There was no reason that a railgun couldn’t fire backwards.
Over and over the Embustero tried to raise the lander, to no avail.
“It’s no use,” Markland said coldly, slipping into the detached state he’d used to deal with the loss of shipmates on other occasions. “He’s gone. Navigation,” he barked, “How much time did he buy us?”
“At present, no more than fifty minutes.”
“How much can we extend that if we use the OMS at full thrust?”
“Not enough to make it worthwhile.”
“We can’t just roll over for him,” Shadrack said grimly.
Markland’s mind raced, grasping for any solution, but only one, a long-shot at best, came to mind. “That’s exactly what we need to do.” He turned to Shadrack’s stunned face. “Remember what that thing is: a stringer. He doesn’t want to fight—he wants to sell the coordinates of a corpse. He’ll stand off and shoot us full of holes as long as he sees any life left, but if he thinks were already done for he’ll keep right on going; maybe even jump out.
“If we play dead we might pick up hours instead of minutes.”
And if it gave Neuchterlein time to get either the main engines or the jump drive working the Embustero would be gone before the first scavengers arrived.
“If you’re wrong,” Shadrack rumbled doubtfully, “If he decides to stop and verify his kill or board us for any reason…”
“We deal with it as it comes,” Markland insisted. “There’s no sure way out, sir. If we try to get away now he will finish us off. If we play dead he might leave us alone. And if he boards,” the first mate said with a grim smile, “he’ll find out the hard way what a high-power hunting rifle will do to a man in a pressure suit.”
SEVENTEEN
The Embustero: 2710:05:19 Standard
Radiation from the pirate’s drive exhaust rendered the lander’s sensors all but useless; Terson shut them down rather than fry the receivers in a vain attempt to coax coherent data out of them. He wasn’t entirely blind, however, and patched the feed from the vessel’s optics to one of his auxiliary monitors, applying a number of filters to pull an imperfect but useable image out of the radioactive glare.
Slight, careful adjustments of the OMS kept the hellish nimbus of the stringer’s drive flame centered on the monitor. Terson’s close attention gave him a split-second warning of what was about to happen although human reflexes weren’t fast enough to do anything about it. A huge ring of fire exhibiting cooler wavelengths than the plasma around it appeared ahead flying at the lander almost faster than the eye could follow.
Terson caught a glimpse of discreet components in the ring’s structure, a mass of debris driven into formation by the drive flame, opening wide like a lariat leaving a relatively—but not completely—empty void in the center. The lander sparkled with fire as the metallic slag within the ring met the hull and vaporized, pockmarking the smooth surface with craters. The camera feed went dead while the lander vibrated; a high–pitched shriek filled the flight deck and the joints of Terson’s suit went rigid from pressure drop as the atmosphere vented through dozens of leaks.
A flotilla of fist-sized balloons materialized inside the cockpit and passenger compartment. Escaping atmosphere dragged them to the leaks where they burst, releasing loads of thick polymer epoxy that hardened almost instantly.
The shrieking wind faded away in seconds and the pressure inside returned to normal but Terson was too preoccupied with the fault lights blazing across his board to notice. The automatic stabilization system went crazy, inducing the OMS to ignite randomly, and sent the lander into a wild tumble before he could deactivate it. He cut his main drive and tried to bring the vessel back under control but his only external reference was the wildly oscillating centrifugal force raising havoc with his inner ear. He opened the front port shutters to get a look at the stars. A paroxysm of nausea seized him at the sight and he clamped his lips around the suit’s catch-bag tube just in time.
Terson fought the lander’s triple-axis gyration with small, experimental bursts of his OMS, accomplishing in thirty minutes what would have taken the computer a matter of seconds. By that time the stringer’s drive plume was visibly shrinking into the distance.
Terson’s attempts to contact the Embustero failed. The transmitter power maxed out at five hundred watts but the VSWR threatened to fry the circuitry every time he keyed up. His high-gain antenna was gone, and the chances of the lander picking up a signal from the freighter, assuming it was receiving him, were next to zero.
“Embustero, Embustero, this is Pelletier. If you can hear me, I’m not receiving you. The lander is minimally operational. I’ve got thrust, but not enough to catch the stringer.”
“Aye, but you gave it your best, laddie.”
The voice was faint, barely perceptible. “Say again? Embustero, is that you?”
“Nay, it is not. Who is this?”
“Joseph Pelletier of the—ah—Ladybird. We’re under attack by a pirate vessel. Can you assist us?”
“You mean the Embustero, don’t you, Joey me lad?”
MacLeod! “Where the hell are you?” Terson asked, scanning the stars outside his front port for another vessel. “I can’t see you. What’s your position?”
“Hangin’ to your sorry ass by me fingernails,” Macleod replied. “You near flung me off with all your spinnin’ about!”
Terson recalled the bump as he departed the Embustero’s launch bay. He would have expected a certain amount of trouble maneuvering with the added mass of a baffle-rider clinging to his hull, but the lander was incredibly over-powered in keeping with its purpose. The stabilization system no doubt compensated without his knowledge, which might help explain his current difficulty.
“I need you to let go,” Terson told him. “I lost my automatic stabilization and your mass is throwing off my center of gravity.”
“Aye, laddie. Let me grab a few things and I’ll be right in.”
“I didn’t say you were coming aboard. I’ve got enough problems without watching my back, too. Cut loose and we’ll come back for you.”
“You let me aboard,” MacLeod said, “or I stay right where I am an’ let you yard your knob ‘til ol’ Nick comes a callin’!”
“For all I know, MacLeod, you helped set us up. You want to help, relay me to the Embustero.”
“I can’t laddie, I got no antenna. That cloud o’ chaff stripped it off, same as yours. Only reason we can talk is we’re both pushin’ all the power as we got.”
“Then we don’t have anything else to talk about,” Terson said. “Let go or I’ll shake you off.”
“Joey,” the old man said with a hint of genuine desperation, “he holed me oh-two tanks. Only thing I got left is what’s in me suit. I’ll be dead by the time you come back.”
Damnit. “Come aboard,” Terson sighed.
MacLeod cycled through the lander’s lock and clambered to the cockpit like a monkey, hastily plugging his suit into the on-board air supply. Terson watched him strap in warily. The old man didn’t appear to be armed and Terson didn’t doubt that he could easily overpower him if necessary.
“Do you have any idea what just happened to us?” Terson asked.
“Aye, an idea. The bloke couldn’t see ye anymore an’ tried to clear his baffles by firin’ his mass driver back through his drive plume. Lucky for us the exhaust blew the lighter stuff aside or we’d both be so much Swiss cheese about now.” His visor roved up and down, side to side as he studied the alarms on the console. “Bit of a mess, this. What’s the plan?”
“I’m going to ram him, if I can catch up. Sure you don’t prefer to stay behind?”
“I’m cozy right here,” MacLeod said, “and you’ll be pleased that I got a much better idea.”
It was Neuchterlein who was struck by inspiration: “Pelletier mistook the petroleum boiling off for atmosphere,” the engineer said. “I can vent some water through our service couplings and send some crewmen
into the hold to blow holes in as many oil containers as they can reach—cause one hell of a cloud.”
Shadrack agreed, and now the Embustero rotated slowly within a shroud of escaping gas and ice crystals. Markland ground his teeth in frustration; the hair on the back of his neck stood up each time the starship exposed its dorsal surface to the stringer, but stabilizing the motion induced by jets of sublimating petroleum would be a dead giveaway.
A splayed human figure drifting among the debris around the ship came into the view of one of the hull-mounted cameras. A spike of adrenaline surged through the first mate’s blood at the sight, thinking one of the crewmen charged with rupturing oil containers in the hold had been cast adrift, but it was just one of half a dozen old pressure suits Neuchterlien had inflated and tossed out.
The suit passed out of sight, replaced by a bright, growing star with a dark mote at its core. The Embustero was well inside the effective range of the stringer’s railgun and the pirate hadn’t fired. Markland dared hope the plan might work.
He jerked when a suited hand fell on his shoulder. “Sorry,” Druski apologized. “The rifles and ammo are prepped.” She handed him a holstered beamer and a pair of spare charges. “Weapons have been issued to all officers and senior enlisted crewmen. Non-essential personnel are sheltered in designated hard points.”
“Thanks, Meg.” He stowed the weapon in a net pouch on the side of his seat.
“Take off your helmet,” Druski said when he finished. “I’ve got something else for you.” She held up a pill bottle.
“I’m not sick,” Markland said.
“No, you’re tired. Take two of these.”
“No drugs.” Markland pushed her hand away and found himself clutching the bottle instead. “I have to keep a clear head.”
“Then turn the bridge over to Colvard or Shadrack and get ten hours of uninterrupted sleep.”
“Damnit, Meg.” He twisted the neck ring to release his helmet and shook two small white pills into his mouth and sucked on the nipple protruding from the inside lip of his collar. The chemical was as bitter as he anticipated; he took another long draw before opening his mouth wide to prove he’d swallowed them. “Should I ask what they are?”
“Diphenylmethylsulfinylacetamide,” Druski said, “an old treatment for narcolepsy. Acts directly on the hypothalamus; you’ll stay awake and alert for at least twelve hours.”
“Great. And Meg—I’m sorry about Pelletier. I know you liked him.”
“I’m okay,” the medic said. “Maybe it was for the best. I don’t think he’d’ve been happy here in the long run.”
“Probably not.” It didn’t ease the guilt nipping at Markland’s conscience. He considered protecting the ship and crew his responsibility—even more so than Shadrack’s. A tiny voice insisted that the outcome would have been different if he’d piloted the mission himself instead of letting an unseasoned civilian—civilians were, by definition, unseasoned—meet his death at the hands of the enemy.
“Sir, the bandit has cut his drive,” Navigation called. “Shortest possible ETA is now six hours.”
MacLeod navigated the unbalanced lander by dead reckoning alone. He worked the OMS with hands, feet and fingers as if playing a musical instrument, conducting Terson’s accompanying thrust with monosyllables and gestures. The damaged vessel responded like a trained animal, its present handling and performance almost indistinguishable from that before the computer’s death.
The stringer continued to pull away, however. The distance separating them opened to well over a hundred thousand kilometers, killing any hope of intercepting the pirate before it reached the Embustero.
MacLeod maneuvered back into the stringer’s drive plume, a tactic that reduced the chances of being spotted so long as he didn’t drift off at an oblique angle even though the lander was too far behind to reach the baffles proper. A significant amount of debris trailing behind the Embustero possessed a radar cross-section similar to the lander’s and the likelihood that the pirate’s radar operator would notice that a particular target wasn’t receding as quickly as the others was low. MacLeod counted on the freighter to steer the stringer’s attention away from the possibility of pursuit.
The pirate began to throttle down and Terson followed suit. “He’ll be able to see us if he cuts his drive,” Terson said.
“Aye,” MacLeod muttered, concentrating on maintaining the lander’s stability, “but I never said it was foolproof.”
The stringer’s drive died out less than an hour later. Terson cut the lander’s thrust at the same time and shucked his helmet to use the only working sensor the lander possessed: a pair of multi-spectrum binoculars. There were no nearby stars to provide light and the stringer was running blacked out, as was the lander, but the binoculars’ infrared feature overcame the absence of solar illumination.
The pirate had not flipped to begin slowing; its bow still pointed toward the Embustero but as near as Terson could tell it hadn’t fired, either. The reason became horribly obvious when he located the stricken vessel a few minutes later. New jets of escaping gas had sprouted all over the hull and the vapors issuing from the hole in the hold had doubled in volume since his departure. Acid rose to his throat at the sight of bodies drifting near the slowly tumbling ship.
“We’re too late,” Terson said. Either the stringer had fired on the run or the freighter experienced some catastrophic secondary failure resulting from the initial damage.
MacLeod took the binoculars for a moment. “Looks bad, aye, but a wee bit dramatic,” he said. “Not quite right for leaking atmo. Fighting Navy man like your mate Markland should know better. Blokes aboard that stringer won’t be fooled, I ken.” Terson fidgeted, wracking his mind for a way to warn them that their camouflage might be compromised. “Just as well relax now, laddie. Nothing more we can do for a few hours, yet.”
“You know Markland?” Terson asked.
“We met once,” the old man replied, “but I know considerably more about him than he does me.” He fell silent without elaborating further but Terson wasn’t willing to let it rest so easily.
“MacLeod, I got shanghaied for knowing a hell of a lot less about the Embustero than you seem to. I might be the only chance you get to explain yourself before they cut out your tongue.”
“Aye,” MacLeod agreed, “that may be the truth of it and we got the time. So.” His face screwed up behind the nicked and scratched faceplate, deciding where to begin. “Suffice it to say I need the services of a large transport,” he said. “Naturally, I dinnea have the lucre to charter a carrier and me business is a bit on the shady side. I asked around a bit and caught wind of a ship called Ladybird that a fellow with excess goods lackin’ provenance could do business with.
“I followed her on a few runs, asked around a bit more, did some checkin’ and put two an’ two together. Seemed like the Ladybird might be the Embustero, which carried a sizable finder’s fee offered by a skip-tracer representing a refitter on Hain’s World.”
“So you decided to blackmail Shadrack,” Terson snorted, “and ended up here.”
“Aye. Seemed like a simple thing at the start.”
“What was so important to go to all the trouble for?”
“That you’ll discover in good time,” MacLeod replied, “after your captain accepts me terms.”
“You’re an optimistic fellow,” Terson observed.
“Wouldn’t be in this mess if I wasn’t,” the old man grinned.
“He’ll pass us in fifteen to twenty minutes,” Navigation told Markland. “Nearest point of approach is one hundred fifty kilometers.”
It was a hair’s breadth in astronomical terms, too close for comfort by any standard given the velocity involved. Neither could the first mate find any assurance in the numbers, for calculating angles and velocity with reasonable accuracy required active sensors and a stable platform from which to measure. The Embustero had neither.
If the stringer hit them neither crew would k
now it until they woke up in hell. On a positive note, the pirate hadn’t chosen to rendezvous with its victim. Perhaps it intended to get a good look at them first, but odds were it would keep going and jump at its first opportunity. The freighter’s crew would have to work fast and get underway before any scavengers returned to strip the supposed derelict.
“He fired!” Systems screamed at the same instant Markland’s indicators registered the pulse. An impact shook the freighter before anyone had a chance to react. The slow, measured tumble quickened to a wild gyration as the projectiles’ kinetic energy transferred to the ship’s spaceframe. Most of the exterior feeds went dead and the one that didn’t showed a gigantic section of hull flying away.
“He hit the superstructure!” Neuchterlien bellowed over the command net, drowning out cries of terror sounding from all over the ship. “Hull integrity is sound! It’s only the superstructure!” The superstructure was camouflage, a shell that contained nothing but lighting and mounts for a few antennas and cameras. To the pirate, however, it represented a vital command center and the commander hedged his bet by taking it out.
“He’s breaking hard,” Navigation called. “He’s coming back.”
Terson cursed in dismay when the stringer’s fire struck the freighter. Bright flashes of vaporized hull glittered across the Embustero’s superstructure. The entire upper two thirds detached and spun off into space and the ship’s tumble intensified. The stringer spun as it passed, lighting its drive again to shed its built-up velocity.
“Aye, we’ve got him!” MacLeod cried. “Stand by the engines!” He tacked to port with OMS, crossing the minefield of debris in the Embustero’s wake to put the freighter between them, blocking the stringer from view and vice versa. “Ease on up to five gravities, laddie. Steady now.”
Embustero- Pale Boundaries Page 24