Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

“Kinetic-kill attacks, you mean. Hundreds of blows.”

“Yes!” Achilles shrieked. “Do it now, before any warheads strike.”

“I am afraid I can’t do that, Achilles.”

He felt himself staring in horror. “Why not?”

“I see no reason to commit suicide to protect such as you.”

And then Proteus broke the connection.

* * *

HAD ACHILLES EVER LOOKED MORE INSANE? Studying his caller, Horatius doubted it. “What do you want?” he asked.

There was the usual short, annoying, between-worlds comm delay. “You must surrender the worlds, immediately,” Achilles demanded.

Horatio sang, “I have put such a message on continuous broadcast. Our attackers do not acknowledge. Everything now relies upon your defenses.”

Not everything. But Baedeker had yet to make contact since leaving Hearth. They might have to proceed without Baedeker. Without Nature Preserve Two. But such tunes were not for Achilles’ ears.

“We have no defenses,” Achilles sang. “Proteus abandons us.” And, plaintively: “What shall we do, Hindmost?”

“Hide,” Horatius answered.

* * *

SIRENS WENT OFF ACROSS the five worlds of the Citizens. Computers trilled with alert tones in every pocket and sash, on every desktop, and after the necessary light-speed delay, aboard every nearby ship. Arcology walls flipped from entertainment or illumination to warning.

The Hindmost’s single-chord message in all cases: Run and hide.

* * *

EARS FOLDED FLAT AGAINST HIS HEAD, teeth bared, Communications Specialist growled at the hyperwave console it was his task to monitor, as the leaf-eaters’ offer, appeal, entreaty, supplication played on and on.

“It is too late to surrender,” he growled deep in his throat. He and his shipmates would take their vengeance and earn their names.

“What is that?” Gthapt-Captain snapped.

Communications Specialist stiffened in his chair. “My apologies, Captain. I said, ‘It is too late to surrender.’”

“True,” Gthapt-Captain said. “The leaf-eaters will soon learn the folly of provoking us.

“Those who survive will, that is.”

* * *

INSISTENT BUZZING PENETRATED Ol’t’ro’s meditations: communications from the servants waiting outside the melding chamber.

Ol’t’ro ignored the noise. They were close to an overarching physical theory unifying planetary drives with hyperdrive, a theory that could explain Nessus surviving Long Shot’s hyperdrive activation from inside the local singularity. So close.

The buzzing went on and on.

For validation, following subtle clues, they delved among old engrams into the nature of Outsider city-ships. Across their many generations the best observations were ancient, from an era before they had, for the good of all Gw’oth, cloistered themselves on this world.

I remember Outsider ship Twenty-three, Er’o asserted, his remnant faint but clear and confident. As it shed its near light-speed velocity …

Perhaps not even the Outsiders fully understood the science underpinning their drive technologies. An uncomplicated optimization — and obvious, if Ol’t’ro’s conjecture should converge upon a mathematical model with a closed-form solution — would have given their ships much better performance than Er’o reported. The planetary drives could have much greater acceleration and deceleration. If such was the case …

The buzzing stopped, only to be replaced by yet more annoying speech. “Ol’t’ro. Your Wisdoms. Ol’t’ro. Your Wisdoms,” the voice alternated, imploringly. “You must hear. You must answer. Ol’t’ro…”

Their concentration wavered and the intricate, beautiful, mathematical structure collapsed. Ol’t’ro decoupled a tubacle from the meld to answer. “We are here. What is it?”

“Panic among the Citizens,” the servant said. “An alien attack.”

They thought to ask what Proteus did, but it was more expedient to pursue that directly. “Thank you,” they dismissed the servant. “Proteus, at once.”

They got no response.

They probed outward through the network interface of the melding chamber into the rich communications complex that served the colony. As information flooded in, they considered:

Hundreds of Kzinti projectiles and several ships plunging toward the worlds of the Fleet.

That Horatius’ surrender went unacknowledged.

That rather than challenge the intruders, the drones, sensors, and comm buoys of the Fleet’s defensive array pulled away from the onslaught.

That a significant fraction of those drones, sensors, and comm buoys had begun to rain down into the oceans of the worlds.

That if Proteus hid, it was not because of Horatius’ panicked command.

That while they could still read from the far-flung sensor net, they had lost the ability to issue commands through it.

That severing them from Proteus was something Achilles might have tried.

That Achilles was trying to contact them.

That when they accepted the connection, Achilles’ eyes looked more crazed than ever. “Thank the herd! Do you know — ”

That whether the blame lay with Achilles’ conniving or their own collective inattention, Proteus had rebelled.

* * *

COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST CRANED HIS NECK, the better to examine Thirsty Talon’s main tactical display. Rather than one map, now there were five. In each close-up view the smart munitions had begun to diverge, separate barrages arcing toward designated targets on and around each target world.

Spaceports. Ships. Communications hubs. Instrument clusters. Power plants. Selected factories whose inventory might enable the leaf-eaters to too rapidly repair those primary targets.

The diplomats’ long, miserable years of stalking were about to pay off.

Communications Specialist howled with the rest of the bridge crew as the leaf-eater probes fled, refusing combat. Even as targets died in fierce blazes of gamma rays, the leaf-eaters did nothing. Vile, honorless cowards!

But then a wonderful thing happened: resistance! Defensive swarms met offensive swarms. Leaf-eater probes hurried to defend key comm nodes and, close above Hearth, the immense orbital manufacturing facility of the General Products Corporation.

Communications Specialist had seen smaller natural moons.

A burst of explosions cleared the skies above Hearth — except for that General Products Corporation factory.

“It’s about time,” Gthapt-Captain growled. “Finally, a target they will fight for. A target worthy of personal valor.” To Communications Specialist, he added, “Get me the other captains.”

“Yes, sir!” Communications Specialist said.

In a flurry of hisses and growls, the four captains agreed: the ships of the vanguard would have the honor of destroying the single asset about which the leaf-eaters seemed to care.

“I promise names for all when the leaf-eater factory crashes to the surface,” Gthapt-Captain roared.

With the rest of Thirsty Talon’s bridge crew, Communications Specialist snarled