Renegade (28 page)

“
We’re going to get incoming before we’ve finished the course change!
” Geish warned.

“
Can’t help it. Arms, full defensive!”

“
Aye LC!”
There was nothing for it but to hope that Arms would intercept anything that would hit them before it did. Engineering gave him an overheat warning on the mains, but it was the jumplines that bothered him, not the well tested and relatively undamaged main engines.

At two minutes, incoming arrived, continually accelerating rounds detonating on proximity fuse, thirty klicks, five klicks, two klicks, a bright flash as defensive intercepted one a klick short. Too many and too close… Erik re-primed the mains, abruptly cut thrust to the collective gasp of everyone on the bridge, waited for the reactor to re-boot, then slammed it on again. And suddenly all the rounds were detonating ahead, where
Phoenix
would have been, as Nav scrambled to recalculate based on that last move. Then the rounds were detonating behind as enemy Armscomps over-adjusted.

“
That cruiser at red-three is gonna get real close to our mark!”
said Karle, toggling fire and threat assessment as Erik held the roll to keep the guns in line. Red-three marked the third-closest enemy threat, but the fastest closing… Erik didn’t want to hit anyone, just defend their escape, but if they left him no choice,
Phoenix
weaponry was more than a match for anything chasing them.

“
Arms, lock red-three with everything and fire!”

“Aye LC, he’s still too far out…”

“I know just hit him!”

Karle did that… and Erik felt a disorientation as dizziness hit him, then a jolt as uplink augments hit him with a stim jolt to keep him blacking out. Mark arrived, and Erik rolled without cutting thrust, and let Nav line them up for first pulse… wham! as something blew just to one side, intercepted or near-miss he couldn’t tell, then a flash as something hit red-three, and he pulsed hard…

…and came out racing, suddenly far too fast for incoming ordinance, but the jumplines had a red light, flashing on the perimeter of his overcrowded vision. Any other time he would have bailed out, but there was simply no choice, and grav readings dropped below critical as velocity piled up, and suddenly all the lines on the jump Nav were matching.

He hit pulse, and Argitori system stretched in white sound and noise…

A
nd arrived
, somewhere else, and a long, long way away from Argitori. That red light was still flashing, and speeds were about thirty percent too high, but that was normal for crazy combat jumps… only this was Rikishikti, which had retained its old krim name by virtue of being too insignificant for anyone to be bothered changing it.

Nav details crossed his eyes, blinking more easily in the lack of thrust but blurred as always from hyperspace time-dilation. It was the physiological equivalent of not sleeping for three days, and staring at a screen for most of them. Rikishikti, small red dwarf, a big, hot gas giant in a close orbit that was slowly melting it, a few rocky outer worlds and some very old, tumbling bits of ice. A dull and boring system frequented by no one, but providing enough mass to pull a speeding ship out of hyperspace.

Nav finally got its bearings and gave him a position — forty percent further down the gravity slope than they were supposed to be. But the dwarf’s mass was low enough that it wouldn’t mess them up particularly.

“Engineering, this is the LC. Rooke, I’ve got a red light on the jumplines, give me a yes or no on the next jump.” He dumped velocity while he waited for Kaspowitz to recalc the jump. The warning light remained unchanged, the dump hadn’t broken anything else. It could just be a bad sensor.

“Nothing here,” said Geish. “Navigation buoy says seven transits in the last week, that’s it.”

“Don’t believe those fucking things,” said Kaspowitz. “They lie. LC, give me another few minutes to recalc.”

“That’s okay, we’ve got time.” The nice thing about being in one of the Fleet’s most powerful ships was that they always arrived well before anyone else. “All posts report.”

“Arms green LC.”

“Coms green LC.”

“Scan green.”

“Nav needs a drink LC.” Erik fought back a smile, sipping water from the seat pouch. He couldn’t quite believe they were still alive. Surely something had fucked up somewhere.

“
Engineering is green LC. Still checking that jumpline but it’s just that one light, nothing else, could be nothing. Mains are fine, I’m not getting any readings of damage.”

“Operations is green LC. PH-1 is locked and secure, both other shuttles are secure, all Engineering crew accounted for.”
Well thank god for that. Now for the one he was dreading.

“Major Thakur? You guys okay down there?”

“
We’re good LC. Zero casualties, one chah'nas prisoner, two rescued kuhsi prisoners. I thought it was just one, but turns out there was a kid squashed into the suit as well. We had two chah’nas prisoners, but one went for a gun just now and… well, now there’s one.
”

Erik couldn’t quite believe his ears. “Outstanding Major. Just outstanding, you’ve excelled yourself. My appreciation to you all.”

“
And ours to you. Incredible bit of flying, the Captain couldn’t have done better.”

“Amen,” Kaspowitz echoed as he worked, and some others echoed it again. Erik still didn’t believe it, he could think of at least five things in that last passage he could have done better or faster. And it was one thing to say you were as good as Captain Pantillo, quite another to actually know what that meant, as he did.

“She took two minutes fifty-six on the dot,” said Jiri with a half-grin of disbelief. “And didn’t lose a man. That’s ridiculous.”

“That’s ‘cause we’re
Phoenix
,” Shahaim said loudly. “And don’t let these fuckers forget it.”

“LC,” came Kaspowitz. “Nav is locked in, got you a course.”

“Good.” He flipped coms to shipwide. “
Phoenix
, this is the LC. Two jumps to go, just hold tight. Let’s see if we can do this in one go.”

“
LC this is Rooke. I think we’re okay. Closer interrogation reveals nothing, I think it’s just the light… it’s the mag oscillation sensor, but I think it might just be reading disruption from mains.”

“
Green it is. Two dumps and a course correction, stand by.” First and second dump passed without any further protest from the light. Erik held them at a 5-G burn for twelve minutes, seeing no reason to push it harder in this deserted system without immediate navigation hazards, then burned at 8-G for another ten to improve position and starting velocity upon the gravity slope, considering their deep entry.

And then when everyone down to the implacable Major Thakur herself was surely cursing him and muttering that he should just jump already, he hit two pulses in succession, watched the lines match, and once more flung them out into the void…

…
a
nd back in
. Everything was shaking, and he just knew something wasn’t right. The red light had made several friends, and the escape lines kept trying to rejoin and fling them back out into hyperspace, despite the great mass racing up at them in the stellar distance. Sounds and vision came at him oddly, as though doplering, colours shifting into realms where they did not belong. Were they actually out of hyperspace? You weren’t supposed to be able to experience hyperspace, the human brain was structurally incapable of processing what it found there, and the sensors the scientists took across the gulf in research ships never recorded much more than static…

Erik tried to flex a hand on the left axis control, tried to find the jumpline toggle. That reach of his hand seemed to take a lifetime, fingers flexing out into the infinite distance…

…and back in fully with a crash of reality, alarms blaring, attitude reading a sideways slide and everyone shouting at once. “Dumping!” he shouted, recharging the lines to do that, and watched with helpless dread as the indicators barely moved, then slowly crawled as the power flowed. Come on, come on…

“That’s not good!” Shahaim yelled from his side, watching the same thing he was. “That’s not good at all!” If they couldn’t charge, they couldn’t slow down. If they couldn’t slow down they’d cross this entire system in a few days and fling into deep space where no one travelled sub-light, and no one would find them, and they’d all die a very slow death from starvation or suffocation, depending on how long they could keep the ship running…

“Engineering!” Erik called. “Get me a charge!”

“
I’m on it!”
A pause. “
Try it now!”

The lines moved, and finally a full charge. Erik hit the pulse, and everything blurred out of phase once more… then snapped back hard. This time the charge came quickly, and he hit it again. And found them at a much more sensible velocity. Heading was a little off — they were nadir on the new star, heading ‘beneath’ it, out of the plane of planets and moons which they’d be astronomically unlikely to hit, and the associated debris which was much more likely.

“Nav?” he called.

“Looks good to me LC,” said Kaspowitz, relief plain in his voice. “Good job.”

“Helm?”

“Systems look good. We can coast here, take a look at whatever went wrong.”

“Okay everyone, this is the LC, looks like only two jumps this time. We’ll have to do the third jump later. All posts call in.”

They did, and all were unchanged save for a very anxious Second Lieutenant Rooke in Engineering. When everything was finally cleared, Erik gave them freedom to move around, and called Draper up to command.

He almost fell when getting from the chair, whether from nerves or the accumulated stiffness of two jumps straight. He braced himself with effort, and found the two marine guards ready by his quarters, having used the paired acceleration slings in there to avoid abandoning their post. They accompanied him around to back-quarter, along the central marine corridor and into Assembly, in time to catch Trace and some of her marines sliding down the access ladders from the core transit that everyone had to use to move from midships to the crew cylinder while rotation was operational.

There were plenty of other marines about, some armoured for simple protection as marines often would when riding a jump run, many checking the rows and rows of stacked armour and weapons as was procedure after every big move. The unarmoured others gathered also, and there were shouts and yells as the returning marines pulled off their helmets and handed off weapons.

“PHOENIX! PHOENIX! PHOENIX MARINES! ECHO PLATOON, FUCK YEAH!” They yelled louder when they saw Erik, moving aside for him. None touching him, just shouting, not wildly, but with purpose. “LC! HELL YEAH LC!”

Trace gave him a wry smile as he approached, sweaty with wet hair stuck to her forehead. She held out her hand, and he smacked it hard, and clasped, and ruffled her wet hair. “Best fucking marine commander in the Fleet,” he said loudly, and they roared.

“Best fucking carrier pilot in the Fleet,” she retorted, and they roared again.

“LC! LC! LC!” And Erik found himself smiling, and covered in goosebumps. Never mind that they’d all almost died in that last reentry, and might have broke the damn jumpline again. This was something he’d never truly believed he’d get, from these people. And never truly realised how badly he’d wanted until now.

Trace yanked his head down to speak in his ear above the noise. “And if you tell me differently, I’ll kick your ass.”

Erik laughed.

T
race’s
first priority after every planned Op was debrief — you didn’t get good at this stuff by chance. It took endless practice and review, but right now ship life was getting in the way.

She arrived at Medbay Three, newly opened with One and Two now full of wounded or dead, warning screens active above the door to say the pivot had been active, and as spacers liked to say with dry humour, objects in the room may not remain as you’d left them. Doc Suelo came to her as she arrived — a darker ‘African’ shade than her, faintly grey and vastly experienced.
Phoenix
was his fourth warship, and in between he’d run vast Fleet station hospitals, big city hospitals, and in his younger days, frontier medical wards on outposts no one had heard of. He’d come back to active duty, he liked to say, because some young punk of a captain had suggested that he might be getting too old for it, and he’d re-signed to spite him.

“I’m sorry Major,” he said. “But she’s becoming a problem, and if I can’t venture into my own ward, I’ll have to tranq her.”

“Not like I have anything else to do,” Trace said mildly. It was not her habit to complain, but as command staff on a warship, her most precious commodity was time. Long experience had taught her to defend that commodity forcefully when necessary, in the sure knowledge that others would take it from her if she did not.

“You’re the one who rescued her,” Suelo reasoned. “She might remember that. I don’t want to tranq her with her kid there, if we get off on the wrong foot we’ll have to lock her up for the duration, and I know from experience that kuhsi hate confined spaces. I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t think it was important.”

Time-short or not, if there was anyone on the ship who could get a favour from her, it was Suelo. “Good job getting all our criticals through the push,” she said. “I was certain we’d lose another one or two.” In heavy-G manoeuvres, the badly wounded often died. There was no helping it, and ship commanders had it drummed into them in the academy to ignore the possibility, least they get
everyone
killed.

“I was certain too,” Suelo said sombrely. “The LC was down here just now talking to a few of those conscious, looking real relieved. You know, that boy’s starting to grow on me.”

“We’ll start a fanclub,” said Trace, and reached for the door.

“You’re going in like that?” Trace held up her forearm guards and gloves, borrowed from a light-armour suit. Suelo nodded warily. “Just be careful. She hasn’t cut anyone yet, but those blades will open you ear-to-ear if they catch you right.”

Trace nodded, hit the door and went in. Within was a broad medbay, runners down one wall where the pivot would tilt the whole room in heavy-G. Bunks were built into broad frames running through the walls. On the furthest one, the rescued kuhsi sat with her cub. She wasn’t hooked up to lifesupport or even an IV. A flask of water sat on the bed table, and a sandwich that had been opened, and the meat picked out of it. Didn’t med-staff know that kuhsi didn’t eat vegetables? Probably not bread either.

She sat on the bed now, watching Trace approach, knees up, teeth bared in a snarl. Big ears back, eyes wide with fear and threat. She’d been much more sedate coming aboard — the suit had had a leak, evidently she’d had to get into it in a hurry, and pull her kid in too. Mild decompression had meant she’d been barely conscious when crew had pulled them both from the suit. Now consciousness had fully returned, and she was scared insensible. In the bunk beside her lay the little boy, one big ear protruding up from the pillow. Beneath a neighbouring bunk, Trace spied the remains of another sandwich, sent flying there with its tray, probably when a corpsman had tried to offer it to her.

Trace climbed onto the neighbouring bunk and sat there. The kuhsi stared at her, faintly trembling with tension. She had tawny fur, brown fading to pale, dark at the tufts of the ears. A powerful jaw, short whiskers, and long, blade-like nails protruding from her three middle fingers. A lot of females had those removed, she’d heard, voluntarily or otherwise. These were short, but looked effective enough. They made slice-marks in the gel-mattress even now. But pretty though she looked to human eyes, she did not look especially healthy. A cut marred both lips, and her ears were notched, one bent unnaturally. An eyelid drooped, partly swollen. And her jumpsuit and jacket were filthy and torn. Some dark patches looked like they might be blood. Old injuries, Trace saw.

“Do you recognise me?” Trace asked. Indicating her own face. “I saved you. In the chah'nas ship.” The eyes widened immediately at that word. The ears dropped. Not a big fan of chah’nas, it seemed. “Chah'nas did this to you?”