Renegade (13 page)

…“
Second pulse!
” as they came back in. Shuttle’s civvie nav was struggling now to display velocity, not equipped to measure at this scale.
Phoenix
feed showed them seventeen percent light, streaking into deep space beyond Balise. Gravitational detach approached, jump engines straining against the mass that kept them anchored to this particular piece of space-time fabric. Everything rattled and shook, and the light that he could glimpse through G-strained vision looked an odd colour… at this speed everything dopplered, light itself conceivable on a spectrum humans rarely saw. It occurred to him vaguely that Lieutenant Shahaim had never made a combat jump before, and that Phoenix’s bridge crew was missing some of its usual members. If they’d been hit, as seemed likely, and something broke in mid-jump strain…

“
P
ulse three
!
” The Gs were gone. His mouth was impossibly dry, and his vision refused to come clear. Like waking from a long sleep, aware that much time had passed, and looking for the time, or a window, to see if the sun was up, or some other indication of just how late it was. Uplink visual gave him time, but it was hard to focus. Without access to bridge nav he wasn’t even sure where they’d gone, and hadn’t the mental energy now to try to figure all the possible routes. Where the hell were they?

A velocity reading, much clearer on his uplink visual than normal vision — straight out of jump you always saw more clearly with your eyes closed. Point thirteen light… dammit Shahaim you’re too fast! He patched into bridge coms with a conscious effort, he couldn’t start directing them from outside, Shahaim had to be in full command, but point thirteen meant something was badly wrong…

“
Helm, correction! Helm!
”

“
We’re off! We’re off! Nav, I need realignment, where the hell are we?
”

“
Scanning, all readings negative!”

“Engineering! Engines status!”

“Sir, I… I got red lights everywhere! We’re not… jump lines not getting traction, we are not charged!”

And now Erik’s heart was thudding harder, because if the jump engines were damaged and they couldn’t dump velocity, the only hope of rescue was another FTL ship that could chase and rendezvous, and at this speed with no warning that was hard at best. And who the hell would want to rescue
them?

“
Navcomp says we’re in! Argitori System, positive fix!”

“I’m not getting that fucking navbuoy, where is it? Oh hang on, I got it… we are five point three nine offline, we must have come out of that fucking thing sideways!”
That was Shahaim, and she sounded panicked. When you were in flying a warship through combat jump at sizeable fractions of light speed, panicked wasn’t good. Argitori System was a good idea, it was big with no habitable planets but lots of Spacer settlements, lots of rocks and dust and lots of places to hide. On the other hand, lots of rocks and dust made these speeds fatal, and if they couldn’t slow down soon before they got into the thick stuff, they wouldn’t need rescuing.

“
Engineering, status!”

“We’re on it! Rerouting now… give us a moment!”

A minute crawled by, agonisingly slow. Erik examined Argitori on uplink to reacquaint himself. Thirteen planets, four gas giants in the middle, some rocky-but-nasty inner worlds circling an amazing trinary star system of two class-A monsters at the centre circled by a smaller class-M further out. The gas giants had about a hundred moons between them, and those held a busy population of about sixteen million settlers. Debogande Inc had interests here, Erik recalled a large refinery operation and a lot of precious metals, plus a half share on a large colony, but couldn’t recall which.

“
Power up, the jump lines are back!”

“Stand by, dumping now!”

Pulse out, then back in again, less violent than acceleration but violent enough… nav now showed velocity closer to two percent light, and if they were where nav thought they were, time for perhaps some minutes’ coasting.

“Shahaim this is the LC,” said Erik, trying to inject some strength into his dry voice. “Are we clear to move about? I want to come up.” Because he couldn’t see everything from down here that she could see up there.

“
LC, my plan is to shut down and run silent, I don’t see any hostiles ahead of us, nothing could have beat us through jump.
” Because nothing went faster in jump than
Phoenix
, except another ship the same class, and there were precious few of them. “
Free to move about.”

Erik unbuckled, floated up in zero-G, then pulled himself over the chairback to go check on Lisbeth. She was out, eyes closed and facemask firm — he checked her pulse and it was fast but steady. He unbuckled her, but then Thakur was floating in with sure, steady grasps of her hands.

“LC you get to the bridge,” she said. “I’ll take Lisbeth to Medbay and an acceleration sling.” And when he didn’t move immediately, “Go now!” But not unkindly, edging him aside to check the unconscious girl’s vitals and mask attachment.

Erik hauled himself away with difficulty, away from the bridge to where Dale and others already had the dorsal hatch open and tight. “Someone shut down the shuttle,” he told them, “she’s still on standby.” And pulled himself through the hatch into a blast of freezing air from the umbilical tube.

Then past berthing crew at the grapples, and tight space between bulkheads, secured with netting and acceleration slings where marines could ride out manoeuvres while waiting to board a shuttle. He overhanded up the corridor, past zero-G equipment bays and outfitting where a lot of marines’ gear was secured, then finally made the core hatch. The umbilical lines were humming, and he grabbed a passing handle and made sure to tuck his hands in as it yanked him up the core tube. The space was narrow and always claustrophobic, but it was the only way to move between the gravitational quarters and the non-G midships when the crew cylinder was engaged. Some designs used elevator cars, but on a ship with as many crew as
Phoenix
, no one had time to sit around waiting for cars to arrive.

He passed delta bulkhead, then got off at gamma-b, main-quarter, over-handed fast down the ladder until rotational gravity began to shove him into a wall, then headfirst, and he flipped over and slid down feet first with increasing speed down several levels, jumping to a new ladder each time. Finally he hit floor and ran into a corridor, heart-in-mouth the way you always were when moving about in combat — a hard thrust here would turn a ten meter corridor into a lethal drop, head first. Most crew injuries in combat were impact-related, self-inflicted by manoeuvre, and some huge number of spacers had died over the ages by simply being out of a chair or acceleration sling when bad news appeared on scan.

Up A-main corridor and straight into the bridge, a wide, narrow rectangle with rows of seating posts out on either side, and the Captain’s chair in the middle.

“Commander on the bridge!” someone yelled, and then Shahaim was pulling herself from the chair, and holding the helmet for him to grab and pull on. It settled with an automatic correction of straps, then a sudden blaze of 3D visual that showed him everything he’d been missing down in the shuttle — position, trajectory, rows of blinking status lights and highlight bars. He strapped himself in, as Shahaim helped, and grasped the twin joysticks to feel the familiar interplay of interlocking controls.

“LC has command,” he announced.

“You have command,” Shahaim acknowledged, and retreated to a secondary post.

“Status by post,” he requested, in that huge rush of relief just to finally be here. This seat he both loved and dreaded more than anything else in his life.

Reports came in, and it wasn’t great. They
had
been hit getting away from Homeworld, it wasn’t clear who but countermeasures had engaged and
Phoenix
had returned fire. Crew was undamaged, so the hit had been elsewhere, and by the looks of things had made a mess of the jump lines. Main thrust was overheating too, they’d nearly blown the core pushing so hard to get away — one of those things Erik was glad in hindsight he hadn’t known. That gave engineering some ideas of where the damage was, but
Phoenix
wasn’t cooperating in giving them a better idea.

“Well we can’t keep running if we can’t jump, and we can’t jump again with that damage,” Erik said with certainty. “And if we have to thrust again at full max, we might just blow the mains anyway. Priority is we have to fix the damage. On a jump that distance, we’re a good thirty hours ahead of anyone coming in behind us, and no one in this system suspects any trouble yet. Unless anyone has a better suggestion, we’ll hide in the outer system and run dark while we try to fix it.”

“Argitori’s a damn busy system,” Second Lieutenant Geish said from Scan. “We’ll have to manoeuvre a bit to make position, plus everyone just saw that entry now, or will do in a few hours. That’ll narrow our band of possible hiding places. With this much insystem traffic, good bet someone spots us no matter how dark we run.”

“Agreed,” said Erik. “But it’ll take them time, and we have to hope we can fix the damage by then.”

“No chance we can get help from the local Spacers?” Second Lieutenant Karle wondered from Arms. “Plenty of repair facilities here.”

“Not once Fleet comes howling in in thirty hours demanding our heads,” said Erik. Though perhaps they shouldn’t write off all possibilities in that direction. “Scan, I want passive monitoring of all insystem traffic. Look for Debogande-affiliated vessels.” Silence on the bridge as they all considered that. “No idea if it’ll help at all, but worth keeping in mind.”

A
fter a final velocity-dump
, Erik stayed in the chair for the next two hours before handing off to Lieutenant Shahaim and heading back to medical. Crew he passed in the corridors looked at him warily, save a few friends who gave him real smiles or other looks of approval. He still wore his dress uniform, for one thing. Dress uniforms on a combat ship were usually a no-no — no one liked others ‘putting on airs’. Least of all those with last names like his.

In medical he found Spacer Carlton from second-shift engineering, whose sling had snapped in the push for several broken bones and concussion. Erik made a point of talking to him before seeing his sister, and Carlton managed a smile, drugged up on painkillers and not feeling much. Doc Suelo said he’d be off for two weeks and on light duty for two more.

On the next bunk was Lisbeth in her civvie jeans and blouse, mask and cuff-sensors on her arm. She was belted in, in case they moved again suddenly, and the entire opposite wall was sliding rails so the medbay would pivot to vertical-G in the event of hard thrust. The mattress was formless-gel, to support head and limbs under heavy-G, and all the life support and other equipment was worked seamlessly into the walls. Fleet crew visiting downworld after a long tour often freaked out at all the loose objects and clutter. Erik knew a guy who had been severely injured by a stray toothbrush. In space, and in Fleet most of all, everything was racked and stowed.

“She’s fine,” said Corpsman Rashni, one of
Phoenix
’s five. ‘Doc’ Suelo ran med bay, technically he was Corpsman Master Petty Officer, but in Fleet tradition for a ship’s senior medico, ‘Doc’ was simpler. “Her bloodwork’s a little down, so I hooked her up. Just need to monitor her stress levels for another thirty minutes to be sure, then she can go.”

“Thanks Rash,” said Erik, and sat on the neighbouring bunk. “Lis, how you feeling?”

“I’m okay. Can I take this mask off?” Rashni shrugged assent and left on other business. Lisbeth took it off, careful of the cuff on her arm, and the intravenous needle with it. She looked exhausted, dark rings under her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to be any trouble. I just… I don’t remember anything after that first push. How many Gs was that?”

“We maxed at 10.5, averaged at 10.1 in that first phase.” Erik smiled, and took her hand. “You lasted nine minutes conscious. That’s better than a lot of folks did here, their first time.”

“It’s just so hard,” Lisbeth said weakly. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Well honestly it doesn’t happen
that
often. But you do get used to it. Or your augments do, they need to get worn in, like a new pair of shoes.”

“If it happens again, I might just take a shot and sleep through it if that’s okay.”

Erik patted her hand. “Lis, I’m going to get you off.” Lisbeth frowned. “We’re in Argitori System, there’s lots of Debogande traffic here. I’ll get you onto one of those ships and…”

“How? You can’t spare a shuttle, you lost one at Homeworld, and there was another still on the ground.”

“AT-7 is not a military shuttle Lis, we can afford to spare it…”

“No you can’t,
Phoenix
is supposed to have four shuttles, now you’ve got three. Losing one to drop me off is stupid, you can’t even deploy all of Major Thakur’s marines with three, let alone with two. And a civilian shuttle might come in handy if you’re on the run, what if you get to some other system and need to sneak your way in to some facility or planet? A civilian shuttle can do that, a military one’s got no chance.”

“Then I’ll find another way,” Erik said firmly. “Lisbeth, you can’t stay here. Fleet’s going to try and kill us, do you understand that? Some of them will doubt HQ’s story, but most won’t. HQ will be panicking now —
Phoenix
wasn’t supposed to get away, they didn’t imagine this could happen, and having a flagship running through settled space spreading bad news about Fleet HQ is beyond a nightmare for them. You being aboard might have stopped them killing the shuttle where everyone can see it, but it’s not going to stop them trying to kill
Phoenix
where no one can.”

“Erik,” Lisbeth said quietly. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to get you off the ship. And that’s final.”

Lisbeth’s eyes blazed with temper. “For god’s sake, would you stop making this about me? What about
you?
What about your ship, what about all your crew? And what about all of our family? This is so much bigger than me being stuck on this ship Erik, this is some of the most important people in all human space trying to remove their biggest competitors by force!” She pointed outward, endangering the plugs in her arm. “You think I’ll be that much safer out there? You think you could arrange private transport back to Homeworld that could get me there alive? Or out of captivity by people who’ve shown they’ll stop at
nothing
to get their way?”

“Then we’ll direct-signal some passing insystem freighter and transfer you to them…”