Scaevola's Triumph (Gaius Claudius Scaevola trilogy Book 3) (42 page)

He looked at the wall screen, the only option to the cold grey of his cage. There was a ball of white, turbulent, seething fire. Small dark blotches could be seen, like small whirlpools on a river of fire sucking material down into the bulk below. Small, he reminded himself, was relative; some of these could suck in a planet without suffering enough indigestion to feel the need to burp. But the star could do more than burp. In one place a fireball had been spat out of its birth inferno, millions and millions of tonnes of material hotter than the surface of the star itself, soaring out into space. Then there were dozens of immense streams of fire, wider than a planet, soaring tens of thousands of miles upwards to twist and turn, then plunge back into the star, to form immense arches of plasma, hundreds of thousands of miles across. The arches, he had been told, were held by immense magnetic fields generated by the movement of the fire below.

The plan was simple. The ship would scan the star, map all the turbulence, calculate what the star would do next, then aim for a region in which the magnetic intensity was low. The ship would generate its own very intense fields to sweep up or deflect the plasma, the outer skin would be made the brightest silver possible, and in principle they would fly through the relatively empty space, and while much of the energy would be absorbed and converted to fuel, some heat had to be absorbed by the ship. Prior to arrival, the ship would pump as much heat as possible to the outside and radiate it to space, cooling it to something approaching absolute zero in places, to make a bigger buffer for the inevitable heat flux. Near the star, the ship would attempt to keep temperatures below the critical temperature where functionality ceased, which was somewhere in the red heat zone.

The ball became bigger, brighter, more fiery. Larger and larger, by now the flares clearly extended well outside any outer distance. There were huge cavernous dark spots, although he knew that 'dark' was relative; they were dark because the suppressors were eliminating almost all light. There before them was a space between two giant arched flares: their target. The ship was aimed at the centre of the rather dark and hopefully empty spot.

Bigger and bigger the spot became. Gaius looked towards the stellar surface. This was the tricky bit. In principle, a new flare should not start up aligned with this null spot, but if it did, they were in trouble. Being struck by a few hundred million tonnes of plasma travelling at hundreds of kilometers per second was not survivable. Flares in principle were predictable from the stellar sounds. The Tin Man had told Gaius that the star was ringing like a bell, only with far more complications, and by analysing these sounds, it was quite predictable what would happen. Gaius had to believe him. Especially now! There was a wall of hot stuff rising, but the hole was now huge. Except by now it was not a hole, but filled with something. The Tin Man had warned him about this. Once they got close enough, the light suppressors had less to deal with, so they compensated.

They seemed to be flying straight at a wall! They were in the wall! At least they were still alive. The image remained a uniform brightness. Perhaps it was dead! Perhaps he had a frozen image! Then, suddenly, black, and the side of another flare. A slight turn, and with a flare on the starboard bow, they were through, and accelerating as fast as they could away from the star.

Gaius now flicked through the channels. There, in one of the rooms, the Tin Man was doing something. At least he was functional. The rest of the ship seemed more or less in working order, although there were some strange sights. A glass from which he had been drinking had boiled dry, and had a black bottom. He pressed on the lever, but nothing happened. He had to wait.

Eventually the Tin Man came, and opened the can. As Gaius stepped out, he could not help noticing the strange smell of cooking.

"Some of the food stores are spoiled," the Tin Man explained, when he noticed Gaius's sniffing.

"Any damage?" Gaius asked.

"Not much, and all ships are through. You will also be pleased to know all energy banks are fully recharged."

"What does 'not much' mean?" Gaius asked.

"Some of my circuits and hydraulics are damaged," the Tin Man said. "My mobility is less than it might be. Refrigeration is down, however weapons and motors are fully functional. Life support is adequate, but luxuries are down."

"The enemy?"

"I shall show you where they are in due course," the Tin Man said, as he helped Gaius through the last hatch from the refrigerated area, "however, from their actions they have probably sensed there is no attack fleet of any magnitude able to be detected. They are decelerating with respect to the planet, but it is not clear whether that is to attack ships about the planet, or to turn around and come back."

"Suppose you are correct," Gaius said, "it would not do for us to fly through them at high speed, only to find that they're going back. Our transports would be open to attack."

"What do you wish to do?"

"Cut motors!" Gaius ordered. "If we decelerate, they'll see our exhausts, but we can let the star slow us down until we see what they're going to do."

Chapter 33

Although seven hundred and fifty years had passed, Ligra 3 remained in part unconquered. From the M'starn point of view, since it had little manufacturing capacity other than for colony maintenance, its only real value was to ensure that they controlled the space around this star. When the M'starn had arrived in this star system, the Ulsian space defences had put up little better than modest resistance at the inner planet and its moon. Since a planet remains a large place and only a limited number of troops could be devoted to this system, despite the lack of spine from the defenders it took many years for the M'starn army to gain control of the inner system. During this time, their fleet denied supplies to the outer planet until it surrendered.

Almost decades later, the M'starn military landed, to find the Ulsian colonists prepared to surrender, but not their hive. During the period, the reproductive class had fled and had set up their own bases under the ice sheets. Eventually a peace was negotiated, under the terms of which the Ulsians would continue to reproduce, they would supply workers to the factories, these factories would produce a specified amount of output, all androids and weapons would be handed over, the Ulsians would not make weapons, and in return, the M'starn would leave the Ulsians on Ligra 3 alone.

In one sense it was an ideal solution to the problem. The M'starn did not have the ground forces to fight their way through the illusion-ridden ice-caverns, while the Ulsians had no means of supporting any struggle outside them.

Over the decades, nothing happened. The Ulsians had originally formed small committees to discuss how they could resist the invaders, and they formed elaborate plans. The M'starn were fully aware of these plans, but chose to ignore them. Since the M'starn realized that there would always be a reaction against the master species, an important aspect was to cultivate the resistance groups they knew they could monitor. After nearly two hundred years, however, both sides began to tire. The M'starn convinced themselves that these Ulsians would never revolt, and the Ulsians became convinced that there was no help coming.

All but two of the resistance groups closed down, and these two gave no sign whatsoever of ever revolting. Instead, they concentrated on the formal protocols of revolt. Elaborate code words to represent every conceivable situation and revolt status were committed to memory. Meetings were held at which each member would proudly recite what had to be done following the hearing of a randomly selected code word. The M'starn heard about this activity, and chuckled mightily. The commander over-ruled calls to arrest the plotters. As he pointed out, the efforts were so laughable they were certainly not worth punishing. But more importantly, from the M'starn point of view, all the Ulsians really thought these activities were secret. Bizarre though it might seem to the M'starn, the concept that any fact known to every Ulsian could hardly remain a secret from the M'starn did not occur to the Ulsians. Since the plotters had survived so long, all the Ulsians also believed that all ideas of revolt could safely be left to the plotters. The possibility of any revolt occurring that could accidentally do any damage was almost zero.

If the Ulsians loved meetings, M'starn society was status-ridden. Thus when the M'starn on the inner planet decided to hold a huge party to celebrate the seven hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the capture of this system, every M'starn of note on the outer planet insisted on attending. Since the feelings of hurt would be acute, and since nothing ever happened on Ligra 3, Central Command on Ligra 2 issued invitations to almost every M'starn of rank Captain and above.

* * *

Four Ulsians from the second revolutionary group were walking jauntily down a corridor. Life was good, well, maybe not good, but at least not bad. The lower-ranking M'starn who could not get to the inner planet had decided to celebrate here. They turned on ample food and drink, and in a fit of generosity added some to tempt Ulsians. Most Ulsians drew the line at celebrating their own defeat, but not the revolutionary group. Turning up was mandatory, to show their loyalty.

Of course the generosity did not run to providing the Ulsians intoxicants. No, the M'starn alone became intoxicated, and began to gloat, calling the Ulsians slaves. The revolutionaries had to bite their tongues. Then came the telling blow! These Ulsians were ordered to clean out the command centre by next morning. For every spot of dirt, an Ulsian would be flayed alive. This was regarded as a great joke. Even the Ulsians had to laugh, or risk having an on-the-spot amputation.

The M'starn drank and drank, and drank so much that gradually they became totally incoherent. What was good, and what made life worth living, was that after that much drink the M'starn would almost certainly have forgotten what they had said. They would clean up, make an excellent job, and ask for a reward. They might well get one, particularly if they asked in a sufficiently loud, high-pitched voice, for the M'starn were known to be very sensitive towards high frequency sound at the best of times, and the day after hard drinking was not even one of their mildly bad days.

They were just finishing cleaning when one of them noticed the control screen. The outer sensor systems were not working, and even more unbelievable, there were no signals on the remote sensor from the two ships whose crews had come down to celebrate with the officers. But even more remarkably, there was an emergency light flashing. When the recall button was pressed, there was a distress message from one of the five remaining ships. There was no message whatsoever from the other four.

Even more strangely, four ships were approaching Ligra 3. They gave none of the identification calls, and their motor signatures indicated they were Ulsian.

One of the party gave out a loud whoop, leaped across the table, thus placing marks on it and breaking two switches, a sure qualification for a flogging even if the M'starn did have headaches, and pulled out two cubes from the central control.

"What're you doing?" one of the others bleated.

"Revolting!" he announced proudly. "It's what we've been training for!"

He reached the intercom system and yelled in a sequence of code words that indicated that the revolt was underway, that the central weapons system had been taken, and the M'starn space ships had been destroyed. The planet was isolated.

This was quite unexpected to the general population. Everyone had always joked about revolt. Usually it was assumed that revolt would mean some Ulsians declaring a revolt, their running around and inflicting minor damage, then being caught and skinned alive. This code word sequence indicated incredible success. Then another code word. The M'starn were contained!

What that meant was that the revolting Ulsians had managed to find the control to the fireproof doors, close them, pump up the hydraulics, and jam the release valves. Even after they awoke from their drunken stupor, it would take many more hours to work out how to get out of there.

All he had to do was to signal the Ulsian fleet, and get the ground troops down. The planet was taken.

* * *

Klendor could hardly believe the message that appeared after about an hour during which nothing had happened. Send in the troops, the planet was his, the message from some self-styled revolutionary leader said. He immediately formed a direct link between his and Lucilla's ships, and he informed her of the message content.

"Well," Claudia Lucilla offered. "Are you going to accept?"

"There are risks," Klendor muttered. "Remember, our troop ship has yet to get here."

"Of course there're risks," Lucilla said, "but if they're telling the truth, you've got to go down and help. Someone needs to make sure everything gets done."

"It could be a trap," Klendor frowned. "There could be enemy down there, waiting to capture −"

"Klendor," Lucilla interrupted coldly. "Get a grip! Who could possibly set such a trap?"

"The M'starn. They are our enemy."

"And they go through all this charade just to lure you down to the surface?" Lucilla said scornfully. "My, they must be terrified of your ship."

"There's no need to be like that," Klendor said, clearly hurting.

"I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings," Lucilla said firmly, "but think! The idea's so ludicrous! There're so few ships here! Why don't they simply defend? Now think about what happens if the message's telling the truth. Somehow a bunch of local Ulsians has overpowered their oppressors, and has taken control. Now because they don't really know what they're doing, if we waste too much time the enemy may be able to recover. You've got to get down there and help organize things and power up the defences."

"There're risks," Klendor said, not to anybody in particular, but rather as a verbal thought.