by Peter Telep
Realizing that an argument would only waste time, Blair staved off his anger and shifted inside. "Karista?" he called back. "I need your help."
After making sure that the woman and child had found the crew cabin jump seats, Blair nervously tripped and banged his way to the bridge, where his trembling fingers drummed on touchpads at the helm and navigation stations. He swiveled a pair of screens closer and watched data bars flood and scroll with ship's status reports. Emergency warm-up and pre-flight in progress.
"What do want me to do?" Karista said, staring at the foreign landscape of flashing displays.
"Just get in that seat," Blair said, gesturing to the copilot's chair to starboard. "Panel there marked life support. Activate, select diagnostic, vital systems only."
She sat, lifted a hand. "Uh, okay."
"Hey, Merlin. I need you, too."
The old man coalesced from the flash of his activation and paced along the top of the navigation console. " Now I know how it is, Christopher. You only call when you want me to pick locks or when you're about to be atomized. You wouldn't just like to hang out some time and, as they say, shoot the breeze? No. I'm just a tool, a holographic helot."
"A what? Forget it. We'll talk about this later. Right now I need you to link to ship's systems. Monitor diagnostics and give the commands for emergency repairs as needed."
"Why do you need me for that? You can-"
Blair sprang from his seat.
"Where are you going?" Karista asked.
"This means a lot to him," Blair said, holding up Paladin's cross. "He's not coming back."
"And neither will you if you go after him."
"I owe him."
He ducked and wound his way toward the hold, feeling a definite rumble pass through all one hundred tonnes of the old errant.
"Attention. Ship will reach PNR velocity in three minutes."
An almost deafening discord filtered in from the open hatch. Troopship turbines warbled over the cursing, the shouting, the moans. As Blair drew closer, he saw that Maniac had backed himself up to the hatchway and now waved his pistol at a wall of fifty, sixty, maybe seventy-five Pilgrims, their faces burnished an angry red. "Let me out," Blair said.
Maniac ignored him, his attention commanded by the mob. " I will shoot!"
"Let us on, you bastard!" someone clamored. "You've got more room on this errant! The troopships are full! Don't let us die here!"
A round ricocheted off the hull, missing Maniac's shoulder by a finger's length.
"That's it," Maniac said, then ducked back into the hold and slapped his hand on the interior ramp control.
Seven or eight Pilgrims jumped onto the gangway as it angled up, hydraulics groaning under the added weight.
"Get off," Blair shouted. "It'll crush you."
A teenage boy and a heavyset woman of forty or so managed to pull their arms and legs completely onto the ramp and came sliding into the ship. Three more rioters slipped off and fell back into the crowd. Another two met the same fate, but the last man, a muscular blonde of about twenty, got his hands caught in the ramp as it began to seal into the hull. Blair looked away as the Pilgrim shrieked, bones crunched, and the severed appendages thumped to the deck.
Maniac jammed his pistol into the teenage boy's head. "You're going back out." Then he aimed at the lady. "So are you."
"Captain's quarters are back there," Blair told the two Pilgrims. "Get in and strap down."
"We got no reason to save them," Maniac said, so enraged that he nearly foamed at the mouth. He turned the pistol on Blair.
And for a moment, Blair felt the same. Here they were, saving four strangers, when Santyana and his family and the commodore were still out there. But how would those two get past the mob? Maybe Paladin could escape on the captain's launch. Maybe Santyana could catch a lift on one of the troopships in the forward deck.
That won't happen. You know that. You just want to make yourself feel better about abandoning them. You are abandoning them. And maybe it was fate that these four strangers got on board. Don't question it. Just go. Do the job.
More gunfire pinged off the sealed hatch. Footsteps rattled from the overhead.
"Christopher?" Merlin called, perched on the ramp's control. "Pre-flight is complete. Diagnostics complete. Impulse engines answering to commands. We're good to go, but I count nineteen Pilgrims on our hull. Two are trying to destroy our communications array. I should also point out that there is no response from the flight control officer; therefore, there is no flight order, and I've failed to locate the deck boss."
"Attention. Ship will reach PNR velocity in two minutes."
"So what about these two?" Maniac asked, leering at the boy and woman.
"We don't have time to lose them."
"You bastards are lucky. That's all I can say." Maniac spun back toward the corridor and small hatchway leading to the bridge. "Two minutes. Shit. Blair? You coming or what?"
"Go strap in," Blair repeated to their new passengers, then bounded after Maniac.
Save yourself.
Maybe I don't even want to anymore.
Santyana… Paladin… they're going to lose their lives. And for what? Does Aristee really know what she's done here? So many people have died… will die. It doesn't seem real.
Back on the bridge, Blair settled in at the helm and engaged the engines. Maniac had replaced Karista in the copilot's chair, and Blair motioned that she strap in at the navigator's seat behind them.
After the usual jolt, the Diligent rose off her landing skids, and Blair brought her around. The flight deck's environmental maintenance field panned into view.
"Most of the Pilgrims on our hull are jumping off," said Merlin, now standing atop Blair's console and facing the forward viewport. "But the two near the comm array are still up there."
"Let 'em stay there," Maniac said. "The energy field will waste 'em."
Two Broadsword bombers nearly collided as they flew abreast and blasted through the curtain. Three Rapiers bucked wildly from their berths and chopped their way through the bombers' turbulence. Two of those fighters swept through the field, but the third dipped too low and crashed nose-on into the angle where curtain met deck. Fuel ignited. Orange flames balled and erupted toward the overhead, flanked by steles of swirling black smoke- even as another pair of fighters plunged through the fire and escaped.
Resigned to the fact that no other ship would yield, Blair increased thrust, steered them onto the runway, then punched the bank of afterburners for launch.
Twin streaks of durasteel stole into view as two more Rapiers fled the deck, their pilots giving Maniac some competition for reckless flying.
Fifty meters. Twenty. Ten. The energy curtain abruptly wrapped the merchantman in an opaque blanket that as rapidly yielded to the gray, rectangular launch tunnel.
"Christopher?"
"Wait, Merlin!"
They cleared the tunnel, and never in his life had Blair been more glad to see an unremarkable field of stars. He felt suddenly cradled in their light-
Until the well extended one of its gravitic tentacles and slapped it on the merchantman. The engines quaked against the force, the bulkheads broke into their creaks of protest, and the velocity gauge began racing backward.
"C'mon, honey, you've done this before," Blair muttered. He glanced at an aft camera display showing the Olympus encompassed by the black pool. Small explosions blotted her port ion engine, and still more fighters fled from her bowels.
"If we can't escape the well, can you jump it?" Maniac asked. "Can you do your Pilgrim thing?"
"I don't know."
"Christopher?" Merlin cried, this time sounding more urgent.
"For God's sake, what is it?"
"I think we're going to-"
Everyone fell forward.
"— break free of the well."
Maniac howled in triumph.
"Did we make it?" Karista asked.
"Not yet," answered Merlin. "First we ha
ve to-"
"Take down the six bandits on our ass," Maniac finished. "Bearing four-four-one by three-three-five. Didn't the old man tell 'em we surrendered?" He rechecked the radar scope. "Great. Six more riding the rear."
"Get up to the ion gun," Blair said. "Merlin? See if you can get them on the comm. And try to hail Commodore Taggart. Maybe he got out."
Even as Maniac threw off his straps and stood, neutron fire raked its way from amidships to the bow, and Blair watched the shield level indicators drop into the red.
"Well, I've hailed those Rapiers three times," Merlin reported. "No response. And it's clear that every vessel that leaves the Olympus is a target. Our registration and Confederation ID code lack validity since this ship might have been captured by Pilgrims."
"Then contact the Tiger Claw. Get us an assist."
"Christopher, you're assuming these fighters aren't from the Claw."
"Well, are they?"
"As a matter of fact they're from the Fosubius battle group. But I don't think that makes a difference now."
"Just contact the Claw."
With that, Blair seized the control wheel and drove it toward the console, diving twenty, thirty, forty-five degrees as Maniac, up in the gunner's nest, hurled back the first of their retaliatory volleys. Four of the Rapiers buzzed overhead, their thrusters flickering as they looped back to begin another strafe.
Blair knew the math, and the math sucked. The Diligent's maximum velocity peaked out at one hundred and fifty KPS, while the Rapier pilots could propel themselves up to three times as fast, and the fighters were, of course, more maneuverable and better armed.
He suddenly remembered a line Paladin was fond of, a line from a story called "The Open Boat," written six centuries ago by a fellow named Stephen Crane: "When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples."
"Request denied, Commander. Your squadron will maintain position. You will not engage. Gerald out." It's all about politics now, Angel thought.
Gerald couldn't order her to attack other Confederation fighters. Never mind the fact that those pilots were killing Pilgrims trying to surrender. Never mind the fact that those pilots had provoked the Pilgrims into battle. Never mind the fact that Paladin and Blair could be on any one of those fleeing ships…
"Got a Proxima Errant on my scope," Bishop reported. "Looks like the Diligent, Commander. She's under attack."
Sorry, Mr. Gerald. Court-martial me later. "We're out of here, ladies. Fluid four to the Diligent. Break and attack on my mark, clearing zone and falling in to escort positions."
"Uh, ma'am, are you asking us to fire upon Confederation pilots?" Cheddarboy asked.
Bishop guffawed. "No, boy, she's askin' us out to lunch."
"Commodore Taggart may very well be aboard that merchantman," Angel told Cheddarboy. "Those pilots don't seem to care about that."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Burn on my mark," she instructed. "Three, two, one. Burn!"
Hurled forward by full afterburners, Angel braced herself and skimmed each of her displays. Gerald's wonderful mug snapped on the left VDU, which she summarily snapped off, imagining his you're-abandoning-your-post-and-if-you-do-not-return-blah-blah-blah rant that meant absolutely nothing to her at the moment.
She led the other five pilots toward that merchantman, opening her mouth a little as she saw it dive and fall under the relentless cannon fire of a dozen trailing fighters. Someone manned the ion gun, swiveling in an abortive effort to track the attackers. The operator finally got off a shot that sheered off a Rapier's wing and punched it into a spiraling climb.
"Here we go, ladies," she began, then kissed her career goodbye. "Break and attack!"
Bishop and Hunter responded immediately, peeling away and booting off guided missiles.
Although Cheddarboy and Gangsta hesitated a second, they pledged themselves to Angel by showering two of the Rapiers with concentrated blasts of neutron fire.
The veteran Sinatra banked hard and came around on the Diligent's six o'clock to simultaneously launch two dumbfire missiles at nearly point-blank range. No, he hadn't directed his fire at the merchantman, but at two Rapiers whose pilots were obviously too intent on their strafe. They flew in a tight pair, just a couple of meters off each other's wings.
"Ouch," Sinatra said dryly as the two fighters vaporized in a rolling carpet of contiguous explosions.
Another Rapier sliced across Angel's cone of fire, and she banked on a wall of vacuum to follow. A guided missile veered after the Rapier, accelerated at the last second, then jammed itself up the fighter's port exhaust cone. She grimaced as sophisticated machinery became scorched scrap metal. Then the strange absence of blips on her radar scope drew her attention. Six blue dots appeared on the display, with a quartet of enemy contacts shifting off to port.
"The rest are buggin'," Gangsta said. "Descending to escort position."
"All of you shift to escort." Angel turned on a wing and thundered off to catch up with the merchantman. She opened a comm channel, general frequency. "Angel to Diligent, copy."
Blair appeared on her Visual Display Unit, and suddenly his absence felt more like years than weeks. He looked somewhat leaner, his face more haggard, more lined, his hair a little longer than she preferred. What was with that robe? And hadn't he lost his Pilgrim cross? "Commander," he said stiffly. "Lieutenant Marshall and I have five civilians on board."
"Marshall's alive?"
The blond jock shoved Blair away from the camera. "Lieutenant Todd 'Maniac' Marshall back from the dead, ma'am!"
"You would've liked your memorial service, Maniac. Lot of women were there. What did you do? Score with half the crew?"
"Those days are behind me."
"Really."
"Is Zarya with you? I can't find her private channel."
"Commander?" Bishop said, breaking into the link. "Check out the supercruiser."
Angel looked to starboard, where nearly a kilometer away the grand capital ship seemed to cower before the faceless black head of the well.
"Hey, Commander? I asked you a question," Maniac said. "Is Zarya with you?"
Blair pulled up a telescopic image of the supercruiser. He held his breath as she soared at Point of No Return velocity toward a gravitic winter storm consuming thousands of metallic leaves. Its power ghastly, breathtaking, even beautiful, the gravity well marked an ebony dimple in a sheet of space otherwise illumined by Earth's pale blue glow.
"She cut the transmission," Maniac cried, scowling from the copilot's chair. "You believe that? I think something's happened to Zarya."
"The Olympus has reached the jump point," Merlin said. "In about five seconds it'll tear apart just like that Snakeir we baited into Scylla. And still no word from Commodore Taggart. I'm continuing to hail on all frequencies." He cocked a thumb back at the viewport. "Our capital ships are opening tubes. If the well doesn't get the Olympus, the torpedoes will."
Scores of white lines stretched from the string of Confederation ships and crossed each other's trajectories in a patchwork of residue that needled on toward the supercruiser. So startling was the image of the well, the fleeing ship, and the horde of pursuing torpedoes that Blair had trouble watching.
Paladin's not on board. He's not.
The Olympus began pulsating with light, as though waves of gravity lapped at her bending and coruscating hull. Her wedge-shaped bow seemed to tuck itself in, and her mountainous superstructure began to flatten toward her antimatter guns, as though she shied from the enormity of her fate.
And then…
… with a blinding flare that enveloped her from bow to stern…
She jumped the well and vanished. Blair stared dumbstruck at his display. "They jumped."
"They what?" Maniac asked.
"They jumped. They weren't tor
n apart. They jumped the goddamned well."
"Son of a bitch! Taggart lied to us! The bastard lied!"
EPILOGUE
SOL SECTOR.TERRA QUADRANT.PLANET EARTH.CS CONCORDIA.
2654.130.0800 HOURS CONFEDERATION STANDARD TIME
Blair and Maniac stood at parade rest in the Concordia's wardroom. They had been debriefed by Captain Gerald back on the Tiger Claw, had submitted their After Action Reports to Admiral Tolwyn only a few hours prior, and had just completed a verbal defense of those reports to the admiral, to Commodore Bellegarde, and to Space Marshal Gregarov. The questions had been probing, and many had concerned Paladin. Blair had repeatedly felt the need to qualify his answers, but Belle-garde or Gregarov would lean forward in their chairs and cut him off before he could fully explain. It seemed that at least two of his inquisitors had already condemned the commodore. As had Maniac.
Blair had insisted that his wingman remain as unbiased as possible and only report the facts-which Maniac had done until the concluding paragraph of his report, wherein he offered his own scathing critique of Paladin's actions. Worse still, Maniac had refused to show Blair the report before submitting it, and only during the meeting had Blair learned of the incendiary notes. Blair decided that once they were outside in the corridor, he would throttle Maniac to within a heartbeat of his life, then tear him that new breathing hole he had promised while back on the Olympus.
"Well, then, lieutenants. Do you have anything to add?" Tol-wyn's gray eyes wore a noticeable sheen, and while the admiral had carefully guarded his tone during most of the meeting, his words now rang sullenly.
"No, sir," Maniac replied.
Blair cleared his throat. "Sir, since you have accepted Lieutenant Marshall's report, which contains his opinion of Commodore Taggart's character, I respectfully request a moment to offer my own observations."
"We're concerned with the facts, Mr. Blair. Nothing more."
"I know that, sir. And I understand that you might consider my opinion biased because I'm half Pilgrim, but I deserve an opportunity to speak."
Gregarov raised a hand at Tolwyn. "Go ahead, Lieutenant."