A Choice of Treasons (61 page)

Alsa closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands. She had no choice. “Fuck!”

York slammed awake, sat up in bed, ignored the sideways tug of the gravity field of his cabin deck as it interfered with that of his grav bunk. He hesitated for just an instant, wondering how he’d gotten back to his cabin, wondering why everything seemed so normal. Then he tore frantically at his shirt until he could see his bare chest. The skin there was pink and healthy.

He threw back the covers, found to his great relief that his right leg was still whole, with no indication it had ever been missing. He wiggled the toes, they felt fine.

It had all been a dream, he realized, an insane dream . . .

. . . Alsa looked sadly at her handiwork. All that remained of York was a bit of tissue, a piece of bone, a smear of blood.

The technician held out the open body bag. “I’ll scrape him into it.”

Alsa looked at what was left of York, shook her head. “That’s not him. There’s nothing left of him.” She reached out, scraped the bits of tissue into a pan, turned toward the disposal can . . .”

York slammed awake, sat up in his bunk, struggled for long seconds while mentally he flipped back and forth between the two realities: it was a dream. No it wasn’t . . . yes it was . . . no it wasn’t . . . This time he wasn’t going to be fooled. Not by any of them. It was real, the body bag dream was a dream, but this was real. He started crying with relief. It wasn’t a dream. He wasn’t insane. No, he was insane, but that was all right, as long as it was real . . .

York could see that Alsa was tired. She could barely hold herself up as she described all the miraculous work she’d done to him: regrowing his eardrums, one artificial lung—the list went on and on. When she finished York just said, “Thanks, Alsa. Go get some sleep.”

Alsa stood to leave, but York stopped her with an afterthought. “Tell Olin and Anda and Maggie I want to see them.”

Alsa nodded tiredly. “Rame’s in sickbay, hardly better off than you, certainly no better at being a patient, been running damage control from sickbay. Gant’s all right; I’ll tell her . . .” Alsa hesitated, then blurted out, “Maggie’s dead.”

York closed his eyes. “Who else?”

Alsa spoke mechanically. “Paris, Straegga, the Dubye woman, a lot of others.”

“What about d’Hart, and Cassandra, and that servant of the empress?”

“They’re okay.”

York nodded. “Tell my officers meeting in my office in half an hour.”

Alsa shook her head. “Your office is under vacuum, along with the bridge and most of officer’s country.”

York said. “Then tell them we’ll meet in the marine CO’s office. I’ll use that as a command post until further notice.”

Cinesstar
was a mess. While York was in the tanks, and then under the knife, his officers had organized damage control teams, cataloged and analyzed the extent of the damage, even begun repairs. They showed him vids of the interior and exterior of the ship. Apparently, his special little computer program hadn’t been able to put them into transition all by itself. It had tried several times, come close, would have failed, except for the last try when, apparently, right in the middle of diverting all of
Cinesstar’s
power into a transition attempt, she took a direct hit from a large warhead—estimated yield strength two hundred megatonnes. It should have disintegrated
Cinesstar
, but it turned out to be just the extra kick needed to blow her into up-transition.
Cinesstar
left the destructive force of the warhead behind, though before doing so she’d had a big piece of her bow blown away, and even more melted.

They weren’t in transition long, traveled only a short distance across the Sarasan system before
Cinesstar
shut down completely and spontaneously down-transited. What remained of Third Fleet—hurt badly at Aagerbanne, then further by
Cinesstar
and the
feddie
hunter-killer—withdrew from the system some hours later.

Rame finished the briefing with, “We’re close enough to monitor Sarasan’s transmitter splash, and apparently no one knows we’re here. They’re not completely sure we were destroyed, but they think we were. Highest probability kind of thing.”

They were meeting in the wardroom used for marine briefings. “What about that
feddie
hunter-killer?” York asked.

“That’s real curious,” Gant said. “I reviewed the scan log of the battle—that
feddie
could have burned us easily, but she didn’t. She kept taking on more difficult targets, actually helped us quite a bit, though I doubt she meant to. In the end she took a big one herself, went out with all hands.”

Cinesstar’s
computer systems were a mess, but actually quite repairable. Almost every unit had sustained some radiation damage, but by scavenging circuitry from some units, they could make others operable. Without access to more spare parts they’d be operating below the margins necessary for combat, but Cinesstar wasn’t going into combat anytime soon.

“My crew?” York asked. Clearly Alsa was functioning on chemicals to stay conscious.

“Thirty-two percent dead. Almost all of the survivors injured in some way, half seriously.”

“I need all survivors functional, even if they are wounded. Do what you can.”

Alsa just nodded.

“Structural integrity?”

Temerek answered. “We lost about thirty meters off the bow, but what’s left is in fairly good shape, structurally. Of course we’ve been hulled in . . .” He consulted his terminal, “. . . twenty-seven places, and half the ship’s under vacuum, but we can patch most of that. With only two exceptions, which we’re fixing now, we’re structurally sound. She won’t fall apart under drive.”

“Drones?”

“That’s the good news. Since we didn’t launch them we didn’t lose any. Some minor damage here and there, but we should have them all active in a matter of hours.”

“Good,” York said. He looked at Gant. “As soon as we’re done here launch those that are functional on passive. I want you to start monitoring everything around us—this system, the interstellar space around it, the works.”

She nodded.

“Weapons and shields?”

Jakobee was now in charge of fire control. “We’ve got about thirty percent of our ordinance reserves left. Turret one went with the bow, and of course we’ve got no shielding there so we’re vulnerable to frontal attack. Turret seven’s a wash; we’re scavenging it for parts. Varying amounts of damage to turrets three, four, and eight, all of it repairable. The aft launch room is undamaged and fully operational, though we don’t have enough power to put a warhead into transition. Defensively we’re in good shape; ninety percent effectiveness there.”

York nodded. They were all looking at him for answers, but all he could give them was a knowing look and an authoritative nod. They needed to think he knew what he was doing. “What if we had the facilities of a small navy yard?”

Jakobee frowned, answered carefully as if the question were purely a hypothetical one. “Well, sir, we could probably mount some moderately effective shielding on the bow, certainly repair turret seven, all depending on the size of the yard and its facilities.”

York looked at Cappik. “Power? Drive?”

“Transition drive’s shot . . .” He raised an eyebrow, reluctantly playing along with York’s fantasy. “. . . though with the facilities of a decent repair yard we could fix ‘er. Sublight drive took some damage, but not so much we can’t repair her here on our own. Power plant’s the problem. Port chamber’s a total loss, hardly even good for spares. Starboard’s no worse off than she was before, which ain’t saying much. And Centerline’s nonfunctional, though repairable with access to a yard.”

Cappik leaned forward. “Starboard’s all we got, Captain. She’ll put out enough power for sublight drive, but we’ll be limited to about a thousand gravities. And no way in hell we’ll make transition. Certainly no power for combat: no shields—except a little for small debris deflection. And of course no real weapons; we won’t be throwing anything at anyone with our transition batteries.”

Cappik let that hang, basically a death sentence. But there was a chance, a faint chance, even if the rest of them didn’t see it. All he had to do was discard all his values, betray every quality he held dear, abandon his sense of honor, his code of justice, his convictions, his principles, his ethics. And then he had to convince them to do the same.

York looked them over carefully, asked, “If I got us access to the Sarasan Navy Yard, could you make this ship transition worthy, combat worthy?”

For the first time they realized he was serious, and Cappik spoke cautiously. “I’m not familiar with the facilities at Sarasan, but she’s only a subsector base, so I’ll guess we can do something with Centerline, maybe get enough out of her to make transition, with the help of Starboard.” He shook his head. “We need a full sized yard to really repair Starboard, and Port needs to be replaced. Probably all we can do with Sarasan’s facilities is patch them enough to get out of here.”

An uncomfortable silence followed, until Cappik finally asked the question all of them wanted to ask. “But, Captain, you can’t just get on the horn and ask Sarasan for permission to use their facilities. We’re under a shoot-on-sight order. They’ll burn us before you say word one.”

York nodded, gave Cappik a look he’d seen Telyekev use, a look that said York didn’t approve of stupid questions. It was unfair of him to do that to Cappik, but for what he was about to tell them, he wanted no argument, no discussion, no debate. “That’s true, Mister Cappik,” York said without emotion. “But then I don’t intend to ask their permission.”

They looked at him as if he’d just told them he was going to be the next emperor. “Now to do that, Mister Cappik,” he continued, “we have to take Sarasan. And to take Sarasan I need sublight drive and as much of this ship operational as possible.” He looked at his watch. “I expect all repairs complete in twenty hours.”

He looked at Rame. “I need bridge crew so get McGeahn up here, if she’s still alive. I think she’s in one of the pod crews. We’ll see if she’s any good as an officer.”

Now for the clincher. He looked at Alsa. “Red Richard’s in the tanks, if I remember correctly. Thaw him out. I want to talk to him.”

That had the desired effect.

York took a tour of the ship. He didn’t need to; he could see everything on vids and damage control reports. But what the crew needed most now was to see him, healthy, whole, in command, giving knowing nods and authoritative looks. He knew of the rumors:
the old man was going renegade, maybe go pirate
. There was no help for it, since their own comrades had double-crossed them anyway. But still, it needed much discussion, and they needed to see that he wasn’t half-insane with grief or injuries. They needed to see the purpose in his eyes, the cold-blooded intent and the will to survive. And to give them that he needed to avoid thinking about Maggie, and Frank, and Paris, and the others.

Half way through the tour Rame pulled him to one side, held a small com out to him and said, “Captain, Commander Gant. She says it’s important.”

York took the com and held it to his ear. “Yes, Commander?”

“I’ve got some funny data here, Captain. We’ve picked up indications of scattered, but heavy, fighting about three light-years from here. It’s all in free space, not near any system. At this range we can’t really tell who’s who. All we can pick up are a lot of up and down transitions and some big warhead detonations. Indications are that there are somewhere between fifty and two hundred ships mixing it up pretty heavily. The funny thing is—it’s all coming from the direction of Third Fleet’s withdrawal. They must have run into something unpleasant. Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I thought you should know about it.”

“Thank you, Commander. Please continue to monitor the situation closely. I’d like regular updates, and let me know immediately of any changes.”

York slammed awake, sat up in bed, caught himself before slipping into any hallucinations about dreams and reality. Maggie had come to visit him in his dreams, or maybe nightmares, he didn’t know what to call them.

Maggie! And Paris! They hadn’t been laid to rest properly, he realized. He unstrapped from his bed, controlling reflexes long accustomed to a grav bunk, wishing he had a grav bunk. They’d gotten pressure back in his cabin—though they were still working on the bridge—and under zero-G the captain slept strapped to a regular bed.

York pulled up the disposition reports for Maggie and Paris. Paris was in cold storage in the aft isolation locker, and Maggie was . . .

Maggie was . . .

Maggie was . . . in tank one-two-six.

. . . tank one-two-six . . .