The False Admiral (12 page)

The lieutenant dangled over . . . absolutely nothing.

All the mist in the galaxy couldn't hide that black void. The ground had fallen away completely. There was nothing down there but mist and the dark. I stared for a moment, stunned, then Salmagard was there, and I joined her. Together, we lifted Nils over the lip of the hull, and he brought Deilani with him. We dragged them a couple meters back, away from the edge.

The lieutenant was shaking. I didn't blame her. Looking down, you'd think you could fall straight to the center of the planet. I clapped Nils on the shoulder. He'd done well. I hadn't pegged him for the heroic type.

I could picture what had happened: the starboard side of the freighter had simply dropped, flinging them from the array. Nils even had the presence of mind to hold on to the reader. Did that mean he had something?

I let him collect himself. Salmagard was hovering over Deilani, who was still on her hands and knees. She'd put full charge in both her gloves, pressed flat to the hull. I hoped we wouldn't have to pry her off, though I couldn't blame her.

I eyed the lip of the freighter. I was stalling. I didn't want to look down there again.

Leaving Nils on the deck, I got up and went gingerly to the
edge to see how bad it was. The hole really was as deep and black as it looked at first glance. Was the whole planet like this? That wasn't important. What mattered was that the ground
under the ship
was like this. A large amount of surface down there appeared to have just fallen away, and more green mist was emerging from it.

Salmagard joined me.

“Admiral?” It was subtle, but even she couldn't hide how shaken she was.

It was difficult to see, but we were poised on the rim of the chasm. It wouldn't take much for the freighter to just slide in. Seismic activity much less enthusiastic than what we'd just experienced could be the end of us.

Air and water had become the least of our problems.

“I suppose the gear went over the side?” I said.

“Yes, sir.” Nils was still sprawled on his back, massaging his shoulder and breathing hard. “But I got the ping off.”

“And?”

“There's something out there.”

I closed my eyes and let out my breath. Holding out indefinitely for rescue had seemed reasonable when the planet had been behaving itself. Now we needed to do better. “Can you place it?”

“Maybe. Roughly.”

“Good.” I kept breathing. One breath at a time. “That's good, Nils. Because we can't stay here.”

IT took some effort to coax Deilani off the hull, a task made even more difficult by the angle of the freighter. Nils had to physically guide her back inside the ship. The lieutenant wasn't the type to rattle easily, but hanging over that abyss had gotten to her. Maybe she had a thing about heights. Her movements were stiff, her face locked in a glassy stare very different from the one she usually had for me.

By the time we reached Medical she'd begun to pull herself together.

I tilted an examination table, locked it in position, and sat down. The angle of the ship was disorienting.

Nils was experimentally working his shoulder, and Deilani had begun to pace, which was a good sign. She absently drummed the fingers of her left hand on her thigh. I'd seen her do that before. It was a calming ritual for her. I hoped it was working.

Salmagard was by the door, hands behind her back, head bowed. That was the only indication that she was feeling fear, not something someone with her background probably had much experience with.

It was good to have the helmet off, but I still felt sick. I didn't know if it was the state of my health, or the perilous nature of our situation. Maybe it was just a guilty conscience. Plenty of that to go around.

“Nils, tell me what you got.”

“The ping was received, so there's definitely a com array out there somewhere. That's all I can say for sure. There wasn't
time
. Everything else went over the side.”

“Can you track it?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“You better do it, because this boat could go anytime, and it looked like a long way down. Come on, people. Focus. If we don't do something, we really are finished.”

“
Do
what?” Deilani snapped. “The ship is dead. The
planet
is dead.”

“Not completely,” Nils shot back. He had the console in his lap now. “But, Admiral, there's no navigational information for this planet, nothing for me to link the ping to.” He gestured. “There's no map, and no way to orient ourselves. All I can do is set an arbitrary north and say the ping was received by something
that way
.” He waved his arm and gave me a helpless look.

“How far?”

He stared at me in disbelief, realized I wasn't kidding, and looked down at his screen. He chewed his lip. “I might actually be able to calculate that.”

“I'd get on it.”

“This is insane,” Deilani said.

“You'd rather stay here?”

“What's the alternative?”

“If this thing goes, that fall isn't survivable. We could strap in, find a way to preserve ourselves,
maybe
—but not the equipment and supplies we'll need. What if the ship ended up upside down? What if we're buried?”

“The fleet could get us out,” Deilani said, rubbing at her temples.

“Exhume us, more like. Lieutenant, think about it. Just think about what would happen if there was another quake, and this ship fell into that chasm.”

“Then let's secure it.”

“To what? One of the spires? There's nothing on this planet solid enough to anchor a ship this size. Even the ground can't support us. If we
were
going to try to ride it out here, we'd have preparations to make and no guarantee of time. It could happen any second.”

“All right! Let's hear
your
plan.” She was still off balance from what had just happened. I couldn't blame her for being frayed. Just looking down at the chasm had been enough to make me feel ill.

“Nils?” I said. The ensign was gazing at the screen, looking dazed. “Nils!”

“I've run it four times,” he said.

“What? What have you got?”

“Whatever picked up the signal is . . . a ways off.”

“How far?”

“Ninety . . . ninety-eight hundred kilometers. Give or take.” He continued to gaze at the screen. “Give or take,” he repeated. “I
don't know how big the planet is, so I just have to guess when I'm trying to compensate for curvature.”

That quieted everyone down. I had pictured us strolling across the surface of the planet, trailing a caravan of gravity carts laden with oxygen.

But that was a little farther than walking distance.

“Right,” Deilani said, squaring herself. “We get ready to ride this out. We'll need electromagnetic binders to secure our equipment and supplies, and a way to protect ourselves.”

She was right. It was the very definition of a long shot, but it was the only shot. The air and the water were in the freighter, so the freighter was where we had to stay. It would certainly be a shift in lifestyle for me, but it wouldn't be the first time.

“Then we just strap in and wait to fall?” Nils asked.

“No,” Deilani said. “We instigate it ourselves. The tremors only started after the shuttle blew; that means the shock conductors work fine, even without power. We set off our own charge. Maybe we can even place it so we go down facing the right way. We can't just take our chances—we have to try to get ahead of this.”

That was a thought. This was all madness, of course—the odds of any of it working were exceedingly slim, but it was something like a plan. My plan, to hold out until rescue, sounded sensible and conservative in comparison, but it was still a reach. I had to keep an open mind.

Our lack of power would make us difficult to find, and without knowing how misdirected the imperials were in regard to our location, it could be a long time before we were found. And being found by imperials wasn't necessarily the best outcome. In fact, I wasn't
really sure if it was preferable to just punching out here on this spiky rock.

I groaned. This—
this
—was what I had waiting for me? I'd come a long way to be stuck in a fix like this. I'd gotten so close; it didn't seem fair. The ship was huge; there had to be something we could use, something to give us an advantage. We probably had enough illegal weapons on the ship for a small war, but there was no one here to fight.

Still, it gave me an idea.

“Guys,” I said. “We're forgetting something.”

“What?” They all looked at me hopefully; it wasn't lost on Nils and Salmagard that Deilani's plan was thin at best. Even Deilani didn't like it, but she'd been trained to take charge, and that was what she was trying to do.

“We've forgotten that we're sitting in a freighter full of ordnance.”

“Weapons?” Nils looked puzzled.

Deilani shut him up with a look and turned to me. “How can that help us?”

“Some of those containers were pretty big. There might be something we can use. Nils, call up the manifest.”

“Uh—yes, Admiral. But I'm not reading any weapons here. These are imperial trade commodities, and according to the log, it's all meant for Free Trade space. It looks like after Payne Station the next stop was the Bazaar.”

“That's just for show. There might be some Evagardian goods on this ship, but not what's listed there. The real manifest is there—it's just encrypted or hidden or something. I know you can get at it. Don't,” I said, cutting him off. “Don't waste your breath.
Nobody gets as good as you are from school, even an imperial school. And besides, you're a maintenance tech, not a systems tech. You're too good to be all legit.”

He gazed at me, face pale. “Reformed,” he said after a moment.

“Nobody's judging you.” I jerked a thumb at Deilani. “Except her. But you get used to it.”

Nils took a deep breath and looked back at the screen. “I don't have any tools for this. The best I can do is . . . tricking it. It's risky. This is the only reader we've got.”

“We could be dead in five minutes, Ensign. Throw the damn dice.”

“Yes, Admiral. Just let me think.” He was sweating.

Salmagard bowed her head again. Deilani had gone back to pacing.

“Don't take too long.” I had a feeling the decisions we made here and now were going to be significant with regard to our collective futures. It was a lot of pressure, knowing that it might be possible for us to get through this, but only if we did everything right, and in time.

I was used to that kind of pressure. They weren't.

Salmagard was still and calm, but now her eyes were fixed on Nils. Even the Empire couldn't breed out nerves.

“I'll be damned,” Nils said. “I seriously didn't expect that to work. This guy needs to update his systems.” Just as I'd had a glimpse of the real Salmagard before, now I saw the real Nils. He spoke mildly, but there was triumph in his eyes. It was easy to picture him in his life before the Service, sitting in sustenance housing somewhere, wreaking havoc deep in the nets.

“Tremma's old-fashioned, obviously. Or he was, at any rate. Have you got it?”

“Looks that way. But these are mostly weapons from Commonwealth systems. A lot of Isakan stuff.”

“Why don't you let me?” I asked, holding out my hand. He gave me a look, then glanced at Deilani, who had gone stony. He gave me the console, and I looked at the manifest.

Small arms, missiles, explosives, weapon systems to be mounted on every type of ship. Armor. Lots of armor. Indeed, only a little of it was imperial.

There was a crawler, but it was short range. It would never take us ten thousand kilometers . . . Gravity shields, EMP shields, EMP warheads . . . Like 14-14, some of this stuff wasn't meant to be transported without proper military procedure. The implications of Tremma's cargo would probably be lost on Nils. The graduates didn't have the context or the perspective to make sense of this, but I had a pretty good idea about the sorts of false-flag operations that Tremma had probably been up to before the cease-fire. I stayed on task. Deilani was hovering at my shoulder, and I leaned to let her see as well. The input of an officer couldn't hurt.

“Oh,” I said.

“What?” Nils looked up sharply.

I pointed at the readout. “There's a personnel carrier. It's a flyer.”

“What kind?”

“It says Avenger. Do you know it?”

“That's a Luna series.”

“That's pretty much one of ours. It shouldn't be too different from imperial carriers,” I said, thinking quickly.

“But it's still a flyer; we need a pilot,” Nils pointed out.

“I can fly it,” I said absently. “As long as it's ready to go. But it probably will be. Guys, if we have a chance, this is it.”

“Will its propulsion even work on this surface?” Deilani asked, but she wasn't being contrary. There was hope in her voice.

“It's got a gravity drive. Why wouldn't it? This can work.”

“Just because it's here doesn't mean it's ready to fly,” Nils said. “It could be in pieces.”

He still didn't quite grasp the realities of this freighter. This equipment was useless if it wasn't ready for action. That was all right. “It won't be,” I told him. “We'll need to fuel it and get it online, but it'll be ready to go. The weapons systems won't be installed, but that won't keep us out of the air.”

“What do we do?”

“Start by finding it. It shouldn't be hard. There can't be many containers down there big enough to hold it. Let's go.” I was already on my feet and moving; without a second to spare, everything we did from this point forward had to be at top speed.

The dark, narrow Ganraen corridors felt tighter and more stifling now. With the clock ticking, they seemed longer as we raced down to the main cargo bay. There was always another panel hanging from the ceiling, or loose grate to trip on. I was sick of climbing ladders, and everything had been knocked askew when the ship tilted.

The crate for the flyer was the size of a building, and it had survived the blast from the shuttle. I had no idea how to open it, but there was a human-sized hatch in the side, which we were able to unseal.

Inside, our hand-lights showed us the personnel carrier. Just
the sight of it gave me a spark of hope. It wasn't some featherweight combat craft—it was an air shuttle. It would have some range. Not much, but maybe enough. Ten thousand kilometers? I wasn't sure—but its effective range would be doubled because we weren't coming back. It was a chance, which was more than we had waiting for us if we stayed here.

The loading ramp at the rear of the flyer was already down, and the interior passenger area was lit with soft blue emergency lights. It was spacious, even comfortable. There was combat seating, impact padding, and carbon viewports. It smelled new. Luna engineering was an enormous step up from most of what you'd find in the Commonwealth. Compared to Tremma's freighter, the Avenger's interior was like a palace. I made my way to the cockpit to check the systems.

Sure enough, there were no fuel cells, but we could take care of that with the leftovers from the deceased shuttle. The computer didn't need anything but pilot officer codes, which I could provide from Tremma, or failing that, probably override. I'd never flown something like this, but I could wing it.

“We're in business,” I said.

“What's the plan?” Deilani asked.

I thought about it. “We're at the wrong end of the bay. We need to get this thing over there in the open, where it can face the doors.”

“There's no way to clear the shuttle wreckage from the launch zone.”

“We don't need a launch zone. It doesn't matter what the thrusters do to what's behind us—we aren't coming back. We need the arm loader. You'll need a good power source for that, Nils.”

He held up the reader. “It'll be sloppy, but I can do it. There
are a lot of energy cells in these crates. There'll be something big enough to get the cargo system running.”

“Are you up to operating it? It can't be as easy as the AI makes it look.”

The cargo system was little more than an arm that ran on a series of rails on the ceiling, with claws that would latch onto crates and move them around. It was meant to be run by a computer.