It was the same prickly, bumpy outline of a sting yam, but no orange poison spots. Bain almost felt disappointed. Then he realized how ridiculous it was to feel that way, and he grinned. He choked when a giggle tried to come up his throat, and he attempted to swallow it.
“There we go,” Lin said, dropping back to a whisper. She tapped the middle column of seven rows of numbers. “If it doesn't go over twelve point oh eight eight oh oh, we're home clear.”
“Why?”
“That's the point where they have to change course to investigate us without wasting energy. If they continue on past that point, they'll technically be passing right by us. They haven't run a second sensor sweep on us yet, and that was almost—” Lin paused to check the chronometer. “Almost twenty minutes ago.”
“It worked?” Bain couldn't breathe for several long seconds, but he barely noticed.
“It's working. This is only the first test, but I have to admit it does look good.” Lin smiled now, and some of the wrinkles of concentration smoothed away from around her eyes. Bain noticed she didn't relax her position of readiness.
He watched the column she had indicated. His breath caught a little when the numbers rolled over to twelve point oh eight. The three zeros flickered a little, three times. Bain watched, staring again until his eyes hurt.
The numbers didn't advance. Bain risked looking away from the numbers once to meet Lin's gaze. She winked at him. When he looked back down, the numbers flickered and dropped to twelve point oh seven nine nine oh.
“Home clear,” Lin said. She sagged back against the cushions of her chair and started massaging her hand. She closed her eyes and laughed a little breathlessly. Bain noticed then that little beads of perspiration misted her forehead.
“It works. It's working,” Bain corrected himself. He knew they had many more tests ahead of them, and each would be just as dangerous as this first one. Still, passing this first test so well had to mean something, didn't it?
* * * *
“Receiving a signal,” Ganfer said, startling Bain.
The boy jerked from a sound sleep in half a second. He wasn't sure if Ganfer had repeated himself, or if he had been dreaming of an alert. Bain's pulse doubled as he tugged aside the curtain of his cubicle and looked out onto the bridge.
Lin had told Bain to go to bed, now that they were technically in the safety zone of the test. He had obeyed after insisting she needed sleep, too. To his surprise, Lin had agreed. Did it mean the last six hours of waiting had been harder on her than she would admit, or were they safe so she could relax completely now? Ganfer was more than enough to stand watch, but Bain had never known Lin to let someone else carry her duties.
“What kind of signal?” Lin asked. She shoved aside her own curtain, and flew over to the control panel, with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and trailing in the air like a cape. Her hair was loose from its usual braid, and hung around her face in tangles, making her look years younger. She still had faint gray smudges under her eyes from the strain of four hours ago.
“It comes from the robot sensor station at the edge of this sector,” Ganfer reported, after only a few seconds’ pause to locate the identification code and translate it.
“That's good—it didn't get destroyed by the Mashrami,” Bain said. He took the time to tug on a pair of pants before he pushed off the edge of his bunk and flew over to the control station.
“Right.” Lin smiled as she adjusted several rows of buttons and switches. “We're just at the outside of the sensor range. I think its safe to come back to full power and bring the engines on line.”
Bain knew an order when Lin hinted one. His hands darted over his half of the control panel before he had even finished sliding into his chair. He hooked one bare foot around the support post of the chair to keep himself in place while he worked.
“That's much better,” Lin said, as a deep vibration rumbled up through the deck plates. All the dark screens on the bridge flickered back into life with bursts of light and color. “Let's see what that robot is telling us.”
“It's safe to broadcast again,” Bain offered.
“Mm hmm.” She leaned forward and studied the newly lit screens in turn. It was a full twenty minutes before Lin nodded, visibly satisfied. Then she pushed off from the chair and flew back to her cubicle.
“What does it mean?” Bain blurted.
“You couldn't understand what it was broadcasting?” Lin shook her head and scowled at him. Bain nearly laughed, delighted to see her teasing side again. “Here I was, congratulating myself that you are my brightest and best pupil yet, and then you ask a question like that.”
“I know it's transmitting the Mashrami movements and everything it picked up before it had to go to passive sensor mode. I know that if it's transmitting, that means the shields worked and the Mashrami didn't blow it to pieces. What else does it mean?”
“We can put back the robot tracking stations where the Mashrami destroyed them.” Lin slid the curtain closed with a rattle and bang.
“Then we'd know what they're doing in all the places we can't go anymore.”
“Exactly,” she called through the curtain.
“We'd know how many Mashrami there are, and where they're going when they move.”
“We won't send too many defenders to one place, and not enough to another, either.”
Lin pulled the curtain aside and flew out again. She had put on a loose, sleeveless shirt of bright green that hung past her knees, and black pants, but she was still barefoot. Bain grinned when he saw that.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
“We calculate how to get around the Mashrami's flight path, and meet up with Gil. When the robot restarted aggressive sensors, it recorded the number of ships in the convoy, and where they were going when they split up.”
“They didn't stay in their convoy? But that's not right.”
“Don't tell me that, tell the Mashrami.” Her voice squeaked comically with frustration. “They always travel in big, nasty flocks, and they never split up until they're ready to surround their latest victim. The robot recorded that they went off in all directions from one central point. That doesn't sound like they're getting ready to surround someone.”
“Maybe they know what we're doing?”
“Who would tell them? Nobody knows how to communicate with them.” Lin shook her head. “The information will reach Gil before we will, even at top speed. Ganfer, put everything you can spare into analyzing the data as it comes in. Bain, you'll pilot, while I calculate our flight path so we avoid all those uglies.”
“That sounds like a lot.” Bain felt his heart skip a beat at the idea of doing all the piloting himself, with Lin too busy to look over his shoulder and catch his mistakes.
“More than anybody has ever recorded in one sector of space at one time. Something is going on, and from where I sit, it doesn't look good.”
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Chapter Seven
Bain listened, as Lin and Captain Gilmore and the pilots and unit leaders of the Ranger ships conducted a remote, voice-only conference. They were less than four hours of flight from the spot where the Mashrami ships had bypassed Sunsinger. The Rangers had received the information from the robot station, and put their own people to work analyzing it. When Sunsinger met up with the Rangers, Lin had nothing new to offer; no information they didn't already have; no ideas they hadn't already discussed.
“The only thing to do is keep watching them,” Gil said, at the end of the six-hour conference. “One bright spot is that now we have a general idea of where to find the Mashrami, instead of drifting around and hoping to run into them.”
“The mouse is always more secure when he knows where the cat is,” Lin muttered.
“What's a cat?” Bain wanted to know. That earned a grin from Lin, even as she pressed a finger to her lips to quiet him.
“We can trim the distance between us to an hour of fl
ight,” Lt. Horiss offered. “We can have a pre-arranged signal that you can send in a burst the Mashrami won't catch, to let us know when you go into shut-down and drift. We'll pull back and watch until we know what's going on, and try to stay on the perimeter of their sensor field.”
“That sounds reasonable to me.” She sat back and rubbed at the back of her neck. “Do you mind if we get a good eight hours of sleep before we go back out there?”
“Anything you want, Lin. You know that.” There was a touch of something in Gil's voice, a drawl, muted by weariness, which made Bain think the Ranger captain smiled as he spoke.
* * * *
Sunsinger found the second Mashrami ship six hours after they moved out from the protective Ranger cluster. For the first five hours, everything followed the same routine established by the first ship.
The first sensor sweep from the Mashrami came fifty-eight minutes and ten seconds sooner. Bain whispered as he reported that to Lin. She nodded, said nothing, and went back to studying the figures on the screen directly in front of her.
“Second sweep.” Bain's voice rose and cracked. Every muscle stiffened. He had a momentary, frantic wish to jump out of his seat, and flee the ship.
“Suspicious, are we?” Lin muttered. “Ganfer, have they changed their flight path or speed?”
“No change,” the ship-brain said.
The ‘point of no return’ crept closer. Bain knew how to calculate that place in the Mashrami's flight path where they would have to change course to investigate Sunsinger as she played dead, or continue on their way. Bain marked that point, and paid careful attention to how quickly it approached.
The third sensor sweep went over them less than twenty minutes from the crucial point.
Bain said nothing. He didn't dare look at Lin. He didn't want her to see how totally helpless he felt. The sweat started trickling down his back. He wiped his forehead, then had to wipe his hand on his thigh before he could touch the control board.
“They're still moving on their straight-line course,” Lin whispered, eighteen minutes later. She reached over and squeezed Bain's shoulder. Her hand was firm and steady. Bain thought that a river of strength and steadiness flowed into him with her touch.
The first encounter with the Mashrami had been a lucky fluke, he told himself. Whoever—or whatever—had been operating the sensors had been lazy and irresponsible. These three scans Sunsinger had just endured were the norm for the Mashrami. Bain convinced himself that in two more minutes, the point of no return would pass, and Sunsinger would be safe again.
“There we—” Lin began, a smile starting to inch across her face.
“Speed change,” Ganfer broke in. “Changing course. Executing an upward curve aimed straight at Sunsinger.”
“Wait,” she ordered. Steel filled her voice. Lin scowled at the sensor displays, as if daring them to give her negative information.
“Sensor sweep.” Ganfer paused for two seconds. “Tripled intensity of the previous three.”
“That does it,” she bit out. “Bain, get ready to bring up engines on my mark.”
“Sensing a concentration of energy in the forward upper deck of the Mashrami ship.”
“Energy beam?”
“Possibly. Hard to tell on passive sensors.”
“Gut instinct says yes. Now, Bain. Engines!” Lin pounded the control board, hitting the thrusters, and shoving Sunsinger away from the oncoming Mashrami ship.
Bain's fingers never moved so quickly. He stared at the control board, refusing to blink even when sweat dripped down into his eyes. He nearly cheered when the rumble of the engines vibrated through the deck plates.
“Up!” he shouted.
Lin pounded the controls. Sunsinger leaped forward, twisting sideways hard enough to smash Bain against his chair. The impact of sudden gravity crushed the air from his lungs. He held on, and fought a sudden wave of blackness creeping in from the edges of his vision. Sunsinger righted itself. The heavy hand of gravity didn't relax, but Bain could breathe now. He sank straight back into the chair cushions, not twisted around at wrong angles.
“Full sensors operational,” Ganfer reported. “Energy beam confirmed. I calculate forty-nine seconds until build-up has reached optimum blast point.”
“That much time?” she muttered. Lin tapped the thrusters, and punched hard on the attitude jets. Sunsinger jerked hard to the right. “Bain, send a message to Gil.”
Bain opened his mouth to ask what he should send. Lin played the controls, and the ship jerked down, hard, so they both flew up in their seats. Only the tight safety belts held them into their seats. Bain knew he didn't dare ask Lin or Ganfer—they were too busy piloting Sunsinger away from danger. They had to have an erratic course so that the Mashrami would have a difficult time aiming the energy beam at them.
Tell the Rangers what? Bain tried to remember all the adventure books he had read. What did the hero do when he was sending a last-minute message?
Place and time. That was always a good point to start. Bain reached forward, straining his body against the gravity of acceleration, and tapped the commands into the computer. He called up the computer images of the Mashrami ship, and included them in the message. Then he added the ship's automatic records from the moment Ganfer had caught the Mashrami ship on the far-range sensors.
Was that enough? Would it help the Rangers figure out what went wrong, if Sunsinger didn't escape?
“Here it comes!” Lin shouted.
Sunsinger went into a wide spin. Halfway through the second turn, Lin slapped the controls, and the ship jerked upwards.
“How close?” she demanded almost in the same moment.
“Two meters from the outer edge of the beam. It widens the further it travels,” Ganfer added.
“Damage?”
“Nothing above a level eight.”
Bain translated that as heat stress, nothing more. He finished the final programming for the message burst, and slapped in the command to send it.
“Message sent,” he said, and had to shout to be heard above the growing roar of the engines. Had Sunsinger ever gone this fast before?
“Good.” Lin never looked away from her controls and the display screens directly before her. “Ready with stellar dust.”
Bain opened his mouth to ask why—it wasn't much use except to hide the angle of their approach to a Knaught Point, and the closest Knaught Point was days of travel away. He choked on the question, and swallowed it down, and reached for the control.
Sunsinger flew straight-line for nearly a minute. Bain knew the erratic pattern was to confuse the Mashrami and any computers they might be using to track the ship for targeting. It confused him, too. He wished Lin would warn him when she was going to veer hard to the left, or turn the ship half upside down.
“Damage?” Lin shouted, just before she put the ship into a barrel roll of three revolutions.
“Minimal.” Ganfer's voice blasted through both their collar links, making the metal vibrate against Bain's skin. It barely rose above the scream of the engines, the chiming and beeping and klaxon bursts of twenty different ship function alerts.
“Now!”
Bain hit the dust release button without thinking. His hand shook as he drew it back. He felt a flicker of pride that he hadn't hesitated.
“Didn't stop them at all,” Lin growled. “Flew right through it like it wasn't there.”
“Wish we had a hold full of asteroids to throw at them,” Bain said.
“What?”
He repeated himself at a shout. Lin nodded, and turned away from the controls long enough to give him a teeth-bared grin.
“Next time!”
Please, Fi'in, Bain prayed. Please let us have a next time.
“Disruption field,” Ganfer reported, after the ship went through four hard shifts to the right, then a leap followed by a drop that made Bain's stomach flatten for two seconds.
“Where?” Lin's voice rose and cracked.
&nbs
p; “Mid-point of the Mashrami ship.”
“That's impossible!” Bain shouted.
“Tell them that,” Lin returned.
Mashrami scout ships weren't supposed to have electrical disruption fields. That equipment was always left to the big, planet-attacking ships. Scouts weren't supposed to go after ships, even ones as small as Sunsinger, unless there were two or three working together.
“They're changing all their known patterns,” Lin said, after ten seconds of straight flying. She took Sunsinger down, and tilted the ship to the left hard enough to generate momentary gravity. “Put together another message burst, and send that to Gil. They have to know.”
Bain nodded and forced his hands to stop trembling so he could obey.
“Field spreading out and forward,” Ganfer reported. “It should catch up with Sunsinger, pushed by the impetus of the Mashrami ship, in approximately forty-five seconds.”
“Why are they changing their pattern?” Bain muttered, as he finished programming the data into the message burst. He didn't expect an answer. All that mattered was that if something didn't interrupt the Mashrami while they generated that field, in thirty-eight seconds the electrical field would reach them. Ship functions would jerk to a stop. The computer files would erase. All control would vanish, just long enough to take the ship from Lin's hands, and cripple it for the Mashrami to catch. They would regain their control, because Bain always carried the basic programs on a disk in his pocket, and he had practiced re-loading until he could do it in his sleep.
The question was, would Ganfer return? If the electrical disruption field hit Sunsinger, Ganfer's vast, ancient memory banks could be wiped clean.
Ganfer could die.
If the ship-brain died, Bain knew it wouldn't matter if he and Lin died, too. It would only be a matter of time, maybe a few minutes, until the Mashrami got close enough to blast their drifting ship to molten dust.
Lin let out a shriek. Bain jerked and looked at her. She grinned, lips stretched in a grimace, and pointed at the screen on the far wall. It showed a computer simulation of their situation. A blue dot for Sunsinger was in the middle of the screen. A black square for the Mashrami was in the far left corner and creeping closer.
Dead World [Sunsinger Chronicles Book 3] Page 6