Anvil of Stars

He slowed, brought himself to one third and then one quarter his highest rate, adjusted the flow of sensory to match, watching the information integrate again like blocks tumbling to form a conceptual castle, and moved at moderate speed through the debris of battle. No more needles presented themselves; every thing was spooky, at peace, but for the aftermath—clouds of debris.

Simulated. Only an exercise. He felt a quick moment of panic, blind fear, not an exercise they caught us while we were out but that made no sense at all.

They were still tendays away from the outer limits of Wormwood. Needles would not orbit in ranked shells out here; the sheer volume of anti-neutronium necessary for such a defense would consume hundreds of suns of mass. He pulled away from the fear.

A feeling of indignation. The children had not known what to expect; no preparation, no battle planning, and that was very unlikely. They had been set up artificially and artificially defeated.

He spotted an active picket: Erin Eire. He pulled up beside her rifle and sent a noach message to her.

“We’ve lost it,” she said. “I’m just waiting for the call to go back.”

“We have other options,” he said.

“I know. Kamikaze.”

“I mean other options besides that.”

“Name them, Pan.” Her voice was only mildly sarcastic, but it still cut.

He raced through the scenarios they had trained for. “The Killers know we’re here. We’ve exhausted their means of defense right now—no more needles. So we broadcast a noach call and pick a rendezvous.”

She thought about that for a long time. He realized she was not accelerating her mind at all. That angered him.

“All right,” she said.

“Go to speed five on your thoughts,” he instructed.

“I don’t—”

“Go now or I’ll pull you from the exercise. You can ride free.”

Riding free was something he had never threatened before.

“You can’t do that—”

“Try me. Pull up, Erin.”

She said nothing. Then he received a rapid burst of chatter from her. She had complied.

“All right. I’ll send the message.”

He broadcast the code signal. In tenths of a second, eleven active craft replied. Seven of the dead tried to signal, but he ignored them. The active craft met at an assigned point and regrouped.

“It’s jaunted,” Paola said, referring to the Dawn Treader.

A chorus of confused comment followed. Martin ordered cutoff and suggested they all think and offer plans, one by one. “And quickly. We can’t afford to wait minutes out here.”

Only thirteen craft. No fake matter in the craft—total mass: barely fifty tons. Complete conversion to neutronium, converting body mass to neutronium and anti-matter fuel to anti- neutronium, yields a total explosive force barely enough to sear a continent on a small world. It would be something, but…

In another channel of thought, Martin considered long-term guerrilla action, but that was quite outside the scope of the exercise. What do the moms want us to do? What will they approve of?

He realized that wasn’t the point. It was easy to forget the moms were not there to be pleased or displeased; they were not human. In one way—the human way—they did not care, had no cares at all. They were simply goal-oriented. He should emulate them; they should all.

He heard Ariel’s voice saying, And then we become the moms, don’t we?

Out of the twelve others, four offered ideas, and eight kept silent. Three of the four ideas echoed what he had already rejected: searching for the Dawn Treader’s energy sumps. Sumps could not be detected from millions of kilometers away, unless one could monitor the local energy of the vacuum, and any number of high-tech processes caused that to fluctuate wildly; a sump could be located if one was right on top of it, within a thousand kilometers or so.

But at that range, energy sumps were dangerous. A hastily made, newly formed sump could leak bursts of radiation across a light hour of space sufficiently powerful to blind or even take out small craft.

Surprisingly, the fourth idea—a usable one, if not a scorcher—came from Erin Eire. We scatter and conduct reconnaissance around the planet. The Dawn Treader comes looking for us eventually, and we might have information to offer.

That was probably outside the scope of the exercise, but then, so be it. No planet was postulated, none projected either within the craft or by the Ship of the Law, wherever it was; but they could conduct their part of the exercise, and at the very least earn marks for innovation.

“All right,” Martin said. “We go down to the planet.”

“There is no planet!” others chorused.

“Then we make one up. Paola, Erin, it’s a rocky planet without an atmosphere—”

“Heavily defended by radiation and kinetic weapons,” Erin suggested.

“Good…”

“And Paola’s torus is nowhere to be seen,” suggested Jack Sand, usually silent in such interactions.

“All right. So what do we do?”

“We search the entire planet, note their weapon positions…”

“How many do we lose?” Martin asked with a touch of irony.

“It’s my idea,” Erin said. “I’ll volunteer.”

Two others volunteered.

“That should be enough,” Martin said, feeling light-headed. The whole exercise was turning into something crazy; what could he do?

They swept out to take up formations around a theoretical planet, positioning themselves in a sphere roughly ten thousand kilometers in diameter, sweeping in crude arcs to imitate orbits. Martin thought of youthful playtime, now made earnest; this dance of craft that would have dismayed his fifth-grade teachers on Earth, watching the ring-o and dodge-ball games on the playground.

Their wands made pictures of the hypothetical planet, projecting images into the areas usually reserved for their sensor reports. The effect was crude—no real artistry—but in their shame and fervor, somehow convincing.

Martin contributed weapons emplacements, dotting the mottled planet floating before him with finger-painted notations of defense and danger. Paola created a geology to match the airless ruined surface, and in quick noach updates, her sketches appeared on the sphere, cold ancient continents, internal heat fled, cracks in crust diving deep to solid cool core.

They played their game for several hours, caught in the raw high-speed spaces between the stars, between engagements.

They were growing weary when the Dawn Treader finally returned to retrieve them. Martin felt at first a neck prickle, before the ship alerted them to its presence; their sensors could not otherwise detect the great dark larval form hiding; then he felt a flood of giddy relief, apprehension, and finally a resurgence of shame.

They joined all their deactivated comrades and returned to the third homeball, flew to the outer hatch, connected to the pylons, pulled into the weapons store.

Their water drained, fields switched off, and membranes withdrew. Martin left his craft with an erection from the membrane’s intimacy. They laddered to the hatch and walked out bleary-eyed. Silent, they parted to get cleaned up, to rest for a few minutes before meeting in the schoolroom to receive Martin’s evaluation, to meet with Hans, who had been in charge of the Dawn Treader, and then to receive the War Mother’s critique.

Hans met with Martin alone in the second neck.

“That was a royal slickup,” Hans commented dryly. “Your outside teams were obliterated. We barely had time to get the ship to safety… We weren’t prepared at all.”