Chapter 8 — FIRST BLOOD

The pretext was dramatic: Trouble had erupted in the Belt, that zone of planetoids that existed between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. Theoretically the Belt was an independent, disorganized conglomeration of settlements, analogous to the widely scattered islands of Earth's giant Pacific Ocean; actually they were the meddling ground for the interests of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and scattered lesser powers. A good deal of interplanetary spying went on there, and several major battles of the Second System War had occurred there. These days the planetary spheres of influence overlapped in the Belt with uneasy tolerance.

The greatest officially unrecognized complication in the Belt was the rampant piracy there. The pirates owed no allegiance to any planet but seemed to have obscure but potent ties to several planets. Perhaps bribery was involved; such information is difficult to come by, for an obvious reason. At any rate, the pirates were a force to be reckoned with in that region of space, and they, too, were tacitly tolerated.

But now the pirates had overstepped their bounds, as they had in the Juclip. They had moved in force on the Marianas, a protectorate of Jupiter, taking over a whole cluster of bubbles and planetoids. The settlers there spoke English, and many of them possessed Jupiter citizenship. Angry protests followed, but the pirates claimed the territory was historically theirs. Centuries ago it had indeed been overrun by pirates; they had preyed on passing Jupiter ships, so in due course Jupiter had sent down a warship, rousted them out, and settled the section itself. It really wasn't so much; today it was mostly agricultural, taking advantage of the more intense sunlight of the inner system, so that smaller focusing lenses were more necessary there than at Jupiter. Probably it cost Jupiter more to maintain the colony than the colony returned in benefits, but once Jupiter had Made an Issue, it had to maintain a presence there. This was the way of planetary powers.

Incursions had occurred before, of greater or lesser severity. Saturn's moon, Titan, embarking on a program of expansion that included several other moons and a segment of Saturn itself, had precipitated Jupiter's entry into the Second System War by sending a carrier fleet to bomb Hidalgo; the drones had devastated Jupiter's Belt-based fleet. When that war ended, Jupiter had defeated and occupied Titan, and the two were now firm allies. But this was only one historic example of the effect episodes in the Belt (Hidalgo, as a planetoid, was considered part of the Belt, though it ranged widely) had on System politics, and helped explain why Jupiter was especially sensitive to incursions against its Belt properties.

It was our public assignment to rid the Jupiter-aligned territory in the Belt of pirates. Privately, I was advised in no uncertain terms that Jupiter wanted to make an example of these criminals, so that no similar episode would occur in the foreseeable future. First the Juclip abduction, now this; the Colossus was annoyed. This was supposed to seem like a routine cleanup mission, nothing special, which was one reason they were assigning a captain instead of an admiral. But in actuality it was a demonstration of imperial will and power, which was why they were providing me with a full fleet.

I would have been more impressed with the rationale had it not been for two things: First, I knew this had been arranged by QYV; second, no self-respecting admiral would embark on a mission against mere pirates. This was work suitable for the riffraff of officers and units. In short, me and my unit. If I got myself killed and my fleet humiliated, they would have a suitable pretext to send an admiral of proper Saxon stock, with an overwhelming fleet.

That was all right. I had wanted this mission, and I would accomplish it. My objection to pirates was not a matter of appearance or politics; I owed the institution of piracy for the destruction of my family and fiancée, and now was my chance.

So we were supposed to punish the pirates as well as clean them out of Jupiter territory. This I intended to do. Unfortunately, the pirates were ready for us. Somehow they had known that Jupiter would make only a token effort, initially, and they were set to turn it into another splendid embarrassment to the Colossus of the System. What they planned to do when Jupiter's anger intensified was unclear; presumably then they would decamp, leaving Jupiter with nothing to step on. That would add insult to injury. Oh, the flies enjoyed plaguing the tiger!

At the moment the pirates were massing most of their available hardware at the Marianas base, which was more than I had in my fleet. Thus they had a triple advantage: superiority of force, the convenience of short supply lines, and the fact that somehow we had to drive them off without hurting the Jupiter settlers they held hostage. No wonder this was no task for an admiral!

I discussed it with my staff. Our decision was simple: We would surprise the pirates by attacking at their weakest point, well around the Belt. Once we had established a solid base in the Belt—a so-called beachhead—we could move on the Marianas pirates at our convenience. If they remained concentrated at the Jupiter base, we would continue to attack elsewhere, expanding our territory. Since I intended to eliminate all pirates, not just some of them, this was a feasible strategy for me. By the time the original-target pirates were brought to bay, they might be at a disadvantage. In fact, with proper deployment, we might compel them to desert the Jupiter base, so we would not have to risk damaging it. In any event, the pirates would not return to their old ways after we departed the Belt, for there would be none left. In this sense my strategy was like that of the Mongols of Earth's medieval period, who simply exterminated all potential troublemakers. That system had worked very well; there had been little internal dissent in the territories of their conquests. Not that I endorse bloodshed as the solution to political problems; this is just an analogy.

My task force was impressive: one battleship, one carrier, two cruisers, six destroyers, fifteen escort ships, and a number of service boats and patrol craft. True, the Sawfish was neither the largest nor the most modern of battleships; she was hardly larger than a modern cruiser, massing 40,000 tons and being 650 feet long and 100 in the beam. She could make 2.8 gee, and carried nine sixteen-inch guns and a commensurate number of laser cannon. Her crew was two thousand. In her day she had been considered a member of the finest class of battleship in the system, but that had been twenty-five years ago, and modern capital ships dwarfed her in mass, firepower, and acceleration. But Commander Phist assured me that she was a good vessel, soundly constructed, maneuverable, and versatile. "There were no lemons in this class," he said. "By the time we get her revamped, she'll be fit for service."

Having seen what he could do in this line, I was reassured. The fact was, a battleship was normally commanded by a rear admiral, and a task force by a vice admiral; my present rank of captain barely qualified me to command this expedition. QYV must have pulled very hard on the string to install me here. But if I succeeded in my mission, I would soon become the first Hispanic admiral in the Jupiter Navy. So I could not complain if my battleship was small and old, and my cruisers minimal; it was the best I could expect.

The carrier, the Hempstone Crater, was, of course, no giant of her type. Carriers, in the ancient days of Earth ocean ships, tended to be named after islands and bays—at least they were in the particular navy from which the Jupiter Navy claimed theoretical descent—so Jupiter's carriers followed in such suit as they were able. The Hempstone Crater, I think, is on Charon, Pluto's moon, about as distant and inhospitable a body as exists in the Solar System; there may be a scientific study mission there but not much else on any regular basis. HC, as we called her, was an escort carrier, much smaller than the contemporary ones. This, more than anything else, is useful to place our mission in perspective: a modern carrier is about 1,000 feet long, displacing some 80,000 tons (that is, if one were to set it into an ocean on Planet Earth, it would squeeze aside that weight in water; actually the calculations are now based on more refined data, but the archaic terminology remains), accelerating at 3.5 gee, carrying 100 drones, and with a crew of 5,000. The HC, in contrast, was 500 feet long, displaced 10,000 tons, accelerated at 1.9 gee, carried 28 drones, and had a crew of 800; that is, an eighth the mass and a quarter the payload and half the gees of the modern one. That was how serious the Navy was about cleaning out the pirates of the Belt. QYV had fetched me a minimal mission.

"We know what they're doing," Repro said heartily. "They're sending the troublesome riffraff off on an impossible mission. They believe we will never return."

"Of course," Phist agreed. "We were supposed to flub the prior Juclip mission; instead, we became heroes. They think we were lucky, but now they have upped the ante."

"They?" Spirit asked.

"The powers-that-be of the Jupiter Navy," Phist clarified. "The ones who are uncomfortable with ripples in the grand old order. It embarrasses them to have a ragtag outfit officered by a scapegoat, a delayed-stress-syndrome derelict, an addict, a whistle blower, a black female file clerk, and a couple of Hispanic refugees, to have such a collection make good. It is not the Navy Way."

"They just can't believe there is any real competence in our unit," Repro agreed, looking more satisfied than ever before, for his dream unit was coming true. "That is the beauty of it. If they suspected our potential, they would instantly yank the rug out."

"That they would," Phist agreed somberly.

"Nevertheless," Emerald put in, "we're going to have to scramble on this one. We aren't facing inferior forces this time. No one has been able to make a permanent dent in the piracy of the Belt before."

"No one's really tried," Mondy said. "The pirates are into a number of endeavors that cause politicians to hesitate."

I shrugged. I had this mission and a fine unit; I was not going to hesitate. My whole prior career had been in preparation for this. Already I had arranged to promote Phist, the longest in grade, to full commander, O5, and would see to the others as feasible. We would succeed.

Phist did his usual with the equipment specs, upgrading the battleship to 3.2 gee and the lesser ships to more. He saw to special weapons. It was amazing that the powers-that-be in the Navy did not realize the transformation that was occurring in our combat capacity; apparently, the bureaucracy chose not to comprehend the kind of logistics competence Phist possessed.

Task forces are not formed and launched on a dime, however. It was eight months before we set off for the Belt, and that in itself was a miracle of logistical organization. Work was still being done as we launched, but we were glad to be on our way at last.

I have said I can match every body in the Solar System to the continents and islands of prediaspora Earth. The notable exception is the Belt. The so-called asteroids (they really are not small stars, they are fragments of planetary matter) can be matched with the old Pacific islands, and the planetoid Hidalgo aligns nicely with Hawaii, as does Chiron with Cyprus. But I don't believe the old Earth islands ever had as savage a concatenation of evils and corruption as did the Belt. There were countless pirate vessels, roughly organized into several major bands—the Bands of the Belt. Each band had a specialty of crime and a territory, generally, though not perfectly, honored by the others. The most powerful bands were like six nations. I knew that the pirates of the Juclip were only limping rabble compared to those of the Belt. Criminals who lacked the strength or courage to go for the big time skulked around the various planets, preying on helpless craft such as the refugee-bubbles; those with real ambition went to the Belt. Such was the power of the Belt pirates that most legitimate planetary trading fleets paid toll to guarantee safe passage. It was cheaper than going to war. So the pirate kingdoms flourished, and in their lee, the rabble-pirates of the other regions survived. I had always known that taking out the Juclip pirates was only tokenism; they would regenerate the moment the Navy mission ended, unless the real pirate bastion in the Belt was eliminated too.

We took our time traveling, picking our spot. We could have reached the nearest section of the Belt in two weeks, but instead we elected to go a quarter of the way around to intersect it at the zone of the Carolines.

The Carolines were the least of the major pirate bands. Their biggest ship was an ancient cruiser, and that had been refitted as a printing shop and warehouse. The Carolines were specialists in pornography and illicit publication, and they handled the best. I had seen some of it as an enlisted man, and it was eye-popping; Juana had required me to burn it, because she said it degraded women. Perhaps she was correct, but I was male enough to enjoy it no matter whom it degraded. The illicit sexual feelies were also wholesaled by the Carolines; the Hidden Flower had merely retailed the transsex line of those, putting her own brand name on them. That was how Spirit had reached me with the EMPTY HAND message.

I did not have a consuming passion against the Carolines; in fact, I felt that pornography was relatively harmless as a vice, and that its suppression was a manifestation of the abridgment of free expression. But pirates were pirates, and Mondy had pinpointed this band as the weakest militarily, and Emerald had decided to start with it so as to test our mettle in true combat without undue risk. I concurred. I was not expert in either Intelligence or Strategy, which was why I had followed Repro's script to acquire personnel who were. A commander is only as good as his staff and his men, and he has to honor his staff's informed judgments. A good commander is to some extent a figurehead, a focal point for the expertise of his unit. So I set out to destroy the power of the Carolines (by that I mean the pirates thereof), a decision viewed with a certain regret on my part, and a certain righteous glee on my secretary's part.

Emerald was neutral about the social implication; she didn't care about pornography one way or the other. She viewed this purely as a strategic and tactical exercise, and it was her intent to give us the cleanest possible victory with minimum loss. She explained the essence to us with pride, for this was her moment.

"The operative concept is Kadesh," she said. "This was one of the earliest Earthly battles of which we have record. The Egyptians met and defeated the Hittites in the vicinity of the town of Kadesh in 1299 B.C."

"Now wait, Rising Moon!" Commander Phist protested, using her song-nickname. "Those were marching land armies; this is space! There's hardly a parallel!"

"You worried about your hardware, King Cole?" she inquired with a glance at his trousers. "I'm trying to protect it for you." She went on to describe the broad outline of her strategy. "Of course, the tactics are critical," she concluded.

"Tactics?" I asked. "I thought you just described them."

"I described strategy," she said. "That's our effort to bring our forces into play advantageously. Strategy occurs before the combatants meet. Tactics are what happens once the battle begins. A winning strategy can be ruined by losing tactics."

"Oh, you mean like setting your opponent up for a knockout punch and then missing the punch," I said.

"Close enough, Worry," she agreed wryly.

It turned out that the Carolines, having noted our coming, had gathered reinforcements. They still had no capital ships, but they had borrowed another cruiser, and this was a good one, a match for one of ours. They also picked up several more destroyers; as a result, they now had six, matching ours.

Emerald bit her lip. "I hadn't counted on this," she said. "We don't want to commit the Sawfish, and without it, the sides are too close to even."

"Why not use the Sawfish?" I asked innocently. "She could gun down the enemy ships before they could get within their torpedo range."

"Same reason you don't use your queen to mop up pawns in a chess game," she said. "In close quarters a battleship has less advantage and becomes vulnerable. We'll hold the Sawfish out until we have access to another battleship, or at least a cruiser. We'd be fools to risk her in a destroyer battle."

Emerald wanted to be able to direct the battle personally, which meant she couldn't remain aboard the Sawfish. I designated the destroyer Discovered Check to be her command ship and went along myself. I wanted personal involvement, too.

"I don't like this, Hope," Spirit said darkly. "That little ship is a lot more vulnerable than the Sawfish."

"Also a lot less obvious," I pointed out. "We'll be observing, not fighting. The enemy will never suspect."

"If the battle comes near you, I'll bring the Sawfish in to fetch you out," she warned.

"And take your bodyguard along, sir," Sergeant Smith said. "Here, I'll assign another dozen men—"

"I don't need any dozen men!" I protested.

"Take them, Captain," Mondy said. He was pale and drawn; he had no love for battle. But he was not nonfunctional; now that the challenge was on him, he was holding steady. Emerald had been good for him these past few years. "In fact, I would like to accompany you myself."

"This may be closer to the action than you like," I warned him. "There is no need for you to expose yourself to this."

"Yes there is, sir. My wife will be exposed."

His wife, my former wife. I knew what a woman Emerald was. I was proof from love, but evidently it was a different case with Mondy. He did not want to live if Emerald didn't. She had married him because our unit needed him, and he had proved his value to us many times. But he had needs of his own. Our unit was bound together in special ways. "Come along, Peat Bog," I said. His song-nickname, no affront.

"And stay out of mischief!" Spirit called as we entered the linked airlocks, transferring to the Discovered Check.

"We know where we're going," Emerald called back, paraphrasing Spirit's song. Songs became more important as tension mounted.

The destroyer was a nice ship. Commander Phist had requisitioned some very special equipment for her, which was one reason we were using the Discovered Check. She was the fastest of our ships, capable of an astonishing 4.5-gee acceleration in her upgraded condition, which meant she could probably outrun any ship in the Belt. Her torpedoes were of the most modern type, fifty percent faster than standard, with magnetic repulsion fields that made physical interception of them in flight almost impossible. When they homed in on their target, the magnetism was programmed to reverse. Her hull was plated with laser-resistant alloy, and her own laser cannon was oriented by computer to destroy any oncoming missile. She was also armed with "depth" bombs—that were hurled by catapult slowly through space, but so powerful that they could disable a small ship by a proximity explosion. This was, in short, one potent ship, and about as safe as a destroyer could be. Commander Phist had taken a great deal of pride in it, justifiably. He had not been able to upgrade the other destroyers similarly; most were not designed for such changes, and as a unit we had already pushed our luck about as far as we could. Had the officers in charge of these matters possessed Phist's insight into performance, quality, and costs, they would never have let us get away with many of our requisitions. But these officers, like much of the Jupiter Navy, were essentially asleep at the helm.

The problem with the Asteroid Belt is that it obscures things. Much of it is sparse, and, of course, the orbiting rocks are readily avoided by ships that travel outside the Solar Ecliptic, the plane in which most of the planets revolve. But there are more small chunks than large ones, and there is considerable sand. In some regions there are whole clouds of dust. This interferes with radar and makes it easy for ships to hide; the radar can't readily distinguish between rocks and ships. It was in this manner that we sailed into the pirate ambush.

We were advancing toward the main Caroline base on a half-mile-diameter planetoid. Because of the debris in the area, we were strung out along a natural channel that the pirates normally used. There really wasn't any other way; the Belt was constantly changing its configuration as planetoids ellipsed in and out, stirring up sand and throwing dust about in their wakes. Maps had to be constantly updated, and, of course, we lacked the latest. Only the pirates themselves knew the latest details, and they weren't giving out that information to the Navy. So we used the main channel, watching for pirate ships, but we had underestimated the care with which their ambush had been laid. Or so the pirates believed.

All six of their destroyers materialized from the debris, bare light-seconds from the center of our fleet. In that region we had only two destroyers, a frigate, two sloops, and half a dozen gunboats. Our fleet had started in compact order but had become dispersed because of the differing accelerations of the various types of ships. Our battleship was at the head with two destroyers and several escorts, while our carrier was far to the rear, with two more destroyers and a cruiser. The center was by far the weakest region, lacking either the firepower of the Sawfish or the drones of the Hempstone Crater, without even a cruiser to bolster its striking force. The pirate fleet of six destroyers was much more than a match for our widely spaced eight ships, and, of course, the second pirate cruiser, the battle-fit one, was waiting in their rear. They could cut our column in two, and then concentrate their remaining ships, which were surely deploying invisibly in the debris of the Belt. When our carrier arrived, they could mass against it. We could lose half our force before we got properly organized. Then they would retreat, escaping retaliation, awaiting a new opportunity to strike.

Emerald showed her teeth in no friendly smile. What I have described is the way it was supposed to seem to the pirates—and now they had taken the bait. Kadesh, when the Hittites had pounced on the Egyptians' weak center as the Egyptian forces marched in columns. Perhaps the Egyptians had not planned it that way, but we had. Our vulnerability was a good deal more apparent than actual.

Our light cruiser, the Inverness, thirteen thousand tons, had already rotated in space and commenced acceleration back toward our center as the enemy destroyers made their move. Our radar wasn't good in this region, but we had known what to expect, so had been able to track their ships approximately. The Inverness was armed with a dozen six-inch guns and another dozen five-inch lasers, compared to the four five-inch guns of each enemy destroyer, and her acceleration of 3.5 gee matched theirs. Of course, she was really decelerating, reducing her inertial velocity, but in the situation that was a quibble. When everything is moving at a given velocity, that becomes your basis for orientation in space, and it is convenient to treat your formation as if it is at rest. The enemy craft were matching our velocity, and the Inverness was rapidly closing the distance, and she was a considerably more potent fighting piece than they. Her six-inchers had greater muzzle velocity and accuracy, which translated into greater effective range.

One of our two destroyers in the region was the Discovered Check. She was not here to fight, of course; she was the temporary command ship. If things got difficult, she could outrun any of the enemy destroyers, but it wouldn't come to that. And our frigate was another upgraded ship, as were two of our corvettes. In fact, our supposedly weak center was a good deal stronger than it appeared.

"Corvettes, evasive maneuvers," Emerald was saying into her scrambled radio connection. "Frigate, fire on your nearest." She glanced up at me, the light and delight of battle in her eyes. "It's only a pair of three-inchers she can orient without changing course, but they may not know that." The problem, of course, was that small ships could not fire effectively sidewise; their heavy guns were oriented forward, since their spin made side-oriented guns highly inaccurate. The larger ships had special independent artillery belts, which did not spin with the rest of the ship; that was another reason our battleship was like a chess queen, while the destroyers were like deadly pawns. Versatility in firepower was critical in battle!

Of course, normally attacking ships simply matched velocities, then rotated to point at their targets; destroyers were highly maneuverable this way. But it did take a few minutes, and they were vulnerable while correcting their attitude, as it was called. The enemy destroyers were closing on our ships at an angle so they could fire forward at us, but that meant they presented a larger and steadier target for return fire by any ships in our column that could fire sidewise. That was why the frigate's effort should be slightly unnerving to them, until they discovered that only two three-inch guns were involved. Theoretically one three-incher was enough to score, but it was unlikely at this range.

The Caroline destroyers were coming within effective range of their five-inchers. Our corvettes, not daring to drift in space while changing their attitudes, were maneuvering by irregular acceleration. When a shell approaches at an angle to the target ship, the rate of the target's acceleration has to be taken into consideration. If the target accelerates faster than allowed for, the shell will miss to the rear; if it accelerates slower, the shot will miss to the front. So the attacker has to get close enough to increase its accuracy and to read the acceleration of the target correctly. Even so, the chances of any one shell scoring, even when correctly aimed and timed, are only about one in four at close range, and close range is dangerous when a number of ships are involved.

You may be wondering why ships don't simply loop about, the way ancient Earth vehicles did. Certainly I wondered, at first. The answer is that they can't. Not when they are spinning for internal gee and external stability. They can change course a little, but any sharp turn at speed would encounter precessional resistance that would tear the ship apart before the maneuver could be completed. Those old stories of spaceships making neat loops in space to engage their opponents, on a scale of seconds, are fantasy; any loop they might reasonably make, unless they are almost stationary in space, would be so big as to be useless in a close encounter. Here in the confined channel of the Belt, the attempt would be disastrous. So maneuvers of this sort are sharply limited, and the keys become proximity and rate of acceleration.

Now the Inverness came in range. Immediately her six-inchers opened up, and the Caroline destroyers were in trouble. They had to refocus on the cruiser, because otherwise she would concentrate her firepower and pick them off one by one. The chances of a single shot scoring, in ideal conditions, may be one in four, but our destroyer would fire hundreds of shells. That shifted the odds.

Actually, six destroyers could normally take on a single cruiser. The cruiser would probably knock out a couple, but then the rest would be within their effective range and would be able to fire so many shells that the cruiser's lasers would not be able to handle them all. Saturation shelling was an excellent tactic. So they ignored our lesser ships and oriented carefully on the Inverness.

Meanwhile, however, the Sawfish, our battleship, was decelerating to approach the battle region from the front, and the carrier HC was accelerating at her maximum gee to get within drone range from the rear, accompanied by our second cruiser, the Brooksville. Our pincers were closing. I really had to admire Emerald's strategy; it was working exactly as she had outlined it to us. Soon we would enclose the enemy destroyers and go after their backup cruiser, which was now approaching in order to take on ours. Our trap was slamming shut on the pirates.

But the best-laid plans, as it has been said, can go astray. A destroyer made a lucky hit on the Inverness and knocked out her communications turret, and perhaps more. Her radio contact with us ceased and so did her acceleration. She had not been holed, but she was in trouble. She would be a sitting target for the enemy ships if she didn't get her drive back soon. Free-fall is for traveling, not for battling.

"Damn!" Emerald swore. "It'll be too long before our wings close; we'll lose her!" She bit her lip fretfully.

I realized that her inexperience had betrayed us. A veteran strategist would have a backup plan in case of the unexpected. Emerald's strategy had been good—good enough to win the battle—but she had not allowed sufficiently for chance. I wondered if the Egyptian king, of the Kadesh battle, had suffered similarly.

"We've got to help the Inverness!" Mondy said.

"We aren't supposed to get into the action," I said, as if I were not the commander.

"If they take out that cruiser," Mondy pointed out, "we'll be next."

I had to agree. "Unless we outrun them."

Emerald nodded. "Can't risk the Expedition Commander," she said without irony. The commander is generally considered more valuable than any single ship, and, of course, our strategist and intelligence officer were also at risk. If the Task Force were considered as an organism, we represented its brain. I had been foolish to permit such a grouping of key personnel to occur at the battle site. In addition, Emerald and I both knew that Mondy, with his susceptibility to battle stress, was now a risk to himself and this ship. There was no way to predict how he might react.

But we had misjudged him. "We barely have the force to do our job now," he said. "Without the Inverness we'll be so short we'll have to send for a replacement ship, and that will take too long." He seemed less nervous now, oddly.

"Way too long," I agreed. What was he getting at? I had always read the deep disquiet in him before; now I sensed a strange purpose.

"This is a fighting ship; let's use it," he said.

I exchanged a glance with Emerald. She was as surprised as I was.

Mondy grinned, now at ease. "Give the order, and I'll explain."

Emerald shrugged. "Sure thing, Peat Bog. We do need that cruiser."

"Captain," I said into the ship's intercom. I was not, of course, commanding this ship; I commanded the Task Force, a different matter. Captain was my rank, but the one who commands a particular ship is captain of that ship, whatever his rank, and he has final authority on that ship.

"Sir," he responded.

"We are joining the battle. Act in the manner you deem best to protect the Inverness, subject to the overriding directives of Commander Sheller."

"Yes, sir." There was a pause, then: "Secure for hi-gee."

We felt the change immediately. We were pacing the frigate; now our acceleration jumped to about two gee as the ship sought to close on the cruiser. The Discovered Check was turning, too, despite the spin; we felt the sheer. Our acceleration couches shifted position, their clamps holding us secure, as the gee of the thrust exceeded that of the spin.

Even at double-gee, a maneuver takes time. We had to wait, watching the slow change on our screens. It wasn't comfortable in either the physical or the emotional sense, but we were in shape for it—and so, it seemed, was Mondy. I realized now that his original potbelly had slimmed down; he was more fit physically than I had pictured him. "If it is not indiscreet to ask," I said cautiously, resisting the gee pressure, "how is it that you are having no more trouble now than we are?"

"This is reality," he said. "Here I have some personal control over my destiny. In my dreams I don't."

"That's not enough, Peat," Emerald said. "I've got more control here than you do, because I can dictate to the captain of this ship, in the name of tactics. But there's a hand squeezing my heart. There's none squeezing yours at the moment."

Mondy smiled. "I saw action in the Saturn Incident," he said, speaking in brief bursts as the gee squeezed more than our hearts. "We were behind enemy lines and short of rations, especially oxygen; we could not afford to take prisoners. Our lasers were low, so we used knives. We infiltrated an observation bubble, knifed their communication operators, and planted timed bombs. That was our job. After we vacated the bubble, the bombs would detonate, killing the remaining personnel. It went like clockwork; we took out five different bubbles that way and watched each blow behind us. 'Lovely!' I exclaimed. Then I realized that it wasn't lovely; it was awful. Those people were fighting to defend their system, just as we were; they were decent, hardworking people who just happened to speak a different language. Their blood was on my hands, some of it literally. I remembered how one of them had been a young woman; her blood had flowed over my knife as she dropped, and onto my fingers. Somehow it hadn't bothered me at the time, but in retrospect that blood was horrible, so hot and thick, her life spilled across my hand. My associates thought it was humorous. 'You really got it into her!' one quipped. He liked it, liked the killing, the gore of it, the sexual analogy: to ram a thing into the warm body of a woman, drawing blood. And suddenly I realized that I didn't like it—but it was too late. I was already responsible for the deaths of over a hundred human beings.

"When we reported back to base, I got a commendation and a promotion: my reward for murdering all those people. And yet in the end, we withdrew from Saturn and the other side took over; all our killing had accomplished nothing. I was left with no justification at all. And since then, I have relived those murders I committed, especially of that young woman—a woman very like you." He turned his head briefly toward Emerald, the gee drawing down his jowls, making him artificially haggard. "Sometimes in my dreams I think she's alive again, that all of them are alive, that perhaps I meet her living, and love her, for love was what she deserved, not that cruel knife. But I know it isn't so, and I can't face it, and I scream."

Now he turned to me. "You assumed I was afraid of action, but it is myself I fear. I don't want to murder anyone else, though I do it again every night. But this—" He paused again. "My companion of the quip, who liked killing, he couldn't get enough of it in the Navy when peace came, so he deserted and became a pirate. I know what pirates do. Them I can kill. They are like the sinister aspect of myself; they need to be extirpated. I cannot undo what I have done, but I can, to a certain extent, atone for it by abolishing the other killers. Only when I am actively atoning does my conscience feel at ease."

"I understand," I said. "I also killed—"

"Pirates," he finished for me. "And children. And a young woman you loved. I know you understand, but your guilt is less than mine, and your strength is greater. Your system protects your sanity, as it protects you from hallucinogens."

I had never thought of it that way. Could there be antibodies against destructive emotion? Surely I had suffered events that drove others mad, but I survived—and so did Spirit, who was of my blood. We felt the impact at first but learned to cope, exactly as I had with the hallucinogen. Mondy had provided me another insight into myself. "Yes," I agreed.

"But now the Inverness is in trouble. If I don't act, many good lives will be lost. So I must act, to pay another installment on my debt."

And now, for the time being, he was at ease and fully competent. I had thought I understood him before, but my judgment had been imperfect because I had not allowed for the potential change in him brought about by circumstance.

Emerald, too, was looking at Mondy, her husband. She had suffered, taking care of him. Perhaps she had felt contempt for him. This was no longer the case. His insights into the nature of the Navy had brought us all promotion and success, and now his very suffering spoke eloquently for the state of his conscience. He had never accepted or forgotten the evil he had done. She had married me and then him; I had left evil behind me and had left her when it was expedient to do so. Mondy would never do either. I could almost see the wheels clicking to new settings in her head. What woman, granted the choice, would choose a truly independent man instead of a dependent one? Only a foolish woman...

We watched the action on our screens while Emerald continued to direct the overall battle. I now appreciated much better the distinction between strategy and tactics. We were now immersed in tactics. We veered abruptly to orient on an enemy destroyer. The change hardly showed on the screen, for our actual shift was small; but the gee was awful, triple normal, and our couches swung about like carnival carriages. At our velocity the slightest deviation from straight-line-forward translated to considerable actual shift, and the acceleration itself was fierce. Slowly we closed on the enemy craft. We could not fire at it, and it could not fire at us; one of us had to turn our guns on the other.

We took the chance. We cut acceleration, damped our spin, and used our attitude jets to rotate in space. This took several minutes, but soon we would be able to launch a torpedo at the other. We resumed spin, stabilizing ourselves....

And the Caroline cruiser, alert to the pressure of a sitting duck, made a beautiful, or lucky, long-range shot and scored glancingly on our nose. Our torpedo tubes were jammed, and we were knocked out of attitude, our precession causing us to rotate slowly in space, end over end. Our hull was tight, but we did not dare use our acceleration jet until we recovered stability. We were, for the moment, effectively dead in space.

"Guide jets damaged," a technician reported. "Unable to correct."

Worse yet. We would have to have a repair crew work on the hull, and that was treacherous in battle.

There was a flare of light on the screen. For an instant I thought another shell had scored on us, but that was not so; an enemy destroyer had blown up. One of our ships had taken it out. The battle was continuing, but we ourselves could no longer fight.

Now the enemy destroyers were reorienting. "They're going to hole us," Emerald said grimly. Her face was drawn; she had never been in true battle before. There were tears of fear or frustration on her face. I think she feared death less than she feared the disaster this represented to her career. This was the stuff from which future nightmares were made.

But Mondy was unaffected. "No," he said. "They're going to board us."

"How do you know?" she demanded sharply.

"That is the nature of pirates. They're looters. They want this ship, and if they can't salvage it, they'll pillage it, rape the women, and maybe take them as slaves."

All true, as I well knew. We had many young female personnel in our fleet and on this ship, and Emerald herself was one. There was ugly business coming, but Mondy and I would probably not live to see much of it.

"See, they're not shooting at the Inverness anymore, either," Mondy said. "That would be a real prize for them."

"They can't hope to take over a cruiser!" Emerald protested.

"Certainly they can," he said. "They've got pacifiers."

Pacifiers: the electronic devices that caused all unprotected people in their range to lose personal volition. I had had devastating experience with one, as a refugee. "But we're protected from that," I said.

Mondy smiled grimly. "Of course. But they don't know that. I saw to it that accurate information did not get out. I believe our best strategy is to play dead—rather, to play pacified—and then take over their ship. Our men are well prepared for hand-to-hand combat."

"I don't like this," Emerald said. "Nobody ever tried to rape me before." Indeed, she was as pale as her dark skin permitted.

"It will not come to that, my dear," he assured her. "I have been in this type of situation before. We shall surprise them."

"You've had dreams about it!" she said. "You scream in the night! I've had to hold your hand! How can you fight them, even if you nullify the pacifier?"

"As I mentioned, reality is less severe than my dreams. My conscience is clear, for this. This time I am on the side of the victim." He turned to me. "Captain, I suggest we plan our strategy in the few minutes remaining before they board us."

"Agreed." I spoke to the Discovered Check's captain, and we entered a four-person dialogue and set our new trap. This ship was aptly named for this ploy!

The ship shuddered as the pirate came into contact. A warning light signaled the presence of a pacifier field. We all had pacifier null-units in our uniforms; our staff had agreed this was essential equipment. But we all slowed our paces, as if caught by surprise, playing the game. The three of us had gone to the ship's main hall, hoping to serve as a preliminary distraction for the pirates, so that they would not be too careful. We wanted as many as possible to board before we acted. The two ships were now in free-fall, neither accelerating nor spinning; the pirate's contact had served to steady us.

The pirates operated the linked airlocks and entered. The first three were big, dirty bruisers, exactly the way we had imagined them. They carried hand-lasers and were alert for trouble, but when they saw Emerald floating there, they relaxed.

"Look at the braid on that black doll!" the party leader exclaimed. "A light commander—that's pretty high!"

"Come here, Commander Doll," the second ordered.

Emerald slowly looked at them, then caught a handhold and hauled herself toward the one who had called her. The pacifier field did not make people dim-witted or physically slow, it merely robbed them of volition. Emerald obeyed the direct order she had been given; Mondy and I remained where we were, supposedly lacking the initiative to act.

Such inaction may seem incredible to people who have not experienced the pacifier's effect, but a pacifier had caused me to watch passively while my father was brutally slain.

"Hey, this one's full captain!" the first pirate cried, as more of them crowded in from the airlock. "He must be the big boss! What a find!"

"What's he doing in this little ship?"

"Ask him, dodo!"

So the second pirate asked me: "Who are you, Navy man? Why are you here?"

"I am Captain Hubris, Commander of this task force," I said carefully. The field tended to interfere somewhat with speech, so I spoke slowly and with seeming concentration, though I was in fact unaffected. "I wanted to be close to the battle."

He laughed coarsely. "You sure got your wish, Navy man! Now you're our prisoner. You'll fetch a good ransom!"

Emerald arrived before him. Eagerly the man grabbed her. "I never had a Navy officer before," he said, hauling her in for a rough kiss. She did not resist, and still Mondy and I did nothing; we were waiting for the other pirates to board.

"Who gave you the rights to her?" the pirate leader demanded. "Chick like that's for the top man!"

"You got your own woman," the second protested.

"So? I got a share of any I want—and I never had a Navy officer gal either, 'specially not a young, sleek creature like this. How old are you, doll?"

"Twenty-eight," Emerald replied. That reminded me that we had both been twenty-two when we met; how fast six years had passed!

The second pirate had to compromise. "Not as young as I thought. So we'll share her. Let's strip her first."

They went at it, yanking Emerald's sturdy uniform off piece by piece, cutting it where it snagged. The others gathered around to watch. Soon there were thirty of them crowding the chamber, apparently all that were going to board. We waited, making sure, while Emerald was stripped. All the pirates were running their hands over her exposed body, delighting in her healthy flesh. Mondy did not react overtly; we both knew that Emerald was not sensitive about exposure, and that she was buying time.

But there was no need to acquiesce to rape. I reached slowly into a pocket and brought out a small device with a bulb. It was a light grenade.

I snapped my fingers. Emerald and Mondy—and the hidden personnel we had placed—closed their eyes tightly. I closed mine and activated the grenade.

The flash was so bright it seemed to burn right through my flesh. It was gone in an instant, but it took a moment for my protected eyes to recover. Slowly I opened them.

There was chaos in the chamber. All the pirates had been temporarily blinded. It did not matter which way they had been facing when the grenade went off; the reflections sufficed.

"Get out of there, Emerald!" I called. But she was already moving, floating for the center passage, getting out of the line of fire. Mondy and I retreated similarly, putting metal between us and the floating pirates.

Sure enough, one of them drew his laser and fired. The beam scorched into the side of another, causing him to scream with pain. Believing they were under attack, several more pirates drew and fired, randomly.

The carnage was terrible. The pirates were destroying each other, because of their blindness, suspicion, and panic. In moments only four were functional, and as they caught on to what had happened, we took them out with stunners.

"Now we move on their ship," I said.

"I'll do it, sir," Heller said. I had kept him clear of the prior action, but now he was back bodyguarding. He carried a gas bomb. He launched for the lock, hurled the bomb through, and slammed the panel closed.

We waited fifteen minutes, meanwhile sending out our repair crew to work on our own hull. Emerald borrowed a uniform and dressed herself, unselfconsciously. Then we opened the lock. The gas had dissipated and neutralized itself as it was designed to do, and the pirate ship was silent.

"Let's see whether we can crew this thing and use it ourselves," Emerald said. She was evidently somewhat shaken by the slaughter among the pirates but was in control. Certainly her understanding of what Mondy and I had been through in the past had broadened.

Captain Undermeyer of the Discovered Check joined us, as he was more savvy about destroyers than we were. He glanced about dispassionately as we entered the pirate ship. "She's been sloppily treated, but she's space-worthy," he said. "Let's see what the bridge is like."

There were pirates scattered about their stations; all were unconscious. Our gas bombs were effective, the gas being odorless and invisible as it diffused; our strategy and drill were paying off. We had successfully reversed the pirates' boarding attempt and had a number of captives and a serviceable ship for our effort. Emerald had done much to make it possible, by allowing her attractive body to serve as a distraction while the trap fell into place.

We came to the bulkhead sealing off the bridge. Captain Undermeyer opened it and stepped through, and into the arms of a husky pirate. "Hold it there, men," the pirate said. "This brass is hostage."

"Fool!" Emerald cursed. "Why didn't I think of that?"

"You? It was my business to anticipate this," Mondy said.

"Not to mention mine," I agreed ruefully. I had encountered such a trap before, when rescuing Spirit. We had all become as overconfident as the pirates.

"Get in here," the pirate snapped. "Drop your weapons."

We started to move, and Captain Undermeyer elbowed the pirate. The pirate's laser fired, Undermeyer cried out, and Sergeant Heller launched himself through the air as the pirate brought his weapon around for a shot at me. The laser beam burned past his head as I flung myself aside; then Heller was on the pirate, pulping his face with several blows of his right fist as he grasped the man's jacket with his left hand.

All of us dived for our discarded weapons—they had, of course, not dropped but floated free—but there were no other active pirates. This one, perhaps the captain, had been lucky enough to avoid the gas until it nullified itself, so had been alert. We should have been on guard.

"You're a good bodyguard," I told Heller.

"I haven't saved your life yet, Cap'n," he said. "You got out of the way of that beam on your own."

Still, he had tried. My decision in giving him the position seemed justified.

Captain Undermeyer was not as fortunate. The beam had seared across his neck and the side of his face, nicking a vein; now he held his hand on the raw gouge to slow the bleeding. Already a medic was arriving, but I knew the good man would be in sick bay awhile. No chance now to activate the pirate ship; I was no pilot, and neither were Mondy or Emerald. But we would hold the ship for future use. We returned to the Discovered Check.

The situation had changed in the larger battle. The pirates' delay to plunder ships had given the Sawfish time to come on the scene at one side, and the Hempstone Crater on the other; already a number of drones from the carrier were aloft, chasing down pirate ships. Our pincers-trap had closed and all that remained was mopping up.

We had won our first battle, but had almost flubbed it by losing our top personnel, and two of our destroyers and a corvette were gone. We had gained back one destroyer, but that was only a ship and could not make up for the trained personnel who had died in the others.

"Sir, you can have my resignation," Emerald said to me.

"Take this woman away and talk to her," I told Mondy. He smiled; in the aftermath of battle, he retained his positive outlook. Emerald's inexperience had allowed us to be drawn into peril, but this first blood would toughen her and help her to become the strategist she could be. I knew Mondy would make her understand. He was a good officer and a good man, and now his qualities were showing. He had not lost competence under stress, he had gained it.

We advanced on the Caroline base, and it surrendered without resistance. One of the six major pirate bands had been dealt with.

But it wasn't quite over. There was one chore the Commander had to perform, and I did not feel free to delegate it to any subordinate, though I did not relish it myself. This was notifying the kin of our dead.

We organized our lists, I reviewed the backgrounds, and Juana started placing my calls. It is too painful for me to go into detail here, so I will provide a nightmare interview.

"Mrs. X? I am Captain Hubris, of the Jupiter Navy Task Force on a mission to the Asteroid Belt. I regret to inform—"

"Oh, no! Something's happened to Jonathan!"

"He died in honorable performance of his duty, and—"

"No! It can't be! He was such a good boy!"

"We regret that we are unable to return his remains to you, because—"

But the rest is drowned out by her screaming.

In actuality it was my own screaming; Spirit was holding my hand when I woke. As I said, this was a nightmare; no such interview occurred in reality. We were in the Belt, about thirty light minutes from Jupiter; a true exchange would take an hour between sentences. So I simply sent messages of condolence; my imagination provided the rest. Still it hurt.

"I was on similar duty when I started," Commander Repro said.

When he started on the drug. Now I could understand that, too! I longed to deaden my mind to the horror of these notices but could not, for my system would soon throw off the drug. In any event, I would not. I understood too well the suffering of family loss; I had to suffer with these families, for the fleet and all its personnel were my responsibility.

We glory in war, in the shedding of human blood. What fools we are!