Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (26 page)

His
job was to stabilize the ship before they went for a Long Walk, or showed up on the Dominion sensors.  He took a deep breath.  First things first.

“Mildred!  State your condition,” he ordered loudly.

“I am functioning within specifications, Pilot Janson,” the AI answered sweetly.  “Thank you for your inquiry. The ship, however, is presently out of control and has suffered damage to a number of systems, including hydroponics, waste removal and recycling-“

“Stop!”  Janson heard a moan and looked to see Fatima Binissa clutching her wrist to her chest in pain.  She would have to wait. 

“Mildred, do you have access to piloting controls.”

“Yes, Pilot Janson.”

“Stabilize the ship and use thrusters to maintain a course for this spot.”  He marked a spot just inside the asteroid field.  “Maintain all stealth parameters.”

“It would be my pleasure,” said Mildred.

And then, using microscopically deft adjustments to thrusters, main engines and even the Dark Matter Brake, Mildred brought the tumbling craft into stable flight within a matter of thirty seconds.  Janson nodded.  He could have done it – heck, he
had
done it dozens of times, but he would have used a lot more of the thrusters to finally settle the ship down.  Mildred could perform the same maneuver faster and with an energy emission footprint a scant fraction of what it otherwise would have been.

Satisfied, Janson turned his attention to the holo display.  Now they were running along the edge of the pink area, signifying the normal detection zone of the Duck sensors.  “Mildred, adjust holo display to show projected sensor detection zone of the Dominion ships taking into account the antimatter explosions.”

“Yes, dear.”  The pink line suddenly pulled back, leaving the
Laughing Owl
once again in the clear. 

“Mildred, adjust detection zone as needed to reflect Duck sensors coming back on-line following the antimatter explosions.”  It wouldn’t be good to get caught napping when the Duck sensors reset.  Then, with a small inward smile of satisfaction, Lieutenant Forrest Janson took over flight controls from the AI and steered his ship toward the relative safety of the asteroid field.  His smile broadened.  He was having fun.

* * * *

Captain Zahiri woke up, sort of.

“Bugger me!” she groaned.  Something large and snarly was inside her head, doing its best to gnaw its way out.  She looked around.

Her first impression:  The control room of the
Laughing Owl
was a mess.  The deck was covered with tablets, coffee cups, paper, specks of blood and reeking pools of vomit.

Her second impression:  The ship wasn’t moving and had lost all power.

Her third impression was that her second impression made no sense at all.

“Captain?  Are you okay?”

She turned her head and the room spun in a most disquieting manner; her stomach rolled and spots flashed before her eyes.

“Captain?”  The voice was more urgent now, more insistent.  Zahiri fumbled with her seat controls to make the chair sit more upright.  Why the hell wouldn’t the damn room stop moving around?

“Mildred!” the voice commanded.  She dimly recognized the voice.  It sounded like Forrest Janson, her pilot.  Very odd, though, the usually fearless Janson sounded scared.

“Mildred, perform vitals scan of Captain Zahiri and give diagnosis!”

The medical scanners embedded in the command chair came to life, flashing and beeping.  Forty five seconds later, the ship’s AI said:  “Likelihood of concussion: 90%.  Degree of concussion: moderate.  No internal bleeding.  Mild shock.  Pulse is steady but fast.  Cognition level: impaired.”

“Prognosis?” Janson asked?

“Captain Zahiri should fully recover within five days, but requires rest and medication to treat shock.  Some patients in this condition respond well to music thera-“

“Stop!  Mildred, are you capable of providing the necessary medications to Captain Zahiri?”  Janson didn’t want to admit it, but the idea of giving someone an injection made him queasy.

“Yes, as a Mildred series, Version 4, I am authorized to perform as an Advance Practical Registered Nurse under the medical provider licensure laws and regulations of the following countries: Victoria, Refuge, Cape Breton, Darwin-“

“Stop!”  Janson took a deep breath, fantasizing for a deeply satisfying moment of taking his blaster and shooting Mildred until she was a smoking ruin.   “Mildred, administer the appropriate medications to Captain Zahiri.”

“Of course, dear.” 

A panel slide open on the side of the Captain’s command chair and a small nozzle extended outward, then bent toward Zahiri.  When it touched her neck, there was the small “hiss” of a spray injection, then the nozzle retracted.  Within five minutes some color returned to Captain Zahiri’s face and within ten minutes she began to feel vaguely human again.

“What’s the condition of the ship?” she asked.

“Two engines are off-line, but Avi is working on them.  Until we get them fixed, though, our acceleration stinks.  Hydroponics and recycling are wrecked.  Rest of the ship is sound, all systems more or less within normal range.  On top of that, when the bombs went off, anything that wasn’t secured went flying.  Ship needs a really good cleaning”

Zahiri grimaced.  Two engines off line meant they couldn’t run away if they got caught.  They could creep with one engine, but they couldn’t sprint.  The hydroponics and recycling would be a problem, but not for a week or so.  It didn’t matter, she didn’t think they would make it a week.

“Status of crew?”

Janson shook his head.  “One dead.  Chief Engineer Branson broke his neck.  He hadn’t strapped in and was thrown against a bulkhead.”

Zahiri sucked in her breath.  That was bad, very bad.  She depended on the Chief Engineer and Avi, the Assistant Engineer, was still pretty green.  “What about the others?”

Janson held out a hand and wiggled it back and forth.  “Mr. Hod is in the med tank with a ruptured spleen.  He should be okay in about eight hours.  Mr. Behrman has a broken nose and a cracked cheekbone and his right eye is swollen closed.  Mildred says no damage to the eye, but he’s pretty messed up and not functioning well.  Mildred is treating him for his headache, but he should probably go into the med tank when it’s free.  Ms. Binissa has a compound fracture of the wrist. She is on an antibiotic IV drip to keep it from getting infected, but she should go into the med tank as soon as Mr. Hod comes out.  Mildred is keeping her sedated because of pain.”

Zahiri’s own headache wasn’t doing too good, either, but she held the pain at bay.  She was missing something.  “What about Dafna?”

“Dafna is fine.  Most of the rest got banged up but are okay.” 

“Dafna?” Zahiri called.  “Do you still have contact with your recon drones?  Still getting a data feed?”

Dafna Simon checked her holo display and her three computer screens.  “Good feeds on all four drones.”  Her voice squeaked a little and her freckles stood out against pale skin.

Zahiri studied her for a moment, then nodded slowly.  “Okay, Dafna, do you have another drone you can launch and run in front of us, scouting out to maybe five hundred miles?”

Simon checked the ready status of her drone magazine.  There were four more queued up and ready to go.  “I can give you up to four before we have to load more drones.”

Zahiri nodded again and was rewarded with a sharp, stabbing sensation.  Her headache was down to level just below the pain of child birth. “Mildred!  Give me something more for this pain,” she ordered.  A moment later a spray jet hissed against her neck and a moment after that the pain subsided.  Not all of it, but enough so she could think. 

“Avi, how long to get the engines on line?” she asked.

Avi Lani, the Assistant Engineer, shrugged.  “Oh, geez, Captain, I don’t know.  The engines seem fine, but I think the electronics are fried.  I have to do a complete diagnostic to isolate the problem, then once I’ve got that, pull the bad connectors and replace them.”

“How long, Avi?  How long?”

The engineer pursed his lips together. “Anywhere from two to five days.”

“Get started,” Captain Zahiri said.  “We need options, and without those engines, we don’t have very many.”

She turned back to Janson and Simon.  “Dafna, you are going to have to run Fatima’s desk on the sensors until she can come back. I need to know if there is any indication the Ducks know we’re here, or even that they know we’re alive, for that matter.”

Dafna, still pale but determined, spent several minutes working through the sensor logs for the last hour, paying particular attention to when the decoy launched and the antimatter missiles that the Ducks fired in reply.  “Captain, as far as I can see, the Ducks did not have us on active sensors when they launched the antimatter missiles.  If I had to guess, and that’s all this is, I would guess that when our decoy took off, they saturated the area near its launch point with missiles in case it was a decoy and not really the
Laughing Owl.
  The sensors couldn’t catch it because of the interference from the detonations, but I’d bet that the Ducks also tried to shoot down the decoy.  The sensors are just coming back on line now.  They’ve got three ships doing a search grid through this area.  No sign of the fourth boat; it might have gone after the decoy.”

“Give me your best guess,” Zahiri said.

Dafna looked at her steadily.  “I don’t think they know we are here, Captain.  I think they figure anything in the area of the missile detonations is dead or disabled, and the decoy either got away clean or has been destroyed.  Either way, I think they are looking for debris, not a live ship.”

Zahiri nodded, wincing slightly.  It made sense.  If the
Laughing Owl
still had three engines, she would be tempted to make a run for it. 
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,
she reminded herself.

“Okay, people, let’s find a place to hide, but let’s do it very, very quietly.”

Two long hours later they crept into the asteroid field.  They all breathed a deep sigh of relief, then spent the next hour creeping into it deeper under low power.

But the sense of relief didn’t last long.

“Oh, crap!” Dafna suddenly blurted.  “Trouble, Captain!  Recon drones show half a dozen ships, frigate size and smaller.  Looks like they are scouting each of the asteroids, trying to see if we’re hiding in the shadows.”

Zahiri rubbed the grit from her eyes, trying to keep the exhaustion at bay.  She wished Dennie Hod was out of the med tank so she could bounce ideas off him.  She wished she had three good engines under her instead of just one.  She wished she had left for home a day earlier.  She wished wishes
were
horses; her crew was hungry and a little horse meat wouldn’t hurt.

“Dafna, keep your eyes on those scouts.  I want to know the minute any of them turn towards us.  In the meantime, keep the ship at full stealth.  Forrest, put up the navigation holo.  I need to know just where the heck we are.”

The holo display changed and expanded.  The
Laughing Owl
was presented as a blue triangle in the middle of the display.  All around them were large, misshapen forms depicting the asteroids, some as small as the
Laughing Owl,
some enormous.  The asteroids moved ponderously from right to left.

“First,” she ordered, “turn us ninety degrees left so that we are moving in the same direction as the asteroid belt’s revolution.  We stick out like a sore thumb moving across the field this way.”

“Not as bad as you might think, Captain,” Janson said.  “Some of the asteroids on the outer edge got pushed around when the Duck missiles exploded.  They got kicked out of their regular orbit and are bouncing around, hitting other rocks and pushing them out of their normal pattern as well.  It looks like very large dominoes getting knocked over.”

Zahiri nodded.  That helped a bit. 

They crept deeper into the asteroid belt, always trying to keep as many of the ponderously turning asteroids between them and the Dominion scouts as possible.  Some of the crew who were not busy with urgent duties began to clean up, starting with the bridge.  After a time Dennie Hod came out of the med tank, but immediately went to his bunk and would not be ready for duty for a few more hours.  Fatima Binissa took his place in the tank.  Another crewman brought sandwiches and coffee, then handed each of the bridge crew a stimulant tablet.  Captain Zahiri eyed the pill with distaste.  She desperately wanted to go to sleep.  Sighing, she popped it into her mouth and washed it down with warm water.  A few minutes later she felt jittery and on edge, her nerves taut as the stimulant took hold.  It felt like someone rubbing sandpaper on her psyche.

And always, she kept her eyes on the pink shading of the hologram that seemed to be pursuing them as they fled.

Two things happened almost together.

“Captain!”  It was Dafna at the sensor display.  “In just a minute we are going to come to an open area in the asteroid field.  It’s the shipyard, Siegestor.  And Captain, now there are Duck scouts working the field in
front
of us and coming our way.  I’m only catching glimpses of them, but Mildred estimates less than an hour until we are within the detection zone.”