Read Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations Online

Authors: James White

Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations (62 page)

BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
10.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
“We’re not wasting time now,” said Harrison, and pointed toward his repeater screens.
For better or for worse, major surgery had begun.
The main screen showed a line of heavy cruisers playing ponderous follow-the-leader along the first section of the incision, rattlers probing deep while their pressers held the edges of the wound apart to allow deeper penetration by the next ship in line. Like all of the Emperor class ships they were capable of delivering a wide variety of frightfulness in very accurately metered doses, from putting a few streets full of rioters to sleep to dispensing atomic annihilation on a continental scale. The Monitor Corps rarely allowed any situation to deteriorate to the point where the use of mass destruction weapons became the only solution, but they kept them as a big and potent stick—like most policemen, the Federation’s law-enforcement arm knew that an undrawn baton had better and more long-lasting effects than one that was too busy cracking skulls. But their most effective and versatile close-range weapon—versatile because it served equally well either as a sword or a plowshare—was the rattler.
A development of the artificial gravity system which compensated for the killing accelerations used by Federation spaceships, and of the repulsion screen which gave protection against meteorites or which allowed a vessel with sufficient power reserves to hover above a planetary surface like an old-time dirigible airship, the rattler beam simply pushed and pulled, violently, with a force of up to one hundred Gs, several times a minute.
It was very rarely that the corps were forced to use their rattlers in anger—normally the fire-control officers had to be satisfied with using them to clear and cultivate rough ground for newly established colonies—and for the optimum effect the focus had to be really tight. But even a diffuse beam could be devastating, especially on a small target like a scoutship. Instead of tearing off large sections of hull plating and making metallic mincemeat of the underlying structure, it shook the whole ship until the men inside rattled.
On this operation, however, the focus was very tight and the range known to the last inch.
Visually it was not at all spectacular. Each cruiser had three rattler batteries which could be brought to bear, but they pushed and pulled so rapidly that the surface seemed hardly to be disturbed. Only the relatively gentle tractor beams positioned between the rattlers seemed to be doing anything—they pulled up the narrow wedge of material and shredded vegetation so that the next rattler in line could deepen the incision. It would not be until the incision had penetrated to the subsurface and extended for several miles that the other squadrons still hanging in orbit would come in to widen the cut into what they all hoped would be a trench wide enough to check the spread of vegetable infection from the excised and decomposing dead material.
As a background to the pictures Conway could hear the clipped voices of the ordnance officers reporting in. There seemed to be hundreds of them, all saying the same things in the fewest possible words. At irregular intervals a quiet, unhurried voice would break in, directing, approving, coordinating the overall effort—the voice of God, sometimes known as Fleet Commander Dermod, the ranking Monitor Corps officer of Galactic Sector Twelve and as such the tactical director of more than three thousand major fleet units, supply and communications vessels, support bases, ship production lines and the vast number of beings, Earth-human and otherwise, who manned them.
If the operation came unstuck, Conway certainly would not be able
to complain about the quality of the help. He began to feel quietly pleased with the way thing were going.
The feeling lasted for all of ten minutes, during which time the incision line passed through the tunnel—Number Forty-three-which they had just entered. Conway could actually see the inward end of the seal, a thick, corrugated sausage of tough plastic inflated to fifty pounds per square inch which pressed against the tunnel walls. Special arrangements had been needed to guard against loss of working fluid because the strata creature’s healing processes were woefully slow. Its blood was quite literally water and one important quality which water did not have was the ability to coagulate.
Two corpsmen and a Melfan medic were on guard beside the seal. They seemed to be agitated, but there were so many leucocytes moving about the tunnel that he could not see the reason for it. His screens showed the incision line crossing the throat tunnel. A few hundreds of gallons of water between the seal and the incision poured away—considering the size of the patient, it was scarcely a drop. The rattlers and tractors moved on, extending and deepening the cut while the great immaterial presser beams, the invisible stilts which supported the enormous weight of the cruisers, pushed the edges apart until the incision became a widening and deepening ravine. A small charge of chemical explosive brought down the roof of the emptied section of tunnel, reinforcing the plastic seal. Everything seemed to be working exactly as planned, until the immediate attention signal began flashing on his board and Major Edwards’ face filled the screen.
“Conway,” said the Major urgently. “The seal in Tunnel Forty-three is under attack by tools.”
“But that’s impossible,” said Murchison, in the scandalized tones of one who has caught a friend cheating at cards. “The patient has never interfered with our internal operations. There are no eye plants down here to give away our positions, no light to speak of, and the seal isn’t even metal. They never attack plastic material on the surface, just men and machines.”
“And they attack men because we betray our presence by trying to take mental control of them,” Conway said quickly. Then to Edwards, “Major, get those people away from the seal and into the supply shaft. Quickly. I can’t talk to them directly. While they’re doing that tell them to try not to think—”
He broke off as the seal ahead disappeared in a soft white explosion
of bubbles which roared toward them along the tunnel roof. He could not see anything outside the digger and inside only Edwards’ face and pictures of ships in line astern formation.
“Doctor, the seal’s gone,” shouted the Major, his eyes sliding to one side. “The debris behind the seal is being washed away. Harrison, dig in!”
But the Lieutenant could not dig in because the bubbles roaring past made it impossible to see. He threw the tracks into reverse, but the current sweeping them along was so strong that the digger was just barely in contact with the floor. He killed the floodlights because reflection from the froth outside the canopy was dazzling them. But there was still a patch of light ahead, growing steadily larger …
“Edwards,
cut the rattlers … !”
A few seconds later they were swept out of the tunnel as part of a cataract which tumbled down an organic cliff into a ravine which seemed to have no bottom. The vehicle did not explode into its component parts nor themselves into strawberry jam, so they knew that Major Edwards had been able to kill the rattler batteries in time. When they crashed to a halt a subjective eternity later, two of the repeater screens died in spectacular implosions and the cataract which had cushioned their fall on the way down began battering at their side, pushing and rolling them along the floor of the incision.
“Anyone hurt?” said Conway.
Murchison eased her safety webbing and winced. “I’m black and blue and … and embossed all over.”
“That,” said Harrison in an obviously uninjured tone, “I would like to see.”
Both relieved and irritated, Conway said, “First we should look at the patient.”
The only operable viewscreen was transmitting a picture taken from one of the copters stationed above the incision. The heavy cruisers had drawn off a short distance to leave the operative field clear for rescue and observation copters, which buzzed and dipped above the wound like great metal flies. Thousands of gallons of water were pouring from the severed throat tunnel every minute, carrying the bodies of leucocytes, farmer fish, incompletely digested food and clumps of vital internal vegetation into and along the ravine. Conway signaled for Edwards.
“We’re safe,” he said before the other could speak, “but this is a mess. Unless we can stop this loss of fluid, the stomach system will collapse and we will have killed instead of cured our patient. Dammit, why doesn’t
it have some method of protecting itself against gross physical injury, a nonreturn valve arrangement or some such? I certainly did not expect this to happen …”
Conway checked himself, realizing that he was beginning to whine and make excuses instead of issuing instructions. Briskly, he said, “I need expert advice. Have you a specialist in short-range, low-power explosive weapons?”
“Right,” said Edwards. A few seconds later a new voice said, “Ordnance control,
Vespasian
, Major Holroyd. Can I help you, Doctor?”
I sincerely hope so, thought Conway, while aloud he went onto outline his problem.
They were faced with the emergency situation of a patient bleeding to death on the table. Whether the being concerned was large or small, whether its body fluid was Earth-human blood, the superheated liquid metal used by the TLTUs of Threcald Five or the somewhat impure water which carried food and specialized internal organisms to the farflung extremities of this Drambon strata creature’s body, the result would be the same—steadily reducing blood pressure, increasingly deep shock, spreading muscular paralysis and death.
Normal procedure in these circumstances would be to control the bleeding by tying off the damaged blood vessel and suturing the wound. But this particular vessel was a tunnel with walls no more strong or elastic than the surrounding body material, so they could not be tied or even clamped. As Conway saw it the only method remaining was to plug the ruptured vessel by bringing down the tunnel roof.
“Close-range TR-7s,” said the ordnance officer quickly. “They are aerodynamically clean, so there will be no problem shooting into the flow, and provided there are no sharp bends near the mouth of the tunnel any desired penetration can be achieved by—”
“No,” said Conway firmly. “I’m concerned about the compression effects of a large explosion in the tunnel itself. The shock wave would be transmitted deep into the interior, and a great many farmer fish and leucocytes would die, not to mention large quantities of the fragile internal vegetation. We must seal the tunnel as close to the incision as possible, Major, and confine the damage to that area.”
“Armor-piercing B-22s, then,” said Holroyd promptly. “In this material we could get penetrations of fifty yards without any trouble. I suggest a simultaneous launch of three missiles, spaced vertically above the tunnel mouth so that they will bring down enough loose material to block
the tunnel even against the pressure of water trying to push it away as it subsides.”
“Now,” said Conway, “you’re talking.”
But Vespasian’s ordnance officer could do more than talk. Within a very few minutes the screen showed the cruiser hovering low over the incision. Conway did not see the missiles launched because he had suddenly remembered to check if their digger had been swept far enough to avoid being buried in the debris, which fortunately it had. His first indication that anything at all had happened was when the flow of water turned suddenly muddy, slowed to a trickle and stopped. A few minutes later great gobs of thick, viscous mud began to ooze over the lip of the tunnel and suddenly a wide area around the mouth began to sag, fall apart and slip like a mass of brown porridge into the ravine.
The tunnel mouth was now six times larger than it had been and the patient continued to bleed with undiminished force.
“Sorry, Doctor,” said Holroyd. “Shall I repeat the dose and try for greater penetration?”
“No, wait.”
Conway tried desperately to think. He knew that he was conducting a surgical operation, but he did not really believe it—both the problem and the patient were too big. If an Earth-human was in the same condition, even if no instruments or medication were available, he would know what to do—check the flow at a pressure point, apply a tourniquet … That was it.
“Holroyd, plant three more in the same position and depth as last time,” he said quickly. “But before you launch them can you arrange your vessel’s presser beams so that as many of them as possible will be focused just above the tunnel opening? Angle them against the face of the incision instead of having them acting vertically, if possible. The idea is to use the weight of your ship to compress and support the material brought down by the missiles.”
“Can do, Doctor.”
It took less than fifteen minutes for
Vespasian
to rearrange and refocus her invisible feet and launch the missiles, but almost at once the cataract ceased and this time it did not resume. The tunnel opening was gone and in its place there was a great, saucer-shaped depression in the wall of the incision where
Vespasian
’s starboard pressers were focused. Water still oozed through the compacted seal, but it would hold so long as the cruiser maintained position and leaned her not inconsiderable
weight on it. As extra insurance another inflatable seal was already being moved into the supply tunnel.
Suddenly the picture was replaced by that of a lined, young-old face above green-clad shoulders on which there rested a quietly impressive weight of insignia. It was the Fleet Commander himself.
BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
10.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Harder You Fall by Gena Showalter
A New Leash on Life by Suzie Carr
Star by Danielle Steel
Gracie by Marie Maxwell
Smokin' Hot by Lynn LaFleur
Friggin Zombies by N.C. Reed
With a Vengeance by Annette Dashofy
Dark Moon Crossing by Sylvia Nobel
Sapphire Crescent by Reid, Thomas M.