“We’re just a freighter,” Captain Travers told him forthrightly.
“With two ship kills. As near as I can figure that puts you number four on the list, just behind Agrabat.”
“There’s a young woman in my crew who is a whole lot more responsible for that than I am, Admiral.”
The other laughed. “And I saw the message you sent about what you want to do for her! I concur and have endorsed it and copied Fleet. Right now, the Federation needs every competent officer we can lay their hands on; I was only too happy to confirm the award and the promotion. It's the very least a grateful Federation can do for the young woman.
“You’ll stay on, then?” the admiral concluded.
“Aye, aye, sir. After we unload our latest cargo.”
“Come down to low orbit; that will take time and leave you vulnerable, but will soak up some of those hours. I’ll have lighters and slop boats up almost at once, we’ll tank you, and get those dependents out of there. If you have to cut loose, I’ll understand if you scooted if there were still civilians aboard.
“When you can, though, I’d like you to take a position about ten light minutes north of the ecliptic. Then turn off your engines.”
“Sir?”
“Lay doggo; if they come in, jump against singletons. The first time should be dead cert -- after that, a little sportier.” The admiral waved his hand at Captain Travers. “We’re uplinking more intel, but there is one important thing: they’ve put Ernie Fletcher in charge of Fleet Operations back home. He’s posited small attacks of two to four ships against all systems. Tannenbaum, Captain, Tannenbaum. That’s what they’re doing, although with more ships than he’d anticipated. And at Tannenbaum you got two of five and then they left. I’ve got nearly a billion reasons why I really want to see that happen here as well.”
“We’re en route, Admiral,” Captain Travers told him.
* * *
The next day and a half was busy and anything but dull. The tension was palpable among all of them; never knowing if this minute or the next would see them fighting for their lives. The dependents and the few adults were unloaded; Gunny Hodge’s married marines laughed at the idea of leaving the ship. Starfarer’s Dream accelerated away from the planet, and took position, with only another 12 hours left to run on the clock. As the time expired, they received a long transmission from New Helgoland.
“Captain Travers, this is Admiral Greer. I’ve got two of my cruisers back and they report no further attacks in the area. I’m sending a report for you to take back to Earth and Fleet Command; I wish you and your crew God speed and a safe journey. Wait until the last of the two ships cease maneuvering, and then depart. On the behalf of myself, the men and women of the Fleet stationed here at New Helgoland, and the government and people of New Helgoland, we wish to offer our deepest, our most profound tha...”
Joachim Wolf interrupted. “Captain, six ships have emerged from High Fan, within a tenth second of each other, at various locations around the system. Rate them as likely hostile.”
“If they’d waited ten minutes, we’d have been out of here,” Naomi said bitterly.
“But we’re not,” her husband pointed out.
“Captain,” Bob Shannon reported. “One of the unknowns is within a million kilometers of one of the asteroid mining centers. That jump is pre-computed, I have firm enough numbers now to get us within range.”
“Weapons!” the captain said.
“Weapons, aye!”
Bill Travers closed his eyes, a seventeen-year-old girl, only recently frocked as an ensign on her birthday. How much destruction did that young woman have at the end of her fingers?
“Prepare to engage!”
“Topping up the charge, sir. Ready in all respects, Captain!”
“Mr. Shannon, jump to intercept the hostile track!”
A fraction of a second later they were back in normal space; two seconds passed, four... at second number five the laser fired. “Target eliminated! They’ve fired on the habitat! One missile!” Willow Wolf reported. “Captain, the attacking ship had a high intrinsic velocity -- more than four thousand kilometers per second. The missile is steadily accelerating towards the habitat. Time to impact is one hundred and ninety seconds.
“Shit!” Six minutes on the recharge! The missile would be there in three minutes!
“Captain, a tug has departed from vicinity of the station,” Captain Wolf reported. “The tug is steadily increasing acceleration; passing fifty gravities. Now at sixty gravities.”
Bill Travers stared at the repeater screen. Someone had to have been on the tug at launch, but they were dead now. People could endure high accelerations -- up to a point. And that point was nowhere near thirty, much less the sixty or seventy gravities the tug was pulling.
“Sensors down!” Naomi said abruptly, then a moment later, “The tug was ten thousand kilometers from intercept when I shut down the sensors; the warhead has detonated about 250,000 kilometers short of the habitat. A very big burst, though. Our own sensors are 35% of nominal.”
“Shannon, we better get out of here!” Captain Travers commanded, regaining his composure. “Compute another intercept! Willow, how long on the recharge?”
“One minute ten, Captain.”
Christ, he thought! He’d wool-gathered a long time! Then he looked at the clock; it was less than two minutes since they’d fired.
“Willow, say again.”
“Less than a minute. We rerouted more conduit. We didn’t do a 4.0 job though, Captain, we’ve got a fire down on deck sixty-four. Forty seconds now; I think I can hold it that long; I’m heading down to lend a hand when the weapon is ready.”
“Jake! Get into your bubbles and get out of there! We’ll dump the air.”
“Thirty seconds is all, Captain. We’re getting a handle on the fire,” his Chief Engineer reported.
His board told him that it wasn’t much of a handle; all sorts of alarms were going off.
Jake came back on the command circuit. “We’re okay; it’s just a switch box, I’ve got two people on it, Captain.”
“You’re sure?” he asked. More than anything else, spacefarers feared fire.
“Yeah, we’ve sealed the space involved. We’re getting our bubbles on. As soon as we’re all set, we’ll dump our air. We’ll have a hell of a problem later with outgassing, but we’ll manage.”
Fire fighting in vacuum was, if you could vent the cubic involved into space, a piece of cake. You didn’t want to think about what sort of damage you’d do by doing so, though.
“Laser charged,” Willow broke in. “I’ve slaved the controls to your board and I’m heading down. It’s okay. Really.”
“Captain, two of the unknowns were engaged by two Fleet cruisers; one Fleet ship has been destroyed, another damaged. One of the aliens is gone, but the surviving alien ship is turning back to engage the damaged Fleet ship,” Captain Wolf reported.
“Compute and jump!”
They jumped. The captain was startled at the range Shannon put them at -- less than a thousand kilometers. The laser fired within an eye blink and the other ship vanished so fast that at first he was afraid the other had jumped, but the computer reported that they hadn’t jumped.
“Why so close?” Bill asked his pilot.
“Captain,” the young pilot told him, “the smallest weapon noted used by the unknowns is 1.1 gigatons. At a thousand kilometers, they’d blow themselves up hitting us. The vice is not versa.
“Captain, at this range, the unknown ship intercepted 99.996% of the beam energy. They strobed.”
A face appeared on a screen, a Fleet officer, a full commander. “You are Starfarer’s Dream?” the man asked. He didn’t look well; he was in a bubble, and it was obvious he hadn’t been wearing the bubble when the cubic he’d been in had decompressed. He was tired and dirty as well. No one cared.
Captain Travers nodded and said, “Roger, that!”
“Sir, thank you on behalf of myself and
the crew of the Catskill -- those of us that are left. My captain was too clever, sir. We jumped close to the alien, fired our missiles and then cut behind a two hundred kilometer rock. That rock wasn’t half big enough, sir, because they hammered it a dozen times. We’ve taken a lot of debris. Everything forward of frame 22 decompressed, about a dozen in the engineering spaces made it, a couple of us from the emergency bridge, and a few more here and there. We sure could use a helping hand about now.”
“Roger, Commander, we’re on our way. This was the last of them.”
The other nodded, looked away as someone gave him a report. “We have about ninety minutes of O-two, Captain, and then e-packs.”
“No problem -- we’ll be there in a twelve minutes.” The numbers were showing on his screen.
“Jake, how are you doing back there?”
His own engineer cursed, “We’ve dumped the air, but this fire’s got a life of its own -- damned if I know what’s burning! We’re working it.”
“Well, we’re going to get you a few extra hands. The Fleet ship here is trashed, only a couple of dozen crew made it this far. We’re going to dock with them and see how many we can get off.”
“Well, so far, everything looks like it still works. But the fire is not under control.”
* * *
They maneuvered towards the crippled Fleet ship, and in minutes were docked. “Thanks,” the commander said, as he shook Captain Traver’s hand, the commander’s voice shaking with emotion. “Thank you ever so much.”
“I’m not sure but what you’ve jumped from the frying pan to the fire,” Bill told him. “We have an engine room fire. My chief’s dumped the air, but says it’s still burning out of control.”
The other grimaced. “Those are the worst.”
As if on cue, Jake was on screen. “Got it, Bill. It wasn’t really a fire, that damn conduit had shorted -- we were running the primary feed for number two fan straight to ground. It’s just thermal hot now, but we had to dump the fan.”
“Shorting the input for an entire fan?” one of the officers just aboard said with a grimace. “That’s gotta void the warranty!”
Everyone laughed -- the laughs of men and women who a few minutes before were looking death in the face. A tax return would have made them laugh, just then.
Jake answered, “Well, the Laser Lady’s toy really sucks up the juice, Commander.” Jake nodded at Bill, “I hope we don’t have to charge it up again soon, because it’s not going to happen. This is going to be a yard job and you have five fans now, not six.”
“Laser Lady?” the rescued officer inquired. “Is that what you used on the son of a bitch? I was watching; I thought he went to fans. But the one tech who made it out of sensor alt says no one went to fans. The other bastard just went to hell. I wanted to shake the hand of the son of a bitch who got him, but I’d just as soon kiss a lady.”
Bill gestured at Willow. She was tall, not very pretty, not slender, but young, her bubble hanging from her hand. She was sooty and smoke covered, as was the commander from the Catskill.
The officer from the Catskill grinned at her. He walked up to Willow and gave her a very thorough kiss. “Don’t tell my wife, Miss! I’m sure she’d understand, but I’d rather not push my luck just now! I’ve used it all up!”
Willow blushed and stood speechless.
“And Laser Lady,” he said, as he reached out and took her hand. “I’m serious! There are two dozen people who came off with me and every last one of us stands in your debt. You ever need anything, want anything; call on me, Birdie Duncan, or anyone else off the Catskill. We’re at your beck and call. Yours too, Captain.” He nodded at Bill Travers, then stepped back, saluted the captain, then Willow.
Then he pitched forward on his face.
145
Starfarer’s Dream
Chapter 8 -- It’s Time to Go Home
I
Hours after the battle at New Helgoland, Willow Wolf sat at her desk in her quarters, the rest of her family were in her compartment as well. No one was speaking; all of them were lost in their own thoughts. Her father and mother were seated together, their arms wrapped around each other, while sitting on Willow’s bunk. Dee Dee was seated on the floor, her head resting against her mother’s leg.
There was a rap on the compartment door, and since it was partway open, Captain Travers pushed it further open. “Willow? Could I have a moment of your time?” Willow nodded wearily, and the captain came further into the compartment.
“We’ve sent the survivors from Catskill down,” Bill Travers told her. “Admiral Greer has asked if you and I, Willow, could spare him about an hour.” Captain Travers grimaced. “Not that we can shuttle down and get back up in that time. An hour downside.”
Willow shrugged. She was still trying to absorb everything from earlier in the day. Of all of the events since Agincourt, this day had struck home in almost the same way the destruction of her home system had. At Tannenbaum it had been clean -- see a blip, shoot. The blip would go away. Here, seeing the survivors off Catskill... You knew. You knew in a way that blips on a screen would never be able to communicate -- as had the pictures they had of the death of Agincourt had about what the aliens were doing.
Captain Travers turned to Joachim Wolf. “Captain, as soon as your daughter and I finish paying our respects to Admiral Greer, we’ll be back up. Dreamer will get underway the minute we’re aboard, I promise. Six more weeks and we’ll be back on Earth.”
Joachim Wolf nodded. “I’ve already talked it over with my wife; she’s not happy, but understands why I’ve got to enlist.” He sighed, looking at his wife fondly. “I think she’s more upset about that than Willow’s enlistment. Willow has wanted this since forever. Me however...”
Captain Travers understood, oh yes, he did indeed! He was wearing his old Fleet shipsuit again; he surely could understand! He turned to Willow. “There’s a shuttle docked with us now, and Admiral Greer has asked us to report to him at our earliest convenience, Willow.”
“I need to shower and get a clean shipsuit,” Willow told him. The shipsuit she was wearing was stained, the smell of smoke still faint in the air. Of course, that smell was everywhere aboard Dreamer now. And there was a personal thing she had to deal with; the pain had been getting slowly worse, instead of better. Better to take a little extra time...
“Half an hour?” her captain asked and Willow nodded. “I’ll tell the shuttle pilot,” he informed her as he left.
Later, as they sat in the shuttle headed down, Willow was uneasy, for several reasons. All her life she’d wanted to wear a Fleet shipsuit. Now she was -- a weapons-black shipsuit. Sensors, comm or lasers; that’s what she’d wanted, what she'd expected. She’d never thought about weapons; she had never given weapons the least thought. She had been incredibly stupid.
She plucked abstractedly at her sleeve. She was getting used to the color -- that and the bandages she’d wrapped around her wrists itched. She glanced at Captain Travers, sitting at ease in his seat, dozing. Would she ever be that blasé about landing on a planet? She’d only done it six times in her entire life -- and the last time had been a while ago.
She turned and looked out the shuttle’s window. There were beautiful greens and whites and lots and lots of blue out there. She remembered Agincourt and Gandalf; it made the pain that was coming from her wrists seem minor and trivial. Should she do something more about what looked like a bad sunburn? When people were dying? It didn’t seem that important -- uncomfortable, but not important.
The shuttle landed at a civilian field, near a large city; Willow couldn’t remember the name of it, if she’d ever heard it. There was a fair sized lake a not very far away; a half dozen starships were bobbing out in the water. None of them, Willow thought, were Fleet. She closed her eyes, remembering the pictures of Catskill. Willow felt cold and clammy, and she shivered; no, none of those gleaming spheres was the shattered wreck of Catskill.
They landed and there followed a qui
ck jitney flight to a large building, not far from the Port; Fleet’s Golden Comet a towering symbol in gilded metal in front. It was quite splendid, Willow thought.
They were met by waiting dignitaries in the rotunda of the building. There was quite a party waiting for them. A cluster of Fleet royal blue dress uniforms, all sorts of stars and wavy stripes and a half dozen civilians ranging from frocked in morning coats to informal business wear. There was a solitary man in dun-colored Marine dress uniform, single silver stars on his collar.
The admiral in the center of the group stepped forward and reached for Captain Travers’ hand. “Captain.”
Bill Travers didn’t salute; instead, he shook the outstretched hand.
“Toby Greer,” the admiral said and then turned to Willow. “Ensign Wolf.” The admiral’s voice was level and expressionless, but his hand was extended as he’d done to Captain Travers. Willow shook it, realizing as she did, that she had work to do. She’d never even thought about a salute. That was, she realized a good thing because lifting her hand even waist high had hurt more than she would have imagined something so minor could.
“Ensign, one of my aides informed me not so long ago who your grandfather is. I’d missed that earlier.” The admiral smiled slightly. “I served with Kurt Wolf a number of years ago; he’s a tremendous officer.
Willow nodded, still trying to put the pain back into its box.
Admiral Greer turned to Captain Travers. “Captain, if you and Ensign Wolf would come with us.” He ushered them forward, through the rotunda.
It was a long walk, Willow thought -- but the admiral didn’t seem to be in a rush. They went through a set of glass doors and to either side of the doors windows showed a breath-taking lake, with water so blue that it seemed to make the sky pale in comparison. Willow looked around her, at a loss to understand how someone or something could want to destroy the beauty that was here. What could cause such a deep and abiding hate? It hurt so much; the pain inside her was shapeless, directionless, leaving her feeling hollow and empty.
Starfarer's Dream (Kinsella Universe Book 4) Page 19
