The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III (34 page)

“No!” Spencer said. “Belay that order, and order all ships to continue the search pattern. I’m on my way.”

He swung out of bed and, acting on a new and pleasant habit, glanced at the other side of the bed. No, Suss was not there. She was no doubt still on the bridge herself.

He stood up, pulled on fresh pants and shirt, and dove into the head just long enough to shave and comb his hair. As far as Spencer was concerned, he could give orders just as handily with a rumpled uniform and a three-day beard, but he also knew the value of captain legends. The men and women of the
Banquo
had never seen him look anything other than clean, rested, and tidy. He wasn’t going to risk ship’s morale by bucking that trend. Still, he still begrudged every second shaving took, and cursed that decorum forbade his running toward the bridge.

But it turned out there was little point in his hurrying.

By the time he arrived on the bridge, the optics team had not even spotted the
Dancing Bear.
Strictly speaking, there was no way to be certain it was the
Bear
they had found. All they had was a strong G-wave source.

“The
Malcolm
was the first to spot her,” Peever volunteered, reporting from Search Control. “We’ve gotten a bearing from her, and are trying to triangulate now.”

“Nice work, Peever. Keep at it,” Spencer said.

“Why did you order the search pattern continued?” Deyi asked, a bit testily. No commander likes being countermanded.

“Because the moment we break off the search and send a major ship in the right direction, the freighters will know we’ve spotted our quarry,” Spencer said. “Then they won’t have reason to hold off from attacking us. They’ll change course, head for the
Bear.
Assuming they are carrying long-range high-acceleration missiles, they’ll fire the first moment they can. I don’t know if we can intercept their missiles or not. So we can’t fly any of the main ships over to the
Bear.
We have to try it with one of the aux vehicles, and hope the freighters can’t spot a smaller craft.”

Spencer examined the main tactical display. Luck was giving them a break for a change. The
Banquo’s
gig
Fleance
was headed back to the destroyer for refueling. She would do. “As soon as
Fleance
is back, I want Wellingham, Peever and Dostchem to go aboard—no, dammit, we don’t have a Capuchin pressure suit aboard.”

Besides, Dostchem isn’t subject to my orders,
he thought. “We’ll send Wellingham, Peever and a Marine pilot and co-pilot, all in full battle armor. Chief, do you copy that?”

“Aye, Sir,” Wellingham replied from Search Control.

“Good. Take the short-range detectors, first-aid gear and repair tools just in case they’re any use. Fly the
Flea
at low thrust to avoid them detecting her fusion jet. We’ll use the targeting lasers to blind their sensors again just as she boosts. The mission: Go aboard the
Bear,
search the ship, get the data we need, and get the hell out. We’ll use secure commlinks and stay in contact.”

“But Captain, using an aux craft could add hours to the time it takes to get aboard the
Bear,”
Deyi protested.

“But it will
buy
us time once we’re aboard,” Spencer replied. “The moment the freighters detect a ship on course for the
Bear,
we’re sunk. If we used a big ship, we might have zero time aboard the
Bear
before the shooting started. But tell you what—just as the
Fleance
launches, we’ll have all three destroyers let off a volley of long-range missiles.
Fleance
can use max thrust and look like a missile for the first part of the flight, then throttle back to low power just as the missiles shut down their engines. That will let her put on some speed and get to the
Bear
faster. So long as the
Flea
doesn’t aim
straight
for the
Bear
on high boost, odds are they won’t detect her—especially if we’ve just blinded their optics and fired a flock of missiles at them.”

Tallen Deyi didn’t look happy, but he nodded his acquiescence. “Very well, Sir.”

“Don’t worry—the second we detect them making a move on the
Bear,
we’ll jump in first. And we’re closer, faster, and better armed.”

Wellingham’s voice came over the speaker from Search Control. “Thank you, Sir. That’s very nearly comforting.”

Chapter Nineteen
Destin

The gig
Fleance
clung to the external hull of the
Banquo,
waiting for the moment when she would be cast loose to make her own way toward the derelict ship. “Thirty seconds,” the Marine pilot announced, and Peever briefly considered he had just that long to get off the
Fleance.
But it really was too late for that. Aside from the question of courts martial and so on, there were just too many seat belts, safety catches, hatches and air locks to get through in that length of time.

“Fifteen seconds,” the pilot reported. The targeting lasers would be programmed by now, and the destroyers ready to fire their missiles. It should have been comforting to know that the fleet was going to such lengths to provide cover for the
Fleance,
but it would have been far more comforting still not to need such cover.

Or, most comforting of all, not to be aboard the
Flea
in the first place.

“Ten seconds.”

Definitely
too late to get off the gig, Ensign Peever thought wistfully. Ensign Wilton J. Peever was, be it confessed, a coward. Suddenly his weight dropped away to nothing and then just as quickly quadrupled.

The viewports were covered and the external cameras stowed during the violent maneuver of drop-and-boost. That was no help, however. He could see quite clearly, in his mind’s eye, the
Fleance
blasting clear, the fusillade of missiles leaping toward their objectives, the laser barrels pitching and skewing as they shifted from target to target. He could visualize a whole sky full of weapons, any of which could accidentally snuff out the little gig
Fleance
if some computer forgot she was out there.

And then there were the freighters, with weapons of their own, who might well seek out
Fleance’s
death on purpose . . .

“All clear,” the Marine pilot declared in an excessively loud, cheerful voice. “On course to decoy objective. My repeaters from the
Banquo
show all missiles away and on course. We’re doing okay.”

“Wonderful,” Peever muttered. He glanced at the mission clock over the pilot’s head. Another six hours and they’d be alongside the
Dancing Bear.

Then the scary part would begin.

###

The
Dancing Bear
hung in the sky, a dark-grey hulking mass of metal, barely visible in the viewscreen, even with the light amplifiers powered up. Without running lights, without a working radar beacon, without a working environmental system to warm the hull and provide an infrared signature, the
Bear
was virtually invisible, even at this close a range.

Lieutenant Bothu, the Marine pilot, edged the
Flea
in closer, slewing the gig around to the mining ship’s stern docking port. “How’re the parasites taking our visit, Sir?” she asked.

Wellingham, bent over his sensor screen, shook his head. “Nothing, no response from the
Bear
or the freighter fleet. The destroyers are continuing the search pattern, and I think the opposition is falling for it. Plus, it looks like three of our missiles got in to make hits. I can’t tell for sure, but that would be a nice bonus. At least none of the freighters are moving toward us, and the
Bear
is as dead as a tomb.”

Peever felt a dull lump in his stomach, and wished Wellingham could have used a different phase. Images of frozen corpses still lurked in Peever’s mind. “May—maybe we’d better get into our suits soon?” he asked nervously, unhappy in the knowledge that his voice was cracking fearfully.

No one seemed to notice the catch in Peever’s voice. Bothu simply nodded and said, “Might as well. This cabin’s too small for more than one at a time to suit up. I’ll go first. Clandal, take the conn and dock us up.”

One after the other, the four of them struggled into the armored pressure suits. In theory, all Navy and Marine personnel were supposed to be rated on the suits, but Peever hadn’t worn one since Basic Training. The two marines seemed perfectly at ease in the things, but Peever’s nascent feelings of claustrophobia were instantly compounded when he slid the helmet shut.

Sergeant Clandal docked the
Flea
’s
belly hatch to the
Bear’s
aft docking port, maneuvering the gig with a flawless precision. There was a set of displays indicating the environmental state on the other side of the air lock, inside the
Bear,
and Bothu looked over the readings. “Looks like just a tad under standard pressure, as if she’s been doing a real slow leak for a bit without being replenished. What you’d expect on a derelict. Unbreathable, though—the carbon dioxide count is way too high. And the internal temps are just a little bit warmer than they should be, even if you factor in greenhousing from the C0
₂
. Just a few degrees, but it’s something to note.”

“If there’s still air can we go in without suits?” Peever asked eagerly. “Maybe just breathe with face mask units?”

“There’s air in there, all right,” Bothu said with a grim chuckle, “but would you really want to risk carbon dioxide poisoning, or breathe what a crew full of dead people have been rotting in for the past month? I don’t know how sanitary it’d be.”

Peever’s face turned a pale greenish-white. He found himself unable to speak for a moment, unable to manage anything more communicative than a shake of his head—a fairly useless gesture inside a pressure suit.

Bothu turned away and started working the lock controls. “Once we’re through into the
Bear,
I’m using a plastic weldbonder on the
Flea
’s outer hatch,” Bothu announced. “We don’t want any parasites coming to visit.

“The bonder will hold the hatch shut just as well as a real weld would. Just in case some of us run into trouble, you’ve each got a can of the deactivator chemical in your suit’s left hip pouch. Once you hit the weld with that stuff, it’ll dissolve and you can get back into the ship. Whoever gets back will be able to get aboard
Fleance.
Just be damn sure it’s only
us
who get back aboard. The chief will use his detectors and triple check everyone and everything that makes it back.”

Once again, Peever devoutly wished that Bothu would choose her words more carefully.

Bothu opened the hatch, stepped in, and gestured for Peever to join her. The two of them cycled through to the
Bear,
then waited for Wellingham and Clandal.

Once aboard the derelict, Bothu occupied herself by check running a manual diagnostic on a status panel. Or at least trying to run it. There was no power at all in the system, not a millivolt or a microwatt. Peever looked about the darkened lock area nervously as Bothu worked.

With ship’s power out, they had to see by the powerful lamps built into their suit helmets. The lamps stabbed into the surrounding darkness on a tight beam. Perfectly ordinary objects—tools, work consoles, monitor screens, equipment racks—loomed weirdly up out of the darkness, transmogrified by the strange shadows cast by the eye-level headlamps.

Hanging in the darkness, drifting in weightlessness, Peever suddenly felt as if his head were caught in the last bubble of air in the whole universe, that the shaft of light from his lamp was stabbing up,
not out, that the surface of some fever-imagined sea lay immeasurably far above him, lost in the shadows, and he was trapped, trapped, trapped at the bottom—

Clandal and Wellingham cycled through with a series of very real-sounding bumps and clumps that chased the false creations of a heat-oppressed brain away. Peever unclenched his fists. His suit thrummed quietly as its cooling system cut in, trying to deal with his sudden, nervous sweat.

“How’s she look?” Wellingham asked, his voice booming just a bit too loud in Peever’s ears.

“Dead,” Bothu replied. “Totally dead. Which is weird, because then the temperature should be at local background, but it’s a bit warmer than that. I tried to get a manual readout here using the ship’s emergency power, but even
that’s
gone. I wish to hell I could plug my AID Gertie in to the diag socket—”

“No AIDs,” Wellingham said sharply. “Captain’s orders, and he’s right. Those damn parasites can suck their way right into an AID, and then it’s all over. Would you rather not get an answer, or not be able to trust the answer you get?”

“But I thought we could detect the parasites with the G-wave detector,” Peever protested.

“Can we detect
all
of them?” Wellingham asked. “Maybe there’s a kind that doesn’t give off G-waves. Or maybe the parasites could figure out a way to trick the detectors. Like by getting
into
a detector, and then where the hell would we be? No chances taken, that’s my motto. I’ve got engineers working to isolate every major system on the destroyers from every
other
major system, so the ships can be run without the damn computers.
And
I’m going to vaporize every bit of equipment that we take aboard this ugly hulk before we return to the
Banquo.
I’m not letting this gig redock with the destroyer, either. We’ll use a pressure tunnel and then burn the tunnel. But for now, Clandal, get that hatch sealed and let’s get on with it.”

Peever watched unhappily as Clandal applied the bonding compound to the hatch cover and ran the activating current through the thick goo. It hardened instantly, sealing off their one possible line of retreat. Deactivator in his hip pouch or not, Peever was not enthused. The others turned and headed into the ship, and Peever suddenly found himself left behind.

“Up ahead, I think,” he heard the chief’s voice say in his earphones. “I’m getting a very nice bright G-wave reading about a hundred meters this way.”

The gloom-black walls started to close in on him, and Peever found himself unable to breathe. He grabbed at the nearest handholds and rushed desperately, trying to catch up.