The Stone Dogs (46 page)

Yolande blinked. Why no, it hadn't, she thought. "Point-O-one percent of the value divided by… two hundred and thirty Citizens is that much?" A moment's pause. "Oh, I see what yo' means."

"Yes, indeed. This discovery will power our space-based development for half a decade."

The commander of the flotilla nodded, mildly pleased. Not that she had ever wanted for money; few Citizens did, and she less than most. Still, it would be pleasant; she was of Landholding family but not landed… A land-grant was free, but that meant raw territory you had to spend a generation licking into shape. Nothing like the opportunities her parents had had in Europe after the Eurasian War. With enough money you could get one of the rare plantations for sale, or pay for someone else to oversee development. A heritage for her children; and then, it would be useful to have an Archona townhouse…

"Can we move it?" she added practically.

"If it is possible, my crew can do it," Snappdove said with another chuckle. "They are well motivated, even the serfs."

Glory, she supposed, as well as wealth, for the Citizens. The serfs would get the satisfaction of exercising their specialties; these would be mostly Class V-a Literates already, many creche-trained for the military. And privileges, apartments, guarantees of education for their children. They would be eager for success, too.

"It is my ambition to get through a project without a single execution," Snappdove said, echoing her thoughts. "And yes, we can move it, I think. Monomolecular coating, reflective, to decrease the heat absorption. Single-crystal cable webbing. Then we set up that thrust plate—beautiful piece of work, astounding things they do with cermet composites these days—and it only has to last a month. Then
boom!
and
boom!
, we use our bombs.

Earth orbit, very eccentric one, but the details after that are not our concern."

She nodded. "Sounds good," she said. "Very good."

He sighed happily. "Yes, every year the size of project we can accomplish increases. Geometrically. Did I tell you, we have nearly completed the long-range feasibility study for terraforming Mars?"

Her ears pricked. For a moment, she was back on the dark beach below Baiae School, lying around the campfire and watching the moving stars and dreaming of what they would do.

Myfwany…

"No," she said hastily.
Gods, how it sneaks up on you
, she thought dismally.
Work, more work. That's
what I need.

"Oh, yes. We float big mirrors near Mars, melt the icecaps.

Much water and C0 there. More mirrors, increase the solar 2

heating. Then we blow up Callisto—"

"Wotan and the White Christ!" she blurted. That was one of the major moons of Jupiter. "That's biggah than Luna!"

He nodded, and ran ringers through his beard. "But ice, only ice; much more than we need for Mars. And there is no limit to how big we may make our bombs. We drop pieces on Mars…

comets also, if convenient. Already the atmosphere will be thicker and warmer. Water vapor increases the greenhouse effect; tailored bacteria and algae go to work cracking the oxides, the sun splits water vapor. An ozone layer. Nitrogen we get from various places, Titan… In a long lifetime, there is breathable air, thinner than Earth, higher percentage of oxygen.

Then we build the Beanstalks, and work begins on the ecology; not my field. Many small seas and lakes, about half the surface."

His eyes stared out beyond the bulkhead. "And then we bring in serfs to till the fields… strange, is it not?"

"No," she said frankly. "Should it be?" For a moment she imagined condors nesting on the slopes of Martian canyons longer than continents, forests five hundred meters tall…

He snorted. "A matter of perspective. Me, I will buy an estate in perhaps south China, for my children. And a block in the Trans-Solar Combine, they have contracts in the project."

Another shrug of the massive shoulders. "All this is moot. We must finish with the Alliance, first."

Yolande grinned. It was a much less pleasant expression than the intellectual interest of a moment before. "To business, then.

Can yo' get me retanked on reaction mass? I ran it down somethin' fierce, matchin' velocities here."

"Oh, yes. Trivial. Do you wish water or liquid oxygen?"

"Hmmmm. No, we're rigged fo' 02, we'll go with that. How long?"

"Two days for your ship, and one to rig the stills. A week for the rest of the fleet."

"Do it, then. First priority. We need the intelligence data on that Yankee ship." And an installment payment on the debt they owe me, she thought. A small, small payment on a very large account.

ABOARD TRANS-AMERICAN SHIP
PATHFINDER

EARTH-CERES

JUNE 12, 1982

The lounge of the
Pathfinder
had acquired a certain homeyness in the month and a half of transit, Cindy decided. It was on the second-highest of the eight decks in the pressure section, a semicircle on one side of the core tube, across from the galley and stores. One corner was posted with drawings and projects; she and several of the other mothers held classes for the children there, around the terminal they had appropriated.

Young Alishia Merkowitz showed real talent in biology; she really should talk to the girl's parents… There was a big viewer, but the passengers generally only screened movies or documentaries; the sort who moved to the Belt didn't go in for passive entertainment.

There was a group mastering the delicate art of zero-G darts, another arguing politics. The coffee machine was going, scenting the air; it looked odd, but you did have to
push
the water through here. A courting couple were perched by the sole exterior viewport, but they were holding hands, oblivious to the spectacle of the stars. Two young men were building a model habitat from bits of plastic—scarcely a hobby, they were engineers and had a terminal beside them for references. She could catch snatches of their conversation:

"… no, no, you don't have to use a frame and plating! Just boil out the silicates, inject water, heat and spin and the outer shell will…"

Dr. Takashi moved his piece. Cindy Guzman Lefarge started and returned her attention to the go board.

"Oh, lordy, Doctor," she said. "You're never going to make a go player of me."

"You show native talent," he said, considering the board. It was electronic, and they were using light-pencils to move the pieces; the traditional stones were a floating nuisance in space.

"I'm surprised you don't play the captain," she said, frowning.

A quarter of her pieces were gone… which still left her with more than her opponent, who had started with a substantial handicap.

But far too many were nearly surrounded.

"Ah." He smiled; Professor of Cybernetic Systems Analysis Manfred Takashi was a slim man, fifty, with dark-brown skin and short wiry hair. "Captain Hayakawa is impeccably polite, but I doubt that he would welcome social contact. Not from me."

Cindy raised her brows. "Well, he is fairly reserved. I would have thought, though, you being Japanese—"

The professor laughed. "
Half
Japanese, my dear Mrs. Lefarge, half Japanese. Even worse, half
black.
"

The woman winced, embarrassed. Overt racial prejudice was rare these days in the cities of North America, even more so in space. Of course, some of the family in the South Carolina low country were still unhappy about her mother's marriage to a Maya from Yucatan, even a much-decorated naval veteran of the Pacific campaigns back in the Eurasian War.

"Actually," the man continued, "it is an interesting change. In Hawaii it was the
Japanese
side of my heritage which created problems."

She nodded. The Imperial occupation in the early '40s had been brutal, and the angers had taken a long time to dissipate.

Even now some of the older generation found it difficult to accept how important Japan had become in the councils of the Alliance.

"You must be eager to get to work, on,"—she lowered her voice—"the Project." Best to change the subject.

"Indeed." He turned the light-pencil in his hands. "I—"

Trhannnng.
The sound went through the hull, like an enormous steel bucket struck with a fingernail. Conversation died, and the passengers looked up.

"Attention!"
the captain's voice. "We have suffered a meteorite impact. There is no danger; the hull was not breached.

I repeat, there is no danger. All passengers will please return to their cabins until further notice."

"I must get back to Janet and Iris," Cindy said, rising briskly.

She forced down a bubble of anxiety; a meteor strike was very rare—odd that the close-in radars had not detected it. "Continue the game after dinner, Professor?"

"I hope so," he said quietly, folding the board as he stood. "I sincerely hope so."

"Distance and bearing," Yolande said.

"100 k-klicks, closing at point-one kps relative," the sensor officer said.

Yolande could feel the strait tension in the ship, a taste like ozone in the air. A week's travel. Overcrowded, since she had dropped off most of the ship's Auxiliaries who handled routine maintenance and taken on another score of Citizen crew from
Batu
. The main problem with Draka was keeping them from ripping at each other. Constant drill in the arcane art of zero-G

combat had helped. And now action. Not that the pathetic plasma-drive soup-can out there was any menace to a cruiser, but they had to
capture,
not destroy. Much more difficult.

"Bring up the schematic," she said. They would not detect the
Subotai
for a while yet; her stealthing was constructed to deceive military sensors.

Two screens to her left blanked and then showed 360 degree views of the Alliance vessel,
Pathfinder
. A ferrous-alloy barrel, basically, the aft section holding a reaction-mass tank and a simple engine. An arc broke the mass into plasma, and magnetic coils accelerated it out the nozzle, Power from solar-receptors or a big storage coil. Thrown out of earth-orbit much as the
Subotai
had been, then additional boost from a solar sail. That was still deployed, square kilometers of .05-micron aluminum foil, rigged on lines of sapphire filament; but soon they would furl it and begin velocity-matching for Ceres. A long slow burn; plasma drives were efficient but low-thrust.

Would have begun their burn,
she corrected herself. It was odd, how vengeance always felt better beforehand than after…

Sternly, she pushed down weakness. There was a duty to the Race here, and to her dead. If she was too fainthearted to long for it, then nobody else need know.

Yolande reached out a hand; that was all that could move, with the cradle extended and locked about her. The couch turned on its heavy circular base to put her hand over the controls. The schematic altered: command and communication circuits outlined in color-coded light.
Provided this is up-to-date—

"When's their next check-in call?" she said.

"Five minutes."

There were no Alliance warships nearby or in favorable launch windows, but it was important not to give them more warning time than was needful. She wanted to have
Subotai
back with the flotilla long before anything could arrive; this was direct provocation, and it could escalate into anything up to a minor fleet action. Probably not. Still…

Her fingers played across the controls. "Here. See this rectenna? Throw a rock at it first. Time it to arrive just after they report everything normal."

"Making it so," the Weapons Officer said, keying. "Careless of them, all the comm routed though that dish." A low chuckle from some of the nearer workstations.

"They like to mass-produce," Yolande said. A light blinked on one of her monitor screens, echoing the Weapons Officer's. On the outer hull a long thin pod would be swiveling.

"Monitoring call," the Sensor Officer said. "Standard garbage, messages to relatives." She paused. "Coded blip. Recordin' fo'

future reference." A minute passed. "End message."

"Fire," Yolande said. A cold-flame feeling settled beneath her breastbone. The first attack on Alliance civilians since the Belt clashes.

The light blinked red. "Away," the Weapons Officer said. In the pod, two charged rails slammed together. A fifty-gram slug rode the pulse of electromagnetic force, accelerated to ninety kilometers per second. "Hit." The target would have vanished in a puff of vapor and fragments.

"No transmission from target, monitoring internal systems."

"With all due respect to ouah colleagues of the Directorate of Security," Yolande said, "I'm not takin' any chances that they got the plans exactly right. We'll cripple her first on a quick fly-by,
then
get within kissin' range. Drive, prepare fo' boost; pass at one kps relative, then decelerate an' match at five klicks.

Weapons, cut the sail loose, hole the control compartment, wreck the drive." A plasma jet could be a nasty weapon in determined hands. "Cut the connections to the main power coil." There were megawatts stored in that, and if it went non-superconducting all of it would be converted to heat,
rapidly.
"Then we'll see."

"Odd they don' have no suicide bomb," the assistant weapons officer said, as she and her superior worked their controls.

"Too gutless," the man replied. "Ready to execute."

"Drive ready to execute."

"Make it so," Yolande said.

The speakers roared: "PREPARE FOR ACCELERATION. ALL

HANDS SECURE FOR ACCELERATION. TEN-SECOND BURN.

FIVE SECONDS TO BURN. COUNTING. "

Somewhere deep within the
Subotai
pumps whirred. Precisely aligned railguns charged as fuel pellets were stripped from the magazines, ten gram bundles of plutonium-239 and their reflector-absorber coatings.

"BURN."

The pellets flicked out behind the cruiser. Her lasers struck and the coating sublimed explosively, squeezing. Fission flame bloomed, flickering at ten times per second. Nozzles slammed liquid oxygen into the carbon-carbon lined hemisphere of the thrust plate to meet the fire, and the gas exploded into plasma.