Petro was busier than a one-armed scragline picker. Working with the ship’s puter, he set up a course that would take them out of lunar orbit and put them on a looping path to L5 as if they were coming in from deep space. If detected by L5, the hope was the ship would be thought of as a wayward asteroid. The real hope was the fuser wouldn’t be detected at all.
The gillies kept trying to help, but Petro was having nothing to do with either of them. “Tell your slime mold critters to leave me alone!” Petro snarled, Crescent and Crater snatching up their particular slime mold things and carrying them off.
He is not efficient, Crater’s gillie said.
He is not efficient, Crescent’s gillie said.
They looked at one another, even though they had no eyes, and then nodded agreement, even though neither had heads to nod.
Crater and Crescent tucked their gillies away, admonishing them to be silent. “Humans don’t work the same way you do,” Crater told his gillie. “Sometimes they look inefficient, but it’s the way their brains work.”
“And some humans don’t have much intelligence,” Crescent whispered to her gillie and felt it vibrate in her pocket. She hoped that meant it was pleased, but you never knew about gillies.
Before turning on the fusion engine, Petro called Crater and Crescent to the cockpit for a briefing. “The launch is going to be rough because we’ve got to make up a lot of energy in a short time. Make sure you’re sitting back in your seat and fully strapped in. To loop out and back to L5, I’m going to have to essentially stomp on the gas.”
Crater and Crescent dutifully strapped themselves in with Crater beside Petro in the copilot’s seat and Crescent in the astrogator’s cabin. “Strapped in and ready to go,” she reported.
“All right, troops, here we go,” Petro said. “Puter, on my mark, send us along. Five-four-three-two-one-mark!”
The violence of the fuser engine was astonishing. It was as if a nuclear bomb had gone off behind them. A massive g-force slammed Crater back into his deeply cushioned chair. It felt like an elephant had put its foot on his chest. Less than a minute later, the g-force abated, then vanished. “We’re on our way!” Petro whooped. “Aren’t we, Linda?”
The fuser’s puter responded, a woman’s voice with a delicate American Southern accent. Why, yes sir, we are. And may I just say congratulations on your brilliant programming?
“Of course you may. And thank you for your excellent interpretation of my commands.”
“Why don’t you two get a room?” Crater complained while trying to catch his breath.
“Jealousy has many forms, brother,” Petro said. “In your case, it’s overt.” He smiled at his own joke while Crater rolled his eyes.
“The missile racks still need to be calibrated,” Crescent called. “Could use some help on that, Petro.”
Petro unstrapped and rose from his seat. “You might want to go through some battle simulations,” he told Crater. “Otherwise, don’t touch anything. Fusers are not easy to fly.”
Petro disappeared aft, leaving Crater to absorb Petro’s admonition. “What do you think, Gillie? Are fusers hard to fly?”
Software, firmware, and hardware systems of fusion-powered battle cruisers are quite complex. They do, however, have a remarkable number of redundancies. They also feature super-hardened puters, which took me nearly an hour to hack.
“What did you learn?”
Nothing. I studied fusers extensively last winter when there was little else to do.
Crater smiled. “I’m sorry you were bored.”
Gillies are never bored.
“You’ve told me any number of times that you were bored.”
Unless it is life-threatening or goes against whatever the current mission happens to be, gillies might tell less than the complete truth.
“In other words, you lie if it’s convenient.”
The gillie did not reply but lay instead on the instrument console of the fuser and looked at Crater in what Crater decided was wry amusement. At least, that’s what it would have looked like if a gillie could look any way at all, which of course it couldn’t.
Crater studied the layout of the fuser cockpit. There was a single glass viewport, vidscreens used for primary visuals. For the view ahead, the pilot used a vidscreen above the viewport. A vidscreen beneath the viewport showed the view directly below the fuser. To see starboard, the pilot looked to his right at another smaller vidscreen, and for a port view to a vidscreen on his left. A split screen overhead provided the view above and behind. If the pilot used the vidscreens properly, there were no visual dead spots, but knowing where to look and how to interpret the screens took practice. Crater decided to follow Petro’s advice and run a simulation of an attack.
“Puter, give me a target of a warpod, Nashville class, running at low normal battle speeds, approaching from port z.”
Yes, sir. Shall we begin? the puter asked.
“Yes, ready,” Crater responded.
Radar indicates bandit at your port z five o’clock.
Crater checked the radar and saw the puter-generated image. “Does it have a squawk?”
Negative, sir. It is running silent. It appears to be a warpod, Nashville class. Would you like a rundown of its capabilities?
“No, thank you. Arm missiles and cannon.”
Armed. Reminder. This is a simulation.
“Understood, puter.”
You may call me Linda.
Crater thought about that, then said, “Understood, Linda.”
Crater checked the lower left vidscreen and saw a star wink out. Warpods were painted a dull grayish-black and were nearly invisible against space, but the winking star indicated something had crossed it. “Infrared on vidscreens, Linda.”
Understood. Infrared on all vidscreens.
A bright blue flare surrounded by a pink outline appeared on the port vidscreen. Before Crater could react, it sped up, looped over and disappeared. Crater swiveled his eyes from vidscreen to vidscreen. “Lost it, Linda!”
Look up.
Crater looked up and saw a warpod on the split screen. It took a moment for him to interpret its meaning. The warpod was on his tail and closing fast. “Fire missile at target on my six!”
Cannot comply. Your missiles have nuclear warheads. Blast would destroy you.
“Tail cannon!”
I’m sorry, sir. The warpod launched a salvo of missiles and completely destroyed you. Would you like to play again?
“No thank you, Linda. Some other time.”
Yes, sir. Have a pleasant evening, sir.
Crater allowed a sigh. “How can I have a pleasant evening when I just got destroyed?”
“I heard most of that,” Petro said, floating into the cockpit and somersaulting into the pilot’s chair. “Come on, brother, don’t look so glum. It takes more than a few puter sims to learn how to fight one of those bad boy warpods. You have to take advantage of fuser capabilities. For one, you’ve got accelerations a warpod pilot can only envy. When that bandit got on your tail, you did not need to engage him at all. One nudge of the throttle and you could have left him and his missiles far behind.”
Crater nodded his understanding. “The puter reminded me we’re armed with nuclear missiles that we can’t use,” he said.
“I’ve been wondering about that. Why did you bring them?”
“I thought maybe we might bluff the station at L5.”
“That’s another thing,” Petro said. “Where is the station? L5 is a big place. To find it, we could paint the area with our pulsdars, but if we do, they’ll detect us.”
Crater thought about that. “Here’s an idea. The Cyclers have pulsdars and they’re always painting space to keep from running into anything. If L5 detected a pulsdar paint from a Cycler, they might not think much of it. All we have to do is find a Cycler willing to do it and keep us secret. The captain of the Elon Musk knows me. I could try him.”
“We’d need a secure channel,” Petro advised. “Maybe your gillie can hook up through a lunar comm-sat.”
“No good. There are only two working lunar comm-sats,” Crater said, “and L5 might be monitoring them. But, lucky for us, Cyclers don’t use lunar comm-sats, they use Earth sats, and there’s a thousand of those. Gillie, see if you can contact Captain George Fox on the Elon Musk through an Earth comm-sat. Pick out an obscure one. Use his personal do4u and encrypt everything.”
Working, the gillie said. In seconds, it reported back. Cycler Elon Musk is behind the Earth relative to the moon. It will be six hours before it is in position to paint L5 with its pulsdar.
“Can I speak to Captain Fox?”
Negative. He does not have his personal do4u turned on.
Crater thought hard, then snapped his fingers. “How about Betty and Tommy? Are they still running tourists on the Musk?”
Affirmative. Do you want me to call them?
Crater explained to Petro. “Betty and Tommy are good friends. They’re guides for an adventure touring outfit called Lunex that travel to and from the moon on the Musk. Yes, Gillie, please call them.”
Within minutes, Crater found himself talking to Betty of Lunex. “Crater, what a delight to hear from you! Tommy and I were just talking about you the other day and wondering how you’re doing.”
“I’m fine,” Crater lied. “Listen, Betty, I’d like to catch up but I really need to talk to Captain Fox. I need to keep it private, so that’s why I’m calling your do4u. Could you ask him to turn his on so I can call him?”
Betty chuckled. “The captain hates do4us. Probably hasn’t turned his on in years. How about I go up to the bridge and hand him this one?”
Not too much later, Crater found himself talking to Cycler Captain George E. Fox. “This is Captain Fox,” the captain said. “Who’s this?”
“Captain, this is Crater Trueblood. I need a favor.”
“A favor? The fellow who brought my Cycler under attack? That Crater Trueblood? You dare to ask me a favor?”
“I didn’t know it was going to be attacked, Captain. It was as much a surprise to me as it was to you.”
Crater’s response elicited a hearty laugh from the Cycler skipper. “I know that, Crater. It was the Medarises that brought on the attack. You and I were both pawns.”
“That’s right, we were. Look, I’m on another mission, a rescue, and I need your help. Would you paint L5 with your pulsdar and tell me what you see? Any ships, asteroids, anything?”
“L5? That’s empty space.”
“No longer, sir. There’s a lot there now.”
“Who put it there?”
“I don’t know, but it isn’t friendly. Not to you or to me.”
“It’ll be a few hours before I’m in position to do that,” Captain Fox replied. “Can you tell me what kind of rescue mission you’re on?”
“You can’t tell him,” Petro advised Crater over their private channel. “He hates the Medaris family, probably including Maria.”
“When I was aboard the Cycler,” Crater said, “I didn’t tell Captain Fox all I knew, and he was surprised by the attack that came. I’m not going to hold out on him again.” Crater nodded to the gillie to open the channel to Fox again. “Maria Medaris has been kidnapped and is being held at L5. I’m heading there to rescue her.”
“Maria kidnapped again? That girl keeps you employed, does she not? Let me tell you something you already know. The Medaris family is nothing but trouble. On the other hand, they own this Cycler, so I work for them too. All right, Crater, I’ll paint L5 for you and report back. I presume you want it to be private and encrypted.”
“Yes, sir. When you have something, give Betty a call. The gillie will be listening and will patch it through to us here.”
“Your gillie? I heard it was dead.”
“Alive and well, sir, and still illegal.”
“I believe it knows that.”
“Yes, sir, I believe you are correct.”
A few hours later, the gillie said, I have Captain Fox.
“We painted L5, Crater,” the Cycler Captain said. “We found some big objects there, presumably asteroids. Our pulsdar isn’t set up to detect warpods, but there’s a group of shadows along the edge of the L5 bowl which look suspicious. There’s also what I think is a station with a design similar to the Cycler. It’s about a hundred miles from the warpods, if that’s what they are. Here are the coordinates.”
After Crater keyed in the Captain’s report on the fuser puter, he said, “Thank you, Captain. That’s very helpful.”
“By the way, in the last hour, we’ve been told the Colonel has retired and his son is taking over the family business. What do you make of that?”
“Business is business,” Crater answered, pretending to make light of it.
“When something this big happens in the Medaris business, you can bet a lot of digital family knives are going into a lot of digital family backs. Does this have anything to do with Maria?”
“I’m not certain and that’s the honest truth, Captain. Thanks again. You were a great help.”
“Good hunting, Crater. Looks like you’re up against tough odds, but it won’t be the first time.”
After Crater hung up from Captain Fox, Petro allowed a sigh. “Warpods at L5. This is going to be rough, Crater.”
Crater’s expression was grim because he agreed with Petro. To fly nearly blind into an area loaded with asteroids and apparently infested by warpods was a desperate move. “Crescent, come up here, please,” he called.
When Crescent came forward, he asked, “Did you hear what Captain Fox said?”
“I did.”
“We’re probably going to have to fight our way in and out.”
“I expected nothing less,” Crescent said. “I ask but one thing, something I’ve asked Petro earlier. I will be brave, but do not allow me to be overly aggressive as per my genetic programming. In other words, don’t let me risk my life unless it’s absolutely necessary to fulfill our mission. There is a reason for that, but one I do not care to share.”
Crescent returned aft to the astrogator’s cabin, leaving Crater puzzled. He turned to Petro. “Does she really think I would give her life to save Maria?”
Petro’s face registered astonishment. “Of course she does, you idiot!”
Crater started aft, but Petro caught him by his shoulder.
“Don’t. It won’t make any difference. She already knows everything you might say. Don’t make it any worse than it already is.”
Crater shook off Petro’s hand. “What are you talking about?”
“She loves you, you dope. That’s the only reason she’s here. She loves you more than her own life. I’m not sure what her request is all about, but that’s the bottom line.”
Crater opened his mouth, set to argue, then clamped it shut. Of course he knew Crescent was in love with him. He’d always known, but it had made no difference when Maria got into trouble. He had essentially forced Crescent to come along. He was disgusted with himself, but it was too late for any kind of apology to make a difference. Gravity was in charge, their course set for a rendezvous with danger and perhaps death. The only thing Crater could do was make a promise to himself, to give his own life to save Maria but somehow protect Petro and Crescent.