“Fire at will,” he ordered Sarov.
As the tactical officer laid out his program for destruction, Norlin added a few touches of his own using two missile tubes. The lights dimmed when their full battery of lasartillery fired. Norlin felt the auto-loader shaking the vessel as it slipped more missiles into magnetic launch tubes.
He blinked when his summary display returned unexpectedly. The first thing he did was check the scout's progress.
“Good shooting, Mitri,” he said.
A continuous-wave laser had sliced off a portion of the scout's aft. Both missiles had penetrated the alien's effective defensive system and blown away another chunk of hull. Spectrometer readings showed a tremendous outflux of gas; they had breached the hull and spilled atmosphere.
“Keep after him. Blow away everything that might be a weapon. Try to save the bridge module, but don't try too hard,” Norlin said.
For the first time since the scout locked onto them, he leaned back and took off his command visor. The control room seemed less alive, less vital, less real without the heads-up display superimposed on his field of vision. Norlin swiped at the sweat on his forehead, stood and stretched, then dropped back.
He was captain. He still had work to do. Lots of work.
“Damage report,” he requested of Liottey.
“Working on it, Captain. Are we going to be all right? I tried to follow the battle. Is the alien dead?”
“Working on it, Lieutenant. I want full systems back in ten.” He toggled to Barse's circuit before Liottey could reply. “Engineering. How are we doing?”
“High load sent a Dirac function spike that wrecked a few circuits. No major problems I can't deal with, though. Just don't want more than ten-percent power for the next hour or so.”
“Will we blow up if I ask for eleven percent?” Norlin wasn't sure if he was joking.
“Trust me, Cap'n.”
Displays winked back on in increasing numbers. Norlin checked the repair progress. RRUs worked diligently on the worst of the damage and clever computer work on Miza's part promised the Preceptor would not be entirely helpless if another alien ship spotted them. Norlin saw that he had, by and large, a good crew.
“Detectors at max. I want to know if another alien is coming after us.”
“No distress signal from their scout was detected. He died without a will, Captain.” Sarov scanned every possible frequency and combination of frequencies the alien might have used. Norlin breathed a sigh of relief. It would be a few minutes before the aliens noticed the loss of a scout unit—or maybe longer.
“Launch a retrieval unit. I want anything that's only slightly bolted down brought back for study. Stow the booty in the cargo bay.”
“That's dangerous,” spoke up Barse. “We might be bringing in a mine or time-delay bomb.”
“Do it. Have Liottey see to it.” Norlin grew weary of finding work for the first officer to do. He understood fully why Barse and the other two hadn't wanted to promote their executive officer up to captain, even if he had been a pilot.
“External retrieval unit on its way. This is the best ERU in the Empire Service fleet,” bragged Barse. “I designed it myself.”
“Have it work faster,” cut in Miza. “We're getting company. This time it looks as if they sent the big boys. Two cruisers, if I read their transmissions right.”
Norlin swore. He settled down in his command chair, settled the HUD and slowly scanned the full 360 degrees in the control room. Each instrument popped up in the wavering display. Most he noted and ignored. Some he had no idea what they meant; he ignored them, too. The ones showing how much fight the Preceptor had left demanded his full attention.
He knew they had been lucky. The asteroid had given them the chance to lie in wait for the scout. They had taken it by surprise with the full force of their weapons. Two cruisers outgunned and out-powered them. He had to hope they couldn't outrun him.
Even as the thought crossed his mind, a plan formed—a desperate one, but possibly the Preceptor's only hope.
“Get the ERU back.”
“It's just begun slicing away at their weapons module,” protested Barse. “We can strip that baby naked!”
“Get the ERU back or leave it. We're shifting out of here.”
“No!” Four voices chorused as one. Chikako Miza's cut through the protest. “Norlin, you'll murder us all. No one can shift this close to significant mass. That asteroid's almost solid iron. Everything will blow up—us included.”
“What is the shift field radius?” he asked.
“Fifty klicks, maybe more. There's no good way to judge since the engines are out of synch,” came Barse's appraisal.
“Get us a hundred away from the Nereid asteroid. Then we're shifting for Sutton II. We've got too much valuable information to lose.”
“You'll kill us.”
He couldn't tell who repeated that, but to his surprise Mitri Sarov came to his defense.
“It is desperate, but it serves two purposes. The asteroid will explode from the shift wave radiating away from the generator. My computer analysis shows it will destroy both cruisers.”
For the tac officer, that settled the matter. Anything that destroyed more of the enemy was a good plan, even if proved suicidal.
Norlin checked and saw that Barse had docked the external retrieval unit. It had laser-cut off a complete weapons turret from the scout. He hoped it had left enough of the radiation cannon intact for study. The scientists on Sutton II needed something tangible to work on. The cerampix of the battle might prove interesting, but an artifact always delighted engineers.
“Everybody button up. We're taking a flyer,” he said. From all quarters, he got warnings. Drive warnings that they were too close to a large, material body. Weapons computer warnings that the cruisers had sighted them and had radiation cannon pre-discharge coronas building. Life support systems warnings of impending oxygenation failure.
Norlin ignored them all.
“Distance one hundred kilometers. We're gone!” He engaged the nav computer and hit the manual override for engaging the star-spanning shift engine.
The explosion at his back ripped his command chair from the deck and sent him spinning through the control room. Pier Norlin's last impression was of the forward control console growing large at an incredible rate. He struck with bone-breaking force, and the universe went black.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Chapter Eight
He couldn't decide where the pain came from. Each time he moved, knives stabbed his chest. The effort of lifting even one eyelid drove photonic needles into his brain. Worst of all was the knowledge that he had failed.
Pier Castor Norlin, commanding his first real ship, had failed. He had been killed in action and had lost the lives of his crew.
New pain came to him. Someone shouted in his ear.
“He's alive. The automedic is scanning him. We'll have a hologram of his innards in a few minutes.”
“I hope he's still alive. I want to kill him with my bare hands. He ruined my goddamn engines!”
“There it is. The automedic shows nothing serious. He took a good whack to the skull.”
“Is that the scientific term for a trauma?”
Norlin forced open both eyes and stared up into a bright light. The automedic worked quietly at his side, cool metal probes pressed into his bare flesh studying his organs for damage. A green light blinked, giving him a clean bill of health.
“You've got cracked ribs. The ‘medic's medicating you for that now,” said Miza.
“Then can I kill him?”
“Shut up, Tia. He's going to be all right. Just don't excite him. As if you ever could.”
“My engines!”
“What happened?” asked Norlin. He forced himself upright. A stab of pain lanced through his chest. He touched the spot where a medistrip worked to heal cracked ribs.
The control room looked as if a bomb had exploded
inside it. He tried to remember if the aliens had fired on them.
“The aliens did this? Or was it the asteroid exploding from our shift?”
“The shift did it. We caught a piece of rock the side of your damned head. I ought to use your skull to plug the hole. Went right through my damned drive exciter chamber.”
“Are we still in shift?”
“We can't go much longer,” Barse said. “We need a dry dock soon—within a few hours. Either that or a good undertaker.” She snorted in disgust. “Cancel that. No undertaker. We'll need a mass spectrometer capable of counting individual atoms. There might not even be that much left of us.”
Norlin got to his feet and almost passed out. Sarov grabbed him and guided him to a bench along the far bulkhead. Norlin looked for his command chair and saw it had been twisted out of shape. Severed wires and foptic cables dangled from the base.
“Get it fixed. I can't keep track of the Preceptor without it.”
“Right away, you suicidal, murdering son of a bitch.”
“That's Captain whatever-you-said.”
“Right, Cap'n,” agreed Barse. She used a remote control to start a half-dozen insect-sized repair robots working on the command chair. Norlin conducted a cursory examination of the remainder of the control room and didn't like what he saw.
“The asteroid exploded and a piece—several—hit us. What about the alien cruisers?”
From the way Sarov smiled he knew the answer before his tac officer replied.
“Both are space debris, Captain. We took ‘em out good and proper. The Preceptor is on its way to becoming an ace. Three enemy vessels vacuumed, two to go and the award's all ours.”
Norlin nodded curtly and instantly regretted it. The medistrip healed his ribs rapidly with its combination of injected medicine and radiation, but the headache refused to abate. He dismissed the notion of checking Sarov's station. They needed repair, not another battle. From the condition he was in, navigation might be the full extent of his ability.
Or luck.
“Captain Norlin, I must protest,” spoke up Liottey. “You are treating me like a child. I outrank you, have seniority aboard this vessel, and I am older by far.”
“Senile is a better description,” muttered Miza.
Liottey ignored her jibe. “I demand to be put in charge of something significant.”
“Life support systems aren't important?” asked Norlin. He put his arm around the man's shoulders and guided him away from the others. A few minutes earnest discussion with Liottey had the executive officer beaming and eager once more.
Barse looked up from her work on the command chair.
“What the hell did you say to him? He looks like the ship's cat who just found the only mouse in fourteen light-years.”
“Do we have a ship's cat?” asked Norlin. “I haven't seen it.”
“Neutron is locked up below. He's got gas so bad we only let him out when there's real trouble aboard. I love to hear the gas warfare conventions negotiators protest him running loose.”
“Better let him out, then. And Liottey will be all right. He'll stay out of everyone's way for a few hours. After that, it might not matter.”
Norlin gingerly put the HUD on and studied the readouts on Chikako Miza's console. He let out a deep sigh. He shifted from being caught in one plasma jet to another. The asteroid had physically damaged too much for the Preceptor to continue to Sutton II. They had to drop back into normal space soon for repairs.
“Any suggestions?” he asked Miza.
The dark-haired woman turned her head sideways and touched contacts in her silver-webbed hair.
“Only one. A rebel base on Murgatroyd.”
“Never heard of it,” said Norlin. He had little liking for rebels, but colonies choosing not to live under the aegis of Emperor Arian were increasing. How they cut their imperial ties varied. Some rebelled, others engaged in lengthy legal battles in the emperor's own courts. Norlin preferred the latter course, even if took centuries.
“Heavens to Murgatroyd?” asked Barse. “I know it. We can get whatever we need there. They've got a complete base with an orbiting dry dock.”
“What will they accept as payment? How much of a rebel base is Murgatroyd?”
“Very,” admitted Barse. “But I know them.” She stared at him without flinching. “That's my home planet.”
Norlin accepted it without comment. How people came to the Empire Service didn't concern him. That they had useful skills and talents did. Barse had hinted at rebellious leanings before, but he had no idea how deeply committed to them she was.
“Chikako, prepare us to drop out of shift space as close to Murgatroyd as possible.”
“What are you going to be doing?” the woman asked, dark eyes narrowed.
“Engineer Barse said the shift drive exciter chamber needed work. I'll help her. In my current condition, about all I'm good for is watching RRUs work. I'll double-check your navigational procedure, if you want, but I recommend you get it right so I won't be embarrassed.”
He left the bridge, brain swinging in wild, crazy orbits inside his head. Norlin kept from weaving by steadying himself against a bulkhead. Any less effort would have been undignified, and a captain of a cruiser had to remain decorous at all times.
He carefully made his way aft toward the engine section, passing through the triple airlock separating the shift engines from the rest of the ship.
He simply stood and stared when he saw the damage that had been done. When Barse had said a “rock” had smashed through the exciter chamber, he had pictured something small. Reality gave him a full-meter-diameter hole.
“Really spectacular, isn't it?” Tia Barse asked. “No way my robots can get it fixed. Dry dock or nothing.”
“Keep them working. If we patch it up as much as we can, it'll speed up repairs in dry dock. I don't want to stay too long in orbit around Murgatroyd. The sector base at Sutton has to know what's happening. I'm not even certain Lyman transmitted complete data on the Death Fleet.”
“Just imagine them sitting there on Sutton II, fat, dumb and as happy as if they had good sense. Here comes the Death Fleet. What would they do?”
“Fight better than they did on Lyman IV, I hope,” he answered. “But I suspect it would be more like Penum. Without warning, the Death Fleet would strike and easily claim another system.”
Norlin tried to take his eyes off the gaping hole in the chamber wall. If that hunk of iron asteroid had gone through the Preceptor only ten meters forward the cruiser would have been split in half. The shift drive would have turned them into high-energy gamma rays.
“Have Miza wake me. I'll be in my quarters trying to get rid of my headache.”
“What? Backing out on helping me? Sweet dreams, Cap'n,” Barse called after him. “If you have any idea how to get rid of my headache, be sure to tell me.” She pointed at the hole.
* * * *
“That's Murgatroyd?” he asked. The heads-up display worked sporadically, so he used the vidscreen for a magnified image of the planetary surface. Small towns dotted the land surface; sailing ships worked the oceans, leaving behind wake profiles that identified them from space. What startled him the most was the size and complexity of the Murgatroyd space station in comparison to the technology level on-planet.
“They're demanding an entry code,” said Sarov. “They promise to reduce us to dust if we don't respond.”
“I'll talk to them,” spoke up Tia Barse. Norlin switched her into the ship's exterior lasercom link. It took almost ten minutes of argument before she told him, “They'll work on us—for a price. I had to call in a lot of markers.” She made a spitting noise. “I have to see my old boyfriend. What a pig.”
“What do they want from us?” Norlin worried that a world in even quiet rebellion against the Emperor might not permit the Preceptor to leave dock. Such a powerful vessel would augment any world's defenses.
Barse didn't answer for five heartbeats. Then she sa
id slowly, “They want both forward laser cannons. Cap'n, I need the exciter chamber fixed or we'll never shift again.”
“Very well.” Norlin seethed. Without their forward cannon, they lost a significant portion of their firepower. He cursed the need for pragmatism in the trade. He had to reach his sector base with the data on the Death Fleet. If he had to strip the Preceptor down to its superstructure to accomplish his mission, he would. But it still rankled.
“They promise we'll be on our way inside ten hours.”
“Ten?”
“They're good, Cap'n. I know most of them—trained some of ‘em myself. And the entire dry dock is automated. They plug in and nothing holds them back.”
“I'll leave these details in your capable hands, Engineer.” Norlin's headache returned, and he wanted nothing more than to turn everything over to his crew. If his XO had been more capable, he might have. Gowan Liottey's lack of ability and common sense put increased burden on his shoulders.
For twelve solid hours, he watched the Murgatroyd dry dock robots ripping and tearing at the guts of his ship. Occasional computer checks against optimal repair showed a correlation of almost one. The robotic crew was everything Barse had promised.
* * * *
“Cap'n, can we get into space?” his engineer asked. Her eyes had dark rings under them, and she moved as if she'd been dropped on a high-g world.
“What's wrong?”
“Nothing.” She smiled crookedly. “Vasily is still the man I remembered, but damn, can he wear me out fast.”
Norlin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. More than the Preceptor had been raped to get the repairs done.
He couldn't take his eyes off the twin holes forward where the lasartillery battery had been. Still, this seemed a small price to pay—and Barse might have gotten the better of her part of the deal, too. From her satisfied expression, he could certainly believe it was true.
“All hands, all hands,” he barked into his command circuit. “Prepare for full check. All circuits, all systems. When we're finished, we do a shift drive simulation for full power.”
Alien Death Fleet [Star Frontiers 1] Page 8
