David Weber - Dahak 01 - Mutineer's Moon

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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

path, attitude unchanged. That couldn't possibly be happening-but, then, none

of this could be happening, could it?

He chopped that thought off and punched more keys. One thing he had was plenty

of maneuvering mass-Beagles were designed for lengthy deployments, and he'd

tanked from the Russkies' Gagarin Platform before departure on his trans-lunar

flight plan-and the ship shuddered wildly as her main engines came alive.

The full-power burn should have slammed him back in his couch and sent the

survey ship hurtling forward, but the thundering engines had no more effect

than his maneuvering thrusters, and he sagged in his seat. Then his jaw

clenched as the Beagle finally started to move-not away from the stranger, but

towards it! Whatever that thing on his radar was, it was no figment of his

imagination.

His mind raced. The only possible explanation was that the blip had stuck him

with some sort of . . . of tractor beam, and that represented more than any

mere quantum leap in applied physics, which meant the blip did not come from

any Terran technology. He did not indulge himself with any more dirty words

like "impossible" or "incredible," for it was all too evident that it was

possible. By some unimaginable quirk of fate, Somebody Else had come calling

just as Mankind was about to reach out to the stars.

But whoever They were, he couldn't believe they'd just happened to turn up

while he was Farside with blacked-out communications. They'd been waiting for

him, or someone like him, so they must have been observing Earth for quite

some time. But if they had, they'd had time to make their presence known-and

to monitor Terrestrial communication systems. Presumably, then, they knew how

to contact him but had chosen not to do so, and that suggested a lot of

things, none particularly pleasant. The salient point, however, was that they

obviously intended to collect him, Beagle and all, for purposes of their own,

and Colin MacIntyre did not intend to be collected if he could help it.

The exhaustive Prometheus Mission briefings on first contact flowed through

his mind, complete with all the injunctions to refrain from hostile acts, but

it was one thing to consider yourself expendable in pursuit of communication

with aliens you might have gone calling on. It was quite another when they

dropped in on you and started hauling you in like a fish!

His face hardened, and he flipped up the plastic shield over the fire control

panel. There'd been wrung hands at the notion of arming a "peaceful"

interstellar probe, but the military, which provided so many of the pilots,

had enjoyed the final word, and MacIntyre breathed a silent breath of thanks

that this was a full-dress training mission as weapon systems came alive. He

fed targeting data from his radar and reached for the firing keys, then

paused. They hadn't tried talking to him, but neither had he tried talking to

them.

"Unknown spacecraft, this is NASA Papa-Mike One-X-Ray," he said crisply into

his radio. "Release my ship and stand off."

There was no answer, and he glowered at the blip.

"Release my ship or I will fire on you!"

Still no reply, and his lips thinned. All right. If the miserable buggers

didn't even want to talk . . .

Three small, powerful missiles blasted away from the Beagle. They weren't

nukes, but each carried a three-hundred-kilo warhead, and they had a perfect

targeting setup. He tracked them all the way in on radar.

And absolutely nothing happened.

Commander MacIntyre sagged in his couch. Those missiles hadn't been spoofed by

ECM or exploded short of the target. They'd just . . . vanished, and the

implications were disturbing. Most disturbing.

He cut his engines. There was no point wasting propellant, and he and his

captors would be clearing Heinlein's transmission horizon shortly anyway.

He tried to remember if any of the other Beagles were up. Judging by his own

total lack of success, they would be none too effective against Whoever-They-

Were, but nothing else in this vicinity was armed at all. He rather thought

Vlad Chernikov was at Tereshkova, but the flight schedules for the Prometheus

crews had grown so hectic of late it was hard to keep track.

His Beagle continued to move towards the intruder, and now he was turning

slowly nose-on to it. He leaned back as nonchalantly as possible, watching

through his canopy. He ought to see them just about . . . now.

Yes, there they were. And mighty disappointing they were, too. He didn't

really know what he'd expected, but that flattened, featureless, round-tipped,

double-ended cylinder certainly wasn't it. They were barely a kilometer clear,

now, but aside from the fact that the thing was obviously artificial, it

seemed disappointingly undramatic. There was no sign of engines, hatches,

ports, communication arrays . . . nothing at all but smooth, mirror-bright

metal. Or, at least, he assumed it was metal.

He checked his chronometer. Communications should come back in any second now,

and his lips stretched in a humorless smile at how Heinlein Base was going to

react when the pair of them came over the radar horizon. It ought to be-

They stopped. Just like that, with no apparent sense of deceleration, no

reaction exhaust from the cylinder, no . . . anything.

He gaped at the intruder in disbelief. Or, no, not disbelief, exactly. More

like a desire to disbelieve. Especially when he realized they were motionless

relative to the lunar surface, neither climbing away nor tumbling closer. The

fact that the intruder could do that was somehow more terrifying than anything

else that had happened-a terror made only worse by the total, prosaic

familiarity of his own cockpit-and he clutched the arms of his couch, fighting

an irrational conviction that he had to be falling.

But then they were moving again, zipping back the way they'd come at a

velocity that beggared the imagination, all with absolutely no sense of

acceleration. His attitude relative to the cylinder altered once more; it was

behind him now, its rounded tip barely a hundred meters clear of his own

engines, and he watched the lunar surface blur below him.

His Beagle and its captor swooped lower, arrowing straight for a minor crater,

and his toes curled inside his flight boots while his hands tried to rip the

arms off his couch. The things he'd already seen that cylinder do told his

intellect they were not about to crash, but instinct was something else again.

He fought his panic stubbornly, refusing to yield to it, yet his gasp of

relief was explosive when the floor of the crater suddenly zipped open.

The cylinder slowed to a few hundred kilometers per hour, and MacIntyre felt

the comfort of catatonia beckoning to him, but something made him fight it as

obstinately as he had fought his panic. Whatever had him wasn't going to find

him curled up and drooling when they finally stopped, by God!

A mighty tunnel enveloped them, a good two hundred meters across and lit by

brilliant strip lights. Stone walls glittered with an odd sheen, as if the

rock had been fused glass-slick, but that didn't last long. They slid through

a multi-ply hatch big enough for a pair of carriers, and the tunnel walls were

suddenly metallic. A bronze-like metal, gleaming in the light, stretching so

far ahead of him even its mighty bore dwindled to a gleaming dot with

distance.

Their speed dropped still further, and more hatches slid past. Dozens of

hatches, most as large as the one that had admitted them to this impossible

metal gullet. His mind reeled at the structure's sheer size, but he retained

enough mental balance to apologize silently to the proctoscope's designers.

One huge hatch flicked open with the suddenness of a striking snake. Whoever

was directing their flight curved away from the tunnel, slipping neatly

through the open hatch, and his Beagle settled without a jar to a floor of the

same bronze-like alloy.

They were in a dimly-lit metal cavern at least a kilometer across, its floor

dotted with neatly parked duplicates of the cylinder that had captured him. He

gawked through the canopy, wishing a Beagle's equipment list ran to sidearms.

After his missiles' failure he supposed there was no reason to expect a

handgun to work, either, but it would have been comforting to be able to try.

He licked his lips. If nothing else, the titanic size of this structure ruled

out the possibility that the intruders had only recently discovered the solar

system, but how had they managed to build it without anyone noticing?

And then, at last, his radio hummed to life.

"Good afternoon, Commander MacIntyre," a deep, mellow voice said politely. "I

regret the rather unorthodox nature of your arrival here, but I had no choice.

Nor, I am afraid, do you."

"W-who are you?" MacIntyre demanded a bit hoarsely, then paused and cleared

his throat. "What do you want with me?" he asked more levelly.

"I fear that answering those questions will be a bit complicated," the voice

said imperturbably, "but you may call me Dahak, Commander."

Chapter Three

MacIntyre drew a deep breath. At least the whatever-they-weres were finally

talking to him. And in English, too. Which inspired a small, welcome spurt of

righteous indignation.

"Your apologies might carry a little more weight if you'd bothered to

communicate with me before you kidnaped me," he said coldly.

"I realize that," his captor replied, "but it was impossible."

"Oh? You seem to have overcome your problems rather nicely since." MacIntyre

was comforted to find he could still achieve a nasty tone.

"Your communication devices are rather primitive, Commander." The words were

almost apologetic. "My tender was not equipped to interface with them."

"You're doing quite well. Why didn't you talk to me?"

"It was not possible. The tender's stealth systems enclosed both you and

itself in a field impervious to radio transmissions. It was possible for me to

communicate with the tender using my own communication systems, but there was

no on-board capability to relay my words to you. Once more, I apologize for

any inconvenience you may have suffered."

MacIntyre bit off a giggle at how calmly this Dahak person produced a neat,

thousand percent understatement like "inconvenience," and the incipient

hysteria of his own sound helped sober him. He ran shaky fingers through his

sandy-brown hair, feeling as if he had taken a punch or two too many.

"All right . . . Dahak. You've got me-what do you intend to do with me?"

"I would be most grateful if you would leave your vessel and come to the

command deck, Commander."

"Just like that?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"You expect me to step out of my ship and surrender just like that?"

"Excuse me. It has been some time since I have communicated with a human, so

perhaps I have been clumsy. You are not a prisoner, Commander. Or perhaps you

are. I should like to treat you as an honored guest, but honesty compels me to

admit that I cannot allow you to leave. However, I assure you upon the honor

of the Fleet that no harm will come to you."

Insane as it all sounded, MacIntyre felt a disturbing tendency to believe it.

This Dahak could have lied and promised release as the aliens' ambassador to

humanity, but he hadn't. The finality of that "cannot allow you to leave" was

more than a bit chilling, but its very openness was a sort of guarantor of

honesty, wasn't it? Or did he simply want it to be? But even if Dahak was a

congenital liar, he had few options.

His consumables could be stretched to about three weeks, so he could cower in

his Beagle that long, assuming Dahak was prepared to let him. But what then?

Escape was obviously impossible, so his only real choice was how soon he came

out, not whether or not he did so.

Besides, he felt a stubborn disinclination to show how frightened he was.

"All right," he said finally. "I'll come."

"Thank you, Commander. You will find the environment congenial, though you

may, of course, suit up if you prefer."

"Thank you." MacIntyre's sarcasm was automatic, but, again, it was only a

matter of time before he had to rely on whatever atmosphere the voice chose to

provide, and he sighed. "Then I suppose I'm ready."

"Very well. A vehicle is now approaching your vessel. It should be visible to

your left."

MacIntyre craned his neck and caught a glimpse of movement as a double-ended

bullet-shape about the size of a compact car slid rapidly closer, gliding a

foot or so above the floor. It came to a halt under the leading edge of his

port wing, exactly opposite his forward hatch, and a door slid open. Light

spilled from the opening, bright and welcoming in the dim metal cavern.

"I see it," he said, pleased to note that his voice sounded almost normal

again.

"Excellent. If you would be so kind as to board it, then?"

"I'm on my way," he said, and released his harness.

He stood, and discovered yet another strangeness. MacIntyre had put in enough

time on Luna, particularly in the three years he'd spent training for the

Prometheus Mission, to grow accustomed to its reduced gravity-which was why he

almost fell flat on his face when he rose.

His eyes widened. He couldn't be certain, but his weight felt about right for

a standard gee, which meant these bozos could generate gravity to order!

Well, why not? The one thing that was crystal clear was that these . . . call

them people . . . were far, far ahead of his own twenty-first-century

technology, right?

His muscles tightened despite Dahak's reassurances as he opened the hatch, but

the air that swirled about him had no immediately lethal effect. In fact, it

smelled far better than the inside of the Beagle. It was crisp and a bit

chill, its freshness carrying just a kiss of a spicy evergreen-like scent, and

some of his tension eased as he inhaled deeply. It was harder to feel

terrified of aliens who breathed something like this-always assuming they

hadn't manufactured it purely for his own consumption, of course.

It was four-and-a-half meters to the floor, and he found himself wishing his

hosts had left gravity well enough alone as he swung down the emergency hand-

holds and approached the patiently waiting vehicle with caution.

It seemed innocuous enough. There were two comfortable looking chairs

proportioned for something the same size and shape as a human, but no visible

control panel. The most interesting thing, though, was that the upper half of

the vehicle's hull was transparent-from the inside. From the outside, it

looked exactly the same as the bronze-colored floor under his feet.

He shrugged and climbed aboard, noticing that the silently suspended vehicle

didn't even quiver under his weight. He chose the right-hand seat, then made

himself sit motionless as the padded surface squirmed under him. A moment

later, it had reconfigured itself exactly to the contours of his body and the

hatch licked shut.

"Are you ready, Commander?" His host's voice came from no apparent source, and

MacIntyre nodded.

"Let 'er rip," he said, and the vehicle began to move.

At least there was a sense of movement this time. He sank firmly back into the

seat under at least two gees' acceleration. No wonder the thing was bullet-

shaped! The little vehicle rocketed across the cavern, straight at a

featureless metal wall, and he flinched involuntarily. But a hatch popped open

an instant before they hit, and they darted straight into another brightly-lit

bore, this one no wider than two or three of the vehicles in which he rode.

He considered speaking further to Dahak, but the only real purpose would be to

bolster his own nerve and "prove" his equanimity, and he was damned if he'd

chatter to hide the heebie-jeebies. So he sat silently, watching the walls

flash by, and tried to estimate their velocity.

It was impossible. The walls weren't featureless, but speed reduced them to a

blur that was long before the acceleration eased into the familiar sensation

of free-fall, and MacIntyre felt a sense of wonder pressing the last panic

from his soul. This base dwarfed the vastest human installation he'd ever

seen-how in God's name had a bunch of aliens managed an engineering project of

such magnitude without anyone even noticing?

There was a fresh spurt of acceleration and a sideways surge of inertia as the

vehicle swept through a curved junction and darted into yet another tunnel. It

seemed to stretch forever, like the one that had engulfed his Beagle, and his

vehicle scooted down its very center. He kept waiting to arrive, but it was a

very, very long time before their headlong pace began to slow.

His first warning was the movement of the vehicle's interior. The entire

cockpit swiveled smoothly, until he was facing back the way he'd come, and

then the drag of deceleration hit him. It went on and on, and the blurred

walls beyond the transparent canopy slowed. He could make out details once

more, including the maws of other tunnels, and then they slowed virtually to a

walk. They swerved gently down one of those intersecting tunnels, little wider

than the vehicle itself, then slid alongside a side opening and stopped. The

hatch flicked soundlessly open.

"If you will debark, Commander?" the mellow voice invited, and MacIntyre

shrugged and stepped down onto what looked for all the world like shag

carpeting. The vehicle closed its hatch behind him and slid silently

backwards, vanishing the way it had come.

"Follow the guide, please, Commander."

He looked about blankly for a moment, then saw a flashing light globe hanging

in mid-air. It bobbed twice, as if to attract his attention, then headed down

a side corridor at a comfortable pace.

A ten-minute walk took him past numerous closed doors, each labeled in a

strangely attractive, utterly meaningless flowing script, and air as fresh and

cool as the docking cavern's blew into his face. There were tiny sounds in the

background, so soft and unintrusive it took him several minutes to notice

them, and they were not the mechanical ones he might have expected. Instead,

he heard small, soft stirrings, like wind in leaves or the distant calls of

birds, forming a soothing backdrop that helped one forget the artificiality of

the environment.

But then the corridor ended abruptly at a hatch of that same bronze-colored

alloy. It was bank-vault huge, and it bore the first ornamentation he'd seen.

A stupendous, three-headed beast writhed across it, with arched wings poised

to launch it into flight. Its trio of upthrust heads faced in different

directions, as if to watch all approaches at once, and cat-like forefeet were

raised before it, claws half-extended as if to simultaneously proffer and

protect the spired-glory starburst floating just above them.

MacIntyre recognized it instantly, though the enormous bas-relief dragon was

neither Eastern nor Western in interpretation, and he paused to rub his chin,

wondering what a creature of Earthly mythology was doing in an extra-

terrestrial base hidden on Earth's moon. But that question was a strangely

distant thing, surpassed by a greater wonder that was almost awe as the huge,

stunningly life-like eyes seemed to measure him with a calm, dispassionate

majesty that might yet become terrible wrath if he transgressed.

He never knew precisely how long he stood staring at the dragon and stared at

by it, but in the end, his light-globe guide gave a rather impatient twitch

and drifted closer to the hatch. MacIntyre shook himself and followed with a

wry half-smile, and the bronze portal slid open as he approached. It was at

least fifteen centimeters thick, yet it was but the first of a dozen equally

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MUTINEERS'MOONDavidWeberThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright(c)1991byDavidWeberAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbookorportionsthereofinanyform.ABaenBooksOriginalBaenPublis...

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David Weber - Dahak 01 - Mutineer's Moon

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