But…with the success of the Fergus, the whole situation merely degenerated into a problem and embarrassment for everyone. The RSF would be blamed for having a torp-happy commander going off uncontrolled, and all the others risked either embarrassment for incompetence or for lack of knowledge about the situation. Even the Scandyans wouldn’t be happy, not when an obsolete cruiser potted an intruder outside their own system, suggesting that one antique cruiser was more effective than the entire Scandyan space force.
Van rose. “Thank you both. I’ll need to make some changes before I send this off.” He took the cup to the adjoining galley, where he emptied it, racked it in its place, turned and left the galley, then the mess. As he eased into the main passageway fore and aft, behind him, he could just catch the whispers.
“You don’t think it was an accident…”
“With the commander…after the Regneri incident?…planned as potted palms…”
That was what Van thought as well, but he said nothing as he walked the few meters forward to the cubicle he rated as commander. There he revised the battle report, then fed it into the message torp.
He accessed the shipnet, linking to Lieutenant Moran. Lieutenant?
Yes, Commander?
I’m about to release a message torp to RSF Depot. Report on our encounter entering the system. Just wanted you to know.
Yes, ser. I’ll log it.
Van keyed the release, then monitored the torp from the shipnet until it jumped and translated back toward the depot off Sligo Station.
Then he stretched out on the narrow bunk. He hoped he could sleep before he had to relieve Lieutenant Moran on the controls.
They had another eighteen hours before they reached Gotland. By then, the message torp would have reached the RSF Depot, and the marshal and his council would begin to decide what to do with the Fergus and her commander.
Chapter 4
In the darkness of the damped cockpit, Van continued to scan the passive inputs from the detectors, waiting, watching. The lieutenant in the couch beside him said nothing.
A line of light, merely a representation of a lase-search, swept across the virtual repscreen toward Van and the ship.
Detection probable. Detection probable.
“I know that,” muttered Van to himself. “It’s what they think we are that counts, not that we’re here.”
Detection probability at unity.
Van ignored the shipnet warning. His shields were down. Playing like an inert hunk of metallic asteroid was far safer than broadcasting his presence with their energy field. The converted terraforming vessel—a ship that amounted to a heavy cruiser—could crush his shields as if they didn’t exist with its particle beams and torps. He still had no idea what the renegade Vetachi was doing where it was—or why. But he had to do something because it was bearing down on the colony ship that lay in-system of Van.
Detection probability at unity.
Waiting in the darkened and damped cockpit, sweating, Van took in all the data as the larger vessel swept toward him.
Then, in the moment when his ship was between the inner and outer shields of the attacker, he triggered off his torps, in sets of two, as fast as he could—then lifted shields and accelerated.
The huge ship, seemingly looming over the corvette in the out-system darkness, shuddered as the third and fourth torps actually penetrated the hull.
Then…torps and debris flared everywhere.
Van watched, openmouthed, as an errant torp flared toward the Regneri, and as the colony ship split into fragments…
“NOOO!!!”
Van bolted upright in his bunk, almost cracking his head against the low overhead. His heart was racing, and his body was covered with sweat.
Ten years, and he still had nightmares about it. The Board of Inquiry had exonerated him, even recommended him for a commendation in taking out the raider, probably a Revenant “black” ship, but the commendation hadn’t happened. No one wanted to commend a corvette jockey whose actions had cost the lives of three hundred highly trained colonists—even if it had been a freak accident that couldn’t have been duplicated if the situation had been replicated a hundred times.
From then on he’d received one difficult assignment after another. After the Inquiry, it had been the Gortforge, the last of the Niamh class, with an entirely new and green crew because the former officers and crew had been court-martialed for refusing to fire on the Keltyr merchanter carrying the escaping rebels of Coole. After reading the report, Van had sympathized with the crew, since more than three-quarters of those on board the Bonnie Prince had been women and children. The Marshal’s Council doubtless hadn’t seen it that way, because the rebels had been Keltyr sympathizers who had destabilized Coole so much that riots still occasionally broke out.
After he’d completed two tours on the old Gort, and after RSF had decided to retire the ultralight cruiser, he’d been given command of the Fergus, yet another ship plagued with problems. Except there hadn’t been any in the two years he’d been commander.
Sitting in his bunk, still sweating, Van blotted himself dry, then stretched back out, hoping he could sleep. After a while he did doze off, without nightmares, but with disturbing dreams he couldn’t quite remember when he woke.
He climbed back up into the cockpit, after a small meal—break-fast, he supposed—bolstered with the evil-tasting Sustain.
Forgael slipped out of the command couch with a grace that Van had always admired and envied. Her smile was as ironic as ever, but then, given that she was a good ten years older than Van, with a solid record that had never been adequately rewarded, the irony was more than understandable to him.
“Nothing new, Commander. The Rev cruiser hasn’t moved. EDI suggests stand-down. The Argentis are headed out-system, but not along our corridor. They’re pushing it, looks like a solid two-gee acceleration.”
“You think they had something to do with that cruiser?”
