Victory Conditions Page 19

  “Boys, you don’t even know how to aim the things—”

  “It’s easy, Uncle Gerry,” Bubba said. “There’s this screen with little ship icons and crosshairs and everything, just like a game.”

  Lozar’s mind clicked on again. “These men—you are their uncle?”

  Gerry grunted. “My sister’s boy, Buford Claiborne. My brother’s boy, Bubba…well, his real name’s Beauregard Eustis, but we call him Bubba.”

  “And his real name’s Gee-yorgy-ih Ham-eel-car D—”

  “Shut your mouth, Buford,” Gerry said. “You can’t even pronounce it right yourself.”

  “All of you shut up,” David said. “I gotta figure out where we’re goin’ and where we want to go. And if we can talk to anybody…”

  “This is the communications board, isn’t it?” Bubba asked. “I’ll bet I can make it work…” He leaned over the seat and poked at the controls. “Dang, it wants another number.”

  “Just make one up,” Buford said. “It won’t know the difference.”

  Bubba tapped at the board. “Yup. Here it comes…Uncle Gerry, should I put it on speaker?”

  “Might as well,” Gerry said.

  “—hear this? Can you hear this? Ship that was in Dock Thirty, can you hear—?”

  Bubba leaned closer, both hands splayed out on the console for balance. “I can hear…who’s this?”

  A burst of static, then: “Take your fat finger off the TRANSMIT, you idiot!”

  “There’s no need to be rude,” Bubba said, and took one hand off the console. To the others, he said, “How’m I supposed to know which is the TRANSMIT button?”

  “Who am I talking to? Who’s in charge?” demanded the voice.

  Before Bubba could reply, David fumbled on the armrest of the captain’s chair. A microphone rose from the back of the chair and curved around to his mouth. “This is Dave Watson, Rigger One on Frame Six. We got all the dots burned out.”

  “Where’s the Miznarii spy? Isn’t he on your ship?”

  Lozar froze as four pairs of eyes stared at him. “I’m not—” he started to say, but his voice faltered.

  David said, “Lozar’s not a spy. He’s just an idiot. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

  The voice still sounded angry. “You just say that because—”

  “I say that because I know him; he’s our friend. Come on, we got him drunker’n spit last night, and had to listen to the whole story of how his second daughter landed the son of somebody important in their congregation, and how this meant his wife wouldn’t have to suck up to someone else’s wife, and all the way back to the girl he didn’t marry because her father thought he wasn’t good enough. And he was hungover this morning…you can’t fake that, not that green look around the mouth and the red eyes. And since we’ve been on the ship he’s been just…an idiot. He thought the datadots were harmless messages to other Miznarii.”

  “Messages to someone, and not harmless,” the voice said. “We want you to put him in confinement and come back here so we can take him in for interrogation.”

  Lozar hunched in his chair. He could imagine all too well what that would be like.

  David looked at him, and then at Gerry, and then over at Buford and Bubba. “You’d be usin’ what kind of interrogation?”

  “Whatever it took. Hell, the Mizzie deserves a mindwipe and a scutter implant, for what he did…”

  Again glances passed back and forth. David cleared his throat. “Well, you know, there’s a problem.”

  “What problem? I can tell you how to link the ship to the station traffic control computer; it’ll bring it in. Just don’t let that Mizzie touch any controls.”

  “See, the thing is,” David said slowly, “the ship thinks I’m the captain.”

  “You?” the voice said. “You aren’t a captain!”

  “I am now,” David said. “Seems the ship just wanted a license number to hand the controls over to me, and my Rigger One license did the trick. And Buford and Bubba here, they’ve activated the weapons controls and communications, and Gerry’s got shields, and old Lozar’s on drives, so the thing is…I don’t think this ship’s gonna just roll over for any traffic control computer.”

  “But you have to make it—you can’t bring it in by yourself; you don’t know how.”

  “I don’t want to bring it in,” David said.

  “You’re one of them?” The voice rose to a shriek.

  “Don’t be stupid,” David said. “I’m not one of those damned pirates or whatever, and I sure ain’t a Miznarii. But we have invaders in the system, and I have a warship and a crew and some weapons—”

  “You have weapons?”

  “And if the bad guys think this ship is empty, maybe they’ll come close enough we can blow their heads off.”

  “You…that’s insane.”

  Gerry nodded vigorously from his seat, but with a grin on his face. David’s grin was even wider.

  “Hey, Thirty!” That was a new voice. “This is Seventeen—you gonna go fight?”

  “Is that you, Allen?” Buford asked.

  “Yeah, it’s me. We got sealed in—you too? Beth and me, Ruta and Ferris, and Simram—he’s a Mizzie but he’s people, whatever they say on the station. Would you believe the ship took my license and made me captain! We got a forward beam, too: what’ve you got?”

  “Stern beam, at least one, and some missiles.”

  “I’ve got a whole slew of mines,” another voice chimed in. “Hemry here, in Eleven. But I’m not the captain. Lee got here first.”

  A gravelly voice broke in. “John, let your captain do the talking; I need you down there figuring out how to launch those damn things. Hey, David, how’s it goin’? George is here and we’ve got Durgin, Burrell, and Fletcher with us. It’s like a Swords meeting.”

  “Be quiet!” That was the station again. “None of you are going anywhere; none of you know how to—”

  “We’re wastin’ time,” yet another voice said. Precise, a different accent than the others. “Jody here, on Ten. Bill’s here with me; we’ve got Kristine, the Schwartzes, and the Bonds. Swords of the Spaceways!”

  “James on Nine; Rachel’s here of course, and the Kerchevals and Godwin. Swords forever!”

  “Underwood on Twenty-two. I never thought I’d get to be a spaceship captain for real! May and Nazarian are with me. Have we got the whole club? En garde, mes amis!”

  “Twenty-eight, Hise here. I’m not sure how to run this thing but it took my number.”

  “Of course you can, Tom. Let me take over communications…Gorlison seems to be our pet Mizzie, and we’ve got Smith, Susan, Esther, and Clough from the club and a few others.” Lozar recognized Jan’s voice.

  “Will you all shut up and listen!” The station again. Lozar watched David and Gerry just laugh. It was the Stationmaster himself now; they shouldn’t be laughing.

  “Latner here with Twenty-six. We have Richerson and the Zrubeks from the club. No, wait, Julia’s here too. And Madeleine. Swords forever!”

  “Mostly the Swords of the Spaceways club,” David said. “I guess that figures. All the ships undocked?”

  “No, Seventeen,” Lee said. “But only eight have our people on ’em. The rest are still docked, but three more have sealed up, and there’s no communication with them yet. Must not’ve reached the bridge. Say…is it true the Mizzie on your ship is the one who put the dots in?”

  “He says so,” David said. “But he didn’t know what they were.”

  “Station wants him bad,” Lee said.

  Lozar hunched lower in his seat, watching David.

  “They can’t have him,” David said. “He’s not the brightest egg in the carton, but I’m not turning any friend of mine over to be mindwiped and forcibly implanted, no matter how stupid he is. It wasn’t his fault; he was duped.”

  “Can we get video with this thing?” Allen asked. “I want to see this bozo.”

  “Come on, Lozar, nobody’s going to hurt
you,” David said. On shaky legs, Lozar made his way around the central display tank to the communications console.

  “I’ve seen you before,” Allen said, when Lozar came into vid pickup range. Lozar barely remembered the balding redhead. Behind him, a thin woman with curly blond hair leaned for a look.

  “Oh—I know you,” she said. “Isn’t your wife, Jari, on the Corridor Four children’s activities committee? And isn’t Mir your younger daughter? Our Meg is a friend of hers.”

  “That settles it,” Allen said with a laugh. “We can’t let anyone do anything to Lozar. Meg would have a fit.”

  Lozar remembered the blond woman and her redheaded daughter. “Please,” he said. “Take care of my wife, my daughters—”

  “Can’t do that,” Allen said. “We’re in the same situation you are…all aboard the one-way express.”

  “Oh, Allen, don’t be that way.” The blond woman nudged him, then smiled into the vid pickup. “Lozar, don’t worry. Even if we don’t make it back, Meg won’t let anything happen to your daughter.”

  “But if people hate Miznarii…because of me…”

  “Don’t worry about it. They won’t take it out on her. Meg won’t let them. And most people aren’t like that anyway.”

  “She may not ever marry—”

  “Is she pretty?” Buford put in. “I’d marry her if I get back alive—”

  “Buford!” Gerry said. He sounded shocked.

  Lozar was shocked. His daughter marry an unbeliever? He hardly listened to the banter that passed back and forth among captains Watson, Hartman, Martindale, Fawcett, Underwood, Sikes, Latner, and Hise, except to note that they kept making references to the long-running serial Swords of the Spaceways.

  “We really ought to have some kind of plan,” Gerry said suddenly. “Those things are a lot closer.”

  “Ram ’em,” David said. “That always works in the vid cubes. Lozar! Give us full speed ahead or whatever that is…straight at ’em.”

  Lozar looked at the controls, none of which said anything like “full speed ahead.” He prodded one sliding bar tentatively. On the screen in front of him, colored bars climbed up a set of lines, both with scales he couldn’t read. He nudged the bar farther. It stopped. On one side was a red button with OVERRIDE engraved in the top and a warning notice beside it: OVERRIDING AUTOMATED ACCELERATION LIMITS IS NOT RECOMMENDED. REQUIRES CAPTAIN’S AUTHORIZATION.

  “It won’t let me make it faster unless you say it’s all right,” Lozar said.

  David touched a control. “Try it now.”

  Lozar pushed the red button, which lit up from inside; a metallic voice said, “Warning. Max acceleration approved. Warning. Take hold.”

  “What are they thinking?” Major Douglas said. He knew from experience that if he’d been in the CCC he would not have had as good a view of scan—everything was angled for the admiral’s convenience—and besides, he could comment to Hugh Pritang without distracting Admiral Vatta. The scan data on two of the rigger-crewed ships showed them accelerating rapidly straight toward two of the pirate ships. “That’s a stupid course; they’re dead meat—”

  “They’re not trained, Moray Command says,” Hugh said. “I don’t know why they didn’t go back and let someone with expertise take over…”

  “Look, there goes another one—” This time on a different course, apparently trying for another one of the attacker groups. “And those—” That for a group moving together, away from the combat zone toward the jump point.

  “Uncrewed. Command thinks they’re controlled by the pirates, due to some kind of sabotage—” Hugh paused to acknowledge Ky’s order to microjump into attack position on the raiders.

  “Too bad the riggers didn’t just blow them up.”

  “They seem to have a suicide wish. Like something out of an entertainment vid.”

  “Maybe they’re Romantics, like Teddy,” Lee put in. Douglas looked at the pilot sharply, but Hugh shook his head. Nothing would convert Lee to full military courtesy.

  “Riggers? I wouldn’t think so,” Hugh said. “I’ve met a lot of that sort and they’re usually solid, sensible—well, except when drinking. But they do watch a lot of commercial entertainment, and if that’s all they know about tactics—”

  Vanguard, in concert with six other privateers and one Cascadian ship, now had a good angle on ten of the enemy. Hugh nodded to Vanguard’s weapons officer, and the ship quivered as the forward batteries launched. The enemy’s counterlaunch came a full second after their own, and they were no longer there to receive it. Four of the enemy ships took damage; none of their own had more than a sparkle on the shields.

  “Seems odd not to have Ky—the admiral—on the bridge,” Hugh said. “She’s better than I am—”

  Douglas shook his head. “That looked good to me; we’re still in one piece. Her ship dispositions seem odd—dispersed like this—but they work. I’m still not used to having instantaneous communication.” He looked back at scan, relayed now from Baskerville’s ship, close in to Tobados Yards. “Damn.” The first of the rigger-crewed ships came under fire, its shields sparkling as pirate missiles struck them. “Well, at least they have their shields up, and they got some off—” Launch signatures, multiple. “Wonder what fusing options they’d used…if they’ve even heard of fusing options.”

  “There’s another—” Now four of the eight rigger-crewed ships were engaged, though their methods made Hugh wince. “They have no idea how to range their shots, do they?”

  “Why don’t they engage their targeting computers?” Douglas said. “That’s a good strong beam; they might even burn out a shield with it—”

  “They probably don’t know they have targeting computers—” Hugh said. “I can’t understand why the ships let someone with no qualifications take control. Unless the sabotage damaged their AI somehow.”

  “See if Moray Command will relay some of their chatter—I have a morbid desire to know if they realize they’re all going to die,” Douglas said. “Or maybe we can give them some direction.”

  Moments later, Moray Command fed some of the previous minutes’ transmissions from and among the rigger-crewed ships. Major Douglas shook his head as he listened. “I’ve never seen or heard anything like that. It’s ridiculous; they’re untrained civilians, not even ship crews, but—damn, they’re brave.”

  “If only they knew what they were doing,” Hugh said. “Wonder if they’d listen to us—there goes one—” The first of the rigger-crewed ships blew, though it was impossible to tell why, just from scan. “Listed as Nine, captain was Hartman.”

  Now all eight were engaged, tossing out missiles with more enthusiasm than skill, stabbing away with their beams. Turek’s ships microjumped out of the way after firing their own salvos, and ship after ship ran into a deadly fusillade and blew. The stolen warships, under enemy control on safer courses, were now accelerating toward the distant jump point.

  Ky, in the CCC, at first missed the easy banter she’d had on Vanguard’s bridge when she was captain, but with every minute in the combat zone she appreciated more and more the wealth of data pouring into the CCC, the lack of distractions. She lost track of time, concentrating on the movement of the enemy ships, her ships, the Moray ships. For the first time she felt she had full understanding of what was happening in real time. Her orders could be more precise, more tuned to the situation. She had seen the rigger-crewed ships’ erratic and ineffective maneuvers, but she also noticed that in evading them the pirates had put themselves in position for her ships to attack. She concentrated on that, moving ships with the best microjumping accuracy into position for attack and back out.

  At first the enemy ships didn’t realize what was happening, but after the first three blew, the others ignored the easy prey and returned more effective fire. Ky had positioned Vanguard between Tobados Yards and the jump point she expected the invaders to use for their escape, well outside the expanding danger zone, but most of her other ships were in the thick of
it, shields flaring as debris or weapons intercepted their course. Moray’s defenders, unused to her style of fighting and unsure of her commands, were slower to respond; two more of them died as she watched.

  This time Turek’s force did not stick to the familiar X-attack pattern they had used before. Ky struggled to analyze the difference. Douglas and Yamini had located a copy of Baines’ Practical Tactics for Regional Conflicts and Ky had loaded it in her implant, but had not come up with a good way to classify the variations. If Turek was using only that one book—and yes, there it was, finally. Baines didn’t list the ideal countering moves, but logically—she moved five of her ships, and sure enough they were able to blow another of Turek’s with only minor damage to one of hers.

  Still, the attackers stayed in formation and continued to fire on Ky’s forces, though they were retreating slowly away from Tobados Yards and Moray’s main planet—and a third of them formed a protective shield around the eight uncrewed ships they were controlling.

  “Keep after them,” Ky said. “If you can get something through to take out those warships—” But so far the new ships’ shields had held and their guardians kept her ships far enough away that no close straight shot was possible.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  T hree enemy icons moved against the flow…as in the battle at the Boxtop ansible, Ky noticed the aberrant movement even before the computer analysis pointed it out.

  “Twenty-seven,” she said on her all-ships channel. “That’s their commander and his escort.”

  “They read like Bissonet ships, but their IDs aren’t the same as at Boxtop,” Douglas said. “They’ve changed ship-chips again.”

  “That’s not the point,” Ky said. “That’s Turek heading for safety. He made it at Boxtop; I’m not going to let it happen again—”

  “Everyone’s engaged—”

  Ky could see that. Only the little group of three turned from the area of battle to move directly toward the jump point.

  “They think they won’t be noticed,” she said.

  “Or they really need those ships and are hoping to distract us.”