against his chest hairs…
No. Martinez put the image firmly from his mind. The key had to be somewhere else.
“Nine minutes, my lord.” The words were spoken over a long, groaning shudder fromCorona’s stressed frame.
WouldFanaghee acceptCorona’s surrender? Martinez wondered. He could safely assume that she would want the frigate back, certainly. But—perhaps of more vital interest—would Fanaghee acceptMartinez’s surrender?
Martinez thought not. His blood would probably still be decorating the walls of Command when Fanaghee put her new captain on board. Perhaps it would be easier on everyone if he just took his sidearm and blew out his own brains.
No.Martinez put the thought out of his mind. Where was thekey?
He pictured Koslowski’s cabin, exactly like his own…small, the narrow gimbaled bed, the washstand, the large wardrobe that contained the formidable number of uniforms required, the chests with the grand amount of gear an officer was expected to carry with him from one posting to the next. The shelves, the small desk with its computer access.
There just wasn’t any room to hide something. A cabin wassmall .
He knew that the captain’s sleeping cabin was larger, though he’d never been in it, but he couldn’t imagine it would be very different.
And then there was the captain’s office. The desk, with its computer access. The safe. The shelves, and all the football trophies.
The trophies. The glittering objects, standing in his office and braced against high gee, that meant more to Lieutenant Captain Tarafah than anything else, including probably his command. The objects that he savored every day, that he probably caressed in secret.
Martinez was so transfixed by the memory of the trophies that he failed to hear the words that were spoken to him.
“Sorry?” he said absently. “Repeat, please.”
“I think I’ve configured the pinnace as you wished,” Kelly said.
“Right. Stand by.”
He paged Alikhan. “Did you check thetrophies? ” he demanded.
“My lord?”
“Did you look in the trophies? The Home Fleet Trophies arecups, aren’t they?”
He could hear Alikhan’s chagrin even through the strain that six gravities was putting on his voice.
“No, my lord. I didn’t think to look.”
“Engines!” Martinez cried. “Reduce acceleration to one gravity!”
“Reducing acceleration to one gravity, my lord,” Mabumba repeated.
Corona’sbeams groaned as the oppressive weight eased. Martinez gasped in air, grateful to breathe without labor. He took a half-dozen sweet breaths, then impatience drove him to demand information.
“What are you finding, Alikhan?”
“I’m trying to work the catch to the lid now, my lord.There …I’m reaching inside…”
In the silence that followed, even over the remorseless percussion of his heart, Martinez could hear the metallic scrape of Alikhan’s fingernails whispering against the inside of the cup. And then he heard Alikhan’s deep sigh, a sigh that to Martinez seemed filled with all the despair in the universe…
“Six minutes, my lord.” Tracy’s words were leaden.
“I’ve got them both, Lord Gareth,” said Alikhan in a voice of quiet exultation.
For an instant the hopelessness still clung like a shroud to Martinez’s mind, and then it was obliterated by an electric surge of triumph that almost had him whooping aloud.
“Activate the captain’s desk display,” he said. “Insert his key. Prepare to turn on my mark.Weapons! Kelly! Catch! ”
Cadet Kelly turned as Martinez fished in his pocket for Garcia’s key. The expression on her face was luminous, as if with glowing eyes she were seeing Martinez descend from heaven on rainbow clouds.
The cadet stretched out her lanky arms, and Martinez tossed her the key.
“Insert and turn on my mark.”
“Very good, my lord!”
Martinez opened his tunic and pulled his own key off over his head. He inserted the key into the silvery metal slot on the command console before him.
“Weapons. Alikhan. Turn on my mark. Three. Two. One. Mark.”
Kelly gave a dazzled smile as the weapons board lit up before her eyes. Another light appeared on Martinez’s board, indicating that the weapons were free.
“Alikhan, get to a rack and strap in.”
“Yes, my lord.”
And then, as frantic relief poured into his veins, Martinez turned to Kelly. “Power up point-defense lasers!” he called. “This isnot a drill!” Such was his haste that he had to keep himself from screaming the words like a lunatic.
“This is not a drill,” Kelly repeated through a broad, brilliant smile. “Powering up point-defense lasers.”
“Activate radars aft.”
“Radars activated aft, my lord.”
“This is not a drill. Charge missile battery one with antimatter.”
“This is not a drill. Charging missile battery one with antimatter…missiles charged, my lord.”
The missiles had been charged with their antimatter fuel, each unit consisting of a solid flake of antihydrogen that had been carefully doped with an excess of positrons, which allowed it to be suspended by static electricity inside a tiny etched silicon chip. The configuration was stable and would last for decades, and the chips were so diminutive, well beneath anything that could be seen with a conventional microscope, that as a mass they flowed like liquid. The antihydrogen served both as propellant for the missile and as the warhead—any fuel that didn’t get used up on the approach would go bang at the end of the journey.
The same antihydrogen fuel was used byCorona for its own propulsion, though larger ships used antihydrogen suspended in larger microchips, which provided more power to the engines.
“Screens,” Martinez asked, “what’s the dispersal on that salvo?”
“They’re clumped together, my lord,” Tracy responded.
Martinez pulled the radar tracks onto his own display. The oncoming missileswere clumped, flying as if in formation. One ofCorona’s missiles should suffice to knock them out, but he thought he should fire two just to be sure.
He pulled the weapons board into his own displays and began configuring the missiles. “We’ll fire battery one in salvos of two,” he explained to Kelly. “The first two will take care of the oncoming missiles. The next two will accelerate till they’re just short of the enemy missiles, then cut power and drift through the blast, coming out the far side, heading for the station but looking on the radars like debris—or so we’ll hope. The next pair will burn straight in for the ring station and probably get shot down, but may distract them from the second pair. The fourth pair we’ll keep in reserve.”
Kelly looked a little overwhelmed. “Yes, my lord,” she said finally.
“When you reload, load tube one with a decoy.”
Pressing keypads. “Yes, my lord.”
On a larger ship, there would be a tactical officer to take care of all these details. But as he spun his plans, as his fingers danced in the displays and tapped console pads, Martinez found that he was enjoying himself again, relishing the planning and the execution and, most of all, the little surprise he was planning to spring on the Naxids.
Blow everything. Garcia’s words echoed in his mind, and he felt his pleasure fade. It wasn’t just rebel Naxids on the ships he planned to destroy, it was their captive crews, and the military installations on the ring were only a small part of the huge structure: millions of civilians lived there as well. All would die if his clever little plan succeeded.
He stared for a moment into a dark, cold imagining: the flash, the fireball, the spray of gamma rays. The ring station rent apart, spinning out of control, parts flung into space, others dragged to flame and impact on the
