With his first moves, Roget slipped the heavy, flat bag that held the Dubietan emergency pressure suit out of his pack and up inside his nightsuit coverall. Then he powered up the concealment features of the nightsuit and pulled the hood over his head. Moving to the stateroom door, he slipped two tools from the flat container inside his waistband. In less than a minute, he was out in the passageway, empty because it was in officers’ country. He closed and locked the door behind him, deliberately but swiftly, and stowed the small tools.
Could he get to one of the airlocks aft of midships before the WuDing provoked the Dubietans into action? That was likely, since the WuDing and the Federation fleet didn’t have the advantage of the Dubietan technology.
Moving quickly, he headed aft toward the first ladder. At the top of the ladder he flattened himself against the wall. Two ship’s marines rushed up the ladder and past him in the direction of his former stateroom, proving the usefulness of the camouflage suit against the pale blue of the bulkheads.
He swung down two levels of the ladder and headed outboard, moving to one of the maintenance ways that he didn’t think was snooped as thoroughly as all the main passageways were. He made it down almost to the outer ring, where the maintenance way ended, before he sensed another pair of marines. He eased open the maintenance hatch, just a crack, but the marines were not yet in sight. So he swung the hatch inward, then used the heavy hinges as an aid to wiggle upward and to wedge himself into the narrow overhead, hoping he didn’t have to wait too long. The camosuit blended into the dark blue.
Roget waited, easing out one of the narrow picks from his waistband.
In less than a handful of minutes, he heard voices.
“Sensors say he’s here somewhere.”
To your right somewhere … hard to get readings down there.
“There’s an open maintenance hatch.”
Check behind it.
One of the marines stood before the hatch, looking down it, a heavy shocker in hand.
Roget flicked the pick as far back up the maintenance way as he could.
Clink.
“He’s got to be up there by that niche.” The first marine charged through the hatch and toward the sound.
The second stepped inside the hatch and halted.
That made it all too clear that the marines hadn’t been in any kind of real combat or fight for all too long. Roget struck, coming down with his left boot squarely into the marine’s eye and nose at an angle that slammed the hapless man into the solid bulkhead. The marine did not move, although Roget sensed rather than saw that, because he kept moving, swinging himself out through the hatch, then flattening himself against the main passageway bulkhead, on the side opposite the hatch hinges.
“Carteon!” The second marine whirled, then moved quickly back down the maintenance way. As he peered through the hatch, Roget moved, yanking him forward so that his boots caught on the hatch lip, then dropping him. In another quick movement, he had the marine’s shocker. He used it on both marines, then grabbed the unused weapon from the first marine.
Holding the shocker in one hand, Roget sprinted to the next ladder aft and swung down. He stopped halfway down, moving slowly so that the camosuit would not blur. Less than ten meters away was the hatch that was the entrance to the midships maintenance bay. Also less than ten meters away stood two crewmen in combat space armor, but without helmets, guarding the hatch that led to the maintenance area and the lower midships locks. Both men held heavy-duty shockers.
Roget eased forward a step at a time, keeping the shocker on the side away from the guards and hoping the camosuit was blending the weapon into the blueness of the bulkheads. He didn’t have that much time, not before more marines with heat-imaging units reached him, but he needed to get closer to use the weapon.
“You see something?” murmured one guard. “Down there a ways?”
“All I see is blue and more blue.”
In the moment that both crewmen were not looking directly at Roget, he took two steps and froze. He was almost close enough. Almost.
“Spray the—”
Roget darted forward and fired.
“—passageway!”
The second crewman got off a shot, and Roget’s right arm erupted in flaming agony. His entire body shivered, almost uncontrollably. Both crewmen were down, but Roget could hear more marines thundering down the ladders.
He pressed the hatch-access stud. The big hatch began to open. The maintenance area beyond the hatch went dark, as did the passageway behind him where the fallen guards lay. Roget jumped through the hatch just before it closed in response to the power cutoff.
He staggered against the nearest bulkhead, and at the impact his arm flared into more agony. Going to nightsight didn’t help Roget because he wasn’t in low-light conditions, but in no light.
The colonel hadn’t cut power to the area to blind Roget, but to disable any equipment he thought that Roget might try to use. The power loss also meant Roget would have to find the emergency personnel lock in the dark and operate it manually.
Roget smiled. If … if he could remember the location, the power cut might be to his advantage because without power there were no snoops … and the emergency locks were designed to be opened manually—especially for times when there was no ship’s power.
He forced himself to concentrate, despite the lines of nerve flame running up and down his right arm, then began to move toward the aft side of the maintenance bay. While it felt as though it took hours to find the emergency lock, it was less than a minute according to his internal systems.
Although the lock wheel turned easily, it took several minutes before he was able to rotate it enough times left-handed to open the inner-lock door. He swung the heavy door toward himself, wincing momentarily as the emergency-lock lighting struck his dark-adjusted eyes. Once he was inside the lock itself, he had to repeat the process to close the inner door. He couldn’t vent the lock chamber without the inner door being closed, and without venting, there was no way he could swing the outer door into the chamber even after he’d rotated the wheel to the open position.
At that moment, power returned to the area, and that meant the marines would be after him in moments. As he’d recalled, there was a broomstick racked beside the outer door. There was also a soft emergency pressure suit with an equally soft helmet—a poopysuit. He checked the broomstick propellant, then winced. Less than 20 percent. Not much margin for error. He pulled on the poopysuit, except for the helmet. Poopysuits usually held less than an hour of oxygen, if that, but the indicator showed forty minutes, and that should suffice.
While he’d thought to vent the lock last, he changed his mind, donned the helmet and sealed, then twisted the lock vent open immediately. That way the marines wouldn’t be able to open the inner-lock door. Then he went to work turning the outer-lock wheel—again left-handed and even more clumsily in the heavy suit gauntlets.
Once he had the lock open, he grabbed the broomstick in his left hand and eased out into vacuum, forcing his almost-numb right hand to hold to the recessed grab-bar outside the lock.
With the disorientation of weightlessness, several moments passed before he finally located the tether—aft of the largest maintenance lock. His dropboat was still linked to the tether, and fortunately, not all that far from the rear of the large maintenance lock.
Abruptly, the tether separated from the dropboat, and a quick blast of gas from the tether pushed the dropboat outward. The colonel definitely didn’t want Roget getting to the dropboat.
Roget straddled the broomstick and aimed it and himself at the dropboat’s lock, giving both gas jets a solid jolt and hoping that his aim was good. If he missed, he was as good as dead … and not immediately. He hadn’t planned to be in vacuum for more than a few minutes in the poopysuit. The emergency suits didn’t have much insulation, and if he missed the boat, whether he’d asphyxiate or freeze first would be the only question left to ponder, and probably not for that lon
g, because he couldn’t reach the distress alarm in the Dubietan emergency suit without breathing vacuum.
He pulsed the broomstick’s left gas jet just momentarily, correcting his course more to the right. After a moment, he could see that he was closing on the empty dropboat. He forced himself not to use the jets more. If he came in too hard, the absorber wouldn’t handle the jolt, and the mag-grip wouldn’t hold.
Another minute passed, and he was within ten meters of the dropboat. He glanced to his left. So far, he and the dropboat had only slid back fifty meters along the WuDing’s hull, and separated less than twenty. That was good because that left him too close to the battlecruiser for the colonel to deploy weapons against him or the dropboat.
The mag-grip on the end of the broomstick hit one of the patches repaired by the Dubietans. While the recoil absorber took up most of the shock, the mag-grip began to slide sideways.
“Shit!” muttered Roget. Just his luck they’d used a non-metallic composite.
The mag-grip skidded along the dropboat’s hull, but finally grabbed onto the metallic composite above and aft of the lock. Roget inched his way up the broomstick until he managed to grab the recessed handle next to the lock access panel. Holding on with his injured hand was painful, but he needed the other hand to manipulate the lock controls, while keeping his legs wrapped around the broomstick.
Once he had the outer lock open, he shifted grips, then eased himself and the broomstick partly inside. Eventually he managed to get everything into the lock and close it behind him. His entire body was shaking.
When the lock was pressured, he stripped off the poopysuit, awkwardly opened the inner lock hatch, and tossed the emergency suit into the tiny bunk cubicle behind the control couch, before scrambling into position enough to power up the controls. Then he pulled the Dubietan emergency suit from under his coverall and out of its film wrapper. There were instructions—very brief and clear. He followed them in donning the suit up to the point of activation. That had to wait.
Next he strapped himself into the couch and checked the systems.
Power levels were as he’d left them—roughly 40 percent. That might get him close to Dubiety, but he wasn’t about to try it yet. He’d ride along with the course vector and velocity already imparted by the WuDing. He was gambling on the fact that, so long as he did nothing detectable, the colonel would not be able to persuade the WuDing’s commander to use the drives for more separation in order to turn weapons on the dropboat.
Three minutes passed, then four. Suddenly the WuDing’s shields contracted, leaving the dropboat outside them, then expanded, pushing the dropboat away from the battlecruiser and effectively adding a ninety-degree vector to the battlecruiser’s—and the small craft’s—previous course. Roget swallowed but still did not activate the drives, just letting the dropboat angle away from the WuDing on a course that was inclined downward and at about 280 degrees relative to the battlecruiser’s course toward Dubiety.
The slight downward velocity would soon carry the dropboat below the Federation formation. Despite the chill in the dropboat, so much so that his breath was steam, Roget was sweating. The hardest part of any operation, especially this one, was sitting tight and waiting.
He scanned the EDI. The Federation fleet was moving at a steady but almost stately pace toward Dubiety, one designed to save power for the weapons that whatever marshal was commanding would soon be unleashing against Dubiety.
Soon? He ran a quick calculation and came up with almost a standard hour before the fleet would be in position to bring everything to bear. Where would he and drop three be in an hour?
He ran another set of calculations. The results were as he feared. If he did nothing, he’d be too far below Dubiety. He reset the parameters and tried again.
If … if he could get away with a thirty-second max angled drive blast in the next few minutes, he’d stay within what he thought would be the Dubietan operational envelope, but still far enough from the fleet by the time he was in range of the Dubietan technology to avoid being an easy target for any of the Federation ships. Being in that Dubietan envelope would make him vulnerable to whatever the Thomists might do, but he hoped what he planned would resolve that difficulty.
Thoughts, guesses, and hopes. That’s all you’ve got left. He pushed that thought away. He’d have had less than that if he’d remained aboard the WuDing. No doubt about that at all. None.
Once again he waited, letting the seconds tick away until the last possible moment before triggering the corrective drive blasts. His eyes flicked to the EDI, wondering if any of the Federation ships would waste a torp on him.
No one fired.
He’d hoped for that, basing his judgment on three things. First, he wasn’t on a direct course to Dubiety. Second, the colonel might well believe that if the Federation succeeded, they could let him drift forever or capture him at leisure. And third, the dropboat had no weapons of any sort and posed little direct threat to any Federation ship.
When the dropboat’s drive cut out, Roget checked his course and the EDI again. No torps, and he was headed into the edge of the envelope he’d calculated. Once more, all he could do was wait.
As the minutes ticked away, he kept checking the readouts, but nothing changed except that the fleet—and dropboat three—edged closer and closer to the silver grayish sphere that was Dubiety.
After twenty minutes, the EDI signaled a disturbance, but not from Dubiety. Rather the instruments were suggesting a large energy source coming from outsystem. More Federation ships? Was that the reason for the stately progress of the Federation fleet? Waiting for reinforcements to join up? All that for a single planet?
Because the dropboat’s EDI was anything but specific for that distance, Roget kept studying his instruments and worrying. It was almost ten minutes later before his EDI—far less accurate than detectors in the capital ships—gathered enough information. Roget just looked at what appeared on the screen before him. What his instruments registered was not possible.
A single vessel sped insystem, and that ship had to embody more than a hundred times the mass and energy of the largest battlecruiser ever built by the Federation. Roget’s eyes flicked from the outsystem screen to the insystem screen, but he saw no change in the speed or course of the Federation vessels.
At that moment, Roget remembered the painting in the museum in Skeptos—an oil painting depicting a ship the size of an asteroid. Was that what his EDI was picking up? Was it real? Or some sort of electronic illusion? But how could the Thomists counterfeit the impression of all that energy?
From the lack of response from the Federation ships, clearly the marshal in command of the attack force believed the vessel showing on the EDI screens was an illusion or a decoy. Roget’s guts tightened, telling him they didn’t believe it was an illusion of any sort.
He still wasn’t within the Dubietan operating sphere. His lips twisted. For all he knew, he might be, but he was assuming that sphere only extended as far as they had been able to launch the dropship. Besides, even the rearmost of the Federation ships was far enough from the dropship that a torp launched at Roget had no certainty of hitting—or inflicting damage.
Roget kept waiting, his attention split between the two screens, watching as the massive Thomist vessel neared. Then he swallowed again because energy flared against what had to be the shields of the Thomist ship. The EDI energy levels indicated that whatever had been in the way of the Thomist dreadnought had not been something insignificant, perhaps even a small asteroid. Whatever it had been, it was gone as if it had never been, with no apparent effect on the monster craft.
The Thomist vessel was still well away from Roget and his dropboat when the EDI registered something like an energy cocoon encircling the largest of the trailing Federation warships. The ZengYi, Roget thought, a large attack corvette, the one that had met him. One moment, the energy cocoon and the ZengYi were there. The next, they were not.
Roget winced. The crew of the
corvette hadn’t deserved that. They’d just been following orders, and they hadn’t even fired a weapon.
But they would have. Roget knew that, but he still wished it hadn’t been the ZengYi.
The Federation fleet still did nothing. Not that the marshal could have, because the monster Thomist ship was well out of torp range.
Then something flared from the WuDing toward the silver haze of Dubiety—a planet-scouring missile with a modified light-drive. Moments after launch, the missile vanished.
Roget activated the dropboat’s drive, pouring full power into propulsion and adjusting his course. He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to get as close to Dubiety as possible. The marshal and the Federation vessels weren’t about to worry about him and his tiny dropboat. Not with what they faced.
His attention went back to the two EDI screens.
Another energy cocoon formed around a cruiser—the DeGaulle. This time the ship’s commander applied full power. Roget could tell that from the rapid rise in energy intensity. But nothing happened. The ship did not accelerate, and the energy cocoon only brightened—until both the DeGaulle and the cocoon vanished from the EDI.
Two more of the energy cocoons followed, enveloping two corvettes and disappearing them as well.
Roget glanced at the upper corner of the EDI. An energy glow had begun to surround Dubiety itself. Things like that weren’t supposed to happen, but, unlike the colonel, Roget wasn’t about to argue with what appeared to be reality. As he watched another cocoon of energy encircle another Federation ship, this time most likely the Shihuangdi, Roget unstrapped himself from the pilot’s couch and scrambled the scant few meters aft to the airlock, where he opened the inner hatch and hurried into the chamber.
Did he want to do what he felt was his only chance?
No. But watching the Federation fleet vanish, ship by ship, was like … Like the last twist of the knife?
Absently, as he closed the inner airlock door and then pulled the hood of the Dubietan emergency pressure suit over his head and sealed it, he wondered from where that thought had come. He pushed that question away and vented the lock chamber, then let the automatics open the outer lock.
Haze and the Hammer of Darkness Page 28