by David Weber
“Never mind that part,” Hanford growled. “They’re supposed to be warships, for—” he glanced over at Juarez, the religious one of the group “—for Pete’s sake,” he amended. “If they can’t spot and identify each other across an asteroid field, that’s their problem. Anyway, better to have too many rescuers than too few. I meant did they get the bit about us losing the whole canned O2 system in the explosion and only having ten hours’ worth of air in these suits?”
“Yes, I’m sure they got that part,” Shankweiler said. “I told them twice.”
“I’m sure they know what they’re doing,” Juarez murmured.
“Yeah, one would hope,” Hanford said, eyeing the man more closely. He had the same tension lines in his face as the rest of them, but there was also a strange sort of calmness behind his eyes. Religious stuff, Hanford thought with old reflexive habits of contempt for such things.
Still, paradoxically, he found himself rather envying the man.
“So now what?” Shankweiler asked.
“We shut down the transmitter,” Hanford said, bringing his mind back to the problem at hand. “Leave the receiver and running lights on, but shut down everything else.”
“Except the fans,” Pickering spoke up. “With the reserves gone, circulating the air will help stretch out the available oxygen. The longer we can postpone tapping into our suit supplies, the better.”
“Good idea,” Hanford said. “But if the power levels drop too low, we shut the fans down, too. We need the receivers working in case Phobos or Vanguard needs to talk to us before they get here.” Steeling himself, he turned to the edge of the semicircle. “Chou?”
“No change,” Chou said, her medikit monitor sensor pressed against the side of Gratz’s neck. “Still comatose. I think he’s stable, but—” She shrugged helplessly. “I really can’t tell. Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Hanford soothed. At least getting Gratz into his suit hadn’t killed him. Some of the crew, he knew, had been worried about that happening.
Others, he suspected, had rather hoped for it. An extra suit’s worth of oxygen would help the rest of them stretch out their own survival time. “Stay with him,” he continued. “If he dies…” He looked around the circle, expecting to see some scandalized expressions or at least some guilty ones at the prospect. But there was nothing. Probably the others had already run the numbers on that option themselves.
Maybe more of them were hoping for it than he’d first thought. Maybe all of them were.
He focused on Juarez. No. Not all of them.
But whatever was going to happen, Hanford himself had now done everything he could think to do. Their lives were in the hands of the universe.
Or maybe in the hands of Juarez’s God.
“Okay, spread out,” he ordered. “Shut off everything except receivers, lights, and fans. As soon as you’re done, we’ll meet back here.” He forced a smile. “When the Navy and MPARS arrive, we don’t want them to have to go looking for anyone.”
* * *
“I don’t believe it,” Bertinelli said, peering at the tracking display. “Out in the back end of nowhere—the back end of nowhere in an asteroid belt, for God’s sake—and there are two of us who just happen to be in range for a rescue?”
“It’s not nearly as coincidental as you make it sound,” Davison chided. “Phobos is here because she was specifically tasked with patrolling these less-traveled areas. We’re here because the same less-traveled areas were the logical spot for gunnery exercises on our way to join up with Gryphon Fleet.”
“Are we breaking off, then, Sir?” Metzger asked.
Davison frowned at her. “Breaking off, TO?”
“Breaking off the rescue,” Metzger said. “Phobos is on track to reach Rafe’s Scavenger in plenty of time. And as you said, that’s why she’s out here in the first place.”
“True,” Davison said. “But the miner’s captain has stated he has at least one injured crewman, possibly more, and I’d bet heavily that Vanguard’s sickbay and medical staff are far superior to Phobos’s.”
“Besides, Phobos barely has room for her own crew and supplies,” Bertinelli added. “She certainly won’t have the capacity for taking the miner in tow.”
“We’re taking them in tow, Sir?” Metzger asked, frowning.
“It’s one of our options, yes,” Davison said. “I presume you’ve never known an asteroid miner?”
“Ah…no, Sir, I haven’t,” Metzger admitted.
“Well, I have,” the captain said. “Their businesses run very close to the edge, with a laser-thin margin for error. Even a badly damaged ship is worth something, and bringing Rafe’s Scavenger back might make all the difference to her captain and crew.”
“Not to mention that it would be nice to know how and why their fusion plant failed,” Bertinelli said. “The evaluators can hardly do a proper investigation if we leave the ship drifting.”
“Understood, Sir,” Metzger said. It all sounded so neat and reasonable and aboveboard.
So why did she have the nagging feeling that there was something going on beneath the surface that the captain and XO weren’t saying?
She returned her attention to her station, feeling annoyed with herself. One of the qualities that made for a good tactical officer was a natural suspicion of an enemy’s plans and actions. Sometimes it was hard to turn off that distrust when among friends.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to keep her eyes and ears open.
* * *
Phobos was two hours into her acceleration when a message came through from the MPARS Gryphon Command.
It wasn’t exactly the kind of message Ouvrard had been expecting.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said flatly.
“I wish I was, Ma’am,” Creutz said acidly. “But they sent it twice, and it came through the same way both times. There’s no garble or other mistake.”
“No, I’m sure there isn’t,” Ouvrard growled, peering at the message again.
* * *
To HMS Phobos
From MPARS HQ, Gryphon
HMS Vanguard has been identified in your sector. Vector indicates she is moving to rescue mining ship Rafe’s Scavenger. It would be in the best interest of the service if Phobos was to effect the rescue. Strongly urge you to act accordingly.
* * *
Appended to the brief note was a dump of Gryphon’s latest data on Vanguard’s position and vector, along with her estimated position and time for a zero-zero intercept with the stricken miner.
“So they’re turning it into a race,” she said. “They’re turning a rescue mission into a damn pissing contest between MPARS and the Navy.”
“That would appear to be the case, Ma’am,” Creutz confirmed. “And if the numbers they sent us are accurate, we’re currently in second place.”
Ouvrard chewed at her lip. “Do we have Vanguard on sensors yet?”
“We’ve got her wedge,” Creutz said. “But they’re still out of com range.”
And even if Ouvrard could talk to them, what would she say? That her MPARS bosses had ordered her to beat them to Rafe’s Scavenger, and would they please let her win? What if Vanguard’s captain decided that for the good of his service he had to win?
Ouvrard glowered at the plot. The bitter irony of this whole thing was that under slightly different circumstances the whole conundrum would have been moot. Rafe’s Scavenger was currently outside Manticore-B’s hyper limit, as was Phobos herself. If Vanguard had also been on that side of the limit, she could have made a microjump and been there within minutes of receiving the miners’ distress call. Alternatively, if it had been Phobos’s sister ship Deimos out here on patrol, the situation would again have been easily resolved. Deimos, which had been built from the after half of the bisected Mars, had inherited the battlecruiser’s hyperdrive, the idea being that once both sloops were in service Deimos could hang around outside the hyper limit and render quick aid throughout that area, while Phobos
could stay inside the limit and handle any trouble there.
But Deimos wasn’t here, and Vanguard wasn’t there, and wishes weren’t horses.
“Fine,” she said. “I presume you’ve run the numbers. What’ll it take for us to get there first?”
A muscle in Creutz’s cheek twitched. “We’ll need to run the wedge at eighty-nine percent for the next two hours. At that point we make turnover, and can crank it back down to eighty-three.”
Ouvrard felt her stomach tighten. Eighty-nine percent. Four points outside the standard eighty-to-eighty-five percent that was considered safe operating range for inertial compensators.
Four very crucial, very risky points. Especially with Phobos’s single mistuned impeller ring continuing to stress the hull. At this point pushing past eighty percent would be dangerous enough, let alone going all the way to eighty-nine.
But she had no choice. The message from Gryphon wasn’t officially an order, but she’d been in the service long enough to know how to read between the lines. If she didn’t do everything in her power to win this damn stupid race MPARS Command would praise her on her brave effort, possibly add a commendation into her file, and then quietly take her ship away from her. For the good of the service, of course.
She snorted. MPARS Command be damned. The point wasn’t showing up the Navy, or even obeying oblique instructions. The point was that there was wrecked miner and a group of desperate people out there. The Rafe’s Scavenger survivors might have enough air to wait for Vanguard, but there was at least one injured crewman aboard, maybe more than one, and there was no guarantee how long those injured might live.
And really, at its core, taking risks to save others was what MPARS was all about. It was what Phobos was all about.
It was what Ouvrard was all about.
She looked around, vaguely surprised to see that everyone else on the bridge was looking back at her. She hadn’t realized her musings had taken so much time. “Tyler, set course for Rafe’s Scavenger,” she ordered the helmsman. “Acceleration—” she braced herself “—one point two seven klicks per second squared.”
“Aye, aye, Ma’am,” the helmsman said. His eyes flicked to Creutz, and then he turned back to his board. “Course for Rafe’s Scavenger, acceleration at eighty-nine percent.”
“And may God have mercy on their souls,” Creutz murmured.
“Yes,” Ouvrard murmured back. “And on ours.”
* * *
“Listen up!” Craddock bellowed, his voice cutting through the excited babble in the machine shop. “Yeah, I know you’re all off-duty—deal with it. Fresh assignments: Bowen and Atherton—”
“Is it true we’re on a rescue mission, Chief?” someone called.
“—you’re on the secondary analyzer. We’ve supposedly got the parts to get it functional again—find ’em, and get the thing up and running ASAP. Yarrow and Long: that flutter in the Number Two gravitics display in CIC has spread to two of the others. The flutters are synched, which means there’s some root cause. Find it and fix it. Benson—”
“Come on, Chief, give,” another voice called. “Are we just mooning around, or are we really doing something for a change?”
“Yeah, we’re doing something, Kilgore,” Craddock shot back. “We’re doing our jobs, or we’re getting our butts handed to us. Got that?”
“Yeah, Chief, sure,” Kilgore persisted. “But are we doing something?”
“Oh, for—” Craddock rolled his eyes. “Yes, we’re doing something. Yes, we’re on a rescue mission. Yes, some sand-sifter mining ship’s blown her reactor and the crew’s stinking up their survival suits. Anyone else?” He glanced around, and his glare fell on Travis. “Long, you waiting for a parchment invitation? You and Yarrow get your butts up to CIC. Now: Kilgore—”
“Pretty cool, huh?” Yarrow commented as she and Travis shot down the passageway. “Not that someone’s in trouble, but cool that we get to do something.”
“Yeah,” Travis said, his heart thudding with anticipation. This was what he’d joined the Navy for: the chance to give aid and protection to the Star Kingdom’s citizens.
He just hoped Vanguard was up to the task. Because worse even than not trying was to build up false hopes and then fail.
“You coming?” Yarrow called over her shoulder as she deftly negotiated a corner.
Travis set his teeth. False hopes and failure…but all of that was Captain Davison’s department. All Travis had to do was fix a balky monitor.
That, at least, didn’t come with any false hopes attached. “Just make sure you don’t run somebody down,” he called back to Yarrow. “I’m right behind you.”
* * *
Phobos was midway into turnover, and Ouvrard was rechecking the figures for their upcoming deceleration profile, when the ship ripped herself apart.
It came without warning: a violent rapid-fire series of jolts and twists, punctuated by screams and shouts from the intercom, the whole thing overlaid by the frantic bellow of the emergency klaxons.
The alarm volume had dropped to background intensity by the time Ouvrard managed to untangle herself from the line of overhead monitors she’d been thrown into.
“Report,” she called, the word coming out more as a croak than as a true command.
There was no reply. Blinking to clear her vision, Ouvrard looked around.
The bridge was a disaster zone. Two of the crew were floating limply around the cramped space, bouncing off consoles and monitors as the ship continued to lurch. The rest of the personnel were moving slowly. Clearly conscious, just as clearly dazed.
Well, the hell with that. “Report!” she snarled, putting some teeth into the order this time.
“Fusion plant scrammed,” a voice came from midway down the bridge. It was so distorted by pain that it took Ouvrard a few seconds to recognize it as Creutz’s. “Emergency power and life support are on line. Wedge down. Intercom…reactor room not showing. Sensors…”
“Shuttles?” Ouvrard asked, getting a grip on one of the handholds and pulling herself toward her station. Something blurred into her eye, and she swiped the back of her hand across it, noting the swath of bright red on her sleeve as she brought the hand away.
“They’re not showing either,” Creutz said. “Could be just the sensors are down. The—oh, my God,” he interrupted himself, his voice suddenly horrified.
“What is it?” Ouvrard demanded, pulling herself down into the nearest station and jabbing for a status report.
“The reactor pylon,” Creutz said mechanically. “It snapped. It just snapped.”
“That’s impossible,” Ouvrard countered, the words complete reflex as she pulled up the proper sensor schematics. The pylon connecting the reactor section to the forward part of the sloop was a solid twenty meters in diameter, containing an axial access passageway as well as a pair of heavily shielded, two-meter-diameter plasma conduits. It couldn’t just break. It simply couldn’t.
Only it had.
Ouvrard stared at the display in disbelief, her injuries and even those of her crew momentarily forgotten. The pylon had broken just forward of its midpoint, leaving the two sections of the ship connected only by the slender dorsal bracing line. The pylon and hull forward of the break had been burned black by the explosive release of the plasma jets from their containment conduits. On one of the camera views, she could see a section of the hull still bubbling as it radiated the extra heat into the vacuum. The aft section of the ship was flopping slowly back and forth, the movement threatening to break the final connection and send it drifting away.
Ouvrard had known the hull harmonic from the unbalanced impeller ring was bad. She’d had no idea that it could be this bad.
She took a deep breath, wincing as the lung expansion sent a stab of pain through bruised or cracked ribs. What had happened had happened. Her responsibility now was to what was left of her ship.
Or rather, what was left of her crew. The ship itself, as a ship, no longer existed.
She jabbed the intercom’s broadcast key. “Initiate emergency procedures,” she called toward the mike. A formality, really—anyone aboard who was still alive and functional would already have figured out that part. “Damage control: triage assessment. Medical personnel: full sweep.” She glanced over her shoulder. “And send someone to the bridge,” she added.
She keyed off, wondering dimly if anyone was even out there to hear.
A hand groped across her shoulder to one of the handholds. “God in heaven,” Creutz murmured. “What in hell just happened?”
“Three things,” Ouvrard said. “One: we just lost MPARS’s criminally stupid race to Rafe’s Scavenger. Two: we also just proved that this ship design sucks swamp water. Three: we got an unexpected chance to practice our wrecked ship search-and-rescue techniques.”
“On ourselves,” Creutz said with a shallow sigh. “Aye, aye, Ma’am. I’m on it.” Carefully, he eased toward his station.
“Where are you hurt?” Ouvrard called after him.
“I’m all right, Ma’am,” he replied over his shoulder.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I know,” Creutz said. “I’m moving. Others aren’t. Triage rules say they go first.”
Ouvrard eased a tentative hand against her injured ribs, wincing at the flash of fresh pain. “Very good, Commander,” she said, keying for a damage-assessment schematic. “Carry on.”
* * *
The only really good thing about working in zero-gee, Travis had long since concluded, was that it gave you the ability to turn and twist your body into whatever angle was most convenient for the task at hand.
Still, it remained a bit disconcerting to look up and see the entire CIC crew in their stations hanging above his head.
“Five-mil,” Yarrow said.
Travis returned his attention to the half-open display monitor and handed her the requested wrench. Above and behind him, the CIC hatch slid open, and he felt the ripple of air as someone came into the compartment. “Relieving you, Jones,” a familiar voice said.