David Weber - Dahak 01 - Mutineer's Moon.pdf - David Weber - margozap

MUTINEERS' MOON

David Weber

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this

book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely

coincidental.

thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, N.Y. 10471

ISBN: 0-671-72085-6

Cover art by Paul Alexander

First printing, October 1991

Second printing, October 1994

Distributed by

SIMON & SCHUSTER

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10020

Printed in the United States of America

INTO THE FIELD OF FIRE

The tunnel seemed endless, yet the end was upon him almost before he realized

it, and he lunged up another ladder. The shaft was sealed, but he was already

probing at it, spotting the catch, heaving it up with a mighty shoulder. He

burst into the night air . . . and his senses were suddenly afire with more

power sources. More combat armor! Coming from behind in the prodigious leaps

of jump gear and waiting in the woods ahead, as well!

He tried to unlimber his own energy gun, but a torrent of energy crashed over

him, and he cried out as every implant in his body screamed in protest. He

writhed, fighting it, clinging to the torment of awareness.

It was a capture field--not a killing blast of energy, but something

infinitely worse. A police device that locked his synthetic muscles with

brutal power.

He toppled forward under the impetus of his last charge, crashing to the

ground half-in and half-out of the tunnel. He fought the encroaching darkness,

smashing at it with all the fury of his enraged will, but it swept over him.

The last thing he saw was a tornado of light as the trees exploded with energy

fire. He carried the vision down into the dark with him, dimly aware of its

importance.

And then, as his senses faded at last, he realized: It wasn't directed at him-

-it was raking the ground behind him and cutting down the mutineers who had

pursued him. . . .

Book One

Chapter One

The huge command deck was as calm, as peacefully dim, as ever, silent but for

the small background sounds of environmental recordings. The bulkheads were

invisible beyond the projection of star-specked space and the blue-white shape

of a life-bearing world. It was exactly as it ought to be, exactly as it

always had been-tranquil, well-ordered, as divorced from chaos as any setting

could possibly be.

But Captain Druaga's face was grim as he stood beside his command chair and

data flowed through his neural feeds. He felt the whickering lightning of

energy weapons like heated irons, Engineering no longer responded-not

surprisingly-and he'd lost both Bio-Control One and Three. The hangar decks

belonged to no one; he'd sealed them against the mutineers, but Anu's butchers

had blocked the transit shafts with grab fields covered by heavy weapons. He

still held Fire Control and most of the external systems, but Communications

had been the mutineers' primary target. The first explosion had taken it out,

and even an Utu-class ship mounted only a single hypercom. He could neither

move the ship nor report what had happened, and his loyalists were losing.

Druaga deliberately relaxed his jaw before his teeth could grind together. In

the seven thousand years since the Fourth Imperium crawled back into space

from the last surviving world of the Third, there had never been a mutiny

aboard a capital ship of Battle Fleet. At best, he would go down in history as

the captain whose crew had turned against him and been savagely suppressed. At

worst, he would not go down in history at all.

The status report ended, and he sighed and shook himself.

The mutineers were hugely outnumbered, but they had the priceless advantage of

surprise, and Anu had planned with care. Druaga snorted; no doubt the Academy

teachers would have been proud of his tactics. But at least-and thank the

Maker for it!-he was only the chief engineer, not a bridge officer. There were

command codes of which he had no knowledge.

"Dahak," Druaga said.

"Yes, Captain?" The calm, mellow voice came from everywhere and nowhere,

filling the command deck.

"How long before the mutineers reach Command One?"

"Three standard hours, Captain, plus or minus fifteen percent."

"They can't be stopped?"

"Negative, Captain. They control all approaches to Command One and they are

pushing back loyal personnel at almost all points of contact."

Of course they were, Druaga thought bitterly. They had combat armor and heavy

weapons; the vast majority of his loyalists did not.

He looked around the deserted command deck once more. Gunnery was unmanned,

and Plotting, Engineering, Battle Comp, Astrogation. . . . When the alarms

went, only he had managed to reach his post before the mutineers cut power to

the transit shafts. Just him. And to get here he'd had to kill two subverted

members of his own staff when they pounced on him like assassins.

"All right, Dahak," he told the all-surrounding voice grimly, "if all we still

hold is Bio Two and the weapon systems, we'll use them. Cut Bio One and Three

out of the circuit."

"Executed," the voice said instantly. "But it will take the mutineers no more

than an hour to put them back on line under manual."

"Granted. But it's long enough. Go to Condition Red Two, Internal."

There was a momentary pause, and Druaga suppressed a bitter smile.

"You have no suit, Captain," the voice said unemotionally. "If you set

Condition Red Two, you will die."

"I know." Druaga wished he was as calm as he sounded, but he knew Dahak's bio

read-outs gave him the lie. Yet it was the only chance he-or, rather, the

Imperium-had.

"You will give a ten-minute warning count," he continued, sitting down in his

command chair. "That should give everyone time to reach a lifeboat. Once

everyone's evacuated, our external weapons will become effective. You will

carry out immediate decon, but you will allow only loyal personnel to re-enter

until you receive orders to the contrary from . . . your new captain. Any

mutinous personnel who approach within five thousand kilometers before loyal

officers have reasserted control will be destroyed in space."

"Understood." Druaga could have sworn the voice spoke more softly. "Comp Cent

core programs require authentication of this order, however."

"Alpha-Eight-Sigma-Niner-Niner-Seven-Delta-Four-

Alpha," he said flatly.

"Authentication code acknowledged and accepted," the voice responded. "Please

specify time for implementation."

"Immediately," Druaga said, and wondered if he spoke so quickly to avoid

losing his nerve.

"Acknowledged. Do you wish to listen to the ten-count, Captain?"

"No, Dahak," Druaga said very softly.

"Understood," the voice replied, and Druaga closed his eyes.

It was a draconian solution . . . if it could be called a "solution" at all.

Red Two, Internal, was the next-to-final defense against hostile incursion. It

opened every ventilation trunk-something which could be done only on the

express, authenticated order of the ship's commander-to flood the entire

volume of the stupendous starship with chemical and radioactive agents. By its

very nature, Red Two exempted no compartment . . . including this one. The

ship would become uninhabitable, a literal death trap, and only the central

computer, which he controlled, could decontaminate.

The system had never been intended for this contingency, but it would work.

Mutineers and loyalists alike would be forced to flee, and no lifeboat ever

built could stand up to Dahak's weaponry. Of course, Druaga wouldn't be alive

to see the end, but at least his command would be held for the Imperium.

And if Red Two failed, there was always Red One.

"Dahak," he said suddenly, never opening his eyes.

"Yes, Captain?"

"Category One order," Druaga said formally.

"Recording," the voice said.

"I, Senior Fleet Captain Druaga, commanding officer Imperial Fleet Vessel

Dahak, Hull Number One-Seven-Two-Two-Nine-One," Druaga said even more

formally, "having determined to my satisfaction that a Class One Threat to the

Imperium exists aboard my vessel, do now issue, pursuant to Fleet Regulation

Seven-One, Section One-Nine-Three, Subsection Seven-One, a Category One order

to Dahak Computer Central. Authentication code Alpha-Eight-Delta-Sigma-Niner-

Niner-Seven-Delta-Four-Omega."

"Authentication code acknowledged and accepted," the voice said coolly.

"Standing by to accept Category One orders. Please specify."

"Primary mission of this unit now becomes suppression of mutinous personnel in

accordance with instructions already issued," Druaga said crisply. "If

previously specified measures fail to restore control to loyal personnel, said

mutinous elements will be destroyed by any practicable means, including, if

necessary, the setting of Condition Red One, Internal, and total destruction

of this vessel. These orders carry Priority Alpha."

"Acknowledged," the voice said, and Druaga let his head rest upon the

cushioned back of his chair. It was done. Even if Anu somehow managed to reach

Command One, he could not abort the order Dahak had just acknowledged.

The captain relaxed. At least, he thought, it should be fairly painless.

". . . ine minutes and counting," the computer voice said, and Fleet Captain

(E) Anu, Chief Engineer of the ship-of-the-line Dahak cursed. Damn Druaga! He

hadn't expected the captain to reach his bridge alive, much less counted on

this. Druaga had always seemed such an unimaginative, rote-bound, dutiful

automaton.

"What shall we do, Anu?"

Commander Inanna's eyes were anxious through her armor's visor, and he did not

blame her.

"Fall back to Bay Ninety-One," he grated furiously.

"But that's-"

"I know. I know! We'll just have to use them ourselves. Now get our people

moving, Commander!"

"Yes, sir," Commander Inanna said, and Anu threw himself into the central

transit shaft. The shaft walls screamed past him, though he felt no subjective

sense of motion, and his lips drew back in an ugly snarl. His first attempt

had failed, but he had a trick or two of his own. Tricks even Druaga didn't

know about, Breaker take him!

Copper minnows exploded away from Dahak. Lifeboats crowded with loyal crew

members fanned out over the glaciated surface of the alien planet, seeking

refuge, and scattered among them were other, larger shapes. Still only motes

compared to the ship itself, their masses were measured in thousands upon

thousands of tons, and they plummeted together, outspeeding the smaller

lifeboats. Anu had no intention of remaining in space where Druaga-assuming he

was still alive-might recognize that he and his followers had not abandoned

ship in lifeboats and use Dahak's weapons to pick off his sublight parasites

as easily as a child swatting flies.

The engineer sat in the command chair of the parasite Osir, watching the

gargantuan bulk of the camouflaged mother ship dwindle with distance, and his

smile was ugly. He needed that ship to claim his destiny, but he could still

have it. Once the programs he'd buried in the engineering computers did their

job, every power room aboard Dahak would be so much rubble. Emergency power

would keep Comp Cent going for a time, but when it faded, Comp Cent would die.

And with its death, Dahak's hulk would be his.

"Entering atmosphere, sir," Commander Inanna said from the first officer's

couch.

Chapter Two

"Papa-Mike Control, this is Papa-Mike One-X-Ray, do you copy?"

Lieutenant Commander Colin MacIntyre's radar pinged softly as the Copernicus

mass driver hurled another few tons of lunar rock towards the catcher ships of

the Eden Three habitat, and he watched its out-going trace on the scope as he

waited, reveling in the joy of solo flight, for secondary mission control at

Tereshkova to respond.

"One-X-Ray, Papa-Mike Control," a deep voice acknowledged. "Proceed."

"Papa-Mike Control, One-X-Ray orbital insertion burn complete. It looks good

from here. Over."

"One-X-Ray, that's affirmative. Do you want a couple of orbits to settle in

before initiating?"

"Negative, Control. The whole idea's to do this on my own, right?"

"Affirmative, One-X-Ray."

"Let's do it, then. I show a green board, Pasha-do you confirm?"

"That's an affirmative, One-X-Ray. And we also show you approaching our

transmission horizon, Colin. Communications loss in twenty seconds. You are

cleared to initiate the exercise."

"Papa-Mike Control, One-X-Ray copies. See you guys in a little while."

"Roger, One-X-Ray. Your turn to buy, anyway."

"Like hell it is," MacIntyre laughed, but whatever Papa-Mike Control might

have replied was cut off as One-X-Ray swept beyond the lunar horizon and lost

signal.

MacIntyre ran down his final check list with extra care. It had been

surprisingly hard for the test mission's planners to pick an orbit that would

keep him clear of Nearside's traffic and cover a totally unexplored portion of

the moon's surface. But Farside was populated only by a handful of

observatories and deep-system radio arrays, and the routing required to find

virgin territory combined with the close orbit the survey instruments needed

would put him out of touch with the rest of the human race for the next little

bit, which was a novel experience even for an astronaut these days.

He finished his list and activated his instruments, then sat back and hummed,

drumming on the arms of his acceleration couch to keep time, as his on-board

computers flickered through the mission programs. It was always possible to

hit a glitch, but there was little he could do about it if it happened. He was

a pilot, thoroughly familiar with the electronic gizzards of his one-man

Beagle Three survey vehicle, but he had only the vaguest idea about how this

particular instrument package functioned.

The rate of technical progress in the seventy years since Armstrong was enough

to leave any non-specialist hopelessly behind outside his own field, and the

Geo Sciences team back at Shepherd Center had wandered down some peculiar

paths to produce their current generation of esoteric peekers and pryers.

"Gravitonic resonance" was a marvelous term . . . and MacIntyre often wished

he knew exactly what it meant. But not enough to spend another six or eight

years tacking on extra degrees, so he contented himself with understanding

what the "planetary proctoscope" (as some anonymous wag had christened it) did

rather than how it did it.

Maneuvering thrusters nudged his Beagle into precisely the proper attitude,

and MacIntyre bent a sapient gaze upon the read-outs. Those, at least, he

understood. Which was just as well, since he was slated as primary survey

pilot for the Prometheus Mission, and-

His humming paused suddenly, dying in mid-note, and his eyebrows crooked. Now

that was odd. A malfunction?

He punched keys, and his crooked eyebrows became a frown. According to the

diagnostics, everything was functioning perfectly, but whatever else the moon

might be, it wasn't hollow.

He tugged on his prominent nose, watching the preposterous data appear on the

displays. The printer beside him hummed, producing a hard-copy graphic

representation of the raw numbers, and he tugged harder. According to his

demented instruments, someone must have been a busy little beaver down there.

It looked for all the world as if a vast labyrinth of tunnels, passages, and

God knew what had been carved out under eighty kilometers of solid lunar rock!

He allowed himself a muttered imprecation. Less than a year from mission date,

and one of their primary survey systems-and a NASA design, at that!-had

decided to go gaga. But the thing had worked perfectly in atmospheric tests

over Nevada and Siberia, so what the hell had happened now?

He was still tugging on his nose when the proximity alarm jerked him up in his

couch. Damnation! He was all alone back here, so what the hell was that?

"That" was a blip less than a hundred kilometers astern and closing fast. How

had something that big gotten this close before his radar caught it? According

to his instruments, it was at least the size of one of the old Saturn V

boosters!

His jaw dropped as the bogie made a crisp, clean, instantaneous ninety-degree

turn. Apparently the laws of motion had been repealed on behalf of whatever it

was! But whatever else it was doing, it was also maneuvering to match his

orbit. Even as he watched, the stranger was slowing to pace him.

Colin MacIntyre's level-headedness was one reason he'd been selected for the

first joint US-Soviet interstellar flight crew, but the hair on the back of

his neck stood on end as his craft suddenly shuddered. It was as if something

had touched the Beagle's hull-something massive enough to shake a hundred-ton,

atmosphere-capable, variable-geometry spacecraft.

That shook him out of his momentary state of shock. Whatever this was, no one

had told him to expect it, and that meant it belonged to neither NASA nor the

Russians. His hands flew over his maneuvering console, waking flaring

thrusters, and the Beagle quivered. She quivered, but she didn't budge, and

cold sweat beaded MacIntyre's face as she continued serenely along her orbital

David Weber - Dahak 01 - Mutineer's Moon.pdf

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