchy from the long wait. His lizard face was inflexible, and could show no more expression than a mask, but his long tail was twitching and lashing. "Begging the Captain's pardon," he hissed. "But what good is that to us-ss? We're not closer! S-she's half an hour away by tachyon drive — which would be detected — or three minutes-ss away by negative mass-ss drive — which would kill us-ss."
Negative mass drive was used in modern times only to warp space as a preliminary to opening a hypertube. In ages past, when it was the best available means of interstellar flight, it had been too dangerous to use for interplanetary flight. Any micrometeorite striking the ship would enter her frame of reference as if travelling at lightspeed, hence be turned as if by total conversion of matter to energy into pure radiation. The greater the mass of the micrometeor, the greater the energy and higher the frequency of the resulting impact: even a small strike would ignite like an antimatter bomb.
Hard-Drink Hob, the Electrician, was manning the engineering board, as the Chief Engineer was belowdecks. He said wryly, "Mayhap the Captain has an Astrogator hid up in his footlocker. He's pulled odd tricks before."
Green Spalpeen said, "Rusty Pate! He told me the Astrogators, they's still a-living somewhere, and must be. Wrapped up in death-cloth, buried aloft in the endless mazes of their orbital pyramids. The Preservers saved them. Hibagons, too. Stands to reason."
Captain Rackstraw said wryly, "Gentleman, I have no plan to find a psychic navigator from a long-dead race of mutant worm-cyborgs created by forbidden science. None is needed. My plan is elegant and direct."
He touched the intercom to call Umfrey the Chief Engineer. "Mister Umfrey, how strong is our Alcubierre?" The exotic-matter cyclotron used to envelop a vessel in a negative-mass induction field was called an Alcubierre engine. It was a name older than the invention of the drive itself, older than history.
"Humming like a top, sir. With the upgrades from Rana, bad wiring ripped out, replaced with variable superconductors — I can work wonders, sir! I got a bus-bar the size of your pinky finger able to carry a load enough to pluck a mountain off the north pole of Torcular and hoist it into orbit!"
"Very good. Such is precisely our need."
"Eh? What the bloody? — I mean how's that, Cap'n? I mean, sir?"
"Can you throw a warp field entirely around the asteroid to which we are anchored?"
The span-high glowing little image of the white-bearded man rolled his eyes and whistled. He spoke to his mathematician robot, an NLSS model, which clanked within range of the pickup.
Umfrey repeated the question. The mathbot rolled its lenses and whistled also. The robot fiddled a moment with an electronic slipstick, checked a few figures, and nodded its metal head slowly. Umfrey turned back toward Athos.
"Captain Rackstraw, sir! That'll put a strain on the system above what the book says the coils can stand. Danger of a meltdown."
"Bedamned to the book. What do you say?"
The white-bearded engineered threw out his chest. "Don't see it being possible, sir! Quite risky! What can justify such risk?"
"What do you say if I double your share?"
"Suddenly, I see it being possible! If'n I jack out the safeties, and cool the coils with liquid oxygen — If she blows, we'll be in hell so fast, none will pay it no mind, sir."
"Very well." He turned to the helmsman. "Helm! We need the asteroid to run fore of us. The ship precisely must apply vector force to the irregular mass of the planetoid, so that the fields our warp engines erect will act on all parts of the mass proportionately, to prevent tumbling. Is it feasible?"
Green Spalpeen, his ruddy face aflame with eagerness, grinned a mad grin. "Sir! No juggler cannot spin a buzz-saw on a fire beam not more shrewd and artful!"
Athos was not sure if all the double negatives in that sentence cancelled out mathematically to an affirmative, but the boy's expression told all.
Athos rested his hand a moment on the comdisc, wondering if he should tell the rest of the crew aboard what was about to happen, in case any wanted to say any last prayers. Of course, with no chaplain aboard, no one could be properly shriven anyway. It might be better if they died in their sins, to go immediately to hell.
He sighed a reluctant sigh, and pressed the comdisc. "Now here this! We are about to initiate a dangerous maneuver — use of negative mass drive within heliopause. In the normal case, we would expect any micrometeorites encountered at lightspeed to pierce shield and hull.
"But we have options. Our brand-new military-grade equipment allows us a new tactic. We are driving an asteroid before us as a shield, to let it sweep up any impacts. Our good Chief Engineer, Mr. Umfrey, has deemed it safe, and our helmsman says the maneuver can be done.
"I will not hide from you the considerable risks involved. You are my loyal bullies, so I know you fear nothing, not even the devil. Nonetheless, if any of you lot have prayers to say for your filthy souls, my good felons, say them now.
"But I will have no cravens aboard! If any man jack of you is feeling yellow-livered, you have ten minutes to report to the lifeboats, and be ejected from the ship before the warp is attempted, with my best wishes and good riddance. You can call to Noctua by tardyon radio, and hope for mercy."
Athos was very gratified when, after ten minutes were passed, not a single man reported to any lifeboat station.
He touched the comdisc again, "Mr. Umfrey! Engage the Alcubierre. Spread the field to cover the whole asteroid. Attune to the minimum warp: half a point above cee, no more."
The merest touch of negative mass drive created a temporary bubble of altered spacetime around the ship and the asteroid.
There was no sensation of acceleration. The warp field, from within, made the stars ahead brighter and bluer in the spectroscope. Those behind turned red and dim. There was no other evidence that they were not in the same frame of reference as the Noctua star system.
During the next three minutes, no one spoke, no one moved, no one even seemed to breathe.
In the viewplates of the hull, the x-ray source of the dead star, marked in false colors, eclipsed the magnified image of the planet. The dead star grew bright, its radiation climbing in pitch toward gamma radiation. The dark mass swelled visibly, rushing toward them like an incoming missile.
The danger of detection was minimal. The massive x-ray source of the dead star was between his ship and the dark planet.
Greater danger lay elsewhere. Athos had honestly stated that the asteroid could absorb micrometeorite impacts. Any object larger than a micrometeorite, however, encountered at their current faster-than-light velocity in realspace, would be converted instantly to hard radiation, and crack even an asteroid mass the size of a mountain like an egg, turn rock to magma to vapor to high-energy particles in an instant.
The flight ended, and the warp bubble collapsed. The stars dimmed. The bridge crew looked up from their stations, and at each other, silent with wonder for a moment.
They had lived. Everyone in the system with a working tesserameter now knew where the Devil's Delight was lurking. But those aboard were alive.
Captain Rackstraw heaved a sigh. "Well, gentlemen — it seems —"
He was interrupted by Green Spalpeen leaping into the air, yodeling. "We're alive! We ain't blowed up, not at all!" The youth was answered by happy barks from Wilco and cheers from the other crewmen, who were shouting in triumph, waving their arms.
Athos stood, peering between the whooping men at the control boards. As he had hoped, counters detected no radiation from any crater impacts along the forward hemisphere of the asteroid. The asteroid had simply not been struck, not even by so much as a flying dustmote. Space was normally empty, but space in an inner star system was normally not perfectly empty.
Athos had been told this system was different. It was good to have that confirmed. He allowed himself a grim, small grin of satisfaction.
Even as the men cheered, now in the viewplates, Noctua emerged from behind the black circle of the dead sun.
"Magnify the view, Mr. Arbogast," ordered Athos.
A planet gray as a skull, sunless, yet lit with a coronet of fire like the halo of some fallen angel in hell, now grew and filled the forward view.
4. A World Thought Lost
Athos found the world unnerving.
She was an astronomical oddity: a world of iron, cold and solid from core to mantle, whose thin crust was a waterless, metallic tundra. Eons ago, this globe had been merely the earth-sized nickel-iron core of a gas giant, whose titanic atmosphere was riven away by the nova which swelled the star into a red giant. This nova ignition had also embedded a rich trove of transuranic elements in the planetary crust. Over geologic eras, subterranean vapors carried spores and gasses to the surface, and epochs of moss clinging to rocks gave the world an oxygen atmosphere.
Noctua was a miner's dream: the richest known motherlode of heavy metals among the stars. Long ago, wealth poured in to the barren world; and steel mills, ironworks, and factory towns soon circled the equator.
During the war, a second disaster had extinguished the giant red sun. If this had been due to the action of a weapon, it was truly an ultimate weapon. The ability of an Omega level war-moon to scorch or shatter a planet was as nothing. There could be no defense against such power.
Radio communication and atomic power sources could be detected on the surface of the sunless planet, and other evidence of industrial activity. The amount of heat radiation and particulate ash spilling onto the icy surface of the world was evidence of a tremendous volume of industry at work. It bespoke the brutal efficiency of the Greatest Empire just as it might have been in days of old: wheels turning, hammers ringing, forges flaming without cease as whole continents of robotic factories would burrow under lifeless rock, seeking useful lodes, robots making robots and factories making factories.
Sixty-six low-orbit satellites circled the globe in both equatorial and polar orbits, blazing with hyperatomic energy. Titanic, ever-burning beams from the satellites sent light and heat roaring down through the atmosphere, and intercontinental forcefields prevented the heat from radiating back into space. They were, in effect, artificial suns.
Athos studied the read-outs from the hyperatomic satellites. These were more than the heat-lamps of a planet-sized greenhouse. These were orbital fortresses of omicron-level power. He saw craters on the surface beneath their orbital tracks, remnants of blasted cities, and studied the position of orbital telescopes and dish arrays, evidently meant to act as spotters. Not only could they sterilize the surface, they formed an impenetrable ring of defense. Any unauthorized ship approaching the world would be incinerated instantly.
Far from the occupied work-towns and transit lines, which were heated to habitable temperatures, the waterless planet now seemed to boast large lakes and small seas. But these were lakes of liquid oxygen, with a layer of liquid nitrogen spread like oil slicks on their surfaces.
The planet was alive, lit, and warmed by what amounted to orbital incubation lamps of prodigious size. It was an unmatched engineering feat. Only the Iss of ancient days could have wrought such a thing, or the long-extinct Hibagon at the height of their glory. Nowadays, who was there that could work such marvels, on such a scale?
The Greatest Empire? They could not still be alive. Controlling the technology to kill living suns and keep dead planets alive, they would never have been defeated. The story told by the sensor scope filled him with awe and dread.
At that moment, the lights from the dead planet flickered and dimmed.
Tisquantum, the First Mate, seeing this, hissed in fear and grasped his javelin. "The world has closed its eye to curse us, Keen-Eyed Hunting Cat!" Athos had earned this name, Cwacwara Nu, during his months among the tribesmen, when they adopted him into their tribe.
"Tisquantum, please call me Captain Rackstraw in front of the men," said Athos mildly, lifting a finger. "And, no, this is no curse, but a blessing. One rare chance. We approached in the plane of the ecliptic, achieving a hyperbolic orbit to slingshot us toward Noctua. The ship whose re-entry we detected must have had the same idea, and is in a nearly identical orbit, and happens to have made a transit across the planet's face."
The world was as dismal as a gravestone, but as well-defended as a sector prime base, or quadrant capital planet. Had she not been sheathed under intercontinental forcefields, protected by dozens of orbiting artificial suns, Athos would not have been forced through the painstaking rigmarole of finding the treasure fleet.
And now, as fortune would have it, a stray seeking to rejoin that fleet was at hand.
Athos smiled at Tisquantum. "But do not put your spear away, old friend. We shall have need all too soon."
Chapter 2: Savages Against Space Pirates
1. The Dog-Faced Fortune
The merchantman straggler who had lost her convoy was outside of visual range. She was merely a blip on the sensor scope. Athos raised his voice, barked out orders. "Detach anchor! Helm, lay in a course to that vessel. Gunner, raise our meteor shields, but leave battle shields down. Running lights on. Signal master, hail that ship!"
The iron and silicate asteroid which had hidden the Devil's Delight from scans or sensors now fell away aft, a dark mountain rotating slowly as it dwindled into endless gloom. The familiar murmur of the engines filled the bridge.
The two vessels came withing range. Sureshot, the master gunner, flicked his tongue in the air, "Ss-sir? Ready weapons-ss?"
Athos said, "Negative. Weapons cold. This is a friendly visit."
There was a mutter of discontent from the men, a few murmured curses directed at him. Tisquantum put his hand near the whips on his belt. Athos gestured for the savage to stand down. This was a time for diplomacy.
Athos raised his voice, "Gentlemen! Did I or did I not lead the survivors out from Rana, with her capital city aflame, and with this ship laden with loot? That was my doing. Did we not breeze, easy as you please, past the guns and eyes of the Navy, unharmed, unhalted? That was my doing. The stubborn pilot would not unlock for anyone Liska's charts to find this world, but for me. I knew what angle to work. That this was a star system where making a negative-mass jaunt through realspace was feasible, I also knew."
He had known because that self-same stubborn pilot had been studying the so-called Black Sun Effect, in reality an omega-level superweapon called the Great Eye of Darkness. When it had been used to end the Battle of Noctua, a generation ago, the death of the star had swept the inner system clear of all asteroids, meteoroids, and debris.
