Reality Dysfunction - Expansion

generator two, and I’ve got cryogenic leakages.”

“Compensate, then, just keep us functional. We’ll be through the atmosphere in another twenty seconds.”

Sarha was already datavising a comprehensive list of instructions into the flight computer, closing pipes and tanks, isolating damaged sub-components, pumping vaporized coolant fluid from the malfunctioning generator into emergency dump stores. Warlow began to help her, prioritizing the power circuits.

“Three nodes are out, Joshua,” Dahybi reported.

“Irrelevant.” He took the starship down to sixty kilometres.

The nine remaining kinetic missile drones followed. They were, as Joshua said, intended for deep space operation: basically a sensor cluster riding on top of fuel tanks and a drive unit. There was no streamlining, no outer fuselage; in a vacuum there was no need for such refinements. All they had to do was collide with their victim, mass and velocity would obey Newton’s equations and combine to complete the task. But now they were flying through the mesosphere, a medium implacably alien and hostile. Ionization started to accumulate around their blunt circular sensor heads as the gas thickened, turning to long tongues of violet and yellow flame which licked back along the body. Sensors burnt away in seconds, exposing the guidance electronics to the radiant incoming molecules. Blinded, crippled, subject to intolerable heat and friction pressures, the kinetic drones detonated in garish starburst splendour twenty kilometres above the Lady Macbeth .

The Arikara ’s tactical situation display showed their vectors wink out almost simultaneously. “Very smart,” Meredith said grudgingly. It took a hell of a nerve to pilot a starship like that—nerve and egomaniacal self-confidence. I doubt I would have that much gumption.

“Stand by. Evasive manoeuvring,” Commander Kroeber said.

And Meredith had no more time to reflect on the singular antics of Joshua Calvert. Punishing gravity returned abruptly to the flagship’s bridge. A third salvo of combat wasps leaped out of their launch-tubes.

Lady Macbeth soared out of the mesosphere, throwing off her dangerous cloak of glowing molecules. Behind her, Wyman’s ice-fields glimmered under eerie showers of ethereal light. Combat- sensor clusters rose out of their hull recesses on short stalks, their golden-lensed optical scanners searching round.

“We’re in the clear. Thank you, sweet Jesus.” Joshua reduced the thrust from the fusion drives until it was a merely uncomfortable three gees. Their trajectory was taking them straight away from the planet at a high inclination. There were no combat wasps within four thousand kilometres. I knew the old girl could do it. “Told you so,” he sang at the top of his voice.

“Awesome,” Ashly said, and meant it.

On the couch next to Joshua, Melvyn shook his head in dazed admiration despite the gee force.

“Thanks, Joshua,” Sarha said gently.

“My pleasure. Now, damage assessments please. Dahybi, can we jump?”

“I’ll need time to run more diagnostics. But even if we can jump it isn’t going to be far. Those three nodes were physically wrecked by the gamma pulses. Our energy patterns will have to be recalculated. Ideally, we need to replace the nodes first.”

“We’re only carrying two spares. I’m not made of money. Dad always jumped with nodes damaged and —”

“Don’t,” Sarha pleaded. “Just for once, Joshua. Let’s deal with the present, OK?”

“Somebody’s jumped outsystem,” Melvyn said. “The grav-detector satellites registered at least two distortions while we were performing our dodo impersonation, I think there may have been a wormhole interstice opened as well. I can’t tell for sure, half of the satellites have dropped out.”

“There is no jamming from the voidhawks any more,” Dahybi said.

“OK, great. Warlow, Sarha, how are our systems coping?”

“Number two generator’s out,” Warlow said. “I’ve shut it down. It took the main strike from the gamma rays. Lucky really, most of the energy was absorbed by its casing. We’ll have to dump it when we dock, it’s got a half-life longer than some geological eras now.”

“And I’d like you to stop using the number one fusion-drive tube,” Sarha said. “The injection ionizers are damaged. Other than that, nothing serious, we’ve got some leaks and some component glitches. But none of the life-support capsules were breached, and our environmental-maintenance equipment is fully functional.”

“Got another jumper,” Melvyn called out.

Joshua reduced thrust to one gee, cutting drive tube one altogether, then accessed the sensors. “Jesus, will you look at that?”

Lalonde had acquired its own ring, gloriously radiant stripes of fusion fire twining together to form a platinum amulet of immense complexity. Over five hundred combat wasps were in flight, and thousands of submunitions wove convoluted trajectories. Starships initiated high-gee evasive manoeuvres. Nuclear explosions blossomed.

The Lady Macbeth ’s magnetic and electromagnetic sensors were recording impulses nearly off the scale. It was a radiative inferno.

“Two more wormhole interstices opening,” Melvyn said. “Our bitek comrades are leaving in droves.”

“I think we’ll join them,” Joshua said. Just for once in her life, Sarha might be right, he conceded. It was the now which counted. Lady Mac was already two thousand kilometres in altitude, and rising steeply from the pole; he shifted their inclination again, carrying them further north of the ecliptic and away from the conflict raging above the planet’s equatorial zones. Another three thousand kilometres and they would be out of the influence of Lalonde’s gravity field, and free to jump. He made a mental note to travel an additional five hundred klicks—no point in stressing the nodes, given their state. About a hundred seconds at their current acceleration. “Dahybi, how is the patterning coming?”

“Reprogramming. Another two minutes. You really don’t want to rush me with this one, Joshua.”

“Fine, the further we are from the gravity field the better.”

“What about the mercs?” Ashly said. It wasn’t loud, but his level voice carried the bridge easily.

Joshua banished the display showing him possible jump coordinates. He turned his head and glared at the pilot. Why was there always one awkward bastard? “We can’t! Jesus, they’re killing each other back there.”

“I promised them, Joshua. If they were alive I said I would go down and pick them up. And you said something similar in your message.”

“We’ll come back.”

“Not in this ship, not in a week. If we dock at a port, it’ll take a month to refit. That’s without any hassle from the navy. They won’t be alive in two days, not down there.”

“The navy said they’d pick up any survivors.”

“You mean that same navy which right now is shooting at our former colleagues?”

“Jesus!”

“There isn’t going to be a combat wasp left in thirty minutes,” the pilot said reasonably. “Not at the rate they’re expending them. All we have to do is sit tight for a couple of hours out here.”

Instinct pushed Joshua, repelled him from Lalonde and the red cloud bands. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry, Ashly, but no. This is too big for us.” The coordinate display flipped up in his mind.

Ashly looked desperately round the bridge for an ally. His eyes found Sarha’s guilty expression.

She let out an exasperated sigh. “Joshua?”

“Now what!”

“We should jump to Murora.”

“Where?” His almanac file produced the answer, Murora was the largest gas giant in the Lalonde system. “Oh.”

“Makes sense,” she said. “There’s even an Edenist station in orbit to supervise their new habitat’s growth. We can dock there and replace the failed nodes with our spares. Then we can jump back here in a day or so and do a fast fly-by. If we get an answer from the mercs, and the navy doesn’t shoot us on sight, Ashly can go down to pick them up. If not, we just head straight back to Tranquillity.”

“Dahybi, what do you think?” Joshua asked curtly. Most of his anger was directed at himself; he should have thought of Murora as an alternative destination.