The Crucible of Empire (36 page)

"After a crack on the head like that," Bast said, glancing up at Wrot, "I would advise rest for at least twenty-four hours."

"No can do, Mike," Tully said, flinching as a bandage was applied. "Baker Company has an assignment." He smiled crookedly at Caitlin and Wrot. "Got to make ourselves of use and all that."

"Not if you've been knocked senseless!" she said, then she couldn't help her curiosity. "What kind of assignment?"

"Going to take assault craft and check out a bit of Ekhat junk that's established low orbit around this star," he said, sliding off the exam table. His blue jinau uniform was splotched with blood. He tugged to straighten his shirt. "Probably nothing, but then again unmanned wreckage should just plunge into the sun, so maybe Dannet is onto something." He shook his head. "After beating the odds like she just did, I can't deny that her instincts are all in the right place."

"You think some of them are still alive?" Caitlin said, overwhelmed with the possibilities. "My god, why doesn't
Lexington
just blast them from here?"

"Survivors will most likely be helpless," Wrot said thoughtfully. "This is an opportunity to take prisoners, which comes very rarely when fighting the Ekhat."

She remembered the only time she'd ever seen Ekhat in person back in Terra's solar system and shuddered. She'd had nightmares about that grisly encounter for months. "But when we parleyed with the Interdict, the two speakers killed themselves afterward," she said, "because they couldn't endure the taint of simply having talked to us—and that meeting was of their own accord."

"You must take great care to prevent that," Wrot said to Tully, as the human struggled to get his arm through his jacket sleeve. "As Caitlin points out, they will wish only to die."

She took the jacket and held it for him. From the way he winced, he must be bruised from end to end. "Take me along!" she blurted. All three turned to stare at her, the doctor, Wrot, and Tully. "I'm trained as a diplomat. Let me try to talk them down from committing suicide."

"You've got to be kidding," Tully said, shaking his head. "Ed would skin me alive."

"And me as well," Wrot said. "At any rate, you are not here to speak to Ekhat. You and I both know that Ronz had a different mission in mind for you. It's necessary, more than ever at this point, for you to remain onboard and hold yourself ready, should the need for your skills arise."

He meant if they encountered the Lleix, but so far there had been no sign of them. Even if they had been here, the sight of five blasted Ekhat ships had probably sent them running for cover back out into the galaxy.

Caitlin sighed, able to tell from the stubborn angle of Wrot's head that she couldn't argue her way out of this. The old Jao might have gone "native" to a startling degree in the twenty-odd years he'd made his home on Earth, but at his core, he was solidly Jao. He had
oudh
in this situation, which meant she would stay on the
Lexington
and make herself of use any way he saw fit. She just hoped her opportunity came before she went stark raving bonkers from inactivity.

The great ship had taken damage, Dannet thought, but fortunately not too much. She prowled from station to station on the command deck, reading the stats for herself, craving unfiltered data. Most of the damage, they could repair themselves. The mission, whatever it was, could continue, though no one had seen fit to trust her with its true nature.

That bit of flotsam in low orbit, though, that was intriguing. It would be interesting to see what Baker Company found and what Wrot krinnu ava Terra would order her to do about it, when they reported back.

She still felt some resentment that he had
oudh
and she did not. For all their fine words, Terra Taif had obviously not forgotten Oppuk krinnu ava Narvo's deeds. It would be a very long time, if ever, until her Narvo origins were forgiven and she was judged upon her own merits.

But . . . this had been a magnificent battle. And the ship which fought and won that battle—this odd, misshapen and hybrid vessel that she had initially thought was both grotesque and dubious—had proven itself. Her ship, now. Neither she nor anyone else would doubt that, any longer. Her place in Terra Taif might be questionable, but not her place in the
Lexington
.

She had deduced Wrot was seeking contact with the species that had manned the other ship in the previous battle, but perhaps that vessel had only been passing through this system. She saw no evidence of them now, though, whoever they had been.

At any rate, diagnostics had detected a single habitable planet in this system. Nebula gases reflected all attempts to scan the surface from this distance, but after they had finished the tiresome mopping up from the battle, they would be at leisure to take a closer look. Perhaps that would yield some useful information.

Their trajectory was still not promising, Jihan told herself, but with precise firings of maneuvering thrusters, they might—just—intercept the wrecked piece of the Ekhat ship with its own orbit. So far, all efforts to contact one of their other Lleix vessels had failed. The hit they'd taken must have damaged the Starwarder transmitter. They were on their own.

Lliant by turns sulked in his seat, then stalked about the rapidly cooling cabin and harangued her. The surviving Starwarder, Hadata, simply hunched over the screens in a daze, punching up useless vectors, until Jihan finally shut the systems down to save the ship's precious power. What little they had might be enough, but then again it might not. They could not afford to waste any.

What they would do, should they be successful by using the Ekhat debris to keep from falling into the sun, she did not know. That bit of ship was in a stable orbit, which was very unlikely without conscious direction. Someone had lived long enough to make it happen and she had no wish to make their acquaintance.

But it seemed, if the
Boh
were watching, they would.

As they approached the Ekhat wreck, Jihan was forced to divert more and more of their dwindling power supply to the shields. Solar radiation at this proximity was deadly.

Lliant was of little help, mostly just mumbling about the Ekhat, huddled in one of the chairs, his robes rucked up in a shocking fashion. Hadata had regained some of her composure, but continued to look to Jihan to direct their actions as the only Eldest on board.

The two remaining Starwarders were, as Lliant had reported, quite dead, one from a broken neck, the other from severe burns taken when the power surge had shorted out the electronics of her ship station. Jihan bullied Lliant until he stirred himself to remove their bodies to a storage area, then left him to fret.

With the application of an herbal pain-dampener, Jihan's arm proved not to be as badly damaged as she'd feared. Muscles and ligaments seemed to be torn, but she did not believe the bones were broken after all. She now had limited use of it, which was enough for the moment.

The ship's interior cooled rapidly with most of the power shunted to the shields and thrusters. Her bare toes curled against the numbingly chill metal underfoot. Her fingers stiffened, gone clumsy as a child's, increasingly hard to use. She had shut off the emergency lights, so now, seated in dimness, the only light came from the instrument panels. Their shadowed faces were uniformly grim.

She took successive readings as they neared, then her aureole flared as she detected energy traces from the Ekhat derelict. The hull had been holed by the newcomers' extraordinary weapons and could not possibly contain an atmosphere, yet electrical activity was evident. Could it be automatic, like the fragment of ship that had fired upon them? If so, they could be hastening to their deaths.

But they had no choice. Their trajectory had them headed into the sun, whatever they did with their limited resources. They had to make the best of what opportunities were given them, which admittedly, wasn't much. At this rate of power depletion, their shields would give out before they hit the photosphere itself. They needed to protect themselves from the radiation almost as badly as they needed to escape the sun's gravity. That derelict could shade them if they anchored on its dark side.

Sitting back, her head spinning, she turned to Hadata. "We need to secure this ship to the derelict."

The Starwarder raised her head, black eyes shining. Her aureole did not stir. "We have magnetics."

"Magnetics will be of no use," Lliant said bleakly, eyes slitted almost shut. He was rocking as though in pain. "Ekhat do not employ iron alloys in their ship construction."

"By some physical means then," Jihan said. "What can we use?" She touched the barely responsive Hadata. "Think!"

"We have—grapples," Hadata finally said. "But they cannot be deployed from inside. We would have to—" She broke off, staring at the rapidly approaching Ekhat wreckage in horror. "—suit up and go—outside—and attach them by hand."

"No!" Lliant lurched to his feet. His bruised face was contorted with emotion. "I will not!"

Jihan wished she had brought poor homely Pyr in the Ekhatlore's place. She had no doubt her
elian's
youngest would have put his hand to anything required without a single protest. "Is this
fear
?" she said. "From one who is convinced that he is already dead?"

"I will suit up," Hadata said quietly. "Even death out there will be better than falling into the sun."

"And so will he," Jihan said, "because if he refuses, I will push him out the air lock in his naked skin!"

His startled gaze turned to her. He was taller, more heavily built, and she had an injured arm, but she felt the blood pounding in her throat and knew that she had all-out fury on her side. She could see he recognized that too. "Well?"

Lliant rose and stripped out of his Ekhatlore robes with sharp, angry motions, casting the brocaded fabric aside. Then he and Hadata suited up while Jihan painstakingly maneuvered them ever closer to their objective with delicate firings of their remaining thrusters.

The Ekhat derelict grew larger and larger in the screen as they approached. It would dwarf them, once they came alongside. Jihan could not take her eyes off it. Were there survivors who had detected the little ship on a docking course that would rendezvous with them? Was anyone left alive to fire upon them?

If so, the Starwarder, the Ekhatlore, and the Jaolore were about to come nose to nose with the infamous great devils who ate the universe.

Kaln krinnu ava Krant was pleased to be assigned to an assault craft dispatched to investigate the Ekhat wreckage. Though the
Lexington
had taken damage, the immense ship had survived with minimal casualties. Compared to the previous battle, in which Krant had lost one vessel in transit, a second to Ekhat fire, and had a third irreparably damaged against only one of their enemy's ships, this action was a resounding success. The Terra-captain's audacity dazzled them all, and these humans—well, they fought much better than Kaln would have ever credited, had she not seen it for herself.

Mallu was assigned to this mission, too, though Jalta had been left behind with the medicians, recovering from a shoulder wound. She noticed, as Baker Company filed aboard down in one of the hanger bays, most of the rest on this mission were humans. But, there were also a smattering of Jao who had joined Terra Taif and now wore the dark-blue jinau trousers, and they all seemed to be in association. Not perfect, of course. She saw a bit of jostling for position on both sides, not to mention some brashly angled Jao ears, but the two species appeared to have a solid working relationship.

And, even more intriguing, these humans didn't look down on Krant either. She remembered how Tully had listened to her ideas about improving the hoist. That would never have happened on a Jao ship, especially one not owned by her kochan. It was possible that humans just didn't know enough about Jao to understand Krant's low ranking, but, whatever the reason, the end results were the same. For the first time in her life, she felt like an equal among others outside her kochan.

Lieutenant Caewithe Miller settled on a bench seat next to Kaln, checking a hand-held. She was diminutive, even for a human, but Kaln had watched her direct her subordinates very capably.

"Have you ever seen an Ekhat?" the human female asked, turning dead-white eyes with those strange centers upon Kaln. The color varied among humans. This one's were a shade of blue.

Kaln's good ear flattened in
surprise
and she felt even the damaged one stir a bit. Maybe sensation would return to it after all. "Only dead ones," she said.

Miller's posture seemed almost
attentive
. "They look huge in the vids."

"Most are very large, yes," Kaln said.

Miller glanced over at Tully, then grimaced, baring her teeth. "Not as large as Paul Bunyan, I bet."

"Pool—Bantyam?" Kaln tried to replicate the sounds, but did not think she got them quite right.

Warning beeps sounded. The hatch closed, then the assault craft lurched forward, heading for the retracting hanger bay doors. "You have not yet heard of Paul Bunyan," Miller said, "and Babe the Blue Ox?"