Hope's Folly (32 page)

“Welford, keep us on course, but take us down to one-half sublight. Martoni, drop aft shields, then raise them. Make it look like we have problems. Big problems. Cool all weapons ports while you're at it.”

Martoni stared at him for a long second, then an understanding smile played across his lips. “Yes, sir!”

The ice thawed. Philip chanced another glance at Rya. She was grinning. He wondered if she'd figured out his plan. It wouldn't surprise him if she had.

He punched intraship. “Sparks, get ready to wake up those jumpdrives. I'm going to need power more than pretty.”

“Want me to launch the shuttle now, Skipper?” Sparks asked. “Got the shields all rigged.”

Philip rechecked the
Folly's
distance to the Ripper and the jumpgate. They were farther from the gate than he wanted to be. And they were on the wrong axis relative to the Ripper. But beggars—and rebels— couldn't be choosers. He wasn't going to get another chance. He sent a coded message to the senior Umoran captain to stand down. “One minute. Martoni, make our shields go a little crazier.”

“Extinguish running lights,” Rya intoned.

He glanced at her again with a quick nod. “Cut running lights and go dark on Decks Two Aft, Three, and Four.”

“ Fifteen-degree list to starboard,” she added. “When a Stryker's sublights go bad, that's what she does.”

“ Fifteen-degree starboard list, Welford,” Philip said, hearing echoes of Captain Cory as he brought the tow fields on line. He tapped intraship again. “Sparks, jettison the shuttle.”
Hell, it's only money

Philip grabbed the small ship with the tow fields the minute it shot from the bay. What could pull could also push. The Ripper slowed, the
Folly
drifting now, shields in disarray, decks dark or flickering. Guiding the rigged shuttle through the empty space between the two ships wasn't the hard part. Dead-eyeing the Ripper's landing bay—just under the row of ion cannons—would be. It had to look as if he was actually coming in to the bay. If he veered off course too soon, the Farosians wouldn't lower their bay shields. They'd fire on the shuttle, destroying it—and Philip's one chance to destroy them.

“Welford, shove her a little. Bring us closer.” The tow fields were harder to control at this distance. It was dangerous, damned dangerous, but he had to close the gap between the
Folly
and the Farosian's 350-ton arsenal. And that lethal array of ion cannons on top.

“Admiral,” Con's tone was cautious. “That's going to hamper our ability to—”

“Closer, Constantine, or our abilities won't matter.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sims were so much easier. In sims you could make a mistake and try again. And in the sims, he still had his P-33s and Ratch fighters. He still had options if the Ripper got wise and struck out.

He was out of options. He was also almost out of time. The hospital ship with Alliance wounded and two of Consul Falkner's key aides on board would be coming through the gate in less than forty minutes. Less than thirty, quite likely, as he knew they were desperate to reach help and, if he was that ship's captain, he would have been going flat-out full-bore at that point.

One of the tow fields suddenly stuttered, its power signal cresting, then flattening.

“Welford!” Philip couldn't take his eyes off his command screen as he wrestled the other tow field into position.

“On it!” Con answered.

“On it,” came Sparks's reply through intraship.

The shuttle shimmied, jerking. Philip knew with certainty that alarms were raised on the Ripper. There was no way with only one tow field he could control the small ship's movements. The Farosians had to know something was wrong. They'd raise shields at the shuttle bays. He needed those shields down.

A blur of movement on his left. Rya, at the XO's console. “Sending wide-band distress signal through the shuttle,” she said.

He had no time to ponder how she knew to do that, except it had Cory Bennton written all over it. It didn't solve his problem, but it legitimized the shuttle's erratic flight and possibly bought them a few more minutes before the Ripper would raise shields and start firing.

“Power's up!” Con called out just as the second tow field's icon lit up on Philip's command screen. He grabbed the shuttle again, but too hard, overcorrecting. It skewed to port—

“Ripper's ion cannons just went hot!” Martoni's voice was tense, strident. “Shields still down.”

Philip threw the full power of both tow fields against the shuttle, like two cue sticks pounding a billiard ball. The shuttle lurched, twisting, and for a very long horrible second he knew he'd missed, he knew he was too far way, too off course …

Then, impact! Debris spewed from the top of the Ripper, chunks of metal and connecting lattice flying. He tore his gaze from his command screen and watched the destruction on the larger, more-detailed forward datascreen. Someone behind him whooped, someone else shouted. He'd hit the Ripper right between the two shuttle bays, just at the rumored vulnerable point where the ion-cannon array met the outer hull. One cannon twisted, toppling, discharging a blast directly into the Ripper.

The
Folly's
lasers fired, raking a gash down the side of the Farosian ship. More debris hurtled into space.

He slapped intraship, heart pounding. “Sparks, punch it! Hit the gate, now! All hands, brace!”

Philip slammed against the back of his seat as the
Folly's
jumpdrives kicked on, hard. Sublights screamed as power flooded the drives. The ship trembled, shaking, and the last thing Philip Guthrie saw before the
Folly
sliced through the gate was the twisted, rolling image of the Farosian Star-Ripper, literally ripping itself apart.

Jump transit was supposed to be the quiet time, the easy time. With no communication possible in or out, and no other ships to deal with or contact, the crew kicked back or attended to minor matters.

Rya leaned her elbows on the desktop in the vacant office at the far end of divisionals on Deck 2 Aft and scrubbed the heels of her hands against her aching eyes. Whoever stated that was a liar. Or had never worked for Tin Man Welford.

It had been four hours since they crossed the C-6 gate, four hours since they left the decimated Star-Ripper behind. Within ten minutes of gate transit, Welford corralled her—“as the new security chief”— into divisionals with a list of things to do that damned near spanned Calth sector. Her requests to speak to Philip were brushed off.

“The admiral's extremely busy,” Welford had said tersely, then left before one word of explanation could come out of her mouth. The cat. Disty-boom. The crash of the lifts that had been foretold by the cargo driver before they even left Seth.

She couldn't even send Philip a message. The deskscreen in the small office didn't have that capability even if she knew the clearance codes.

She didn't. Some chief of security she was.

Right now she was vetting the personnel jackets of every officer and crew member waiting at Ferrin's— over one hundred twenty names. She knew it was necessary. It was on her own list of things to do before they hit the exit gate. But it took Commander Adney two days to clear the seventy-eight currently on board the
Folly.
Welford wanted it in hours.

Slagging slave driver. No wonder Captain Folly …

The image of the cat growling and spitting while Welford held him by the scruff surfaced in her mind. Captain Folly didn't like Con Welford at all.

Captain Folly didn't like disty-boom.

Maybe … Her gut tightened. Who else but Tin Man would know how to rig a bomb? Who else but Tin Man would know where to find something as obscure as disty-boom? Maybe it wasn't Welford's size at all that kept him from crawling with her into the maintenance tunnels as the fire raged.

Maybe he didn't want the fire put out.

No. She paged down another screen, scrolling through a crew member's references as part of her mind played good cop to her bad cop. Fact: Philip trusted Con Welford. Fact: Con Welford had been on the
Loviti.
Fact: Con Welford had helped her when Adney didn't believe her about the intruder.

But they never found the intruder. Could Welford have—

“Bennton, you look tired.”

Rya glanced up, startled, one hand automatically flying to the Carver on her hip. The burly form of Burnaby Mather filled the doorway of the office.

“Don't shoot!” He raised his hands. Both contained bottles of water. “Thought you might be thirsty. Don't kill a man for trying to do a good deed, hey?”

She chuckled, releasing her grip on the weapon. He held a bottle out to her.

She stood, leaning over the desk, and grabbed it. “You're a lifesaver.”

“Not much else for a commo to do in jump.” He pulled the seal off his water bottle. She did the same. “You're stuck up here, just like the rest of the poor slag-heads stuck in their cabins on Three and Four. I hear the rumblings down there are getting louder.”

When Sachi and Tramer had stopped by briefly, two hours before, they'd mentioned there were two or three complainers, but nothing as bad as Mather made it sound. “People with too much time on their hands.” Rya shrugged. “You know it's necessary.”

Mather swiveled a gray metal chair around, then plopped down, angling slightly to accommodate the Carver by his side. “Is it? Come on, Rya, do you really think we have some dangerous enemy agent on board?” He wiggled his eyebrows, then took a long draft of water.

She smiled at his attempt at levity, but it was a thin smile. “Someone set that fire.”

“So we're sure it was set? Not just another malfunction?”

Mather didn't know about the presence of disatone tylethelene in the lift shaft. He was command staff, off the
Nowicki.
Philip had given him a Carver. He should have been updated. But Philip hadn't because there hadn't been time for a full update meeting since the fire. Well, there was time now, but Welford had blocked any chance of that happening by stashing her in divisionals. Rya took a mouthful of cool water before answering. “Ever hear of disty-boom?”

“Disty what?”

“An accelerant. Highly flammable, highly illegal, explosive. Banned years ago, so I didn't catch it right away. Neither did Sparks. But it leaves a unique burn pattern. So, yeah, that was no malfunction.”

“We've got someone making bombs on this ship? You're kidding, right?”

“We have the confirmed presence of disatone tylethelene at the source of the fire. It doesn't mean whoever put it there is still on board. It doesn't mean they're not. However—”

“Those intruder incidents Tin Man found. You're thinking someone got on board, rigged bombs.” Mather's brow furrowed.

“Bomb,” she corrected. “Unless you know about another one.”

“Me?” He snorted. “I'm just Mather the Commo. Messages in, messages out.”

But he'd served on the
Nowicki,
was one of the officers handpicked by Captain Bralford to transfer to the
Folly.
He was part of the
Folly's
advance team. Which meant he was not only trusted but had experience. “But you'd know if you overheard something that could relate to explosives. Or saw a message that might be suspect.”

“On this ship? Rya, my dear, you're damned lucky I could get intraship up and limping. This isn't Fleet. We don't have the equipment to intercept. It took me twenty slagging minutes to get a live link with the
Nowicki
the other day, and it was all shits-and-sticks … Sorry.” He grinned sheepishly. “There was a lot of interference.”

She grinned back. “I know the expression.”

“Anyway, Scruffy—uh, that is, Admiral Guthrie— has all communications locked down, except the bridge and his own. There's nothing to listen to.”

“Scruffy?” Rya leaned forward, lips twitching. “Scruffy?”

“You've never heard him called Scruffy Guthrie?”

“I've heard the Great Guthrie.”

“And Guth. Those are names he'll admit to. But to most everyone who's served under him, especially once he took over the
Loviti,
he's Scruffy. Even Captain Bralford's called him that. Behind his back.” Mather winked.

Rya thought for a moment. “I can't say I've ever seen him the least bit scruffy.” Not even when rolling on the station floor, Norlack blasting chunks out of the shuttle counter. And not even when he was soaking wet, standing in the ready room, kissing her in the most self-indulgent manner. There was something innately elegant about Philip Guthrie even when he was thoroughly disheveled.

“That's the whole point.” Mather's eyes narrowed. “Daddy's money keeps you looking nice and gets you even nicer assignments on nicer ships.”

“Except this one,” Rya pointed out, even as she considered the suddenly harsh tone in Mather's voice. He reminded her at that moment of the sneering naked man she'd left in her bed on Calth 9. Whenever he couldn't get his way, Barrister Matthew Crowley turned petulant. Like Mather did now.

Burnaby Mather was likely near Philip's age. But his career had been less stellar, and it bothered him.

“Just goes to prove he's human and, yes, there is a God,” Mather quipped. Then he laughed, his expression lightening. “Wow, listen to me. Telling tales about the Great Guthrie to Cory's kid. Yeah, he's had lots of breaks, got the top assignments. But we all know he's one hundred percent devoted to the Alliance. He'll ask you to work long hours, but he'll work even longer ones himself. The Great Guthrie.” Mather shook his head, smiling. “If anyone can get this bucket to Ferrin's, he can. Providing, of course, someone doesn't blow us out of the space lanes before we get there with that distoon stuff.”

“ Disty-boom,” Rya corrected. “But don't worry. If there's any more of that on board, I'll find it.”

“What, you think someone has a big jar labeled Disty-Boom sitting in the middle of his cabin?”

“Labels aren't required when you have Captain Folly.”

Mather frowned again. “Captain—you mean that cat?”

Rya nodded. “I had a piece of the damaged bulkhead from the lift earlier. He went into violent sneezing fits as soon as he came close to it. I'm going to test him later with other sections from the fire. If he keeps sneezing, well, then he's as good as any high-tech sensor the arson guys use.”