Part 5 (1/2)

Isn't it possible that maybe the locals ...?' '... haven't got a chance,' finished Truzenzuzex. 'They're outnumbered and outgunned, and not a regular armed force among them in the first place. As the AAnn doubtlessly surmised well in advance. I doubt 'f their s.h.i.+ps even have doublekay drives. Theirs is only a colony and they wouldn't have need of many.'

'Typical AAnn macoeuvre. d.a.m.n those anthropomorphic b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Always sniping and chipping at edges. I wish they'd come right out and say they're going to contest us for this part of the galaxy. Let 'cm stand up and fight like men!'

'No can do, brother, because they obviously aren't. And I refer not to their physiologies alone.

According to the Aann standards set down by their philosophy of ”perpetual warfare as the natural state of things,” any advantage you can get over your opponent is by definition of success ethical. They're not immoral, just amoral. Sneak attacks are like sugar - pardon, -like bread- to them.'

'If the major agreed to step in I'm sure headquarters would give retroactive approval to the action,' Bran said. 'They'd offer obeisance in public, sure, but privately I'll bet Marshal N'Gara would approve.'

'He might. Might not. As soldiers grow older and more powerful their personalities tend more and more to the mercurial. I can't see dear sweet Gonzalez risking a chance to help a bunch of aliens, especially non-Commonwealh. He's far too fond of his scotch and imported Terran cigars, Besides, to undertake such an action would require at least a modic.u.m of imagination, a commodity in which our commander is sadly deficient. Look. It's starting already.

Bran glanced up above the communications equipment to the huge battle screen. Out in the void a number of s.h.i.+ps represented only by ghostly dots were manoeuvring across thousands of kilometres for position in a battle which would prove notable only for its brevity. Somehow the locals had mustered six s.p.a.ceworthy s.h.i.+ps. He'd bet a year's credit not one of them was a regular wars.h.i.+p. Police launches, most likely. Opposite, the well-drilled, superbly disciplined Aann force was to lining one of its characteristic tetrahedrons. Fifteen or so attack s.h.i.+ps, a couple of destroyers, and two bloated pips that in a normal battle situation he would have interpreted as dreadnoughts. The finer instruments on the big board told the true story: same ma.s.s, small gravity wells. Troop carriers, nursing dozens of small, heavily screened troop shuttles.

He'd observed AAnn occupation forces in action before. No doubt by now the members of the first a.s.sault wave were resting comfortably in their respective holds, humming softly to themselves and waiting for the 'battle' to begin, masking sure their armour was highly polished, their nerve-prods fully charged ...

He slammed a fist down on the duralloy board, sc.r.a.ping the skin on the soft underside of his wrist. There were ten stingers and a cruiser in the humanx force ... more than a match for the AAnn, even without the dubious 'help' of the locals. But he knew even before the pathetic debate of a few moments ago that Major Gonzalez would never stir from his wood-panelled cabin on the Altair to intervene in any conflict where humanx interests weren't directly threatened. He paused at a. sudden thought. Of course, if a confrontation could be forced to the point that such a threat occurred ... still no certain guarantee ...

definite court-martial ... dismissal from the Corps ... 300,000 sentient beings ... processing camps... He suddenly wasn't so sure that he wanted to make captain after all. Still, he'd need the concurrance of...

'Bran, our drive appears to lie malfunctioning.'

'Wha? I don't...'

'Yes, there is no question about it. We appear to be drifting unavoidably into the area of incipient combat. At top speed, no less. A most unusual awkwardness, wouldn't you agree?'

'Oh. Oh, yes.' A pseudo-smile sharp as a scimitar cut his face. ”I can see that we're helpless to prevent it. G.o.d d.a.m.n unfortunate situation. Naturally we'll have to make emergency preparations to defend ourselves. I don't think the AAnn computers will be overly discerning about s.h.i.+ps which float into their target area.'

'Correct. I was just about to commence my own injections.'

'Myself also.' He snuggled back into the reaction seat, felt the field that enabled them to manoeuvre at high speed and still live take hold gently. 'Best hurry about it.'

He followed accepted procedure and did his best to ignore the barely perceptible pressures of the needles as they slipped efficiently into the veins on his legs. The special drugs that heightened his perceptions and released the artificial inhibitions his mind raised to constrain the killer instinct immediately began to take effect, A beautiful rose-tinted glow of freedom slipped over his thoughts. This was proper.

This was right'. This was what he'd been created for. Above and behind him he knew that Truzenzuzex was undergoing a similar treatment, with different drugs. They would stimulate his natural ability to make split-second decisions and logical evaluations without regard to such distractions as Hive rulings and elaborate moral considerations.

Shortly after the Amalgamation, when human and thranx scientists were discovering one surprising thing after another about each other, thranx psychologists unearthed what some humans had long suspected.

The mind of h.o.m.o sapiens was in a perpetual state of uneasy balance between total emotionalism and computer like control. When the vestiges of the latter, both natural and artificial, were removed, man reverted to a kind of control led animalism. He became the universe's most astute and efficient killing machine. If tile reverse was induced he turned into a vegetable. No use had been found for that state, but for theformer ...

It was kept fairly quiet. After a number of gruesome but honest demonstrations put on by the thranx and their human aides, mankind acknowledged the truth of the discovery, with not a small sigh of relief. But they didn't like to be reminded of it. Of course a certain segment of humanity had known it all along and wasn't affected by the news. Others began to read the works of ancients like Donation Francois de Sade with a different eye. For their part human psychologists brought into clearer light the marvelous thranx ability to make rapid and correct decisions with an utter lack of emotional distraction and a high level of practicality. Only, the thranx didn't think it so marvellous. Their Hive rulings and complicated systems of ethics had long kept that very same ability tied down in the same ways humanity had its killer desires.

The end result of all the research and experimentation was this: in combination with a ballistics computer to select and gauge targets, a thranx-b.u.man-machine triumvirate was an unbeatable combination m s.p.a.ce warfare. Thranx acted as a check on human and human as a goad to thranx. It was efficient and ruthless.

Human notions of a 'gentleman's' war disappeared forever. Only the AAnn had ever dared to challenge the system more than once, and they were tough enough and smart enough to do it sporadically and only when they felt the odds to be highly in their favour.

It was fortunate that thranx and human proved even more compatible than the designers of the system had dared hope - because the nature of the drug-machine tie-up resulted in a merging of the two minds on a conscious level, it was as if the two loves of a brain were to fight out a decision between themselves, with the compromise then being paused on to the spinal cord and the rest of the body for actual implementation, Some stings.h.i.+p pilots likened it more closely to two twins in the womb. It was that intimate a relations.h.i.+p. Only in that way would the resultant fighting machine operate at 100 per cent effectiveness. A man's partner was his s.h.i.+p-brother. Few stinger operators stayed married long, except those who were able to find highly understanding wives.

The tingling mist flowed over his eyes, dimming and yet enhancing his vision. The tiniest things became obvious to his perception. Specks of dust in the cabin atmosphere became clear as boulders. His eyes fastened on the white diamonds on the battle screen with all the concentration of a starving cobra. All stinger pilots admitted to a slight but comforting sense of euphoria when under battle drugs. Bran was experiencing it now. For public relations purposes the enforcement posters insisted it was a beneficial byproduct of the HIP drugs. The pilots knew it for what it was; the natural excitement that overtakes most completely uninhibited humans as they antic.i.p.ate the thrill of the kill. His feelings whirled within, but his thoughts stayed focused.

'Up the universe, oh squishy bug!' he yelled drunkenly. Off from never-never land Truzenzuzex's voice floated down to him.

'Up the universe, oh smelly primate!' The s.h.i.+p plunged towards one corner of the Aann tetrahedron.

The enemy force stood it as long as possible. Then three s.h.i.+ps broke out to intercept their reckless charge. The rest of the formation continued to form, undaunted. Undoubtedly no one in a position of command had yet noticed that this suicidal charge did not come from the region of the pitiful planetary defence force circling below. And having all heard the interfleet broadcast they knew it couldn't possibly be a Commonwealth vessel. Bran centred their one medium SCCAM on the nearest of the three attackers, the pointer. Dimly, through the now solid perfumed fog, he could make out the outraged voice of Major Gonzalez on inters.h.i.+p frequency. It impinged irritatingly on his wholely occupied conscious.

Obviously Command hadn't bought their coded message of engine trouble.

'You there, what do you think you're doing! Get back in formation! s.h.i.+p number ... s.h.i.+p number twenty-five return to Formation! Acknowledge, iih ... by heaven! Braunsch-weiger, whose s.h.i.+p is that?

Someone get me some information, there!

It was decidedly too noisy in the pod. He shut off the grid and they drove on in comparative silence. He conjured up a picture of the AAnn admiral. Comfortably seated in his cabin on one of the troop carriers, chewing lightly on a narco-stick ... one eye c.o.c.ked on the Commonwealth Force floating nearby.

Undoubtedly he'd also been monitoring the conversation between the planetary governor and Major Gonzalez, Had a good laugh, no doubt. Expecting a nice, routine ma.s.sacre. His thoughts must now be fuzzing a bit, especially if he'd noticed the single stinger blasting crazily towards the centre of his formation. Bran hoped he'd split an ear-sac listening to his trackers.

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-coloured 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 & 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 stings.h.i.+ps in action with only human operators. It had resembled very much a tridee pix he'd seen on Ten-a showing sharks in a feeding frenzy.

The moment notified him of itself. 'Firing one!' There were no conflicting suggestion from the insectoid half of his mind. He felt the gentle lurch of his body field as the s.h.i.+p immediately executed an intricate, alloy-tearing manoeuvre 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 jelled.

The disappearance of a gravity well from the screen told him that the SCCAM projectile had taken the AAnn s.h.i.+p, piercing its defences. A violent explosion flared silently in s.p.a.ce. A SCCAM was incapable of a 'near-miss.' The SCCAM system itself was a modification of the dobblekay drive that powered the s.h.i.+ps of most s.p.a.ce-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 s.h.i.+ps, and other races to order the components which would enable them to make their own modifications. A wholely thranx innovation, however, had been the adaption of the gravity drive as a weapon of irresistible power. The SCCAM projectiles were in actuality therm-o-nuclear devices mounted on small s.h.i.+p 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 towards a target. At a predetermined sate distance from the s.h.i.+p, the sh.e.l.l'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 s.h.i.+p. 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 sh.e.l.l. Both halves of the s.h.i.+p-mind had 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 wars.h.i.+ps from their unexpected ally. Bran had just gotten off a third shot -amiss- when a violent concussion rocked the stinger. Even in his projective 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 upwards.

'Tru, this time the drive is off for real. We're going to go into loose drift only ... be 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 k.n.o.b several times. It seemed operative. 'Tru? Say something, you slug! Old snail, termite, boozer ... G.o.d d.a.m.n it, say something!'

With the cessation of the s.h.i.+p's capacity for battle the HIP antidotes had automatically been shot into his system. Thank Limbo the automedics were still intact I 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 s.h.i.+p suddenly decided to leap into ward rive and spatter him all over the bulkhead. Redfaced, 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 d.a.m.ned his arms which persisted in slipping off grips like d.a.m.n 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 s.h.i.+pboard 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 p.r.o.ne 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 ma.s.sage 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.