An Officer’s Duty (54 page)

The problem wasn’t physical, however. It was psychic. Gritting her teeth, Ia forced herself through her grounding and centering exercises, pushing up stronger, harder shields—until that made things
worse
. Quickly backing off, she let go of all efforts to use her abilities. Only then did the pain recede, leaving her mind-blind and reeling. Grabbing for the only thing that made sense, her physical senses, she stared at the screens displaying the object now coasting toward them, slowing no doubt to collect ice from the fragments of old comets giving them a scrap of cover.

It was wrapped in the dark grey, mirror-polished contours of ceristeel plating, of all treacheries, but bore the distinct configuration of a Salik warship, like a flattish, elongated, five-lobed star. If a warship could be four times the largest seen to date, that was. It almost qualified as a Battle Platform in size…and the moment Ia realized
that
, she knew out of sheer, paranoid instinct that it
could
take on a Battle Platform.

“Holy
shakk
…” Culpepper swore, staring at the ship bearing down on them.

“
Ah
, sir?” Private Sikmah asked from his position at the gunnery controls. “It’s headed straight for us, sir. We have maybe two minutes before we’re in range of its guns. What do we do, sir?”

“We…we have to destroy it.” Ia murmured, staring at her screens. It was the only thing she could think of to do.

All three men choked. Kipple recovered first, spluttering. “
What?
Sir, have you lost your
shakking mind
? That
ship
will eat us for lunch, never mind the Salik who built it!”

Her resolve firmed. Ia didn’t take her eyes off her primary screen. “Corporal, we
have
to destroy it. That thing is big enough, it can take on a Battle Platform and
win
.” Switching on the ship’s intercom, she broadcast to the rest of the crew.
“All hands, this is Lieutenant Ia. You have twenty seconds
to lock and web yourselves in place, mark! Engineering, you have twenty-
five
seconds to bring all systems back online, mark!
”

“You’re
crazy
!” Culpepper argued as lights started coming back on across their boards. “I didn’t sign up for a
suicide
run!”

“Neither did
I
, Private,” Ia snapped, bringing her right hand back to the controls. “Eyes to the boards, thoughts on your tasks.
All hands, brace yourselves!
”

Her head still hurt, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the wild scheme that was their one shot at survival. Flexing her fingers in the glove, she hit the thruster controls with her free hand. There was no way they could escape from a dead stop, not when pointed nose-first at a ship that was headed almost straight toward them. No way they could escape detection, either. Any moment now, the Salik version of lightwave analysis would pick up their own existence, and the Salik version of capital ship guns would turn toward them.

The only choice left was to confront their unexpected, utterly unwelcome problem. Now, before they were noticed.

“Sir!” Kipple called out as the
Audie-Murphy
picked up speed. “Do I send a message to the Fleet?”

“Send our coordinates and emergency beacon
only
, then cut all power to the hyperrelay and shunt it to the hyperarray. We don’t have time for anything else.
Engineering, give me every last scrap of spare power to the insystem thrusters and the
aft
shields in twenty seconds!
”

“Sir…we’re headed straight for that warship,” Sikmah warned her, eyes on his screens. “When do you want us to fire, sir?”

“Negative.
All gunnery pods, shunt all power to thrusters and aft shields. I repeat,
all
power to thrusters and
aft
shields—dammit, I said
aft
shields, Gundrich, not fore!
” Ia snapped into her headset mike, seeing the wrong set of telltales lighting up around the second of the two miniature ships displayed on her second tertiary screen. Her fingers danced across the controls. “Warming up the hyperarrays.”

“Sir, we’re not going fast enough!” Kipple protested. “We don’t have enough room—the wormhole will collapse on
top
of us!”

“Sir, the Salik warship is powering up its lasers!” Culpepper
warned her, his voice overlapping Kipple’s. “Projectiles launched!”

“Not on
us
, Kipple,” Ia half growled, half prayed. Head aching from the instinct to try and use her gifts, she danced her right hand over the controls, warming up the hyperjump dish at the nose of the
Audie
. The Salik ship loomed huge in her primary screen, the distance between her tiny vehicle and the behemoth shrinking rapidly.
“And lo, I followed the will of the Prophet, for the Prophet was
never wrong!”

“Message away, sir—
Sir!
We’re—
Ungh!
” Sikmah cried out, just as Ia swirled the paired ships, dodging the incoming missiles in a spiral that swapped port and starboard. Her hand danced again, warming up the nosecone on the
Murphy
half. Sikmah’s voice rose into a broken squeak. “Sir, we’re going to
hit them
—!”

Ia sparked the hyperrift with a smack of her thumb and scraped the thrusters down with her fingers, shifting all power to the dorsal panels on the
Audie
. That, combined with the snap of her left hand, flipped them over and shoved them downward just enough to get them angling off-course from that spark of light. Golden white energies swirled into existence right on the nose of the enemy craft. Brighter, redder lights exploded as they rushed past, skimming so close to the underside of the alien ship that the collision klaxons blared. Kipple shouted, and Culpepper screamed, clutching at his harness, while Sikmah choked on a curse.

Snapping the heel of her left hand in the thruster glove as they flew past, right hand cutting the thruster grid for just a moment, Ia flipped the
Audie-Murphy
once more fore to aft, and sparked the second hyperrift onto the rear of the behemoth as they flew by. It, too, exploded, the view shifting from her primary screen to her third tertiary. Pulling out of the snap before they could tumble off-course, Ia shoved her fingers up the power controls, pouring everything into the rear thrusters.

The second hyperrift swirled open, then imploded onto the engine section of the Salik ship, triggering a cascade of explosions that raced back to meet the first implosion and its own chain reaction. Energy met energy, as the abruptly compressed matter created a pair of very brief, very bright balls of artificial fusion. Her third tertiary screen, the one showing her the
view of everything behind her, blossomed golden white, then blacked out as the sensors protectively shut down.

A second and a half later, the fireball caught up with them, vibrations rumbling through the ship as the plasma molecules strafed their hull.
Pings
and
bangs
and
crunches
warned them of debris hitting the paired ships. With the debris came a release from her headache so abrupt, it was almost a new pain of its own. Dropping waist-deep into the timestreams, Ia flexed and flicked her hands blindly, dodging the wreckage of the ship hurtling upon them from behind.

She dodged most of it—the worst of it—but not all of it. A final hard
clannnng
was followed by the rumbling shriek of tearing metal. Instinct made her hit the emergency release clamps. The
Audie
parted company roughly from its twin, sending both ships into a tumble.
“Yeoman Bunker, take the
Murphy!
Shields to all sides!”

The
Audie
jolted again, triangular wings catching on the plasma waves still burning out from the condensed remnants of the warship. They tumbled roughly, almost helplessly. Ia tried to guide the ship, but with the shields still imbalanced, the ship took increasing damage, burning off thruster panels and shorting out sensors. She did manage to slow most of the spin, turning it into a slow tumble, but couldn’t stop their forward motion. Lights winked and blinked on the bridge, and the gravity plates beneath the decking stuttered, threatening everyone with nausea.

“All hands, gravity off. I repeat, gravity is
off
inside the
Audie,” Kipple announced, broadcasting the warning to the whole ship. The bridge suddenly went weightless. Hair floated away from heads, limbs drifted away from keyboards, bodies bumped against restraint belts.

“Thank you, Corporal,” Ia muttered. The weaves had a limited range, just a dozen or so meters. They were also monodirectional, which meant if they weren’t balanced just right, they could stress the ship in odd ways. Given the battering the
Audie
had just taken, it was safe to say that any extra strain on the hull or its interior should probably be avoided. As much as Ia wanted to check the timestreams to be sure, her head throbbed too much to try, now that the worst of the emergency was over.
As it was, she was now beginning to feel other pains, strained tendons and bruised flesh from being jolted in too many directions. Physical aches as well as psychic ones.

“Okay…Is everyone on the bridge alright?” she asked. “What’s the status on the rest of the crew?”

“Ugh,”
Sikmah muttered. “I’ll live, if that’s what you meant, sir.”

“I’ll live, too, sir,” Kipple reported.

“What the
shova v’shakk
did you
think
you were
doing
?” Culpepper railed at her, tugging at his restraints. He didn’t remove them, but he did use them for leverage so he could turn and glare at her in the weightlessness of the bridge. “You almost got us
killed
!”

“Watch your language, Private!” Kipple snapped before she could. “If you hadn’t noticed, the Lieutenant just
saved
us from certain death!”

“I don’t
shakking
care!” Culpepper yelled. “I am going to have her hide hauled up for
reckl
—”

Ia stabbed her mind into his, knocking him unconscious. It gave her a raging headache to do so, one that squeezed her right eye shut from the blinding pain that seared like a migraine, but the abrupt silence, both physical and mental, was a relief.

Ia cleared her throat. “I think the,
ah
, excitement was too much for Private Culpepper. Hopefully he’s just passed out. Status report. Sikmah, anything on the scanners?”

Kipple blinked and pushed to the side, reaching out for him. He snagged a wrist with his fingertips. “His pulse is still there. Let’s hope he didn’t have a heart attack. Trying to do chest compressions in zero G sucks.”

Turning back to the few screens still flickering with life, Private Sikmah took a few moments to study the readings. “Several of the sensors got burned out, but since we’re tumbling, sir, I’m getting something of a reading all around. I think the
Murphy
is off to,
uh
…well, to one side by about half a klick, maybe a bit more. It’s hard to give a heading when you’re spinning and half the ship is lightspeed blind.”

“Any immediate threats to our vicinity?” Ia asked him.

He studied his few functioning screens for a minute, then shook his head. “No, sir. Nor to the
Murphy
. There are still
chunks of the enemy ship floating around, but I’m not getting any energy readings from them. The pieces seem to be traveling on an explosion trajectory only, sir.”

“All hands on board have reported in, sir. Internal comms are working, and we have no serious injuries on the
Audie
,” Kipple reported from his station. In addition to engineering, he had taken up Culpepper’s job of monitoring the other ship functions. “Thrusters are spotty at best, I’m afraid, but the hydroengines are still good, so aside from the lack of gravity, we do have power. Lifesupport’s a bit mucked up, but otherwise functional for now. And…we do seem to have external comms, still. At least, here on the
Audie
.”

“Confirmed, Lieutenant. I can try to contact the
Murphy
if you like, sir?” Sikmah offered.

Ia removed her hand from the control glove and unbuckled her restraints. Maneuvering carefully in the weightlessness ruling the bridge, she pushed herself toward Culpepper’s chair. “Do so. I’m going to check on Culpepper, here, make sure he didn’t have a heart attack or whatever. Get ahold of the
Murphy
if you can and see what condition she’s in. Then see if you can raise the Fleet—you
did
get a message off before things fell apart, right, Sikmah?”

“Yes, sir, I had just enough time to send coordinates and the emergency beacon before shunting power. If nothing else, they’ll send a ship to investigate that much. Five, maybe seven hours, and they’ll be along to catch our lightwave info, and see the rest of it,” he offered. “On the upside, sir, both ships’ directions are carrying us out of the Oort plane. There aren’t any major stellar body threats for the next…eighty million klicks?”

Ia nodded in acknowledgment, clinging to Culpepper’s harness with one hand, the other on his throat. Ostensibly, she was checking him for signs of stress-induced trauma. Psychically, she was reducing his urge to haul her up before a Board of Inquiry. She would have enough problems explaining the deviations in their patrol; she didn’t need him pouring oil on the blaze.

It was tempting to “correct” his behavioral problems. Not that she enjoyed meddling with other people’s minds, but it was an option. Ia restrained herself; that was a problem for the near future, and one that would have to be corrected in a different way.

Not
that she knew what the Salik had done to meddle with
her
mind. The amphibians were mind-blind, giftless, psychically null.
How
they could have blocked her abilities—
her
abilities—was still a complete mystery.
Who or what could
they have on their side, working for them? A Feyori? No, that wouldn’t make sense. They’re even stronger than I am…

At least the grey mist was gone. Enough to let her know that there was at least one chunk of that ship with a surviving databank core, and that in that core lay the coordinates for the base where this ship had been built. It probably would have moved on by the time the Alliance could get their hands on that databank, but there was a chance it would still be there.