Praxis def-1

by Walter Jon Williams

  He waited for the flashing orange cue in his sleeve display to let him know that transmission had started, then looked at the sleeve button camera and spoke.

  “Captain Kandinski, this is Lieutenant Gareth Martinez on Lord Commander Enderby’s staff. The yacht Midnight Runner with its captain, Ehrler Blitsharts, is tumbling out of control, heading southward from Vandrith. There is no telemetry, and there has been no communication from Captain Blitsharts since before the situation started. He may still be alive but unable to recover command of his boat. If your situation permits, I should like to request that you launch one or more pinnaces on a rescue mission. I will send you the latest course data. Please advise Command your course of action as soon as possible. Data follows.”

  The message, Martinez knew, was already being pulsed toward Los Angeles by powerful military communications lasers, but it would still be over twenty-four minutes before the red-shifted signal reached the cruiser, and at least that much time again before he would know Kandinski’s decision.

  Martinez added Blitsharts’s real and projected course to the end of the message and closed the transmission. He tried to lean back, then swayed as he almost toppled from the Laiown chair. Abacha was talking to yet another questioner whom he cut off in mid-sentence. “Receive military communications only,” Abacha told his console. “Log others for reply later.”

  Abacha turned to Martinez. “What now?”

  Martinez rose from the chair and kicked it away. “We wait an hour or more for a reply, while you field calls from every Blitsharts fan on the planet.” Then a thought struck him. “Oh,” Martinez added. “I suppose we should inform Lord Commander Enderby.”

  Martinez was busy trying to analyze the way Blitsharts’s boat was tumbling so that any rescue mission might better know how to dock with it when Enderby arrived at Command. The ring’s optical trackers caught only reflections of Zanshaa’s sun flashing on the glossy black surface of the yacht, hardly ideal data for an analysis. Even the 3D displays at Operations would be too small for the kind of detail he needed of a small vessel that far away, so Martinez got a headset out of storage and projected a virtual environment onto the visual centers of his brain. His mind flooded with an infinite, empty darkness that seemed to extend light-years beyond the limits of his skull, and he built a simulation with a picture and specifications of the craft he’d snagged, using Enderby’s priority code, from the files of Vehicle Registration. Once he had the model ofMidnight Runner, he created a virtual sun at the appropriate angle and of the appropriate intensity, then sent the model tumbling over and over again in a lengthy series of simulations until it began to resemble the flashing visual he was getting from the ring’s optical detectors. It could be refined later, after he began getting reflections back from the ranging lasers he’d pulsed out along Blitsharts’s presumed track.

  Under normal circumstances, a Fleet pinnace should be able to rendezvous with a yacht likeMidnight Runner with little trouble. The boats were approximately the same size, and were built for nearly the same purpose: carrying a single passenger very fast, through abrupt accelerations and decelerations and changes of course. In Blitsharts’s case, this was to enable his boat to make the changes in vector necessary to win a yacht race; in the case of the Fleet boat, it was to avoid destruction long enough to accomplish its mission.

  It occurred to Martinez that no one had ever performed a rendezvous like this. The yacht’s rolling was wildly complex, as if designed on purpose to baffle anyone attempting to dock with it, and he couldn’t imagine that Blitsharts could remain in that tumbling craft for long and remain conscious. There was only one hatch onMidnight Runner, and it was rolling over and over in a chaotic series of gyrations. It was forward of the center of gravity about which the yacht was tumbling, and there was no way a rescue craft could dock to it. It would be like docking with the end of a stick being waved in the air by an erratic child.

  Martinez worried at the problem, his mind spinning as frantically as the tumbling yacht. He built a model of a standard Fleet pinnace and tried to maneuver it near the yacht, only to see it batted away again and again, one potentially crippling collision after another.

  It seemed that if he worked really hard, he could help killtwo pilots, Blitsharts and his rescuer both.

  It was the scent of a bruised apple that brought him out of the depths of his study-Abacha’s apple, or perhaps just the peel, lying somewhere nearby and reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since his noon meal, over half a day ago.

  He saved his simulation and pulled off the headset. “Ari,” he said, turning toward Abacha’s console. “Got any of that apple left? Or any food at all?”

  It was then he realized that the person he’d sensed standing behind him had far too much braid on his uniform to be a mere lieutenant.

  “My lord!” He leaped to his feet, his chin snapping back. Agonizing pain clamped on his crotch, which had been perched on an alien chair for over an hour.

  Fleet Commander Enderby gazed at him with mild eyes. “Carry on, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Enderby looked at the displays, which had been showing Martinez’s solution. “A difficult problem, is it not?”

  “I’m afraid so, my lord.” Martinez clenched his teeth against the pain. Whatever passion had seized Enderby during their last interview had passed: the Fleet Commander was his usual self again, keeping himself informed of what was occurring in his command, but content to let lesser beings work out the details. Martinez had never quite made up his mind whether this was a result of Enderby being profoundly stupid or profoundly wise.

  “I fear Blitsharts has run his last race,” Enderby said. “I’m certainly not permitting a Fleet vessel to batter itself to pieces attempting a hopeless rescue.” Distant regret tracked across Enderby’s features, then he looked at Martinez again. “Call the commissary and order something, if you want. Use my authority.”

  “Yes, my lord.” He reached for his sleeve display, then hesitated. “Will you have anything, my lord?”

  “No. I have dined. Thank you.”

  Martinez realized he was ragingly hungry. He ordered soup, a salad, some sandwiches, and a pot of coffee. Trying not to hobble, he removed the Lai-own chair and replaced it with one designed for humans. Gingerly, he sat down and looked again at the simulation frozen in the displays.

  His nostrils twitched to the scent of apple, and he turned toward where Abacha sat at his own console, looking at his own displays. The stiffness of Abacha’s spine and neck, and the ostentatious way he went about his business, showed his awareness that the commander of the Home Fleet was standing behind him.

  Abacha’s handkerchief sat on the long console between them, the screw of apple peel lying discarded on it. Without thinking, Martinez reached for it-it was a reflex action for him to keep the Fleet commander’s vicinity tidy-and he looked for someplace to throw it.

  His eyes alighted on the handkerchief, the perfect corkscrew peel lying coiled on the white surface, and he froze.

  “Lord commander,” he said slowly, “I think I know how this can work.”

  The woman called Caroline Sula fought her way back from nightmare, from a sensation of being smothered with a pillow, the soft pressure filling her nose, her mouth, the screaming pressure in her chest building as she tried to bring in air…

  She came awake with a cry, hands flailing at an invisible attacker. Then she realized where she was, strapped into the command seat of her pinnace, and fought the darkness more rationally, clenching her jaw and neck muscles to force oxygenated blood to her brain. The darkness that swathed her vision retreated just enough so she could see the cockpit displays directly in front of her. A total stranger looked at her and said, “You’re going to have toscrew it in,” and then the main engine fired again, the boat groaned in response, and panic flared in her as darkness once more flooded her mind.

  An unknown amount of time later she woke gasping for breath, fighting the ton o
f lead that pressed on her rib cage. Sensors in her pressure suit monitored her condition: the computers on her pinnace were instructed to keep heralive, but the programming said nothing aboutcomfortable.

  In the blackness of her vision there was a hole through which a little light came. Sula focused the hole over the engine display and found that the pinnace was accelerating at a steady 6.5 gravities, which the computer had apparently decided was the optimum both for keeping her alive and getting her to where she was going.

  The darkness retreated a little from her vision. Sula panted for breath. She badly wanted to pee.

  She wrenched her gaze to the speed indicator. It felt as if she had to crowbar her eyeballs around their sockets. She discovered she was traveling.076c.

  Too bad. It meant that this wouldn’t end anytime soon.

  The brutal deceleration finally came to an end. The pressure exerted by Sula’s suit, soft as foam but firm as steel, withdrew from her arms and legs, bringing them tingling back to life as the blood surged to the muscles. The tingling on her back, caused by the miniwaves pulsed through the acceleration couch-to prevent blood pooling and to prevent bedsores-faded as she floated free in her harness. The soft darkness retreated from her perceptions, and she could fill her lungs with air.

  She checked her own vital signs, found elevated heart rate and blood pressure, but not in the critical ranges. She hadn’t stroked out during the acceleration-which sometimes happened even to the fittest young cadets-nor had she given herself some kind of weird heart murmur or arrhythmia.

  The composite organics of the ship’s hull cracked and snapped as they reacted to the end of the relentless acceleration. Sula scanned the displays, then raised a hand to send a message both to theLos Angeles and to Operations on Zanshaa.

  “Cadet Sula reporting. Diagnostics report optimal conditions following deceleration.”Thanks for not killing me, she added mentally.

  She stretched in her acceleration couch, forcing sluggish blood to her reluctant muscles. The cockpit of the pinnace was tiny, with Sula in her pressure suit taking up most of the available volume. There was even less room than normal, because she was flying a two-seated trainer in case she had to take Blitsharts aboard.

  Funny. She’d volunteered for pinnace duty in part because it meant getting time to herself, away from ship quarters where the cadets were crammed together, each living in the other’s armpit. What she discovered was that even here, alone in the infinity of space, there wasn’t room enough to so much as stretch her arms above her head.

  A light glowed on her communications board, the signal that messages had been recorded for her. She’d noted the light since deceleration ceased, but hadn’t felt up to interacting with the command structure till now. She triggered the display and discovered a continuous stream of tracking data from Zanshaa’s ring sensors showing Blitsharts’s tumbling craft. Another was a communication from Operations Command, a message the pinnace had received directly, followed by a copy of the same message forwarded by the communications officer aboardLos Angeles.

  Sula played the recorded message. A dark-browed, lantern-jawed young man looked out of the display. There were staff tabs on his collar, the sign of a lord commander’s pet, and Sula found herself loathing him on sight.

  The lieutenant spoke. “Lieutenant Martinez at Operations to any rescue pilot. I have analyzed the way in which the target boat is tumbling, and the results don’t look very promising.” A simulation ofMidnight Runner filled the display, and Sula leaned forward, studying the fix Captain Blitsharts had got himself into.

  The voice went on. “I can’t see any way to dock with the boat’s hatch, which is too far forward. At best you’d get knocked around badly; at worst you’d kill yourself, Blitsharts,and his dog Orange.”

  Har har, Sula thought. The lord commander’s pet had a sense of humor. Wonderful.

  “I’ve worked out a way you can dock with the yacht, if not with the hatch,” Martinez went on. “You’ll have to exactly duplicate with your own boat the precise fashion in which Blitsharts is tumbling, then slip inside his rolling motion to dock.” A pinnace appeared in the simulation, rolling and pitching just as Blitsharts’s boat was doing, and then the two moved together to mate, the pinnace fitting carefully into a whirlwind corkscrew cone formed byMidnight Runner’s off-center spinning nose.

  “You’re going to have toscrew it in,” Martinez said, and Sula felt a surge of memory. She’d heard the message, live, as she received it-only she’d been unconscious through most of it.

  “You can’t access the hatch from this position,” Martinez continued, “but once you’re clamped onto him, you can use your own maneuvering thrusters to damp down the movements of Blitsharts’s boat. When you’ve got his boat under control, you can shift your own boat forward to mate with Blitsharts’s hatch.”

  Sula frowned at the simulation, which showed exactly that. It looked possible, but experience had shown her that a simulation was not necessarily cognate with reality.

  The picture cut to Martinez.

  “There are two problems,” he said. “The first is thatMidnight Runner’s thrusters still occasionally fire, which may make the tumbling more chaotic by the time you arrive.”

  Oh great, Sula thought. She could do everything perfectly, and then Blitsharts’s thrusters could cut in and cause a collision.

  “The second problem-” Martinez took a breath, “-will be staying conscious. If you attempt to match the movements of Blitsharts’s boat, you’ll be subjecting yourself to an unforgiving pattern of accelerations, followed by a chaotic combination of roll, pitch, and yaw. You will be in severe danger of blacking out.”

  “Oh. Great.” Sula closed her eyes and leaned the back of her head against her helmet pads.

  Martinez’s closing words echoed in her helmet earphones. “You are the pilot on the scene. It will be entirely up to you whether you attempt this maneuver. I am to tell you from the lord commander of the Home Fleet that no blame will attach to you if you decide the rescue is too risky.”

  Sula opened her eyes.Lord commander of the Home Fleet…

  It wasn’t like there was any pressure or anything. She’d only be performing-or demonstrating cowardice or killing herself or fucking up beyond all possible redemption-in front of the individual who commanded the largest division of the Fleet, the defenses of the capital, and of course her own personal future.

  Thanks a lot.

  Martinez’s image gazed steadily at her from the displays. “I’ll keep sending updates from our sensors here, though of course anything you’ll receive fromme will be an hour out of date. I’m afraid there is very little assistance I can offer. You’re truly on your own. Good luck.”

  The image faded, replaced by the orangeEnd Transmission symbol.

  Sula’s fist hovered over the transmit button. “Thank you for sending me on a mission that gives me the choice of suicide or disgrace. Why don’t you come and do it yourself if you’re so smart?”

  She held the fist there for a long moment, hit the transmit button and said, “Cadet Caroline Sula to Lieutenant Martinez, Operations Command. Your message received. Thank you.”

  She hadn’t got as far as she had by being stupid.

  Sula managed to stay conscious through the next long deceleration burn, as her pinnace swooped over Vandrith’s north pole to fire her south, directly on Blitsharts’s trail. Her jaws ached from keeping her teeth clamped.

  She started getting data from the ranging lasers trackingMidnight Runner, and she was able to update Martinez’s simulation of the tumbling craft. There was an extra wobble in its roll-sure enough, the yacht’s maneuvering thrusters must have fired and added an extra little complexity to the acrobatics.

  She wondered what could be causing them to fire at random that way. It didn’t make any sense. If an automated pitch-and-yaw program had been initiated to stabilize the craft, the thrusters would be firing more regularly and deliberately, which would have dampened the oscillations, not
increased them.

  Could Blitsharts be making brief attempts to solve his problem? Coming out of unconsciousness briefly to fire a thruster, but so disoriented he only made his situation worse?

  That didn’t precisely make sense either, but it was the best guess she could make.

  She studied the simulation. She ate some ration bars. She took a brief nap. And, because she finally couldn’t stand the pressure in her bladder any longer, she urinated into her suit.

  Elimination was the thing she hated most when living in a vac suit. She knew that the crotch of her suit was packed full of absorbent material chock-full of hydrostatic screens and mindlessly happy bacteria that would process the urine into demineralized water and harmless salts; that it would clean her up and leave her “fresher than before,” which were the words actually used in the suit manual.

  Beforewhat? she wanted to snarl. Before she was crammed into this giant, unwieldy, vacuum-resistantdiaper? But if the service could only provide her with an honest-to-godtoilet, she would have much preferred to handle the freshening business herself, thank you very much.

  Just before the pinnace oriented for the next deceleration, Sula triggered the boat’s radars to give her a better view of her tumbling target. Then the pinnace swung around, aligned its engines very precisely, and began the deceleration burn.

  Again she felt the suit gently closing around her arms and legs, forcing the blood to her brain. Again the weight of many gravities compressed her chest. Again she felt the darkness gathering around her vision, the light narrowing to a tiny tunnel bearing only straightforward.

  Again she felt the pillow pressing down on her face, throttling her half-formed scream.

  Blitsharts,she thought,you’d better fucking well be alive.

  Enderby had gone to bed hours ago. With dawn, a new shift arrived-not humans but Lai-owns, members of a flightless avian species. They were taller than humans, covered with gray featherlike hair mottled with black, and with vicious peg teeth in an elongated muzzle.