Barrington Bayley - The Zen Gun

Swivelling the throne, Ragshok glared at Archier. “So this is what you’ve been keeping quiet,” he accused, speaking the words round the huge, puffing cigar. “Diadem is defended.”

“I don’t really understand it,” Archier admitted mildly. “No fleets are stationed in Diadem. The last I heard, Star Force had been ordered to stay away altogether.” He smiled faintly. “That’s Seventeen-Fleet coming at us, and she’s nearly up to strength. You’d better surrender. Maybe you’ll be treated leniently—given remedial treatment, given homes in Diadem, even.”

“Made tax slaves, you mean. They haven’t even attacked yet, and they won’t when we put you onscreen to reassure them.”

“I’m afraid they will, whatever you make me say. We’re supposed to be somewhere else. Remember those funny cobweb things that were making people disappear? We are supposed to be investigating that. Turning up like this makes us look like a threat. You see.” He explained after hesitation, “there’s been a civil conflict inside Diadem. They probably think we’re aiming to mix in it. They must think it, in fact, or they wouldn’t be coming out to meet us.”

The radar picture suddenly disintegrated into a three-dimensional cross-patchwork. Then the operators briefly obtained a single magnified image of one of the dreadful front-line-o’-wars, already extending its immensely long gun barrels.

“They outgun us,” Ragshok muttered.

“Fight ’em, chief!” Morgan urged. “We’ve got plenty of guns too. They don’t outgun us all that much.”

“They know how to use what they’ve got, you fool, and we don’t!” Ragshok retorted. He took the cigar from his mouth and flung it away. “We’ll be smashed to pieces if we stay in formation like this. Order the fleet to disperse. Every ship to avoid contact as best it can and make its own way into Diadem. We can exert some leverage there. Civilians are always soft-bellied.”

When he heard this, Archier’s jaw dropped. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” he yelled.

“SHUT UP! Get him out of here!”

He heard the order being relayed and was still protesting as the virago hustled him from the room. Outside, he stared blankly at the lens of the scangun she held on him. How much should he exert himself, risk his life even, for the sake of these people?

It was a grotesque death. But he would get his fleet back…

He remained wrestling with his conscience when she vanished, with a clap of air.

For a while he stood there. Then, slowly, he walked back into the Command Centre. It was empty, of course. With a dazed feeling, he took up the throne so precipitously vacated by Ragshok Hesper found him there a few minutes later, having followed at her own pace. “Where are they all?” she asked.

“Back in the Claire de Lune ,” Archier told her dully. “But dead, of course.”

While she continued to stare at him in mystification, he waved at the radar picture. “Do you see that? It’s another Imperial fleet on its way to intercept us. To escape it Ragshok decided to scatter Ten-Fleet. But he didn’t understand about the intermat, you see. I don’t suppose hardly anybody outside Star Force does.

“You see, the intermat only works inside the big feetol bubble that encloses the fleet when it’s flying in what we call feetol formation. And it isn’t really permanent. You have to return to your point of origin before the bubble disappears, otherwise you’ll transpose back there spontaneously, in a horribly mangled state because there’s no intermat kiosk to regulate the process. That’s what happened when Ragshok dispersed the fleet and burst the bubble. Remember, his people had spread themselves around the fleet by intermat in the first place. I don’t like to think what it must look like on the Claire de Lune right now.”

He wasn’t sure Hesper took in what he had said about the feetol bubble, but she was bright enough to grasp the bottom line.

“You mean all Ragshok’s people have been killed?” she said. “ All of them?”

“All except the handful who stayed aboard Claire de Lune from the beginning. Some of my own people must have got caught, too,” he brooded. “Not everybody managed to get back to their own vessels after the takeover.”

He sighed. “Better get on to Seventeen, I suppose, before they blast us out of the galaxy.”

Using his Admiral’s throne codes to override the crewless space torsion room, he succeeded in sending a leader tone burst to the flagship of the approaching fleet. Once contact was made the signal was good; they were only minutes away from gunnery range.

In the other’s torsion room, he found himself looking into the mild face of a koala. “This is Admiral Archier,” he announced. “Would you please put me through to Admiral Tirexier.”

“Admiral Brusspert now has command, sir. I will try to get him for you.”

Brusspert? Archier frowned. He knew no such admiral. Very likely he or she was a promotion… but surely Tirexier was not suspected of disloyalty? He could no more believe it of him than he would of himself.

He thought the koala had made a mistake when a grinning pig face confronted him. The pig wore something on its head: it was with a shock that he recognised it, after a moment, as an adaptation of the ceremonial admiral’s hat, with its peaked, bell-shaped dome.

“Ah, there you are, Archier. Now then, what the Simplex do you think you’re doing?”

“Do I address Admiral Brusspert?” Archier asked after a pause.

“Indeed, indeed. Now come to it! Our gunners are raring to go! You saw Crane and Oblescu, I suppose?”

Archier swallowed. As concisely as he could, he related everything that had taken place. When he had finished, Brusspert sniffed dubiously.

“A pretty unlikely tale in the circumstances, I must say… Still, we’ll confirm the truth, or otherwise, of it sharp enough.” The pig’s eyes flickered to something in his range of vision. “Your ships don’t behave as though they have anyone at the helm, at that. Zipping about like a bunch of pesky swamp flies. We’ll chase them down and board. Meantime, make ready to receive our gig. We’re coming over.”

“First,” Archier said, “may I ask how a second class citizen comes to have the rank of admiral? Yours is an acting rank, I take it?”

Brusspert stared at him. Then he broke into squealing laughter. “You haven’t heard, then? Don’t worry, you’ll find out soon enough!”

The picture vanished. The new admiral had cut him off.

In the short interval before the gig from Seventeen Fleet arrived Archier made some attempt to put his flagship back in order. He called the living quarters and informed the vessel’s denizens that it was safe to come out. Slowly the ship began to fill with sounds of life, and he was surprised once again to see his Fire Command Officer, whom he had presumed killed along with so many other animals. It transpired that Gruwert had spent the last few days hiding in a locker, and had ventured forth only when he heard voices he recognised. Thinner, and somewhat bad-tempered, he gulped down an enormous quantity of his favourite mash, and then reported for duty.

Archier was not sure what it would be like to confront a pig admiral. There was an ingrained protocol for dealing with animals. He did not go to the boarding bay to meet the gig, as he might have normally have done, but waited in his office for the party to come to him.

It was larger than he had expected: about twenty animals and humans, though few of the latter. Half a dozen of them trotted into his office, and all of them were four-footed.

He had not realised earlier that Admiral Brusspert was a sow. Her plump dangling udders were evidence that she had littered recently. Archier noted the fact only in passing. It was swallowed up in his general shock.