Wings of Retribution (87 page)

Yes.  Now shush.  You’re breaking my concentration.

She launched
Retribution
at the nearest battlecruiser, a few hundred warships in hot pursuit.  She veered down at the last moment, twisted, and shot around the underbelly, blasting through the startled warships on the other side using slipstream and a fraction of interstellar thrust.  Several ships moved to block her path and she doubled back, scattering her pursuers in a startled burst of automatics.

Dallas grinned.  Rabbit was right.  This was what she was
born
to do.

“Abort!  Abort!  We’re dealing with a fairy!”

All around the helm, blaring PROXIMITY WARNING lights were going off, and had been for the last thirty minutes.  Athenais reached forward and shut them off, eyes fixed to the comset.

“This is Admiral Redstone.  That’s a negative.  Keep on him. 
Glory
, what are our casualties?”

Another captain came on the air, bewilderment in her voice.  
“None, sir.  He hasn’t even fired on us.”

“Had plenty of opportunities, too,”
another captain added.

“Guns malfunctioning?”
Redstone asked.

“Fully functioning, Admiral.  He’s made no attempts.  The array is not even hot.”

Athenais glanced up from the comset, then glanced at Ragnar.  Together, they turned to stare at Fairy.

“Looks like I might end up kissing her ass,” Athenais whispered.

“I’d pucker up,” Ragnar agreed, also whispering.  “Do you see that?  She’s using the 3-D view as her map.”

“And she’s using the damn interstellar thrusters,” Athenais said between her teeth.  “God, I wish she’d stop doing that.  One muscle spasm and we all become a metal patty.”

“She’s not shooting them,” Ragnar noted.  “We could’ve taken out at least thirty ships by now, but she’s not even trying.”

“Maybe she needs a gunner,” Athenais said, moving to the weapons panel.

“No,” Ragnar said, grabbing her wrist.  “Leave it alone.  You might break her concentration.”

Athenais flinched at Dallas and very slowly pulled her hand away from the gun controls.

As she watched, they took a nosedive between two battlecruisers, so close that the sides of the cruisers loomed up around them, blocking the view through the cockpit windows.

“What is she
doing?!
” Athenais hissed.  “We could’ve been through twenty minutes ago!”

Dallas shot her hand over to the weapons panel without looking up from the 3-D display.  Then she dove back through the opening between the two cruisers, adding extra thrust from the interstellar engines.

“She does that again and my stomach’s coming out my mouth,” Athenais said between gritted teeth.

“I think I just pissed myself,” Ragnar said.  He looked down.  Grimaced.  “Yep.  Pissed myself.”

“
Admiral! 
Retribution’s
weapons are
hot
!  She’s targeted on
Glory!
  Aiming for the Section B—he knows the ship’s anatomy!  Admiral, he’s aiming at the central engine’s exhaust vent!”

Athenais’s brow lifted.  “How does she know how to find that?”

“Space Academy,” Ragnar whispered.  “She’s about to take out a cruiser.”

They waited, breathless, for the killing blow.

Dallas’s hand darted back to the weapons panel and then she twisted back and away, leaving the two carriers behind and allowing the cloud of fighters to swarm her.  Then, as she backed off, she picked up the com and said, “Admiral Redstone, this is Dallas York, and that was your only warning.”

“She didn’t kill it?!” Athenais cried.  A hundred thousand ships—a quarter of the firepower arrayed against them—would have been out of commission, in an instant, and she’d
left it
?  She would have jumped from her seat, but the harness held her in place.  “You had a clear shot and she didn’t take it?!  Fairy, you moron!”

“She didn’t need to,” Ragnar whispered, his voice awed.

“What do you mean, she didn’t—”

“
Stand down.”

Athenais’s eyes jerked back to the comset.

“
Utopian forces, stand down.  This is Admiral Redstone.  Return to formation. 
Retribution,
you are free to go.”

Athenais’s jaw fell open.  “Is he serious?”

Ragnar said nothing.

“He’s
serious
?!  He’s just letting us
go
?!”

Dallas picked up the comset and turned to grin at Athenais.  “Admiral Redstone, this is Dallas York.  I appreciate it, sir.”  At that, she hung up the comset and turned back to grin at Athenais.

Oh, this was too much.  “Wipe that smirk off your face,” Athenais snapped.  Then, belatedly, she added, “Captain.”

Dallas spent the next four days sleeping off the side-effects of Stuart’s drug.  When she woke up, they were only a week from T-9.  The rest of the trip went smoothly, except for the day Tommy recovered from his coma.

Dallas was flying while Ragnar and Athenais slept, watching the debris field and bantering with Stuart, when Mari came running into the helm, face flushed with excitement.  “Dallas!  Tommy is awake.  He woke up!”

“That’s great,” Dallas said, setting the ship on autopilot and getting up.

Mari shook her head vehemently.  “No.  That’s bad.  Very bad.  It’s
forbidden.”

Dallas frowned at Mari and hurried down the corridor to Tommy’s room.  The Colonel was sitting on the bunk, staring wide-eyed into space.  When Dallas came to the door, he turned to her and swallowed, hard.

“Tommy?” Dallas said tentatively.

“Hello Dallas,” Tommy said, his voice gruff.  “And Stuart.”  He nodded respectfully and looked away.

Is he feeling all right?
Stuart asked.

“You need anything?” Dallas asked tentatively.  “You hungry?  I can get you some water, if you don’t want to get up.  You were out of it for quite awhile.  We had to convince Mari to install an IV line on you.”

“I know,” Tommy whispered.

He sounds like he’s about to cry,
Stuart said, sounding troubled.

“Look, Tommy, Mari says there’s no brain damage.  You’re fine.  We’re only three days out from T-9 and scott free.  Juno got her ass kicked by the Utopia…what’s wrong?”

Tommy looked up at her, his eyes wet.  “Nothing.  You’re a real sweet girl, Dallas.  Stuart’s got good taste.”

Okay, now I’m
sure
there’s something wrong,
Stuart said.

“Tommy, what happened back on Xenith?  What put you under?  Was it Juno?”

Tommy stood up.  “You can stop worrying, Captain.  I’m just happy to be alive.”  He stumbled around his bed toward the bathroom door.  “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve gotta take a major dump.  My bowels just kicked in and I feel like I’m gonna explode.”

“Sure,” Dallas said, backing out of the room.

“You see?” Mari whispered, peeking over Dallas’s shoulder.  “It was the wash.  Oh, this is very bad.  Very, very bad.”

“It’s
good,”
Dallas snapped.  “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but one of my crew just woke up from a coma.  You ask me, this deserves a celebration.”

Mari wrung her hands in front of her, shaking her head, so Dallas shut Tommy’s door and turned on her.  “What’s wrong?” she demanded.  “Spit it out.”

“Those who survive the wash…” Mari began, sweating, “…they are changed.”

“Then, believe me, it was for the better,” Dallas said.  “He’s not such a cranky old bastard.  Hell, it wouldn’t bother me at all if he got a few synapses re-wired…  As long as he doesn’t attack me or my crew, I figure Juno did us a favor by brainwashing him.  Besides, he survived the first time she tried.  Some special training or something.  He’s fine.”

Mari shook her head and turned away, muttering.

Despite Mari’s insistence that there was something wrong with Tommy, he quickly adapted to the ship’s routine, sitting with Dallas with her shift.  After some initial nausea, he began eating again, developing a ravenous appetite in the first four hours after waking up.  After making sure his brain patterns were stable, Dallas even let him take over for her for a few hours at a time.  She judged him to be perfectly healthy and dismissed Mari’s warnings as superstition.

When they reached T-9, however, he refused to leave the ship.

Dallas, overly possessive of
Retribution
now that she had lost it twice, found it too difficult to leave anyone alone onboard, but Tommy stoutly refused to enter the Hub.  She tried everything, even threatening to fire him, but he would not get within twenty feet of the air-lock.  She ended up settling for locking him in his room and closing down the bridge with a passcode.  Mari she left in the regen room studying a memchip on Utopi customs.  Only then was she able to join Athenais and Ragnar for a planetside jaunt to celebrate.

They started in the Silk district.  Ragnar and Athenais went to dinner at one of the many fine restaurants while Dallas window-shopped along the busy avenues.  It wasn’t quite the fashion district on Millennium, but it was exhilarating nonetheless.  Athenais had given her four months of pay for the entire Xenith fiasco and it took her all of two hours to spend it.

“You think you got enough stuff, there?” Athenais said when she and Ragnar came to find her.  “You’d think you were buying for an orphanage or something.”