by Jake Elwood
Before West could answer, Dulcie set down a half-eaten an apple and said, "I've got just the thing." She trotted across the bay, disappeared behind a shuttle, and came back holding a pry bar. West wasn't sure he was ready to force open someone else's guitar case, but Dulcie had no such qualms. She jammed the end of the bar against the first seal, thumped the other end with the heel of her hand, and twisted. The seal popped open. She got the other seal open and stepped back.
West stared down at the guitar case. Well, I guess it would be stupid not to open it now. He flipped open the case.
The guitar was nothing special, some generic brand with a faux-wood finish and six strings. He ran a thumb across the strings, not expecting much. The sound hit him, a tiny wave of pure music, and he shivered, surprised to realize how much he'd missed it. He looked at the others. "Sounds like it's pretty much in tune."
They didn't answer, just watched him. Dulcie looked mildly interested. Raleigh looked avid.
West lifted the guitar out of the case and settled the strap around his shoulder. It felt good, but subtly wrong, and he missed Jessica with a sharp pang of longing. Has it come to this? You're excited by this piece of crap? It's second-hand and second-rate. It's …
It's a guitar. What are you going to do, put it back and go back to bitching about how you lost yours?
Raleigh said, "What's the matter?"
There were no words to explain the tangle of emotions in his chest, so he let his fingers talk instead, through the guitar string. He did it without thought, his fingers finding the positions without any help from his brain, his thumb starting to strum. At first it was just random notes, little jagged pulses of emotion, each one disconnected from the rest. Then he noticed he was playing a song. Mountain Blues, from Mars, a melancholy tune about pioneers who know they can never go home. He played, and it felt good, so he started to sing. It was soft at first, but he felt his voice rise higher and higher with every verse.
Earth was far away. He'd seen death, he'd met eager fans on Freedom and they hadn't made it to the lifeboat. Death had come for them at a time when they were supposed to be at his show.
Gone. Cold and dead and gone, and there wasn't a single damned thing you could do for them. At first he'd been busy being scared and relieved he was still alive, but it had rattled him, more than he knew. A big part of him wanted to take that guitar and hurl it across the bay. What right did he have to play music when so many people had died, and so many more were stranded in this floating steel box with the pitiless enemy hunting them?
Music felt like a sick joke. It was the only thing he was good at, the only thing he had ever cared about, and now it felt like a travesty. Every note felt like a mockery of the people who had died.
Dark emotions had been festering in the back of his skull for days, and now the guitar brought them swirling up. It was bleak and awful, and he took all that horrible energy and poured it into the song. The cheap guitar seems to come to life in his hands in a way that even Jessica never had. He sang, holding nothing back, and heard his own voice echoing from the bulkheads. He sang of pain and loss and danger and the hopeless yearning to go home. He sang until his fingertips ached and his throat was raw. It was just one song, but he felt like he'd done a two-hour show.
Finally the last note trailed away, and he lifted the guitar from around his neck. He felt drained, but at peace. He set the guitar in the case and turned around.
Dozens of people filled the bay. He saw civilians and cadets, sailors and officers. They stared at him, some of them smiling, some of them blank-faced. Some of them wore a raw, shocked expression that matched the way West felt. He stared back at them.
And then someone started to clap. In an instant the bay rang with applause, and the closest people surged forward. Someone shook his hand, someone else clapped him on the shoulder, and a big man in a pyjama shirt and blue jeans put himself in charge of crowd control and started holding people back.
West could hear people asking who he was, and others telling them, "That's Mathew West." A dozen people filed past, meek under the stern eye of the man in the pyjama shirt. They shook his hand. A young woman beamed and told him he was awesome. A man shook his hand and said "Thank you," his voice strangely horse. A matronly woman didn't speak, just threw her arms around him and squeezed him hard.
At last the crowd began to break up. People streamed out, smiling and chattering. A familiar figure at the back gave West an ironic salute and said, "What did I tell you? National treasure."
Dulcie said, "You know Dalton Hornbeck?"
"He's a fan," West admitted.
"Wow."
Raleigh grinned. "So, I'm going to tell Mick you'll be hanging onto his guitar."
West nodded. "I guess I will be."
The grin deepened into a smile. "And now I'm going to hit my rack." He headed for the corridor.
"And I'm going to work on some boxes," Dulcie said. She wagged a finger under West's nose. "You're not allowed to do another show without telling me first."
"It's a deal."
He watched her work for a couple of minutes. Then he carried the guitar to a bench along one bulkhead where it would be out of the way and safe from damage. He set it down and went back to work.
Chapter 30 – Janice
Janice slipped quietly into the starboard lounge. There was a single cadet on duty, a bored -looking young man slouched deep in a padded chair. He sat up and looked around, saw who it was, and gave her a wave. Then he sank back into the seat and resumed staring at the stars.
It had to be the most boring assignment on the ship, she supposed. Still, she didn't think she'd mind it. Crisp, bright stars unhindered by atmosphere made a view that still took her breath away. Even after nineteen long days in the gulf between the stars the view from the windows entranced her.
The next wormhole jump was imminent, and she meant to see it happen. It had been a goal since the ship left Deirdre, and she hadn't managed it yet. New Avalon was only a few jumps away, which meant this was nearly her last chance.
If she was perfectly honest, she had another reason to be in the almost-empty lounge. She was shirking her duties. The lounge was a place she could avoid the crew and passengers without actually looking as if she was hiding.
"Janice! There you are. I've been scouring the ship for you."
Janice grimaced through the window, then noticed that she could see the other woman's reflection in the steelglass. She hastily smoothed her features and turned. "Ms. Barnard. What can I do for you?"
Hammett had made up the title of "passenger liaison", but in the aftermath of the battle it had become true. With so many automatic systems fried, the Alexander had become a very labor-intensive ship. Many of the cadets had died, leaving her short-handed, while more than a hundred passengers found themselves crammed into tiny staterooms and bunk rooms with time weighing heavy on them.
Janice had suggested putting the passengers to work, and after some initial resistance on both sides, everyone had embraced the idea. How she had ended up in charge of all those passengers Janice wasn't sure, but the role of passenger liaison had become her aegis and her albatross.
"We have a laundry crisis," Barnard announced. "It's the misfits, of course." The misfits were that subset of passengers who had escaped Freedom Station with only the clothes they wore, and were the wrong size to borrow anything from the crew or the workmen from Kukulcan. "They've been doing the best they can, but they drop off laundry and it doesn't get back to them for a day and a half." Barnard shook her head. "That's fine for the rest of the ship's company, but for the misfits it causes a real problem. They need preferential laundry treatment. Just once every couple of days, mind you. I'm sure you understand."
Janice nodded. "I see what you mean. Maybe I can go down to – no. I want you to go. I want you to go into the laundry compartment and take charge of things."
Barnard's eyebrows rose in distressed arcs. "But no one's going to listen to me!"
"I'm de
putizing you," Janice announced. "I'm giving you complete authority to act in my name where matters of laundry are concerned." She gave the other woman a sharp look. "It's a lot of responsibility, and I'm trusting you not to abuse it."
Barnard nodded, looking impressed.
"Tell whoever's there that I've given you this authority. Don't take any attitude from them, either. And be warned." She held up a finger. "Every time someone brings me a laundry -related problem, I'm going to refer them to you."
Alarm showed in Barnard's eyes, but to her credit she simply nodded. "You can count on me."
Janice smiled and sent her on her way.
The moment the woman's back was turned, Janice whirled. "Did we jump yet?" she demanded.
"Hmmm?" The cadet gave her a startled look. "No, I don't think so."
"Good." Janice chose a couple of the brightest constellations and tried to fix them in her mind. Each jump only took the ship a short distance, but for a very close star it might be enough. She wanted to see a star move. She wanted to know the ship had jumped, to actually see the evidence and not just understand it in an intellectual way.
A dark shape moved in the reflection on the steelglass. Someone was coming into the lounge. Janice ignored whoever it was, staring fixedly at the stars, hoping they would take the hint.
"Liaison Ling."
She turned in spite of herself, and a cadet in a pressed uniform snapped a crisp salute. "Cadet Thorpe reporting."
He was young and earnest and terribly serious, and she smiled, trying to hide both her annoyance and her amusement. "You don't have to salute me, Cadet Thorpe. I don't have a rank in the Spacecom armed forces."
Thorpe stared at her, looking flustered.
"What's your name, Cadet?"
His eyebrows rose. "Thorpe?"
"Your first name."
He flushed. "Rory, ma'am."
"Rory, you must never call me ma'am again. It makes me feel old. My name is Janice. All right?"
"Yes, m— That is, all right, Janice." He relaxed his rigid posture, letting his shoulders slump. It was a big improvement.
"Thank you, Rory. Now, what can I do for you?"
"We could use some backup message runners during General Quarters. We have enough cadets if there aren't too many messages, but if the phones go down and things get busy, there won't be enough. It has to be people with vac suits, though. They'll be running messages in corridors and compartments that are close to the skin of the ship."
Janice nodded her understanding. "I'll add the people from Baffin. They're the only ones with suits. If I move—"
Rory glanced past her shoulder and said, "Neat! We just jumped."
"Damn it!" Janice turned, trying to find one of her bright stars before she could forget their positions. There was a change, though, in the constellation she had dubbed the Duck. The stars hadn't moved, not that she could see. But there was a new feature, a blue-white line just beyond the tip of the Duck's bill. She stared, then pointed. "Is that …?"
"It's a comet," Rory confirmed. "It looks like we've reached New Avalon." A metallic clang echoed through the corridor behind them, and both of them stood silent, counting. Six clangs rang out in total, followed by a moment of silence. Then they heard the patter of rushing feet.
"General Quarters," Rory said. "I guess we're here, all right."
Chapter 31 – Hammett
"The next jump will take us into the system," Hammett said. "We'll still be a good hundred million kilometers from the Gate, so if the enemy is there, the odds of being spotted before we have time to bug out is infinitesimal. Nevertheless, we shall be ready."
He looked around the bridge. It was a much different place than it had been three weeks before. The telephones had proper handsets now, banana-shaped plastic handles with an earpiece on one end and a mouthpiece on the other, and they hung from the bulkheads on clips, or sat in cradles at bridge stations. The deck was clear of cables. The wires now ran under deck plates or made tidy patterns across bulkheads.
The system had built-in redundancies now. Breckenridge and his Baffin technicians had installed two relay stations, compartments with dozens of telephones and a patch panel, with a handful of crew standing by. Every key location on the ship was connected to the bridge by at least two routes. If a wire was cut, the relay crews could create a secondary connection in moments.
"Get me the shuttle bay," Hammett said. "I want to talk to Lieutenant Kasim."
Along the bulkhead a cadet named Sadiq nodded and lifted a phone to her ear. He was getting much better with names, mostly because he'd instituted a change to uniforms. There were too many cadets, and too many civilians working alongside them, for anyone to keep track, and he didn't want communication slowed by people stumbling over names. Now everyone, including himself, wore a strip of tape on their chest with their name in block letters.
"I've got him, Sir," Sadiq said, and he crossed the bridge to take her phone.
"Lieutenant Kasim. I want you to take the Falcon out for a test flight." The Falcon was the runabout from Baffin, now gutted and refitted with entirely manual controls. Breckenridge had made it his pet project, working day and night for a week and a half. Kasim and a handful of technicians, some from Baffin and some from the Alexander, had worked with him. Now they were stripping a shuttle and giving it the same modifications, but so far only the Falcon was spaceworthy.
Probably. As the ship jumped again and again they hadn't taken the time for a test flight.
"We'll be doing practice maneuvers," Hammett told him. "Make sure you signal the ship before you come back in." There wasn't a single working radio on the Alexander, so they had fitted the Falcon with signal lights. There were more signal lights in the shuttle bay to let him know it was safe to land.
"Aye aye, Sir," Kasim said, sounding cheerful. "I'll put her through her paces."
For the next hour the Alexander played tag with a comet. They swept in close to the flying snowball, matched velocities, then flew away. They raced past, almost close enough to touch the comet, then drifted in slowly, seeing how close they could come. Finally they parked a hundred kilometers off and tore the thing up with rail gun rounds.
"The new slugs are working fine," DeMarco reported. They had brought a small fabricator up from Baffin before abandoning the station. The machine had nowhere near the versatility of the big Level III replicator they'd left on Kukulcan, but it was adequate for making simple things like telephone handsets and control equipment for the Falcon. Solid rail gun slugs were no problem at all.
"The Falcon is coming in for a landing," Sadiq said. "Lieutenant Dixon requests that we maintain our position."
Hammett glanced at Cartwright, who nodded.
"Sound General Quarters again," Hammett ordered. Technically there were still at General Quarters, but the crew would have relaxed their vigilance somewhat. This would warn them that the Alexander was about to make its final jump.
"Spotters report no activity in the system," Cartwright said. "For what that's worth." They were a good light month from New Avalon. They would see nothing unless the aliens had been in the system for a long time.
"I guess we'll know shortly if they're waiting for us," Hammett said. He looked at Sadiq.
"The Falcon's back on board," she reported.
"Bring us about, if you please, Ms. Cartwright." Hammett waited as she spoke into three different telephones. "Ask Lieutenant Rani to jump us as soon as we're lined up."
Cartwright spent a minute or so getting the ship aligned with the nearby star, then announced, "We've jumped."
Cadets began chiming in with reports from the telescopes in various lounges and windowed compartments. The Gate was visible and looked intact. No other shipping was in sight.
Then the report he'd been dreading came through. A cadet named Murphy looked at Hammett with wide, alarmed eyes and said, "Several ships spotted near the Gate."
Aw, hell. He didn't speak, just waited.
"At least five craft,"
Murphy said. "She says it's hard to count them at this range. They're stationary. No indication we've been spotted." There was a long, tense silence. "She can't be certain," Murphy said at last, "but it looks like the enemy."
For a moment Hammett clung to the idea that it could be Navy ships keeping watch on the Gate. The Alexander had no way to pick up transponders, after all. But every Spacecom vessel had a distinct profile. If the Alexander was close enough for the spotters to see the Gate, they were close enough to recognize military craft.
He sighed. "Lieutenant DiMarco."
The weapons officer looked up from his console.
"I'll need you to go to the missile bay and prepare me a nuke. It'll have to explode on impact. Where are you at with the guidance system?"
DiMarco had spent much of the last two weeks taking apart a missile guidance system, testing the components one at a time, and using the fabricator to replace what couldn't be salvaged. "I'm pretty confident," DiMarco said. "All the essential code is burned in. I'll have to be close when I launch it, though."
"Works for me," Hammett said. "How close do you need to be?"
"The closer the better. A couple of hundred kilometers would be great, but I know you're not taking us that close. Anything less than a hundred thousand should be fine." He considered. "The thing is, I know pretty much what the orbit of the Gate is. I could hit it from anywhere close to the planet, if we were in an equatorial orbit at a similar altitude."
Hammett nodded. "We should be able to manage that." He turned to Cartwright. "Bring us around, Ms. Cartwright. I want you to jump us pretty close to the planet."
She gave him a dubious look. "How close, Sir? Our range is pretty much an educated guess right now."
"We won't jump straight at the planet," he said. "I want to pop out on the far side of the planet from the Gate."
She nodded. "Okay, no collision risk, then."
"I want the planet between us and the Gate," Hammett told her. "That's the only place we've seen the enemy so far."