Battle Cruiser (19 page)

“Sparhawk? Is that you—?”

The message cut off as the group crash landed. I could see, all around us, bodies striking the snow. They sent up puffs of ice crystals in a dozen individual geysers.

Then, the lifeboat hit. There was a flash, and a jet of gas was released in a steamy puff. The boat rolled three times, then came to a halt. Fortunately, lifeboats were built solidly. It had stayed intact.

“I’m in the lifeboat,” Taranto said. “I’m okay, the others are reporting in—”

I heard them then. Taranto must have ordered them to switch channels. They were transmitting in the clear.

The survivors were groaning. Some cried out in agony. They had broken bones and a few had problems with suit integrity.

We scrambled out of our cavern and plowed into the ice. The nearest body was only thirty meters away, and it was moving feebly.

The next hour was difficult for everyone, but we managed to get them all into our vessel. No one shot at us, fortunately. They were too stressed and shocked by the manner of their arrival for that. They welcomed emergency people rushing to their aid, it was only human.

Zye, however, did give a number of them pause. They shrank from her huge hands, but she plucked them up and carried them off like naughty children. Some of their startled reactions were comical.

When the worst of the wounded were finally inside cells in the detention center, medical robots went to work on them. Taranto came to my side. He was uninjured as the lifeboat had taken the rough landing in stride.

“Sparhawk,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “You’re a man of your word, whatever else you might be.”

“Thank you, Midshipman,” I said. “I only wish I could have saved more.”

Taranto stared at me with squinting eyes. “I can’t figure you out, man,” he said. “Do you really think you’re going to get away with this? The destruction of a fleet vessel? The killing of your own commanding officer?”

“The truth will see me through to justice, sir,” I said.

He nodded, bemused.

“I’ll speak at your trial,” he said. “I’ll tell them what you did here. I owe you that much—but Sparhawk?”

I turned to look at Taranto. It was then that I saw the pistol in his hand. He’d carried it in a pouch, I surmised. He had it aimed at my side.

“You gave your word, Midshipman,” I said.

“That I did,” he said ruefully, “and that pains me, it really does.”

-27-

Taranto’s treachery took me by surprise. I suppose that was a character flaw in my make-up. As a man of commitment, I am sometimes blind to the possibility of duplicity in others.

Zye, however, had no such failings. She’d been operating the detention center cells, setting them into automatic mode so they could go to work on the most injured men in their embrace. The general medical deck was, as yet, still inoperable.

Even before Taranto made his play, she’d sensed his intent. She moved behind him, and her large hand clamped over his, directing the pistol downward.

A power bolt cracked the air and melted a puddle of poly-alloy on the deck. Zye had managed to aim the gun away from my person.

A brief struggle ensued—very brief. Taranto, red-faced and wide-eyed, struggled with both his hands on the gun.

Zye seemed unimpressed. The gun didn’t waver from its position, aiming at the deck. Her other hand, however, snaked up and around his throat. She constricted his neck—and it was over. Soundlessly, he slid to the floor.

Several crewmen, both mine and those from
Altair
swung around to look at us in shock.

“He’s injured himself,” Zye stated loudly. “I must provide aid to him.”

She picked up Taranto’s limp form and carried him to an empty cell. Stripping off his clothes as a mother might a baby, she left him there and slammed the door.

The others watched with confused frowns as the surgical bot went to work. They cast suspicious glances at us. I exited the center quickly, giving them a nod and a reassuring smile.

Zye followed me, as usual. When we were alone in the passageway, I confronted her.

“He’s injured himself?” I asked. “That was the best you could do?”

“Among Betas, I’m considered a masterful liar.”

She said this with such flat confidence that I was unable to do anything other than believe her. “I’ll take your word for that,” I said. “Did you use tactics such as that to hide your status from your own people?”

“Yes. I told them I was normal—that I wasn’t an Alpha at all. For many years, I acted as normally as I could, behaving as others did. Eventually, however, I made mistakes. I told lies that were found out. They knew then that I could not be a Beta—you see, Betas do not lie.”

“Ah,” I said, smiling. “There’s an old saying on Earth to the effect that in a kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

Zye frowned. “I do not understand the connection.”

“Never mind then,” I said.

I wasn’t surprised by her lack of comprehension. Zye’s people weren’t a subtle, introspective group.

The rest of the visiting crewmen, now leaderless, seemed less rebellious. It helped that their former Marine Commander was committed to following my orders. The rest of them followed his lead. Many of them were too injured to fight, anyway.

What I found most disturbing was the number of crewmen I’d saved. Out of a complement of nearly two hundred, only thirty had made it to us alive. That fact haunted me. I wondered if I could have done anything differently—maybe if I’d let Singh win…

I brought up the idea to Yamada, who laughed at the thought.

“You’re asking me if I’d rather be dead instead of them? Because that’s what would have happened. My answer to that is definitely ‘no.’”

“But we’ve killed a hundred and fifty men to keep the ten of us alive.”

“That’s true,” she said, “and it’s tragic. But there’s more to this situation than that, William.”

“How so?”

“Let’s imagine that Singh had won the battle and this ship. What would he have done with it?”

“I don’t know…maybe taken it home to Earth as a prize?”

She shook her head. “You’re as blind as Zye in a way,” she said. “You graduated at the top of your class in the Academy, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but I don’t see—”

“Then let’s use that big brain of yours.”

I looked around to make sure that none of the others were listening. Only Zye was keeping an eye on us, as always. The rest were repairing bridge functions or were somewhere else on the ship. Most of the repair bots and my crewmen were working on the engines now.

“What are you suggesting?” I asked. “Out with it, Ensign.”

“Just this, sir,” she said, “I think Singh was planning to take this ship for his own.”

“To what purpose?”

She shrugged. “Do you think Earth’s entire arsenal could stop this battle cruiser?”

“Maybe—well, no. The more I see of her capabilities, I think our fleet would have been at a disadvantage.”

“Exactly. This battle cruiser would have cut through the rest of our destroyers like butter. Earth has some antiquated missile batteries on the Moon and in orbit, but this vessel has tremendous range, from what I’ve seen. She’d stand off at range, striking by surprise and knocking out all defenses.”

Shaking my head, I had trouble believing it. “But why?” I demanded. “And, there’s a big hole in your theory: his crew. They went along with firing on my pinnace, but they’d never attack Earth.”

Yamada nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve got a bigger computer than you do, and I’ve been working the database on crew histories.”

“Yes?”

“Singh was originally from the rocks.”

I stared at her. “So? Lots of spacers start out like that. The service is a relative vacation for them.”

“Yes, but what if he held separatist beliefs? There are a lot of rock rats that resent Earth.”

“An interesting theory,” I said, “but it’s only that.”

She shook her head. “Unfortunately, it isn’t. I’ve been going over
Altair’s
logs.”

“How?”

“When the ship was hit, the onboard systems automatically downloaded everything to the lifeboats. It’s a black-box system.”

“I didn’t know that. What did you discover?”

“Singh made several encrypted transmissions—and he received replies.”

“Let me guess. These transmissions were directed toward the outlying system? Toward the rocks?”

“Yes. He did this after we found the Beta ship, but before he attacked us. I think he got some kind of go-ahead from allies out here.”

“Miners? Plotting rebellion?”

She shrugged. “How else do you explain his actions? He could have just flown out to the battle cruiser and assumed control of her—but instead, he blasted
Cutlass
to atoms. I think that was just his first move.”

Frowning, I was beginning to wonder if Yamada was right. Could Singh have been involved in such a monstrous plot? It was so audacious, so ill-conceived…

“His first move,” I echoed. “His next move would have been to kill his own crew. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

She nodded grimly. “I think so. He called his friends out in the rocks. He summoned them to help him. Destroying us in our tiny pinnace—that was the beginning. But you derailed his plans by not dying. Do you see now why I say you did the right thing? The thing you had to do?”

“But I had no idea he was going to try something so insane.”

“No, but you knew he was up to something and that he was going to kill us. You had to stop that. Your first duty as a captain is to your ship and your crew.”

“All right,” I said, letting myself be convinced. “Unfortunately, we might never know for sure if your assumptions were correct.”

Yamada smiled and touched the main displays. I looked on with interest. Unlike the ship’s diagrams shown within the life support module, the bridge had a full tactical display.

The screen showed a region spanning something like a fifth of the Solar System.

“We just picked this up,” Yamada said. “See this green triangle? That’s us. These tiny yellow dots over here are unknown contacts. From their behavior, I’ve concluded they’re small ships.”

As she spoke, more and more dots appeared. The battle computer was spotting them and extrapolating their trajectories.

“This is much better data than the sensor arrays were giving us a few hours ago,” I said.

“Yes. I directed some of the repair bots to fix the arrays. They went up there on the outer hull and cleared off the ice. They also connected up the sensors. The dishes are moving now, scanning the star system automatically and feeding information to the battle computer.”

Taking it all in, I reached out and tapped a swarm of yellow contacts that were fairly close to our location.

“What are these ships? Plot their trajectory.”

Wordlessly, Yamada obeyed. Zye came up to look over our shoulders, which she could do easily.

“That’s the formation of ships I wanted you to see,” Yamada said. “They appear to be in-bound to our position. The readout gives us two hours before they intersect with our location—but they’ll be in weapons range long before that.”

“They are enemies,” Zye said firmly.

Her breath puffed into my hair. She was such a large person, she moved a lot of air when she breathed nearby without her helmet on. I ignored the fact and tried to stay focused on the problem at hand.

“Analysis, Yamada?”

“Zye’s probably right,” Yamada said. “They’re coming directly toward us, moving fast. Given their angle of attack, I think we know who they are.”

“Rock rats,” I said, “militia ships, probably. They aren’t even supposed to be out here—especially in such numbers.”

Zye loomed closer. I could feel her body heat on my back. I wondered then if perhaps Betas were accustomed to standing close to one another. Zye seemed to have no concept of personal space.

“Militia ships?” she asked. “Rock rats? What are these creatures and why do they threaten us?”

“The rock rats—sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t call them that. They’re independent miners, officially. They provide most of Earth’s metals and other raw materials. Unfortunately, due to their remoteness, the Guard is unable to police them properly. They’ve got problems with pirates, claim-jumpers, smugglers and the like. Over time, they’ve built up their own militia forces to handle the lawlessness of the outer reaches of the Solar System.”

Zye looked annoyed. “That’s unacceptable,” she said. “I can’t imagine such a thing happening among Betas.”

“No, it probably wouldn’t. But in this system…well, you should think of Earthlings as a mix of Alphas and rogues. We don’t have too many Betas, really.”

“Chaotic,” she muttered and retreated.

“What if we contact them, warn them off?” Yamada asked.

“We’ll try it,” I said, “but they look determined. I’m concerned that they haven’t attempted to contact us yet.”

“They may simply attack,” Yamada said.

“Yes,” I agreed with reluctance in my heart. “They’re the new crew. Singh promised them this ship. It’s the only thing that makes sense of his actions. We found this vessel for them, and he plotted to deliver it. Now, they’re coming to collect.”

We all stared at the screens for a few seconds. The swarm of yellow dots edged infinitesimally closer.

“What are your orders, Captain?” Zye asked.

“Redirect the cannons,” I said. “Lock on their lead vessel.”

Zye worked her console eagerly. “Should I fire?” she asked.

I could hear in her voice that she wanted to. She didn’t like the rock rats, and I couldn’t blame her. They were popular only among people who’d romanticized their existence. Like the pirates of centuries past, they lived grim lives on the fringe of society.

“No,” I said. “Don’t fire yet. We’ll warn them first.”

Zye stared at me in disbelief. “That is not the optimal strategy.”

“No,” I admitted with a tight smile, “I don’t suppose that it is. Yamada, do we have helm controls yet?”

“Not yet—no engines, no directional jets.”

“Then running is out of the question,” I said. “Call Rumbold to the bridge. While he’s en route, realign our communications dish to direct a beam straight into their formation. Transmit a message indicating we’re a Star Guard vessel, and that they’re entering restricted space. Tell them they must turn back.”

Yamada turned to her console and contacted Rumbold first. Then she recorded and transmitted my message. I knew it would go out as a blip of light to be caught and pondered by the people aboard those tiny ships. I only hoped they would listen as I had no desire to do any more killing today.