THE TEMPLE COMPLEX THAT WAS ALSO WA CHI Center had a far different look to it on the surface; a series of large domes, some atop thick cylindrical bases, stretched out starting about fifty meters from shore. Most were polished, waterproofed wood, ornately carved and trimmed in silver and gold, although there was some polished stone and slate and atop the domes, an assortment of stained glass skylights showing religious or ethical themes. Only a few lights showed through; it was essential that the primitive mass of the population should not suspect the existence of the technological wonders that the elite running their world took for granted, even by accident. Water approach was secure, but Chanchukians often were both curious and creative and were not above occasional land forays to see what they could see, and while Wa Chi was sacred ground, forbidden to the masses, it was so eerily impressive above the water that many made pilgrimages just to look upon it.
The coast itself was a black sand beach cut into a wide cleft in the rock; around it the coastal range rose fifteen hundred meters, the first five hundred or so in a craggy basalt rock wall.
The beach was used primarily for recreation and sunning oneself on hot days. Although it was often convenient to bring boats in there, supplies were landed elsewhere. Flat coastal barges were fairly common over the world and so wouldn’t attract any attention. They were powered by oar and sail and often by crews pushing from beneath, guided by a helmsman above who could stomp out commands to the “pushers.”
Every night a thick fog rolled in, covering the domes of the lodges and the beach area, making things miserable for anyone foolish enough to be out in it. Security used a sophisticated radar to sweep the area at those times, and special infrared goggles to see through even the densest fog.
Without the SPF present, this would have been a piece of cake, but now the raiders had to resort to a mixture of the crude and the creative to achieve their end. The crude was first; the SPF had set up a low, horizon-sweep air radar on top of the mountain overlooking the Center to supplement the surface patrols that were normally run from Wa Chi’s security central. It gave some protection against low-flying aircraft should any potential enemy use them, but it was a weak point spotted early by the team.
The small radar station was automated and transmitted directly to security central and also to the SPF command ship via satellite. Monitoring there, too, was totally automated, designed to ring an alarm if anything unusual was spotted. Colonel Chi, however, mindful that the pirates in the past had shown a remarkable talent for beating electronic locks, also had two enlisted personnel fully armed stationed at the radar unit at all times, in six-hour shifts.
Min Xao Po watched the guard change at two hundred hours through her own special night goggles, then waited until the old guards wearily put on their flight packs and jumped off the cliff to float down to the beach below. She allowed them fifteen minutes to be on the beach and in the water, well away from any trouble and unable to return quickly, then took aim on the two new guards and shot them down before they knew what hit them. The weapon fired a high stun, rather than a killing beam, since the guards wore automatic life sensors that would have brought a fast investigation if either had died.
Hurrying to the fallen guards, she removed from a pouch a small medical injector, already loaded with serum, and gave each guard a shot in the arm. It would guarantee that they would sleep until relieved, by which time this would be long over.
The Chows, born wizards with all sorts of locks, had looked at the analytical photos of the lock on the radar unit and solved it in a flash. It was pretty crude, but it did have a few nasty little booby traps for the unwary or ignorant. The combination wasn’t much of a problem; Vulture had tapped that line long ago.
Carefully Min placed a device measuring about half a meter square over the locking mechanism, securing it with clamps to the small cubicle, then activated it with the press of a button. There was a lot of loud clicking and a whine and then a light began blinking on the device signaling that the door was unlocked. She removed the device but did not immediately unlock the door. Instead she climbed up on the top of the cubicle to the antenna complex, found the set she wanted, removed another small box, and attached it between two smaller antennas and then lifted up a second set of antennas almost the same size as those on the cubicle. Two cables were attached to terminals on the box, and then, stretching, she fastened the huge alligator clips on the other end of the cables simultaneously to the two fixed antennas. She then scurried back down to the ground and waited nearly five minutes to make certain that no activity could be heard from below.
Satisfied, she nodded to herself and opened the door. A bell alarm sounded, but it was muffled beyond the immediate area by the sound of the surf and wasn’t intended to do more than alert the guards. The same alarm was now being transmitted to security central and should have brought a horde of troopers armed to the teeth, but the signal was now not being broadcast by the twin original antennas to the receivers below, but rather being fed directly into her little box, which filtered out all the nasty, unpleasant things like alarms and then sent the rest of the signal unaltered. With the simple press of a button on a remote control on her belt, she could stop even that and send whatever signal she wanted.
Her entry would be recorded and what she was doing would later be plain to investigators, but she didn’t have the time to dig into complex built-in monitor circuits nor did she want to risk tripping secondary alarms. Let them find out—as long as it was later. By now all three of them were almost certainly on Colonel Chi’s wanted list simply by being absent from home for four days, and she had no intention of being anywhere near Chanchuk by the time the recordings were viewed.
She was relieved to find the unit a stock SPF issue as expected. She had nightmares of having to face a totally different design from what she’d been mindprinted to handle. Bless the military mind! Within minutes she had done her work, and from this point you could have brought Thunder in hovering over Wa Chi Center and the screens and monitors both at the Center and on the command ship would show empty, peaceful space. Of course, the orbital and deep-space monitors were still operable, but those were not a concern at the moment.
It went perfectly. The only thing they hadn’t anticipated was the headache that damned alarm gave her, bouncing around in that confined space.
She emerged, closed the door, and got some blessed silence. Since there were no alarms sounding near or far now and no armed squads and since she was still conscious and free, she took the liberty of assuming that their estimate of Min Xao Po as a brilliant communications technician had not been misplaced. She picked up a small waterproof transceiver from her pack and lifted it to her mouth.
“Secure One. Proceeding to level two.” She secured her own floater device, picked up the bulky pack, and jumped off the cliff.
Allowing themselves the time not merely to scout out but to analyze the entire problem with the Thunder’s computer and personnel and then taking the additional time and patience to slowly infiltrate in the exact equipment needed was paying off.
Now, aboard a coastal raft, Chung Mung Wo was getting her own equipment in shape. The raft was a regular; it was expected in these waters between midnight and dawn out on the fringes of the security zone, just out of the fog area. Being subject to all sorts of delays, it wasn’t unusual to have it show up on the surface sweeps at any hour of the early morning—and often later—and, because it wasn’t a Center craft but a native one running between two native villages sixty or so kilometers south of the Center and ninety kilometers north of it, there was really no way security personnel could determine if it was truly the correct raft or not. There would be no way of knowing that the old helmsman had somehow gotten herself dead drunk down in Waning and hadn’t even sobered up enough to leave town as yet.
Chung checked her console, deployed the aerial and underwater transmitters, and began to crank up the juice a bit. “Nice static electricity tonight,” she mumbled to herself. “Couldn’t be better. That fog is energizing almost too well.” She looked at her watch. “Have to bring it up slowly. We want the fireworks on schedule.”
Forward, Butar Killomen, the leader of this meager but well-armed attack force, checked her own control console. This was the one area she was most nervous about, since there had been no way to test this equipment except with computer simulations. She had some faith in simulations, but she was an old spacer. Computers could answer only the questions you asked them in the first place, and there was no substitute for actual experience. The very air was starting to crackle all around them.
Around the Sacred Lodge, the surface guards, in pairs on small platforms and within sight of one another even through the fog, began to get disturbed.
“Must be a storm coming up,” one remarked to her companion. “I don’t remember there being one on the weather plots, but the electricity in the air tonight’s so high I’m blind with these damned goggles on. It’s shorting out everything.”
Her companion nodded. “I’m worried. If it gets much worse than this we’ll get shocks every time we touch anything. You get too high a charge, I heard that these damned rifles’ll discharge all at once. I sure don’t want to be holdin’ one that does.”
“That’s for sure.” The other nodded. “Look, I’m gonna call this in. Anybody tries anything in this shit is gonna be in the same shape we’re in. Besides, this whole watch is screwy anyway. What are they gonna do? Bomb us?”
She undipped her communicator. The static on it was almost unendurable in and of itself. “This is Corporal Gwi, Post Three. We have prestorm conditions up here and high static. Visibility is zero even with the goggles, and we are starting to get equipment malfunction.”
In about two minutes there was a loud splash and the sergeant of the guard popped up and looked around in the water below. She shouted the password, then did a survey. “You’re right. It’s lousy tonight. I’ll call the OD.”
The officer of the day appreciated the conditions, but also reflected that it was just the sort of night that she’d choose to try something. It was certain that the guards were in more danger from their own equipment than any help in fending off an attack. Still, she didn’t like to make any major decisions that might haunt her. She called Colonel Chi in her quarters.
Chi, awakened from a sound sleep, was in a foul mood, but listened intently. “Check with the command ship for weather data, then check space, air, surface, and subsurface scanners. If nothing shows up, have them come below until conditions clear—but they go back up the moment conditions clear, understand?”
“Yes, Colonel.” The OD called the command ship. “Anything unusual on your scopes?”
“Nothing at all, Captain. We’re measuring a local disturbance in your area, though.”
“Anything unusual about it?”
“Well, meteorology can’t give a good reason for it, but we’ve seen this sort of thing a couple of times before. It’s rare, but it happens. Space monitors are clear, and the aerial scan shows only your disturbance. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Thank you.” The OD turned to her sergeant. “Check all surface and subsurface monitors.”
“Already did, Captain. Nothing subsurface, but we’ve got enough stuff there that anyone’d be crazy to try anything. Air is a mess. With all that static and the discharge from the storm, it looks like we’re being invaded, but the monitoring computers don’t seem to be worried. You know they could pick a bird out of that mess anyway, ’cause the echoes from the storm are constantly changing in random patterns. Anything solid would be regular. I’d say it’s clear.”
She nodded. “Very well. Send the sergeant of the guard a stand-down for surface personnel until, in the assessment of this or higher authority or the sergeant of the guard on the scene, conditions should improve to a safe level. Got it?”
“Got it. Sending now.”
Butar Killomen looked at her watch. It was time. She turned and shouted back to Chung. “Let’s do it!”
Chung nodded and brought up the charge to near storm levels. Her console was getting hot, but it didn’t have to last all that long anyway and, besides, enough energy had been dumped into that fog bank now that it had a life of its own. Already there was a good deal of lightning, and even from their distance the boom of thunder reached them with increasing frequency. It was quite a nice fireworks show, if Chung did say so herself.
Butar Killomen put on the command helmet and sat back in her makeshift recliner. The drone was already powered up; now she was in complete command of it, and it was a mess. There was certainly a lot of noise in the interface connection, more as the small drone lifted off like some great bird of prey and slid into the night, even though the special frequencies they were using were supposed to insulate the electronics, and the intense lightning and the sudden updrafts and downdrafts caused by the storm were hard to handle. These were not the kind of conditions for an amateur pilot, and the tiny computer brain in the drone was hardly adequate by itself to handle these conditions. The problem was, any radar-type scan to maintain distance and pick out targets that would be useful to them would also be useful to the SPF; by knocking out the SPF, they knew they’d be flying by the seat-of-the-pants method, and that required great skill. Butar only hoped she wasn’t too out of practice.
The visuals were awful; there was so much energy around that the sensors were filled with garbage, and she concentrated hard to separate the real from the unreal and keep everything just so. There! Ease over, careful, careful, you did this in your mind a thousand times blind . . .
The drone, barely three meters long by two across, settled onto one of the guard perches and then locked itself onto the polished wooden dome of the Sacred Lodge itself. A small drill extended from beneath and bored a tiny hole through the more than twenty centimeters of wood wall with nearly silent efficiency. There was a problem when the required depth was reached; there was no indication that the tip of the drill was through. Worried, she continued on, but it was another ten centimeters, almost the length of the drill, before she broke free. She guessed she’d drilled through a case or an ornamental work, but it didn’t matter what.
Next the drill was retracted and a small hose inserted. She had a tense moment when she realized that the hose was only thirty centimeters—perhaps a fraction short—and cursed herself for not thinking of this eventuality, but it was close enough. A centimeter was a very tiny distance and the ejection would be under pressure.
Almost immediately the tanks switched on and began pumping a high volume of the colorless, odorless neurotoxin into the Sacred Lodge. She guessed it was going in in the vicinity of the entry hall, but it didn’t really matter. The way the interior climate control worked, the stuff would be all over the place inside of six anxious minutes, and it only took about two parts per billion to paralyze anyone breathing it in.
Now, if no busybody popped up at that point and spotted the probe, and if Vulture was ready for the gas, could neutralize it, switch the rings, and then find where the opening was, all within a very short period of time, they just might make it.
This was certainly the toughest one yet, from a technical point of view. Part of the problem had been access to the inside of the Sacred Lodge, which was difficult even with Vulture, and part had been circumventing the security system. There was, however, one security system they could not circumvent because they didn’t really know it or its capabilities. Nobody really did. That was the internal one inside the Sacred Lodge, beyond even Center’s security control. You could tamper with the monitors and records, those things that had been designed for human interfacing, but not the mechanical guard devices. Those operated automatically whenever the Holy Lama was awake, and the only thing the raiders could guess about the devices was that they were formidable. Clayben had been insistent that their plans take the worst-case approach toward the security system even though it might be less efficient than they feared, and that was as it had to be.
There was no way to get Vulture out of there without blowing a fairly large and hardly unobtrusive hole in the dome and almost certainly triggering all sorts of alarms. The windows and tempting skylight in the Holy Lama’s office were connected to the internal system as well as audible external alarms. They might still have gotten Vulture out, but the odds of a successful getaway after were practically nil. No, success depended on stealing the ring separately and letting Vulture rely on his unique talents to escape at a later time. Nor could they count on Vulture simply becoming the Holy Lama. Not only would the best security system be keyed on both her and the ring, but she could not exit without always being in a crowd. Vulture was hard to kill, but mortal all the same.
Vulture, of course, had already practiced with the specific neurotoxin used, neutralizing it in no time with his absolute cellular control. Awake and waiting, his body and mind sensed the danger at once and moved to combat it. The process was simple but not automatic. He’d been caught unawares by such substances before, but this was different, it was expected and almost on schedule.
The other Seed slept on like corpses. Even if they’d suddenly awakened, they could not have so much as opened their eyes, although their autonomic systems continued to function in a reduced but not harmful manner. Vulture got up, went out into the meditation chamber, and retrieved the duplicate ring from behind a statue of the sacred Buddha. Then he headed for the Holy Lama’s bedchambers.
He stopped and stifled a grin as he saw her in bed, and had to suppress an urge to take advantage of the situation. That was the Chanchukian male part of him, something he could control as easily as the neurotoxin but which took more constant vigilance. She’d actually taken off the ring and put it on her nightstand! He wasted a precious second to lift and look at her finger. The hair had been virtually worn away by the ring and there was some scabbing where it had been. She must have had one hell of a time getting the damned thing off!
Peeling away the disguise layer on the ring he’d brought, he turned it from a high priestess’s signet into a near duplicate of the ring on the nightstand. It wasn’t perfect, but they’d been able to work from blown-up pictures of the Holy Lama’s rare public appearances taken from the computer files at security. However, when not side by side they sure as hell looked identical.
For a moment he had a sudden fear as he momentarily forgot which was the real one and which the fake. After all this it sure as hell wouldn’t do to steal and send the counterfeit back! With some relief, he saw a tiny bit of the foil from the outer wrapping of the disguise still clinging to the back of the fake ring. He scraped it away, inspected it, then put it down on the nightstand.
Time was precious. He had timed this operation at no more than twenty minutes. The storm outside sounded pretty bad, but the SPF was certain to keep popping up to check on it firsthand. Every minute that drone was atop the dome was one minute more it could be spotted and an alarm sounded that would queer the whole deal.
Now the problem was to find the damned opening, not much bigger around than the ring itself, and do it as quickly as possible.
By now the pumps on the drone would have reversed, and the suction would create a strong airflow outward rather than in. With that in mind, he found some papers and a match and lit them, watching the smoke, then tried to follow it before he burned his hand. Since he knew that it would be at one of the six guard positions, if all went as planned, that narrowed down his search some, and he found the proper location with little trouble. Finding and then getting to the probe was more difficult. It had come into the library, and it appeared to have drilled its way right through a bookcase wall about three meters up—or about three times his height. A chair might have helped, but Chanchukians didn’t use chairs—they were built for a different sort of furniture and tended in any event to have seating areas rather low to the floor.
Feeling the seconds tick away, he thought frantically about how to reach the probe, cursing that the whole elaborate scheme might now fall apart because he was too short or the hole was too high. He finally started stacking the largest books he could find one atop the other, some so heavy he had problems with them, then climbing on top. It was just out of reach, and he stretched his arm to the limit on the high, hastily built stack, the ring held in his outstretched fingers, and didn’t quite make it several times. Finally, though, he felt it suddenly taken from his grasp, but he looked in horror as he saw the ring jam up just inside the hole. The probe hadn’t quite reached through, and the wood was chewed up!
Summoning all his strength and concentration, he leaped up and smacked the ring hard with his hand, then fell crashing to the floor, his tower of books in shambles. He was bruised and battered, and nearly broke his neck in the fall. Only the fact that, being the creature that he was, that sort of damage wouldn’t really harm him saved him from a rather obvious hospital call.
He looked up at the opening. He couldn’t see the ring, but he wasn’t certain if it had fallen down or been sucked in or, if sucked in, if it had made it to the tube and been hauled into the probe. He looked around the floor, saw no sign of it, and decided that there was simply nothing more he could do. He would require a few minutes of concentration to repair his bruises and sprains, and then he could only attempt to pick up and reshelve the books and get back to his quarters.
At least the suction, which had been audible in the library, now seemed to be gone. Whether that was because the ring was lodged in the hole or safely inside the probe he wouldn’t know, perhaps for some time, but even if it was lodged it was not a total loss. He alone would know it was there, and it would be easier at some point to retrieve it from that spot than to steal it all over again.
Outside, the sergeant of the guard broke the surface and looked around. The weather was still awful, and the wind was picking up, but she frowned, not quite certain why it didn’t seem right. Something, some sound—no, it was gone now, but its very absence made her more suspicious.
Suddenly conscious of the fact that, if there were intruders out there, she was in a pretty weak and exposed position, she ducked back under. Now was the time to retrieve the guards, lousy conditions or not, and do a thorough check of the exterior!
The probe switched from vacuum tube back to the borer, only now a different mechanism was activated. The effect was to plug the hole with the same material taken from it. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be far less noticeable. That done, Killomen attempted a sweep of the immediate area but found the weather conditions impossible. The false echoes were everywhere, blanketing the screen. She decided that enough was enough, detached the clamps, and slowly eased the probe up to a height perhaps twenty meters over the roofs of the lodges, then began bringing it bumpily back to the barge.
The sensors in the extension mechanism of the drone weren’t all that much; she knew she had grasped something, but she wasn’t certain what or where or if it had gotten inside the drone. That would have to wait for its return and inspection.
It had been audacious, risky, and complicated as all hell—that last being the best guarantee of something going wrong. The fact that they’d gotten away with it even this far was, to Killomen, nothing short of miraculous.
She brought the drone back down to the deck of the barge, drew the tarp over it so that no SPF spy satellite might see anything unusual if it should happen to look, then crawled under. The drone was still warm from its long flight, but she wanted no suspense that wasn’t necessary. The lock to the storage compartment was easily accessible, and she opened it and reached inside.
There was nothing in the compartment.
Damn! All this for nothing . . .
She calmed down a moment and thought. The lone sensor had indicated that the vacuum tube had picked up something. If it wasn’t in the compartment, it might well have fallen out when withdrawn, in which case it was either on the platform or on the bottom at the foundation of the Sacred Lodge. There was only one other place to look before assuming the worst . . .
She went back to the command console and extended the suction tube, then killed the power and crawled back under. With all the strength she could muster she pulled and tugged at the tube, then finally got a knife, reached in, and cut the damned thing off at its base plate. After bringing out the tube, she felt along it and found, not very far from the opening, a lump.
“Chung! I need very small pliers or a screwdriver or something that’ll cut this material down the side!” she shouted. “We’ve picked up something—but I’m not sure just what. It’s stuck!”
Chung came over and examined the tube, then stuck her longest finger in and felt it—it was close to the opening but wedged in tight.
Taking the knife, and with Killomen holding, Chung cut through the tube on both sides of the object, then sawed the very small piece laterally. After some time and effort, she was able to peel away the thick, tough hose and see just what was inside. It had been nicked a bit by the knife, but was otherwise in pretty good shape.
“So that’s one of the rings.” Chung Mung Wo sighed. “It is impressive, even in the darkness.” She brought up a small service light and they both stared at it.
“Four more ugly birds,” Chung said.
Butar Killomen shrugged. “Makes sense, if we count ’em. Matriyeh’s ring has one bird and a tree. Janipur’s had two but no tree, this is four, and from the pictures, the one on Earth has three. I suppose the fifth one is either five birds of some kind or maybe none. It would make over a hundred possible combinations, all but one of which could kill you. Makes a crazy kind of sense, I guess.”
“Yes,” Chung agreed. “Who knows how strange those ancients were, or how they thought?” She sighed, and they both just stood there for a moment, staring at the ring.
Finally Butar Killomen gave a grin and looked up at Chung. “We did it. This insane, idiotic plan actually worked! We have the ring!”
Chung nodded, always the pragmatist. “Yes, but we had better signal Min to meet us at the rendezvous point. Now all we all have to do is get off this world.”
Butar Killomen sighed, got up, and put the ring in her pouch, then looked up at the dark, cloudy sky. “At least I will not die here,” she muttered to herself. “At least I shall return to where I belong.”
“We have much to do and something of a swim yet tonight,” she reminded Chung. “Let’s get on with it. I want to be well away before that fleet arrives. This plan is not complete unless we get away with the prize, and we don’t stand a chance with Vals and fighters and an SPF task force about.”
Chung nodded but couldn’t help looking back into the fog. “I think we will make it. They were not prepared for this, no matter how elaborate their precautions and their trap. They will not be prepared for our leaving, either. But Vulture . . . ”
“Sometimes I think Vulture is too self-confident,” she acknowledged. “With that much power and knowledge perhaps we would be the same. But there is such a thing as being overconfident. This Colonel Chi is a different breed than we have seen before. I wish her or him or it luck. We have three now, and know of a fourth. But the fifth—without the fifth, it is the same as having none at all. And each time security is tougher: one mistake and we must begin again—and this is taking long enough as it is. Vulture will have to be extracautious with this Colonel Chi . . . ”
Chung shrugged. “Well, our part from now on will be in space, where we belong. I never believed that this plan could be pulled off. Now, deep down, I feel our victory may be difficult but is inevitable. Come! If the current carries us out far enough I might even risk the motor!”
The storm activity continued fiercely for a while but died away with the sunrise. The guards came back up and took their positions, but nothing seemed amiss—and why should they think differently? Clearly no one had broken into the Sacred Lodge from above no matter what, or all hell would have broken loose within and without.
Up on top of the cliffs, all hell was breaking loose anyway. The relief guards showed up and discovered the ones on duty still unconscious; an alarm was sounded and a specialty squad was dispatched on the double. When they found the antenna jumpers and the added little box, Colonel Chi, still sleepy, was not far behind and already had issued a general alert.
Within an hour, a team from the science labs aboard the command ship were down, examining the boxes and analyzing the work done inside the station as well. They were cautious, just in case of booby traps, but there were none.
The chief technical officer was quite certain of her results. “Essentially, last night we had no surface-level sweep. We were blind to about, oh, three thousand meters when the orbital probes took over. You could have flown anything in here last night.”
Now, suddenly, there was a careful examination of almost everything. Colonel Chi was livid. If anything really serious had happened, the blame never fell on the foot soldier, it all fell on the commander. Nobody was more aware of this than Chi.
“All right, between two and six hundred this morning somebody knocked out our sensors with a very clever set of devices,” she said to her staff. “Now we must know why. Such devices are beyond the capacity of anyone here to make, so we must assume a tie-in with our missing priestess and her housekeeping staff. The only external threat capable of this is the pirates, and they are after one thing and one thing only. I want the entire Sacred Lodge covered, every centimeter of the exterior and all of the working plant below. I want all guards not just questioned but mindprinted and computer scanned for the slightest details.” She stopped and looked at the officer of the day. “Didn’t you say you sighted a barge far out on the scopes?”
The OD nodded. “Yes, but it was expected. Of course, if they interfered with our scopes, I can’t be certain it was there at all . . . ”
“It was there. The scope sighting came a few minutes before the guards were put away on the hill,” said the charge of quarters. “I checked on that.”
“I want that barge. Give me air probes and to hell with regulations! I don’t care what the masses see or what they believe!” She sighed. “And get me the Holy Lama! I don’t care if we wake her up out of her precious beauty sleep!”
But before she could put in the call, another came from the surface guards reporting odd scratches and markings above guard post three. Chi called the tech people and went to investigate. The Holy Lama wasn’t going anywhere.
“Suction clamps,” the technical officer said after a cursory study. “Some high-quality ones specially made for bonding to a wet wooden surface, most likely. The marks aren’t that pronounced—whatever it was was almost certainly designed to do this very job and not much else. We measured the marks and got an estimate as best we could. I’d say it was small—too small to even fit one of us, considering the type of motor it had to have to be that unobtrusive in idle.”
Chi thought furiously. “Too small for us. Might a male have fit in it?”
“Huh? Yes, I suppose—but how would a male get into it? The only hole we found is a circular cut perhaps two, two and a half centimeters across.”
Chi wasn’t certain what her hypothetical creature might be capable of, but even she doubted it could turn itself into a rope or snake and slither through such an opening, particularly while carrying a ring.
It hit her suddenly, and she cursed herself for not seeing the obvious. “It’s big enough to feed that damned ring through! I want that barge and that drone! I want every available trooper and all available technology on this—now! They might have blinded us here, but they certainly did not blind the command ship and the permanent system monitors! They are still on the surface of this planet and I want them!”
She stood there a moment, on the platform, thinking hard. Not only were they still on the planet, but no matter what their mole, their inside operative—whoever or whatever it was—most certainly was still inside the Sacred Lodge.
“Get me a team up here in full security gear and a construction unit with heavy drills and saws,” she ordered. “If they can get in by drilling a hole without triggering the internal security system, we can get in by drilling a bigger hole. I want to be in there as quickly as possible—and no one, absolutely no one, gets out!”
By zero nine-thirty they had a hole drilled sufficient to make a total wreck of the library wall and large enough to get in both fully armed troopers and equipment. The squad looked eerie in their full battle gear and special suits that were both armor and life support systems. Chi wanted no unpleasant surprises for her people.
By ten-fifteen they had found the Holy Lama still out cold, as well as all nine Seed and the children, all also apparently out cold. Medical took scans and samples and discovered a simple biochemical neurotoxin in the bloodstream. There were traces in the air, but most if not all of it had been flushed out or broken down by now.
“Simple but effective,” the medical officer told Chi. “There is no permanent harm and it will break down in a few hours at most. They should all have serious headaches but little else.”
A sergeant came forward with an object in her gloved hand. “This what they were looking for, Colonel?”
The colonel took it and examined it with some fleeting hope. That little hole had been pretty high. Might it be that they made the attempt but didn’t get what they were after?
“Is it safe to go in just like this?” she asked the medical officer.
“No problem now. Go ahead.”
“Where is the Holy Lama? They could make a duplicate of the ring to fool us, knowing we don’t know enough to tell a valid ring from a phony one, but there is one thing they might have overlooked.”
She was brought to the unconscious figure of the Holy Lama. It was a bit startling to see the great figure of Chanchuk in person; Chi realized that she had never seen her in the flesh until now.
The SPF officer knelt down and immediately saw the finger where the ring had been. She took the ring she had and placed it on the supine figure’s ring finger. It went on easily—too easily. Chi lifted the hand so the fingers bent limply down and the ring fell right off and hit the floor with a clatter. A soldier reached down to pick it up.
“File it as evidence, or a souvenir,” Chi told the soldier. “It’s phony. Look at the ring finger. Clearly our Holy Lama has gained some weight since she put on the ring at her investiture. That ring she had was wedged on tight. See the scabbing? This ring, on the other hand, is at least two sizes too large. It was a nice try, though; I’ll give them that.”
“They’ve got the ring, then?” the tech officer asked.
Chi nodded. “They have—may it poison them! They’ll never get it off this world, I swear.” She turned and looked around. “Medical—you took blood samples from all life forms here?”
“All the ones not our own people, yes,” came the reply.
“I want you to run every test possible on all nine, for the presence of the gas—whoever switched that ring and got the real one out sure wasn’t knocked out. I want every test run that you or your medical computers can think of or remotely imagine. Understand?”
“Yes, certainly. But—what are we looking for?”
“Anything. Any sign that the blood of one of them is not one hundred percent normal. And, of course, any sign that one might have no toxin, or have a greater or lesser degree of it than the others. Don’t neglect the Holy One or the children, either. And pull the internal security recordings and anything else useful and then go over this place with a microscope. And—Doc?”
“Colonel?”
“I want every living thing in here, from the Holy One to any stray microbes, to be packed and sealed and taken to separate isolation cells aboard the command ship as soon as possible. At no time are any of them to be left alone. I want at least two armed troopers with them every moment until they are safely in isolation. Do it now!”
The medical officer shrugged. “All right, but I don’t see what you’re getting at doing it to the children, too. They’re mostly babies.”
“Everyone. No exceptions. Now.” Chi scratched her chin, thinking furiously. “All the rest I can see. A bold plan. But how do they expect to escape?” Suddenly she saw it. “They’ll have to either move before the fleet arrives later today or they’ll have to stay here underground for years! Notify the command ship—I don’t care what sort of ship might punch in in the outer system, I want no challenge unless it moves within range of planetary defenses. I want everything we have concentrated on Chanchuk. I want anything that flies from the surface or from any position within transporter range blown up, no questions asked. Everything. The one who lets anything escape from the surface dies very slowly!”
“Very well, Commander.” The way it was said, though, indicated that the medical officer was wondering if Chi was very long for that position. To her, the precautions seemed cold and callously officious, not the work of a brilliant commander. The colonel was well aware of this.
“And, Doctor—as soon as possible, when things are established, I shall want a mindprint taken of myself. The print is to be filed and also dispatched to the Val commanding the task force.”
The medic was surprised. “Not to headquarters?”
“One to headquarters, too. All right. But I wish it on record for the direct evaluation by Master System.”
“Very well. As you command.”
Later on the command ship, the Holy Lama and her family were just coming around and not feeling any too good about it, while Colonel Chi was in nearly as much discomfort after the thorough scanning and recording of her mind and memories, when the colonel’s recovery was interrupted.
“We have a punch,” the duty officer reported. “All hands on full battle alert.” Alarms sounded throughout the command ship.
Chi jumped from her cot, the headache pushed away as something she could not afford, and made her way immediately to the command center in the center of the ship.
The command center was a different world from the surface expedition and troop ships. Here SPF officers and enlisted personnel of a number of races worked side by side, each there because he or she was the best at what they did. Commodore Marquette, in overall command of the SPF task force now in place and the only superior on hand that Chi had, was in his command chair studying screens full of data that scrolled so fast only the experienced, trained naval eye could make sense of them.
Marquette was a thick, burly apelike creature who looked as if he could bend steel bars without thinking, his face a hairy mass with two huge yellow eyes peering out from the brush and a mouth that had the teeth and muscles to crush bone. Every race that Master System had carved from the human base forcibly expelled from Earth many centuries before had its counterpart in the SPF, so that they could move unobtrusively in and out of any and all of the colonial worlds as need be, and so that there would be a certain level of understanding between the human fighting forces and the colonials. Chi was of the race of Chanchuk; Marquette’s own people were from a far harsher and more violent world.
“What is happening, Commodore?” the colonel asked.
“Lone ship, relatively small but fast. Punched in just beyond the orbit of Makyiuk. Distance is about sixty million kilometers. It’s kept its shields on and its engines at full power, but it’s keeping just out of range of the fighter screen.”
“It’s a feint,” Chi told him flatly. “They are trying to draw us out so that they can get their people off Chanchuk. They know that we have sufficient force to either cover this immediate area or to make a creditable challenge but not both. I should not be surprised if others show up in mock attack formation.”
The commodore was not totally convinced. “You’re certain? They fought last time, remember.”
“And took tremendous losses. They can replace ships but not people so easily.”
“I could take three such ships, maybe more, with what I have,” Marquette noted. “If you’re right, though, and we get more company, we could wind up as sitting ducks for hit and runs unless we challenge them.”
“It is true you could take them if they stood and fought,” Chi agreed, “but this time they will not. I beg you to hold firm. If we can hold their people on the ground for just another few hours, the main task force will be here and we will be impregnable.”
“Two more punches, evenly spaced, twenty-million-kilometer separation!” the scanning computer reported.
Marquette’s eyes narrowed. “Freighters. Scows. The one in the middle is the only worthy fighting ship.” He punched a command button. “Identification?”
“Likely that the freighter to port is Bahakatan, freebooter vessel commanded by Ali Mohammed ben Suda,” the computer reported. “Starboard is Kaotan, commanded by Ikira Sukotae. Commanders are last known registry, may not apply at this date. Fighter is unknown origin, no registry, but was involved in the Battle of Janipur. Communications monitors referred to it as Lightning. All three ships have additional armor and have changed configurations since last encounter. Bahakatan is most vulnerable since inherent design makes it intrinsically slower and less maneuverable, but for that reason it is probably the best armed and shielded.”
Chi nodded. “What do we have?”
“Nine fighters dedicated to command ship fighter screen, two other groups of six each on random surface sweeps, two transports and the supply and factory ship each with one group screen of nine,” Marquette responded.
Alarms suddenly went off. “Minipunch detected! Attack imminent!” warned the speakers, and as Chi watched, the center ship vanished from its position on the master screen while the two fighters went into normal space motion, peeling off and creating large arcs as their probable attack plan was analyzed.
“Don’t like this,” Marquette grumbled. “Sitting ducks, waiting for them to shoot before we know where to shoot back.”
Lightning emerged from its punch within barely a kilometer of the supply and factory ship and let loose a barrage of torpedoes, punching back in within moments.
“Bastard! Nervy bastard! He’s actually punched inside our damned fighter screen!” the commodore exclaimed. The torpedoes, all intelligent and all preprogrammed for weak spots in shielding, curved and dodged close to the transport whose guns blazed trying to pick them off before one of the torpedoes found a way in. In the meantime the fighters were nearly useless; any attempt on the torpedoes would be just as likely to hit the ship they were supposed to protect.
“Transport struck! One—two—no, three hits! Damage serious!” the battle group commander called, although Marquette could see what was happening. Lightning punched out a good fifty million kilometers out from the Chanchuk task force, looped, then came back straight in and punched as, simultaneously, the two freighters punched as well.
With these speeds and distances, punching was nearly instantaneous. An attacker would simply vanish in one spot and appear in another. No human could defend against such an attack, but the battle computers could shift—if Marquette freed them to counter the threat.
Suddenly all three ships were inside the command ship’s perimeter, firing off salvos of a dozen torpedoes and vanishing. Punching in with their full forward shields on and punching out without turning, the massed fire from the command ship itself had no more effect than to perhaps shake up the people on the attacking vessels. The command ship attack was equally futile; the kind of screens employed by the command ship would take far more than these kinds of forays to damage. Still, there was a faint shudder within the bowels of the ship as the torpedoes struck where they could.
“These aren’t random attacks,” Marquette told Chi. “They’re well planned, well scouted, and well flown. Thanks to the initial response, the damage to the factory ship isn’t bad and is under control, but they can do this all day if they have the power, and I’d guess they do. Sooner or later they are going to take some of us out. I’ve got to free the defensive computers to work as a whole! Otherwise we will begin to suffer serious damage!”
“No!” Chi was adamant. “They are trying to pull us away, don’t you see?”
“Colonel, we have twelve fighters covering the Chanchuk grid from pole to pole. Nobody can punch from the surface; it’d take a good ten minutes for anything taking off to reach orbit, let alone beyond. In ten minutes I can have three fighters taking out anything that comes up from anywhere.”
Chi swallowed hard, unable to make a case against that. The navy knew what it and a potential enemy could do, and physical laws were physical laws. “All right. I will defer to you on this. Keep the planetary screen intact but feel free to employ your other forces as you desire.”
“Now you’re talking!” The commodore could have overridden Chi from the start, of course, on the basis of sheer rank and position, but had no desire to do so. Their mission was to prevent an escape; that was Chi’s department.
The defense computers took over task force command. The three vulnerable ships were brought close and tightened up with the command ship, and the new task force fighter screen, now numbering eighteen, divided into two groups, one shielding the ships and the other ready to analyze speed, trajectory, and movements of the enemy and go after them. None of the fighters was manned; all had limited punch capability.
The three enemy ships and the SPF played cat and mouse for almost forty minutes, neither striking any real blow against the other that caused any damage, until the defense computers under Marquette determined what was known as a “release pattern” to the enemy attacks. They came in, attacked alternately, and regrouped at various angles from the task force—but the regrouping positions were now showing a distinct mathematical pattern. The defense computers took a guess at just where they could come out next, and when the next attack came, and the attackers punched through, the fighters punched through at the same time.
Colonel Chi watched the battle on the screens, noting particularly the rolling and gyrations of the enemy vessels as they were engaged by the fighters. Thinking about there being people on those attacking ships, she was very glad she was a ground trooper.
“Stung ’em a bit that time,” Marquette noted with satisfaction.
“Sir! Surface launches!”
Marquette whirled in his chair. “Where? How many?”
“All over. Oh, my—hundreds. From all over the place!”
A full three-dimensional model of Chanchuk hovered over the command plate in the planetary defense section, and on it could be seen just what the monitor was reporting. Hundreds of angry, red blips, all over the globe . . .
Suddenly Chi realized the one thing she’d forgotten in all the excitement over the Sacred Lodge, the raid, the creature, all the rest. That damned small motor assembly.
Somehow, somewhere, over a very long period of time, they had been planting those things all over Chanchuk! What use was just a motor and a small logic module? On defensive screens the damned things all looked alike. Somewhere among them was one, two, perhaps three with pirates aboard—and the ring.
“Break off!” Chi shouted. “Concentrate all fighters on those things! Shoot ’em down! All of them! Forget about anything else!”
“I’ll be damned if I’m going to take my screen off this ship!” the commodore responded. “Recall and reform battle group,” he commanded. “When done, commit three fighters from battle group two to each enemy vessel. Have planetary defense battle group break off and split into thirds and join covering fighters. Target anything attempting to reach said vessels. Shadow!” He turned and looked up at Chi. “Can’t possibly get more than a fraction of ’em, but we can shoot anything they try to pick up!”
Chi’s estimation of Marquette went up a notch or two.
The tiny SPF fighters were much too small and fast to use torpedoes against, and as long as they themselves could throw a random missile or two at the enemy to make it keep its distance—which meant keeping out of range of the ship’s guns—they were relatively safe. On the other hand, guns could pick off an object of any size or significance that was on any sort of clear trajectory for pickup by the freighters, who were bearing down so that they would both skim opposite sides of Chanchuk well away from the task force’s position. If either freighter stopped long enough to allow matter transmission from the surface, enough fighters would converge on it that it would never escape.
Lightning continued its attack against the task force, keeping the rest of the fighter screen occupied. Now facing only nine fighters having to cover four ships, the enemy was able to inflict some real damage on the previously weakened supply and factory ship and on the two transports. It ignored the command ship for now—except for an occasional salvo of torpedoes to keep the fighter screen busy—since those shields were just too strong for any one ship.
“Two Val ships and twice the fighters and all three of them would be history,” Marquette noted. “I just can’t figure out what they’re trying to accomplish by this.”
The two freighters continued to close as the fighters screening them remained ahead and began picking off anything in their path before those freighters could get close. There were now effectively two fighter groups, one on each freighter, while a lone group of five or six ships randomly picked off the small dots just attaining orbit.
Marquette pointed at the globe of Chanchuk. “We’ve got a few of those mystery blips heading straight for us. Good. It’ll give our gunnery computers some work!”
Lightning looped at forty-six million kilometers out, turned, and bore back in on them head on, punching as predicted. Suddenly an alarm went off in the command center and they turned to look. The projected exit of Lightning was not within their protective ring but below and beyond it! As they watched, Lightning reappeared perhaps a hundred kilometers below them, extended some sort of scoop, and sucked up a half dozen of the mystery blips.
It was so close in that the defense computers committed the fighters to go after Lightning, loosing a horde of torpedoes at the same time. Even ships’ guns opened up; at that range they had a clear shot at the enemy.
There were several hits but clearly not enough. Lightning lurched and then began accelerating to where it would miss the planet and attain sufficient speed for a punch. The fighters were on its tail, but they could not prevent the punch or stop the enemy ship. Lightning was damaged but by no means helpless, and it had a pretty good chance of complete escape.
“All fighters break off, break off!” Marquette ordered. “Target the escaping vessel. Repeat, target the escaping vessel.”
Almost immediately Kaotan and Bahakatan were alone. Only when they were certain that there was no more fighter cover did they alter course and close in together. Kaotan opened its pickup bays and activated its transport beams as Bahakatan covered.
As Chung had predicted, the pickup was made with comparative ease and safety.