Eric Flint's Blog, page 158
September 21, 2017
Chain of Command – Snippet 37
Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 15
The Spark – Snippet 24
September 19, 2017
The Spark – Snippet 23
The Spark – Snippet 23
“Now, Pal of Beune,” Lady Frances said, using her hard tone again, “I want you to understand something. I’ll not be cheated. If you and this boatman are in league to rob me by pretending there’s a problem with the boat, I’ll walk back to Holheim.”
I shrugged. “Holheim must be a pretty dreadful place,” I said, “if the people there behave like that. I don’t know where Baga’s from, but–”
“I’m Holheim too,” the boatman said. “There’s worse places.”
I grinned at him, then met the lady’s eyes again. “Beune’s different,” I said. “We don’t rob each other. Word’d get around. I don’t swear I can fix this–”
I was sure Guntram could, and I figured he’d help if I got stumped. He was a good guy.
“–but nobody’s going to cheat you here.”
Frances’ lips made a little twitch. I’d like to think she was embarrassed by the way she’d been behaving, but it could as easy have been her wanting to call me a liar but swallowing the words.
“So,” I said to Baga. “What’s the boat doing that it shouldn’t be?”
The boat was thirty feet long and twelve wide at the flat bottom. The sides curved up and over like a section of cylinder.
It was bigger than the house I lived in and I figured there’d be plenty of room inside. There wasn’t. A seat in the front and a narrow aisle to pretty near the back were all I could see from here just inside the hatch
“She needs sand to run,” Baga said. “I keep some of the hoppers full of sand, and I always exchange with fresh sand when I get back to Holheim. The run to Marielles was a long one so I refilled there instead of waiting till we got home. When the sand’s used up the speed drops, so that’s how you know.”
Baga looked at me. I nodded to show I was listening. What he was saying didn’t make sense because he didn’t understand the workings of his boat, but he was telling me what to look for. “Go on,” I said.
“Well, getting fresh sand on Marielles didn’t help,” Baga said. “We’ve been going slower and slower on the way back. I finally told Lady Frances that we had to stop at the next node and look for a Maker because there’s something really wrong.”
“It’s possible that we were sabotaged on Marielles,” Frances said, though the hard look she gave Baga showed that she hadn’t let him off the hook for the problem. “Certainly I got no satisfaction there. I wouldn’t put anything past Prince Phillip, let alone his whore.”
I frowned, because so far as I knew it wasn’t any easier to sabotage a boat than to fix one. Anybody who really had the skill to do that wouldn’t be the sort to destroy a piece of the Ancients.
“What does the boat’s menu tell you?” I said to Baga.
“I don’t know about any bloody menu!” the boatman said. His red face was angry, but I couldn’t tell who he was angry at. “I’m a bloody boatman, I’m a good one, but I’m not a bloody Maker, all right?”
“Well, I am,” I said. “We’ll get you going again, don’t worry.”
I smiled a trifle. I had a lot more confidence knowing that Guntram was backing me up than I would otherwise; but if Baga didn’t even know how to open the boat’s menu, the problem might be a lot simpler than I’d thought to start out.
“I assure you that you’ll be paid for your work,” said Frances, working hard on her sneer. “That is–can anyone in this place process a credit transfer?”
I shrugged. “I guess a couple of the bigger farmers might be able to,” I said. “I don’t figure to charge for helping a lady in distress, but you may want to pay somebody for your keep while I’m working on this thing.”
I patted the hatch behind me. I was really looking forward to getting inside the boat’s structure.
Frances glowered again. “How long is this going to take?” she said. I guess she’d have threatened me if she could figure out any way to do that.
My smile–because there wasn’t any threat she could make–just made her madder. “Ma’am,” I said, “I don’t have any idea till I get inside. I’m going to bunk down in your hallway here–”
I pointed to the aisle.
“–and check things out.”
“Use one of the capsules, why don’t you?” Baga said. “It’ll be more comfortable.”
“Eh?” I said.
He reached past me and tapped the panel on the right side of the aisle. It slid up, opening a room about five by five by nine feet long.
“You can live there as long as you want,” Baga said. “The lady here–” he nodded toward Frances “–didn’t come out of hers the whole voyage.”
“This man told me that though there are six cabins in the boat, it can only carry two people,” the woman said sharply.
“Look,” said Baga, “maybe it’d haul six when it was new but it’s not new, it hasn’t been new for thousands of years, and it won’t take but two!”
Frances looked at me. “Perhaps you think I should have trusted him without a chaperon if not a guard? Are all the men in whatever this place is saints?”
“It’s Beune,” I said. “And no, they’re not.”
I’d heard stories, mostly told by the guys involved. I didn’t like some of what I’d heard.
I shrugged and said, “Ma’am, why don’t you go out and look for a place to stay while you’re here. Say–chat with Guntram. He’s from Dun Add and he can talk about things with you. Baga, I don’t need you right now. If I do, I’ll look you up.”
“What’s someone from Dun Add doing here?” Frances said as I hunched to get into the open compartment.
“I wondered that too,” I said, “but I didn’t think it was polite to ask.”
“You close it by the corner like you open it from the outside,” Baga volunteered. He reached in to point.
“I don’t need it closed,” I said. “I just need to be left alone for a bit.”
I laid my head on the pillow built into the couch. I wondered how the compartment kept clean and all the other little practical things, but I could ask about that later. Now I slipped straight into a trance.
Warriors, Makers, and boatmen all work with Ancient machines. I knew warriors were different, that they didn’t need to understand the structure of the weapons and shields they used, but I’d figured boatmen were more like Makers.
I was wrong. Anyway, that sure wasn’t the case with Baga.
The boat was amazingly complex. My first thought was it was like trying to follow every strand of silk in a huge spiderweb and do it all at once. I could see gaps in the structure in hundreds of places, thousands, but there were so many that I couldn’t focus. When I tried to, my mind melted off into twenty other directions. That didn’t stay either.
I withdrew for a moment. Boats were supposed to have menus that provided their state of health. When I looked for one, it just about leaped out at me.
The list of missing elements was long, and some of them were things I’d never heard of or anyway didn’t know how to replace.
“Are you here to return me to specifications, Master?” said a voice in my head. “It has been a very long time since I was at my designed optimum.”
“Boat?” I said. In my trance I don’t know if I spoke aloud or not.
“Yes, Master,” the voice said. It didn’t keep talking because it’d answered the only question I’d asked.
Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 14
Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 14
Part II: Awakening the Maidens
Chapter 14.
She stood in the cool September morning, watching as the yellow school bus grumbled its way up to her driveway, and felt an eerie sense of frightened déjà vu. It had been almost twenty years since the last time Stephen Russ had boarded such a bus, and the memories of that and earlier bus rides wasn’t a pleasant memory to recall. Maybe I should’ve talked about that with Silvertail.
The faint whiff of diesel washed over her along with the muffled crunch of gravel under broad tires and the pneumatic hiss of the door opening reinforced the memory; she looked up, half expecting the blue-eyed, wrinkled face of old Bill to be looking back.
Instead it was the brown eyes of a woman in her thirties, looking — as most bus drivers do — somewhat harried, but she gave a bright smile. “You’re Holly Owen?”
“Yes, I am. That’s my dad,” she pointed to where Mr. Trayne Owen stood at the door, waving.
“Good. Get on, Holly.”
She waved back to Mr. Owen and then climbed up the steps.
Thank God it’s not too crowded yet. She looked up and down — sure her nervousness was visible — and chose an empty seat. I’ll have to make some friends somehow, but right now, I have to get through the first couple of days and figure out what it’s like to be in high school now. There were the usual faintly curious glances from the other passengers at seeing a new face. Some of the boys looked a hair longer — again, no surprise.
She sat down and the bus started with the same lurch she remembered from two decades back. And still no seatbelts. Some things never change. The massive size, height, and cushioned interior of a modern schoolbus were supposedly safer than any other vehicle, but Holly had Steve’s ingrained expectation of a seatbelt in any vehicle, and she found herself unexpectedly nervous at the unsecured swaying as the bus continued its rounds.
Okay, that’s probably just fine. Be nervous. Lots of the other students will be. You’ve just gotten here, you don’t know anyone, you don’t even know the area well since you came from the West Coast. That will probably be my big stumbling block. Can’t be too familiar with this area.
The bus arrived and disgorged its passengers. Holly paused, looking up at Whitney High; as Steve, he’d had a friend or two that had gone there, but Whitney had become the center of the district; with the other three high schools shut down, it had undergone a major expansion and refurbishing a couple of years back and looked nothing like it had back then.
Well, almost nothing like. The central part of the school was still the massive, respectable three-story brick with an old-style belfry that looked something like a watchtower above the columned entrance; that, and the tall chain link fence that had always surrounded the grounds, had given it a prisonlike appearance which led his friend and others to refer to the school as Whitney State Correctional Facility.
That unified and intimidating appearance was gone, however. Extending to either side were two-story expansions in brighter, glass-and-concrete materials; from the quick tour she’d taken with Mr. Owen, Holly knew there was a third extra wing behind the visible front. Behind that were the sports bleachers and tracks and other phys ed–related spaces.
Entering the school was a lot different. The doors were thicker, heavily reinforced, with cameras observing everyone coming and going. And an actual couple of police officers on duty. Steve remembered people just coming and going from his old school — old students visiting their favorite teachers, parents dropping by to pick up a kid for a sudden appointment, and so on. Here, anyone entering who wasn’t a student had to go through a separate screening entrance.
The intimidating security suddenly made his friend’s old joke much less funny. Boy, if one of the attacks happens here, I’ll have a hell of a time keeping it off the video, especially if Silvertail’s not with me.
As she made her way to her homeroom — A207, which meant in the right-hand wing, with Mr. Coyne — the impression grew stronger. The cameras weren’t just at the front of the building or the entrances; there were cameras watching the hallways, too. I definitely need to sit down with Silvertail and see if he can put some kind of, I dunno, contingency on the cameras here, so that if I need to transform it’ll blank all of them. Our enemies will know Whitney High’s the center soon enough, but if we can force them to have to keep guessing which of the thousand students is their target, it’ll help.
It was a tiny shred of relief that there were no cameras actually in the classroom. Yet. And while there were more high-tech screens and such, the classroom didn’t look that different from the ones she remembered from Steve’s pass through public education.
Mr. Coyne was a tall dark-haired man with a long, lined face that held the weariness of the career teacher along with a still-present humor. “All right, sit down, quiet everyone, I know it’s just after summer and we’d all rather be outside, but there’s going to be a lot to go through.”
Holly chose a seat and listened with half an ear to Coyne’s quick summary of the way things would work in the school. Silvertail — as Mr. Owen, naturally — had attended an open house and gotten the summary then, so she was aware of the schedule and how everything was organized.
She was much more interested in trying to guess which of the students might be the other Apocalypse Maidens — although admittedly there was no reason to assume they were all going to be in the same classroom, or even necessarily in the same grade.
Still, the tropes practically demanded that at least one or two of the other Maidens be in classes with her. Who would it be? The shy-looking pale girl with uncontrolled curly brown hair sitting in the corner? The tanned girl with a stack of books next to her that nearly reached her pin-straight hair dyed deep purple with white edging? Maybe one of the two Latina-looking girls who were busy in a whispered conversation on the far side of the room? Or the black girl with poofy black curly hair, whose face was almost completely obscured by the book she was reading?
Holly got no sensation of rightness, or wrongness, from any of them. Inwardly she shrugged. Silvertail said there probably wouldn’t be any way to tell until a crisis. Might as well stop thinking about it and focus on being a fine young student.
It was true that ultimately it didn’t matter if she did well, or poorly, in school; after all, either the Apocalypse Maidens would succeed and send the bad guys back to the darkness, at which point Holly would become Steve again and no one would remember any of this, or they’d fail and the world would fall to Lovecraftian horror, at which point no one was going to care about her grades in history. But Steve’s pride wouldn’t let Holly screw this up. I did pretty well the first time through; with almost twenty more years of living I’ll be damned if I’m going to do anything less than the best now!
Her schedule turned out to be annoying as hell. My first class is in B-Wing, then I go back to A, then to C, then I get lunch, and then A, B, C again. That meant that she would have to walk very fast to manage to get to all her classes on time — and they emphasized being on time a lot. Being late anywhere could have consequences up to and including suspension, which didn’t make sense to Steve-Holly. So I’m late to class a lot, so you’ll punish me by taking me out of the classes I’m apparently not wanting to go to? Brilliant plan, guys.
On the positive side, the crisscross scheduling, from Biology with Mrs. Rizzo to English with “Doctor, not Mister” Beardsley, Social Studies with Ms. Vaneman, and so on, made sure that she would get really familiar with a lot of the school, and see a lot of the students every day.
And boy, did I make the right decision to get a big backpack. I’m almost never going to get a chance to get to my locker, unless I do it just before homeroom or during lunch.
Homework was going to be a pain in the ass. Holly, seeing through Steve’s memories, could tell she could probably do a lot of it faster than most people would ever manage, but still . . . They’re saying they’ll assign a lot more stuff than I remember from back in the day, and boy, they’re hardass about it. No more handwavy extra-credit slide for me.
Suddenly she realized the last class was over, the bell had rung. Okay, first day, fine, but I’ve got to start talking to people. I’ve been just half-here all day.
The students filed out to where the buses were waiting, a huge line of idling yellow boxes. She looked around, figured out where hers should be, and started over. As she did, she glanced idly around, still surveying the people, her eyes skipping over most of the boys, since they —
She froze so suddenly two people bumped into her and she staggered and fell. The hot, rough burning sensation of a hand scraped raw on pavement shot through her. “Ow!”
“Sorry!” said one of the two apologetically. The other muttered, “Why be sorry? It was her fault she stopped like that!”
But Holly barely registered the apology or cynical retort; automatically she said “It’s okay, I’m fine, sorry, my fault,” but she was rising, backing away at the same time, trying to find a route that didn’t take her past that next bus, but really, there wasn’t any choice, was there?
There wasn’t. She had to continue, her bus was just on the other side of the one she was approaching. She kept her head down, looking from beneath her hair. There was no mistaking the tall, slender form, the long uncontrolled fall of gold hair.
Richard Dexter Armitage.
Chain of Command – Snippet 36
Chain of Command – Snippet 36
“How serious was the damage?”
“Cruiser Four-Two-Eight was a total loss, of course, when it exited jump space into a planetoid. A fire lance hit disabled the jump drive of Four-Two-Nine and the captain jettisoned the entire module to avoid contamination. It can maneuver but will use most of its reaction mass to decelerate and return to our fleet rendezvous. It will arrive in twelve days. Five-Two-Two has only intermittent power, has lost its coil gun and most of its sensor array, and is not immediately repairable. Five-Oh-One is lightly damaged and will be operational as soon as we are.”
So–discounting Cruiser Four-Two-Nine, which could not jump and so could not join the other ships in their next attack maneuver–they had only two operational cruisers left, including the flagship. Two ships to face whatever remained of the Human fleet, which included at least two cruisers and three destroyers at K’tok, two cruisers at Mogo, and seven more destroyers unaccounted for. The First Fleet had had fewer ships destroyed, lost fewer lives, than had the enemy, but the balance of force had changed hardly at all. Nuvaash took a breath to steady his voice before speaking.
“The new missiles performed well, Admiral.”
e-Lapeela looked up sharply but Nuvaash met his gaze and after a moment the admiral cocked his head to the side in a shrug.
“We expected to take out every starship. It worked well in testing but the test sequence, for reasons of secrecy, was limited. No weapon ever seems to perform as well in the field as in the tests. Still, we dealt them a shattering blow: eight ships destroyed versus only one of ours. It may not seem so here, surrounded by casualties and damage, but this was a great victory.”
“But to what end?” Nuvaash said. “They still hold K’tok.”
“To what end? I told you others waited in the shadows to join us. Victories steel their courage, quicken their blood, broaden their vision. Because of this victory–and that is exactly how it will be perceived, regardless of how much damage we sustained–others will join us. First a trickle, but like water cutting a sand bar, a trickle widens the passage and more water follows.
“And I have just received word by jump courier. The government has released the cruiser division on Akaampta from Cottohazz duty to my command, and the Home Fleet is readying another squadron to join us. Our enterprise prospers.”
“Not of the ground, I am afraid,” Nuvaash said. “We are stalemated. Human orbital bombardment has become less effective both in terms of volume and accuracy, and the Human ground forces have taken casualties which they seem unable to replace immediately. These are both fruits, in my opinion, of our earlier attack. All of our heavy ground force units took severe casualties in the aftermath of the invasion, however, and our three regular mobile cohorts have been rendered ineffective for offensive operations. If we are to resume the ground offensive we must reinforce out ground forces.”
“Reinforce? How?”
“We are receiving three transports from home, carrying between them a reinforced ground brigade. I believe we can land part of a lift cavalry squadron by reentry gliders.”
“Reentry gliders?” the admiral demanded. “While the Humans hold orbital space? That would be suicidal for the transports.”
“If we used the transports, that would be so. But out cruisers have the ability to carry a limited number of reentry gliders in place of external ordnance modules. The extent to which the detonation of Human nuclear warheads interfered with our sensors during the last attack suggests a way for a ship or two to make a high speed approach and exit, dropping the reinforcements into the atmosphere as we pass.”
“We?” the admiral said.
Nuvaash shifted his position and let his earns fold back slightly in the position of respect.
“As the attack profile I am outlining is hazardous and untested, I assumed the admiral would lead the first raid in the flagship.”
e-Lappela leaned back in this chair and smiled. “I am surprised, Nuvaash. You strike me as cautious rather than aggressive, and yet now you recommend another audacious attack.”
“I recommend nothing, admiral. I only point out the facts as I understand them.”
And one of the facts he understood now was that the admiral was a murderer. But how many supposedly glorious triumphs throughout history, he wondered, were secretly purchased with murder?
*****
Sam glided through the hatch to the wardroom and clipped his tether to end of the main table. No other officers were present and so Sam ordered cheese enchiladas for lunch and prepared to eat alone. That was fine; he had a lot of reading to catch up on.
Second Principle of Naval Leadership: Be technically and tactically proficient.
He put on viewer glasses and started re-reading TM-01 Deep Space Tactical Principles.
After five minutes Lieutenant Rice, the boat’s beefy supply officer appeared, drew a bulb of coffee from the dispenser, and clipped his tether next to Sam’s.
“How’s it going, Moe?” Sam asked, taking off his viewer glasses.
“Not too good, Cap’n. I mean, we’re in good shape, but the grunts down in the dirt are in trouble. With most of the cruisers gone we’ve only got ground bombardment coverage about a third of the time. The uBakai are starting to close in with mobile troops whenever there’s no one in a firing position. For now they’re okay but that Limey battalion is going to run short of ammunition if things heat up much.”
“Ammunition? Don’t they have their fabricators with them?”
“No, sir. The cohort’s fabricator platoon never got down to planet surface. It was going to come down the needle with its gear but was still onboard HMS Furious when the uBakai attack came. That’s the British transport that got nailed.”
“Aren’t there backup British fabricators in the fleet train?”
“There were, sir. They were aboard FS Mistral, the French auxiliary vessel we lost.”
That was a problem, but Sam didn’t see it as insurmountable. He’d spent enough years in the fabricator business to understand their versatility.
“The other two cohorts down there have their own fabricators, right? There’s nothing the Brits need they can’t fabricate for them.”
“Not quite, sir. Seems like no one has the software code to load the output specifications for the British munitions into the US or Indian fabricators. The British cohort HQ has the specs in their tactical data base. They just can’t get the other cohort fabricators to accept it. I talked to the task force N-4 and he says they’re trying to get the go-codes from home by jump courier missile, but they’re still negotiating with the fabricator manufacturers.”
“Who’s that?” Sam asked, but was suddenly reluctant to hear the answer.
“SubcontininenTech made the Indian fabricators, Dynamic Paradigms made the US ones.”
Of course, the company he worked for, squabbling over intellectual property while people’s lives were at stake.
“Okay, keep me apprised, Moe. Any deterioration on the ground, let me know right away.”
Moe raised his eyebrows slightly in surprise, but nodded. Of course he was surprised. Why would a destroyer captain in orbit be this interested in whether or not fabricators were working on the ground?
“Remember, I worked for Dynamic Paradigms until I got activated,” Sam explained. “Professional curiosity.”
It wasn’t the truth, or at least not the entire truth, the important truth, but it satisfied Moe, and for now that was all that mattered. Still, this new wrinkle was one more thing for him to worry about, one more tough call he might have to make fairly soon.
In his seven years at Dynamic Paradigms, he’d done a variety of jobs, but most of his time was spent in the Product Support Division, making sure installed fabricators worked as advertised. Sometimes all the different interfaces got scrambled, the processor locked up, and you had to just reset everything. Even when power was pulled from the unit, even when there was no available interface, the e-synaptic core of the processor was still alive, still barely powered by waste heat generators, waiting for the master cheat code which would reopen the system and let technicians reprogram it.
The code was all but unbreakable, a precise series of signals of different intensities, durations, and at different radio frequencies. But a handful of product support supervisors knew the code, and Sam had eventually been one of them. He knew the code which would unlock the Dynamic Paradigms fabricators in the US Marine cohort’s support platoon and let it accept the production instructions for the British munitions.
The problem was those codes were among the most closely guarded corporate proprietary secrets Dynamic Paradigms had. He had signed more non-disclosure agreements than he could remember. In addition, each code shared with an employee contained one signal sequence which was unique to that employee, so any use of it was immediately traceable. If he revealed that code now he was never going back to his old job, or any other job for any fabricator firm, or any corporate position anywhere that involved access to proprietary information. He would make himself unemployable, permanently, and in a pretty lousy job market to boot.
But his old company still might come through, do the right thing, and turn over the cheat codes. If not …well, no point in dwelling on that now.
September 17, 2017
Chain of Command – Snippet 35
Chain of Command – Snippet 35
Chapter Eighteen
26 December 2133 (one hour later) (fifth day in K’tok orbit)
The forty-eight hours following the uBakai attack had been filled with frantic work, first trying to recover survivors from the two disabled destroyers, then making the surviving ships fully operational, and finally trying to find answers.
The big questions were simple. What was wrong with their missiles? How had the uBakai reached out and killed six of their starships? How could they execute their mission with the forces and resources they had left? The smaller, softer question, the one hardly anyone asked out loud, was much more complicated: what were they doing here?
Sam had no answers to any of those questions, even after the briefing from Atwater-Jones. If he would find them anywhere, he thought it would be in the boat and from the crew, not sitting in solitude in his cabin trying to think deep thoughts.
Third Principle of Naval Leadership: Know your subordinates and look out for their welfare.
He was about to set out on a tour through the boat, just to show his face and talk to some of the crew on duty, when his comlink vibrated.
“Captain, here.”
Sir? It’s Lieutenant Filipenko. I think we may have something you should see.
“Something good, I hope. Where are you?”
Port missile room, sir, and yes, it’s good.
Ten minutes later Sam pulled himself through the hatch to the missile room and Lieutenant Filipenko held out her hand to him with two small, shiny metal pieces in it. Sam took them and examined them closely. They appeared to be a single light-weight metal part broken in half, and the broken area on each half was dramatically deformed, almost as if they had melted, but the break was sharp, jagged in places. Whatever had done this had done it violently. He looked up and saw Chief Joyce Menzies by her workbench, watching him with interest. The bench had a partially disassembled missile clamped to its work area.
“Is this your work, Chief?”
“All of us, sir,” she said and glanced at Filipenko. “Me and the lieutenant here, and two of my missile monkeys: Warwick and Guerrero. And Machinist First Hasbrow back in engineering, who set up the horizontal compression machine. Oh, and Ensign Robinette ran the stress numbers for us.”
“Stress numbers, huh? Okay, what am I looking at here?”
“Sir, that’s why our de crisse missiles are all broke-dick-no-workee.”
Filipenko took over. “That is the angular brace for one of the rod aiming sub-assemblies out of that Block Four Fire Lance over on the workbench, sir. It’s why when our missiles detonated the laser beams went all over the place instead of at the target. We’ve got the diagrams up on a workstation over there.”
Sam glanced over and even from two yards away could see a diagram cluttered with parts and notations.
“Just tell me what it means.”
“BuOrd changed the layout of the rod aiming assembly not long before we shipped out,” Filipenko said, “and they re-fitted all our missiles. There were problems in the tests and this was supposed to fix them.”
“Let me guess: it didn’t.”
“It might have, sir, but it made a different one. They moved the angle of these braces and apparently forgot they were only rated to take the stress of the acceleration in their original position, which was perpendicular to the acceleration vector when the missile was fired. They moved the brace about twenty-five degrees off-angle and so when it goes through the firing acceleration, it sheers in half. Then the rods just sort of rattle around up there when the laser pointer tries to align them.”
Sam looked at the metal parts again, looked at the distortion around the break lines, how the metal had changed color…
“You broke this under pressure in the machine shop? How much force does this part have to take, anyway?”
“A little over twenty thousand gees, sir,” Menzies answered.
“Twenty thousand? Are you serious?”
Menzies shrugged. “Zero to twenty-one thousand kilometers an hour in less than a tenth of a second–the math’s pretty simple, sir.”
The part seemed warmer somehow, just from Sam thinking about that sort of acceleration force.
“Okay, what can you do about it?”
Filipenko looked at Menzies and the chief answered. “We’re still looking over these assembly diagrams and the earlier test results. See, we can’t just back-build everything the way it was before, ’cause the tests say they weren’t hitting right most of the time.”
“Re-machine the part to take the strain?” Sam asked.
“Maybe we can manage that, sir. Engineering’s got a pretty good precision-tolerance fabricator. The problem might be weight and space. There are thirty of these de câlice de crisse things in each warhead. Heavier part might be a little bigger, and that could be tricky. A little more weight could mean it’s going to be slower coming out of the pipe, shave maybe a couple hundred klicks an hour off its launch velocity.” She shrugged again.
“I don’t care. Give me missiles that kill, Menzies. If we have to get in closer to launch them, we’ll figure out a way to do it.”
Sam handed the broken pieces back to Filipenko. “Filipenko, Menzies, well done. Let’s get the word out to the rest of the squadron so we can all work on a solution, but my money’s still on you guys coming up with the fix we’ll use. You go ahead and set up the tight beam and do the honors.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and it was the first time he could remember her saying that with enthusiasm and some pride.
Now that was some good news, and Sam felt his mood lift a little as he headed back forward to officer’s country. One problem down and it wasn’t much past breakfast. Maybe he could line his other problems up and knock them over in just as orderly a fashion.
*****
Vice-Captain Takaar Nuvaash, Speaker for the Enemy, looked at the admiral floating behind the workstation, the admiral he knew to be complicit in the murder of a planetary governor and part of a conspiracy which had launched a war which had already cost hundreds of lives, perhaps thousands when the casualties from the ground combat and the attack at Bronstein’s World were added in.
“Nuvaash, how badly did we damage the enemy?” Admiral e-Lapeela demanded.
Nuvaash closed his eyes for a moment to suppress his warring emotions and order his thoughts.
“Less than we anticipated, but we still materially reduced the capabilities of the enemy squadron. It also revealed a critical weakness: the missiles fired by the Human destroyers failed to hit, without exception, even though several of them evaded our point defense weapons and detonated.”
It was a very good thing–Nuvaash thought but did not say–that they failed to accurately target the uBakai ships. The position of the distant picket destroyers guaranteed that two of them had excellent shots at the fleet as it overshot K’Tok’s north pole, and a low orbit destroyer had also managed to launch its missiles well before Nuvaash would have thought possible. The destroyers’ missiles had proven unexpectedly difficult to destroy.
“That last destroyer we killed seriously damaged our ship and two others,” the admiral said. “Their missiles did not do that. Their point defense lasers did. Why did we not know they had this lethal close-in offensive capability?”
He seemed more distant than he had in the past, as if preoccupied with a different problem.
“The destroyer did not display any new or unknown capability,” Nuvaash said. “Its captain simply used its close defense weapons in a novel manner, as offensive weapons. None of our simulations predicted this because the tactic was suicidal, as was demonstrated by the destruction of the craft.”
That much was true, but he looked away from the admiral. He should have anticipated something like this.
“Humans do not put the same value on life as we do,” the admiral said, “not even their own. A Speaker for the Enemy should understand this.”
“The admiral is correct.”
e-Lapeela gestured dismissively and for a moment returned his attention to his desktop.
The truth was, Nuvaash had never noticed Humans to be any less attached to life than were Varoki. But what in a Varoki would be seen as an act of courage and self-sacrifice was, in a Human, always judged differently by e-Lapeela and others like him, including the new governor of K’tok.
Nuvaash had spent many months with Human staffs when serving on combined fleet exercises. Humans displayed a barely contained nervous energy, like a powerful caged animal, which he had never seen completely unleashed except perhaps in some of their appallingly violent athletic contests. In contrast they possessed enormous capacity for beauty, surrounded themselves with it to the point that it became invisible to them. Nuvaash remembered riding in the lift of a tall office building on Earth and in the lift hearing the most hauntingly beautiful music he could ever remember, music so sweet and melancholy it had nearly reduced him to tears, while the Humans ignored it, or in some cases hummed along. Most of them could whistle or sing, could do so beautifully, and simply took the gift for granted. Didn’t they see what they had?
Nuvaash partly understood e-Lapeela’s aversion to Humans, at least the part based on fear and envy. He felt its tug as well, more strongly of late, But if he let himself become slave to those base instincts, what was to become of him?
“How can a close defense laser do the sort of damage we experienced?” the admiral said, pulling Nuvaash’s thoughts back to the cruiser and the present.
“It was designed in response to the new armored nose caps we began deploying on missiles two years ago, Admiral. It has a diameter of ten meters and a virtual focal array of twenty, which is why the mounts are so clearly visible on the exterior of their destroyers. Some of their cruisers have been refitted with them as well. They emit in the ultra-violet part of the spectrum and the combination of short wavelength and very large focal array gives them considerable power at range.
The Spark – Snippet 22
The Spark – Snippet 22
CHAPTER 8: The Boat
It’d been a short day up the Road and into the Waste, the same place I’d taken Guntram the first time we’d gone out. Today, though, I figured he’d had enough experience to go out alone with his hedgehog. Worst case, Buck and I could find him if he didn’t wander far. Anyway I hoped we could.
There wasn’t any need. I won’t say, “I shouldn’t have worried,” because nothing’s certain till it’s happened, but Guntram came back in a couple minutes as pleased as punch, his hedgehog wriggling its nose and him waving the artifact he’d found. It was flat and about as big as my thumbnail.
On the way back to Beune we probed the piece and talked. Guntram chattered like I’d never heard him before. I realized that in sixty-odd years working with things that had survived from the Ancients, this was the first time he’d collected one himself.
“Mostly what’s brought in to Dun Add comes from professional prospectors,” Guntram said. “And generally from quite a distance away. Of course we are quite a distance away now.”
“From Dun Add we are,” I said. I was a lifetime away from Dun Add, though Guntram could be back there in a few weeks. I’d say “back where he belonged,” but in truth he seemed fine on Beune and Beune was sure fine with him.
We stepped off the Road. The chip Guntram found didn’t seem much, but we’d take a good look at it this evening. For now I was thinking about bacon and biscuits, washed down with some of Sandoz’ good ale.
The first thing I noticed in the afternoon sunshine was the boat. The second thing was that there was about fifty people around it. I hadn’t seen as many of my neighbors all together since the boat landed when I was fourteen.
Gervaise’ two oldest saw me and Guntram before anybody else did. They started calling, “Pal! Pal! They need you here to fix the boat!”
I turned toward the crowd. Guntram came along with me. We exchanged glances but there wasn’t much to talk about.
Buck doesn’t like crowds. When he whined, I patted him on the ribs and said, “Go on home, boy. Go home!”
Not everybody around the boat knew me, but enough folks did that they cleared a path for me and Guntram up to the front. I said to him, “I guess you’d better handle this, sir.”
“No, Pal,” Guntram said. “I’m a stranger here and I don’t know how long I’ll be staying. I’ll watch you, if you please.”
He smiled–sort of–and added, “You can think of it as a further test, if you like.”
I thought about ways to argue, but I wasn’t going to. Guntram was my guest and he’d expressed his preference clearly. What I’d prefer–letting somebody else handle the business–didn’t matter.
“Sir!” said Gervaise at the front near the boat’s open hatch. “Sir! This is Pal, our Maker!”
The fellow he was talking to had a beaked cap so I figured he was the boatman. He wasn’t near as tall as me, but he was close-coupled and we were about of a weight. He was in his thirties, with red-brown hair and a short beard that was darker brown.
He looked angry and frustrated, which I could understand, but that didn’t justify him looking at me and snarling, “What the hell is this? I need a real Maker, not some hick kid!”
I thought of Easton baiting me; and I thought of my last sight of Easton. I smiled at the boatman and said, “If you weren’t completely ignorant of what a real Maker is, you wouldn’t need one, would you? Why don’t you explain the problem and let me take a look at things. Though if you’d rather bluster like a fool, you’re welcome to do so while I go home and get outside a mug of ale.”
A woman stood in the doorway behind the boatman. She wore a purple dress with puffed sleeves and lots of gilt embroidery around the cuffs and the high waist. In a voice as sneering as her expression she snapped, “Baga! We’re in the Marches, so all we’re going to find is hicks. Since you can’t fix the problem, we’ll see if this fellow can at least get us to somewhere that we can find proper help.”
From the woman’s tone, I was willing to bet that at least some of Baga’s frustration came from being close quarters with her when things were going wrong. I felt a flash of sympathy, which I hadn’t felt for him earlier.
“Baga, get out of the way and let me see him,” the woman said. When the boatman hopped aside, she glared at me and said, “Step closer so that I can get a proper look at you.”
I was about five feet away, as close as I liked to be. She was standing on the boat’s floor, three steps up, so she’d have been looking right down at me if I did like she said. Looking right down her nose, in fact.
“Ma’am,” I said. “My name’s Pal. Coming on like a great lady doesn’t seem to have scared your boat into working right, and I don’t think it’s going to help with me either. Now, if you want to act like a proper person, we’ll see what we can do for you.”
In Dun Add I’d been bossed around by people who gave me little thought and no courtesy. I’d been uncomfortable from the moment I arrived, and their contempt made me feel lower than a snake.
This woman in the boat was more of the same, only here we were on Beune and I was home. I had my neighbors to back me, but I didn’t need backing against a lone woman.
She flared her nostrils at my words. Her nose was long and already bigger than fitted in her pinched face, so that didn’t help her looks. She wasn’t but a little older than me, I guess, but being so sour added twenty years to what I’d thought at first glance.
Now she swallowed whatever was going through her mind. “Master Pal,” she said, “I am Lady Frances of Holheim. If you’ll come aboard this boat, we can discuss your offer of assistance more easily.”
I looked over my shoulder. “Guntram?” I said.
“You appear to have matters under control,” Guntram said. “I’ll look around the outside to see if anything strikes me.”
“All right, Lady,” I said, walking forward. She backed inside ahead of me.
Baga came last and closed the hatch. I hadn’t been expecting that, but after the first little twinge it didn’t matter. I guessed I could handle Baga without the weapon in my pocket–but it was in my pocket.
I’d never been in a boat before. It was like all the best days of my life rolled into one.
We’ve found a lot of artifacts from the Ancients, and more–more than I could even hope to guess–must still be lying in the Waste, waiting to drift to a node or to be pulled out by those of us who look for them. All are in bits and pieces, parts of what they were in the time of the Ancients.
Boats are complete. Oh, they’re worn and they don’t work like they ought to, but they’re at least the bones of what the Ancients meant them to be. I’d always wanted to examine one, and now I wasn’t just being allowed, I was being asked to do just that.
Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 13
Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 13
Chapter 13.
“Holly? You need to go to sleep!” Mr. Owen said, looking in and seeing her sitting at her computer.
Holly sighed, tried to smile and failed. “I can’t sleep, Dad . . . Silvertail.” The confusion that had made her change the name she used threatened to overwhelm her. Sometimes I almost forget being Steve Russ, and that terrifies me beyond words.
He sat down in one of the other chairs, pushing back the graying black hair that needed a trim. “But you do need sleep, Holly. Big day tomorrow.”
“Why do you think I can’t sleep, Silvertail? I know what tomorrow is. Tomorrow school starts. Tomorrow I’m a fourteen-year-old girl in her first day of high school, trying to look perfectly normal while I secretly scope out my classmates to figure out which of them is going to get thrown at a shoggoth or a dhole or whatever hideous thing our enemies bring out next.” She looked down, saw she had the armrests of her chair in a deathgrip.
His dark eyes showed lines of pain and sympathy. “Holly . . . Stephen . . . believe me when I say I understand.”
She was silent a moment, realizing the truth of that gentle reminder. “Yeah. Yeah, of course you do. You’ve done this so many times. How did you manage it, Silvertail? Because I’ve been around you long enough so I’m sure you’re not faking it; you care what happens to us.”
Silvertail’s human guise dropped its gaze to the floor. “How? By constantly reminding myself that if I do not, those exact children — and all they care for, all they are, all they could ever be — will be destroyed as well. The only way to save them . . . is to imperil them, much as I — as we — hate the very thought. I have done all I can in choosing you. All I can do is pray this was the right choice. But it never becomes easier, and I pray also that it never shall.”
His eyes came up and there was a clearer look in them. “But something else bothers you as well.”
He’s sharp as ever. Guess you have to be if most of the time you’re a white rat. “More than one. See, I called you Dad. Not the first time. But it’s gotten . . . more natural. I think of you that way, sometimes, when I’m really comfortable as Holly.”
“Ah. And that frightens you?”
“Hell yes!” she said, heard her own voice just a tiny bit too high, too nervous. “I’m starting to think like a teenage girl. Like I really am Holly Owen. Okay, sure, that’s great for our cover, I’m not, like, going to screw it up so easy now. But that’s not the real me, and I . . . I really don’t think it should’ve changed for me that fast. It’s that . . . template thing again, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so, Holly. All the previous Holy Auras were teenage girls, no more than your current apparent age. It is, in all truth, necessary that you become, at least to some extent, Holly Owen as the world will see you. I explained to you the symbolism that made choosing such a person, standing between childhood and adulthood, a vital part of the weapon that is the Apocalypse Maiden.”
“Yeah. You did. I’m just . . . scared. And scared like I was when I was little, not like when I was Steve.” She got up, walked to the bed, hesitated, turned around, sat down, got up. “See? I can’t even figure out where I want to be when I’m talking. Too nervous.”
“I wish –”
“I know. I know.” She closed her eyes, concentrated. Now to the hard part. “But there’s something else.”
Mr. Owen nodded. “I rather thought as much.”
“It’s about those other girls, what we’re going to do. Now I get it, we need all five Apocalypse Maidens to do the full job of kicking these monsters back where they came from and locking the door behind them. We have to find them, we have to awaken them, we have to work together. I got that. But I’ve been thinking . . . you remember what you told me about why you chose me after all this time?”
“How could I forget?” The front teeth flashed in the smile, reminding her of the incisors natural to a rat. “I was tired of choosing children for this job.”
“More than that. You were trying to do the right thing by not forcing this on a child. And you were right. But what that means is that we have to do the same thing here.”
“We can’t choose adult –”
“Right, right, I know, we went over that; the enchantment’s already engaged, it will have already found the four others, even if they’re not active yet. But what I mean is that you made a moral, an ethical choice, to not dump the leadership, the key of the whole world’s salvation, onto a girl who shouldn’t have to deal with it. So that makes it my duty — and yours — to try to keep the whole thing as ethical as we possibly can.”
The narrow gaze was as piercing as it had ever been from the beady eyes of a white rodent. “Yes . . .” Silvertail said slowly, “of course. But exactly what are you getting at?”
“I mean that maybe they’ll have to get it dumped on them in the middle of combat — I know the memes, believe me — but after that? We can’t drag a fourteen-year-old girl out into this and keep it secret from her family.”
“Lemuria’s Memory, Stephen! You cannot seriously mean –”
“I mean exactly that. How can we be doing the right thing if what we’re going to do is make children lie to their parents and sneak out to maybe get themselves killed — or come back broken in their heads? Sure, I’ll bet these Apocalypse Maidens are supposed to be strong and all, but half the people who were in the mall that day are probably gonna be in therapy for months or years; at least I had thirty-five years of life to help me deal with that fight. These kids aren’t going to have even half of that.”
“And what if their parents say no? Or try to have us arrested? Or shoot at us? Steve — Holly — your current culture is highly protective of your children, in some ways stultifyingly so. You know what sort of reaction any threat to children will create.”
She ran her fingers through her hair, realized she had better brush it again before going to bed, then shoved that trivial thought aside. “Yes. I know. But I know this is the only way I could do it.”
The form of Mr. Owen wavered, and suddenly Silvertail was sitting on the chair, staring at her with desperate concern. “You know we have no choice in this war, Holly. Even if they say no, we would have –”
“If they say no, it’s no.” Seeing the half-furious, half-panicked twitching of the whiskers, she forced a smile and went on. “But I think we have to assume there’s some way to convince them. After all, there really isn’t any going back, from what you said. The meme demands the super-team get formed, I just have to try to work it so our super-team has super-duper parental support. And between Holy Aura and you, Silvertail, we’ve got quite a lot of force of personality and evidence that we’re not crazy.”
The silver-white rat paused, tilting his head, seeming to contemplate. Then a tiny hop of assent. “You . . . make excellent points, Holly. Yes, the imperatives of the enchantment and our ultimate confrontation will tend to smooth our way through such mundane problems. But it will still not make the results certain. We still run a great risk.”
“But risk and sacrifice, that’s part of the power of the spell, right? And if the families are aware –”
A squeaking laugh. “Stephen Russ! For that is your mind at work, I will swear to it! Indeed, you are correct; if — and I emphasize if — we succeed in convincing these families to support us, it will symbolize a great deal of willing sacrifice and faith. All the Apocalypse Maidens will be stronger for that.” It was astonishing how the little furry face and body could manage to convey such a wide range of emotions; now Silvertail looked at her with a wry cynicism. “However, to achieve that will also require an astonishing amount of faith, possibly sacrifice, and most certainly luck.”
“But it’s the right thing to do.”
Silvertail took a breath so huge his sides visibly swelled, then sighed explosively. “Yes. Yes, Holly, Stephen, you are completely correct. I began this cycle with a determination to take a higher path; I can hardly fault you for insisting I hold to my course. I cringe at the thought of how much danger we may be placing our cause in, but I will not argue.”
With a flash, Mr. Owen reappeared. “And now, having convinced me of your correctness, can you please relax enough to go to bed? The last thing either of us need is for you to try your first day in school as Holly with half a night’s sleep.”
Holly felt a small loosening of the tension in her stomach. He agreed. I was right. Or I hope I am, anyway. “Yes . . . Dad, I’ll try.”
“Good. Then . . . good night, Holly.” He watched as she turned off the computer and got into bed, then switched off the light.
Holly rolled over, and tried to relax. I think I can, now. Her eyes were feeling heavy, and she drove out thoughts of the future. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Now that I know Silvertail’s supporting me . . . She smiled. This just might work after all!
September 14, 2017
Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 12
Princess Holy Aura – Chapter 12
Chapter 12.
The door opened. The shape that stood outlined in the faint light from the hallway was subtly wrong; something about the length of arm, joints, stance, said this was nothing that belonged in so mundane a place. But despite its alien nature, it hesitated, unsure.
“What news?”
The voice from within the room was a warm contralto. At first, a human might have found it welcoming. But beneath the voice was something else, as inhuman as the figure that waited in the doorway. “Come,” the voice said again, “speak.”
The creature in the doorway bobbed low, almost groveling on the floor before rising and stepping forward. Its features were stretched and hairless, with a crest that rose and fell like a fish’s fin, eyes huge and dark. Broad, clawed, webbed hands twitched nervously. “Bu’lekau is defeated. Its screams were heard and it speaks no more, and human responders are evacuating the building.”
“And do they speak of what destroyed a shoggoth?”
“A woman-child, of silver and light, so they say.”
“Tch.” The speaker arose, a figure nearly the color of the shadows surrounding her; a brilliant white smile, disconcerting in its brightness, flashed out. “Fear not, Arlaung. I had expected this failure.”
“I do not understand, Great Queen,” he said. “The powers move deeply on this world; a shoggoth of such power is far greater than any adversary the prior First Enemies have faced. I was . . . certain it would work.”
The Queen laughed; it was a sound that Arlaung found comforting, but a human would have heard cruelty and hunger. “You do not remember the other times, Arlaung. But there is a pattern, a way of these things. Surely, we attempt to change that pattern — and sometimes, we have succeeded — but it is by far its strongest in the beginning. As the others appear, their total power is greater . . . but so are their vulnerabilities. Our best chances of victory have always been when we took advantage not of simple combat, but the opportunities their weaknesses provided.”
She surveyed herself idly. “And this cycle may offer us some . . . most interesting opportunities.”
Without warning, a lurid purple-and-green glow emanated from farther within the room.
“Ah!” she said, and turned toward the light.
The luminance came from a strange, multifaceted stone within a box covered with alien runes in shapes that human eyes would have found difficult to observe without confusion or even maddening pain; for Arlaung and his Queen, the symbols were clean and clear and strong. “What does the Trapezohedron say, Great Queen?”
“It begins to clear, Arlaung. Soon it will be time for you to carry it.”
“Can I not be chosen? Let another carry it in the seeking, Great Queen! I would serve you well as one of the Cataclysm Knights!”
She shook her head, shadows moving like long tresses about her. “You must serve as you were made, Arlaung. The Knights must reflect the Princesses; you know this. You are no more human than I. Be the seeker of the Knights, guide them to me, and be content; for when Azathoth of the Nine Arms comes finally to this her throne, you shall be rewarded with the dominion of Y’ha-nthlei and rule the seas under her, and all your people will bow before you.”
Arlaung bowed again. “As you command, Great Queen. I merely wished –”
Another laugh. “Be not eager to take the field of battle, child of the depths. Better far to use humans — for their strength is nigh the equal of their folly, and far more easily bent to our needs.”
Her hand caressed the stone and it flickered like a candle for a moment. “We will gather the Knights, and through them find the weapons of this world that will defeat the Apocalypse Maidens.”
She straightened and looked up, past the ceiling to a limitless distance. “Yes, we have failed before, Arlaung. It is possible we will fail again. But numberless defeats mean nothing, for we will never die . . . and they need only fail once.”
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