Starship Alexander (22 page)

"Jump's complete. We're in the Oort Cloud."

Hammett nodded. "Pity we haven't got any working scanners. We could do some useful mapping while we're here." His stomach rumbled, and he thought of going to the galley and helping himself to some of that repulsive gruel. He was almost hungry enough to enjoy it.

Almost.

The last of the canned food was a distant memory. No one had eaten anything but protein and carbohydrate paste in a week, and not very much of it. They could reach Earth within a day. Earth, planet of a thousand cuisines. Steak, and carrots, and fresh fruit, and green vegetables …

He suppressed the thought with an effort. "Tell the spotters to look sharp. We're in a crowded neighborhood. After all we've been through I'd hate to get creamed by a comet." Odds were the ship could float around the Oort Cloud for a decade and never even see another object, much less hit one. Still, it would be stupid to be careless.

"Aye aye," said Cartwright, and murmured into a telephone. She was able to juggle eight telephones without any apparent effort, and Hammett told himself for the hundredth time that he'd made the right choice when he shot the knife-wielding Katie. Cartwright was indispensable.

Katie's death still haunted him, though.

Wilkins and Nakatomi were back on duty, fully recovered. There were still a couple of patients in Medical, making a slow recovery, and half a dozen injured civilians and crew who spent most of their time in their bunks.

Most of the mutineers still walked the corridors. The brig wouldn't hold them all, and the spirit was gone out of them. They were no further threat. Many of them seemed remorseful, and had become some of the most enthusiastic workers in Janice Ling's corps of volunteers.

Velasco was in the brig, along with the worst of the conspirators. The ship only had four tiny cells, and for a time there had been two prisoners per cell, with half a dozen more locked in a bunkroom. Crabtree spent a couple of days interviewing witnesses, and put together a pretty clear picture of who had done what. The very worst offenders were dead, and he identified a couple of real thugs who had used the mutiny as an excuse to go on a rampage.

On the third day after the mutiny Hammett decided to release the other prisoners, keeping only Velasco and a couple of apparent sociopaths. He'd hesitated over Wyatt. The man was a ringleader, after all. He seemed to be a good man, though. Hammett had a long talk with him, and ultimately decided that Wyatt, released from his cell, would be a calming influence on the other civilians from Baffin.

Over the last three weeks Wyatt had more than justified Hammett's faith in him, and Hammett found himself regretting the fact that the man might still hang once they got back to Earth.

One crisis at a time,
he reminded himself.
For all we know, the aliens beat us here. The Earth might be a cratered ruin by now.

"Shuttle bay reports fighters launching," Wilkins reported.

"What's the status of the fighter squadron?" Hammett asked.

Carruthers smiled. "The drones are working better than I ever would have believed. I tell you, that Kasim's some sort of genius."

Nakatomi looked up and snorted. "Please. All he did was make a suggestion. I did most of the work." She looked at Hammett. "The last test flight was brilliant. The runabout and both shuttles are, to quote Lieutenant al Faisal, lean, mean fighting machines."

Hammett had visited the shuttle bay when the shuttles were still being modified. They didn't look particularly lean. They'd been blocky and angular before. Now they looked scabrous, covered in bulbous lumps.

Nakatomi and a crew of technicians had welded half a dozen drone fighters to the hull of each shuttle and the runabout. The computer controls in the drones were irreparably fried, but they had lasers and engines that could be activated with the touch of a newly-installed button inside the cockpit. Four drones pointed forward and provided firepower. Two drones pointed aft and provided thrust for hard braking. According to Kasim the ships were much more nimble now, able to stop on a dime, whatever that meant.

Six pilots took turns flying the three fighters between wormhole jumps. Kasim was the only one who showed real aptitude, but the others were becoming at least competent. This would be the last training flight, Hammett decided. After the next jump he wanted the fighters on active patrol.

The next jump would put them almost half a light-year from Earth. The odds of seeing another ship were laughably small. Still, it would be stupid not to be ready.

It was the jump after that when things would get interesting. Spacecom had to know by now that humanity was under attack. They'd had weeks to investigate the Gate failures. They would be braced for trouble, expecting the worst, when a wormhole would open practically on Earth's doorstep. The
Alexander
would pop through, without a transponder, and ignoring hails.

Hammett walked over to the communication station, which had been abandoned for weeks. A cadet named Dixon sat there now. His job was to monitor the radio. They had a radio of sorts, with a telephone handset connected to it. Hammett reached past the cadet and lifted the radio, examining it dubiously.

A plastic cylinder tightly wound with copper wire formed the bulk of the contraption. The cadet was apparently supposed to move a piece of wire back and forth along the coil to listen at various frequencies. It looked ridiculous to Hammett, but Rani had insisted it would work when she presented it to him. There was no way to transmit, but they would at least be able to hear broadcasts at close range.

"Nothing so far, Sir," Dixon said. "Of course, at this range …"

At this range, any transmissions from Earth would be several months old. Hammett nodded and set the radio down. "Everyone into vac suits." He turned to the line of cadets at the telephones along the bulkhead. "Spread the word. I want everyone suited up before the next jump." He took his own suit from a locker and pulled it on over his uniform, then put his helmet in the rack on the back of his seat where he could grab it in an instant.

After that there was nothing more he could do to prepare. They could only jump and hope for the best.

Kasim boarded the
Falcon
, trying to quiet the fluttering of his stomach. They were still a jump away from Earth, after all. A short jump, granted, but they had to be several light-weeks out. What were the odds of encountering anything but vacuum?

Still, it was the first time he'd been ordered to patrol, rather than practice. In all likelihood nothing would happen, not until the next jump. But you never knew ….

He ran through his pre-flight check, which was minimal. There was no real way to know if the
Falcon
was spaceworthy except to launch it and see what happened. He put on his helmet and retracted the faceplate. Finally he started the engine and waited for the improvised "launch" light to turn green. The shuttle bay crew had rigged a lamp near the end of the bay to tell pilots when they were clear to launch.

Kasim waited, and the lamp remained stubbornly dark. He started to fidget, wishing heartily for a working radio. He'd adjusted to so many things, from manual flight controls to telephones, but it was the little things that drove him absolutely crazy. There was no way to know what was going on ten whole meters away except by opening the hatch and walking out to ask somebody.

The launch light would probably come on as soon as he finished unbuckling his harness. He waited, staring stubbornly at the lamp, as the minutes crawled past. At least his irritation took his mind off his fear.

Finally a cadet walked out in front of the
Falcon
and waved. Kasim held his hands out in an I-don't-understand gesture, and the cadet flapped an arm in a disgusted, dismissive way.

Either he's got a really bad attitude or I'm not launching.
Kasim climbed out of the pilot's seat, headed aft, and opened the hatch. The cadet met him at the bottom of the ramp. "We're standing by," the young man reported. "Reason unknown, of course. Why would anyone tell us anything?"

"You've been hanging around cynical pilots too long." Kasim clapped him on the shoulder, then headed down the ramp. He could see a cluster of sailors and cadets grouped around the telephone on the back wall, and he headed in that direction.

A sailor named Chupik, the senior crewman present, left the group and came to meet him. "Back in your ship, please, Sir. We need you to be ready to launch at a moment's notice."

Kasim stopped. "What's going on?"

"Distress call, apparently. The
Alexander
's going to investigate. You'll launch as soon as we get there, but nobody actually knows where "there" is. We're just flying in a straight line and looking for trouble. As soon as we spot it, you launch."

"Right," said Kasim, and spun on his heel. He hurried back onto the
Falcon
, shut the hatch, and dropped back into his seat. He was back to waiting, but it was much worse now.
Distress call? What's that about?

And how in space did anyone pick up a distress call?

The launch light turned green, and he started the engine, lifted off the deckplates, and headed out into vacuum.

He saw nothing but stars at first. He turned the
Falcon
, hugging the hull of the
Alexander
, scanning for threats. He'd learned to ignore the countless patches and welds that marred the skin of the ship, but he noticed them now.
Those bastards are dangerous. Look what they did to the Alexander. They'll split this little tin can in half like a—

Suppressing that unproductive line of thought, he massaged the maneuvering controls and swept along the
Alexander's
ventral hull. Marco and Sharina would be launching the modified shuttles behind him. There was no way for the three of them to compare notes. He would find out what was going on, then wait for the other two to join him before he headed out to deal with … whatever it was.

He reached the starboard side of the
Alexander
and looked around, mystified. There was nothing to see but the blank expanse of the stars. What was he supposed to be doing?

Then he spotted motion directly ahead of the
Alexander
. He did one last visual scan for other threats, then brought the nose of the
Falcon
around. He moved out ahead of the
Alexander
, dropping low to stay out of line with her rail guns, and watched as the shuttles formed up on either side.

A ship hung in the void before him, tiny as a pebble in the distance. He raced toward it, adrenalin surging through his veins, and the shuttles kept pace. He started firing lasers when he was much too far away to hit anything. There was always a chance he'd get lucky, and the
Falcon
had plenty of power.

Then he swore and stopped firing, leaning forward to peer through the cockpit window. The ship ahead of him looked almost like a Navy corvette. It was only when a dark shape moved across the pale hull that he saw the second ship.

Both ships grew as he raced closer. It was a corvette, all right, and it was locked in a death battle with a bulky alien craft. The alien ship – five or ten of the smallest ships joined together, Kasim estimated – was maybe a quarter the size of the corvette. As he watched, the alien darted in and a point of red light appeared on the corvette's hull.

The corvette darted sideways, and laser light splashed across the hull of the alien ship. The alien jerked out of the way, then started a dogged pursuit.

Kasim blinked, trying to make sense of what he'd just seen. Had that been a plume of vapor? He shook his head in disbelief. The corvette, its electronics undoubtedly fried, was maneuvering the only way they could.

They were venting air to create thrust.

"Crazy bastards," he muttered. It was an insane tactic. How much air could the little corvette possibly hold?

Still, it was keeping them alive for the moment.

"I want to meet that lunatic captain," Kasim muttered. "I guess I better keep him alive, or I'll never get the chance." He raced toward the battle, the two ships loomed suddenly huge before him, and he fired his lasers and braking thrusters simultaneously. The alien craft filled his view, and four laser beams drilled into it. A moment later four more lasers joined the barrage from the shuttle to his left, then four more as the third shuttle joined in.

He could make out the shapes of individual alien craft within the cluster, lit up in a red glow. The lasers seemed to be doing no damage, diffusing across some sort of shield. Then, as he watched, the shield failed and a dozen powerful lasers burned into the massed hulls.

One of the component ships vented a plume of vapor and seemed to collapse inward, and then the cluster broke apart. Two more small craft died, sliced up by that lethal convergence of laser fire, before the rest of the cluster spun away, fleeing in half a dozen directions at once.

Kasim whooped, soared through the space where the alien ship had been, and heard debris rattle from the
Falcon
's hull. He chose a fleeing alien and pursued it, lasers blazing. The enemy craft jerked and twisted, trying to avoid him, and he singed it several times. Finally it went spiralling off to his left, and he brought the
Falcon
around, searching.

The alien was gone.

He looked around, disoriented, then brought the
Falcon
around in a slow loop, trying to spot the corvette. He saw it at last. The
Alexander
had arrived, and if any alien ships had survived, they were long gone. Kasim was relieved to spot both shuttles, still intact, hovering between the two warships. He flew back, taking station just below the
Alexander
's hull.

A man in a vac suit left the
Alexander
through an airlock just above Kasim's position. A cord of some sort trailed behind the man, and Kasim chuckled as he realized what was happening. Someone was taking a phone across to the corvette.

Soon after that, he saw the flashing light of a recall signal coming from just inside the shuttle bay. He was the only pilot in a position to see it, so he flew out and waggled the
Falcon
's body in front of one shuttle and then the other. It was a ridiculous way to communicate, but it worked. Both shuttles followed him back to the
Alexander
.

"Good shooting, Lieutenant," Chupik said. "I couldn't see a thing, of course, but third-hand scuttlebutt says you three were awesome."

"Every word of it is true," Kasim assured him. "We were incredible. Especially me."

"You get five or ten minutes while we top up your fuel and check for damage," Chupik said. "Then the ship jumps and you go right back out again."

"Naturally. What's the story with the corvette?"

Chupik spread his hands. "The bridge didn’t tell me a thing even before we had our systems fried. You think they tell me anything now?" He made a disgusted face. "Nobody respects a deck dog."

"You should have become a pilot," Kasim said. "They treat us like gods."

Chupik snorted and headed for the
Falcon
.

Sharina came up beside him. She was a lowly cadet, but she'd flown atmosphere craft on Earth before she joined up, so she was a fighter pilot now. As far as he was concerned, they were equals. She gave him a frazzled grin and said, "I got one, after they broke up. They didn't even put up a fight. All they wanted to do was run away."

He nodded. "They panicked. Which makes sense, considering how awesome we are."

She smirked. Then the smirk faded and she said, "That was the easy fight, wasn't it? The main enemy fleet went on to attack Earth. They just left this little handful behind to finish off a stray corvette."

Kasim nodded. "That's how I read it. I wonder how long the corvette was holding them off. A few hours at the most, I'd say."

"I guess we're going to jump to Earth now," she said. "God only knows what we're going to find."

"We've had a nice warm-up," Kasim said. "Now the real flying begins."

"All right," said Chupik, backing away from the three fighters. "Back in the saddle, kids. We're about to jump."

Kasim punched Sharina on the shoulder, she punched him back, and they ran to their ships.