Star Peregrine

by Jake Elwood

  For a long terrible moment Ham stared at Tom. Then his eyes closed. He didn't stir as the volunteers guided his bed out of the hospital bay and into the corridor. Vinduly stood at Tom's elbow and watched them leave.

  "How is he?" Tom murmured when Ham was out of earshot.

  "He'll live." Vinduly rubbed his eyes. "He won't make a full recovery. He'll have scars, and his feet will hurt every time the weather changes. But he'll live. Physically, he'll mostly be all right."

  Physically. But hundreds of his countrymen were going to die because he broke under torture, and that knowledge was a burden no man should have to bear. Tom shook his head, feeling as weary as Vinduly looked. "What a mess." Vinduly nodded his agreement, then moved away as Tom's radio gave a chirp.

  "Thrush here."

  "It's O'Reilly, Captain. I just got a call from the scanner crew. A hyperspace portal just opened, and a ship came through. We're out of time."

  Bloody hell. He activated his radio. "Sawyer!"

  "Captain? Sawyer here." Her voice came to him in stereo, from his helmet speakers and from behind him.

  He turned around. She was nowhere in sight. "Sawyer? Where are you?"

  "Medical bay." A hand appeared from inside the medical pod in front of him. The hand gripped the edge of the pod, and Sawyer's head and shoulders rose into view as she sat up. She was in her shirtsleeves, and she started to lift her bracer to her lips, then saw Tom and lowered her arm. "Hello, Sir."

  "Are you injured?"

  "No, Sir. Just exhausted." She looked it, too, her eyes bleary and her face drooping. She braced her elbows on the sides of the pod. "What's going on?"

  "There's a Dawn Alliance ship in the system."

  That shocked the sleepiness out of her. She was out of the pod and standing before him in a moment. "Robinson!" she barked into her bracer. "What's X-Time?"

  "Nineteen minutes if we drop everything now," came the reply, the voice faint and tinny.

  "Drop it," she said. "We need to fly." To Tom she said, "We can lift off in nineteen minutes." She turned away and dragged her vac suit from a shelf above the pod.

  Tom looked around the medical bay. Vinduly was already gathering his medical staff, which included a surgeon and a couple of corpsmen from the corvette. By the sound of it he'd be turning the bay over to the Dawn Alliance surgeon.

  "Do you need me here, Sir?" Sawyer was pulling her suit over her shoulders, her helmet dangling from one hand.

  "No."

  She nodded and hurried past him into the corridor.

  "Now hear this." The voice belonged to O'Reilly, and it boomed from speakers set in the ceiling. "Enemy ships are inbound. If you have no other duties, get yourself aboard the ship. We'll be leaving in a hurry."

  Tom found himself standing in the middle of the surgery, unsure what to do next. Finally he decided his place was on the Kestrel. He hurried to the repair bay, where he found an air of controlled chaos. People were hurrying onto the ship while the big robots replaced a last few hull plates. He spent a minute watching the action, then boarded the ship.

  The bridge felt claustrophobic with the looming walls of the repair bay just beyond the windows. The full bridge crew was present. O'Reilly rose from the captain's chair and moved to the helm station as Tom entered. "Just one bogey," he said before Tom could ask. "And he's holding position at about five thousand K."

  Tom dropped into his chair. "Does he know we're here?"

  He meant the question rhetorically, but O'Reilly replied. "He knows something's wrong. The base isn't answering his calls, and neither is the corvette."

  "So he's waiting," Tom said, thinking out loud. "Is he hoping we have an antenna down and we're about to fix it, and start replying? Or is he waiting for more ships?"

  "Don't know, Sir." O'Reilly shrugged and glanced at his forearm. "If he's waiting for friends to show up, will they be another eleven minutes?"

  Tom realized he was grinning despite the strain of the situation. He hadn't dared hope the arriving ship would give him time to lift off. "Do we have an ID?"

  "It's a corvette or a frigate," O'Reilly said. "We might even have a fighting chance. Especially if those land-based missiles of Alice's work."

  That, it seemed to Tom, was a long shot. He turned to Onda. "Contact her. Tell her to abandon the missile launcher and get to the ship at X minus five minutes. Tell her to leave the missiles. We can't use them." He thought about ordering her to fire all the missiles she had, just to avoid leaving them for the Dawn Alliance. He didn't want to tip his hand, though.

  "Same message for the other teams, Captain?"

  Tom looked at Onda, baffled. "Sorry?"

  "There's three teams with missile launchers, Sir. They set up about a kilometer away in two different directions."

  "Three?" The colonists had been busy. "Yes, recall everyone. Make sure they're back in time for us to launch. I don't want to wait."

  Onda nodded and murmured into a microphone.

  "We'll take off, stay low, and get over the horizon," Tom said. "Use the planet for cover and open a portal." He looked around the bridge. "Any thoughts, people?"

  O'Reilly said, "It seems a shame to not even try those missile launchers. There's a chance we'll catch that ship napping. And all it'll cost us is, what? Thirty seconds to stop and pick up the last crew? It might make them keep their distance, too. They'll wonder what else we've got up our sleeve."

  Tom's instincts told him not to let anything interfere with their departure. The angry knot in his belly, though, told him to strike while he had the chance. He nodded. "You're right. Make it happen."

  They were just under a minute from Sawyer's deadline when Onda said, "The marines report everyone is on board." He looked at Tom. "Mr. Harper says the other two missile crews brought their launchers and all their missiles in on a mini-cat."

  Tom, thinking of Dupuis and his bomb timer, said, "Are all the Free Planets people aboard?"

  "Most of them," Onda said. "Sheffield and Scott decided to stay and take their chances."

  "What's that ship doing?"

  "Still nothing," Harris said, sounding a little aggrieved. He would have spoken up, of course, if the enemy ship had made the slightest move.

  I should call Sawyer. Ask her what the delay is. But I don't want-

  "Lieutenant Sawyer says we're good to launch," Onda said.

  "Go!" Tom snapped. The engines hummed in the distance, barely audible from the bridge. Tom felt the faintest hint of a tremble through the deck plates. He had to sit, fuming with impatience, while the ship's systems powered up.

  And then, with agonizing slowness, the Kestrel began to rise.

  "I'm getting energy readings from the bogie," Harris announced. "He's manoeuvering."

  He's seen us. Let's give him something else to think about. "Tell that missile crew to fire everything they've got."

  As the ship rose above the walls of the repair bay Tom watched on his tactical display as one missile after another flashed up from the surface. Eight missiles in total hurtled themselves toward the enemy ship, and he smiled, pleased. It wouldn't have surprised him if the launcher failed completely.

  It's a pity the missiles will arrive one at a time. I wonder if we could reprogram them, get the first missiles to wait so they can all fly out together. It would make them harder to shoot down. He dismissed the thought. Getting Dawn Alliance missiles to launch at all was a major accomplishment. He wouldn't add reprogramming to the list of impossible tasks his people faced.

  The Kestrel cleared the top of the repair bay and advanced, turning as it went. For an awful moment Tom was sure the ship would collide with the gantry beside the mountain of tailings. They cleared the obstacle with several meters to spare, however. A moment later the ship raced out across the regolith.

  On his tactical display the missiles vanished, one by one, shot down by laser fire from the enemy ship. Well, he'd expected that.

  He had a quick glimpse of the missile crew, three tiny figures wavin
g up at the ship. Then the Kestrel touched down with a thump that made Tom grunt. He carefully didn't look at O'Reilly. Speed was what mattered right now, not delicacy.

  "They're in," said Onda. O'Reilly didn't answer, just dragged his fingertip across the screen on his console. The Kestrel rose, then raced forward, chasing the horizon.

  Chapter 19

  "Contact lost," said Harris. That meant the bulk of the planet was between the two ships.

  "Keep low," Tom ordered. The Boot had no surface features to avoid. There were no hills, no tall trees. The planet may have had mountains, but there were none nearby. The Kestrel raced along, scant meters above the regolith. Each passing moment put more of the planet between the Kestrel and the enemy ship.

  At last he said, "Take us up." The crater-pocked surface of the planet vanished as the nose of the ship rose.

  "Ready to open a portal," O'Reilly announced.

  Tom started to tell him to go ahead, then hesitated. "Any sign of the bogey?"

  Harris said, "No, Sir."

  "Cut engines," said Tom. "We'll go stealthy."

  O'Reilly glanced over his shoulder, but didn't speak. Tom said, "Let's see who turns up."

  "Bogey's in sight," Harris announced some ten minutes later. "Looks like they're in a low, fast orbit." He looked up. "There's no indication they can see us."

  That was one advantage to flying without cargo pods, Tom reflected. The ship became harder to detect. They'd had plenty of momentum when O'Reilly cut the engines. The Kestrel was quite a ways from the planet now, and the range was still growing. He tapped at his tactical display and watched the Dawn Alliance ship as it drifted around the Boot.

  He might not know we're here. But maybe he's spotted us. We can't see Rivendell from here. What if another portal opened, and there's an entire fleet sitting there?

  "I want us to move just as soon as that ship is over the horizon," he said. "Turn us, let me see, ninety degrees on the X axis." He paused, orienting himself. 'Ninety degrees' translated as ninety degrees to starboard. He wanted ninety degrees to port, which was ... "Make that two seventy degrees on the X axis. I want a view of Rivendell."

  "Two seventy, aye," O'Reilly said.

  "Give me, oh, ten seconds of burn," Tom said. "Then shut the engines down again." If a fleet came around from behind the Boot he wanted the Kestrel to be hard to spot.

  He opened a calculator as he waited, and made a projection of the ship's movement based on his orders. He was chagrined to find that ten seconds of burn would leave the Kestrel behind the planet for more than an hour. "Belay that last order," he said. "I need four minutes of burn." That would give him a view of Rivendell in less than ten minutes. It would also give the Kestrel a comforting amount of velocity if they saw hostiles.

  The Dawn Alliance ship had reappeared and Rivendell was about to come into view over the horizon when Tom's console beeped. At the same instant Harris said, "Portals opening!"

  A pair of portals appeared, widely separated, in the void above the Boot. The nearest portal, at a range of a few thousand kilometers, was visible to the naked eye as a flattened rectangle of dazzling white light.

  "I've got four ships total," Harris reported as the white rectangles winked out. "Two from each portal."

  O'Reilly was hunched over his console, fingertips almost touching the screens, ready to goose the engines or open a portal at an instant's notice. Tom, his heart in his throat, almost gave the order. Instead he said, "Any indication that they see us?"

  For a long, terrible moment Harris didn't speak. "No missiles inbound," he said at last. "No active radar scans." He glanced at Tom, then returned his gaze to his console. "They might have missed us."

  The Kestrel was close enough to detect, at least for the closest pair of ships – if they looked in this direction. Their attention might be focussed on Rivendell, though.

  "I'm getting an engine burn," Harris said, and O'Reilly twitched. "They're moving toward the planet."

  O'Reilly moved back slightly. "I almost hit the engines." He looked at Tom. "Should we bug out?"

  Yes, we probably should. We're really pushing our luck. Tom took a deep breath, imagining a box in his mind. He imagined his fear going into the box, and the box closing. "We'll stay here for the moment. Let's see what we can see." Tom looked down at his console. "What's our relative momentum?"

  "We're moving toward the nearest portal," O'Reilly said. "The enemy ships are moving away faster than we're approaching, though."

  Then every moment makes us safer. "Keep the engines cold for now," Tom said. "Don't anyone doze off, though."

  That elicited a wry chuckle from Harris.

  Four red dots showed on Tom's tactical display, in two pairs. A fifth dot appeared as the original ship reversed course and cleared the horizon. All five ships seemed to be converging on a point not far above Rivendell.

  According to the tactical display, Rivendell was over the horizon now. Tom switched to a scanner view of the base and zoomed in.

  He was just in time to see a flash of light that turned the middle of the screen white. It wouldn't have been visible to the naked eye, but the scanners picked up a spike in heat energy. At the same instant Harris said, "Enemy ships are changing course."

  They saw the flash, Tom realized as all five ships halted their advance. There was a jumble of confused motion that puzzled him.

  "I think they're doing evasive maneuvers," Harris said. "I'm not sure what's going on."

  "The bomb just went off," Tom said, smiling. When Harris gave him a blank look he explained about Dupuis and the rigged warhead.

  For twenty minutes he watched as the fleet made a cautious approach to Rivendell. More and more data trickled in with every passing minute, as the Kestrel's computer sifted through the input from the scanners and pieced together a picture of the enemy ships. The first ship to arrive was indeed a corvette. Now she'd been joined by a light cruiser, two heavy cruisers, and a light carrier.

  Tom watched the tactical screen and shivered. Don't let them see us. We are so badly out of our league.

  Finally the carrier and one heavy cruiser moved in low over the base, and the light cruiser touched down. Tom expected more of the fleet to land. He expected the DA force to begin the long, laborious process of bringing the station back online. But they surprised him.

  The light cruiser lifted off within five minutes of landing. Then all five ships moved away from the planet, breaking into two groups. A pair of hyperspace portals appeared, and the entire fleet disappeared.

  "Huh," Tom said. "What the devil just happened?"

  "They landed troops," Harris said. "I'd bet my dinner on it. They put down enough people to retake the base, and then they bugged out." He leaned back in his seat, thinking. "They didn't stay to support the ground-pounders. So wherever they went, they were in a hurry."

  "The rendezvous," O'Reilly said. "They went to join the ambush at Ham's rendezvous."

  Harris said, "Maybe they are the ambush." When the others looked at him he shrugged and said, "Why not? It's a big enough force. We assumed that when the last fleet left, they were going to set up an ambush. But maybe they went back to their main fleet to report." He spent a moment poking at his console. "There's probably a Dawn Alliance fleet at Hapsburg. It's that way." He pointed to starboard and down. "Black Betty is that way." He pointed to port and forward. "So Rivendell is on the way. It's an obvious place to stop for fuel."

  Tom felt suddenly hollow, as if all the air had been sucked out of his lungs. "We could have beaten them there. We could have warned off any friendly ships." He shook his head. "But it's too late now."

  "Currents," said a voice, and Tom looked around. The speaker was a Naomi Silver, former UW Navy spacer, former Free Planets revolutionary. She looked at him, pink-cheeked, flustered by all the attention. "The Navy never bothers with currents," she said. "We use them all the time, though." Her blush deepened. "The Free Planets ships do, I mean. Hyperspace currents make a huge difference when
you're in a small ship."

  Tom said, "You mean there are stable currents that can increase a ship's speed?"

  "Kind of stable," she said. "A good current might last for a couple weeks before it shifts or just falls apart. But, yeah, for a small enough ship it can make a huge difference in speed."

  Frigates had a difficult time predicting arrival times, Tom knew. Hyperspace storms could slow a ship down considerably. He'd never heard of a storm speeding a ship up, though. "Do you know where there's a current we can use?"

  She shook her head, and the brief spark of hope he'd nourished fizzled. Then she said, "The people who were stationed here would know. They'd keep track of all the local currents. If there's one we can use, they'll know about it."

  Tom turned to Onda. "Get Dupuis up here, fast." He thought for a moment. Ham was in the surgery, hating himself for letting down his comrades. He needed to know there was a chance of limiting the damage.

  He needed a chance for redemption.

  "Call Dr. Vinduly too," he added. "If Ham can be moved, I want him up here as well."

  Silence fell as they waited. O'Reilly said softly, "Are you sure we want to get to that rendezvous just ahead of that fleet that just left?"

  An image of Hanson flashed through Tom's mind. Hanson would be furious when he learned that Tom was taking the ship on yet another dangerous detour instead of hauling ass back to Garnet. Tom smiled. If I achieve nothing else with this little side trip, at least I get to cause that prick some stress. "We'll be fine," he said. "We'll pop out of hyperspace, blast a radio warning, and bug out. Any friendly ships that got there early will have time to get away. I won't put the Kestrel in any danger."

  The bridge hatch slid open, putting an end to the conversation. Dupuis stood on the threshold, looking uncertain. Then he stepped aside as a medical corpsman appeared, pushing Ham in a hoverchair. Ham looked pale and tight-lipped, but a glint of determination in his eyes told Tom he'd made the right choice.

  Tom quickly described the situation, and the two Free Planets men exchanged glances. "The Atticus Ridge?" Ham said, and Dupuis nodded.

  "It's a front where two storms touch," Ham said to the bridge at large. "The Blackbird and the Finch are what we call them. Your Dawn Alliance fleet will bull its way right through the Blackbird storm. It'll slow them down. If we go a bit to starboard, we can follow the ridge where the storms meet. The energy builds up along the contact line, and it tries to equalize by spinning around the perimeter of the larger storm." He made a twirling motion with one finger. "We get into that current, we'll double our speed."