First Casualty (17 page)

“Now let them wonder when I'll smack 'em with a broadside,” Guns chortled.

It was amazing how good it felt to Mattim, knowing he wasn't the only one sweating out the unknown. The long fight was telling on the colonials; their beams were wider. The 9.2-inchers were a meter wide as they flashed through the ice
Sheffield
spewed at every chance—and hid behind when she could.

As expected, the
Significant
and the
Aurora
dropped off the colonial target list; the
Sheffield
was it. Jinking became a constant as the colonials gave up their slow salvo fire. Each cruiser lashed out as quickly as it could recharge. Still, the time between shoots stretched from thirty to forty-five seconds to a full minute. Now Guns shot with everything he had—the forward six guns at the flag, while the aft three kept the other cruisers on their toes. The enemy flag had gathered them in. They made the
Sheffield
's life tenuous, but rapidly fell out of position, giving the
Significant
and
Aurora
a clean shot for the jump.

“It's working.” Mattim grinned.

“I found the jump,” Sandy shouted. “It's moved!”

“Where?” Ding and Mattim roared together.

“Refreshing the board,” Sandy snapped.

One glance at the screen told Mattim he was in trouble. The red spot had only jumped a few inches on the display. Those represented kilometers—and some hard, unforgiving maneuvering, if they were to catch their ride home. “Ding, change course.”

“Already doing it,” she breathed.

“Cruiser launching missiles,” Guns shouted.

“Only destroyers carry missiles,” Ding muttered, not letting this latest distract her from her course change.

“I fear our intelligence may be a tad out of date,” Guns drawled. “Launch ice. Secondary battery, stand by.”

Lasers snapped at them, missed, or grazed the
Sheffield
when one side outguessed the other. The missiles inched closer.

“XO,” Guns said slowly, “the missile spread is aimed toward the old jump location. Most will miss.”

“Thank you,” Ding said as the ship swayed under her orders, and more lasers flashed through the steam and ice the
Sheffield
streamed, some by intent, some from damage.

“It's gonna be close,” Sandy whispered.

“Get ready for four gees,” Ding ordered. A laser volley raked them as Ding jinked left. The
Sheffield
shuddered in her spin even as pumps struggled to rebalance the hull. Ding goosed them up to four gees.

“We're going to overshoot,” Sandy cried. “I've got to have control of delta V.”

“You've got it for ten seconds,” Ding shouted. “Put us through the jump or lose it.”

“Can you take off the spin?” Sandy yelled back.

“Not if you want to live,” Ding answered.

“One missile's still coming,” Guns said evenly. “I got all secondaries firing a pattern.”

“Here we go,” Sandy cried.

“Got the bastard,” Guns exulted—as wreckage or evasion drove Mattim sideways in his seat.

The main screen wavered as one set of stars was replaced by another. Ding collapsed on her board. “Captain has the conn,” Mattim announced. “Cancel spin. Take us to one gee. Lay in a course for the station.”

“He can’t,” Sandy croaked.

“Why not?” Mattim eyed the screen. He knew the answer even before Sandy spoke again.

“ 'Cause Pitt's Hope ain't there.”

Eight

Mary slept all the way back to the platoon. Cassie greeted her as they pulled in. “You see the space battle?”

“Nope. They throw any rocks?”

“A few, but we hardly felt 'em. Captain wants us to head over and replace any noisemakers they broke.”

“Hope no more rocks are on the way,” Mary muttered. Once the supply truck was unloaded, they used it to run Cassie's squad over to where they'd “built” an HQ, setting up noisemakers to imitate the electromagnetic and heat you'd expect to leak from a base under twenty meters of rock. The place was cratered, but not as bad as the last time. Apparently they were using smaller rocks or tossing them at slower speeds. Mary moved the noisemakers away from the new craters, and dialed them down. Even headquarter weenies would know to dig deeper and be quieter.

Moving the decoys, Mary found an extra one, camouflaged almost good enough to pass for a rock. Still, rocks don't have thin antennas spreading out from them. Mary tossed a real rock at it. It blew up. Gingerly, she collected the pieces. Lek would want a look at it.

“Repeater,” he growled. “Given enough distance, even a tight beam gets wide.” He fingered different parts of the wreckage. “Stuff here to intercept radios and lasers. Good workmanship. You say it was out where you set up the fake HQ?”

Mary nodded.

“Better pass this along to brigade. If Collies don't intercept anything at your fake, they gonna start dropping these around until they do. Isn't the information war wonderful?”

* * * *

Mattim rubbed his eyes, driving his palms into them, trying to wash away the fatigue clogging his brain. When he looked again, the stars hadn't changed. How many times had Sandy warned him to respect jump points? So he dives balls-to-the-wall into an A. Instead of being blown to bits, they'd hurled themselves . . . where? “Sandy,” he asked softly, “any idea where we are?”

“Leave me alone, Matt, I need time.”

Mattim glanced around his bridge crew. “I'm open to suggestions,” he said softly.

Guns whispered into his mike. “Tommy, put a save on all the gunnery sensors for the last five minutes.”

“Okay, boss.”

Thor at the helm coughed softly. “Skipper, I've got a magnification on the star, er, stars.”

“On screen,” Mattim whispered, not wanting to disturb Sandy .

There were four, and they were beautiful. A giant blue star was high above a brilliant yellow one. Close to the yellow was a red dwarf. Very close to the blue one was a ...

“It's a neutron star,” Guns swiveled around. “I heard about this foursome. They're halfway across the galaxy. What a jump. Quite a few vectors on the boat going in, but at least we got it on tape.” Guns spoke matter-of-factly, as if he got hopelessly lost among the stars on a regular basis.

Sandy looked up. “I've located enough pulsars to get a rough fix. You're right, Commander Howard. We've gone about thirty thousand light-years. I'd like to have a look at your data.”

At Mattim's side, Ding had caught her breath, but now she was struggling to stop shaking. The rest of the crew would be picking up rumors before too long. It would be better if they heard it from their captain. Mattim keyed his mike.

“This is the captain. We made it out of a hell of a mess and punched a hole for the other ships. With all the shooting going on, we hit the jump in a nonstandard configuration.” Sandy rolled her eyes at him; Guns chuckled noiselessly. “We know exactly where we are and exactly where we want to go, so it's only a matter of a few adjustments and we'll be heading back. In the meantime, we'll keep the ship on a low-gee acceleration and concentrate on damage repair. That is all.”

Mattim raced into a checklist. “OOD, get a list of all damage. Tell damage control to prioritize and coordinate. Ding, you head up the navigation problem. Let's go over it in my day cabin.” He turned to the bos'n. “How about some sandwiches and lots of coffee? Sandy , could you get Ivan up here?”

She was doing that already. “Hon, I've got a bit of a problem, and I'd sure like you handy when I brief Matt.”

“Nothing popping down here, love. Be right there.”

The fight hadn't left Mattim with much reserves; he doubted anyone aboard had anything to spare. He'd have to order his crew to a night's rest soon. But first, he wanted to look this problem over while it was still fresh in everybody's minds, even if those minds were far from fresh.

* * * *

“Okay, march soldier.” Rita ordered, mean as any drill instructor. Ray hung between two handrails, trying to move his left leg. The mirror beside him showed the knee move up a smidge. He didn't feel anything, but he concentrated harder. The foot came up. He swung it forward.

“That's cheating, Major,” the physical therapist snapped—and moved the foot back to where it started. “You've got control of that leg. Use it. You're not some cripple with a busted back who's never going to walk again. Walk.”

That stung; Ray wanted to spin around and read the man out. Except he was right. That agony he'd mistaken for torture had saved, regenerated, and otherwise patched up enough of his spine. He'd seen it on the doctors' view boards. He could move that leg. He could walk. He shook his shoulders, gritted his teeth, and focused on his right knee again.
Move, damn you!

Slowly, the knee came up. With every muscle in his body tied in sympathy knots, it moved three inches.

“That's the way, honey,” Rita crowed. “Now the next one. Show them you can walk and I'll get you checked out of here.”

“Checked out?”

She came close. “Yeah. Once you're walking, I can take you home. We've rigged rails for you. You can practice a lot at home. The tech will visit.” She leaned close to his ear. “And we better get you away from those damn mikes before you get yourself shot.”

He took four steps in the next hour, two with his right, two with his left. The therapist left to fill out the discharge paperwork. Back in his room, Ray found a large envelope on his bed. After Rita helped him from the wheelchair, he ripped it open. A red box fell out. As a soldier, he recognized it; only the contents would be a surprise. He flipped the lid open. The Presidential Cross with Diamonds stared back at him—the highest honor Unity conferred on a fighting man.

He snapped it shut and tossed it to Rita. “See if you can't find a bottom drawer to lose that in.”

Rita opened it. “Cross and Diamonds,” she whispered, oozing respect and pride—and looking straight at the corner they agreed held the mike. “Dad will be so proud. He'll have it hung in the parlor. He was an early member of the party here on Wardhaven.”

She handed it back to him, and bent to kiss his ear. “We've got to get you out of here.”

“Yes, love.”

After a sponge bath, Rita helped him into undress greens, even draping his medal around his throat under the pretext of bending to kiss him. Like a child whose fussy mother was dressing him for church, he put up with it. The therapist showed up. Yes, he was signed out. Yes, he could leave immediately. “You remember what I told you,” he said knowingly to Rita.

She reddened, but nodded a quick reply.

“What was that all about?” Ray growled as she wheeled him down the hall.

“I'll show you later.”

What began as a quiet journey broken only by the creaking of a wheel turned into a spectacle as staff and patients paused to watch. Someone clapped. Ray waved, meaning to silence the fool. Others waved back and began clapping too. The applause grew. Neither shushing them, nor rolling his eyes to the ceiling, nor waving them down with both hands did any good.

“Face it.” Rita leaned forward to his ear. She almost had to shout to be heard. “You are a hero to them. Act like one.”

With a sigh of resignation, Major Ray Longknife, Commander of Wardhaven's 2nd Guard Brigade, accepted the acclaim of the hospital. Most he ignored; others were harder. A cluster of his own men in bathrobes stood to attention and saluted.

Now the major wept.

* * * *

Mattim ordered the
Sheffield
to a night schedule once he was sure everything that could be done was. It took Ivan physically pulling Sandy to get her out of Mattim's day cabin.

“I'll be back as soon as I put Ivan to bed,” she insisted.

“Ivan, you two get eight hours sleep. Either of you touch that terminal in your quarters and so help me, I'll rip it out of the wall.” The two went.

The exec held back until after the others. “What kind of watch do you want to set?”

“Make it a skeleton watch tonight. Everyone gets serious sack time. Then work their tails off so they don't have time to think. We took enough damage; let's fix what we can.

Heaven knows, we may jump back just in time for the next shoot.”

“Right, sir. I'll have tomorrow's Orders of the Day posted before I hit the rack.”

“Which better not be more than a half hour from now.”

She just smiled. He raised an eyebrow. “I didn't hear my order properly acknowledged.”

She grinned as she said, “Yes, sir.”

Mattim walked her as far as the bridge. The four suns were still on the screen. Space did turn up some beautiful oddities. “Thor, what's the system like?”

“Some small gas types, rocks not much bigger than asteroids. Their orbits are as crazy as the suns. No sun orbits another. The big blue and yellow stars do some kind of mutual swing with the little ones near them, then the two pairs do their own swing around a center of gravity between them.”

“Lay in a course for the nearest gas type. Hope it's got what we need.” Mattim rubbed his eyes to help him focus on the star picture. “Were they hatched like this?”

“Sir, if you'd like, I could run a full workup on the gas types so you could select the better one. I'd love to do one on the stars, too, see if they share the same origin.”

The new voice, speaking from the darkness beside the hatch, startled Mattim. “And you are?”

A girl, thick glasses falling over her nose, stepped forward. “Excuse me, sir, Security Striker Second Zappa, sir. But I just got my masters degree in System Engineering before they drafted me. My paper was on the ...” She paused as if doing a translation in her head. “Something about jump points, sir.”

Mattim appreciated the interpretation. “You've got an advanced degree, and we're making you a guard?”

She drew herself up to what couldn't have been one hundred twenty centimeters. “I've got my black belt, sir.”

“You misunderstand me.” Mattim waved a hand. “We've just launched ourselves on a grand voyage of discovery'...”

“So I noticed, sir,” she interrupted dryly. “We know where we are. We know where we want to be. So we'll make a few minor adjustments, twitch our noses, click our heels together and bingo, we'll be home. That was quite a whopper, sir.”

“That obvious, huh?”

“To those of us with any training.”

“And how many might that be?”

“There's two of us with Ph.D.'s, nearly a dozen Masters like me, and twenty B.S.'s. Didn't you check the personnel rolls?”

“We were rather busy,” Mattim flinched.

“I guess you were. We'd be glad to help.” Eager eyes, wide with youthful confidence and innocent folly, stared at him.

And who knows, they might help. And he sure as hell did not need the rest of the crew getting an alternate viewpoint from their own science team of child wonders. Co-opt them before they clobbered him. “I think you have a deal. Can you stand this watch and be ready to form up in a team in the morning?”

“No problem, sir. I've pulled all-nighters and aced the test the next day. We're kids, sir, not old folks.”

Mattim headed back to his cabin, not sure who was co-opting whom. A computer search verified what she said. As a businessman, he shuddered at the waste. As the captain of a ship halfway across the galaxy from the nearest port, he was glad. With that, he stumbled to bed. It was exactly one half hour since he'd sent his officers off. When they asked, he could answer that he'd followed his own orders. About the time his head hit the pillow, he was asleep.

* * * *

Ray sat in the passenger seat as Rita drove them home. They were delayed by several troop convoys, red unity flags flying, packed with recent draftees still in civilian clothes. The new troops looked less than enthusiastic. A red flag bedecked stoplight showed the alternative. Two bodies swung from it. Around one neck was a sign reading “Earthie symp,” around the other “Draft Dodger.”

Rita scowled. “We only have enough transports to lift one division. Why raise more troops?” Ray had no answer.

Her parents had converted a second parlor on their spacious ground floor into his bedroom. The rails and mirror were there for him to practice on at all hours. A housekeeper and her husband were there to help. Recalling that Rita's father was an early Unity Party member, Ray wondered if he'd just traded a camera watcher for a human eye.

* * * *

Thrown into close proximity with Rita, even in his present condition, the proprieties became difficult to maintain.

“Mother wants to know when we can announce our engagement. I told her I wanted to announce the wedding date instead.”