The Phoenix in Flight (33 page)

Brandon’s hands flexed, then he reached over, turned the key
to his side, and pulled it out.

“What are you doing?” Osri demanded as his console went dark
and Brandon’s lit up. “You’ve logged even fewer hours of realtime flight than I
have.”

“Official, yes,” Brandon said as he scanned the console.
“Unofficially, with my so-called co-conspirator Markham vlith-L’Ranja, I put in
hundreds of hours gaming under every imaginable set of conditions, including
exactly this kind of chase, before my brother found out and returned me to
waltzing and ribbon-cutting.”

“I was put in command of this ship. It is my responsibility.
And I can certainly get us away from some Rifter trash,” Osri retorted in
affront.

An abrupt chattering moan rang through the little courier,
growing swiftly into a rapid, violent shaking. Deralze’s scalp spasmed in pain,
his headache intensifying. Osri’s profile whitened to a degree visible through
his faceplate as he gazed at Brandon.

They listened helplessly as the skipmissile overtook them, guided
to the booster by the rift in spacetime in their wake. Then the shaking died
away—out of range.

Brandon dropped the key into the safe-slot on his side and
tapped into a navigation window. As an afterthought, he echoed his screen to
Osri’s. Then he popped open his faceplate. Osri opened his a second later, but
did not look at Brandon. Instead, he watched the screen intently, as Deralze
opened his own faceplate.

“Do you really want to bet our lives on an unknown Rifter’s
incompetence?” Brandon asked. “I understand some of them are excellent behind a
console. With his probable recharge and detection lags, we should have better
than three hundred seconds; and every time we skip, it’ll get harder for him to
catch up.”

Osri did not answer.

Brandon’s fingers were clumsy on the pads at first. Deralze
remembered his unerring speed on the Academy simulator tactiles—the complex
patterns of texture and temperature they furnished sped up a pilot’s adaptation
to a new board. But despite the handicap imposed by his gloves, his fingers
started tapping out remembered patterns.

“Pseudo-drunkwalk,” he said.

Deralze nodded, though Brandon could not see him. The
Krysarch slapped the go button, and the ship lurched slightly. On the screen
stars swirled into being as the skipfield died. The starfield slewed rapidly
across the screen as the little courier pitched about to a new course.

Then they waited as the geeplane took them off their course
at ten gravities. A window on the screen displayed the crazy-quilt graphics of
an unstable engine, slowly shaking itself into the relative neatness that would
indicate a safe skip. With occasional glances at this pattern, Brandon
continued to tap at the console with increasing sureness.

Osri watched in silence. Orbital plots flickered colorfully
on the screen as the computer optimized Brandon’s courses. Osri blinked, and
shook his head slowly. Deralze felt his own guts crawl and successfully
interpreted Osri’s reaction. The constant course changes were beginning to make
Osri sick as the starfield slewed randomly across the screen.

Brandon glanced up one more time, and just then the stars
swirled into blackness. Deralze winced at the skull-bloating transition.
Brandon hesitated before continuing his plots.

A few seconds later the ship rattled again, more briefly
than before. Brandon glanced up, his expression pained. “He’s better than I
expected,” he whispered.

“What are you doing?” Osri demanded. “Your drunkwalk is
taking us off our course toward that gas giant!” His gloved finger pointed at
the graphic neatly labeled “Warlock,” the largest planet of the Charvann
system, which ordinarily any sensible pilot would avoid, especially on the
skip. “What do you expect to buy with this maneuver? Why are you heading for
Warlock?”

Lurch. Slew.
Osri looked away from the screen, and
Deralze tightened his insides, trying to steel himself for the next skip.

Brandon replied without taking his eyes from the screen.
“Not Warlock. A good friend of mine lives on Dis. Took over an abandoned
hydrocarbon mine.” That much Deralze had told him—but Brandon did not reveal
that to Osri. “I was on my way there when I stopped to see your father.” His
tone was abstracted. The intervals between the orbits presented by the computer
were growing longer. Suddenly an overlay popped up: NO ORBIT. Brandon rested
his hands on the console edge, motionless for a time.

“Dis! There are no polities of any size on Dis,” Osri
exclaimed. “The system is clearly coded uninhabitable—why would anyone choose
to live there?”

His profile jerked toward Brandon, expressive of outrage.
Deralze recalled the words spoken by the Archon back in the defense room:...
the
usual reminder to our local Rifters...
and knew that Osri had just
remembered them as well.

“Yes. He’s a Rifter—he relies on people thinking just that.”

“Rifter?” Osri’s voice shook, which seemed to increase his
fury. “We’re running for our lives from a gang of Rifters, and you...” Osri
gulped for air. “Why not just turn around and surrender?”

Brandon’s voice expressed only abstracted mildness as he
worked his display. “Do you really think they’d let us?” he asked.

With a lurch that seemed worse than before, the courier
skipped out again. The flickering orbital plots painted the Krysarch’s face in
a medley of colors. Deralze could not read his expression as the changing light
now highlighted, now obscured his profile. A wash of golden light recalled the
profiles on a thousand years of coinage, then a flood of greenish gray shone
proleptic of death.

Deralze looked away grimly. They’d been snatched twice from
annihilation.
Is it possible that we are here to a purpose?
he thought,
his senses oddly heightened as he watched Brandon’s profile despite the
increasing physical discomfort in his body. Brandon’s hands were sure and swift
on the keys.

The viewscreen blossomed with a gout of light and a jarring
shudder the next time they emerged from skip. “That was close,” Brandon
commented, not pausing in his manipulations of the nav console. “I’ve done this
kind of thing before in wargames, as I said. That captain has, too, or else
he’s really fast. I wonder where he learned his trade?”

In other words, is he ex-navy?

Osri was silent, every line of his body in its form-fitting
suit expressive of outrage.

Deralze winced as another skip transition seemed to balloon
the sutures of his skull, and tongued another painkiller.
How much longer
can the fiveskip take this?
Osri’s medical telltale blinked to orange. He
must be on his third or fourth painkiller. Now even if he got the key back from
Brandon, the ship would refuse to activate his console.

Deralze sat back, smiling.
Now we might survive.

Brandon tapped at his console, paused as another transition
wrenched at them, then keyed the big go-pad. The navigation overlay froze and
the red letters overlaid on the display: COURSE INTERSECTS ATMOSPHERE.

The green line of their projected path flared red where it
merged with the fuzzy blue-green circle that represented Warlock. Behind the
nav window the bulky red-orange glare of Warlock mocked the graphic artifacts
of the computer, man’s feeble attempt to master spacetime and its immensity.

Brandon keyed the console and an overlay popped up: SHIELD
140%, GRAVITORS 144%, TRACKING 0.1%, MAXIMUM GEE ON PROJECTED COURSE = 8.6.

There was a blip as the medical circuit interrupted. HULL
ABLATION WITHIN ACCEPTABLE RANGE. SHOCK TRAUMA WITHIN TOLERANCE.

Deralze’s throat constricted as Warlock’s true size reached
out of the viewscreen and took possession of him.

“You can’t do that!” Osri yelped. “The ship will come
apart.”

“That’s what I’m hoping our Rifter escort will think,”
Brandon said, his voice going hoarse. “But we don’t have enough delta to
rendezvous with any body in the Warlock system, let alone Dis, unless we use
atmospheric braking. The ship seems to think we can do it with one more skip.”

“That’s insane.” Osri’s voice wavered as he glared at the
image of the gas giant now seemingly dead ahead. “We’re headed straight for a
gas giant, and you’re going to skip? We’re too close to radius. Given the
choice, I’d rather be vaporized than turned inside out.”

Deralze was glad of the medication now, glad of the
muzziness that muted his helpless panic. Ships that hit radius in skip rarely
reemerged into fivespace. Those that did were found inverted in three
dimensions—passengers, cargo, and hull—by the drive’s interaction with a
planetary gravity well. Deralze remembered one particular training chip, and
nausea tugged at his throat with the memory of those obscene sausage-like
objects topped with something like pink broccoli. Or the courier that had
emerged with its pilot forming the outer hull.

“That’s about all the choice you have,” said Brandon,
grinning at them both. Then he slapped shut his faceplate. His voice changed as
it came over the comm. “Better seal up. We may bust a seam during braking.”

Osri had to have the last word. “If the gravitors don’t fail
first and turn us into jam.”

For a moment longer Warlock bulked foursquare ahead, an
orange wall blocking off the stars they couldn’t reach. Then the screen blanked
as the fiveskip engaged, and Deralze wondered what radius would feel like.

o0o

Silence gripped the bridge of the
Satansclaw
as the
skipmissile leapt away toward the booster. Even the demented chatter of the
logos ceased, but Tallis barely noticed as he glared at the main screen.

He knew it was irrational to be furious with Kherrimun for
having been blown up, but here he was alone on a chase, with no backup. He
could feel the grins of the bridge monitors, especially Anderic’s, even though
not one of them was foolish enough to look toward him. His rage mounted until
tears started in his eyes, making him even more furious. Then the missile
struck.

“Got ’em!” shouted Ninn hoarsely. “We got the...” The little
fire-control tech broke off as a reddish chain-of-pearls Cerenkov wake
announced the escape of the booster.

The cheers of the crew ceased. Tallis knew what they were
thinking—speculating what Hreem would do to him for letting the nyr-Arkad
escape. He started to lower himself into his pod, his head reeling with
half-imagined plans for escaping Hreem’s vengeance, and then froze as a quiet
voice spoke in his ear.

“REPAIR SEQUENCE COMPLETE. TACTICALS UPDATED.”

o0o

Anderic’s fierce enjoyment of his captain’s failure
evaporated as Tallis abruptly straightened up, his expression of dismay
hardening into intent. His prominent larynx bobbed rapidly as that peculiar
internal dialogue the tech had noted before the attack recommenced. Then Tallis
sat down and began issuing commands while he tapped at his console.

“Anderic, run a scan on his wake. It looks wrong. Ninn,
charge another missile. Sho-Imbris, hop us over into his wake and orient to
fire up his ass. Now!”

The crew jolted into frantic action as Tallis shouted the
last word. The main screen rippled into a new configuration, with a prominent
time count superimposed on the forward view. Anderic set up the scan, and in
the moments before his console reported back, stared at Tallis’ reflection in
the carefully polished metal above his screen. The captain again appeared to be
listening intently to something, and his eyes were following something on the
screen, something that, as far as Anderic could see, wasn’t there. Did no one
else notice? He stole a glance around and his lip curled in disdain. Except for
that close-faced Lennart at Damage Control, the rest of the crew obviously
hadn’t a clue.

He scowled at short, spare Lennart, who’d turned slightly in
her pod, her brows furrowed in puzzlement as she observed Tallis. She knew
something was wrong, but clearly didn’t know what. Just as well. She was both
popular and ambitious, which made her an automatic enemy.

Anderic gnawed on the inside of his cheek at the reminder
that he still didn’t know, either. Then his console beeped. He stared at the
readout in disbelief.
How did Tallis know?

He considered his words before reporting. “His high end’s
gone, Captain. I estimate no more’n three cee or so... and really unstable.”

Tallis smiled as the skip cut in briefly. “Right. If he
stays in skip, his wake’ll suck our missile right into him. If he drops out and
tries to maneuver, we’ll catch up.”

The ship dropped back into fourspace and the stars skewed
rapidly across the screens as the missile tube oriented on the fleeing booster.
Only the remnants of its wake, a faint red blotch, were visible. Tallis slapped
the launch button, then keyed some more instructions into his console. A series
of bracketed distance estimates joined the time count on the forward view, with
the fading wake of the skipmissile as background. There was something wrong
about his actions, but Tallis didn’t give him any time to puzzle it out.

“Sho-Imbris, take us straight along twenty-five
light-seconds. Anderic, run a full-sphere scan as soon as we drop out and push
the results over to me. Ninn, charge it up.”

The navigator hesitated, looking at the main screen, where the
center distance estimate read
25.
“This missile, Cap’n?”

“Do it, nacker-face!” Tallis shouted. “It’s already
detonated or missed. The shields can handle it.” He tapped at his console some
more, then stared at the screen again. Once more, Anderic noted a sort of
dissonance to his actions.

The tech set up his scan and then watched Tallis intently as
the ship leapt forward into skip. The main screen kept changing as the captain
punched at his console. More windows popped up, and a spherical grid overlaid
the main view, now blanked for skip. Then the ship dropped out and Anderic’s
console began flickering through a full-scan sequence, with no immediate
results. None of the views on-screen showed anything but a normal starfield. A
clean miss.