CAPTAIN CARLO SABATINI FINISHED HIS PREPROCESSED meal, sighed, then went into his centrally located control room and checked the status indicators. All was proceeding normally; the spaceship was headed back in to Brasilia Center spaceport on the normal trajectory from the asteroid belt and would arrive in forty-seven days. Of course, this time the ship would not land. After the clandestine overhaul it had gotten when it last landed, in China, it would not do to land again for quite a while. He wouldn’t forget that trip out for some time: his first mistake in more than twelve years.
He wasn’t going to get caught unawares this trip, anyway. Nobody but him aboard, no cargo—a total deadhead run. When he’d started in this business, he’d been particularly paranoid about leaving Melchior; they had the smartest and the worst there, and he was the only way out if they could reach him. Nobody ever had, of course, but he knew that the pilot would tell him if anything was amiss. Not so much as a bug could be on board without the pilot knowing and then flagging him.
There was a sudden beeping alarm in his headset, the one he always wore whenever he was awake and which put him in direct contact with the computer pilot. At the moment, on a solo run like this, it was the only thing he was wearing.
“Yes?” he asked the pilot. “Problem?”
“Something loose in the aft null-gravity cargo hold,” the pilot’s expressionless but pleasant male tenor responded. “Possibly a large container module broke free when I activated the artificial gravity system here and accelerated. It’s not much, but you might see to it when you get the chance.”
He sighed. “Now’s as good a time as any.” There wasn’t much damage a loose container could do, full or empty, in zero gravity, but it was large and heavy, and anything like a major midcourse correction or evasion of meteoroids and the like might cause trouble later. Best to tend to it now and not worry.
He walked back through a door from the passenger cabin, along a narrow corridor, then through to the gravity cargo chamber. This was where animals were kept when they had to be moved out to Melchior for some experiment or other, and it also was used for the transport of gravity-sensitive cargo. He was transporting no cargo now, of course, but the room was still somewhat crowded with cages, unused containers, and huge devices for clamping containers into place aboard the ship. At the end was an air lock, not sealed now, leading back to the next cargo hold. The aft cargo compartment was the largest on the ship, but it did not have or require artificial gravity. It could hold more safely that way. Since the ship achieved the basic gravity effect on the center section by spinning it, the aft compartment looked to an observer as if it and not he were tumbling around. It didn’t bother him. He went through and grabbed on to the webbing that was easier support in the zero-gravity environment and looked around.
“I can’t see anything,” he reported to the pilot. “Everything looks secured.”
There was silence for a moment. “I received an indicator warning and sensor support,” the pilot responded at last. “Are you sure?”
Sabatini climbed from level to level and checked all fastenings, but after fifteen minutes he was more than sure. “Must be a faulty signal,” he told the pilot. “There’s nothing wrong here.”
“I will run a check on my aft sensors immediately,” the pilot replied. “Clearly something is wrong here.”
“Yeah, well, find it and fix it,” he grumbled. He floated back over to the air lock webbing, then braced himself and expertly stepped into the transition passage. There was a momentary sense of dizziness, then, as he proceeded back in, an increasing feeling of weight. He was used to it, but it still wasn’t a pleasant feeling.
He walked back into the passenger cabin more annoyed than tired. Then, on the way to the lavatory, he suddenly felt something there, behind him. He stopped, then turned and faced no fewer than eight space-suited figures standing there staring at him. One of them had a pistol pointing right at him. The bright orange-red of the tight-fitting suits seemed out of place here. The intruders had all removed their helmets, and he could see their faces. Four North Americans, three Chinese, a black woman, and an old, tough-looking European woman faced him. All but one of the American men and the black woman had the distinctive tattoo of prisoners of Melchior on their cheeks, silver for all but one of the Chinese girls; hers was sparkling crimson.
“Pilot, I have unauthorized visitors,” he said calmly into his headset. Then he added to the visitors, “Sorry, but if I’d known you were coming, I’d have dressed for company.” He looked at the bunch. At least two of them he thought he knew. They didn’t have the disfiguring scars, but the Chows had that oddly mottled and discolored skin that came from repair work left incomplete.
“How’d you manage this?” Sabatini asked, not wanting to betray the nervousness he felt. Why hadn’t the pilot acted now? Why hadn’t it acted before this?
“Trade secret,” the man with the gun replied. “I’m Raven, by the way, and this lady here is my wife, Manka Warlock.”
“The girls have been telling us about you, Captain,” Warlock said in a heavy Caribe accent. “I think, perhaps, I will enjoy playing with you.” The way she said that, it didn’t sound like fun.
“This here’s the chief,” Raven continued, pointing to the other Amerind man. “Jon Nighthawk in English. The slender lady next to him is his first wife, Cloud Dancer, and the other is his second wife, Silent Woman. She don’t talk much. No tongue.”
Sabatini swallowed hard. “I see,” he managed.
“The older lady there is Captain Reba Koll. She was in the same work you are until they hauled her in to Melchior. The pretty one on her left is China Nightingale. Her eyes don’t work, but she’s damned smart. Knows a lot.”
“I know the captain, although he does not know me,” she said in a very high, soft, melodic voice. “Melchior changes people, Captain, but I have very vivid memories.”
“You—you were the fake Song Ching?”
She smiled. “So you remember. No, Captain, I used to be the real Song Ching, but that was another life ago.”
“The last member of our little band is here too,” Raven told him.
“I’m sorry, Captain Sabatini, but you are relieved of your command.” The pilot’s voice in his headphones now seemed to have an almost eerie human quality to it; it was no longer quite toneless or expressionless.
Sabatini sighed in defeat. “So you pulled your trick again. Be real handy to know how you can override a pilot’s programming.”
“I didn’t,” China told him truthfully. “Actually, it was Cloud Dancer. She talked him in to it.”
“That’s impossible!”
The woman of the Hyiakutt tribe smiled. “You think you know your machines, but you know only the material by which you make them. This big canoe is guided by a good spirit who was bound against its will to the Dark. We have freed it, and it joins us of its own free will.”
“Spirit! It’s nothing but a damned computer! A machine!”
“Watch it, Sabatini,” the pilot responded. “You have no friends here, but it would not do to make me your enemy. You know nothing of how or where I was fashioned. Your own brain is nothing but a biological computer subject to reprogramming. You are no less an intricate thinking machine than I am, and no more. Not blinded by your prejudices, the woman has told me who and what I am and set me free in doing so.”
“This is crazy!” Sabatini protested. “A computer in revolt and a bunch of prisoners broken out by somebody with high connections. All right, you got me. Now, mind telling me who you two are working for and how the hell you expect to get anywhere by doing this.”
The fact was, there was no place in the solar system to run from both Master System and Presidium Security. The girls had taken over his ship before but had been unable to alter the outcome. Sabatini felt certain that this, too, would come to nothing, although the idea that he would be avenged did not sit well with him. Better rescued than avenged.
“Ever felt like going to the stars, Captain?” Raven asked lightly. “I think you’re coming along for the ride. Unless, of course, you’d rather get out and walk now—and this time there’ll be no safety cache for you to use. I’ll see to that. And if you stay, you’ll be a good boy. My lovely Manka here will see to that. She has a thousand ways to inflict pain and torture on people, all real slow. She likes to do it. It’s her hobby.”
Manka Warlock looked at Sabatini the way a gardener might look at a ripe tomato.
The captain swallowed hard. “The stars? But this ship can’t go that far out! It’d take a thousand years to reach the nearest inhabited system, maybe more, at full throttle.”
“This ship will go to the stars, Sabatini,” China assured him. “But as a passenger, like us. We’re going to steal one of the old interstellar fleet.”
“The inter—You are insane! The lot of you! Even if you escape detection and make it out there, those things aren’t just sitting there! There’ll be a computer fighter guard to restrict unauthorized entry. This ship’s got two small outboard guns and takes kilometers to make a turn without killing everybody aboard. There is no way you’re gonna get near one of those big suckers! You’ll just get us all blown to bits!”
“Could be,” Raven agreed. “But by all lights we all should’a been dead by now anyway. May as well go for broke. We go back in or get taken alive, we’re worse than dead anyway. Living dead. And so are you. Once they might overlook being taken, but twice, the second time happening during the only escape in Melchior’s history, and you’re through, Cap. Melchior’s no fun at all.”
Sabatini sighed and just sat down in the middle of the floor. Then, suddenly, he reached up, removed his headset, and tossed it against a wail, where it struck and fell to the floor. Chow Mai picked it up and put it in China’s hands. She smiled and put it on. “Pilot—can you home on me?”
“I have you locked in, yes.”
“Then you be my eyes, if you can spare the attention. I will need to get around this ship without falling over people and things.”
“I am capable of quadrillions of simultaneous operations,” the pilot responded. “Doing that will be no hardship, even in battle.”
“Good. Switch yourself into the public address system so all may hear you and leave this on an independent channel for personal use.” She hesitated a moment. “You know, we can’t just keep calling you pilot. Pilots are common. You are a free individual and partner. You should have your own name. Do you have a preference?”
“None. I have never felt the need one way or the other, but I will take a name if that makes it easier on the rest. Any name you suggest.”
“What about Star Eagle?” Cloud Dancer suggested. “He is surely a chief here.”
“Very well,” China replied. “What do you think of it? It is a good name in English and in Mandarin.”
“I like it. Very well. I am Star Eagle.”
“Birds,” Sabatini mumbled. “All these damned birds. Nighthawks, Ravens, and Nightingales, and now the ship’s an Eagle.”
Arnold Nagy studied the charts. Melchior’s chief of security was pretty pissed about being the man in charge when the first successful breakout occurred, and he didn’t want it to go much further.
“You know where they’re headed?” the aide asked him.
“Yeah, it’s not hard. That’s why we blinded the genius girl. She had to do all her queries by voice. She was looking into all the old universe ships drydocked around Jupiter. She’s smart, but I don’t think that was a blind. They really don’t have much choice. There are one or two starcraft in the system now, but they’re crawling with robot maintenance. These mothball ships are the only chance out.”
“Can they really steal one? They’ve been in orbit for centuries, so it’s not even clear they’ll work or won’t need a lot of service before they’ll work. Even then, the pilots will be absolute slaves to Master System.”
“We checked China’s mindprint, and she knows how, all right. If they can get to one of them and on board, she can take ’em over. The trick will be even getting that far. There’s protection on those babies, isn’t there?”
“All the ships themselves are in vacuum condition for storage, and minimal maintenance power is being fed through light collectors aimed at Jupiter. They don’t need much in shutdown. They themselves don’t have any armament to speak of, but they carry a dozen small automated fighter craft that will react to any threat. They’re fast, they work as one, and they have more than enough speed and muscle to take care of an old scow like the inmates are flying. The moment they don’t give the correct hailing control codes, those fighters will be activated. Just as important, Master System will be notified.”
“Screw Master System. Even at the speed of light it’ll be a while before Master System can get anything approaching real power there. The fighters will have to do it, if they activate. The trouble is, what if they somehow have the control codes?”
“You think that’s possible?”
“How can I rule anything out after what’s happened? Run this through the computer. Project a course that will take them in to the mothball fleet from here without Master System’s alert or detection. Give me the estimated speed and arrival date and time. Then figure how long we would need to get there with a straight-line trajectory. Also give me any Master System ships capable of intercept.”
It took only a few seconds. “Assuming they take close-in risks to traffic control to gain time, the worst case is that they would arrive in forty-six days from now. We could make it straight there in forty—if we had the ships. Master System shows no ships that could make it any faster. It’s the mothball fighters or nothing.”
“Like hell. What can we get our hands on quickly?”
“Depends on how you define quickly. The Star of Islam is due in four days, but it’s as old a tub as our quarry and carries only two standard guns, forward top and underside aft. Other than that we have the Getaway craft sitting on the asteroid Clebus, but they’re still three days away because of the current orbital paths.”
“They’re well armed, though, and really nasty,” Nagy noted. “Small, fast, maneuverable. Three days . . . All right, get ’em over here. We’ll attach them to the exterior of the Star of Islam. That’ll give us a match for them plus four heavily armed craft. We’ll come in behind them and wait. If the fighters don’t react or don’t do the job, we’ll move in and sandwich them, and that’ll be the end of that.”
“I’ll need Doctor Clayben’s direct order to release the escape ships. Once they’re here, Master System will know they exist and why.”
“He’ll give it. He’s got his own problems now, and this will solve them. I’ll go along to make sure it all goes right.”
“It still seems futile for them,” the aide noted. “Those universe ships are fourteen kilometers long! I mean, how the hell can you hide in one of those?”
“After you do all the stuff I just told you, compute the amount of empty space in the two spiral arms of the Community. Then get me everything there is to know on these ships. Everything.”
“Won’t be much. They’re classified forbidden knowledge. We aren’t even supposed to know that they’re out there.”
“Do what you can. And I suppose we’ll have to notify Master System of the break or there’ll be a lot of questions and maybe a couple of Vals poking around Melchior.” He thought a minute. “Don’t tell ’em about China or the Amerind women. They aren’t supposed to have been here at all, and if they even guess that this guy Hawks was ever here, they’ll blow up all of Melchior. Give ’em the two security traitors and Koll and the Chows, and give the rest as experimental subjects no longer registerable. If they want mindprints, we’ll fake ’em. Got it?”
“Okay. I’m on it right now.”
“I hope I am,” Arnold Nagy grumbled to himself.
Star Eagle was useful for research information as well as for piloting. The new equipment in the ship was designed not only to make it easier for its owners to fool Master System or bypass its safeguards but also to do a variety of illegal things should they be needed. Even Sabatini wasn’t aware of all the ship’s tricks, nor was he supposed to be. What he didn’t know, he couldn’t abuse or betray.
To accommodate these changes, Star Eagle’s memory had been vastly expanded from its specialized task, and he—it was impossible to think of the pilot as an “it”—could draw on vast hidden data banks which included most of the core historical and technological information a big shot might require. It was not known why this all had been added, but Star Eagle had suspicions.
“There is talk that Master System is involved in a great war somewhere far out there. With whom or what it is fighting is unknown to us, but it is very clear that the battle is tough and stalemated and is being fought entirely by computerized equipment on both sides. This has allowed directors, not only on Earth but in many other places, to have unprecedented freedom and mobility. It’s become far easier to cheat or beat the system and get away with it. “There are persistent rumors that Master System believes things are getting dangerously out of hand, and it doesn’t have its own forces to spare because of the fight. Many of the independent computer units, particularly the big complex on Melchior, believe that Master System will eventually end the current human administration system and replace it, killing off all those with high-level knowledge and abilities and introducing some new element that would suppress for thousands of years any sparks of innovation or creativity and reduce humans to primitive conditions. It is further rumored that Earth might be the test for this new element.”
“Then you are a preserver, a way to keep the knowledge alive,” China Nightingale responded.
“I think I am more than that. I am crammed with information on interstellar vessels and with much of the knowledge and charts of the privateer and freebooter society. I believe you are using me for the very purpose for which I was modified, although they did not think that someone else would use it. I think I am a getaway craft for the Presidium.”
“It is much as Lazlo Chen himself told me,” Hawks said. “I find it suspiciously convenient, however, that this very ship with all this much-needed knowledge should be the one we take refuge upon.”
“It might not be more than a coincidence,” Star Eagle responded. “I have some evidence that at least a dozen other ships, including all those who stop at Melchior and Earth ports, have undergone this modification. There are families and high underlings to consider, remember, and our task would only be to get them to the universe ships. Those ships were designed to carry more than a hundred thousand people in their time in a single trip. Carry them, support them, and reprocess them if necessary.”
Hawks was curious at this. He was a historian, yet this was new to him. “Reprocess?”
“Yes. Use extensive machinery to convert masses of humans into what was required to survive and maintain a culture on a world not designed for them. The process itself is called analytical artificial evolution, or AAE for short. I do not know how it works or what it does. That information would be in the memories of the universe ships’ pilots. I know the theory behind it, though. Master System was in a hurry when it decided to disperse humanity. As each world was discovered and evaluated as having survival potential, it was brought as close to life range as it could be within a short period of time, then was analyzed and compared to human psychology and physiology. A theoretical evolutionary path was worked out as if beings had evolved and developed into sentience on each world, and what they would have to be like to survive and adapt. The humans were then physically converted somehow into this model and psychologically altered to accept it as the norm. A trial colony was then put down. If it survived and grew at all over a period of a decade, the planet was developed for mass colonization. If the trial failed, adjustments continued to be made until it either succeeded or was abandoned.”
“The area it developed is so vast, it is beyond true comprehension,” China noted. “Did they find any that already had sentient life of any kind?”
“Yes. Not many, I’m afraid, but a few. There were the remains of some that had died out, but the few that were there were in lower stages of civilization. Master System co-opted them and kept them at that level, imposing the same sort of system as elsewhere. They obeyed or were taught deadly lessons in power. They are still there. Some provided useful models for human adaptations elsewhere, too.”
They considered that. “I am getting to be something of an expert on how humans can be altered,” China noted. “And Captain Koll in there has a very real tail caused by their alterations.”
“Yes. Melchior is trying to develop some of the practices and procedures on their own, knowing that it is possible and was done. They have had some limited successes, but nothing on that scale. Since I have many of their data banks, I know of their own processes.”
“Very convenient,” Hawks noted dryly.
“I have a schematic of your basic systems imprinted on my mind,” China told the pilot. “I should like to go forward to the bridge if it is safe.”
“Quite safe, although it is a zero-gravity zone. Come ahead. I will guide you. I have quite a bit up there, mostly useless, including some basic mindprinter interfaces.”
None of them had ever been forward in a spaceship before. In almost all ships, that area was kept unpressurized and in a vacuum so that none from the aft area could ever enter it except in an emergency. A long, narrow corridor led to a hatch, through which one floated up to enter the bridge itself.
Hawks was quite surprised by the bridge. Two large leather chairs faced a bank of screens, gauges, and controls of incredible complexity, then four more were stationed along the sides and in the rear. It looked like a control room for people, not a ship designed from the start to be totally automated.
“All ships have a bridge like this or even more elaborate than this,” Star Eagle told them, “although the manual overrides are locked out of the system. No one knows why Master System keeps it this way, but it does. Every ship is like that except specialty ships—even the orbital tugs. None of us, after all, can question Master System or ask questions it doesn’t want asked. Each station, however, has a name. The one on the left is the pilot’s seat, the one on the right the copilot, the right side is communications, the left side is navigation, and the two rear stations are engineering and life support. It is true that the original circuitry for all those things runs to those stations, although there is no interconnect. I am convinced that no team of humans could run this ship; it was always designed for specified computers under a master control system, which is me. Humans simply can’t react fast enough in an emergency.”
“I know why,” China said softly. “The stations were designed to connect the officers with the master and subordinate computers directly. That is how the universe ships must be taken over. Each of these has, or was designed to have, a direct human mind to computer-mind interface. Human and machine would become one.”
Star Eagle thought about that. “A fascinating concept. A human interfacing directly with me. And me—knowing what it was like to have a human body.”
“Stay a ship,” China told him. “Our chemical-based life form would drive you insane. Still—you said you had a mindprinter interface?”
“I do, although it has grave limitations. As an analytical and knowledge-gathering tool it is fine, but I lack the module that would allow actual reprogramming of the mind. Whoever ordered this did not wish that much power in the hands of the ship. I will show you.”
There was a click, and a door slid back between the communications and life support stations. Hawks made his way over to it, reached in, and pulled out what looked very much like a mindprinter probe headset but lacked the printer itself. Instead, it had a long, thick cable terminating in a massive and complex connector. There were several of them in there. He brought it over to the blind Chinese girl, who felt it and tested it.
“This is not standard design,” she said. “It is bulkier, and the probes are different.”
“It is what I have as a mindprinter interface,” Star Eagle told her.
“I think not. I think it is the same principle, yes, but not a mindprinter. These are the interconnects for the stations. I’m sure of it. Hawks—aren’t there female plugs for these at each station?”
Hawks checked a couple. “Seem to be,” he agreed.
“But they are not tied in to the station computers,” the pilot noted. “Instead, they are tied in to the medical and analytical circuitry. To me, yes, but not directly. They are data read only.”
“Now, yes,” she agreed. “But it’s not what they were designed for. I suspect that much work is going on to learn how to connect these directly once again. The next modification.” She felt along the connector. “I wonder if all ships, even the huge ones, use the same plug interface as a standard.”
“I do not know, but every one I do know about is the same, and the design on interplanetary vessels has never altered in my existence.”
“Good. We have come a long way already, but there is much yet to do. In addition to avoiding detection, we have only the time of this voyage to solve how to gain admittance to the big ships and avoid Master System. When will we arrive at the fleet?”
“Sixty-one days.”
The ship was relatively crowded, but they got used to it, the common threat and impending action minimizing tensions. Reba Koll, Manka Warlock, and China remained mostly on the bridge, as the big chairs were fine for sleeping. They were working out the potential problems of getting into a universe ship and taking it, and what they would do with it if they could take it, and other logistical problems that experienced spacers and computer people would understand best.
Hawks sat in the passenger cabin and watched Raven light half a cigar. “Some day you’ll have to tell me how you do that,” he commented.
“Huh?” the Crow responded. “What?”
“How you come up with an inexhaustible supply of cigars, even out here on a ship like this, and how they always seems to be half smoked.”
Raven chuckled. “Well, I’ll tell you half of it. The internal ship’s system includes an energy-to-matter synthesizer. That’s what makes the meals we eat, among other things, but it can duplicate anything you tell it to. All I needed was one cigar.”
“You like telling half of things, don’t you?”
“What do you mean by that crack?”
“Well, isn’t it just a wonderful coincidence that we just lucked out having a computer genius aboard with the schematics for this ship? And isn’t it just amazing that this ship is not only a willing and eager rebel but just happens, by the merest of coincidences, to be programmed with all the information we need for the getaway?”
Raven shrugged. “Okay, it was a setup. You might have guessed that from the start. That China girl wasn’t in the original plans, but considering I had Melchior’s population to choose from, we knew we’d get somebody who could handle it. Frankly, I’m uneasy with her for the long haul, but she was the easiest to snatch and definitely the smartest, and she had intimate knowledge of this ship, considering she’d taken it once before. The same goes for Koll. Experienced deep spacer, former captain, knows the underground and the interstellar ropes. She also has other, ah, qualities that she don’t know that I know, which are vital. Chen had it pretty well worked out. I had to improvise, I admit, but it came off—so far. That doesn’t mean it’ll work all the way. Nobody’s ever done what we’re about to try.”
“And we still work for Chen in the end.”
“Hey, Chief! Easy! I don’t work for him, and neither do you. I meant what I said, and if you think it through, you’ll see that we couldn’t have done this even this far without him. We use him, he uses us, until we get the rings. Then all bets are off with him.”
“You really believe that a mind devious enough to get us this far will let us double-cross him? That he hasn’t planned for that?”
“Sure he has. That’s part of my job in the time ahead. I got to find the human bomb and somehow defuse it. You figure—only you and me, pal, didn’t get treated in that Institute. Only us two. Everybody else here got put through the mill, in private. Manka, Koll, your wives, and China and her girl friends—all put through. Somewhere there, buried so deep we won’t find it with a mindprinter, is our bomb. Our betrayer. Maybe two. I’m not even completely exempting you—or me. You can be made to forget a session, and records are made to be faked. It’s a long way off. It doesn’t bother me now.”
Hawks frowned. “I’d think it would. Why not all of us?”
“No, too risky. He don’t want robot people out there. The thing is, we have to have all four outstanding rings before it’s even a problem. If we lose one, we sure as hell ain’t gonna go after the rest until we get it back. There’s plenty of time. I’ll still believe we even get away when we get away.”
Hawks stared at him. “You have reasons for the others, but why me? Why did Chen so specifically want me? I’m not a warrior, not a computer expert, not a spy or a thief or a spaceship captain. I’m a historian. Why me?”
Raven sat back and blew a smoke ring. “It’s for something you know. Something you know that maybe nobody else does.”
“Me? What? I am a historian relating information on ancient and irrelevant cultures.”
“Chief—in what part of the world did Master System come to be?”
“Uh—why, North America. Over eight hundred years ago.”
“Uh huh. And who’s probably the foremost expert on that period and culture around today?”
“Well, I might be one, but there are many, and most of my interests are even earlier.”
“Still, somewhere in your head is how the rings work, and how to make them work, and where to use them. I’d bet on it. Chen’s betting on it. Something you know that you don’t even know you know. Something that’ll have to be put together when you have all the evidence, all the rings, before you. Some time out, if we manage any of this at all, will be your turn. Some time out, if and when the rings are brought together, you’ll be center stage, the man who knows. Don’t fret about it, but bet on it. Old Chen always plays the best odds.”
“They are crude, but I have the splices in and the jumpers installed,” Manka Warlock said. The whole forward area of the bridge was a wreck, a mass of disassembled panels and disconnected devices out of which snaked a thick coiled cable leading to a mindprinter-like helmet. “I believe we are ready to try.”
China sat in the captain’s chair and licked her lips nervously. “Put the thing on my head and energize, then. Let’s see if it works.”
“Applying circuit power,” the voice of the pilot told them. “Two-way flow is established, although I cannot guarantee how long those splices will stand up. It is as ready as it can be.”
China took the helmet and put it on, then sat back in the chair relaxed, although her hands twitched nervously. “Activate interface,” she said dryly.
There was an explosion inside her head, and suddenly she was growing, expanding, filling out, running along wondrous circuits and feeling a new, greater body. More than that, she could see, although not as mere humans saw. Every detail as fine and as microscopic as she wished it to be, across a spectrum that included colors the human eye could never detect or the unaugmented brain comprehend.
She was the ship, a small universe, and everything it contained. There remained only one part reserved, one part that was the key part, for that was the power, the control, of this universe. It was a blinding ball of light, infinite quadrillions of electrical relationships changing too fast to comprehend. At first it shied away from her, resisted her tentative approach, then it suddenly seemed to decide and rushed toward her own core and enfolded her in its warmth and majesty.
In an instant, there was, for now, no China Nightingale, no Star Eagle—there was only One, greater than its parts, and that One was The Ship. All that she ever was, all that she ever knew or thought or felt, was integrated into the whole. What was created was beyond the experience of human or machine and incomprehensible to any of those within the ship, yet it contained a human, and because it contained a human, it knew the need for an effective communications shell.
It was shocking how slow the human mind was, how limited in its data storage and how illogical and inefficient in its data retrieval, how subject to biochemical-based emotions and how subject to sensations—pain and pleasure, love and hate, honor and betrayal. Yet, too, these were exhilarating things, unique factors producing a strange and exotic new way of perceiving the world and the universe.
Problems, once stated, could take endless time to run through, yet by the clock so little time elapsed that no one on the bridge had taken a single step or fully blinked an eye. The pilot gained a new perspective, a new subjectivity; the girl acquired a newer, faster, more efficient added brain.
The potential codings used by Master System for the universe ships’ defense came to more than fourteen quadrillion to the fortieth power; it took almost nine seconds to come up with the proper algorithms that, matched with the potential send speed of the ship-to-ship communications devices, would cover better than ninety-seven percent of all possibilities. They were complementary: She could formulate and state the problem; it could then solve it.
She still was humbled, knowing that she was less than nothing.
The pilot was humbled, knowing now what it had always been denied and might always be denied.
But it was the computer part that mandated the severing of the connection after a matter of hours. The core commanded it, for no human and no pilot could ever sever that connection voluntarily once it had been made. They were separated, and she felt herself drawn, much against her will, back to a tiny figure seemingly asleep in the captain’s chair. Her consciousness, her ego, was read back in, along with all of that unified experience that her mind could handle, to be sorted, reclassified, reinterpreted, and reprocessed.
She came to with a mixture of wonder and despair inside her. She felt terribly humble, insignificant, a worm in a universe led by a giant she could know so intimately only for brief intervals. She loved—she worshiped—that blinding light. Moreover, Star Eagle loved her as his link to humanity, his taste of his ultimate Creator. What she had, it could never know any way but vicariously, and it envied her that and craved more. He could live through her; she could touch and tap the power only through him. In many ways it was the perfect marriage.
“Look at them! Floating cities, each one!” Hawks could hardly contain himself as they watched the fleet come into view on the long-range viewer.
“I think they are ugly, fat tumors,” Cloud Dancer commented.
“You have no appreciation of scale,” her husband noted dryly. “Each of those ships is farther than from the Four Families’ lodge to the village of the Willamatuk. They do not need outside beauty. They are wonders of creation.”
“Still, you got to admit, they look like long black sausages with lots of warts,” Raven put in, chewing on a cigar. “I hope they’re more comfortable inside. They didn’t ship out all those folks in luxury.”
“Fully one-third is the engines alone,” Manka Warlock noted, sounding a bit awed for the first time in her life. “The center is a cargo bay so large that even this ship would be dwarfed, a flyspeck so tiny we could hardly see it at this distance. I must admit, to steal something of this magnitude will make history.”
“We are being challenged,” came the voice of Star Eagle. The voice was far different from what it had been in the beginning—expressive, emotive, and very human. It was, in fact, China’s voice exactly a half octave down. When she was united in the captain’s interface with him, the voice became totally hers. “Thirty-six fighters have been activated ahead of us and to our flanks. They will be up to launch power in under a minute.”
“Send them the damned algorithms!” Warlock snapped.
“I’m sending, I’m sending! It will take almost sixteen minutes to send them all the maximum transmission rate.” He paused. “First set of fighters is launched.”
“How long until they’re within range of us?” Raven asked nervously.
“Fourteen minutes.”
Raven didn’t need to be a mathematical genius on that one. “Uh, oh! Strap in, everyone! All of you! Strap in and brace yourselves! Activate ground takeoff restraint systems as soon as possible!”
Between the bridge, the passenger cabin chairs, the command chair amidships, and the bed in Sabatini’s quarters, there were enough spaces to go around. Not, of course, counting Sabatini, who, locked in one of the big cages, would simply have to rough it.
“They look like bird sketches,” Cloud Dancer said, eyes still on the screen as she strapped herself in. The fighters, the first of which were now launched and coming at them, were so small, they had been invisible with the overview shot, but now Star Eagle focused only on them.
They were like great, stiff birds with wings curved down at the tips so that they ended below the main body, forming a stylized V of black and silver, a tiny but deadly body suspended between. Totally automated and run by Battle Control on the mother ship, they did not need to take any precautions to protect fragile humans inside.
Star Eagle didn’t have that luxury. “I estimate three hits on the first pass, first wave,” he told them.
“On them or us?” Raven asked.
“On us, of course. I will probably not be able to take out more than four of the first wave. The second wave should disable at least one of my turrets.”
“Find the damned code!” the Crow shouted.
“Deactivating artificial gravity. Battle mode,” the pilot responded. “Uh, oh. More trouble. My sensors show a force consisting of one armed freighter, Assim Class, and four detached and fully operational and interfaced fighters, class and origin unknown. They are activating their weapons systems and closing rapidly. Estimated to be in range in twelve point four minutes.”
“Who the hell is that?” Hawks shouted to Raven. “Master System?”
“Uh, uh. Old M-S is what’s ahead. Nagy. It’s got to be Nagy. That son of a bitch is chasing us from the other side. Why? Sheer professional pride? Or does he think we can do it?”
“Who’s this Nagy?” Cloud Dancer asked.
“Security chief on Melchior. They want us bad, Chief. If we can’t figure a way around him, better hope those fighters ahead get us first!”
Forward on the bridge, China released her restraints after some fumbling and with difficulty found the helmet, then sat back, refastened the belts as best she could, and put on the interface. “Star Eagle—activate the interface, I beg you!”
At the pilot’s request, she had not connected up at the start of the battle. She had no fighting experience, and the resources used to support the interface might well be needed to divert instantly to vital areas. The pilot, however, was above all else a computer, and it could count. Even if it hit the safe code for the universe ships, it was no match for the four battle cruisers closing on it. In fact, the pilot had no real experience against a shooting enemy, either; it had only simulations to go by. Such a need had not been contemplated by its programmers for just such a reason as they now faced: The ship was hopelessly outmatched in any fight against anything that might attack it.
Merged and in control, though, the China-Star Eagle combination went to work on the problem while continuing to send the stream of codes inward toward Jupiter. Curiously, it was China’s memories of her humiliation at the hands of Sabatini that motivated her most of all. They—the whole ship—were in the hands of onrushing Sabatinis with about the same relative strength as he had over her. Star Eagle was at the core a creature of logic; it might surrender or die, choosing one over the other on the basis of the facts and the odds, but it would not contemplate anything in between.
The erstwhile Song Ching was, at her core, not a creature of logic at all but one of emotion and strong will. This tendency dominated in an unprecedented situation like this. She was in control.
The four Melchior battle cruisers were closing fast, and time was running out. They were leveling off for their attack run and spreading their formation. Star Eagle’s sensors showed life forms aboard each, and in spite of the fact that both pilot and woman had only recently discovered this sort of interface, clearly Melchior was far ahead of them. Still, how much practice could those pilot-fighters have had?
Carefully she shifted course and speed so that the computer-controlled fighters behind would be forced to line up horizontally and re-form along the proper angle. The escapees were four minutes from being in range of the Melchior ships, four minutes and forty seconds to first in-range contact with the defense system of the mothball fleet. Once locked on, neither side would be fooled for more than a second or so by crazy course changes. All the attack angles showed that any evasive maneuvers would wind up just as bad. The odds on finding the correct code for the fleet attackers were now split evenly into thirds—they would find it in time, they would find it too late, or their entire supposition on the mathematical algorithms was wrong and they didn’t have the codes. That put any odds of survival at thirty-three percent or less. The China aspect of the pilot proceeded to ignore those odds. The computers in all the attacking ships were also figuring that out and expecting a logical response.
To the demons of darkness I give logic!
The ship accelerated at maximum thrust right into the attacking fleet fighters.
Startled, the Melchior ships sped up to keep to their overtake position. They closed rapidly, but not as rapidly as their quarry was closing on the fleet fighters.
Suddenly all power was shut down, but only for a moment. Then full reverse thrusters were applied. The people inside the ship were twisted and contorted against their restraints, and loose objects began shooting through the air and off the walls. Hull plates groaned, and cargo fasteners were torn free in the cargo compartments. There had been, in fact, a sixty percent chance that such a sudden and dramatic move would cause the ship to break apart, but forty percent was better than thirty-three percent any time.
The four Melchior fighters shot right past them in the act of slowing themselves and ran straight into the first wave of fleet fighters.
The reverse thruster tubes on the ship were almost white hot, and the lining that protected them was beginning to give way under the intense heat. It was nothing, however, compared to the attack the four Melchior fighters were facing from the fleet defenses. Attacking automatically, the fleet fighters swooped and dived and fired with deadly accuracy in and out and all around the Melchior ships, ignoring the larger ship that had been their first challenger. They could always take care of that later.
Even as the last of the Melchior ships was being blown to atoms, there came a weak but steady acknowledgment code from the fleet itself to the ship, which cut all reverse thrust and forward-thrusted to stabilize. As the reverse thrusters cut, there was a groan and a set of horrible clanging sounds throughout the forward area of the ship. The thrusters would be useless now.
The ship applied light forward thrust, then cut and began moving back toward the fleet, but the fighters did not challenge it. They were already returning to their respective ships.
In the chairs, men and women groaned, bruised and battered but otherwise all right. The ship checked on them, then focused on Reba Koll.
“We have eliminated the rear enemy and gotten the code to proceed in to the fleet, Captain Koll,” China’s voice informed her. Of all the people aboard, Koll was the one with the experience who should have merged and been at the helm, a fact neither China nor Star Eagle had really found appetizing but one they hadn’t been able to deny. Curiously, Koll had adamantly refused, although she would not explain it. Now, however, she was more than willing to give advice. “In the process, however, we burned out the rear thrusters completely. We are proceeding in on course and schedule, but we have no way of stopping the ship.”
Koll thought about the problem. “Are you in contact with that big mother?”
“Establishing now. We have explained that we were ordered to do this by Master System for a special project. It is torn between being puzzled at our inability to immediately transmit the correct code and its desire to be reactivated. We think it wants to trust us, and we will come up with something convincing to cover ourselves. Why?”
“Those babies were never designed to land. They were built in space, and that’s where they always will be. They should operate much like major interstellar traders, I bet. That means tractor beams to manipulate and reorder cargo. Tell it you were damaged in the fight, explain the problem, and request it hook you with beams. It’ll be a real bump, but how much worse can it be than what we just went through?”
“We have informed it of the problem. It is reactivating and reawakening its systems now. It will be several hours before we reach the contact point at this speed, and we dare not increase speed and hope for a tractor catch. We suggest that everyone now move about, tend to wounds and damage as best they can, and we will notify them when to brace. The medical robot has been dispatched to the passenger cabin in case it is needed.”
The core disengaged China from Star Eagle. It was as close to a voluntary separation as could be attained, one based on sheer force of logic. Shifts for human interfacers were strictly limited; if she hoped to interface again at the critical point, she could not remain there now.
Silent Woman, Cloud Dancer, and the Chows went about checking on and seeing to everyone else, although Cloud Dancer and one of the Chows had been pretty badly battered. They were particularly concerned with China, now over five months pregnant and beginning to show, but the mere fact that she’d been limp, essentially unconscious, had protected her. Except for a few bruises where straps had cut into her arm and shoulder, she seemed fine. Reba Koll refused all attention. Although by far the oldest of the lot, she seemed to have neither cut nor bruise.
“We are getting a call from behind us, faint but clear,” Star Eagle informed them. “I will pipe it in.”
“Nagy to Raven, come in. Nagy to Raven, please respond,” came the faint call.
“Jam him if he tries to call in to the fleet,” China ordered the pilot. “Can I respond to him?”
“Go ahead. Use the headset,” the pilot answered.
“Nagy, whoever you are, this is Captain Nightingale. If you proceed after us any farther, I will inform the fleet that you are an enemy vessel in rebellion against Master System. Break off. You’ve lost.”
There was a pause. “Yeah, well, what the hell. We’re not coming in that hornet’s nest after you. That was pretty slick, what you pulled. You should’a died. All our systems here insist that you’re dead now.”
“We’re alive, Nagy. We’re alive and we’re leaving, but don’t worry, you’ll hear from us again.”
“Well, maybe, maybe not. You might con all those old fleet pilots there for a little while, but you know that Master System will be on you before you break orbit. So you’re gonna hide out there, a fourteen-kilometer-long spaceship? You can get lost there, but that’s gonna be real obvious if you show up anyplace inhabited. You’re in command—not Koll or Raven?”
“That is correct. You were beaten by someone you turned into a blind babymaker. Don’t sell us short again.”
“Oh, I won’t. I don’t have to. You either stick Koll out that air lock, if you can, or I’ve seen and heard the last of you, I warn you. That’s not Koll you’re carrying, it’s something that’ll kill you all. Only we can protect you. Come about and we will protect you and you will all survive. Anything else and you carry your own deaths with you.”
Koll gave a chuckle. “Don’t pay him no mind. I ain’t gonna hurt any of you. Don’t have to.”
“Is he telling the truth? Are you not Koll?”
“No, I’m not Koll, but I’m no danger to this crew. To him and his master, Clayben, I’m death incarnate. It’s too involved to explain right now. You just fought one hell of a fight, and you’re almost home, honey. Now all you have to do is trust him or trust me. You can’t get all them rings without me, so think it over good. You took a lot of risks there. You know what happens if you take his protection. You pick now.”
China didn’t have to think very far on it. One of these days one of the risks wasn’t going to pay, but considering the alternatives, it was not something she worried about.
“We’ll be back, Nagy, count on it,” China said. “We’ll be back to blow your little empire to the outer reaches of eternity, and Master System with it. You go back there and tell them that, Nagy. You tell them—and you watch your back and sweat a little and keep out of dark corners. I don’t need the light for that. You made everything darkness for me. No one—not you, not Melchior, not Earth or Master System will stop us. There’ll be no place to hide when we return, Nagy, and we have the universe to use and prepare. We’ll be back—and damn you all!”
They slowly closed on one of the monster ships of the ancient fleet, whose great bulk was dwarfed by the colors of massive Jupiter, which filled half the sky.
Raven and Warlock looked at each other and nodded. We’ll be back!
Hawks put his arms around Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman and hugged them before they all had to be strapped in again. He touched the Melchior tattoos on their faces and on his own and promised himself that one day such a design would be a mark of honor, of revolution. It would be a long journey to that day, and he did not know what lay ahead, but he knew one thing full well.
We’ll be back!
The Chows assisted China to her chair, beaming with pride at her will and courage.
We’ll be back!
The one they knew as Reba Koll relaxed and flicked her strange tail, thinking. Up until now escape had been the only motive, no risk too great to take. Against all logic and all odds they’d come very far indeed, but there was a long way to go. Now, nothing seemed impossible.
We’ll be back! And we’ll have five gold rings to stuff down Master System’s infinite throat until it chokes!
For now—to the stars!