Effectively, he was no longer Pan—no longer a leader.
He would hunt.
The residue of radiations from intercepted needles left a crazy tangle throughout a billion cubic kilometers of space, the center of the battle. How many other needles—in how many other orbital tracks—were set up for this exercise?
None of the needles are real. None of this is real. It is simulation projected for our eyes only against a real background.
No matter. To lose this exercise so completely would be a disgrace, and he could not stand to see the children disgraced before the moms, with so little time until the real Job began. Martin could not feel his body. His accelerated thought gave him long hours for every breath or pound of heart. The body was separate from him now; his present self existed as a virtual simulacrum, which would re-connect with the physical mind at the end of the exercise.
At this rate, the craft he controlled seemed positively slow and balky. And that was perhaps part of the problem; he was not matched with his capabilities, but outmatched them. He was too high powered in his head for the weapon he used. He did not need the extra acceleration to contemplate strategy for all the small craft.
He slowed, brought himself to one third and then one quarter his highest rate, adjusted the flow of sensory to match, watching the information integrate again like blocks tumbling to form a conceptual castle, and moved at moderate speed through the debris of battle. No more needles presented themselves; every thing was spooky, at peace, but for the aftermath—clouds of debris.
Simulated. Only an exercise. He felt a quick moment of panic, blind fear, not an exercise they caught us while we were outbut that made no sense at all.
They were still tendays away from the outer limits of Wormwood. Needles would not orbit in ranked shells out here; the sheer volume of anti-neutronium necessary for such a defense would consume hundreds of suns of mass. He pulled away from the fear.
A feeling of indignation. The children had not known what to expect; no preparation, no battle planning, and that was very unlikely. They had been set up artificially and artificially defeated.
He spotted an active picket: Erin Eire. He pulled up beside her rifle and sent a noach message to her.
"We've lost it," she said. "I'm just waiting for the call to go back."
"We have other options," he said.
"I know. Kamikaze."
"I mean other options besides that."
"Name them, Pan." Her voice was only mildly sarcastic, but it still cut.
He raced through the scenarios they had trained for. "The Killers know we're here. We've exhausted their means of defense right now—no more needles. So we broadcast a noach call and pick a rendezvous."
She thought about that for a long time. He realized she was not accelerating her mind at all. That angered him.
"All right," she said.
"Go to speed five on your thoughts," he instructed.
"I don't—"
"Go nowor I'll pull you from the exercise. You can ride free."
Riding free was something he had never threatened before.
"You can't do that—"
"Try me. Pull up, Erin."
She said nothing. Then he received a rapid burst of chatter from her. She had complied.
"All right. I'll send the message."
He broadcast the code signal. In tenths of a second, eleven active craft replied. Seven of the dead tried to signal, but he ignored them. The active craft met at an assigned point and regrouped.
"It's jaunted," Paola said, referring to the Dawn Treader.
A chorus of confused comment followed. Martin ordered cutoff and suggested they all think and offer plans, one by one. "And quickly. We can't afford to wait minutes out here."
Only thirteen craft. No fake matter in the craft— total mass: barely fifty tons. Complete conversion to neutronium, converting body mass to neutronium and anti-matter fuel to anti-neutronium, yields a total explosive force barely enough to sear a continent on a small world. It would be something, but…
In another channel of thought, Martin considered long-term guerrilla action, but that was quite outside the scope of the exercise. What do the moms want us to do? What will they approve of?
He realized that wasn't the point. It was easy to forget the moms were not there to be pleased or displeased; they were not human. In one way—the human way—they did not care, had no cares at all. They were simply goal-oriented. He should emulate them; they should all.
He heard Ariel's voice saying, And then we become the moms, don't we?
Out of the twelve others, four offered ideas, and eight kept silent. Three of the four ideas echoed what he had already rejected: searching for the Dawn Treader'senergy sumps. Sumps could not be detected from millions of kilometers away, unless one could monitor the local energy of the vacuum, and any number of high-tech processes caused that to fluctuate wildly; a sump couldbe located if one was right on top of it, within a thousand kilometers or so.
But at that range, energy sumps were dangerous. A hastily made, newly formed sump could leak bursts of radiation across a light hour of space sufficiently powerful to blind or even take out small craft.
Surprisingly, the fourth idea—a usable one, if not a scorcher—came from Erin Eire. We scatter and conduct reconnaissance around the planet. TheDawn Treader comes looking for us eventually, and we might have information to offer.
That was probably outside the scope of the exercise, but then, so be it. No planet was postulated, none projected either within the craft or by the Ship of the Law, wherever it was; but they could conduct their part of the exercise, and at the very least earn marks for innovation.
"All right," Martin said. "We go down to the planet."
"There is no planet!" others chorused.
"Then we make one up. Paola, Erin, it's a rocky planet without an atmosphere—"
"Heavily defended by radiation and kinetic weapons," Erin suggested.
"Good…"
"And Paola's torus is nowhere to be seen," suggested Jack Sand, usually silent in such interactions.
"All right. So what do we do?"
"We search the entire planet, note theirweapon positions…"
"How many do we lose?" Martin asked with a touch of irony.
"It's my idea," Erin said. "I'll volunteer."
Two others volunteered.
"That should be enough," Martin said, feeling light-headed. The whole exercise was turning into something crazy; what could he do?
They swept out to take up formations around a theoretical planet, positioning themselves in a sphere roughly ten thousand kilometers in diameter, sweeping in crude arcs to imitate orbits. Martin thought of youthful playtime, now made earnest; this dance of craft that would have dismayed his fifth-grade teachers on Earth, watching the ring-o and dodge-ball games on the playground.
Their wands made pictures of the hypothetical planet, projecting images into the areas usually reserved for their sensor reports. The effect was crude—no real artistry—but in their shame and fervor, somehow convincing.