Ship's Boy (The David Birkenhead Series)

by Phil Geusz

  Then, almost before I knew it, the cruiser formed up with Hummingbird and gave us a good, long looking-over. Her Field remained up and strong for what felt like forever; so long that I got a little fidgety and Sergeant Wells thumped me for my trouble. Then she closed in further, further, further, into easy spacer’s jump range…

  …and finally let down her Field so that she could send over a salvage party to search for secret papers and the like.

  19

  Sword of the People, I was able to read emblazoned on the cruiser’s flank in proud, blue letters. Up until then none of us had known her name—the Field had rendered our antagonist anonymous. In nothing flat all four twin turrets were slewed around facing us and their boarding party was gathering on their outer hull. I gulped as the lock cycled again and again and again, until a good twenty men were standing on Sword’s hull awaiting orders. Most of them were wearing specialized combat suits, which rather frightened me at first. Then I thought things through. This was the group we’d ambush first and hardest—the more marines there were among them, the better.

  The battle was still being planned when Sergeant Wells and I had exited Hummingbird; while he was still in touch with the captain via secure micropip link I had no way of knowing what was to happen next. So I looked up into his faceplate and shrugged my shoulders. He replied by shaking his head and pressing me down harder against the hull. I scowled and nodded back—the message was clear enough. We were to wait.

  And wait, and wait, and wait it seemed, though my heart was still trying to beat its way out of my chest. It was hard to just float in place while my target loomed so close it took up half the sky! But I had an excellent view as one of the Imperials, some sort of officer judging by the gold-painted symbols on his suit, suddenly saw something he didn’t like and kicked himself around to use his jetpack. The instant he did…

  …something unexpected happened. Suddenly stirring to life, Hummingbird fired her chemical maneuvering jets, which were normally only used for docking. She surged under me, and I was so surprised by the sudden vector that I might’ve floated helplessly away if Sergeant Wells hadn’t grabbed hold. Indeed, well for’rard I saw exactly that happen to someone caught off-guard in a bright-orange lubber’s suit—whether they ever made it back, I’ll never know. In the same instant Hummingbird’s main armament—blasters no heavier than a large land-fighting vehicle might carry—vomited forth with all they had. Sword fired back, but most of her broadside missed because even though Hummingbird was barely crawling by interstellar standards, she was also very near at hand and the heavy mountings could only track just so quickly. For an instant I watched the fireworks, transfixed by the terrible majesty of it all. Then Sergeant Wells whapped me a good one, and it was time to go!

  I felt very naked indeed as the sergeant and I stood up side-by side amidst all the blaster-fire—space itself seemed to be aflame! I powered up my Field, which hadn’t been done earlier because it would’ve shown up on the Imperial’s sensors. Meanwhile, as my protective shield stabilized Sergeant Wells bound us together with an umbilical and clipped on the reel of superconducting rope. Then we were ready, but my companion decided to toss a couple shots of his own into the melee before we pushed off towards the enemy vessel. Both struck home on Imperials who were attempting to escape the terrible crossfire; one was a certain kill, while the second caught its target in the calf. I was watching gape-mouthed as the wounded Imperial first writhed in agony and then began an a desperate attempt at patching himself when my companion cuffed me again. First he held up one finger, as I braced myself for the big leap. Then two…

  And three!

  Squish! my still-damp feet went as I shoved off just as hard as I could towards Sword of the People, and then I was on my way. Both the sergeant and I made good leaps; though he was by far the larger and stronger of us we Rabbits were extra-strong in the legs, so our efforts weren’t too terribly mismatched. He got us stabilized in nothing flat, something he had to take care of for both of us since Field suits carried their generator in the place where a jetpack was normally mounted. And then…

  …we simply floated along.

  While there were probably safer places to watch a battle from, there’s probably never been a better one. Hummingbird’s light mounts were all firing independently now, just as fast as their chargers would feed them. The rounds might not’ve been very heavy, but there sure were lots of them! And, in the absence of a protective Field, they were absolutely shredding Sword—one of her big twin turrets was already out of action, while the others still weren’t hitting much of anything. Perhaps they’d never been calibrated for such a close-in target? And yet… Sword’s skin was already starting to develop a silvery sheen as her engine-room staff strove desperately to get her underway. The sudden new holes appearing all over her skin weren’t making her chief engineer’s job any easier, I knew. Nor were the already-damaged engines. And her plant was finicky, I reminded myself.

  But still—we weren’t moving half fast enough to suit me!

  Sergeant Wells might’ve—and possibly even should’ve—nudged us along a little faster with his jetpack. But he was plenty busy dealing with our other immediate problems. Chief among them were a group of Imperials who, having escaped the crossfire, had seen my silvered-suit and rope and put two and two together with commendable speed. Six or seven of them were jetting our way, letting fly with everything that’d shoot. All I could do at first was watch—my blaster was configured for short-range work only. Sergeant Wells picked several off, then took a glancing hit on the back of his left glove that required a patch. He was quick, Sergeant Wells was. But not half quick enough. The Imperials kept right on closing, accelerating all the way as he worked. Finally, still certain they were too far away, I drew my own blaster and let fly. The result was… amazing! At first I thought the weapon had exploded in my hand, the discharge was so intense. But at least a dozen bolts blasted out in a fanlike pattern, killing two of the remaining three Imperials outright and holing the third’s boot. This last one kept right on firing despite the fact that he must’ve been breathing something closely resembling vacuum—there were gold emblems on his suit and maybe that was why. The recoil from the first shot knocked me silly so that Sergeant Wells and I were now spinning slowly around each other; it wasn’t easy at all to line up for another shot. But somehow I managed, and my second over-powered discharge caught the stubborn Imperial square in the chest, ripping him into pieces. My gun was hot now, even through my Field-protected glove, and a yellow light was blinking. So I re-engaged the safety and holstered it, even though there was more to shoot at.

  Besides, by then Sergeant Wells was back in action and with him at my side I didn’t need to fight. He was like a remorseless precision machine, carefully aiming and then squeezing off one carefully-directed round after another. He killed at least seven men while we made our long drift, which was a very good thing because everywhere I looked Hummingbird’s crewmen, particularly those not trained for advanced maneuvers—much less space combat!—were dying in droves. Inert orange lubber’s suits filled the sky, so many that I gulped at the sight.

  Then at last we were close-aboard Sword, and Sergeant Wells spun around feet-first to make his landing. I did the same with considerably less grace, and then we slammed onto the rapidly-silvering hull with enough force to knock the wind out of me; belatedly, I realized that I’d forgotten to account for the initial vector provided by Hummingbird’s maneuvering-thrusters. In fact, I slammed home so hard that it was actually Sergeant Wells who unclipped the rope-spool from my belt and handed me the bitter end to clip down. I stared stupidly at him for a moment, then smiled and nodded. He clapped me on the shoulder again and smiled back, then scrambled away a few yards to avoid the inevitable warp flux.

  We’d already mounted a clip on the end of the rope, so all I had to do was find an unused eye of some kind on Sword’s outer skin. This was easier said than done, since apparently the Imperials were much less enamored of the
things than Royal shipbuilders. Hummingbird and Broad Arrow were festooned with tiedowns—now that I really needed one in a hurry for the first time in my life, there wasn’t one to be found anywhere! And the hull was almost fully silvered!

  Finally I found a place where a steel pipe of some kind connected two long, low structures whose purpose I couldn’t discern. It was far from ideal—the connection would be loose and uncertain and thus spark continuously. And even worse, because I didn’t know what I was connecting to, for all I knew I was setting up the biggest explosion I’d never live to see. But there wasn’t anything for it; Sword was about to stabilize her Field despite all her handicaps. So I reached out with the cable…

  …the Field arced with a brilliant eye-stabbing flash, draining all the accumulated ship’s power from countless dimensions…

  …and I screamed my lungs out as my non-conductive and unpowdered fur blocked the proper eddy-flow inside my personal Field and, in places, burst into flame.

  20

  Field suits are different than other kinds of vacuum gear in many ways. For one thing, they’re routinely worn for many hours a day by comfortably seated engineers in pressurized spaces, surrounded with perfectly good air. Plus, they’re almost never used in null-gee. So their climate-control systems are rudimentary—if one needs to go EVA, the designers reason, one can always don a less-specialized suit. The air tanks are also relatively small—when on engine-room watch, we simply topped off frequently. And the joints are stiff too, especially in the buttocks region where there’s plenty of padding. There are other technical differences as well, all of which go far beyond the Field generator itself. Most of them center around the safety-systems, which are both extensive and well thought out. This is due to the simple fact that despite all modern innovations engine rooms remain very dangerous places—that was why we wore the suits to begin with, after all. And with each accident, the designers learned more and made the suits that little bit better.

  I think I’d have died right then and there if my Field suit hadn’t been brand new and absolutely up to the minute. As it was, I suffered charring burns over so much of my body that I don’t ever want to know how bad it actually was. My suit was ready for such an eventuality, however, and immediately filled itself with medical foam from the neck down. The stuff both extinguished the flames and killed the pain. Meanwhile a little injector shot me up with a generic (and in my case, Rabbit-approved) anti-shock drug, and initiated a forced IV to restore the fluids I was probably losing faster than the machine could pump them in. Meanwhile a cherry-red flashing light appeared on my chest to let my comrades know how badly I was hurt.

  I don’t know how long all of this took, because I too busy screaming myself silly the whole time to register the passing of minutes and seconds. Being simultaneously electrocuted and flash-fried hurts, I can assure anyone who wants to know. It hurts more than there are words in any language to express, and it goes on and on and on until the cool, soothing foam finally whisks the pain away. And even then I was still in agony because the suit designers foresaw that foaming the inside of my helmet would kill me even more effectively than any conceivable burns. (You can’t breathe healing-foam!) My ears felt like they were both about half-gone with the stubs shredded to ribbons, and there could be no medication for them. But the happy-happy feel-good stuff in the shot helped. Or at least eventually it did. A little.

  So, as I said, I screamed and screamed for a very long time. When finally I stopped and began to be able to think again, my first problem was that my visor was all fogged up on the inside, from where the water I’d been soaked in had flashed into steam and then recondensed. Only half-aware of what I was doing, I followed my training and dealt with that by venting the suit’s atmosphere directly into space until it cleared, which also had the side benefit of clearing out most of the awful stink as well. Then, unable to hold out any longer, I used the sick tube.

  When I was done my head was a lot clearer and I was actually able to look around me and take in what was going on. Sergeant Wells was crouched behind good cover about thirty feet forward of me, pinned down by a veritable waterfall of auto-blaster fire. The bolts were striking everywhere, all around him, some just an inch or two away. The marine didn’t have enough space to do much more than turn his head, which he did frequently to look back at me. I finally caught his eye and waved. He waved back, clearly pleased that I was conscious. Then he pointed at the grapple, the unconnected end of which still floated near the half-melted steel bar.

  Wasn’t I supposed to do something with that? It seemed terribly urgent, but somehow I couldn’t quite remember…

  I shook my head to clear it, which was a mistake because this jarred my ruined ears something fierce and I fear I wasted more time screaming. But maybe it was just as well, because when I was done I was truly myself again. I had, simply had, to reconnect that grapple! It seemed so simple, but…

  …I didn’t want to burn again, either. Not that! Never, ever again! And Sword’s hull was already all silvery, almost like before!

  Somewhere along the line Sergeant Wells had activated my sandal magnets so I wouldn’t float away. Wincing because I knew it was going to hurt, I raised my right foot and took a wobbly step forward. It wasn’t so bad, really—no worse than the time when I was little and fell down a flight of steps, smashing three teeth and breaking my jaw. So I ignored the agony and did it again. And again and again and again, squish-squish-squish in the medicated foam. I was ready to weep by the time I grabbed the loose end, but shook it off regardless. This had to be done, and that was that.

  Even though I was quite certain that this time the back-eddies would kill me.

  Since I couldn’t afford a second failed hookup I opened the connector with nearly numb fingers, then lined up my swing carefully so that with any luck at all the fitting would snap shut and grasp the pipe on its own, without my having to be around to close the thing manually. Then I made a couple practice swings, again to ensure that everything was just-so. A few blaster bolts zinged by—apparently someone had finally seen me. But they were too late. I swung the grapple one last time…

  …and slammed the fitting home onto the twisted, burned pipe!

  Once again there was a terrible flash as the ship’s accumulated power was shunted down the endless, geometrically-impossible drain that was the grappling-line and Hummingbird’s hull, and I screwed my face up in anticipation of the terrible burning. But this time all that happened was that I felt a sort of electrical tickle pass up and down my body five or six times. I blinked, shocked to still be in existence. What on earth? Then suddenly I understood. It was the first-aid foam! It must be electrically-conductive, like Dad’s powder!

  There wasn’t much time to celebrate, however. Suddenly the ever-thickening blaster-rounds were a lot more important than they’d been just seconds before; I used my sandal-magnets to creep around behind one of the little protuberances whose purpose I still hadn’t divined. Once there I was almost all the way aft, so that for the moment at least all the fire was coming from one direction. Sergeant Wells was still pinned down, and I didn’t see any way he was ever going to extricate himself without help. Though in turn, I also didn’t think anyone could force their way past him without paying a terrible price. My red light was blinking faster now, which meant I was getting worse. Though I didn’t need the indicators to know it—I was seeing black spots sometimes, and the problem didn’t lie in my suit’s oxygen density.

  I looked back at the grapple, which was holding fine. Then I looked up towards Hummingbird, and my jaw dropped at how crowded the space between the two vessels had become. There was debris everywhere, of all sorts and description. Blown-out hatches, abandoned weapons, bits of cable, and a veritable snowstorm of ships' papers. Worst of all there were suited figures everywhere, many mutilated and some still feebly struggling to survive. Hummingbird herself was a near-skeletal wreck, though most of her guns were still blazing away. Which was more than could be said for Sword’s
mounts—her huge fireballs would’ve been quite visible, had her major weapons remained in action. But…

  I gulped. Yes, the navy’s engineers were very good indeed at repairing battle damage. But if Sword was in as pitiful a condition as my own ship, well…

  None of us would be going home. Not ever.

  21

  I popped my head up again to check on Sergeant Wells—he was still pinned down, but very much alive and in the fight. His flanks were at least somewhat protected by intense covering fire from Hummingbird. And yet…

  I scowled to myself. Surely I wasn’t the only one to notice how quickly Sword was deteriorating. The Imperials themselves had to know her condition better than anyone. Yet, it was becoming clear, they could no longer win this battle so long as the grapple was in place. So… If I were the enemy commander, what would I be doing?

  It didn’t take long at all to figure that out, what with my sitting where I was and staring dead aft. Which was, as near as I could figure, the best place left for the Imperials to mass for a decisive counter-attack.

  This time when I tried to lift my feet against the tug of the sandals, I couldn’t manage it at all. It wasn’t just the pain—that was tough, yes, but I’d conquered it before. The problem was that I was growing weaker by the second. Which was all the better reason for me to do what had to be done and get it over with, before I became totally helpless.

  So I turned off the magnets and drifted slowly towards Sword’s stern, easing my way from handhold to handhold and keeping an eagle-eye out for the sudden massed attack that I was certain had to be coming. Sure enough, when I was just a few feet short of the end of the ship a whole gaggle of suited men, many of them marines, popped suddenly into my line of sight with their jetpacks roaring away at full power. I didn’t have time to think, which was just as well. Instead I hooked my leg around the nearest stanchion, drew my blaster, and let fly without aiming just as fast I could pull the trigger. Blam! Blam! Blam!