The Bright Black Sea (81 page)

'The proud father.'

'Well, I'd hope you're a proud mother,' I replied.
I'd been one of her proteges.

'You've done alright, Wil,' she allowed with a smile.
'Give her the chance. As you say, she'll have time to get
comfortable in the position. And well, Rafe will get restless
sooner or later and Kie will be chief tech, so her promotion
shouldn't be too awkward.'

'Kie's a solid mate. I'm certain he'll welcome her
promotion. She'll be a captain some day in the not to distant
future if she chooses, so he'd best get used to it now.'

02

We'd finished our fueling in a day and moved into the
offing. We were to sail in the next watch.

I stood and looked around at the faces of my
shipmates gathered around our dining saloon table. And saw, in my
mind's eye, the missing faces as well.

'Shall we raise our globes to our old shipmates not
at this table this evening, Our owner, Tallith, and our mates, Dyn,
Vyn and Ten. Fair orbits in all their travels.'

'Hear him,' said Riv, echoed by my shipmates. 'Fair
obits, always!'

We drank our toast.

'And now, It's my pleasure to introduce you to our
new First Mate. Would you stand Molaye and accept our toast to your
new title and success,' I said with a broad smile.

'Hear him,' piped up Riv. 'To our new first mate and
the best crater buggy racer in the Nine Stars!'

She blushed and rose. And we drank to her
success.

'Speech!' demanded Riv. 'A speech!'

'I'll not give a speech, but I will give my first
order, keep still Riv, I'm far too young and inexperienced to be in
awe of wisecracking chief engineers.'

'And if I don't?', ask Riv with a smile.

'Then I'll give Lilm my second order, and you'll be
liking that one a whole lot less,' she replied undaunted.

'Hear her,' chimed in Lilm, giving him her finest,
fiercest look.

'Not a word more,' he laughed.

'I will, however, propose a toast. To my shipmates,
my captain, and my ship, The
Lost Star
, Rockets Away!'

'Rockets Away!' said we all, with a cheer.

I took a second sip and thought about those who we
were missing, we'd be missing them even more shortly, I feared. I'm
not cut out to play the role of Brilliant Pax, at best I was his
faithful lieutenant, Buntly. I'd survived some tight scrapes,
because I had Brilliant Pax caliber shipmates beside me in Min,
Tenry and Vynnia. And Naylea, if it came to that. I was on my own
now. I took a deeper sip and let the happiness from the gathering
flow around me.

03

I was in a tearing hurry to put Despar astern, so we
were dancing the
Lost Star
down a passage through the Despar
Reef known as
Luhan Street
in order to reach the coast in
the shortest possible time. With only the extra fuel tanks in no. 1
hold as cargo, the ship was traveling light and was unusually agile
so it could be “danced” like a fast packet half her size. I
expected trouble. I hoped to outrun their preparations and if not,
I'd make it hard for them to ambush us in passage with our
breakneck pace.

There are seven main channels – known locally as
Streets
– from the planet of Despar that lead out of the
reef plus dozens of minor streets that could be followed though the
dense rocky drifts of the reef to escape Despar. I chose Luhan
Street. It isn't the shortest passage out, but it is well buoyed
and relatively straight – save for a large, 79 degree dogleg three
quarters of the way out – which allows a well handled ship to be
aggressively driven through the passage. At a more normal pace, the
passage requires nearly three days to complete, but we intended to
clear Despar Reef in less than than two.

“Dancing” a ship involves using the main rocket
engine to make the abrupt course corrections necessary when
traveling at higher than normal speeds through a passage with lots
of slight twists and bends in it. Space ships always have inertia
that would keep them going on a straight line unless force is
applied to bend that line. The slower a ship is traveling, the
longer time it has to shape its course. The faster it's traveling,
the more quickly and abruptly the ship's vector has to be bent, and
to do that, the main rocket engine is used by twisting the ship to
align the engine with the angle of the thrust you need to bend your
course in the time and distance you have to do it in. The result is
that the ship would seem to be tumbling down Luhan Street, firing
its main rockets this way and that way to negotiate the subtle
twists and bends of the narrow seam in the rocky drifts that leads
from Despar to the edge of its reef. For a pilot, it's challenging,
but, well, it's fun too – Molaye delighted in it, though I think
the fun may've faded for Illy – but for everyone else it's a great
trial since the ship is constantly alternating between free fall,
short periods of pseudo-gravity as it accelerates and often weird
tides of inertia as it maneuvers for the next abrupt alteration in
its course, making it hard to do anything, including sleep, while
it's being danced. Everyone was irritable as a result.

'Really, Wil. Is this necessary?' asked Illy as I
turned over the helm to her at the end of my pilot's watch.

'I hope not,' I replied, as I settled into a chair
behind the main control console. 'But I've been in the drifts long
enough to believe it is. The sooner we put Despar astern, the safer
we'll be.'

'I doubt any drift trader that the Despar Navy still
might have at large would pose that much of a threat to us that we
need to be tearing though this passage like this,' replied
Illy.

'Not one perhaps, but how many could they assemble if
we gave them the time?' I replied. 'How many are still hiding in
the reef? The Patrol holds Despar itself and not much more. I'm not
taking any chances. Besides, we're already half way through – we'll
reach the big dogleg in 10 hours, after which the passage widens
and we'll be able to shoot clear of Despar in another 10 and be on
our way to civilization.'

I knew as soon as I said it that I was tempting the
Dark Neb, and the Dark Neb jumped at the chance.

'Willy, I'm picking up a plot that appears to be a
ship coming up the passage fast, and possibly cutting corners as
well,' said Rafe two hours later. 'I can't quite be certain just
yet – the drifts between us and the target are interfering with my
readings, but from the strength of the rocket flares, it looks to
be a ship rather than a boat.'

'Faster than us?' I asked, peering over his shoulder.
The rocky drifts that surrounded us make the holographic radar
image look more like pure static than a chart. Luhan Street was
just a thin clear vein between the static of rocks and dust that
surrounded us.

'Aye, and it must have local charts since it's not
strictly sticking to the buoyed channel and appears to be cutting a
more direct course. It should be within contact range in three
hours.'

'Who'd risk a ship on local charts – it has to be a
ship's boat...'

Rafe shook his head. 'I'm afraid, Willy, even at this
range I can assure you its engines are too powerful to be a
boat.'

'A Patrol Frigate?' I asked, hopefully.

'Not a Martin Class frigate – it's too small for
that, but too big for a patrol boat, so I'd not place too much hope
that it's the Patrol.'

'Right,' I said grimly. I knew it wasn't the Patrol.
That's not the way the Neb worked. 'Keep me informed, Rafe, and
Illy, if you can pick up the pace just a little, I'd appreciate
it.' Our chances of outrunning it were slim, especially if it had
access to local charts that'd allow it to cut though the drifts to
straighten out the passage. Still, I had to make it as hard and
dangerous as possible for it.

'Aye,' she said, rang the warning bell and nudged the
ship ahead with a short burn.

I settled back to consider the implications. I'd not
expected the Despar Navy to still have regular warships to call on,
but , the Patrol was not exactly a gushing font of information, and
perhaps the Navy was able to destroy enough records before they
surrendered to keep the full extent of their operations secret. If
it was a Despar warship, we were in dire straights even with our
full self-defense battery. The only bright spot for me was that I
didn't have many, if any, options to choose from, I could only run
as fast as the channel allowed, and would have to fight if and when
it came to that.

Illy managed to push back contact time, so that at
the end of her four hour watch, the ship was still half an hour out
of missile range. It was close enough to determine that it was a
100 meter ship with an oversized engine, most likely a warship. And
it wasn't Patrol. I had Rafe send out a series of signals to the
Patrol HQ on Despar describing our situation, but there seemed to
be a lot of radio interference, so I didn't place too much hope in
any results.

Molaye took the helm and kept the mystery ship at
bay, even though it cut through several small twists in the
official channel. She was in her glory with this type of sailing –
it was a race, after all – but we'd soon have to start to
decelerate if we were to negotiate the big dogleg in the channel
that was looming four hours ahead. Of course our chaser would have
to do the same, but if they had local charts, they might be able to
take more chances... And even if we stayed ahead through the
passage, once free of the reef, they'd easily catch us, especially
with our cut down engine. All we were doing was buying time for
something lucky to happen.

But the Dark Neb was not done with us yet.

We were just half an hour into Molaye's watch when
Kie, who'd taken over for Rafe at lookout said, 'Captain, I believe
I'm seeing what appears to be a formation of ships ahead of us in
the passage. They seem too uniformly placed to be just a random
collection of ships in passage. Ah, they've begun to
accelerate.'

I stepped over to look over his shoulder. Ships ahead
didn't mean anything, in and of itself. The reef and passage teemed
with ships and boats. We'd passed a hundred of them in the last two
days in the channel alone, mostly rocket boats, mining craft,
barges and tugs. There were hundreds more of the same in the
asteroid belts that we were twisting our way through. We'd passed
factories and foundries and cities build on and in the rocks of the
asteroid belt. We'd kept a wary eye on all, but all seemed to be
going about their normal business, and steering clear of us. So the
fact that Kie was calling my attention to some ships is what made
his announcement significant.

I glanced at the screen. He'd narrowed the range down
so it showed mostly the passage ahead, with the static of the
drifts just at the fringe. There were the usual collection of small
dots with their vectors, small boats, and the odd long string of
barges going about their business, but what was striking was the
five dots in a lose cluster in the middle of the channel, about an
hour away at our present speed. Glancing at their sensor profiles,
I could see that they fit the medium drift trader profile to
several decimal places. The tightening in my gut told me these were
the ships of the Despar navy I'd been expecting. They were now just
firing their drive rockets to accelerate away from us in order to
keep up with us longer when we overtook them in order to allow them
a longer window in which to engage us, since drifting as they had
been, we'd have raced by them in minutes. They had also positioned
themselves in the one stretch of the passage, two hours before the
big turn in the channel where our more powerful engines and speed
advantage would be nullified since we'd have to decel and maneuver
to make the channel's sharp bend.

I'd lain awake the last four nights going over this
scenario several thousand times and could come up with no better
one than to rely on the experience we'd gained in the big battle.
We didn't have the jump fighters to protect us, but we could likely
outrun these converted drift traders – if we managed to survive the
unavoidable ambush. What I'd not expected was a real warship. It
was far more dangerous than the five ships ahead combined. I'd no
plan for dealing with it.

'Kie, collect the sensor data and send it off with a
distress signal indicating imminent pirate attack. And update that
signal every five minutes,' I ordered.

'There's a great deal of interference across the com
channels, Captain. I think we're being jammed. The navigation buoys
seem to be the source...' said Kie as he worked the com panel.
'Probably a defense precaution... We must to be dealing with the
Despar Navy...'

'Can you get anything through?'

'Perhaps locally, and with the laser com, but, well,
sir, we're in Despar,' he added with a shrug and a glance my way.
'I suspect every boat will be deaf.'

'Aye, you're likely right. Well, see if you can find
a gap in the spectrum and punch something through.' I said. Not
that it would do any good. We were either bait or, we were on our
own. Jamming our com wouldn't change that.

I turned to Molaye next to me and said quietly, 'I
wouldn't mind if we have to take the dogleg a little into the
drift.' That would allow us to keep up the pace a little longer
before the need to decelerate.

She turned and grinned. 'Aye, Captain.' and ringing
the warning bell, inched back the rocket levers. I held on the back
of her chair as the ship accelerated. We were going to take it
wide...

I hoped we'd all live long enough for her to become a
little more responsible as she settled into her duties as first
mate. She seemed to be having way too much fun for what, at least
to me, seemed to be a race with death, with death winning by a
comfortable margin at the moment...

04