Sertian Princess (5 page)

CHAPTER 5

On board Salamander IV, Marienna stretched herself wearily on her couch and reflected on the events of the last 24 hours which had caused such wild fluctuations in her fortune.  She had been wakened from a deep and blissful sleep by Julia, the Commander of the Guard, in person.  She had been nearly beside herself with rage.  Frantically, Marienna had looked round for Lord David.

"He's in the Control Room, you incompetent fool, and has been for the last hour.  Get dressed and get out of here.  You will place yourself under open arrest: confine yourself to your quarters and report to my office at 08.00."

Her heart had sunk.  She would be dismissed from the bodyguard, probably dismissed from the crew altogether and put down at the next convenient spaceport with enough money to pay for her fare home to Lentor.  How could she go home in such disgrace?  She had privately made up her mind to take her fare and any backpay which she had coming and travel as far across the Galaxy away from Lentor as she could possibly get.

Now, less than 24 hours later, she was exhilarated and exhausted at the same time.  It appeared that Lord David had personally intervened on her behalf and had confirmed that he had told her to go back to sleep.  Not only was she not to be dismissed from the Salamander but, even more amazing, she was to accompany Lord David on a mission as his only bodyguard.  She still could not believe the abrupt and total change in her fortune.

Her roommate, Brianey, had told her that Lord David had been overheard having the most terrific row with the Guard Commander which had ended with Lord David taking personal charge of crew selection for this mission and Julia sulking for the rest of the day.  Julia had certainly worked out her resentment on Marienna: full medical, extra weapons training, extra combat training, all fitted in around briefings on Serta, Vostov, Parm, Floreat, Andes and, of course, the luxury liner Aldebaran.  When, at last, all the briefings and training sessions were finished she had crawled back to her quarters to try to catch a few hours sleep before they reached Floreat.

She rolled over as Brianey came into the room.

"Hello, Bri.  Are you all ready to go?"

Brianey had been selected as a member of the Blue Star Streak Group partly on account of her singing voice, which was good, but mostly because of her height and colouring.  In terms of singing voice alone, there were probably six or seven girls who could have been chosen but Corin had picked Brianey because she blended in better with the rest of the group.  Tessa, Carly and Cerys had all performed together the last time the group had been formed and so were used both to the routines and to each other.

"Yep. We've just finished loading the Phoenix now.  Corin personally supervised the packing of every blasted item.  It took forever."

"How did the dress rehearsal go?"

"That still needs some more work.  I knew most of the old routines but Lady Zara wanted to introduce some new numbers.  We will have to make time for some more rehearsals on the Phoenix."

"I'm sorry I missed it.  I wanted to get down there and watch you but I had extra weapons training."

"That's all right.  You didn't miss much.  And Julia has been pretty hard on you today.  Still another 2 or 3 hours and you will be off on your own for a few days with our lord and master.  Lucky creature."

Marienna felt herself colouring.  "He hasn't spoken to me today.  I don't what I'm going to say to him when I see him."

"You'll be OK.  You'll think of something when the time comes. After all, you are his personal choice for this mission."

While she had been talking, Brianey had changed into a travelling dress suitable for a member of the entertainment profession.  Now she grabbed her personal kit and headed for the door.

"Must dash.  Corin wants us all down in the dock area before the final jump.  See you on the Aldebaran."

"Take care," Marienna called after her.

On her own again, she forced herself to get up and take a quick shower.  Then she gave instructions to the room computer.

"Set the room for sleeping; wake me in two hours, and have some coffee here when you wake me."

She lay down as the lights obediently dimmed and the computer selected one of her favourite melodies to play softly in the background.

***

One level up in the Salamander's Control Room, all eyes were turned towards the Tank.  Most of the off-duty officers had found apparently compelling reasons to go the Control Room and, once there, had simply stayed.  As a result there had been more than enough willing hands around to ensure that the trip to Andes had passed with no technical problems or delays.  Only the final jump remained: a short jump to take the Salamander into the Andean system and position her on the blind side of the sun from the spaceport.

The routine of sub-space jumps was familiar to all of them.  The first stage would be to fix the current position to a high degree of accuracy.  There is always a certain element of imprecision involved in any jump through sub-space and so, the more accurately the starting position of the jump is known, the less uncertainty there is in the prediction of the arrival point.  Under Sam's direction the navigational computers would take sightings of all the major stars in the vicinity, and then make use of the parallel processing capability of the main array to simultaneously resolve all the equations giving not only the position at that instant but also the velocity of the Salamander relative to the Galaxy.  The monitoring of position and velocity would then be maintained on a continuous basis by randomly checking a sample of the 1000 or so sightings on which the original fix was made.

The next stage would be to decide on a jump time and extrapolate the current position and velocity to obtain the position at jump time, the starting position.  Then a course would be plotted through sub-space to the desired re-emergence point.  It is always at this stage that the uncertainty arises since sub-space, almost by definition, is not normal.  The conditions which the ship faces in that brief instant of transition cannot be accurately predicted.  The science of sub-space jumps has progressed to a state where it is rare for a ship to be lost in sub-space but deflections from the plotted course can still, on occasions, be quite significant.

The final stage is always regarded by deep space crew as by far the most important.  A probe would be despatched to the predicted arrival point to ensure that there were no stellar objects within 10 million kilometres of the actual point of re-emergence.  Only when the safety of the probe is ensured will the actual jump take place.  Usually the probe and the spacecraft will end up fairly close together so that the probe can be recovered quite quickly after the jump.

To jump a small probe does not require a vast amount of energy but to jump a spacecraft the size of Salamander IV requires a great deal. The equivalent of the total output of one of the Salamander's powercells would be stored in a series of capacitance devices which would then simultaneously discharge at the instant of de-materialisation.  It is the recharging of these capacitance devices which takes the time and which means that it is not possible to make more than one big jump an hour although small jumps can usually be made as quickly as the computers can calculate the positions.

The battle at Rigel had started almost four hours into the journey to Andes and so had been going on now for nearly twenty hours.  The tank, however, was annoyingly blank and the officers standing round were waiting with growing impatience for the display to recommence.  Until the current position was fixed the tank would remain blank and although the process of sightings and calculations only took a few minutes it seemed much longer than that to an audience eager for the latest news of the battle.

As they watched the tank flickered into life showing the region local to the Salamander.  Nobody made a move towards the controls to adjust the tank to Rigel, as Elida, who was Officer of the Watch, came forward.  Aware of all the eyes upon her, she took extra care in performing the routine checks.

"Local space clear," she reported to the log.

"Permission to use the tank, ma'am," came almost as a chorus.

"Permission granted," she replied.  "Carry on."

There was a dive for the tank controls in a race which was won by Simon.  He punched in the co-ordinates of the main Rigel beacon and the tank cleared leaving a small region around Rigel centred in the tank.  Normally the processors controlling the display would then hunt for all the surrounding beacons and build up a picture of a larger and larger area to fill the tank.  Simon cut short this process by spinning the dials and expanding the battle zone.

"Sam, have you tapped into the Fleet Command Ship yet?"

The other annoying feature of sub-space jumps was that communications links were inevitably broken.  Once the new position was fixed then Sam would start to re-establish communications.  In this case the Salamander had been monitoring the transmissions from the Command Ship at Rigel and was now trying to tap into that information stream again.  Until then the watching officers had to be content with basic data from the commercial navigation beacons.

"I can only make out nine rebels now," Julia said.  "Have they lost another one?"

"I still make it ten," Mtebe replied.  "With that one over there that's running hell for leather from the fight."

The flashing of the dots changed slightly as Sam finally made the connection to the Fleet Command Ship.

"Come on Simon, you're better at reading the naval codes than we are."

"It all looks much the same," Simon told them.  "Except for that one frigate of theirs that's running.  She looks pretty badly damaged: powercells I would say.  And that looks like the Antares that's chasing her."

"You're probably right, Simon."

In the excitement, no-one had noticed Lord David entering the Control Room.  They parted to make room for him at the tank.

"Thank you, my lord," Simon replied.

"Do you wish to take the ship, my lord," Elida asked.

"No, Lida.  You carry on.  I only came up because Sam told me there are going to be some developments at Rigel."

"What sort of developments, my lord.  It still looks fairly indecisive at the moment."

"Watch the region around Naxos: less than two minutes now."

As they watched, green dots started to appear in a regular formation of a three dimensional cross.  At the centre of the cross in line astern, were six heavy destroyers, three in front and three behind a battleship which, by its size, could only be the Tennessee.  Above and below and to either side of this line, four other lines of frigates and corvettes were appearing at regular intervals.  The Seventh Fleet had arrived.  It made a very impressive show.

"The battle is over: the chase begins," David remarked.  "It all depends now on how many of the rebel ships can be tracked down as they run.

"I think that now we had better start concentrating on our own mission.  How soon before we can make the final jump?"

Mtebe scanned the power boards.  "Power will be up in 22 minutes," he reported.

"Time the jump for 25 minutes then, Lida.  Have we got the course co-ordinates yet?"

"The calculations haven't finished yet, my lord.  I will release the probe as soon as I have them."

"Carry on then.  I shall be in the docking area."

As he pushed himself down the zerograv chute, Sam came through to tell him that the probe had been launched.  At the bottom, Zara and the female members of the group were already there.  He looked around.  The big docking doors were still tightly shut but Mtebe's technicians were making preparations, ready to open them as soon as the final jump had been successfully completed.  Before opening the doors, a force screen would be established across the opening to prevent the loss of the atmosphere and permit the technicians to continue working without the need for breathing apparatus.  Through this force screen, the Phoenix would be lowered on a tractor beam and then released.

He turned to Zara.  "Final jump in 13 minutes, my lady....  Isn't Corin with you?"

"He's just double checking that all the equipment has been properly stowed."

"I see.  And you, Brianey.  This is your first mission isn't it? How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine, thank you my lord."  He continued to look intently at her.  "Well, maybe I'm just a little bit nervous."

He smiled at her.  "Don't worry, you'll be fine.  Just do what Corin tells you.  Ah, here he is now."

Corin appeared through the hatchway of the Phoenix.  "Everything is securely stowed, my lord.  We're ready to go."

"All right.  How are we doing, Sam?"

"Probe is safe; jump space reported clear; deviation from plotted course 0.8%; jump time 2 minutes 8 seconds and counting."

The two minute warning sounded.  They waited while the seconds ticked away to the 10 second warning and then they experienced that familiar feeling of spatial disorientation as the Salamander vanished from one point of normal space and a fraction of a second later, re- materialised at a different point.  The intensity of the feeling depended on the length of the jump and even experienced deep space travellers took a few seconds to recover.

When the sensation had passed, he went over to Zara and, cupping her elbow in his hand, steered her a little away from the group.  Taking both of her hands in his, he stood looking into her dark eyes.  Neither of them spoke for a long minute and then he gently raised one of her hands to his lips, bending over it slightly in the style of an age long past.