Martin H. Greenberg & Larry Segriff - Guardsmen of tomorrow

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Guardsmen of Tomorrow

Edited by Martin H Greenberg and Larry Segriff

Cover art by Bob Warner.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1169.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Putnam Inc.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and

reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received

any payment for the “stripped book.”

Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are

protected by United

States and international trademark law.

with permission of Lit-tle, Brown and Company.

First Printing November 2000 123456789

DAW TRADEMARK HfcCISTHUD

US PAT OFT AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

-MARCA RECISTKADA.

HECHO EN U S A

PRINTED IN THE U S A

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION by Larry Segriff

A SHOW OF FORCE by William H. Keith, Jr.

BLINDFOLD by Robin Wayne Bailey

WIPING OUT by Robert J. Sawyer

SMART WEAPON by Paul Levinson

PROCESSION TO VAR by Andre Norton

THE GEMINI TWINS by Paul Dellinger

THAT DOGGONE VNORPT by Nathan Archer

THE SILVER FLAME by Josepha Sherman

STARDUST by Jean Rabe

KEEPING SCORE by Michael A. Stackpole

ALLIANCES by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

A TIME TO DREAM by Dean Wesley Smith

ENDPOINT INSURANCE by Jane Lindskold

* * *

INTRODUCTION

by Larry Segriff

Adventure stories. FTL ships rocketing through space; the Space Guard keeping vessels safe from

pirates; ray guns, BEMs, and damsels in distress. These are the stories I grew up on, and these are

among the stories I still like to read.

Robert Heinlein. Isaac Asimov. E. E. “Doc” Smith. And, of course, Andre Norton. These are some of

the people whose work I devoured growing up—and, in Andre’s case, whose new books I eagerly look

forward to.

Space opera has changed a lot since the Golden Years of SF. The laws of science are followed more

rigorously, for example (“modern” spaceships don’t bank when they turn), and the people in the stories

tend to be more well-rounded, and even more flawed… more human, if you will. But the heart of space

opera—the rousing sense of adventure, the strong pacing, the exotic settings, the larger-than-life

issues—these haven’t changed. Or, if they’ve changed at all, they’ve only gotten better… as the stories in

this anthology prove.

So sit back, turn the page, and enjoy… but before you do, you might want to buckle your seat belt,

‘cause it’s going to be a wild ride.

A SHOW OF FORCE

by William H. Keith, Jr.

William H. Keith is the author of over fifty novels, divided more or less equally between science fiction

and military technothrillers. While most of his SF is written under his own name, he writes the military

novels under a variety of pseudonyms. His most recent work is Europa Strike, third in a planned series

of military science fiction novels written under the pseudonym Ian Douglas.

Watch your helm, Mr. Sotheby,“ Captain Fifth-Rank Greydon Hazzard said quietly. ”Put a dent in that

thing up ahead and they’re going to be taking it out of your pay for the next ten thousand years

objective.“

“Aye, sir. We’re at fifty-three meters per second, in approach.”

Hazzard could sense the drift of the ship, the tug of gravity, the caress of the photon breeze, the shrill,

insistent drag of the interlocking magnetic fields of planet, star, and galaxy. The frigate Indeterminacy

was edging gently toward the orbital moorings, primary sails folded, her impetus coming now entirely

from way sails and jigs, her secondary drive barely ticking over.

Jacked into the virtual display of the shipnet, Hazzard was immersed in the data feed, with a crystalline,

all-round view of the approach, just as though he were perched out on the fifty-meter thrust of the ship’s

dorsal flying jib spar. The sprawl of Tribaltren Station spread across star-limned blackness dead ahead,

the nearest bastions and field guide towers now just ten kilometers distant, dark and monolithic against

the soft, liquid-light glow of the Milky Way.

The moorings about the station were crowded with other vessels, and there was heavy traffic in the

approach and departure lanes. The steady wink of IFF netbeacons and shipboard running lights crawling

across three dimensions would have been a bewildering tangle of confusion to any observer not equipped

with an AI that could make sense of the chaos and feed it in manageable chunks to the bridge.

“Approach Control signals we’re clear for Bay 12,” the comm officer of the watch announced. That

would be Midshipman cy-Tomlin. Bright kid. Steady, with a streak of laziness that watch-and-watch for

a few subjective months would cure. And of course, with the cy-enhancements, he was of the Chosen

and destined to go far in Union service.

“Very well. I see it.” Text and flickering symbols overlaid sections of Hazzard’s view of the sensory

feedscape around the vessel. He could see the steadily incoming trickle of navigational data both from

the Indy’s helm and from Tribaltren Station Approach Control, see the traffic sites of other ships in the

moorings, see the readouts for all departments and decks of his own ship. All of that information played

across his brain, instantly accessible, but his responsibility was the whole, not any given part. He held

back, aware of the rhythm of ship operations, giving orders when needed, but letting his people do their

jobs. Indy’s officer complement was a good one, well trained and experienced. Her crew, like most

crews in the fleet, was a melage of gutter sweepings, metplex gangers, and pressed c-men, but. by the

Goddess, they were his sweepings, gangers, and c-men, and he was proud of how they’d shaken out

over the past three months subjective.

He took a moment to check crew deployment on the

Indy’s starboard foremast, a constellation of golden stars, each light representing in netgraphic clarity the

position of a sailhandler maintaining the delicate set and trim of the 2,000-ton frigate’s spacesails. At the

moment, only the fore-ways’Is were set, giving the ship just enough of a vector that she could maintain

way.

The image of Tommis Pardoe, Indeterminacy’s First Lieutenant, materialized to the right of Hazzard’s

viewpoint. “A good deployment, First,” he said. “The new hands shaped up well.” Indy had been on

blockade duty off Danibar, three months subjective pacing back and forth at near-c, which had translated

to almost two years of tau minus.

“Thank you, Captain.” He sounded worried.

“Problem, First?”

“Just wondering what the urgency is, sir. The dispatch calling us in to Tribaltren was still smoking when it

came across the comm station. ‘Report immediately,’ it said. Where’s the war?”

“All around us, Tom. We’ll find out in a few hours which particular part of the war is so urgent.”

“I suppose so, sir. But it’s not like they don’t have plenty of assets right here in port.”

His senior lieutenant had a point. Closer in to the mooring station roads, the ship traffic ahead resembled

a swarm of angry stingflies, everything from service bugs, LO coasters, and single-sailed planetary

luggers to huge three-decker first-rates.

An alert klaxon sounded through the shipnet. “Bridge, port lookout! We have a collision alert. Incoming

at port high at two-zero-three plus one nine!”

Hazzard spun his point of view, looking off Indy’s port beam. A ship moved athwart the blue-white

crescent of Tribaltren IV.

“Mass reading! Ninety-eight thousand tons, range 705 kilometers. It’s a first-rater… Goddess!”

That last exclamation accompanied the deployment of a dozen sails, spreading across the first-rater’s

yards. She was huge and blunt-prowed, a five-hundred-meter dagger shape carrying several square

kilometers of mesh sail, a Galactic Union ship of the line. On Indeterminacy‘s sensory feeds, she was

painted a patchwork red and black, with white trim highlighting the lines of sealed firing ports along her

three gundecks. The G.U. flag materialized across her foreways’ls as their surface displays altered. A

second emblem shimmered into visibility beneath the first, a family crest in red, gold, and black.

“She’s the Victor, Captain,” Lieutenant Pardoe observed. “One-oh-two. Captain First-Rank Arren

Sullivese, commanding. She’s flying Admiral Starlord cy-Dennever’s flag.”

“She’s closing, Captain,” the helm watch called. “Oblique approach at one point one kilometer per

second! Looks like she’s trying to cut us off at the moorings.”

“Damn it,” cy-Tomlin said, “we have right-of-way.”

Hazzard scowled, the expression safely hidden within the anonymity of the shipnet. Victor had been on

normal approach, her velocity a bit high for that approach corridor. As soon as her helm AIs had

identified a collision danger with the frigate Indeterminacy, though, Victor’s captain had crowded on

more sail, hoping to pass the Indy’s prow, rather than slowing in order to pass astern.

Technically, Victor should back down and allow the Indeterminacy to proceed; vessels to port and

zenith always had right-of-way over ships to starboard and nadir. However…

“You feel big enough to argue with him, Tomlin?” Hazzard said gently. “Maneuvering! Back full!” In any

case, Victor was the burdened vessel right now… burdened with too much mass and too much speed in

a claustrophobically narrow volume of space. First-raters had all the maneuvering finesse of a

Thaldessian bloaterslug, especially when compared to the nimble sail-handling elegance of a frigate. It

made more sense for the tiny Indeterminacy to defer to the drifting mountain of the Victor. “Bring us to

zero closure with the station!”

“Maneuvering back full, aye, sir!”

“Spread more sail! Deploy main tops’ls, port, starboard, and dorsal!”

“Loosing main tops’ls, aye!”

Like all trihull lightjammers, Indy possessed three sets of masts and field-guide spars, canted out and

forward from port, starboard, and dorsal fairings, mizzen and main masts astern of the gundecks,

foremasts well forward, nine masts in all, not counting the trinity of bowsprits reaching far out ahead of

her prow dome.

Sails unfurled, popping taut under the snap of static fields. Their leading faces shimmered, then went

mirror-silver as their trailing surfaces dulled to black, perfectly reflecting the star-misted black of space

and the red-brown, black, and gray battlements of Tribaltren Station ahead. As yards pivoted, the

reflective surfaces of the sails caught the light of Tribaltren’s sun, as the mesh beneath the adaptive

surface display grabbed hold of the local magnetic fields. The total energy striking the sails from forward

was equivalent to less than a ten-thousandth of a gravity, and yet…

“Drive room! Emergency maneuvering! Cut in the main drive!”

Vector drive fields amplified any acceleration, however minute, drawing on the literally inexhaustible

energy of quantum space through a singularity-induced Cashimir cascade to augment the ship’s vector or,

as in this case, to arrest Indeterminacy’s forward momentum. Since everything within the field was

affected uniformly, there was no sensation of deceleration as the Indy slowed sharply. A

two-thousand-ton vessel moving with a relative closure rate of over fifty meters per second could not

stop on the proverbial tenth-credit piece. Still, the Indeterminacy slowed rapidly as the Victor loomed

huge to port.

“Incoming signal from Approach Control,” cy-Tomlin said.

“I should think so. Let’s hear it.”

“ ‘Slow to full stop and yield to incoming traffic.’”

“Already in hand. Mid. Acknowledge.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Too little and too scrabbing late,” Pardoe muttered. ‘’What are those people playing at over there?“

Hazzard didn’t know if he was complaining about Approach Control’s tardiness or the heels-in

maneuver Victor was attempting to pull off. The Victor was still two kilometers off Indy’s port beam,

but through the magnification inherent in the ship optical sensory feed, the immense vessel loomed like a

passing cliff face, with sponsons, barbettes, field projector arrays, and fairings turning hull metal into a

landscape of faceted surfaces and complex topographies, with masts like forest giants, with gun ports

grinning down her gundeck modules like bared teeth.

“Now,” Pardoe said, “just so long as he doesn’t—”

A shudder rolled through the Indeterminacy, a long, crunching lurch that seemed to rack the brain and

twist the stomach. For a jarring few seconds. Hazzard’s linkfeed was interrupted; he was plunged into

blackness and, for just an instant, was back on his jackrack, hot, drenched with sweat, as other

command deck personnel shouted and screamed in the echoing close darkness around him.

Then the feed came back on-line. Still queasy—he hated field interface transits—he scanned the cascade

of data on his visual field. There were reports of disorientation, jacker shock, and obvious confusion…

but no damage, thank the Goddess, and no link dissociations.

“Damn them!” cy-Tomlin’s voice said.

“As you were, Mid,” Pardoe warned. But his own voice was barely under control. Victor had popped

her drive field to further slow her lumbering mass just as she cut across the Indy’s bow. Vector drive

fields worked on the fabric of space-time, a true space drive; a kind of curdling of bent space rippled

along the interface between the inside of a deployed VDF and what lay outside. Though not dangerous if

encountered at low speeds, it was disorienting and could damage delicate electronics. At high relative

velocities, it could generate disruption enough to shred the largest vessel into scattered debris.

“Signal, Victor to Indeterminacy.” Cy-Tomlin reported. “Ware our wake!”

“The bastards did that on purpose!” Sotheby said.

“I very much doubt that, Lieutenant,” he replied. “They were already moving too fast, and spreading that

extra sail moved them faster. They had to drag their fields to decelerate in time.” Still, it did seem to be a

calculated insult. As Indy came to a near-dead stop, Victor drifted across her bow a scant half kilometer

distant, making for Mooring Bay 16. Cooling vanes like squared-off wings, the vast reach of her sails,

shimmering as they fought to slow the behemoth, and the deadly complexity of the first-rater’s aft

maneuvering drive Venturis passed slowly, a moving mountain. Indeterminacy rocked and shuddered

again with the passing of the big ship’s wake, and then the way ahead was clear once more.

Hazzard let out a slow breath. Things could have worked out much worse. “Let’s have the extra sail in

now, Mr. Par-doe. Set sail for ahead, maneuvering dead slow.”

“Furling all main tops’ls, Captain. Set sail for ahead, maneuver dead slow.”

“What do you think, Captain?” Pardoe said on their private link. “Was Sullivese trying to be flashy for

the admiral’s benefit? Or was he just being incompetent?”

“Arren is not incompetent,” Hazzard replied, a bit more sharply than he’d intended. Sometimes, Pardoe

spoke his mind a little too freely. “Maybe they’re just in a hurry.”

“Aye, sir. And maybe some cyberenhanced Starlords think they’re just a rung or two higher up the

Darwin ladder than the rest of us.”

Hazzard said nothing. Pardoe’s bitter aside had struck just a little too close abeam. Their blockade

deployment at Danibar had been cut short by the arrival of dispatches requiring Indeterminacy to make

for Tribaltren Station with all due haste and for Greydon Haz/ard to report to the Port Admiral’s office

immediately upon docking. With so many other vessels available within a few days’ travel of Tribaltren,

why had the Indy been called in?

Immediately, fortunately, was a flexible term in the Galactic Union Navy, however. There was the

routine of seeing to it that the ship was safely docked, of course. Most of the minutiae could be properly

left to his First Lieutenant, but there were reports to electronically sign and a grumpy Port Disbursement

Officer to cajole into giving an upcheck to the purser’s request for new condenser tubes for the galley’s

stasis units.

And, perhaps more immediate, he needed to get presentable first. One did not visit a two-star admiral in

shipboard skins. When he chose to make himself visible on the shipnet, of course, his icon could take on

any appearance he chose… which meant in uniform. When he came fully awake on the jackrack,

however, the crisp and spotless Navy blacks were gone. In their place were gray skins soaked with

sweat, and all the usual accoutrements for waste absorption, cooling, and nutrient tubes. A jackrack

technician helped him unplug, took his helmet with its forest of electronic feeds and cables, and stood by

as he swung his feet onto the steel grillwork of the deck.

Forty minutes later, freshly showered with the last of this deciyear’s personal water ration, Hazzard was

clad in his one decent set of dress black-and-golds, complete with shoulder half-cloak, visored cap,

medals and decorations, and his personal computer woven into the left arm of his jacket, from shoulder

to wrist, in closely worked patterns of what looked like liquid gold.

“You loog good, zur,” Cadlud, his steward remarked, brushing his uniform with a static cleaner. The

Irdikad hovered over him as it worked, its single eye in an elephantine head studying his uniform in minute

inspection as all three tentacles twitched the fall of his cloak into perfect line. “Zhip-zhape ond sqvared

avay.”

“Thank you, Cadlud. I just hope the admiral thinks the same.”

A launch took him from the Indy, now moored alongside the towering bulk of the station, across to one

of the turreted tower complexes extending above the main body of the twelve-kilometer-wide facility.

The Port Admiral’s office was decorated in Late Jingivid Imperial, all mirrors and black trim in a jarring

cacophony of light and reflections. Admiral Dalim cy-Koenin was a blunt, bullet-headed man with a

no-nonsense attitude and little patience for protocol. Hazzard wondered, in fact, how the man had

managed to survive politically long enough to be awarded two stars. Cy-Koenin’s implants encased parts

of his head and were visible on the backs of his hands and extending down each finger to the tip.

Well, that, as much as anything else, explained his rank and considerable power.

“You’re late” was the way he greeted Hazzard, as the office door dilated and the ship captain stepped

between the Marine sentries and into cy-Koenin’s inner sanctum.

“Yes, sir,” he replied. Hazzard was familiar enough with the ways of admirals to know that excuses were

neither desired nor appropriate.

Wall screens displayed deep space—not the view from Tribaltren, but someplace closer in toward the

Galactic Core, teeming with orange suns and the mingled, softer glows of pale nebulae. The mirrors,

black trim, and star projections made it difficult to see where the walls of the room really were. Hazzard

wondered if he could even find the door again.

Another man was in the room, reclining in a black synthliquid chair. Lean, hard, and angular, his face was

faceted as though carved from obsidian. Both eyes were covered by a sensor array implant, and he was,

if anything, more heavily intertwined with hardware than the Port Admiral. “Admiral,” cy-Koenin said,

“this is the young man I was telling you about. Captain Hazzard, Admiral Starlord cy-Dennever.”

Hazzard inclined his head, as courtesy required. “My lord.”

Cy-Dennever looked him over coldly. “A noncy? My dear Dal, you are joking, I trust.”

Noncy. Non-cybernetically augmented. That again…

“I believe you will find me up to any task required of me, my lord.”

He sniffed and continued to address cy-Koenin, pointedly ignoring Hazzard. “I specifically require a

frigate captain capable of leading my in-system squadron and with a master’s understanding of the

Ordiku Anarchate and the political situation there. A noncy simply will not do.”

“Captain Hazzard is what’s available, Admiral,” cy-Koenin replied. “And he has personal knowledge of

Kaden. Don’t you, Hazzard?”

“Yes, sir. I was an assistant diplomatic naval attache to the Anarchate home world for a year. My

steward is Irdikad, in fact.”

Cy-Dennever gave him another look, harder this time. “And how long ago was this?”

“Oh, about eight years subjective, my lord.”

“How long objective? Things do change groundside while we’re on highspace approach. Or hadn’t you

noticed?”

Hazzard had to consult his PC. He’d minused some subjective with this latest deployment at Danibar.

How much? Nearly two years, this time.

“‘Nineteen years objective, sir.”

“Nineteen years. Well, you’ll find the political situation within the Anarchate radically transformed. I’m

not so sure you will be of any use to me.”

“Their politics may have changed, my lord, but I doubt that the Irdikad have. They’re solitary, traditional,

meticulous, a bit stuffy, even stubborn at times. They are also unflinchingly loyal.” He smiled. “Despite

their interest in tradition—their recorded history goes back something like nine thousand years-—they

respect, you might even say revere, madness. Insanity is rare, but it’s granted a special status in their

culture, maybe to avoid the problems of stagnation.”

“Ahem, yes,” cy-Dennever said. “All very amusing, I’m sure. But the facts of the matter are that the

Anarchate is now in negotiations with the P’aaseni Orthodoxate. The Ministry of Political Intelligence

assures me that a decision by the Anarchate is imminent, perhaps within the next ten days, and that

Orthodoxate ships will almost certainly deploy before then to, urn, convince the Irdikad to come along.”

“The Irdikad volume is small, but strategically placed,” cy-Koenin added. “They have a fleet… a small

one, true, but one capable of causing some considerable inconvenience should we extend our operations

in that quarter. Lord cy-Dennever’s orders are to present a show of force at the Anarchate capital.”

“Exactly. My squadron has firepower sufficient to convince the Irdikads that joining with the Doxies

would not be in their best interests.”

“I should think their best interests would be obvious,” Hazzard said. “The Orthodoxate is

anthropocentric. Rather virulently so, in fact. The Irdikads would be reduced to slave status or worse.”

“Obviously.” Cy-Dennever sniffed. “And obviously, too, the Doxies are on their best behavior until the

Anarchate planetary defense batteries are safely in their hands. Remember, most Irdikad dealings have

been with the Union so far. They are a simple people. To them, all humans are the same. Planetary

genocide by what they consider to be an honorable and civilized species is probably utterly beyond their

comprehension.”

Hazzard held his peace at the patronizing nonsense of “a simple people.” The man acted like he was a

few genes short of a full chromosome.

If cy-Dennever represented Homo sapiens superioris, though, as his kind so often claimed, maybe he

simply wasn’t done evolving yet.

“The question of Anarchate neutrality is in the hands of the diplomats,” cy-Koenin said. “Your mission,

Captain Hazzard, will be to take command of the in-system squadron, as a part of Admiral

cy-Dennever’s diplomatic show of force.”

Hazzard digested this. The in-system squadron would be the mission’s cutting edge, of course, patrolling

within a few million kilometers of the Anarchate home world. Admiral cy-Dennever would have the

heavies, the main squadron’s ship of the line out on the fringes of the Kaden system, accelerating back

and forth at near-c so as to be ready for a near-immediate jump in-system at need. “Aye, sir,” he said.

“It is vital, absolutely vital,” cy-Dennever put in, “that you not fire on Irdikad assets. Enemy vessels, of

course… but under no circumstances will you fire on the locals, even if you are provoked.”

“You’re saying, my lord, that we can’t shoot even if they shoot at us first?”

“Well done! That is precisely what I am saying. These negotiations are too delicate, and too much is at

stake to risk…” He stopped and looked at cy-Koenin. “Are you certain there are no augmented frigate

captains available? I can’t be expected to trust a mere biological’s reflexes or instincts in a situation this

precarious! He doesn’t even have the hardwiring to handle his ship properly! His vessel very nearly

fouled mine during our approach a few hours ago!”

Cy-Koenin glanced at Hazzard, then looked hard at cy-Dennever, saying nothing outwardly. Hazzard

decided the two must have shifted to a telepathic exchange, one he was not privy to. Micro-radio

transceivers implanted in their skulls allowed Starlords to converse privately, in much the same way that

Hazzard could open a private channel to Par-doe when they both were on-line.

At last, cy-Dennever sighed and looked away. “Very well. But you are responsible, sir, if this goes

wrong!”

“Of course, cy-Dennever,” cy-Koenin replied.

“What ships will I command?” Hazzard asked.

“Besides Indeterminacy,” cy-Koenin said, “there is Decider, a frigate of thirty-three guns, Captain-sixth

Bellemew. The other vessels are smaller… Swift, twenty-seven; Fire Angel and Ferocious, both

twenty-one; and Uriel, of eighteen guns. All five are already on-station or will be by the time you arrive.

Four line battleships will be on blockade station out-system within two days objective. Admiral

cy-Dennever’s Victor will bring that to five, under his flag. Your full operational orders will be

transmitted to your ship. You are clear for departure as soon as you complete taking on necessary stores

and provisions.”

“Aye, aye, my lord.”

“Should be an easy deployment, Greydon,” cy-Koenin added, dropping into less formal speech. “The

Irdikad aren’t hostile, and they won’t pick a fight with one of our line battle squadrons!”

“Clarification,” cy-Dennever said. “They’re not hostile yet.”

“Mm,” cy-Koenin said. “As always, minus-tau is against us. We need you at Kaden as quickly as

possible. Assume one day for refit, five days for the trans-c jump to Kaden. You will have a three-day

margin, some of which will be lost to minus-tau.”

“Tau is of the essence, you might say,” cy-Dennever added, smirking at his own joke.

“Admiral cy-Dennever will be there in Victor within five days more,” cy-Koenin went on, ignoring him.

“It will be up to you to assess the situation when you arrive, and to report to Admiral cy-Farrol, currently

in command of the Kaden Squadron. You will have dispatches and orders to deliver to him.”

“Aye, my lord.”

“Dismissed, Captain Hazzard. Inform me when your vessel is fit for space.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

As he left, the two Starlords were arguing in low but nova-hot tones.

Twenty-one hours later, Indeterminacy boosted for c and the jump to Kaden, the Anarchate capital,

without even time enough for Hazzard to visit Cynthea, his portwife at Trib-altren. Though the Indy cast

off from the station at almost the same moment as the Victor, the frigate, with far less mass to boost,

accelerated more quickly. Within another hour, the Indy was tacking on nines to her ninety-nine percent

of light speed, as the universe, crowded forward by the distortions of relativistic travel, took on the

appearance of a ring of frosty light encircling the prow, and objective hours in the universe outside passed

like minutes to the men and women crowded within the frigate’s steel and duraplast hull.

A vessel’s spacesails could ride the almost nonexistent currents of light, gravity, and magnetic flux, while

her Cashimir cascade array boosted milli-G accelerations to accelerations measured in kilogravities. As

the ship crowded c, a phantasm seeming to recede like Xeno’s Paradox the harder the ship boosted,

space around the vessel turned strange, warped by the starship’s own pyramiding relativistic mass. A

command from the bridge, and the trans-c primaries engaged, kicking her into highspace where they

devoured light-years by the handful.

But star travel came with a cost. Each time a ship approached the pace of light before engaging her

highspace drives, relativistic effects invoked the steadily mounting curse of minus-tau. Three minutes

subjective at 99.9 percent of the speed of light translated as almost an hour objective; sixteen weeks on

patrol at .95 c saw the passage of over a year. C-duty, as it was called, carried c-men and of-ficers alike

into the future, sundering the bonds of family and friends left behind.

It made for tighter bonding among the men and women serving aboard for, after accumulating a

minus-tau of a scant few decades objective, they had few ties left to the planet-lubber populations of

world surfaces. Others within the crew became family…

Greydon Hazzard, though, had no one aboard. As captain, he was expected to stand apart, to command

without seeming to have favorites or cliques. It made for a painfully lonely life, one marked by periods of

watch and watch… and the inexpressibly vast deeps of emptiness between the sundered suns.

“Tell me about your world, Cadlud. Tell me about your people.”

They sat in Hazzard’s day cabin, a tiny office aft of the gun decks. Or, rather, Hazzard sat behind his

desk, while Cadlud squatted in a bulky huddle in the center of the deck. Irdikad were humanoid, more or

less, if massive, blunt, and elephantine to human sensibilities. Each shoulder sprouted a heavy tentacle

with a graceful, sinuous tip; a third grew from the face, above the inverted-V slash of a mouth and

beneath the single, slit-pupiled eye. Most Irdikad wore ornate robes with patterns expressing individual

tastes and artistry, but Cadlud generally went naked aboard ship. Indeterminacy‘s crew spaces were

warmer than he was used to, and his species seemed never to have developed nudity taboos… quite

possibly because their genitals were located in their central arm, and sex for them was the equivalent of a

casual handshake.

“My people are my people,” the Irdikad said with stolid indifference. The tips of his tentacles twitched to

some emotion beyond human ken. “There is little to zay.”

“Well… you could tell me why they’re interested in joining with the Orthodoxate. The Doxies and their

allies are all human, or human-derived. Some of them hate non-humans, have vowed to eradicate them

across the Galaxy. Why would any nonhuman civilization join such an alliance as that?”

Cadlud stared at him for a long moment with that liquid, glittering eye. “Zur, many humans, they make

miztaig. Think all Irdikad are zame, think zame. Not zo.”

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GuardsmenofTomorrowEditedbyMartinHGreenbergandLarrySegriffCopyright©2000byTeknoBooksandLarrySegriff.AllRightsReserved.CoverartbyBobWarner.DAWBookCollectorsNo.1169.DAWBooksaredistributedbyPenguinPutnamInc.Allcharactersandeventsinthisbookarefictitious.Anyresemblancetopersonslivingordeadisstrictlycoinc...

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Martin H. Greenberg & Larry Segriff - Guardsmen of tomorrow

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