Starfishers Volume 3: Stars End by Glen Cook Page A

from the Big Bang, had pulled a few mega-trillion quarks out of a linear accelerator which circumscribed Hel itself, had sorted them, had stacked them in orbital shells around the mini-singularities, and had installed these “cores” in a delivery system. The carrier missile would perish in the fires of a star, but the core itself would sink to the star’s heart before the quark shells collapsed, mixing positives and negatives in a tremendous energy yield which would ignite a swift and savage helium fusion process.
    Navy had its weapon. And now, apparently, a target for it.
    “What have you done, Paul?”
    “I don’t know, Ion. God help me if you’re right.”
    The passageways were a-crawl with Marines, Marescu swore. “I didn’t realize there were so many of the bastards. They been breeding on us? Where’s everybody else?” The usual back and forth of technical and scientific staffs had ceased. Civilians were scarce.
    At Final Process they were told to report to the arsenal instead.
    They found three civilians waiting outside the scarlet door. The Director, though, was an R & D admiral in civilian disguise.
    “This’s a farce,” Marescu growled at her. “Two hundred comic opera soldiers . . . ”
    “Can it, Ion,” Paul whispered.
    The Director did not bat an eye. “They’re watching you, Ion. They don’t like your mouth.”
    Marescu was startled. Ordinarily, even the Eagle did not bite back.
    “What’s going on, Kathe?” Neidermeyer asked.
    Marescu grinned. Kathe Adler. Kathe the Eagle. It was one of those nasty little jokes that drift around behind an unpopular superior’s back. Admiral Adler had a thin wedge of a face, an all-time beak of a nose, and a receding hairline. Never had a birthname fit its bearer so well.
    “They’re taking delivery on the product, Paul. I want you to work with their science officers. Ion, you’ll prepare a test program for their shipboard computers.”
    “They’re going to use it, aren’t they?” Marescu demanded.
    “I hope not. We all hope not, Ion.”
    “Shit. I believe that like I believe in the Tooth Fairy.” He glanced at Paul. Neidermeyer was trying to believe. He was like all the science staff. Keeping himself fed on lies.
    “Ship’s down, Major,” a Marine Lieutenant announced.
    “Very well,” Feuchtmayer replied.
    “We’d better get lined out,” the Director said. “Paul, pick whomever you want to help. Ion, you’ll have to visit the ship to see what you’ll be working with. I want your preliminary brief as soon as you can write it. Josip, get with their Weapons officers and draw up the preparatory specs for carrying mounts and launch systems. Have the people in the shops drop everything else.”
    Josip asked, “We have to build it all here?”
    “From scratch. Orders.”
    “But . . . ”
    “Gentlemen, they’re in a hurry. I suggest you get started.”
    “They brought the whole ship down?” Paul asked. Ships seldom made planetary landings.
    “That’s right. They don’t want to waste time working from orbit. That would take an extra month.”
    “But . . . ” That was dangerous business. The ship’s crew would stay crazy-busy balancing her gravity fields with the planet’s. If they made one mistake the vessel would be torn apart.
    “It shouldn’t take more than twelve days this way,” Admiral Adler speculated. “Assuming we hit no snags. Let’s go.” She pushed through the red door.
    The completed weapons had a sharkish, deadly look, looking nothing like bombs. The four devices were spaced around the arsenal floor. Each was a lean needle of black a hundred meters long and ten in diameter. They were longer than the shuttle craft intended to lift them to orbit. Antennae and the snouts of nasty defensive weapons sprouted from their dark skins like scrub brush from an old, burned slope.
    They were fully automated little warships. The essentials of the nova bomb occupied space that would have been given over to crew