Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

the point?

“Spin the ship!” Baedeker sang. “They are trying to shut down our hull.”

Nessus flinched. How could he have forgotten?

This ship was old, nano-grown before anyone understood that General Products hulls could be shut down. The hull was a single supermolecule, its interatomic bonds reinforced by an embedded power plant. Reinforcement was the source of the hull’s incredible strength — and, once revealed, also its biggest vulnerability. Overload that power plant or reprogram its photonic controller and you could shut it off —

And cabin pressure alone would burst the gossamer structure of the unsupported bonds.

Nessus wondered, do Gw’oth see irony? It had been Baedeker who discovered this weakness. General Products had long since redesigned power plant and controller to defy such attacks.

Falling into old memories was a retreat from reality as much as hiding beneath his belly — and as apt to get them all killed. With auxiliary thrusters, Nessus threw the ship into a spin. “Adjust for our rotation, Louis. And get moving!”

“Acknowledged,” Louis called.

On radar, Nessus watched Endurance sprint away. “Godspeed,” he radioed his friends.

From more and more nearby drones, lasers probed Long Shot’s twirling hull.

Chiron came back. “It is just a matter of time until your hull comes apart. You will die; the modified Type II hyperdrive will be salvaged. Surrender or perish.”

“I think not,” Nessus trilled, jumping to hyperspace. “Baedeker, how long will you need?”

“Give it three minutes,” his beloved sang.

Because neutrinos and their ultrafaint echoes crawled at light speed. And because their message, if it had not been received by then, would never get through at all.

Nessus dropped the ship back to normal space.

Transmitting, Voice sent. As the ship spun and jinked, only their AI could hold the focused neutrino beam on its target.

A blip much larger than any drone appeared in Nessus’ hyperwave radar display. Endurance! “Louis! You said you would leave.”

“True, but I didn’t say when.”

A nearby drone blazed in infrared, then another. Endurance, zigzagging, stalked targets among the nearest arcs of the defensive array! Endurance leapt in and out of hyperspace, staying close to Long Shot, attacking the closest drones.

Lasers shifted off Long Shot.

“You have made yourself a target, Louis,” Nessus called.

“Just a decoy. Do what you have to do. Quickly would be good.”

If only Long Shot had such maneuverability! Alas, not even the best normal-space thrusters could outrun light. On his console, Nessus saw ever more glints of laser beams reflecting from Endurance.

Endurance had not diverted all the drones; the intensity of light pouring onto Long Shot was climbing again. But Louis was buying them time.

“Get us closer,” Baedeker sang, his voices quavering.

Nessus jumped to hyperspace. A moment later Long Shot reappeared yet closer to the Fleet, among even more drones. Transmitting, Voice wrote.

Endurance reappeared. It no longer glowed with reflected laser light.

“Louis! They’re ready to attack you some other way. Get out of here!”

“Real soon,” Alice answered. “Are you done?”

An instant later: drones everywhere, swooping and pouncing. One solid hit could destroy Endurance.

Endurance veered; changed speeds; leapt to and from hyperspace. Drones flared and died under its assault — but never as quickly as others arrived. Endurance zigzagged, its (Pak Library-inspired?) laser cannons blazing.

“How much longer?” Nessus sang desperately to Baedeker.

“Just a little longer. And we need to slow down.”

Making ourselves an even better target, Nessus thought. If only they had another choice.

Drones kept coming …

* * *

PROTEUS CONSIDERED:

That Long Shot was spewing neutrinos at the Fleet. The emissions were pulsed like deep radar but highly modulated like communications. It was a message, he decided, because he could read it. Seek shelter immediately, the short, repeating message sang. But shelter from what? Whom did Baedeker warn? Why use such feeble security measures: neutrinos, rather than radio waves, and short bursts, rather than a continuous broadcast? Why not just encrypt the message?

That Ol’t’ro insisted Long Shot not be destroyed unless it became an imminent threat to Ol’t’ro themselves on Nature Preserve Five, or to Hearth, or to Proteus.

That the smaller vessel Long Shot had disgorged used thrusters more nearly reactionless than anything Ol’t’ro had seen off an Outsider city-ship. That by taking part in Baedeker’s scheme — whatever that was — the little ship had declared itself hostile.

That while the newcomer had the silhouette of a General Products #2 hull, reflections showed it to be made of a different material. This hull could not be switched off.

That both ships must be stopped — Kzinti, ARM, and Trinoc diplomatic missions were observing. That the sooner this incident ended, the less alien watchers would deduce about his capabilities.

That Long Shot’s evasive maneuvers were far from random. It stayed close to the singularity, with little normal-space velocity relative to the Fleet. The better to aim its warning message?

That because Long Shot so constrained itself (again, why?), in a matter of seconds he must soon succeed in turning off its hull.

That not even Ol’t’ro could guess why or how Citizens stayed to meet certain death.

That while the smaller ship’s agility should have made it an elusive target, its maneuvers became predictable the longer it stayed near Long Shot.

That the problem with Ol’t’ro’s gravity-pulse projector was that there was no known way to spot a ship still in hyperspace for targeting.

But as the annoying little ship’s maneuvers became more and more predictable …

* * *

BARELY TWO MINUTES INTO THE BATTLE, the wonder was that Endurance had yet to take a hit.

“Get ready,” Louis called.

“Ready,” Jeeves and Alice answered.

Despite everything, the sight of Alice perched on the Puppeteer copilot’s bench made Louis smile. “In five. Four.”

Endurance lurched. The main view port lit. Something had knocked them out of hyperspace!

“Drones swarming,” Jeeves said.

Nearby, amid its own cloud of drones, the Long Shot glowed luridly. “Run!” Louis radioed. He’d seen Nessus and Baedeker both goad themselves into acts of insane bravery, but staying any longer would be suicide. For both crews.

“What just happened?” Alice yelled.

Louis killed their normal-space velocity, shedding their swarm of drones. With a slightly different speed than before he zoomed back toward Long Shot.