by David Weber
“It’ll pass like a boot in the rear, smartmouth,” Vachali growled. “Get back to work.”
“Aye, aye, Sir.” With a grin, Dhotrumi turned back to his board.
Vachali looked around at the bodies. As soon as Gad finished securing Forward Impeller, he decided, he’d have him send one of his men back here and find a locker or storage room to get the corpses out of the way. Until then, he would just have to work around them. Walking past Dhotrumi and one of the bodies, he slipped into the helm station and started studying the controls. In about an hour, if things went according to plan, he’d be taking this thing out of orbit.
“Boss?” Munchi’s voice came over the speaker from the com room. “We’ve got a call from the Manticorans. You want me to tell them the intercom system is out?”
Vachali hesitated. That was indeed the cover story that Guzarwan had instructed them to use if any of the other orbiting ships happened to call. It was safe, efficient, and discouraged the caller from trying back.
But he’d just received a report via the shuttle’s laser com system that Guardian had tried calling Péridot for their captain a few minutes ago and that Wazir had spun that same cover story for them. The idea was to allay any suspicions, not enflame them, and having two Havenite ships reporting the exact same problem was likely to stack things in the wrong direction.
“No, I’ll talk to them,” he said. Backing up from the helm to the Watch Officer’s station, giving his Havenite tunic a quick check for stray bloodstains, he settled into the padded seat and strapped in. “Go ahead, Munchi,” he ordered.
The com display lit up to show a middle-aged woman wearing a Manticoran commander’s tunic. She looked a little tired, but beneath the heavy lids her eyes were alert enough.
“This is Lieutenant Vachali, Saintonge Watch Officer,” Vachali identified himself. “What can I do for you, Guardian?”
“Commander Metzger,” the woman identified herself in turn. “I wonder if I might speak to Commander Charnay.”
“The commander is occupied elsewhere,” Vachali said, resisting the awful temptation to point her at the body lying at the rear of the bridge near the plotting station. Now was clearly not the time, but Metzger’s reaction would undoubtedly have been priceless. “Perhaps I can help you?”
“There’s some kind of problem with our communications with Péridot,” Metzger said. “I can’t get them to link a call to our captain, and they seem unable to get a message through to your commodore, either. I wondered if you’d heard from him.”
“Not that I know of,” Vachali said, lowering his eyes to the board in front of him. He couldn’t pull up the ship’s log until Dhotrumi unlocked the bridge computer system, but of course Metzger had no idea he was looking at a blank display. “According to the log, we haven’t had any contact with him since he left for Péridot.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Not really,” Vachali said. “Commodore Flanders isn’t the type who feels it necessary to check on his officers every ten minutes. I know he was going to be assisting Captain Henderson in showing some of the visitors around Péridot today. They probably just got caught up in the activities and lost track of time.”
“That doesn’t explain the glitch in Péridot’s intercom and internal relay systems,” Metzger pointed out. “Especially since I thought Havenite intercom systems had triple backups.”
“Sometimes multiple systems go out together,” Vachali pointed out. “I’ve seen a single relay box take out an entire sector of a ship’s power systems. Also remember that they’re switching Péridot’s systems over to Cascan programs and protocols. That’s bound to wrinkle things up a bit.”
“Perhaps,” Metzger said. “Thank you for your time, Lieutenant. I’ll just have to keep calling until they get things sorted out.”
“That’s probably best,” Vachali agreed, stifling a grin at the thought of Wazir and Guzarwan suffering patiently through repeated Manticoran nagging. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you further. Would you like me to log a note for Commander Charnay to call you when he gets a chance?”
“That would be very helpful,” Metzger said, nodding. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure, Ma’am,” Vachali said. “Saintonge out.”
He keyed off the com, feeling pleased with himself. More pleased than he should be, really, considering that all he’d done was pull the wool over a woman’s eyes. He swivelled around—
To find Dhotrumi swivelled toward him, his eyes wide. “What?” Vachali growled.
“What the hell was that?” Dhotrumi demanded. “Havenite ships don’t have triple com backups, you idiot.”
Vachali’s warm glow vanished. “Oh, hell,” he growled, running the conversation rapidly back through his mind. The damn woman had set him a damn trap. And he’d walked right into it.
Or maybe he hadn’t. “She said it, but I never agreed with her,” he pointed out.
“You didn’t deny it, either,” Dhotrumi pointed out.
“Maybe I was just being polite,” Vachali said. “Either way, it leaves her with uncertainty, and uncertainty slows people down.”
“Maybe,” Dhotrumi said. “But I wouldn’t count on it slowing her down too much.”
“Then you’d better get this thing cracked so we can get the wedge up and get the hell out of here, hadn’t you?” Vachali said.
“Yeah. Right.” Dhotrumi gave Vachali a final glare, then turned back to his board.
Vachali shifted his eyes to the man working at the aft end of the bridge, his back to the other two, clearly trying to look inconspicuous. Stepping over to Dhotrumi, he leaned down and put his lips right behind the other’s ear. “By the way,” he murmured, “the next time you call me an idiot in public, I’ll wreck your face.”
Dhotrumi didn’t miss a beat. “The next time you screw up that badly in public,” he countered in the same low voice, “the chief will wreck your face.”
Vachali grimaced. Guzarwan probably would, too. “Just do your job,” he growled.
Turning, he headed back to the helm, glaring at the bridge displays. The previous owners had set them to give the three-sixty display a corresponding three-sixty view of the space around them. Not especially useful, but impressively panoramic.
And dead center in the display in front of the helm and watch officer stations was the Manticoran destroyer.
It looked so harmless, Vachali thought sourly to himself, floating all alone in space. So harmless, and so vulnerable, with its wedge down and its portside flank lined up with Saintonge’s forward weapons cluster.
But it was neither harmless nor helpless. It was a warship, crewed by trained Naval personnel, and with a full arsenal of weapons.
And he and Guzarwan had damn well better not forget that.
Swearing under his breath, he maneuvered into the helm station. “Tell Labroo to get Aft Impeller under our control,” he snarled toward the intercom. “And someone call Gad. Tell him I want these damn bodies off my bridge.”
“Huh,” Boysenko murmured in a bemused sort of way. “I didn’t know Havenite ships had triple intercoms.”
“That’s because they don’t,” Metzger said, glaring at the blank display, as if she could see through the afterimage back to Saintonge and Lieutenant Vachali. “I made that up.”
She turned around, noting in passing that Burns was still strapped, stiff and straight, into the Watch Officer station. Probably still annoyed that the XO had effectively usurped her command.
Right now, Metzger couldn’t be bothered with hurt feelings. “Colonel?” she invited.
Massingill was hovering at the missile station, peering at a display that was currently showing Carlyle’s loop recording of Saintonge’s EVA activity. Unfortunately, as Metzger had already noted, there wasn’t much to see. Carlyle had apparently come in right at the tail end of whatever was going on, and Guardian’s electro-optical sensors hadn’t been pointed the right direction before that.
“I don’t know, Ma’am,”
Massingill said slowly. “That many people, that spread out . . . unless they’re doing some bizarre check of the entire hull, I can’t see anything it could be except an incursion.”
Metzger looked at the looping video, chewing at the inside of her cheek. Unfortunately, she could think of any number of things it could have been, all of them completely innocuous. It could have been routine maintenance, with several different systems tagged to take advantage of the battlecruiser’s down time. It could have been a training exercise for EVA teams—the RMN didn’t do routine exercises of that sort, but the RMN was chronically strapped for cash and the Republic of Haven Navy wasn’t.
Or it could indeed have been a routine check of the entire hull. With only a handful of seconds to go on, and no idea how long the spacers had actually been out there, it was hard to draw any definitive conclusions.
But there was also Péridot, another RHN ship, supposedly having bizarre problems with its internal communications coincident with Captain Eigen being aboard. There was Metzger’s little triple-intercom comment, which Saintonge’s watch officer seemed to have missed, though perhaps he was simply too polite to correct a foreign officer. There was even Long’s and Donnelly’s weird P-409-R question that still hadn’t been answered.
And all of it added up to . . . what?
Metzger hated uncertainty. That was one of the best things about serving with the Navy: the fact that a hundred years of fine-tuning had created a list of regulations, procedures, and protocols that covered nearly any situation an officer could possibly find herself in. Regulations that should have banished uncertainty to the paving stones of hell.
Yet here she was, up to her neck in it.
Was there some kind of threat out there, as Massingill seemed to think and Metzger’s own gut was reluctantly seconding? Or was it just a bizarre series of coincidences that added up to exactly nothing?
And if there was a threat, what exactly was she supposed to do about it?
Abruptly, she realized that the twisting in her gut wasn’t just agreement with Massingill that this wasn’t adding up. The twisting was fear. Deep, genuine fear.
The Star Kingdom of Manticore had never experienced a war. The closest it had ever come to one was the brief tangle with the Free Brotherhood, and that had been a hundred years ago.
Metzger and the rest of the Navy had been trained to fight. But neither she nor any of Guardian’s officers, from Captain Eigen on down, had ever actually done so. Nor had they ever really expected to.
What was she supposed to do? Was she supposed to decide that the threat was real and sound Readiness One?
But what if it wasn’t? Captain Eigen had promised Commodore Flanders that Guardian would hold station relative to Saintonge. If she violated that agreement without cause, would there be diplomatic consequences down the line?
Worse, would there be military ones? Saintonge’s forward laser was pointing directly at Guardian’s flank, and the fact that Flanders had promised to disengage it wasn’t particularly comforting.
The consequences might not stop with Manticoran-Havenite relations, either. It was someone else’s concerns that had pushed Eigen and Flanders into the positioning agreement in the first place. If Metzger unilaterally violated that agreement, would that delegate lodge a formal protest with Landing over her actions? She had no idea what the possible political and trade ramifications might be; what she did know was that Defense Minister Dapplelake had given Guardian’s senior officers specific orders to be as diplomatic and cooperative as was humanly possible.
She looked back at Burns . . . and as she did so it dawned on her that the stiffness in the young lieutenant’s face wasn’t from Metzger’s supposed insult at taking over her watch. It was, instead, fear. The same fear and uncertainty Metzger herself was feeling.
And Burns was looking to her executive officer to come up with a response to those fears.
Metzger felt her back straighten a little. Uncertainty and the fear of petty consequences were for cowards. She was an officer of the Royal Manticoran Navy; and by God and by her King, she would do whatever she had to.
“Colonel, I want you to assemble a response team,” she said to Massingill. “I realize you and the other two are the only actual Marines we have aboard, but I’d guess we have our fair share of people who’ve tested well with small arms and hand-to-hand combat. Find them, collect them, and get them ready.”
She could see in Massingill’s face the obvious objection: that skill on a firing range or salle did not exactly translate into combat readiness and skill. But she was a Marine, and Marines followed orders. “Aye, aye, Ma’am,” she said. Pulling herself fully into the missile console station, she called up the personnel files and got to work.
Metzger turned to Burns. “Lieutenant Burns, as you’ve probably already deduced, I’m relieving you,” she said formally. “But stay here—I may need you.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Burns said, and to Metzger’s ear the younger woman’s voice sounded marginally calmer. “Should we—I mean, do you want to raise Guardian’s readiness level?”
Metzger looked at the view of Saintonge floating in the center of the main display, some of her momentary resolve evaporating back into caution. Not too far, she warned herself. Don’t push it too far.
And not just out of consideration for the outside world, but also for her own crew. She didn’t want to stress them out, or look too jumpy. Not until and unless she had a few more facts under her belt.
“Signal Readiness Two,” she told Burns. “Then get over to the plotting console and start running a full diagnostic on ship’s weapons and targeting systems. Let’s see just how ready Guardian’s prepared to be.”
Guzarwan was studying his tablet, reviewing the course he’d composed, when a little crowing yelp came from the tech station. “Got it!” Mota announced, looking at Guzarwan in triumph. “We’re in. You got helm, reactor, impellers, and all the peripherals that go with them.”
About time. “Send out the codes,” Guzarwan ordered, jabbing the intercom. “Impellers; bridge,” he called. “Mota’s feeding you the access codes—plug them in, and get the startup sequence going.”
He got an acknowledgement from both impeller compartments and rekeyed for Shora. “We’re starting the impellers,” he said. “Pull your men inside and make sure the hatches are sealed.”
“What about the two Havenites out there?” Shora asked. “You want us to take them out?”
For a moment Guzarwan was tempted. Part of the startup procedure was to bring the spin section to a halt, and as the dumbbells slowed the rapid rotation that had so far defeated his men’s attempts to pick off the two would-be escapees would cease to be a problem.
But even small radar-guided missiles were expensive, and at this late date spending one to take out a couple of troublemakers wasn’t worth the effort. If he could keep them trapped outside, that was all he needed. “Don’t bother,” Guzarwan him. “Just make sure your men seal the hatches once they’re in.”
“Got it.”
Guzarwan turned back to the helm, smiling tightly as the displays started coming up in response to Mota’s cracked access codes. Setting his tablet floating in front of him where he could easily read his calculations, he began feeding in the numbers.
Gill’s first warning was the slight change in his inner ear as he started yet another climb over Flanders’s back. “Commodore?” he called.
“I feel it,” Flanders confirmed, his voice grim. “They’re getting ready to lock down the spin section.”
Gill felt a chill run through him. The only reason for this kind of dumbbell-shaped spin section in the first place was that locking it vertically made for more efficient compensator field when traveling through n-space. And the only reason Guzarwan might care about n-space efficiency—“He’s starting up the impellers?”
“Sounds like it,” Flanders said tightly. “Which means that he somehow got the lock codes . . . and I know none of my people would have give
n them up. Not willingly.”
Another shiver ran up Gill’s back. “Let’s hope he’s just got a really good hacker team,” he said, trying to put out of his mind the nastier ways Guzarwan might have gotten the codes. “Either way, we’ve got to get inside.”
“No argument here,” Flanders said. “It looks like our playmates agree.”
Gill looked at the main hull. Sure enough, the two sentries had disappeared, presumably back inside. “You realize they’re still going to be waiting for us,” he warned.
“I’m sure they are,” Flanders agreed. “Just keep going. And no talking from here on—they’re probably monitoring our channel.”
Their progress inward to the slower-moving sections of the spin section, combined now with the section’s decreasing speed, made their leap-frog jumps both easier and longer. Three double-jumps after Alpha Spin began its slow-down, they reached the hub.
Gill had been making a mental list of all the hatches he could remember in this part of an Antares-class ship and wondering which one Flanders was heading for. The answer, as it turned out, was none of them. Instead, Flanders slipped into an open gap at the edge of the hub, led the way on a zigzag course through the still-operating mechanism, and finally slipped into a service accessway equipped with single-person-sized airlock.
Ninety seconds later, they were both again inside the ship.
Gill keyed off his suit radio, gestured for Flanders to do the same, and touched his helmet to the other’s. “Let me guess,” he said. “Officers should be able to do everything the enlisted can?”
“And we had some pretty crazy enlisted when I was aboard,” Flanders said, an edge of dark humor in his voice. “Okay. You said the starboard accessway?”
“I did say that, yes,” Gill said, wincing. “But that was when Péridot was locked down and we had plenty of time. Now, we don’t. What’s it going to take, about forty minutes to bring up the wedge?”
“Probably down to thirty-five now,” Flanders confirmed. “So if the accessways are out, that means the regular passageways. If we eliminate the ones with access to the reactor and Aft Impeller—they’ll surely be guarding those—that leaves us . . . not a lot of options.”
