Braxi-Azea - In Conquest Born Part 22

And then she stepped out.

In theory, the reception dock of the Conqueror was supposed to be kept free of debris, so that a visiting dignitary might be properly impressed by its gleaming emptiness. But her own transport was flanked by four fighters, ready and waiting to be sent off into battle. It was a flagrant violation of StarControl custom, but not of regulations. No, the rules said nothing about what might be kept here, only that the place must be spotless and impressive. And it certainly was that.

The presence of the fighters could be read as an insult: you are not important enough to justify extra work for us. But she thought it meant just the opposite; the crew had probably moved the fighters here just for her arrival. Was it a chal- lenge? She smiled to herself. From what she understood of the nature of the officers here, that would be typical.

With a slight nod to indicate her approval of the gesture, she strode down the ramp to meet her crew.

One of the subcommanders, probably her prime, came up to greet her.

"Welcome, Starcommander." Guarded, wary thoughts accompanied his ritual bow: I think there's no danger of this one being like all the others, "Zeine li Tenore, Prime Subcommander." This was her counterpart then, the man who would be responsible for fulfilling her duties when she was offshift or-Hasha forbid-incapacitated. A warship was a world in miniature, and the Starcommander was its governor. Other subcommanders might limit themselves to one or two aspects of war, but she and li Tenore were responsible for everything, from the deployment of troops in battle to the thousand and one little details of shipboard life that kept humans occupied when they weren't fighting.

Dark, violent thoughts clouded his foremind, but his hostility was not directed at her. It was like a reflection of her own hatred, directed toward Braxi.

We share a purpose, she thought.

He took her down the line of officers and introduced each one. Subcommanders of Security, Armaments, Astrogation, Engineering . . . their thoughts were all the same. Dark people, violent in outlook, with dreams that tasted of death; they must have appalled her predecessors. Now she could understand why the other Starcommanders had clung to the rulebook. It promised control in a world they didn't understand, on a ship peopled by aliens. The Azean mind was even- tempered, rational, congenial. These men and women, cast in a different mold, were warriors in the Braxin sense. One by one they had found their way to the Conqueror, had discovered others who shared their priorities, who were ruled by similar hatreds. No Starcommander would be allowed to threaten that.

At the end of the line a man stood apart, civilian in dress but for a band of rank- markings fastened about his arm: Tau en Shir, civilian medic. Torzha had rescued him from the soon-to-be-dead, when he planned to consummate his misery by opting for legal suicide. He had watched his bonded mate killed in a Braxin raid, not quickly and not pleasantly; the memory-and the hatred-was more than he could bear. But Torzha had talked him out of it. This is my weapon, she told him, indicating Anzha. This woman will bring the enemy to its knees. He was her private physician, whose only duty was to learn the alien intricacies of her body and mind and keep them sound, that she might attain her maximum potential.

Those eyes met hers, and the emotion that poured forth was like a blow across the face. Grief intermingled with hope, and a strange new sensation: loyalty. She savored that a moment before greeting him; it was something she had never experienced before, and she was not entirely comfortable with it. "My pleasure to serve you," he told her quietly. And he meant it.

"Your orders, Starcommander?" The thoughts of her second-in-command reeked of challenge. Shall we sit here for days of pointless ceremony, as custom would demand? Is that your will?

"Let's get underway," she said brusquely. "We have a War to fight." Approval rose from the minds surrounding her. "There's time enough for ceremony on the way."

They were hers-or they would be, soon enough.

She had come home at last.

Harkur: War is the fire that tempers men's souls.

Fourteen.

When the bulk of the fighting was done and the only vessels within sight were marked with the Holding's identicodes, First Sword Sezal allowed himself a moment in which to scan the surrounding Void directly. From his brain, in which the special implants rested, his senses rode outward-first to the band of contacts which nestled snugly about his head, then to the computer and its myriad scanners, and lastly, magnificently, into the Void itself.

He saw no stars; he was moving too fast, had left the tardionic universe with its finite visual display behind him. Yet the Void was not empty. Photons crossed the dark expanse, and though their patterns could not be interpreted by the human eye, the computer noted their existence and translated them into fleeting sensory images. Thus it was that he saw light where light could not exist, and tasted with his other senses all that the Void contained, rendered in familiar sensations.

Gases and dusts, the residue of a swordship's pa.s.sage . . . he tasted them, smelled them, reveled in their familiarity. Then he focused his attention on the composition of the residue and had his computer run an a.n.a.lysis. Yes, it was a trail-the trail he wanted, the one which he must follow to make his triumph complete.

He took a moment to transmit a victory message to the Sentira. Enemy offensive neutralized, he informed Commander Herek. Ten Azean swordships destroyed, three remaining. Pursuing. He brought the signal insync with the mothership's course vector and sent it off to the nearest relay. Now he needed to be well on his way before a response could reach him. Because Herek would respond, he knew that, and would order him back to the safety of the talon.

Therefore they needed to be out of sync with the Sentira's contact network before Herek had time to transmit his orders.

One last glance at his pilots: impatient but disciplined, their attack formation steady, they knew the rules of the game as well as he did and were anxious to be underway. Sezal nodded approvingly as he called up his computer's speculative matrix and had it run an array of possible courses for the fleeing Azeans. There, that one . . . he set up an intercept course and locked it into his ship's computer.

One, two, five pilots acknowledged locksync with him-they'd fly this one on automatic linkage-then the last of them and it was GO and they were accelerating- -out of sync with the relay system; was that Herek's signal coming in?

Sorry, Commander, but I received no orders.

FREE.

He breathed a sigh of relief as the slender swordships pa.s.sed through the Sentira's contact periphery, into the freedom of the superluminal night. Riding point on their formation, Sezal's ship gobbled up the residue of the enemy's pa.s.sage, digested it for content. Speed, course, defense . . . the pattern of exfuel discharge became a wealth of information, and Sezal adjusted his flight vector accordingly.

It appeared that the Azeans were not expecting prolonged pursuit. That was good; it would make them easier to catch. To be sure, only a fool would commit himself to a chase like this when his prey was in full retreat. There was too much danger of running into the Azean's contact net, of coming suddenly within the range of a mothership's fire. That was a nightmare which plagued the best of pilots, and a reality which all too often claimed the lives of the unwary; it was with good reason that the Azeans expected a safe ride home. But their very certainty made them vulnerable, and Sezal was not one to let such an opportunity slip by.

"Estimated time to scanner contact, three six oh and counting." That was if he had figured the intercept properly, if the Azeans had kept to their course, if they did not reach their home ship first-don't think of that!-a blessed lot of ifs, but Sezal was reasonably confident. The computer called time for him, relayed the countdown to his pilots. Acceleration, just so; a strain on his compensatory systems, but not too much to handle. Then slow, to the speed of the enemy ships (antic.i.p.ated speed, he corrected) which should be in range now- "Got them!" His pilots peeled out of formation with the competence born of endless practice; twelve against three should mean a quick clean-up, if luck didn't turn against them. There is always that factor, he reminded himself, as he locked onto the nearest target. Three Azeans had come within range of his scanners-no more. Sezal breathed a sigh of relief. No reinforcements yet, and if they moved quickly enough, none would come. The faster they worked, then, the safer they would be.

His men were dividing into a.s.sault teams, one for each of the Azean fugitives.

Sezal took his position among the nearest swordships, making it five against one.

Good odds. They began to lay down a pattern of random fire; computer- synchronized, it defied a.n.a.lysis, hence could not be antic.i.p.ated. Since a swordship was vulnerable in the moment it fired, such randomness a.s.sured their safety. The first Azean must outrun its opponents or die-and it could not do the former, their containment formation saw to that.

With grim satisfaction Sezal watched as the other swordships in his group fired upon their prey, and he added his own energy to the barrage. The enemy's outer forcefield deflected what it could, began to absorb the rest . . . and exploded at last in a star of brilliance as its defense generator, overloaded, succ.u.mbed to the sheer force of the attack.

One down. No damages. Time elapsed . . . not good. Sezal tapped up his speculative matrix, a.s.signed it to the problem of the enemy mothership.Where is it likely to be- what is our chance of contact? It answered with an array of probable courses, based on previous scout reports, fleshed out by mechanical reasoning, and a gross estimate of the odds of immediate interception.

Twelve percent.

Not good. Not good at all. Sezal considered turning back, decided against it.

They hadn't come this far to give it up now . . . but a two-digit risk factor was bad news. Quickly, he reviewed his pilots' positions and was startled to find that the third group had lost control of its prey. Apparently the Azean's point ship had also proven more dangerous than antic.i.p.ated; two of Sezal's swordships had been damaged and a third had withdrawn, its defense field disabled. But how-?

Then the warrior's answer: it doesn't matter. Anyone who dares an attack risks a moment's vulnerability; that was part of the game of war, whose rules they all understood. Good strategy would help make you safe, good timing was invalu- able, but there was always luck-and the third Azean seemed to be turning theirs against them.

Fourteen percent. He tried not to think about it. Across past the second team- their victim was weakening, would not last much longer-on to the third group and its elusive prey. The Azean seemed to be turning back. Was that possible?

Yes, to help its remaining companion. Hopeless!

Or was it? Sezal tapped up the Azean's course figures, frowned, tried again. This couldn't be right. Physics was physics; there were simple limits to how fast a swordship could decelerate, how tight a turn it could manage . . . and the Azean was defying them all.

With a growing chill in the pit of his stomach Sezal sent a warning to his second team. Too late; the Azean fired, hit one of his men even as the swordship's outer field dropped. Bless it! Clean shot across the fireports, disabling the pilot's of- fense. Sezal ordered him out of the way; too many swordships in that small an area was asking for trouble with crossfire. Ten against two was still good enough to guarantee Braxin victory-wasn't it?

He discovered he was no longer certain.

He locked himself onto the renegade's tail, made no attempt to a.n.a.lyze its movement, just followed it. Its movements were careful, precise . . . and patently impossible. Sezal's men could not seem to land a shot on it. They fired, but it was gone, had moved, had decelerated-something- and their carefully focused energy sped off into the Void, wasted. Sezal tailed it, watched it battle his swordships in a desperate attempt to reach its companion vessel, did nothing until he felt, with a warrior's certain instinct, that the moment for action was now and he fired and the heavens were immersed in white, the Void a field of incandescent splendor as his scanners fused, their housing struck dead on. For a moment he was blinded as the implants seared his inner vision-but then he had control again, of the ship and of himself, and by the time his senses cleared he had managed to put some distance between himself and the enemy.

Bless the luck! He quickly a.s.sessed his damages: all scanners out, internal systems at fifty percent efficiency . . . the com network was still functioning, though, and his defense fields were intact. It could have been worse, he told himself. With a few seconds' work he was able to lock into another swordship's field display, so that he might have the illusion of scanner efficiency. But it was not precise enough for him to rejoin the battle; the temporal distortion was too crippling.

How in Ar's name had the Azean managed to hit him like that?

Contact risk up to sixteen percent; they were running out of time. He watched as the third Azean dodged the best efforts of his men, even struck one of the Braxin swordships in the moment it opened fire. Bless it! They weren't going to get this one, that was clear, not without a detailed a.n.a.lysis of just what was going on inside that shipsh.e.l.l.

But as for the second Azean . . . that was a different matter. Already its defenses were weakening, and even as Sezal watched, the crucial shot was fired. Straight into the generator housing. The forcefield folded, imploded, and shattered its shipsh.e.l.l into a glorious shower of tachyonic atoms. Two down.

Now they could focus all their energies on the third ship.

But even as Sezal planned his attack, the last Azean pulled out of range, and with a burst of what must have been painful acceleration took off toward its starship. Nineteen percent chance of mothership contact if they followed, the computer said, and that would grow worse with each pa.s.sing moment, If they could follow him at all; Sezal was beginning to have his doubts When given the choice he preferred to fight-but only an idiot would commit himself to a chase like this without some knowledge of the enemy. This last Azean ship seemed to be functioning in defiance of Heyer's Ratio, and that was not a possibility that could be explored in the heat of battle. Sezal needed a complete a.n.a.lysis of the vessel's movement, a composite scannerlog and all the stats that went with it. And that could only be compiled back on the Sentira.

Regretfully-but not without haste-he ordered his pilots toward home.

Talon-Commander Herek was an impressive man, possessed of a restless energy that often overflowed the bounds of his discipline. In shape and coloring he was a curious admixture of human traits, as though each one of the Scattered Races, having the opportunity to add something to his genetic background, had chosen its single most evident trait to mark his appearance. Thus his height- typically Aldousan- was supported by the hard, clean lines of a Vrittan physique, and the narrow features of his part-Laissan countenance were streaked irregularly with tan and brown, in the manner of the Tukolt veldtlanders.

An impressive man, and a dangerous one. His pacing consumed the length of the room in seven long strides, from the wall of monitor screens to the computer console which controlled both starmap display and library access. He was silent, pensive (musing over Sezal's report, no doubt) and since his next words were likely to be those of condemnation, Sezal was not anxious to encourage him.

"You took out eleven, am I correct?" he said at last. "And their attack was neutralized. Excellent. Damage?"

Startled, Sezal offered, "Minimal." This wasn't like the Commander. Was he so preoccupied with other matters that he'd forgotten his usual opening-namely, criticism of Sezal's tendency to leave the Sentira's contact network? "Swordships One, Four, Seven, Twelve, and Twenty are undergoing systems review now; damage appears to be localized in all cases."

As he heard Sezal say One, Herek stopped his pacing. He looked at the First Sword, forked eyebrow raised in surprise. Not like you to be hit, he seemed to be saying. Sezal flushed.

"Tell me about the Azean," Herek urged.

Sezal described the third ship's unusual capacity-in acceleration, in maneuverability, and in aggressive timing. It was the last which disturbed him most, for although no machine could predict with any certainty when an enemy would be vulnerable, the Azean had seemed to know when such moments would come, in time to take advantage of them.

The Commander nodded as he listened, his expression dark. "Let's get a composite on it," he said at last. And he turned to the computer, which could combine the scannerlogs of the Sentira's fighters into a single image. With a practiced touch he brought its display to life.

Stars: invisible during battle, now added to the display by the Sentira's computer. They moved slowly, fluidly, as the viewer's point of reference sped between them. Now the fighter was taking form in the darkness, gaining solidity and definition as log after log was added to the composite file. At last it was whole, and Sezal had the opportunity to study it.

It was different. One could see that immediately. Changes had been made in the generator housing, and the structure of the fireports had clearly been altered.

Other differences, less obvious to the human eye, were being outlined via statistics at the side of the display. Changes in shipsh.e.l.l structure, realignment of the primary drive . . . the list scrolled up before them, first the adjustments which were certain and then those which were merely probable, accompanied by speculative figures.

"Heyer gave us the optimum balance for high-speed Voidflight nearly ten thousand years ago," Herek said quietly. His thoughts echoed Sezal's own: if the famous Ratio could be improved upon, why had it taken this long to do so? "Over the years, we've pared our swordships down to ma.s.s-minimum. A pilot has only his shipsh.e.l.l and weapons and the equipment necessary to move them. There's nothing on board that isn't absolutely essential, either for flight or survival.

Nothing! So where have they made the adjustment? Or have they found a way around Meyer's Ratio altogether-discovered another variable, perhaps, which can be entered into the central equations? I don't like it. I don't like it at all."

Sezal nodded agreement. Better maneuverability required more gravitic compensation, which required in turn a larger generator, which added to a ship's basema.s.s and thus limited maneuverability . . . the optimum balance for all those elements had been known for centuries. If there was any room for improvement in Meyer's equations, either Braxi or Azea would have discovered it long ago.

Wouldn't they?

"I want a full a.n.a.lysis," Herek was saying. "Speculative as well as deductive.

Run this swordship's behavior through an open matrix and see what the computer comes up with. Omit no possibility. We'll a.s.sume for the moment that the Ratio still stands," he added, "and that the Azeans have discarded some part of the internal package. Take a swordship apart piece by piece, if you have to, until you find some combination of items whose ma.s.s would account for the change we see here."

"Understood, Commander."

"Now: on to other matters." A pause; Sezal could feel the tension in him, noted the care with which he chose his words. "We're to have a visitor," he said at last.

He caught Sezal's eyes and held them; as always, the alienness of Herek's features made his gaze twice as riveting. "A Lord Commander."

It took Sezal a moment to recall the t.i.tle. "A Braxana?"

"Purebred. With the right to enter the fleet at will, at the head of any talon. My talon, in this case." His voice was bitter, controlled. "No accident, that a.s.signment. It was by his own request. The Sentira will be his warship, and the talon it controls will belong to him. As will its swordships."

The thought of serving a Braxana awakened emotions in Sezal in strange, unfamiliar combination. Resentment, foreboding, these he could understand- but fear was there also, accompanied by a terrible kind of awe. A Braxana-here?

"What does he want?"

"Who knows? Amus.e.m.e.nt, perhaps. Conquest. Authority. What do they ever want? The law which makes such things possible doesn't question a man's motives, only permits the act."

Sezal could hear the indignation in this Commander's voice, and he sympathized with it. According to tradition, a Braxana purebred Lord was ent.i.tled to enter the fleet as one of its highest ranking officers. As Lord Commander, he could move onto any ship he chose and take command of it, as well as directing those warships which were a.s.signed to the same talon. No more earned rank among the talon's commanders; race would dominate experience, the black hair of the Central Tribe commanding higher t.i.tle than a lifetime of expertise.

Usually the Braxana gravitated toward the lesser fronts- K'vai, the Bengesh stretch-in hopes of earning their glory with minimal risk and not much effort.

Often they even chose other wars; battles of expansion and the conquest of new cultures offered far more gratification to the Braxana mindset than the difficult and often unrewarding conflict with Azea. Never did they move into the center of the Active War Zone. Never did they place their inexperience at the head of a high-risk talon, or unseat a commander whose expertise was renowned throughout the Holding. Until now.

"He'll be taking your place?" Sezal asked. He was trying hard to control his emotions; it was dangerous to hate the Pale Ones. "For how long?"

"For as long as he wants." Herek's hands clenched, unclenched, silent witness to his anger. "And you understand, there must be no resistance. Not from you, not from your men. The Braxana reward defiance with death. And this one's a Kaim'era," he added bitterly. "So on top of all the rest of it, we have Whim Death to contend with."

"I thought military officers were immune-"

"No one is immune!-how could they be? This is the scepter with which our Holding is ruled, Sezal, and don't you forget it. The right to put anyone to death, for any reason, at any time."

He sighed. "Tell your men. Make it clear. There'll be resentment in the ranks, I know; how can we help that? But any sign of it-spoken, unspoken, it doesn't matter-can cause us to lose a pilot. We can't afford that. Make them understand.

If you can control your own anger, Sezal thought, which must be considerable, we can do no less. "As you command. When is this Braxana due?"

"A fleet transport will bring him to Y'maste, where we'll meet him; ten days from now, if all goes well. Ar!" His eyes, naturally narrow, were slits of anger.

"Only a Braxana could order us away from the Border for that long." The tone of his voice was unfamiliar to Sezal; was there fear in it, perhaps? "At any rate, it could be worse. He's a tactician; never set foot on a warship, but at least he knows the rules. If any rules hold, for his kind."

"Who is he?"

"Public name of Zatar, son of Vinir. And K'siva," he added, remembering the matronym. "Lord, Kaim'era, and now Commander. And we will all be on our best behavior while he's here, at all times. The Braxana have ways of knowing what goes on, even in private. As for your pilots, I myself have indulged their idosyncracies, but to expect the same of him might be tantamount to suicide.

They must understand that."

"I agree," Sezal said tightly.

"He'll leave us eventually. Then things will return to normal-if we survive the period of his command.We can't afford mistakes."

Sezal wondered which of them the Talon-Commander was trying to convince.

"Of course," he answered simply. "I understand."

He would do what he could, but would it do any good? Who could say why this Kaim'era was coming in the first place? Who could say what his intentions were, in invading their ordered domain? All guesses were futile, as always; when it came to motivations, the Braxana were a mystery.

"I'll see that my men are prepared," he promised.