by Jake Elwood
A strange paralysis had ahold of him, though. The anger that he'd always taken for granted seemed oddly foreign, like it was something from outside of him, an unwanted intruder clouding his thoughts and goading him into reckless mistakes. He had a sudden sharp memory of the Pee Deck, looking down at Trainer Reynolds, full of a sick certainty that his temper had just ruined his career. He remembered Captain Alizadeh's words. You might want to think about not being quite so easy to manipulate.
The pilots who fired the nukes aren't on that cruiser. Neither are the officers who ordered it, or the politicians who started the war. There isn't a whole lot of difference between that crew and your own crew.
He took a long, slow, deep breath and unclenched his fists. And looked again at the other ship.
The more he looked, the more his confidence ebbed. One missile seemed to have done very little damage, striking at an oblique angle and blackening a wide expanse of hull plates without causing a breach. The other missile had blasted away some hull plates and torn up the bones of the hull underneath. A strike like that would have crippled the Kestrel, but cruisers were tougher than frigates. It wasn't a deathblow. It wasn't even close.
Beyond the cruiser, a bright rectangle appeared against the darkness of deep space. Tom could just make out the outline of the freighter as it vanished into hyperspace. Then the portal closed, and he knew the civilians were safe.
"We're done here," he said. "O'Reilly. Get us out of range of her Benson fields, and then open a portal."
"Aye aye, Captain." The cruiser dropped away to aft and vanished from sight as the nose of the Kestrel swung around. The starfield steadied, and the deck seemed to tilt ever so slightly under Tom's feet as the ship accelerated. He returned to his chair and sat down as the pulsing light of a hyperspace portal filled the forward windows. A moment later, the seething energies of seventh-dimensional space enveloped the ship.
Only when O'Reilly said, "Portal closed," did Tom relax.
"Move us," he said. "Take us in the direction of Garnet. But drop us back into normal space in, let me see, ten minutes or so." You sound like a dithering chump. Be precise in your orders. The aftermath of combat had him feeling exhausted and mushy-brained. You need to get off the bridge before you make a fool of yourself.
"We'll stop somewhere in the deep dark," he said, speaking as much to clarify his own thoughts to himself as to inform the others. "Somewhere far enough from Argo that the Dawn Alliance won't stumble on us. We'll do repairs and make sure we can handle hyperspace. And then we'll head for Garnet at best speed."
No one spoke, but he saw a few heads nod. Rising from his seat was surprisingly difficult – he felt as if he'd just run a marathon – but he managed it. He walked to the bridge exit and checked the hatch panel. It showed normal pressure on both sides of the hatch, so he opened the faceplate of his helmet, then opened the hatch. "I'm going to assess damage. Call me if anything goes wrong." He stepped through the doorway, then paused. "You all did very well. I'm proud of you."
He turned away before anyone could answer and went to see what was left of his ship.
Chapter 29
"What the hell do you mean, we're stranded?"
Sawyer, the front of her vac suit blackened and melted, gave Tom the kind of look that said if she gave voice to what she was thinking, she'd be guilty of gross insubordination. She stank of sweat and burned plastic.
The whole corridor reeked. The two of them stood at the forward end of the spine, on the lower deck. A mixed crew of marines and spacers worked behind her, opening panels in the bulkheads and lifting deck plates.
"Not stranded," Sawyer said. "Not exactly. We just can't get back to Garnet."
Tom flapped his arms in exasperation. "That sounds to me like we're stranded!"
Her sigh told him she was every bit as frustrated as he was. "We have fuel. We could travel a good ten, fifteen light years. There's at least four systems within that range. Garnet, however, isn't one of them."
For a moment they stood there, glaring at each other. Then Tom made himself take a deep breath. "I see."
"They breached our main fuel storage," Sawyer said. "We managed to save almost fifteen percent of it. The rest is gone." She brought a hand up as if she was going to rake her fingers through her hair. When her hand touched her helmet she frowned and lowered her arm. "Quite a bit of fuel is stored in auxiliary tanks close to the engines, in case of this exact situation. It's enough to reach one star or another from almost anywhere in the settled galaxy. It's enough to get us to a port." Her shoulders drooped. "Just not necessarily a friendly port."
"All right." Tom pinched the bridge of his nose. "What about the rest of the ship?"
"I'd rather have a week in dry dock before I give you a definitive answer." He opened his mouth and she held up a hand, forestalling him. "I know that's not going to happen. So I'm going to talk to you about probabilities, not absolutes. Understand?"
Tom nodded.
"We're airtight. I'm almost certain of that. We're also spaceworthy. If we were in port, I would say that the ship was not safe for hyperspace. We're not in a port, though. We can't stay here. We have to go back into seventh-dimensional space. And we can. The ship will survive."
"But you just said …"
Sawyer lifted her hands in a shrug. "I estimate the risk of a catastrophic failure as something in excess of one percent. Probably less than two percent. That's enough for me to ground a ship in a safe port. It's not enough for me to insist that we all die a slow death of starvation in deep space."
"All right." Tom paused, digesting that. "What else?"
"We have two damaged laser turrets. If we pillage one for spare parts, we can probably repair the other one. I can't fix them both, though."
Tom nodded.
"The fire is out in the missile bay. I think I can restore full functionality, but I won't make it a priority, not when we're in the middle of nowhere and in no danger of attack." She shifted her gaze, staring past his shoulder as she thought. "One nav thruster is disabled. The basic components are practically indestructible, though. We can fix it. All the major electronic systems seem to have survived Benson field exposure. It's going to take a day or so to finish resetting the minor systems."
"Okay," said Tom. "What else?"
"We've used almost half our firefighting foam. We've gone through a lot of emergency repair supplies, too, and we'll go through a lot more in the next day or two. We're not at critical levels, but we'll need to do some serious restocking when we reach Garnet."
Unless Garnet is a smoking ruin. He pushed the thought aside. One crisis at a time.
"About a hundred other systems have been damaged, compromised, or impacted," Sawyer said. "Half of it we haven't even diagnosed yet. Up to now we've been doing triage and making sure the ship's not going to blow up. The next step will be to send crews outside to patch the hull." She grimaced. "The ship's not going to be pretty when we're done with her. And fixing our repairs is going to be a major undertaking. We'll be welding chunks of steel onto every burn and puncture on the hull. The yard dogs at Garnet are going to hate us."
"I can live with that," Tom said.
"Living with it is exactly what it's about. I'm talking about hardening the hull to survive hyperspace." She gave him a sharp look. "Just the same, you'll need to steer around the heavy weather. The stronger the storm, the greater the odds of the hull flying apart. So don't head for something at the limit of our range. Save yourself a little room to manoeuver."
Tom nodded. "I understand."
"That's it for major issues," she said. "I'll get you a detailed list of issues and a proposed schedule of repairs when I get a chance. Right now, though, we're still finding problems."
"That's fine," he said. "Concentrate on doing what needs to be done. Giving me a detailed report should not be one of your priorities."
Sawyer nodded, then stiffened. "Oh! There is one more major issue. The spine is not traversable."
He star
ed at her. "What?"
"You can't get to the aft section without a vac suit." She grinned, making white lines appear in the corners of her eyes. Tom realized with a start that her face was covered in a fine layer of soot. "I'll make that one of our priorities. It'll be a lot more convenient if we can walk from one end of the ship to the other without using airlocks."
"Yes," he said dryly. "I see what you mean." He shook his head. "You're doing good work. I'll get out of your way now." He started to turn away, then paused. "Don't exhaust yourself. Rest if you need to. I need the basic repairs done right more than I need them done quickly."
She nodded and headed aft, stepping around the bulky figure of a marine in filthy firefighting gear. The marine approached Tom, and he recognized Harper. By the look on his face, he'd overheard most of the conversation.
Harper leaned in close. "What are we going to do, Captain?"
Tom shook his head, feeling weary beyond belief. According to Vinduly there were five crew in the surgery and three in the morgue, plus all the minor injuries on crew who were still at their posts. Fagan, hard as a rat to kill, was in the surgery, wounded when shrapnel ripped through the brig.
We were shorthanded already, and now we've lost more people. This was already a crisis before we got shot to pieces. We can't reach Garnet, and even if we could, it might be swarming with Dawn Alliance troops. We're done. We're finished. I've led us from mishap to catastrophe, and I've doomed us.
I should never have taken command. I can't undo the damage I've done, but I can stop making it worse. We'll go to the nearest settled system, we'll find ourselves a Dawn Alliance warship, and we'll surrender.
But he knew how the Dawn Alliance treated prisoners. If they were lucky, they'd be used as slave labor. They could pray for a quick United Worlds victory before their captors worked them to death. The wounded in the surgery would be shot out of hand. They weren't any use as laborers, after all.
He couldn't surrender. And he couldn't condemn himself for his decisions, either. Perhaps he could have done better – but coming to Argo had been the right thing to do. Almost two hundred civilians were safe because the Kestrel had done its duty.
Tom squared his shoulders. "We're going to find some fuel. If we can find a safe port, we'll refuel there and head for Garnet. If we can't find a safe port, we'll damned well take some fuel from the Dawn Alliance. This is a warship, after all. We'll show them they're not done with us yet.
"We'll sneak. We'll raid. We'll go to war if we have to. We'll get the fuel we need. Come hell or high water, I'm bringing us home."
Author Notes
The adventures of Tom Thrush and the Kestrel continue in Star Peregrine, coming in April 2018.
Jake Elwood is a Canadian writer of science fiction, especially adventurous space opera with a dash of humor. When he's not at a keyboard he likes hiking and biking and sometimes kayaking on the Bow River. He is also the author of the Hive Invasion trilogy, beginning with Starship Alexander.
For more titles and releases by Jake Elwood check out his website and don’t forget to sign up for his mailing list: http://jakeelwoodwriter.com/
