"CAN YOU HEAR ME?"
"I can hear you," she said, not in the mood to shout back.
"She's awake," came more quietly. "Get the rest of that stuff off her suit . . ."
"What stuff?" asked Cecelia, then she began to remember. The fall out of FTL, then the capture, then the mutineers' ship, then the attempt to escape. "I hope you're the good guys," she said. Someone chuckled, and it was a nice chuckle.
"Well, we think so." Definitely Chief Jones. "We're in a troop shuttle, off the ship . . . but we have a little problem."
"Oh . . . ? Is Miranda all right?"
A silence that lasted a beat too long, then Jones' voice again. "No. She refused . . . they were one suit short."
"She got Anseli out, didn't she?" asked Cecelia. She could just see a blur of light swiping back and forth across her suit's faceplate, as if someone were cleaning it of the opaque glue.
"Yes. And told Kouras to get out, and Kouras did."
"Good decision," Cecelia said. "Can you get me out of this suit?"
"Once we get the tangle stuff off it."
Cecelia emerged from the confines of the suit feeling as sweaty and dirty as if she'd just ridden a major event. The troop shuttle's interior looked stark and unpromising—a long open space with racks along the sides for weapons and suits and other equipment she didn't recognize.
Several of the survivors of the breakout were wounded, propped on pieces of suit, being tended by their fellows. Chief Jones beckoned Cecelia forward.
"The problem we have, sera, is that not one of us is qualified to pilot this thing. Or any other ship. We were hoping you could, but you were so tangled up when we found you, that we didn't dare wait. We had one sergeant who had a license for a surface-to-orbit before he joined Fleet, but he hadn't passed the Fleet aptitude test and hadn't handled anything like this . . . He got us out the door, but he's unfamiliar with the navigation system and hasn't a clue what to do next. You're qualified, right?"
"For a ship like my own, yes. For this one . . ." Cecelia looked around, and bit back the suggestion that they should have asked her what she could pilot before picking a ship. "I suppose you took the one nearest the hatch," she said finally.
"Yes. There's an automatic launch, that sort of throws them out . . . this was sitting on it. So what I was hoping—"
"Was that I had somehow acquired proficiency in flying Fleet combat troop shuttles. Well . . . I suppose I can try."
"Are you sure you weren't ever military?" The unspoken sir hovered just off the end of that question. Cecelia grinned.
"Not me. But it wouldn't do me or any of us any good for me to sit here howling, now would it?"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
R.S.S. Indefatigable
Despite Heris's sense of urgency, she took her flotilla through the intermediate jump points with all due caution, checking ansible activity along the way. Nothing more from the ansible at CX-42-h and the only word from HQ was "Proceed with caution." Heris would like to have arrived at CX-42-h in an off-axis insertion, but the erratic planetoid made that too risky. So she ordered a textbook insertion and hoped the mutineers—if they were there—hadn't had time to mine the entrance.
She missed Koutsoudas most at times like these, when insertion blur robbed her of eyes at the moment they were most vulnerable. But the scan finally cleared—it had been only a couple of minutes after all—and the navigation board came up with a perfect match for the chart, except that the erratic planetoid was a degree off from where it should have been.
"Ship?" she asked.
"One . . . masses a cruiser . . . no ID yet."
"Mutineers could have disabled the ID." No Fleet cruiser should be here; the last ansible download had given her all cruiser locations in this sector, and this wasn't one of them. "What's its course?"
"It's . . . zero acceleration relative to system, Captain." A worried note in that voice. "Drives appear to be shut down. They may be trying to lie doggo."
Thank the gods for small mercies. "Weapons?"
"Nothing lit, Captain."
"Is that the only vessel insystem?"
"The only thing that size—the search program's on . . ."
Indefatigable continued its own deceleration, in company with its companions.
"Captain, I have a tentative ID—"
"Go ahead."
"It's based on just the mass data—"
"Go ahead!"
"Well . . . it's the same class as the Bonar Tighe. We have to get a lot closer before I can be sure."
"Our beacon's transmitting, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir."
"So unless they're all dead over there, they know we're here, and who we are."
"If their scan's working . . ."
"Why wouldn't it be? You want to bet our lives on the notion that they have even their passive scan shut down for some reason? I don't. When will we be in tightbeam distance, Chief?"
"Forty minutes, Captain. There'll still be lightlag, of course."
"That's all right." Heris considered. If she blew them away without hailing them—which she was inclined to do—she would have to pick up debris proving they were a mutineer ship, or she'd be in worse trouble. Officially at least; being caught by surprise would be the worst. If she hailed them by tightbeam . . .
"Captain! Ansible flash!"
Here? Now what had happened at HQ?
"What is it?"
"Local origin—this ansible—and it's . . . omigod!"
"The message, please."
"Sorry—yes, Captain. It's to be transmitted to any Fleet unit querying any ansible . . . it's on a two-hour repeat. Danger Blue, Danger Blue, Danger Blue, mutineer fleet this location on 23/4—that's today, Captain—ship names include Bonar Tighe, Wingate, Metai, Saracen, Endeavor . . . attempting to disable mutineer flagship, execute code zero, repeat execute code zero."
Heris let herself breathe again. Someone on that ship—several someones, it would have to be—had just committed suicide, but their deaths would save many. "Weapons," she said. "Lock on to that ship—give me a solution."
"We're still too far out," the weapons officer said.
"I know. But there's some urgency. We're going to microjump closer. Any other ships in the system yet?"
"There might be—nothing as big as the other named ships—"
"They've left," Heris said. "But the loyalists don't have that information—"
"There's this little something—yes—it's really little, about the size of a troop shuttle."
Mutineers escaping a disabled cruiser, or loyalists who had managed to escape the mutineers? Either way, she'd prefer not to destroy it.
"Weapons, we want to take out the cruiser and not the troop carrier. Where's the best location? Nav, heads up on this, and prepare to microjump."
While they calculated, Heris tightbeamed her captains on the other ships and sent them out on search.
"Here, Captain," the Weapons officer and Navigations officer presented their plot.
"Do it," Heris said. "And I want a firing solution the instant we come out, and then immediate fire."
A split-second later, the screens blurred and cleared again as they microjumped. There was the blunt ovoid of the cruiser, showing no activity in drives or weapons or active scan. From this distance, they could get a positive ID: it was the Bonar Tighe, last reported on Copper Mountain.
* * *
Troop Shuttle Two
* * *
The combat troop shuttle was larger than the shuttle she'd taken up from the surface of Xavier that time, but the cockpit, when she reached it, looked much the same. The sergeant had chosen the right-hand seat. He gave her an anxious look as she edged past a console covered with knobs she didn't recognize and took the pilot's seat.
"You can fly this, right, sera?"
"We don't know yet. I certainly never trained in it, or anything nearly as big." At first glance the screens, buttons, dials, and controls were a confusing blur; she forced herself
to look at them one by one. She recognized the rate-of-climb indicator, and then the roll-and-bank next to it, where it should be. "We're under power?"
"Yes, sera, just five percent. I didn't dare go faster . . ."
Percent power, percent fuel remaining, flying time at this fuel usage . . . all in the right relation, which meant that here—yes—would be the onboard power supply, and there would be the artificial gravity indicators and controls. Something in the right place looked like a scan screen, but it was dark. "Did you try scan?"
"No, sera—I don't know anything about scan."
So they were under power flying blind . . ."You have scan experts," she said to Chief Jones. "Get someone up here to handle scan, while I figure out the rest of this." She ignored the scan screens, found the attitude controls, and then the primary navigation system. It was off; she flicked it on, and a screen came on, showing much the same display she'd seen from her own ship . . . from a different angle, but she recognized it. There was the mass of the system's star . . . a label popped up giving its ID number in the catalog. Then another mass, then another, appeared, each with a descriptor.
Dusty Dirac spoke up from behind her. "Hey—need some help with scan?"
"We need to know who else, if anyone, is in the system," Cecelia said. "And I've got enough to do learning the rest of these controls."
"Gotcha. Do you need Pete right now, or can I switch places with him?"
Cecelia glanced over at her copilot. "Do you mind?"
"Not me. I'm way over my depth." He struggled out of his seat.
"See if you can find a manual while you're up," Cecelia said. Heris had finally convinced her of the utility of hardcopy manuals, and she hoped the rest of the military had Heris's habit of stashing useful manuals near the places they might be needed.
Dusty slid into the copilot's seat and started tabbing systems on. Cecelia ignored the results for the moment; she had to decide if she could really get this craft to go where she wanted it to.
"Uh-oh," Dusty said.
"What?" Chief Jones leaned into the cockpit.
"Something big just jumped into the system."
"Whose side, I wonder?"
"Theirs, most likely. We only just got our message out. This is probably one of their people coming to rendezvous."
Cecelia shut her ears to this distraction and located all the controls she was used to from her own runabout. Unfortunately, this craft was missing some she expected—it had no FTL drive, for instance—and had some she'd never seen before. Intended as it was for near-space work, mostly shuttling from orbit to surface and back, its fuel load was far less than she could have hoped. They certainly weren't going to leave the system in it.
"How far are we from the ship we left?" she asked.
"Oh . . . about ten kilometers. Why?"
"How far away should we be for safety if that ship blows up?"
"Blows up . . . why would it blow up?"
"Because if that's one of their allies coming in, and they can't answer—and they can't, because we destroyed their ability—it'll probably shoot them preemptively, won't it?"
Jones looked at her and shook her head. "Cecelia, you continue to amaze me. Let's see—a cruiser under fire, not returning fire, shields down . . . the fireball will be . . . we need to be a lot farther away."
"Their scans will still be foxed by downjump turbulence," Dusty said. "We can move now and they may not notice us . . ."
"Tell everybody to hang on," Cecelia said. "In case the artificial gravity does something I don't know how to fix. I'm going to go insystem . . ." She changed the ship's attitude, then advanced what she hoped was the throttle. The delta vee changed abruptly, and then increased.
"We're going somewhere fast," Dusty said. "Or faster, I should say."
* * *
"It's the Indefatigable," Dusty said suddenly.
"Can you tell if they're loyalists or mutineers?"
"They just blew up Bonar Tighe. I'd say that makes them loyalists."
"That could be a mistake," Jones said. "Or they may think like you, Cecelia."
"Whoever it is, they'll have scan that can pick us up, right?"
"Well . . . maybe. There's a lot of noise from the ship blowing up. If we hailed them—"
"And if they're the wrong ship, then we're in worse trouble."
"We can at least be listening," Cecelia said. Dusty turned on the receivers and the automatic tuners.
"—Shuttlecraft, identify yourself or we will fire upon you."
"Don't fire!" Dusty said quickly. "Who are you?"
"R.S.S. Indefatigable, Serrano commanding. Stand down your weapons."
"Weapons . . . what weapons?" Cecelia asked. "Do we have weapons?"
"Combat shuttles do, but I don't know anything about them. Maybe it's these switches—"
"Don't touch that!" Chief Jones said. "Tell them our problem."
"We don't have a real pilot aboard," Dusty said. "We don't know which switches are which."
"What do you have?"
"Well . . . a civilian who holds a surface-to-orbit license for a small civilian craft—we used the automatic launch to get out with."
"Just stay where you are—don't touch anything. We'll match course."
Cecelia sat back and took a deep breath. Against all odds, they'd escaped the mutineers, escaped the destruction of the ship they'd been on for . . . however many days . . . and she was still alive. Miranda . . . she did not want to let the others know how merciful Miranda's death had been.
It took hours for the Indefatigable to match courses and for one of the shuttle pilots aboard it to make an EVA trip across to take over and maneuver the shuttle into the other cruiser's bay. Then at last they could debark and work their way, one at a time, through the airlocks into the ship proper.
Cecelia, rumpled and dirty, saw across the compartment the compact dark woman she knew better than perhaps any other . . . Heris Serrano.
"I might have known," Heris said. The corner of her mouth twitched.
"What?"
"You . . . of course . . ."
Chief Jones looked from one to the other, alert and almost suspicious. Heris transferred her gaze to the Chief. "Chief Jones? I'm Commander Serrano . . . welcome aboard. I understand you're the ranking NCO?"
"Ranking survivor, yes, sir. Master Chief Bigalow was senior to me, but he was killed during the escape."
"Let's get your wounded to sickbay and get you all something to eat, then we'll need to hear the whole story.
* * ** * *
The captain's office into which Heris ushered Cecelia looked nothing like she'd imagined. Blonde, fake wood, soft-focus pictures of desert scenery in peaches and tans . . .
"It's not my ship, really—I inherited it during the mutiny. This is what her former captain wanted."
"So who has your ship?" Cecelia asked.
"I don't know. Haven't had time to find out. There is a war on, you know."
"I know," Cecelia said, rubbing her bruised shoulder. "I was in it."
"Just what were you doing on a mutineers' ship, and how did you get from there to a combat shuttle? The last I heard, you were clear across Familias Space, having just won that horse trials thing."
"It's a long story." Cecelia sank into the soft cushions with a sigh. "It started with finding a home for Brun's children—"
"The family's not keeping them?"
"No. I took them away because Miranda and Brun were immobilized after Bunny's death—they couldn't think. They hadn't even named the boys. Anyway, I took them off to Ronnie and Raffa, who were out on this colony—" She launched into the whole story, and Heris listened without interruption, until Cecelia came to that last bit of the voyage. "So I tried to signal the ansible, but they got to me before there was time to get confirmation that it had accepted my signal . . ."
Heris nodded. "It did accept your signal—and Fleet's been watching out for ansible activity not associated with normal message traffic."
> "Took you long enough," Cecelia said, not quite grumbling. Heris shrugged.
"So—then they captured you. Then what?"
Cecelia would have preferred not to give the details of everything that had happened—it wasn't so much humiliating as simply unpleasant—but Heris insisted on extracting every bit of information.
"I don't see why you need all this from me," Cecelia said at last. "You've got the others—"
"Yes, and I'll talk to them," Heris said. "But your viewpoint is unique. You were in at the beginning, with the Lepescu mess; you were involved with the crown prince and the clones; you were at Xavier. And you saw it from a civilian viewpoint—from an old civilian's viewpoint."
"Well, this old civilian is hungry and thirsty and tired and could really use a shower."
"I know. I'm sorry. It was imperative that I hear your story first, before talking to the others. Remember at Xavier that you had that lieutenant—what was his name?—convinced that you were some sort of covert ops person?"
"Well, you'd put me in an odd position—"
"Don't blame me—you were the one who insisted on coming up to the Station. But my point—I'd like you to do that again. I'm burdened by an Executive Officer of surpassing pedantry—no combat experience at all, very little ship experience, a born paper-pusher. But senior to everyone else, and he's driving me insane. If you could keep him busy—"
"Why not let Petris take care of him?" Cecelia asked. "He's an officer now, right?"
Heris grimaced. "Petris isn't here. This isn't my ship—I mean, not the ship I'd been on, with my crew. In the turmoil right after the mutiny, they were assigning officers to command the nearest ships, and this one was just finishing a refit. The crew is a mixed bag from a dozen other ships and the sweepings of regional headquarters. That's where I got Seabolt."
"But I'm not covert ops," Cecelia said. "I'm not military at all."
"So you say . . ." Heris said, grinning. "I'm willing to bet that even the women in that cell with you will accept the story that your life as a self-indulgent rich horsewoman is just cover. Everyone knows, you see, that self-indulgent rich women are all fools. What did they think of Miranda's trick with the mop?"
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