Once a Hero

by Elizabeth Moon

  Esmay wondered about that. By rumor, if a Bloodhorde group closed with prospect of a kill, it would not break off just to avoid contact with another ship. Unless its ships were having trouble . . . she wished she could see the scan data herself. Not likely, if the mine blew. But . . . she dared a transmission. "Were they close enough to plant the mine by hand?" she asked.

  "Don't transmit," the voice said. "If it hears you—"

  "You wanted to know why," she said. "Is Wraith's scan tech available?"

  "Wait."

  She could imagine the scene in Koskiusko's communications shack—perhaps Major Pitak was there; certainly the captain was. A different voice came with a tiny physical tap on her EVA suit. "You're going to upset 'em, Lieutenant." That voice sounded amused; she wasn't sure what it meant. She shrugged enough to move the shoulders of the suit; a chuckle came through the link. "You got an idea, huh? Good for you. I can't figure out why that thing hasn't blown us both—but I'm willing to live with that." Another chuckle. Esmay felt her own stiff face relaxing into a grin.

  "Suiza, just in case you've got an idea, we've patched you through to the Wraith senior scan tech. Just try to keep your transmissions short, do you understand?"

  "Yes, sir. Did the Bloodhorde ships come close enough for an EVA team to plant the mine by hand, or by pod?"

  A pause. Then yet another voice. "Uh . . . yes . . . I suppose. We were trying to rotate, because of the damage to the starboard shields and hull. They got pretty close . . ."

  Esmay wanted to yell "NUMBERS, dammit!" but she could hear a roar in the background that might be the scan tech's supervisor saying the same thing, for the next transmission gave her the figures she wanted. Close enough indeed; her mind raced through the equations for both EVA and pod movement . . . yes. "How soon after that did the Bloodhorde ships pull away?"

  "As soon as Sting and Justice came back," the tech said. Esmay waited, confident in that background bellow. Sure enough, the tech came back on with the precise interval. Esmay felt as if someone had run a current down her spine. Maybe they'd spotted the Fleet ships before they were fired on, or maybe they hadn't. They'd planted a smart mine, programmed for a specific task, and then they'd gone away, leaving Wraith damaged but not killed. And why?

  What did the Bloodhorde expect to happen next? A damaged Familias military vessel would not be abandoned, so they couldn't have hoped to capture it—in fact, if they had, why mine it? Damaged Familias vessels . . . went to repair facilities. Either dockyards, in this case too far away for a cripple like Wraith to reach, or the mobile dockyards called DSRs . . . Koskiusko. What would the Bloodhorde know about DSRs? Whatever was in the public domain, certainly—and Esmay knew that the public knew DSRs were capable of taking the smaller Fleet ships into the DSR's vast central repair bay.

  That made sense. She thought it all through, then transmitted it. "The Bloodhorde chose a small ship to disable, planted a smart mine, then withdrew, so that Wraith would lead the way to a DSR. The mine's programmed to go off when Wraith enters the repair dock—disabling the DSR. It's not strong enough to destroy it, but it would probably be unable to make jump—"

  "Certainly unable to make jump," came Pitak's voice in her ear.

  "And thus would be immobilized for attack." Esmay paused, but no one said anything. "Either they followed Wraith and her escort to this system, or the mine will also have a homing module to lead them here. They want the DSR, almost certainly for capture, since they could have covered Wraith with enough mines to blow the whole DSR if they'd wanted."

  Another long pause, during which the contact hissed gently in her ear. Then: "It makes sense. Never thought the Bloodhorde were that sneaky . . . and what they want a DSR for, unless they've got significant battle damage somewhere . . ."

  Esmay rode the wave of her confident intuition. "They lack technical skills they need; they don't have a military-grade shipyard. They want a DSR to upgrade their entire space effort. In one blow they get manufacturing facilities, parts, and expert technicians. Given a DSR, they could upgrade any of their ships to Fleet equivalency—or quickly learn to manufacture their own cruisers."

  The long hiss that followed conveyed both horror and respect. "Of course," someone said softly.

  "Which means," Esmay said, "that this thing won't go off until the parameters match whatever they think the inside of a repair bay looks like, or until someone tries to remove it. It doesn't know it's been detected until we try to do something about it." Relief weakened her knees; she leaned back against the unseen person behind her. "Which means we can walk away and it won't blow—as long as we don't put Wraith in the repair bay."

  "Not so fast," said Pitak, over a gabble of other voices. "You still need to get good scan on it."

  "Not active," Esmay said. "But yes, I can do vidscan." Without waiting for orders or permission, she moved, leaning over to aim at it. There it was, the blunt-ended cylindrical shape, the little sensor pod on its wire now retracted to form a knob on the cylinder. She could pick out a serial number, and one of the swirling shapes that meant something in the language of Aethar's World. Probably something rude; the outside of Bloodhorde ships were usually decorated with slogans intended to shock and frighten their neighbors.

  She patched the vidscan signal to her headset, and waited for Pitak to say they had enough data. Finally she heard, "That's enough—now the guy behind you is going to withdraw—" A final tap on her shoulder, and then she saw the shadow cast by Koskiusko's light waver as he left. The smart mine's sensor pod didn't move. Curious, but welcome. She waited a little longer, watching her oxygen display count the seconds and minutes, then lifted one stickpatched boot from the hull. The sensor pod stirred, rotating on its wire stalk.

  "The sensor pod's moving a bit," Esmay said. "How about dousing the light while I get loose."

  "We were afraid the change might trigger something," the voice said.

  "If it's programmed for repair bays," Esmay said, "then light will activate the matching program, but dark will turn it off."

  The light behind her vanished, and with it the crisp shadow she'd cast. She turned up the sensitivity of her helmet scan, and just made out the mine . . . the sensor pod did not move. Slowly, she folded herself up as much as the EVA suit allowed, so that she could grip her safety line close to the pin and kick the other boot free. No movement from the sensor pod. Slowly, she worked herself hand by hand backwards, around the curve of the hull, until she was out of sight of the mine. Then she stuck her boots onto the hull and walked back to the line connecting Wraith to Koskiusko. There the specialists of the bomb squad waited for her, in the strange bulky suits she had seen only in training cubes.

  "Suiza, come back to Koskiusko," she heard.

  "Yes, sir." She wanted to know what the bomb squad was going to do about the mine; now that she was here, she might as well stay. But the voice in her ear had left her no options. And she'd need another auxiliary tank to stay out longer.

  "Good job, Lieutenant," said one of the bomb squad. "Glad you figured out it was safe for me to come back."

  "Me, too," Esmay said, then hooked herself to the transfer line and pushed away.

  By the time she had clambered out of her EVA suit, she felt like collapsing in a heap on the deck. The undersuit clung to her nastily; she hated having to stand around in it while the chief in charge of suits examined and checked off the condition of the one she turned in. After one glance, she ignored the big mirror at the end of the bay; her hair looked like dirty felt glued to her head.

  Showered and properly dressed once more, she headed to the compartment number waiting in her message bin. T-1, Deck 9, number 30 . . . that was in the administrative area of the Senior Technical Schools, down the passage from Admiral Livadhi's office.

  The conference, when she got there, consisted of Captain Hakin, Admiral Dossignal, Admiral Livadhi, Commander Seveche and Major Pitak from Hull and Architecture, and two lieutenant commanders she did not know. One wore the insignia of t
he 14th Heavy Maintenance, with the collar flashes of weapons systems; the other, also with weapons collar marks, wore the armband of ship's crew. The captain spoke first.

  "Well, Lieutenant . . . glad your guess about the mine's programming turned out to be right. At least as far as you were concerned."

  "Me, too, sir." Esmay hoped the edge in the captain's voice had as much to do with the situation as with her.

  "I don't suppose you've had time to figure out how we're going to evacuate Wraith and repair her without triggering the mine's recognition program?"

  "No, sir." He was definitely displeased with her; that frosty glare could mean nothing else.

  "What I'd like to know is how much time delay is built into that program," said Commander Seveche, after a quick glance at Dossignal. "Would they have sent it open-ended, or would they have built in a hard delay, for just this situation?"

  Eyes shifted to Esmay but she had nothing to say. Shrugging was inadvisable in the midst of that much brass, so she simply didn't say anything.

  "Do we have any Bloodhorde analysts aboard?" asked Dossignal, looking at Admiral Livadhi.

  "Not really, Sy. They pulled the best for some sort of policy/strategic planning thing back at Rockhouse, and the next best is on the flagship with Admiral Gourache. I've got an instructor for the tactics course, but his specialty is Benignity history. He's hitting the databanks . . ."

  "Abandoning Wraith is not an option," the captain said. "The admiral's made it clear that we're not to give the Bloodhorde any chance at advanced technology, and even stripped, that hull has too many goodies to let fall into the hands of the Bloodhorde, or even a random pirate. If she can't be repaired well enough to get her back to safety—"

  "She can be," Admiral Dossignal said. "This is exactly the kind of damage we're equipped to repair. The only question is how to do it safely, without risking the integrity of this ship." He glanced at Commander Seveche, who took over.

  "We have to repair that hull breach, and reset the engines, or she won't make jump again . . . and that means working all around that mine, even if we don't stick her into the repair bay. I'd like to hear from the weapons experts."

  The captain nodded, and the crew weapons officer spoke. "Given the kind of mine, there are several approaches we can use, depending on the amount of damage tolerable on Wraith . . ."

  "Wraith's already got enough damage—" Pitak sounded outraged. Dossignal held up his hand and she subsided.

  "We realize you want to minimize any further damage, but there's a trade-off between speed and safety here. We can get the remnants of Wraith in to repair faster if some additional damage is acceptable; if not, we're looking at a long period of preparation in an already damaged ship—dangerous time, for both the workers and both ships—to attempt something which may not be possible."

  "Explain what procedures you might use," the captain said.

  "Ideally, we'd detach the mine, enfold it in a foam-mold casing, and set it off at a safe distance. However, we—Lt. Commander Wyche and I—believe that there's considerable risk of detonating the mine if we try to detach it. So the next best thing is a foam bed both interior—behind the hull where it's attached—and on the exterior. Here the problem is how much of the interior needs to be foamed. And that homing signal we suspect, though that depends on which kind it is."

  "How long before you can set it off?"

  "That depends on what H&A tells us." He turned to Commander Seveche. "Will we need to foambed the interior as well? How much additional damage would such a mine cause?" With a gesture, Seveche passed the question to Pitak.

  Pitak scowled; Esmay recognized thought in progress. "There's already so much damage forward—we're going to have to replace most of the structure anyway. On the other hand, it's stretching our resources, especially if we expect an attack. Do you think it's an aimed charge, or just a straightforward blow-em-up?"

  He shook his head. "If they went to the trouble of hand-placing this thing, I'd bet on a directed charge, probably with substantial penetrating power. It's definitely a hull-cracker."

  Someone down the table stirred. "But if they wanted to disable the DSR, wouldn't the charge be directed outwards?"

  "Not necessarily," Pitak said. "An explosion of that magnitude, in the repair bay, could be expected to damage sensitive equipment—certainly enough to keep us from withdrawing Wraith and closing the bay." She paused, and no one interrupted. "Sorry, but I think you'd better foambed the interior, at least these compartments—" She called up a display, and highlighted some of the forward compartments. "If we can possibly save these: seventeen A, eighteen A and B, and twenty-three A, it'll save us considerable time on the repairs."

  "Then—with the precautions we need to protect personnel—we're talking 96 hours to foambed those compartments and the exterior—"

  "Why the exterior?" asked someone else.

  "Because we don't want pieces flying around hitting us," Pitak said. "Or the rest of Wraith."

  "And I'll need additional squads," he said. "The more people, the faster it'll go. As long as they're not working in close, it should be safe enough."

  "Unless it has a fixed delay of some kind—"

  "Unless stars sprout horns . . . sure, that'd kill us all, but there's no way to know but go."

  "Very well, commander," the captain said. "I presume damage control would have personnel trained to spray a foam bed?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Captain Hakin turned to his exec. "Make sure he gets what he needs. Major Pitak, can H&A do anything to expedite this?"

  Pitak nodded. "Yes, sir. With the captain's permission, I have construction crews standing by to widen access to the compartments that must be foamed; they've been clearing debris already—"

  "I thought we pulled everyone out," the captain said.

  "We did, sir, but when tactical analysis concluded that the mine had its programming set for our internal bay, I sent them back over."

  "Very well. Keep me informed." With that, the captain rose; everyone stood as he left. Pitak beckoned to Esmay.

  "Lieutenant, you're not ready to direct a crew in this kind of situation; I want you to hold down the office—be my communications link. I'm going over myself."

  "Yes, sir."

  Pitak started down the passage; Esmay followed.

  "You'll be in charge of expediting the transfer of materials and tools as we need them. I've set up a model in my office, but it'll need modification—they always do. Keep in mind the limited staging area on Wraith. We don't want things backing up there."

  The model lasted only about an hour, then Pitak was calling in changes, and Esmay thought of nothing but her assignment. She relayed requests for tools, for materials, for personnel. Several glitches required intervention from above; she sicced Commander Seveche's office on the stubborn senior chief in the Technical Schools who didn't see why an instructor in weapons systems should dismiss a class and go help deal with the mine. He'd argued that the 14th was supposed to have its own bomb disposal squad . . . but polite requests through appropriate channels soon produced a cheerful woman with one prosthetic hand and her custom EVA suit slung on her back. Esmay directed her to the right EVA hatch, and went back to work.

  She would like to have watched the work on Wraith; she knew only vaguely what a "foam bed" was, and what it was supposed to accomplish. But Pitak's construction teams had found more casualties in the forward compartments, most dead and the rest unconscious.

  "The artificial gravity failed up here, along with the communications lines—some shrapnel, probably, sliced them like a hot knife. It's a wonder any of 'em are alive, and I don't know how many will survive—they look pretty bad. But they're all out now, so you can send over the next load of stuff as soon as they're logged clear of the lanes."

  Esmay looked at the cluttered screen that now represented everything between Koskiusko and Wraith. A query to the scan supervisor tagged the medical evac pod on her screen; when it was out of the way, s
he put a priority tag on the shipment Pitak had asked for, and talked to the sergeant minor in T-3 responsible for sending it off.

  She was concentrating so hard on keeping up with Pitak's requests that she jumped when the sergeant at the other console said "Wow!" and then "Good thing they foamed it . . ."

  "The mine?" she asked, when she got her breath back.

  "Yeah. Want a replay?"

  She couldn't resist; he transferred the replay to her console. Wraith's hull breach no longer faced Koskiusko; she could just see the edge of it. That meant the mine was out of line of sight; the viewpoint shifted. Now, where she remembered the mine should be, an irregular grayish blob strongly side-lit by Koskiusko's floods.

  "They took this from a pod," the sergeant said. "Relayed on tightbeam . . . they had several out there watching."

  This view closed in, until she could see that the blob looked like whipped cream or icing piped into a slumpy cylinder. As she watched, another blob of foam appeared, rising then slipping sideways to seal off the end of the cylinder.

  "They foamed all the compartments inboard," the sergeant said. "And foamed a cylinder around it, aiming it away from us . . . then finally put a lobe over the top. That's when . . ."

  It blew; the blob of the foam bed burst apart, and something shot out the top, away from Wraith.

  "All the ejecta went the right way," the sergeant said. "Good design. Reports are that very little blew in the interior. All they have to do now is get all that foam back out, and we can do that in the big bay."

  "I don't understand how it works," Esmay said. "I thought if you confined an explosion, that only made it worse."

  The sergeant shrugged. "I don't really understand it either, but I had a buddy back in Sector 10 who was in their bomb squad. He said you had a choice—you could try to aim it somewhere, and let all that energy escape in a direction that didn't bother you, or you could put enough padding around it to absorb the force."