Tides of Light Read online

  Beyond those infractions, which he could deal with in the usual ways, there had gradually risen a harder problem. They regaled one another with gaudy tales of past battles, grand adventures bloated beyond recognition. Killeen himself could recall all too clearly those years spent on the run across Snowglade—his frequent chilling fear, the sickening indecision, the many scrambling retreats from humbling defeats. Now, as the tales had it, everyone (but usually most notably the narrator) had been valiant, savvy, quick, and steadfast, a dreaded scourge of mechs.

  But there was something more than empty bravado here. He watched the snapping flames, smoke licking at his eyes with a sting he almost welcomed. The sooty tang brought forth innumerable memories of hard nights spent peering dejectedly into guttering campfires, fearing every odd sound that came ringing out of the darkness. The corncobs gave off a sweeter taste than the bite of woodsmoke, but the gathering pall did encase this nook in a comforting blue fog, a momentary signature of their mutual dependence.

  He felt a restive mood building and kept his silence, letting it grow. Finally Jocelyn edgily broke the silence with, “Near as I ’member, Fanny said that we should never leave a mechplex at our back when we’re advancin’.”

  Heads nodded all around the circle. Killeen sipped thick apricot nectar to cover his surprise. So it was Jocelyn talking up these ideas, harking back to the old Cap’n, Fanny. Though Fanny had been dead years now, cut down back on Snowglade by the Mantis, she still exerted a profound influence in the Family. Killeen himself had respected and loved her beyond saying. Innumerable times, during their long voyage, he had asked himself, What would Fanny do now? and the answer had guided him.

  But this was different. Jocelyn was using Fanny’s legend to sow trouble among the crew.

  “She also said, don’t take on enemies you don’t need.” Killeen looked deliberately around, locking eyes with each of the crew in turn. “And ’specially when they’re bigger’n you.”

  Some murmuring agreement welcomed this. Jocelyn didn’t look directly at Killeen, but said, “If we can’t take a station, how’ll we do with that whole damn planet?”

  Killeen knew he had to be careful here. There was a tense expectation in the air, as if Jocelyn had summed up what they all felt. This was a Family talk, and she had kept it just beyond the strictures of ship discipline. He could cut off Jocelyn right now, show his anger, but that would leave unanswered questions, and irritations among the crew. He decided to not invoke his rank. Instead, he laughed.

  Jocelyn had not expected that. His dry chuckle startled her.

  Then he said with a halfsmile, “That’s your killer-Aspect talkin’ again, right?” He turned to the rest. “Jocelyn now, she’s loaded in five new Aspect chips in just the last year. One’s a Cap’n who specialized in leadin’ charges ’gainst the mechs—just ’bout the only maneuver he knew, I’d guess, ’cause he sure didn’t live long. That Aspect gives great advice, he does—only it’s always the same.”

  Several around the circle smiled. Granted, the Family would never have survived this voyage without the Aspects’ vast hoard of advice on the ancient human tech which had built the Argo. But their hovering presences perpetually yearned to be tapped more fully into their host’s sensory net, to gobble hungrily of the very air and zest that life brought. Aspects could never be truly content. They came from many eras and their advice often conflicted. Occasionally one dominated its host’s thinking. Letting an Aspect get out of control was humiliating.

  Muscles bunched in Jocelyn’s long jaw. “I speak for myself, not for some dusty Aspect,” she spat out.

  “Then you should avoid fights when you can.” Killeen kept his voice wry and friendly.

  She said sharply, “Like this one?”

  So she had gotten the hint and still chose to make this public. Very well. “Now that you mention it…”

  “Some of us think Family honor demands—”

  “Honor’s the first thing that falls on a battlefield,” Killeen said dryly.

  He immediately regretted having interrupted her, because Jocelyn’s eyes narrowed angrily. “We should take that mechplex ’fore it attacks us.”

  “Our target’s a world, not a tin box in space,” Killeen said easily. He knew he would come out ahead if he let her lose her temper.

  “With that in our hands, we can control what reaches the surface!” she said excitedly.

  “And alert whatever’s on the surface before we can land the Argo,” he said.

  “Well, Fanny would never—”

  “Lieutenant Jocelyn, belay that Fanny stuff. I’m Cap’n now.”

  She looked startled. He had always thought that she was best at following a planned tactic. She fumbled when time came for fast footwork and a shift of attack. “Uh, aye-aye, but—”

  “And I say we’re going straight in. Got that? We’ll skip the station.”

  “Damnall, that station’ll give us—”

  —Cap’n!—

  The call came not from the circle but from Killeen’s own belt. He was startled at the tinny voice that spoke from his waist: Shibo.

  “Yeasay,” he answered. Abruptly he lost interest in Jocelyn. Shibo seldom called on ship comm. For her to do so meant something important.

  —The board—Shibo began, but Killeen cut the switch. He never allowed crew to overhear officers’ messages unless he wanted to leak something deliberately.

  He got up, nodded briskly at Jocelyn, and set off up the spiral to the control vault. He disliked leaving his dispute with Jocelyn hanging. He had blunted her momentum, but left a core of resistance in her still. And ambition, as well.

  When he came through the hatch, Shibo was standing with uncharacteristic immobility, meditative: her arms wrapped around herself, thumbs hooked into her shiny black exskell ribs. Normally her hands would be moving restlessly over the boards, summoning forth the Argo’s energies and microminds.

  “Cap’n, I have a problem. New kind, too.” Her luminous eyes and chagrined mouth could not conceal her alarm.

  “Is it the station?”

  “In a way.” Her exskell shifted like a cage of black bones, framing her gesture: something halfway between a shrug and a vexed wave of dismissal. “The board is frozen. I can’t dictate trajectory anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Some override command.”

  “From where?”

  “Maybe ‘From when?’ is the right question.”

  “The Mantis?”

  “Could be. It’s taking us on a slightly different tack from planetary rendezvous.”

  “You can’t countermand it?”

  “No.”

  When Shibo admitted defeat he was sure she had struggled with the problem to her limits. He frowned. “Where are we going?”

  “Toward that station. Against our will.”

  EIGHT

  Deep bass moans ran the length of Argo, like the songs of great swollen beasts.

  The dust outside hummed and rubbed against the life-zone bubbles as the ship decelerated. It was as though the thin flotsam of the Galactic Center, spiraling in toward the shrouded star ahead, played the Argo like a great taut instrument. Melodies of red lightning danced about the burnished bow.

  Killeen watched the approach of the station. He stood with his back to the assembling crew and peered through the forward port. Their trajectory ahead was clear. Argo was coming down to fly parallel to the station’s great circular plain, skimmed along it by unseen forces. Shibo could do nothing with Argo’s helm.

  He allowed himself a smile of self-derision. His proud show of decisiveness had come to nothing. Jocelyn’s cagey—and insubordinate—egging on of the crew, and her public disagreement, had angered him. She had taken advantage of the Family context to attack his piloting decisions. Now, ironically, her whetting of appetites for action served his purposes.

  He had to rouse the crew for an assault that promised little success. They were going in against unknown opponents, across a mech
tech terrain they had never seen the likes of before. Hard-learned Family tactics would mean nothing here—perhaps worse than nothing, for they might well be exactly the wrong thing to do.

  The swelling disk below revealed its silvery intricacies as he watched. At their present speed, blunted somehow by the station as they approached, it would take over an hour to reach the central tower. If that was their destination, he had time to carry out the ruse he had planned. If not, there was a surprise squad set at a spot mechs would probably not anticipate.

  Killeen wore his full ceremonial tunic of blue and gold over his gray coverall, and a full belt of tools and weapons beneath that. He would waste no time changing if events interrupted the ceremony. Battle squads were poised at every small lock of the ship, ready to pour forth on signal. The remaining crew, gathered here, were for effect. Killeen had no way of knowing if whatever ran the station had already planted bugs on the hull, listeners powerful enough to pick up conversation. But he had to allow that this might be true, and use it against the enemy if he could.

  Ahead, the scintillant, perfectly circular disk filled half the sky. Phosphorescent waves spiraled inward on the disk, their troughs brimming silver, their peaks moving rims of gold. The luminescence hovered like a fog over the actual metal-work of the disk. Arcs formed at the disk’s rim, where they washed and fretted in random rivulets.

  Somehow this chaos resolved itself into distinct waves which grew and glowed with each undulation, oozing inward to join a whirlpool that twisted with majestic deliberation toward the towering spike at the disk center. That bristly central axis harvested the inward-racing waves in a spray of rainbow glory as they hammered against its ribbed base.

  Jutting above and below the disk, the light-encrusted central tower tapered away, many kilometers long. Web antennae bristled along it. One end of the tower poked into a vapor of forking flux that burned steadily, silent and ivory against the backdrop of a passing dustcloud. The other ended in a burnished stub.

  The waves seemed to be drawing Argo down in a long, scalloping glide across the circular plain. Bulkheads crackled and the deck rippled in sluggish, muscular grace, like something roused from sleep. Killeen fretted about how much of such flexing the ship could take.

  Shibo said to him quietly, so the gathering Family behind them could not hear, “Lie doggo?”

  “A little longer. Looks like whatever’s bringing us in is taking no other precautions.”

  “Maybe it thinks we’re a mech ship?”

  “Hope so.” Killeen watched luminous discharges warp and merge in the plain beyond. He had the sensation of skating over a huge sea, and remembered the time he had spent in a place like this—the interior digital world of the Mantis, a great gray ocean of the mind.

  “What now?” she prompted.

  “We zag against their zig.”

  He turned when he sensed the room become still. Lieutenants Cermo and Jocelyn had ranked and ordered the Family into lines precise and attentive.

  This was the atmosphere he wanted, had carefully programmed. Here, he reflected, was all of humanity he would probably ever know again. The nearest brothers were back at Snowglade, an unfathomable distance behind. For all he knew, this small band might well be the only shred of their race that yet lived.

  “Dad? Uh, Cap’n?”

  He turned, startled, to find Toby at his elbow. “You’re out of ranks, midshipman,” he said severely.

  “Yeah, but I gotta carry this damn thing, and it’s ’cause a you.” Toby twisted his neck uncomfortably at the cowling that wrapped around his shoulders, snug against his helmet ring.

  “You’ll carry your designated ’quipment into battle,” Killeen said stiffly.

  “This’ll just slow me down!”

  “It will give us a good view of all the action around and in front of you. Someone has to carry the area-survey eye.” Killeen used the connective words of and to, which were absent in ordinary Family speech, to lend distance and Cap’nly reserve.

  It failed to work with Toby. “You got me saddled with this, right?”

  “Lieutenant Cermo chooses gear.”

  Toby sneered. “He knew just what you wanted.”

  “Cermo assigns jobs, picks the most able,” Killeen said tightly. “I’m proud that he deemed my son capable of such an important job.”

  “Dad, I’ll be a slow target with this rig on, crawlin’ ’round down there. I’ll get pushed back to the second skirmish line.”

  “Damn right. I’ll want views from the second line, not the first.”

  “That’s not fair! I want—”

  “You’ll get back in rank or else you won’t set boot outside,” Killeen said sharply.

  Toby opened his mouth to protest and the Cap’n spat back, “Now!”

  Toby shrugged elaborately and marched stiffly back to his position in the third left-flank squad. He stood beside Besen, the dark-eyed young woman; Killeen often saw them together these days. True, they served in the same squad, but that probably concealed more than it explained.

  Killeen hoped the Family had not overheard them and thought they were just bantering casually. Somehow, given his inability to conceal his emotions where his son was concerned, he doubted that. As if to confirm this, Besen cocked an eyebrow at Toby. Killeen realized that he and Toby must have been quite obvious to everyone in the large room.

  He suppressed an irritated grimace and nodded curtly to Cermo. The inspection began. Killeen walked down the ranks, Lieutenants Cermo, Jocelyn, and Shibo at one pace behind. He scanned each crewmember closely. Faces well remembered, faces which had grown healthier with rest and better food. But also faces that had time to see that the old ways of Family fidelity and organization did not suit well the running of a true starship. Faces that doubtless hatched half-thought-through plans to better themselves by bending Family and crew discipline.

  With the press of deadly necessity gone, the sprouts of individual ambition grew in fertile soil. Would they fare well in battle after such indolence? A host of tiny impressions collected in Killeen’s mind. He would digest them later, during his solitary walks on the hull, to form the raw and instinctive material for furthering the efficiency of the ship—if they ever again flew the Argo. Yet the ritual was worthy in and of itself.

  The Family had added thirty-two newborn on the voyage. Mothers tended the young at the rear of the domed assembly room. Killeen wondered if those children would ever stride the soil of the world far below, proud and free. Or, indeed, of any world at all.

  It was time. Before the action to come, it would be best to remind them of who they were. He began to read the ancient Family Rites.

  His Ling Aspect had provided the text from ancient times. The planet-bound Citadels of Snowglade had neglected the spacefaring rites. But here they fitted perfectly.

  It was a code black and stern, full of duty and tradition and larded throughout with dire warnings of the punishment which would befall any Family member who transgressed it.

  Many of the arcane passages made no sense to Killeen at all. He read one such without letting the slightest suggestion of a frown of incomprehension cross his brow. “No Family shall countertack or polyintegrate more than two separable genetic indices in any one birthing, using artificial means. Penalty for this is expulsion of both parents and child for the lifetime of the engendered child.”

  Now what did polyintegrate mean? And how could anyone tinker with the traits of his or her children-to-be? True, Killeen had heard whispered tales of ancient crafts like that. They were buried in the mists of mankind’s origins in the Great Times. This passage indirectly vouched for the ancient origin of the Families, which was, he supposed, reassuring. The human vector had been set long ago, and its opposition to the mechs was a truth which emerged from time immemorial.

  Something about the droning passages, saddled with legalisms and prickly with techtenns, caught and held their attention. The Family stood stiffly with solemn, set faces. As Killeen launched into the
long, rolling sentences detailing the depredations of the mechs, and the valiant efforts every Family member was expected to take to oppose them, they stirred. A boy in the front row, Loren, had eyes that seemed to fill his face. Tears welled in those eyes and trickled down, unnoticed by the boy. He had a faraway look, perhaps dreaming of classic battles and brave victories that were to be his.

  In a sudden bitter gust Killeen wondered if these old, lofty sentiments would armor Loren against mech shots. He had seen more than one boy blown to red jelly—or worse, his mind sucked of self, the once-vivid eyes blank and empty.

  This sudden lurch of emotion did not make him miss a syllable of the reciting. He went on to the finish, projecting the stern moral tones that were right and effective, even though within him doubts fought and sputtered.

  Now for the added touch:

  “In furtherance of these high aims I have a new name to bestow. Tradition grants Cap’ns the right to name a fresh-found star system. I have already seized this right. The blazing opportunity before us is Abraham’s Star.”

  They cheered. Abraham’s legend endured still.

  “To the crew of a ship falls the time-honored right to name a discovered world. Your council has picked one hallowed and vibrant—New Bishop.”

  He finished and, following tradition, the Family shouted “Yeasay! Yeasay! Yeasay!” and broke into a raucous symphony of howls and calls. A few, thinking of the battle ahead, indulged in rude obscenities. Some were ingeniously impossible, describing acts of unlikely sexual passion between mechs of astounding geometries.

  Killeen stepped back, his mind coolly distant from the effect he had sought. Humans could not press the attack without heightened adrenaline and hormone-driven zest. Mechs could simply switch on, but humans who would risk their lives needed a powerful cocktail lacing their veins.