The Mind Field (3 page)

It took patience to unravel, unlike the soon–to–be sweater in her hands. Watching Javier work reminded her of advanced tactical exercises she had run. Understand the terrain. Understand your enemy’s plans for you and his tendencies. Find the weak spot he designed into the system as a honey trap to draw you in and kill you. Unravel the design until you found the hole he missed.

It had been four hours. She had watched Aritza like a hawk. Not because she expected him to actually commit suicide, he was too vibrant to just die so easily, but because she wanted to see him actually sweat. The man was far too lackadaisical.

Plus, he wanted to make sure they all went to jail, or the hangman.

Everyone else had forgotten that, but she occasionally still saw that look in his eyes. Usually when he was looking at her. That desire. That hunger. That hatred. It made her warm and tingly.

Besides, she smiled to herself as she worked, having a good enemy made you better. It made you keep upping your game, in a complex arms race to see who could win, especially two well–matched opponents.

So she studied him. Learned his traits and his tendencies. Watched him work so she knew his weaknesses, even as he worked the understand the long–dead designer of the trap they had entered.

You never knew when information like that would be useful.

From Javier’s explanation, the minefield was a hive mind. There was no single controller they could kill to escape. Instead, a small part of the overall intelligence was in each little metal body floating around. It thought slowly, as a result. Patiently. Like a trapdoor spider. Waiting.

She understood that sort of patience.

Around them, dozens of killers floated. Big guns. Little guns. Armoured pods. Things to kill dreadnaughts. Things to kill shuttles. Every one of them powered by the solar wind and designed to last forever. It had been five and a half centuries, so far.

She had looked up the battle.
Pyrrhic
failed to cover the consequences.

Five fleets had all been functionally destroyed. But that was enough for
New London
to win the war and proclaim the
Union of Mankind
to a war–weary galaxy. The last significant challenger to their dream of a universal government had died on the planet below when someone had lost control of a terminally–damaged dreadnaught and it had plunged into the atmosphere, exploding only a few tens of thousands of meters above the ground, over the capital city of an entire Pocket Empire.

According to Aritza, the crater was apparently still visible from orbit, a bullet wound just rising into view below them in the near distance, beyond the minefield, inside the shell of death and destruction the war had left.

Afterward, there had been nobody to turn off the mines. Or the minefield had been laid by the victors as a way of salting the earth. Nobody knew the truth. It only mattered now because they were trapped in it, a small fly stuck in fresh sap, waiting for it to harden into amber. Or trapped in a web, waiting for the spider.

Part Five

Javier had finally found someone to dislike more than the amazon, Sykora. It had been a difficult thing. After all, the minefield designer had never given him a concussion, or worked him into utter exhaustion fixing bio–scrubbers, or any of the other things Sykora had done since they had first met, the first time she had shot him.

But the person who designed the defenses around
A’Nacia
? Here was a prime candidate for his considerable hatred.

Five hundred and fifty years had passed, more or less. The system this designer had built was still intact enough to threaten them. Javier had no doubt that the weapons were fully charged and just waiting to fire. He had sat here and watched the little battle–bots push themselves around with little pulses of energy, so he knew that most of them were working.

At least four different satellites were locked onto
Storm Gauntlet
with cannons of some sort at this moment. Certainly the weapons pointed this direction were things the hivemind that was controlling the field thought were hot enough to crush this ship if she turned out to be an enemy ship and not a rock floating around.

Javier wasn’t sure the system wouldn’t fire on rocks either. Eventually.

He would have programmed in that behavior.

He had, however, begun to solve the design of the system, sitting here and passively listening. Each satellite in the net broadcast an ID and a location on a regular basis, about every second or so, so the rest knew where each other was and what it was doing.

He had a catalog going. The forty–six closest ones, mapped and classified roughly into ship–killers, shuttle–killers, and scanners that just sat and watched. Some he had no clue what they did.

Their cryptography was weak, but still too strong for him to crack in anything less than a month, even with the navigation computer brute–forcing the signal.

And there were just too many of them out there for Mary–Elizabeth to take out in one salvo. He didn’t trust that the shields would come up fast enough to help, or be strong enough to hold out. Someone had planned for dreadnaughts. That meant big guns.

Javier considered the ship’s stealth cloak, but that just made it hard to scan them, not invisible. In fact, it had probably been what kept them alive, since they didn’t scan like a starship to the stupid brain running things over there.

As soon as they did anything to change that conclusion, they would get boomed. And he was far too beautiful to die like this.

That’s what he kept telling himself.

He looked down at his favorite tea mug and decided it had been empty long enough. And he was hungry. And
she
had been staring holes in the back of his head long enough.

Javier pushed a button to save all his notes and stood up.

“You’re in charge,” he said as he walked to the door.

“Where are you going?” she said, startled.

It felt good to throw her off balance every once in a while. She was just too damned smug, most of the time. Right now, she was furiously packing yarn and stabby things into a small cloth bag and trying to stand as he went past.

“Lunch,” he replied, biting off the other replies that were rude, or snarky, or just obnoxious. Not today. He was too tired.

“Wait,” she said, abruptly, “I’ll come with you.”

Javier actually stopped and looked back at her as the hatch slid open, holding his surprise in.

“You have the deck,” he said, cruelly, as he stepped backwards and let it close on her surprised face.

Ξ

Javier had gotten food from the buffet line and an industrially–manufactured tea–substitute by the time she tracked him down in the main wardroom. Today it was something vaguely approximating previously–frozen burritos and what could charitably be called red rice, heavy on the vitamins and nutrients, light on taste.

He looked up as she walked up, just short of stomping.

“You aren’t supposed to just walk off the bridge,” she said firmly, professionally, scoldingly.

“What?” he smiled innocently, “you mean I should turn over operational control to another Centurion or qualified Yeoman?

She wasn’t standing close enough that he could actually hear her teeth grind, but the imaginary image in his head was close enough. He smiled up at her. Way up. Sitting, he was just about looking at her belt buckle.

She didn’t respond, but instead slid the chair across from him back and practically threw herself into it.

“What have you learned?” she began the interrogation.

Javier carefully chewed the first bite of his burrito forty–two times, just like his mother had told him to do when he was a kid.

She was gnashing her teeth by thirty–four.

Javier swallowed, set the wrap down, and took a careful drink of the tea, slow to savor the industrial goodness that came of chemicals instead of dried plant leaves that he grew down in his botany hideout.

“Well?” she continued.

“The burritos aren’t half bad,” he said slowly, “but the tea just doesn’t have it today. I would recommend the coffee.”

“I meant about the minefield,” she replied with a growl, exasperation filling her voice.

“It hasn’t killed us yet,” Javier said and stuffed another bite of meat–substitute–and–bean–thing into his mouth.

Chew. Chew. Chew.

“So you’re no closer to solving the puzzle than before?” she sneered.

“Oh, I know lots of ways to solve it,” he replied, eventually. “Most of them end up with us dead.”

“Most?”

There was a really strange look in her eyes. One that might have been mistaken for hope, but that assumed that little miss invulnerable amazon giant had the least doubts in her ability to survive this particular situation. Especially when she had to count on Javier to save her.

Probably she just had gas.

“The rest are so completely insane that the Captain would never go for it.”

“How do you know until you ask him?” she asked with a smile. Upbeat rationality from her was a new thing. Probably a trick, like telling him to look over his shoulder right before she slugged him in the jaw. Again.

“I’m trying to eat here, lady,” he responded, somewhere between a surly growl and an exasperated sigh. It was where she left him, most days.

“You eat, Javier,” she said with a smile. “I’ll go get the Captain and you can explain it to him.

Javier? Really? Her?

He watched her start to slide her chair back, stop, and stare fixedly over his shoulder.

“Never mind,” she said suddenly. “He’s already here. You can explain it to him.”

“Not falling for that trick,” Javier said, stuffing another bite of burrito into his mouth.

“What?” She looked confused. Apparently hadn’t had nearly enough caffeine today, or something. She sounded almost human.

He chewed, staring intently at her while he waited for a fist to appear.

“What do we know, mister?”

The Captain was suddenly beside him. Standing there. Really there. It was probably still a trick. Javier watched Sykora like a hawk. And chewed forty–two times. These people just did not understand good digestion.

A tap on the shoulder.

Crap
.

Javier looked up, braced to be punched. Chewed. Made a face that boiled all the frustration of the last five hours into a single expression. Modern art. Sort of. Something. He was trying to eat here.

The Captain took a hint and sat down beside him. One of the evil Wardroom minions appeared with fresh coffee.
Why couldn’t he get that kind of service?

He ruminated on his burrito.

Oh, what the hell.

Javier smiled beatifically at the Captain. Go big or go home. Or maybe it should be
Go stupid or go home
. Because this was right up there with the dumbest things he had ever done. At least he was less likely to end up getting shot at or married. Again. Hopefully.

He took a sip of the tea–impersonator and set his mug down.

The whole room seemed to have gone quiet, like everyone was holding their breath waiting for his next words. Yup. Gonna get stupid. Might as well do it right.

“It’s like this,” he began. Swear to God that everyone leaned a little closer. It was almost like a scene out of a movie. Weird.

“The minefield isn’t sure if we’re a big rock or a stealthy starship,” he continued, a little louder for the guy in the serving line who was leaning in. “As long as we sit here quiet, it probably won’t shoot.”

Javier looked around, faces were all turning slowly this way. He suppressed a giggle.

“However, if we do anything at all, we might set it off. Sensors. Shields. Engines. Even powering up the jump drive is likely to be enough.”

“Understood. What are our options, Aritza?” Sokolov had that whole Captain Badass thing going today. It was impressive to watch.

“I thought about playing games with the gyros to see if we could drift out of range. We could, but it would take about three months if everything went right. Zero margin for error for that long. Unhappy option.”

He sipped some more tea. The evil minions brought the Captain more coffee, and ignored him. He scored it a draw.

“Instead, I started looking at the mines themselves. Big, dumb things. Couple of maneuvering pulse jets, banks of solar panels to keep the batteries at maximum charge. Some kind of gun. Either a multi–barrel pulsar, a big–bore cannon, or an Ion pulsar, depending. Enough to gut us like a fish, even with shields up.”

“Encrypted?” the Captain asked. Good, solid Concord Navy veteran. If you can’t kick the door in, pick the locks.

“Good enough. We might crack the code in 30–45 days, if we’re lucky. Got a better idea.”

“Oh?” The Captain had sense enough to look dubious. Javier’s good ideas always tended to be
interesting
.

“Yup. Each mine rotates through a basic signal sequence. Eight and a repeat. Each beep, it also includes a simple x, y, z coordinate, zeroed on the old capital city on the planet’s surface. I have no idea what each mine is saying, but it says them in the same pattern. We can use that.”

“How?” the Captain looked somewhat askance at him. Smart guy. Waiting for the other shoe.

“We kill one of the nearby mines right after it sends a ping, and start broadcasting the same thing a second later. The hive mind controlling the field falls for it, ignores us, and we can use maneuvering pulses to back out of the field far enough to escape.”

“You just said that powering up one of the pulsar turrets was likely to set things off,” Sykora said, showing she was paying attention.

“Yup,” Javier replied. “Someone will have to go over there with a limpet mine and blow the thing up manually.”

“You?” she sneered audaciously.

“Oh, absolutely not,” he smiled back. “Well beyond my capabilities. No, we need an expert in EVA and explosives. Somebody crazy. Somebody like the
Ballerina of Death
.”

Yeah. That look right there. Smoldering hatred. If looks could kill. Vitriol, distilled down to an aperitif and served with cheese and crackers. That look on her face almost made everything else worth it today.