Valthyrra considered that briefly. “I can certainly cut down the oxygen content to a level at which a human could not remain conscious. Believe it or not, that really is a useful function with Kelvessan. It will be as much as a couple of minutes before he goes under.”
“Do it, then. Leave all other levels where they are. He might not even notice for some time.”
Tarrel hurried the best that she could; there was no artificial gravity outside the ship, and her boots held to the hull only by an electromagnetic device that was pressure-sensitive to each step. The hold seemed to stick for just a fraction of a second with each step, until the sensors registered the lifting of her leg and released the lock, but it was just enough to slow her down. The probe drifted silently behind her, its lenses glittering in the reflection of the distant lights between the two carriers.
“The missile just began a one-minute delayed count,” Valthyrra reported. “The overload level is full power, twenty megatons or more. Lieutenant Commander Pesca seems to have panicked. His respiratory and cardiac rates are climbing rapidly, and he is pressing buttons on the missile’s manual control apparently at random.”
“He scared himself,” Tarrel observed. “Can I have a channel to him now?”
“The second audio channel is ready.”
“Wally, can you hear me?” she asked, trying to sound both authoritative and strongly reassuring. “Wally, you have to turn the damned thing off. You have it set to overload in less that a minute.”
“I can’t, Captain,” he answered, almost hysterical. “The controls aren’t in Terran. I was trying to fire it, and I don’t know what I did.”
After weeks of trying to find any clue to the secret language of the Starwolves, he had to do it the hard way.
“I can direct him to key in the manual override to lock out the controls and return the missile’s systems to inert status,” Valthyrra said softly over Tarrel’s com.
“Wally, Valthyrra Methryn is going to tell you how to turn the thing off. Will you listen to her?”
“Where is she?”
“Walter, this is Valthyrra,” the ship said. “We use the standard Terran character set, so you will recognize that much. To deactivate the missile, type in the characters and numbers in reverse order of the access code that you will see inside the lid of the control panel. Can you do that?”
“I can’t see the numbers!” Pesca insisted, deeply frightened. “I don’t have a light. I can only see the keyboard because the keys are illuminated from the inside.”
“Walter, I will read you the sequence from my inventory. But you have to hurry, because you have only twenty seconds.” Valthyrra paused. “Damn. I suspect that he just fainted. ” “Give him back his oxygen,” Tarrel suggested.
“I did when I realized that he was willing to deactivate the missile. You will have to do it. The missile is only twenty meters ahead of you now.”
She looked up, but she could barely make out the black form of the missile drifting above the outer edge of the ventral groove. Pesca must have pushed against it as he passed out, for the tapered nose of the missile was swinging slowly out away from the ship. “Val, I’ll never get there in time. Do you have enough control of that missile to fire it away?”
“Yes, I do.”
“That’s the only way you can save yourself now. The nose of the missile is pointing away into open space, so get it the hell away from here now.”
“Walter Pesca might be caught in the drive wash,” the ship protested.
“Perhaps his suit will protect him,” Tarrel insisted. “Val, you gave me temporary command of this ship, and now you listen to me. I’m ordering you to fire that missile. The decision and the responsibility are entirely my own.”
The missile suddenly disappeared in a blinding flash of light that streaked away to disappear into the distance. Tarrel was still blinking from the flare of that drive when a second flash of brilliant light filled the blackness of space several kilometers out from the ship. She wondered at first if it had gotten away in time, when it seemed that the explosion was reaching out to take them, but the shock wave that moved across the ship seconds later was hardly enough to rock it gently, a light pressure that did not even threaten her hold on the hull. She turned and hurried to find Walter Pesca, fearful as Valthyrra had been that he had been caught in the tremendous energy of its drive wash.
“Captain, your companion did not make it,” Valthyrra said softly.
She stopped short. “He’s dead?”
“His suit telemetry stayed with the missile. I must suppose that he had fastened himself to it with a short tether.”
“Then he died in the explosion?”
“He did not survive the acceleration of the missile,” the ship answered. “I tracked his telemetry until the explosion. He was dead already.”
With nothing left to do, Captain Tarrel returned to the airlock and took the lift back to the bridge. She hardly knew what to think, the situation had arisen and was gone again so quickly. Her thoughts at the time had been only practical ones, above all her awareness that the survival of the Union, if not human civilization itself, could depend upon the welfare of these two ships. With the danger past, she now had time to realize that she had given an order that had caused the death of a junior officer under her command. Oddly, she felt vaguely disappointed with herself, with Walter Pesca, and with her own kind in general; having to face aliens after a demonstration of the violent failings of her own race. She did not know if the Starwolves would ever be able to understand the fear and suspicion that had driven Pesca mad, or if they agreed with her decision to sacrifice him to save the two carriers. They possessed the strength and speed to have gotten to that missile in time.
Commander Gelrayen had returned to the bridge by the time she arrived. He met her at the lift and led her into the corridor leading behind the bridge. “Are you well?”
“Yes, fine,” she insisted. “Is something else wrong?” “Valthyrra is taking it very hard,” he explained. “She has never had to kill anyone before. Fighting the Dreadnought was one thing, since its actual sentience is in doubt. But she had not anticipated that she would have to take a life deliberately anytime soon, no matter how necessary it was.”
“The choice was mine,” Tarrel answered. “I had been given the bridge, and it was my order as temporary commander of this ship. I told her that.”
“Even I cannot order Valthyrra against her will,” Gelrayen said. “She made the decision to do what you told her, and she was the one who actually fired that missile. She just needs a little time to adjust.”
“Is there anything that I can do?”
“Valthyrra will feel better when we get her repaired and under way on her own power. We have begun moving the main drives, and I need to get back to the repair crews. Will you watch the bridge for a while yet?”
Tarrel was surprised by that request. “Yes, I suppose. If you still trust me with your ship.”
Gelrayen smiled. “You have taken good care of her so far.”
10
After nearly three days of hard work, the Methryn was ready to get underway again under her own power, if only barely. She had half as many main drives working as she should have, and her star drives were expected to operate at only one-third of normal capacity, if that. A part of her sensor array remained out, along with her rear battery and some of her perimeter cannons, as well as several external cameras and a section of her heat exchange. All the same, she had been very lucky in many important respects. Her armor was completely intact, and her main battery and her shields were both fully operational, even at stealth intensity. Her star drives could be restored with only a modest amount of work, and the phasing crystals and major components could be salvaged from her four damaged main drives. Four or five days of work in a construction bay would have her in fighting condition once again.
The most serious problem she faced was being able to beg those repairs when she did return to Alkayja
