PrenTalien swung his heavy, grim countenance back to his flag lieutenant. “Order Cimarron to close us at flank acceleration. Whatever they think they’re doing, they aren’t doing anymore.” His glare transfixed the corpsman again. “Can she be moved?”
“Ah—yessir.” The corpsman licked his dry lips. “Just don’t go bouncing her around.”
“Geoff, ready a pinnace. You and the medics here will transport the commander to Cimarron at best possible speed—burn the bottles as long as she doesn’t get bounced around. Does that meet your requirements, Corpsman?”
“Uh—yessir. That should be satisfactory.”
“What’s your name, anyway?”
“Nicholson, sir. Specialist Dieter Nicholson.”
“Very good, Mr. Nicholson—” Here they were interrupted by two more orderlies maneuvering a float pallet into the space. PrenTalien waved them over. “Carry on.”
“Aye aye, sir.” They sidled up to the table. Nicholson and an orderly lifted Trin onto the pallet and began to prepare her for transport.
Lieutenant Reynolds looked up from his xel. “Cimarron’s skipper’s replied, sir. He says he’s about to transfer the remaining patients and begs we give him twenty minutes to accomplish it.”
“You tell him from me,” PrenTalien answered, a blaze of brimstone in his glacially blue eyes, “that his remaining patients can hang fire for awhile and if he doesn’t get his ass moving in ten seconds, I’ll personally find out how long he can hold his fucking breath.” His voice grew even louder as he called out to the members of his staff who were still loitering. “Clear away there! Nobody told you to stop working.”
That impelled the loiterers from the compartment, and medics guided the pallet with Trin’s strapped and sheeted form into the passageway. As Lieutenant Reynolds made to follow, the admiral laid a hand on his elbow.
“See that she’s put in a secure ward, Geoff—no admittance without my say-so. I don’t care if they have to stack people in the bilges to make it happen. And keep me updated. She’s worth a strike force to us, and I’ll be goddamned if I lose her.”
* * *
Joss PrenTalien exhaled noisily, pushed aside the night’s last cup of coffee and cleared his desktop of the day’s last paperwork. Then he paged his flag lieutenant. The young man answered on the second ping.
“Not getting you up, am I, Geoff?”
“Of course not, sir.” Lieutenant Reynolds stifled a yawn.
“Spare me a minute, if you would. There’s a couple of quick items.”
“Absolutely, sir. I’ll be there directly.”
The stateroom’s entry system announced Lieutenant Reynolds’ arrival not quite eight minutes later, and admitting him, the admiral smiled at his aide’s crisp appearance, despite the hour. The resiliency of youth, he observed silently. How soon we grow old and forget.
“Yes, sir?” Reynolds prompted politely.
“I was wondering if there’s been an update on Commander Wesselby.” He hadn’t heard anything for the last two hours, and it wouldn’t do to constantly badger them. But Geoff had left Cimarron less than an hour ago.
“Nothing since I returned, sir. She’s been placed in a medical coma.” That would be consistent with the diagnosis of a massive stroke.
“Prognosis unchanged then?”
“It’s guarded, sir. They say it’s still too soon to assess the full extent of the damage.”
“I see.” He rasped one beefy hand across the new stubble on his heavy jaw. “She can be transported?” Traveling hyperlight could be risky for delicate cases, especially neurological ones.
“Yes, sir. They were discussing arrangements to transfer her to Bastogne when I left.” Bastogne Military Hospital at Cassandra Station was one of the CEF’s premier medical facilities.
The admiral nodded. “Have them use my corvette—she’s standing by with my personal physician. Make it as soon as possible, Geoff. I’d like you to oversee this personally.”
“Of course, sir.” Reynolds had known his boss and the commander were close. He hadn’t known he regarded her, in essence, as family.
“There’s something else we oughta see to,” PrenTalien continued. He took a chip from a secure envelope and put it on the desktop. “You recall Nick Taliaferro.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“He and the commander are close friends.” Reynolds did not miss the slight emphasis on close. “He ought to be informed of what happened.”
“Do we know where he is, sir?” He’d heard the retired Nedaeman chief inspector had moved on.
“She mentioned he’s vacationing. Outremeria, is what I recall her saying.”
“Outremeria?” A decidedly eccentric choice for a vacation spot, in Reynolds’ opinion.
“Yep. Nick likes to go fantee, at times.”
The lieutenant recognized that as a cant term for “going native”—or so he thought. He resolved to look it up when he had a moment. “Do we even have a consulate on Outremeria, sir?”
“We don’t, no. But Nick’s from Whitworth”—as indeed the admiral himself was—“and the colony maintains a semi-permanent delegation there. For trade, you understand.”
Reynolds understood, in so far as at least a third of the economy of Whitworth was based on smuggling. Only Lodestone Station surpassed it as a notorious smuggler’s haven. “Quite so, sir.”
“If we get a message to them, Nick will be able to pick it up. The current colonial registry will have the contact info.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And then there’s this.” PrenTalien tapped the chip he’d placed on the desk. “It’s a private message she left for him in case anything happened. It ought to be personally delivered, if possible.”
“Yes . . . That might be—problematic? Sir.”
“Might be,” PrenTalien agreed, hoisting himself out of his chair with a grimace. “But get a hold of Sergeant Major Yu. Explain the situation and see what he suggests. If he wants, have the chip couriered to him directly.”
Fred Yu had spent most of his long and extraordinary career in the Strike Rangers, where he was still Brigade Sergeant Major, and if there was anyone who would know how to deliver a sensitive chip to the far side of charted space, it was him.
Reynolds picked up the chip cautiously. “I’ll get right on it, sir.”
The admiral smiled, a weary expression that aged his broad, heavy-jowled face. “Treat this all as classified, Geoff. I know I can rely on your discretion.”
“Absolutely, sir.”
Z-Day minus 12
LSS Trafalgar, deployed;
Gamma Hydras, Hydra Border Zone
“Tally ho! Two bandits! One o’clock level. I don’t think they’ve made us yet. Let’s see what’s on their mind.”
Huron’s voice was crisp over Kris’s helmet set, with that slight undertone of anticipation she’d come to recognize. She had the two Doms fixed on her T-Synth, heading away on a crossing vector, apparently unconcerned. Apparently—and only two of them. Doms typically flew in a three-fighter vic, and these guys looked a little too casual for her taste. It stank of a setup, but the way to find out was to go dance in that fire.
“Got ’em, sir.” She eased in tighter to Huron’s wing spar, slewing with him.
“Come left to oh-one-five, angels plus six, twenty decel easy, continue left turn.”
“Roger—coming to oh-one-five, angels plus six, twenty decel easy, continuing left turn.”
As one, their fighters rose six thousand meters, sliding around in an arc that would bring them into the Doms’ drive cones (their baffles, as they were called) where their passive sensors were blind.
“Kris, we’re gonna engage along Phase Line Hammer. I’ve got a bead on the northern bandit.”
“Roger that, sir. I got the southern guy.”
At that moment, the Doms broke, cutting back sharply and going to max boost.
“Okay, this is it—they’re comin’ down.”
Kris a
nd Huron opened their formation. Some pilots liked to play it close, so the fields of fire of their antimissile chain guns would overlap, but that risked crowding each other’s engagement volumes. Opening up maximized their kill power on target, and the very best missile defense was obviously to kill the other guy first. The Doms felt similarly, for they did likewise and bore straight in.
Kris flipped to her neutron guns. Ya wanna go head to head, motherfucker? That’s fine with me.
They opened fire at almost the same instant, his shots splashing in bright peacock colors all over her forward shield. She watched the indicator dip into the yellow and was about to jink when he flashed past, coming between her fighter and Huron’s. It was a gutsy move, and she pulled back on the stick to clear her baffles. Huron had winged his target and was closing in for the kill. She checked her T-Synth to get a line on her adversary—she doubted he was hurt yet.
Christ! Where the fuck did he go?
A lock warning chimed as Huron’s voice came over the command link. “Kris, watch your six!”
Shit! How’d he done that so fast? He was too close to spin loop and engage, so she broke right into a J-slide. He stuck with her as if he’d read her mind, pickling two missiles as he closed. She dumped a chaff bundle. One missile bit on it and her chain guns opened up on the other. It detonated off her port side, close enough to singe a wing spar through the shield.
“Goddammit, Huron! Get this asshole off me!”
“I have him, Kris. Hard roll left! Help me engage.”
She nodded the nose of her fighter to the right then slammed into a left roll. The Dom didn’t bite on the yaw and anticipated her maneuver smoothly. A burst of plasma fire lit up her weakened aft shield.
Jeezus Fucked! This bandit’s all over me!
“Huron!”
He swooped in on the Dom’s tail, plasma cannon and neutron guns firing together. The Dom reacted a split-second too late. His shields flared and died—he spun wildly. There was a blinding flash, tinted green by her shields, and a spreading cloud of debris.
Fuck! That was close.
Huron coasted up on her starboard side. “How you doin’ there, Ensign?”
“I got it, sir”—fighting to keep the tremors out of her voice.
“Good. Because we got triplets coming in at three o’clock low.”
“I see ’em.”
“They’re splitting wide. Let the trailer go.”
“I can take him, sir.”
“Stick with it, Ensign.”
“He’s coming around, goddammit!”
“I said stick with it. Don’t break until I say.”
Okay, fine. Let him burn your ass—
She slid in alongside Huron, targeting the off-side bandit. Her fire control cycled and hunted, fighting his ECM for a solution.
C’mon—lock up, dammit!
The two Doms started crossing their drive wakes, further cluttering her sensors. She pushed forward. “Missiles won’t lock. I’m switching to guns.”
“Kris—”
Her target cut back to counter, but she veered, suddenly dropping below him. He tried to recover but couldn’t get his nose around in time. Twin streams from her neutron guns took him solidly in the belly. His shield failed, the thinner armor there boiled and he exploded.
Yes! That was more like it!
Huron was in a knife fight with the other two Doms far off to her left and above, one of them now bleeding air. She throttled back and was turning to engage when a sixth fighter appeared on her T-Synth, high and behind, and stooped. Caught decelerating at the bottom of her loop, she could have braked into a Split-S—that was the prudent thing to do. It wouldn’t allow her to engage the Dom, but it would buy crucial time and set up Huron for a clear shot, once he’d shaken his last adversary. Even if Huron couldn’t engage, she’d still be in a good position to extend an escape.
But Kris wasn’t feeling prudent. If she elected to escape, Huron would be obliged to break off to follow her, and that meant letting them both go.
No fuckin’ way—
She held her vector and went to maximum power. The bandit had a velocity advantage, and if he pushed hard enough he could still close. The maneuver she intended had a tight envelope; the game was to pull him in by convincing him she was outside it, because there was the book envelope and there was her envelope. Her acceleration continued to climb and he was burning in, red-lining his drives—just what she wanted.
“Kris!” Huron called suddenly. “You can’t pull a cobra boosting like that!”
Her fist tightened on the stick. Watch me, asshole!
The Dom was still coming hard—in another second, he’d be in range. The instant he locked—
The lock alarm shrieked. She jammed the brakes, dropping power as she pulled up the nose. The trick was to hit E-boost and pitch down just as her bird tipped past vertical, flying up and snapping back to the horizontal as the Dom shot by. The tight S-shaped trajectory her bird would describe, ending with a sharp lunge forward, gave the lethal maneuver its name.
Sensing the moment, she hit pitch thrusters to pop the nose down, but her timing was off by a hair and there had been a shade too much yaw when she braked. A sudden vicious cross-coupling threw her into rapid tumble. Struggling to save it, she never had time to see the Dom loop back easily and fire two missiles, both of which hit her weakened shield mere seconds later.
“Gotcha!” N’Komo caroled over the exercise circuit, his voice reaching that annoying high-pitched register he resorted to when happy. “You’re dead, kiddo.”
Swearing in a steady monotonous undertone, Kris cracked the simulator canopy and levered herself out. Dropping to the deck, she saw Huron emerge from the adjacent unit. He stood there, appraising her in that dissecting way of his, and rubbing his jaw.
“That could’ve gone . . . better.”
Her left hand rhythmically clenching, Kris resisted the urge to kick something—anything. This failure meant another three weeks on the walking wounded list, standing watch along with Tole, who’d also failed to requalify, and missing out on everything. How could she possibly take it? The biggest battle since Anson’s Deep right there on the horizon, and she’d be left out of it? They couldn’t let that happen. They just couldn’t—
“You’re trying too hard, Kris,” Huron intruded on her thoughts. “You know better than to push it like that when you’re in a bad position.” He stepped over and showed her the biometric readouts: stamina, vision, and reaction time were all highlighted. “It’s not there, Kris. You’re not ready yet. Sorry.”
“I feel fine, sir. Really.” She brought a hand to her forehead, unable to face the numbers any longer. “I just got a little tight out there today. I’ll get the edge back. I will.”
“I know.” His voice was soft—almost intimate. “But not today. Not tomorrow or this week. You’ve still got some healing to do.”
Biting her lip savagely, Kris looked down to hide the wetness starting to film her eyes.
“Yessir.”
Z-Day minus 7
Outbound Station;
Gamma Hydras, Hydra Border Zone
At precisely 0732, between grabbing a second helping of eggs over-easy, pouring a third cup of coffee and trying to decide between another plate of bacon or a lamb chop, Minerva Lewis’s xel lit up. She pushed it aside without looking at it—the alert tone had signified general/administrative—and continued her contemplation of the lamb chop. It was cultured, of course (you couldn’t get anything really fresh out here, except vegetables from Crystal City’s few hydroponic farms, and those cost like hell), but overall, she’d been surprised and pleased at how well the officer’s mess on Outbound did.
Frowning now, though, she concluded that lamb which had never gamboled or even had a chance to baa was not all that interesting this AM. Uncharacteristically, she abjured more bacon too and was reaching instead for the hash browns when her xel chided her for neglect. She glared at the device, still demurely furled and emitti
ng a soft amber glow.
As it was, her mood was far from good (if it could have been pegged by an old-fashioned barometer, the mercury would have settled somewhere between Storm Warning and Hurricane Watch). Three of the past four days had been taken up with exercises; they were to hold the final postmortems that PM. In a more charitable mood, she would’ve readily acknowledged that Major Bradshaw, the executive officer, was decently competent, Lieutenant Colonel Kerr was making some progress getting his head dislodged from his ass, and the kids were shaping up okay.
But this progress was a far cry from anything on the smiling side of comfortable, because she knew what lay ahead of them. She’d heard about the “phantom” monitor, both officially and privately, had spent no small share of the wee hours discussing it with Kell, and there was just no fuckin’ way in this here God’s Great Green Galaxy here you could stand up and say with a straight face they were ready.
Kerr, of course, had done just that. He had to, obviously. There was no possible way around it—no other acceptable answer. Do or die, no questions why—up an’ at ’em, never quit ’em—send ’em back in the same old style, fuck the bastards single file—three cheers and a slug in the rear—swing low, sweet chariot, she’s never gonna follow you home . . .
It wasn’t that she minded her molecules mingling out there with star stuff—that’s what everyone was and would be again—we’re all just once and future fusion fuel—but that she hated waste and bad management. She’d had her run—done her bit. Her experiences, knowledge, joy and pain were part of the Cosmos now, propagating inexorably toward some far place the physicists still couldn’t make up their mind about, in company with all the other myriad thoughts and feelings: the incalculable love-hate-agony-fear-lust-raptures that are the marrow of all the Joyful Sorrows of the World and the precise opposite of nothingness, but just as unfathomable.
Not a bad thing that . . .
But those kids—feeling their way yet, their impressions still soft, unset, apt to smudge—being cheated of leaving an indelible fingerprint on the Infinite, all because of carelessness—some asshole who couldn’t care less—couldn’t care about a 6 and 9 transposed—169 serial numbers on 169 bronze boxes (did they get those right?)—616 (sweet symmetry that) of her people paying the blood gelt for what those REMFs couldn’t shovel under fast enough, bury deep enough—and here we go again—boots and saddles, lock and load, answer the Call . . .
The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set Page 88