half a day ago.
He saved his simulation and pulled off the headset. “Ari,” he said, turning toward Abacha’s console. “Got any of that apple left? Or any food at all?”
It was then he realized that the person he’d sensed standing behind him had far too much braid on his uniform to be a mere lieutenant.
“My lord!” He leaped to his feet, his chin snapping back. Agonizing pain clamped on his crotch, which had been perched on an alien chair for over an hour.
Fleet Commander Enderby gazed at him with mild eyes. “Carry on, Lieutenant,” he said.
“Yes, my lord.”
Enderby looked at the displays, which had been showing Martinez’s solution. “A difficult problem, is it not?”
“I’m afraid so, my lord.” Martinez clenched his teeth against the pain. Whatever passion had seized Enderby during their last interview had passed: the Fleet Commander was his usual self again, keeping himself informed of what was occurring in his command, but content to let lesser beings work out the details. Martinez had never quite made up his mind whether this was a result of Enderby being profoundly stupid or profoundly wise.
“I fear Blitsharts has run his last race,” Enderby said. “I’m certainly not permitting a Fleet vessel to batter itself to pieces attempting a hopeless rescue.” Distant regret tracked across Enderby’s features, then he looked at Martinez again. “Call the commissary and order something, if you want. Use my authority.”
“Yes, my lord.” He reached for his sleeve display, then hesitated. “Will you have anything, my lord?”
“No. I have dined. Thank you.”
Martinez realized he was ragingly hungry. He ordered soup, a salad, some sandwiches, and a pot of coffee. Trying not to hobble, he removed the Lai-own chair and replaced it with one designed for humans. Gingerly, he sat down and looked again at the simulation frozen in the displays.
His nostrils twitched to the scent of apple, and he turned toward where Abacha sat at his own console, looking at his own displays. The stiffness of Abacha’s spine and neck, and the ostentatious way he went about his business, showed his awareness that the commander of the Home Fleet was standing behind him.
Abacha’s handkerchief sat on the long console between them, the screw of apple peel lying discarded on it. Without thinking, Martinez reached for it—it was a reflex action for him to keep the Fleet commander’s vicinity tidy—and he looked for someplace to throw it.
His eyes alighted on the handkerchief, the perfect corkscrew peel lying coiled on the white surface, and he froze.
“Lord commander,” he said slowly, “I think I know how this can work.”
The woman called Caroline Sula fought her way back from nightmare, from a sensation of being smothered with a pillow, the soft pressure filling her nose, her mouth, the screaming pressure in her chest building as she tried to bring in air…
She came awake with a cry, hands flailing at an invisible attacker. Then she realized where she was, strapped into the command seat of her pinnace, and fought the darkness more rationally, clenching her jaw and neck muscles to force oxygenated blood to her brain. The darkness that swathed her vision retreated just enough so she could see the cockpit displays directly in front of her. A total stranger looked at her and said, “You’re going to have toscrew it in,” and then the main engine fired again, the boat groaned in response, and panic flared in her as darkness once more flooded her mind.
An unknown amount of time later she woke gasping for breath, fighting the ton of lead that pressed on her rib cage. Sensors in her pressure suit monitored her condition: the computers on her pinnace were instructed to keep heralive, but the programming said nothing aboutcomfortable.
In the blackness of her vision there was a hole through which a little light came. Sula focused the hole over the engine display and found that the pinnace was accelerating at a steady 6.5 gravities, which the computer had apparently decided was the optimum both for keeping her alive and getting her to where she was going.
The darkness retreated a little from her vision. Sula panted for breath. She badly wanted to pee.
She wrenched her gaze to the speed indicator. It felt as if she had to crowbar her eyeballs around their sockets. She discovered she was traveling .076c.
Too bad. It meant that this wouldn’t end anytime soon.
The brutal deceleration finally came to an end. The pressure exerted by Sula’s suit, soft as foam but firm as steel, withdrew from her arms and legs, bringing them tingling back to life as the blood surged to the muscles. The tingling on her back, caused by the miniwaves pulsed through the acceleration couch—to prevent blood pooling and to prevent bedsores—faded as she floated free in her harness. The soft darkness retreated from her perceptions, and she could fill her lungs with air.
She checked her own vital signs, found elevated heart rate and blood pressure, but not in the critical ranges. She hadn’t stroked out during the acceleration—which sometimes happened even to the fittest young cadets—nor had she given herself some kind of weird heart murmur or arrhythmia.
The composite organics of the ship’s hull cracked and snapped as they reacted to the end of the relentless acceleration. Sula scanned the displays, then raised a hand to send a message both to theLos Angeles and to Operations on Zanshaa.
“Cadet Sula reporting. Diagnostics report optimal conditions following deceleration.”Thanks for not killing me, she added mentally.
She stretched in her acceleration couch, forcing sluggish blood to her reluctant muscles. The cockpit of the pinnace was tiny, with Sula in her pressure suit taking up most of the available volume. There was even less room than normal, because she was flying a two-seated trainer in case she had to take Blitsharts aboard.
Funny. She’d volunteered for pinnace duty in part because it meant getting time to herself, away from ship quarters where the cadets were crammed together, each living in the other’s armpit. What she discovered was that even here, alone in the infinity of space, there wasn’t room enough to so much as stretch her arms above her head.
A light glowed on her communications board, the signal that messages had been recorded for her. She’d noted the light since deceleration ceased, but hadn’t felt up to interacting with the command structure till now. She triggered the display and discovered a continuous stream of tracking data from Zanshaa’s ring sensors showing Blitsharts’s tumbling craft. Another was a communication from Operations Command, a message the pinnace had received directly, followed by a copy of the same message forwarded by the communications officer aboardLos Angeles.
Sula played the recorded message. A dark-browed, lantern-jawed young man looked out of the display. There were staff tabs on his collar, the sign of a lord commander’s pet, and Sula found herself loathing him on sight.
The lieutenant spoke. “Lieutenant Martinez at Operations to any rescue pilot. I have analyzed the way in which the target boat is tumbling, and the results don’t look very promising.” A simulation ofMidnight Runner filled the display, and Sula leaned forward, studying the fix Captain Blitsharts had got himself into.
The voice went on. “I can’t see any way to dock with the boat’s hatch, which is too far forward. At best you’d get knocked around badly; at worst you’d kill yourself, Blitsharts,and his dog Orange.”
Har har, Sula thought. The lord commander’s pet had a sense of humor. Wonderful.
“I’ve worked out a way you can dock with the yacht, if not with the hatch,” Martinez went on. “You’ll have to exactly duplicate with your own boat the precise fashion in which Blitsharts is tumbling, then slip inside his rolling motion to dock.” A pinnace appeared in the simulation, rolling and pitching just as Blitsharts’s boat was doing, and then the two moved together to mate, the pinnace fitting carefully into a whirlwind corkscrew cone formed byMidnight Runner’s off-center spinning nose.
“You’re going to have toscrew it in,” Martinez said, and Sula felt a surge of memory. She’d heard the message, live, as she received it—only she’d been unconscious through most of it.
“You can’t access the hatch from this position,” Martinez continued, “but once you’re clamped onto him, you can use your own maneuvering thrusters to damp down the movements of Blitsharts’s boat. When you’ve got his boat under control, you can shift your own boat forward to mate with Blitsharts’s hatch.”
Sula frowned at the simulation, which showed exactly that. It looked possible, but experience had shown her
