Piers Anthony - Steppe

Except that it would take her about three-thousand-six-hundred-and-fifty-days to age ten years—and that would bring the Game up to Day 4,500 or so. Even five Years would bring it beyond the present Galactic date! Kokachin might flower in some other Game, but hardly this one.

Alp shook his head sadly. The chances that he would live to see her beauty were not good.

Chapter 10

BATTLE

Now they were upon the nebula. Alp hoped the other Uigur riders had been briefed as he had been, for surely the T'ang trap was about to spring.

The dust of the interior was not nearly as thick as it appeared from a distance. Stars were visible within the nebula, and at close range space seemed empty. But they had to slow way down to navigate it safely, for as with a river the visibility was deceptive, and it was thick with small rocks that could interfere with the ships. The galaxy outside faded out, and they were in a small private universe.

Then, in the center, Uga abruptly diverged. Alp started to follow him, but realized after an instant of reflection that he should maintain the original course. The ambushers had to have a fleet to attack, or they would become suspicious and perhaps thwart the counterattack.

Four ships accompanied Uga, leaving six with Alp. They spread out to approximate the original fleet perimeter—but that ruse would soon become obvious when they left the shade of the nebula and engaged the enemy. If the T'ang caught on too soon...

Alp checked his bow. In a Game like Armada, his memory told him, the ships mounted laser cannon that fired bolts of searing light. This did not actually harm the target, but did stun the occupants, partially or fatally, depending on the marksmanship. It amounted to the same thing: elimination of the inept or unlucky. But this was the Game of Steppe, and this ship was not a boat but a horse, and Alp had to depend on his personal bow, modified for space. This meant mounting it at the firing window and changing the arrows to laserheads. A computer-magic screen helped him aim, for no human could approach the precision necessary to orient on a target light-seconds distant.

"I can read off the chart for you," Kokachin offered.

"And betray your own Emperor?" So far her cooperation had been passive; could he trust her beyond that?

"I never saw him. I just made beds for his concubines."

"Even concubines have beds?" Alp asked, amazed.

"Sure! And most of them never even get used."

"The beds? Then where—"

"The concubines, silly! Big waste, if you ask me."

This was drifting from the subject. "All right, you can read the chart—if you can read."

"Numbers I can read, and that's all you need, isn't it?"

His memory agreed. Galactics were number-literate, after all, perhaps because combinations of numbers were essential for directing the many machines. "But if you call off wrong corrections, they'll shoot us down instead of us getting them, and your part as well as mine will terminate at a loss."

"I know," she said, for the first time showing nervousness.

The reduced fleet emerged—and an arrow passed within range of the ship's perceptive field. They were already under fire.

Alp watched the screen. Two bright lines appeared on it as the computer tracked the paths of the multiple-lightspeed arrows. The enemy could not know the nomad's precise location yet; they must have been firing randomly at the estimated zone. That suggested that they were well equipped, for these were sophisticated and costly arrows. The stun-beams were only triggered when the solid units were proximate to the target, as a lightspeed beam could not hope to catch a ship traveling at hundreds or thousands of light years per hour!

Alp did not return fire. The ambushing ships had a fair notion of the location and velocity of the nomad fleet because they had been indirectly tracking it all along, and it was Alp's job to be where the nomads were supposed to be. But the Uigurs could not pinpoint the enemy horses until more arrows had been fired. By the time the T'ang ships showed up on the vision screens, they would be far beyond the visible points. It was a tricky business, estimating where a given ship would be and doing it accurately enough to score!

A third streak registered—and this one projected back to intersect one of the prior streaks. Now Alp had a recent fix on one enemy ship! But still he did not fire, for the moment he did so the enemy ships would correct their markings on him and zero in properly. Tracing arrows was the surest way to nail a horse and rider.

Alp spurred his mount and the ship accelerated rapidly despite its extra burden. This would make it look helpless and scared, when its jump forward was calculated by the enemy. The six Uigur steeds behind him followed, spreading out further and losing what little formation remained. A mathematical formation would be disaster; the moment the enemy nailed one ship, they would have the others pinned by magic projection.

The T'ang troops would be closing in now, sure of their prey. The range was too great for either side to operate effectively. Proper combat range was light seconds, not light minutes. And the coup had to be complete within the two-Minute period of Game daylight, when all instruments were functioning efficiently, or the prey would escape in the night.

It bothered Alp that the ratios were not consistent; a horse could travel at many times the speed of a historical horse, and much farther before resting; yet the time-scale for days and seasons was maintained. But the Game Machine had compromised wherever it had to, limited by human adaptability more than anything else. Alp, like the other players, usually ignored the four-minute cycles of the days, except in specific cases like this where they became critical.

More blips showed as the misses became nearer. Some were ghosts: unverified locations that the computer projected on the basis of the probable T'ang formation. The Chinese military command never had mastered the strategy of disorder; that was why it was normally so inept in battle against true nomad cavalry.

The jaws of the T'ang trap were closing neatly. But where were the teeth of the Uigur countertrap? These had to bite too, or Alp and his few riders would be finished. As the enemy drew closer, their aim would improve, until finally they would come within a fraction of a light second and in straight visual range. Evasive maneuvers could prolong the battle, but only rank incompetence on the part of the Chinese would allow the Uigurs to escape cleanly. Alp's only protection was the T'ang's ignorance of the true disposition of the main nomad fleet. For of course the Chinese were incompetent.

Alp glanced at Kokachin. Her little face was drawn. Obviously she had never been under fire before, and of course she had the tremendous liability of being female. Adventure in space was fine to dream about, but the reality could be terrifying. Even Alp himself was nervous; he had fought many times in circumstances only superficially dissimilar, springing bandit traps and such, but always felt the tension of incipient injury or death. His old wounds pained him sympathetically.

He would not be able to spot the horses of Uga and Pei-li when they attacked, because they would be too far away and their arrows would not be directed at him. But he would know by the enemy reaction to the counterambush!

"What if they desert us?" Koka demanded shrilly. "They could just sneak home while we get wiped out!"

"That is not the Uigur way," Alp said. But he too felt unease. These were not true Uigurs; they were merely Galactics playing a Game. How could he be sure of their motives? "Anyway, the T'ang would know that not all of our ships were accounted for, so the ruse wouldn't work."