Hope's Folly

by Linnea Sinclair

  Her mouth was a thin line, her brows drawn.

  “Trank me and we’ll never get that thing online,” he growled at her, hitting the button for Deck 6.

  “You don’t know why the Gritter went off line,” she said tersely as the lift doors closed. “Someone could be down there. You said it yourself: this ship still isn’t a safe place.”

  He knew that but in his shock and anger had forgotten that option was still very real.

  “Let’s hope Mather’s ghost just flipped the off switch. If it’s more than that, we have problems.” And no time to solve them.

  “Dillon might have answers.”

  The lift doors opened. Philip strode out, cane digging into the decking, Rya at his side, Carver in hand. The ship shook again. Another torpedo, detonating too close. They couldn’t take much more of this.

  Dillon had the housing off and the main power panel open when Philip lunged through the doorway.

  “It’s not the primary feed, it’s the secondary,” Dillon said before Philip could ask. He was crouched on the unit’s right side, datapad in hand. “It can’t handle the—”

  “ Hot-patch it. Now. Don’t argue.” He dropped to his knees next to Dillon. “Rya, that red toolbox. Bring it here.” He turned back to Dillon again, wondering how many corners he could cut without having the thing blow up in their faces. “Have you hot-patched a plasma cannon before?”

  “Only in the lab, in the academy.”

  “This will be ten times more dangerous. Do what I tell you, but for God’s sake, if you’re not sure, ask.” He pulled the toolbox between them. “Power’s off?”

  “Off,” Dillon confirmed. He wiped his sleeve over his damp brow. The room was too warm and held that grimy, oily smell common to maintenance shops and power plants.

  “Rya, I need ten feet of D-93 optic conduit. There’s a stack—”

  Her boots were already moving. “Saw it before.”

  Philip plucked out two small laser knives from the toolbox and handed one to Dillon. “We need to cut the feeds here, here, and here.” He put his hand inside the Gritter, pointing. “In that order. Then the same thing on the other side. Then—”

  The ship shook violently, lights dimming. “Five minutes, Constantine. Give me five minutes!”

  “Conduit.” Rya was back, a large coil in her hand.

  “Can you splice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Three sections. This end only. Dillon, cut the feeds.” Philip flicked on his knife and made his slices, then the next set, Dillon mirroring his movements. He concentrated fully on the Gritter, on the patch. Rya was no longer Rya but someone who followed orders, who brought this, spliced that. He had to forget she was Rya, because if he remembered then he had to face the fact that what he was doing would likely kill her. A patch like this could fail.

  If Imperial torpedoes didn’t blow a hole in their hull, their own weapon would.

  The ship shook again, this time setting alarms wailing.

  “This end on the power panel?” Dillon shouted over the noise.

  “Exactly.” Philip shoved himself awkwardly to his feet. He’d think about his throbbing hip later. He prayed there was a later.

  Rya had his arm, then she shoved his cane into his hand.

  “This way?” Dillon asked, holding the conduit in front of a row of blinking connectors.

  “No!” He lurched forward, shirt sticking to his back. “You have it backward.”

  Dillon corrected his mistake in the few seconds it took Philip to reach him. Philip leaned against the bulkhead on the other side of the power panel and interlaced the rest of the conduit, sweat dripping down his face. Time; they were running out of time.

  “Rya,” he called out over his shoulder. “Get the laser-bank program up on the main console.” This was critical. Once he started the recoding—redirecting the laser banks’ commands and inserting the Gritter’s—a power fluctuation would wipe everything out.

  Give me a miracle, Sparks.

  “Program’s up!”

  “Dillon, I’ll finish here. You get that recoding started. Delete all safety overrides. Go!”

  But Dillon was already going. Then the tapping and beeping of the screen and the low snap of the last pieces of conduit were the only sounds other than the harsh breathing of three people on a race against time. The alarm had shut off—Philip couldn’t say when. But it was quiet again, the ship’s sublights a constant vibration.

  “Almost there,” Dillon called.

  “Tell me when.” Philip threaded his way around the enviro converters, back to the Gritter. He shoved open the small access panel and checked the spliced feeds. They looked good. “Then get up to engineering. If there’s a second failure, you’ll see it start there before I will down here. Cut all power to the unit if that happens.”

  “Almost … yes. Done!”

  “Engineering, now.” Philip hit the Gritter’s manual reset. Power indicators blinked on, then a low hum vibrated from the Gritter. He glanced quickly at the bulkhead power panel. No sparking overloads. Everything was holding. He let out a long breath.

  Rya stepped toward him.

  The room plunged into darkness, the ship lurching hard to port. He fell against a converter. Teeth gritted in pain and anger, he grabbed frantically for an edge to keep his balance. He heard a thump, heard Rya swear, then alarms wailed again as green emergency lights winked on overhead.

  “Rya!”

  “I’m all right.”

  He glanced at the indicator lights on the Gritter. The patch was holding. For now.

  A handbeam flashed on in his direction. He couldn’t see her but she could see him. Another hard lurch. He dropped to his knees, swearing under his breath. She was already crawling toward him.

  He grabbed her arm. “Get out of here. This thing blows, it’s taking this whole section with it.”

  “You coming?”

  Two lights on the Gritter went from green to yellow.

  “Fuck.” The feeds had come loose. But there hadn’t been time to link the conduit, to solder connections. He slid quickly over to the unit and shoved the access hatch aside with one hand, feeling in the toolbox for the laser knife with the other.

  Rya pressed it into his hand.

  “Rya, out. Now.”

  “I’ve got the other knife.” She wedged the handbeam into a vent in the Gritter’s housing, illuminating the feeds. “I watched what Dillon did. Tell me what you need done.”

  “This unit’s live. You’re not touching a damned thing.”

  “And you are?”

  “I know what I’m doing.” He held his breath, angling the knife in carefully, bracing his right hand with his left. If he touched the wrong feed or brushed against one, he was dead. It was like threading a needle in a rocking chair. His body swayed, sweat dripping into his eyes.

  His first try missed. He yanked his hand out quickly, swearing.

  His second try shoved the thin feed line snugly back into position. For now. Until Hillarston threw a torpedo at them again.

  “One green light’s back on.”

  “Lieutenant Bennton, you have two seconds to get your ass out of here or you will be an ensign.”

  The ship shuddered. If that shudder had been ten seconds earlier, while his hands were in the unit, he’d be dead. Hand on her arm, he gave her a push toward the door.

  She pushed back. “If you lean your arm on my shoulder when you fix the other one, it’ll steady you.”

  It would, but that wasn’t the point. The ship was vibrating, lurching. They were under attack. “Ensign Bennton.”

  “You’re wasting time, Guthrie. Here.” She scooted under his arm, her back against the unit’s housing.

  “Rya.” His voice was strained. He was tired, he was angry. He was scared. “If I touch the wrong feed, we’ll both die.”

  She tilted her chin up in a familiar defiant move. “Cheaper than a divorce.”

  “Divorce?”

  “You tell me
to leave one more time and, yes, I’m filing for a divorce. Now, are you going to fix that goddamned thing or not?”

  He exhaled harshly. “Hold still.” But just as he said that, the ship bucked again. She grabbed a handful of his shirt.

  “That’s it! Get out—”

  “They’re firing. That shimmy is a Gritter firing. And misfiring, because that thing in there is loose.” She stared at him, hard. “Now, are you fixing it or are we going to divorce court?”

  The ship’s odd shimmy was from the Gritter. He’d never experienced it down on a power-converter deck before. Always on the bridge in a ship with properly installed plasma cannons. Not a desperately patched-in Gritter.

  He sucked in a breath, steadying himself against her shoulder, and slid the knife toward the ruptured feed. He could kill them both in the next few seconds. Emotions churned inside him. He had to let them out. “Why would you,” he asked, one eye squinted shut as he stared at the cluster of feeds and not at her face, “divorce a man who loves you?”

  “Why would you send away a woman who loves you?” she asked quietly.

  He drew another long breath, chancing a glance at her face in the harsh light of the handbeam. The defiance was absent. There was only softness and a mouth that pleaded for kisses.

  There was no time. He wrenched his gaze off her face and stared at the feeds, at the tip of his laser knife, concentrating harder than he ever had before in his life. Her words were the only things keeping him focused in this hell down in the bowels of this ship. He tapped the loose feed with the edge of the knife. Shit! It swung too far to the left, the ship’s vibration throwing him off target. Tension cramped the muscles of his arms, his calves, his lower back. If Con fired the Gritter now, if it misfired—

  No. Nudge the feed back. Just … a … little … nudge.

  It wiggled. It fell into place.

  Gods and stars. Keep it there. Please.

  His arm was shaking when he pulled it out. But all lights on the unit were green. He looked at Rya, his mind still clinging to what she’d said. A woman who loves you.

  “I keep sending you away, beautiful, because I’m trying to keep you alive. Long enough,” and he hesitated, “that we’ll have a chance. That you’ll forget that guy back on Calth Nine.”

  She frowned, puzzled, then she shook her head slowly. “There’s no guy worth remembering back on Calth Nine. The only guy I want is right here with me now.”

  His breath caught, his heart stuttering. “Rya—”

  A shimmy wrenched the decking—a big one. She grabbed his shirt again. He dragged her away from the unit. Con was firing the Gritter. But the hot patch was not going to hold much longer.

  He used the side of the enviro converter to lever himself up. “Get the handbeam.”

  “Not without—”

  “I’m coming! We have to take this thing off line from engineering. It’s got only a few more shots left before it blows.” A disconnect at the unit, with the hot patch so erratic, would only hasten the process.

  She was on her feet, grabbing the handbeam. He put his hand on her back. “Go! I’m right behind you.”

  She moved, he lunged, but he took one last look back at the indicator lights. Still green. If the lights turned red before he and Rya reached engineering, they were dead.

  Philip ran up the dark stairs after her, using the railing to pull himself up each step. The pain in his leg wouldn’t matter if he was dead. The pain in his heart— if he lost Rya—would never end.

  She grabbed his arm, half-dragging him into the stairwell and under the green glow of the emergency overheads. The ship shimmied, lurching to port again. The Gritter, firing. There was still thirty, forty feet of corridor. One more shot could set it off, shearing away decks.

  “Tell Dillon to start a shutdown!” He shoved her away.

  She broke into a run, boots pounding, the light from her handbeam zigzagging through the corridor.

  He limped quickly after her, praying Dillon didn’t panic, praying he initiated the shutdown in the right sequence. Praying … just praying.

  Suddenly the corridor lights flickered on brightly but, before his eyes could adjust, went out again, plunging him into darkness. A good sign or a ship in the throes of death? He didn’t know.

  He careened into engineering, raking his gaze over the forms silhouetted by console screens. Screens were on. That meant primary computers were on. The bridge was working. The bridge had to be working.

  “Philip!”

  He saw her next to the taller, ponytailed Dillon at a line of consoles on the left. “Off line yet?” he gasped out as he headed for them.

  “Captain Welford needs a little more time,” Dillon answered.

  “We don’t have any more damned time. If that Gritter blows, it’s taking this whole section with it.” He came to a halt at Dillon’s console and realized Ensign Jasli was next to Rya. Intraship was definitely out.

  “You just come from the bridge?” he asked her.

  “Yes, sir—”

  “Status!”

  “Both P-75s are destroyed. The Drey’s hit bad, but, sir, so are we. Deck Three Aft and the starboard shuttle bay.”

  He’d felt that one. That was probably what sent him and Rya to their knees. But the patrol ships, gone. A small taste of victory. “What else?”

  “Shields are down to sixty percent port, forty-three starboard. At least they were a few minutes ago. Captain Welford said that Gritter is our only hope.”

  He wanted to ask about casualties, how many injured, how many dead. No time. “Dillon, let me at that program. There might be one more thing we can try.”

  “A Taison loop?”

  “You can do one?”

  “Already started.”

  He almost forgave the man for kissing Rya, right then and there. The loop was a temporary stabilization program that could regulate the pulses of energy surging through the Gritter, dovetailing one into the next. It would be one less thing jostling the feeds out of position. But it, too, would eventually fail as the energy surges piled up, coming faster than the loop could handle them.

  But it could buy them twenty, thirty minutes. Maybe.

  He nodded to Jasli. “Tell Captain Welford he has twenty minutes. Go!”

  She bolted for the corridor.

  “How did we lose power?” he asked Dillon.

  “Jasli said Sparks did that. He’s using the power from the lights, lifts, and intraship and rerouting it to the shields. Or they’d be gone.”

  Miracle worker. “Stay on that program. If you see a rupture coming, shut down the Gritter, even if it’s five minutes from now. I’m not going to help the Imperials by blowing a hole in our own hull.

  “Rya.” Philip put his hand on her shoulder. “Bridge.”

  It would be a long climb. But he wanted to be there if the Folly destroyed the Drey. And he had to be there if the Gritter failed and the Drey put that fatal shot into the Folly

  “Lean on me,” Rya said. They’d reached Deck 3, and she could tell Philip was in pain by his harsh breathing. And the occasional bitter epithet he said under his breath and thought she couldn’t hear.

  She heard them all. But the most important words were the ones said on Deck 6: a man who loves you. Her throat tightened even now as she replayed those words in her mind, hearing emotions roughen his voice.

  “The Old Man will make it,” Philip said.

  “You damned well better. I’m already picking out that tattoo parlor.”

  He answered with a harsh laugh, but he let her put her arm around his waist.

  At the stairwell for 2 Forward he stopped, pulling her back.

  “Rya.” Her name was a low rumble in his chest and then she was against his chest, her back to the stairwell bulkhead, his mouth searing hers with a kiss she was sure would make the Gritter’s detonation look like the weak flare of a match. She shoved the handbeam into her utility belt, then ran her hands up the hard planes of his back, feeling muscles bunched i
n pain, feeling the dampness of his shirt. She clung to him, kissing him with a blinding desperation. If the Gritter blew, if the Drey’s torpedo found that last target, then this is where she wanted to be, in Philip’s arms.

  He pulled back, cupping her face with his hands. He brushed his thumb over her lips. “Okay, Mrs. Guthrie,” he said softly. “Now we can go on.”

  Something bumped against her leg. She glanced down quickly, saw the white cat now greenish in the emergency lights.

  “Captain Folly too,” Philip said as she picked up the cat, holding him against her chest. He butted her chin with his soft head.

  The ship rumbled, lurching, voices from the bridge suddenly spilling down the stairs.

  “This is it.” Philip’s voice went tight. “We need to be on the bridge. Now.”

  Fear and hope clashed somewhere in the middle of Rya’s chest. She held Captain Folly more tightly against her and moved quickly up the final set of stairs, Philip just behind her.

  “Shields down to twenty, sector four-seventeen!”

  “Starboard side, incoming. Fire!”

  “Helm, execute—”

  The ship lurched. Rya stumbled against the bridge door. She felt Philip’s hand on her back, then he lunged past her, heading for the command chair, staring at the forward screens.

  She stared too, her breath catching. The Imperial Arrow-class destroyer looked massive, spiky with weapons jutting from aft and forward ports as it revolved slowly through the black starfield. Gaping holes charred its hull, debris spewing left and right. Entire sections of hull had no lights. Only a few were still lit on its narrow bridge, which rose amidships on a short column.

  Con Welford turned as Philip’s hand found his chair. Rya caught up with him and braced herself against the XO’s console on the left. Con had a gash on his forehead, a thin line of blood trickling down his cheek.

  She looked around quickly, saw Corvang, Sparks, Sachi. Others with their backs to her. She knew there were injuries, but she couldn’t tell in the dim lighting who were at their posts and who were replacements.

  “We’ve almost got her, Guthrie,” Con said. “I need one more good shot … Sparks!” Con jerked to his right.

  “Gritter’s powering up. But she’s overloading fast. This could be the last one. It could take her out. It could blow us apart.”