Strider's Galaxy (39 page)

Are there degrees, however, of loneliness?
thought Lan Yi, still looking into the vacuum of her eyes.
Isn't all loneliness the same? Is she any more lonely than . . .?

It came to him that, even more than the tachyonic drive,
loneliness
was what drove the
Santa Maria
through space. The ship itself was alone in The Wondervale, carrying as its cargo a few individuals who were in the wrong galaxy and the wrong time, an outcast even when it was acting in concert with other species, as now: only the Images could fully interact with the humans, but they were so different that they could hardly be counted as companions, or friends.

Even among the people aboard the
Santa Maria
there were great lonelinesses. Strider, forced to keep her emotional distance from her personnel and so able to find intimacy only with a bot. The bot himself, Pinocchio, who could form friendships with human beings—but how deep were those friendships compared with what he might achieve with another bot of his own calibre? Pinocchio, too, was communicating across what was in effect a species gulf. Strauss-Giolitto, whose lesbianism was now not just a suspicion but a certainty in Lan Yi's mind: her loneliness could be no less profound just because it had been self-imposed. O'Sondheim, who seemed on the outside to be so gregarious, yet was lost in a pit of solitude whose cause Lan Yi did not yet understand.

And then there was himself, who could look back over decades of loneliness.

He lowered his eyes and moved a rook.

#

Kortland's faces suddenly appeared in one of the communications Pockets.

Leander sprang to it.

"General announcement to the commanders of all vessels," the Helgiolath said. "There can be no interruption."

Leander beckoned Strider, but Strider was lost in her own Pocket. Nelson, seeing the gesture, pulled at Strider's elbow. She moved rapidly across to join Leander.

"We have taken up formation around Qitanefermeartha, and its automated defenses have been activated. Already we have sustained some casualties. It is vital that all craft maintain their shields at all times until we start to engage directly with the Autarch's warcruisers, which are now moving outward towards us. Do not waste weaponry trying to destroy the automated ballistics: let the Autarchy waste these weapons. There will be fewer of them for us to deal with later."

In order to launch a counterattack from a warcruiser, you had to drop your defensive shield for a tiny fraction of a second. That tiny fraction could be just enough time for a ballistic or a beam to sneak through and reduce your vessel to smithereens. This had been impressed upon Strider by an earlier general communiqué Kortland had issued, and she in turn had impressed it upon Leander and the others.

"All cruisers will now place themselves in direct communication with the central puter aboard this flagship," the Helgiolath was saying. "This instruction does not apply to those craft that are carrying back-ups of the central puter. The basic instructions are as follows . . ."

Not fully understanding what she was doing, Leander found her fingers dancing across the keyboard directly beneath her at the front of the Pocket. She knew that she was just a sentient channel through which the Helgiolath was feeding codes to the keyboard: the codes, like many of the keys, made no sense at all to her. What she was doing was unnecessary—the Images must be picking up all this stuff direct—but she found herself unable to stop obeying.

A second ballistic impacted against the
Santa Maria
's defensive shields and exploded in a surge of fury and brilliance. Once again the craft itself was unaffected.

But there would have to come the time when the
Santa Maria
would be facing the might of the Autarchy head-on. A single ballistic penetrating through a momentarily dropped shield would rip the ship in half.

That time might not be long in coming.

#

Back on a hillside on F-14, when she had looked like nothing more than a naked savage as she and Segrill negotiated, Strider had had the beginnings of an idea. Later, after she'd established the
Santa Maria
in orbit, she'd explained it to him further.

Warcruisers are very large spacecraft—they have to be, because of all the weaponry they must carry, not to mention armored shuttles for making planetfall, when that is necessary, and of course the troopers who will be going down in those shuttles. The average Autarchy warcruiser was home to upwards of a thousand personnel, and some of those were from species whose individuals were very large indeed—although few matched the Bredai for size. Most were on roughly the same scale as human beings. Very few sentient species were as small as Segrill's, the Trok.

Although warcruisers occasionally deployed fighters in combat, more usually they did not. The fate of a fighter when it came up against a defensive shield was much the same as that of a ballistic, but ballistics were significantly easier—and cheaper—to manufacture. Also, ballistics were a lot smaller than fighters and could move and manoeuvre much more swiftly, and so they presented a far more difficult target for the enemy to track and destroy—even despite the fact that the presence of sentient creatures aboard fighters made their trajectories much more unpredictable. Most of the time, therefore, warcruisers in battle were engaged in direct combat with each other: they were accustomed, in other words, to be fighting with objects that were as big as themselves.

Even a ballistic was quite large by comparison with a Trok fighter.

Of course, a Trok fighter couldn't carry the same firepower as one designed for a species built to the scale of, say, human beings. But that didn't matter too much. Its computers were every bit as skilful and speedy, and any missiles it launched could travel as swiftly as something far larger. A bigger missile could carry a bigger payload, certainly—one that could blow a warcruiser to pieces most impressively. But that was hardly necessary: in the hostile environment of the vacuum, a crippled warcruiser was a dead warcruiser. Though only a few meters across, the Trok's fighters were each capable of transporting—and directing—at least a couple of missiles which, assuming they penetrated the enemy's defensive shield, bore charges sufficient to do significant damage to a warcruiser's outer hull. And that was all that was needed.

Ever since the
Santa Maria
had rejoined the Helgiolath fleet she had been surrounded by a swarm of over a hundred Trok fighters under the overall command of Segrill. By comparison with the thousands of warcruisers amassed in the armada, the number was as trifling as the size of the vessels themselves, but Strider and Segrill were convinced they could do a disproportionate amount of damage to the Autarchy's forces.

#

WE ARE PICKING UP A NEW COMMUNICATION,
said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.

"What is it?" said Strider. "Put it on the communications Pocket."

THE RELEVANT INDIVIDUAL DOES NOT WISH INITIALLY TO SPEAK WITH YOURSELF, CAPTAIN LEONIE STRIDER. WE COULD INTERPRET THE COMMUNICATION DIRECTLY TO THE PERSON INVOLVED ABOARD THIS SHIP, BUT WE BELIEVED THAT WE SHOULD ASK YOUR APPROVAL FIRST.

"Who do they want to speak to?" said Strider. It was unusual for the Images to consult her about very much. This must be something unusual.

POLYAGGLE,
Ten Per Cent Extra Free replied.

Strider thought for a moment. She was fairly certain in her own mind that the Spindrifter would do nothing to harm the
Santa Maria
, but she couldn't be a hundred per cent sure. Alien ways of thinking, as she kept telling herself, were radically different from human ones. Who could tell what was going on behind those impenetrably deep eyes?

"Can you ask Polyaggle to come to the command deck?" she said. "She can speak via Pocket. I want to be able to see what's going on."

WE CANNOT MONITOR THE POCKET AS SHE CONVERSES,
said Ten Per Cent Extra Free reprovingly.
IT WOULD BE AN INVASION OF PRIVACY.

Strider snorted. The Images had never been sticklers about her own privacy.

BESIDES,
Ten Per Cent Extra Free added,
BOTH BEINGS WOULD IMMEDIATELY RECOGNIZE OUR PRESENCE AND CEASE COMMUNICATION.

"Yeah," she said. "But I still want to be able at least to watch from outside the Pocket."

WE HAVE REQUESTED HER PRESENCE,
said the Image a moment later,
AND SHE IS ALREADY MAKING HER WAY HERE.

Another ballistic impacted against the defensive shield as Strider waited. The effect inside the
Santa Maria
was as if everyone aboard had been brushed by a moth's wing. In the Pocket in front of her she could see, graphically represented, the Autarchy's warcruisers beginning to peel out of their orbits around Qitanefermeartha. The display told her that there were over four thousand of them. They were outnumbered nearly two to one, but there were still enough of them to ensure that this was going to be no walkover—especially since the Autarchy could count on the use of its ground-based ballistics as well.

The
Santa Maria
, too, was shifting its position under the commands of Kortland's central puter. Strider felt disempowered—hell, she
was
disempowered—by being able to do no more than watch her ship being navigated by remote control. One virtue the Helgiolath very clearly lacked was the art of public relations: it was all very well telling the individual commanders what was going on at the moment, but what they needed to know was
why
it was going on and, if all went according to plan, what was intended to happen next. As it was, Strider felt a seriously less useful component of the
Santa Maria
than her busted Main Computer.

Ten Per Cent Extra Free clearly picked up her thoughts.

KORTLAND IS INTRODUCING AN IMBALANCE TO THE ATTACKING SHELL AROUND QITANEFERMEARTHA,
he said.
HE IS AMASSING A FAR GREATER CONCENTRATION OF CRUISERS IN ONE AREA TO FORM, IN EFFECT, A SEPARATE FLEET THAT IS ABOUT THE SAME SIZE AS THE AUTARCH'S. CERTAINLY IT IS TOO LARGE FOR THE AUTARCH'S GENERALS TO IGNORE: THEY WILL HAVE TO DIRECT THE BULK OF THEIR FORCES TOWARDS IT. THE REST OF THE SHELL WILL BE MORE SPARSELY POPULATED BY CRUISERS—FOR A WHILE.

Strider nodded. The reasoning seemed sound.

ONCE BATTLE HAS BEEN JOINED, THE REMAINING HELGIOLATH AND F-14 VESSELS WILL LIKEWISE COME TOGETHER, AND CONCENTRATE ON PIERCING STRAIGHT THROUGH THE RESIDUAL PLANETARY DEFENSES TO QITANEFERMEARTHA ITSELF.

"And in which bit of his armada has the mighty Kortland decided to put the
Santa Maria
?" said Strider, knowing the sarcasm would be picked up by Ten Per Cent Extra Free.

BECAUSE OF ITS ENTOURAGE OF TROK FIGHTERS, KORTLAND HAS DETERMINED THAT THE
SANTA MARIA
WILL BE PART OF THE FORCE THAT ATTACKS QITANEFERMEARTHA DIRECTLY.

"It would have been polite of him to mention it," she said. The Image didn't bother to reply.

She continued to gaze into the Pocket. A few Helgiolath vessels had been eliminated, but so far the situation between the opposing forces had really not changed at all. They were like two people high on ziprite who had picked a fight with each other but were still at the stage of making aggressive punches into empty air. Whenever one of those punches chanced to land it did very little damage. Soon, however, the fight would be joined in earnest. And it would be to the death.

She turned to Pinocchio. "Issue orders to everyone aboard—kids included—that they're to ensure they're properly kitted out with fully charged lazguns. Tell them to check their suits, but not to suit up yet." No need to get clumsy until you had to—and if the
Santa Maria
were badly damaged being in a spacesuit wasn't going to save anyone's life. "I want twenty volunteers in case we're sent down to the surface to fight—if you can't get twenty, conscript a few. O'Sondheim is not to volunteer: he is to take over command from me in the event of my death. Neither are you—he'll need you. Understood?"

"Anything else?" said the bot.

"Yup. All volunteers, except those from the command deck, are to gather themselves in four of the shuttle bays. Organize them into suitable parties, Pinocchio. I'll lead one, Nelson another, Leander a third—I've just volunteered them for duty. We three will stay here until the time comes. Appoint someone else to head the fourth party and to be in overall charge of the rest until—if—we go down."

The bot started working with his commline.

Behind Strider, the lock leading from the main part of the ship to the command deck soughed open. Polyaggle emerged, with Lan Yi following behind her. Strider scowled. She hadn't asked for the scientist to be here. Still, he would probably be of some use—especially if she and Leander and Nelson had to leave the deck under O'Sondheim's control.

"Pinocchio," she said, indicating the newcomers, "get some bot or other to fetch these two's suits."

Polyaggle was moving straight towards the left-hand communications Pocket, which was automatically adjusting its height to welcome her. Strider felt a small shock of annoyance—as if the Spindrifter should have asked her permission first.

"We're beginning to pick up speed, oh darling of my dreams," said Nelson.

He seemed to be a lot calmer than she was. His calmness was infectious.

"Keep your dreams to yourself!" she snapped, beginning to grin. "And keep me posted." She nodded towards Polyaggle, who had already immersed her face into the communications Pocket. "I have other observation to do."

Two ballistics hit the defensive shield almost simultaneously. Again the sensation of their explosions was hardly detectable aboard the
Santa Maria
.

Strider paced from side to side, her gaze fixed on Polyaggle's back. Reading the Spindrifter's face was impossible; reading her back was doubly so—or maybe it wasn't, because occasionally the wings would rise slightly from their sheaths.

She looked at Lan Yi. "You know her better than I do. Any idea what's going on?"

He turned his hands outward. "Those movements of the wings are friendly gestures," he said. "Other than that I can't tell."