JIMJOY’S FOREHEAD WAS still damp from the fresher, as was his hair. But at least he was clean, and shaved, for the first time in days.
The flight suit he wore had belonged to one of the crew members who had presumably been in New Kansaw orbit control at the time Jimjoy had appropriated the Darmetier. The suit’s original owner was slightly shorter than Jimjoy, but a shade bulkier, and the difference in fit was not noticeable except that the flight suit’s legs only reached down past the tops of his boots.
He glanced over at the control board, then at the woman in the copilot’s seat, whose curly brown hair was already dry. Jimjoy had suggested that she use the facilities first once they had emerged from the jump, during the time when he was setting up the inbound course.
“You actually look presentable, Major.”
“Jimjoy. Service wouldn’t have me back except for an execution.”
“Don’t you deserve it?”
“Hades…but…probably so, at least technically.”
“Technically? How about ethically?”
Jimjoy eased himself back into the control couch. “Ethically? Not sure about that.” He did not say more, but the question sounded more like something a certain Ecolitan Andruz might have asked. Still might ask, if he ever got back to Accord. And he really didn’t have an answer that would satisfy Luren or Thelina. Especially Thelina.
He sighed, and checked the board. He still had to get back to Accord. The brief recharge from the cleanliness and warmth imparted by the fresher was already beginning to fade, and he could feel the weight of the days of fatigue building behind his personal controls.
For another few hours, perhaps, he would be able to override it. Postpone payment for a time, but only for a time. His eyes were bloodshot and felt like they had been sand-blasted. His legs felt like he wore twenty-kilo boots.
Still, once he got to Accord and locked in—
He frowned, wanting to pound his forehead.
“Hades!” He’d forgotten the simplest thing, the last hurdle. And the most troublesome.
“Now what—?” asked the rebel in the copilot’s seat tiredly. “Another battle? Another set of impartial killings?”
Jimjoy ignored her. His problem was simple. Simple and impossible. So simple he had totally ignored the obvious.
His fingers touched the controls, and he studied the display screen before him. Just under three standard hours until he was within the defense perimeter of Accord. Just under four hours of power left in the Darmetier.
The problem was that Accord orbit control was Imperial territory.
Stupid of him…subconsciously believing that once he got to Accord his problems would be over. And the Darmetier was a spacecraft only, with no atmospheric capability.
He sighed.
“What’s the problem?” Luren asked tiredly.
“How to get through Accord orbit control. It’s an Imperial station.”
“Walk through. No one could have traveled any faster than we have. How would they know?”
“Not exactly the problem. This is an Imperial ship. I have no Imperial I.D. except my own, and that isn’t usable. You and Kordel have none. Even if we could fake our way through and onto a down shuttle, it wouldn’t take much to trace our steps. Then the Accord locals would have to return us.”
“I wish you’d thought of this earlier, Mr. Kill-them-all-and-think-later. Is there any place else we can go?”
“With four hours of power left?”
Still, Jimjoy called up the navigational display and studied the representation of the system.
Suddenly he grinned. Maybe…just maybe…he could work it out.
“What’s so funny?” snapped Luren. Her red-rimmed eyes peered out from the dark circles in her face.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing! You don’t tell us anything. You have a drugged Imperial Lieutenant tied up, and Kordel’s virtually catatonic, and you’re laughing.”
“You’re also alive,” snapped the pilot.
Luren sighed and closed her mouth.
Jimjoy thought of another possible problem with his tentative solution, and his hands and fingers moved more quickly. He would have to plot a nearly powerless approach to avoid a telltale EDI track. Finally he had the figures on the screen.
“Strap in.”
“Again?”
“Just for a minute or two. We’re headed somewhere safer,” he said, not adding the words, “I hope.”
As the acceleration pressed him into the shell, he continued to watch as the course change took effect. Then he cut the power down to the absolute minimum for habitability. Any Imperial detectors might have detected the burst of energy, but not the directional change toward the fourth planet’s second moon, the one with the Ecolitan research station.
The next problem would be deceleration behind the planet to mask the radiation from the Accord orbit control detectors. And that would make the approach tricky, as well as hard on both of them, since he could not afford to make gradual changes. A gradual powered approach would hand the Impies a road map.
His initial power surges could have been a ship outjumping or merely passing through, unlikely as it might seem…but only so long as there were no energy tracks traced in-system.
He leaned back in the couch and watched the screens.
“Now what?”
“We wait.”
“Until when?”
“Until we get there…”
Luren gave him a disgusted look. “Do you mind if I check Kordel?”
“Not at all. At least an hour before anything else happens.”
As Luren fumbled with the straps, he wondered how he would explain it all to the Ecolitans, or to Thelina, assuming he ever managed to see her again. He was assuming there were no Imperial ships in the vicinity of Permana, the fourth planet. If there were, they were all dead. He shrugged and leaned back in the couch.
“…I said, he’s fine…”
“…un…what?” Jimjoy jerked himself awake, realizing he had not remembered dozing off. He lurched to check the time—less than an hour had passed.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine,” he mumbled. “Under the circumstances.” He rubbed his neck to ease the stiffness and to lessen the pounding in his temples.
Then his hands reached for the navigational display controls. He began to replot the Darmetier’s position. Surprisingly, the courier was within the envelope he had earlier plotted.
The next step was to program the ship’s tight-beam burst sender. With the correct focus and reduced power, he should be able to contact the Ecolitan Base without alerting anyone else.
He checked the ship’s position again. Still too early for comm contact.
“Would you stop tapping your fingers, Major?”
“Not Major, just Jimjoy.”
“Fine, Mr. Just-Jimjoy. Would you stop tapping your fingers? It’s bad enough sitting here watching you fidget, without listening as well.”
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re not, but thanks, anyway.”
Jimjoy studied the nav screen again.
“You’re tapping your fingers again…”
He sighed.
“What are you waiting for?”
“For us to get close enough to get rescued.”
“Rescued? I thought we had plenty of power.”
“Not that much, not now. And we need to be rescued in order to escape the Impies.”
Luren looked away. Jimjoy did not volunteer more, instead checked both the screens and his calculations again.
The broadband audio frequencies remained in a hissing near silence.
Finally, Jimjoy cleared his throat, checked the power outputs, and triggered the tight-beam sender. “Nader Base, Nader Base…blue Mayday…blue…Sendak…failure…estimate…arrival…estimate…”
“Mayday? Is it that serious?”
“Only if we don’t get rescued.”
“Aren’t you ever truthful?”
“I am this time. We need to be rescued.”
Luren shook her head again, refusing to meet his eyes.
Jimjoy watched as her eyes rested on the display screens, watched as she tried to make sense of the information remaining on the screen.
“Unidentified ship, unidentified ship, this is Nader Base, Nader Base. Request your status and estimated arrival. Request your status and estimated arrival.” The woman’s voice was no-nonsense, but the phrasing was decidedly non-Imperial.
Jimjoy ignored the transmission. Instead, he continued to monitor the courier’s instruments, particularly the EDI.
“Why aren’t you answering?”
“Because they expect me to. Because any Impie on a fishing expedition would respond immediately, and because any ship with the power level I just used wouldn’t be able to hear the Nader transmission.”
Jimjoy checked the closure rate and the angle between Permana and Accord. He had another five minutes before he could pour on the remaining power to kill their inbound vector.
“Unidentified ship, this is Nader Base. Request your status and estimated arrival time. Status and estimated arrival time.”
Again Jimjoy ignored the transmission, continuing to monitor the Darmetier’s screens and to watch Luren squirm uneasily in the copilot’s seat.
After a time, he touched the comm controls.
“Nader Base…blue…blue Mayday…arm…Sendak…arrival in one…say again…one…”
“You don’t let anyone know the whole truth, do you?”
Jimjoy looked over at the young woman, about to answer. Then he closed his mouth.
“You don’t lie, either, exactly. You never let anyone know everything if you can help it.”
“You may be right.” He did not look at her, but at the navigational plot, which showed the Darmetier had finally coasted in behind the bulk of Permana. “Strap in again.”
Luren said nothing, but he could hear the rustle of the harness and the shifting of weight.
“You ready?”
“I’m fine, Major.”
Jimjoy did not argue about the title, but touched the stud to start the preprogrammed decel. The pressure pushed him into his seat, and the blackness narrowed his vision to a tunnel that kept trying to close in on him. He fought it until the pressure eased.
Cling.
He shook his head to concentrate, and was rewarded with an increasing throbbing in his temples as he studied the board, noting the postjump entrance of another ship in the Accord system. He began to calculate its inbound path against the standard parameters.
The throbbing eased fractionally as he realized the inbound ship was Accordan and on course for Accord proper.
“Unidentified ship. Unidentified ship. This is Nader Base. This is Nader Base. Standing by for your arrival. Do you need medical assistance? Do you need medical assistance?”
Jimjoy nodded in response to the inquiry, but made no move to respond.
He continued to check the plot screen, trying to calculate whether he needed to step up the decel before the ship cleared the section of transit blocking a direct screen from Accord. Finally he stabbed the override and was jolted back farther into the shell.
“…uuuffffff…” Luren protested.
He eased up on the extra decel and checked the parameters for near orbit around the moon. Given the six-hundred-kay diameter of Thalos, the orbit would have to be close indeed.
As he touched the controls again, the Darmetier shivered, once…twice…
“Unidentified ship, unidentified ship—”
“Nader Base, Nader…tier…medical…say again…med…stance…arrival ten…”
“This is Nader Base. Nader Base. Say again. Say again.”
Jimjoy ignored the request. The base had already picked up the burst of power from the Darmetier, which would pinpoint the ship’s location.
He was gambling that the Ecolitans would notify the Institute by their own courier, but not the Imperial orbit control station off Accord. From what he had seen on his guided tours of Accord, the Ecolitans, even plain local citizens, tried to avoid letting the Empire know anything.
With a mirthless smile, he monitored the last stages of his near powerless approach to the airless moon that orbited Permana, the fourth planet of the Accord system, and home to an Ecolitan mining-and-research operation.
“Ohhhh…” The gasp came from Luren as he called up the front visual. Thalos filled nearly a quarter of the main screen.
As she took in the view, Jimjoy scanned the board. The courier’s EDI detection system was picking up energy sources—both in space and on the satellite itself. Those from the satellite were barely detectable, something he might have expected, given the Ecolitans’ consciousness of energy usage.
He frowned as he studied the two point sources in space, in orbit around Thalos, each roughly one-third of an orbit from the other, indicating the possibility of a third identical source.
Needleboats! With their only use that of space-to-space combat, the majority of Imperial needleboats were in storage. Those on his screens appeared marginally different. Why would the Accordans be using needleboats? And where had they obtained them?
Pushing those questions away, he focused on the delicate last stages of his manual approach, trying to use the last of his power to establish a generally stable orbit and hoping that the Ecolitans would ask questions first.
The sweat beaded up on his forehead. He wiped it clean with his forearm, not taking his eyes off the screens and the readouts before him.
“Gentle…now…power…” The words slipped from his lips as he tried to fuse with the board, fingers adjusting, correcting, using the minimal power available, as if each erg were the last the courier possessed. He had already dropped all the screens and cut off the internal grav field.
“There!” He sat back, bouncing in his straps in the null gee, then wiped his forehead and leaned forward to reestablish a minimal gee in the courier for as long as the energy lasted. He took a deep breath and relaxed. But only for an instant.
“All right. Let’s suit up.”
“Suit up?”
“Right. We’ll put Kordel and the Lieutenant into the bubble sled.” He looked at her. “Before very long, someone will be here, and we’ll need to be ready. They certainly aren’t about to let an Imperial ship close to their base, even if the Darmetier were able to land.”
“Darmetier?”
“Name of the courier.” He was in his suit, except for the helmet, before she was halfway suited. While she finished, he located the bubble sled in one of the lockers next to the lock.
Then he checked Kordel. The man lay on the bunk, still staring blankly at the overhead, still wearing the harness straps. From there Jimjoy went back to the control area, where the Imperial Lieutenant was beginning to toss, as if the stun charges were wearing off. The last thing the woman’s nervous system needed was another stun or drugs. He sighed and tied a makeshift blindfold over her face. Her hands and feet were still bound.
She might be rather uncomfortable, but for some perverse reason, he didn’t want to hurt anyone he didn’t have to, no matter what Luren and Thelina thought. Besides, the woman hadn’t done anything wrong, except be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Turning back to the main corridor, he found Luren suited, except for her helmet. “Turn around.”
As she did, he checked over the suit connections, and found everything in place.
Clang.
“Our rescuers have arrived.”
“Are they our rescuers?”
“Hope so.”
He moved to the lock controls, and touched the stud to open the outer door. Through the narrow vision port he watched as two green-suited figures edged in. Both wore holstered hand weapons of an unfamiliar design.
He closed the outer lock and waited for the pressure to equalize, then cracked the inner door.
Despite the protection of her suit, Luren shivered as the cold air poured into the corridor.
Jimjoy said nothing, waiting with his empty hands in full view of the Ecolitans as the pair stepped inside the courier.
The taller one opened his faceplate. “You don’t look that disabled.”
“Not in the conventional sense,” answered Jimjoy. “But I can assure you that both you and I would suffer a great deal if we had been forced to make Accord orbit control.”
At the word “suffer,” the first Ecolitan shifted weight and put a suit gauntlet on the butt of the holstered hand weapon.
“Refugees, then? You know we’ll have to turn you back to the Empire, particularly if you mutinied and took the courier.”
“We didn’t exactly mutiny, since we weren’t the crew. And I think you’ll be in deep trouble if you act without contacting the Institute. You might check with an Ecolitan I once knew there. Andruz…Thelina Andruz.”
“Who are you?”
Jimjoy grinned raggedly, belatedly recalling that he had told the man in the green suit nothing. “Sorry about that. Been a long time without much rest. My name is Wright. Jimjoy Wright. Guess you’d have to call me either a defector or a traitor, depending on your viewpoint.”
He gestured toward Luren. “Can’t the inquisition wait? Her…husband is lashed in the crewroom with deep-space shock trauma, and there’s a rather angry Imperial Lieutenant trussed up and about ready to wake up in the control area. Luren here hasn’t had much more than a few hours’ sleep in the past four days.”
“You still haven’t explained why we shouldn’t summon the Imperial Service.” The Ecolitan’s voice was cold and tired.
His silent companion had said nothing.
“Oh, that…it’s really rather simple. You could execute me yourself—”
“No…” The involuntary cry came from Luren, who immediately closed her mouth.
“—but you might have a rather difficult time explaining why an Imperial courier with a defecting Major from the Special Operative section of Imperial Intelligence showed up near Accord with a commandeered courier. Even if you turn all three of us over. And you might have an even harder time with the Institute if you got rid of me without at least consulting with them. And last, if you insist on getting rid of us, how are you any better than the Impies?”
Jimjoy shrugged, then added, “And by the way, Luren and Kordel are the last survivors of the Imperial massacre on New Kansaw. You might find what they have to say about Imperial tactics and kindliness interesting.”
Cling.
Jimjoy recognized the sound.
“Hold on. The grav’s going, and we’ll be down to emergency lights and no ventilation.”
“Going?” asked the Ecolitan.
“We didn’t exactly have a lot of power to play with, friend. Less than I thought…”
As the courier lapsed into weightlessness, the onetime Imperial Intelligence officer squinted, tried to hold back the blackness as the corridor swirled around him. Tried to hold on, to argue for Luren and Kordel, for himself, and for Accord. And failed.
The blackness of deep space swallowed his awareness.