Chapter Fifteen

Get every neddy we have up to the flight deck. We need damage control right now,” Candless said, throwing out orders as fast as she could. There was a great deal of work to do—the battle might be over, but no one was safe yet. “We have some hard flying ahead of us—we can’t afford to have anything up there shake loose in the middle of a maneuver. Get the yeoman to the pilots’ ready room. Check to see if anyone needs medical attention. Have the quartermaster take stock of how many fighters were damaged, and write up a preliminary repairs list, though it’ll have to wait until—”

“Turn this vessel around,” Shulkin said, his voice a low growl. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the battle is the other way.”

“Belay that order,” Candless said. She checked her tactical board. The carrier was out of the disk’s atmosphere, and the lasers had stopped firing, but that didn’t mean they were safe yet. Three more dreadnoughts were on their way, one of them having already risen into actual space—it was clear they were going to be chased. “Keep us moving. Get us as far from the disk as you can—I’m hoping they won’t follow us too far, if they think we’re running away.” The pilot nodded once and returned to her console. Had there been a look of actual gratitude on her face? Candless wasn’t used to that. “Captain Shulkin—”

“Cowardice,” the old man said, grinding the word between his teeth. “If I have to bring every last one of you up on charges, don’t doubt that I will!”

“Captain,” Candless said, in a voice she reserved for her most recalcitrant students—the ones who failed to turned in their papers on time, for instance, despite having been told the deadline on the first day of class—“my orders come directly from Commander Lanoe. Your superior officer. If you persist in attempting to countermand him, I will have you removed from duty.”

“Damn you, woman, we have fighting to do here! Turn this vessel around!”

He started to rise from his seat, one hand moving to a pocket on the front of his suit.

Candless was ready for this. She’d heard all the stories about Shulkin. Even as he started to pull out his antique pistol—he was notorious for brandishing it at his bridge crew, having actually shot one of his officers once when she failed to respond to an order quickly enough—Candless had her own weapon in her hand. A slim, rather underpowered particle beam sidearm. Underpowered in that it wouldn’t actually shoot through steel plate. It would drill a very neat hole through Shulkin’s cranium, if it came to that.

“Is this strictly necessary?” she asked, as she leveled her weapon in his direction.

The navigator, the pilot, the IO all ignored their stations, turning to stare at the two of them. Candless wanted to bark at them to get back to work, but she knew she couldn’t afford to shift her attention, even for an instant, away from the mad captain.

This was a contest of wills, not arms. If she could get the madman to stand down, this could all be over in a moment and she could get back to work. If he was as mad as she feared … well, she couldn’t back down. She tried to read his face. She could see his lower lip shaking. His eyes were empty pits, however, giving away absolutely nothing. As they stood there, guns pointed at each other, he started to laugh.

The situation could not help but remind Candless of the duel she’d once fought with Bury, her former student. At the very least, in how tedious it all suddenly was.

She couldn’t help herself. She glanced at the tactical board out of the corner of her eye. The alien dreadnoughts were still right behind them. The carrier was making good headway toward deep space, but her job was far from done.

“Captain Shulkin,” she said, “I understand that you wish to discuss the balance of power between us, in the absence of Commander Lanoe. However—”

She shot him in the leg before she finished her sentence.

“—I simply don’t have the time.”

Shulkin dropped to the deck, his whole body curling up like a leaf in a fire. He didn’t cry out, nor was there very much blood. He did drop his pistol and clutch at the wound just above his knee. Candless made a mental note and filed it away. As crazy as he might be, Shulkin could still feel physical pain.

She walked over to him. With a deft kick, she knocked his pistol well out of his reach. He looked up at her with those meaningless eyes, and she felt not an ounce of pity.

“Someone get him to the sick bay, please,” she said, and went back to her boards. Those dreadnoughts were still on her tail. “The rest of you, back to work. Now.”

“Three of them,” Valk said. A display popped up in front of Ehta and she saw the dreadnoughts. They weren’t flying in anything like a formation—she supposed ships that big didn’t need to. She could barely make out their silhouettes against the dull red light of the star. She touched a virtual key in one corner of the display for an enhanced false-color view. Infrared, low-light augmentation, and X-ray views superimposed on each other, building up a better image. In the new view she could make out the cagework blisters that stuck out from the dreadnoughts’ edges. She saw what looked like shadows moving around inside—those had to be the jellyfish, she thought. She could see the big weapon pits, lying quiet and cold now, because the cruiser was still well out of their range. She could see their thrusters, burning very hot. Pushing that much metal took a lot of energy—whatever kind of power plants those things used was way beyond the fusion torus on the cruiser. “We’re outrunning them, but very slowly,” Valk told her. “Candless has me pushing our engines to the point they’re burning themselves out. We can maintain this acceleration for maybe sixteen more hours, then … well.”

“If we have to stand and fight—”

“It’s an option,” Valk said. “Not a good one. We know your gun crews can take down those dreadnoughts. To get a good shot at them, though, we’ll have to turn sideways so we can hit them with a broadside. That means slowing down.”

“Which means letting them catch up,” Ehta said. She nodded.

“Our best bet is to keep moving. Gain as much distance from the disk as we can. Maybe they’ll get bored and stop chasing us.”

“Or,” Ehta said, because she thought it was more likely, “maybe they’ll run out of fuel.”

“Maybe.” Valk lifted his arms a little. Let them drop. His version of a shrug. “I don’t much like running away like this.”

“You want to go back, pick another scrap?” she asked him.

“Hardly. But it feels wrong—leaving our people behind.”

Ehta cursed herself. She’d all but forgotten that one of the destroyers—and Lanoe’s Z.XIX—were unaccounted for. Nobody had seen or heard from them since they dove into the red clouds. “Is there any word from Lanoe?

“The clouds block my transmissions,” Valk said. “I haven’t gotten so much as telemetry data from him since he went down there. But I’m sure he’s fine. He’s Lanoe, right? It would take more than a battery of lasers to bring him down. I’ll keep trying him.”

An hour later, though, there was still no word.

Another hour went by, and another. The dreadnoughts showed no sign of breaking off their pursuit. And still no sign, no signal, from Lanoe.

Maybe it’s better this way, Ehta thought. Maybe we’re all a lot safer without him here pushing us toward more battles we can’t win. Maybe this is all over.

She caught herself wishing it was true.

The man she owed so much, and now she wanted him to be dead—it was just one more reason to loathe herself. As if those were in short supply.

Bury was stuck on the carrier—he’d come over for the launch of the Screamer, and never had a chance to get back to his post at Valk’s side before the battle started. Now, during the retreat, Captain Candless had forbidden anyone from traveling between the two ships, so he couldn’t get back there if he wanted to. He supposed it hardly mattered. The things Valk had given him to do had been obvious busywork—the AI didn’t need an information officer.

If he’d been on the cruiser, though, he could have checked on Ginger. He was worried about her. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been screaming, her body racked by seizures. Every time he’d asked someone about her since, he’d been told that she was fine, that he shouldn’t bother her. He supposed that there was a part of him that was happy to leave it at that. Seeing her like that had been—confusing. He didn’t like admitting it to himself, but it had been downright terrifying. The last thing he wanted was to have to see her like that again. Yet he couldn’t help but worry.

He must have asked after her one too many times, because Captain Candless gave him a new duty. One he didn’t care for at all. It was more busywork—and unpleasant busywork at that. She’d sent him to look in on the pilots, the ones who’d survived the battle, and assess their morale.

As he entered the ready room, he kept close to the walls. He had no right to be there, he knew. He hadn’t flown in the battle. But he was a pilot, damn it. This was where he ought to be, following an action. He should be sitting with the others, the Centrocor pilots who had come back. The ones who’d survived. Commiserating with them, raising their spirits. It was what pilots did for each other after a catastrophic defeat.

They sat on padded benches, leaning forward, looking at the floor. Heads in their hands. Every so often one would look up, glance around as if looking for somebody. Somebody who wasn’t coming back.

They didn’t talk. There was food and water available for them, but none of them touched it. One of them popped a hydration tab in his mouth and swished it around his cheeks, then spat it out on the floor. He looked up, right at Bury, and the Hellion felt a torrent of shame run down his spine, through his arms. It made him feel weak, useless. Eventually the pilot looked away.

So many empty spaces on the benches. There were no wounded among them—the yeoman had come through a while back and asked, but not a single one of them had raised a hand. Anyone unlucky enough to be hit by one of the Blue-Blue-White’s weapons had died instantly, either incinerated by a plasma ball or cut to pieces by the lasers. The men and women who came back were unscathed—at least physically.

The air in the ready room was so heavy and oppressive that Bury felt like it would crush him, smash the breath out of his lungs. He wished someone would say something, make a little sense out of what happened. He felt a jolt of relief when he heard footsteps approaching from the corridor. Then he saw who it was, and his face bent in an angry scowl.

Maggs came up to the edge of the room with a big smile on his face. He leaned on the frame of a hatchway and looked around. Stroked his mustache. “Now, now, chaps, why the long faces?” he asked.

One or two of the pilots looked up. Glared at the man.

“I’ll admit,” Maggs said, “that could have gone better. But we’re alive, yes? That ought to be celebrated.” He’d been holding one hand behind his back. Now he brought it out and showed them all a big squeeze bottle of champagne.

What the hell was the fool thinking? Bury’s arms tensed, as if he would run over at any moment and start pummeling Maggs, just knock him down to the floor and start kicking him, beating him savagely—

Actually, that sounded like a good idea.

“No one wants a swig?” Maggs asked, brandishing his bottle. “Really, none of you have ever lost a battle before? It’s hard, it can be damned hard on the old soul, but you have to rise above. We should sing songs, tell tall tales. Come, now. You—have a drink. It’s the good stuff, I swear.”

He shoved the bottle toward the nearest pilot, a woman with a hexagon tattoo on her cheek, meaning she’d done time in a Centrocor labor colony. She stared at Maggs, not even lifting her hands. The bastard leaned over her, putting one hand on her shoulder. She turned to sneer at the gesture, but she didn’t shove him away.

“Here,” Maggs said in a gentle tone. “Please. I just want to help.”

The woman grabbed the bottle and started sucking on it. She didn’t pass it on, just kept swallowing more and more of the champagne. Eventually she belched noisily and threw the bottle on the floor. Saliva dripped from her lower lip as she stared at her hands.

“You can’t let this defeat destroy you,” Maggs insisted. “You need to find a way to accept what happened. Don’t you see? Commander Lanoe’s war has just begun. There were will be a dozen more battles to come, a dozen more chances to seize glory!”

Some of the pilots raised their heads when he said that. They looked up at him with terrified eyes. One of the men even started to sob.

Bury rushed forward, his hands up. He grabbed Maggs by the elbows and shoved him out of the ready room. Maggs made no attempt to resist. Bury slapped the key that closed the hatch, sealing them off from all those faces, from all those frightened pilots.

“What the hell are you doing?” Bury demanded.

“Offering a little cheer,” Maggs insisted. He looked baffled. Confused by Bury’s violent reaction. “Only that!”

Bury knew better than to trust the bastard’s expression—or his words. “You’re up to something,” he insisted. His hands balled into fists. “You’re running some kind of scam, and when I figure it out—”

“Ahem.” Maggs stood up very straight then. He was a good ten centimeters taller than Bury. He was slender in build, but Bury knew if it came to a fight Maggs would play dirty. “This is about the time I tried to kill you, isn’t it?”

“What? You—you—”

It was true. Back when Maggs defected to Centrocor, the two of them had been flying a patrol together. Maggs had attempted to convince Bury to join him in his treason. When Bury refused, Maggs had turned his guns on Bury’s fighter. The only thing that had saved Bury’s life was that Valk had already tampered with Maggs’s ship, installing software that prevented it from firing on a Navy vehicle.

“You can’t possibly think that has anything to do with—”

Maggs shrugged. “I can’t possibly think you might hold a grudge? You?”

The Hellion felt blood rushing to his head, to his face. “You son of a—”

“Tsk, tsk, young Bury. An officer does not sully his mouth with profanities.” Maggs started to turn on his heel. As if he would just walk away. “Didn’t anyone tell you?” he asked. “We’re all on the same side now. Let’s at least try to pretend that we’re friends.”

It was just too much. Bury dropped his head and threw himself at Maggs, knocking the bastard sideways into the wall. He tried to punch Maggs in the kidney, but the traitor twisted away from him and Bury’s fist collided with a life support module on the back of Maggs’s suit. He felt his knuckles shift and spread apart inside his hand. The pain raced through his nervous system like an electric shock, just making him angrier, and he tried to draw back, to get leverage to take another swing.

But Maggs had already counterattacked, swiveling around and jamming one arm between Bury’s collar ring and his chin. Intense pressure pushed down on Bury’s throat and he gasped for breath.

“A marine taught me this trick,” Maggs said, “after a very lively evening of cards and bourbon. If I press down a little harder,” he said, and the weight on Bury’s windpipe intensified, “you’ll be unable to breathe at all. You’ll pass out and I will leave you in a disgraceful heap on the floor here. If I press still harder, I can crush your trachea.”

Bury struggled, trying to break free. It was no use. He couldn’t get a breath, couldn’t get enough oxygen to use his arms, to move at all.

“Now. I’m going to walk away, and you’re going to go find someone else to be angry at,” Maggs said. “And before you think about running to Mummy Candless and telling her all about mean M. Maggs, let’s think about the fact that you attacked me. In the Navy that’s called conduct unbecoming an officer. Those of us with blue stars know these things.”

The hold on Bury’s neck released. Black spots swam before his eyes and he dropped to his knees, sucking wildly for air. He tried to jump back up, tried to get up so he could attack Maggs—

But by the time he could breathe properly again, the bastard was already gone.

Paniet picked his way up through the flight deck, climbing over the wreckage of cataphract-class fighters that had been sliced in half or melted into shiny blobs of slag. The devastation was incredible, but highly selective—there was a gap in the hull so big he could see a whole patch of sky through it, yet directly next to the hole he saw carrier scouts lined up in their docking berths, their paint still shiny and pristine.

There was no air in the flight deck, and no sound. Yet when he put his hands on a machine or found a foothold in his climb, he could feel a deep and unsettling vibration rattle through him. The carrier shouldn’t be accelerating, not when it was so badly damaged. It should, honestly, be towed to the nearest drydock for emergency repairs. Sadly, the nearest drydock—and for that matter, the nearest tug—was ten thousand light-years away, and the carrier could hardly switch off its engines while it was still being pursued by a million tons of alien metal.

Studying the wreckage, Paniet wasn’t even sure how to proceed. He could hack off the damaged section of the flight deck, just as he’d cut the nose off the cruiser. Yet by doing so he would basically make the carrier useless for any kind of combat operation—its whole reason for existence was to provide a mobile launching platform for the rows of fighter craft, and without a flight deck those small ships wouldn’t have a home. He could try to reinforce the hull with spars and braces, but that would interfere with the ability of the fighters to get in and out. It was a depressing mess of a problem, and as much as he hated to admit it, it might be beyond his abilities.

As he pondered it, he slowly became aware that he wasn’t alone in the cavernous deck. A group of people in suits were moving around up near the front of the carrier, where it was open to space. He climbed hurriedly up, thinking perhaps some disgruntled pilots were up to mischief.

Instead he found a group of his own people—neddies—poking and prodding at some of the worst of the damage. As he approached he saw the hexagons on their shoulders and realized it was the carrier’s own crew of engineers. He hadn’t realized they’d already been dispatched.

“Having any luck, darlings?” he asked.

One of them reared her head and swung around as if Paniet had given her the shock of her life. Through her helmet he could see her wide eyes and pale face. A welding pen spun out from her hand and went bouncing down through the long deck, smacking against the canopy of an undamaged fighter on its way.

“We’re, uh—we’re trying to—” she stammered out.

Paniet barely heard her. He’d seen someone else—and gotten a wonderful surprise. “Hollander!” he said, and rushed forward to embrace the Hadean engineer.

“Right, right, it’s me,” Hollander said, laughing.

“I thought you were dead!” Paniet said, then instantly regretted it. “Your destroyer, it was—”

“Gutted like a fish, by that laser,” Hollander said, nodding. His face fell. “And the crew inside it.”

Paniet realized he was still holding the man. He pulled his arms away, as casually as he could. “It’s a miracle,” he said. “How did you—”

“Well, I wasn’t on her when she went down, of course. For which you have my thanks, to be honest. I was here on the carrier, working on the Screamer, and then the battle started so quickly I never had a chance to join my mates. Maybe if I had been, if I’d been there—”

“There’s nothing you could have done,” Paniet said. He could understand how the man felt, a little. Certainly Paniet had lost squaddies before, and marines he held dear—he was no stranger to survivor’s guilt. Yet he was so happy to find his friend alive he couldn’t keep a smile off his face.

Hollander shook his head. “I’ve been at a loss, since, with no one to give me orders.” He laughed, but Paniet could hear the sorrow in it. “Just fell in with this batch, doing what we can.”

Paniet glanced at the damaged hull section the crew had been working on. Bundles of cables hung limp from sheared-off conduit sections. Whatever they were trying to do, it was pointless—this whole section had lost power. “Let’s get you away from here, figure out what you’re going to do next,” he told Hollander. “As for the rest of you—forget this section. We’ve got much more pressing concerns. You, dearie,” he said, pointing at the woman he’d startled. “You’re in charge of this bunch? I want you down at the rupture, there. We need to get a foamsteel sprayer up here and fill in that hole.”

“Of course, sir,” the woman said. She glanced at one of her people but he just shrugged. The crew dispersed, headed back down the deck, leaving Paniet and Hollander alone.

“You’re going to need a new bunk,” Paniet said, putting a hand on Hollander’s shoulder. “We’ll find you something on the cruiser. Between us, I’m worried this hulk might fall apart in a stiff breeze.”

“If you like,” Hollander said, nodding eagerly.

“I’m so glad I found you, ducky,” Paniet said. “In all this chaos, I suppose we should cling to what remains, as best we can.”

“Definitely,” Hollander told him. “Definitely.”

Candless stared at the tactical board until her eyes lost their focus. She forced herself to blink.

Six hours since they’d left the disk’s atmosphere, and still the dreadnoughts were following them. They’d expanded their lead to nearly ten million kilometers, but the jellyfish gave no sign they would abandon their pursuit. “M. Valk,” she said.

“Here.”

“Might I inquire how your engines are faring?”

The AI replied instantly. He didn’t need to check a display—he was so deeply integrated with the cruiser now he could probably feel the thruster cones deteriorating. “They’re definitely softening up. I’d rate them as good for another three hours before we start seeing real damage.”

“Better than the carrier’s, then,” Candless told him. “And Paniet has warned me that our hull can’t take much more of this, either. It’s time we tried something rather foolish, don’t you think?”

“I’m ready when you are.”

Candless nodded. “Very well. Be ready to mirror me.” She turned to the carrier’s pilot. “I would like you to make a course correction,” she said. “I want a burn from our maneuvering jets of sixteen seconds’ duration. At the end of which time, cut all power.”

“Ma’am?” the pilot asked. “We’re barely outpacing the enemy as it is—”

Candless silenced the woman with a fierce glare. Then she pointed at the IO. “Giles. When the engines have switched off, I want us running silent. Perfectly silent. No lights on the ship’s exterior. No radio communications. No active sensor pings. If someone on this ship needs to cough, I want them to do it quietly. Am I understood?”

“Ma’am,” the IO said.

“On my mark,” Candless said.

“All personnel, all personnel,” the IO called. “Prepare for maneuvers.”

Candless glanced one last time at the tactical board. The three dreadnoughts were just blue dots there, far enough away that they would be invisible to the naked eye. “Now,” she said. She grabbed the armrests of her chair.

The carrier lurched sideways. The deck plates under her feet vibrated, started to shake. A nasty groan rose from the walls around her, and then she heard something snap far away, something metallic, something hopefully not very important. She saw red lights come up on the IO’s boards but she made a point of not asking what had just broken. If the carrier was going to tear itself to pieces during this maneuver, there was absolutely nothing she could do.

It was a very long sixteen seconds. When it was over, the carrier gave one last rattling cry, and then—nothing.

Her displays shut down, one by one. Her tactical board went last, but when it was gone she couldn’t see what was happening, couldn’t tell if her trick had worked.

“IO,” she said, “give me something. A telescope feed. Anything.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the IO said, and bent over his console.

In the sudden quiet Candless found it difficult to breathe. She forced herself to stay calm.

It was a very old trick that she’d pulled. One that sometimes actually worked. As long as the carrier’s thrusters were burning, they had been a beacon for the dreadnoughts to follow—a signpost that could be read by anyone in the system who happened to be looking. With the engines switched off, the carrier became all but invisible in the depths of space. The dreadnoughts could, of course, simply extrapolate their course from their last known location. The last-minute burn of the maneuvering jets, however, had sent the carrier moving on a whole new trajectory.

With any luck—no, scratch that, with an extraordinary amount of luck—the dreadnoughts would continue on their prior course and fly right past the carrier.

It would take some time to discover if the ruse had actually worked. In the meantime, all Candless could do was wait. And hope.

“Candless?” Valk’s voice in her ear startled her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m calling you via communications laser. There’s no way for them to hear us.”

“We should keep chatter to a minimum anyway,” Candless told him. “Just on principle.” And because the last thing she needed just then was an AI blathering in her ear.

“Understood. I just need to know one thing. Lanoe’s still out there.”

“If he’s still alive,” Candless said.

“Right. If he is. And if he’s trying to get back to us, to come home, with all our lights turned out how’s he going to find us?”

Candless sighed. She had considered that. “He’s Aleister Lanoe,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll find a way.”