The moment I’m done, I push back and stare at the latticework of glowing welds. It’ll take hours for it to cool without any atmosphere to suck the heat away. Only then do I notice Henna is still watching. I’d thought she was already gone. It must be damned uncomfortable in that nasty-ass radiation suit.
“I think you make a better welder than a boxer,” she says as she pushes open the airlock hatch.
I kick off and glide into the hatch. Henna pulls herself inside and seals the hatch. A second later, the tone sounds and the inner hatch opens.
I step out backward and pull Henna along with me. Her face shield is totally opaque, only a camera admitting any light through.
“Jager…”
That camera is focused firmly over my shoulder.
I release her grip and spin my suit.
There, clasped on to a bulkhead, is Captain Magnus Hallverson. His face is tight, like he hasn’t eaten in weeks. His salt-and-pepper hair now closer to all salt with just a bit of black. But his eyes, good God, they are intense. Life burns inside of him.
I snap open my face shield.
“Well done, Mr. Jager,” his voice grates. A wicked smile cracks upon his face. “Now you know how it feels. Now, Karl, now you’re one of us.”
I stare into those intense eyes and know deep in my heart what he means.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Hallverson eats in front of me, a heaping bowl of what looks like oatmeal but is just reconstituted carbo paste. He’s ravenous; the spoon is no sooner out of his mouth than he shovels more in. Only once does he look up, and then the pace slows.
Just watching him eat makes my stomach rumble. We are down to about 1,100 calories a day now. Even Winkelman’s uniform is loose as a tent.
I watch and wonder what the future holds. The Orca is slowly coming back together, but she isn’t much of a fighting ship. Not any longer. Not after what I did to her.
Is Hallverson pissed? He doesn’t seem it. But I hold myself back from any questions or comments. No need to walk into a steel trap.
He pushes the empty bowl away and wipes his face with a blue surgical cloth. “That’s the worst part, it really is. The doctor plumbed me with an IV feed line, but the hunger is…hmm, exquisite.”
I look away from him and stare over at his bunk. Near it is all sorts of medical equipment, along with a cot nearby.
“You did good, Karl.”
I look up at him. Nothing about this op felt good. Colby is dead
Hallverson stands slowly and stretches his back out. One hand cradles his skull, and he squeezes all along his scalp as if massaging his brain.
“I watched the feeds this morning. Given the circumstances, I’d have done about the same. The little trick coming into system was clever. I bet that kept them guessing.”
A slight smile grows on my face. I like clever. I thought I liked a stout punch and three rounds in the ring, but clever…that is a different sort of fun.
My smile fades. Colby.
Hallverson sees it, that look of loss. He reaches a hand out and lays it on my shoulder. It’s the most paternal thing he’s ever done to me. In that moment, I truly feel one of the Orca.
I sob quietly, and he says nothing. Him being there is enough. He shares my grief.
“The Orca doesn’t have much fight left in her,” he says. “Once we’re secured to bounce, we’ll make our way back to ConFed space and retire her.”
I can’t bear that thought. “But they can refit her, really, I saw what those fitters—”
“No, no, she’s taken more than her share of licks. You can’t keep fixing scars. And, Karl…”
I look up. He releases my shoulder and sits on the edge of his bunk, amid the scattered medical equipment.
“I’m dying.”
He says it like it’s a passing remark. Like it’s just a statement of fact. No emotion at all.
“What?” I try to wipe away a tear, but they just keep coming.
He beckons around the room. “We can traverse the stars, harvest the power of the sun, fight wars against each other, but we can’t fix a tumor in my brain.”
I swallow hard simply because I don’t know what to say. What can I say?
“The tumor is pressing on a section of my brain that triggers the flashbacks.” He lays his palms out before him and stares down at his hands.
“I’m sorry.”
Hallverson nods without looking up. “All I ever wanted was revenge. Now, though, I’ve run out of time.”
The two of us sit and listen to the sounds of the Orca around us. Pipes still gurgle. Breakers still flip. Crew still walk the halls. It seems a stark reminder that the wounded Orca will die along with Hallverson. Like some sort of Viking funeral ritual.
“We’re taking a wormhole out,” Hallverson says.
I snap my eyes up. “There’s no such thing.”
Hallverson looks back at me with a knowing smile. “Then let’s go to the bridge.”
I follow after him (but not before wiping my face thoroughly) and take my usual spot beside him. It feels odd to not have the chair to myself. The Orca was mine, for a little while, for better or for worse.
Hallverson leans over and keys up the Engineering comms. “Send up Engineer Henna, please.”
I say, “Sir, with the condition of the cloaking system, I’m not sure we can get more than one or two cloaks in.”
“Two.” Hallverson nods. “Which means there’s no way we can make it back the way we came. So instead we’ll take the same way out that we did after the Doolittle raid.”
“But—”
Hallverson raises a hand up. “There’s no such thing as wormholes. And for the most part, you’re right.”
“For the most part?”
“They are…hmm, unstable. Violent would be a better description. Once we reach the edge of the system, we’ll try and generate one and bring us back into ConFed space.”
I stare at him with my mouth open. Wormholes. “Why the hell didn’t we just use those all the time?”
“Because of the inherent violence within. They are restrained chaos, we think. After that Doolittle raid, there were a half-dozen ships that transited through the wormhole. We were the only one that made it through.”
“Is that a good idea?” One in six odds isn’t all that great.
“Would you prefer to ask the Tyroleans for safe passage?” He raises an eyebrow as if that is even a plausible idea.
Henna comes on the bridge and reports to the captain. She looks dog tired, worn right through, and still manages to wear fresh grease stains on the front of her coveralls.
Hallverson looks her over with only a slight hint of displeasure on his face. “Colby normally set this up, but it’ll be your duty now. We’re engaging a secondary drive. Monitor the reactor and maintain power output at all costs.”
Henna’s eyes flash up at me and then back to Hallverson. “Secondary drive?”
Hallverson bares his teeth in a grin. “We’re taking a wormhole home, Ms. Henna. Now, we’ve got no time to waste.”
We bounce half a dozen times toward nowhere. Every time, our fuel reserves are taxed even more. But, as Hallverson said, this is it.
The Orca will come in right on the edge of ConFed space. However the wormhole works, it exits about the same spot if you come from this sector of space.
“Why don’t we just pour missiles through the wormhole and hammer the Tyrolean worlds?”
Hallverson looks up from the star plot and peers up at me. “Because then the Tyroleans would learn that we have something they don’t. Eventually they’d trace it, and then we’d end up dealing with them in the same fashion. Only rarely do we use this method, and only on the return trip.”
It makes sense, but by God, it sure seems like one hell of a way to travel.
Finally, we bounce far enough from the core of the system. We are back out in the land of stray hydrogen and bits of drifting comet.
Hallverson steps down from his chair an
d climbs into the astrogation station. He keys up a few menus and leans forward to give an optical scan. The computer decides he is, in fact, the captain, and brings forth an entirely new display.
I watch it all but have no idea what I’m looking at. It doesn’t look anything like a standard star plot.
“Could Yao have done this?” I ask.
Hallverson shakes his head. “Captains only.”
That isn’t terribly reassuring. But hey, this is it, the home stretch. It hits me about then. We’ll be out of hostile space and back into the frontier. There’ll be fleet assets, escorts, hell, maybe even a good old-fashioned bar. I need one drink to go with the other dozen I plan on drinking.
I wonder if Henna will join me?
Hallverson speaks in a low, even voice. “Henna, regulate the incoming power, modulate to under 1 percent ripple. Good, good.”
His voice trails on in a stream of consciousness as he tweaks variables and requests changes through the ship. Torpedomen move aft. The center of the ship is vented. Henna moves up different power levels until we are right on the edge of what the ship can take.
The bridge is silent. It doesn’t feel like any of us are breathing. The others all know what to expect; I’m too ignorant to know how screwed we could be. One in six. I’ll take those odds.
“Mr. Jager,” Hallverson says slowly, “prepare weapons plots, but don’t so much as twitch unless we have verified hostiles. There’ll be a massive minefield and a few cruisers waiting for us. Understood?”
“Understood.”
Hallverson turns back to the console and looks to be a smaller man. His shoulders hunch over; one hand shakes with the slightest tremble. As he turns to look at me, I see a face that is marked by time, sorrow, loss, pain. Gone is the tyrant, the madman. In his place is a middle-aged man on his way to die.
“This is it for me. My tour will be done once we get back. I—” Hallverson sighs and wipes his face. “I tried too long to avenge them.”
“You did well, Captain. They’d be proud.”
He doesn’t look proud; he looks sad. “Engineering. Are you ready?”
“Aye aye, reactor is ready. What can I expect?” comes the reply over the ships comm. Henna’s voice is solid, sure; she’s in the zone.
“Massive fluctuations and feedback. Just keep the reactor at full power. We go in three, two, one.”
Hallverson gently lays a hand down on the console.
It’s about then I wonder if I should be hanging on, or strapped in, or in a full radiation suit. The external display shows a starscape that suddenly shifts. Inside the Orca, the lights flicker and throb—at first high, then low, then they drift back to normal.
I’d have never known anything was different except for the way the starscape looks. It’s like peering into another section of space, like a viewscreen to somewhere different. A dusty gas giant hangs in space like an old toy ball; it was definitely not there before.
The Orca slides ahead slowly with the slightest acceleration. The reactor barely budges; we are venting cold gas instead of pushing it through the thrusters. It’s a terribly wasteful way to accelerate the ship.
“I hope your friend is on her game today,” Hallverson says with a slight tremor. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard fear in his voice.
The window into another place approaches. It feels odd thinking of it as a real wormhole.
The ship groans. Static electricity tingles everywhere. The corners of the walls take on an odd phosphorescence as the static coalesces into some strange version of Saint Elmo’s fire.
Hallverson engages the external camera. The screen above me shows the battered wreck that is the Orca. Had I not known better, I’d have thought her a dead and drifting hulk. The corrosion from the cloaking gas is terrible, especially on top of the fresh wounds and old scars.
I feel the same way the Orca looks.
The Orca slides into that window. The line of Saint Elmo’s fire erupts on the outside of the hull. Balls of lightning shiver and dance. The man at the weapons station cries out and crosses himself in the old Tsarist style.
“More power!” Hallverson yells.
We slide farther into that gaping maw of electricity and violence. The more we push, the more intense that electrical storm grows. The balls of light merge and coalesce into greens and yellows and blues. It’s a kaleidoscope that seems to tear us right apart.
“Divert backups!” Hallverson yells louder. “Pour it all in!”
“It is all in!” Henna yells back, her voice riddled with static.
The hull reverberates in a high-pitched tremor, like it’s being struck by a tuning fork. I feel it in my bones, through my legs, in my gut.
My eyes snap back to the display. Almost the entire Orca ripples with electricity. It’s a foam of terrible intensity as lightning and plasma dance, all seeking a way to get in.
“How much more can it take?” I call out. Afraid? Fuck yeah. I’ve never seen anything like this.
Hallverson sits back suddenly and claps his hands together. “Hah!”
I exhale and grab on to the rail to steady myself. The electrical storm is gone. All of the corrosion is cleaned right off. Only bare metal shines out, and we glitter in the glow of a new, distant star.
We made it.
“Well, Mr. Jager, Ms. Henna did an exceptional job.” Hallverson stands and hobbles past me on shaky legs. I catch a glimpse of his face, and he looks beyond worn, like a tool resharpened beyond the temper. Now after every use, it’s into that soft steel.
Our sensors struggle to resolve through the ebbing electrical storm. Violence was definitely the right way to describe it. It seems there’s an enormous potential energy gap between the wormhole entrance and exit, and the Orca herself had to transit that load. Or, rather, our reactor did.
“Sir,” the communications station operator, Opolov, calls. “Comms contact.”
Hallverson plops into the captain’s chair and gives him an offhand wave. “Let’s hear it.”
“Orca, this is the destroyer Coral Bay. Hold position. You’re in the midst of a minefield. We’ll escort you out.”
“Destroyer?” Hallverson mumbles.
“Do you have ordnance?” Coral Bay calls.
I look at Hallverson and nod. “Four left.”
“Three,” Hallverson corrects me.
I’ve forgotten that one is always for the Queen.
“Coral Bay, we have ordnance remaining, but we are severely damaged. We’d like an escort out,” Hallverson replies.
Slowly our sensors come online. A single destroyer, the Coral Bay, is slowly moving through an invisible field of very explosive mines.
“Coral Bay, where’s the rest of the defensive ships?” Hallverson says. He leans forward and studies the viewscreen.
“Orca, Admiral Klaus led the Sixth Fleet into the frontier while the Eleventh Fleet and the Ninth Fleet did a pincer movement. The Tyroleans are trapped and trying to escape.” I can hear the excitement in the man’s voice. “We’ve got them, Orca. They’re trapped. All ships are trying to keep them contained.”
Hallverson stands slowly, his eyes fixed on the viewscreen. Then he looks up as if in prayer. “What of the White Queen?”
“Orca, she’s with them. That damned dirty bitch is with them.”
I turn and look at Hallverson. Gone is the tint of age, the patina of wear; he’s rehardened into a tool of vengeance. His eyes burn with the same sparkle that threatened to consume the Orca as it came through the wormhole.
“Where! Where? Where’s the Queen?” Hallverson bellows. He steps closer to the viewscreen.
“Orca, they’ve got them trapped in the Good Hope system.”
Hallverson grins. “Hurry up, Coral Bay! Good God, man, there’s no time to waste!”
The crew looks at Hallverson. Some with fear, some with excitement, some in awe. This is the moment they’ve hoped for. The moment they’ve all worked for. Years of toil, danger, and death. All to get one thin
g. Revenge.
Hallverson picks up a slender microphone and keys up the shipwide comm. The old whistle sounds throughout, and he speaks with a wicked grin on his face.
“Now, now, I say, is our moment of deliverance. Three of our fleets have trapped the Tyrolean fleet along with the White Queen. Now is our time! Make all stations ready! We’ll resupply along the way. Our revenge is at hand.”
I feel my heart slip. Just moments before, we were on our way home. Now, though, now we’re off to hunt the Queen.
“Take the bridge, Mr. Jager,” Hallverson says as he leaps off the captain’s platform with a youthful vigor. “I’m off to speak with the torpedomen. It’s time to prep that charge.” He flashes me one last grin. “The hunt is on.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
There’s blood in the water. The Orca can taste it. She’s tight, stretched thin. Every bit of her senses it. The crew, who just hours before were thinking the tour was done, furiously prep the ship.
Bulkheads are sealed and double-checked; fire control teams run drills and top off fire retardant and sealant. Even the cook slops together sandwiches on biscuits in case he can’t get the food out during a long action.
By my estimate, we’re still a hard week out of the Good Hope system. That would be with a fully functional reactor, a topped-off tank of propellant, and a fresh crew. We don’t have any of those things.
I remember when I was a kid, watching this historical documentary about whaling. At one time, a good portion of the world used whale oil for lighting. Can you imagine that? They literally hunted down whales just to render out the fat for lighting.
The section of that story that I really remember is when they’d drive dozens of whales onto the shore and slaughter them. It wasn’t with guns or explosives but harpoons and clubs and even knives. The water frothed a crimson sheen.
Cloak of War Page 21