A Choice of Treasons (25 page)

Once clear of Dumark’s atmosphere the drones took up circulating orbits around
Cinesstar
. The
feddies
, because of their wild transition jumps, had scattered themselves all around the planet. He couldn’t head in toward the empire without becoming an easy target, his only escape a vector running parallel to the front with a heavy slant toward an enemy quadrant.

A hand touched his shoulder, startled him out of his wits, and at the same time his headset spoke in Maggie’s voice. “I’m in the alternate helm cluster, York. I’m relieving you . . . now.”

York let go, deactivated his cluster and as it started lifting off him he rolled out of the couch, saw uniforms all around him sitting down at
Cinesstar’s
consoles. He dropped down behind the captain’s console, pulled on a headset and plugged it in, started barking orders. Frank was at fire control, Maggie at helm, Paris at com, Dak at engineering, Anda at scan. He was still barking orders when Olin Rame stepped onto the bridge, and he continued to bark orders as their eyes met. Rame nodded, a silent acknowledgement that York was in command, then sat down calmly at navigation.

“Commander Rame,” York said. “We need transition, any way, anywhere, anyhow.”

Rame glanced at his console as his hands danced across the keys. “It’s going to be sloppy. We’re barely twenty million kliks from Dumark. There’ll be serious
nearspace
error.”

“We’ll take what we can get,” York said, beginning to hope they might escape unscathed.

“Ballin.” York flinched at the sound of Sierka’s voice. “I’m taking command.”

Sierka stood beside York next to the captain’s console, Senator Andow standing behind him hunched uncomfortably beneath the overhang of an instrument cluster, and behind the instrument cluster stood the empress. “You can’t,” York said without thinking, realizing as he did so it was a mistake.

“I can’t?” Sierka demanded, glancing toward Andow. “And why can’t I?”

York couldn’t give Sierka command. He hadn’t gone to all this trouble only to let an incompetent idiot get them all killed. “But you don’t know how. You don’t have—”

“Don’t know how, Lieutenant?” Sierka leaned forward angrily. “Are you questioning my authority? In combat? Under alert status?”

Andow leaned into the light from York’s console. “It would be best if you did what he said, Lieutenant.”

“I ah . . .” York didn’t know what to say. He kept his mouth shut as he unplugged his headset and rose carefully from the captain’s console, stepped aside. Sierka sat down, rubbed the edge of the console proudly and gave a contented nod.

York asked, “What station would you like me to take, sir?”

Sierka looked at him and grinned. “None. Just get off my bridge.”

“But, sir, I—”

“Don’t argue with me,” Sierka screamed. “Off the bridge. Now!”

The captain’s console beeped, and since Sierka didn’t have a headset plugged in, Cappik’s voice and the noise from engineering came out over a speaker. “Captain, I need to jettison the ignition pile. Now!”

Sierka touched a switch on the console. “Belay that.”

“But, Captain, it’s going—”

“Silence,” Sierka screamed into the pickup. “Is everyone here insubordinate? Doesn’t anyone obey orders?”

A telltale started blinking on the engineering console, then suddenly it flashed bright red and a horn blared. The computer barked, “Hazard warning! Low-level contamination; Engineering Section. Critical contamination in—”

York leaned over Temerek’s shoulder, plugged his headset into the engineering console. “Cappik, jettison the ignition pile. Now! That’s an order.”

York felt a tickle of premonition crawl up the back of his spine, as if he sensed a transition somewhere else, a warhead up-transiting. But that was impossible.

“Incoming,” Gant shouted, “Dead ahead.”

Maggie changed course, and on Sierka’s console the navigational readouts swung wildly. The power demand skyrocketed as a warhead flared nearby and the shields took priority. Sierka ordered, “Return to course, Miss Votak,” and Maggie obeyed.

“A close one,” Gant hissed. “Came out of nowhere. Must have been a long shot.”

York turned, leaned over her shoulder, looked at the scan trace that remained.

“Ballin,” Sierka screamed hysterically. “I told you to get off my bridge.”

York started shaking his head, not at Sierka, but at what he saw, or didn’t see, on Gant’s console: no transition history for that warhead.

Sierka screamed, “Don’t you argue with me. Get off this bridge now, or I’ll have you arrested and shot.”

The answer came to York so quickly he was moving before he realized it. He switched his headset to the command channel so they could all hear him. “There’s a hunter-killer out there,” he growled. “Running silent somewhere dead ahead. Maggie, take evasive action. Anda watch your scans closely, stand by to divert all power to the shields. Rame we need that transition.”

“Shut up,” Sierka screamed. York had his back to Sierka, heard him shout, didn’t see him climb up from behind the captain’s console with a wrench in one hand.

Someone shouted, “York, look out.”

Preoccupied with the scan readout he was slow to react, turned around just as Sierka swung the wrench at him and it slammed into his face just above his left eye. It wasn’t a heavy wrench, but backed by Sierka’s fist it knocked him back against Gant’s console, a small trickle of blood trailing down through the scars around his chrome eye. “Get off my bridge,” Sierka screamed.

Rame called out, “Commander.”

“You shut up too!”

York glanced down at Rame’s console, saw the Drone readouts swinging wildly as they approached transition.

“But Commander,” Rame pleaded. “The—”

“Shut up. All of you.”

Jondee’s voice interrupted them all. “Transition in twenty seconds and counting. Nineteen . . . Eighteen . . .”

York shouted in Sierka’s face, “He’s trying to tell you you’re going to lose the drones, you idiot.”

Sierka froze, seemed unable to give the right order, unable to give any order. York leaned over the com console, slammed his fist down on a switch, shouted over the command channel, “Drones in.”

“Eight,” Jondee continued. “Seven . . . Six . . . Five . . . Four . . .”

“Drones are in,” Gant acknowledged as the clang of the shutting drone bays echoed through the hull.

“Three . . . Two . . . One . . .”

York felt that strange sensation that always came at the moment of transition, the same feeling he’d felt when the hunter-killer had spit its warhead into transition.

“Transition. One-point-two lights and accelerating.”

For a moment they all hesitated, breathed a collective sigh of relief as
Cinesstar
left the Dumark system behind.

“Mister Ballin, get off my bridge. Now! That’s an order.”

York turned slowly toward Sierka, looked at him carefully, wanted to kill him, but instead raised his hand to salute. “Aye, aye, sir.”

Sierka didn’t return the salute. “Get out of here.”

York turned toward the lift, edged his way carefully past Andow and the empress, touched the sensor at the lift hatch and stepped through as it opened. Inside the lift he hesitated. He was still wearing the vac suit, minus the helmet and gauntlets, and he had to slide the seal ring at the end of the suit arm past his wrist to see his watch. Less than two hours ago he’d awakened in the
Drop Zone
, and now all the adrenaline and drugs and stress threatened to catch up with him. For a moment he thought he felt the hunter-killer make transition behind them, but realized he was hallucinating again.

They could probably use help in Engineering. He focused on that thought, used the action of programming the lift destination to bring him back to reality, and when, an instant later, the lift doors popped open in front of him, he had at least restored himself to the appearance of control.

“Transition,” Ducan Soe said calmly. “We’re right in their wake, might be able to get off a good shot, maybe burn ‘em.”

Jewel Thaaline shook her head slowly. “Belay that,” she said, looking at her console. “We’re both in transition; we’re blind; he’s blind.”

“But we have a pretty good idea where he is,” Soe argued. “We can shove one up his ass and he won’t even know what hit him.”

Jewel continued to shake her head. “He knows we’re here, behind him somewhere. He just doesn’t know exactly where.”

Soe looked up from his console angrily. “Impossible. We vectored that warhead so they’d think it was a long shot from somewhere else.”

Still she shook her head. “That evasive action he took, just before transition. That was for us. He knows we’re here. He’s probably holding his crew on alert, waiting for us to try something, give away our position. And if we give him a nice accurate targeting vector, with the kind of firepower he’s got, he’ll squash us.”

“But how could he know?”

That was bothering Jewel also; how could he know? She thought about that for a long moment, but it was Innay who gave her the answer. “He’s one of us.”

Jewel smiled and nodded. “Exactly. He probably served on an
imper
hunter-killer sometime. He knows our tricks.”

“So what do we do?” Soe asked.

“We sit tight,” Jewel said. “We hang on his tail, run clean and silent, don’t give him anything to shoot at, wait for him to make a mistake. Maybe he’ll have trouble. He’s headed into the Directorate. He’ll want to change that as soon as possible. Maybe he’ll try a course change. And maybe he won’t be patient enough to swing around slowly, and we’ll catch enough flaring to really pin him down. Then we’ll have a sure hit, and we’ll take him. Clean, easy, neat.”

CHAPTER 12: REALITY LOST

Add’kas’adanna needed all of her training to contain her anger. It helped that Kaffair was doing the shouting for her, though he seemed unable to penetrate Ninda’s smug demeanor. Zort could only stare, too frightened to say anything.

“That was insanity,” Kaffair shouted. “A waste of ships and manpower and resources. And for what, to capture a princess worth nothing.”

Kaffair looked at Add’kas’adanna and she knew he blamed her as much as Ninda. He didn’t know Ninda had given the orders, overridden her own command structure, had literally orchestrated the entire fiasco at Dumark. He hadn’t wanted the princess at all, wanted something or someone else on that ship. And he was willing to throw every warship in the vicinity at that
imper
just to destroy whatever it was.

Kaffair demanded of Add’kas’adanna, “And what were the results? Did you destroy that ship?”

“
Invaradin
?” Add’kas’adanna said, controlling her voice. “No.
Invaradin
escaped, though badly damaged. But during the fighting it became obvious
Invaradin
and the other imperial warships were trying to protect another ship. We have no identification on her, but she too escaped. We can assume she was used to evacuate the princess.”

“We can assume,” Kaffair shouted, mimicking her. “Tell me, where is this ship now?”

Add’kas’adanna shook her head. “We don’t know. We know her approximate heading when she up-transited out of the system—she’s headed this way, by the way. And we believe some of our ships were able to follow, but we’ve had no contact from them so we’re certain of nothing.”

Add’kas’adanna was sure of one thing: whatever sort of opposing plots Kaffair and Ninda had hatched, the answer was on that
imper
ship.

“And are you diverting more ships from their regular patrols to capture this one ship?”

Add’kas’adanna looked at him coldly. “We don’t have to. She’s coming our way. We need only wait.”

York found utter chaos down in Engineering. The ignition pile had gone into meltdown before they’d jettisoned it. There’d been a minor explosion, rupturing a safety bulkhead and contaminating half the section. The explosion had also damaged a feed channel on one of
Cinesstar’s
three big power plants. Starboard was arcing badly, making an incredible noise, pushing the chamber into overheat and spilling more radiation into the section.

One marine and one of Cappik’s people were badly contaminated. Notay had already gotten Kalee up from Hangar Deck to take care of the two injured men, and when York got there he pulled Notay aside, shouted above the noise, “How bad are they?”

Notay shouted back, “Don’t know yet, sir.”

“Can we get more help from Palevi?”

“If you order it, sir, but he’s got his hands full down on Hangar Deck: a couple hundred civilians along with injured and wounded.”