Chapter 23: Basic Connections

She has learned to sleep with the quiet sounds of fluids and plasmas whispering in the hull around her.

And when she awakens, she thinks at first that it may be a subtle variation in the sound of the Zadar.

Clu lies in the darkness, looking at the ceiling, listening for a false note or alarm. She can hear the soft rush of the foldspace waveguide cycler, the cold plasma radiator crinkling and pinging in the distance.

The countdown timer at the edge of her vision suggests that they will not complete exit into the Palatine system for another fifteen hours. But finally she rolls out of bed and sits, head in her hands, allowing consciousness to seep back. Gradually, she realizes that the soft and omnipresent proximity sensor has added a discordant harmonic. She gestures up a visual representation and looks around. There is a faint spark below and ahead, very distant, no ID.

The Valeron is about a hundred thousand miles to the lower right ahead. The intruder is something over a half million miles out and barely detectable, even with the best resolution available to her Gamici-Laris broad-spectrum detector array. She looks up and behind to the right and sees the Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar about a quarter million miles away, emitting its standard transponder coding. She points at it.

"I hear you," it responds, slightly distorted over the foldcom.

"Do you see this?" she asks, packaging the image and sending it on.

"I'm not detecting it, but that's a weak signature."

"You think it's just passing traffic?" She is watching its trace, which has now elongated to suggest it will cross their path at about plus fifty thousand miles.

"I"m starting to see it now." A long pause. "That's a close intercept for crossing traffic. It's below, so we'd better set up to control the intercept. Go ahead and move forward and down. I'll stay up."

She nods, and now she is jazzing.

The hallway passes quickly and she is in the control room. Her system performs a quick negotiation with the front end control systems and the panels spring to life across the smooth metal surfaces.

"Should I unsheath the weapons?" she asks.

The response is fairly quick, and she can see the Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar starting to move on the other side of the Valeron.

"Yes, just in case," crackles over the audio channel. "It's probably nothing, but we wouldn't be here if they didn' have reason to be worried about raids. What's it been, three of the last five? Maybe we have to earn the deep money now? I'm contacting Valeron to let them know."

The sound of the Zadar becomes more feral as it moves up to speed.

"I understand," she replies. Warning signals light her boards as the safeties disengage.

The emission ahead is strengthening, and some possible identities are beginning to form like ghosts around it. But there are contradictions, and it might be anything from a singleton to a small cargo liner. She decides to move down to intercept the front of the Valeron's path.

I wanted to be in the militia, she thought. It should have been good training. I needed the money to pay for the FoldWeaver recharge. And the prospect of action wasn't... too frightening.

But... It happens in utter silence.The edge of her ship is enveloped in a blinding flash that quickly dies away into a vague fog of parts and gas as the vehicle tumbles away, shattered. Air roars out of the hull, tearing at her suit. The force of the blast spins the ship, and she faints with G-shock as the blaze of the explosion envelops her. The energy vaporizes parts of the seat and the control panel. It washes across her back as she is thrown forward against the restraints. In the distance, Haris Rennart is destroyed in the now indiscriminate missile barrage.

Her face feels suddenly cold. But her hands are moving like automation, setting up missile and energy targeting, preparing the countermeasures and point defenses for a forward engagement.

A moment later, the Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar lights up with a point defense signal. And another. Damage indicators spring up around its location. Then, as the systems begin to catch up, missile traces work backward from the damage, crossing at a barely perceptible spark overhauling from behind.

Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar calls over. "We're taking hits here. Have to turn to respond... can you take the point?"

She coughs ... then, "Yes, I... I have it." Come on, get focused.

She looks at the Zadar's course, and at the power rating. She pushes it up just a fraction to cross the line on time. Then she ejects four missiles in a strategy she had developed a week ago for a similar situation. The missiles, unpowered, fly formation with her, their controls slaved to the Zadar in case she needs to manuver. Gradually, they edge outward, getting ready for the attack pattern. When they are distant enough, they light up their drives and disappear into fold. Despite her fear, she winces at the price of four foldspace missiles. Nevertheless, she is glad of the overwhelming force at her hands. Like a human once stung, she frantically does not want to be stung again.

But there are rules, rules that she cannot flaunt, if she wants to complete her mission to Cocteau, if she wants to get back to Lan.

So when the missiles emerge, they will listen to foldcom, and they will not attack. They will fly formation with their target. Until told.

Clu shifts her attention back to Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar and the Valeron. There have been two strikes near the propulsion system, and Valeron's stern countermeasures and point defense are busy with defensive events. But the missile traces are not foldspace traces - they are highly energetic realspace drives tugged inward by the Valeron's semifold wake.

Clu leaves a portion of the Zadar system to monitor the space near the intruder, and she starts to rise over the Valeron's course, facing back toward the action. There are now two attackers, but the Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar is having some effect against the first one. Events and debris alerts ghost around the original intruder signal. But the new intruder is using energy pencils in the transgamma range, and the damage to Valeron and to Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar is mounting.

Now, as if sensing she is out of position, the intruder she is leaving has started a series of missile launches. Angry, she snarls, "Go destroy!" In a fraction of second, they have unburdened themselves of their payload and have folded back to rendezvous. The automatics start the recovery process, even as she begins accelerating, releasing a point defense cloud to protect the Valeron. Seventy thousand miles behind, energies are released. She turns to look back and pulls a window on the view into her direction of travel. Debris markers are coming into existence and are slowly expanding from a center. Close in transmissions from the payloads are also downloading and being merged from the recovered boosters, and she sees a vessel of spindles and arches barely visible in the starlight. There is a launch whose booster's light brightens the front of the intruder for a moment. Then the first payloads respond to the attack, begin their journeys and their antagonist is starkly illuminated by the attempts of its defenses to batter the payloads into dust. A bright chasm forms at the core of the enemy's spindles as the first payload gets through - and then the last missile engine folds out, ending the recording.

Below her now, the Valeron has pushed its drives to emergency power. Ahead, the Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar is barely under control, and the damage markers almost obscure its location. Clu checks status. The missiles have been reloaded and are ready. She deploys them and targets them on the Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar 's primary attacker, dispatching a warning to Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar. Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar is low on ammunition, but they are ready to join the attack, in hopes of being able to saturate the enemy defenses. Then she refocuses on the secondary danger.

I'm still alive, she thinks. Still alive. It is exhilarating in a way.

However, the missiles launched by her original prey have not forgotten her, and Clu is only warned a fraction of a second before the Zadar point defense begins to lattice the space behind her with energy.

There is no sound, though the attack is reported to be fierce and unrelenting. Temperatures and radiations more suitable to the interior of a sun than cold vacuum are ignited as pinpricks of light hundreds or thousands of miles away. So far, nothing is getting through, and soon the assault is exhausted. But the Zadar is still pressing forward to the real danger.

The secondary attacker has turned from the Valeron, and is accelerating toward Clu. Ten thousand miles below, the Valeron exudes a stream of volatiles into space, illuminated dimly by burning sections of the hull.

She is getting a telescopic profile of the oncoming enemy. The vessel is a similar configuration to her first foe, but that configuration is not registered in her database. Who are they? she wonders briefly.

But there are attack plans to be formed, launch schedules and recovery schedules to create and update.

She initiates the plan, just as the first transgamma laser slashes across the Zadar. The hull shudders as a swath of the outer shield volitalizes, exerting a sudden and unpredicted force. Fortunately, at these distances, microscopic variations in the position of the source translate into tens of miles of variation at the Zadar. Two missiles had been ejected, but the system halts the next ejection until the Zadar stabilizes; then it recycles. She forces the first two into fold. A fraction of a second later they are at the attacker, and the payloads are launched at a hundred thousand gravities of acceleration from a distance of two hundred miles. She updates the schedule with two more boosters, and immediately folds all four. The evasion program sets in, trying to avoid the beam weapons, as she turns toward the Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar . The burn across her vessel aches at her, and she glares into the virtual sphere as if she can sharpen the Zadar's sight through force of will.

Perimeter alarms sound, even as her telescopic views are showing the start of her missile run against the first and second enemies. The Zadar laces the vacuum with a net of energy so strong that the combined demands of point defense and drive dim the interior lights briefly. Clu's heart almost halts and then restarts with a bang.

Another transgamma strike dissipates on the hull, and secondary radiation alarms shriek briefly, in time with the loud slow bong of hull metal expanding and reforming under thermal stress. She briefly shakes with a terror at the possibility of radiation, a spike of fear for a child never conceived, but she submerges it in revising schedules and trying to manage the power of the Zadar.

Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar and its attacker are ahead of her. Valeron is far below and to the left, pulling away, but slowly, and it has developed a slow spiral around its course, signaling a problem with the steering systems.

Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar had joined the Zadar assault a few minutes ago, and the results are beginning to take their toll on the attacker. Damage signals begin to spring up from the attacker point source. To her right, the payloads are making their deliveries, also successfully. Death and damage are being done, but the defenders are surviving.

However, Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar is in noticeable trouble. Atmosphere fires at the skin show the pressure loss continuing, which means internal pressure maintenance is failing. "I'm coming," Clu calls.

"Lots of trouble here," someone replies, and there are sounds of roaring air, fire, sparking, and alarms behind the sound. "We still have pressure in the center, but we're all suited, in case."

The displays are starting to show the final throes of the attack. The forward attacker is gone, except for a brief burst of gas, a faint array of dust, and a shell of gradually diminishing radiation; Valeron is past its position and running as hard as possible for Palatine. The third attacker is shuddering under the hammer blows of warheads - at least it was a minute ago as light travels. And the attacker of Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar is burning in space, slewing as if trying to escape.

Clu plans a rendezvous with Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar, approving an advised trajectory. As the image grows larger, she is stricken with the extent of the damage. Gaping holes, sporadic bursts of flame... she points at the image and says "I'm almost there..."

In the event, the rescue attempt is terrifying. The escaping volatiles, the flames, all conspire to create a chaotic motion. The space around them is filled with debris and radiation, placing a heavy load on her ability to manuver. After a while, she is poised in space above the Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar, and she can see by starlight that it is shattered and incapable.

"How many people on-board?" she asks.

"Three."

"I think you should evacuate, don't you?"

"We're trying... I'm waiting for damage assessment to finish, but we're having problems with the automata..."

"The fires..."

"We're going to attempt some shutdowns, and try to vent all the volatiles. Maybe there will be enough to salvage. Later. We'll call."

So Clu stands and leans over the panel. She rubs her face, then turns away. She steps behind her seat and leans her forearms against the tall back. "What's with them?" she mutters. But she knows. They want to save their ship.

Time passes, and below her the Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar continues to burn.

"Anyone there? Are you getting ready to come out?"

No answer.

Hours pass, and she paces. She takes a bulb of water from the froster in the galley and drinks. She strains the sensors to see through the clouds of debris and the shattered hull, trying to find a trace of the crew members. But the fires and the escaping volatiles obscure any possible signal. She calls again and again, but no one answers.

She paces again. I could go down there.

I could go down there, and I could die. And if I did, there would be no one to save Lan. Everything I've worked for would be lost. For the sake of strangers.... people I barely know.

She stares at her displays as they scan the Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar. They are finding nothing. She calls again and again, but no one answers.

Sometimes a single action requires vast effort. She builds the fold configuration, telling herself it is simply to prepare. But when it is complete, and she is sitting and waiting, she knows she can't delay any longer. The countdown to the fold is passing.

I can't risk it. I know, it's just one more risk. But I can't. I can't leave the Zadar. Anything could happen.

Angry, she edges the Zadar away. She feels her heart thundering, and she knows why. I don't want to run away again.

She is close to the fold point. Help can be here in a day. I should go.

Clu steps into the void, where it is dark, except for the flickering light of flames, and the shadows of torn metal and the slow choreography of debris. She has done three spacewalks in her life, and each one was a pit of terror as far as she had been concerned. I have a tether. She controls herself and doesn't look back, because if she moves, she will start to spin. I have a tether, the ship is relative matched and will stay that way.

Her lights finally reach the hull ahead. Her contacts bring up a diagram of the Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar and after some false starts, sync it to the shape ahead. Once again, she realizes that she is approaching the bottom of the vessel. There are three service airlocks on the ventral surface. None, are very close to her line of flight.

The enormity of her position begins to rise through the calculation, but she tries to force it down.

The bottom of the Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar is three hundred feet lengthwise, two hundred across. And it is rapidly growing larger.

I don't know enough about doing this.

She reflexively checks distance and velocity. The system is sequencing through the profile and beginning the deceleration phase. "Command: Target airlock Ventral 3," she requests. The thruster push alters her balance and her stomach heaves a bit with the water she had consumed back on the Zadar.

The flames below are flickering with less vitality. But a cloud sweeps up suddenly from the surface, envelops her for a moment, and is gone. She flinches, spins, and then the autostabilizers take over, and she is back on target. The deceleration swings her feet up, and more stablilization thrust attempts to counteract. She is confused and fails to position properly. Her feet are swinging back down and her heels slam into the hull, which pitches her back, head toward the hull, to where the helmet crashes into the metal and she rebounds again. Frantically, she grabs at the tether. but the autostabilizers have already done their work and then she is slowly spinning, upright, around the tether. The suit slamstops and she nearly vomits. So she hangs there, watching across the hull, waiting for her balance to renormalize. Somewhere far above is the Zadar. but it is only a blot of darkness with a few lights and the occasional strobe.

Her breath is loud in her ears, and the bile is sour in her throat. "Command: Surface".

Even with guidance, the interior is a nightmare. The low narrow corridors are choked with smoke, and the ventilators and outgassing only succeed in streaming the tangled mass past her in flickering light. Ahead, a tongue of flame surges into the corridor and then is magically sucked back as the chaotic air currents reverse on some unknown impulse.

She keeps calling but there is no answer.

The center is only a few hundred yards ahead. The wind has shifted, pulling weakly toward the open center door. A huge gong tone reverbrates the corridor. The gravity fluctuates and dies. She is left in mid corridor, commanding her thrusters by voice.

The center is empty. Literally. The control surfaces have been destroyed by an explosion or fire. Shattered suit shells - non-human in form - are melted against the walls as if by the same intense heat. The walls are broken and cracked, thick layers of hullmetal are peeled back from a rent in the walls to reveal pipes that apparently admitted the explosion.

The area is largely vacuum, and she cannot hear the sound, but she feels the awesome creaking through her glove on the doorport.

It is time, past time to leave.

Emergence from the opening, departing flickering and a silent vibration that screams of tearing metal. Stars are wheeling slowly and in the distance a dusky nebula crawls across the sky.

But there is no sign of the Zadar.

She stands legs apart, perplexed. Could she have gotten lost? But the guidance program couldn't have failed, and it still shows the airlock below her as Ventral 3.

To her right, there is a sudden flash of flame, and in the dying luminosity, she can see huge plates, girders and assemblies flying upward, glittering briefly against the stars.

There is still nothing.

The emptiness, the immensity, and the failure all hit her like a club across the shoulders. Her muscles sag, but she does not collapse to the hull. Her eyes fill with tears, and she shudders. She feels oddly dizzy. I should never have come. It's what I was afraid of. I've been out here, wasting my time, risking Lan, having ... fun. Making money. Now none of it means anything. What am I going to do?

She starts to think about the lifepods, or about holing up in unbroken sectors of the Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar, forcing her heart rate down, suppressing the fear and sadness.

Then the dark silhouette of the Zadar rises over the edge of the hull to her left, lights flaring and dimming. She realizes that the rate of rotation has changed, which accounts for her lightheadedness - the remains of the Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar are spinning more rapidly as it breaks up. She hesitates, waiting for the systems to give her a leadpoint on the Zadar's motion, then she gathers her feet up off the surface, and the thrusters fire. It is unnerving, because it looks all the time as if she will miss.

Ten minutes pass, and the Blenicar / Imarinichan / j'incar crawls slowly into the distance below, occasionally shedding mass as internal disruption and explosions progress down axis from the weapon strike zones.

The Zadar is close now, and Clu's suit lights cross the hull.

She fends off a small piece of debris and wonders if there has been any damage to the Zadar during her trip.

There is no warning, but beyond the dark bulk of the Zadar she sees three points of light elongate into streaks, and then become softly glowing ellipsoids that track slowly across the background stars.

It's too soon for help from Palatine, even if Valeron made it at her highest energy fold. This can't be good.

In the airlock she thrusts her way out of the seals in her suit as quickly as she can, fumbling and lurching against the padded walls. As soon as she is free, she gestures up the fold and starts it on the computations to take her to Prometheus. Then she pelts down the corridor to the flight deck and hurls herself into the left seat. The displays shatter the view around her. She checks the progress bar for the fold, and seeing she has time, she searches for the just emerged ships.

"What the hell is that?" she whispers. But it is too late for a good look.

The Zadar vanishes into fold with a sudden surge of light.

The tugs are gone and the Zadar hangs in its docking cradle, exposing its horrific wound to the harsh greyish lights. Clu stops at the rim of the door and looks away at the vastness of the open docking area, a place that for a moment seems as alien as it had her first day visiting the Zadar. Mountainous vessels, attended by a myriad of small vehicles, ranked into the distance. Towers and piping. Strange protrusions and vapors casting shadows wildly across the corners and walls.

This is my home, she tells herself. But it is a thought without the gratitude as it deserves. Her face is lined with exhaustion and a remnant of worry. She wants a hot shower more than almost anything. For two days she has barely dared to leave vigilance except for snatches of sleep in the pilot's chair. In theory, it wasn't necessary. In practice, she had wondered if what she had seen might have followed her. Followed her home.

Looking below, she can see a Marshal's car, parked at the bottom of the gantry. They are waiting because she had called ahead.

She supposes her shower is a little way off.

"I practiced so many times with the Zadar systems. With the mockups. I ran battle simulations again and again." Her voice trails off, becomes indistinct.

"Yes?"

The room is quietly lit, with dim corners.

"I never... never thought it would be like that. I mean, when I escaped, I was running. I didn't have time to think."

"So that bothers you?"

"No! No, I mean, this time, I made decisions to do this."

"You saved a lot of lives. You defended the people and property you were hired to defend. You're going to have to step back from your doubts to make sure this audit goes the way it should."

"Step back?" she laughs, but it is not happy.

The ethicist leans forward. "Hikaru asked me to work with you for two reasons. You've been through more violence than most people ever see - and you came here from... well, Cocteau isn't the worst place I've ever read about, but the change... it's hard. I know that. And now a non-aggression audit." His long tan face, grooved with years of expressiveness, slips back into the dimness. "No one could object that you fired on those ships. They were firing on the convoy. On you."

She looks up. "Not right away."

"Non-aggression allows you to defend others."

"I killed fifty people." She is silent, then, wondering about her desire to torment herself.

"Yes you did. But it isn't a matter of numbers, is it?"

"I don't understand..." Her long fingers play briefly with the fabric of the chair.

"If it were one person, would it be better, worse, or the same?"

"No.... no worse. No better. I just think... it should bother me."

"Does it, then?"

"Not as much as it should," she admits, finally.

"'Should' is a funny word. It means you have some sort of standard, but you haven't integrated it; maybe it isn't a viable standard."

She considers. "Maybe I need to think about that."

He rocks a hand. "We'll talk tomorrow."

Clouds are lowering and hide the suntube. Light and shadow patterns knit into intricacy with distance, and there are faint streamers of virga miles down the valley. Celine steps from her car at the entrance to the Recovery League headquarters, brow furrowed with thought as she mounts the shallow stairs. She almost misses the dark figure at the brass doors. Then...

"Marie! How are you. I haven't seen you since... that benefit for Clu, wasn't it?"

Marie Field leans out of the shadow, but her smile is bare. "So it was. That's who I'm here to talk to you about." Her eyes are icy blue with characteristic vertical pupils.

Celine nods. "Walk with me, hon."

They step through the doors into the cool spaces beyond.

"If you're worried about the audit, you shouldn't be. My staff is quite clear the engagement was justified."

"That's not exactly why I'm here. My abstractionists looked at the record too, and they're satisfied. They'll be filing friendly opinions, for that matter, but perhaps you hadn't heard."

Celine smiles as they pass a vaguely white, bushily tentacled creature and then refocuses her attention on Marie. "No, I hadn't, but then, my last update was... oh, a few hours ago. So what is it, then?"

Marie grabs her arm. "Don't you realize what she did?"

Celine looks astonished at the touch. "I don't know what you mean, no."

"One woman, in a slightly enhanced but primitive ship, successfully defending against two much more advanced vessels, that's what I mean. What have you created, Celine?"

"I have no idea what you mean?"

"That woman was a test pilot and a designer when she came here. In six months you've turned her into a warrior. Count me strange, but that seems odd. Maybe unlikely. What do you think?"

"I think she wants to go back and save her husband. So... are you suggesting I've done something to her? Or that I have some sort of... agenda?"

Marie's eyes narrow. "I'm wondering whether you do or not. Whether maybe you have a Radical Aggressionist theory about Cocteau. And whether maybe you think it wouldn't be a bad idea if someone was motivated to carry it out. And trained. Trained well and equipped well."

Celine laughs and shakes her head. "Marie, you've contributed for what, eight years now? I'm surprised at you. We've had people who didn't know any better mouthing that nonsense about Radical Aggressionism. You know how many audits we have a year? Our failure rate is less than a tenth of one percent, and there's never been a credible charge that any piece of that is anything but normal overreaction. And you said that your people agree the audit on this militia rental action is going to come up clean."

"That doesn't mean I'm not concerned. I hired her almost a year ago on speculation when I was hoping to hire her husband. I thought I'd give her a try. I couldn't find anyone with experience... But she was good. She risked her life for my prototype. Three times. I probably only still have a company because of her. I can't help as much as I want to... most of what I have is locked up in the company right now. But there is one thing I can do, and that's make sure she isn't being used. Are you going to be able to reassure me on that?" Her hand is pointing hard toward Celine's face.

"I can tell you that you don't have anything to worry about from the League. Or from me. Clu's lived in my house. I helped after the accident. I've been donating to help her stay on her feet while she's been saving for her expedition. I've helped her get the kind of weapons and training she's going to need to find her husband and get him out of whatever kind of nightmare they're keeping him in. So ask yourself if that sounds like 'using'. Or more like being a friend and sameworlder."

For a moment the blue cat eyes and the blue normal eyes meet and a sort of frission passes across that link - a connect that softens the confrontation.

Celine breaks the link first. "All right, she's special. Just staying alive with what she's been through is special, hon. She learns fast. She's a lot more aggressive than you or I. But with what she wants to do, that's a positive quality."

"I know." There is an awkward moment. Then, "Did you know I was sponsoring Kalss Binaeart Moncla?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't. It was a terrible thing that happened to him. None of us expected that."

"Yes. I almost stopped donating." She looks out the broad window over the valley. It has started to rain on the rich green grass beyond. "Well, we'll leave it at that for now. Be careful, Celine. Make sure you have some doubts about what you're doing."

"That looks like a Promethean hull," Lantee mutters.

"That's the problem. It isn't. It looks like one. In fact, it looks like a Field Icelander 876. But it isn't." Marshal Hanson is a gaunt dark man with a thin, lined face, a shock of startled hair, and a habit of scratching his right jaw edge for no apparent reason. "So now you see why I called you."

"You think this is related to the technology thefts."

"I'm starting to agree with your idea that this is a lot bigger than I thought."

"Where did you get the recording?"

"It's the second one we've gotten back from the raids in the Palatine sector." He frowns. "Just transmitted here by the Dock Marshalry. It's evidence in an Aggression audit from a militia rental action guarding a cargo liner to Palatine."

Lantee leans forward, his eyes narrow, his pale hands lying downward on his knees. "The problem I have is... why doesn't whoever is doing this just buy what they want? Sure, the Hermes isn't available, but an Icelander 876 is three year old hull tech."

Hanson pushes back in his chair and puts his long legs up on his kitchen table.

"Who knows why criminals do what they do? You've been in this long enough."

Lantee slowly shakes his head - denying. "That's not it. There's been a pattern. I just can't see it."

"You figure it out, you let me know." Hanson slides his legs back to the floor and gulps a drink from his cup. "Yeah, we could use that."