Seven Conquests Page 10

  “But she’s gone!” García let out a rattling whoop. “No more flagship. We got her, lads, we got the stinking can!”

  Not far away was a shadow visible only where it blocked off the stars. A ship…light cruiser—“Cram on the air!” said Wolf roughly. “Let’s get the devil out of here.”

  “I can’t.” Crane snarled it, still dazed, wanting only to rest and forget every war that ever was. “We’ve only got so much pressure left, and none to spare for maneuvering if we get off course.”

  “All right…” They lapsed into silence. That which had been the Monitor gas and shrapnel, dissipated. The enemy cruiser fell behind them, and Luna filled their eyes with barren radiance-

  They were not aware of pursuit until the squad was almost on them. There were a dozen men in combat armor, driven by individual jet-units and carrying rifles. They overhauled the tank and edged in—less gracefully than fish, for they had no friction to kill forward velocity, but they moved in.

  After the first leap of his heart. Crane felt cold and numb. None of his party bore arms: they themselves had been the weapon, and now it was discharged. In a mechanical fashion, he turned his headset to the standard band.

  “Rebels ahoy!” The voice was strained close to breaking, an American voice…For a moment such a wave of homesickness for the green dales of Wisconsin went over Crane that he could not move nor realize he had been captured. “Stop that thing and come with us!”

  In sheer reflex, Crane opened the rear throttles lull. The barrel jumped ahead, almost ripping him from the saddle. Ions flared behind as the enemy followed/ Their units were beam-powered from the ship’s nuclear engines, and they had plenty of reaction mass in their tanks. It was only a moment before they were alongside again.

  Arms closed around Crane, dragging him from his seat. As the universe tilted about his head, he saw Wolf likewise caught. García sprang to meet an Earthman, hit him and bounced away but got his rifle. A score of bullets must have spat. Suddenly the Venusian’s armor blew white clouds of breezing water vapor and he drifted dead.

  Wolf wrestled in vacuum and tore one hand free. Crane heard him croak over the radio: “They’ll And out—” Another frosty geyser erupted; Wolf had opened his own air-tubes.

  Men closed in on either side of Crane, pinioning his arms. He could not have suicided even if he chose to. The rest flitted near, guns ready. He relaxed, too weary and dazed to fight, and let them face him around and kill forward speed, then accelerated toward the cruiser.

  The airlock was opening for him before he had his voice back. “What ship is this?” he asked, not caring much, only filling in an emptiness.

  “Huitzilopochtli. Get in there with you.”

  Crane floated weightless in the wardroom, his left ankle manacled to a stanchion. They had removed his armor, leaving the thick gray coverall which was the underpadding, and given him a stimpill. A young officer guarded him, sidearm holstered; no reason to fear a fettered captive. The officer did not speak, though horror lay on his lips.

  The pill had revived Crane, his body felt supple and he sensed every detail of the room with an unnatural clarity. But his heart had a thick beat and his mouth felt cottony.

  This was Ben’s ship.

  García and Wolf were dead.

  None of it was believable.

  Captain Benjamin Crane of the Space Navy, Federation of Earth and the Free Cities of Luna, drifted in through a ghostly quiet. It was a small shock to see him again…when had the last time been, three years ago? They had met in Mexico City, by arrangement, when their leaves coincided, and had a hell of a good time. Then they went up to their father’s house in Wisconsin, and that had somehow not been quite as good, for the old man was dead and the house had stood long empty. But it had been a fine pheasant shoot, on a certain cool and smoky-clear fall morning. Robert Crane remembered how the first dead leaves crackled underfoot, and how the bird dog stiffened into a point that was flowing line and deep curves, and the thin high wedge of wild geese, southward bound.

  That was the first thing he thought of, and next he thought that Ben had put on a good deal of weight and looked much older, and finally he recalled that he himself had changed toward gauntness and must seem to have more than the two-year edge on Ben he really did.

  The captain stiffened as he came through the air. He grabbed a handhold barely in time, and stopped his flight ungracefully. The quietness lengthened. There was little to see on Ben’s heavy face, unless you knew him as well—inside and out—as his own brother did.

  He spoke finally, a whisper: “I never looked for this.”

  Crane of the Marduk tried to smile. “What are the mathematical odds against it?” he wondered. “That I, of all people, should be on this mission, and that your ship of all Earth’s fleet should have captured me. How did you detect us?”

  “That bomb…you touched it off too soon. The initial glare brought us to the ports, and the gas glow afterward, added to the moonlight, was enough to reveal a peculiar object. We locked a radar on it and I sent men out.”

  “Accident,” said Robert Crane. “Some little flaw in the mechanism. It wasn’t supposed to detonate till we were well away.”

  “I knew you were on…the other side,” said Ben with great slowness. “That’s a wild chance in itself, you realize. I happened to know the Marduk was assigned to Venus patrol only because the Ares suffered meteoroid damage at the last moment. Consider how unlikely it is that a rock will ever disable a ship. If it hadn’t been for that, the Marduk would probably have been right here when the…trouble began, and you’d have had no choice but to remain loyal.”

  “Like you, Ben?”

  The young officer of Earth floated “upright,” at attention, but his eyes were not still. Ben nodded sardonically at him. “Mr. Nicholson, this prisoner happens to be my brother.”

  No change appeared in the correct face.

  Ben sighed. “I suppose you know what you did. Lieutenant Crane.”

  “Yes,” said Robert. “We blew up your flagship.”

  “It was a brilliant operation,” said Ben dully. “I’ve had a verbal report on your…vessel. I imagine you planted an atomic bomb on the Monitors hull.

  If we knew just where your fleet is and how it’s arrayed, as you seem to know everything about us, I’d like to try the same thing on you.”

  Robert floated, waiting. A thickening grew in his throat. He felt sweat form under his arms and along his ribs, soaking into the coverall. He could smell his own stink.

  “But I wonder why that one man of yours suicided,” went on Ben. He frowned, abstractedly, and Robert knew he would not willingly let the riddle go till he had solved it. “Perhaps your mission was more than striking a hard blow at us. Perhaps he didn’t want us to know its real purpose.”

  Ben, you’re no fool. You were always a suspicious son-of-a-gun, always probing, never quite believing what you were told. I know you, Ben.

  What had Wolf’s religion been? Crane didn’t know. He hoped it wasn’t one which promised hellfire to suicides. Wolf had died to protect a secret which the drugs of Earth’s psychotechs—nothing so crude as torture—would have dissolved out of him.

  If they had not been captured…the natural reaction would have been for Earth’s fleet to rush forth seeking revenge before the Unionists attacked them. They did not know, they must not know, that Dushanovitch-Alvarez lacked the ships to win an open battle except on his own ground and under his own terms; that the loyalists need only remain where they were, renew the threat of bombardment, carry it out if necessary, and the Union men would be forced to slink home without offering a shot.

  “Sir…”

  Ben’s head turned, and Robert saw, with an odd little sadness, gray streaks at the temples. What was his age—thirty-one? My kid brother is growing old already.

  “Yes, Mr. Nicholson?”

  The officer cleared his throat. “Sir, shouldn’t the prisoner be interrogated in the regular way? He must know a good deal
about-”

  “I assure you, not about our orbits and dispositions.” said Robert Crane with what coolness he could summon. “We change them quite often.”

  “Obviously,” agreed Ben. “They don’t want us to raid them as they’ve been raiding us. We have to stay in orbit because of our strategy. They don’t, and they’d be fools if they did.”

  “Still…” began Nicholson.

  “Oh, yes, Intelligence will be happy to pump him,” said Ben. “Though I suspect this show will be over before they’ve gotten much information of value. Vice Admiral Hokusai of the Krishna has succeeded to command. Get on the radio, Mr. Nicholson, and report what has happened. In the meantime, I’ll question the prisoner myself. Privately.”

  “Yes, sir.” The officer saluted and went out. There was compassion in his eyes.

  Ben closed the door behind him. Then he turned around and floated, crossing his legs, one hand on a stanchion and the other rubbing his forehead. His brother had known he would do exactly that. But how accurately can he read me?

  “Well, Bob.” Ben’s tone was gentle.

  Robert Crane shifted, feeling the link about his ankle. “How are Mary and the kids?” he asked.

  “Oh…quite well, thank you. I’m afraid I can’t tell you much about your own family. Last I heard, they were living in Manitowoc Unit, but in the confusion since…Ben looked away. “They were never bothered by our police, though. I have some little influence.”

  “Thanks,” said Robert. Bitterness broke forth: “Yours are safe in Luna City. Mine will get the fallout when you bombard, or they’ll starve in the famine to follow.”

  The captain’s mouth wrenched. “Don’t say that!”

  After a moment: “Do you think I like the idea of shooting at Earth? If your so-called liberators really give a curse in hell about the people their hearts bleed for so loudly, they’ll surrender first. We’re offering terms. They’ll be allowed to go to Mars or Venus.”

  “I’m afraid you misjudge us, Ben,” said Robert. “Do you know why I’m here? It wasn’t simply a matter of being on the Marduk when she elected to stay with the Union. I believed in the liberation.”

  “Believe in those pirates out there?” Ben’s finger stabbed at the wall, as if to pierce it and show the stars and the hostile ships swimming between.

  “Oh, sure, they’ve been promised the treasure vaults. We had to raise men and ships somehow. What good was that money doing, locked away by Carnarvon and his gang?” Robert shrugged. “Look, I was born and raised in America. We were always a free people. The Bill of Rights was modeled on our own old Ten Amendments. From the moment the Humanists seized power, I had to start watching what I said, who I associated with, what tapes I got from the library. My kids were growing up into perfect little parrots. It was too much. When the purges began, when the police fired on crowds rioting because they were starving—and they were starving because this quasi-religious creed cannot accept the realities and organize things rationally—I was only waiting for my chance.

  “Ben, be honest. Wouldn’t you have signed on with us if you’d been on the Marduk?”

  The face before him was gray. “Don’t ask me that! No!”

  “I can tell you exactly why not, Ben.” Robert folded his arms and would not let his brother’s eyes go. “I know you well enough. We’re different in one respect. To you, no principle can be as important as your wife and children—and they’re hostages for your good behavior. Oh, yes, K’ung’s psychotechs evaluated you very carefully. Probably half their captains are held by just such chains.”

  Ben laughed, a loud bleak noise above the murmur of the ventilators. “Have it your way. And don’t forget that your family is alive, too, because I stayed with the government. I’m not going to change, either. A government, even the most arbitrary one, can perhaps be altered in time. But the dead never come back to life.”

  He leaned forward, suddenly shuddering. “Bob, I don’t want you sent Earthside for interrogation. They’ll not only drug you, they’ll set about changing your whole viewpoint. Surgery, shock, a rebuilt personality—you won’t be the same man when they’ve finished.

  “I can wangle something else. I have enough pull, especially now in the confusion after your raid, to keep you here. When the war is settled, I’ll arrange for your escape. There’s going to be so much hullaballoo on Earth that nobody will notice. But you’ll have to help me, in turn.

  trWhat was the real purpose of your raid? What plans does your high command have?”

  For a time which seemed to become very long, Robert Crane waited. He was being asked to betray his side voluntarily; the alternative was to do it anyway, after the psychmen got through with him. Ben had no authority to make the decision. It would mean courtmartial later, and punishment visited on his family as well, unless he could justify it by claiming quicker results than the longdrawn process of narcosynthesis.

  , The captain’s hands twisted together, big knobby hands, and he stared at them. “This is a hell of a choice for you, I know,” he mumbled. “But there’s Mary and…the kids, and men here who trust me. Good decent men. We aren’t fiends, believe me. But I can’t deny my own shipmates a fighting chance to get home alive.”

  Robert Crane wet his lips. “How do you know I’ll tell the truth?” he asked.

  Ben looked up again, crinkling his eyes. “We had a formula once,” he said. “Remember? ‘Cross my heart and hope to die, spit in my eye if I tell a lie.’ I don’t think either of us ever lied when we took that oath.”

  “And—Ben, the whole war hangs on this, maybe. Do you seriously think I’d keep my word for a kid’s chant if it could decide the war?”

  “Oh, no.” A smile ghosted across the captain’s mouth. “But there’s going to be a meeting of skippers, if I know Hokusai. He’ll want the opinions of us all as to what we should do next. Having heard them, he’ll make his own decision. I’ll be one voice among a lot of others.

  “But if I can speak with whatever information you’ve given me…do you understand? The council will meet long before you could be sent Earthside and quizzed. I need your knowledge now. I’ll listen to whatever you have to say. I may or may not believe you…I’ll make my own decision as to what to recommend…but it’s the only way I can save you, and myself, and everything else I care about.”

  He waited then, patiently as the circling ships. They must have come around the planet by now, thought Robert Crane. The sun would be drowning many stars, and Earth would be daylit if you looked out.

  Captains’ council…It sounded awkward and slow, when at any moment, as far as they knew, Dushanovitch-Alvarez might come in at the head of his fleet. But after all, the navy would remain on general alert, second officers would be left in charge. They had time.

  And they would want time. Nearly every one of them had kin on Earth. None wished to explode radioactive death across the world they loved. K’ung’s will had been like steel, but now they would—subconsciously, and the more powerfully for that—be looking for any way out of the frightful necessity. A respected officer, giving good logical reasons for postponing the bombardment, would be listened to by the keenest ears.

  Robert Crane shivered. It was a heartless load to put on a man. The dice of future history…he could load the dice, because he knew Ben as any man knows a dear brother, but maybe his hand would slip while he loaded them.

  “Well?’’ It was a grating in the captain’s throat.

  Robert drew a long breath. “All right,” he said.

  “Yes?” A high, cracked note; Ben must be near breaking, too.

  “I’m not in command, you realize.” Robert’s words were blurred with haste. “I can’t tell for sure what—But I do know we’ve got fewer ships. A lot fewer.”

  “I suspected that.”

  “We have some plan—I haven’t been told what—it depends on making you leave this orbit and come out and fight us where we are. If you stay home, we can’t do a damn thing. This raid of mine…we’d hope
that with your admiral dead, you’d join battle out toward Luna.”

  Robert Crane hung in the air, twisting in its currents, the breath gasping in and out of him. Ben looked dim, across the room, as if his eyes were failing.

  “Is that the truth. Bob?” The question seemed to come from light-years away.

  “Yes. Yes. I can’t let you go and get killed and—Cross my heart and hope to die, spit in my eye if I tell a lie!”

  I set down my mug, empty, and signaled for another. The bartender glided across the floor with it and I drank thirstily, remembering how my throat had felt mummified long ago on the Huitzilopochtli, remembering much else.

  “Very well, sir.” Freylinghausen’s testy voice broke a stillness. “What happened?”

  “You ought to know that, Professor,” I replied. “It’s in the history tapes. The Humanist fleet decided to go out at once and dispose of its inferior opponent. Their idea—correct, I suppose—was that a space victory would be so demoralizing that the rebels on the ground would capitulate immediately after. It would have destroyed the last hope of reinforcements, you see.”

  “And the Union fleet won,” said Neilsen-Singh. “They chopped the Humanist navy into fishbait. I know. My father was there. We bought a dozen new reclamation units with his share of the loot, afterward.”

  “Naval history is out of my line, Captain Crane,” said the engineer, Buwono. “How did Dushanovitch-Alvarez win?”

  “Oh…by a combination of things. Chiefly, he disposed his ships and gave them such velocities that the enemy, following the usual principles of tactics, moved at high accelerations to close in. And at a point where they would have built up a good big speed, he had a lot of stuff planted, rocks and ball bearings and scrap iron…an artificial meteoroid swarm, moving in an opposed orbit. After that had done its work, the two forces were of very nearly equal strength, and it became a battle of standard weapons. Which Dushanovitch-Alvarez knew how to use! A more brilliant naval mind hasn’t existed since Lord Nelson.”