“A stray shot from the battle killed almost a thousand people aboard Habitat Three,” Casey’s thought answered her. “We also lost a comm satellite, a long-range booster.”
“Damn, now calling for back-up’s not going to be possible.” That one probably hadn’t been a stray shot, it was the first thing she would have aimed at if she had been commanding that rebel fleet. But she hoped with all her soul the deaths on the orbiting habitat hadn’t been deliberate, because if the Rebs were people with that kind of disregard for life then she hated to imagine what Narsai was going to be like if occupation was what her world now must face.
“Fralick’s got that thing underway, ma’am.” The lieutenant at their own craft’s helm looked grim. “Do we let him go, or do we take him out?”
“Oh, gods,” Katy Romanova muttered, and felt the same helpless fury that she had last known lying on a bed in a house on Kesra—her nightgown torn off, her baby daughter asleep nearby, and with the man who had once promised to love her forever poised above her and about to force his body into hers.
That damned bastard. And once again Maddy was the reason she must hold back from killing him, because then to do so would have been to guarantee that her baby would grow up orphaned—her mother executed for her father’s murder, since on Kesra a mated female simply had no right to refuse her male’s advances—and to do so now would mean that Maddy must spend the rest of her life with the memory of hearing her mother give the order for her father to be shot down before her eyes.
She hadn’t done it then, and she wasn’t going to do it now. So as the lieutenant asked again, “Ma’am? Admiral Romanova?”, she gripped the back of his chair and she stared at the viewscreen from over his shoulder.
And at last she said, “He’s heading up toward orbit, Lieutenant. So let him go, we need to get back to Narsai Control while we still can make it there.”
She heard her daughter’s sigh of relief, and a moment later the girl butted her head against her mother’s shoulder like a leggy colt looking for its dam’s attention.
She did look just about like one, too, Romanova thought absently as she put her arm around the child and held her close. And then from the hatch leading down to the cargo bay she heard Dan Archer calling to her, “Matushka! How long until we can get to a hospital? Or can we port Rachel to one right now? Dr. Barrett says if these kids don’t go into stasis the second they come out of her, we’re going to lose them. We’re probably going to lose them anyhow, but in a hospital they might have a chance.”
There was something wrong about those ships. Lincoln Casey had been a starship command officer for most of his adult life, and he knew just by watching the blips. The peculiar readings that went along with them only confirmed it; of the nine ships that remained after the Archangel had taken six with her into oblivion, he was certain that seven had not come from any yard operated by human shipwrights.
Yet two definitely had, which made the puzzle even more baffling. Not that one space-going species could not appropriate and fly another’s ships, he himself had prize captained a few alien vessels during his junior officer days; but with every sense he possessed focused now on the actions of those holo-imaged blips, and on the thousand different readings that they were generating on Narsai Control’s tracking computers, he was certain that he was looking at a mixed fleet.
Morthans did not fight. As far as he knew, he was the only individual of his kind who had ever wanted to become a Star Service officer; so those ships out there could not be “manned” (ridiculous, inappropriate word!) by people from his mother’s home-world. Sestians, natives of Sestus 4, occasionally contributed a member of their species to the Service; but those individuals did not rise far, and they usually didn’t stay long, because they were notoriously unable to grasp the idea that they must take orders from humans. In other words, as they saw it, from animals. And Kesrans seldom deigned to leave their watery world at all, although Linc did know there had been one Kesran aboard the destroyed Archangel.
But it was beyond imagining, even for him, that an influx of crew members from the three nonhuman sentient species that inhabited the Outworlds as he knew them could account for the strangeness that emanated from the ragged formation in that holoscreen. It was just too alien, and although he did not like Sestians or Kesrans much he did not find them strange—just annoying. And Morthans, even when he had been a child and his cousins had taunted him, were still just as much part of what he was as were humans.
There was nothing familiar out there. The fleet wheeled, and came in toward Narsai in a fan formation that was clearly intended to place that world’s globe within its center.
The ships in orbit around Narsai included armed freighters, twenty-three of them just now; a passenger liner, which had a few defensive weapons but which really was not equipped to fight anyone or anything; and the usual assortment of shuttles, private yachts (rarely affected by Narsatians, though, so there were only a couple of them while an Inner World of similar population would have had dozens cluttering up its orbital pathways), and work-boats for the habitats and satellites that also accompanied Narsai in its annual journey around its sun. In other words, there really wasn’t anything out there that could even consider challenging the fleet of warships.
Maybe some of them could run, though, if their captains had brains enough to realize it was time for that. Yet Casey knew after decades of having protected civilian shipping that civvie officers weren’t trained that way. Heading for open space when they were in trouble was the exact opposite of what they were taught to do, so he was sadly unsurprised to see that although Narsai Control’s commlinks were crackling—alive with frightened voices transmitting questions, making demands for explanations that right now the controllers could not supply—the civvies were staying put.
One blip was not doing that, though. Even on a controller’s monitoring screen that particular blip generated a code all its own, a “top priority” indicator that was supposed to tell everyone who saw it (and every navigational computer that read it) that the vessel it represented was not to be challenged or interfered with in any way.
“Coming through!” was what that code said, and it was a rare circumstance under which anyone who recognized it would do anything else but give it full heed.
George Fralick aboard the Corporate Marshal Service’s long-range shuttlecraft. So small that the alien fleet probably wouldn’t bother to pursue him, so fast that he could be at New Orient—the closest Star Service base to Narsai—in two weeks’ time, easily, if he headed straight there at the shuttle’s maximum warp.
I never thought I’d be cheering for Fralick again! Casey thought, as an incredulous grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. But now I’ve got to. I guess Katy’s right, that guy who was our first captain still is inside that stuffed shirt someplace.
“Of course I’m right!” came his wife’s thought, acerbic and half-distracted. “He’s smart, he’s got guts, he can think on his feet. That’s why he was a good captain, and he hasn’t lost any of it.”
“He’s still a goddamn bastard,” Linc responded, as he gave himself a physical shake to break out of the near-trance that watching the monitors with such utter concentration had caused him to enter. “A sick bastard.”
“Yes. That, too, and someday it’s going to catch up with him. But right now every prayer I know how to say is going with him, because if he can get through and send help back to us he may be the only hope we’ve got.” Katy’s thoughts became even more distracted. “I’m going to get my parents, Linc, as soon as we drop our patient off at MinTar Medical. And I’m ditching this uniform, that may make me a coward but right now I don’t feel the least bit duty-bound to identify myself as a Star Service flag officer. I’m not sure whether Narsai Control is the worst or the best place you could be right now, because depending on that fleet commander’s strategy it could be his next target or it could be the facility he most needs to preserve for his own use later; but I’m going to bet my credit
s on that last option, it’s what I’d do. So I’ll see you there. Please tell the watch commander not to shoot when we come in low and fast and don’t announce ourselves first.”
“Your patient?” Linc realized he had missed some key events aboard the Archangel’s surviving shuttle, while he had stared in fascination at the alien fleet’s maneuvers. “And you know that fleet’s not under human control, Katy?”
“Of course it isn’t. It still may be the Rebs, though, if they’ve allied themselves with another space-traveling species. From what I’ve been hearing they are desperate enough to do that, and while I can’t imagine what alien species they could have hooked up with it’s clear that most of those ships weren’t built from any design we’ve ever seen before. Could be that it’s Rebs using ships they got from another species that actually has enough vessels so they can sell them cheap—but there’s something about the way they’re handling themselves that feels funny to me, something that makes me believe all those captains can’t possibly be Rebs and humans.”
She paused, awaiting his response. Casey answered her, “I read it that way, too.”
“Good.” All their professional lives they’d served as each other’s sounding boards, and even though neither liked that conclusion the fact that they had reached it independently gave it an astronomically higher chance of proving to be the truth. Romanova continued, “Rachel’s gone into labor, Linc. Months too soon. I had to use a wide-dispersion stunner to get Dan and her separated from Vargas, and afterward when I scanned her she seemed to be okay; but then suddenly her body had just had enough, and now we’ve got to get her to proper care or at best the babies are going to die.”
And at worst, of course, so would Rachel. Katy didn’t say that, but she didn’t have to.
CHAPTER 23
Linc felt the mental touch with disbelief. It couldn’t be, because Kerle Marin had been aboard the Archangel; and he had seen the Archangel die, just minutes ago. Yet there was no mistaking it, this was another Morthan’s mind—and it had to be someone who had touched him before. It was not possible for even a Morthan to reach across space, even at this quite manageable distance, to touch a consciousness that was not already familiar. Establishing a new connection required that the two individuals be in physical proximity to each other.
“It’s me, cousin.” Marin sounded—what? Bemused. The sorrow of losing his shipmates a short time earlier, the physician’s outrage at the destruction of so many lives, and his personal grief for those few beings who had treated him as an equal instead of secretly fearing him—Captain Giandrea, in particular—came through as well; but Marin was a mortal being, after all, and he was not pretending he wished he had died with his ship. And however it was that he’d wound up aboard one of those Reb or alien vessels, clearly he had already been able to get past the resulting fear and sense of strangeness.
“I believe it, but I wish I knew how.” Linc responded even as he tried to broaden the communication to include his wife; and he winced when someone else, not Marin, prevented him from doing so. “Ouch! Who was that? What in hell’s going on, cousin?”
“I don’t understand it all myself just yet, but I do know that they scanned the Archangel before she blew and that they took me off because I’m Morthan. And they also took off every gen who was still alive at that point, and a really furious Sestian and a really puzzled Kesran.”
“How? You can’t teleport unless you’ve got compatible equipment at both ends! And I don’t believe you and all those others hopped onto porter platforms when your ship was about to go up around you, when there wasn’t an ally in sight.” Casey knew what he was talking about, because he’d been there. Clearly in his case the proverbial chestnuts had always been pulled out of the fire successfully, or he would have died in action long ago; but trying to port someplace was the last thing that crossed your mind, if you were on a lone ship engaged in battle with an alien foe.
“Of course we didn’t. So now we know that’s one technological barrier that someone else has broken, even though our own scientists are still telling us it can’t be done.” Amusement now came through from both Marin’s mind, and from whoever was the third party in this conversation in which he was now revealed as intermediary rather than principal.
“So these people snatched you with a porting technology that goes beyond what we know about, that doesn’t need equipment at both ends.” Linc repeated the thought, as much to let him collect himself as to have it confirmed.
“Yes. And now they want to meet with Narsai’s top brass, Linc. Don’t be afraid, the fact that Narsai has hardly got a weapon to its name is exactly why the only loss of civilian life so far has been aboard the habitat that stopped a wide shot—that wasn’t deliberate, in fact it’s a….”
“A sorrow to us,” the mental voice that Marin’s had been masking came through plainly on its own now. “Destroying the warship was regrettable, as well; but to that we had no alternative.”
“Let my mate hear what you’re saying, please.” Casey had never wanted the touch of Katy’s mind more than he wanted her with him right now. “If you really do want to deal with Narsai’s leaders, you’ll need to deal with her too; and I just scared hell out of her by trying to touch her, and then cutting off.”
The other mind considered the request, and for a moment it reached beyond Casey’s consciousness. It went deep into his being, to places it could not have gone easily without his consent. It had the power to go there anyway, he knew that instinctively from his memories of a time when he had been a helpless infant and his mother’s mind had been able to do as she wished when she handled him; but now, as then, there was no malice in the power that touched him. If he had resisted, this being would not have committed the mental equivalent of rape by forcing its way where he attempted to block its entry.
This was distasteful, the human parts of his mind were not places this being even wanted to go. But before Katy could be allowed into the link, his intentions must be ascertained—on a level where undetected deceit was impossible.
A few seconds by the chrono, an eternity while it was being experienced. At last the invader withdrew to normal levels of telepathic communication, and Linc Casey sighed his relief. And then the strange voice said, “Prepare her. Then we will talk.”
Catherine Romanova had not intended to debark from the shuttle at MinTar Medical, but it had become necessary. Hauling Rachel Kane up to the porter platform in the cabin was out of the question, so the shuttle had to set down in the hospital’s huge receiving lot; and with what was going on in space above them broadcast to every viewscreen on the planet, even the hospital’s emergency personnel were not willing to come outside and bring their newest maternity patient in.
So there was no solution except for Romanova to join Dan Archer and Cab Barrett in doing that, and of course Maddy trailed along beside her mother. Katy wanted her there, right now she wasn’t letting her own baby out of her sight.
Four lives, three of them not even technically begun. Probably it was ridiculous to take risks to save them right now, with everything else that had happened and was about to happen; but Katy Romanova could not possibly have written those little lives off, not when she could do something that might help them. She and Dan handled the stretcher, with Cab hovering along beside and with Maddy bringing up the rear. And as they went she wondered if she could get civilian clothing for the two surviving Star Service officers still aboard the shuttle, since she had every intention of commandeering an outfit for herself while she was here. If she had to spend the rest of this episode wearing someone’s surgical scrubs, with just her underclothes beneath, that would be fine. There were times when any uniform, let alone that of an admiral, functioned like a sign that read, “Please shoot me!”
The OB/GYN team met them in emergency reception, and Rachel and her lover and her doctor were all rushed through into the treatment area without red tape. Narsai’s informality had its advantages; at a Terran medical facility there would have be
en wrangling about who was responsible for payment, and whether or not Dan Archer had a legal right to accompany the patient, and whether Barrett had authorization to treat her. Here no one dreamed of putting any of those issues ahead of caring for the patient—whatever had to be sorted out, could and would be dealt with later.
Katy stood outside the set of doors that had been closed in her face, and she waited for her chest to stop heaving as she put a reassuring arm around her daughter. Maddy asked softly, “Mum? Will Papa be okay?”
Of course. Maddy hadn’t heard the conversation Katy had had with Linc, because somehow during the past few hours Casey had finally mastered the trick of shutting the child out when he wanted to talk to his wife alone. They’d been so distracted, though, that Katy had not even realized the difference.
What a blessing that was going to be! She squeezed the child gently as she said, “He got away, Maddy. Hopefully he’ll get all the way through to New Orient, and he’ll tell the authorities there what’s happened.”
“Then are you glad you didn’t let that lieutenant shoot him down?”
“Yes. I’m very glad I didn’t do that.” For more reasons than I understand myself, little girl, Katy added mentally.
Then she stiffened, and she leaned on her daughter’s surprisingly strong young shoulders without realizing she was doing so.
“Katy. I have contact with someone on one of the ships. It’s nothing I initiated—he, or she, or it, was looking for a telepath down here and found me.” Her husband’s thoughts were more formal, more structured, than in their usual mode of communication; but if a third being was about to join them, then the formality was not surprising. What was astonishing was that anyone but Maddy, or possibly a Morthan healer, could be communicating with Linc by this means.
“Mum, you need to sit down.” Maddy’s voice came from far away, and the child was right. She drew Katy with her to the waiting area and its seats, and she settled her mother there as if for the moment their roles had been reversed.
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