The Serrano Connection

by Elizabeth Moon

  "Admiral—" Seveche said after a few meters. "Sir—let us catch up—"

  Dossignal slowed and turned. "Mari, there's—" He gasped, and staggered. Esmay realized she'd gone for the deck just as her body smacked into it. So had Seska, Frees, and Bowry; the others stood where they'd stopped, looking around.

  "DOWN!" yelled Seska, and the rest of them went down. "Admiral?"

  "Alive," grunted Dossignal. "And lucky."

  Esmay looked past Dossignal, up the passage, trying to guess where the shot had come from, and what kind of weapon it was. She'd heard nothing until the impact.

  "Very lucky," Seveche agreed, crawling forward.

  "Not for long," said a quiet voice; the figure that stepped out was a lot closer than Esmay had anticipated, and loaded with weapons. "Drop—"

  She had fired almost before she knew it; the intruder's shot ricocheted off the bulkhead as her burst took him apart from neck to hip. Someone—not that intruder—screamed.

  She ignored that, made herself get up and move forward, past Admiral Dossignal, through the mess of splattered blood and tissue, to check the opening from which the intruder had come. It was a small compartment lined with shelves of office supplies, and empty now.

  "—Two casualties," Seveche was saying into his headset. "Deck 8, main passage—"

  "You're the one who was in the mutiny," Captain Seska said to Esmay.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Good reaction time. My guess is this one was cut off when the doors went down; if he'd had a partner, we'd already know it."

  Esmay thought about it. "Makes sense, sir." She could see nothing, and hear nothing, but the sounds their own party made. "We could get the admiral into cover in this closet. Just in case."

  By the time help arrived, they had both casualties in the closet, with Esmay and the Wraith exec, Commander Frees, watching for more trouble. Dossignal kept insisting that he was all right, that they should go on without him, and once others had arrived, he put it as a direct order.

  "I'm not fool enough to think I should go—I'd only slow you down—but you can do nothing useful here, and over there you might save the ship. I've dictated orders for the 14th—Lieutenant Suiza, take this to whatever officer is senior when you arrive. Now go."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Nothing hindered their movement until they reached the access area for the Special Materials Fabrication Unit.

  "You can't do that! It's in use . . . there's ninety meters of whisker in the drum now . . ." The shift supervisor for the Special Materials Fabrication Facility was a solid, graying petty-chief, who was not intimidated by a mere four officers. "You'd have to have permission from Commander Dorse, and he wouldn't—"

  "Stand aside, or there'll be ninety meters of whisker and . . . I estimate 1.7 meters of you." Seska, intent on getting back to his ship, furious with more than the Bloodhorde, was past making polite requests, although he'd started with one.

  "Admiral Dossignal will kill me if you get in there and destroy an entire batch—"

  "No . . . the Bloodhorde will kill you. The admiral will only break you to pivot and then give you twenty years hard time if you don't get—out—of—the—way."

  "Bloodhorde? What does the Bloodhorde have to do with it?"

  "Haven't you heard anything?" Esmay stepped forward, trying to project harmlessness and a pure heart.

  "No, I haven't. I've been monitoring a startup whisker for the past five hours and my relief hasn't shown up and—"

  Esmay lowered her voice. "Bloodhorde commandos are loose on the ship, and your relief is probably dead. The only way we can fight them is to get out of T-1 and the only way out of T-1 is through here. I suggest you let us pass, and when we're safely out, let the Bloodhorde in, if they show up. Then do a breakoff early."

  "But that'd be ninety meters wasted . . ."

  "Excuse me," said Frees, to one side. The man's head turned, and Esmay hit him as hard as she could with her weapon. She might have killed him; at that moment she didn't care.

  They barricaded the hatch to the passage as well as they could, and climbed quickly into the EVA suits in the nearby locker. They checked each others' suits before opening the first of the lockout hatches that isolated the Special Materials Fabrication Unit from the ship's artificial gravity. Inside was a metal-grid walkway ten meters long, ending in another lockout hatch. Rails ran along either bulkhead, with rings set every half-meter. They went in, closed the hatch behind them, and punched for Airless Entry. The light ahead of them turned green, and they started down the walkway.

  Esmay felt herself lifting with each step, as if she were walking in deepening water. In the last meter, her steps pushed her off the walkway completely, and her feet trailed back, lured by the weak attraction of Koskiusko's real mass. She grabbed for a rail, and hoped her stomach would crawl back into her midsection.

  "I hate zero-G," Bowry said.

  "I hate the Bloodhorde," Seska said. "Zero-G is just a nuisance."

  They cycled through the second lockout hatch into a long dark tube lit by the eerie purple and green glow of the growth tank. It seemed to go on and on, narrowing to a dark point far away. Here Esmay could feel no slightest hint of attraction to any mass. Her stomach slid greasily up into her throat when she moved one way, and back down her spine when she turned the other way. She tried to concentrate on her surroundings. Along one side was a narrow catwalk with a rail above it.

  "Remind me again what happens if we disturb the growing whiskers," Seska said.

  "They shatter and impale us with the shards," Bowry said. "So we don't disturb them," Seska said. "Minimal vibration, minimal temperature variance—we slide on the rail. Not thrashing around, not trying to look. Just relaxed . . . like this." Esmay watched as he made a circle of his suit glove loosely around the rail, and pushed off from the lockout hatch. He slid away . . . and away . . . and vanished into the darkness. Esmay noticed that he'd pushed off precisely in the axis of motion he wanted; his legs simply trailed behind him.

  "I hope there's a bracket on the end of this thing," Frees said, and did the same thing.

  "Lieutenant, it's my turn to be rear guard," Bowry said. Esmay wrapped her glove around the rail, loosened it in what she hoped was the right amount, then kicked off. It was a strange feeling. She was drawn along effortlessly, as if the rail itself were moving, and she could see nothing but the faint reflection of the greenish purple glow on the bulkhead, a long vague blur of not-quite-color.

  When she slowed, she didn't at first realize it. Then the blur steadied . . . she thought it was motionless. Now what? If she moved around too vigorously she could bang into the bulkhead and disturb the whiskers. She moved very slowly, bringing up her other hand to steady herself, then turning to look back the way she'd come. Far away now she could see the little cluster of lights at the lockout hatch. Nearer—something was coming, sliding along . . . too fast. If Bowry hit her, they'd both hit the bulkhead, if not worse. She gripped the rail and pulled herself along hand over hand, trying to let her body trail without twisting.

  She couldn't watch and move at the same time, not without twisting. And she didn't want to go too fast; she didn't know how much farther she had to go. She glanced up from time to time, matching speed with Bowry . . . and as he slowed in his turn, she also slowed. Somewhere ahead of her were the others; she didn't want to slam into them, either.

  "Slow now," she heard. She hoped Bowry heard it too; but she didn't look, just put out her arm to brake against her movement. Her legs slewed sideways, but she was able to stiffen her torso and keep them off the bulkhead.

  When she turned to look forward, she saw the narrowing rounded end of the fabrication unit, and the big round lock that allowed completed jobs to be taken out. To one side was a smaller personnel lock. Why did they even have locks at this end, when the point of SpecMatFab was its hard vacuum and zero-G? She thought of the answer almost as soon as the question. Of course they didn't want all the debris in space getting into
the unit.

  The personnel lock was manual, a simple hatch control that required only strength to turn. Then they were outside, clinging to the grabons and loops that Esmay thought were misnamed as "safety" features. Beside it were a row of communications and oxygen jacks.

  "Top up your tanks," Seska said. Esmay had almost forgotten that standard procedure. She glanced at her readouts; it hardly seemed reasonable to spend the time now for just a few percents. But the others were all plugged in; she shrugged mentally as she pushed her own auxiliary tube into place. Her suit pinged a signal when tank pressure reached its maximum, and she pulled the connection free.

  Seska clipped his safety line to the first loop and started pulling himself along, up the rounded end of the fabrication unit alongside the arching supports for the whisker transport system. Esmay followed Frees again, with Bowry behind her, stopping to unclip and reclip her line every time it ran out. When they got to the upper surface—upper as defined by the whisker track—Seska paused.

  From here, the size of Koskiusko surprised Esmay all over again. The fabrication unit alone was larger than most warships, coated like them with matte black, and studded with the shiny knobs of the shield generators. Beyond it rose the angular outer face of T-1, black against the starfield, with the faint gleam of the transport track rising over its edge.

  "Check," Seska said.

  "Two."

  "Three."

  "Four."

  Esmay shivered. Only four of them, out here alone on a ship so big she couldn't see most of it . . . .

  "We'll take the transport line," Seska said. "It'll save us time." Nobody mentioned how much air was left; no one had to.

  Esmay could see on her own suit gauges that they had spent twenty minutes cycling through locks, traversing the long tunnel of the fabrication unit, climbing up this far. And now they had to go back the same distance they'd come, cross the entire ship, find a way down to one of the locks opening into T-3's repair bay. Inside, walking along the decks, even running up and down ladders, they could have done it within the limits of a suit tank. Out here? It didn't matter—they had to. Seska clipped his line onto one of the rails of the transport line and pushed off. They followed.

  Esmay had wondered how far beyond the ship's surface artificial gravity projected. As they came over the edge of T-1, with the dome of the bridge ahead of them, she could feel nothing . . . but when she looked, her legs had drifted toward its surface.

  The transport track led directly over the domed core of Koskiusko, and Esmay thought that if she had not been both rushed and frightened, she would have enjoyed the view. The five blunt-ended wings splayed out around them, the dome itself studded with shield generator points and an array of retractable masts for communications and remote sensing. She looked for, but could not see, any other ship shapes against the stars. The escorts were out there somewhere . . . but too far to occlude a noticeable patch of the starfield.

  It was easy to lose track of time in that long traverse of darkness. The glowing numerals inside her helmet flicked through the tenths of seconds, then seconds, then minutes. She did not look at her oxygen gauge; if it went too low, too fast, there would be no helpful bomb disposal team to hook up a new one for her.

  "Trouble." That was Seska; Esmay looked his way. Beyond him, the starfield shifted suddenly. Her mind froze up, but even as Seska said, "They're maneuvering," she had figured it out. Someone had decided to rotate the ship . . . and that someone could not be the captain.

  But it could very well be the Bloodhorde commandos, in control of the bridge.

  She told herself not to panic. She told herself that despite the seeming solidity and immobility of Koskiusko, the ship had never been really immobile: all ships moved, all the time, and she was no more likely to lose her grip and fall off when it was under drive than when it was moved only by the old laws of physics. Kos wasn't a warship; it couldn't develop the acceleration of the most anemic civilian cargo vessel on insystem drive.

  Bowry's voice, elaborately casual, broke into her thoughts. "Lieutenant—I don't suppose you know whether the FTL drive is irretrievably broken?"

  The FTL drive. At once she knew what the Bloodhorde was going to do, and kicked herself mentally for not seeing it before. Of course they were going to take their prize away from possible rescue before trying to open it, like a jay with a sweetnut. "No, sir," she said to Bowry. "Drives and Maneuver seemed to think it was most likely sabotage, but the sequenced jumps out could have knocked something loose."

  "Those escorts ought to be doing something useful," Seska said. "Like blowing us away, when they see us moving under power."

  Esmay had forgotten about the escorts, too. Her mouth went dry. Here she was, clinging to the outside of a spaceship under power, which was likely to come under fire . . . her EVA suit felt about as protective as facial tissue.

  "Unless our crew's doing it, and they're talking to them." Bowry didn't sound really hopeful. "I suppose they could be moving away from the jump point and closer to the escorts."

  "No . . ." That was Frees. "Looks to me like we're heading for it, but on a different vector . . . without the nav computer, I can't be sure, but—didn't this jump point have four outbound vectors?"

  "Yes," Seska said. "I can't judge the approach, but you're probably right, Lin. We're less than a half hour from jump, I'd guess, and a lot more than a half hour from any place we can get into the ship. This should be interesting . . . pity we have no way to record the experience of the first people to die going through unprotected jump."

  "The commandos survived," Esmay said, not knowing she was going to say it. Silence followed; she assumed the others were watching the wheeling starfield that proved Kos was moving under power.

  "They were in Wraith," Seska said.

  "But there was a hull breach and forward shield failure. There's nothing wrong with Kos's FTL shields." She didn't know anything about shield technology, except that all FTL-capable ships had FTL shields. "If we get off this thing and down onto the hull . . ."

  "Good idea, Suiza."

  It took almost the entire half hour to clamber down, carefully clipping and unclipping and reclipping safety lines, from the high smooth arch of the materials transport track to the hull. Here, for the first time, Esmay could feel through her bootsoles a faint lateral tug, another proof that Kos was moving on her own, arguing with the inertia of her former path.

  They were perhaps two-thirds of the way across the bridge dome from the Special Materials Fabrication Unit, its bulge hiding from them T-1 and all but the tip of SpecMat. Suddenly, light behind them, a flare that spread into a glow overhead. Esmay ducked instinctively, and looked up. The materials transport track flared into blinding vapor at its highest point, and shed flaming pieces that streamed along a track revealing their progress.

  "Let's see," Seska said. "Now we're on the outside of a ship headed for jump and someone's shooting at us. I wonder where the adventure cube camera crew is?"

  "On the other escort, of course," Frees said. "That's why they're not shooting at us yet."

  "I would wonder what else could go wrong, but I don't want to give the universe ideas," Bowry said.

  Esmay grinned. She suddenly realized one other thing she'd been missing . . . humor that felt right to her.

  "If they're at standard distance, they can't get mass weapons to us before we go through jump," Seska said. "And that's only an escort, isn't it? Two more LOS shots ought to wipe them out for recharge, and then we'll be gone."

  "Assuming the other one doesn't fry us," Bowry said. Light flared again, and this time the haze thickened. The rest of the transport track peeled away. "Good tracking, but they'll burn out their power supply if they don't let it go." Abrupt darkness; Esmay blinked, and the stars showed again.

  "If the other one wanted to, they'd have done it already. What I heard in the first conference was that one of the escorts was waffling and probably would jump out pretending to go for help."

 
"Desertion . . ." mused Frees.

  "Butt-covering," Bowry said. "How I hate the prudent ones."

  "Doing all right, Lieutenant?" Seska asked, not as if he were worried, just checking.

  "Fine, sir," Esmay said. "Just trying to remember if there's an airlock access around here somewhere." Because even if they could survive jump on the outside of the ship, they'd run out of air before they finished . . . even a short jump lasted days longer than the air supply in an EVA suit.

  "That's an idea," Seska said. "Get back in and go for 'em?"

  "No, sir . . . not just the four of us, with only four light weapons. I was thinking, just stay in the airlock, with the outer hatch cracked so no one can get into it from inside, until we drop out of jump. Then go on."

  "Might work," Seska said. "We can use suit—"

  Koskiusko bulled its way into the jump transition with an uncanny slithering lurch and a vibration that ground its way through Esmay's boots into her sinuses. The stars were gone. She could see nothing beyond the readouts in her helmet and they looked very strange indeed. Her com was silent, as dark a silence as the visible dark around her. Under her, the vibration went on and on, unhealthy for the ship, for the connection of wing to core, for the stability of the drives themselves. If the drives failed, if they dropped out of FTL at some unmapped point . . .

  She clung to her handholds, and tried to talk herself out of the panic she felt. Of course it was dark; they'd outrun the light. If her readouts looked strange, she could still see them. Oxygen, for instance, gave her two hours more . . . but as she watched none of the values clicked over. The time-in-suit display was frozen in place, unmoving.

  She had never been that good in theory, and she knew little about FTL flight, except that there was no way to define where and when ships were when they vanished from one jump point and reappeared (later, if there had been such a thing as absolute time, which there wasn't.) FTL flight wasn't instantaneous, like ansible transmission; the onboard reckoning might be anywhere from hours to days to—for the longest flight ever recorded—a quarter-standard year. Onboard, inside the hull and the FTL shielding, the clocks worked. Here . . . she forced a breath, which was not reassuring. She was breathing; she could feel the warm movement of her expiration on her cheeks. But the suit timekeeper wasn't keeping time, which meant it wasn't logging the oxygen she breathed, which meant she could run out without even knowing it.