Ad Astra (6 page)

Halley was in her suit by the time I got back. The Vestral Company suit she wore looked new or very close to it. I couldn’t help comparing it to the suit I had on, which in its patches and worn fittings betrayed every hour of too much use over too many years. But if Halley Keracides noticed the differences between our suits she didn’t show it.

One hour out. I called for more thrust from
Lady
’s engines, and the old girl started putting on more speed. That called for another adjustment to our course. Down and off to the side we could see the privateers closing on the big freighter. So far they hadn’t paid any apparent attention to us. I tried to match a freighter-turned-privateer mentality to my own experiences and wondered how long it’d be before they started worrying that
Lady
was more than just a tramp freighter trying to sneak past them.

By adding speed I’d set us up to intercept the privateers a bit earlier, at a point a little further from the big freighter than before. I didn’t want to risk them shooting up the freighter any before I got there.

“Why haven’t they opened fire on the freighter already?” Halley asked.

I made a sour smile. “You wouldn’t understand, I guess. When you think of spare parts you think of going to a shop and buying them new. Ships like the
Lady
live on what we can salvage. I know what they’re thinking. They don’t want to damage stuff on that ship. They’re going to overhaul that freighter, put in a few well-aimed shots at close range to knock out his ability to maneuver, then board, space the kids and strip everything off the freighter that they can use or sell.”

“Why not just keep the freighter?”

“It’s too easy to track stolen ships. It’s hard to track stolen parts.” Halley at least had the grace not to remind me that I’d already demonstrated my knowledge of the illicit parts market.

An alarm pulsed and I watched the read-outs tell me a chunk of metal had just raced past us. “I guess that was a warning shot.”

Halley nodded. “They’re using rail-guns.”

“Sure. The electromagnets are easy to build and maintain. And the metal blocks they use for ammo are cheap and really easy to manufacture. Just the thing for a bunch of people who want to keep shooting at each other for a long time.”

“What are you going to do about the warning shot?”

“Ignore it. By the time they figure out I’m ignoring it we’ll be a lot closer.”

“You’re going to get a whole lot closer, aren’t you, Kilcannon?”

So she’d guessed what I intended doing. “Yeah. I can’t act too soon, though. I have to wait as long as possible or they’ll be able to get up enough relative speed to dodge us.” I checked the distance and the time. Not much than another half-hour. “I want you to get down to the lifeboat now. You, the others from the
Canopus
, and the rest of
Lady
’s crew. Get into the lifeboat and standby.”

“How sure are you that the lifeboat isn’t going to be hit when they start shooting at the
Lady
?”

Not sure enough. “The lifeboat is out on one side of the ship, and the privateers will be aiming at Lady’s center to maximize their chances of a hit. The lifeboat should be okay even if the privateers really shoot us up while we’re closing on them.”

Halley eyed me. “Tell me you’re not going to ride
Lady
all the way in.”

The thought brought a shiver up from somewhere deep inside me. “Hell, no. But it’ll be close. It has to be. I need everyone else at the lifeboat waiting.”

“Alright. The saints know you’ve promised to try and make the lifeboat, Kilcannon. You don’t want to meet them with a broken promise fresh on your record. Remember that. For my part, I’ll keep that lifeboat waiting as long as I can.” She hesitated. “Should I get Captain Weskind?”

“No! She won’t go with anyone but me. I’ll bring her with me.”

Halley Keracides looked like she wanted to argue, but then nodded and left. About ten minutes later she called the bridge and reported that everybody was at the lifeboat. Everybody but the guys in engineering, Captain Weskind and me.

A moment later another metal projectile whipped by
Lady
. I wondered how long they’d give me to react this time. But it hadn’t been a warning shot. More projectiles came in, aimed straight at
Lady
. I heard and felt the impacts, grateful that the storage spaces in the bow were taking the brunt of the first volley. That’s why they were there, to absorb damage if
Lady
hit something or something hit
Lady
.

But storage spaces aren’t armor and those metal projectiles were fast and heavy. There was a pause of a few minutes after the first volley, apparently to see if we’d take the hint after actually being hit, then more rounds started coming in. This time they started punching through. Tiny hurricanes roared through Lady as the shots from the privateers ripped holes in her. Atmosphere vented from a score of holes in the hull, pushing Lady slightly off course as they did so. I corrected the course and watched the instruments report dropping air pressure until every compartment in the ship was in vacuum.

I checked the read-outs again, watching the paths the other ships made as they swung through space, and I knew it was time. I brought
Lady
around, finally steadying her pointed at the spot where the smaller privateer would be in fifteen minutes. The barrage of projectiles halted for a moment as my course change avoided shots aimed at the place where Lady hadn’t gone. In the momentary calm, I popped a console I’d never opened in earnest and threw two switches.

On the outside of the hull, massive grapples opened and electromagnetic pushers engaged as the emergency cargo jettison system activated for the first and last time on
Lady
. The big cargo containers which ringed the ship at two places were pushed away from
Lady
, slowly spreading out around the course she was on. As the last containers cleared the hull I goosed
Lady
’s engines to the maximum we could manage. The old girl shook and shuddered, but she accelerated away from the containers, leaving them traveling behind us down the same course. As I turned
Lady
slightly again, I watched as the delayed commands I’d fed to the cargo containers activated and they started offloading drums of precursor chemicals through load points located on their tops and bottoms, the drums drifting into the areas between and among the big cargo containers. Good riddance to a cargo I never should’ve loaded.

In the process of clearing my conscience I’d also created a huge shotgun blast aimed for the point the smaller privateer would reach in twelve minutes. I wondered how long it would take the privateer to spot what I’d done, figure out what it meant and try to alter its trajectory. It shouldn’t matter. Freighters, even freighters fitted out as privateers, weren’t designed to dodge wide debris fields aimed right at them.

I steadied
Lady
just short of a collision course with the larger privateer. The longer I could leave that privateer thinking I was only planning a close firing run, the better.

Ten minutes. “Vox, evacuate engineering
now
.”

“This is Chen. Vox is dead. We took some hits back here and suffered power arcs.”

Damn. “The rest of you get out of there and get to the lifeboat.”

“How much longer -.”

“Go!”

“Aye, aye. On our way.”

Lady’s hull twitched and rang with impacts as kinetic rounds from the privateers hit again and again. I sat there, watching compartments and systems report damage or just go dead as the solid metal chunks tore into and through
Lady
. I wondered what would happen if a round came through the bridge. Would I have time to realize it or would I just find myself face to face with Dingo, him demanding to know what I’d screwed up this time? Eight minutes. Close enough and maybe too close.

I made a small course correction, finally fixing Lady onto a collision course, then I locked the docking system onto the big privateer and deleted the engine braking and maneuvering overstress limitation sequences.
Lady
would steer herself directly at the privateer, engines going full blast, as long as her systems still functioned. I stood up, fighting for balance as
Lady
jerked to maintain her lock on the big privateer, and stared at the screen where the shape of privateer loomed. Then I ran for the Captain’s cabin.

Captain Weskind was there. Face down on her desk. She’d opened her suit. There wasn’t any time to see how long it’d been open and how badly she’d decompressed. I sealed the suit and repressurized it and sat her limp body on the edge of her desk and turned my back to her and draped both her arms forward over my shoulders and grabbed her hands and lifted her on my back and ran for the hatch.

I staggered down passageways which swung wildly as impacts and sharp maneuvers to keep the ship aimed at the privateer altered
Lady
’s motion. The lights flickered, caught, then finally died, leaving dim patches where the few working emergency lights came to life. What must have been a metal projectile from one of the privateers burst through a bulkhead three meters in front of me and went corkscrewing on, chewing another hole through
Lady
’s guts.

Ten meters from the lifeboat access the deck suddenly bent and rose on one side, then the bulkhead slapped me. I hit the other bulkhead, my vision graying out, then managed to get to my feet again, Captain Weskind still a dead weight on my back. Something inside
Lady
screamed as it tore under stress, the sounds transmitted through her structure and into my suit. She was dying. Saints forgive me she was dying. I stumbled down the weirdly narrowed passageway to the junction, then one more meter to where outstretched arms waited.

Captain Weskind was pulled from my back and then I was pulled in as well, the lifeboat hatch being slammed shut almost on my feet. I felt the hard deck beneath my back and remembered the lifeboat was overcrowded. People were screaming but my head was swimming too much to understand. Then a great hand pressed on me as the lifeboat accelerated away from what was left of
Lady
, putting everything it had into getting away. I struggled to breathe as a couple of bodies lying partly across me tripled in weight.

A black fringe grew around my vision as I lay there, but I kept my eyes fixed on the display screens at the front of the lifeboat. The one in front of the piloting station showed only the spinning star field, but the auxiliary screen was locked on the area where
Lady
was still heading.

The big privateer was accelerating, trying to get up speed, finally realizing Lady was playing for keeps, but its own mass and inertia were holding it back.
Lady
came down on it, moving so much faster under her long acceleration that the old freighter seemed like an arrow. The privateer was still firing, but the shots were only chipping pieces off
Lady
. They couldn’t stop or divert her.

Lady
roared down from above like the angel of death and struck across the privateer at an angle. I fought back the blackness and what might have been tears as
Lady
’s old hull bent around the point of contact. The privateer’s hull bent, too, curving upward on either side of the impact. I could see hulls shredding, compartments blowing open under the stress and spilling their contents into space, countless minor detonations rippling through the merged wreckage as systems and structures failed explosively. A cloud of vented gases blocked direct view of the wrecks as they spun off, locked together in their death throes.

Off to the side, the slower-moving cargo containers and cargo drums were coming down on the smaller privateer. It was moving, too, trying to dodge the field of debris. It almost made it. Drums hit, denting the hull or punching through, but the smaller privateer managed to hold its course. Then a big container clipped its bow. The privateer shuddered and lurched off to one side under the impact, directly into the path of another container. The second one hit aft and hit hard. I watched energy flare and knew the privateer’s engines had slagged. The smaller privateer staggered into an erratic roll, taking more glancing impacts as it spun away.

I couldn’t see the refugee ship. I couldn’t remember where it was supposed to be relative to us now. I tried to find it but my head hurt and I felt very tired and it was too hard to keep that blackness out of my eyes, so I let it fill my eyes and my head and let the pain go away.

#

I opened my eyes and saw light again. Smooth light, steady light. I blinked, turning my head to see what looked like a very well-appointed sick bay. I turned my head the other way and saw Halley.

She nodded at me wordlessly, waiting for me to speak.

“This doesn’t look like a peacekeeper prison infirmary.”

Halley twisted her mouth into a sardonic smile. “No. The peacekeepers figured they owed you one. You’re on the Vestral ship
Fenris Rising
. Outbound from Fagin.”

“Oh.” I thought about that. “
Lady
…”

“The collision totally destroyed the larger privateer. The smaller was knocked completely out of commission by the impacts of the cargo containers. The peacekeepers rounded it up a few days later.”

“A few days later.” I lay back, feeling a lot more tired than someone who’d been asleep for at least that long ought to feel.

“Peacekeepers picked us up. Good thing. That lifeboat of yours wasn’t in very good shape. Neither were you. Concussion, a few broken bones. That kind of thing. The refugee ship made it, by the way. They’re safe.”

So
Lady
’s sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. I nodded.

“Captain Weskind would be very proud of you, Kilcannon.”

“Captain Weskind -.” The question stalled as I saw the look on Halley’s face.