The Ensign looked at the Tac officer, who simply stared back at him with a stone face. No sympathy there. He looked back at the Captain.
"I don't think I'll be talking about it, sir."
"Good. Ensign, those rules about atmospheric speeds were written six decades ago to prevent a ship's externals from being ripped off at high speeds. We'd just lost any externals to the nuke, and I flatly didn't care if other bits of us fell off. The people below are dead; they were killed by their own damned nuke."
The Captain gazed steadily at the Ensign as he punched the bridge recorder button again and said, "... And damn it, I wish they'd put this recorder button on the side, or somedamnwhere completely away from all the others. Thanks for noticing that the light was off, Ensign. They ought to move that, too, maybe - oh, let's see, now - how about to where the guy who sits in the damned chair can see it, too? Wouldn't that be a great idea?"
"Uh... Yes, sir. I guess so, sir."
"Damned right. Damn all half-assed dimwit designers who don't have to live with their screwups. Check the regs later and see if there's any reason we can't redesign this console a little. The next guy can get his own damned chair."
"Uh, yes, sir," said the Ensign, smiling broadly. "First chance I get, sir."
"Good, son. Real good. Now get us into high orbit and contact HQ."
L'Tan woke the first time in a darkened room. The smell told her she was in a medical facility, but she had no idea whose facility.
Oh, well, I'm alive. That's a plus.
Ancillary medications helped her go back to sleep.
The room was still darkened the second time she woke, but she had an urge that couldn't be ignored. After discovering to her horror that her legs didn't seem to work, she groped painfully for a light on the stand by the bed.
She tried to draw a breath to yell for help, but that proved to be a mistake. A pain lanced through her back and into her chest that left her gasping tearfully.
Finding no light and no way to call for assistance, she simply started pushing things off the table every fifteen seconds or so. The water pitcher hit hard enough to make some noise and bounced satisfactorily. She was about to push the table, itself, over when the door opened and a nurse poked her head in cautiously.
She turned on the lights and said, "There's a call button clipped to your pillow."
"Didn't find it," croaked L'Tan. "Help me up. I need to use the bathroom."
"No," said the nurse, approaching the bed. "Stay put and I'll get you a bedpan."
"I don't want to use a pan."
The nurse started to lift the sheet to place the bedpan. L'Tan swatted at it.
"I told you I don't want to use a damned pan."
"And I told you that you aren't getting out of bed. Now let me do my job before you have wet sheets."
The two women glared at each other for a couple of moments, but L'Tan's urge grew implacable, so she gave in to the nurse.
A few minutes later, feeling vastly relieved, L'Tan said, "Sorry I gave you a hard time. If I couldn't see my legs, I couldn't be sure I had any. Half the reason I wanted to get up was to prove to myself that I'm not crippled."
"I've seen it before. Let me see if I can find a doctor, now that you're awake."
The nurse marched out in that quick-step style that all nurses seem to adopt sooner or later. A couple of minutes passed before a man walked into the room.
Smiling broadly, he said, "Well, hello," - he consulted his chart, then continued unctuously - "Patient 491586. I'm your doctor. How are we this evening?"
"We're in a lot of pain, our doctor thinks our name is a number, and we can't get out of bed. Evening?"
"Evening. Your second evening with us, in fact. We feel rather priveleged to have you aboard, Lady L'Tan."
"Well, good for you. Why don't my legs work?"
The doctor pulled the only chair in the room next to the bed and sat down.
"You have a bruise about the size and shape of a flitter seat on your back. Your spine was stretched, strained, and battered senseless, but nothing's broken. We think that your numbness is probably only temporary."
L'Tan held back tears and croaked, "Probably? Wonderful. Anything else?"
The doctor took her hand, kissed the back of it, and said, "Yes, ma'am. Quite a lot, really. You saved everyone aboard, and we're profoundly grateful to you."
L'Tan just stared at him, her tears momentarily forgotten. No one but foppish dignitaries had kissed her hand for more than a decade. This man looked as if he didn't make such gestures casually.
"Uh... Well, you're welcome. Would it be possible to see the Captain?"
The doctor grinned hugely.
"The Captain has been hounding me day and night to be told the moment you wake up. I could probably have him here in five minutes or less, but maybe you'd like a few minutes to freshen up first? I'll send in the nurse to help."
He almost dashed out of the room.
'Help?' wondered L'Tan. 'What kind of help..?'
She found out what kind of help. It quickly became a major, painful effort simply to lift her arms above her chest repeatedly. The nurse helped her brush her teeth and comb her hair, then asked if she'd like a touch of makeup. L'Tan laughed aloud at that.
"This isn't a date. Let's skip the makeup."
"In that case, I think you're ready to meet the Captain. Do you need the pan again, or anything like that?"
"No, thanks. Captains aren't that scary to me. I'm ready. Bring him in."
The nurse left and moments later a balding, middle-aged man whose face looked a bit older than his years walked in. He strode to the bed, his hand extended to her, and she tried to conceal the ache in her arm when she took it.
"Hello, Stardancer. We thought we'd seen the last of you when you took that desk job. Thanks for saving my ship, by the way."
"Oh, you're quite welcome, T'Var. Did I really save the Alliance, or would you have managed without me?"
T'Var shook his head and grinned.
"Our own best hope was an exploding probe, so skip the modesty, please. We're battered and burned, but still flying, L'Tan. Quad three is beyond salvage. It's radioactive scrap. My Tac man thinks that the extra twenty miles you gave us made all the difference, so I hope you're ready for some adulation later."
"Not really. It hurts to even shake hands with someone. Maybe much later. Where are we?"
Captain T'Var turned the chair slightly and sat down tiredly.
"We're in high orbit around Eirania. They've made a few efforts to hit us, but the Alliance can handle whatever other primitive crap they can toss up here. Shield generators are heavy gadgets; they can't put a shielded missile all the way up here that we can't easily avoid. HQ told us to stay put for now, but didn't say why. No ships are to leave Eirania. They're being sanctioned."
"They could field other ships for station duty and they know you took heavy damage, so there must be another reason we're still here, T'Var."
"I'm sure there is, but they didn't mention it."
"Speculate for me. What do you think would make them keep you here?"
"One thing, obviously; we're able to keep any ships from leaving, but none have tried to leave. Not even the commercial ones."
L'Tan considered matters for a moment.
"Do you have any Eiranians on board? Any at all?"
"None. The last one left the Alliance an hour before all hell broke loose. He was that brother-in-law to their Defense Minister."
"Did any of them leave anything behind? Have you searched their quarters thoroughly?"
"No. They were quartered in quad three, and three took all the radiation and damage from the nuke. If they left anything in there, it's cooked by now. What are you getting at, L'Tan?"
L'Tan debated whether to tell him what she knew, then decided that he was the man on the spot and deserved to know as much as reasonably possible.
"The Eiranians are suspected of developing new pathogens, T'Var. The kinds used in ge
rm warfare. That's one of the reasons I was assigned to the Consulate. We were trying to find out if the suspicions had any merit."
The Captain sat very still for a moment. "And..?"
"A few of our people came up with a few things, but nothing solid."
T'Var frowned as he added things up.
"That makes it sound as if HQ is keeping us here to see if we're infected. We're as quarantined as the planet."
"Probably. It would make sense to do that, wouldn't it? Telling you about a plague on an open comm channel could start a panic, and you have to assume that no comm channel is truly secure. Have you contacted anyone other than HQ?"
Captain T'Var stood up and reached to touch her hand again.
"No, but I'm about to. Is there anything you need, L'Tan? Anything I can send down here? Anyone you want to talk to?"
"Nothing I can think of at the moment, T'Var. I'd like to see the two who flew with me, though. T'Mar and L'Sil."
"I'll have them delivered shortly, Stardancer. Thank you for everything."
She smiled at him and he left for the bridge at a brisk pace. Soon afterwards, she heard the ship-wide intercom.
Chapter Five
"Captain L'Sil and T'Mar, report to the bridge as soon as possible."
The message was repeated once, then the intercom was silent. Fifteen minutes or so later, there was a knock on her door.
"Come in."
T'Mar and L'Sil entered almost cautiously, then L'Sil stood at attention and saluted.
She asked, "You wanted to see us, ma'am?"
"At ease, Captain. I just wanted to thank you two for your support."
T'Mar said, "Uh, well, okay, I guess. I can't remember helping much, though."
"I said 'support'. You were there to take over if needed. That's help of another sort, and no less valuable than any other kind. It left me free to move."
She had to pause to let an agonizing twinge pass, then said, "T'Mar, if I remember correctly, you were screening Eiranians in the dispensary. True?"
"True."
"Did you find reasons to reject any?"
"Not reject them, no. I put a few on hold for further examination."
"Why?"
"Something didn't look right in their specimens. Some kind of residue. It wasn't on the stop list, but I couldn't identify it, so I passed them on to the lab."
"I want you to get with the doctors here and be specific about what you know. And what you don't know, in this case. I think the Eiranians were up to something involving pathogens. This is entirely unofficial at present, of course, but I'd appreciate your cooperation, T'Mar."
T'Mar grinned and said, "If you'll tell me why you're called Stardancer..?"
"That's a cheap trade. I used to be a fighter pilot. That was my call sign. I'm surprised that someone hasn't told you before now."
T'Mar said, "I asked a few people. Evidently the wrong people. They didn't know."
L'Tan laughed. "I guess it's been too long ago for this crew. This was my ship, twenty years ago. Or, rather, I was stationed aboard her for five years. They refitted her after the peace accords and now she's basically a heavily-armed diplomatic ferry."
L'Sil asked, "Wasn't that about the time of the Adaran pirate wars?"
L'Tan nodded. "It was. People who weren't there to experience it called it a 'police action'. We were there, and we called it a damned war. We chased pirates from star system to star system for over two years. It would have gone on longer if Adar hadn't capitulated and called their ships back."
T'Mar asked, "But how did you get the name 'Stardancer'?"
L'tan looked thoughtful. "We used to deploy fighters from secondary ships. The Adarans ambushed us near a binary star. Tore us up pretty badly. I led three of them on a deranged chase long enough for the others to break free, but I was too far away to expect any help in time to do any good. My comm system was out, anyway. I was on my own."
She took a sip of water and continued, "So I climbed into the storage locker behind the pilot's compartment and used my nav computer to trigger the ejection system. The Adarans saw the escape pod blasting away and thought I was finished. They turned around and headed back."
L'Sil was shocked.
"They didn't try to pick up your escape pod?"
L'Tan shook her head.
"Pirates don't give a damn about such polite customs. Without a seat, I used some of the exposed wiring to tie myself in and flew the ship on my knees for ten minutes until I caught up with them. They were in tight formation and they weren't expecting trouble. When the one in the middle exploded, he took the other two with him."
When she didn't say anything more for a moment, T'Mar prompted, "But you still haven't said how you got the name."
L'Tan grinned. "Oh. Right. Well, I was nearly out of fuel and headed toward the binary near Adara. There were no planets near the binary; nowhere to set down and nothing to orbit, and I couldn't slow down. Things looked kind of grim for a while. Then it occurred to me that I might be able to create a figure-eight sort of orbit between the stars. Circle one, then let the other take me, then back again. My nav computer worked out the details and I used the last of my fuel establishing a fast orbital track. Then I sat out there for two days until the Alliance found me."
L'Sil looked confused. "I don't quite understand how they could have found you without your comm system."
"They followed the escape pod's signal and found an empty pod. That was a definite first for them." She grinned again. "When I figured they'd had time enough to locate the pod, I fired a torpedo back the way I'd come every time I reached an orbital apex. Torpedoes that can't find their target call for instructions. They picked up the torpedoes and traced them back to me."
T'Mar began, "But..."
"I'm getting to that. They found me slingshotting around and between the two stars. When they were close enough to hear my suit comm, the Tac officer asked if he could have the next dance. Everybody called me 'Stardancer' after that."
"That's it? Just because some guy asked you for a dance?"
"Well, I'm so sorry, T'Mar, but that's all there was to it. The name stuck."
L'Sil said, "Wow. Over two days in a lifesuit. I'll bet you were glad to see them."
"I was a nasty mess by that time. I'd have been glad to see pirates again."
"Well, hell," said T'Mar. "I guess I expected something a little more dramatic. Still, a deal's a deal. I'll get with the lab for you."
L'Sil looked to see if he was serious. L'Tan laughed.
"I like you. You aren't afraid of me. Yet."
"Oh, I'm plenty afraid of you, ma'am. I saw what you did to suppress fire at the docks. You just about ground the walls and floor of that flitter down to nothing. I just don't think fear would make any difference, so I'm ignoring it."
L'Tan laughed again, then winced as the pain lashed her back.
"That's... Very... Reasonable of you, T'Mar... Thanks for coming down, both of you. I'm feeling much better."
L'Sil said, "Oh, I can see that. Maybe we'd better go before we kill you."
The doctor rushed in and shouldered his way between T'Mar and L'Sil to check the vid screen by the bed. He tapped in a code that released a quieting dose of painkillers into L'Tan and stepped back.
"My desk monitors screamed," he said. "I'm surprised that you didn't. I'm chasing your two friends out of here for now."
L'Tan said, "I'm all right now. They can stay, doctor."
The doctor swiveled the monitor screen to face her and said, "See this line? They leave. You stay. That's it. Thanks to you we have a tomorrow, and that's when they can come back in here. Besides, you'll be asleep soon from the stuff I just gave you. Everybody out. Now."
Over the next two days the Captain tried to scrounge information from nearby worlds without appearing to be doing so, but his efforts yielded nothing useable. Some of the worlds nearby failed to even respond to his calls.
T'Mar unloaded all he could remember on the medlab te
chs about his reasons for red-flagging Eiranian visa applicants and also yielded no quantifiable results.
L'Sil found herself employed as L'Tan's aide, which seemed at first to mean not much more than someone to fetch and carry, but as soon as L'Tan was able to function on a lower level of medication, she began asking for information that L'Sil had to dig out of archives and assemble.
For all their efforts, by the end of the week they had little more than when they'd started. The information required simply wasn't forthcoming from any source on the ship, and tempers were beginning to fray from frustration.
Then, on the sixth day after the Consulate attack, some news finally arrived from nearby Erek. People were dying in vast numbers, all over the planet. People of all ages and races were suddenly and simply collapsing, and nobody had any idea what was killing them or how to stop it.
A few tried to escape by leaving the planet, but their efforts only allowed them to die in space. HQ issued orders to destroy any ships that failed to respond to hails, and the Alliance unfortunately had occasion to act on those orders eight times during the next two days.
The comm board was silent for most of the seventh day, then a man's voice said, "Alliance, this is Station Commander T'Ran. Come in, please."
The Captain nodded to the Tac officer, who punched the comm button. A haggard-looking man in his forties appeared on the bulkhead screen.
"Captain T'Var, here, Commander T'Ran. Go ahead."
"Captain T'Var, this is a deliberately unsecure communication, intended to be overheard by the Eiranians, because they either refuse to answer our calls or are unable to do so. You are to remain near Eirania until relieved and to prevent all vessels from leaving that planet by any means necessary. The Eiranians appear to be directly and deliberately responsible for an attack on the Confederation."
The bridge crew of the Alliance simply stared at one another.
Captain T'Var said, "I'll have to confirm this transmission, Commander. Is there anything more you can tell us?"
The Commander's face changed to one of malevolent fury, but his words were as uninflected as before.
"Only that an investigation is underway and that - if the Eiranians are found to be guilty in this matter - you will receive new orders. That is all. Please confirm this transmission at your earliest convenience, Captain."
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