by R. M. Meluch
“Not now, Augustus.”
The tac specialist reported sharply, “Sir! Both Spit boats have left Trojan points and are moving toward the LEN ship!”
“Aghani, cease the progress of my boats toward Woodland Serenity or I will space Woodland Serenity.”
Calli’s brows flew high, but she did not protest the threat.
“Calli. Line it up.”
Calli opened the com link. “Fire control. Target Woodland Serenity and stand by shipkillers to go hot.”
“Fire Control. Targeting, aye. Standing by.”
Farragut looked to the com tech. “Any acknowledgment from the LEN?”
“The captain of Woodland Serenity is calling you a terrorist. That’s an acknowledgment, I guess, sir.”
“Calli, are we close enough to hook our Spit boats with our force field?”
Calli relayed the question to Tactical. Received the answer, “Momentarily.”
Calli put Engineering on standby.
Tactical reported, “Sir, both SPT boats have stopped progress toward the LEN vessel Woodland Serenity.”
“Don’t care. Calli.”
“Range,” Calli demanded of Tactical.
“One boat, aye. Now both. Aye.”
A glance to Farragut.
“Hook ’em.”
Calli: “Engineering. Engage force field hook.”
“Engineering, aye. Hook engaging.”
Merrimack’s distortion field extended like a pseudo-pod to enclose SPTs 1 and 2.
“Command. Engineering here. Targets acquired. We got ’em, sir.”
The com tech reported, “Sir, the LEN captain says our force field is preventing them from displacing their people off our spit boats.”
“Well, glory be. How ’bout that?” Farragut breathed, as if the thought never occurred to him before. “Advise Woodland Serenity that I will restore their people to their ship as soon as all of my people are restored to Merrimack.”
The whole command deck could hear the LEN captain’s voice through the com tech’s headset as he pulled it away from his ears: “This is piracy!”
Farragut took up the caller. “I am towing U.S. boats aboard a U.S. ship. What is the basis of your charge?”
“There are LEN personnel on board those spacecraft!”
“Why, yes, there are. They did not ask my permission to board my boats, but there they are. I shall have to ask them why they’re there.”
“You will return my people now.”
“You will be free to collect your personnel pending a head count of my personnel aboard my boats.”
And listened to dead space again.
Import descended in a horrid chill. They can’t deliver. The LEN could not comply, because someone is missing .
Merrimack reeled in her extended force field to bring the patrol boats back to the flight decks, where they were captured, clamped, and hauled inboard to the hangar deck.
When the deck pressurized, the SPT boat hatches opened to a gunpoint welcome by a Marine detachment armed with splinter weapons.
First to disembark down the ramps were the LEN personnel. Stiff. Trying to show umbrage, but could not disguise their fear in the face of all the guns and the determined, angry faces glaring squint-eyed down the barrels. “There has been a misunderstanding.”
“Someone for sure misunderstood something,” a Marine muttered, cheek mashed to his splinter gun’s stock, keeping a bead on the speaker’s forehead. Kept the visitors pinned for the captain’s arrival.
The MPs sent a cadre of dogs aboard the returned SPT boats to sniff for booby traps. Dogs had an uncanny sense for rooting out wrongness.
The captain arrived on deck. Said immediately, “Where is Glenn Hamilton?”
Met silence from the LEN, from his own recovered personnel, who stood at embarrassed, blank-faced attention.
Surprising how a face so open and friendly could turn so frightening so fast. The LEN got a gorgon’s eye view of John Farragut, the ferocity, the deadly energy. He became someone who threw lightning bolts. He roared into the silence: “Where is she?”
Everyone recoiled from the force of it, even his own Marines.
Ambassador Aghani took a breath as if he might speak. But his eyes only searched for somewhere to look other than at the captain’s face. Found only guns and growling dogs.
Glenn Hamilton’s second-in-command, Ensign Kenyon Kent, whom everyone called “Ken Ken,” filled in at last: “We think she escaped, sir.”
Aghani abruptly found his voice. “It’s not like that.”
“Shut up. Brig ’em.” The captain waved an arm at the lot of them.
“Yes, sir,” Colonel Steele acknowledged. “With pleasure.”
As Marines ringed the LEN boarders, Aghani protested, “We are free citizens of Earth!”
“When Glenn Hamilton is free, you’re free. Till then, you’re in my brig. And if that’s the rest of your natural life, then you know where you’re going to die.”
And the deep terror in their eyes struck John Farragut with a fear he did not know he could feel.
They can’t free her. She’s dead.
“You,” Farragut barked at his rescued crew, none too gently. “Proceed to ops and await debriefing.”
He detained Ken Ken out of the unhappy group. “Talk to me. Where’s Glenn?”
“Not sure, Captain,” said Ensign Kent. “When Hamster went planetside to deliver your message to Donner, the LEN came in and took over both boats.”
“How? How did they get aboard?”
Kenyon’s baby smooth cheeks blotched ruddy. “We let ’em aboard. Bagging us was like hunting cows. Come this way? Yeah, sure. Hatch locks. There we are. We were stupid, sir.”
“I see that. What about Glenn?”
“We were locked up, but you know these bulks.” He rapped a thin partition with a bottom-fist. “We overheard them receive Captain Hamilton’s request for displacement back to SPT 1. They signaled Woodland Serenity to yank her up there.”
“They displaced her to the LEN ship?”
“I thought they did, sir. But later—hours later—more LEN came storming aboard SPT 2, ransacked every centimeter, pulled on our faces to make sure we were real. We guessed that meant she got away. And since she’s not here, she’s either doing a really good job of hiding on board the LEN golf ball, or she’s planetside. But, sir, I’m pretty sure they don’t have her.”
“Who turned on the beta twelve code?”
“I did, sir.”
“Then you don’t walk the plank.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Calli!” Farragut called into his com while climbing up the ladder.
“Captain.”
“Scan the planet for Hamster’s com signature.”
“Scan initiated, aye.”
“And have Mo do a full physical workup on our guests. Look for contaminants. Any possible physiological cause for paranoia and delusion. Tell him to make it uncomfortable. And if he finds something, make sure we don’t have it.”
“Understood, sir.”
Farragut arrived in the control room to receive Calli’s report on the search for Hamster. “Her com is not reading. She may have turned off her link to avoid LEN detection.”
But there were other ways to track a crewman. “Locate all displacement collars.”
Calli signaled the supply officer to punch up the inventory. He reported one collar unaccounted for, logged out to the Hamster.
“Where is the collar now?” Farragut demanded.
“It’s . . . not functioning,” Calli reported guardedly.
“You mean she’s not wearing it?”
“No.” That would be a void reading. “We have no reading on it.”
It went without saying that you can’t turn a collar off. To destroy a displacement collar’s locator was to destroy the collar.
“Run the history,” Farragut ordered, pale.
“Running it,” said Calli.
Given that the
collars never turned off, the ship’s sensor log would have a continuous record of the activity of all collars at every moment. It did not take long to isolate the moment that Hamster’s collar ceased to function.
“Last successful displacement logged on collar P240H was from the LEN ship Woodland Serenity to the planet surface forty-two hours ago.”
So Ken Ken had guessed right. Lieutenant Commander Hamilton had managed to escape LEN captivity.
“Last intact location of the collar was on the Arran surface.”
“When did it flat line?”
“Forty-one hours ago.” Calli sounded quite hollow. “In transit.”
Farragut grabbed the signal log to read for himself. The signal for the final abortive displacement had originated from Woodland Serenity. The LEN had tried to retrieve the escapee using only the signal from her collar. They had initiated displacement without a corresponding signal from an LD.
You never, ever displaced a human being without three matching signal sets. The LEN tried to displace Hamster with only two.
“Was Hamster in the collar at the time?” Farragut spoke so quietly Calli scarcely heard him.
“Can’t know, John. Not without the LD confirmation.” Except that no one ever took his collar off while on a planetside mission. It violated procedure.
The LEN had attempted retrieval knowing they had a very poor chance of transporting a human completely intact. And they had failed.
It was a hideous image. Did not help that it had probably been painless.
“Realign Star Sparrows. Arm shipkillers.”
“Positioning missiles, aye.”
“Tag Woodland Serenity.”
Calli relayed the order to fire control. The tags would give Merrimack’s missiles a homing signal. No matter how the target attempted evasion, the missiles would follow the tags. And there was no outrunning Star Sparrows. Star Sparrows were faster than any manned ship and good for light-years.
“Tags away.”
Tactical announced, “Woodland Serenity opening gunports.”
What Woodland Serenity showed was a total of four of the most basic low-bid lances, useful for clearing debris from its path. The LEN had been better shielded in defenselessness. Nothing could save it, should Merrimack fire in anger.
Closed gunports would at least have insured a murder conviction when it was done.
“Target acquired. We have tag lock.”
The com tech: “Sir. The LEN is demanding to know our intentions.”
“Transmit tag signature to Star Sparrows.”
“Fire Control, load firing solution.”
“Firing solution loaded. Fire Control standing by.”
All the officers in the control room looked to Captain Farragut, as the civilian vessel of five hundred souls sat under Merrimack’s guns. Only Calli dared speak.
“Sir? What are our intentions?”
The captain’s blue eyes were white all round, his thoughts loud enough to hear. He raised his hand—like wielding a gavel—and the officers on deck feared what order would come down when the hand should drop.
A nervous pronouncement from the com tech: “I have a com sig.” And to the captain’s white-hot glare, he clarified, “Com signature from planetside.”
Farragut’s voice came out strangled, “Glenn’s?”
The tech answered carefully, “It’s Lieutenant Commander Hamilton’s com. Someone just switched it on.”
And immediately followed a hail on the captain’s direct link. Farragut yelled into the back of his hand, “Glenn!”
For a moment the world stood still. Waiting for whom he would hear on the other end of this link.
Glenn Hamilton’s clear soprano, “Captain! Lieutenant Commander Hamilton. Beta twelve. Repeat, beta twelve.” Hostage code.
“Beta twelve secured here. I have both Spits,” Farragut assured her quickly, still shouting. “Do you have beta twelve?” Are you a hostage?
“No, sir. Not me. The Spit boats are beta twelve.”
“We’ve secured them. Are you in danger?”
“No, sir. I’m fine, sir. Hungry. I can’t eat the food.”
At last Farragut remembered to breathe. “Is there an LD near you?”
“Yes. I’m in Donner’s shack.” The Archon’s palace. “But I don’t have a collar. I took mine off so the LEN couldn’t trace me. Now I can’t find it anywhere. . . .”
The Star Sparrows were recalled, the tags extinguished.
John Farragut logged out a displacement collar for himself and one with which to retrieve Glenn Hamilton from the planet surface. He issued orders for his LEN detainees to be restored to Woodland Serenity without standing trial for piracy, though he still insisted on a full physical examination, unable to believe that such insanity could be naturally occurring.
He gave orders to the chief to resupply Merrimack’s oxygen from the planet’s atmosphere, and to bring the ship’s pressure back up to Arran sea level.
As he collected food from the ruins of the galley, the blue-white planet Arra hung overhead in the starry space that showed through the chewed-out hull. The bright image twinkled through the force field.
And to his shadow, Augustus, Farragut asked, “Why aren’t you debriefing my Spit crews with Colonel Steele?”
Augustus snapped a displacement collar around his own neck. “I will review the flattop’s inquiry when he is done.”
The patterner could plug into the data bank and take in the whole session in the blink of an eye. “Sitting through a Q and A in real time is like sucking a frozen milkshake through a coffee stirrer. And it was vastly more interesting watching you skewer your dignity over another man’s wife.”
No pretending not to understand. The captain looked chagrined. His big shoulders hunched a bit. “Wouldn’t be the first man to do that.”
“First one to threaten to blow up a civilian vessel with five hundred live bodies on board.”
Farragut offered no comment.
“A question for the captain.”
As if refusal would shut Augustus up. Farragut waved him to go ahead.
“Were you bluffing?”
“You tell me, Augustus.”
“Either you are a much better poker player than I ever imagined, or else you’re psychotic.”
When Augustus did not continue that thought to a final conclusion, Farragut demanded, “Well?”
“I don’t want to play poker with you,” said Augustus.
Farragut frowned. Confessed, “I wanted them dead.”
Augustus dismissed that lightly. “Of course you did. But fantasy is fantasy and reality is reality. You would not have killed five hundred people to avenge one. You won’t even break honor and orders to sleep with your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“But it was embarrassingly obvious to all hands in the control room that that detail had nothing to do with the wanting of it.”
Till now, John Farragut naively thought he had kept that card close to his chest.
Once upon a time he had talked to Glenn a lot. Back when she was a lieutenant on his watch. She and he had bounced ideas off each other, argued, laughed. Hamster had a sneaky sense of humor and she could rope you in before you knew you’d been had. Because little Glenn Hamilton was married, Captain Farragut had not felt that primitive need to impress her, and she was not his type anyway. She was just a guy.
Then one day he’d been out here in the Deep End too long and he had to remind himself that she was just a guy. A really pretty, good-smelling guy.
And that day Hamster came into command of the middle watch.
“You did manage to make a complete idiot of yourself over a married woman,” said Augustus. “A subordinate, no less. A Mrs. Hamilton, no less.”
Farragut gave a kind of pout. Lifted blue eyes in appeal, “A complete idiot?”
“Absolute.”
The grin was boyish. “No use doing anything halfway, hey?”
They were in t
he displacement chamber by now. They took places over two disks. The tech coordinated signals among collar and displacement disk and landing disk. Green lights.
Farragut gave the nod to the technician. “Let’s do this.” And the ship vanished before his eyes.
A wilted Hamster greeted her captain with a smart salute, giving way to a wilted smile when he bid her stand down and presented her with two fragrant bags of food.
“Mo said you should eat this.” The first bag held a carton of nutrient broth with harmless crackers on the side. “I brought you this.”
Hamster melted around the smell of the second warm bag. Trembling hands unwrapped a big sloppy burger. “Marry me,” said Glenn and bit into the burger. Groaned in ecstacy.
“Um . . . aren’t you married?”
“Actually, here, I’m not.” She talked with her mouth full. “I learned a couple of Myriadian customs. I am ‘committed’ but not ‘married’ because I haven’t consummated the pairing.”
“This is probably not information I ought to have,” said Farragut.
Hamster covered her mouth and laughed. “It’s not a consummated Myriadian marriage without offspring.”
“Ah.”
They were outside, under the clouded stars, in a park-like area planted with flowering trees and laced with flat stone walkways that meandered around ornamental ponds and little oases of stone carvings—votives or gravestones or art, who could tell?
Though they need not fear Myriadian surveillance—the Myriadians did not know English—Augustus made a quick sweep of the garden for LEN devices.
When he pronounced the area clear, Hamster lost her smile. “I’m sorry, John. I lost it. I never saw it coming. I—Break me.” She pulled off her lieutanant commander’s pips and offered them.
Farragut would not take her insignia. “Save it till after the inquiry. I don’t think anyone will sanction you for being taken in by insane allies. Just tell me—if I hadn’t showed up when I did, what were you going to do?”
She shrugged. “I was putting one foot in front of the other. I only got as far as step one—escape. I was going to be back in control of the Spit boats by the time you returned. And it was going to be brilliant. Really.”
“Should I go away and come back?”
Glenn gave an abashed smile, “If you don’t mind.”