The Tar-aiym Krang (10 page)

His hand drifted down to the firing studs. The calm voice of Truzenzuzex insinuated itself maddeningly in his mind. No, it was already
in
his mind.

“Hold. Not yet.” Pause. “Probability.”

He tried angrily to force the thought out and away. It wouldn’t go. It was too much like trying to cut away part of one’s own ego. His hand stayed off the firing stud as the cream-colored dot grew maddeningly large in the screen.

Again the calm, infuriating voice. “Changing course ten degrees minus y, plus x two degrees achieve optimum intercept tangent.”

Bran knew they were going to die, but in his detached haze of consciousness it seemed an item of only peripheral importance. The problem at hand and the sole reason for existence was to kill as many of
them
as possible. That their own selves would also be destroyed was a certainty, given the numbers arrayed against them, but they might at least blunt the effect of the AAnn invasion. A tiny portion of him offered thanks for Truzenzuzex’s quiet presence. He’d once seen films of a force of stingships in action with only human operators. It had resembled very much a tridee pix he’d seen on Terra showing sharks in a feeding frenzy.

The moment notified him of itself. “Firing one!” There were no conflicting suggestions from the insectoid half of his mind. He felt the gentle lurch of his body field as the ship immediately executed an intricate, alloy-tearing maneuver that would confuse any return fire and at the same time allow them to take the remaining two enemy vessels between them. Without the field he would have been jellied.

The disappearance of a gravity well from the screen told him that the SCCAM projectile had taken the AAnn ship, piercing its defenses. A violent explosion flared silently in space. A SCCAM was incapable of a “near-miss.”

The SCCAM system itself was a modification of the doublekay drive that powered the ships of most space-going races. When human and thranx met it was found that the human version was more powerful and efficient than the thranx posigravity drive. It also possessed a higher power-conservation ratio, which made it more reasonable to operate. Working with their human counterparts after the Amalgamation, thranx scientists soon developed a number of improvements in the already remarkable system. This modified propulsive drive was immediately installed in all humanx ships, and other races began to order the components which would enable them to make their own modifications.

A wholely thranx innovation, however, had been the adaptation of the gravity drive as a weapon of irresistable power. The SCCAM projectiles were in actuality thermonuclear devices mounted on small ship drives, with the exception that all their parts other than those requiring melting points over 2400 degrees were made of alloyed osmium. Using the launching vessel’s own gravity well as the initial propelling force, the projectile would be dispatched toward a target. At a predetermined safe distance from the ship, the shell’s own drive would kick in. Instantly the drive would go into deliberate overload. Impossible to dodge, the overloaded field would be attracted to the nearest large gravity well—in this case, the drive system of an enemy ship. Coupled with the uncontrolled energy of a fusion reaction, the two intersecting drive fields would irrevocably eliminate any trace of the target. And it would be useless for an enemy vessel to try to escape by turning off its own field, for while it might survive impact with the small projectile field, the ship had not yet been constructed that could take the force of a fusion explosion unscreened. And as the defensive screens were powered by the posigravity drives. . . .

He felt the ship lurch again, not as violently this time. Another target swung into effective range. He fired again. Truzenzuzex had offered a level-four objection and Bran had countered with a level-two objective veto. The computer agreed with Bran and released the shell. Both halves of the ship-mind bad been partially correct. The result was another hit . . . but just barely.

The AAnn formation seemed to waver. Then the left half of the Tetrahedron collapsed as the ships on that side sought to counter this alarming attack on their flank. More likely than not the AAnn commander had ordered the dissolution. Penned up in a slow, clumsy troop carrier he was by now likely becoming alarmed for his own precious skin. Heartened by this unstrategic move on the part of their opponents the native defensive force was diving on the broken formation from the front, magnifying the confusion if not the destruction and trying to avert the attention of the AAnn warships from their unexpected ally.

Bran had just gotten off a third shot—a miss—when a violent concussion rocked the stinger. Even in his protective field he was jerked violently forward. The lights flickered, dimmed, and went off, to be replaced a moment later by the eerie blue of the emergency system. He checked his instruments and made a matter-of-course report upward.

“Tru, this time the drive is off for real. We’re going to go into loosedrift only . . . he paused. A typically ironic reply was not forthcoming.

“Tru? How are things at your end?” The speaker gave back only a muted hiss. He jiggled the knob several times. It seemed operative. “Tru? Say something, you slug! Old snail, termite, boozer . . . goddamn it, say
something!”

With the cessation of the ship’s capacity for battle the HIP antidotes had automatically been shot into his system. Thank Limbo the automedics were still intact! He felt the killing urge flow out of him, heavily, to be replaced by the dull aftertaste and temporary lethargy that inevitably followed battle action.

Cursing and crying all at once he began fighting with his harness. He turned off the body field, not caring if the ship suddenly decided to leap into war-drive and spatter him all over the bulkhead. Red-faced, he started scrambling over broken tubing and sparkling short-circuits up to where Truzenzuzex lay in his own battle couch. His own muscles refused to respond and he damned his arms which persisted in slipping off grips like damp hemp. He hadn’t realized, in the comfort of HIPnosis, how badly the little vessel had been damaged. Torn sheeting and wavering filaments floated everywhere, indicating a loss of shipboard gravity. But the pod had remained intact and he could breathe without his hoses.

The thranx’s position was longer and lower than his own, since the insect’s working posture was lying prone and facing forward. Therefore the first portion of his fellow ensign’s body that Bran encountered was the valentine-shaped head with its brilliant, multifaceted compound eyes. The familiar glow in them had dimmed but not disappeared. Furiously he began to massage the b-thorax above the neck joint in an operation designed to stimulate the thranx’s open circulatory system. He kept at it despite the cloying wetness that insisted on floating into his eyes. Throwing his head back at least made the blood from the gash on his forehead drift temporarily backwards.

“Tru! C’mon, mate! Move, curse you! Throw up, do something, dammit!” The irony of trying to rouse his companion so that he could then be conscious when the AAnn disruption beams scattered their component parts over the cosmos did not interrupt his movements.

Truzenzuzex began to stir feebly, the hissing from the breathing spicules below Bran’s ministering hands pulsing raggedly and unevenly.

“Mmmfff! Ooooo! My friend, I hereby inform all and sundry that a blow on the cranium is decidedly not conducive to literate cogitation! A little lower and to the right, please, is where it itches. Alas, I fear I am in for a touch of the headache.”

He raised a truehand slowly to his head and Bran could see where a loose bar of something had struck hard after the body-field had lapsed. There was an ugly dark streak in the insect’s azure exoskeleton. The thranx organism was exceptionally tough, but very vulnerable to deep cuts and punctures because of their open circulatory system. When their armor remained intact they were well-nigh invulnerable. Much more so than their human counterparts. The same blow probably would have crushed Bran’s skull like eggshell. The great eyes turned to face him.

“Ship-brother, I notice mild precipitation at the corners of your oculars, differing in composition from the fluid which even yet is leaking from your head. I know the meaning of such a production and assure you it is not necessary. Other than injury to my immaculate and irresistable beauty, I am quite all right . . . I think.

“Incidentally, it occurs to me that we both have been alive entirely too long. As I appear to be at least momentarily incapacitated I would appreciate it if you would cease your face-raining, get back to your position, and find out just what the hell is going on.”

Bran wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes. What Tru said was perfectly correct. He had been so absorbed in reviving the insect he had failed to notice that by all reasonable standards of warfare they should both have been dead several minutes now. The AAnn might be unimaginative fighters, but they were efficient. He scrambled back to his seat and flipped emergency power to the battle screen. What he saw there stunned his mind if not his voice.

“Oooo-wowwww! Fibbixxx! Go get ’em Sixth, bay-bee!”

“Will you cease making incomprehensible mouth-noises and tell me what’s taking place? My eyes are not fully focused yet, but I can see that you are bouncing around in your seat in a manner that is in no way related to ship actions.”

Bran was too far gone to hear. The scene on the screen was correspondingly weak, but fully visible nonetheless. It resembled a ping-pong game being played in zero gravity by two high-speed computers. The AAnn force was in full retreat, or rather, the remainder of it was. The bright darts of Commonwealth stingships were weaving in and out of the retreating pattern with characteristic unpredictability. Occasionally a brief, terse flare would denote the spot where another ship had departed the plane of material existence. And a voice drifted somehow over the roaring, screaming babble on the communicator, a voice that could belong to no one but Major Gonzalez. Over and over and over it repeated the same essential fact in differing words.

“What happened what happened what happened what . . .?”

Bran at this time suffered his second injury of the action. He sprained a lattisimus, laughing.

It was all made very clear later, at the court martial. The other members of the Task Force had seen one of their members break position and dive on the AAnn formation. Their pilot-pairings had stood the resultant engagement as long as possible. Then they began to peel off and follow. Only the cruiser
Altair
had taken no part in the battle. Her crew had a hard time living it down, even though it wasn’t their fault.

Not so much as a tree on the planet had been scorched.

The presiding officer at the trial was an elderly thranx general officer from the Hiveworld itself. His ramrod stiffness combined with fading exoskeleton and an acid voice to make him a formidable figure indeed. As for the majority of the Task Force, its members were exonerated of wrongdoing. It was ruled that they had acted within Commonwealth dictates in acting “under a justifiable circumstance where an act of violence against Commonwealth or Church property or persons shall be met with all force necessary to negate the effects of such violence.” This provision was ruled to have taken effect when the AAnn ships had engaged stingship number twenty-five in combat. That ship number twenty-five had provoked the encounter was a point that the court would “take under careful study . . . at length.”

Ensigns Bran Tse-Mallory and Truzenzu of the Zex were ordered stripped of all rank and dismissed from the service. As a preliminary, however, they were to be awarded the Church Order of Merit, one star cluster. This was done. Unofficially, each was also presented with a scroll on which those citizens of the colony-planet known as Goodhunting had inscribed their names and thanks . . . all two hundred and ninety-five thousand of them.

Major Julio Gonzalez was promoted to commander and transferred immediately to a quiet desk post in an obscure system populated by semi-intelligent amphibians.

After first being formally inducted into his ship-brother’s clan, the Zex, Bran had entered the Church and had become deeply absorbed in the Chancellory of Alien Sociology, winning degrees and honors there. Truzenzuzex remained on his home planet of Willow-Wane and resumed his preservice studies in psychology and theoretical history. The title of Eint was granted shortly after. Their interests converged independently until both were immersed in the study of the ancient Tar-Aiym civilization-empire. Ten years had passed before they had remet, and they bad been together ever since, an arrangement which neither had had cause to regret.

“Buy a winter suit, sir? The season is fast nearing, and the astrologers forecast cold and sleet. The finest
Pyrrm
pelts, good sir!”

“
Pas?
No. No thank you, vendor.” The turnout to their little inn loomed just ahead, by the seller of prayer-bells.

Bran felt an uncommonly strong need of sleep.

Chapter Six

Flinx returned to his apartment to set himself in order for the trip. On the way back from the inurb he had stopped at a shop he knew well and purchased a small ship-bag. It was of a type he’d often seen carried by crewmen at the port and would do equally as well for him. It was light, had a built-in sensor lock on the seal, and was well-nigh indestructible. They haggled formally over the price, finally settling on the sum of nine-six point twenty credits. He could probably have cut the price another credit, but was too occupied by thoughts of the trip, so much so that the vendor inquired as to his health.

At the apartment he wasn’t too surprised to find that all his possessions of value or usefulness fit easily into the one bag. He felt only a slight twinge of regret. He looked around for something else to take, but the bed wouldn’t fit, nor would the portikitchen, and he doubted there’d be a shortage of either on the ship anyway. Memories were stored comfortably elsewhere. He shouldered the bag and left the empty room.

The concierge looked at him warily as he prepared to leave her the keys. She was generally a good woman, but inordinately suspicious. In reply to her persistent questioning he said only that he was departing on a journey of some length and had no idea when he would return. No, he wasn’t “running from the law.” He could see that the woman was suffering from a malady known as tri-dee addiction, and her imagination had been drugged in proportion. Would she hold the room for his return? She would . . . for four months’ rent, in advance if you please. He paid it rather than stand and argue. It took a large slice out of the hundred credits he’d made so recently, but he found that he was in a hurry to spend the money as quickly as possible.

He strolled out into the night. His mind considered sleep but his body, tense with the speed at which events had been moving around him, vehemently disagreed. Sleep was impossible. And it was pleasant out. He moved out into the lights and noise, submerging himself in the familiar frenzy of the marketplace. He savored the night-smells of the food crescent, the raucous hooting of the barkers and sellers and vendors, greeting those he knew and smiling wistfully at an occasional delicate face peeping out from the pastel-lit windows of the less reputable saloons.

Sometimes he would spot an especially familiar face. Then he would saunter over and the two would chat amiably for a while, swapping the stories and gossip of which Flinx always had a plentiful supply. Then the rich trader or poor beggar would rub his red hair for luck and they’d part—this time, at least, for longer than the night.

If a jungle could be organized and taxed, it would be called Drallar.

He had walked nearly a mile when he noticed the slight lightening of the western sky that signified the approach of first-fog (there being no true dawn on Moth). The time had run faster than expected. He should be at the port shortly, but there remained one last thing to do.

He turned sharply to his right and hurried down several alleys and backways he knew well. Nearer the center of the marketplace, which was quieter at night than the outskirts, he came on a sturdy if small frame building. It advertised on its walls metal products of all kinds for sale. There was a combination lock, a relic, on the inside of the door, but he knew how to circumvent that. He was careful to close it quietly behind him.

It was dark in the little building but light seeped in around the open edges of the roof, admitting air but not thieves. He stole softly to a back room, not needing even the dim light. An old woman lay there, snoring softly on a simple but luxuriously blanketed bed. Her breathing was shallow but steady, and there was what might have been a knowing smile on the ancient face. That was nonsense, of course. He stood staring silently at the wrinkled parchment visage for several long moments. Then he bent. Gently shifting the well-combed white hair to one side he planted a single kiss on the bony cheek. The woman stirred but did not awaken. He backed out of the room as quietly as he had entered, remembering to lock the main door behind him.

Then he turned and set off at a brisk jog in the direction of the shuttleport, Pip dozing stonelike on one shoulder.