Wong winced as a feeling of failure washed over him. “Sir, there was still no sign of their mass driver before they went into the cascade. Perhaps they left it behind in Eris, but I doubt it. I want to be sure they didn’t leave it behind here either, to ambush us now that they’re gone or to be recovered later.”
Nevlin’s frown deepened. “Again, a very cautious approach, Captain Wong. I suppose you will have a reason to wait before continuing our pursuit?”
With a slight bow, Captain Wong lowered his eyes. The challenge in the admiral’s words was painful to confront, especially since Nevlin was not bothering to lower his voice or limit the volume on his speakers. It was very likely that the entire bridge could hear every hint of blame and every tone of condemnation. “With your permission, Admiral. We have pilots to recover as well, and—”
The admiral waved his words away impatiently. “Yes, yes. I understand. Tend to your wounded and then proceed after the enemy. We can’t have them escaping our grasp again, Captain.”
Wong began to acknowledge the order, but Nevlin cut off the transmission before he could. For a long moment, Wong kept his eyes on the display, unwilling to face the expressions of the rest of the bridge crew. Though he knew that each of them would remain professional, that there would be no open contempt or dislike, their eyes would likely tell a story he felt all too keenly. He had worked hard to gain their respect—even harder to be worthy of it—and now one of the greatest heroes of the Directorate had taken the time to browbeat him publicly.
Then, with a slight indrawn breath, Wong lifted his gaze. The Known Worlds still required him to serve, no matter how he was coming to feel about one of its inspirational figures. He turned to the sensor watchstander. “Analyze their burst signal. I want to know exactly where they’ve withdrawn to as soon as possible. Next time, they will be ours.”
The bridge once again became alive with movement, and he settled back to listen to the murmur of their activities. Yet beneath that façade, even deeper than the resentment and shame he felt, a question began to turn in his mind. Where had the mass driver been? Had it even been there at all? And if it had not, was it possible that the Wayfarers were not the prey he truly sought?
Wong forced those questions aside and tried to focus. The next battle was coming soon, and he would be ready to bring his enemies to bay at last.
Chapter Six
Gabe woke to a blindingly bright light. He tried to bring his right hand up to block it, and for one terrifying second, his arm didn’t respond. Then it moved, sluggishly, and Gabe let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
A half second later, the pain started to kick in. His legs felt like they were on fire, and his head throbbed. The CTR might have taken the real damage, but Gabe’s pain receptors were still very, very unhappy with him. He groaned softly and wondered if things hadn’t been better when he was numb.
He heard someone shift slightly, and Gabe looked over to see Delacourt sitting in a chair nearby. It was hard to read her expression; she had her professional face on again. Gabe tried to smile despite the pain. “Hey. What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”
She smiled back at him. “Visiting an idiot who almost got himself killed.”
“Lucky idiot, then.” Gabe chuckled, then stopped when the motion sent stabs of agony through his ribs. “Did we escape? Or did they get the cascade drive?”
Susan’s smile faded. “We made it out. Most of us.” She looked away for a moment, her expression grim. “We still took casualties, Gabriel. Not among the civilian ships, but the Concord was hit hard.”
Gabe heard the pain in her voice despite her cool, professional tone. He shook his head. “We still saved the rest, Susan. Without you, not even that many would have made it to safety.” She nodded slowly, still avoiding his eyes, and Gabe continued. “We’re in another system now. Are we safe?”
“For now.” She shifted again, this time looking around to see if anyone else was listening. “The Directorate will follow us here. They will trace our resonance cascade to this system eventually, and they won’t stop looking for us now. Sooner or later, they’ll come here. We need to be hidden and secure when they do.”
“Is there a lot out here to hide behind?” Gabe thought of the size of the fleet and shook his head. “Better question. Is there anything we can hide behind?”
Susan nodded. “We’re going to move behind one of the gas giants. This system has four to choose from, so that should put off detection for a little while.” She shrugged. “Perhaps we’ll be able to harvest some of the resources we’ll need there. I suppose anything is possible.”
Gabe watched her. Pain still filled her expression, and she seemed beaten down from her typical, energetic self. He shifted, unhappy that he couldn’t reach her, couldn’t put his arms around her. “Susan, are you all right?”
When she looked up, Susan gave him a reproachful look. “The Directorate is hunting us, Gabriel. How could I be all right?” She wrapped her arms around her torso and stood. “The people I dedicated my life to—the people I swore an oath to—are trying to kill us. How many of my friends are fighting us? How are we going to survive if they don’t give up?”
He felt his fingers clench on his sheets. “We’ll find a way, Susan. The Lord will not abandon us.”
Susan didn’t answer for a moment. She began to pace, and Gabe watched her with something near panic bubbling inside him. The last time they’d faced Directorate forces, he’d nearly lost her when her stubborn sense of honor had compelled her to walk away from the fight. After everything they’d been through together, after everything they’d managed to overcome, was he going to lose her now?
Abruptly, Susan stopped pacing and looked at him. “Are you feeling all right, Gabriel? You look worried.”
Gabe tried to force his concern from his face. He shrugged, and gritted his teeth as the pain shot through him again. “I should be fine. It seems like most of the damage was done to my rig, not me. I’m mostly intact.” Then he forced another chuckle. “Not that I’m planning on a repeat performance. That was a rough landing.”
Susan nodded slowly. “I agree. I would be …very grateful … if you didn’t try anything like that again.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. “This journey has been hard enough for me, Gabriel. Facing it alone …”
Her words trailed off, and Gabe laid his own hand across hers. Susan met his gaze, and he smiled from the sheer relief. She wasn’t leaving. “You won’t need to, Susan. I promise.” Then he chuckled. “That is, unless someone cuter comes along. No guarantees.”
Susan gave him an indignant slap on the shoulder, and then looked horrified as he twitched in pain. Then she swatted him again, harder. “Don’t flinch. You deserve that and worse. Never again, you hear me?”
“As ordered, Admiral.” Gabe gave her as much of a salute as he could from the hospital bed, and then settled back into the pillow. Fatigue was already threatening him, and he had to fight to keep his eyes open. “For now, I think I’ll give you a rest. Wouldn’t want … to tire … you out …”
When Susan left, Gabriel was snoring soundly. She had been glad to see him awake—as irritating as he’d managed to be—but it had been hard to see him so battered. Between the battle and crash landing, he’d acquired an impressive series of bruises and fractures. The CTR’s gravity bubble had kept the crash from killing him, but that didn’t mean he’d escaped unscathed. He would need the rest.
Gabriel had not been the only thing to take damage. The entire topside of the Concord had taken a terrific beating from the missile barrage. Despite the concentrated efforts of the fleet, forty percent of the enemy missiles had gotten through. Thanks to Gabriel’s attack on the spotters, another half of those had wandered off target, exploding when they were uselessly out of range.
That left only one-fifth of the original salvo, but the blasts had been more than enough. The Concord’s screens had failed after absorbing the majority of the first and second
blasts; the third wave had struck the armor. Her engineers had been working to reinforce their protection and repair the weak spots from the battle with the mercenaries. In a series of titanic blasts, all their hard work had been undone.
Susan sighed. Already her thoughts had brought her back to what she should have been doing in the first place. She located a wall terminal and pulled up the communications system. It took only a moment to locate Commander Mesic. “Commander. What is the progress on our repairs?”
Mesic’s voice was deliberately neutral. “The repairs are going ahead. We have ninety percent of the breeches in the hull repaired, and the engineers have started to clear the debris.” He paused. “Casualty totals have increased to ninety-three dead, one hundred and forty injured, and twenty-seven missing.”
The numbers were cold, but Susan knew they could have been worse. It would not make the deaths any harder to face, nor would it lessen her determination to find every last one of the people who were missing. There were always some who disappeared in every large battle. Perhaps they had been trapped by ruined compartments and remained alive. Others might have been killed and their bodies not yet recovered.
Yet the worst fate would have been those who were in compartments breeched by enemy fire and swept out into space. Those unfortunate souls were often never found, and their families would be left with the doubt and uncertainty. Susan pushed those thoughts aside. “Keep searching, Commander. Are there any other problems?”
“Not yet, Admiral.” Mesic’s voice was more brisk now, as if the casualty report had been a burden he’d needed to be rid of. “The tetherdrive system is no longer fluctuating; we have full acceleration capability restored. The engineers have assured me that we will not tear apart our superstructure if we maneuver, which is reassuring.”
Susan winced at his dour tone. “Were they able to salvage the topside plasma cannon?”
Mesic was quiet for a moment. “No, sir. The engineers have not started on that yet; apparently damage to the topside weaponry was labeled as ‘external’ and was considered to have a lower priority than internal repairs.” He paused. “Shall I have them change their schedule, Admiral?”
She thought for a moment and then shook her head. “No. I’m sure they still have enough to do inside. Have they managed to clear the starboard recovery bay, or did Captain Miller manage to create a big enough mess to prevent that this time?”
Susan heard Mesic sigh, and could easily picture the former Directorate officer shaking his head. “With all due respect to Captain Miller’s ability to create disaster zones, I believe our engineering staff has outmatched him this time. They reported that the bay would be marginally clear a half hour ago, and that in another hour, it would be completely ready for service. I have not received any reports of a delay as of yet.”
“Excellent.” Susan allowed herself a smile of satisfaction. “Congratulate the engineering teams on my behalf, Commander. Their work has been a credit to our Defense Forces. I would not have expected such efficiency from most crews—especially outside the Directorate.”
“I’m sure they will be glad to hear of your approval, sir.” Mesic seemed to hesitate, and when he spoke, he sounded concerned. “Admiral, may I ask what our course of action will be if the Directorate attacks us again?”
The question brought a sense of unease to Susan’s mind. She worded her response carefully. “We have a clear responsibility to protect this fleet, Commander Mesic. If the Directorate continues to pursue and attack us, I will have no choice but to stop them by any means possible.” There was a long silence, and Susan could imagine the uncertainty in her fellow officer on the other end of the line. Finally, she spoke up. “Do you see any other option, Commander?”
Mesic released a long, resigned sigh. “No, sir. I wish I did.” His voice turned even more grim. “There is no pleasure in a victory over former comrades, but I almost wish it were victory I was worried about. The size of the task force they’ve sent leaves us with very few options.”
Susan felt some of her inner tension ease; she had worried about the allegiance of Mesic and his fellow officers. The decision to fight the military of the Known Worlds was not an easy one, and she herself had struggled with it for a long time. As Mesic had said, if there were any other way, she would have leaped at it. However, the Directorate would not accept the surrender of people the Council had labeled as traitors, no matter what they said.
She firmed her jaw. “We will have to find a way, Commander. We have no other choice.”
Gabe slowly made his way along the corridor, careful to use the cane his father had lent him. As humbling as it was to borrow something from his father just to be able to get around, it would have been much, much worse to fall on his face in front of the rest of the rig corps. While most of his actual injuries were light, the phantom pains caused by the damage his CTR had taken were still echoing through his legs on a regular basis. At the very least, he could walk on his own; it was easy to imagine circumstances where he wouldn’t have managed that much ever again.
He managed to reach the rig bays without anyone pestering him, but Derek saw him the moment he stepped through the doorway. Gabe heard his friend shouting from all the way across the bay. “Hey! It’s the late arrival!” The other rig pilot waved at him. “Come on over, Gabe!”
Gabe rolled his eyes and hobbled forward. “Hey, Derek. Glad to see my noble efforts got you home safely.”
Derek snorted. “Yep. We’ve been wanting to thank you for that. Now if only we could launch our rigs, we might be able to put on a parade for you.”
The comment brought Gabe’s attention into focus. “We can’t launch?”
“Well, we can, as long as we don’t try to land again.” Derek shook his head. “The missiles messed up the transport rail from the port recovery bay, and as for the starboard one …” He trailed off meaningfully and gestured to Gabe’s cane.
“Thanks for the reminder.” Gabe shifted to put a bit more weight on his cane. He glanced around the rig bay. “Next you’ll tell me they can’t salvage my rig.”
“Oh, no—they can still manage to save that poor old thing. Last I heard, they were just getting ready to tow it off to the Foundry for repairs.” Derek gestured toward another part of the rig bay, and Gabe looked over to see his CTR. The rig was utterly in shambles. Both of the lower legs were missing—they likely hadn’t made it onto the Concord for the resonance cascade and were probably still drifting in the last star system. Its left arm looked undamaged, but the right hung loosely at the shoulder and the elbow, as if it had been nearly ripped loose from both of those sockets.
Worst of all, the head lolled to one side, and Gabe could see that the faceplate had been smashed by the impact with the recovery bay floor. He winced, thinking of the delicate circuits and connections inside. The head was usually where most of the BCI computers were located; if it was too damaged, the Foundry would have to replace the thing entirely and Gabe would have to recalibrate for the new interface. It would be a long time for him to sit on the carrier instead of flying in defense of the fleet.
He prayed fervently that the Lord would grant him a different fate. “So when will the shuttle be taking it over? Maybe I’ll be able to hitch a ride and see what they say about it.”
Derek laughed. “Shuttle? No, not this time. This time the fleet’s come up with a much better idea.” He pointed. “That’s what will take your rig over now.”
Gabe looked in the direction Derek was pointing, and his jaw dropped. An MSSR crouched on the deck of the rig bay, its malevolent features at once clear and familiar. After the past months of trading fire with the mercenary rigs, he could have identified that grilled faceplate and hulking form anywhere. Just seeing one, even motionless in the rig bay, was setting off a flood of alarms in his head.
Yet this time, there was something different about it. Gabe looked closer and realized the rig wasn’t armed. The missiles that had been mounted on each MSSR’s shoulders were gone, and the
rig did not hold the repeating heavy plasma rifle that had been its main weapon. In its place, both shoulders appeared to have auxiliary tetherdrive units installed—substantial ones, like something Gabe would have expected to see on cargo lifters or construction rigs. The cylinder in its hands was not a rifle. Instead, it looked like an auxiliary sensor unit, something more suited to an RSR instead of a heavy combat rig.
Even the coloring had been altered, and Gabe’s eyes widened in surprise as he recognized the blue and red paint job. “They actually converted some of those into search and rescue platforms? I was wondering if they would …”
Another thought struck him. “Who’s flying it over? I want to make sure they take good care of my—”
“So that’s your rig, is it?”
Gabe turned to see a woman striding across the rig bay, flanked by two guards. She had a tracking bracelet fastened around one of her wrists, with blinking lights showing that it remained active. Her clothing matched what Gabe had seen the former mercenary prisoners wear, though she seemed unaware of the glares it attracted as she passed the Wayfarer pilots standing nearby. There was a scar on her face, though it hid none of the ferocity in her expression. The mercenary stopped in front of Gabe, placing her hands on her hips as if the guards on either side of her were escorts rather than jailers.
“I have no idea what stupid stunt put your machine in such bad shape, but I’m surprised you survived. My name’s Nakani. Anna Nakani.” She stuck out a hand.
There was nothing he wanted to do less than shake her hand, but Gabe knew that upsetting the woman who would be transporting his fragile CTR was a bad idea. He shook it quickly. “Ms. Nakani. I’m surprised you managed to get your rig in through the recovery bays. I’ve heard they were quite a mess.”
“No thanks to you, you stupid bastard.” The casual tone of her voice made the curse seem almost a compliment, but she gave him no time to respond. “Your techs already have the starboard bay mostly clear. They made a path for me to fit through, though I had to come in at reduced speed. Probably nothing like the speed you were doing when you hit the deck.” Nakani slugged him in one shoulder. “Am I right?”
Broken Halo (Wayfarers) Page 9
