That Way Lies Camelot (11 page)

The Firefall

The gauges on the instrument console lit Ataine's hand like stagelights as she reached for the switch which locked the
Quest III
probe on autopilot.

'
I'm
not going to be manipulated,' she said through clenched teeth, though the spacecraft was a single-hander, now irrevocably severed from outside contact. The transmitter was a tangled ruin. Ataine had sabotaged the unit herself when an angry superior had beam-arced a recall command: the Quest's launch from Station was unauthorized.

'That's right, you sonuvabitch.' Ataine shoved a fist full of uprooted circuitry at the astonished face on the screen, thereby sparing herself the fury of the man's response. Since the visual monitor still functioned, his balding, purpled image mimed anger by her left elbow, but she gave it scant notice, the toggle a small point of cold at her fingertip.

'And
I'm
a damned good astrogator, thanks to your turkey of a second lieutenant.' She tripped the switch from 'autopilot' to 'manual.'

As though on cue, red lights crowded the screens, and a buzzer shrilled. Ataine wished she could silence it. She certainly didn't need fail-safe sensors to recognize threat to the Quest's frail shell. The planet engulfed the portside screens like a hideous bruise, and its gravity field dragged against the probe's thrust insatiably as a nightmare lover. The smallest mistake would hurl the Quest to a meteor's incandescent death. Ataine grinned. The electronics didn't trust her.

'You shouldn't either,' she said to the small, white dash which was the aft screen's rendition of her pursuit; a late model Sabre, Ataine guessed, with a very determined man at the controls. He had used weapons, tried repeatedly to cripple her. The Quest's shell carried scorchmarks from a leak in the deflection shields. But Ataine made a difficult target, and the drive engines still functioned to designer specifications.

With damp fingers, she pressed the basket-weave frame of the headset over her ears. Electrodes prickled her scalp, and signals merged with neurological impulses, uniting her mind with her spacecraft. Though direct-link control systems were still highly experimental, Ataine absorbed the influx of electronically induced sensations with no side effects. Other astrogators became paralyzed with vertigo, nausea, and headaches without drugs to balance the artificial impulses generated by the ship's system. Yet Ataine used no drugs.

'Anomaly,' the Station physician had said with a shrug, when he learned how many hours Ataine had logged under manual control in the Quest without a single request at the dispensary. Tired of an infirmary filled with puking test pilots, he'd dismissed the subject out of laziness.

Ataine never corrected him, never explained that she had used the vertigo, nausea, and headache like a drug to shadow a different kind of pain; and when her body's natural resistance had finally, reluctantly, acclimated to the Quest's sensory hardware, she went on using the ship's electronics to bury her own humanity. Her passion was obsessively simple: when she flew, she was spared the emotion which prisoned her thoughts like a shroud.

Now, impulses from the Quest's sensors ruled her thoughts, blanketing awareness of her woman's body and the tormented memories it contained. Her existence became that of the ship, hurtling through space at speeds impossible for flesh alone to achieve. But this time the joy of release was marred. Attuned to the ship itself, she felt the drag of the orange gas-giant like a fish hook in her guts, tearing. Pictured by electronic circuits, the planet's monstrous mass eclipsed her left hand vision, perilously close. Never intended for such stresses, the Quest's light, high-impact shell came equipped for reconnaissance of asteroids. Government mining operations had no interest in gas-giants. The craft resonated under abuse enough to make her designers weep to a man.

Ataine's mouth twitched in amusement. She'd made off with an exceptionally sophisticated chunk of technology. The brass at Station would roast in hell sooner than pardon her. But she had no intention of returning, which meant shedding the man in the Sabre as soon as possible. And for that, the bloated orange planet would become her ally.

Ataine tightened her grip on the control yoke, bent the Quest's course closer to the planet. Alarm bells screamed. But linked as she was to the anguished increase in resonance in the Quest's shell, she needed no warning.

'Come on,
baby
.' Her voice shook, though she'd spent hours of computer time over the equations. Delicately, she inched the lever forward, increased thrust. The hull shivered in protest. Her tiny cockpit glittered with lights like an arcade. Ataine licked sweat from her lips as her spacecraft plunged toward the gas-giant's surface. Though impulsive by nature, she had rehearsed her escape through seven weeks of misery. She hadn't miscalculated. She couldn't have. Too much lay at stake.

Ataine steepened the pitch of the Quest's trajectory once more. The hull shuddered, trembled under her like an overextended race horse. She nudged the lever again, fractionally, and checked the aft sensor. Everything, wholly
everything
depended upon the man who chased being reckless enough to follow. He would know she had reached the absolute limit of the Quest's capabilities. Certain of his victory, he might follow and descend inside her arc, awaiting the moment when hull failure would leave her at the mercy of gravity. She looked back.

A fleck of light hovered off her tail vane, solitary as a star. The Sabre still pursued.

'Foolish,' said Ataine, and laughed aloud. She had him. Though he didn't know it yet, rescue was not part of her plan. She took a bearing on his position. The computer matched vectors, and the results made her laugh again, triumphantly. Trusting the higher tolerances of the Sabre's hull, he too had steepened his dive, and used the pull of the giant planet to increase speed. His thrusters flamed as he corrected course.

'Clockwork,' said Ataine, and her hand quivered feverishly on the controls.
Why did you have to behave so damned predictably?

Anxiously, she waited. At length, the Sabre dropped below, flashy as a child's model against the muddled surface of the planet. The moment had arrived. Ataine whipped the Quest into a banking curve, increased thrust, and kicked in the repulsion field designed to protect the spacecraft from collision with rogue asteroids. Like a small, flat rock pitched spinning across the calm water, the Quest would skip free of the gas-giant's field. But the heavier Sabre, belted by the force of her field, would sink like a stone.

Ataine ripped off the headset, punched the craft into autopilot, and ground the heels of her hands into her eyes. She had murdered a man. She'd planned to. A voice inside her head calmly affirmed her action as right; the man must die, for justice, that others might survive. She sat, and shook, and after a long minute, realized that someone
was
speaking, outside, and it was the man she had sent to his death. Separate from the main transmitter, the emergency distress monitors could never be shut off.

'I won't listen,' she whispered.

But the voice called her name, and the inflection was wrenchingly, horribly familiar.

'No!' Ataine banged her palms against the console. A new glow from the screen tinged her knuckles blue, and with an ugly shock, she saw the emergency code signal had also invaded the video portion of the transmitter. She wished, desperately, she'd smashed it with the rest. Dorren's face confronted her.

'Ataine, you were wrong about me.' He spoke calmly, as though he sat safe in Station's lounge. But the look on his pale, tense features cut her like steel.

Anger claimed Ataine, vengeful and hot as desert wind. Naturally, the Commander would have sent Dorren after her. Who better? All of Station believed she had a weakness for him.

As though he'd read her mind, Dorren gestured impatiently. 'I came myself. The Commander had nothing to do with this.'

Grimly, Ataine wrenched off the access panel. So he'd volunteered. Not even Second Lieutenant Dorren Carlton would get her to return to Station.

'Ataine, will you listen?'

But the desperate, imploring note in his voice rang dissonant in her ears. She found the wire she sought, and pinched it viciously from its contact. The screen went blank. And bitter tears flooded her eyes. Hunched in the Quest's cockpit, with her elbows crammed miserably against the arms of the pilot's seat, Ataine found that she couldn't let him die. Anyone but Dorren ... anyone ... her luck was rotten. Hours of emotional anesthesia in the Quest's fancy astrogational systems had enabled her to live without him. But no escape existed which could negate responsibility for his death.

'Coward,' she sobbed, and jammed herself back into the headset. Tears dripped off her chin as she banked the Quest around, this time without equations, calculations; this time with nothing but her wits and the knowledge that if she saved him, others less deserving would die.

'I hate you,' she said, as she once had to his face, but the words changed nothing.

The controls shuddered under her fingers, as though protesting betrayal. And the gas-giant swelled in the starboard screens mocking the futility of every month spent in preparation, wasted effort, now, because of Dorren. Wracked by self-loathing she fought to steady the Quest against the planet's cruel pull, tried not to think, and lost, as she always did, to memory . . .

* * *

'Don't frown so hard,' said a quiet male voice at her elbow. 'Didn't you play Jacks and Aces as a child?'

Startled, Ataine glanced up from the instrument simulator's console to discover a young man of medium height leaning on the armrest beside her. A grin softened the lines of decisively set features, and the wheeze of the overhead ventilator ruffled perfectly trimmed brown hair. The eyes were direct, and very blue.

'Were you deprived?' His grin faded into puzzled inquiry,
'I
thought every kid played Jacks and Aces.
I'm
Dorren, assigned to coach you, and if you hated cards, you're going to make a difficult job for me.'

'I played,' said Ataine. As he crouched beside her seat, she buried a moment of vulnerability by staring stonily at the screen.
He's nobody special,
she told herself firmly. But the instinctive platitude was useless. Theirs was a rapport so perfectly balanced that nothing she had experienced since was the same.

Using whimsical analogies drawn from card games, Second Lieutenant Carlton taught her to handle the sensitive instrumentation of Station's ore probes faster than any trainee had done in the past. Long after the others had shut down their systems for lunch, she and Dorren had lingered in the trainer, mixing instruction, anecdotes, and tasteless jokes with unparalleled enthusiasm. Time stopped. Neither of them noticed. Finally, the disgruntled technician in charge asked them, please, to leave. He had a date.

Ataine slapped the power switch off, smiled at Dorren. 'Are you busy? We could have a date, too.'

Instantly, his expression lost its vitality. She swallowed. It never occurred to her he might already be mated.

'Not today.' He sounded stricken. 'Another time.'

Ataine shrugged. She guessed he was avoiding her. Yet as he left, she experienced a distinct uneasiness, as though something unnatural had occurred. Her disappointment must have leaked into her expression, because the technician paused in his haste to see the doors locked.

'Dorren's not mated,' he said, his face sympathetic. 'He simply prefers to be alone.'

Ataine blinked, icily sobered. 'Then keep him away from me,' she said, because too often in the past she had been attracted to the independent sort of man who 'simply needed no one.' Another was a heartache she'd avoid.

But Station was as small as a closet; inevitably Dorren's superior heard about their supreme compatibility as a team. They were assigned together.

* * *

The morning of her first survey mission, Ataine stood under the ribbed belly of the Prospector she and Dorren were to fly. Landing beacons beyond the airlock ports spilled hellish reflections through the launch tube, increasing her uneasiness. Dorren was late. Ataine waited, buffeted by drafts as the escort teams who would accompany them sealed hatches and fired
up systems prior to ignition.

Dorren appeared, finally, in the service passage, still fastening his gloves. His face bore a deep scowl, and as he approached, Ataine saw his chest heave in short, hard jerks. His evident temper smothered her greeting unspoken.

Dorren seemed oblivious. He glanced at the helmet which dangled stupidly from her fingers. 'Put that on. I don't want to look at you.'

Stung past restraint, Ataine looked squarely into his face. 'I didn't ask for this. Why take your frustrations out on me?'

The hurt she tried uselessly to hide made him check abruptly. He paused and studied her, and the unguarded feelings she discovered in return took her breath away. The scowl softened.

'
I'm
sorry.' He sighed, knuckles locked and white over the seal ring of his own helmet. 'We're stuck for today. I'll speak to the Commander when we get back.'

Prompted by intuition, Ataine said, 'You already did. He refused to change the roster, didn't he?'

Dorren's eyes narrowed. His expression became harried, as though he fully acknowledged her presence only that moment. 'He'll change his mind. Now,
get in.'

Disgusted by his unpleasantness, Ataine obeyed. Without protest, she found her way into the co-pilot's seat, and scooped her auburn hair into the helmet. She left the faceplate down. Secure within its shelter, she assumed control over her half of the cockpit, and promptly forgot the man who readied systems for launch at her side. The demands of flying brooked no distraction. Ataine settled into routine, absorbed by the gauges on the console before her.

The mike in her helmet crackled. 'All set?' Dorren's voice was neutral.

Ataine signaled affirmatively and released the magnetic field which anchored the craft to Station's flight deck. Dorren snapped a switch, and the air lock irised open.

'Lift,' he said softly. ,

As one, their hands closed over the controls. The Prospector shuddered. Thrusters flamed, and the launch tube shot past, replaced by darkness pinpricked with stars.

'Bank left.'

Ataine responded, startled by an unexpected thrill. She'd flown most of her life, but even the sportiest dual-handers had never responded as cleanly as the common, work
-
battered Prospector did that day. As the Sabre escort launched from Station to trail like beads behind, she found she barely had to adjust for trim; they flew without need to compensate. Dorren's touch on the controls complemented her own with a perfection akin to ecstasy.

Her helmet mike clicked. 'Enchantress,' said Dorren. He laughed, exuberantly. 'My stomach just sank into my boots. Too much peaches and cream.
Who taught you to fly?'

'Chromosomes. And a father who named his children after spacecraft.' Ataine grinned, enthralled by his fussy, precise sense of timing. Transformed by laughter, her bad temper vanished as though his rudeness had never existed. And the Prospector flamed through space like a star class yacht.

This can't last,
Ataine thought. An indicator flared yellow, warning the approach to the asteroid field they were assigned to survey. Dorren would certainly brake to quarter speed, fresh as she was from orientation training.

Skilled astrogator she might be, but at ore prospecting she was a novice. The first obstacle loomed on the screens, dead ahead. Instinctively, Ataine reached for the portside throttle, to cut back for the turn, just as Dorren began a bank to the left. He toyed with the trim, unnecessarily, and said, 'You knew which direction I would go.'

'Yes.' Ataine paused to wonder how she'd known, and gave up. The move seemed natural at the time.

'Don't reduce speed.' Dorren leaned over the controls, suddenly impulsive. 'I don't know why, either, but there's something between us I can't leave unexplored. Do you mind if we simply let rip ... ?'

Ataine returned a pleased smile. 'The Commander will scorch our shorts off, when we get back to Station.'

'If
we get back to Station.' Dorren fingered the lieutenant's stripes on his cuff. 'Those rocks out there won't be half so forgiving if
I'm
wrong.'

Ataine laughed. 'We'll get back to Station, and maybe wish we hadn't.' She kicked in the thrusters, her movement precisely co-ordinated with his.

The Prospector leapt ahead, cut a tortuous, blistering course through the tumble of debris. Very quickly they discovered they shared something preciously rare. As a team, they were subconsciously, if not telepathically, attuned.

Glued to her controls, Ataine knew a companionship untainted by any human doubt. She and Dorren Carlton thought alike, acted alike, and the mixture was addictively heady. An asteroid skated onto the screens. She banked right, certain Dorren would balance for the slop in the vanes.
Between us there are no limits,
she realized,
none at all.

The communicator buzzed. Dorren sighed, throttled back, and punched the 'receive' toggle.

The speaker shrilled to life. 'Are you two nuts? Hot-shot any more, and you'll make hamburg of your escort. You've outdistanced us, to understate, and if you get sighted by anti-nationals, serve you both right.'

Dorren shrugged. 'Flame the anti-nationals. We haven't seen any in months, and they'd have to catch us, first.'

The Sabre captain sighed into his mike. 'Right. Wait up, will you?'

They passed the remainder of the assignment with more decorum. But upon their return to Station, even their disgruntled escort boasted over the territory they had covered.

'Two claims, and a twelve beacon mark-off,' said the Sabre's captain in admiration as Dorren stepped through the Prospector's chipped hatch. 'You and that greenie did a helluva day's work.'

Ataine followed the second lieutenant out, tired but content. She slipped off her helmet, and smiled, freed hair tumbling in slow motion over her shoulders in the flight deck's low gravity. Yet as she met Dorren's eyes, she watched his pleasure die, pinched deliberately from a face still flushed from happiness.

She felt as though he'd struck her. Warily interpreting his mood, she said, 'You're going to insist on re-assignment.'

Dorren frowned. 'Especially after this.'

'Why?' Her outburst escaped before she thought to quell it.

But Dorren strode off without reply, leaving her desolate with uncertainty.

'What's with him?' said the puzzled captain at her shoulder.

Ataine shook her head angrily. 'Blast if I know.' She left abruptly for her quarters and hoped for a better partner next shift.