Harcourt nodded, thinking that "lambs" might have been a better term—sacrificial lambs.
No. Not lambs. They had died fighting—or trying to. "We have to bury them," he said. "We owe them that much."
"Why?" Ramona countered. "They've got the perfect coffin as it is."
Her face was very bleak. Glancing at her, Harcourt felt a chill. What was going on in that mind of hers?
"Captain to the bridge!"
"Coming." Harcourt hurried away, unfastening his pressure suit. He came into the bridge with his helmet still under his arm. "What did you get, Chief?"
"The whole ship's log," Coriander said, "at least for this mission, from the time they were asked to volunteer up until they died." Her face paled as she watched the screen.
Harcourt was tempted to ask for an audio analog. Instead, he said, "Give me the digest."
"The John Bunyan was ordered to run a reconnaissance mission past Vukar Tag," she said, "six months ago. They tried to get close to the planet, but fighters swarmed up to defend, and they had to run for the asteroid belt. They were Swiss cheese by the time they got here, but they had taken out seven Kilrathi ships on the way. The only atmosphere left was in the pressure bottles on their suits. They stayed in the asteroid belt, hoping the Kilrathi would give up and go away so they could make a run for the jump point—but the Cats stayed. They hung around for eight hours, twelve hours… The captain recorded the last entry just before he blacked out from lack of oxygen." She paused, then said, "The computer made one final automatic entry, noting that the fusion plant had been hit by a parting shot, a random Kilrathi missile. Then the reserve battery ran out, and the computer couldn't do anything more, either."
Harcourt turned to Ramona. "Did you know there had been a ship assigned to this mission before us?"
Ramona stared, frozen. Then she gave a quick, jerky nod. "Yes, Captain. They didn't tell you, huh?"
"Not a word." Harcourt's lips thinned. He had a nasty, sneaking suspicion that Ramona had known the information had not been included in his briefing—but maybe he was being paranoid. After all, it had sounded like a good deal, at the time…
As long as they weren't told the whole truth.
"Captain," Billy called.
"What is it?" Harcourt knew that tone in Billy's voice. His tension increased.
Billy was pointing out the vision port. "Silhouette. Just coming out from behind that big rock."
Harcourt stared. Then he said, "Can you get that on your screen?"
"Electron telescope." Billy jabbed at his panel a few times, and another screen lit. "There it is, Captain. Full magnification?"
Harcourt nodded.
Billy twisted something, the image expanded…
Into the silhouette of a Venture-class corvette. Badly damaged, missing a lot of pieces, but a Confederation corvette nonetheless.
"So," Harcourt breathed, "we're Number Three." He turned to Ramona. "Or is it Number Four? Or Five? Or Six?"
She shook her head, ghostly pale. "They didn't tell you this, Captain? They really didn't tell you any of it?"
Harcourt forced his voice to be gentle. "No, Commander. None."
"We're Number Three," she said, "and the Admiralty's really upset that the first two missions disappeared."
"I'll just bet they are!"
Ramona shrugged helplessly. "They're afraid all this spying will attract the Kilrathi's attention."
Harcourt just stared at her.
Then he said, in a very soft voice, "Oh, are they really, now?"
He turned back to look at the hulk on the screen. "I'd say they attracted attention, Commander. Yes, I think you could say that."
Ramona was silent.
After a minute, Harcourt turned back to her. Her eyes had hardened, but they were still fixed on the wrecked silhouette on the screen. "You know," she said, "if you didn't captain a corvette yourself, you might never recognize that shape, it's been chewed up so badly."
"Yes, you might not." Harcourt felt as though a gust of cold air had blown through him. What was she thinking?
He found out soon enough.
"We need to talk in private, Captain."
He looked in her eyes and said, "Yes. Of course. The wardroom." He turned to the staring eyes all about them. "No one interrupt." Then he rose and went out the door.
Ramona followed.
In the wardroom, Ramona toggled off the intercom and locked it. Then she told him what she had in mind.
"No! It's sure suicide! I won't hear of it!"
"It's the only way." Ramona paced the wardroom. "We need a ruse, right? Well, this is it—better than going in disguised as an asteroid, even. A dead hulk, no emissions of any kind, so badly shot up that its silhouette isn't even recognizable any more! I get aboard that wreck, you tow me up to cruising velocity, then disengage and let me go. Vukar Tag grabs me into orbit, but I'm going so fast that the planet can't hold me. I swing around it once, get my pictures, shoot off toward the asteroid belt again—and voila! Mission accomplished!"
"Impossible!" Harcourt snapped. "If we're off by one degree on the calculations, you'll get sucked into Vukar Tag's gravity well and crash!"
Ramona shrugged. "That's the chance I take, that everyone in the Fleet takes whenever they go into battle. What's the matter? Don't trust your own computer? Or Ensign Barnes?"
"Barney is a damn fine astrogator!" Harcourt barked.
"Yes, I know—so crashing is the least of my worries." She came back, leaned over him. "Look, I volunteered for an extremely dangerous mission. I knew I might not come back alive."
"Yeah, but at least you could accomplish something by your death! This way, you might still get shot down before you get close enough for a single frame! When the Kilrathi see a bogey coming in to Vukar Tag, they're apt to hit it with everything they've got, just to be on the safe side!"
"No, they won't," Ramona said, "because they'll be too busy chasing after you."
Harcourt didn't move, but he went rigid. "Oh, will they?"
"Sure. A diversion, distraction, just as you were talking about with your crew during the brainstorm session."
Harcourt leaned back, eyeing her very warily. "Just what kind of distraction did you have in mind?"
"Act like a Viking," she said. "Private enterprise. A privateer, Free Trader—call it what you want. You attack one of their supply ships."
Harcourt just stared at her in disbelief.
Then the idea sank in, and he went loose. "Yes. That would distract their attention, wouldn't it?"
"You bet it would! They'll come swarming up to stop you! As soon as you see they're on their way, you take off and head for the jump point."
"And leave you behind? Not a chance!"
"Simmer down, Captain—I'm not talking about suicide." Ramona held up a hand. "Remember how we talked about using the planet as a slingshot, tractoring a chunk of atmosphere, ending up with us heading right toward the jump point? Well, instead, you have me come out heading toward the asteroid belt. Then you loop around, attack one of their fighters, exchange a few shots, then cut off all exterior emissions. They'll think you're dead, and won't worry too much when you 'crash' into the asteroid belt and don't come back out. Once you're in there, you can maneuver on thrusters and pick me up."
Harcourt sat glowering at her, trying to find a flaw in the plan.
He found it.
"Fine," he said, "but how do we get home?"
"You won't really be damaged, won't be losing air the way the John Bunyan was." Ramona knew she was talking more from hope than from logic. "But you'll pretend to be, so they'll think you are—and they'll wait a few days, maybe a week, then go away. But your life-support systems will be intact, and you have rations enough for a couple of months. So when they decide you're dead, and go away back to their bases…"
"If they decide we're dead and go away."
Ramona shrugged. "They did with the John Bunyan. Why shouldn't they do it with you?"
Har
court glared at her, trying to think of an answer again—but this time, he couldn't. It was a lousy plan, one that was almost guaranteed to get her killed, without the information she'd come to get… "What if you are shot down in the middle of it? And the chances are very good that you will be. The pictures don't get back to us, the mission fails, you're dead—for nothing!"
"Of course I get the pictures back to you," she said scornfully. "I beam them by microwave. There will be plenty of time, before you turn to fake that attack on the fighter. Even if I do crash or get shot down, you'll have all the pictures I shot up until then."
A chill enveloped Harcourt's back.
She saw it in his eyes and nodded. "Yes, Captain. Once you have that information, you have to forget about me, if that's the only way to escape and get the data back to the Admiralty."
"No," Harcourt whispered. "I won't abandon one of my crew."
"I'm not one of your crew," she countered. "I'm in charge of the mission—and I rank you. Especially when I'm no longer aboard your own ship."
Harcourt said nothing. He couldn't. Not just because she had finally hit the point at which she could legitimately give him orders—but because she was right.
There are times when you have to take the only course of action that's open to you, no matter how much you dislike it. This was one of them.
Oh, Harcourt could have commanded them all to turn the ship around, leap through the jump point, go home, and report that the mission was impossible. He would also have been stripped of rank or, at the very least, given up hope of all promotion. But his crew would have been alive, and so would Ramona.
She, however, seemed to have a death wish—and she was in charge of the mission. He couldn't go back without disobeying orders—technically, mutiny, even though it was his own ship.
Harry and Flip volunteered for the grisly task of moving all the bodies back to the wardroom of the John Bunyan. If Ramona's scheme worked, if she came out alive, they would take her aboard the Johnny Greene and Harcourt would read the Service for the Dead over the derelict, then leave it as a floating coffin in the asteroid belt forever.
If it didn't work, there wouldn't be anything left to bury.
Ramona moved into the bridge of the John Bunyan. All her mysterious cases came open. She set up her arcane gear, replaced the dead nose camera with something that looked like the grandmother of all gadgets, then pressed Coriander into helping her install some very sophisticated cameras of her own. The Chief mounted the microwave dish for her and hooked up a little computer programmed to keep it always aimed at the jump point and therefore toward the Johnny Greene. Then they substituted a magnetic grapple for the towing hook…
And sat. And waited. And waited.
Finally, Billy called out, "Transport! Just in from the jump point!"
"Battle stations!" Harcourt snapped, and Grounder hit the klaxon.
The crew scrambled to stations, Lorraine fired up their two original engines, and they burst out of the asteroid belt as though they had the Wild Hunt right behind. They accelerated up to cruising velocity, aiming the John Bunyan exactly right, and let it go. The hulk sped away from them on a trajectory that should loop it around Vukar Tag in a hyperbolic orbit, spinning it out faster than it came in.
Harcourt triggered one short transmission: "Good luck, Commander. We'll be waiting."
He hoped.
"That," said Billy, "is one gutsy lady."
"I really feel badly now, about having been such a shrew to her," Grounder said.
Harcourt shook his head. "You had orders to follow, Lieutenant."
"Yes," said Barney, "but we could have tried to warm up to her."
"I did," Coriander said. "She wasn't having any."
Harcourt nodded heavily. "I think someone must have told her about 'the loneliness of command' at a very impressionable age—so she decided that if she was a commander, she should always be lonely." Then he shook himself. "Enough. We could have been warmer, we should have been, but she didn't exactly encourage it. She's got a job to do, we've got a job to do—and if we want her to have a hope in Hades of living through it, we'd better get busy with our end. Turn and aim for that transport. How long till we catch it, Number One?"
"Two hours, Captain."
"Close enough."
"Fighters coming up off the moon like popcorn without a lid!" Billy reported.
But a stern chase is a long chase, and the Johnny Greene was already up to cruising velocity. When it turned, leveling off toward the transport, Harcourt ordered, "All engines full."
Now they did what Ramona had commanded at the wrong time—kicked in their two captured Kilrathi engines. On all four, they ran up to the maximum velocity for any Confederation corvette, and past it.
Way past it.
The supply ship swelled in their screen, bigger and bigger.
"They're coming up off the gas giant's orbital station!" Billy snapped.
On the battle display, the Johnny Green was a bright green circle at the center. Above it, near the top, was the yellow oblong of the supply ship. Below, there was an arc of red arrowheads—Kilrathi fighters.
Now more little red arrowheads came swooping in from ten o'clock.
"You wanted attention? We got it!" Harry howled. "When can I start shooting, Captain?"
"You've got ranging computers again," Harcourt answered. "When they register enemy, you can start shooting."
Jolie gave a whoop of joy.
A minute, five minutes, ten…
"Range!" Billy snapped.
Jolie howled.
Her gun was in tune now—there was no Whumpf! echoing through the hull—but dots of blue sprang up in the space between the red arrowheads and the green dot.
Even Harcourt felt the satisfaction of being back in battle, the relief now that the shooting had started. Fear hollowed him, but a terrible excitement seethed up to fill that emptiness. He knew he very well might not live through this one—but he felt more intensely alive than he ever had.
How was Ramona feeling, he wondered? His gaze strayed toward the rim of the screen at eight o'clock, where the fat yellow arc that was Vukar Tag loomed. There was no blue dot near it—she was flying a dead ship, after all. Harcourt ached to send out a scan, but knew they couldn't spare it; ached to know how she was doing, what she was seeing…
Coriander had charged all the batteries on the John Bunyan, and Ramona had brought plenty of her own, so she could watch the screen to see what her cameras saw as they recorded the fly-by. Of course, she couldn't activate them until they were near the planet, but the ship's batteries were enough to show her what the passive sensors saw—not on the huge battle display, of course; it would have taken a major dry dock to repair that. Coriander had revived the lookout's screen, though, and Ramona watched, her heart in her throat, a pool of icy fear in her stomach sending out rivulets all through her body. She saw the little red arrowheads darting up from Vukar Tag, darting toward her; they had to be leveling their guns on her…
Then they were swinging away, passing her by. She heaved a huge sigh of relief. She was only a piece of floating space junk to them, after all—an asteroid about to become a meteor, to be burned up as it flashed through the atmosphere, on its way toward becoming dust. Nothing to worry about; it certainly was nothing that was going so fast that they couldn't come back and finish it, if they had to.
But the active blip, the "Free Trader" that was pouncing on their transport—that was something they had to eliminate. What impelled them to send what must be every ship in the system against one lone corsair, though? The logical conclusion sank within her like lead: they couldn't let any Confederation ship get away with news of Vukar Tag.
What the hell was on there, anyway?
Well, she would find out in a few minutes. The planet loomed beyond the vision port, hovering over her, ready to fall on her…
She pressed the "record" patch, and her camera's viewfinder lit up.
Then, suddenly, Vukar Tag wa
s beneath her, and she was skimming over it.
There was nothing to hear from her cameras, of course—everything was recorded in solid memory with automatic backups in a redundant system. None of the archaic frustrations of a transport system, of spinning wheels and fragile tape that could snap or stretch, nor any danger of a crash from a magnetic or laser head hovering over a spinning surface. The data went straight into memory, with an anti-erase lock.
The lenses were electronic, able to show her a drinking mug on the surface in fine detail—but just in case they failed, there was one optical zoom lens, only a foot long, but capable of the same amazing magnification as the electron-telescope.
What did she see?
Sand.
She was zoomed out as wide as she could be—she had to cover a whole hemisphere, since she could only be sure of the one orbit (and not even that, really). The boys back home could expand anything they saw that might be worth expanding. For herself, out of idle curiosity, she could isolate any one feature of the surface, hold it in a buffer memory, and expand it to full view.
She intended to. If she was going to give her life for this look, she meant to have it.
She tested the buffer on a faint line that she thought might be a mountain range. Sure enough, there they were, rounded humps swelling up toward her—old mountains, worn down by wind. Not water, though—there was too little of it on this planet…
She canceled the view, hovering over her instruments, the enemy forgotten in the thrill of fulfilling her mission, of seeing the closely guarded secret, whatever it may have been.
The miles unrolled beneath her. The pole shifted slowly, a tiny ice cap moving from the top of the screen to the center, then to the bottom, and the southern ice cap began to come into view…
All of a sudden, she remembered the Kilrathi fighters. She stepped back over to the lookout's screen. There they were, red sawteeth chasing a green dot, thousands of kilometers away.
But what was this? A larger triangle, a bomber at least, perhaps a small ship, spurring away from a cruiser, chasing after her!
Her heart leaped into her throat again. She poised, ready to leap to her recording equipment, ready to hit the patch that would activate the burst transmission of all the data gathered so far…
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