Wolf Among the Stars-ARC (30 page)

Andrew managed to keep a straight face at this staggering understatement. “I’ve thought of that, sir. And it’s quite possible that you would be able to deflect Gev-Harath’s course enough to throw a monkey wrench into the scheme.” Presumably the translator could handle that. “But that would leave humanity under their control, with Valdes still ensconced as president-general—”

“—and the Black Wolf Society still exerting influence and pressure,” Rachel finished for him grimly.

“True. But that would be an internal human problem.”

“Also a problem for Gev-Harath, to some extent, for Valdes would hardly be as favorably disposed as the present government,” Katy pointed out.

“And in the meantime,” Reislon urged, “they would continue to work to prop up the status quo in Gev-Rogov, which is hardly in your best interests.”

“Besides,” Andrew added, “with Earth under their thumbs, they would be in a position to regroup and start over and try something else—something we
wouldn‘t
know about—to subvert the Lokaron powers. Wouldn’t it be better to abort their plan now, while we still have the advantage of knowing what that plan is?”

“These are all cogent arguments,” Svyatog admitted. “But I am still not clear on what, precisely, you want me to do.”

“Help us stop Valdes before he reaches Earth. This ship is unarmed except with a couple of light point-defense lasers. We need something with ship-to-ship firepower.”

“That I cannot offer you.” Svyatog smiled at Katy. “Forty-four years ago there happened to be a Harathon navy cruiser here in the Sol system when we needed it. We can hardly expect that kind of good fortune twice. No, all we have is my ship . . . and it is entirely unarmed.”

Alana Morales spoke up. “But your ship does have a tractor-beam generator. And we know Valdes’s ship is a relatively small one—less than corvette-sized, probably smaller than yours. If both our ships intercept him and yours locks on to him . . .”

“You can haul him in so close that even our lasers can put holes in him!” exclaimed Gallivan. He whooped laughter and gave Morales’s shoulders a quick squeeze. “Darlin’, I always knew you were a pirate at heart! Anne Bonny to the life, with a touch of Grace O’Malley!”

Morales’s glare somehow lacked conviction.

“It might actually work,” said Andrew slowly. He led the way into the control room, absently muttering “As you were” to Davis, and set up the problem on the nav plot, displaying Earth’s orbit and Valdes’s projected course approaching it. The difficulty was too obvious to require verbalization. They couldn’t simply head out to meet Valdes; the ships would flash past each other at a tremendous relative velocity.

“We’re going to have to position ourselves out here,” said Andrew, indicating a region along Valdes’ route. “Then be ready to start back inward toward Earth when our sensors show that Valdes has reached the point at which we can intercept him and match vectors.”

“That first step—getting out there into position—is going to be the hard part,” said Morales. “We’ll be struggling against our own residual orbital velocity around Sol. Swimming against the tide, as you might say.”

“Just so.” Andrew knew that the maneuver, which would have been laughably out of the question with old-fashioned rockets, would be difficult enough even with today’s reactionless drives. And it was depressingly certain that it would allow no time to talk his mother into returning to Earth and take her there. “Mister Davis, feed the problem into the computer. Assume continuous 1.5 g acceleration.” Then he remembered Katy and Reislon. “No, make that one g. I want to know how much time we’ve got.”

“Less than you may think.” It was Gallivan’s voice: flat, cold, and without a trace of banter. He pointed to the display, which showed the returns from the long-range sensors, hooked into the access key and focused narrowly on Valdes’s projected course to maximize their range. A scarlet icon had winked into life at the outermost limit of detection, headed Earthward.

“He must have nearly killed himself, piling on the gs,” Rachel breathed. “How soon will he be here?”

Andrew did a quick calculation. “About a week. We had hoped for two. Mister Davis, include this new factor in your nav problem and tell me how soon we have to start out.”

“Can we even do it?” Morales wondered aloud.

“No, we can‘t,” said Davis after a moment. “But using your original figure of 1.5 g, it‘s just barely possible—if we head out within two hours.”

“Two hours
? But that won’t give time to return Svyatog to Earth!” And, Andrew thought with a sick sense of defeat, it would have been hopeless anyway: 1.5 Terran g was slightly over two Harath-Asor gs.

“My ship, as you may have noted, is a luxury model,” said Svyatog. “It has compensating internal gravity fields to reduce apparent acceleration. I can accommodate Reislon and your mother aboard
Korcentyr
.”

“You mean
you’re
going?
Personally?
”

“There appears to be no other alternative.”

Katy’s grin banished decades from her face. “Just like old times, isn’t it, Svyatog?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Walking carefully
under his half-again-normal weight, Andrew went to the nav tank and stood over it, gazing at the three-dimensional plot. Nothing had changed. He hadn’t really expected that it would have.

The relevant portion of Earth’s orbit around Sol showed as a curving string-light along which the icon of the mother planet slid in a counterclockwise direction. Above the plane defined by that orbit, Valdes’s course extended down at a seventy-degree angle from the right to intersect the orbit at the point where Earth would be at the time of the intersection. And farther to the right, off to the side of that course’s scarlet thread, were the two tiny green icons of
City of Osaka
and
Korcentyr
, still working their way into position.

Merely reaching Earth’s escape velocity would have sent them outward in the plane of the ecliptic on a parabolic orbit. Instead, they had boosted “upward,” above that plane, and fought to overcome the intrinsic eighteen-plus miles per second that Earth had imparted to them. Soon the untiring exertions of their reactionless drives would send them curving back, and they would be back to normal weight, at least for a time.

He felt rather than heard Rachel join him. She had held up uncomplainingly under the acceleration, with the often surprising resilience of young human females. But her lack of naval experience made her even less able than the rest of them to cope with the gnawing uncertainties of what awaited them.

“Surely he can detect us,” she said nervously.

“Probably. But not necessarily. Remember, that’s a very small ship, with a powerful drive taking up space. We don’t know what he’s got in the way of sensors. In fact, we don’t know anything at all about what he’s got.”

“Including weapons.”

It was, of course, the great imponderable. “We’ve gone over that,” Andrew reminded her. “We have no hard information, but it’s difficult to believe that a ship that small could have even as much as this one, or that its deflection screens could be as strong as ours or
Korcentyr
’s. In fact, if the ship is supposed to suit Valdes’ official role, you wouldn’t expect it to be armed at all.”

“I hope you’re right, especially considering that
Korcentyr
definitely isn’t.” Then, as she saw Andrew’s wince of worry and belatedly remembered who Svyatog’s ship was carrying: “Oh, I‘m sorry. I shouldn‘t have—”

“That’s all right.” He took a last look, then sighed and squared his unnaturally heavy shoulders. “We’ll know the answers to all of this soon enough.”

The interception turned out to involve less trouble than Andrew had feared. Their quarry attempted a certain amount of evasive action, but he was severely limited in what he could do if he wanted to stay on course to be captured by Earth. If he simply accelerated on his present course, he would flash past Earth and continue sunward on a flat hyperbola from which he would probably take many weeks to struggle back even with today’s drives . . . which was fine with Andrew, for it would give them the leisure to devise new strategies. And besides, Legislative Assemblyman and front-running president-general candidate Valdes was expected back at a particular time.

“So we’ve got the bugger where we want him!” exulted Gallivan as they observed a nav plot that could now be reduced to the tactical scale as they closed in.

“If I didn’t know it was useless,” said Morales, “I’d tell you not to get cocky. Remember, this is going to involve some extremely delicate coordination.
Korcentyr
doesn’t have an access key, so Svyatog is going to be dependent on our ability to pierce Valdes’ cloaking field.”

“Ah, but thanks to the good Lieutenant Davis’s efforts, we can download our sensor readings directly to
Korcentyr
, rather than having some poor sod—most likely me, if you had your way!—sit at the communicator and read them off.”

“Which is why this ought to work,” said Andrew, “as long as everyone carries out my orders.
All
my orders,” he added firmly, with a significant glance at Gallivan. “Don’t forget, the optimal outcome is to take Valdes alive, for questioning and for living evidence.”

“Also,” Rachel opined, “his ship was based on the space station, and they wouldn’t have allowed Black Wolf humans there. So his crew must be all Kappainu.”

“Right,” Andrew nodded. “So we’re going to give him a chance to surrender. Understood?”

They all muttered agreement, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Valdes’s ship proved to be even smaller than they had expected, visibly smaller than
Korcentyr
. And their theories about it panned out: it was unarmed and mounted only the most minimal civilian-model deflection shields. After a certain amount of seemingly half-hearted evasive maneuvering, it was seized by
Korcentyr
’s tractor beam. From
City of Osaka
’s control room, Andrew watched it being reeled in.

This is going too smoothly
, he thought.

“Very well,” said Valdes in response to their hail. He seemed oddly calm. “I surrender. I appear to have no choice—especially inasmuch as
Broadsword
will surely be headed in-system soon, if it isn’t already.”

Andrew half rose, all his resolve to be coolly distant forgotten. ?
Broadsword
?”

“Yes, that’s right; you wouldn’t know, would you?” Valdes smiled his campaign smile. “While I was en route toward Earth,
Broadsword
appeared and intervened in the battle. She must have been waiting and observing that region of space, and seen the explosion of our station. At any event, she made it possible for your Rogovon allies to wipe out our mobile forces.”

“I can imagine,” said Andrew. Jamel Taylor’s strike cruiser must have been like a tiger among jackals.

“So,” Valdes continued urbanely, “my only hope was to get to Earth and reentrench myself. But now I see that I have failed and have no more cards to play. So I will give myself up to your Lokaron confederates.” Valdes signed off, seemingly leaving his strangely composed expression on the screen like the smile of the Cheshire Cat.

Svyatog’s face appeared. Katy was visible in the background. “I will bring him aboard as soon as we’ve brought our respective passenger ports together.”

“Right. Signing off.” Andrew turned to the viewscreen and watched Valdes’ ship gradually approach
Korcentyr
.

“I don’t like this,” Andrew muttered. “He’s giving up too easily.”

“What else can he do?” asked Rachel. “Do you expect him to blow up his ship and
Korcentyr
with it when they come in contact? Somehow that doesn’t seem consistent with Kappainu psychology.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Andrew admitted. “I don’t expect that.” But he continued to stare, brooding, at the viewscreen.

Abruptly, he stood up. “I’m going over to
Korcentyr.
X.O., you have the conn. Have them break out the gig.”

“You’ll be wanting me to pilot the gig, Captain,” Gallivan stated rather than asked.

“I’ll come, too,” said Rachel.

“No!” Andrew didn’t know the source of his premonition, but he was in no doubt as to its strength. “For once I’m going to put my foot down. Stay here. Please.”

She started to speak, but something she saw in his face stopped her. She simply nodded. Their eyes held each other for a moment. Then, with a gesture to Gallivan to follow him, he was gone.

It wasn’t far, as
City of Osaka
was holding position within the effective antiship range of her point-defense lasers. But Gallivan took the gig on a curving course, partly to stay well outside those lasers’ field of fire and partly to come around to
Korcentyr
’s starboard access port, on the opposite side from the one toward which Valdes’s ship was being drawn. Gazing out the gig’s transparent canopy, Andrew watched the two ships gently touch.

Maybe I’m just getting worked up over nothing
, he told himself.

They glided around
Korcentyr
’s stern. As Gallivan began his approach to the starboard side, it occurred to Andrew that Svyatog wasn’t expecting him. “Raise
Korcentyr
,” he ordered.

Gallivan activated the communicator. No sound came, and the small screen remained black. He tried it again, frowning. “Odd. They’re not responding.”

Suddenly, with a burst of static, the gig’s interior was filled with a confused cacophony of panicky sounds: scuffling, and several voices trying to talk at once, among which Andrew could make out his mother’s. Then Valdes’s shout rose above all of them, silencing them.

“I said shut up! And everyone keep your hands where I can see them—especially you, with your weapon implant! I won’t hesitate to use this flamer again.”

Andrew, his mind trapped in nightmare, leaned forward against his straps. “Get the video!”

Gallivan raised a cautioning finger. “Valdes clearly doesn’t know the audio is on. Somebody—Reislon, I’ll wager—contrived to turn it on, in send-only mode, so we can listen. Let’s not give that advantage away.”

Andrew nodded slowly, forcing a semblance of calm on himself. It was hard—very hard. Especially when Katy’s was the next identifiable voice.