by Marko Kloos
Lieutenant Hunter considered his words for a long moment. Then she nodded and shrugged.
“I suppose I can take one of the engineers across. But I’m going to let the master of arms post an armed guard by the airlock while we are connected.”
“I have no problem with that.” Dunstan touched the audio field on his comms screen again, and it changed from red to green.
“Zephyr, we will come alongside and run a supply line. If you prep your airlock for docking ops, I’ll send someone over to help your engineer. Do you need medical assistance?”
“Negative, Commander. Just a nosebleed or two from the high-g pursuit.”
“That is a very fast little ship you have there,” Dunstan said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I was going to say the same thing. We have absolutely no idea how you did what you did,” Aden Jansen said.
“And that will have to stay that way. In fact, while you are under tow, you’ll need to keep your sensors offline and trust our ears and eyes instead.”
“That won’t be a problem. We’ll prepare for docking. Be advised that we are down to cold thrust only right now, so we’re a little limited when it comes to rendezvous maneuvering.”
“We’ll take care of that, Zephyr. Sit tight. Hecate out.”
Dunstan ended the connection and turned toward Lieutenant Hunter.
“I know what you are going to suggest.”
“You do,” she said.
“You’ll hack their AI core and make sure their sensors stay cold. And when we cut them loose, we’re going to wipe whatever data they have on us already. Including our encounter with those ships.”
“That was my suggestion, sir,” Lieutenant Hunter said. “Of course, it won’t erase the knowledge in their heads.”
“No, it won’t,” Dunstan conceded.
“And they’re cargo jocks, flying a little hot rod. That kind isn’t known for discretion. The next time they get drunk at a spaceport, they’ll tell the story to half the bar.”
Dunstan sighed.
“They’re spacers. Most of them tell tall tales when they’re drunk. At least they won’t have sensor data to back it up.”
Lieutenant Hunter nodded, but she didn’t look like he had convinced her.
“Maneuver to rendezvous and commence docking operations when ready. Take whoever you need along with you to assess the situation,” Dunstan said.
“Aye, sir.”
“While you’re over there, you may want to impress on them that it would be best if they forgot what they saw today,” he added. “Make sure they understand that the alternative would be to keep them detained until this ship officially exists. And that may never be the case.”
Hecate was a small ship for a deep-space patrol vessel, but docked alongside Zephyr, she seemed enormous. The Oceanian courier ship was a third the mass and not quite half the length of the Rhodian warship. Her origin as a speed yacht was undeniable, given away by her slender, graceful build and the size of her drive cone, which looked disproportionately large for a ship of her mass. The only indicator that she wasn’t quite in her original configuration anymore was the pair of megawatt-class emitters for her Point Defense System, which were definitely not a common piece of technology on a civilian-flagged vessel. PDSs were military technology, and private permits for them were tightly controlled and difficult to obtain. But the permits for Zephyr had all checked out the first time he had encountered her with Minotaur. Whatever the cost of the system, it had paid for itself by saving the ship, if only barely. The hull section above the drive cone showed damage from shrapnel, but Dunstan knew what rail guns could do to a hull. The slug that had disintegrated into that shrapnel would have caused much more serious damage if Zephyr’s PDS hadn’t blown it to pieces.
That ship and her crew had no business rushing headlong into battle, he thought. That was almost suicidal recklessness, point defense or not.
He checked the secondary mission clock projection on the bulkhead. They had been docked with Zephyr for over four hours, and Lieutenant Hunter had been over on the other ship with a few members of Hecate’s engineering crew for most of that time.
“Lieutenant Robson, what’s the updated ETA for Cerberus and Pelican?” he asked.
The communications officer checked her display.
“Fifty-three minutes for Cerberus and sixty-one for Pelican, sir. The other inbound reinforcements are still ten-plus hours away.”
“It’s a bit of a trip from Rhodia One,” Dunstan said. Fleet command had sent half a dozen more ships their way to secure the remaining vessels of the Odin’s Ravens fleet. Even in an organization that was chronically short on ships right now, someone had managed to scrounge up a fair-sized task force to come out for Hecate’s catch.
“It’s a shame they don’t do prize money anymore,” Dunstan said.
“What’s that, sir?” Lieutenant Armer asked.
“Oh, they used to award money to the crew whenever they captured another ship,” he replied. “Back in the Old Earth wet-navy times. They’d split the worth of the ship and its cargo between the crew and the admiralty.”
“I would not object to that at all,” Armer said. He looked at the screen that tracked the Gretian gun cruiser floating in space a few thousand kilometers away. “How much do you think that ship is worth?”
“That was their last and most modern hull,” Dunstan said. “Probably as expensive as our Nike-class ships. And those cost a little under thirty billion per hull.”
“Thirty billion ags.” Robson let out a low whistle. “Divided by twenty-eight. That would not be a bad bonus for our troubles.”
“In all fairness, we would have to cut in the people on Zephyr, too. But I don’t think fleet command would be too receptive if we floated the idea of prize money.”
“Control, airlock deck. The first officer is back on the ship with the boarding party.”
“Airlock, Control. Acknowledged,” Dunstan answered. “Secure the airlock and prepare your deck for undocking.”
“Aye, sir.”
A few minutes later, Lieutenant Hunter climbed up the ladder behind Dunstan and stepped onto the control deck. When she sat down in her gravity couch with a low sigh, Dunstan saw that her shipboard overalls were dark with sweat stains.
“Every time I am on one of those civilian nutshells, I am reminded why we build warships the way we do,” she said.
“What’s the situation?” Dunstan asked.
“Their engineer had it right. The reactor torus ate some high-speed shrapnel. There’s no way to patch it out here. They’ll have to replace the whole unit. Maybe even the entire reactor assembly depending on the overhaul inspection they’ll have to do once we get them to a space dock.”
“I hope they are insured well,” Dunstan said. A reactor replacement could put a ship out of commission for three months and easily cost a quarter of the original construction costs.
“That’s not the end of it, though. I crawled around in that hull with their engineer for about three hours. Some of the power conduits got nicked, too. She is patching what she can. But there is no systems redundancy on that ship. They made a lot of sacrifices to get all that speed out of her.”
“As you pointed out, Lieutenant, it’s not a warship. It’s not built to take hits.”
“Someone’s going to have to tow them all the way into Rhodia One,” Hunter said.
“I guess that will be Hecate,” Dunstan replied after a moment of consideration.
“Are you sure about that, sir?”
“We’re already connected. Once the other Alliance units get here, there’s not much we can do to help. We don’t have the space to take in anyone from the escape pods. And we don’t have marines to board those Odin’s Ravens ships.”
Lieutenant Hunter expanded the navigation window and let the AI plot a direct course back to Rhodia One.
“Twenty-five million kilometers. And they can’t use their gravmag, so it’ll be a one-g tow
all the way. I guess we know what we’re going to be doing for the next two days.”
Seven hours later, Hecate was on the way down the track to Rhodia One, with Zephyr tethered alongside. A few hundred thousand kilometers behind them, the Alliance ships RNS Cerberus and ONS Pelican were collecting Gretian escape pods out of space. The reinforcement task force was coming down the track from Rhodia in the opposite direction, now three hours away and in the middle of their deceleration burn, and Dunstan decided to head belowdecks for a meal and a shower.
He was sitting at a table in the galley with a coffee and a fresh serving of lamb stew when Lieutenant Hunter climbed down onto the deck. She nodded at him and walked over to the serving nook to get a food tray of her own. The seating in the galley was tight quarters, only two booths with space for four people in each, and Hunter brought her food over to his booth and sat across the table from him. Dunstan was still learning the ropes of day-to-day life on a stealth ship, but by now he was accustomed to the economization of the limited space. He knew that Hunter was joining him to keep the other booth free as a courtesy to enlisted crew members.
“You can claim bunk time first,” Dunstan told her. “You look like you’ve been awake for days.”
She took a long sip of coffee and hummed softly with pleasure.
“No offense, sir, but you don’t exactly look fresh either. You’re the commander. You go first.”
“I’ll shake odds and evens for it with you. Pick one.”
Hunter shook her head with a little smile. “Odds.”
Dunstan raised his fist and flexed his fingers. “Ready? One. Two. Three.”
They shook their fists at each other in the cadence of the count. On three, they opened them. Dunstan had two fingers extended. Hunter had chosen two fingers as well.
“Evens,” Dunstan said. “Looks like my luck is holding today.”
“Well, you gave me a fair contest. I was going to check in with the department heads after my meal anyway. I may let Armer have the deck for fifteen minutes longer, though. I’m going to need a shower after that climbing tour.”
“I’d never begrudge anyone the luxury of a shower. Just make sure we keep our eyes open on sensors. The ship that got away is still out there.”
Lieutenant Hunter took a bite of her food and chased it with another long sip of coffee.
“Do you think that’s all they have left?”
Dunstan shrugged. “We just captured what’s without a doubt their best warship, plus company. Two supply ships in attendance. And that fuel hauler we blew up by accident. If that wasn’t all of it, we probably got the bulk. Unless they have a secret invisible space station out there somewhere.”
“Oh gods, I hope they do,” Hunter said. “I hope this isn’t over.”
“I thought you didn’t crave conflict anymore.”
She stirred the stew on her tray with a spoon.
“This wasn’t conflict. It was flicking a switch and turning off an unruly piece of gear. Whatever else they may have out there, we will find it. And with this ship, it won’t even be a contest. Whoever designed this beast, I want to kiss them square on the mouth.”
“We will find them,” Dunstan agreed. “We’ll bring these people to Rhodia One, and then we are going back out to look for what’s left of Odin’s Ravens. And maybe this ship will save their lives, too. I like the idea of ending fights without firing any ordnance. I think we’ve both picked through enough wreckage in our lifetimes.”
Lieutenant Hunter nodded.
They continued their meal in silence for a while. Two enlisted crew members from the engineering department came up into the galley and sat down in the other booth, and a third one joined them a few minutes later. When Lieutenant Hunter was finished with her bowl of stew, she checked her wrist comtab for the time.
“Well, I better hurry up with that shower. Watch change is in twenty, and then there’ll be a line.”
Dunstan nodded. “See you in a few hours, Number One. Sorry you lost the odds and evens shake.”
“As you said, your luck is holding.”
She got up and carried her tray to the cleanup rack, then went over to the ladderwell and climbed belowdecks. Dunstan returned his attention to his lamb stew. In the booth next to his, the enlisted crew members were having a muted conversation, but he could tell they were moderating themselves because the commander was sitting behind them. He finished his stew and drained his coffee mug and got up to give the galley back to the crew. Even in the egalitarian atmosphere of a stealth ship, the boss was still the boss, and the enlisted and junior officers needed their occasional private spaces.
Forty more hours to Rhodia One, he thought as he climbed up toward the officer berth deck. If my luck keeps holding, maybe I can get a day or two of surface leave for the crew before we head back out. Maybe get a chance to see Mairi and the girls.
As he reached his cabin and unlocked the door, he realized that it had been a very long time since he had actually looked forward to going out on patrol again. This ship was a daring experiment, but the last few days had conclusively proven the validity of the concept. She was small and lightly armed, and she only had one shower for twenty-eight people, but she had just captured a heavy gun cruiser almost ten times her size without getting a scratch into her paint.
“Not bad,” he said and patted the bulkhead next to the door. “Not bad at all. Let’s see what else you can do.”
CHAPTER 24
SOLVEIG
When Solveig opened her eyes, there was darkness all around her.
The pain she felt told her that she was still alive. She had no idea how long her mind had been floating in the nothingness. There had been dreams, but she couldn’t remember any images or details, just darkness and all-consuming fear. Her mouth felt parched and dry, and she was feeling the worst headache of her life, a sharp, bright pain that radiated out from her forehead to the rest of her skull and spiked and ebbed with her heartbeats.
It took a while for her eyes to adjust to the lack of light. She concentrated on the rest of her body and tried to focus on each part in turn: arms, legs, chest, abdomen, hands, feet. Everything seemed to be there and working, but it all felt as if someone had beaten every square centimeter of her limbs and torso with a rubber mallet. There was another pain center, just a little less intensely bright than the one in her head. This one was on the right side of her back, radiating out to the front, and unlike the pain in her head, it remained constant with her heartbeats.
She turned her head to get her bearings. As soon as she did, the pain in her forehead turned from intense to blinding, and she let out a groan that sounded croaky to her ears in the silence. Nearby, a soft blue light came on in the darkness, and she heard the faint humming of an electric pump. A few moments later, something cold entered her lower arm and made its way up toward her brain. The wave of nausea that followed almost made her retch, but then the pain dissipated like a dusting of snowflakes on a sun-warmed rock.
She looked down to see that she was in a medical cradle, held in place by light-blue gel cushions that conformed to her body. The medical gel was cool and soothing. There was a medication port in her left arm with a tube and several probe wires connected to it. When she tried to move the arm, the gel reconfigured itself into a gentle embrace around her limb and kept it in place.
Still alive, she thought. But where am I?
The medication had taken away the pain almost completely, but it had also wrapped her brain in a fog that made everything seem distant and abstract once more. When she felt herself drifting off again, she did not fight it.
The next time she opened her eyes, the darkness was gone. Solveig looked around to see a familiar scene, the meadows around the Ragnar estate where her running path curved through the orchards and past the fishponds. The unexpected sight disoriented her a little until she figured out that the medical suite had a holographic projector AI built into the ceiling.
The suite was empty except for her medi
cal cradle and the automatic monitoring unit next to it. Whatever meds the unit had given her when she woke up were starting to wear off again, but the dull aches she was feeling in her back and her head were not entirely unwelcome.
“Room,” she croaked. “End the projection. And get me some water, please.”
The hologram of her running track disappeared. A few moments later, a door opened nearby, and a woman in a medical tunic came into the room, holding a tray with a cup on it. The woman stepped next to the cradle and pulled out a stool from some crevice Solveig couldn’t see.
“The autodoc told me you woke up,” the doctor said. She looked like she was barely older than Solveig. The name on her white tunic identified her as D.MED LARSEN. “I won’t do the thing where I ask you how you are feeling because I know the answer already.”
“Thank you,” Solveig said. Her tongue felt rough and dry and twice its usual size in her mouth. She nodded at the water cup on the doctor’s tray. “Can I have some of that?”
“Yes, you can,” Dr. Larsen said. “Small sips. Don’t want you to aspirate. Your lungs took a beating already.”
She held out the cup for Solveig. It had a lid with a thin stainless drinking tube in it, and Solveig wrapped her lips around the end of the tube. It took three tries for her to get suction going, but when the cool water finally hit her throat, it felt like the best thing she’d ever had to drink. She emptied the cup in the prescribed small sips, then leaned back and exhaled with relief.
“What happened to me?”
“Someone shot you, Miss Ragnar. There was an insurgent attack.”
“I remember. I was in the middle of it, at the police building. Where am I now?”
“You’re at Sandvik University Medical Towers.”
“Where’s Stefan? Detective Berg? He was with me when I got shot. He got hurt, too. Did they bring him here as well?”
“I’m not sure,” Dr. Larsen replied. “There were a lot of casualties. We’ve been very busy over the last few days. But I can try to find out for you.”
