“Can you tell if the Dakh Hhargash are following us?”
“No.”
“No, they’re not following us, or no you can’t tell?”
“Can’t tell.”
“Damn. Increase speed.” They were about half way between where the enemy ship had been parked and where Fmedg’s ship waited. “Why didn’t we spot that thing when we approached the comet cloud? Just too many things to scan?”
“We should have spotted it,” Trel said. “Except it looked like it had its main engines off.”
“Stealth mode,” Mehta said. “They were trying not to be seen.”
Trel swerved around a small comet as she brought her hands to her face. What were the Dakh Hhargash up to? One way or the other, she needed to find out.
“Hey, Hiranaka,” Ramirez said from the door, pronouncing her name as though he had spit it at her, as though it were an insult, hissing the “H” sound and flattening the ahs.
The skin on her back tingled with an uncomfortable chill that swooped up the back of her neck, then fizzled on her crown. She straightened from the console she’d been looking at in the helmsman training room, lifting herself to her full, yet unimpressive height. “Vril, will you please excuse me?” she said to the Mralan who’d been walking her through ship maneuvers.
Vril cringed, his angular face turning all diagonal. “Take aaaallll the time you want.” He made a wide sweep with his hand.
“I suspect I’ll be gone for a while.”
“Oh.” He frowned. “We still have a lot to go over. This stuff is not easy to learn.”
Hiranaka smiled at him, at the way he loved to make it sound like no one else in the universe could pilot as well as he. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She hurried out of the room, anxious to get her time with Ramirez over with, anxious to get back to her real work.
“I found the library,” Ramirez said as he started down the hall. “A bunch of computers. You have something to make notes on?”
She had to stretch her stride to keep up with him. “I’m prepared, sir,” she said. Not going to give him anything to criticize her about. “What about you? Have you got your PIR done?”
“It was a cinch. But also a waste of time.”
“Why do you say that, sir?”
“I’ve talked to several Mralans, and I can tell you, as soon as they attempt this crazy plan with Mehta as the captain, they’re going to change their minds about it.”
He turned a corner and she followed. “Why?”
He stared down at her with a condescending expression. “It’s complicated.”
Son of a bitch. Was he saying she was too simple-minded to understand? Man, the sooner she could get away from him, the better.
“Right here,” he said, pointing to a door just ahead.
They entered the library, but there were no books, only computer stations, and no one else in the room. He took a moment get her logged on and show her how they worked, then sat in the station right next to her.
She had to work to keep from scowling. What was the deal? Was he trying to keep track of her? “How long are we going to stay here?”
“The rest of the day.”
“Sir, I have a lot of other things to work on. Vril wasn’t kidding about how complex—”
“This is our mission.” He jabbed a finger at his monitor, his frown turning to a scowl. “Once the Mralans decide they can’t deal with our methods, they’re going to take us back to Earth, and if we haven’t even started on our studies… we’ll get blamed for every Dakh Hhargashian attack.”
“I respectfully disagree,” she said, her voice soft enough she could hope he didn’t hear her.
“You just wait.”
“Sir, it almost sounds like you want them to take us back.”
“The sooner, the better. If we stay on this ship, Colonel Mehta will get us all—” He stopped himself, then clamped his mouth shut.
“Killed?” she supplied.
“She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
Hiranaka turned to her own computer, jaw tight. Should she report what she’d just heard? Technically, Ramirez could get in big trouble for having said it, having been so disrespectful. But she doubted Colonel Mehta would do anything about it. After all, she hadn’t been appointed their commander, just their officer in charge, so she had no authority to impose punishment or court-martial.
She thought about how she would handle it if she’d been in Colonel Mehta’s place. Distressingly, she didn’t know.
Well, time to get to work. Perhaps what she learned here could serve to help her understand the ship better, anyway. She could justify being here.
She made several navigational moves through the computer files, looking for file names that would indicate she was going in the right direction. She found instructions on material manufacturing, outlining in detail processes for creating various types of metal alloys, ceramic components and chemically engineered sheets and blocks. It made fascinating reading, and she found herself caught up in the intricacies of the various processes.
Time to take notes. She pulled out her tablet from her satchel and looked at it. “Do you think there’s a way to transfer files?” she asked.
He shook his head. “From what I know about computing, their system is going to be so different from ours… even just ASCII code would be different. Then think… if they used trinary instead of binary…”
“Okay. I get it.” The Mralan engineers had created a charging station for their laptops and pads, but that was probably the limit of the adaptations possible in so short a time. That meant she would need to type in everything. That was going to be a lot of work.
And none of what she’d found so far had anything to do with capabilities or maneuvers.
“You finding anything?” she whispered.
“I’ve found lots of diagrams, but nothing to explain the actual physics.”
“Same here.”
“It doesn’t make sense. If I’m not permitted to access the physics, why can I see the diagrams?”
“I don’t know, but you should start taking notes.”
“There’s nothing here to take notes on. I’m finding parts explosions,” he muttered. “How can I take notes on those?”
“Maybe we need to get a Mralan recording device to copy the files into.”
“I’ve found nothing to copy!”
“You’ve found files showing how the ship is made, sir. That’s all we need.”
“We need the physics.”
“Fine, sir,” she said, pulling back in her chair. “I’m going to see if I can finagle a Mralan recording device, something like a pad.”
“You really think you can do that, and they won’t know what you’re up to?”
That was a good question, although she didn’t want to acknowledge that to him. How was she going to get past their ability to tell when she was feeling guilt about lying to them? What excuse was she going to come up with for why she needed it?
“I’ll figure something out, sir,” she said as she rose to leave.
But it was going to be awfully hard to get something past the Mralans.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The first thing to catch Mehta’s eye when she stepped onto the bridge was a large screen at the front of the room. Fmedg stood facing the screen, while Mlendish sat at his place and punched the controls with stubby fingers. “They’ve responded,” he said.
“Their ship isn’t putting out much energy,” the sensor operator said.
“I’m putting visual on the screen,” Mlendish said.
Fmedg straightened. “Dakh Hhargashian vessel, depart the area immediately.”
A gruff looking man appeared on the screen. Damn if he didn’t look like a caveman, with a large brow ridge and very little chin. “Ha!” he snapped, lifting his hands with a quick thrust. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“To whom am I speaking?”
>
“I am Captain Glog of the Dakh Hhargashian ship Marauder.”
“You need to leave…”
“Fmedg,” the sensor operator said. “They don’t have their engines on.”
“Ha, ha!” Glog shouted. “Stupid, all of you!”
“Would you mind explaining?” Fmedg said.
“You shot my ship, you idiot. Now it’s broken, and you want me to move it?”
“Yeah,” the weapons operator said with a satisfied smile on her face. “That’s what they get for messing with Earth!”
“I see,” Fmedg said to Glog. He looked around, his expression suddenly uncomfortable. “I trust you’re endeavoring to repair it.”
“Yes. And when I get it back on, I’m going to shoot your ship to pieces!”
Fmedg smiled at that. It was clear from their first encounter with this ship that the Dakh Hhargash could do no such thing, even when their ship was in perfect repair. They were no threat, and Fmedg felt no concern about it. “Very well, then. Do continue your repairs.”
Fmedg turned to Mehta. “What do you wish to do with them?”
She looked around the room with a sinking feeling. In a normal unit, there would be battle drills that covered this sort of thing, but she had nothing.
“Let’s put some options on the table,” she said. “Ideas?”
“We could tow,” Vril said. “Take them far enough away that they can’t get back here anytime soon.”
“Yeah,” the sensor operator said. “We combine that with removing enough of their fuel so they have to go back into their own space to get refueled.”
Vril grinned at her. “We make a great team.”
“How about we shoot them?” Mlendish offered.
“Oo, I like that idea,” the weapons operator said.
Fmedg cleared his throat. “We could merely wait for them to finish their repairs, then escort them out of the system.”
“And what if we suddenly have to be somewhere else?” Mehta said.
“Good point.”
“Any more options?”
No one said anything.
“Any more pieces of information we need to get?”
Everyone gave her blank faces.
“Let’s ask the captain how long he expects his repairs to take. If it’s only a few hours, maybe that’ll be good enough.”
“Excellent thought,” Fmedg said. He turned to the screen and asked the question.
“Ask your engineers,” Glog said. “Figure it out.”
“Please,” Fmedg said, “you’re not being very helpful.”
“I don’t want to help,” the captain said. “Now, go away.”
Fmedg sighed and signaled for the audio connection to be broken again.
“Are they always this belligerent?” Mehta asked.
“I’ve never seen them any other way,” Fmedg said. “Of course, I’ve only had a few dealings with them.”
“All right,” Mehta said. “Any other ideas?”
Again, she got blank stares. Well, okay, it was time to move on. “Shooting them is out,” she began. The enemy was technically unable to engage in combat, which meant shooting them would be like shooting an injured enemy soldier—it would be a war crime, at least according to the rules they followed on Earth. “So that leaves two options. Now let’s go over the advantages and disadvantages of each.”
The crew offered a few ideas on how the options compared, but it wasn’t much. Still, they were learning how to make decisions more thoughtfully, and Mehta felt good about that. Finally, it was time to decide.
“Okay,” she said. “We tow. Fmedg, will you arrange it?”
“Indeed.” He reestablished communications with the enemy ship and quickly explained what was about to happen.
Captain Glog stared at him in silence for several minutes.
“Did you not understand?” Fmedg said. “We will be assisting you.”
“Oh, I understood,” the other said. “And the answer is ‘no.’ We don’t need your assistance.”
“Clearly, you do. Your engines are not operational.”
“I said no!”
“We insist. We cannot allow you to remain here, so close to one of the planets we protect.”
The enemy captain’s image stretched over the screen, hands moving in frantic gestures. “What part did you not understand?”
“I’ve explained this to you,” Fmedg said, his voice paternalistic.
“And I don’t care what you’re worried about. Just leave us alone!”
“It’s worse than that,” Rbemfel said, turning around to look at them. “We don’t know how to connect into their inertial compensator.”
Mehta walked over to him. “Their what?”
“It’s the thing that keeps us from being crushed by the acceleration,” Rbemfel said. He traced his fingers over the screen, and a life support module appeared on his control panel. “This is just the manual controls. We don’t use them much, unless the computer is having trouble. But since their ship is so different from ours, this is what I’m going to have to do. If we can even figure out. . .” His voice trailed off as he stared at the diagrams on a small pop-up window.
“How much acceleration would we use in a case like this?”
“Several hundred Gs. Going into Netherspace will peg the G meter.”
She didn’t remember the exact numbers that humanoids could endure, but this was way beyond anything survivable.
Fmedg shook his head. “We can’t do something that would kill them. As much as I dislike this particular fellow…”
Mehta nodded, then walked back to where she could be heard by Glog. “Actually, I think we should tow them back to the planet they just raided and turn them all over to the planetary government for trial.”
Captain Glog shook visibly. “You can’t do that!”
“No,” Mehta said, “but we can disable your ship so thoroughly that you have nowhere to go, and you will have to come aboard our ship as prisoners.”
“Try it,” Glog said, now looking at her steely-eyed. “When you get here, you’ll find all of us dead.”
Mehta motioned for Mlendish to cut off the sound, then instructed Fmedg to remain in the vicinity while Glog’s crew repaired their ship. She walked to the back of the bridge and sat heavily. Trel sat beside her.
“You’re angry at yourself.”
“I really don’t like it when you tell me how I feel.”
He shrugged. “Why are you angry? You made the best decisions you could have.”
“It still wasn’t the right decision,” she said. “We looked like idiots trying to figure out what we could and couldn’t do. I should have known the gravitational compensators wouldn’t mate up with each other.”
“I think you’re being a little hard on yourself.”
“I should know everything that’s going on, all the capabilities, all the status.” She shook her head, the frown puckering her scar. “I should have known.”
“Maybe we should take that tour of the ship now?”
“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “We can start with engineering. And this time, we don’t hold anything back.”
“Right.” He stood. “We should get Rbemfel to show us around. He’s the senior—”
“Good idea.” She came to her feet and moved toward the door.
“Fmedg!” the sensor operator shouted. “There’s another Dakh Hhargashian ship approaching.”
Mehta looked back at Fmedg, saw his eyes close in frustration. “Now it’s twice as bad.”
She walked back to the center to join him. “You think we can get them to tow the disabled ship?” Mehta said.
“I doubt it.”
“Mralan manure-eaters,” a voice said, “what are you doing so close to one of my ships?”
The screen split, showing two invisible bridges, and another captain whose face was grizzled and leathery, like a piece of retread thrown from a tire and abandoned on the road.
On the auxiliary screen
, both ships sat near each other, cradled in the darkness of space.
“Ah, Captain Zolbon,” Fmedg said, “how good of you to come. This ship requires assistance, and we were unable to help.”
“But you tried?”
“We were merely beginning our discussions.”
“Then you were trying,” Zolbon said.
Captain Glog shook his body in wild spasms. “They were not! I told them to leave, but they just stayed here arguing like pigs.”
“You should have shot them,” Zolbon said.
“We tried…” The captain threw up his hands. “They damaged our weapons. But give me one more minute.”
“It’s too late,” Zolbon said. “Where is your second in command?”
“I will run my ship into theirs,” Glog said. “I will destroy them! Just give me a few more minutes!”
Another officer stepped beside Glog and pushed him out of the way. “Second in command.”
“You are now the commander. Put that failed piece of worm dung into the brig. Once that’s done, we will tow you back.”
The new captain nodded.
“Now I want to bring up another matter with the Mralans,” Zolbon said.
“No,” Fmedg said. “Return to your own space immediately.”
“Oh, you want us to run away, all frightened,” Zolbon said, “with our heads between our shoulders. That is our normal response, isn’t it? But, no. Today is different. The galaxy is different. The Protectorate has changed.”
“I beg your pardon?” Fmedg said. He laid a hand flat against his chest and lifted his chin.
“And anyway, I don’t want to talk to you,” Zolbon said with a smirk. “I hear you give your women positions of power. I want to talk to the woman, to someone who can decide things.”
Mehta gulped. Guess the disguise was working.
“Very well,” Fmedg said, then nodded at Mehta.
She gave him a weak smile, then turned to Zolbon. “What’s on your mind?”
“Listen,” Zolbon said, leaning toward the screen like he was trying to become cozy, “why don’t you let us have this planet? Just one little planet. You go your way and tell your government the rights to the planet have been given to the Dakh Hhargash. That would be simple, wouldn’t it?”
Mehta shook her head. “Not possible. You know we wouldn’t turn a planet over to you.”
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