Blood and Fire (5 page)

For a long while, the crew of the
Star Wolf
had been resentful of Korie's treatment. They had complained—with considerable justification—that the executive officer drove them too hard. But later, after several missions and several close encounters with the enemy, after several opportunities to see how well the ship functioned in a crisis, the crew's attitude had changed dramatically. They still complained about how hard Korie worked them—but now they did so with a considerable degree of pride. Their unofficial motto was, “Yes, but he's
our
son of a bitch.”

Captain Parsons had come aboard the
Star Wolf
well aware of Korie's reputation. She knew his record, she knew what fires fueled his engines. She had expected a humorless man, a grim one, a martinet—someone like his mentor, Captain Richard Hardesty, only younger and without the augments. What she found was someone much more complex.

At first, Korie seemed to her much less than she had expected. But then, perhaps she wasn't certain at all what she expected. What she found was a young man who was deceptively soft-spoken and respectful of her authority. Possibly he had grown more relaxed with his situation over the past year. And possibly the tales of Korie were somewhat exaggerated. In either case, she found him intriguing—particularly the depth of his knowledge about his starship. She suspected that he could take it apart and rebuild it single-handedly, if given enough time. And add a few improvements in the process. So far, she hadn't found any situation he couldn't handle. And she doubted she would.

She caught up with him in the officer's mess, where he was poring over a set of schematics.

“How's your team doing?”

“They've had thirty hours training, Captain. They've had the last six hours off so they can be thoroughly rested and ready when we go in.”

“What about yourself?”

“I've had my sleep for this month.”

“We're going to have some very long days coming up ...”

Korie nodded, still preoccupied with the diagrams. “I can handle it.”

Parsons stepped in close and whispered, “I know you can handle it.
But I don't want you playing superman
all
the time. You've got to learn how to pace yourself or you'll burn out before you're thirty.”

“I'm thirty-two,” Korie said.

“Then you're overdue. We've got six hours until we begin final approach. Go take a power nap—”

“I don't need—” Korie stopped himself. “Aye, Captain.” He switched off the display, pulled his headset off and picked up his coffee mug and sandwich plate. He ducked through the hatch to “Broadway,” the starship's main corridor. Captain Parsons watched him go, pleased that Korie was learning how to follow orders.

She'd been worried about her executive officer's strong will and independent nature. That was part of his “legend” too. It was no secret among his fellow officers that Jon Korie had earned his captain's stars three times over. That the admiral had not yet given him a ship of his own was rapidly becoming an embarrassment not only to Korie, but to everyone serving with him as well—not to mention other captains whose names had come up later than Korie's.

In fact, Korie didn't know it, but Parsons had refused this posting when she discovered her executive officer would be Jon Korie. But Admiral O'Hara had told her to put her objections aside and take the ship. It wasn't that Korie was unready for command—he'd already proven that—but there were
other
factors at work. And in the meantime Korie needed the opportunity to practice the virtues of patience and cooperation. Parsons' supervision would be a useful and important role model for him.

Parsons suspected that Korie had already figured it out. Korie's mental agility was part of his growing “legend” among those who had served with him, and it was part of the scuttlebutt around Stardock that Jon Korie could tell you how far out of alignment the hyperstate grapplers were just by tasting the soup in the galley. Parsons had not yet seen Korie demonstrate this particular skill, but after a few weeks of watching him oversee the maintenance of the vessel, she would not have been surprised. The man was the most totally dependable officer she had ever met. Almost a machine.

Neither was it a secret why Korie was so driven. Korie's wife and two sons had been on Shaleen when the Morthans attacked. They were presumed dead. Afterward, Korie had received a delayed-in-transit message from Carol indicating that they were trying to evacuate to Taalamar—but Taalamar had been destroyed by an avalanche of asteroids, launched by teams of Morthan commandos. The
Star Wolf
had
been part of a massive (but insufficient) evacuation effort. In what few records survived from Taalamar, there was no evidence of the arrival of his wife and children. Emotionally, Korie had lost them, been given a nugget of hope, then lost them again.

Still, part of him prayed. He didn't want to be alone. Perhaps they had been separated. Perhaps one of the boys had gotten away. But he didn't dare torture himself with those thoughts anymore. That was planting the seeds of madness.

At Stardock, Korie routinely and methodically worked out with robots designed to look like Morthans. He pummeled, kicked, beat, attacked, bit, punched and butted the robots with his head, oblivious to his own risk of injury. Several times, the gym attendants had considered restraining or sedating him. But Korie was only one of thousands who felt the need to kick the living crap out of a Morthan, and the workouts with the robots were considered a valuable therapeutic exercise for everyone.

At all other times, Korie's demeanor was singularly professional, but it did not require a quantum mechanic to figure out why Korie was so obsessive about keeping the
Star Wolf
functioning at optimum military readiness. Whenever the ship came to port, whether Stardock or any other safe harbor, Korie had Chief Petty Officer “Toad” Hall out negotiating for upgrades, spares and additional weaponry, whatever he could find, wherever he could find it. The
Star Wolf
had even taken aboard a shipment of six defective torpedoes—rather than let them be recalled, Korie and Chief Engineer Leen intended to rebuild the units to their own specifications.

As long as Korie's obsessions were sublimated into such potentially useful outlets, Captain Parsons had no objections. Indeed, she actually enjoyed watching Jon Korie work. He was a complex and interesting man—and he had the effect of energizing everyone around him. Parsons had written the admiral that she had never been on a ship that hummed with so much directed activity, and she felt this was directly due to Jon Korie's determination, now shared by the crew, that the
Star Wolf
would outlive the blemishes on her name.

“There are a lot of advantages,” Parsons had written, “to serving on a big ship, a ship like the ‘Big E.' It's the biggest, the best, the boldest and the brightest. Wherever you go, you're regarded as the pride of the fleet and the hope of humanity. But the ‘Big E' doesn't get sent out to the front lines because the Fleet can't take the risk of losing her. The psychological shock wave that would send across the Allied Worlds would
be devastating. So it falls to the smaller ships, the liberty ships, to plow the dark between the stars and take the ultimate risks. This is where the real heroism is found—among the men and women who know that they are not going to be celebrated wherever they go, among those who are doing their jobs because they know the value of their actions to the Fleet. Despite the risks, despite the lack of appropriate reward, despite the lack of glory and fame—these are the people who are going to make the difference for all of us. What is truly remarkable about all of them is what they bring to their work—not just a sense of obligation, but more than that, a genuine affection for their duty.

“These young heroes—and heroes they truly are—have learned to love their mission. Whatever it is that energizes these people,” Parsons concluded in her letter, “it is not only a source of enormous hope, I believe it will eventually prove to be the fuel for our victory over the Morthan Solidarity. I do not know if this feeling can be trained or taught, but once experienced, it can never be forgotten or expunged from a human soul.”

Admiral O'Hara had replied, “Captain Parsons, thank you for your note. I intend to share your thoughts with all of the other captains under my command. I can see now that I was right to insist that you take the
Star Wolf
. I had expected that there was much you would teach her crew. I am pleased to find that you are learning as much from them. Carry on.”

“Thirty seconds to horizon—” called Tor.

Parsons checked her own display. Even though she knew exactly what she would see, she had long ago gotten into the habit of confirming everything herself. “Good,” she said. The hatch behind her popped open. Without turning around, she said, “We're now officially in range. Did you have a nice nap, Mr. Korie?”

“Yes, Captain, I did,” he replied stiffly.

She gave him a questioning look. Was he still smarting at having been ordered to rest?

“It was an interesting experience, sleep,” he said blandly. “I'll have to try it more often. Thank you for the opportunity.”

Parsons allowed herself a hint of a grin, a wry expression. Korie was clearly not without a sense of humor—he could even allow the joke to be on himself. That was good to know. She nodded and turned forward, all business again. “Let's get a close look at the
Norway
. Commander Brik—?”

The Morthan Security Officer and chief of strategic operations straightened up and turned to face the captain. When he stood on the Ops Deck, he could turn toward the Command Deck and be eye-to-eye with his superior officers, so he had made his post a work station directly ahead and to the left of the captain's command chair. “Aye, Captain?”

“Launch a spread of three probes. Monitor them all the way in.”

“Aye, Captain. Launch bays armed and ready. Stand by.” He turned back to his console and began reading calmly off his display. “Probes are hot and green. Launching on my mark ...” He snapped open a plastic protective cover, and flipped a red toggle. “We are armed. Three ... two ... one—” There was a row of buttons next to the toggle; three of them were lit. He pressed the first one, paused, pressed the second, paused again, then pressed the third. With each touch, the hard thump of a torpedo launch thudded through the ship.

Captain Parsons' coffee rippled in her mug; she replaced the cap and put the mug back in the holder in her chair arm.

At his station, Brik continued to watch his displays. “Probes accelerating. On course. Probe one has acquisition of target ... Probe two has
acquisition of target ... Probe three has acquisition of target. Flyby in seventeen minutes. Deceleration begins in thirteen. Confidence is high, and all three units are in the groove, five by five.” He punched up the next program in the series and reported, “We have acquisition of all three signals. We'll have a half-second delay at maximum range.”

“Thank you, Mr. Brik.” Parsons retrieved her coffee and turned her attention to the holographic display in the center of the Ops Deck. It showed the bloated red spheroid with the orbit of the
Norway
tracking around it and a separate line showing the interception course of the
Star Wolf
. Although they were now decelerating at full power to the plasma drives, they were still more than half a light second away from the other ship. In six hours, their respective trajectories would be almost matching. Less than two hours after that, they should be close enough for final approach and docking.

The physics of the problem were trivial. HARLIE could have the answer on the screen before a person finished asking the question. But the logistics of the problem were complicated by IKE-34's primary, the bloated red star. Once per orbit—once per artificial “year”—the
Norway
would have to pass through the streamer of flame being pulled out of the red star by the blue. This was clearly a “fail-safe” orbit. If something went wrong on the
Norway
, if she were disabled and couldn't break orbit or if there was no one left alive to give the order, she would be destroyed by her passage through the fire.

The
Norway
's large orbit gave her a long “year”—more than fortyeight months—so she had clearly been on station for some time; she was just now approaching her time of passage. Within a few days at most, she would be gone. The
Star Wolf
's timing was fortunate—or maybe not. They still didn't know what they would find aboard her.

This was the troubling factor in Captain Parsons' calculations. How badly was the
Norway
incapacitated? Could she be saved? Was she so badly contaminated that she should not be saved? If they were to make the attempt to save her, would they have time to decontaminate the ship? Assuming the contamination was of a controllable nature. Nothing was known. Everything was assumption.