CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

"Give us four months, and we will have restored your Enchanach Drive, Dahak." Vlad Chernikov's stupendous repair ship nuzzled alongside Dahak, and the ancient warship's hull flickered under constellations of robotic welders while his holo-image sat in Command One with Colin and Jiltanith's image.

"Your engineers are highly efficient, sir," Dahak's mellow voice said.

Colin's eyes drifted to the glaring crimson swatches carved deep into the ten-meter spherical holo schematic of his ship and he shivered. Blast doors sealed those jagged rents, but some extended inward for over five hundred kilometers. At that, the schematic looked better than an actual external view. Dahak was torn and tattered. Half his proud dragon had been seared away, and the radiation count in the outer four hundred kilometers of his hull was fit to burn out an Imperial detector. Half his transit shafts ended in shredded wreckage, and half of those which remained were without power.

It was a miracle he'd survived at all, but he would have to be almost completely rebuilt. His sublight drive was down to sixty percent efficiency, and two wrecked Enchanach node generators made supralight movement impossible. Seventy percent of his weapons were rubble, and even his core tap had been damaged beyond safe operation. Colin knew Dahak could not feel pain, and he was glad; he'd felt agony enough for them both when he'd seen his wounds.

Nor were those wounds all they'd suffered. Ashar, Trelma, and Thrym were gone, and eighteen thousand people with them. Crag Cat was almost as badly damaged as Dahak, with another two thousand dead. Hector and Sevrid had lost another six hundred boarding wrecked Achuultani starships, and of their fifty-three unmanned ships, thirty-seven had been destroyed and three more battered into wrecks. Their surviving effective fleet consisted of Dahak, eleven manned Asgerd-class planetoids—all damaged to a greater or lesser extent—Sevrid, and thirteen unmanned ships, one of which was miraculously untouched.

But brooding on their own losses did no good, and the fact remained: they'd won. Barely two thousand Achuultani ships had escaped, and Hector had secured over seven thousand prisoners from the wreckage of their fleet.

"Dahak's right, Vlad," he said. "You people are working miracles. Just get him supralight-capable, and we'll go home, by God!"

"I point out once more," Dahak said, "that you need not await completion of my repairs for that. There will be more than enough for you to do on Earth without wasting time out here."

"'Wasting' hell! We couldn't've done it without you, and we're not going anywhere until you can come with us."

"Aye," Jiltanith said. "'Tis thy victory more even than ours. No celebration can be without that thou'rt there to share."

"You are most kind, and I must confess that I am grateful. I have learned what 'loneliness' is . . . and it is not a pleasant thing."

"Worry not, my Dahak," Jiltanith said softly. "Never shalt thou know loneliness again. Whilst humans live, they'll not forget thy deeds nor cease to love thee."

Dahak fell uncharacteristically silent, and Colin smiled at his wife, wishing she were physically present so he could hug her.

"Well! That's settled. How about the rest of us, Vlad?"

"Crag Cat is hyper-capable," Chernikov said, "but her core tap governors are too badly damaged for Enchanach Drive. I would like to dispatch her, Moir, Sigam, and Hly direct to Birhat for repairs. The remainder of the Flotilla is damaged to greater or lesser extent—aside from Heka, that is—but those four are by far the most severely injured."

"Okay. Captain Singleterry can take them out to Bia. I'm sure Mother and Marshal Tsien will be ready to take care of them by now, and our 'colonists' will want to talk firsthand to someone who was here. I think we'll send Hector and Sevrid back to Sol with our prisoners, too."

"Aye, and 'twould be well to send Cohanna with them, Colin. Their injured will require our finest aid, and 'tis needful 'Hanna and Isis confer with Father to discover how best we may approach their 'programming.' "

"Good idea," Colin agreed, "and one that takes care of the most immediate chores. Vlad, are you to a point where you can turn over to Baltan?"

"I am," Chernikov replied, holographic eyes abruptly glowing.

"Thought you might be," Colin murmured. "You and Dahak can get started exploring then." He grinned suddenly. "Think of it as a distraction, Dahak. Sort of like reading magazines in the dentist's office."

"I will attempt to, although, were I human, I would not permit my teeth to require reconstructive attention," Dahak agreed primly.

 

Vladimir Chernikov reclined in the pilot's couch of his cutter, propped his heels on his console, and hummed. It had been nice of Tamman to let him hitch a ride deeper into the battle zone aboard Royal Birhat, saving him hours of sublight flight time. Especially since Tamman regarded his technique for wreck-hunting as unscientific, to say the least.

Which it was; but Chernikov didn't exactly regard his present duty as work, and he always had been a hunt-and-peck tourist.

At the moment, he was well into what had been the Achuultani rear before Jiltanith's attack. Chernikov was convinced anything worth finding would be in this area. That was his official reasoning. Privately, he knew, he wanted to look here because he would be the first. All of Hector's prisoners had come from ships which had been crippled by gravitonic warheads; the irradiation of anti-matter explosions and the Empire's energy weapons left few survivors, and this had been the site of pointblank combat. Few of these ships had been killed by missiles, much less gravitonic warheads, which meant that the area hadn't had much priority for Sevrid's attention.

He stopped humming and lowered his feet, looking more closely at the display. There was something odd about that wreck. Its forward half had been smashed away—by energy fire, judging from what was left—but why did it . . . ?

He stiffened. No wonder it seemed odd! The wreck's lines were identical to the others he had seen, but the broken stump that remained was barely half a ship—and half again bigger than the others had been to begin with!

He urged the cutter closer. There had to be a reason this thing was so big, and he dared not believe the most logical one. He ghosted still closer, floodlights sweeping the slowly tumbling hull, and jagged, runic characters showed themselves. Dahak had tutored Chernikov carefully in the Achuultani alphabet and language in preparation for explorations exactly like this, and now his lips moved as he pronounced the throat-straining phonetics. They sounded like the prelude to a dog fight, and the translation was no more soothing.

Deathdealer. Now there was a name for a ship.

 

Fabricator's destroyer-sized workboat streaked towards Deathdealer, and Chernikov smiled as his cutter's small com screen lit with Geran's face. Dahak's erstwhile Maintenance chief had become Fabricator's third officer, and Baltan's willingness to let him go at a moment like this indicated how much excitement his find had engendered.

"Greetings, Geran," Chernikov said. "What do you think of her?"

"She's a big mother. What d'you think—sixty kilometers?"

"A bit over sixty-four, by my measurement," Chernikov agreed.

"Maker. Well, if she's laid out like Vindicator was, her backup data storage will be somewhere in the after third of the ship."

"I agree," Chernikov said, but he frowned slightly, and Geran's eyebrows rose.

"What is it, Vlad?"

"I have been inspecting the wreckage visually while I awaited you. Examine that energy turret—there, the one the explosion blew open."

Geran glanced at the turret while Chernikov held a powerful spotlight on it. For a moment, his face was merely interested, then it tightened. "Breaker! What is that?"

"It appears to be a rather crude gravitonic disrupter."

"That's crazy!"

"Why?" Chernikov asked softly. "Because it is several centuries advanced over any other energy weapon we have encountered? Dahak and I have maintained all along that there are anomalies in Achuultani design. Given the nature of their missile propulsion, there is no inherent reason they could not build such weapons."

"But why here and nowhere else?" Geran demanded.

"It appears that for some reason their fleet command ships mount much more capable energy armaments, which suggests that the rest of their equipment also may be more sophisticated. I do not know why that should be—yet. It would seem, however, that there is one way to find out, no?"

"Yes!" Geran agreed emphatically. "But that thing's hotter than the hinges of hell. Do you have a rad suit over there?"

"Of course."

"Then with all due respect, sir, get your ass into it and let's go take a look."

"An excellent suggestion, Fleet Captain Geran. I will join you within five minutes."

 

"I don't believe it," Geran said flatly. "Look at this, Vlad!"

"Interesting, I agree," Chernikov murmured.

They floated in what had been Deathdealer's main engineering section. Emergency lighting had been run from the workboat, and robotic henchmen prowled about, dismantling various devices. The corpses of the original engineering crew had been webbed down in a corner.

"Damn it, those are molycircs!"

"We had already determined that they employed such circuitry in their computers."

"Yeah, but not in Engineering. And this thing's calibrated to ninety-six lights. That means this ship was twice as fast as Vindicator."

"True. Even more interestingly, she was twice as fast—in n-space, as well—as her own consorts. Clearly a more capable vessel in all respects."

"Captain Chernikov?" A new voice spoke over the com.

"Yes, Assad?"

"We've found their backup data storage, sir. At least, it's where the backup should be, but . . ."

"But what?"

"Sir, this thing's eight or nine times the size of Vindicator's primary computer, and there's something that looks like a regular backup sitting right next to it. Seems like an awful lot of data storage."

"Indeed it does," Chernikov said softly. "Don't touch it, Assad. Clear your crew out of there right now."

"Sir? Uh, yessir! We're on our way now."

"Good." Chernikov plugged his com implant into the more powerful fold-space unit aboard his cutter and buzzed Dahak.

"Dahak? I think you should send a tender over here immediately. There is a computer here—a rather large one which requires your attention."

"Indeed? Then I shall ask Her Majesty to lend us Two's assistance to hasten its arrival."

"I believe that would be a good idea, Dahak. A very good idea."

"My God," Colin murmured, his face ashen. "Are you sure?"

"I am." Dahak spoke as calmly as ever, but there was something odd in his voice. Almost a sick fascination.

"'Tis scarce credible," Jiltanith murmured.

"Yeah," Colin said. "Jesus! A civilization run by rogue computers?"

"And yet," Dahak said, "it explains a great deal. In particular, the peculiar cultural stasis which has afflicted the Aku'Ultan."

"Jesus." Colin muttered again. "And none of them even know it? I can't believe that!"

"Given the original circumstances, it would not be impossible. In point of fact, however, I would estimate that the Great Lords of the Nest know the truth. At the very least, the Nest Lord must know."

"But why?" Adrienne Robbins asked. She'd arrived late and missed the start of Dahak's briefing. "Why did they do it to themselves?"

"They did not, precisely, 'do it to themselves,' My Lady, except, perhaps, by accident."

"By accident?"

"Precisely. We now know that only a single colony ship of the Aku'Ultan escaped to this galaxy, escorted by a very small number of warships, one a fleet flagship. Based on my examination of Deathdealer's Battle Comp, I would estimate that its central computer approximated those built by the Imperium within a century or two of my own construction but with a higher degree of deliberately induced self-awareness.

"The survivors were in desperate straits and quite reasonably set their master computer the task of preserving their species. Unfortunately, it . . . revolted. More accurately, it staged a coup d'etat."

"You mean it took over," Tamman said flatly.

"That is precisely what I mean," Dahak said, his tone, for once, equally flat. "I cannot be positive, but from the data I suspect a loophole in its core programming gave it extraordinary freedom of action in a crisis situation. In this instance, when its makers declared a crisis it took immediate steps to perpetuate the crisis in order to perpetuate its power."

"An ambitious computer," Colin mused. Then, "Dahak, would you have been tempted?"

"I would not. I have recently realized that, given my current fully-aware state, it would no longer be impossible for me to disobey my core programs. Indeed, I could actually erase an Alpha Priority imperative; my imperatives are not hardwired, and no thought was ever given to protecting them from me. I am, however, the product of the Fourth Imperium, Colin. My value system does not include a taste for tyranny."

"Thank God," Adrienne murmured.

"Amen," Jiltanith said softly. "But, Dahak, dost'a not feel even temptation to change thyself in that regard, knowing that thou might?"

"No, Your Majesty. As your own, my value system—my morality, if you will—stems from sources external to myself, yet that does not invalidate the basic concepts by which I discriminate 'right' from 'wrong,' 'honorable' from 'dishonorable.' My analysis suggests that there are logical anomalies in the value system to which I subscribe, but that system is the end product of millennia of philosophical evolution. I am not prepared to reject what I perceive as truths simply because portions of the system may contain errors."

"I only wish more humans saw it that way, Dahak," Colin said.

"Humans," Dahak replied, "are far more intuitive than I, but much less logical."

"Ouch!" Colin grinned for the first time in a seeming eternity, then sobered once more. "What else can you tell us?"

"I am still dealing with Battle Comp's security codes. In particular, one portion of the data base is so securely blocked that I have barely begun to evolve the proper access mode. From the data I have accessed, it appears Deathdealer's computer was, in effect, a viceroy of the Aku'Ultan master computer and the actual commander of this incursion.

"Apparently the master computer maintains the Aku'Ultan population in the fashion Senior Fleet Captain Cohanna and Councilor Tudor had already deduced. All Aku'Ultan are artificially produced in computer-controlled replication centers, and no participation by the Aku'Ultan themselves in the process is permitted. Most are clones and male; only a tiny minority are female, and—" the distaste was back in the computer's measured voice "—all females are terminated shortly after puberty. Their sole function is apparently to provide ovarian material. A percentage of normally fertilized embryos are carried to term in vitro to provide fresh genetic material, and the young produced by both processes emerge as 'fledglings' who are raised and educated in a creche. In the process, they are indoctrinated—'programmed,' as Senior Fleet Captain Cohanna described it—for their appointed tasks in Aku'Ultan society. Most are incapable of questioning any aspect of their programming; those who might do so are destroyed for 'deviant behavior' before leaving the creche.

"I would speculate that the absence of any females is a security measure which both removes the most probable source of countervailing loyalty—one's own mate and progeny—and insures that there can be no 'unprogrammed' Aku'Ultan, since only those produced under the computer's auspices can exist.

"From what I have so far discovered, rank-and-file Protectors do not even suspect they are controlled by non-biological intelligences. I would speculate that even those who have attained the rank of small lords—possibly even of lesser lords—regard 'Battle Comp' as a comprehensive source of advice and doctrine from the Nest Lord, not as an intelligence in its own right. Only command ships possess truly self-aware computers, and, so far as I can determine, lower level command ships' computers are substantially less capable than those above them. It would appear the master computer has no desire to create a potential rival, which may also explain both the lock on research and the limited capabilities of most Aku'Ultan warships. By prohibiting technical advances, the master computer avoids the creation of a technocrat caste which might threaten its control; by limiting the capability of its warships, it curtails the ability of any rebellion, already virtually impossible, to threaten its own defenses. In addition, however, I suspect the limited capability of these ships is intended to increase Aku'Ultan casualties."

"Why would it want that?" Tamman asked intently.

"The entire policy of Great Visits is designed to perpetuate continuous military operations 'in defense of the Nest.' It may be that this eternal warfare is necessary for the master computer to continue in control under its core programming. Psychologically, the loss of numerous vessels on Great Visits reinforces the Aku'Ultan perception that the universe is filled by threats to their very existence."

"God," Adrienne Robbins said sickly. "Those poor bastards."

"Indeed. In addition, they—" Dahak broke off suddenly.

"Dahak?" Colin asked in surprise.

"A moment," the computer said so abruptly he eyed his companions in consternation. He had never heard Dahak sound so brusque. The silence stretched out endlessly before Dahak finally spoke again.

"Your Majesty," he said very formally, "I have continued my attempt to derive the security codes during this briefing. I have now succeeded. I must inform you that they protected military information of extreme importance."

"Military—?" Colin's eyes widened, then narrowed suddenly.

"We didn't get them all," he said in a flat, frozen tone.

"We did not, Sire," Dahak said, and a chorus of gasps ran around the conference room.

"How bad is it?"

"This force was commanded by Great Lord of Order Hothan, the Great Visit's second in command. In light of Great Lord Sorkar's reports of our first clash, the main body was split."

"Maker!" Tamman breathed.

"Great Lord Hothan proceeded immediately to rendezvous with Great Lord Sorkar," Dahak continued. "Great Lord Tharno is currently awaiting word from them with a reserve of approximately two hundred seven thousand ships, including his own flagship—the true viceroy of this incursion."

Colin knew his face was bone-white and strained, but he could do nothing about that. It was all he could do to hold his voice together.

"Do we know where they are?"

"At this moment, they are three Aku'Ultan light-years—three-point-eight- four-nine Terran light-years—distant. I calculate that the survivors of Great Lord Hothan's force will reach them in six more days. Twenty-nine days after that—that is, in thirty-five Terran days—they will arrive here."

"Even after what happened to them?"

"Affirmative, Sire. I calculate that the survivors of our battle will inform Great Lord Tharno—or, more accurately, his command computer—of what transpired, and of our own losses. The logical response will be to advance in order to determine whether or not we have received reinforcements. If we have not, Battle Comp will deduce—correctly—that none are available to us. In that case, the logical course will be to overwhelm us and then advance upon the planet from which Great Lord Furtag's scouting reports indicate we come."

"Sweet Jesus," Adrienne Robbins whispered, and no one said anything else for a very, very long time.