by Peter Grant
The onlookers aboard Edith Cavell stared at the Bihar ship as her icon changed to the red of a distress signal, but she did not stop moving. “She’ll be all right,” Captain Butler said aloud. “She’s taken damage and casualties, but a few hits won’t kill a ship that big – not unless one of them gets very lucky, and takes out a reactor.”
Commander Yilmaz pointed wordlessly to the still-approaching Devakai patrol craft, now less than a million kilometers away, and the freighter nearing the far side of the planet. BCS Bindusara’s missiles had almost reached each of them.
The patrol craft was the first to feel their wrath. She vanished in a storm of starburst icons. When they had cleared, nothing remained to be seen of her in the Plot. Meanwhile, the other missiles struck at the freighter, slashing at her sides, shutting down her gravitic drive, but not her reactor or sensors. Her radar emissions continued, providing a means to track her in the Plot as she swerved slowly to one side, clearly out of control. A small speck detached from her stern, visible on the OrbCon radar feed.
“What’s that?” someone asked.
“Probably a piece of wreckage being blown off her,” the Plot operator answered absently, not looking around. Butler nodded in agreement, his gaze also fixed on the three-dimensional display.
“Look out!” Yilmaz blurted out suddenly, pointing ahead of the freighter. “She’s –”
Before their horrified eyes, an icon representing Avida, the smallest of Athi’s moons, appeared in the Plot display. The freighter plunged straight into it at one-tenth of light speed, her icon merging with Avida’s, then suddenly disappearing. They could only imagine the eruption on the airless moon’s surface as it absorbed the impact of well over a million tons of spaceship in the blink of an eye.
Butler shook his head, as if to clear it, then turned to his Executive Officer. “Reactivate our transponder beacon and radar. Resume normal operations. Send ambulance shuttles to rendezvous with Pickle’s lifeboats.” He indicated their beacons, displayed as orange distress symbols in the Plot. “Have them lead the lifeboats back to us. Signal Maurya and offer medical assistance. Ask her whether she needs ambulance shuttles to transfer her casualties to us. As for Pickle, we can’t move freely right now, while surgery is still going on. Signal Mesquite and ask her to investigate.”
“Yes, sir.” He hesitated. “We owe Lieutenant-Commander Maxwell our lives, sir – every one of us aboard Cavell.”
“Yes… yes, we do.”
December 7, 2851 GSC, 12:00 – 24:00
ATHI SYSTEM – LCS PICKLE – 12:00
Steve slowly came back to reality, as if swimming upward through an immense depth and weight of water that held him down. He shook his head to clear it. What… what was wrong? He was weightless, but couldn’t move.
He opened his eyes. Wreckage lay on top of his console, drooping over it to trap him in the angle between bulkhead and deck. His spacesuit command panel was beeping at him through his helmet speaker. He tried to lift his left arm to silence it, and instantly regretted it as pain shot through the limb. I’ve broken something, he realized drearily, his thoughts seeming to come slowly, muzzily.
His right arm wouldn’t move, because wreckage was lying on it. He gently pulled and tugged, trying to free it, only to hear a faint hiss as something punctured the outer surface of his spacesuit. He cursed and stopped moving, waiting for the suit’s self-sealing compound to close the leak. When the hissing stopped, he tried wriggling the arm in a different direction.
After what seemed like forever, but was probably no more than half an hour, he managed to clear the wreckage from on top of his helmet and torso, and sit up. His legs were still trapped, and with only one usable arm, he wasn’t sure he could move everything off them – particularly without puncturing his suit again.
As he gazed upward, he could see space through a wide gap in the deckhead, the distant stars glittering brightly. I don’t know how the hell I survived, he told himself shakily. I hope I never have to go through something like that again!
Even as he looked, the shape of a cutter drifted slowly into view. A spacesuited figure, connected to the cutter by a long cord emerging through the open rear hatch, shone a hand-held spotlight into the huge tear in the hull. It waved a hand as it saw him, and his suit radio crackled on the standard emergency frequency. “Are you Lieutenant-Commander Maxwell, sir?”
“Yes, I am. You’re a sight for sore eyes, let me tell you!”
“You are too, sir! This will send everyone wild aboard Cavell. You saved her, sir, and everyone aboard her.”
Steve’s heart leapt within him as hope rekindled. “She wasn’t hit?”
“No, sir. Not a scratch.”
He heaved a great sigh of relief. Brooks was still alive! He wouldn’t have to tell Carol that she was a widow, and her children fatherless. Compared to that, the damage to Pickle was a mere bagatelle.
“Mesquite took care of the missiles coming at her,” the spacer continued. “Maurya was hit, and took some damage, but nothing too serious. Her casualties are on the way to Cavell now, sir. I’m from Mesquite. Cavell asked us to look for you. If you can get out of this hole, sir, we’ll take you to our ship ASAP. Are you hurt?”
“Yes, I am. I can’t use my left arm – I think it’s broken. Also, my legs are trapped underneath this heap of wreckage. Can you help me get it off them?”
“Sure, sir.”
With the help of the spacer’s two strong arms, he was soon free. The new arrival offered him a hand, pulling him to his feet. He stood on shaky, rubbery legs, leaning on the spacer for support, and gingerly floated in free-fall across the heap of wreckage to a clear part of the bridge deck. As he did, he could see Pickle’s frames grinding and twisting. “Is her spine broken?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. It’s shot through in two places. The reactor compartment’s gone, too, and your capacitor ring. Pickle won’t be moving anywhere under her own power.”
“Well, that simplifies matters,” he said with a sigh. “How far away is Mesquite?”
“She’s two kilometers off, sir, just over there, keeping station on your ship.”
“Please ask your cutter to patch this emergency frequency onto a direct link to her commanding officer. What’s his name?”
“That’s Captain Macgregor, sir. Wait one.”
Macgregor’s voice confirmed his Scots ancestry. “Welcome back to the land o’ the living, Commander Maxwell. Are ye hurt? Over.”
“Yes, sir. I think my left arm’s broken, but I don’t have time to worry about that now. This circuit is not secure. I respectfully request that you establish a secure, encrypted circuit to Captain Butler aboard Cavell, sir. Please ask him to give you the code word I gave him yesterday. When you’ve confirmed that word, please call me back, and I can explain what I need to do next. Over.”
“What do you mean? I want to get started salvaging Pickle. I’ve got work crews all ready to send over to you. Over.”
“Negative, sir, I say again, negative. This is a code word matter. Please contact Captain Butler, then we’ll take it from there. Over.”
“Weel… All right. I’ll call him. Stand by.”
It took almost ten minutes before he heard the Captain’s voice over his suit radio. “Macgregor to Maxwell. All right, I’ve got that code word, and I understand what it means. What do you need? Over.”
“Sir, Pickle’s lost all power, and with the amount of wreckage lying around, I can’t move through her hull, so I can’t reach or use her own demolition charge. Can you send me the biggest nuclear demo charge you have available? Over.”
“That’ll be a five-megaton beastie. I’ll send it, but will ye no’ come o’er here and get that arm treated, man? My people can set the charge. No need to do that yourself. Over.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m under orders. I must set it myself, or see it done. Over.”
“Very well. I’ll send the charge in a cutter. Set it to one hour’s delay, d’ye hear? That’ll give us
time to get well away from her before she blows. Over.”
“Understood, sir. Thank you. Maxwell standing by.”
It took almost forty minutes for the charge to arrive, by which time Steve was beginning to feel faint, and his left arm was throbbing worse than ever. He leaned against the bulkhead, trying to focus and stay alert enough to do what had to be done.
“Are you sure you don’t want to wait aboard our cutter, sir?” the worried spacer asked him.
“No, thank you. I’ve got to do this. It’s my last duty as Pickle’s commanding officer.”
Steve hated the thought of losing his ship, but the Black Squadron’s standing orders brooked no disobedience. No intelligence-gathering ship was ever to be placed in a position where salvage workers, shipyard technicians, or others not cleared to know about her, could examine her at their leisure. Too many secrets were at stake. Rather than risk them being compromised, any severely damaged Black Squadron ship that could not proceed to a secure dockyard under its own power was to be destroyed.
At last another cutter pulled up alongside the first, and a team of spacers floated a large metal box down into the former bridge compartment. They tied it off securely to the wreckage, then a Warrant Officer opened a control panel. “Do you want to do this, sir, or should I?” he asked.
“As long as I see you do it, that’s good enough, thanks. Your Captain wants an hour’s delay.”
“Yes, sir.” He entered a long, complex password, then ran a series of tests, watching the panel blink at him as it passed each one. He carefully entered ‘60:00’ into the time display. It blinked twice as he pressed the ‘Enter’ key. Steve couldn’t hear the panel beep, in the absence of any atmosphere to carry the sound, but he knew it had accepted the input.
“Ready, sir?”
“Ready.”
“Then here goes.”
The Warrant Officer lifted a clear plastic cover, and pressed the red button beneath it. The system demanded a second password for verification. He entered it, and a red light began flashing above the button. The counter began unwinding; 59:59… 59:58… 59:57…
He shut the transparent panel over the cover. “Let’s get out of here, sir!”
“You said it! Help me out of the bridge and over to that cutter, will you?”
Willing hands helped him to cross the few dozen meters between Pickle’s wrecked hulk and the cutter. He eased himself inside, careful not to jostle his left arm against anything, and sat down. The spacer who’d waited with him on the bridge helped him to strap in.
“Here we go, sir. Next stop, Mesquite.”
He was glad to be heading to safety… but it was sad to have to leave Pickle to her fate. She had served him, and the Fleet, very well this day.
—————
ATHI ORBIT – ORBITAL CONTROL CENTER – 13:15
“Communications to Command, signal from an unknown station on the emergency channel!” Without waiting for orders, the operator put it over the loudspeaker, even as a new icon appeared in the Plot.
“Orbcon, this is Petty Officer Tamboli. I’m in a Devakai cutter, and I want to surrender. I got off that freighter before your missiles destroyed her. I’ve shot both of the spacers with me. They were Kotai fanatics. I’m not. They were carrying a nuclear bomb to Athi, to explode it high up in the atmosphere and cause an electromagnetic pulse, to blind the planet’s defensive systems. I’m broadcasting transponder code Alpha Two Niner. I’ll hold my present position until you can send someone over to verify what I’ve just told you. Over.”
There was a sudden hubbub in OrbCon’s Operations Center as the speaker finished. Commodore Singh raised his voice. “Silence!” The noise died away as he reached for a microphone. He handed it to Lieutenant Chetty, who was now wearing Bihar Confederation uniform. “Talk to him. If you think he’s trustworthy, I’ll send a boarding party to secure him and the bomb, and bring him here. If not, we’ll save ourselves time and trouble and shoot him out of space.”
“Aye aye, sir.” He depressed the microphone button. “Petty Officer Tamboli, this is Lieutenant Chetty, also from Devakai. I think I recognize your name and your voice. I’m working with the authorities here. If you are who I think you are, tell me the name of the ship on which we first met. Over.”
“It wasn’t a ship, sir. It was during your basic training planetside. I was one of your instructors, sir. Over.”
“That’s right.” Chetty exhaled in relief, nodding to the Commodore. “It’s good to hear your voice again. Tell me how you came to be part of this operation. Over.”
“Sir, I was assigned to Bhishma last year as her small craft pilot. Lieutenant Palli joined just after me. He drafted in a bunch of people over time, to replace the crew that were aboard when I started. I noticed they were all followers of Kodan Sastagan, but I didn’t think much of it. I just grunted agreement when they started going on about him – showing willing, you know, sir, as one does to get along. Next thing I knew, they’d accepted me as one of themselves. They even gave me one of their funny turbans. I never thought much about it until they loaded Bhishma aboard that freighter. It was only after we left Devakai that they told us what we were going to do. I figured I was as good as dead.
“This morning, Bhishma rendezvoused with the freighter. Their cutter was unserviceable, so they asked the Lieutenant to send his across. I piloted it over, expecting to be taken back, but Captain Palli kept me aboard. He was going to make me serve as just another crew member, but I told him this was my cutter, and I wanted to pilot her. He wouldn’t let me do that, but he let me go with his pilot and another man who were going to detonate the bomb. I had a small pistol with me. We launched as your missiles began to hit, and scooted away from the freighter before she was destroyed. I waited until we were clear, then shot both men. I sat tight until all the shooting seemed to be over, then figured I’d better call OrbCon to find out what to do next, sir. Over.”
Chetty grinned. “You did the right thing, Petty Officer. Keep that transponder operating, put on a spacesuit, lower your rear ramp, and stand by to receive a boarding party. They’ll secure you, but don’t take that personally – it’s just a standard security precaution. They’ll bring you to OrbCon, and we’ll take it from there. Don’t worry. You won’t be harmed. Over.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll wait right here. Over.”
“Very good. OrbCon standing by.”
He turned to the Commodore. “I remember him, sir. I think you can trust him, although I can’t say for sure. You’ll have to put him through a truth-tester examination to make certain.”
“I’ll have Bindusara send her cutter to investigate. We’ll check him out thoroughly. If he really has saved Athi from an electromagnetic pulse, there’ll probably be a nice little reward for him, too. D’you think he might join our service, as you’ve done?”
“I think it’s possible, sir. If he passes his security check, I’d like to ask for him to be assigned to me. It’ll be nice to have a familiar face around.”
“I think we can arrange that. I suppose his cutter was that speck that detached from the freighter as our missiles struck. We thought it was just a piece of wreckage. Thank the Gods they didn’t set off that nuclear charge! If it had disrupted communications planetside, it might have messed up the ground forces’ plans to intercept any Kotai that make it down from orbit.”
“How’s that going, sir?” Chetty asked.
They turned back to the Plot, just as a patrol craft fired a laser cluster at an icon in the display labeled ‘Kotai 29’. It sparkled, then disappeared.
The Commodore grinned wolfishly. “So far, so good, I’d say. The Kotai small craft have to use their gravitic drives to slow down as they approach Athi, which means they can’t help but show up on our Plot displays. So far, the patrol craft have only missed eleven that we know of, and all of those were nailed by waiting assault shuttles. Some of the Lancastrians are already talking about the ‘Great Athi Turkey Shoot’, whatever a turkey shoot is.”
“I think I can guess, sir!”
—————
VELLALORE ORBIT – LCHS EDITH CAVELL – 17:25
LCS Mesquite’s cutter rocked as tractor beams locked on to it. The pilot shut down its reaction thrusters as the beams pulled it into LCHS Edith Cavell’s docking bay. They waited in silence as docking bars extended from a vacant bay, pulling it snug against an airlock and inflating a sealing ring around the rear ramp. A light above the ramp glowed red, then orange, and finally green.
“Air seal established. Clear to disembark,” the pilot said, turning in his seat. “I… This isn’t protocol, sir, but I’d be honored if I could shake your hand.” He offered his own.
Steve shook it firmly, embarrassed by the open hero-worship in the man’s face. “Thanks for picking me up this morning, and giving me a ride here.”
“Any time at all, sir.”
Steve stepped through the airlock, then slammed to a halt in utter astonishment. A formal side party awaited him once more, with sideboys, bosun’s call and Cavell’s Captain and Executive Officer standing rigidly to attention. What’s more, they weren’t waiting for him, as the junior officer, to salute them – they were already saluting him. Behind them, Pickle’s entire crew were lined up in parade formation, with her officers in a line to one side. They were standing to attention as well, with Senior Lieutenant Laforet at their head. She was saluting just as smartly as Cavell’s officers.
He hurriedly composed himself, cursing his unkempt appearance. His left arm was in a cast, and immobilized in a sling. His shirt sleeve had been cut off above it, and his rumpled, creased Number Two uniform jacket hung loosely over his shoulders, because he couldn’t put it on over the sling and cast. He clearly wasn’t adequately uniformed to return a salute, so he stiffened to attention instead.
