The Fleet 01 by David Drake (ed), Bill Fawcett (ed) Read Free Book Online

the region of space Chrysanthemum had plied. The computer was so much smarter than any human mind at solving the equations that governed its physical attributes, calculating the most probable course deviations imposed by gravitational anomalies or the movement of mass and energy due, for instance, to the outburst of a nova ... of which there had been one in the vicinity not long ago. When the core of a sun exploded it had effects in the FTL universe as well as—
    She snapped herself back from despair to optimism. There was one thing humans were better at than any computer. That was using unverbalised knowledge to turn a guess into a deduction! In view of the difference of age between them, she had never been very close to her brother. But she did remember him, though he had been a distant figure during most of her childhood; she had had a kind of crush on him when she was in her teens and he was already a seasoned space-farer. Sometimes a look had come over his face as though he were gazing past the here-and-now into uncharted regions of’ the galaxy …
    That had been why he opted to work for a small, unprofitable space-line, trading as often as not beyond the boundaries of Fleet-controlled space. That had been why she had tried to emulate him, and wound up here—wherever here might be. So few stars had habitable planets; so few compared to the illimitable span of universe space and time!
    But it didn’t matter where she herself was, as of this instant. What counted was to figure out—and this was her last chance—a high-probability location for Chrysanthemum. She could not have flown a galactodesic course for home; there was too much interstellar clutter in the way, intruding mass into her tachyonic line. Back-tracking a ship whose path lay partly through the otherness of FTL had much in common with subatomic physics; the number of influences that could disguise the ultimate location was at the power limit of even the most advanced computers.
    Suppose, though, she had been her brother, which of the routes open to him would she have chosen, given that all the likeliest had now been eliminated? (There were only a few thousand others! She had grounds to hope!)
    Abruptly her patience ran dry. She stabbed a handful of co-ordinates into the board before her. The computer began to voice its inescapable objections. With an override command she aborted them, and retreated to her bunk.
    When she awoke, the viewscreen in her cabin showed wreckage drifting all around the Nag.
    Shouting for more information, she rushed back to the control room without even rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The answer, of course, was prompt. But there was a difference. For the first time she discerned a conciliatory—almost respectful—note in the Nag’s automatic voice.
    “At the last destination you specified, it became possible to detect a light-speed distress signal then arriving in the vicinity. This damaged ship appears to be its source.”
    “Identity?” she cried. “ Chrysanthemum?”
    The cold of space invaded her very heart. “Prepare my suit!” she forced out.
    “First,” the Nag said firmly, “you will relieve yourself, then cleanse your body and eat.”
    “But—!”
    “There is no sign of survivors.”
    The machine, as ever, was right. Sighing, Yuriko added one more question before she quit the console.
    “Does what happened look like an accident?”
    “No,” said the Nag, after a pause to analyse the implications. “It looks more like the result of an attack.”
    But how? How?
    The mystery plagued Yuriko every second as she complied with her instructions, knowing in her head that they were justified, yet feeling in her guts that if she were only to see with her own eyes rather than through a screen, she could find and take revenge on whoever—whatever!—had callously carved her brother’s ship apart.
    How? It implied the enemy could track their prey in FTL drive! There couldn’t possibly be a way of setting an