Barrington Bayley - The Zen Gun

But evidently someone on the Escorian side had already thought this through. The FMO had no trouble reducing the battle perimeter, but she found it impossible to extricate the fleet from the enemy. Wherever it went, the Escorians followed, able to match speeds as long as Ten-Fleet did not take up galaxy formation and mesh bubbles. The two fleets went hurtling through Escoria, speeding heedlessly past star after star and clinging together in a furiously energy-spitting mass.

A blinding flash of coruscating purple light suddenly enveloped the Command Room’s combat space. When it had gone, so had the combat space. Normal lighting had returned. Archier was sitting on the throne, blinking, only his flagship staff before him.

Even the pool was dead.

After a moment the Damage Assessment Officer spoke up. “We have sustained a near miss. The hull’s combat mode receptors have been burned off.”

“What about the rest of it?”

The officer paused. “Other communications continue to function.”

“Weaponry too,” Gruwert announced. “It was some Simplex-damned converted gas carrier got in a shot at us. Have range; training all guns…” He tailed off, his small eyes glazed in concentration.

“Any chance of regaining contact?” Archier asked his DAO. The officer shook his head.

The Command Room was now useless, unable to receive the fleet’s sensory webwork that had made combat space possible. “Then we shall have to open the old bridge,” Archier decided. “Let’s get up there quick.”

“It might be a bit of a job getting through,” Arctus remarked. “There’s a big party going on on decks thirty to thirty-five.”

“Well, have the bridge opened ready for our arrival.”

“Excellent work, Turret Fourteen!” Gruwert exploded suddenly. “They got him!”

“Congratulations,” Archier said absently. He stepped down from the throne and led his half dozen officers out of the Command Room and to the nearby travelator. Once inside the capacious compartment they soared up to deck twenty-nine, the site of Standard Bearer ’s old-style bridge, without difficulty—Archier had been afraid someone would have tampered with the switches, depositing any unwary transship traveller in the midst of the celebrations; it was a common trick. On debouching from the travelator, however, it became evident the party had strayed outside its stated bounds. On a deck of coloured glass, old-young women danced with extravagantly costumed young men, forming a vivid, swirling crowd. Strictly speaking their presence was out of order, this was a working area of the ship, though disused. Varihued smokes drifted through the air, making Archier feel intoxicated. Someone had mixed a powerful combination of incenses.

“Make way, make way!” Gruwert shouted angrily. “you are obstructing Imperial security!”

He charged into the dancing throng with head bent, coarsely butting people aside. The others followed through the path he cleared. Archier recalled being invited to the party himself—as Admiral, he was formally invited to all the more organised occasions on the flagship—and realised it had been arranged before the fact of a coming battle became known. Not that it would have made much difference. A fair proportion of the flagship’s population was scarcely aware of the Fleet’s official business. Many might not even have heard yet that there was a major space battle in progress.

The harried, desperate-looking face of a capuchin monkey greeted them at the door to the bridge. Archier felt momentary pity, knowing how much some of the more sensitive animals suffered emotionally at times of stress. The capuchin pressed a key to the plate of the door, which slid aside. They hurried in through an opening wide enough to take them all together.

The monkey scurried after Archier. “Is the battle lost then, sir?” it whispered.

“No, of course not,” Archier soothed. “I’m sure we are winning, though not as quickly as I would like.”

The bridge had an old-fashioned appearance, its working area horseshoe-shaped and lined with waist-high instrument and display boards. Above these were large, curved vid-windows that served the same purpose, though in a less sophisticated way, as the pool and the combat space of the Command Room. Archier lost no time in unlocking the boards. He knew it would take a few minutes to set up a network parallel to the one he had just lost, by calling up the redundant communicators. Meantime, the fleet was fighting without overall command.

The monkey had forgotten to lock the door behind him. People were coming in, high on incense. A withered-cheeked girl in a shimmering spectrum dress that converted infrared to visible tones flung herself on Archier as he stood at his board clamping her chin on his shoulder and draping an arm about him. Her intense perfume engulfed him.

“Oh, Admiral, is it true we’re having a space battle? That’s terrific, isn’t it? Let’s see the action, Admiral!”

As if he had instantly obeyed her request, the expanse of vid-window over the board came to life. Outlined large against blackness was the long form of a ship in glittering silver and gold, not by its natural colour but as a result of the colour coding system used to assist human vision. The vessel was a passenger liner, its outer surface spoiled by crudely emplaced weapons. Because the vid screen gave the impression of being a direct window onto space, the enemy ship seemed no more than yards away.

“Who’s paging this image?” he barked at his FMO, unable, for the moment, to make sense of the information glyphs on his board.

“It’s ours ,” she screeched at him. “Distance, ten light-minutes!”

With a start he realised the rebel had crept up on them while he had been making the transfer from the Command Room. But at that moment the Escorian exploded, throwing out gouts and sprays in dazzling—and harmonious—colours. The girl clinging to him oohed and aahed in his ear, her appreciation echoed in wows and oohs by her friends who had also gathered to watch. Archier had to admit the show was pretty.

“Well done Turrets Eight, Fourteen and Twenty-Three,” Gruwert grunted. “They picked him up and fired at will,” he explained to Archier.

“That’s the stuff to give ’em!” the party girl shouted. She giggled, stroking Archier’s neck.

“Let’s have some more of it!” yelled a swaying young man behind her. “Come’n see, everybody!”

Then, with shocking unexpectedness, a dull, prolonged roar sounded through the bridge. It seemed to come from somewhere aft. It was followed by a jarring, undulatory vibration that made the floor of the bridge oscillate up and down.

The Damage Assessment Officer called out from her board. “Looks like they had time to get off a missile!”

“Get a report.”

It couldn’t be a direct hit or they wouldn’t still be here, Archier thought. Probably the ship’s defences had taken out the missile just before it struck, but had been unable to prevent the warhead from detonating. It must have been close: blast effects even of a fusion explosion did not travel far in space, and the force shields would have warded off most of the radiant energy.

Anxiously the DAO worked her board. Confirmation of Archier’s thoughts appeared quickly on the vid window above it. Scanning a section of Standard Bearer’s external hull, it found a gaping ragged hole through which a tangle of wreckage could be seen. Three decks seemed to have been affected, seen blurrily through the emergency gel that was preventing the escape of air.

“What’s the status of repair work?” Archier asked.

“At the start of the current shift, the robot repair teams still hadn’t given an assurance of cooperation, sir,” Arctus reminded him quietly. Archier watched while the window switched to an internal location. They saw an incredible scene: a gang of repair robots being driven along a broad corridor by enraged pigs and dogs. The animals had guns strapped to the tops of their heads: one robot, pausing to turn and protect, fell as a pink-glowing beam struck him square in the thorax.