Starfishers Volume 3: Stars End (31 page)

The Defender Prime of Ulant gave the order. The Climbers left their mother ships. Pursuit destroyers moved to positions in reserve-and-chase, ready to pounce on any courier or fugitive fleeing the battle. The Empires and Conquerors and their Ulantonid, Toke, Khar’mehl, and aChyfNth equivalents began to move. The cruisers, frigates, and bombards formed their holding screen. A gnatlike swarm of singleships put on inherent velocity preparatory to a lightning pass through the enemy, spewing energy and torpedoes and collecting to-the-minute intelligence for the Defender’s master battle computers.

The centerward people were unsuspecting. Even the folk they were attacking had no idea that help had come.

Years of Ulantonid staff planning had gone into this action. It was their game. For the first time ever Confederation personnel were accepting orders from outside commanders. Even the Warriors of Toke set aside their pride and accepted direction from leaders more knowledgeable than they.

Twelve sovereign governments of five races were represented in the Allied fleet.

The Climbers materialized amid the enemy force. They expended their munitions stocks before their foes could react. They returned to their mothers to rearm.

Seconds later the singleships dropped hyper.

It took a special breed to fight the one-man scout ships. Egoists, solipsists, men convinced of their own invulnerability. Men who could not be intimidated by the knowledge that they had virtually no defense but speed and violent maneuverability.

The singleships streaked through the centerward war-fleet, spewing their hunter missiles and flailing with their lone nose-mounted energy beams. For some speed proved a liability. There were so many enemy vessels, shifting in confusion, that there were collisions.

Data flowed to the computers of the Allied fleet. The size, disposition, orientation, vectors, and velocities of enemy units began to appear in the huge displays of the Defender’s command and back-up command vessels. Ships and installations belonging to the race under attack were identified and tagged friendly. Enemy command ships were identified and targeted for special attention by the next Climber sortie.

The General Staff of Ulant had planned thoroughly and well. There were no unpleasant surprises.

The heavies closed and began pounding a technologically inferior enemy.

The advantages were all to the Allies. All but one.

They were outnumbered a hundred to one.

They were a single-minded folk, those centerward creatures. When unable to fight a ship any longer, they took to their shuttlecraft and tried to land on the planet. The handful who reached the surface looked for something to kill, and kept at it till something killed them. Aboard ship and on the ground they had only a limited concept of tactics.

Tactics were unnecessary when the only strategy needed was the application of overwhelming numbers.

They seemed unacquainted with fear, and constitutionally unable to retreat. They simply fought and died and let someone else take their place.

The only ships to leave the battle were couriers departing at ten-hour intervals.

The pursuit destroyers handled them, as well as couriers coming in.

One by one, Allied warships were destroyed or injured beyond any capacity to continue fighting.

At hour forty of an action originally projected to endure about one hundred hours the Defender Prime instelled Ulant. She expressed her fear that her command was insufficient to fulfill its mission. Effective losses: twenty-four percent of commitment. Current estimated active ratios: 70-1 in the enemy’s favor.

Her figures did not take into account displacements. Her ships were concentrating on the more important and dangerous enemy vessels. A significant percentage of the remaining ships were lightly armed troop transports.

The centerward people stubbornly insisted on devoting strength to their assault on the planet.

The Defender’s pessimism was not unwarranted. Her one-hundred-hour report showed the Allied fleet over fifty percent neutralized. All missile stores had been expended. Breakdowns were claiming the energy weapons. She had lost the use of the last of her Climbers. Her crews were drained by exhaustion.

She disengaged.

The enemy ignored her departure. They closed ranks and continued their disrupted planetary assault.

The Defender received instructions to stand off and observe. Confederation was sending reinforcements. Convoys bearing munitions and repair spares were in space.

In the end, after a month of brutal fighting, the last centerward warship was annihilated. The Allied fleet returned home, to lick its wounds and reflect on the savagery of the encounter. The Defender departed without contacting the planets she had saved. She wanted no replacement enemy fleet finding any information on the mysterious rescuers.

A great victory, by numbers. A huge slaughter. But a Pyrrhic affair. The carefully husbanded and prepared strength of the Allies had been decimated.

At least four more warfleets were moving out The Arm. Nothing, really, had been won, except the knowledge that such a monster force could be overcome. The victory did not fill the several high commands with joy.

It simply unleashed an even more grim foreboding of things to come.

Twenty-five: 3050-3052 AD
The Main Sequence

McClennon had been relating his memories for months. “Christ, Mouse. I’m sick of it. Why can’t people be satisfied with the deposition tapes?”

Mouse moved a pawn, trying to initiate a trade. “Because it’s so damned fascinating. It’s like meeting somebody who can wiggle his ears. You want to see him do his trick. I can’t help it either. I wish I could get inside your head. Man, remembering what the galaxy looked like before Old Sol was formed . . . ”

McClennon refused the trade. He moved a knight to support his own pawn, glanced at the time. “Four hours. I’m beginning to dread it. They’ll do the whole debriefing routine. For two years of mission. And they’ll stay on me about my starfish memories till they know the whole physical history of the universe.”

Mouse glanced at the clock too.
Marathon
would be dropping hyper soon, preparatory to decelerating in to Luna Command. “Debriefing doesn’t excite me either. On the other hand, we’ll get to see a lot of people we haven’t seen for a long time. They’ll all be changed.”

“Maybe too much. Maybe we won’t know them anymore.” McClennon tried to focus on his friends in Luna Command. Max would be older. Greta would be a different animal. He might not recognize her now.

His thoughts kept fleeing to the memories. He found something new each time he checked them. They were intriguing, but he could not shed the disheartening parts.

There were not just five warfleets coming out The Arm. There were eighteen. And the galaxy was infested by not one, but four Globulars. He could not console himself with the starfish view that, in the long run, the enemy was never entirely successful. He did not care that this was their third scourging of the Milky Way, that life always survived, and that sometime between the grim passages, over the eons, new intelligence arose to contest the world-slayers’ efforts. He could not be consoled by the knowledge that the enemy would not reach Confederation in his lifetime.

If there was a God, He was cruel. To have allowed the creation of such all-powerful, enduring monstrousness . . . 

“Chub thought he was giving me a gift,” McClennon said. “He knew I was curious about the past. And he knew his species had information we wanted. It was a gift of despair. It just showed us how hopeless the whole thing really is.”

“I wouldn’t say that. You’re down too far.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You told me the fish said they can be stopped. That it had been done before. The Stars’ End people were working on it when the plague got them.”

“They were working on us, Mouse. Trying to breed some kind of killer race of their own.”

Mouse shrugged. “Hi, Tanni.”

McClennon glanced up into laughing green eyes.

Mouse suggested, “Why don’t you take my friend for a walk? He’s down again.”

The woman laughed. “That’s what I had in mind. Or would you rather play chess, Tom?”

McClennon grinned. “Let’s flip a coin . . . Ouch! No fair pinching.”

“Come on, you. I’ve got to go on station in an hour.” She undulated out of the wardroom.

“Wait till Max gets a look at that,” Mouse said.

“Hey. She better not. Not ever. Hear? The fireworks would make the nova bomb look pitiful.”

Mouse laughed. “I’m looking forward to it, old buddy. I can’t forgive you for snagging that before I did.”

“You can’t win them all, Mouse.” He hurried after Tanni Lowenthal, Stars’ End, the mission, starfish, and centerward enemies forgotten.

He spent a month in the bowels of Old Earth’s moon. The mind-butchers demolished his soul and on its foundations rebuilt to saner specifications. The first three weeks were horror incarnate. He was forced to face himself by mind mechanics who showed no more compassion than a Marine motor pool man for a recalcitrant personnel carrier.

They did not accept excuses. They did not permit stalling. And even while he slept they continued debriefing him, tapping the incredible store of memories given him by Chub. They were merciless.

And they were effectve.

His sojourn among the Seiners had mellowed his memories of the cold determination of his Navy compatriots. He had come in unprepared. He was less ready to fight the reconstruction.

It went more quickly than his doctors anticipated.

When he was past crisis they opened him up and repaired his ulcerated plumbing.

He was permitted visitors on day twenty-nine.

“Two at a time,” his nurse protested. “Just two of you can go in.”

“Disappear,” Mouse told her.

“Yes sir. Captain. Sir.”

Mouse was nearly trampled by two women. He dropped his portable chess set. Chessmen scattered across the floor. “Oh, damn!”

Greta plopped her behind on the edge of the bed, flung herself forward, hugged McClennon. “I’m glad you’re back. I’ve been calling every day since I heard. They wouldn’t let me come before.”

And Max, the old girlfriend, “Christ, Walter. What the hell did they do to you? You look like death on a stick.”

“That’s why I love you, Max. You’ve always got a pleasant word.” He squeezed Greta’s hand. “How are you, honey? How’s Academy?”

She started babbling. Max got on about some new stamps she had at her hobby shop. She had been saving them for him.

Mouse recovered his chessmen, deposited the set on the nightstand, took a chair. He crossed right leg over left, steepled his fingers before his mouth, and watched with a small smile.

McClennon turned his head, trying to hide his eyes.

Softly, Max said, “Walter. You’re crying.”

McClennon hid behind his hand. “Max . . . It was a rough one. A long one and a rough one. I was lost for a long time. I forgot . . . I forgot I had friends. I was alone out there.”

“Mouse was there, wasn’t he?”

“Mouse was there. Without him . . . He brought me through. Mouse. Come here.” He took Storm’s hand. “Thanks, Mouse. I mean it. Let’s don’t let it get away again.”

For a moment Storm stopped hiding behind the masks and poses. He nodded.

Greta resumed babbling. McClennon hugged her again. “I’m having trouble believing it. I thought you’d have forgotten me by now.”

“How could I?”

“What am I? A sentimental fool who helped a pretty girl in trouble. We never knew each other.”

She hugged him a third time. She whispered, “I knew you. You cared. That’s what matters. When you were gone, your friends were always there to help.” She buried her head in his shoulder and blubbered.

McClennon frowned a question at Max, who said, “Your Bureau took care of her like family. She’s got to be the most pampered Midshipman in Academy.”

“And you?”

Max shrugged. “I did what I could.” She seemed embarrassed. “Well, how else was I going to keep track of you? I don’t have connections.”

“I’m glad you’re going to be all right,” Greta murmured. “Dad?”

More tears escaped McClennon’s eyes.

“Did I do wrong? I didn’t mean . . . ”

“It’s all right, honey. It’s all right. I wasn’t ready for that.” He squeezed the wind out of her.

“Just get the hell out of my way, woman!” someone thundered in the passageway outside. Beckhart kicked the door open. “See if you can’t find a bedpan over around Tycho Crater, eh? Go on. Get scarce.”

The nurse beat her second retreat.

The Admiral surveyed the room.

McClennon stared at his professional paterfamilias.

“Looks like everything’s under control,” Beckhart observed.

“Place is drawing a crowd,” McClennon said. “Must be my animal magnetism.”

Beckhart smiled with one side of his mouth. “That’s one crime they won’t convict you of, son. Lay out that board, Mouse. I’ll beat you a game while we wait for the females.”

The game had hardly started, and McClennon had hardly gotten Greta’s eyes dried. The door swung inward again. The nurse watched with a look of despair.

Tanni Lowenthal’s face rippled with emotions. It selected an amused smile. “Tom. I thought I’d get here first. I guess you don’t run as fast when you’ve got short legs.” She crossed gazes with Max. The metallic
scrang
of ladies’ rapiers meeting momentarily tortured the air. Then Max smiled and introduced herself. She and Tanni got past the rocky part in minutes.

Beckhart checked his watch. “Damn it, they’re late. I’m going to have somebody’s . . . ”

The harried nurse stepped in. She carried a portable remote comm. “Call for you, Captain McClennon.”

“Let me have that,” the Admiral said. He seized the comm. “Jones? You find her? Got her on the line? All right. Thomas, your mother.” He handed the comm to McClennon and returned to his game.

McClennon did not know what to do or say. He and his mother were estranged. She was Old Earther born and bred, and they had battled fiercely ever since his enlistment. Their last meeting, just before the Seiner mission, had ended bitterly.