"The crew
were Nightrider’s helpers, were decision counsellors and tactic teachers, were
mission book components second only in importance to Nightrider itself. Without
Nightrider, of course, the mission book stalled.
Apart from the Lander
team’s small arms, Nightrider currently had only one weapon. The main hull was
completely enclosed in a girdle of huge expendable pods containing thousands of
tonnes of deuterium-tritium propellant feed pellets. Four of the pods were nothing
more than propellant tanks, four more were propellant tanks with through-flow
fusion reactors mounted — four monstrously powerful rockets that could exert a
continuous 10g thrust.
Such high-gee
manoeuvrability might prove to be as valuable tactically as the drive
invisibility on target approach was strategically, but that was not the purpose
of the fusion boosters. The combined plasma jet, a searing flood of charged
ions and massive neutron flux and sheer sun heat, was a weapon trailing torching
kilometres of absolute lethality.
Nightrider was the
first of a new class, the first ever purpose-built war machine of space."
Earth is picking
itself up after the long collapse under its new Pragmatic Rationalist
government. It's about to take space back from the Outsiders - the space
colonists of the asteroid belt, the gas giant moons and Hel, an earth-sized
planet orbiting the Sun's binary partner Hades, a nova-remnant way outside
Pluto's orbit.
It’s known that
the Outsiders have a new base on Hel and Nightrider's mission is to utterly
destroy it prior to Earth colonising the system itself. Nightrider has a
"graviton drive" which delivers 0.25g continuous: its entry into the
Hades system should be unobservable. The plan is to slingshot round Hel, line
up on the enemy base and take it out with fusion fire. Drop the Lander to mop
up if necessary and retrieve Intel. What could possibly go wrong?
As Nightrider
enters orbit, it's pinged by a 2 millisecond burst of scanning radar. Somewhere
in the vicinity is an armed Outsider ship and Nightrider's just been detected.
Suddenly the mission is in peril.
Nightrider is a
highly autonomous AI system with a 'psychostructure' built around the Mission
Book. The only reason for the presence of the two pilots, Sandra and Shapir, is
to train Nightrider to think more creatively as regards mission tactics. The
other five crew: Akira and Yasmin, the soldiers; Kim, Samson and Ali, the
technical specialists, are there to fly and crew the Lander - an opportunistic
and ultimately disposable mission segment. But who is ultimately in command -
the human crew or the Nightrider AI?
This classic SF
novel starts, like "Alien", with a deceptive languor. The pilots wake
from long sleep, check their entry into the Hades system, review the equipment,
chat and make love. Gradually, things start to happen and the complex battle
begins. Like all David Mace's work, behind the manifest plot lurks the presence
of a malign military-industrial complex, a bureaucratic force which trusts
machines and does not trust humans to behave as proper mission components.
I don't understand
why this excellent, gripping novel has not had the enthusiastic reception it so
clearly deserves. It's well-written, exciting (once the action begins) and
Mace's grim message, the bankruptcy of the "Pragmatic Rationalism"
which the crew mostly sign-up to, is shown not told.
This book, along
with the author's "Fire Lance", deserves to be on every SF reader's
bookshelf - rather than out-of-print.
