Robert Chilson - Per Strategem

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Per Stratagem

By Robert Chilson

To the true barbarians, Truth and Justice mean supporting a strong, victorious leader. It’s not that they

lack loyalty-they are loyal to Truth and Justice.

The sound burst on Rahjikah at the speed of light, swelling from an infinitesimal whisper he had not

consciously heard, to an ear-straining, wide-ranging yell in mere seconds-as if the others were hurtling

toward him at appalling speeds. Which might, he thought grimly, be the case. However, once the sound

reached that incredible volume, it grew no louder. It was coming from somewhere above him-ahead of

him on his line of flight-and from south of the ecliptic. About thirty degrees off, in both directions, he

thought, scanning space swiftly. The sound was not as loud as it seemed; much of the volume was illusion:

it had to be very loud to be heard at this distance. There were no ships near.

For it had to be a ship. It had to be more than that-it had to be one of the ships from Outside. The output

from it was all amplitude modulated, sounding like an agonized cry, or a roar of anger, or a bellowing

matting call-some intense emotion of some titanic beast. There was no intelligence in it, and though it

varied second by second, it remained curiously the same.

Rahjikah cut his exhaust, then his acceleration. His cone-shaped head eased in its circular collar, but he

held it rigid, not to lose his bearings. His body elongated from the spherical high-acceleration shape into

its normal egg shape. At his posterior end, his exhaust jet, a conical bone and horn organ, turned

sideways at right angles to his line of flight. A short, sharp spurt of exhaust caused him to tumble slowly,

anterior and posterior tentacles extending, their receptors listening to space.

Another spurt of exhaust stopped his rotation, a cloud of steam expanding, instantly shot through with

crystals of ice and carbon dioxide, which latter as quickly evaporated. He applied a tiny fraction of his

normal cruising acceleration, just enough to keep him from tumbling; it would take hours to brake down

to zero from his velocity, even at full. The Outsider ship was now somewhere below him. He raised his

head on its long neck and tilted it to look after over the swelling horny curve of his body.

His posterior tentacles picked up the astonishing vocal range of the ship; much of it was of too long a

wavelength to be detected by the ears in his head.

He took time out for though. If this was indeed an Outsider ship, it was important that it be captured for

the Sidilikah Swarm. It was known that two other such ships had been captured-by none other than the

Swarm’s worse enemy, the Dahjilahdim Swarm. It was only a matter of time until the larger of the two be

brought against the Sikah. This could not be it; the Dahdim were still fighting among themselves. The

smaller one was known to have been destroyed accidentally, along with a number of the Dahdim

Swarmheads. The ships obviously had great powers, but how much of what they’d learned was truth,

exaggeration, or outright lie could no be known.

He made up his mind, fully aware of the consequences of error: he would attempt to seize this ship-alone.

True, his very ignorance might kill him. But he was familiar with the language of the Outsiders; he, of all

the Sikah’s Intelligence Offices, had penetrated closest to the Dahdim’s Outsider ship-though he had

never seen it. And lastly, he was Rahjikah, the Sikah’s youngest, ablest, and most ambitious Captain of

Intelligence.

His hearts began to race, sending energy-rich blood swirling through his vocal organs. Straining every

nerve, he forced his voice up to the incredibly high frequency of pulses the Outsiders used, a shrill

scream, one word repeated: "Help! Help! Help!" Pulse-modulated; unmistakably intelligent. Its volume

was as nothing to the output of the ship, but it should be detectable thought it. Sending out that shrill call,

he had time for a few moments of uneasy wonder as to what kind of animals could be making such

fantastic noise.

He suppressed the incipient fear. He had reached his present high position partly because, early in life, he

had developed the ability to push all doubt and fears into the lower part of his mind, allowing him to deal

with the situation on a rational basis. Once the situation had been resolved the doubts rarely recurred.

It was obvious, he told himself, that the Outsiders had bred up some very special draft animals to propel

their ships. He had heard that, unlike the ships of the didahdin, they could actually accelerate faster than

a lone individual.

Pounding back through the bellowing of the ship’s draft animals came a cold, hard, precise voice; a voice

so utterly emotionless that even Rahjikah of Sidilikah Intelligence all but quailed. Even as his tentacles

extended, their nerves picking up and triangulating on the beam, another quaver of uneasiness uncoiled in

him. This was the antithesis of that mindless bawling. Those knife-edged signals might have been

impressed on the ether by cold steel and crystal rather than blood, nerve, and horn. He literally could

detect no rounding of the pulses; they were as absolutely square as it was possible to be. Had the

Outsiders also bred animals for communicating? Surely it must be, he thought, shaken.

The signal, in Outsider code, was :"Identify yourself. Identify yourself."

He hesitated for several seconds, then sent back "Rahjikah of Sidilikah Swarm." On every repetition he

used a different synonym for "Swarm." There were a number of these in the book he had stolen from the

Dahdim, but as none had been translated satisfactorily, he had no idea which was nearest. He guessed

that the Outsider’s social organization was quite different from that of the more advanced didahdin. Aside

form that, only the operator "of" would be meaningful to them, but the structure would suggest a name.

They would undoubtedly be suspicious-they’d lost two ships in the Inner Sphere within a Sikah year-but

this encounter should also suggest an opportunity to learn of them.

"What are you? What are you? What are you?"

Rahjikah listened to it, shaken. Triangulating again on the beam, he calculated that the other ship was

making somewhere between then and a hundred times his present velocity. At his top acceleration-both

of them-it would take a week of maneuvering for them to match velocities. He couldn’t begin to survive a

week of high acceleration without food.

He was taking a desperate enough chance as it was, though he was not given to worrying much about

such things, in taking this hop across the system. He was taking a chord across the Inner Sphere,

foregoing the possibility of stopping and eating on the way. Even drifting for days between cutoff and

reverse would still leave him exhausted and ravenous when he braked down to zero in Dahdim territory.

Only his superlative physical development made it possible.

His only hope must be that the Outsiders really could maneuver at very high accelerations-high enough to

offset the difference in their velocities.

Again he answered. Their question had two possible meanings; he gave the answer least damaging to

himself. It was also the one they’d be most interested in hearing, he thought; it was a question how much

the Outsiders knew of the people of the Inner Sphere. It was important that he stay near to the truth until

he knew how much they knew. "A member of the didahdin-the Fifth Race," he said.

A comparatively long time passed, and he thought of the captain and staff officers discussing the

encounter. The conference would be exhaustive, in view of the strangeness of the situation to them, but it

could only have one conclusion.

Another signal came long before the conference could have ended. Naturally they would attempt to learn

as much as possible before taking action.

"Are you in danger?"

"Negative. Alert only." Rahjikah repeated that several times while he considered his next words. "I have

information of great value to Outsiders," he added.

"We wish to learn of other Outsiders in this System," came the cold voice. "Have you any information on

them?"

"Affirmative. General knowledge only. Can you match velocities with me?"

"Affirmative. Matching velocities; contact, twenty-five minutes. You know our code," came that chill

voice, "yet you have only general knowledge of other Outsiders."

"I learned it from a book," he told them absently. He had translated the Outsiders’ time measurements

into didahdin and was aghast. It was not possible; flesh and blood could not stand it. It meant

accelerating at hundreds of times his absolute top. Perhaps his original estimates of distance and direction

were off. In that case it must be a very loud, small ship close to him. He could not yet pick up an echo

form it, but surely its exhaust would be visible. The draft exhaust would be visible. The draft animals

would have considerable exhaust, and they were close enough to the sun for it to be clearly visible.

He had been hearing pulses form the Outsider’s echo-sounding organ for some time-it must be another

specially-bred animal. Like the voice, the pulses had absolute precision. To the limit of his detection, the

pulses were exactly as long as one wavelength of the continuous wave. It would be marvelous for

doppler.

Presumably the ship had better detection than he did, but as he was quite small and it large, he expected

to detect it before it did him.

The bellowing of the draft animals had been growing louder and louder, seemingly, astonishingly, to be

coming from half the sky, as if the ship was hundreds of miles in diameter, but then it abruptly faded to

half its former strength, continuing to fade to a mere murmur. The weak pulses from the ship grew

noticeably stronger, but were still as weak as I it were at an enormous distance-but his own pulses began

to be echoed back to him from close by, seeming very strong and very fuzzy beside the ship’s. Rahjikah

had a moment of pure astonishment as he realized that the ship probably had had him in detection

probably from the moment he first heard its sounding pulses. On such low volume!

Then he was overwhelmed by his own echoes, proclaiming the ship to be huge beyond comprehension.

He glared in its direction, made out a star, moving. At that distance he saw it. Even if it was mirror-plated

for some insane reason, it shouldn’t be so visible. But as it drove deliberately toward him, swelling and

swelling apparently without limit, he was forced to admit that it was as big as it seemed. Its density was

not too high, about twice that of ice, yet it must have massed a million of the Outsider’s tons. It literally

was as big as some inhabited islands he had seen. Sidilikah Central and such large planets were millions

of times as missive, of course, enough to hole comae of gas around them. But this was a ship!

His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden feeling of disorientation. Space seemed to pulse around him,

as if a wave-front of electromagnetic distortion from a solar flare had swept through the area. In that

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Robert Chilson - Per Strategem

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