Hope's Folly (48 page)

“A request for surrender, sir. Hillarston's specifically demanding we turn you over to her. She guarantees that no action will be taken against the
Folly's
officers or crew.”

Philip glanced back at Martoni. This was the point he'd known would come. The point where the life of one could save the lives of many. He could feel Rya's gaze on him. He could feel Con's, Sparks's.

There may yet be a day, a situation so dire that that was an action he'd have to take.

But today wasn't that day.

He held up one hand. “Don't answer her yet, Martoni. Let her think we're thinking about it.” He turned farther around, to Rya. “We're not. So put that trank back in your pocket, Subbie.”

He didn't know if she had one, but the wide-eyed look on her face and the frown on Con's when he glanced in his direction was worth the jibe.

His good humor was short-lived. A patrol ship threw another bird at them, changing the angle of attack, moving more toward the starboard so the
Folly
had to angle as well to counter. Two more birds exploded under the
Folly's
laser. The next came too close, detonating short of the
Folly's
hull but close enough to put her starboard shields in disarray and send tremors through the decking.

“Return fire!” Con ordered, and the
Folly
laid down a barrage. The patrol ships backed off, regrouping.

Philip's trigger finger itched.
C'mon, Hillarston. Just a little closer. You know we're running. You know we're helpless. We're not going to listen to your P-75s. You need to bring the big guns out.

“The
Drey's
moving in, weapons ports hot,” Tramer said.

Thank you, Hillarston.
He was a much better game player than Captain Hillarston, but he still didn't like it. And this was a game where all the odds except one were on her side. He had his surprise, a Gritter, and a little-known gate, now only an hour and a half away.

He braced himself against the XO's console and watched the destroyer's icon move toward theirs on the screen.

“Now, Admiral?” Con asked.

“Now, Captain Welford.”

Con gave the order. “Arm the Gritter.”

Philip brought up a pattern of attack honing in on the destroyer's weak spots and sent it to weapons. “But keep those lasers on the patrol ships!”

“Got it, sir! Gritter online and—”

Philip saw the malfunction signal flash on the screen just as Sparks did. His gut clenched, breath catching in his throat.

“Dillon, get down to Six!” Anger and panic mixed in Sparks's voice as he shouted into intraship. “Grit-ter's gone dead.”

No, the Gritter wasn't dead. They were. Two P-75s and an Arrow-class destroyer, minutes out, with weapons ports hot. Coming right for the
Folly.
He'd let them get too close. He'd miscalculated the risks.

“Fire lasers!” Con ordered.

They had only minutes …

A hot patch. He had to try. “I'm on it,” Philip told Con as he lunged away from the console and headed for the corridor in a painful, limping run, praying the lifts still worked.

He pushed through the lift doors before they fully opened and was turning, reaching for the panel, when Rya shoved herself next to him, one hand grabbing his arm.

Her mouth was a thin line, her brows drawn.

“Trank me and we'll never get that thing online,” he growled at her, hitting the button for Deck 6.

“You don't know why the Gritter went off line,” she said tersely as the lift doors closed. “Someone could be down there. You said it yourself: this ship still isn't a safe place.”

He knew that but in his shock and anger had forgotten that option was still very real.

“Let's hope Mather's ghost just flipped the off switch. If it's more than that, we have problems.” And no time to solve them.

“Dillon might have answers.”

The lift doors opened. Philip strode out, cane digging into the decking, Rya at his side, Carver in hand. The ship shook again. Another torpedo, detonating too close. They couldn't take much more of this.

Dillon had the housing off and the main power panel open when Philip lunged through the doorway.

“It's not the primary feed, it's the secondary,” Dillon said before Philip could ask. He was crouched on the unit's right side, datapad in hand. “It can't handle the—”

“ Hot-patch it. Now. Don't argue.” He dropped to his knees next to Dillon. “Rya, that red toolbox. Bring it here.” He turned back to Dillon again, wondering how many corners he could cut without having the thing blow up in their faces. “Have you hot-patched a plasma cannon before?”

“Only in the lab, in the academy.”

“This will be ten times more dangerous. Do what I tell you, but for God's sake, if you're not sure, ask.” He pulled the toolbox between them. “Power's off?”

“Off,” Dillon confirmed. He wiped his sleeve over his damp brow. The room was too warm and held that grimy, oily smell common to maintenance shops and power plants.

“Rya, I need ten feet of D-93 optic conduit. There's a stack—”

Her boots were already moving. “Saw it before.”

Philip plucked out two small laser knives from the toolbox and handed one to Dillon. “We need to cut the feeds here, here, and here.” He put his hand inside the Gritter, pointing. “In that order. Then the same thing on the other side. Then—”

The ship shook violently, lights dimming. “Five minutes, Constantine. Give me five minutes!”

“Conduit.” Rya was back, a large coil in her hand.

“Can you splice?”

“Yes.”

“Three sections. This end only. Dillon, cut the feeds.” Philip flicked on his knife and made his slices, then the next set, Dillon mirroring his movements. He concentrated fully on the Gritter, on the patch. Rya was no longer Rya but someone who followed orders, who brought this, spliced that. He had to forget she was Rya, because if he remembered then he had to face the fact that what he was doing would likely kill her. A patch like this could fail.

If Imperial torpedoes didn't blow a hole in their hull, their own weapon would.

The ship shook again, this time setting alarms wailing.

“This end on the power panel?” Dillon shouted over the noise.

“Exactly.” Philip shoved himself awkwardly to his feet. He'd think about his throbbing hip later. He prayed there was a later.

Rya had his arm, then she shoved his cane into his hand.

“This way?” Dillon asked, holding the conduit in front of a row of blinking connectors.

“No!” He lurched forward, shirt sticking to his back. “You have it backward.”

Dillon corrected his mistake in the few seconds it took Philip to reach him. Philip leaned against the bulkhead on the other side of the power panel and interlaced the rest of the conduit, sweat dripping down his face. Time; they were running out of time.

“Rya,” he called out over his shoulder. “Get the laser-bank program up on the main console.” This was critical. Once he started the recoding—redirecting the laser banks’ commands and inserting the Gritter's—a power fluctuation would wipe everything out.

Give me a miracle, Sparks.

“Program's up!”

“Dillon, I'll finish here. You get that recoding started. Delete all safety overrides. Go!”

But Dillon was already going. Then the tapping and beeping of the screen and the low snap of the last pieces of conduit were the only sounds other than the harsh breathing of three people on a race against time. The alarm had shut off—Philip couldn't say when. But it was quiet again, the ship's sublights a constant vibration.

“Almost there,” Dillon called.

“Tell me when.” Philip threaded his way around the enviro converters, back to the Gritter. He shoved open the small access panel and checked the spliced feeds. They looked good. “Then get up to engineering. If there's a second failure, you'll see it start there before I will down here. Cut all power to the unit if that happens.”

“Almost … yes. Done!”

“Engineering, now.” Philip hit the Gritter's manual reset. Power indicators blinked on, then a low hum vibrated from the Gritter. He glanced quickly at the bulkhead power panel. No sparking overloads. Everything was holding. He let out a long breath.

Rya stepped toward him.

The room plunged into darkness, the ship lurching hard to port. He fell against a converter. Teeth gritted in pain and anger, he grabbed frantically for an edge to keep his balance. He heard a thump, heard Rya swear, then alarms wailed again as green emergency lights winked on overhead.

“Rya!”

“I'm all right.”

He glanced at the indicator lights on the Gritter. The patch was holding. For now.

A handbeam flashed on in his direction. He couldn't see her but she could see him. Another hard lurch. He dropped to his knees, swearing under his breath. She was already crawling toward him.

He grabbed her arm. “Get out of here. This thing blows, it's taking this whole section with it.”

“You coming?”

Two lights on the Gritter went from green to yellow.

“Fuck.” The feeds had come loose. But there hadn't been time to link the conduit, to solder connections. He slid quickly over to the unit and shoved the access hatch aside with one hand, feeling in the toolbox for the laser knife with the other.

Rya pressed it into his hand.

“Rya, out. Now.”

“I've got the other knife.” She wedged the hand-beam into a vent in the Gritter's housing, illuminating the feeds. “I watched what Dillon did. Tell me what you need done.”

“This unit's live. You're not touching a damned thing.”

“And you are?”

“I know what I'm doing.” He held his breath, angling the knife in carefully, bracing his right hand with his left. If he touched the wrong feed or brushed against one, he was dead. It was like threading a needle in a rocking chair. His body swayed, sweat dripping into his eyes.

His first try missed. He yanked his hand out quickly, swearing.

His second try shoved the thin feed line snugly back into position. For now. Until Hillarston threw a torpedo at them again.

“One green light's back on.”

“Lieutenant Bennton, you have two seconds to get your ass out of here or you will be an ensign.”

The ship shuddered. If that shudder had been ten seconds earlier, while his hands were in the unit, he'd be dead. Hand on her arm, he gave her a push toward the door.

She pushed back. “If you lean your arm on my shoulder when you fix the other one, it'll steady you.”

It would, but that wasn't the point. The ship was vibrating, lurching. They were under attack.
“Ensign
Bennton.”

“You're wasting time, Guthrie. Here.” She scooted under his arm, her back against the unit's housing.

“Rya.” His voice was strained. He was tired, he was angry. He was scared. “If I touch the wrong feed, we'll both die.”

She tilted her chin up in a familiar defiant move. “Cheaper than a divorce.”

“Divorce?”

“You tell me to leave one more time and, yes, I'm filing for a divorce. Now, are you going to fix that goddamned thing or not?”

He exhaled harshly. “Hold still.” But just as he said that, the ship bucked again. She grabbed a handful of his shirt.

“That's it! Get out—”

“They're firing. That shimmy is a Gritter firing. And misfiring, because that thing in there is loose.” She stared at him, hard. “Now, are you fixing it or are we going to divorce court?”

The ship's odd shimmy
was
from the Gritter. He'd never experienced it down on a power-converter deck before. Always on the bridge in a ship with properly installed plasma cannons. Not a desperately patched-in Gritter.

He sucked in a breath, steadying himself against her shoulder, and slid the knife toward the ruptured feed. He could kill them both in the next few seconds. Emotions churned inside him. He had to let them out. “Why would you,” he asked, one eye squinted shut as he stared at the cluster of feeds and not at her face, “divorce a man who loves you?”

“Why would you send away a woman who loves you?” she asked quietly.

He drew another long breath, chancing a glance at her face in the harsh light of the handbeam. The defiance was absent. There was only softness and a mouth that pleaded for kisses.

There was no time. He wrenched his gaze off her face and stared at the feeds, at the tip of his laser knife, concentrating harder than he ever had before in his life. Her words were the only things keeping him focused in this hell down in the bowels of this ship. He tapped the loose feed with the edge of the knife. Shit! It swung too far to the left, the ship's vibration throwing him off target. Tension cramped the muscles of his arms, his calves, his lower back. If Con fired the Gritter now, if it misfired—

No. Nudge the feed back. Just … a … little … nudge.

It wiggled. It fell into place.

Gods and stars. Keep it there. Please.

His arm was shaking when he pulled it out. But all lights on the unit were green. He looked at Rya, his mind still clinging to what she'd said.
A woman who loves you.

“I keep sending you away, beautiful, because I'm trying to keep you alive. Long enough,” and he hesitated, “that we'll have a chance. That you'll forget that guy back on Calth Nine.”

She frowned, puzzled, then she shook her head slowly. “There's no guy worth remembering back on
Calth Nine. The only guy I want is right here with me now.”

His breath caught, his heart stuttering. “Rya—”

A shimmy wrenched the decking—a big one. She grabbed his shirt again. He dragged her away from the unit. Con was firing the Gritter. But the hot patch was not going to hold much longer.

He used the side of the enviro converter to lever himself up. “Get the handbeam.”

“Not without—”

“I'm coming! We have to take this thing off line from engineering. It's got only a few more shots left before it blows.” A disconnect at the unit, with the hot patch so erratic, would only hasten the process.

She was on her feet, grabbing the handbeam. He put his hand on her back. “Go! I'm right behind you.”

She moved, he lunged, but he took one last look back at the indicator lights. Still green. If the lights turned red before he and Rya reached engineering, they were dead.