Closed System

The fleets closed, moving at a fraction of light speed on their flux drives. It would begin withinminutes. Pat's stomach was acting up. He swal­lowed the desire to run for a sanitary cabinet tovomit up the fear and regret that had seemed tocollect in his belly.

'Mr. Kelly,' he said to the Taratwo fire control officer who would direct the fleet's conventional weapons, 'you may fire when you are withinrange.'

There were only three men, other than Pat andCorinne, on the bridge of the flagship. The trend inbuilding ships of war had been, in the past decade,toward more computer control and smaller crews.The entire compliment of the flagship was just tenmen.

Pat saw the flickering from afar, the small wink­ing of the Brenden's lasers beginning, and heardhis own conventional weapons open up at extremerange. The screens of his own ships were not evenstrained, and he knew the same was true for thoseof the Brenden.

He had to give no further orders to Werner, who, as flagship gunner, was coordinating the fire of the gunners throughout Pat's half of the fleet. He heldhis breath. Now the screens began to sizzle and indicators began to blink estimates of loss of screenpower as the laser weapons began to take their toll—simulated, of course, for this was, after all,just a war game between elements of the samefleet.

Pat had to breathe. He looked doubtfully towardWerner's position. The disrupter installation couldnot be seen from the bridge. He checked the range.Why were the disrupters not firing? Damage wasbeing done by the lasers.

A feeling of mixed relief and dulled acceptancecame to him. The gunners were not going to obeythe orders of the God Fleet Admiral Torga Bluntz,after all.

He looked at Corinne. Well, history would be hisjudge. Perhaps, in some distant day of sanity, they'd look back and write about the trailer Audrey Pa­tricia Howe, who joined the forces of the dictatorwho threw the populated galaxy into a new DarkAge. And those future historians wouldn't even know that he'd tried, wouldn't know that at oneparticular moment in time, when it seemed thathis desperate plan had failed, he felt relief andlooked at a woman, the dictator's sister, with ahunger which, being projected into her own greeneyes, set her face flushing and caused her to makea tentative movement toward him.

And then they fired.

With a clicking rush the counters began to tell ofdisrupter hits on the ships of the Brenden's fleet,and the flagship's computer began to go crazywith alarms and warnings even while indicatingthat the ranks of Pat's grid were being reducedwith the same deadly efficiency that had been themark of the disrupter gunners in previous exercises.

And in the midst of it, in the clicking rush ofcounters and the grim closing movement of thefleets, the Brenden's voice roaring, 'Cease fire, Ceasefire.'

Corinne had leaped to her feet. Her face waswhite; one hand was at her throat. Kelly, the fire-control officer, and the other crew members atpositions on the bridge had their own jobs andwere not aware that the hits being registered werenot made by harmless beams of electrons from theprimary power source.

On both sides of the battle line men and shipswere dying.

For a few seconds, before the fully armed dis­rupters began to fire, before the amazingly swiftgunners began to play the game in earnest, Pathad thought that the closed system which wasDorchlunt had become too engorged with supersti­tion and blind obedience. He had feared that theyoung men of Dorchlunt had decided to break outof the circle, to disobey the orders of the God FleetAdmiral Torga Bluntz, who, as they stood at easeon the parade ground on the previous day, hadexplained carefully that the time had come forthem to return to glory, to go to Zede not weak inthe flesh, but powerful in the spirit so as to accom­plish the desired return of all to their past posi­tions of power and glory.

The God Fleet Admiral Torga Bluntz had spoken in the way of the priests of Dorchlunt, using the centuries of tradition and discipline to order thecream of the young men of Dorchlunt to kill eachother in the name of that perverted and polytheistic system of belief which had been originally in­stituted by Torga Bluntz.

But Pat Howe, impersonating the God Fleet Ad­miral Torga Bluntz, stood with his eyes full oftears as men died and hysterical voices screamedon the fleet's communication frequency and theodd ship or two zapped out of formation, andthe glow of direct disrupter hits left the new andexpensive toys of the

dictator Brenden lifeless hulksin space, all electronics fused, all life gone.

And Pat Howe prayed. He hadn't prayed in awe and fear and pain in a long, long time, not since hehad been a child, but now he prayed to the oneGod who had created it all, saying, 'Let there belight.' He prayed for forgiveness. He prayed thathe had been right. He prayed that the lives ofthose young Dorchlunters had not been sacrificed in vain.

It began with the minute hand of the bridgechronometer at seven minutes past the hour. Atnine minutes thirty seconds past the hour the twofleets fell silent. The initial exchange of disrupterfire had killed almost two thousand ships, andthose few left alive continued to fire. The gunnershad no way of knowing, short of seeing the glowof a hit, which ships were alive or dead, and sothose who survived kept spraying the disrupters up and down lines and ranks and then began topick off the few ships trying to break formation, and one by one the survivors died, until there wereonly two disrupters firing, and those two sweptthe blasted ships again and again until Pat picked up the communicator and said, 'Gorben, Werner,enough.'

Corinne had a look of horror on her face, a lookwhich came nearer to not being beautiful than Patcould ever have imagined. The fire-control officer, Kelly, was half crouched over his console, lookingfirst toward Pat, then toward the computer read­out on the screen.

The gunner, Werner, appeared on the bridge.And at that moment Kelly yelled something to­tally incomprehensible and reached for his side-arm. He did not have time to clear it from theholster before Werner's hand beam left a smokinghole in his uniform. The other crew members onthe bridge, stunned, not knowing exactly what had happened, were dead before Pat could say, again,'Enough, Werner.'

'I will see to the others, Holiness,' Werner said.

'Don't kill them,' Pat said. 'Take their weaponsand lock them up.'

'Sir,' Werner barked, and was gone.

Corinne's eyes were unbelievably wide. Shelooked at Pat. One hand was up, two fingers pressedagainst her upper lip. She screamed once, and alook of agony was there as she ran to the com­municator.

'Brenden, Brenden,' she cried, her voice strained.'Brendennnnnn,' she wailed, and fell limply into the chair.

'Admiral,' said a young, tense voice on thecommunicator.

Pat stood across the console from Corinne. Shedidn't look up at him.

'Admiral Bluntz here, Gorben. You may report.'

'I have taken the ship, Holiness.'

'Very well,' Pat said.

'Brenden,' Corinne whispered.

'And the Brenden?' Pat asked.

'He is here, Holiness.'

'Let him speak,' Pat said. He handed the com­municator to Corinne. 'Brenden?' she whispered. 'I'm here, Cory.' The voice was not the ebul­lient one of old. 'Oh, Brenden,' Corrinne sobbed. 'Yes, you can sure pick'em, little sister,' Brendensaid. 'Pat, you there?' 'I'm here,' Pat said. 'What now?' the Brenden asked. 'I want Gorben off your ship,' Pat said. 'Then me, huh?' Brenden said, his meaning clear. 'Then you're free to go,' Pat said. 'Go? Go where?' 'Back to Taratwo,' Pat said. 'And what about you, little sister?' Brendenasked. 'Were you with him?' 'No, no,' Corinne sobbed. 'Does she go with me?' Brenden asked. 'That's up to her,' Pat said. He looked at her.He felt a great sense of loss, for her eyes blazedwith hate. Her sobs ceased. 'You—you—do you actuallythink . . .' 'I can only hope,' Pat said. 'But I guess love isn't that powerful, is it?' Before she could answer, Werner was back, asmile on his face. 'The crew is neutralized, Holi­ness,' he

said proudly, snapping into a salute. It was in that position that he died. He died with alaser beam cutting

a hole directly into the bridgeof his nose and into his brain. He died swiftly. Corinne turned the weapon on Pat so quicklythat he had no time to reach for his own. Indeed,he had no

desire to reach for a weapon to be usedagainst Corinne. He stood facing her, sadnesswelling up in him

for Werner, and for all the thou­sands of Werner's counterparts who had died onthe other ships, and for

the loss of the womanwhose emerald eyes blazed fire at him down thebarrel of a handbeam.