Piers Anthony - Steppe

"The others would still get a good head start," she said, wanting to be convinced it was not so.

She was right, and it was small encouragement. Alp chided himself for being entirely too trusting. He had let himself become lead decoy on his first mission for Uga, and he was certainly vulnerable. If Uga broke faith, Alp would be finished—and he had no assets to re-enter the Game and seek revenge.

"Uigurs do not deceive their own," Alp said.

"They're better than Chinese, then!"

The enemy bolts abruptly stopped. The screen showed that no further arrows were entering detection range, and the probability of that happening accidentally in such a battle was small. It meant Uga had attacked from the outside! The T'ang fleet, surprised in the rear, was reorienting to protect its flank.

Alp cut his drive. Now he could rotate his ship, bringing his bow to bear more accurately on the enemy positions while resting his horse—who sorely needed it! He could not afford to drift long, as the enemy could readily orient on him after he fired. But he wanted no distractions the first time he used his bow in space.

He focused on the lead T'ang ship on one side. The second ship in his formation would orient on the second, and so on as far as they lasted. Meanwhile the formations of Uga and Pei-li would be firing too—and with luck the Chinese fleet would be wiped out. Trap and counter-trap: normal international relations!

Alp fired and knew that this released the other players in his group to do the same. The twang of his string was a mere formality; it was the aim of his arrow that counted. The head of it passed through the window and jetted away under its own power, accelerating phenomenally. Each arrowhead was a miniature spaceship, unburdened by the weight of a man and his attendant equipment: food, air, communications, safety features, weapons and so on. It could move at a hundred thousand light years per hour, catching any ordinary ship—provided it was properly aimed. A shot that missed did not cross the galaxy in an hour; it soon fizzled out and became a dead meteorite, its propulsive and stunner power expended in the futile quest for the target. No doubt the omniscient Game Machine had means to recover and recharge the lost hardware.

The target screen showed the calculated course of Alp's arrow. That line crossed the indicated T'ang blip, showing Alp's aim had been good—but there was no way to tell whether contact had been made. A direct score would make the enemy ship go dead, and in due course the Game Machine would salvage that too and return the stunned occupant to the mundane galaxy. If the ship did not return fire, Alp would assume he had knocked it out.

On the other hand, if his shot had missed—as it probably had, for the enemy would be foolish indeed to remain in the same course after firing—there would shortly be more accurate return fire.

Alp cut in his drive and bucked his horse into a random evasive pattern. This was an uncomfortable type of warfare, when he saw his enemy only through an electronic magic pattern on a screen and had to wait for the other rider's shot before firing his own! How was the superior warrior to prevail, except by blind chance?

"I can't correct your aim," Koka said. "It was right on."

FLASH! An enemy arrow passed within half a light second, illuminating his board. Alp felt the momentary vertigo that signified a fringe-range swipe by a stunner. The T'ang bowman was right on the job with a lucky shot.

Alp watched the line-projection on his screen. It did not appear instantly complete, though the arrow would have passed faster than human perception could trace it. The limiting factor was the small computer's computation of its course. Thus the line extended back to its source and crossed another line three light minutes away. That ship was approaching rapidly, orienting exclusively on Alp now—a bad sign. Had it already dispatched the other Uigur ship, the flank attacker?

FLASH! Half a light second again—and Alp had not yet returned fire! Such accuracy was impossible, in the face of his random evasive pattern!

But now Alp had two extremely pertinent fixes on the enemy. He fired his arrow, then cut his automatic pattern and let his horse drift, watching.

"On target again!" Koka exclaimed. "You're some shot!"

FLASH! A full light second this time—but still too close for chance. In fact, had he not cut his program, that enemy arrow could have intersected him! That meant—But it was so highly improbable that a random program would be intersected by chance that that possibility was not considered in battle tactics. Space was too large...

Alp yanked out the program spool. He had set it himself, as another matter of innate caution, before coming to China, though at the time he had hardly understood its function.

This was not his spool! This lacked the Uigur-script identification. Another had been substituted.

He stared at Koka. But she could not have done it; she had been with him all the time, she could not have messed with his controls without his knowing it.

Uga again? For an instant a raging suspicion took him. But it cooled as he worked it out more thoroughly.

The T'ang had sabotaged his horse. They knew his evasive pattern! Only the slowness stemming from Koka's added weight had thrown the ship off that pattern, making the shots miss. Had Uga changed that pattern, it would have remained random as far as the T'ang were concerned.

FLASH! Yet another close shot—but two light seconds distant. Because he was drifting, no longer even partially on that deathtrap spool. He had not fired since commencing his drift, so there was no indication the enemy could pick up. By that thin margin also he had averted elimination!

Now he started up again, throwing his horse into a manual evasion. What, then, of the other nomad ships? Were they all vulnerable? No—only the ones that had been left unoccupied. His, Uga's and Pei-li's. Unless the other Uigurs had been put under stasis and released without being informed—difficult, but perhaps possible with contemporary technology. No—the Game Machine would not permit such modern techniques in Steppe! Still, none of the ships could be assumed to be secure!

Useless to call Uga. Either the chief had been alert enough to catch it himself—or he was already dead. Alp became angry.

He checked the position board, orienting carefully on the enemy ship whose location was now obvious because of the four fast shots. But he did not fire. He accelerated his own ship there instead.

"Hey, this is fun!" Koka exclaimed, terrified. "Why don't you fire back?"

"Because I'm using original Uigur strategy," Alp muttered grimly. "The T'ang never saw this before..."

"I have a sudden premonition of futility," she said.

Fancy language for a little girl! But Alp could not pay attention to her now. In an instant he was there.

His computer's calculator was pretty good; he passed only a fraction of a light second behind the T'ang ship and was able to pick it up on visual. It could have reached him as readily but obviously had preferred to fire at the unrandom pattern from a secure distance instead of evening the odds through close combat. Immediately Alp set his own ship on inertia, spun its nose around to aim toward the other, and shot his arrow.

It missed by a tenth of a light second. He had aimed too quickly and made a bad shot, considering his range. A stupid, amateur failing! He had to maneuver again, before the other could reorient. He accelerated—directly toward the enemy.

FLASH! A bolt passed him, missing by a scant three thousand kilometers, a hundredth of a light second. Sparks danced across his control board and his screen went momentarily blank. For an instant Alp lost consciousness. But he fought out of it; a stun ricochet had struck his spine and deadened his legs, but he could still control his horse!