The Bright Black Sea (84 page)

I was not surprised when he replied, and indeed
ceased firing.

'Ah, Captain Litang, had enough?' he had the audacity
to say as a greeting.

'Why, yes, Captain Nun, I have. I think we've
demonstrated that our defensive system is superior to yours. We've
decided to risk a passage through the reef since we seem to have
only a slightly better chance of surviving the wide turn through
the rocks, and would still have to continue the fight after making
it. I don't believe you'd fare well if you should decide to follow
us in. My bridges have been burned but you do still have a choice
and I trust you'll not choose to commit suicide by following us
in.'

'I'm touched by your concern, but I can't help
feeling you're up to something...'

'That's no secret. I'm trying to escape you and
Despar. And I'm very, very desperate. You needn't be.'

'I'm puzzled by your concern for my welfare. You
showed little during our first meeting.'

'Come now, I only stunned you. Seeing that your
organization was, and is still trying to kill me, I think I showed
great restraint. And I'm doing so now by telling you my plans while
you still have time to alter your course.'

'Thank you, Captain, but I think I know my duty. I've
a code of ethics that requires that I carry out my orders at all
cost.'

'Does it require you to be a fool?'

'I'll be the judge of that.'

'Then consider your options carefully, Nun,' I said
and cut the connection.

I turned to Botts. 'I just give up when killers start
babbling about their ethics.'

'You did all anyone could do, sir. We have done our
duty.'

Nun reopened fire and began to close range. Botts
continued to decelerate when it could, which allowed the
Sister
Sinister
to get closer, no doubt making it harder for Botts to
foil the increasingly frantic volleys from the St Bleyth frigate. I
could tell that the launches of our anti-ship missiles increased
rapidly, and the ship was hurled about with increasing urgency so
that inertia whirling us about like fictional heroes in a mythical
quantum storm. This went on for what seemed like hours, or rather a
single long frozen minute.

Nun continued to close, and launched six quick waves
of solid broadsides, hoping to overwhelm our defenses. Botts
responded with full broadsides of our own anti-ship missiles
directed at the oncoming missiles. A frantic series of brilliant
sheets of light filled the viewpanel as wave after wave of missiles
collided and exploded sending most of the survivors harmlessly off
course.

And the track chart began to show objects other than
ships – we were out of the passage's channel and into the rocky
strewn reef.

Botts quickly swung the ship about to place our
thickly armored bow to the fore, and sent the drones in a line
ahead.
Sister Sinister
stopped firing to maneuver, freeing
Botts to process the radar readings of rocks, large and small ones,
from the lead drone that was racing ahead of us. Their density
increased fast. The channel bent for a reason.

Nun was now concentrating on navigation too, placing
his ship directly astern of the
Lost Star
. Just as we were
using the drones, he intended to use the
Lost Star
as his
shield. For the first hour, we were following the drones, while the
Sister Sinister
followed us, mimicking our every move as
best a human pilot could and everything went well for both ships.
With their long range radar they could follow the movement of our
leading drones as well, allowing their human pilot a little more
reaction time than Botts had. The
Lost Star
had to dance
once more, though far more subtly as Botts dodged rocks even as
small as my fist. At our speed, we'd need a bit over three hours to
traverse the reef – no human could hope to stay on top of all the
rocks we'd likely encounter in even the first hour. To safely sail
this stretch of the reef would take three days, not hours.

Occasionally Botts fired a volley of missiles ahead,
past the drones to blow through a thick stream of small rocks and
dust. The deeper we drove into the reef, the thicker the dust and
micro meteor field became. This increased the ionization around the
ship, reducing the range of our radar and Botts's response time. It
also made it harder for the
Sister Sinister
to mirror our
subtle maneuvers.

The hull hissed as we plunged through the thick dust
and I could hear the occasional bang of a fist-sized meteor hitting
the bow or scraping along the hull. I sat watching the screen
displays on the bridge bulkhead with a mixed sense of resigned
fatalism and a frantic desire to do something, anything, in order
to take charge of our fate. They alternated by the minute. The
fear, a knot in the pit of my stomach, was, however, a
constant.

There was a rush of missile launches and a series of
flashes ahead – we jerked violently and fragments of our lead drone
and shattered rock screamed and scraped across the hull as we raced
ahead.

'Oops,' said Botts again, which again unnerved me
greatly.

'Had to sacrifice a drone. Sorry sir. Things are
getting thick back there.'

'That's what they're for,' I said, gripping the arm
rest of my chair. 'Feel free to use them when necessary...'

Another hour crawled by, according to the clock. It
felt more like a lifetime than an hour. The hull continued to hiss
and zing, sometimes rising in volume, other times settling back,
giving me a false hope that the worst was over. Hollow “bangs” and
high pitched zings of small meteors frequently punctuated the
background hiss. I wondered if we'd have a hull left if we managed
to survive this. Botts was firing our anti-meteor/ship missiles
every few minutes it seemed and kept the ship dodging about
constantly. I couldn't imagine a human pilot keeping this
pace...

Botts launched a barrage of missiles and sent the
ship into a series of wild gyrations. And , suddenly, our sensors
picked up a brilliant flash astern –the
Sister Sinister
had
– in the thick, blinding dust, failed to find the hole we'd just
punched and dodged through with the last anti-meteor missile
volley. They must have hit one of the larger fragments of the
larger rocks that vaporized on impact, perhaps breaching the hull
over a fuel tank, causing a further explosion that sent the ship
tumbling even further off course and another flash, and a third as
they plowed through the thick space we were threading our way
through The
Sister Sinister
was pounding itself to pieces on
the rocks of the Despar Reef.

'I was afraid of that,' said Botts.

'We tried,' I said. 'We tried.' And yet, try as I
might, I found it impossible to feel sad. I'd held off destroying
that ship I had in my sights during that last battle before
Boscone, perhaps because I knew some of the crew were at least
involuntarily pressed into service – but with
Sister
Sinister
, that wasn't the case, and well, I'd no love for their
chosen profession. With sufficient reason. I quickly clamped down
on any other thoughts... We had to get clear the reef ourselves for
the destruction of
Sister Sinister
to be significant, and
that seemed very far from certain.

The missiles launched again and again, there were a
series of flashes as they struck and blew apart rocks in our
course, followed by an even larger and more brilliant flash as our
second drone took a hit for us. And we once more raced though the
bang, clatter and zing as we plowed through the debris of that
explosion.

'At this rate we have a life expectancy of five
minutes,' I muttered to myself, and closed my eyes.

'Three minutes, twenty-three seconds,' said Botts. 'I
may have been slightly too sanguine with my initial estimation of
our chances.'

Yet two minutes, forty-seven seconds later, the
hissing and clattering of dust and micro meteors suddenly ceased –
we'd survived that dense stream of astroids and dust at the cost of
our second drone. Our sensor horizon expanded as the dust
diminished, revealing that we were slightly more than half way to
the edge of the reef. There appeared, however to be no unavoidable,
thick asteroid stream along our course. Within radar range.

Yet half an hour later we found yet another dense
curtain of rocks and dust forcing Botts to send four more waves of
missiles ahead to blow a hole through the large asteroids within
the dense streams, far too extensive to dodge. Fortunately, it
proved to be a thin shell near the outer edge of the reef, so we
dodged and danced through it in five long minutes – the reef
diminished rapidly astern as the dead, black, almost solid looking
coast of the Despar Reef, appeared like a massive black wall astern
that spread out of sensor range.

'Are we really clear, Botts?' Can I breath
again?'

'Captain,' said Molaye turning to me and leaning to
the side to show me the display before her on the helm console.

'Bloody Neb!' I muttered, as Kie at the sensor
console and Riv at the engine room console did likewise – showing
me their displays flashing red with critical alerts.

I stood and swung around to face the specialized
monitoring stations along the back bulkhead. They were a'blaze in
red and amber status lights. Alarms should have been ringing like
crazy – Botts must have suppressed them. 'Black Bloody Neb, Botts!
What sort of shape are we in?'

'Nothing to be alarmed about,' it answered calmly.
'Everything is under control. We have sustained some damage, but
nothing of a critical nature. We are in relatively good shape for
driving through an asteroid reef. We've lost two of the balancing
engines, and four steering rockets. We have some fairly substantial
damage and a breach in the outer hull where the no. 7 balancing
engine and sheathing used to be and minor leaks in the inner hull
where its fuel lines and support structures have been disrupted. We
also have several minor breaches of the outer hull – deck one lower
hull and deck three upper hull, and deck four starboard hull. The
inner hull, except in the engine room has not been breached. Both
sensor bars were damaged by debris. At the present, I'm using radar
reads from the ship's longboat and gig to navigate. The long boat
is losing atmosphere, most likely from a small micro-meteor breach.
We also took a significant damage to no.1 cargo hold hatch and the
lower hull heat exchanger. And that accounts for all of the
critical red light alerts. Most of the amber lights are associated
either with those issues or with damage to fuel pipes, power lines
and sensors associated with non-breaching distortions in the outer
hull. Nothing to cause immediate alarm. They can be attended to at
your leisure.'

I took a deep breath. Apparently Botts did not get
alarmed. 'Right. Any significant fuel leaks? Do we have an
atmosphere between the hulls?' I asked, quickly scanning the status
displays that indicated both were a possibility.

'I've isolated the balancing engine breach. That hull
section is in hard vacuum. The rest of the inner hull sections
still have a breathable atmosphere – the breaches appear to be
minor. You may encounter some minor leaking of fuel, but I believe
I've shut down all the affected fuel lines. Still, I would advise
spacesuits. I've sealed all the inner-hull sub-sections as a
precaution.'

'Right,' I said trying to clear my thoughts. 'I think
we'd best attend to what we can fix immediately since we're all
present and we've our space suits on. Riv, you and your gang attend
to your engine room breach. Rafe, Kie, we need to get one of the
sensor bars back in operation as soon as possible. Molaye, let's
divide the rest of the crew into two parties to tackle the minor
hull and fuel line breaches. Botts will direct us to the possible
leaks and breaches. We'll use cold patches for now, we don't want
any explosions...'

As the crew rose and began to sort themselves out for
the task, I took several deep breaths. Yes, it would be good to
have things to do – to put my thoughts and reactions to what we'd
just survived a few hours away.

It was nearly two watches later before I was to
follow my weary repair crew back to the bridge. There were still
several dozen amber lights glowing, but they were low priority
items – we'd extinguished all the red ones, patched the hull and
patched or rerouted several cracked or bent fuel lines. The sensors
in the between hull sections showed it clear of hydrogen fuel.

Molaye and her crew followed us in shortly
afterwards.

Botts still had control of the ship, as cool as ever.
'Do you have a set of sensors back up yet?' I asked.

'Aye, Captain.'

'Are we in sensor range of any ship at the
moment?'

'None appear to be in range.'

'And during our passage? We'll likely be thought dead
if our survival is not directly observed. Our next move depends on
knowing if we were observed or not.'

'I have reviewed our sensor records, and find no
evidence that we were tracked by radar or any other sensors in the
later stages of our passage,' it said, adding, 'The explosions
associated with the destruction of the
Sister Sinister
and
our two drones will leave lingering traces, but I don't think there
will be enough data in those signals to determine exactly what
exploded, so with three such explosions, the
Lost Star
's
destruction would seem all but certain, given the density of the
reef the from which the explosions will be originating.'

'Which is your way of saying that, given the
circumstances, we shouldn't have survived,' I said.

'A ship without a class 8 pilot at the helm would
have been very unlikely to have survived the encounter, given the
velocity at which we traversed it.'

'And a ship with a class 8 pilot? What would've been
its chances?' Riv asked.