Strictly speaking, the Phoenix is a constellation in the skies of the Solar System, about halfway between ecliptic plane and south celestial pole. It is a mistake to apply the name to that region of space, some hundred and fifty light-years in the same direction from Earth, where the suns of Alerion and New Europe are found. But because a human colony makes a number of the neighboring systems interesting—as places to visit, mine, trade, explore, fight, be related to—a name is required for such a vaguely defined territory. Once bestowed, however carelessly, it remains.
And perhaps this one was not altogether a misnomer. The Phoenix of myth is reborn in fire. Nuclear energies bore Lamontagne the long way to Aurore. When he saw that that sun had a world where men could settle, he raised the tricolor like a flame in its heavens. Hope burned high in the folk who moved to New Europe, labored, begot, and bequeathed. Then the warcraft of Alerion came, with hellfire aboard.
A ship raised from the planet. Forces pulsed in her gravitrons, meshed with the interwoven fields of the cosmos, drove her out at ever-mounting speed. As Aurore fell behind, space grew less distorted by the star’s mass. She would soon reach a point where the metric approximated a straight line so nearly that it was safe to draw the forces entirely around her, cut off that induction effect known as inertia, and outpace light.
A million kilometers away, Fox II observed her: saw by visible light and infrared, felt with a ghostly quickly-brushing whisper of radar, heard faint ripples of her drive in space, snuffed the neutrinos from her engines, and came to carnivore alertness.
“Damn!” said Gunnar Heim. “We should have spotted that beast hours ago. They must have installed extra screening.”
First Officer David Penoyer studied the data-analysis tapes. “Seems to be a moderate-sized transport ship. Same class as the Ellehoi we took last month, I’d guess. If so, we’ve got more legs than she does.”
Heim gave a restless shove with one foot. His huge body made a free-fall curve through the air to a viewport. Stars crowded it beyond counting; the Milky Way rivered in silver around an endless clear black; nebulae and remote galaxies glimmered across more distance than man will ever comprehend. He had no time for awe; he stared outward with eyes gone wintry blue as a giant sun and said: “She’ll be outside the Mach limit long before we can come anywhere near matching velocities. I know it’s theoretically possible for a ship to lay alongside another going FTL, but it’s never been done and I’m not about to try. If nothing else, there’d be too much interstellar gas turbulence.”
“Well, but—Captain, we don’t have to make a prize of her. I mean, if we simply accelerate, we’ll catch her inside the limit. Then she’s either got to turn on the Machs and probably get ripped apart, or face our barrage.”
Heim’s blocky features bent into a grimace. “And she might take the chance rather than surrender. I’d hate to spoil our record. Four months of commerce raiding, eighteen Aleriona ships captured, and we haven’t had to kill anybody yet.” He ran a hand through his roan hair. “If only—Wait!” He swung about and pushed the intercom controls. “Captain to chief engineer. Listen, you can make a gravitron do everything but wash dishes. Could we safely make a very short FTL run from here?” Penoyer shaped a soundless whistle.
“The matter is one iow ’recise adjustment, skiwwer,” rumbled Uthg-a-K’thaq’s voice. “We succeeded in it when we lewt the Solar Sys-tem. Wut now, awter cruising so long without an owerhaul—”
“I know.” Heim’s faded blue tunic wrinkled with his shrug. They didn’t have uniforms on Fox. “All right, I suppose we do simply have to destroy them. War isn’t a game of tiddlywinks,” he added, largely to himself.
“A moment, ’lease.” The intercom brought clicking noises. C.E. must be using his Naqsan equivalent of a slide rule.
Heim thought. “Yes-s-s. I hawe recalculated the sawety margin. It suwwices.”
“Whoops!” Heim’s yell rang between the bulkheads. “Hear that, Dave?” He pounded Penoyer on the back.
The blond man catapulted across the bridge, choked, and sputtered, “Yes, sir, very good.”
“Not just that we wont have to blot out lives,” Heim exulted. “But the money. All that lovely, lovely prize money.”
And a prize crew to take her back to Earth, the business part of him recalled. We’re damn near down to a skeleton complement. A few more captures and we’ll have to call a halt.
Fiercely: So we don’t sell the last one, but send word by. it. Whoever wants to sign on again can meet us at Staurn, where we’ll be refilling our magazines. With the kind of bank account I must have now, I can refit for a dozen more cruises. We won’t stop till we’re blown out of space—or the Federation gets off its duff and makes some honest war.
He gave himself entirely to the work of preparation. When battle stations were piped, a cheer shivered the length of the ship. Those were good boys, he thought with renewed warmth. They’d drawn reluctant lots to choose who must bring the seized Aleriona vessels home, and even so fights had broken out over the privilege of daily risking death in the Auroran System. Of course, the ones who stayed got a proportionately larger share of booty. But they had signed on his privateer for much more than that.
“Engines to full output!” If the enemy were on the qui vive, they would immediately observe on their instruments that another vessel orbited here. Radar alone was useless at such distances, for what was registered might as well be a meteorite: until it awoke.
“Internal field to standard!” Earth weight came back.
“Turning vectors: roll three points, pitch four and half points, yaw twelve points!” Stars wheeled across the ports.
“Acceleration maximum!” There was no sense of pressure in the compensating gee-field that webbed through the hull But the engines growled.
“Stand by for Mach drive! On the mark, five, four, three, two, one, zero!”
Starlight wavered, as if seen through a sheet of running water, and steadied again. In that brief passage, the fantastic acceleration of inertialessness did not build up a speed so great that aberration or Doppler effect counted. But the remote disc of Aurore shrank yet farther.
“Cut Mach drive!” An electronic signal had sent the command before Heim’s automatic words were well begun.
Computers chattered beneath Penoyer’s hands. Fox had returned to normal well ahead of the Aleriona ship. The latter was still traveling at more than the privateer’s kinetic velocity, but it would now be no trick to match vectors inside the Mach limit.
“Number Four Turret, give her one across the bows!” The missile streaked forth. Atomic fire dazzled momentarily among the constellations.
“Sparks, connect me on the universal band,” Heim ordered. He realized he was sweating. The outflank maneuver would not have been possible save for Uthg-a-K’thaq’s non-human sensitivity in the tuning of a gravitronic manifold, and the engineer could have been mistaken. But beneath the released terror, joy sang in the captain. We’ve got them! One more blow struck!
A siren wailed. The ship trembled. Automatons reacted; great clangings and thumps resounded through her plates. “My God!” Penoyer’s cry came thin. “They’re armed!” The viewports darkened, that eyes not be burned out by the intolerable brightnesses which blossomed around. Riven fragments of atoms sleeted through vacuum, were whirled away by the ship’s hydromagnetic field, spat X-rays into her material shielding and vanished starward. The meteorite detectors shouted of shrapnel thrown at kilometers per second by low-yield warheads.
Time was lacking in which to be afraid. “Parry her stuff,” Heim commanded his gunners. “Laser Turret Three, see if you can cripple her Mach rings.”
Beyond so elementary a decision, he was helpless. Nor could his highly skilled men do a great deal more than transmit it to their robots. The death machines were too fast, too violent for human senses. Radar beams locked on, computers clicked, missiles homed on missiles and destroyed them before they could strike. A blinding beam of energy probed from the Aleriona craft. There was no stopping it; but before it inflicted more than minimal damage, Fox’s own heavy laser smote. Armor plate vaporized, the ray burned through, the enemy weapon went dark. The Terrestrial fire-lance drew a seared line across the Aleriona hull as it probed for the exterior fittings of the interstellar drive. That was no easy target, with the relative position of the two vessels shifting so rapidly. But the computers solved the problem in milliseconds. The other ship crammed on acceleration, trying to shake loose. For a moment the laser pierced only emptiness.
Then, remorselessly, it found its mark again and gnawed away.
“Fire Control to bridge. His Mach’s disabled, sir.”
“Good. He can’t go FTL on us now, whatever happens,” Heim said. “Bridge to radio room. Keep trying to make contact. Bridge to engine room. Prepare for velocity-matching maneuvers.”
The fight died away. It had not been long. The disproportion between a hastily armed merchantman and a cruiser equipped like a regular Navy unit was too great. Not ludicrous—a single missile that exploded near enough would have killed the human crew by radiation if nothing else—but nonetheless too great. Fox had warded off every thrust with an overwhelmingly larger concentration of immensely more powerful weapons. A dark peace descended in space. The stars came back in the viewports.
“Whee-ew,” Penoyer said faintly. “Jolly near got us by surprise alone, didn’t he?”
“He obviously hoped to,” Heim nodded. “I suppose after today we’d better expect every unescorted transport to be able to fight back.” Those that were convoyed he left alone. They weren’t many, with Alerion’s strength stretched thin in the Marches and with quite a few warships searching the deeps for him. His prey were the carriers of the cargo which New Europe’s occupiers must have to make their conquest impregnable.
However closely he had skirted obliteration, he felt no delayed panic. If asked about that, he would have said he was blessed with a phlegmatic temperament. But the truth was that upwelling triumph left no room for other feelings. He must force himself to speak coolly: “I’m not worried. Pleased, in fact. We showed up better in combat than I had a right to expect with such a higgledy-piggledy crew.”
“Oh, I don’t know, sir. You’ve drilled us aplenty.” Penoyer fumbled for a cigaret. “Those explosions may have been noticed. Somebody bigger might come out investigating.”
“Uh-huh. We won’t stay to admire the local scenery.”
“But what about this capture? She can’t make the Solar System.”
“We’ll park her in a cometary orbit, not likely to be detected, and repair at leisure—Hoy, there’s an answer to our call.”
The comscreen smoldered with the simulated light of a red dwarf sun. An Aleriona looked out. He was of rank, Heim saw from the fineness of the muliebrile visage, the luster of golden hair and silvery fur. Even in this moment of rage and grief, his language was music that would have haunted a Beethoven.
Heim shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t know the High Speech. Parlez-vous français?”
“Not truth,” sang the other captain. “In the star meadows fare we here aboard, needless of New Europe’s tongue. To you the rover yield we Meroeth.”
It was a relief finding one who had some English. So far there’d been two with Spanish, one each with French and Chinese. Otherwise sign language worked, when you had a gun in your hand. “You know what we are, then?” Heim said.
“All know now of that which is named for the swift animal with sharp teeth. Ill may you prosper,” crooned the Aleriona.
“Thanks. Now look. We’ll send a boarding party. Your crew will be brigged, but we don’t plan to mistreat anybody who doesn’t force us to. In fact, if you have any casualties—None? Good. You’ll be taken to Earth in your ship and interned for the duration of the war.”
Within himself, Heim wondered about that. Earth was far, Sol itself lost to naked vision. He had no way to get their news. A prize crew could not return and rendezvous with a ship fighting alone against an empire, dependent for survival on unpredictable motion through immensity. He supposed Parliament had had to concede France’s claim that the World Federation was indeed at war with Alerion and his own expedition lawful. Otherwise Earth ships would be out here—Earth officials, at least, aboard Aleriona ships which invited his approach—to order him home.
But there was no word, no help, nothing in the six months since he had left except his own solitary battle. The last Aleriona prisoner he talked to had said the two fleets were still merely glaring at each other in the Marches, and he believed it. Are they deadlocked yet about whether to fight or negotiate? Will they never see that there can’t be negotiation with an enemy who’s sworn to whip us out of space, till we prove we can beat him? Merciful God, New Europe’s been gripped for almost a year!
Sorrow touched the lovely face in the screen. “Could we have gotten well-wrought engines of war, might we have slain you.” Hands slim, four-fingered, and double-jointed caressed one of the flowering vines that bedecked the bridge, as if seeking consolation. “Evilly built are your machines, men-creatures.”
Oh, ho! So this Q-boat was outfitted right on New Europe. Did somebody there get the idea? “Cease acceleration and stand by to be boarded,” Heim said.
He cut the circuit and issued orders. Treachery was still possible. Fox must maintain her distance and send boats. He would have liked to go himself, but his duty was here, and every man was eager to make the trip. Like small boys playing pirate … well, they had taken some fabulous treasures.
Not that Meroeth was likely to hold much of interest. Alerion wanted New Europe as a strong point—above all, wanted simply to deny it to humans and thus deny the entire Phoenix—rather than a colony. The cargoes that went from The Eith to Aurore were industrial or military, and thus valuable. No important resources were sent back; at the end of so long a line of communications, the garrison of New Europe must devote everything they could to the task of producing and putting into orbit those defenses which would make the planet all but invulnerable.
Still, the ships didn’t always return empty. Some of the plunder Heim had taken puzzled him. Was it going to Alerion for the sake of curiosity, or in a hope of eventual sale to Earth, or—? Whatever the reason, his boys had not argued with luck when they grabbed a holdful of champagne.
Vectors were matched. The boats went forth. Heim settled himself in the main control chair and watched them, tiny bright splinters, until they were swallowed by the shadow of the great shark-nosed cylinder he guarded. His thoughts ran free: Earth, prideful cities and gentle skies; Lisa, who might have grown beyond knowing; Jocelyn, who had never quite left him—and then New Europe, people driven from their homes to the wilderness, a certain idiot dream about Madelon—
The screen buzzed. He switched it on. Blumberg’s round face looked out at him from a shell of combat armor. The helmet was open. Heim didn’t know if the ember light within that ship could account alone for the man’s redness.
“Boarding party reporting, sir.” Blumberg was near stammering in his haste.
Unease tensed Heim’s belly muscles. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.
“Nothing … situation in hand … but sir! They’ve got humans aboard!”