McCollum - GIBRALTAR STARS (34 page)

“I dispatched
Yeovil
just after our discussion, yesterday. They are on a high-acceleration, continuous-boost trajectory to get to
Sasquatch
before the Broa do. My orders were to close to missile range, and make sure there was nothing left that the Broa might find informative.”

“And since you’ve found out they are alive?”

“About an hour ago, I ordered Captain Sulieman to shift to a minimum time rendezvous orbit
.
That will add thirty-six hours to his flight.”

“When will he reach them?”

“If all goes well and the Broa don’t interfere,
Yeovil
will match orbits next Thursday.”

Lisa blinked. Her training was in linguistics, but her years in the Navy had taught her the true scale of planetary systems. Sabator was a large star, with a correspondingly large temperate zone. Karap-Vas was the fifth planet, and well out from the primary.

Galahad
had taken up position as close in as they could without risk of being spotted. If
Yeovil
was going to reach the crippled starship in only five days, she would have to pile on the gees. Starship crews are young and healthy, but
Yeovil
’s spacers were risking their lives.

“Does Mark know about the rescue?”

Sulieman shook his head. “We can’t tell him, not without revealing our own presence.”

“And if the Broa do interfere?”

Cavendish stared at her, no longer the kindly captain consoling a member of his crew. “If Captain Sulieman concludes that rescue is not possible, I have ordered him to carry out his original orders.”

“Yes, sir,” she said in a barely audible voice. “I had figured that out myself. General Order Seven.”

He nodded. “General Order Seven. Can you live with that?”

“I don’t see that I have a choice.”

“You surprise me, Commander.”

“Sir, I don’t know whether you know it, but this whole campaign was originally Mark’s idea. He and I were involved in the initial planning for this war. We were members of the team that thought up General Order Seven.

“When I saw that explosion yesterday, I thought they had set off the self-destruct on purpose or by accident. Now that I know the extent of their damage, why didn’t they?”

“They can’t. Their nuclear charge was destroyed in the explosion. Commander Rykand made it clear that he has no means left aboard to vaporize the ship to prevent capture.”

“So if rescue isn’t possible and Sulieman fails to missile
Sasquatch
out of existence, we will have provided our enemies with dozens of human bodies to autopsy. Mark will be dead for no purpose.”

Cavendish scowled. “That won’t happen. Your husband has a plan to prevent it.”

“I thought you said that he can’t blow up the ship?”

“I said that he has no means
onboard
to do so. He has his people working feverishly to restore the forward battery of superlight missiles.”

“What good will that do? He can’t fire them at
Sasquatch
. They don’t work that way, and he certainly can’t fight off an entire star system.”

“He doesn’t expect to.”

“I don’t understand,” Lisa said.

“Are you sure you want to know this?” Cavendish asked.

“Of course. What is Mark going to do?”

“His plan is to fire an SM at the first Broan craft that approaches the ship. His strategy is to destroy the target if he can, but to provoke a Broan response if he cannot.”

“He’s trying to
antagonize
them?”

“Those were his exact words.”

“But why…?”

Lisa had opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again with a snap. Her tired brain had just caught up with the conversation. She and Mark lived in close quarters through three Long Jumps. She knew him better than any other human being alive. She knew how her husband thought.

There is an evolutionary quirk in the human race, a chasm that can never truly be crossed. For all of human history, men had hunted for prey while women gathered berries, tended the crops, and took care of the children. This natural dichotomy of labor conditioned the two sexes to react in diametrically opposite ways in the presence of danger.

At the first sign of trouble, women scoop up the children and run in the opposite direction, while men grab their spears and rush to the sound of battle. It is an impulse that women can never really understand, any more than men can understand how it feels to have a baby grow inside a womb.

“So,” Lisa said heavily, “he wants to attack them and provoke them into blasting
Sasquatch
out of the sky!”

“That is his strategy,” Captain Cavendish confirmed.

#

Chapter Thirty-Five

“We’ve got two thermal sensor arrays in place, Captain,” Gwen Tasker said. She and Mark Rykand were huddled over an outsize diagram of
Sasquatch
spread out across a jury-rigged table at the back of the bridge. The diagram was a riot of color. Damage showed as red splotches, while handwritten notations in various colors showed the progress of their damage control efforts. The entire aft end of the ship had been circled in red and simply labeled ‘destroyed.’

“What is the view angle?” he asked, observing the two green hash marks on opposite sides of the ship that denoted the sensors.

“Five degrees above and below the ecliptic. The electronic steering circuits are fried, I’m afraid, so we’ll have to spin the ship to get circumambient coverage.”

“Oh, my poor stomach! How fast?”

“One revolution every ten minutes should do it. With two sensor panels, that will give us a five minute sweep rate, more than sufficient to see anything headed this way.”

“And the scope?”

“Scopes! We’ve got two. They’ve been fitted with IR detectors. The motorized gimbals and control systems are fully functional. We should have them deployed and calibrated within the hour. I’m having them installed in the dorsal and ventral maintenance locks on extensions so we’ll be able to look in any direction we need to.”

“Okay. Sounds good. Even though the spin will be slow, make your announcement prior to firing the attitude control jets. We’ve been through too much to have someone break a leg through carelessness.”

“Yes, sir. With your permission…”

“Go. Get it done.”

Mark watched the engineer expertly arrow through the hatch before turning back to the damage control chart. He gazed over the forest of notations and felt a certain pride at all they had accomplished in only thirty hours.

Getting a warning off to the fleet had been the most important accomplishment. If they went down fighting — Mark still didn’t let himself think “
when
they went down fighting” — it would not be in vain. If nothing else, the next time Headquarters got a harebrained scheme, they might think about it longer than they had this one.

And should the Navy again try to maneuver the Broa into leading them to their home world, at least the ship assigned to carry the Easter Egg would know to put distance between itself and the Trojan Horse before powering generators.

In addition to the one-way comm capability, they had patched numerous holes, got the computers back online, rigged two working screens for the bridge, and prepared a sanctuary to which they could retreat for a last stand. In a bit of gallows commentary, one of the crew had painted a sign on the mess hatchway: MASADA

The mess deck now housed every spare gas cylinder they could find, all of their food stores, and supplies of all sorts, including their medical stocks. In fact, the most capacious compartment on the ship was becoming cluttered.

Mark had ordered one additional modification.

Located around the periphery were four large barrels, each with six high-pressure oxygen tanks strapped around their circumference. The barrels were filled with machine oil and magnesium shavings. Each was topped with a jumble of tubes leading to the oxygen tanks, various electrically operated valves, and triply redundant explosive initiators. Pairs of wires from the initiators ran to timers bolted to nearby mess tables.

Mark’s plan was to entice the Broa into firing on the ship with their heavy weapons. It would be a quick, painless death and the cleanest way to accomplish General Order Seven. However, if the Broa failed to be enticed, his homemade bombs would have to do.

While one party worked on the incendiaries, he gathered up the rest of his effectives and ordered them to collect bodies and body parts from all over the ship. These were placed reverently in the large storage compartment across the passageway from the mess. It had been a gory, emotionally draining task for everyone involved.

With bodies arrayed in rows, and anchored to the deck with cargo nets, he’d led a funeral service with all hands in attendance. Then had come the installation of two more incendiary bombs. Lastly, they emptied the freezers of ice and spread it over the bodies to reduce the rate of decay. With the ventilators sealed and the hatch dogged tight, the compartment would not be heated and the odor of corruption would be contained.

 Should capture be imminent, Mark planned to order everyone into the mess, and in a scene reminiscent of an ancient movie he’d once seen, have the doctor pass out suicide pills. The timers would be programmed to explode after the pills did their deadly work. He hoped the magnesium and oil, fed by a plentiful supply of pure oxygen, would burn hot enough to destroy all biological material in the two compartments, leaving nothing for the Broa to analyze.

It wasn’t as effective as a nuclear explosion, but it was the best he could manage with the resources at hand. Unfortunately, the plan included one major drawback. No matter how redundant the initiating circuits, there was still the remote possibility of a malfunction preventing the incendiaries from igniting. To guard against such a contingency, someone would have to stay alive long enough to do the job manually, if needed. By long tradition, that someone would have to be the captain.

Of all the ways to die, Mark considered being burned alive the very worst. To make sure his resolve did not fail him in those final few seconds, he unlocked Captain Darva’s safe and retrieved the pistol that regulations required to be there.

He was jogged out of his reverie by the sound of a throat being cleared. Doctor Hamjid was hovering in the hatchway.

“Come in, Doctor. How is Captain Darva?”

“Resting comfortably. I have the cranial swelling under control. The palsy has ceased.”

“Good. And your other patients?”

“Spacer Grimes is the worst. I don’t think he will survive the day. The others are in no immediate danger. We have their pain under control.”

“Do you have enough pain killers?”

There was a hint of mirth in the doctor’s response. “Considering how long we are liable to require them, the supply is more than adequate.”

Mark nodded, glad to see their predicament had been accepted to the point where people could make jokes about it, no matter how lame.

“Gwen is going to put spin on the ship to get us a pair of eyes. It will be a nudge, only one-tenth RPM. Make sure your patients are all strapped down. We don’t want any of them drifting out of bed.”

“Will do, Captain. It is at the request of my patients that I have come. They are all asking about the Broa. Have they spotted us yet?”

“Doctor, we lit up their inner system like a supernova. Of course we’ve been spotted. We’re blind at the moment, but you can bet your stethoscope they have ships en route.”

“Is that what you wish me to tell my patients?”

“No. Tell them we are working on getting the sensors back online and that I will make an announcement when I have something to report. How is the crew holding up?”

“They are doing well… considering the circumstances. You’ve been keeping them busy. That helps.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“There is one more thing,” Hamjid said.

“Shoot!”

“You haven’t slept since the explosion. Scuttlebutt has it that we will be in battle soon. We need your head clear for combat.”

“Message received and understood. I’ll catch a nap as soon as I finish a few things here.”

“Yes, sir. I will get back to my patients.”

#

Mark was shaken awake by Chris Sotheby. Turning over in his bunk, he asked, “How long did I sleep?”

“Four hours, sir. Sorry to wake you, but we’ve got a bogey on detectors.”

“Where is it coming from?”

“The planet.”

Mark slowly rotated himself to a sitting position, using the sleeping belt to keep from floating away. He rubbed his eyes. “Is it headed this way?”

“It appears so. Number One scope is locked on. The cross-axis velocity is virtually nil, and there seems to be a slow change in the Doppler shift. We think it is boosting at two standard gravs, which probably makes it a warship.”

“Accelerating or decelerating?”

“Accelerating.”

“Okay, that means we have time. Give me a minute to wash the sleep from my eyes and I will be with you presently.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mark got up and sponged his face with cold water. It helped. The adrenaline had worn off shortly after Dr. Hamjid left the bridge and he’d taken the doctor’s advice about getting some rest.

As he’d told Sotheby, if the ship coming toward them was accelerating, it was good news. Matching velocities with a ship headed directly at you was one of the hardest of all space maneuvers. With
Sasquatch
aimed at Karap-Vas, their pursuer would first have to accelerate away from the planet, then at the one-third point, flip end for end and thrust vigorously back the way it had come. Eventually, the last of the outward velocity so painfully gained would dissipate, bringing the ship to a halt before it picked up speed back in the direction it had come.

Essentially, the ships were doing what the runner in a relay race does at the approach of the baton holder. The second runner sprints forward and gains velocity until the two are moving at the same speed at the moment the baton is passed.

There were limits as to how quickly a practical head-on rendezvous can be accomplished. Starships, like the nuclear-powered rockets that preceded them, possess essentially unlimited propulsive capabilities, at least on the scale of this particular intercept. The number of gees the Broan ship could lay on was limited only by the acceleration tolerance of its crew. At two standard gravities, their pursuer would require another seven days to pull alongside
Sasquatch.