Theirs Not to Reason Why 5: Damnation (19 page)

“I
want
to keep everyone but Sergeant Kardos and myself off Sanctuary, because fighting in high gravity will tax all the nonnatives even with gravity weaves, which we can’t really take, which means using the telekinetics in the crew . . . but if she’s captured and held for interrogation, it’s going to require a fast, discreet extraction, and the best team for that job is on this ship, not on that planet. The people my family have been training are good, but they just aren’t good enough, yet. That’s what Kardos is for.” Raking her nails through her hair, she scrubbed for a few moments, relieving the itch that had built up over the last few hours. Harper’s slight, amused smile told her that he thought her actions were funny-looking. She rolled her eyes but didn’t hold it against him.

“Shall we adjourn to the cockpit and squeeze ourselves in next to the chief yeoman?” he asked. “Or strap ourselves in here in the jump seats the grunts use, like so much brass-tacked cargo?”

“Brass-tacked cargo.” Moving over to the doorframe, Ia palmed it shut, then hit the comm button.
“Ia to Huey, we’ll be riding back here. ETA to liftoff?”

“Since we’re not in a rush, I’ll be ready in five and a half minutes. I want to finish loading the tanks with fresh air. The Tower’s spaceport says we can lift off in seven, so we’ve the time for it.”

“Understood. We’ll be Locked and Webbed in one. Ia and Harper out.”

“Want to hold hands while we wait out the remaining minutes?” Meyun asked her, grinning mischievously as he moved over to one of the seats lining the cargo bay’s bulkheads.

“Do you want to end up face-first in the timestreams?” she countered wryly, though she chose a seat with only one empty place between them. It was far enough away to avoid any accidental contact . . . but she did offer her hand, palm up, after she finished clipping the harness in place.

“I can think of more pleasant places to land, faceup or facedown,” he admitted, covering her hand with his own. “Like one of the beaches here on Kaho’olawe. Southeastern, of course; the northwestern side of the island’s still off-limits to nonnatives.”

Thankfully, her gifts didn’t activate. “You had your day of Leave yesterday, Commander.”

“Yes, but it was boring going to a beach without you.” He sighed. “And having to be on display today for all those politicians and top brass has soured what little relaxation I did manage to achieve. Even if I wasn’t the center of all that unwelcome attention, I was still right next to the center of it.”

“Welcome to my world. It’s ruined what peace I garnered in my visit to the Afaso the day before . . . though I think I’m getting some of it back, now that I’m calming down.” She squeezed his fingers lightly and changed the subject. “How’s the special project coming along?”

“I think I’m close to figuring out what all those things have in common. But it might help if I could ask the timeplains a few questions,” Harper said, holding her hand as the shuttle engines started warming up, sending a faint baritone
thrum
through the hull, adding to the noise of the compressors. “I don’t know if your ‘search parameter function’ would work as well with
me
asking the questions, though. You’ve always been the one to make it work . . . but it’s always been based on what
you
perceive of what I’m trying to ask. I’m not sure I can put it into words that clearly, though I know something of what I’m looking for.”

“It might work that way if I was reading your thoughts telepathically as you spoke,” Ia offered. These days, she felt a lot more comfortable about fraternizing with her first officer. He had conducted himself quite circumspectly, as cautiously and privately as she could have wished. “It might add that extra layer of nuance you need. But it’d be rather . . . intimate.”

He smiled, leaning back against the cushioned headrest. “You know I don’t have any fear of that.”

There wasn’t much she could safely say or do in response other than to give him a lopsided smile and draw him onto the timeplains to search for what he needed. Once they returned to the ship, she would have prophecies to write and battles to fight, all while praying Harper could find a way to not just slow but fix a gaping hole in the universe.

Her anger could wait. His task could not.

MAY 7, 2499 T.S.
INDEPENDENT COLONYWORLD SANCTUARY

She was out of time.

Ia knew it the moment the
Damnation
left the hyperrift. It felt in the back of her mind like a globule of spit flung from the mouth of a disgusted sergeant. An unpleasant image, an unpleasant thought . . . and an unpleasant reality. Her finger jabbed at the comm button.

“
Ia to all hands, we have a Plan C. I repeat, a Plan C. Commander Helstead, and Privates Yarrin and O’Taicher, meet me and Sergeant Kardos in the boardroom amidships in fifteen minutes, light armor, no weaves, weapons hot.
Teevie, get me the
Nadezhda Popova
even faster, on my left secondary. O’Keefe, helm to yours in twenty-five seconds.”

“Aye, sir, helm is mine in twenty-two,” Yeoman O’Keefe agreed.

Private Teevie added, “Pinging now, sir. On your left secondary.”

Ia was still flying the ship at a significant fraction of Cee, coming out of the hyperrift hole. She did not take her eyes from the blips of text bursting and racing on her main screen. She still had to follow the course correction plotted by the navicomp and couldn’t look immediately to her left when the dark, gray-hair-framed face of a woman in her fifties appeared.

“General Ia,” Vice Commodore Brenya Attinks stated, her tone conveying a touch of censure in its increasing bite. “Last time you were in the area, you were just a Ship’s Captain, and you convinced me to dismiss the charges of trespassing on two of your soldiers. I took a lot of political
shakk
for that and have been stuck here in this command ever since, when I could’ve been transferred to a place where I could have done some
good
in this war.” She paused, smiled pleasantly, and asked, “So what can I suffer from you and yours today?”

“Transferring helm to you, O’Keefe,” Ia stated.

“The helm is . . . mine, sir. Following your trajectory now,” the ginger blonde pilot reassured her. “ETA to orbit, fourteen minutes.”

“Good,” Ia praised her. She stripped her hand out of the attitude glove, free from the task of keeping her ship in one piece and on course.
Now
she could look to her left and flicked her hands over the workstation controls, sending authorizations on a subchannel. “Vice Commodore Attinks, you are ordered to pull in everything. Every navigation buoy, every patrol fighter, every shuttle, every
scrap
of Terran military tech that is not on that planet, I want all of it pulled into the
Popova
’s bays and Locked and Webbed within thirty hours Terran Standard. If you cannot pull it in, you are to destroy it. And yes, that
includes
the hyperrelay node, but save that for last.

“Your highest salvage priority is living personnel, followed by anything with a weapon or a capacity to move. Your highest destruction priority is anything that can scan, sweep, or communicate.” Leaning over to her right, she lifted up the little door that hid the prongs that gave her access to electricity, and started absorbing energy. “Your orders include temporary security clearance for accessing and commanding the personnel in the High Class 8b listening outpost on the seventh planet of this system. You will remove the twelve black boxes and the seventeen personnel on that station—by force if need be—and you will destroy their facilities from orbit with one of your hydrobombs.

“In thirty hours and two minutes, you will have the
Nadezhda Popova
back in tight orbit around Sanctuary—and by tight orbit,” Ia warned her, “I mean you will park your ship in the closest orbit the navicomp can get you to the atmosphere without burning the shields. Once you have achieved that tight orbit, your pilots are to stand down at their stations, take their hands out of the gloves, and let the comp do the autopiloting until I give you the signal to break orbit and leave. Is that clear?”

“General, I do not
understand
these orders, sir,” Attinks said, giving Ia a bemused look. “And this will put us behind schedule, since we were supposed to depart this system on patrol to the next in twenty more minutes . . . but . . . my crew and I will comply with your commands, sir. I also was not aware of any manned listening posts in this system . . . but then my clearance level is only High Class 7c—are you going to explain
why
we’re pulling out, when we’re still under contract to protect this system?”

“Just between you, me, and the daily encryption codes,” Ia answered dryly, “the main government on Sanctuary is going to go
shakk n’shova
crazy. They will fire on your ship, my ship, their own space station, and anything
else
anywhere near them, just over thirty hours from now.”

That startled the vice commodore. She gaped for a moment, blinked, then frowned “Uh . . . not to question my orders, sir, but if we are take up a
close
orbit, you do realize we are going to have a very hard time avoiding that incoming fire?”

“Yes, I am very much aware of it. Your shields will take it. You will not return fire, nor break orbit until I give the command to head for
Confucius
Station,” Ia said, her mind aware of the ticking of time on the coming rescue party, and the fact that she needed to get herself ready for insertion, too. She was still drawing on the ship’s energy grid, but now could
see
that grid, the power conduits, the glowing screens, the body heat of the others on the small, modified bridge of her elongated second ship. A slight, wry smile twisted her mouth and wrinkled her nose. “Make sure you’re well rested and that everyone has a clean change of underwear, Vice Commodore. The Greys are about to invade and take over this system, and we
will
be leaving them to it.”

“Ahh . . .” Attinks gaped at her. Ia didn’t give her time to ask any questions.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go scare up some extra personnel, then get down to my home planet in order to make sure they start their inevitable civil war on time and on schedule. Begin your countdown as thirty hours Terran Standard exactly from . . . five, four, three, two, one . . .
mark
. General Ia out.” She cut off the channel but kept drawing energy from the conduit prongs. “O’Keefe, park us in a geosynchronous over Our Blessed Mother. You have the bridge until Lieutenant Spyder arrives.”

“Aye, sir,” the yeoman agreed, her gaze firmly on her own screens.

“Sergeant Santori, get ready to shoot me.”

“General, yes, sir; every time you or your guests darken, sir,” the 2nd Platoon sergeant said. Unstrapping herself from one of the spare workstations, the dark-haired woman unclipped the stunner rifle from the edge of her console. Standing, Santori flicked the weapon on and adjusted the nozzle cone, aiming it at her commanding officer.

Drawing out a little bit more, Ia twisted the energies within her—and popped into a silvery sphere. Santori shot her twice with the stunner field. The electrosonic pulses tasted like bacon-tomato sandwiches. Drinking it in, Ia swirled and headed for the door. Santori followed her.

Out of politeness, Ia zapped the door controls, opening them for the matter-based woman, though she didn’t have to have an opening; the huge gaps between whirling electrons and their proton-neutron nuclei left her plenty of room to maneuver as an energy being. It wasn’t far to the officers’ meeting room, just two doors forward from the bridge. As soon as the other woman was braced in a comfortable firing stance, Ia began.

Twisting inward, she reached for her personal cosmic strings, the ones tying her to the Feyori who had sworn themselves in service to her. She didn’t have to reach far; most of the selected fifteen were actually on Sanctuary, having a last snack-and-
shakk
while awaiting her call. They teleported in ones and twos, silvery spheres the size of bridge workstations, slightly larger than Santori could have spread her arms and legs. They bobbed through the edges of the workstation-embedded table, roughly occupying the spots Ia’s cadre would have used in a similar meeting. Except this wasn’t anything matter-based bodies could do. Not in a timely way.

(
Thank you for coming,
) Ia stated, pitching her thoughts in an energy format the Feyori around her could hear. (
I realize the task ahead is distasteful, but it still needs to be done. I don’t have the time, and no one else has the ability. Link with me now, so that I can share with you the exact shapes of the satellites you will be making, in conjunction with Commander Harper’s material components.
)

Curious, bored, willing, they drifted closer, until the edges of their spheres brushed together. As soon as the last of the fifteen linked in to the rest, Ia snapped them all into the timestreams. There, she was still matter-based, matter-shaped, and hauled them into a side-stream, a pocket universe wherein she
did
have the time to do this all herself. Unfortunately, Rabbit needed rescuing ahead of schedule.

The task she had in mind was literally distasteful to the Feyori; several started, and one tried to pull herself out of the link. (
I am
not
going to be eating and regurgitating
shit
!
) the offended Meddler snapped. (
Find someone else to—
Aaaah!)

Ia relaxed her tight-dragging grip. It had only been a short trip, but painful enough to get the Meddler’s attention, nonetheless.

(
I have just abraded away one year of your life, Selula,
) she warned the alien. (
The next among you to balk at my commands will lose ten years. The next after that, one hundred . . . and then one thousand. After that, I start killing you, and
then
is when I start bringing in your replacements. But I will grant you the right to choose, either to spend your time hauling the crysium up to this ship or spend your time reshaping it. As this is his home territory, Albelar is in charge of the group selecting the spray fields to be harvested. Silverstone will be in charge of the reshaping team.