The Star Fox (29 page)

The minstrel shouted his answer.

Heim reined in his own eagerness. The faster we move, the better,’ he said. ‘We’ll call HQ at the lake immediately. Do you know Basque, or any other language the Aleriona don’t that somebody on de Vigny’s staff does?’

‘I fear not. And a broadcast, such as we must make, will doubtless be monitored. I can use
Louchébéme
, if that will help.’

‘It might, though they’re probably on to it by now. … Hm. We’ll frame something equivocal, as far as the enemy’s concerned. He needn’t know it’s us calling from a sub. Let him assume it’s a
maquisard
in a flyer. We can identify ourselves by references to incidents in camp.

‘We’ll tell de Vigny to start lightening the spaceship as much as possible. No harm in that, since the Aleriona know we do have a ship on the planet. It’ll confirm for them that she must be in the Haute Garance, but that’s the first place they’d look anyhow.’ Heim tugged his chin. ‘Now … unfortunately, I can’t
send any more than that without tipping my hand. We’ll have to deliver the real message in person. So we’ll submerge right after you finish calling and head for a rendezvous point where a flyer is to pick us up. How can we identify that, and not have the enemy there with a brass band and the keys to the city?’

‘Hm-m-m. Let me see a map.’ Vadász unrolled a chart from the pilot’s drawer. ‘Our radius is not large, if we are to be met soon.
Ergo
– Yes. I will tell them … so-and-so many kilometers due east of a place—’ he blushed, pointing to Fleurville, a ways inland and down the Côte Notre Dame – where Danielle Irribarne told Endre Vadász there is a grotto they should visit. That was shortly before moonset. We, um, sat on a platform high in a tree and—’

Heim ignored the hurt and laughed. ‘Okay, lover boy. Let me compute where we can be in that coordinate system.’

Vadász frowned. ‘We make risks, acting in this haste,’ he said. ‘First we surface, or at least lie awash, and broadcast a strong signal so near the enemy base.’

‘It won’t take long. We’ll be down again before they can send a flyer. I admit one might be passing right over us this minute, but probably not.’

‘Still, a New European vessel has to meet us. No matter if it goes fast and takes the long way around over a big empty land, it is in daylight and skirting a dragon’s nest. And likewise for the return trip with us.’

‘I know.’ Heim didn’t look up from the chart on his knees. ‘We could do it safer by taking more time. But then we’d be too late for anything. We’re stuck in this orbit, Endre, no matter how close we have to skim the sun.’

‘B
RIDGE
to stations, report.’

‘Engine okay,’ said Diego Gonzales.

‘Radio and main radar okay,’ said Endre Vadász.

‘Gun Turret One okay and hungry,’ said Jean Irribarne. The colonists in the other emplacements added a wolfish chorus.

Easy, lads
, Heim thought. If
we have to try those pop-guns on a real, functioning warship, we’re dead
. ‘Stand by to lift,’
he called. Clumsy in his spacesuit, he moved hands across the board.

The lake frothed. Waves swept up its beaches. A sighing went among the trees, and
Meroeth
rose from below. Briefly her great form blotted out the sun, where it crawled toward noon, and animals fled down wilderness trails. Then, with steadily mounting velocity, she flung skyward. The cloven air made a continuous thunderclap. Danielle and Madelon Irribarne put hands to tormented ears. When the shape was gone from sight, they returned to each other’s arms.

‘Radar, report!’ Heim called through drone and shiver.

‘Negative,’ Vadász said.

Higher and higher the ship climbed. The world below dwindled, humped into a curve, turned fleecy with clouds and blue with oceans. The sky went dark, the stars blazed forth.

‘Signal received on the common band,’ Vadász said. ‘
Jubalcho
must have spotted us. Shall I answer?’

‘Hell, no,’ Heim said. ‘All I want is her position and vector.’

The hollow volume of
Meroeth
trapped sound, bounced echoes about, until a booming rolled from stem to stern and port to starboard. It throbbed in Heim’s skull. His open faceplate rattled.

‘Can’t find her,’ Vadász told him. ‘She must be far off.’

But she found us. Well, she has professional detector operators. I’ve got to make do with whatever was in camp. No time to recruit better-trained people
.

We should be so distant that she’d have to chase us for some ways to get inside the velocity differential of her missiles. And she should decide her duty is to stay put. If I’ve guessed wrong on either of those, we’ve hoisted our last glass
. Heim tasted blood, hot and bitter, and realized he had caught his tongue between his teeth. He swore, wiped his face, and drove the ship.

Outward and outward. New Europe grew smaller among the crowding suns. Diane rose slowly to view. ‘Captain to radio room. Forget about everything else. Lock that maser and cut me in on the circuit.’ Heim reached for racked instruments and navigational tables. ‘I’ll have the figures for you by the time you’re warmed up.’

If
we aren’t destroyed first. Please
…
let me live that long. I don’t ask for more. Please
, Fox
has got to be told
. He reeled off a string of numbers.

In his shack, among banked meters that stared at him like troll eyes, Vadász punched keys. He was no expert, but the comsystem computer had been preprogrammed for him; he need merely feed in the data and punch the directive ‘Now.’ A turret opened to airlessness. A transceiver thrust its skeletal head out for a look at the universe. A tight beam of coherent radio waves speared from it.

There were uncertainties. Diane was orbiting approximately 200,000 kilometers on the other side of New Europe, and
Meroeth
was widening that gulf with ever-increasing speed. But the computer and the engine it controlled were sophisticated; the beam had enough dispersion to cover a fairly large circle by the time it reached the target area; it had enough total energy so that its amplitude then was still above noise level.

Small, bestrewn with meteoritic dust, in appearance another boulder among thousands on the slope of a certain crater wall, an instrument planted by the men from the boat sat waiting. The signal arrived. The instrument – an ordinary microwave relay, such as every spaceship carries by the score, with a solar battery – amplified the signal and bounced it in another tight beam to another object high on a jagged peak. That one addressed its next fellow; and so on around the jagged desert face of the moon. Not many passings were needed. The man’sheight horizon on Diane is about three kilometers, much greater from a mountaintop, and the last relay only had to be a little ways into that hemisphere which never sees New Europe.

Thence the beam leaped skyward. Some 29,000 kilometers from the center of Diane, it found
Fox II
.

The problem had been: how could a spaceship lurk near a hostile planet from which detectors probed and around which warcraft spun? If she went free-fall, every system throttled down to the bare minimum, her neutrino emission would not register above the cosmic background. But optical, infrared, and radar eyes would still be sure to find her. Unless she interposed the moon between herself and the planet. … No. She dared not land and sit there naked to anyone who chanced close when the far hemisphere was daylit. She could not assume an orbit around the satellite, for she would move into view. She could not assume a concentric orbit around New Europe itself, for she would revolve more slowly and thus drop from behind her shield—

Or would she?

Not necessarily! In any two-body system there are three Lagrangian points where the secondary’s gravitation combines with the primary’s in such a way that a small object put there will remain in place, on a straight line through the larger bodies. It is not stable; eventually the object will be perturbed out of its resting spot; but ‘eventually’ is remote in biological time.
Fox
put herself at the most distant Lagrangian point and orbited in the moon-disc’s effortless concealment.

The maneuver had never been tried before. But then, no one had ever before needed to have a warship on call, unbeknownst to an enemy who occupied the ground where he himself meant to be. Heim thought it would become a textbook classic, if he lived to brag about it.

‘
Meroeth
to
Fox II
,’ he intoned. ‘
Meroeth
to
Fox II
. Now hear this and record. Record. Captain Heim to Acting Captain Penoyer, stand by for orders.’

There could be no reply, except to Lac aux Nuages. The system, simple and hastily built, had been conceived in the belief that he would summon his men from there. If anything was heisenberg at the other end, he wouldn’t know till too late. He spoke into darkness.

‘Because of unexpected developments, we’ve been forced to lift directly, without passengers. It doesn’t seem as if we’re being pursued. But we have extremely important intelligence, and on that basis a new plan.

‘First: we know there is only one capital ship in orbit around New Europe. All but two others are scattered beyond recall, and not due back for quite some time. The sentry vessel is the enemy flagship
Jubalcho
, a cruiser. I don’t know the exact class – see if you can find her in Jane’s – but she’s doubtless only somewhat superior to
Fox
.

‘Second: the enemy learned we were on the planet and recalled the two vessels in reach. They are presently accelerating toward New Europe. The first should already have commenced deceleration. That is the lancer
Savaidh
. The other is the cruiser
Inisant
. Check them out too; but I think they are ordinary Aleriona ships of their respective classes. The ballistic data are approximately as follows—’ He recited the figures.

‘Now, third: the enemy probably believes
Meroeth
is
Fox
. We scrambled with so much distance between that contrary
identification would have been difficult or impossible, and also we took him by surprise. So I think that as far as he knows,
Fox
is getting away while the getting is good. But he cannot communicate with the other ships till they are near the planet, and he doubtless wants them on hand anyway.

‘Accordingly, we have a chance to take them piecemeal. Now hear this. Pay no attention to the lancer.
Meroeth
can deal with her; or if I fail, she’s no major threat to you. Moreover, nuclear explosions in space would be detected and alert the enemy. Stay put,
Fox
, and plot an interception for
Inisant
. She won’t be looking for you. Relative velocity will be high. If you play your cards right, you have an excellent probability of putting a missile in her while warding off anything she has time to throw.

‘After that, come get me. My calculated position and orbit at the time are approximately as follows.’ Again a string of numbers. ‘If I’m a casualty, proceed at discretion. But bear in mind that New Europe will be guarded by only one cruiser!’

Heim sucked air into his lungs. It was hot and had an electric smell. ‘Repeating message,’ he said. And at the end of the third time: ‘The primary relay point seems to be going under Diane’s horizon, on our present course. I’ll have to sign off. Gunnar Heim to Dave Penoyer and the men of
Fox II
– good hunting! Over and out.’

Then he sat in his seat, looked to the stars in the direction of Sol, and wondered how Lisa was doing.

Increment by increment,
Meroeth
piled on velocity. It didn’t seem long – though much desultory conversation had passed through the intercom – before the moment came to reverse and slow down. They mustn’t have a suspicious vector when they encountered
Savaidh
.

Heim went to the saloon for a snack. He found Vadász there, with a short red-haired colonist who slurped at his cup as if he had newly come off a Martian desert. ‘
Ah, mon capitaine
,’ the latter said cheerily, ‘
je n’avais pas bu de caf
è
depuis un sacré longtemps. Merci beaucoup!
’

‘You may not have much to thank me for in a while,’ Heim said.

Vadász cocked his head. ‘You shouldn’t look so grim, Gun – sir,’ he chided. ‘Everybody else is downright cocky.’

‘Tired, I guess.’ Heim slumped onto the Aleriona settle.

‘I’ll fix you up. A
grand Danois
of a sandwich, hm?’ Vadász
bounced out. When he returned with the food, he had his guitar slung over his back. He sat down on the table, swinging his legs, and began to chord and sing:

‘
There was a rich man and he lived in Jerusalem.

Glory, hallelujah, hi-ro-de-rung!
—’

The memory came back. A grin tugged at Heim’s lips. Presently he was beating time; toward the end, he joined in the choruses.
That’s the way! Who says we can’t take them?
He returned to the bridge with a stride of youth.

And time fled. And battle stations were sounded. And
Savaidh
appeared in the viewports.

The hands that had built her were not human. But the tool was for the same job, under the same laws of physics, as Earth’s own lancers. Small, slim, leopard-spotted for camouflage and thermal control, leopard deadly and beautiful, the ship was so much like his own old
Star Fox
that Heim’s hand paused.
Is it right to kill her – this way?

A legitimate ruse of war. Yes
. He punched the intercom. ‘Bridge to radio. Bridge to radio. Begin distress signal.’

Meroeth
spoke, not in any voice but in the wailing radio pattern which Naval Intelligence had long known was regulation for Alerion. Surely the lancer captain (was this his first command?) ordered an attempt at communication. There was no reply. The gap closed. Relative speed was slight by spaceships standards, but
Savaidh
grew swiftly before Heim’s eyes.

Unwarned, the Aleriona had no reason to doubt this was one of their own vessels. The transport was headed toward the Mach limit; not directly for The Eith, but then, none of them did, lest the raider from Earth be able to predict their courses. Something had gone wrong. Her communications must be out. Probably her radio officer had cobbled together a set barely able to cry, ‘SOS!’ The trouble was clearly not with her engines, since she was under power. What, then? Breakdown of radiation screening? Air renewal? Thermostats? Interior gee field? There were so many possibilities. Life was so terribly frail, here where life was never meant to be.