The People of the Wind

VII

“Our basic strategy is simple,” Admiral Cajal had explained. “I would prefer a simpler one yet: pitched battle between massed fleets, winner takes all.”

“But the Ythrians will scarcely be that obliging,” Governor Saracoglu remarked.

“No. They aren’t well organized for it, in the first place. Not in character for them to centralize operations. Besides, they must know they’re foredoomed to lose any standup fight. They lack the sheer numerical strength. I expect they’ll try to maintain hedgehog positions. From those they’d make sallies, harass, annihilate what smaller units of ours they found, prey on our supply lines. We can’t drive straight into the Domain with that sort of menace at our rear. Prohibitively costly. We could suffer actual disaster if we let ourselves get caught between their inner and outer forces.”

“Ergo, we start by capturing their advanced bases.”

“The major ones. We needn’t worry, about tiny new colonies or backward allies, keeping a few ships per planet.” Cajal gestured with a flashbeam. It probed into the darkness of a display tank, wherein gleamed points of luminance that represented the stars of this region. They crowded by thousands across those few scaled-down parsecs, a fire-swarm out of which not many men could have picked an individual. Cajal realized his talent for doing this had small intrinsic value. The storage and processing of such data were for computers. But it was an outward sign of an inner gift.

“Laura the nearest,” he said. “Hru and Khrau further on, forming a triangle with it. Give me those, and I’ll undertake to proceed directly against Quetlan. That should force them to call in everything they have, to protect the home star! And, since my rear and my lines will then be reasonably secure, I’ll get the decisive battle I want.”

“Um-m-m.” Saracoglu rubbed his massive chin. Bristles made a scratchy sound; as hard as he had been at work, he kept forgetting to put on fresh inhibitor after a depilation. “You’ll hit Laura first?”

“Yes, of course. Not with the whole armada. Well split, approximately into thirds. The detached sections will proceed slowly toward Hru and Khrau, but not attack until Laura has been reduced. The force should be ample in all three systems, but I want to get the feel of Ythrian tactics — and, too, make sure they haven’t some unpleasant surprise tucked under their tailfeathers.”

“They might,” Saracoglu said. “You know our intelligence on them leaves much to be desired. The problems of spying on nonhumans — And Ythrian traitors are almost impossible to find, competent ones completely impossible.”

“I still don’t see why you couldn’t get agents into that mostly human settlement at Laura.”

“We did, Admiral, we did. But in a set of small, close-knit communities they could accomplish nothing except report what was publicly available to see. You must realize, Avalonian humans no longer think, talk, even walk quite like any Imperial humans. Imitating them isn’t feasible. And, again, deplorably few can be bought.

Furthermore, the Avalonian Admiralty is excellent on security measures. The second in command, chap named Holm, seems to have made several extended trips through the Empire, official and unofficial, in earlier days. I understand he did advanced study at one of our academies. He knows our methods.”

“I understand he’s caused not just the Lauran fleet but the planetary defenses to be enormously increased, these past years,” Cajal said. “Yes, we must certainly take care of him first.”

— That had been weeks ago. On this day (clock concept in unending starry night) the Terrans neared their enemy, Cajal sat alone in the middle of the superdreadnaught Valenderay. Communication screens surrounded him, and humming silence, and radial kilometers of metal, machinery, weapons, armor, energies, through which passed several thousand living beings. But he was, for this moment, conscious only of what lay outside. A viewscreen showed him: darkness, diamond hordes, and Laura, tiny at nineteen astronomical units’ remove but gold and shining, shining.

The ships had gone out of hyperdrive and were accelerating sunward on gravity thrust. Most were far ahead of the flag vessel. A meeting with the defenders could be looked for at any minute.

Cajal’s mouth tightened downward at the right corner. He was a tall man, gaunt, blade-nosed, his widow’s peak hair and pointed beard black though he neared his sixties. His uniform was as plain as his rank allowed.

He had been chain-smoking. Now he pulled the latest cigaret from a scorched mouth and ground it out as if it were vermin. Why can’t I endure these final waits? he thought. Because I will be safe while 1 send men to war?

His glance turned to a picture of his dead wife, standing before their house among the high trees of Vera F6. He moved to animate but, instead, switched on a recorder.

Music awoke, a piece he and she had loved, well-nigh forgotten on Terra but ageless in its triumphant serenity, Bach’s Fassacaglia. He leaned back, closed his eyes and let it heal him. Man’s duty in this life, he thought, is to choose the lesser evil.

A buzz snapped him to alertness. The features of his chief executive captain filled a screen and stated, “Sir, we have received and confirmed a report of initial hostilities from Vanguard Squadron Three. No details.”

“Very good, Citizen Feinberg,” Cajal said. “Let me have any hard information immediately.”

It would soon come flooding in, beyond the capacity of a live brain. Then it must be filtered through an intricate complex of subordinates and their computers, and he could merely hope the digests which reached him bore some significant relationship to reality. But those earliest direct accounts were always subtly helpful, as if the tone of a battle were set at its beginning.

“Aye, sir.” The screen blanked.

Cajal turned off the music. “Farewell for now,” he whispered, and rose. There was one other personal item in the room, a crucifix. He removed his bonnet, knelt, and signed himself. “Father, forgive us what we are about to do,” he begged. “Father, have mercy on all who die. All.”

“Word received, Marchwarden,” the Ythrian voice announced. “Contact with Terrans, about 12 a.u out, direction of the Spears. Firing commenced on both, sides, but seemingly no losses yet.”

“My thanks. Please keep me informed.” Daniel Holm turned off the intercom.

“As if it were any use for me to know!” he groaned.

His mind ran through the calculation. Light, radio, neutrinos take about eight minutes to cross an astronomical unit. The news was more than an hour and a half old. That initial, exploratory fire-touch of a few small craft might well be ended already, the fragments of the vanquished whirling away on crazy orbits while the victors burned fuel as if their engines held miniature suns, trying to regain a kinetic velocity that would let them regroup. Or if other units on either side were not too distant, they might have joined in, sowing warheads wider and wider across space.

He spoke an obscenity and beat fist on palm. “If we could hypercommunicate—” But that wasn’t practical. The “instantaneous” pulses of a vessel quantum-jumping around nature’s speed limit could be modulated to send a message a light-year or so — however, not this deep in a star’s distorting gravitational field, where you risked annihilation if you tried to travel nonrelativistically — of course, you could get away with it if you were absolutely sure of your tuning, but nobody was in wartime — and anyhow, given that capability, the Terrans would be a still worse foe, fighting them would be hopeless rather than half hopeless — why am I rehearsing this muck?

“And Ferune’s there and I’m here!”

He sprang from his desk, stamped to the window and stood staring. A cigar fumed volcanic between his teeth. The day beyond was insultingly beautiful. An autumn breeze carried odors of salt up from the bay, which glittered and danced under Laura and heaven; and it bore scents from the gardens it passed, brilliant around their houses. North-shore hills lay in a blue haze of distance. Overhead skimmed wings. He didn’t notice.

Rowena came to him. “You knew you had to stay, dear,” she said. She was still auburn-haired, still slim and erect in her coverall.

“Yeh. Backup. Logistic, computer, communications support. And maybe Ferune understands space warfare better, but I’m the one who really built the planetary defense. We agreed, months back. No dishonor to me, that I do the sensible thing.” Holm swung toward his wife. He caught her around the waist. “But oh, God, Ro, I didn’t think it’d be this hard!”

She drew his head down onto her shoulder and stroked the grizzled hair.

Ferune of Mistwood had planned to bring his own mate along. Whan; had traveled beside him throughout a long naval career, birthed and raised their children on the homeships that accompanied every Ythrian fleet, drilled and led gun crews. But she fell sick and the medics weren’t quite able to ram her through to recovery before the onslaught came. You grow old, puzzlingly so. He missed her sternness.

But he was too busy to dwell on their goodbyes. More and more reports were arriving at his flagship. A pattern was beginning to emerge.

“Observe,” he said. The computers had just corrected the display tank according, to the latest data. It indicated sun, planets, and color-coded sparks which stood for ships. “Combats here, here, here. Elsewhere, neutrino emissions reaching our detectors, cross-correlations getting made, fixes being obtained.”

“Foully thin information,” said the feathers and attitude of his aide.

“Thus far, aye, across interplanetary distances. However, we can fill in certain gaps with reason, if we assume their admiral is competent. I feel moderately sure that his pincer has but two claws, coming in almost diametrically opposite, from well north and south of the ecliptic plane… so.” Ferune pointed. “Now he must have reserves further out. To avoid making a wide circuit with consequent risk of premature detection, these must have run fairly straight from the general direction of Pax. And were I in charge, I would have them near the ecliptic. Hence we look for their assault, as the pincers close, from here.” He indicated the region.

They stood alone in the command bridge, broad though the chamber was. Ythrians wanted room to stretch their wings. Yet they were wholly linked to the ship by her intercoms, calculators, officers, crewfolk, more tenuously linked to that magnificence which darkened and bejeweled a viewscreen, where the killing had begun. Clangor and clatter of activity came faint to them, through a deep susurrus of power. The air blew warm, ruffling their plumes a little, scented with perfume of cinnamon bush and amberdragon. Blood odors would not be ordered unless and until the vessel got into actual combat; the crew would soon be worn out if stimulated too intensely.

Ferune’s plan did not call for hazarding the super-dreadnaught this early. Her power belonged in his end game. At that time he intended to show the Terrans why she was called after the site of an ancient battle on Ythri. He had had the Anglic translation of the name painted broad on the sides: Hell Rock.

A new cluster of motes appeared in the tank. Their brightnesses indicated ship types, as accurately as analysis of their neutrino emanations could suggest. The aide started. His crest bristled. “That many more hostiles, so soon? Uncle, the odds look bad.”

“We knew they would. Don’t let this toy hypnotize you. I’ve been through worse. Half of me is regenerated tissue after combat wounds. And I’m still skyborne.”

“Forgive me, Uncle, but most of your fights were police actions inside the Domain. This is the Empire coming.”

Ferune expressed: “I am not unaware of that. And I too have studied advanced militechnics, both practical and theoretical.” Aloud he said, “Computers, robots, machines are only half the makers of a war-weird. There are also brains and hearts.”

Claws clacked on the deck as he walked to the view-screen and peered forth. His experienced eye picked out a glint among the stars, one ship. Otherwise his fleet was lost to vision in the immensity through which it fanned.

“A new engagement commencing,” said the intercom.

Ferune waited motionless for details. Through his mind passed words from one of the old Terran books it pleasured him to read. The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion: whoso provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own soul.

Hours built into days while the fleets, in their hugely scattered divisions, felt for and sought each other’s throats.

Consider: at a linear acceleration of one Terran gravity, a vessel can, from a “standing start,” cover one astronomical unit — about 149 million kilometers — in a bit under fifty hours. At the end of that period, she has gained 1060 kilometers pet second of velocity. In twice the time, she will move at twice the speed and will have spanned four times the distance. No matter what power is conferred by thermonuclear engines, no matter what maneuverability comes from a gravity thrust which reacts directly against that fabric of relationships we call space, one does not quickly alter quantities on this order of magnitude.

Then, too, there is the sheer vastness of even interplanetary reaches. A sphere one a.u. in radius has the volume of some thirteen million million Terras; to multiply this radius by ten is to multiply the volume by a thousand. No matter how sensitive the instruments, one does not quickly scan those deeps, nor ever do it with much accuracy beyond one’s immediate neighborhood, nor know where a detached object is now if signals are limited to light speed. As the maddeningly incomplete, hoard of data grows, not just the parameters of battle calculations change; the equations do. One discovers he has lost hours in travel which has turned out to be useless or worse, and must lose hours or days more in trying to remedy matters. But then, explosively fast, will come a near enough approach at nearly enough matched velocities for a combat which may well be finished in seconds.

“Number Seven, launch!” warned the dispatcher robot, and flung Hooting Star out to battle.

Her engines took hold: A thrum went through the bones of Philippe Rochefort where he sat harnessed in the pilot chair. Above his instrument panel, over his helmet and past either shoulder, viewscreens fitted a quarter globe with suns. Laura, radiance stopped down lest it blind him, shone among them as a minikin disk between two nacreous wings of zodiacal light.

His radar alarm whistled and lit up, swiveling an arrow inside a clear ball. His heart sprang. He couldn’t help glancing that way. And he caught a glimpse of the cylinder which hurtled toward Ansa’s great flank.

During a launch, the negagrav screen in that area of the mother vessel is necessarily turned off. Nothing is there to repulse a torpedo. If the thing makes contact and detonates — In vacuum, several kilotons are not quite so appallingly destructive as in air or water; and a capital ship is armored and compartmented against concussion and heat, thickly shielded to cut down what hard radiation gets inside. Nevertheless she will be badly hurt, perhaps crippled, and men will be blown apart, cooked alive, shrieking their wish to die…

An energy beam flashed. An instant’s incandescence followed. Sensors gave their findings to the appropriate computer. Within a millisecond of the burst, a “Cleared” note warbled. One of Wa Chaou’s guns had caught the torpedo square on.

“Well done!” Rochefort cried over the intercom. “Good show, Watch Out!” He rotated his detectors in search of the boat which must have been sufficiently close to loose that missile. Registry. Lockon. Hooting Star surged forward. Ansa dwindled among the constellations. “Give me an estimated time to come in range, Abdullah,” Rochefort said.

“He seems aware of us,” Helu’s voice answered, stone-calm. “Depends on whether he’ll try to get away or close in… Um-m, yes, he’s skiting for cover.” (I would too, for fair, Rochefort thought, when a heavy cruiser’s spitting boats. That’s a brave skipper who sneaked this near.) “We can intercept in about ten minutes, assuming he’s at his top acceleration. But I don’t think anybody else will be able to help us, and if we wait for them, hell escape.”

“We’re not waiting,” Rochefort decided. He lasered his intentions back to the squadron control office aboard ship and got an okay. Meanwhile he wished his sweat were not breaking out wet and sour. He wasn’t afraid, though; his pulse beat high but steady and never before had he seen the stars with such clarity and exactness. It was good to know he had the inborn courage for Academy psych-training to develop.

“If you win,” SC said, “make for—” a string of numbers which the machines memorized — “and act at discretion. We’ve identified a light battleship there. We and Ganymede between us will try saturating its defenses. Good luck.”

The voice clipped off. The boat ran, faster every second until the ballistics meters advised deceleration. Rochefort heeded and tapped out the needful orders. Utterly irrelevant passed through his head the memory of an instructor’s lecture. “Living pilots, gunners, all personnel, are meant to make decisions. Machines execute most of those decisions, set and steer courses, lay and fire guns, faster and more precisely than nerve or muscle. Machines, consciousness-level computers, could also be built to decide. They have been, in the past. But while their logical abilities might be far in excess of yours and mine, they always lacked a certain totality, call it intuition or insight or what you will. Furthermore, they were too expensive to use in war in any numbers. You, gentlemen, are multipurpose computers who have a reason to fight and survive. Your kind is abundantly available and, apart from programming, can be produced in nine months by unskilled labor.” Rochefort remembered telling lower classmen that it was three demerits if you didn’t laugh at the hoary joke.

“Range,” Helu said.

Energy beams stabbed. The scattered, wasted photons which burned along their paths were the barest fraction of the power within.

One touched Hooting Star. The boat’s automata veered her before it could penetrate her thin plating. That was a roar of sidewise thrust. The interior fields couldn’t entirely compensate for the sudden high acceleration. Rochefort was crammed back against his harness till it creaked, while weight underfoot shifted dizzyingly.

It passed. Normal one-gee-down returned. They were alive. They didn’t even seem to need a patchplate; if they had been pierced, the hole was small enough for self-sealing. And yonder in naked-eye sight was the enemy!

With hands and voice, Rochefort told his boat to drive straight at that shark shape. It swelled monstrously fast. Two beams lanced from it and struck. Rochefort held his vector constant. He was hoping Wa Chaou would thus be able to get a fix on their sources and knock them out before they could do serious damage. Flash! Flash! Brightness blanked. “Oh, glorious! Ready torps.”

The Ythrian drew nearer till the human could see a painted insigne, a wheel whose spokes were flower petals. That’s right, they put personal badges on their lesser craft, same as we give unofficial names. Wonder what that’n means. He’d been told that some of their speedsters carried ball guns. But hard objects cast in your path weren’t too dangerous till relative velocities got into the tens of KPS…

She fired a torpedo. Wa Chaou wrecked it almost in its tube. Hooting Star’s slammed home.

The explosion was at such close quarters that its fiery gases filled the Terran’s screen. A fragment struck her. She shivered and belled. Then she was past, alone in clean space. Her opponent was a cloud which puffed outward till it grew invisible, a few seared chunks of metal and possibly bone cooling off to become meteoroids, falling away aft, gone from sight in seconds.

“If you will pardon the expression,” Rochefort said shakily, “yahoo!”

“That was a near one,” Helu said. “We’d better ask for antirad boosters when we get back.”

“Uh-huh. Right now, though, we’ve unfinished business.” Rochefort instructed the boat to change vectors.

“No fears, after the way you chaps conducted yourselves.” They were not yet at the scene when joyful broadcasts and another brief blossoming told them that a hornet swarm of boats and missiles had stung the enemy battleship to death.