“What is it, Master?”
“Can’t you smell it?”
“Smell what, Master?”
“That stink. These power units reek of danger pheromone. So did those at Klys’kra’t. This is proof, if any is needed, that the Trojans and the Vulcans are the same people!”
#
Chapter Thirty Six
Mark had mid-watch duty, the “night shift” aboard ships in space. As head of the Astrogation Department he could assign himself to any watch he wanted. He’d chosen the unpopular mid-watch because it was quiet, and to give his two bleary-eyed assistants a break. They had been standing watch-and-watch the whole time he was on the planet. Upon hearing his decision, Lisa pointed out a drawback to the arrangement, namely that he would be sleeping alone for the rest of their time in the Etnarii System.
It had been a full day since
New Hope
departed Pastol. They had two more days to go before they rendezvoused with the stargate, where they would fake a jump to the Gasak System before returning to Brinks Base. They could have made the transit faster, of course; but to do so would reveal their ship to be no ordinary Type Seven freighter, and the masquerade must be maintained. So they plodded outbound, accelerating at 0.8 standard gees.
Of course, modern-day starships had redefined what it meant to “plod.” Unlike the primitive rockets of the early space age,
New Hope
’s normal space generators were capable of thousands of hours of continuous acceleration. This meant that starships avoided the long coasts that had been the normal mode of spaceflight in earlier centuries. Instead, they accelerated under continuous power until they reached speeds approaching one percent of the speed of light. And having spent the first half of their voyage gaining velocity, they spent the second half shedding it.
Accelerating at eight-tenths gee,
New Hope
had traveled in a single day essentially the same distance that Earth moves in its yearly circuit around the sun. Even so, they had covered barely one-tenth the distance to the stargate. However, continuous acceleration is like compound interest. It adds up in a hurry. Their velocity was such that they would reach the midpoint of their voyage in only twelve more hours, and would rotate the ship to begin decelerating to keep from overshooting the stargate.
For much of the time since leaving the planet, they had focused a comm laser on
Chicago
in the Oort Cloud. The Pastol planetary database was much too large for them to transmit the whole thing to their distant guardian, but those parts researchers found interesting went on the beam.
In addition, the members of the ground party spent the day recording their impressions of Pastol. Alien Assessment Team researchers peppered them with questions designed to elicit ever greater detail from their recollections. They were so persistent that when the interrogations ceased so the victims could resume normal shipboard duties, it seemed like a respite.
Mark found the mid-watch as quiet as he had hoped it would be. After the hectic events surrounding their departure, it was pleasant to sit under the blue “night light” and feel the cool breeze of the air system wafting against the back of his neck. Things were quiet, that is, until Mark finished logging the required hourly position check. It was at that instant that a computer alarm sounded in his ear.
“What’s the problem, Mr. Rykand?” Ensign Malkovich demanded in a voice that nearly cracked from adolescent tension. Malkovich was the most junior of
New Hope
’s officers.
“Checking now,” Mark replied as he punched up various displays. The cause of the alarm was not difficult to discern. Throughout the climb toward the stargate, they had kept a full sensor suite focused on Pastol.
“Oh, shit!” Mark muttered under his breath.
“What is it?” the Ensign asked. This time his voice did crack.
“That Avenger just left orbit, Mr. Malkovich. It’s hauling ass after us. You’d better roust the captain.”
“The captain is rousted,” a weary voice called from the entry hatch. Glancing over his shoulder, Mark saw Captain Harris, still sealing the closure on his ship coveralls as he entered the bridge. Ensign Malkovich immediately relinquished the command chair to the captain.
“Report!”
“The Broan Avenger just broke orbit, sir. He is accelerating this way, pulling 1.4 gee. I would say that our cover is blown.”
“How long before he overtakes us?” Harris asked.
“Forty four hours if he intends to follow us through the gate. If he accelerates continuously, he’ll close to weapons range in…” Mark punched a few numbers into his workstation. “… I make it 34 hours.”
“Time to the gate on our current flight plan?”
“Another 48 hours, Captain.”
“So they catch us before we get there in either event. How long to the summit?”
‘The Summit’ was the point in a voyage where velocity reached maximum and they turned the ship.
“Deceleration in 12 hours, Captain.”
Harris quickly programmed his command board. Various velocity and acceleration curves filled the main viewscreen. He studied them for long seconds before shaking his head.
“Negative, astrogator. We’ll delay turnover for four hours and let our velocity build. That should keep us ahead of him. Then we’ll turn up the wick and decelerate at emergency max for a Type Seven. That should get us to the gate first without blowing our cover.”
Mark did some work of his own and confirmed the captain’s figures. “First by a hair, assuming he doesn’t adjust his own velocity profile to match our maneuver.”
Harris shook his head. “If he is truly after us, then he shouldn’t have much performance margin to spare. Hopefully, we’ll get outside his pursuit envelope.”
“And if we don’t?”
“We’ll face that when it happens.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Communicator!”
“Yes, sir,” Vivian Domedan responded. She was the third member of the mid-watch bridge crew, and if anything, younger than Ensign Malkovich.
“Put a report on the laser beam to
Chicago
. I want Captain Symes to know our situation.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Shall I order the ship to battle stations, Captain?” Malkovich asked.
“Not just yet, Ensign. Worst case, he can’t overtake us for another day and a half. If we’re going into battle, we need the crew rested.”
Slowly, the talking died away and they all watched the blip on the screen. Accompanying the display was a range-to-target indicator. Mark became hypnotized as the Broan warship gained on them. Finally, after an hour of silence, Harris spoke up. “Ms. Domedan!”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Put notes in the computer files of the battle staff. We will have a strategy session in the wardroom at 09:00 hours this morning. We need to figure out how to lose this shadow without giving away our secret.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
“Well, people, I think I will try to go back to sleep. If the situation changes, call me. Ensign Malkovich, the bridge is yours. Good night.”
“Good night, Captain,” the youngster responded, a note of pride in his voice as he resumed his place in the command chair.
#
“Wake up, sleepyhead!” Mark said, nudging Lisa gently with one hand. When she didn’t stir, he nudged her again.
“Wha… what time is it?” the sleepy voice asked, muffled by a pillow.
“Oh-six-hundred. I just came off duty.”
“Then take off your clothes, climb in, and don’t disturb me until 08:00.”
“Can’t do that,” he said, admiring his wife’s naked back. “We had some excitement mid-watch.”
“Excitement?”
“That Broan Avenger is on our tail!”
That did it. Her orange-and-black-striped head snapped upright as she raised her head to an angle that threatened to give her a stiff neck.
“What?”
“The Broan warship left orbit a couple of hours ago. It is heading after us as quickly as it can move.”
“Damn!”
“That’s what I have been saying to myself every minute or so since we spotted him.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Dunno. The Captain has called a strategy session for 09:00 hours. As our foremost authority on the Broa, you are invited.”
That news was sufficient to levitate her to a sitting position, giving him a view that he still appreciated.
Half an hour later, they were in the mess compartment, eating breakfast. Around them hovered a buzz of urgent conversations. News traveled fast aboard ship, and no news moved faster than word that they were being stalked by a Broan warship.
“Is it true, Mr. Rykand?” Spacer Donnelly asked as he paused en route to a nearby table. His breakfast tray, momentarily forgotten, drooped to the point that Donnelly’s bulb of coffee was threatening to slide off.
“It’s true,” Mark replied, speaking around a piece of toast that he had just bitten into. “Spotted him departing Pastol parking orbit at 04:10 this morning.”
“We going to outrun him?”
“We’re postponing turnover to make sure we beat him to the gate. After that… well, the captain has a strategy session this morning to answer that question.”
In the twenty minutes it took him and Lisa to eat, he must have answered that same question a dozen times. Finally, they got out of the mess compartment and Mark accompanied his wife to the Alien Technologists’ compartment, more to hide out until briefing time than because he had duties there.
Finally, 09:00 rolled around and both of them excused themselves as they left the scientists, all of whom were clustered around a monitor, intently watching the sensor display that showed their pursuer.
They made their way to the wardroom, where they found most members of Captain Harris’s battle staff already assembled.
The captain began the session by recounting what they had observed. He explained that they had prolonged the acceleration portion of their voyage, and that they would be going to higher deceleration in a few hours. He finished with, “We’ll beat them to the gate unless they continue accelerating — barely. What do we do then?”
“We jump through,” the Exec said.
Mark shook his head. “Can’t.”
“Why not? Isn’t that how you departed Klys’kra’t?”
“It is. We jumped through a stargate to an uninhabited system and then went superlight. The system beyond Etnarii is Gasak, the Subsector capital. We try to go superlight there and we can guarantee an audience.
“Besides, that Avenger is going to be right behind us. Even if no one in Gasak spots us, our pursuer will know something is wrong when he doesn’t find us on his scopes after he jumps through.”
“Then we take him out with a superlight missile,” the Chief Engineer said. “Ships explode all the time. He strained his engines during the chase and blew up.”
Harris nodded. “That is a possibility. Downsides?”
“Destroying a Broan warship in plain sight of one of their worlds isn’t advisable, Captain,” Lisa said. “Our whole strategy involves keeping a low enough profile that no one will ever put serious effort into finding out who we are.”
“What do we do, then?” Harris asked, gazing at each member of his staff in turn. The response was an uncomfortable silence.
Mark frowned. They had come so far and now they were threatened by the same sort of ship that had killed Jani at New Eden. The thought brought with it a flash of his kid sister’s laughing, red-curl-enshrouded face. That, in turn, was followed by an errant thought. Uncontrolled by conscious will, his mouth opened and words tumbled out.
“It’s simple, really, Captain. They don’t explode. We do!”
#
“They are past time when they should have begun decelerating, shipmaster!”
Pas-Tek was seated at his command station in
Blood Oath
’s control room, watching the Vulcan ship on his displays.
There was no law that decreed a ship had to begin slowing at the precise midpoint of a voyage. It was, however, a development he had not planned on.
“Engineer!”
“Yes, Commander,” came the disembodied reply.
“Our quarry has passed the midpoint and continues to flee. Can we do the same?”
“No, Commander. We are running one-twelfth above recommended power now. Any more and we are liable to damage the generators.”
“It looks as though our target will reach the gate first. We are going to need our jump engines.”
“We’re working on repairs as quickly as we can, Master. The acceleration is impeding the recalibration.”
“I don’t care, Engineer,” he replied, using the idiom of command. “I want my ship ready to jump when we reach the gate. I don’t want him to get too far into Gasak before we overtake him.”
“Yes, Commander.”
Saton’s station was at the foot of Pas-Tek’s command throne. The sailing master turned his head awkwardly and said, “It is a shame that you do not have the codes to deactivate the gate, Master.”
“While we are at it, why not wish for a planet destroyer?”
The planet destroyers were a class of large warship held in readiness to deal with planetary revolts. It had been generations since one had been used, but Those Who Rule had long memories.
However, Saton was correct. It would have been much easier if he had access to the disable code for this particular stargate. However, the gates were critical to the proper functioning of Civilization. Shutting down a gate for even a fraction of a cycle could disrupt an entire sector’s economy. Chasing down one errant freighter did not seem a sufficient reason.
That thought provoked another. It was obvious that the Ruling Council wanted these miscreants badly, and much honor would fall to the officer who captured them. Yet, he was bothered by one aspect of his situation.
Those two images of the female alien haunted him. Why would the same individual show up on both Klys’kra’t and Pastol, two systems many stargates apart? Were these criminals such a small gang that they had only the single ship? It seemed possible since both fugitive vessels were Type Seven freighters. If that was the case, however, what had they done so heinous as to warrant a Civilization-wide alert?
“Computer!”
“Yes, Master,” the mechanical voice replied in his ear.
“Run the following data.” He gave the reference for both the Klys’kra’t and Pastol data files. “Is the female in both files the same individual?”