Starpilot's Grave: Book Two of Mageworlds

by Doyle, Debra; Macdonald, James D.

  Saben maneuvered herself into the communications seat. She fastened the safety webbing to keep herself from drifting away, then put on the earphone link and began to work.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Somebody just shot Ebannha all to pieces,” Cantrel said. “I don’t know know who or why. But right now, I don’t want anyone who’s looking for me to find me until I tell them where to look.”

  Saben and Falkith nodded. A few seconds later, Saben looked up from the communications board.

  “Getting a signal on the lightspeed comms, sir.”

  “Put it on.”

  The comms tech pushed a button. The last notes of the “attention” signal came over the speaker, followed by words:

  “Set General Quarters, condition red, weapons free. Mageworlds attack imminent. All vessels in Patrol Screen detached effective immediately. Permission granted to act independently. Net Control Stations, maintain the Net as long as physically possible.”

  The transmission ended.

  “Who was that from?” Cantrel asked.

  “Karipavo.”

  Chief Yance nodded in the direction of the expanding ball of glowing gas that had been their home vessel. “Guess Ebannha didn’t get the word in time.”

  “Not at lightspeed they wouldn’t have,” said Cantrel.

  “And it might not have done any good anyway. Whatever hit them, it hit them fast and nasty.”

  In the darkness beyond the viewscreens, the brief lightning of energy fire continued, though more sporadically now. Falkith nodded toward the starfield.

  “What d’you think’s going on out there?” he asked.

  Cantrel shook his head. “Who knows? Maybe the fighters are still at it. Maybe the bad guys are shooting lifepods.”

  “Too bad we don’t have guns,” said Falkith.

  “I feel sorry for the pilots in the fighters,” Saben said.

  “No food supply, no hyperspace engines. Even if they can get up near lightspeed, if nobody comes after them they’ll die of starvation or old age before they get to a friendly world.”

  “I don’t know how to tell you this, Elligret,” said Falkith. “But we don’t have hyperspace engines either.”

  “Wonderful,” said the comms tech. “Because I’m picking up some other stuff now, more lightspeed transmissions like the last one. And there’s a war going on out there, all right.”

  “Keep us posted,” Cantrel said. “If our side wins, I want to know about it. Because we sure as hell can’t do anything where we are right now.”

  The four of them waited in the cockpit of the boarding craft, listening as the reports came in one by one over the lightspeed comms: all initial-contact reports, and all—after correcting for distance—originally transmitted at about the same time. The initial-contact reports gave way in some cases to pleas for assistance, and in other cases to silence. Eventually, the signals got too faint to read—lightspeed comms were only good for short range—and there was nothing but the quiet of space, and the stars.

  PART THREE

  I.

  WARHAMMER: THE OUTER NET RSF KARIPAVO: THE OUTER NET

  BEKA WATCHED RSF Karipavo’s signal dwindle and fade from the sensors as the ’Hammer accelerated steadily to jump speed. The No Jump light still burned, but she couldn’t afford to stand still while waiting for it to go off. She’d started a straight-line realspace run on a Galcen-bound course right after dropping out of hyper at the Outer Net; she could hit the hyperdrive enable as soon as the Net went down.

  Pinpoint piloting it isn’t, she admitted to herself, but if it gets me within shouting distance of Galcen I can fine-tune things at the other end.

  The vacuum-tight door of the cockpit sighed open and shut again behind her. Nyls Jessan came forward and slipped into the copilot’s seat. She turned to look at him. In the periphery of her vision the No Jump light glowed orange.

  “Where’s Ignac’?” she asked.

  “Still at the guns, in case somebody gets trigger-happy and needs to be scared off.”

  “Don’t worry too much about that,” Beka said. “That was your old Space Force buddy Jervas Gil I just got through talking with—smart man, he’s got his flagship sitting right on the main jump line from Eraasi to Galcen—and his people have more important stuff on their plates by now than stopping a fast-running merch.”

  Jessan smiled. “I take it he believed you.”

  “Damned straight he believed me,” she said. “You guys have all the cargo kicked out?”

  “That’s an affirmative.”

  “Good, because we’ve got permission to cross the Net.” And, as the No Jump light went out, “Now.”

  She hit the hyperspace controls.

  The starfield beyond the ’Hammer’s viewscreen blazed up and died, replaced by the iridescent grey pseudosubstance of hyperspace. Beka powered down all the ship’s nonessential systems, took off all the safeties and regulators, then cut in the overrides.

  “Living dangerously again?” inquired Jessan.

  She shrugged. “With the hi-comms down it’s all ours to lose. Either we overload and blow up in hyper, or we make it to Galcen in record time.”

  “Better never than late?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “I don’t plan on popping out over Galcen South Polar just in time to see the lid blow off.”

  “No, I suppose not. This definitely puts a crimp in your plan to pay back that herb dealer on Raamet, though. It was his merchandise we ended up dumping to vacuum.”

  “He’ll have to write it off as a bad debt,” Beka said. “When the war’s over, I’ll go back and square it with him.”

  One by one she cut off all the ship’s nonessential systems—lights, artificial gravity, temperature control—and fed the extra power to the hyperspace engines. The ’Hammer ’s frame vibrated with the increase, a complex harmony of many disparate notes. With the overrides disabled, she would be depending on her sense of the ship’s internal music as much as on the control panel’s arrays of readouts and status lights. A faint discord might warn of trouble even before the problem registered on the sensors; and as long as the song remained constant, she could risk letting a danger indicator or two burn red.

  Jessan glanced over at the speed and acceleration readouts. “Just out of idle curiosity—how much faster are you planning to go?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Beka said. “These are new engines, remember? I did a hundred and sixty percent of rated max a couple of times with the old ones, so I’m taking that as my baseline. Nothing lower.”

  “Mmmph,” he said thoughtfully. “Are you planning to fly this thing the whole way by hand?”

  “Something like that. Can you fix up something to keep me awake until we get there?”

  “If I have to. But it’s a bad idea.”

  She drew breath for a sharp reply, then let it out again. Jessan almost never protested the decisions she made as Warhammer’s captain—at least, not that bluntly. When he did, she listened.

  “Why?” she asked finally. “We have to make speed, and I’m the only one who knows the ’Hammer well enough.”

  “When you push the ship this hard, everything rides on your own judgment. The tireder you get, the less dependable your judgment is.”

  “Stimulants—”

  “Only make it worse. By the time you get to Galcen you’ll be so jumpy your eyes aren’t even tracking.”

  She bit her lip. He’s probably right, dammit. “All right, Doc. What do you suggest we do instead?”

  “I’d say, the two of us go watch-and-watch from here to Galcen, four hours on and four hours off. I won’t even try pushing the ’Hammer up to your top speed, but I think I can keep her at baseline velocity while you catch a bit of sleep.”

  She frowned. “We’ll lose time that way.”

  “Some. But we cut down on the chances of making a fatal mistake somewhere along the line.”

  She thought about it for a few seconds while the ‘Hamm
er’ s metal frame hummed and vibrated about her. Getting there late does nobody any good at all … but getting there on time and then killing myself doing something stupid won’t do anyone much good either.

  “Okay, Doc,” she said. “You win. We’ll do it your way.”

  When Commodore Gil arrived in the control area of ’Pavo’s Combat Information Center, everything seemed calm—but the TAO was sweating in spite of the cool shipboard air.

  Gil walked over to him. “What’s the situation, Patel?”

  “The Outer Net’s under attack, sir.” The TAO pointed at one of the monitor screens. “That’s the raw sensor data from up ahead. It’s about all we’ve got, too—no comms with any of the Net ships or the generating stations, and we’ve lost all of our fighters. The Mageworlders are packing some heavy weapons and they know how to use them.”

  “How are we holding up?”

  “Our shields are working off the backup generators,” the TAO said, “and we’re still managing to maintain airtight integrity. But those guys have something that punches right through shields. Looks like a homer with a plasma-burst head on it, and they know right where to aim.”

  “That’s not good,” said Gil. “I suspected that somebody in the Republic was supplying the Mageworlds with war matériel—but nobody expected them to take the stuff and go us one better.”

  The crew member watching the sensor readouts looked up from her post. “Net Control under attack, signal fluctuation.”

  “What’s our estimated time of arrival at Net Control?” Gil asked the TAO.

  “Ten minutes.”

  “Do we have any of the Mageworlders in range?”

  The TAO shook his head. “They scem to know our range exactly and stay just beyond it.”

  “Get a signature on those plasma-burst missiles of theirs,” Gil said. “Set our secondary weapons systems to acquire them and take under fire automatically. Do we have anyone in voice range, lightspeed?”

  “We have Net Control B-Twenty-three requesting assistance, open comms,” the TAO said.

  “Put B-Twenty-three inside range of our secondaries, then,” said Gil. “And tell them we’re on our way, ETA ten minutes. Any luck on getting those missiles targeted?”

  “We’re still trying.”

  “Keep working on it,” Gil told him.

  For a few minutes there was no sound in CIC except the back-and-forth of information and orders: “Incoming.” … “How many?” … “Many, all directions.” … “Max speed, take evasive action. Spiral.” . . “Firing blind.” … “Engine hit.”

  Then the crew member at the sensor readouts said, “Friendlies—one five seven relative, speed five.”

  In the battle tank—being updated now by hand as the bits and scraps of data came in—two specks of light changed from the yellow of unknowns to the blue of friends. There were still entirely too many red-for-hostile dots out there, Gil decided, all approaching the blue marble of the Net generating station.

  “Signal those two contacts,” Gil said. “I am taking tactical command. Form three-sector screen on Station B-Twenty-three.”

  “Signal aye,” said the comms tech.

  “Damage report coming in.” announced another crew member. “We have one hundred percent power available, reserve not available, repairs in progress. Hits alfa and bravo sealed and isolated, emergency shields rigged.”

  It could be worse, thought Gil, but without any sense of relief. It probably won’t be very long before it is worse.

  In Warhammer’s common room, the emergency glows shed a dim blue light, illuminating the zero-g handholds and attachment points but little more. Ignaceu LeSoit must have come in from the gun bubble as soon as the ship jumped; Jessan, pulling his way aft from the cockpit, was aware of the other man’s presence as a darker area within the darkness, a stillness in the still air. LeSoit made no noise at all, not even the whisper of breath that should have sounded now that the temperature-control systems no longer kept up their constant susurration.

  “You can relax,” Jessan said. “We’re not in danger at the moment, unless you count the possibility we might go up like a nova from an overloaded hyperdrive.”

  “I’ll take my chances with that,” Le Soit replied from the shadows, a couple of feet from where Jessan had placed him. “The faster we get away from the Mageworlds, the better. Mind telling me where the captain’s going to drop us out?”

  “Galcen,” said Jessan.

  LeSoit whistled. “That’s a long haul in one jump.”

  “Hi-comms are down hard all over, and somebody’s got to give them the word.”

  “Civic duty?” The gunfighter laughed quietly in the dark. “That didn’t used to be in the captain’s line. But things change, I suppose. What’s she planning to do afterward?”

  “There’s a war on,” said Jessan. “As far as I know, she’s going to join it.”

  “So much for my plans to jump ship when we hit port,” LeSoit said. “I should have known the first time I met her that I’d wind up getting into something like this.”

  “Resign yourself to a short but merry life full of incredible space heroics,” Jessan recommended. “Do you watch ‘Spaceways Patrol’?”

  “You’re joking, yes?”

  “Not at all. It’s the best preparation I know of for life with the captain once she makes her up mind to do something and damn the consequences.”

  “I think I liked her better when she was just a tough kid on the run from political speeches and fancy-dress balls.”

  “There’s no accounting for some people’s taste.” Jessan yawned in spite of himself. “I need to catch a bit of sleep before my watch comes up.”

  LeSoit sighed, a light breath of sound in the blue-tinged darkness. “I suppose I ought to go forward and offer to take my turn at baby-sitting the autopilot.”

  “Don’t even bother,” Jessan said. “We’re doing this run by hand at max speed, and you don’t know the ship well enough to handle it. She didn’t want to put me on the watch bill either, but I managed to convince her.”

  “I’ll bet you did. What am I supposed to do while I’m waiting—play solitaire?”

  “If you like,” said Jessan. “But I think you’ll find it rather difficult in zero-g. I’d recommend sleeping instead.”

  The glowing dots in Karipavo’s main battle tank—blue triangles, painfully few and scattered, for friendly ships; red ones for hostile craft—gave Commodore Gil a clear picture of a bad situation steadily getting worse. The crew members on the control panels and status boards murmured back and forth: “Sensors report five targets inbound, sector green three.” . “Tracking.” … “Locked on.”

  Lieutenant Jhunnei spoke quietly at Gil’s elbow. “We need to get a visual ID before firing.”

  Gil looked at his aide. Her long, narrow face had a serious expression, one that he found oddly familiar. Mistress Hyfid looked like that when she told the General there was trouble coming from the Mageworlds.

  Aloud, he asked, “What makes you think so, Lieutenant?”

  Jhunnei gave a half-shrug. “Spacer’s intuition?”

  He turned to the TAO. “Weapons tight in green three pending visual ID.”

  “Weapons tight aye,” echoed the TAO. “Set magnification to plot in main tank.”

  In the battle tank, the tactical representation winked out and was replaced over the next several seconds by a large-scale ship diagram, built up line by line in blue light as the sensor data came in.

  The TAO whistled. “Good call, sir. Those are friendlies, all right. Fighters—Eldan dual-seaters.”

  “Good,” said Gil. Eldans were long-range fighters with short-burst hyperspace capability; less agile in close quarters than single-seaters, they carried heavier weapons and could deliver a powerful blow before dropping back into hyper for their return to base. “Signal them into our docking bay. We need all the fighters we can get.”

  There wasn’t much time for relief; already the crew member at the se
nsor panel was calling out again, “Hostile craft, many, sectors blue nine and blue ten. Inbound fast.”

  “Launch missiles when they’re in range,” said Gil. “And signal Shaja to take a blocking position between them and the Net Station.”

  The fighter-craft image in the battle tank vanished, and the tactical display came up again. Gil watched the diagram shift as the sensors and the lightspeed comms fed information into the ’Pavo’s comp systems—old data, all of it, minutes old in a situation where seconds could mean everything.

  With nothing but lightspeed comms, getting updates is like pouring syrup on a cold morning, he thought. And if we’re not lucky it’s going to kill us.

  The vacuum-tight door of CIC sighed open to admit a messenger escorting the senior pilot from the flight of Eldans. Shoulder flashes on the pilot’s pressure suit said that she was a JG; she carried her helmet in the crook of one arm, and her eyes were dark with fatigue.

  Her salute was weary but professional. “Lieutenant junior grade Orialas reporting as ordered.”

  Gil returned the salute. “Under the circumstances, Lieutenant, we’re very glad to have you aboard. Now—tell me what you’ve seen at your end of things.”

  “There isn’t much,” Orialas told him. “My buddies and I were ready squadron on board RSF Sovay. Word came down to launch, and we were vectored over to investigate a long-range contact. As soon as we dropped out at the contact point, we got ambushed by a flight of small fighter craft. By the time we finished them off and jumped back to base, Sovay was gone.”

  The JG swallowed and went on. “I don’t know who it is we’re fighting out there, but they’ve got some bad stuff to shoot at us with. We ran into a kind of multidirectional energy lance, and a collimated beam weapon that seems to work at lightspeed—it’s a lot faster than our plasma pulses, anyway—and some sort of large-aperture pulse weapon that could probably blow an asteroid out of orbit if it had to.”

  “You’ve got sensor records on all this stuff?”