Guardsmen of Tomorrow Read online

Needless to say, the field was deployed slowly. As usual, as the nausea twisted in his stomach, Hazzard wondered if the jackrack crews were going to have to clean up his inert body.

  The Indy had emerged with the same velocity she’d carried upon entering highspace, a fraction of a percent below light speed itself. At Hazzard’s command, sails unfurled, snapping into place, shimmering with the field effect distortions twisting time and space. The sensory feedscape showed the universe turned strange, with all of the sky compressed into a cold ring of light ahead of the ship as she plunged forward into darkness. As always, the computers handling sensory input corrected the image, eliminating the visual distortion effects of near-c travel.

  Now, with a saner sky, an orange beacon glowed dead ahead. Here, light-centuries above the Galactic Plane, the Galaxy was a vast pinwheel of pale, pale silver-white light viewed not quite edge-on. The result was a sky divided in twain, to one side a vast, softly glowing wall of stars spread out in a distinctly spiral panorama, the Galactic Core in the far distance, swollen and gold-hued, a fuzz of myriad suns rising above the dark blots and smears of nebulae; opposite, the sky was empty, save for the scattered, solitary stars here at the Verge… and the inconceivably distant smudges of radiance representing other galaxies adrift on the Ocean of Ultimate Night.

  Closer, much closer at hand, an orange sun glowed cool and ancient, and worlds shone in darkness. Kaden was the second world of four, tucked in close enough to the K4 primary that it enjoyed cool but not frigid climes along its equator.

  Indeterminacy had emerged nearly half a light-hour from Kaden. Dumping velocity in space-twisting torrents of bleed-off energy, the frigate dropped toward the orange-lit world, six hundred million kilometers distant.

  Through the magnification of the sensory inputs, ice caps gleamed in the orange light, together encompassing nearly half of the world’s rugged surface. Hazzard opened a display showing a computer-generated image of the world, slowly rotating, as the actual planet swiftly grew from an isolated point of light to a tiny crescent, to a living world, a scimitar of white and silver and orange bowed away from its sun, with three small moons in attendance.

  Indy’s sensor arrays were also sampling the flood of electronic and laser signals crisscrossing the system, noting the time-lagged positions and vectors of spacecraft, identifying threats.

  Out-system, in the comet-haunted deeps two light-days out, were the four ships of the line of the Union show of force, led by the old seventy-five-gun Trimirage, keeping blockade station as they awaited the arrival of the Victor. Their field-distortion wakes, generated as they cruised close to c, were distinctly visible against the night as crisp, blue cones of light in line-ahead formation.

  Blockading a star system required careful timing and reliance on the physics of highspace. Clearly, it was impossible to englobe an entire planetary system in order to intercept vessels that might leave at any time, on any heading. By having a blockading squadron cruise back and forth at near-c velocities, however, the ships were able to drop into highspace with a few minutes’ warning and reappear within seconds anywhere in-system they needed to be. The problem, of course, was that the light informing the blockade that enemy units were in motion in-system took hours or days to reach the blockade station. That was why light-rates-frigates and lesser craft-were used in-system to provide early warning and to carry information out to the battle line at trans-c velocities. Even at usual planetary velocities, they could accelerate to c within an hour or so. Larger vessels, the big ships of the line, took a lot longer to reach near-c, and so were vulnerable to intercepts by the blockading squadron.

  There were numerous vessels in-system, close by Kaden itself. “I’ve got radio transmissions, Captain,” cy-Tomlin announced. “Military bands, VHP through UHF.” Hazzard could see the transmission point sources on his panorama. Four showed friendly IFF signatures, and the data tags beside each vessel identified them further as Decider, Swift, Fire Angel, and Ferocious. Close beside them were other targets, six of them, these showing red on Indeterminacy^ visual display. At Hazzard’s triggering thought, schematics of each vessel appeared to one side, together with lists of stats showing mass, acceleration, vector data, and range. The situation unfolding there was… make it twenty minutes old, now, as Indy closed with them. Thanks to the speed-of-light time lag, they were looking that far into the past, watching the maneuvers unfold with bewildering apparent speed. Fortunately, their absolute velocities were low enough that they didn’t appear to be moving anywhere fast.

  “Six hostiles, Captain,” Lieutenant Pardoe announced, as additional schematics drew themselves on the feedscape- ornate hulls, curved masts, triple gundecks set far back on the spine. “They look like P’aaseni. Two ships of the line… seventy-twos or seventy-fives, four frigates.”

  A fifth point transmission was closer, climbing out of the system, high above the plane of the ecliptic on a bear-ing straight for the out-system blockades, broadcasting on an emergency band. That would be little Uriel, accelerating clear of what obviously was a major squadron action. Four of her masts were missing, though, and her spread of sail was ragged, putting a sharp limit on her ability to hump Gs.

  Time passed, achingly slow. The battle ahead was unfolding slowly, the Union ships apparently trying to maneuver clear of incoming Orthodoxate ships. Subjective time crawled, while the universe outside Indy’s isolated space-time reference point seemed to race along. And it would take time-another forty minutes yet-to decelerate to battle speed.

  “Communication coming in from the Uriel, Captain,” cy-Tomlin said.

  “Let’s hear it, please.”

  “… attack by Orthodoxate ships. We are heavily outgunned, and planetside defense batteries on Kaden have opened fire, causing severe damage. Indeterminacy, please acknowledge.” There was a long pause. At this range, there could be no true conversation due to the speed of light time lag. The message would begin playing again in just a…

  “Indeterminacy, this is Uriel, Lieutenant Lasely in command. The in-system squadron has been trapped and is under attack. We were lured in close to Kaden by a request for real-time communications from the Kaden Military Council. It was a trap. Six Orthodoxate ships jumped in-system and attacked, just after we were taken under heavy fire from the planetary defense batteries.”

  As the message played itself through, Hazzard checked range, vector, and time lag.

  Uriel was eight light-minutes away, and sixteen had passed since their emergence from highspace. The sloop must have begun broadcasting as soon as they’d become aware of the Indy’s arrival.

  Uriel was clearly making for the line ships two light-days out but was still moving at only about half the speed of light. With the damage she’d suffered to her rigging, though, it would be another hour, at least, before she would be able to engage her trans-c drive and make the jump to the blockade point.

  Mentally, Hazzard engaged a side communications band, one linking him not with other men and women strung together in the shipnet, but to an ordinary radio in his physical quarters, deep in the bowels of the ship. “Cadlud? This is the captain. Are you there?”

  “I am here, zur.”

  “Ever hear of something called the Kaden Military Council?”

  “No, zur. It zounds… most un-Irdikad.”

  “It does to me, too. It also sounds like they’re making decisions for your world’s government.”

  “Kaden does not have a world government,” Cadlud reminded him. “Guidelines, zur, not rules.”

  “Thank you, Cadlud.” He broke the link.

  A cyberenhanced starlord, he thought, might have been able to tap directly into local communications and informational channels, might have accessed ocean-deep volumes of material on the current political situation on Kaden. He trusted, however, his own intuition, and the observations of his steward.

  Hazzard studied the tactical display spreading out before him against the visual field of his mind. The other four Union ships were closel
y engaged with the P’aaseni squadron half a million kilometers past the crescent of Kaden. An hour before Uriel could summon help from Tri-mirage and her consorts… a little less, possibly, if Indeterminacy began accelerating to c and made the jump to the blockade point herself. The Union in-system squadron was in serious trouble, though. Pounded by the P’aaseni heavies and by Anarchate planetary defense batteries, Fire Angel was a mass of fiercely radiating wreckage drifting down the walls of Kaden’s gravity well, and Decider appeared to be crippled. Ferocious and Swift were both still firing, but their life span could only be measured now in minutes, unless they were able to win clear.

  At the moment, Indeterminacy was moving at just under .9 c, and still slowing; at that velocity, twenty-five seconds of shipboard time translated as almost a minute in the outside universe, and so the battle appeared to be evolving at breakneck speed as the Union frigate plowed through the photons revealing the conflict ahead. Add to that the fact that thanks to c-lag, he was still seeing things as they had been, fourteen… no, make it thirteen minutes ago. He had to decide quickly…

  He shifted his attention to a global display of Kaden, with the locations of known planetary defense batteries plotted as gleaming yellow sparks scattered along the equator. As on most technic worlds throughout this sector of the galaxy, the locals had been beefing up their PDS against the possibility that they would be dragged into the spreading war between Union and Alliance. There. The eight or ten Planetary Defense System emplacements stretched along the Dalacradak Peninsula were likely the ones firing on the Union squadron.

  Hazzard was uncomfortably aware of his orders, specific to the point of anality, forbidding him from opening fire on any Kaden military facilities even in self-defense.

  Planetary defense batteries tended to be immense fortresses, buried, for the most part, under kilometers of bedrock, with only the surface turrets mounting the massive singularity cannon visible on the surface. A return bombardment from space, with the throw-mass possible for a frigate like Indeterminacy, might damage some of those batteries, but it wouldn’t knock them out… not before the Indy herself was smashed into blue-hot fragments.

  But there might be another way…

  Range to the battle was now eleven light-minutes. The light announcing Indy’s arrival in-system still hadn’t reached Kaden but would in another… make it ninety-five seconds. He reached out through the ship’s senses, trying to feel the accelerated flow of the situation, to guess what was actually happening now.

  “Captain?” Pardoe said, perhaps wondering if Hazzard had his mind on the situation at hand. “Shall I order more sail and a shift to acceleration, Captain?” Clearly, fleeing for the safety of the out-system station-and giving warning to the heavies-was where duty lay.

  Or…

  “Affirmative,” Hazzard snapped. “Have all hands prepare for hopskip.”

  “A microjump?… We’re not going to warn the squadron, sir?”

  “If we do, Bellemew and the inshore squadron are dead. Uriel can warn the fleet.

  And maybe we can make a difference down there.” Speaking quickly and with a calm he could not feel, Hazzard described what he was planning.

  Pardoe hesitated only a moment before giving a sharp-edged “Aye, sir.”

  “Let’s go to battle stations, if you please, Mr. Pardoe. We will be engaging within a few minutes.”

  Under the frantic urgings of rigging rats and spiders tele-operated by Indy’s c-men, jacked in from their racks deep within the ship’s hull, the frigate’s sails transfigured, top and’t‘gallant sails unfolding, sail surfaces turning from silver to black forward, and swinging on the yards to set the ship accelerating toward the battle, instead of slowing down.

  Minutes crawled as she built back her velocity, reaching toward the speed of light as her primary drive compounded the minute accelerations of photon flux and magnetic field into near-c jamming. Ahead, a fuzzy, hard-to-look-at sphere the color of the back of one’s eyelids began condensing out of empty space, the singularity created and focused by Indeterminacy‘^ fast-increasing relativistic mass. At velocities above

  .99 c, the singularity became a doorway for the ship into trans-c.

  “Indeterminacy ready for microtransition,” Ishiwara, the drive engineer, reported.

  “Strike the sails,” Hazzard ordered. “Stand by for transit!”

  The crescent of Kaden swelled rapidly ahead as the frigate’s sails collapsed and furled. By now, even with light’s snail-pace crawl, the P’aaseni squadron had noted the frigate’s initial arrival, and their ships were redeploying to intercept this new threat. They wouldn’t know yet, however, that the Indy was coming to meet them.

  “Helm, we’re feeding you transit course corrections.”

  “Aye, sir. Got ‘em.”

  “Sails furled,” Pardoe said. “Vessel ready in all respects for transit.”

  “Punch it!”

  Indeterminacy dropped into the singularity, in a sense swallowing herself whole. At the last moment, the helm used the singularity’s intense gravity to bend the frigate’s course slightly, adjusting her heading as she dropped into utter strangeness…

  … and reemerged, a fractional blink of an eye later.

  A scant light-minute ahead, huge in the magnified display, Kaden hung in orange, ice-capped splendor. Hazzard’s commands crackled through the shipnet. “Deploy full sail! All back! Ishi, dump V into the drive fields!…”

  Like the Victor at Tribaltren Station, the Indeterminacy was now barreling into the fray with far too much velocity. Much could be dumped as energy fed directly into the drive fields, expanding them across well over a hundred kilometers of empty space where it could actually be applied to braking the ship’s headlong plunge forward. Still, V could be translated into energy only so quickly. By the time they neared Kaden, they would still be moving too quickly to engage the enemy vessels.

  “Mr. Ishiwara,” Hazzard said. “I want you to stand by on the drive controls. We’re going to pop our fields out full as we round the planet.”

  “The fields are already extended all the way, Captain.” The larger the volume of Indeterminacy’s space-warping wake, the more velocity could be safely dumped.

  “I know. We’re going to pull an anchor drag.”

  He heard the pause, as loud as a shout, as the engineer digested this. “Sir…”

  “Do it. Planetary encounter in… twenty-eight seconds, now.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Hazzard took a last look at the Indy’s alignment with the fast-growing planet and the squadron battle ahead. This was going to be damned tight…

  “Strike all sails,” he ordered. “Smartly now! Helm… you’re on thrusters, now. Hang on to her! She’s going to buck!”

  Swiftly, as rats and spiders swarmed through the rigging, Indeterminacy’s spread of sails collapsed, folded, and vanished, furling into their storage lockers on mast and spar.

  “All hands below!” Hazzard ordered. He didn’t want to lose anyone with this maneuver… though that was a fairly forlorn hope. What he was trying to do was not exactly recommended in Yardley’s Book of C-Manship. “Set ship for close passage!”

  Constellations of points of light flowed down the rigging and masts, vanishing into Indy’s below-deck spaces. Slowly, now, the yards were folding, the masts telescoping down their own lengths, truncating themselves to reduce the possibility of crippling damage from tidal effects or-don’t think about the possibility!-drive field failure.

  There wasn’t time for a full close-passage deployment. They were going to take some damage here, in another few seconds. The question was… how much?

  As Indeterminacy had approached Kaden over the course of the past few minutes, the ship’s display computers had been steadily recalculating magnification factors and redisplaying the view forward. Hazzard noted with a small kick of surprise that the magnification factor was down to one, that the planet now filling his mental view ahead was as it really was outside the
all-too-thin walls of Indeterminacy’s hull. They were crossing the terminator now, swinging low across the white and orange curve of the world into day-side. He could sense the growing tug of gravity… though far, far too weak to capture the frigate at her current velocity of over ten percent of the speed of light itself.

  Ahead, close along the equator, just south of the mo-tionlessly sprawled swirl of a tropical storm, lay the ragged, mountainous thrust of the Dalacradak Peninsula, thrusting out from the eastern coast of Alekred and into the violet-blue, cloud-dappled reaches of the Zurkeded Ocean like a Valosian scimitar, straight at the hilt, wickedly curved at the tip, Cape Zhadurg. Goddess! He could see the big guns of the PDS firing up ahead, each discharge like a straight-line bolt of lightning stabbing into space from the wrinkled, snow-capped barrenness of the mountains as they smoothly rolled over the horizon and into view.

  “Captain?” It was cy-Tomlin, the bridge team’s Starlord-in-training. “We’re not supposed to fire on the Irdikads!” He sounded outraged. “Especially not their planet!”

  “As you were, Mid,” Pardoe said.

  “I’m not about to fire on them,” Hazzard explained gently. “I’m about to make a mistake…”

  “Sir?”

  Hazzard smiled to himself. Starlords might have all the advantages with their hardwired personal technology, but they were hampered, sometimes, by an almost desperate need to play by the rules.

  Rules that, sometimes, could be bent…

  “Altitude three hundred two kilometers,” the helmsman reported. “Now two fifty-five kilometers. One hundred eighty-one… One hundred seven…”

  “I can read the altitude data, Mr. Sotheby, thank you. Bring us up just a bit, plus zero-two.”

  Maneuvering thrusters, fueled by water from the ship’s forward tank, imparted a scant few kilos of thrust, amplified by the drives. Hazzard was completely focused now on the dance of numbers- Indeterminacy‘& heading, altitude, dwindling velocity…

  Ahead, almost below now, the big guns kept firing, hurling pinpoints of dazzling sunlight into the tangle of star-sailing vessels ahead. Decider had just taken several more hits, as microsingularities from both the planet and the P’aaseni smashed through drive barriers, sails, and hull with equal ease, savaging armor plate, splintering bulwarks, slashing through the deep-buried vitals of a dying ship.