Jack Chalker - Balshazzar's Serpent

The first trick was to launch the probe in such a way as to make it clear to any defender that it was indeed a probe and not a weapon. That was easier said than done, and relied on some experience and tried-and-true methods, but that didn’t stop the entire ship from being put on alert when it was launched, weapons at the ready.

The same defensive system that scanned them when they arrived also locked onto the probe, but, as with them, appeared to make no aggressive moves as a result. As the probe closed in on the largest gas giant and used its great gravitational force to supplement its jump engines, more scans snapped on, but, as before, nothing fired at the spherical probe. Either the system wasn’t armed for defense, was incapable of it, or was willing to allow the potential aggressor a look at things. There would have been nothing The Mountain ’s crew could have done to protect the probe had it been shot at; with every passing minute the time delay for a reaction increased. The probe’s own computer was pretty much on its own.

A bit more than three days in, and just a hair more than halfway to the inner planet, the defensive system acted. It wasn’t a serious defensive blow, more a shot across the bow of the probe, clearly missing deliberately but with the intent of slowing or halting the thing. It came from an undetected free-floating platform that was too small and too well shielded to show up on instruments until it revealed itself, but when it did, it showed, too, that there were no lifeforms aboard. This was automatic.

The probe showed some defensive prowess, whirling and twisting while using some energy for its own shields, but instead of slowing it used every ounce of available power to get the hell out of there while taking a more evasive, zigzag style inward course.

The gun platform suddenly flared into life and began a rapid pursuit. Clearly it would not just be a bow shot if it could close, although it remained to be seen if it was capable of doing that.

“Very weak energy signature,” the gunnery officer noted back on The Mountain . “It’s showing its age and its lack of service. I’d say these folks no longer have space travel in any useful sense. Look—you can see how it’s losing the race. I’d expect— Ah! ”

There was a major energy surge from the gun platform, as if it had suddenly shot everything it had at the fleeing probe, but it was certainly not enough. The probe easily swerved even as the beam fired, and didn’t look back.

“Reading only trace energy on the platform,” one of the artillery crew noted. “That platform’s spent.”

“Notify the Doctor and send this to whatever console he’s closest to,” the gunnery officer ordered.

“Done!”

The Doctor was on the intercom within two minutes. “It missed?”

“Yes, sir. No problem. But, of course, if one of them does that this far out, it’s sure as shooting that there’ll be more and meaner ones closer in.”

“Doctor to bridge. Close to the position of the platform. See if you can snag it. I doubt if it’ll be in any shape to resist and our shielding should take whatever it might give. Let’s see who made it, and when.”

“This could be a trap to lure us into just that,” the First Officer commanding the bridge at the time warned him. “Do you really want to risk the ship at this juncture?”

“Faith, Number One! We’re founded on faith! This is God’s chariot! I gave you an order and I expect it to be carried out, not questioned!” he thundered, then paused a moment before adding, in a much more conversational tone, “Besides, if we’re so damned paranoid we’ll run from these antiques then we should get out of this business!”

The First Officer nodded, more to himself than to any other authority, thought a quiet and personal prayer, and then said, “Half ahead. Maintain full alert defensive mode, slowly increase speed to two-thirds pulse if clear.”

The ship was basically computer controlled, and was used to interpreting the orders of its long-time bridge officers. In fact, the whole of The Mountain actually required few human crewmembers to run efficiently, although it was hardly a luxury liner type of ship. Much of the routine maintenance, such as collecting soiled clothes, cleaning the vast areas of the ship, changing linen, and so on were done by humans because there were no robots or robotic services of that sort to do them, and, in fact, probably would never be allowed so long as the Doctor was running things. The key systems were automated, even gunnery, although at all such positions, from the bridge to gunnery to engineering, there were humans present to confirm, block, or manually override as might be needed, and these were also experts at checking out and testing their equipment.

Many of the less crucial functions aboard might have been automated but deliberately weren’t. The Doctor wanted everyone to have a job that meant something to the whole.

By the time The Mountain was in approach range of the one hostile gun platform the probe itself was almost to the warm, blue and white world that was their objective. There had been several attacks, but always tepid ones, and never with great power or with anything other than automated systems behind them, indicating that this whole defense grid was sadly undermaintained and out of whack.

This was doubly reinforced when The Mountain reached the platform, placed an energy plasma shield around it, and hauled it in. The poor platform was almost an object of pity aboard ship; it kept trying to defend itself and shoot up the works, but it just didn’t have any juice left. Gunnery experts in repair spacesuits actually approached and boarded it, tracing and dismantling its self-destruct mechanism even though instruments said that there was nothing left there to explode.

“Standard Mark XXIX,” the chief gunnery officer reported. “It’s so pitted that it’s clear nobody or nothing’s been here to service it for maybe a century or more, and whatever made the big dent shorted out a lot of its power. Logic circuits are still okay, though. Readout says it was placed by Eleventh Mars Corps, UC Navy, one hundred and sixty-one years ago.” He whistled. “This is an old trooper, then, if it’s never been rebuilt or serviced.”

“At least it dates the colony, since it’s probable that this and the other defensive units were placed here when the colony was established as part of the network,” the Doctor commented.

“So they got set up and it wasn’t long before the Silence. That could explain why it’s so undeveloped down there. I bet they never even got a lot of their initial shipments. Hell, they probably didn’t have anything more than the stuff they initially brought with them, and that would have been really the basics. By this point that could be a very primitive agricultural colony down there.”

“So you think everything here is automatic, and in as poor shape as that thing?” the Doctor asked.

“Probably, but I wouldn’t underestimate one or two of these units or better escaping the ravages and actually functioning. You never can tell.”

“Oh, I believe we can tell,” the Doctor told him. “And in a matter of hours we’ll have a look at just what they’ve managed to maintain down there. Cheer up! If it’s like you say, then we may be able to help them out and lift them up. God brought us here for a reason. Consider what would have happened if one of the pirates had found this place first.”

He never understood why they didn’t think of themselves as the good guys, and it worried him. He was a better teacher than that .

The probe’s data confirmed their suspicions of a fairly low level technology even though the colony here had been saved to a large extent by the climate, isolation, and the fact that they’d been set up so close to the Silence that nobody’d heard of them or blundered into them before.