Jack McDevitt - A Talent for War

"Another what?"

"A mute ship. Battle cruiser, I think. I should have seen it before, but I was watching the little one, and not paying much attention to the scan."

"Where?"

"About ten hours out. Also on an approach vector. It’s coming fast, but braking hard. Must be raising hell with the crew. Anyhow, it should be able to slow down enough to get into orbit. I think you’d better get back here so we can clear out."

"No," I said. I was sweating. "Chase, get out of the Centaur."

"You’re crazy."

"Please," I said. "There’s no time to argue. How far away is the destroyer?"

"About five minutes."

"That’s how much time you have to get aboard the Corsarius. If you don’t make it by then, you’re not going to make it at all."

"You’ve got the capsule."

"That’s why we shouldn’t be standing around talking. Move. Get over there any way you can, but get there!"

I saw the flash high in the western sky: a brief needle of light.

"Chase?"

"I’m okay. But you were right. The bastards just blew the Centaur to hell."

I tried to pick the destroyer up with the capsule’s scopes, but it was already out of range. Chase, who had a picture of it on Corsarius’s monitor, hadn’t figured out yet how to relay it down to me. It didn’t matter anyway. "I’m on my way," I said. "See you in a couple of hours. You might want to invest the time learning how to run Sim’s bridge. Can you get a message off to Saraglia?"

"I’ve already done that. But if they ever receive it, I’ll be amazed. This thing isn’t equipped for that kind of long-range transmission. Alex, I think we’re stuck here."

"We’ll manage," I said. "They’ve got to have a stardrive." I lifted off the shelf, and locked onto the numbers that Chase transmitted.

In the soft cool womb of the cockpit, over the late afternoon of the world, I thought about Sim and Scott. And it was Scott’s melancholy fate that caught at me.

Maybe because Christopher Sim was too remote.

Maybe because I knew Scott’s obsession would become my own.

I rendezvoused with Corsarius several hours later. By then I knew that Chase had been able to get the magnetics working. We’d be able to move, at least. The capsule wasn’t designed to fit in the warship’s bay, so I secured it to the hull outside one of the hatches. I wasn’t quite ready to cast it adrift, until I had a better idea how things stood.

Chase opened the hatch for me. "Okay," I said, as soon as I had my helmet off, "let’s get out of here."

She looked unhappy as we headed back toward the bridge. "We can’t outrun them, Alex."

"This is the Corsarius," I said.

"It’s also two hundred years old. But that’s not the problem. Listen: we’ve been through all this. We don’t have a stardrive. The computers are behaving as if we do, but we don’t—"

"We have to assume it’s there. If not, nothing else will make much difference."

"Okay. But even if we’ve got Armstrongs hidden back there somewhere, we need time to get a sufficient charge to make the jump—"

"How much time?"

"That’s what’s strange. The readout should be precise on that. But the computer says between twenty-five and thirty-two hours."

"I don’t think this is a time to worry about details."

"I suppose. Anyhow, I started to power-up as soon as I came on board."

"When will the mutes be here?"

"In about six hours."

"Then let’s get moving."

"They’ll catch us long before we can make the jump. Even if we assume the most optimistic numbers." She’d got the internal systems working. Each of the hatches opened as we approached, and closed behind us. "I thought it best to keep the individual compartments sealed, until we’re reasonably sure of internal integrity."

"Yeah," I said. "Good idea. How come we can’t outrun them? I thought this thing was supposed to be fast."

"It probably is. But they’re already at a high velocity; we’ll be moving out from a start-up."

I tried to visualize the situation. It sounded like Sim’s problem at Hrinwhar. Enemy ships bearing down, and no real chance to accelerate away. What had he done? "How long before we can vector out on a head-on course?" I asked.

"You mean go out to meet them?"

"In a manner of speaking."

She frowned. "Why make it easy for them?"

"Chase," I said. "What happens if we run right past them? How long does it take them to get turned around?"

"Hell." Her face brightened. "They’d never catch us. Of course, they’ll probably shoot a big hole in us as we go by."

"I don’t think so," I said. "They’re going to a lot of trouble for this ship. The whole point of the attack on the Centaur was to try to prevent our getting aboard Corsarius. I can’t believe they’ll risk destroying it."

"They might if they think we’re going to get away with it."

"Then we’ll have to take our chances. You have a better idea?"

"No," she said, sitting down in the pilot’s seat. "You’ll be happy to hear the magnetics test out. We’ll have full-thrust linear anyhow. If necessary, we can ride them home. Only take about fifty centuries."

"Let’s see the mute," I said.

There was a large, wraparound display set over the viewports. It darkened to the color of the night sky, and the alien appeared. I’d never seen anything like it before, and I wasn’t at first certain that it was a vessel at all: at least, whether it was capable of carrying a crew. It appeared to be a cluster or approximately twenty hyperboloids of varying sizes and design, slowly orbiting each other in a manner that suggested they were not physically connected. There was only a stylized resemblance to the alien vessels of the Resistance era. For purposes of comparison, a silhouette of the Corsarius appeared in the lower right corner. We were scarcely larger than the smallest of the alien’s components.

"Are we sure it’s a mute?"

Chase shook her head. "Damned if I know. Only thing I’m certain of is that it’s not ours. The destroyer was certainly a mute." She pushed back from the pilot’s console, and swung to face me. "You really want to try running past that thing?"

"Yes," I said. "I don’t think we have any other option."

"Okay," Chase said, loading instructions into the computers. "We’ll start to leave orbit in about fifty minutes. How close do you want to go?"

I thought about it. "I’d like to stay out of firing range. Any idea what that might be?"

"None."

"Okay, let’s try for a minimum of ten thousand kilometers. That should make for a tough shot, at least. And still give them a long turn."

"Okay," she said. "Locked in. By the way, this thing’s really building up an operational power reserve. We’ve got enough juice to run a big interstellar. And it’s still climbing. I suspect, if it comes to a fight, we’ve got a substantial kick ourselves."

"It’s not going to blow up, is it?" I was thinking of the Regal.

"Your guess is as good as mine."

Minutes later, the engines of the Corsarius took hold. Chase looked up at me from the navigator’s console. "Historic moment, Alex. You want to execute?"

"No," I said. "Go ahead."

She smiled, and pressed the keys. I felt the ship move.

"Once we leave orbit," I said, "give us everything we’ve got. Full throttle."

"Alex," she said, "the Corsarius can accelerate a lot faster than you and I can. We’ll move pretty quickly, but it’ll be well below what this ship can do."

The alien was getting bigger. It had begun to pulse with a soft blue-green glow, reminiscent of Christmas lights.

"Operational power levels are still building," Chase said. "I’ve never seen anything like it. This son of a bitch might actually have enough of a punch to knock that monster over. If we have to."