The Star Fox

He jollied her as best he could, and kissed her farewell, and departed. While his pilot flitted him the short way back to the yacht, he looked out. A flock of Staurni hunters was taking off. Sunlight flared across their weapons. The turmoil in him changed toward eagerness—to be away, to sail his ship again—as he watched those dragon shapes mount into the sky.

Part Three—ADMIRALTY

I

Strictly speaking, the Phoenix is a constellation in the skies of the Solar System, about halfway between ecliptic plane and south celestial pole. It is a mistake to apply the name to that region of space, some hundred and fifty light-years in the same direction from Earth, where the suns of Alerion and New Europe are found. But because a human colony makes a number of the neighboring systems interesting—as places to visit, mine, trade, explore, fight, be related to—a name is required for such a vaguely defined territory. Once bestowed, however carelessly, it remains.

And perhaps this one was not altogether a misnomer. The Phoenix of myth is reborn in fire. Nuclear energies bore Lamontagne the long way to Aurore. When he saw that that sun had a world where men could settle, he raised the tricolor like a flame in its heavens. Hope burned high in the folk who moved to New Europe, labored, begot, and bequeathed. Then the warcraft of Alerion came, with hellfire aboard.

A ship raised from the planet. Forces pulsed in her gravitrons, meshed with the interwoven fields of the cosmos, drove her out at ever-mounting speed. As Aurore fell behind, space grew less distorted by the star’s mass. She would soon reach a point where the metric approximated a straight line so nearly that it was safe to draw the forces entirely around her, cut off that induction effect known as inertia, and outpace light.

A million kilometers away, Fox II observed her: saw by visible light and infrared, felt with a ghostly quickly-brushing whisper of radar, heard faint ripples of her drive in space, snuffed the neutrinos from her engines, and came to carnivore alertness.

“Damn!” said Gunnar Heim. “We should have spotted that beast hours ago. They must have installed extra screening.”

First Officer David Penoyer studied the data-analysis tapes. “Seems to be a moderate-sized transport ship. Same class as the Ellehoi we took last month, I’d guess. If so, we’ve got more legs than she does.”

Heim gave a restless shove with one foot. His huge body made a free-fall curve through the air to a viewport. Stars crowded it beyond counting; the Milky Way rivered in silver around an endless clear black; nebulae and remote galaxies glimmered across more distance than man will ever comprehend. He had no time for awe; he stared outward with eyes gone wintry blue as a giant sun and said: “She’ll be outside the Mach limit long before we can come anywhere near matching velocities. I know it’s theoretically possible for a ship to lay alongside another going FTL, but it’s never been done and I’m not about to try. If nothing else, there’d be too much interstellar gas turbulence.”

“Well, but—Captain, we don’t have to make a prize of her. I mean, if we simply accelerate, we’ll catch her inside the limit. Then she’s either got to turn on the Machs and probably get ripped apart, or face our barrage.”

Heim’s blocky features bent into a grimace. “And she might take the chance rather than surrender. I’d hate to spoil our record. Four months of commerce raiding, eighteen Aleriona ships captured, and we haven’t had to kill anybody yet.” He ran a hand through his roan hair. “If only—Wait!” He swung about and pushed the intercom controls. “Captain to chief engineer. Listen, you can make a gravitron do everything but wash dishes. Could we safely make a very short FTL run from here?” Penoyer shaped a soundless whistle.

“The matter is one iow ’recise adjustment, skiwwer,” rumbled Uthg-a-K’thaq’s voice. “We succeeded in it when we lewt the Solar Sys-tem. Wut now, awter cruising so long without an owerhaul—”

“I know.” Heim’s faded blue tunic wrinkled with his shrug. They didn’t have uniforms on Fox. “All right, I suppose we do simply have to destroy them. War isn’t a game of tiddlywinks,” he added, largely to himself.

“A moment, ’lease.” The intercom brought clicking noises. C.E. must be using his Naqsan equivalent of a slide rule.

Heim thought. “Yes-s-s. I hawe recalculated the sawety margin. It suwwices.”

“Whoops!” Heim’s yell rang between the bulkheads. “Hear that, Dave?” He pounded Penoyer on the back.

The blond man catapulted across the bridge, choked, and sputtered, “Yes, sir, very good.”

“Not just that we wont have to blot out lives,” Heim exulted. “But the money. All that lovely, lovely prize money.”