“He wouldn’t have enough fuel, sir. He’d have to make at least three jumps in quick succession, and without some excellent piloting, he’s in hot water.”
Ruger glowered at her. “I’d say that excellent piloting is one area he has a surplus in, Sindal! I’ll let Cavendish run down the lead through that intermittent gate, but you damn well better jump when I tell you to.”
Sindal gulped. “Yes, sir.”
Chapter Fifteen
Seen from the outside, spacedock Upsilon resembled an off white cue ball. The dock’s smooth surface was punctuated only by a large black opening on one side and dotted with red lights like a sprinkling of cinnamon. Space-going vessels of all sizes and shapes slipped through the dock’s opening in a sort of cosmic birthing. Inside, the surface of the sphere, aided by the dock’s majestic spin as it rotated about the planet Northumbria, crept up to a comfortable nine-tenths of a gee.
Drake’s officers relaxed at the dock’s well-stocked bar, watching though the portal window as their battered ship was towed into position by drone tugs. Workers wearing space suits and booster packs clustered around the moorings like anxious fireflies. Sebastiàn reclined at the table, letting his lids droop over his tired eyes. He was tired, but alert. He was too excited to nap. He had been in two engagements, and not only had he lived to tell the tale, he had distinguished himself. And now, though they were on the run, he was seeing sights and visiting far off sectors which he had only dreamed about at the Academy. The excitement and the adrenaline was a heady wine, and he sighed to himself, contented with his lot.
There were two things which struck every person on their first visit to a spacedock. The first was how incredibly big a spacedock was. The steel and plexi sphere which Sebastiàn was looking at could have easily encompassed the entire base at Kennedy City, with room for the bay. The workers at the other end of the dock were all but invisible, only distinguishable by the flare of their booster packs.
The second thing which surprised him was how quiet a dock was. Even in the age of sophisticated machinery, people expected a shipyard facility to ring with the pounding of a thousand hammers, to hiss with the sound of molten metal being poured into ingots. Vacuum robbed the spacedock of all its romantic sound effects, and Sebastiàn couldn’t help but listen to Ferra and Kincaid’s banter instead.
“And that’s where you’re dead wrong,” Kincaid said, gesturing drunkenly with his glass. “Engineering is less important than medicine.”
Ferra made a rude noise. “Anything to justify your employment, Kincaid. Everyone knows that you’ll need an engineer to run a ship if there isn’t a regular crew.”
“Yeah? Then how come we always follow up robotic scouts with manned expeditions? You just can’t do certain things without a sentient brain pulling the strings.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it. The problem in itself is having people around. Engines are cleaner, they behave themselves.”
“Hey, things break down.”
“People get sick.”
“Engines need overhauls.”
“Crews need shore leave.”
“Now there’s an idea,” Kincaid considered, scratching his chin.
“And all the maintenance…too time consuming.”
“And too much work.”
“Especially having to provide heat and air for a whole ship.”
“Not to mention feeding them.”
“A pain in the ass.”
“You got that right.”
“The solution?”
“Kill ‘em all!”
They clinked their glasses together and drank a toast.
Sebastiàn gave them a look. “You two are seriously disturbed.”
Drake and Tally came in and took a seat next to the little group. Tally looked tense, and her face was pale. She ordered a drink, and then downed it with a single gulp when it arrived.
“What’s the matter?” asked Kincaid. “You look like you needed that.”
“This is why,” she replied, showing him her credit printout. “Someone put a ‘hold’ on my bank account!”
Sebastiàn blinked in amazement. “Ruger doesn’t have that kind of power over a civilian bank, does he?”
“A Fleet Commander doesn’t, but the Terran Security Council does.” Tally fumed silently for a minute, as if she were fighting with herself. “I really could use another drink.”
“Not now,” Drake cautioned her. “I need you thinking clearly.”
“All right,” she said, closing her eyes and cracking her knuckles. “There is one possibility, but I’ll need your help, Captain.”
Drake spread his hands. “Whatever you ask.”
“I’ll need the gold coin I gave you.”
“My coin? What for?”
“Bait.”
With a silent flash, Captain Sindal’s destroyer moved through the Chandrakasar gate and into the Tarazed system. Instead of the empty space around ‘Trapeze Central’, her ship entered the bustling traffic of an interstellar freight zone. Ahead lay a huge space station in the shape of a wine glass. Several dozen transports and tankers hung in close orbit. The control tower set in the ‘stem’ of the glass swept the area ceaselessly, ensuring that newly arriving ships avoided colliding as they jockeyed into the appropriate spots for loading or refueling.
“Welcome to system Tarazed,” came a friendly female voice. “This is Transport Station Control. You’re on our screens as Alpha Bravo one six. Please identify yourself.”
Sindal swore under her breath. All she needed was a nosy transport chief delaying her mission. “This is Captain Sindal of the Earth destroyer Vigilant,” she said curtly, “We’re looking for—”
“Vigilant?” the transport chief said, startled. “I’ve been at this job for ten years, and I’ve never come across a Marine vessel like yours.”
“My ship isn’t in the Marine Corps,” Sindal said pompously. “I am a Captain in the Terran Home Guard.”
“Gotcha. ‘Terran’ Home Guard? Well, this ain’t Earth. You’re a little outside of your field, aren’t you?”
“Look, I’m on an important mission. We’ve tracked a fugitive vessel to this sector, and I need to track them down.”
“Why, what’ve they done?”
“This is being done on orders of the Terran government,” Sindal snapped. “Information is being issued on a need-to-know basis only.”
“And I don’t ‘need to know’, right?”
“We’ve tracked their drive exhaust into this sector. They’re either here, or they’ve passed through your zone. Where are they?”
“You got me.”
Sindal could hear the disinterested shrug in the voice. It made her want to strangle the woman on the other end.
“You impudent—”
“Before you threaten to revoke my dock license or something stupid like that, let me tell you something. I monitor five hundred ships on each shift. Many arrive by the same gate you just came from. If I plot ‘em, they talk nice to me, I let them go on their way. And to answer your next question, no, we don’t keep visual records of who’s been through. So I’m sorry, but you’re barking up the wrong tree here.”
Sindal gestured angrily, and the line was cut.
“We’re going to be thorough about this,” she announced. “Initiate a search pattern for any propulsion traces of the Ranger. As soon as we find it, we track it to a gate.”
The headquarters of the freelance construction company looked out over station Northumbria’s repair docks. The steep angle of the window gave the illusion that no one was ever quite able to stand up completely straight.
Tally crossed her arms in stubborn refusal. “Don’t give me that. You owe me, Jayden.”
“I owe you? What a strange universe this is. Usually, that’s my line when I’m addressing the CEO of Tallyho, Incorporated.” Jayden’s voice was raspy, whimsical, but his face was not.
The man’s deep-set eyes burned like twin chips of jade, and they watched Tall
y and Drake with scarcely concealed curiosity. Jayden al Ramòs was the spacedock general manager, and he never let any visitor to his domain forget that fact.
Jayden was a freelance contractor who liked the security of a regular station job, and would have been one of the many scrupulously honest station managers but for the fact that he liked piles of money even better. He hired out select groups of dock workers to do special ‘rush’ jobs, and they never asked him questions when they got their ‘overtime’ credits. Tally liked him better than most people, probably because they thought on the same wavelength.
“Look, have I ever failed to pay you back?”
“You really want to know the answer to that?” he replied sourly.
“I meant besides that last time. And I did bring you your share, regardless,” Tally pointed out.
“You’ve plenty of nerve, woman.” Jayden idly scratched his scraggly beard, pretending to notice Drake for the first time. “What’s going on with you, spacer-boy? Do you know that you’re hooked in with someone who brings people artifacts contaminated with alien life forms? You know, last time we had these little furry caterpillar things all over the station, we had to gas every room…”
“Look, if you really have to know,” Drake growled, “I’m a member of the Terran military. Can we move this along? We’ve been haggling here for half an hour, and I’m starting to get a little annoyed.”
Jayden raised an eyebrow. Drake’s keen senses told him that he hadn’t gained an inch.
The man laughed. “Cool it, space jock. I could tell from the moment you stepped in that you’re a soldier. And you’re also on the run from something. Unless there’s something in it that interests me, don’t bother coming back.”
Tally sighed, and dug into her pocket. She brought out Drake’s doubloon. She turned it over in her hand, making sure that it caught the light.
Jayden’s hand darted out and snatched it up. He pursed his lips speculatively.
“What would this be, now?”
Tally appeared to be surprised. “That? Oh, it’s nothing. Just a trinket, really.”
Jayden tapped the coin with a fingernail, brightening as the metal indented slightly. “Real gold,” he whispered. “But judging from the date...”
Tally shrugged. “Well, it is an antique. But you wouldn’t be interested in that.”
“You might be surprised. Pray tell, how much would this little trinket be worth?”
“That single doubloon? Probably enough to buy a new groundcar. But that’s small change. An entire chest’s worth of these coins? That would be worth enough make a down payment on your very own spacedock construction company,” Tally said offhandedly, as she warmed to the game. She knew Jayden’s dream, and she tapped into it. “It’s a real shame, you know. I had a lead on a half-dozen treasure chests.”
“Was it a good lead?” The eyes were intent.
“Yes, but we ran into those repair problems I told you about.”
“I think that I could ask some of my people to take a look,” Jayden confessed. “That is, if you were planning to split the proceeds with me. I mean, my station.”
“Perhaps, if I can get underway in three hours.”
Jayden choked. “I think twenty would be a more accurate estimate. Someone was not playing around with that starship of yours.”
“Eight would be more reasonable.”
“Eighteen.”
“Ten.”
“Twelve.”
“Oh, thank you, Jayden,” Tally gushed, giving him the patented flash-bulb smile. “It’s always a pleasure doing business with you.”
“You’ll be the death of me someday, Tally,” Jayden grumped, as he slipped the coin into his pocket. “If you don’t mind, I’ll put this here for safe keeping.”
Tally shook on the deal with Jayden before she left. Drake followed her out, fuming.
“I can’t believe this!” Drake spat. “He’s got a responsibility to aid travelers in distress. At least patch our worst repairs without gouging us.”
“I know how you feel,” Tally sympathized. “But we’re not exactly in a position to take the moral high ground. And remember, I’m effectively broke unless we find this engine.”
“And then we destroy it,” he said, as he carefully watched her face.
“Of course, Benjamin. Of course we will.”
Chapter Sixteen
On the screen, the gold green globe of Northumbria floated before them, the slowly receding spacedock a dim curve on the upper left. With a flick of a switch, the scene switched to a three dimensional representation of the local star map. Tally and the officers of the Ranger looked on with hushed anticipation.
“Are we ready to look up our final destination?” asked Tally.
“Now that repairs are complete, of course! Just give me a bearing, I’ll get us there,” Sebastiàn said expansively. He adjusted the star map as it plotted out the first yellow grid. Once again, it overlay the Earth and several other significant star systems.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have our answer,” Tally announced. “Plotting the grid...now.”
Line by line, the navigation computer built a new grid in blue. It angled gently downward towards the projected star systems, moving through the immense distances plotted out on the star map. The new grid bypassed the Earth. The angle of the blue plane skimmed over the densely populated core systems. Then it passed by the sparsely populated outer sectors, again refusing to touch the yellow plane.
But eventually, it did. At the very edge of the map, it slashed through the yellow grid. It was a lonely star system, separated on one side from the closest rim colony by more than eighty light years. In every other direction, the nearest stars, barren of any planetary systems, were over five hundred light years away.
The lonely star shone a baleful, metallic shade of silver.
“That system is registered as Naq Al Sharif,” Tally pronounced triumphantly.
“Nice neighborhood,” Kincaid remarked, “If you like peace and quiet.”
The silence on the bridge was shattered as an alarm sounded. In an instant, Sebastiàn was at his navtech console.
“A new spacecraft just exited the gate,” he reported. “It’s one of Ruger’s destroyers. The Vigilant, by the look of her.”
“Tactical!” Drake ordered.
The display came up. The enemy ship was still some way off, but it glowed red on the screen like a fresh bloodstain.
“I’m picking up a pulse of noise from the nullspace frequency again,” Tally said, from the communications position. “It’s not the same as the one we got from the Repulse.”
“I see it too. She’s sweeping the area with an active sensor. High power, too.” Sebastiàn made a small tsk. “Lets everyone know you’re looking for them.”
“Well, everyone knows how thorough Tara Sindal is,” Drake allowed. “Not very bright, but thorough.”
“Of course everyone knows how thorough she is,” Kincaid said wryly. “She mentions it every third sentence at the officer’s club.”
Drake shared a small laugh with him. “Yeah, she sure has gone downhill since she got rid of her first officer.”
“Only man on the Vigilant with the balls to tell her his mind.”
Tally gave the two men a look. “How do you know so much about her?”
“You spend ten years in the Terran Home Guard, you know when somebody passes wind,” Kincaid grumbled. “It happens when all you have to get drunk in is an officer’s club the size of a walk-in closet.”
“Her ship’s slightly newer, with an active scanning system,” Drake added. “Great for finding things, but it’s noisy. Sindal’s navtech is too lazy to figure out a way to improve it.”
“If it’s new, why hasn’t she located us yet?” Sebastiàn asked, tense. The navtech’s board showed the blue sensor lines playing along their location. He could see that the range of Sindal’s weapons were far greater than his.
“Something that Ferra looked up years ago,�
�� Drake explained. “Active sensors pick up particle emissions from the new tachyon engines that came into service twenty years ago.”
“And this ship is too old to have them,” Tally said, divining the thought. “So we should be able to sneak right by.”
“It buys us some time, but we can still be spotted visually.” Drake stopped, lost in thought. He got up and stared at the tactical screen, mentally noting the distance between the Ranger, the Vigilant, and the Chandrakasar gate. “Lieutenant, you’re better than anyone I’ve seen at re-calibrating weapons systems. Think you’re up for a real oddball request?”
Sebastiàn grinned. “Try me, sir.”
“What’s the status of our aft torpedo launcher?”
“Fully loaded, sir.”
“Good. Set our aft torpedoes for proximity detonation at fifty meters.
“All of them, Captain?”
“Yes. Empty our aft magazine while giving me a tight dispersal pattern. What’s more, when you launch them, I want each of the torpedoes cold-popped.”
“Sir?” Drake had lost him.
“He means that he wants the missiles ejected with the compressed gas, but he doesn’t want their engines to fire,” Ferra supplied.
“That right,” Drake said. “And this is the most important part: I want you to turn off each torpedo’s targeting systems.”
Sebastiàn stared at his commander for a moment, and then got to work.
Sindal’s navtech sung out. “Engine signature, bearing mark four six seven. Confirming visual, it’s the Ranger!”
“Helm, bring us about,” Sindal ordered. “Target their engine.”
“The range is too far,” the navtech said, after a moment. “I can’t get a precise shot.”
“Engineering,” Sindal snapped, “flank speed, now! They’re going to make a run for the gate.”
Sindal’s navtech fed the rush of power into the ship’s thrusters, and they accelerated smartly. His breath caught in his throat as he realized that the gate that Drake was heading for wasn’t going to open for the next ten minutes.
Treasure of the Silver Star Page 12
