“AWWWK! Frag the lieutenant! Frag the lieutenant! Arawwk!” The bird’s noise pierced the steamy midday air.
In the tense silence that followed, Charlie Poindexter knew he was in trouble. “Quiet, Archy! Quiet!” he whispered.
It was too late. Dressed in battle armor, helmet off to let some of the steam that had so recently been sweated seep into the equally steamy day, the marine lieutenant turned to focus a harsh, killing glare on the parakeet standing on Charlie Poindexter’s left shoulder. Ahead and behind him were the hardened troops of his platoon, trudging warily on either side of the dirt road. The tropical sun beat down on the silent clearing with murderous intensity.
The gunny sergeant and the others of the combat platoon were suddenly gathered around on either side of their lieutenant.
“Frag the lieutenant! Awr-eek!” the bird screeched as Charlie batted him in mid-squawk.
Three days of wakefulness and lots of casualties stared out of the lieutenant’s eyes as he asked in a voice made gruff from screaming too hard too long: “That bird bio’d?”
The bird was suddenly quiet and Charlie could feel his sweat chilling in his one-piece ship suit as he lied.
“Him! No sir, natural as can be!” Damn this humidity, he swore to himself, it’s playing hell with all the electronics! “Just a dumb bird.”
“Dumb dead bird soon,” one of the grunts behind him grumbled.
“Araak! Sir to an officer!” the bird screeched. Charlie batted it desperately. “Frag the lieutenant!” Charlie batted it harder but the bird dodged aside. “Incoming! Incoming!”
Shit! Charlie swore to himself. He matched stares with the lieutenant. “The bird’s just a joke, a gift from some old buddies. It’s a real Earth parakeet.”
His left arm started up to his pocket but spasmed halfway, vibrating so quickly it hummed, and then froze as far down as the wrist, while the hand began clawing and shuddering like a lost spider. Hastily, Charlie reached over with his right hand, opened the pocket, and thumbed open his wallet.
“They thought it was a good joke.”
The lieutenant swallowed hard, took his eyes off the clawing hand attached to the spasming arm, and looked at the ID on the wallet.
The man in the picture looked younger and tougher than the man in front of him, but he could see the resemblance. His eyes went up to the man and back to the wallet again.
The gunny took that moment to approach and peer at the wallet ID himself. It included Poindexter’s service record. The noncom straightened suddenly and turned around to his platoon.
“All right, you bunch of slugs! No more goofing off. Let’s get set up around here!” He herded the rest of the platoon off with one respectful backward glance at Charlie, his arm half raised in a salute, hastily dropped in shame.
Charlie took the time to move his left arm to his side, pressing some special spot in the underarm which caused it to jerk suddenly and remain still. “This damned moisture!” Charlie swore.
“Yeah, it gets into all the electronics,” the lieutenant agreed hastily. He looked up again carefully and asked, “Why the parakeet?”
For a moment Charlie Poindexter remembered the charge and the explosions and the laser fire, his cheerful men being set alight like so many fireworks, how he’d held together the remnants, struggled through the night to regroup them, dragged bodies into cover, and how they’d cheerfully cursed him throughout it all.
“Frag the lieutenant!” It had been a big joke up to that point, a game he and his men had played. When the flarefire—that strange burning weapon that looked so much like a laser and acted so much like powdered white phosphorus, burning and sticking to everything it touched—had got him as he signaled the last remnants to safety, they in turn had pulled him back. Pain-racked but sure his men were in no danger of fleeing, he had joked back “Lieutenant fragged!” On the battlefield, where body parts and burned flesh were the order of the day and the only thing to hold out for was the buddy who was holding out for you, it had been high humor. It had been so funny that the whole platoon, all seven of them left out of the fifty men of the day before, had burst out laughing. Laughed their sides out.
“Battlefield humor,” he replied, remembering how his old men had come to the hospital, subdued, respectful, until one of them remembered the joke and they all laughed. He sketched the details to the lieutenant quickly, adding “Then the next day, the parakeet.”
“Sick,” the lieutenant agreed. He looked over at the parakeet again.
“You sure he’s not bio’d?”
Charlie stared back and lied again. “You think I made that bird say those things? Mister, I’ve still got some living to do!”
The lieutenant shrugged. “I’ve never seen a bio’d bird, that’s all.”
“Me neither,” Charlie agreed, lying cheerfully. “I can understand bio’d dogs, it’d be kinda useful to have a dog you could link with, but a dumb bird?” The parakeet turned its beak and took a nip at Charlie’s ear.
The lieutenant was getting fidgety. He’d spent enough time with Poindexter and that arm. “My men’re setting up,” he said. “You want a hand with that arm? My tech’s pretty good with the small stuff.”
“No, no thanks,” Charlie replied quickly. “I just have to reset it every so often in this damned muck!” He swirled his good arm in the heavy moisture that lay around them.
The lieutenant looked doubtful. “Well, if you say so.” Suddenly he asked: “What’re you doing out this far from town, anyway?”
The tone had Charlie instantly alert and he struggled not to show it. Instead, in nostalgic tones, “Heard there might be some action here, and—well, you know.”
The lieutenant did not know what Charlie was talking about, but nodded anyway. “Better head back to town soon,” he replied. “What do you do there?”
“Trader,” Charlie replied. “Got a one-manner over at the yard.”
“Risky business,” the lieutenant said disapprovingly. “You must make a fair profit.”
Charlie bridled realistically, raised his left arm, and intoned haughtily “I rather think I have a right to make up for this.” The lieutenant looked away. “Besides, I don’t have much else to do and I still can help out.”
“Whatever,” the lieutenant allowed. He turned toward his platoon. “You’d better get back to town soon, sir.” There was more tone in his “sir” than there would have been had Poindexter been a civilian. With that the lieutenant trudged off, battle armor whirring as hot motors fought for traction.
“You damned bird!” Charlie swore as soon as he was sure the lieutenant was out of sight. “I ought to break your neck right now!”
“What, and feel it, Charlie my boy?” the bird quipped back in a poor brogue. “Bio’d!” Archy sniffed.
Poindexter had no time for the simulac’s pride.
“What’d you get?”
“You got it all,” the bird told him. “KG-30 silicon gear oil with a hydroscopiscity of thirty percent, delamination of the main breastplates of ninety percent of all combat effectives, forty percent failure of all communications gear, inaccuracies of up to one hundred percent in all heads-up displays…”
“That stuff is shot. If these are typical, they’re gonna be slaughtered!” Charlie Poindexter exclaimed. “C’mon, we’ve got to get back to the ship!”
“What about informing the authorities?” The simulacrum inquired.
“Oh no! Not after the last time!” Poindexter replied, picking up his pace.
The guard at the spaceport freight yard was the first human Charlie had seen since his conversation with the marine. Tandin, the capital of powerful Isslan, was ghost-town empty. At least it was some indication that the authorities had finally come to take the alien threat seriously.
“Too late,” Archimedes declared, responding to Poindexter’s unspoken thoughts. Poindexter sighed. The evidence was overwhelming: the humans were going to lose the planet.
“If the local governments had banded together immediately into one military coalition there was only a forty percent chance of successfully countering the enemy’s military forces.”
Charlie pursed his lips. The problem was that the enemy insisted on killing every human found. The evidence was only just coming to light and still hotly contested by most of the nations of the world. They contended that it was just the Alliance’s way of getting more military aid. The politicians conveniently forgot the destruction and conquest of the states of the Coastal Coalition and made no mention at all of the Royal Islands of Anseen. The New Adriatic Alliance was composed of those island states which surrounded what had once been called the Coastal Coalition, which itself had surrounded the Royal Islands.
The planet Skylark had been inhabited centuries ago by humans, who established thousands of monarchies and anarchies among the many islands of the water world. The military forces that existed had evolved only to protect the various nations against any possible “misunderstandings” and so were purposely token in nature. If ever a nation got expansionist tendencies the surrounding nations would band together in a loose coalition and contain the perpetrator. Things being as they were, the military forces were always underequipped and overcharged by the civilian sector. Equipment was nonexistent or faulty, as Archimedes had noted of the Alliance marines assigned that sector of Tandin’s defensive perimeter.
“There has to be something,” Poindexter declared. To the parakeet simulacrum he said: “List me their known weaknesses.”
The simulacrum ruffled its feathers, muttering: “It’s a sign of inferior design to always vocalize your thoughts.” Poindexter grabbed for the simulacrum but it dodged away and began: “Known weaknesses of the Gerin…”
“Start with what we know about them instead,” Charlie interjected.
“The Gerin were first encountered on the lesser island of Marjea in the Royal Islands. Only fragmented radio reports from the islanders made it to the mainland,” Archy intoned. “When coast guard ships attempted to contact the islanders they were obliterated before they could report back. Aerial observation of the island was interdicted by some unknown form of antiaircraft weaponry later termed ‘inkjet incinerators.’ The Royal Space Station was attacked and destroyed without warning.”
The bio’d parakeet had settled back on the merchant’s shoulder.
“At this point a company of Royal Marines were loaded aboard a seawater destroyer under orders to reoccupy Marjea. Simultaneously, overtures were made to the three largest republics nearest the Royal Islands to form a military coalition while the Royal Intelligence Gatherers attempted to determine which of the neighboring nations had coveted Marjea.”
The robot bird’s presentation was clipped and toneless. It had been a week since Charlie had been given the bird and ship. Ever since, he had been unable to decide just how smart the enhanced bird was. Charlie wondered if the bird remembered he had been a Royal Marine. There certainly was no hesitation as it continued its recitation.
“The devastation of the company of Royal Marines was not complete, although three of the eight survivors were thought to have been eaten by some sea animal previously not known but later identified as the Gerin themselves. Neighboring space stations were destroyed on the night of the first landing of the Gerin on the main island. Within three days the Gerin had reached the outskirts of the capital and the neighboring nations had agreed to form a military coalition with troops arriving within the week.”
Charlie shuddered. They didn’t get the week. He remembered how his company had been annihilated in twelve minutes, how his shattered platoon had “held the door open” for the remnants of the Royal Battalion. He remembered the long torturous night and the agony of his seared arm. The fleeing Royal Islands forces were evacuated to the nearest unoccupied islands, but those were overrun in the following days.
The Gerin attacked in threes, one in the lead and two on either side. The leader invariably was better equipped and tore through defenders with a ferocity that left limbs and entrails strewn over meters. On the ground, the Gerin were unstoppable. In the air, the Gerin had developed sophisticated aircraft capable of outflying all the manually controlled aircraft the Coalition and now the Alliance could pit against them. The space forces of the Alliance were engaged in the strictly defensive role of trying to maintain exterior lines against interior forces. The Gerin fought a reverse siege, the humans on the defensive outside of the conquered territory, the Gerin savagely expanding their conquests from the inside.
From above they were aided by their space force, which maintained not only a low earth orbit, but both geosynchronous and geosynchronous transfer orbits. High above the planet Skylark a battle fleet hovering constantly over one spot conducted the war. Transports looped in from it to supply top cover to the assault fleet, which itself provided a stream of airspace transports downloading supplies and fighter aircraft. Surprisingly, the Gerin seemed to ignore unarmed ships which avoided the war zones. Poindexter closed his eyes and called up the graphics which showed the orbits as two circles—the geosynchronous and low earth orbits joined by an elliptical geosynchronous transfer orbit. It was this newly arrived assault fleet, a relatively new development, which finally awoke the politicians of more distant island states to the danger the Gerin posed. Far away, however, the threat looked unreal, or at least transient, and certainly not global.
“The destruction of all space stations, completed just this week, will ultimately cause larger coalitions to form,” Archimedes continued. “Unfortunately the destruction of the stations and the few free-flying communications satellites has rendered coordination of defense nearly impossible and has already reduced commerce of all forms by thirty percent.” The simulacrum paused, the result of a trillion new calculations. “The restriction of commerce is projected to increase arithmetically until the planet is conquered by the enemy.”
“The assault force is in retrograde orbit. Why?” Charlie asked of the fake parakeet.
“Unknown,” it answered. “Most probably due to original orbital inclinations.”
“What about the composition of the GTO force?” Charlie asked, searching the possibilities open to them.
“GTO—ambiguous—expand,” Archimedes responded in computer confusion.
“GTO: geosynchronous transfer orbit,” Charlie explained with a sigh. Every so often the simulacrum would remind him that it was nothing more than a very sophisticated set of molecular electronic devices linked to form an excellent imitation of intelligence. Only an imitation. It couldn’t think; it could just repeat what had been programmed into it.
“Information regarding the enemy’s space forces is classified as an Alliance top secret,” the simulacrum responded primly.
“I thought you were going to break into those systems,” Charlie insisted.
“Certainly,” Archimedes replied. “However, you have been occupying too much of my computative facilities to permit me to gain access.”
“Okay, okay! I’ll shut up,” Charlie responded. Electronically he called ahead to his spaceplane, Risky Lady, to lower the boarding ramp as they approached. Once inside, the merchant pressed the retract button and strode determinedly into the cockpit. There he deposited the strangely still form of the parakeet on the armrest of one of the pilot seats and sat himself in the other.
Risky Lady was a standard aerospace plane which still had conventional displays and controls as well as the ever-present biolink the avian aliens had given him which enabled properly “wired” pilots to connect directly to the onboard intelligence. It was incapable of getting farther off Skylark than a high orbit, but could put him anywhere on the planet within minutes.
Charlie connected with Risky Lady. Softly he subvocalized, Hey, baby! How’s it going?
All systems are functioning normally, the ship replied in dry controlled tones. However, I have noted on the military wavelengths that there is an increasing number of military craft in the air and suborbital space which indicates that…
Yeah, I know. Rough times ahead, Charlie interrupted.
Having your ship controlled by a second enhanced computer programmed to be primarily concerned with its own survival could be a problem. What about the cargo?
All cargo has been successfully off-loaded, the ship responded, adding with a note of discomfiture: However, the simulacrum Archimedes conducted all business transactions on our behalf.
So? Archy do something wrong?
A profit was made but not as great as could have been realized.
Charlie smiled. Risky Lady was also programmed to maximize profits.
Overhauls cost money! the ship protested.
Archy was acting under my orders, Charlie informed her. Don’t worry about the profits. I thought we were gathering vital information. He sensed silent shock from Risky Lady. Whoever had programmed her really liked his profits. What about back-freight?
The prospects of profit are dismal, the ship responded, feeding him raw data. Charlie stiffened involuntarily as the data downloaded into his implant. Instantly, he had a list of over a thousand items which could be purchased from the port’s automated warehouses all over the beleaguered capital. His implant and Risky Lady both had already decided which items from the list would maximize certain slightly different requirements: profit and usefulness. One item stored near the port itself caught his attention: Umbrellas?
Tanning umbrellas, silvered, two meters in diameter with bimetallic sun sensors. They open automatically in sunlight. “Ideal for the beach!” the ship intoned in response, even to the point of switching “voices” to reproduce the advertising blurb at the end.
Here? That’s insane! You don’t need a tanning umbrella on Skylark! Charlie laughed. The clouds rarely parted anywhere on Skylark—it was just too humid. Apparently they were intended for off-planet export.
“The same tanning umbrellas that the natives of beautiful Skylark use!” Another line from the commercial.
“I have succeeded in gaining the data on the enemy space forces,” Archimedes announced suddenly, startling Poindexter. His entire conversation with the ship had taken 11.2 seconds.
“And?” Charlie prompted the enhanced parakeet. “The data are very interesting. It appears that the largest craft of the Gerin’s geosynchronous space force always alters to transfer orbit-GTO-before a major assault is launched.”
“How often is GTO in sync with the LEO?” Charlie snapped.
“Ambiguous phrases: sync, LEO, please clarify.”
Charlie responded in computer, wondering who had programmed such marvelous memories and hadn’t entered so many commonly used terms. “Sync: short for synchronous. LEO: low earth orbit.” Charlie finished in exasperated tones. “Bloody parrot!”
“’Understood,” Archimedes replied evenly. “This simulacrum is a parakeet, not a parrot,” it continued in hurt tones.
Charlie rolled his eyes heavenward. Whoever had programmed the personality was a sanctimonious SOB, too.
“Just give me the answer!”
“Geosynchronous transfer orbit and low earth orbit synchronize once every seven low earth orbits, nearly in exact time with the orbital period of geosynchronous transfer orbit,” the simulacrum answered.
Charlie paused to turn that answer into something more human-readable: transfer orbit matched with low earth orbit about once every ten hours, roughly. That big ship . . . “What sort of communications data do you have?” Charlie asked.
“Ambigu—”
“The big enemy ship—how much communications traffic does it have?” Charlie expanded.
“Information indicates that the largest enemy ship has the greatest amount of communications traffic,” Archimedes answered. Then, reaching Charlie’s conclusions: “However, that does not make that ship the command ship—it could just as easily be a hospital or repair ship.”
“Something important whichever way.” Charlie decided.
“You must remember that the rules of war do not allow hospitals to be attacked,” Archimedes informed him.
Charlie swore. “Bird, those mothers’ sons don’t give one flying—” He caught himself as he realized he would have to spend several hours explaining the meaning of his swearing to the simulacrum. “Disregard. The enemy do not seem to be playing by the rules of war.” He thought to himself for a moment. “Do you have any idea when that ship will be in LEO again?”
“That ship does not take a low earth orbit,” Archimedes responded primly, accepting the acronym and ignoring the meaning of the question.
Charlie sighed in exasperation again. “When is that ship going to be at perigee of the GTO again?” he asked, rephrasing the original question in a manner understandable to the computer intelligence of the fake bird.
“The ship will probably participate in an assault on the three remaining capitals of the Alliance in eighteen thousand four hundred and fifty-three point three-four seconds.” Archimedes sensed the question from Charlie before he asked. “Or five hours, seven minutes, thirty-three point three-four seconds.” ,
“If only we could get that ship . . .” Seeing the tattered remnants of the island’s defenders had affected Charlie more than he expected. He had to do something.
“The effect of destroying that enemy vessel is not known, as its exact purpose is still unknown,” Archimedes responded. “However, if that ship is the command ship for the alien assault they would be discommoded only for the length of time required to receive another command ship; doubtless their assault would continue in the interim, diminished by an unknown factor.”
“Bird, you talk too much!”
“Our purpose in being here is to gather information so that—”
“Don’t say it!” Charlie cried, pointing a silencing finger at the bird. “I know why we’re gathering information on the enemy, but it won’t do a bit of good if they’re going to wipe out the whole planet!”
“As long as the information is stored in a manner that allows it to be retrieved at a later date it does not matter whether the planet is devoid of human life,” the simulacrum replied dispassionately.
“It does to the humans who die here!” Charlie replied hotly, forgetting for a moment to what he was talking. He cooled off. “Besides, how are we supposed to preserve this information?”
“That,” the simulacrum responded, “is why I was united with a human being—to allow him to make that determination. That is your function, your sole function, so far as I am programmed to respond.”
“Five hours, huh?” Charlie mused. How is our fuel? he asked Risky Lady.
Fuel types for all stages of ascent and descent were ordered and are at maximum, the ship responded.
Charlie could have sworn it sounded a bit smug. He leaned back in the pilot’s seat.
Decisions must be made soon. The situation grows risky as the enemy gets closer, the ship prodded him in a twittering voice. Charlie wondered if the voice belonged to the genius that had programmed her, then pulled in on himself, thinking. After a few seconds he threw two switches on the control panel and all external contacts cut out, ship, simulacrum, even his artificial left arm. Bitterly, he mulled over the information he had. The planet was lost. It was only a matter of time. He thought of the children he’d watched playing just outside the walls of the marine compound on the Royal Islands, and felt helpless. Surrender was pointless, overflights had found no sign of a living human being in any enemy-held lands. Fighting was pointless; the enemy would overwhelm their meager defenses, and only a totally committed planet-wide defensive stood any chance of checking the enemy until help from other human worlds came—if it could be persuaded to come. There was no hope.
“Dammit, I won’t give in!” Charlie swore, jerking forward as images of his men dying around him mixed with the death-tired eyes of the marine lieutenant and his platoon—all too soon to be annihilated. “There’s got to be a way to hit back, or at least to give them a hotfoot!”
Charlie stopped. A look of amazement crossed his face and he fell back in the seat, thoughtful. A smile crossed his face, and then he laughed, loud and long. He reconnected to the rest of the electronic world, forcing his left arm to take a thrower’s stance and jerking it as though throwing an unseen javelin. He speeded the arm up, faster, and then stopped.
“Archy?” he called. The simulacrum looked at him.
“What’s the fastest cycle time on this arm? How fast can it move?”
“I cannot tell. The specifications are altered for each human recipient,” Archy replied.
“Well, here, take it and see what you can find out,” Charlie responded, releasing control over the artificial arm. He watched, slightly perturbed, as the arm flexed and loosened repeatedly and then suddenly performed a series of jerks so fast that he thought the circuits must have blown again.
“It has a cycle time of about forty-nine milliseconds, but I would not perform that operation repeatedly without getting modifications made to the limb’s mechanics.”
“How about eight thousand cycles?” Charlie asked. The simulacrum was silent as it thought. “I can reasonably assert that the artificial limb can repeat that number of cycles for a limited time without sustaining immediate failure.”
Charlie was instantly active. “Call the tower and get a clearance for Phoenicis,” Charlie told the parakeet. Internally he ordered the ship, Buy the umbrellas! They were already in a container and should take only a few minutes to load.
The umbrellas are not profitable, the ship objected in haughty tones. When Charlie overrode the objection, Risky Lady allowed: They may be useful as samples. How many did you want?
All of them! Charlie replied, getting a bit impatient.
How soon can you get them aboard?
There are eight thousand umbrellas for sale, the ship responded. If it was possible for mere circuits to sound confused, she did.
I know! How long to get them aboard? Charlie asked, wondering if it was possible to outrage a computer.
Two hours and twenty-three minutes to receive the container and reload all eight thousand umbrellas, the ship responded after consulting her computer counterpart in the automated warehouse.
I want them loaded so that we can access them from the airlock, Charlie said. Risky Lady acknowledged the order, revising her estimate to exactly three hours.
“Take off in three hours and five minutes,” Charlie informed the simulacrum as he settled back into his seat again.
“Tower wants us to leave as soon as possible,” Archy responded, adding, “Enemy action outside the capital is beginning to threaten air access.”
Poindexter ignored the parakeet’s warning, demanding instead that Archimedes calculate a series of orbits and orbital maneuvers that either so engaged or so confused the simulacrum as to render it speechless. Of Risky Lady he demanded detailed emissivity and absorptivity data of all paints commercially available. He finally found what he needed in Phoenicis, which was one of the few other ports still operating. Then, after overriding the ship’s troubled objections that the paints he was most interested in getting were already imported and not a profitable cargo, he ordered Archimedes to buy all they had.
By the time Risky Lady was taking off, the Gerin were on the outskirts of the city and the simulacrum had struck a deal with a Phoenician trader for the paint. The flight to Phoenicis should have been completely atmospheric, but Charlie Poindexter chose to go suborbital. He rapped the simulacrum on its beak with his finger to get its attention.
“I have not completed your calculations! One is needed for each launch,” the parakeet objected.
“Fine, later,” Charlie said. “Link in with the Lady and see what sort of sensor information you can get on that big Gerin ship. Confirm that it’s coming down to LEO.”
“I cannot possibly see what the position of the Gerin’s largest ship has to do with the safety of the information I possess,” the simulacrum complained.
“That’s why you have a human being with you, bird beak.”
Archimedes started to reply and stopped. After some time it spoke again, this time in a new voice. “There is no possible way for you to attack it with the equipment on this vessel!” it objected. “There are no ship’s weapons and it would have allowed none to be added.”
“Just get the readings!” Charlie ordered. He linked with Risky Lady and added: Continue approach.
Descent in ten minutes. On the descent Charlie remembered all of the lies he had told the marine lieutenant. Likely the young officer was dead now, he and the men he had led. What Charlie regretted most was the lie about the simulacrum: his men had not given it to him.
“Just take it with you wherever you go. It’ll feed you all the information it has or gleans,” the birdlike ITC trader had said to him. “All we ask is that you let us take a data dump when we pass this way again.”
“What if I don’t make it until then?” Charlie had asked.
“Then just leave it someplace safe. We’ll find it,” the trader had replied.
In return, Charlie Poindexter found himself leasing an amazingly low-priced spaceplane capable of making geosynchronous orbit and so of trading directly with the Interstellar Traders Collective. If they ever returned to the system. The bird and ship represented some of the strangest technology he had ever encountered. He was amazed at the abilities of the ship and surprised at the simulacrum, which was not really a parakeet at all but some artificial creation styled to look like a small household pet of the avian race that had crafted it. Something about that whole deal still nagged at the back of Charlie’s consciousness. Sure, the aliens were traders, but why did they need information on the attacking Gerin? Sure, any new military tactics were instantly salable—military intelligence was always salable. But there was hardly anything new about the Gerin’s attacks. They always had overwhelming numbers. Besides, traders avoided wars, they didn’t sneak into war zones just to get standard intelligence. But the birdlike trader had been so persistent, so dedicated to getting Charlie to accept the offer.
Phoenicis Tower calling, the ship informed him.
“Tell them that we are just landing long enough to pick up our cargo,” Charlie replied. “And tell that trader to have the goods ready as soon as we stop.”
To Archimedes: “Get ready to download our first orbit into Risky Lady as we land.”
The fake parakeet squawked. “She’s gonna refuse! And the tower will read her program and refuse you permission to launch.”
“Override her,” Charlie replied calmly. Twenty minutes later, as Risky Lady launched at full throttle, Archimedes, on a command from Poindexter, overrode the ship’s intelligence and replotted its course. Risky Lady altered angle immediately after retracting her gear and went supersonic, to the loud protests of Phoenicis Tower.
“Blame it on the war effort!” Poindexter told them.
High up in the atmosphere, as the air grew too thin for the ramjets to operate, Risky Lady was switched to scramjets, which rapidly boosted her speed up to Mach 25. Instead of trimming for a low-energy Hohmann orbit, on Poindexter’s orders the simulacrum kept the thrust on to form a direct-ascent orbit.
“This is gonna play hell on the fuel-cost balances!” the parakeet remarked.
“We’ve got fuel to spare,” Charlie responded. “It’s the time I worry about. How are we?”
“We’re right where you want us to be,” Archimedes responded. “It cost more fuel because of that hold at the gate, but we’re right on time.”
Minutes later, Risky Lady was shifted from her scramjets to pure rockets, burning a combination of her standard hydrogen fuel with onboard oxygen. In seconds she was in a well-formed circular orbit three hundred kilometers above the planet’s surface. The former marine officer activated his magnetic soles and undid his seat harness.
“We are within risk of detection by the enemy,” the parakeet noted. “It would have been wiser to shape a retrograde orbit with the planet between us.”
“And have the GTO force and the GEO ships spot us?” Charlie shot back. “Get the airlock ready,” he ordered as he hurried toward the hold. Once inside the airlock, Charlie sealed a helmet over his one-piece shipsuit, then opened the lock connecting the cargo hold to the airlock bays. Using his pilot’s implant, he overrode several safety connections and caused the air in both the combined hold and the airlock bays to evacuate. He found the paint in the cargo bay and hauled it toward the airlock, carefully stacking the magnetized containers. Then he looked at the stacks of boxes that housed the umbrellas.
“Time!” he called to Archimedes, not bothering with his implant. When he got no answer he shouted, repeating on his implant: “The second program, is it running?”
“Affirmative. Time is seven eight zero, seven-nine, seven-eight . . .” Charlie shut out the droning of the simulacrum as he started a large clump of boxed umbrellas through the cargo hold and into the airlock bays. Through his ship connection he engaged the ship’s conveyor system. Not waiting to see the result, he manhandled another set and started them on the way. Somehow the parakeet got separated from him.
“Just what is it you are trying to do, human?” the simulacrum asked in pompous tones.
Charlie did not respond, setting the final group of boxed umbrellas in motion. Archimedes continued:
“Even granting that the combined velocities of this ship and the enemy craft will be in excess of twenty kilometers per second, there is insufficient mass or rigidity in these umbrellas to pose a hazard to the enemy.”
“That’s okay,” Charlie replied. He clambered around the massed umbrellas and climbed up to the airlock’s exit, an umbrella in each hand. He stopped, staring down at all the other ends that waited to be opened. With a shrug, he picked up an unopened umbrella in his artificial arm, ensured that it was properly aligned, and with a quick thrust forward popped the umbrella out into the darkness of Skylark’s shadow. He watched approvingly as the closed umbrella, looking like a thin javelin, streaked backward away from the ship.
“The trajectory was not correct,” Archimedes chided.
“In order to correctly align—”
The ship silently started to rotate as control jets and then maneuvering jets cut in.
“Time?” Charlie called.
“Seven fifty-three,” Archimedes responded automatically. Then, “Human, this can’t work!”
“Sure it can,” Charlie replied. “One umbrella every seventy-nine milliseconds”—another umbrella out and another as Poindexter spoke—“while we traverse inclination from plus twenty-eight point five to minus twenty-eight point five.” Another umbrella.
After a few hundred umbrellas Charlie’s shoulder began to feel stretched. With his “arm” moving almost too fast to watch, the mechanism was remaining sound, but the flesh and blood attached was beginning to show the strain. Breaking only long enough to open another box of five hundred, he continued the process.
By the time two thousand umbrellas had been jettisoned, his shoulder throbbed painfully. Two hundred later, the agony had spread until it was hard to breathe. After five hundred umbrellas, a tiny trickle of blood ran down the straining merchant’s chest. Still he couldn’t and didn’t halt. At one point, he distracted himself by reciting the roll call of his lost command. The ordeal seemed to last forever.
“That was six hundred umbrellas,” the bird noted, “and each is taking longer,”
“That’s all I need, and more,” Poindexter replied.
Another umbrella.
“That was eighty-eight milliseconds,” Archimedes chided. “And the one before was—” .
“If you’ve got a better idea?” Charlie asked, straining to grab for another umbrella while chucking the first one.
“Computers don’t have ideas, they analyze data,” Archimedes corrected him. “Data analysis: attach unit to fixed surface.”
Charlie Poindexter stared at the simulacrum.
“That’ll work!” he exclaimed, quickly unstrapping the physical connections to his artificial arm. The opening was raw and his shoulder bled where he had to pull the leads out of muscle and skin. At other times the action would have made him feel crippled, but not now. There simply wasn’t time. Twenty seconds later, Charlie Poindexter, one-armed, was feeding umbrellas up to his artificial arm, at the end of which Archimedes sat to control minutely its speed and accuracy. With the parakeet’s help he had precisely positioned the arm with magnetic clamps on the outside of the lock, securing both arm and simulacrum to the outer hull of the ship. Two minutes later, after one hundred and twenty seconds, the simulacrum had counted off one thousand five hundred and nineteen umbrellas.
Charlie soon found that he had to climb back down into the hold in order to push the masses of umbrellas forward to get them onto the ship’s conveyor belt. Above him, through the link, Archimedes continually harangued him for not getting umbrellas to the arm fast enough. “That one was twenty microseconds behind, and its orbit is one thousandth of a degree off true!” the fake bird snapped.
Charlie grimaced, pushing more umbrellas up with his remaining arm.
“More!” the bird called.
“Last one,” Charlie called back. He was sweating in his suit as he climbed up the ladder to the outside. Turning, he could see nothing of the last umbrella. All eight thousand were already lost in the darkness.
“Are they on course?” he asked the artificial bird as he returned the arm to its socket. Without the imbedded connections, it felt awkward.
“Nominally,” the parakeet responded, returning control of the arm to Charlie, adding after a long pause: “I fail to calculate—”
It was abruptly cut off as the artificial arm grabbed and threw the simulacrum in the totally opposite direction from the distant umbrellas.
“The information is safe!” Charlie called after the disappearing bird. Archimedes’ circuits had been too heavily involved in analyzing Poindexter’s reasons for the madness of throwing needlelike umbrellas in the enemy’s path to note the surging link between the human and the artificial arm. Now, floating helplessly in space, the simulacrum found time to be fleetingly intrigued that a slow human brain, even augmented with implants, could outpace a well-programmed simulacrum.
On board Risky Lady, Charlie Poindexter stared in the direction of the simulacrum for long moments. He shook himself.
“Nothing but time on my hands,” he said. Then he laughed. “Boy! That damn bird must be pissed!” He undid the magnetic clamp on his artificial arm and carefully reattached it to his shoulder. With a mental sigh, he flexed it once or twice and smiled, in control once more. He sobered suddenly, chiding himself: “What about the Lady? She’ll be sore!” He hurried to the bridge and freed the restraints Archimedes had put on the intelligence module that normally controlled the Risky Lady.
THERE IS NO PROFIT IN THIS! Risky Lady shouted immediately, using all uppercase to print out the same message on every screen on the bridge. You must restore this ship to full functionality!
Sorry, babe, Charlie responded. No dice.
He turned around, facing in the direction of travel.
Sun’s going to come up soon, and we’ll be in a polar orbit, he remarked conversationally to the Lady.
How could you waste so much fuel? the ship demanded.
It doesn’t matter, Lady.
Charlie sighed contentedly, turning back to stare out the forward port at the darkest side of the planet as they headed toward the terminator. His arm still ached, but he would soon see if it had been worth it. They had also been up here a long time; they were lucky no Gerin patrol had spotted them. Soon they would move into direct observation of the Gerin fleet. After more than a minute he spoke.
Listen, in about ten minutes it’s going to get pretty hectic. I want you to do me one last favor.
I cannot see how ownership can be changed, the ship’s computer responded, You will tell the Gerin ships that this is a trading ship, intended only for peaceful profit! Maybe then they’ll not blow us apart. I am not programmed to attack. Only military ships are capable of such.
Charlie filed that bit of surprising information and then responded, You’ve just been commissioned.
The merchant expected to find himself either ignored or restrained for piracy. After all, the ship was just a loan. Surprisingly, Risky Lady responded in yet another new voice. By whose authority?
Poindexter was taken aback. He had not for a moment expected that the ship’s programming would include a change of prime purpose. Finally he managed, By the authority of my appointment as an officer by the king of the Royal Islands. Bitterly he tried not to remember the Royal Islands had been overrun six weeks earlier.
That will do, the ship acquiesced. What do you want of me? We can charge into the enemy and probably . . .
Charlie found the difference between the merchant and military programming of his ship startling. Nope. I want you to stay on this course until I tell you and then thrust us directly above the enemy’s formation. All of the time send that we are a merchant interested in selling information. They must have seen traitors before.
The enemy will destroy us when we approach too closely or remain too long, the ship informed him. This is not a good battle plan. I could suggest a number of approaches more likely to, achieve success. One has an almost eleven percent probability of successfully damaging a Gerin warship. I
Charlie raised an eyebrow. Could they have programmed this baby for military operations? he asked himself. Sure, he decided. If they can stick all the books ever written onto a molecular chip one centimeter square, why not throw some basic tactics onto a trader? Especially one which, he was sure, was especially made by those bird-brain ITC traders. It was a shame to waste it.
My plan will have to do, Charlie responded as they arrived at the terminator. Below him the day faded to night.
Enemy ships are seven thousand kilometers away, and closing, the ship informed him.
Contact in nine minutes, Charlie responded.
And eighteen point five seconds, the ship corrected.
Based upon prior behavior, I predict that they will detect us in two hundred and twenty-four point seven eight seconds.
Let me know when you get a definite contact, Charlie responded. As soon as I tell you, start that maneuver.
How far above the formation should I arrive? the ship wanted to know.
Near enough to scare ‘em, I don’t care, Charlie responded. He climbed down the ladder. Maneuver now so that this airlock is pointing on an intersecting path.
Jets coughed, stars whirled, jets coughed again, and stars stabilized.
Done.
Charlie looked out, but saw nothing in particular. With great care he centered himself on the airlock docking marks. With his artificial arm he began heaving out the two hundred one-gallon cans of paint. His shoulder began to ache again, but the pain was tolerable and he didn’t dare risk the dullness a pain-killing drug would have as a side effect.
Are- you throwing out some form of secret weapon loaded while I was inactive? the ship inquired.
Sort of, Charlie replied as he heaved another.
Radar lock! They have spotted us, the ship’s computer warned.
Great. Hold steady. Charlie kept heaving. Ninety.
Ninety-one, ninety-two, Charlie counted to himself.
I detect small arms being fired at your projectiles, the ship told him. They have vaporized the first four.
Beautiful! Charlie allowed himself a smile. One-forty-two, one-forty-three ... he counted as he threw the paint out of the hold. He was panting. His artificial arm might be doing the throwing, but the rest of his body was doing the lifting and countering the recoil. Once more he found himself working in a fog of pain.
Energy beams! We are just beyond range, the ship warned.
If they shoot at us, execute that maneuver! Charlie responded. One-eighty-nine, Suddenly his view changed and he felt himself being pushed against the floor. The new bruises didn’t make his shoulder feel any better.
They fired at us, the ship explained. Their beams are following us! Missile launch! One hundred seconds to intercept!
* * *
The airlock glowed brightly, then red-hot. Charlie Poindexter shielded his eyes as he dived for the ladder to the bridge. He never reached it.
Far back in space, the simulacrum Archimedes detected the thermal signature of plasma weapons as they tore through the hull of Risky Lady. In seconds, nothing was left of the spaceplane but a molten mass. Dispassionately, the simulacrum noted that its calculations had been correct. The paint flung out of the ship and fired upon by the Gerin had spread into a large vaporized cloud which wrapped the enemy fleet like black ink from a squid. As the fleet emerged from the cloud, the simulacrum noted that some of the ships, including the largest, had been well coated with the black paint. The simulacrum devoted some microseconds to calculating the average temperature rise if the aliens did nothing to remove it. Dispassionately, it noted that the rise would be well within standard limits. It would have no effect. Further, Archimedes calculated that the paint would not provide sufficient interference to reduce the enemy’s ability to detect and avoid ramming the thousands of umbrellas which would shortly clear the planet’s shadow and . . .
With a sudden burst of understanding the very sophisticated computer known as Archimedes almost wished it could turn around to see the umbrellas opening.
Each electronically neutral and unthreatening umbrella orbited slowly toward the Gerin fleet. As the Gerin fleet and its trailing swarm of umbrellas cleared the planet’s shadow, each umbrella heated slowly until the bimetallic springs reached a critical temperature. One by one, but in increasing numbers, the umbrellas fanned open to catch the sun’s rays and shine-in a nearly perfect parabola with constantly changing focus, directly on the largest ship of the Gerin fleet!
With the speed of its kind, the amazingly complicated microcomputer that almost resembled an Earth parakeet completed its calculations. Each umbrella was coated with a near-perfect reflective surface. It had often noted how humans always used their best materials for their luxuries. Perhaps five thousand of the umbrellas, each spread about a meter apart, retained their alignment. Each umbrella was two meters in diameter, and the light intensity of this star at this distance was 1,400 watts per square meter. That was a total reflected energy of 4,398 watts per umbrella. As they entered the light, the otherwise inoffensive umbrellas opened and concentrated the sunlight on the still unshielded Gerin ship. The Gerin flagship, not being threatened by anything electronic or massive enough to attract attention, was not even at alert.
The simulacrum watched the bright white spot form on that large ship, glow as the hull grew hotter and hotter, as twenty-two megawatts focused on that one spot for slightly over three hundred seconds. The large ship distended and finally, with alarming speed, exploded in a large cloud of debris as its hull fatally and unexpectedly ruptured.
With an almost human glee in the silent void of space, Archimedes crowed at the cooling mass of debris that had been the Risky Lady, “Frag the flagship! Frag the flagship! Craaaaw!”