'General quarters! General quarters! This is not a drill!'
From the panic that clawed at the amplified voice of Cadet Qing, Martinez knew this wasn't a drill from the first word. By the time the message began to repeat he had already vaulted clean over his desk and was sprinting for the companion that led to Command, leaving Marsden sitting in his chair staring after him.
Martinez sprang for the companion just as the gravity went away. The distant engine rumble ceased, leaving the corridor silent except for the sound of Martinez' heart, which was thundering louder than the general quarters alarm. Martinez had no weight but he still had plenty of inertia, and he hit the companion with knees and elbows. Pain rocketed through his limbs despite the padding on the stair risers. He bounced away from the companion like an oversized rubber eraser, but he managed to check his momentum with a grab to the rail.
His feet began to swing out into the corridor, and that meant Illustrious was changing its heading. He had to get up the companion and into Command before the engines fired again. His big hand tightened on the rail and he began to swing himself back to the steep stair so that he could kick off and jump to the next deck.
No good. The engines fired without warning and suddenly Martinez had weight again. His arm couldn't support his entire mass and folded under him, and the rail caught him a stunning blow across the shoulder. He flopped onto his back on the stair. Risers sliced into his back.
Martinez tried to rise but the gravities were already beginning to pile on. (Two gravities. Three…) Pain lanced through his wrist as he seized the rail to try to haul himself upright. The stair risers were cutting into him like knives. (Four gravities at least…) He gasped for breath. Eventually Martinez realized he wasn't going to be able to climb.
He realized other things as well. He was on a hard surface. He hadn't taken any of the drugs that would help him survive heavy gravity. He could die if he didn't get off this companion, cut by the stairs like cheese by a slicer.
A sort of crabbing motion of his arms and legs brought him bumping down the stairs, each step a club to his back and mastoid, but once his buttocks thumped on the deck it was harder to move, and the risers were still digging into his spine. (Five gravities…) His vision was beginning to go dark.
Martinez crabbed with his arms and legs and managed to thump down another stair. Comets flared in his skull as his head hit the tread. He clenched his jaw muscles to force blood to his brain and dropped down another step.
It was Chandra's nightmare, he realized. Relativistic missiles were inbound and he needed to get to Command. It would be the height of stupidity to die here, vaporized by a missile or with his neck broken by the sharp edge of a stair.
Martinez thumped down another stair, and that left only his head still on the companion, tilted at an angle that cramped his windpipe and strained his spine. (Six gravities…) His vision was totally gone. He couldn't seem to breathe. Without the drugs Terrans could only rarely stay conscious past six and a half gravities. He had to get off the stair or his neck was going to be broken by the weight of his head.
With a frantic effort he tried to roll, his palms and heels fighting for traction against the tile, fighting the dead weight that was pinning him like a silver needle pinning an insect to corkboard. Vertigo swam through his skull. He fought to bring air into his lungs. He gave a heave, every muscle in his body straining.
With a crack his head fell off the stair and banged onto the tile. Despite the pain and the stars that shot through the blackness of his vision he felt a surge of triumph.
Gravity increased. Martinez fought for consciousness.
And lost.
When Martinez woke he saw before him a window, and beyond the window was a green countryside. Two ladies in transparent gowns gazed at the poised figure of a nearly naked man who seemed to be hovering in a startlingly blue sky. Above the man flew a superior-looking eagle, and on the grass below the two ladies were a pair of animals, a dog and a small furry creature with long ears, both of whom seemed to find the floating man interesting.
It occurred to Martinez that the man in the sky wasn't alone, that he, Martinez, was also floating.
His heart was going like a triphammer. Sharp pains shot through his head and body. He blinked and wiped sweat from the sockets of his eyes.
The man still floated before him, serene and eerily calm, as if he floated every day.
It was only gradually that Martinez realized that he was looking at a piece of artifice, at one of the trompe l'oeil paintings that Montemar Jukes had placed at intervals in Illustrious' corridors.
The engines had shut down again. Now weightless, Martinez had drifted gently from the deck to a place before the painting.
He gave a start and looked frantically in all directions. The companion leading to Command was two body- lengths away. So far as he knew the emergency, the battle or whatever it was, had not ended.
He swam with his arms to reorient himself, and kicked with one foot at the floating man to shoot himself across the corridor. Striking the wall he absorbed momentum with his arms-pain shot through his right wrist-and then he did a kind of handspring in the direction of the companion.
He struck the companionway feet-first and folded into a crouch, which enabled him to spring again, this time through the hatch atop the companion.
From there it was a short distance to the heavy hatch to Command. The door was armored against blast and radiation and would have been locked down at the beginning of the emergency. Martinez hovered before the hatch, his left hand clutching at the hand grip inset into the door frame, his right stabbing at the comm panel.
'This is the captain!' he said. 'Open the door!'
'Stand by,' came Mersenne's voice.
Stand by? Martinez was outraged. Who did the fourth lieutenant think Martinez was, some snotty cadet?
'Let me into Command!' Martinez barked.
'Stand by.' The irritating words were spoken in an abstract tone, as if Mersenne had many more important things on his mind than obeying his captain's orders.
Well, Martinez thought, perhaps he did. Perhaps the emergency was occupying his full attention.
But how much attention did it take to open a damn hatch?
Martinez ground his teeth while he waited, fist clamped white-knuckled around the hand grip. Lieutenant Husayn floated up the companion and joined him. Blood floated in perfect round spheres from Husayn's nose, some of them catching on his little mustache; and there was a cut on his lip.
There hadn't been the regulation warning tone sounded for high gee-or for no gee, for that matter. Probably there hadn't been time to give the order. Martinez wondered how many injuries Doctor Xi was coping with.
With a soft hiss, the door slid open after Martinez had been waiting nearly a minute. He heaved on the hand grip and gave himself impetus for the command cage.
'I have command!' he shouted.
'Captain Martinez has command!' Mersenne agreed. He sounded relieved. He was already drifting free of the command cage, heading toward his usual station at the engines display.
Martinez glanced around the room as he floated toward his acceleration cage. The watch were staring at their displays as if each expected something with claws to come bounding out of them.
'Missile attack, my lord,' Mersenne said. as he caught his acceleration cage. The cage swung with him, and he jacknifed, then inserted his feet and legs inside. 'At least thirty. I'm sorry I didn't let you into Command, but I didn't want to unseal the door until I was certain the missiles had all been dealt with-didn't want to irradiate the entire command crew.'
It grated, but Martinez had to admit Mersenne was right.
'Any losses?' Martinez asked.
'No, my lord.' Mersenne floated to a couch next to the warrant officer who had been handling the engines board, then webbed himself in and locked the engine displays in front of him. 'We starburst as soon as we saw the missiles incoming, but when we hit eight gravities when there was an engine trip.'
Martinez, in the act of webbing himself onto his couch, stopped and stared.
'Engine trip?' he said.
'Number one engine. Automated safety procedures tripped the other two before I could override them. I'll try to get engines two and three back online, and then work out what happened to engine one.'
