Though Hell Should Bar the Way - eARC

by David Drake

  Enery was straddling the chair by the display. She poured whiskey into a tumbler, then handed the bottle to me. “There’s another glass under the chair seat,” she said, gesturing with her own drink.

  I took the tumbler—it was high-density plastic—from its nest with flatware and a platter and sat down to pour. The whiskey was a Heilish County brand, a very good one that one of Dad’s friends had sworn by—but it was something of an acquired taste for its heavy smokiness. It wasn’t a favorite of mine, but I sipped.

  I handed the bottle back and said, “Thank you, mistress.”

  “We’re the outsiders on this run, Olfetrie,” Enery said. I noticed that the back of her right hand was hairless and had the same smoothness as half her face. “I thought we ought to get to know one another.”

  I sipped the whiskey again to have an excuse for lowering my eyes. “Ah,” I said. “You’re not RCN either, then?”

  “Oh, I’m RCN, all right,” said Enery. Her lips worked and she took a large swallow—too large for me to equal with this stuff. If I’d tried, I’d have spewed it out my nose. “Just not one of Captain Leary’s gang. I’m Admiral McKye’s goddaughter, and I had a stellar career in the RCN ahead of me ten years ago.”

  “What happened?” I asked. I didn’t want to hear the answer, I wanted to be back in my cabin reading—or on the bridge, practicing astrogation on one of the stations there. Enery obviously wanted to tell somebody, though, and she’d picked me for the duty. If we were going to be in the same crew, I was going to make an effort to get along. I guess I’d do that anyway.

  “Lieutenant Daniel Leary happened,” she said bitterly. “Oh, I don’t blame him. I just happened to be in his way when he started out on the most brilliant career in the RCN. I wasn’t even a bump to him.”

  I sipped again. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but I wasn’t going to have a refill of her whiskey.

  “I was tipped for the command of the corvette Princess Cecile,” Enery went on, pouring more whiskey. “She went to Leary instead. And he made her the most famous ship in the RCN.”

  I frowned, remembering stories that I’d heard. “I thought Captain Leary had captured the Princess Cecile?” I said.

  “Sure, he did that right enough,” Enery agreed. “But that shouldn’t have mattered in the way things are done. In RCN politics, I mean. He was a new-minted lieutenant with no interest at all, and I had three admirals in my bloodline and a fleet commander as my sponsor.”

  Instead of slugging down the fresh drink, Enery swished the liquor around in the tumbler as she stared at it. “Leary outmaneuvered Admiral McKye,” she said. “He did or his friend Mundy did. He got the ship, and I…”

  She drank. And took a second gulp before she put the tumbler down.

  She glared at me and said, “It broke me. Broke my luck, I mean. It wasn’t Leary’s fault any more than it was mine. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it never went right again for me.”

  “That was in the middle of the war,” I said. “You surely weren’t put on the beach because you missed that posting?”

  “No,” said Enery. “I was appointed first lieutenant on a destroyer commanded by a distant cousin, a very good posting for a lieutenant as junior as I was. But we were in the home fleet and saw no action. I transferred to the Ajax and I did well, there was never anything wrong with my work, but again we weren’t in action. You don’t make a name for yourself because your ship remained squared away when nothing happened. Then”—she smiled again. It was horrible to look at, but I did—“I was in line for promotion to lieutenant commander and command of a destroyer. Something finally happened on the my cruiser—a fire in a paint locker. I was head of damage control. We were in Harbor Three, so of course I didn’t have a hard suit on and of course I didn’t take time to put one on. The locker exploded just as I arrived.”

  She took more whiskey though she didn’t drink immediately. The bottle was down well below half.

  “I was three years in hospital,” Enery said. “By the time I could return to duty, the Treaty of Amiens had been signed and Admiral McKye had retired.”

  “I’m very sorry,” I said. Of course Enery hadn’t thought first about protective gear in a crisis. She wouldn’t have been fit to wear the uniform if she had. She’d really had bad luck for a well-connected officer. Still—

  I didn’t smile but I thought, I can do you one better, honey. Though I’m not sure Enery would have thought my situation was truly worse than hers.

  “I was expecting to be beached for good and all,” Enery said, looking hard at her whiskey. “But then this came up—was I willing to become first lieutenant to Captain Leary on a civilian charter? I jumped at it—of course.”

  “Well, it’s certainly better than retirement on a lieutenant’s half pay,” I said. Let alone picking up casual labor on the docks. “I’m glad that Captain Leary gave you the opportunity.”

  “Him?” Enery said. “Scarcely! Navy House wished me on him. I don’t doubt that he’d have put in one of his cronies if he’d been able to.”

  I swallowed and said, “I don’t understand.” I didn’t see how that could get me into trouble, and anyway it was true.

  “What do you know about Captain Leary?” Enery demanded. “As little as you seem to?”

  “I know he’s a hero,” I said carefully. “I believe he’s the son of a senator, a powerful one. And I know that he gave me an officer’s slot when nobody else on Cinnabar would have.”

  “Leary and the crew of the Princess Cecile, his Sissies, are pretty much a special operations commando,” Enery said. “The problem is, nobody in Navy House is quite sure whose commando they are. His friend Mundy, that’s Lady Mundy of Chatsworth, is a spy in the intelligence network that Bernis Sand runs.”

  “Our spies?” I said. I’d never heard of Mistress Sand.

  Enery shrugged. “I suppose,” she said. She drank again. “When it suits them, anyway. I’ve found spooks are pretty much in it for themselves when you look closely enough. Anyway, Mundy certainly isn’t working for Navy House. That’s why somebody at Navy House wanted me aboard the Sunray.”

  I raised my tumbler high enough for the whiskey to touch my lips, but I didn’t really drink. I wondered if Enery would have been talking like this if she hadn’t been punishing the bottle so hard.

  Aloud I said, “You’re here to spy on Captain Leary for Navy House?”

  “I’m not a spy,” Enery said. “They all know who I am. I think somebody hoped that me being aboard will put some kind of rein on Leary. That’s nonsense: I can’t get in Leary’s way any more than I could when I was supposed to take command of the Princess Cecile. But it’s a chance for me, anyway. A better chance than there’d be on the beach. I keep thinking, you see—”she gave me another of her terrible smiles“—that maybe my luck will change.”

  “Lieutenant…” I said. I got up and put my empty tumbler down on the seat I’d vacated. I didn’t remember finishing the whiskey, but I had. That was a reason to leave if I hadn’t had a better one—a desire simply to get away—before I wound up drinking more. “Lieutenant, I hope this voyage works out well for you and for all of us. Thank you for the drink.”

  Enery didn’t speak. I glanced over my shoulder an instant before closing the hatch behind me. The first officer remained hunched over the back of her chair. The bottle was in one hand, her empty tumbler in the other.

  I sat on my own bunk. I’d thought I was signing up for a charter voyage on a civilian vessel, carrying diplomats to a distant, minor posting. It sounded like it was a great deal more than that.

  Regardless, it was better than casual labor.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Testing thrusters One and Six,” said a raspy voice over the PA system. The Sunray shook and wobbled as two plasma thrusters vented into the flooded slip.

  Pasternak, the Chief Engineer, was speaking. He was the old spacer I’d asked to guide me when I first arrived at Bergen and Associates a lifet
ime ago.

  There was a brief pause. The ship still rocked as the pool settled.

  “Testing thrusters Two and Five,” Pasternak said, and again we roared and shook.

  I was squatting on one side of the A Level corridor with other riggers, ready to go out with both watches to set sail as soon as the Sunray had reached orbit. There wasn’t room in the rotunda for all of us, and each of the two airlocks could hold only four personnel in rigging suits at a cycle.

  “Testing thrusters Three and Four,” said Pasternak. This time the ship teetered slightly nose-high for a few seconds before splashing back and lifting again for another few seconds. The central pair of thrusters weren’t precisely at the Sunray’s balance point.

  A big man—bigger yet in his rigging suit—clomped down the corridor and said to the spacer on my right, “Scoot up to the rotunda, Kellogg. I want to talk to the kid.”

  Kellogg, a tough-looking forty-year-old, got up with a grunt and moved forward. Barnes, the speaker, sat down beside me. He was one of the bosun’s mates under Woetjans, the Chief of Rig.

  “Testing all thrusters!” Pasternak warned. This time the Sunray bobbed like a cork. The leaves of the thruster nozzles were flared open, minimizing impulse, but the plasma quenched violently in the slip. The gushing steam added to lift.

  “So, kid…” shouted Barnes. “Six says we’re to train you like a midshipman, but this ain’t the RCN. Maybe you want to tell me to bugger off because you’re an officer?”

  I’ve done my share of dumb things, but I wasn’t dumb enough to take that at face value. I said, “I want you to do what Captain Leary told you to do, Barnes!”

  I tried to sound authoritative, like a real officer. I don’t know how well I did, but Barnes laughed and slapped my armored knee.

  “Lifting off in ten, repeat, ten seconds,” Lieutenant Enery’s voice warned as the thrusters built to full power. The Sunray didn’t have an armored Battle Direction Center like a real warship, but the dockyard had added a full console in the stern so that she could still be directed if the bridge were destroyed.

  “Lifting off!”

  The thruster note changed as Enery closed the sphincters. The Sunray shook herself free of the slip, paused a moment, then resumed her climb at an ever-increasing rate.

  I was on my way to my first operational deployment as a spacer.

  * * *

  We began staging out through the airlocks as soon as the Sunray reached orbit, though by the time I’d reached the locks the High Drive motors were accelerating us. It felt to me like 1 g, comfortable for those within the hull and not particularly burdensome for the rigging watch.

  No commercial vessel could accelerate much harder than that anyway, and even warships were limited because their rigging couldn’t be stressed for heavy thrust and still be able to fold and telescope as it had to do for landing. Landings—and to a lesser degree lift-offs—were the real problem for a starship’s rig. Atmospheric buffeting, accompanied by vibration from the thrusters running at maximum output, snapped shackles and undid any rovings that weren’t snugged up tight. Microcracks, crystallized metal, frayed cables—any weakness was likely to be tested to destruction.

  The rig was wholly automated. Gears and hydraulic motors raised and extended the antennas, rotated the spars into place, and stretched the sails in response to commands from the navigational computer. Riggers were superfluous—unless something broke or jammed.

  As it always did.

  The port watch was assigned to the aft ring of antennas. B Port mounted only thirty degrees and jammed, but Barnes put two other spacers to clearing it. The mainspar of B Dorsal didn’t release, and that became a task for me and Wedell whom I’d met the day I reported to the Sunray.

  The lower clamp had opened properly: It was only waist high to spacers standing flat-footed on the hull. We climbed the ratlines to the upper clamp and found it only half-open. We didn’t expect to need jacks for the initial job—we wrapped our legs around the antenna, set a prybar, and put our backs into it. The clamp opened with a clack! just as I was about to decide I was going return for the jack after all.

  I lurched backward on my perch, but my legs didn’t quite lose their grip. I slid down to the hull and hit on my butt. I wasn’t in real danger—I’d set my safety line before climbing—but it was a nasty feeling for a moment and a solid thump when I hit the steel.

  I’d worn hard suits before, but I wasn’t used to them. The one I’d been issued fit all right—as well as any that hadn’t been personally fitted, I guess—but I knew that in the morning I was going to have worse than a rash at the points it rubbed.

  Strands of monocrystal stiffened the fabric. It wasn’t armor in the sense that it would stop a bullet, but it would resist a torn plate or a strand from a broken cable that would puncture an air suit. If your job was to work with torn plates and broken cables, it was definitely the garment to be wearing. It wasn’t very flexible, however.

  The Sunray entered the Matrix just after we got the spar loose. I felt my nerves tingle in a wave, starting at my toes and rolling up through my scalp. Light changed: The focused, distant glare of Cinnabar’s primary vanished and the ship trembled in the glow of all universes.

  The B Dorsal mainsail shook out with neat precision; the antenna rotated about fifteen degrees to impinge on Casimir radiation and propel the ship between bubble universes. Each individual spot in what looked like the starry sky above me was really a separate universe with constants of time and velocity different from those of the sidereal universe. It was by shifting from one bubble to another in the Matrix that starships were able to traverse interstellar distances in practical lengths of time.

  The second part of my job and Wedell’s was to fix the clamp—on the hull, if possible, but by carrying it in to the engineering shop if necessary. The driving gear in the clamp body was worn smooth, but I suspected that wouldn’t have happened if the driven gear had been turning properly. We fetched a replacement clamp from an external locker, and Wedell slung the worn one to her equipment belt.

  When we’d finished, our four-hour watch was pretty near over. I was looking forward to a bite to eat and my bunk. Wedell pointed back past me. I turned and found Barnes—his name was stencilled in glowpaint above the front window of his helmet—standing at my shoulder. He leaned forward slightly so that our helmets touched.

  Wedell and I had been using hand signals when we needed to “speak.” Rigging suits didn’t have radios because the accidental use of one in the Matrix could send a ship wildly off course. I’d learned the signals in the Academy, but I wasn’t very good at them yet—and Wedell and I hadn’t worked together before, so we didn’t know how to predict one another’s actions the way an experienced team would. Still, we hadn’t had real problems in such a straightforward job.

  Barnes, the sound of his voice transmitted through his helmet to mine, said, “We’ve got a job, you and me, kid. We’ve got to replace the extender cable on Ventral A antenna.”

  I frowned. “It’s broken?” I said.

  “Naw,” said Barnes. “It’s a half millimeter undersized. Some contractor cheated, or maybe his supplier did. Who’d have thought that RCN suppliers’d be crooked, hey?”

  I took a deep breath. “Then we’d better change it,” I said.

  I didn’t bother asking why I was being held over at the end of my watch to do a lengthy, brutal job. For that matter, I didn’t ask why nobody’d noticed the cable while we were in Harbor Three. That was the sort of thing that might pass unnoticed in the usual run of things, but the examination Captain Leary and his Sissies had given the Sunray hadn’t been usual.

  They had noticed it. And they’d waited until now to see how the new third officer dealt with it. I was bone tired, but I was going to be more tired before I went off watch. That was just how it was.

  We trudged along the hull to the bow ring, then down to the ventral antenna. It had been raised and extended, but the spars were still locked vertical in
stead of being rotated ninety degrees to their set position. The sails were furled.

  I’d been carrying my safety line unhooked since I left Dorsal B. I wasn’t shuffling because Barnes was following me, but I made sure I set each magnetized boot sole firmly before I lifted my trailing foot. I stepped along uncomfortably fast. I’d pay for it in the morning—thigh muscles and skin abrasions both—but this was a test.

  I hooked the line to one of the shackles at the base of the antenna; then I checked the raised lettering on the pulley at the foot of the mast. The nearest exterior locker was just behind Dorsal A and easily within the reach of my line. I clanked up to it, setting my feet with determination as before.

  Barnes continued to shadow me. He didn’t comment on what I was doing.

  I opened the locker, pulling up the recessed catch before turning it. I was pleased to find a spool marked with the correct number—I hadn’t been sure how far Captain Leary was willing to go in a training exercise. I’d half expected to be sent to the stern locker or to inside storage.

  There was a handle on either flange of the spool. I gripped one, turned to Barnes, and mimed him taking the other one. He did—another better result than I’d feared—and we returned to Ventral A.

  I could probably have handled the spool alone if I’d had to, but there was no point in making me do that—except to prove I was on the bottom of the totem pole. I already knew that.

  When we got back to the antenna, I took a wrench from the satchel I was wearing and adjusted it to the nut of the hydraulic fitting that fed the pump. Barnes tapped my shoulder. I looked up and he touched helmets again.

  “Six took Ventral A out of service on the main console,” Barnes said. “It won’t move no matter how the course changes.”

  “All right,” I said. I finished disconnecting the hydraulic line, then took the existing cable loose from the lift spool and crimped it to the end of the fresh cable with an in-line splice. I then stuck a screwdriver through one of the holes in the take-up spool provided for the purpose and began turning it like a windlass.