She dropped the towels and spun toward him.
He held his hands in the air in supplication. “I was only doing what you told me to—”
She grabbed his arm. “Incoming. Damn it! That’s my short-range alarm. We’ve got incoming!” She bolted down the corridor.
He caught up with her on the ladderway to the bridge. “Short-range?”
“Long-range is fritzed. Can’t ID.” Their boots hammered up the metal stairs. “Short-range is all we’ve got to handle unfriendlies.”
Trilby was first through the hatchway. “Who’s there, Dez?”
“Ycsko. Three Trahtarks.” The ’droid relayed their speed and distance without any of his usual, meandering dialogue.
Trilby slid into the captain’s seat, her fingers already keying queries into the ship’s systems. The wailing ceased. “Okay. I see ’em. Weapons online. Shields at max.”
“Affirmative.”
She raked the safety straps across her chest. “Anyone else in the neighborhood?”
“Negative. I have sent out a broad-channel Request for Assistance.”
Rhis stood, scanning the data at the copilot’s station. The Tarks were about twenty minutes behind the Venture. Then he grabbed for the navigator’s chair. A light flashed on her panel, showing his station was online. She went back to her work with Dezi.
“Fifteen minutes. Still closing,” the ’droid intoned.
Something odd flickered on one of Trilby’s data comps. It came from the navigation. She shot him a look over her shoulder. “Vanur! What the hell—?”
“The ’Sko have started filtering their energy emissions. This grants them some invisibility. Unless, of course, your scanners know to look for them.”
Trilby saw the large blip flash on her long-range screen. Somehow he’d gotten it to work again. Her anger at Rhis died and was replaced by a moment of amazement. And then a growing feeling of dread. “Cloaking device?”
“Not exactly.”
“Eleven minutes,” Dezi stated.
“Shit! That’s a mother ship.” Part of Trilby’s mind acknowledged Dezi’s countdown. The other part focused on data now streaming next to the ominous blip. She glanced again at Rhis, saw him frowning at the weapons data on the screen on his left. He evidently had the same thoughts she did. A half-dead ion cannon was no match for a ’Sko mother ship.
Her stomach tightened in fear. Neadi’s warnings played through her mind. But she wasn’t on a cargo run. Her holds were empty.
“Dezi, amend that RFA to a Code-Three SUA!” A Request for Assistance could be ignored. A Ship under Attack advisory could not.
She shook her fist at the blip on the screen as if it could see her. “Gods damn you. I don’t have any cargo!”
“That will not be their concern until it’s too late.”
“Thanks for the encouraging words, Vanur.”
“Nine minutes.”
Trilby’s fingers flew back to the command controls. “Tarks are in attack formation. Retract cannon hatch.”
“Nav!”
Trilby’s chair tilted back. A broad arm shot in front of her, knocking her hands from the controls. He yelled words at her as he keyed in a course change from her station.
She swore back at him. “Speak Standard, Gods damn you!”
“The abandoned miner’s raft in the asteroid belt. There!” He pointed to the data now on her screen. “We can get there. We can lose them in the debris field.”
It just might work. Trilby hesitated only a second before throwing the ship hard to starboard.
The freighter shuddered as the Tarks’ weapons laced the shields. The auxiliary interface panel behind Rhis sizzled, showering sparks through the small cockpit. Two data screens flickered. The Venture’s engines whined, straining. Power readouts sagged, then spiked.
Rhis worked in a course adjustment. “We have to outrun them.”
Trilby tapped quickly on a datapad on her left. “Dezi, get down to engineering. Disconnect the A-Five bypass. I’m going to run everything we got to the drives. That should give us what we need.” Though what condition they’d be in when they got to the rafts was up for grabs.
Rhis slid into the seat Dezi vacated just as Trilby banked the ship to port to avoid incoming fire.
“Missed me, you bastard.” There was a grim note of glee in her voice.
A critical-status light blinked red. “You’re disconnecting life support?”
“Only belowdecks. I’ll seal the bridge on Dezi’s signal. What do you think, we’ve got reserves? That extra power has to come from somewhere.”
It took five more long minutes of ducking and diving, of skittering through the blackness before the asteroid debris field was in sight. Two more comp panels sizzled as the Venture’s shields tried to handle the impact of the ’Sko weapons. Trilby ran through every evasive maneuver she knew, then invented a few more. She trusted Rhis to keep one hand on the cannon’s targeting controls and prayed for a lucky shot. He grazed one Tark. It fell back behind the other two, damaged but not disabled.
“Good shot, flyboy.”
The Venture defied all safety parameters, pushing her components beyond their specs. Circura II short-haulers weren’t built to maneuver like this one did.
But even the best of patches couldn’t hold up forever under enemy fire.
She announced the problem before he did. “Starboard shields down forty percent.”
They were just skimming the first debris from the asteroid field. Already several shots from the Tarks exploded off target, shattering the small asteroids instead.
“We’ll make it.”
She wished she had his confidence. She checked the scanners, saw the two lead Tarks and one behind. Her stomach clenched. “They’re still on us.”
“When we get into the larger debris field, it’ll force them to loosen formation. I should be able to get a clear shot then.”
“That big debris will get through my starboard shields eventually.”
“Logged and noted, Captain.”
“Unless I—” Trilby spun out of her seat. “Take over, Rhis. I might be able to do something here.”
He reached over and transferred control just as she wrenched the lower panel off the auxiliary power console on his right. She hunkered down, a crystal splicer already in her hand. But she kept a vigilant watch on her screen.
The Tarks started to change formation. Then the weapons sensors showed incoming fire. He banked, maneuvering the freighter around several larger groups of debris.
Trilby braced herself against the edge of the access panel as her ship veered sharply. “Don’t forget my starboard aux thruster’s a bit oversensitive.”
Aft shields showed two grazing hits from the Tarks. Then a readout on the main console went suddenly from red to green.
“Got it!” Trilby pushed herself upright. “Just bought us about ten minutes more on the shields, Rhis-my-boy.”
“Good. Our friends are starting to get careless.”
Trilby lunged for her seat, rehooked her straps, and swung the armrest controls in front of her. The debris fields on the viewscreen were tightly grouped, with boulder-size asteroids trailing away from one almost as large as her ship.
Rhis wove the freighter through the fields with practiced precision.
Trilby saw a brief opening ahead and poised her hand over her controls. “I’ll take her back when we get there.”
“We’re not going there.”
“We’re not?”
Rhis banked the freighter without warning, sending the bulky ship into a narrow space between two asteroids. Smaller debris pinged off the shields. Proximity alarms wailed in complaint.
Trilby ignored what her eyes told her and worked the data from her navigational systems. Rhis flew her ship as if he’d been born in the captain’s chair. She patched in small corrections, playing with attitude and yaw as he sloughed off their speed.
“Use the braking vanes,” she told him, but he was already tab
bing them down to fifteen percent, then twenty.
She caught his swift, questioning glance in her direction. He was no doubt wondering how she knew that trick. And she was wondering who taught him.
A flare on the aft viewscreen drew her attention.
Rhis’s smile, when she looked back at him, was almost feral. “A Trahtark’s main flaw. Increased power means decreased stability in tight quarters.”
They emerged with only two Tarks on their tail. Trilby retracted the vanes quickly.
“They’re persistent, though.” She saw the splattering of their lasers on the port shields now. There was an ominous hissing and popping noise from a console to her right.
“Let them be so.” Rhis magnified the viewscreen until a large angular object came into view. “There. The Drachnar mining rafts. Should be two of them.”
“One and a half,” Trilby corrected as she scanned her data.
“Let’s take our friends for a tour.”
“We might be able to do better than that.” Trilby brought up a file from her nav charts. “This ship used to dock here. I’ve still got the codes.”
She caught his brief look of appreciation. It meant more to her than she wanted to admit. “Head for the red launch tower,” she told him. “I might be able to release the maintenance ’bots from those bays below. Drachnar always staffed at least sixty to a bay. If even half are left, that should play hell with their targeting sensors.”
The lead Tark got in two good shots before they got to the raft. “Starboard shields down twenty percent!” Trilby hung on to the armrest as the freighter shimmied in response.
“Two minutes, Trilby-chenka.”
“Got a leak in the compression feed.”
“One minute, forty-five.”
Another alarm wailed overhead. Trilby slapped at the panel, silencing it. “I’m not getting a response from Bay Eighty-Seven. Affirmatives from Eighty-Five and Ninety-Two.”
“One minute.” The console behind Rhis continued to hiss and spark.
Trilby ignored it. She focused on the weak signals from the mining raft. “I’m getting a readout on Eighty-Seven. It may open and discharge. It may not.”
“Forty-five seconds.”
“Remember my ascent indicator is wrong.”
Rhis reached over her head and tapped the plush felinar.
“You learn quick. For an Imperial.”
He flashed her a conspiratorial grin. “Twenty-five seconds.”
“Sending release codes. Bays Eighty-Five and Ninety-Two responding. Bay Eighty-Seven—” Trilby took her eyes from the data scanners and glanced at the aft viewscreen. It looked as if a hundred metallic balls suddenly shot out of a gigantic pinball-machine tube. She gave a short whoop of delight. “Eighty-Seven’s decided to party!”
Both Tarks banked sharply as the maintenance ’bots bounced off their shields. The pilots’ attentions and targeting computers suddenly overloaded. Rhis targeted, locked on, and fired the ion cannon.
The lagging Tark, the one he’d damaged earlier, exploded into a ball of debris and escaping gases.
“Damned good shot, flyboy!”
Several thousand tons of plasteel gridwork loomed ahead. One Tark followed behind, closer now, firing more insistently.
“Aft shields down another twenty percent. I’m going to pull power from the port shields, Rhis. Aft is critical now.” The ship’s drives were in the aft section. The drives and Dezi.
“I can compensate.” He made some quick adjustments, keeping the Tark targeted to starboard.
The Venture hugged the perimeter of the larger raft, proximity alarms again screeching. It was a close, dangerous maneuver.
Rhis banked the ship sharply, cutting power.
The Tark’s view of the raft was blocked by the larger freighter in front of it. The pilot tried to pull up abruptly at the last moment but slammed into a protruding launch tower, shearing off one wing. Jagged chunks of metal wheeled through the airless void toward the raft’s empty launchpad.
Trilby hollered with joy again, reached for Rhis’s hand in a congratulatory handshake. His clasped his large hand around hers, grinning, but there was something more than the thrill of victory in his eyes.
Just as she had no doubt there was in hers.
His hand tightened around hers. Warmth flowed up her arm. Flustered, she plastered on her “professional captain” mien. “We did good, flyboy.”
His fingers squeezed hers. “We did very good.”
Not “we.” Rhis was the hero, and not only because he’d just saved their lives. But because he cared about Carina’s plight. Pored over shipping logs rather than sleeping. Poured her tea and brought it to her. Folded the towels, nice and fluffy, just as she liked them.
Damnation! She pulled her hand back. She had to stop touching him. Next time she might not be able to stop.
She feigned a proprietary look and keyed control of her ship back to her station. She guided it between two large storage depots, but her heart was still pounding. Which reminded her of the larger problem: the ’Sko. “Anyone else out there?”
They were too deep in the asteroid field for the mother ship to come after them. But another set of Tarks, if diligent, might find their trail.
Rhis looked up from the scanner and wiped one hand over his face. “No. The mother ship seems to have pulled out of range.”
She heard his emphasis on “seems” and grudgingly acknowledged her scanners were often myopic, at best. And they were not at their best right now.
“Well, we’ll keep out eyes peeled.” She keyed open intraship. “Dezi? All clear, for now.”
“I am pleased to learn that. Shall I reconnect life support?”
“I want to do a systems check first.” She nodded to Rhis. “We took some damage.”
He leaned forward, bringing the data online as Dezi acknowledged her request. “I have begun repairs on the compression feed already.”
“Get back to me when you’re done. Captain out.”
A low exclamation in Zafharish was followed by a few curse words she recognized. Her heart stopped for a moment and she glanced at her long-range scanner. But it showed no intruders, ’Sko or otherwise.
Then she remembered she’d started a system check. He probably was compiling a damage report. “Tabulating repair times for me?”
He raised his gaze from the screen, and for a moment she thought she saw something hard glitter in his eyes’ dark depths. Something more than annoyance at her ship’s mounting ills. Then he shook his head, his mouth twisting into a cynical half smile.
“Have you ever had the feeling,” he asked her, with an aimless wave of one hand, “that the Gods are conspiring against you?”
She burst out laughing. “My whole life. Don’t be so sure it’s you. Could be the Gods don’t want me to make a nice profit off that Bagrond run.”
“Or maybe the ’Sko don’t,” he put in quietly.
Trilby’s smile faded. “You can’t be serious. They were purposely waiting for the Venture? There’s no way they’d know my schedule. It’s not as if we departed from a controlled port where I’d have a flight plan filed.” Like Bella’s Dream had, coming out of Marbo.
“You’re right. Of course,” Rhis said quickly. “I was thinking of something else.”
“That they knew you were on my ship? How? Nothing came by to check out where your Tark went down. Not a seeker ’droid. Not even a flyby.”
He ran one hand through his hair before answering. “Sorry. It is only that …” He paused, then quickly, almost harshly: “I don’t know what it was I was thinking.”
Her comp screen chimed twice softly. She turned from him, paged down the data from her systems check, then sent it to Rhis’s screen. He wasn’t going to like the results, but then, she didn’t like what she was hearing. Or his sudden evasiveness, his hesitancy with his words. “Okay, so we’ve got problems. Why all of a sudden do you think it’s personal?”
“I don’t. It is just that
…” He shrugged. “I’ve been in Fleet for too long. Paranoia is part of my job description. We most likely came across the Tarks by happenstance. A routine patrol.”
It was a totally believable explanation. And she totally didn’t believe it.
“In Conclave space, nowhere near any trade lanes? As soon as we get up and running, I’m sending out an advisory.” She didn’t think for a minute the Conclave would investigate. But at least a warning would be posted. The kind of warning that could have saved Bella’s Dream.
“We’re close to the border. By the time you contact a patrol base, the ’Sko will be long gone. Besides,” Rhis added with a shrug, “your people may ask what you were doing out here.”
True, but the gain seemed to outweigh the risk to Trilby. “I’ll take that chance.”
“I advise you not to.”
It was the first time she’d heard that sharp tone from him since he’d grabbed her in sick bay. She leaned back in her seat, was about to ask him just who he thought he was to dictate to her, when he touched her lightly on the arm.
“Sorry.” And he sounded sorry. “I’m not giving you orders. But I am trained to deal with security issues. If the ’Sko have left this area, your report will generate nothing. But if they’ve not, your report will help them trace us again.”
He had a point. She nodded, slowly. The light touch on her arm changed to a reassuring and not at all unpleasant clasp. Warm, almost possessive. But his evasiveness rankled at her. She leaned away from him. “Okay. But I’m filing as soon as we pick up Rumor’s outer beacon.”
“Agreed.”
“Can I have my seat back now? That routine patrol poked some holes in my ship. I want to get her into one of the raft bays so we can patch her up. Just in case they’re still waiting for us when we leave this asteroid field.”
“Of course.” He unsnapped the harness strap. “Let me know what you need me to do.”
Be honest with me, Trilby thought, but said nothing. Her disquieting sense of unease about her “hero” was back. She hated being kept in the dark. Bad things always seemed to follow. Like Jagan’s marriage. Her agent’s desertion.
She guided the Venture into an abandoned bay, worrisome thoughts trailing through her mind like the debris floating through the wreckage behind her.
Finders Keepers Page 9
