by Tony Daniel
Dahlquist stopped a hundred yards back along the centerline passageway, at the sealed door she had tried earlier that led to the bridge companionway. He tugged a folding knife from a coverall pocket, then used one of its blunt blades to remove screws from a plate below the hatch open and intercom controls. He reached inside, tinkered, and a moment later the circular door whispered open like a camera lens iris.
Her eyes widened, too. “You fix this ship with that?”
They kicked, feetfirst, into the companionway, a narrow staircase that spiraled away from the ship’s centerline like a spoke away from a wheel’s hub.
Dahlquist shook his head. “Not by choice. New ships come with specialized tools for every task. Old ships come with empty places where the tools used to be. And in Bastogne’s case it’s worse. The reason she was chosen to pick you all up was that she had enough room. The reason she had enough room was that she was empty. The reason she was empty was that she was deadheading back to Mousetrap to be scrapped.”
“She’s superannuated? Like you.”
“She’s a lot more superannuated than I am. But before a ship gets scrapped she gets stripped of every ounce worth saving, from galley spoons to screwdrivers. All of which makes our problem worse.” He wrinkled his forehead. “‘Superannuated?’”
“It means—”
“I know what it means. I’m a drunk, not an illiterate. What I don’t know is why a pip-squeak like you uses words like superannuated.”
Within yards rotational gravity pulled them to the floor treads, and they followed the staircase down as it wound toward the deck’s outermost rim.
At a sealed, hinged intermediate door Dahlquist knelt at its latch and worked his screwdriver magic again.
She said, “A pip-squeak is a person too small or insignificant to deserve respect. Please don’t call me that.”
Dahlquist grunted as he twisted a stubborn screw. “How about ‘annoying small person’? Unless you’ve got a name.”
“Patricia Wynant Reisfeld. My mother, the surgeon, is the Wynant.”
“Ah.”
“My grandfather was a professor of English—what you call Standard—back on Earth.”
“Trueborns? Well, that explains the annoying.”
“Actually, it doesn’t. I unnerve adults because I’m extraordinarily gifted.”
“Modest, too. Why’d your parents bring a kid to an ice ball like Weichsel?”
“Parent. My father was the Reisfeld. He died before I was born. Mom’s therapist suggested a change of scene to facilitate her acceptance of his death. Treating Tribals outside the Iceline on Weichsel was the biggest scene change available. My grandfather came along with her to help raise me.”
“Brave man.”
“But mostly to establish a planet-wide program to teach Standard to the Tribals. So they could assimilate.”
“Well, that’s working out great.”
The intermediate door swung inward on its hinges. An acrid haze, tinted red by the companionway’s emergency lights and stinking of burned metal, drifted out across them.
Dahlquist nudged her behind him, then crept down the spiraling stair tread. He clutched his pocket knife, blade extended, in his right hand, while his left groped through the haze.
At the staircase’s next landing he stumbled over something and she fell too.
It was a body, another Marine, face up, and Patricia had fallen across its boots, which seemed small.
She stifled her scream with her own palm, as Dahlquist hugged Patricia’s face against his side so she wouldn’t see.
They stood, and she pushed away from Dahlquist.
The Marine’s boots were small because she was female, and her throat had been slit just as surgically as had the throat of the Marine who had smiled. The door behind this Marine, which she had defended to her death, lay on the landing alongside her, its hinges scorched where they had been severed.
Patricia shuddered, then whispered, “It’s okay. The first one scared me so much I couldn’t think. This one just makes me so mad I don’t want to think.”
Dahlquist knelt alongside the female Marine and drew his fingers across her dead eyes, so the lids closed and she was no longer staring. Then he turned to Patricia and stabbed a finger at her chest. “Scared and mad are what you can’t be now. Thinking straight under pressure wins unwinnable battles.” He pointed at the door opening, and at the scorch marks at the jagged hinges. “And thinking straight seems to be something our Sep buddies are good at.”
“What do you mean?”
“They realized that the only weapons they could smuggle past the gangway sensors onto this ship would be made of organic material compatible with the scanned individual. A Weichselan Tribal’s knife is carved from one of his ancestor’s ribs, isn’t it?”
“You’re smart.”
“They’re smarter. Bone knives won’t defeat modern arms after the first couple sucker punches.” He pointed at the empty holster at the Marine’s waist. “So they foraged her sidearm, and probably her rifle.” He flicked two of three empty cloth loops on the Marine’s left pack strap. “The only way they burned the hinges off the door she was guarding was with two of her own FEDs they had to kill her to get.”
“FED?”
“Focused Explosive Device. Detonating a conventional hand grenade in a starship’s like hitting a golf ball in a shower stall. A FED blows a hole in what you want and not in what you don’t.” He tapped a metal cylinder the size and shape of a Coke plasti that was clipped in to the third cloth loop. “I suspect the only reason they left this one is they were in a hurry to reach the next line of defense. A bone knife’s quiet, but it can’t cut steel. A FED cuts steel, but the bang spoils the surprise.”
“Does all this smoke mean the Seps won up ahead, or lost?”
“Maybe both. Come on.”
The next line of defense turned out to be another blown-off door and another murdered Marine. But this doorway was now guarded by a live Marine.
“Halt!” Helmeted head cocked sideways, he shuffled toward them, sighting down his rifle’s barrel as he aimed it at them.
Dahlquist shoved her farther behind him. “Where’s Captain Hicks, Tom?”
The Marine squinted through the haze. “Dahlquist? Why are you out of the brig?”
Dahlquist sighed. “Read your dailies, Tom. Since you transferred to bridge watch, the captain converted the brig into quarters to accommodate all our guests. Now I sleep in a booth in the steerage cocktail lounge, on my own recognizance.”
Patricia peeked around Dahlquist at the Marine.
He slid his finger off the trigger, but kept the rifle pointed at Dahlquist. “Guests my ass. They’re Separatist hijackers, Dahlquist. Weichselan Tribals. At least some of ’em. Took down eight Marines aft. And five of my squad here.” He saw her peeking out from behind Dahlquist and shifted his aim. “What’s with the brat?”
“She’s a kid, Tom.”
The Marine slid his finger back to the rifle’s trigger. “A kid covered in blood!” He jerked his head at the dead Marine at his feet. “Before Walker died he told me the Tribals used a weaponized kid to get close to him.”
“She’s no Tribal. One of those Marines aft bled out all over her while she was trying to save his life.”
The Marine snorted. “Who told you that? Her?”
Patricia stepped out from behind Dahlquist, stared past the rifle muzzle into the Marine’s eyes and spread her bloodstained hands. “It’s true. He was my friend. If you think I’m lying, shoot me.”
“Friend?” The Marine narrowed his eyes. “What was your friend’s name?”
“Martinez.”
The Marine kept his eyes locked with hers and the rifle’s muzzle pointed at her face while with one hand he patted the name tape above his breast pocket, which read browning. “Nice try.”
He tightened his finger on the trigger and her heart skipped.
“Hector. He told me his first name was Hector. He said he has
a sister my age named Rosa who looks just like me.”
The Marine kept staring. Then he blinked, lowered his rifle, and stared past her up the stairway into the dark. “Hector was my friend too. And Rosa’s taller than you.”
He took a deep breath, then asked Dahlquist, “How’d you make it this far? When the Tribals locked themselves inside the bridge, they locked down all the mains at the same time.”
Dahlquist swore again. “I was hoping it was Hicks who locked them down. So the bastards do have control of the bridge and the engineering space.” He coughed and swatted at the smoke. “But Hicks obviously survived and is in charge.”
“The XO was in command on the bridge, not Hicks, when they stormed it. So yeah, the captain’s still in command. How’d you know?”
“The bridge capsule’s armored with nine inches of reinforced plasteel and so are all the control conduits that lead away from it, and so is the engineering space’s forward bulkhead and door. An experienced officer would know that by the time the plasma cutter they’re using up there at the bridge, that’s making all this smoke, burns through it’ll be too late.”
The Marine stared. “Too late for what?”
“Tom, don’t be such a jarhead. I was this ship’s chief engineer for fifteen years. Hicks didn’t even graduate Command Basic Course ’til fifteen months ago. I knew enough to get us this close to the bridge. Maybe I know enough to unscrew this pooch. At least let us pass so I can try.”
The Marine paused, then stepped through the door and said over his shoulder, “I’ll see what they say up there. You stay put, Dahlquist, or I’ll blow your squid head off. Yours too, ma’am.”
Patricia peered up at Dahlquist and puffed out a chest she wouldn’t have for a while. “He called me ‘ma’am’. Do I look older?”
Dahlquist smiled down at her and shook his head. “Military courtesy. A display of respect. The best way a civilian can earn a jarhead’s respect is to befriend another jarhead in trouble, Ms. Wynant Reisfeld.” He paused. “Don’t you have a nickname?”
She pouted. “No.”
Dahlquist consulted his wrister then sighed. “Might as well share our secrets. Tom’s a good man, but if he moves as slow as he thinks we’ll be here awhile.”
She crossed her arms. “You first. Why were you alone in the observation dome staring at Mousetrap?”
“I was born there. Hadn’t seen the place in forty-two years.”
“For you this is a homecoming.”
He shrugged and swallowed. “Not the kind I wanted. Not for me, not for this ship.”
“Why?”
“The Bastogne was built in Mousetrap. Before you or I were born. As a battle cruiser during the Pseudocephalopod War. Her name commemorates some Trueborn-on-Trueborn violence that most of the Outworlders who built her, and died in her, never heard of.”
“Battle cruisers don’t have casinos and cocktail lounges.”
He nodded. “True. After the war she was refitted for mercantile service. Then she got so old that not even a chief engineer who loved her could keep her healthy. She was coming home to Mousetrap to be broken up for scrap, stripped naked, with a novice captain, and a skeleton crew. She deserved better.”
“Ships are machines. But you talk like you married this one.”
Dahlquist shrugged. “Machines don’t lie. They don’t leave the cap off the toothpaste even though you asked them not to. Or throw the tube at you if you forget their birthdays. All machines ask is maintenance. After fifteen years together a man and a machine can grow closer than some husbands and wives do. So I didn’t take the old girl’s end well. Three months before the Bastogne got diverted to pick you up, I got drunk at the wrong time. A rating serving under me almost lost her leg as a result. The Bastogne deserves better. But I deserved what I got.”
“Oh.”
“So now Bastogne and I are both coming home to die, disgraced and too old to matter.” Dahlquist paused and stared at the smoky and still-empty companionway beyond the blown door. “I think that story’s pathetic enough to earn a reciprocal one. Don’t you?”
She stared at the floor plates. “Peewee.”
“What?”
“My grandfather says good things come in small packages. So he calls me Peewee.”
Dahlquist covered his mouth with his hand like he was rubbing his cheek, but his eyes smiled. “Hell, that’s just like calling a machine ‘she.’ Just an old man’s way of saying he loves you.”
“The last thing he said to me before I boarded the upshuttle was ‘Go forth and do great things, Peewee.’”
The Marine returned, his rifle now slung over his shoulder, and led them through the door toward the bridge.
The companionway tripled in width when they emerged from it into the space in front of the massive bulkhead door that isolated the bridge from the rest of the ship.
The space was dim, but crowded with unsmiling crew and armed Marines. All of them watched as two goggled men knelt alongside a wheeled machine, directing a pencil-thin white flame at the bulkhead’s base. Crackling sparks and smoke fountained from the spot where the flame contacted the bulkhead, and the flame’s flicker lit the others’ faces.
The goggled men paused to inspect their progress, and found only a shallow, glowing furrow in the metal.
Peewee followed Dahlquist as he walked toward Captain Hicks, who stood, feet planted and arms crossed in the dimness, watching the plasma cutter’s progress.
Dahlquist paused along the way and patted the shoulder of another officer, younger than Dahlquist but older than the Captain, who wore old-fashioned eyeglasses that hooked around his ears and lay across his nose. His uniform nameplate read macdougal.
Dahlquist whispered, “The new brass looks good on you, Mac.”
The man turned to Dahlquist and his eyes widened behind his glasses. “Johnny?” Then he whispered back, “Looked better on you.”
“How you holding up as chief engineer?”
“Acting chief engineer.” Macdougal shrugged. “I’m an astrogator, not a wrench.”
Dahlquist tossed his head toward the captain. “How’s Hicks holding up?”
Macdougal gave his head a shake so small only Dahlquist and Peewee saw it. “Drowning and he knows it, Johnny. He’s too scared and too angry at the hand he’s been dealt to play it. But there’s no point pushing him.”
“If somebody doesn’t push him we all drown, Mac.”
Dahlquist patted Macdougal’s shoulder again, walked past him and when he reached Hicks he stood straight and saluted. “Captain.”
The younger man scowled, and didn’t salute back. “Dahlquist? Come up from the bar to appeal your administrative punishment?”
“Sir, the captain will recall I affirmatively waived my rights and accepted your decision. I’m only here to offer advice on the current situation.”
The captain nodded toward the sizzling sparks and spoke loudly enough that those around him heard. “We have the current situation under complete control. Once we penetrate the bridge capsule locking mechanism, we’ll overpower the Tribals and regain control of the ship.”
Several crewmen had cocked their heads to listen to the discussion.
Dahlquist leaned toward the captain and lowered his voice. “Sir, a word in private?”
The captain frowned, but stepped away from the others as Dahlquist followed. Peewee hunched over, tried to look ignorable, and followed the pair of them.
Dahlquist pointed at the sputtering plasma torch, “Captain, that torch won’t penetrate the capsule for an hour. Meantime the ship’s not slowing down. Without control of either the engineering space or the bridge the book says we can’t slow her down or steer her.”
“Dahlquist, I know what the book says.”
“Sir, there’s more to it than what the book says. On present course and at present velocity we will impact Mousetrap’s North Portal in fifty-seven minutes.”
The Captain leaned closer and hissed. “Goddammit, Dahlquist. I know
that! I also know that I was ordered to take these refugees aboard my ship with minimal vetting. So CentCom and the politicians would look good. But history won’t say that. History will say that I failed to prevent assassins from infiltrating my ship. History will say my ship didn’t have escape pods and even pressure suits, so it couldn’t be abandoned. It won’t say that every ship gets stripped before it’s scrapped. Fifty-seven minutes from now it won’t be my problem though. It will be my wife’s problem. Because she will have to explain to my son why his dead father was the first captain to lose a capital ship to hostile action in a century.”
“Sir, you need to focus on solving the problem, not on what history will say.”
“Exactly. The problem is bigger than you or me or even this ship. If history says all of us on this ship went down swinging, with courage and grace, maybe the Union will be inspired to win the next round. And the war.”
Dahlquist pressed his lips together. “Captain, I don’t question your courage. I do question your assumptions about the stakes and about available alternatives. With respect, losing with courage and grace is brave and noble. Losing when you could win is stupid. Especially when there’s more to lose than you think.”
The captain stiffened. “You said you were here to help. Insubordination helps no one.”
“A civilian can’t be guilty of insubordination. Dammit, Richard, I am trying to help, if you’d just listen!”
The captain blinked, stood silent.
Dahlquist said, “You’re right that what you’re doing here won’t work. Mousetrap hasn’t been equipped to interdict anything bigger than smugglers’ fast movers for decades. The kinetic energy generated by a capital ship impacting Mousetrap at ninety-six thousand miles per hour, which is the velocity we’re locked at, won’t just vaporize this ship and everyone in it. It will reduce Mousetrap, and the eleven million people who live in it, and the dozen or so capital ships that are refitting there post-jump on any given day, to a debris field that in a few million years may coalesce into a ring around Leonidas.”