The Empty Warrior (18 page)

“Explain,” Lindy ordered coldly, as he wiped the gore from his hand onto the right leg of his sky blue trousers.

“Look at him,” Rast exclaimed, with more than a little exasperation. “Look at the size of him. He’s not one of ours. He’s an aberrant!”

Lindy did a quick scan of the scorched body that lay at his feet, and the man was large. He had to be nearly two meters in height. He was obviously not your average Akadean. “Well, he shouldn’t be any different from us internally,” the pilot said, misunderstanding the med tech’s reasoning. “Aberrants are still human. Just do the best you can for him. I’ve got to get us out of here before the Vazileks decide to put in another appearance.” He turned away and began to walk quickly back toward the flight deck.

“Don’t you get it,” Rast nearly yelled. “There is nothing I can do for him in only a few minutes, and we can’t take him back with us; you’ve got to know that! We need to put him back where we found him.”

Lindy stopped in his tracks, then turned slowly until his eyes met the med tech’s. The pupils within his patrician blue irises widened slightly and burned into the man from either side of his long narrow nose. “What did you say?” he asked softly, slowly.

“Willet, we can’t,” Rast said defensively, holding his palms out before him like a supplicant. “For the love of Stirga, he’s an aberrant. We’re not even supposed to speak to these people, let alone abduct one. It’s a violation of a thousand laws. We
have
to leave him.”

Lindy was mortified. He looked at Rast incredulously, his chin dropping and his mouth falling open. He had just seen forty some crew-mates burned to ash by people they had never even met. Some of the dead had been his close friends. And now, after all that, one of his own crew wanted to condemn yet another man to die, a man who could be saved, because of rules in a book, because of words written by legislators who were light years away from
Talon
and the wounded man that now lay on her deck.

All he could do was slowly shake his head in disbelief. Lindy had never been one to let what he considered to be petty guidelines override his judgment, and it invariably surprised and agitated him to be confronted by those slavishly devoted to regulations. But he wasn’t one to give in either. Pressuring Lindy generally had only the effect of exacerbating his innate stubbornness. He confronted the med tech with a rhetorical question. “Can you fly this bird, Rast?” he asked with feigned innocence.

The med tech rolled his eyes before meeting Lindy’s gaze. “You know she won’t recognize a command from me as long as you and Loble,” he jerked his head toward the p-spec whose stare bored into a nearby bulkhead and who obviously only wanted to stay out of the argument, “are on board and not incapacitated. But that is not the issue. This man is an Earther, an aberrant. He could be incredibly dangerous. We simply
cannot
take him back with us.” Rast spoke with an earnestness that only served to further inflame Lindy’s already seething ire.

He responded with an indignant grimace before speaking again. “Well he doesn’t look very dangerous at the moment.” Lindy paused, just for effect, and then went on. “Now let me tell you how we are going to proceed. Whatever else he is, this man is a human being. I will not under any circumstances leave him to die now that we have found him. We can either stay here with him until it is certain that he will survive without our aid, or we can take him with us. And I dare say that staying on this planet is most unappealing, particularly as
Vigilant
cannot wait for us and three Vazilek raiders are running amok in this system. That being the case, I suggest we close the frigging hatch and allow me to get us out the fuck out of here!” He had been crossing the deck as he spoke, his voice rising with every word, and as he reached the end of his harangue he stood just to the side of the hatch that still hung open over the water. As the last angry word escaped his lips he forcefully punched the hatch’s control panel as if to provide an exclamation point. The ladder folded into the hull and the hatch swung upward and dogged itself shut, forcing Rast to hastily pull his dangling legs inside and lean over onto to his left elbow.

Lindy stood over him glowering for a full five seconds before he continued. “Well,” he said with insincere jocularity, “I’m glad to see that there are no more objections. Now, if you please, get to work on our passenger and do your best to keep him alive until I can get us back aboard the ship.” With that he turned on his heel briskly enough that his long blonde and braided ponytail whipped over his shoulder and came to rest against his chest. He stalked away toward the flight deck until his anger forced him to turn and take one last dig at the med tech. “Oh, and Rast,” he said, forcing himself to use a tone of politeness that he certainly didn’t feel, “you needn’t fret. The log is in perfect working order. You can rest assured that your objections have been duly noted. The rescue of the aberrant will be my responsibility, and mine alone. Your
career
,” he put special emphasis on the word, “will be in no jeopardy.”

As he resumed his path toward the cockpit, he overheard Rast sullenly ask Loble for his help in wrestling the Earther into the autodoc. Lindy could hear their grunting exertions behind him until the crew quarters hatch slid shut behind him as he passed.

CHAPTER NINE:

Gauntlet of Fire

Red icons at last reappeared within the holographic plot; they had been missing for several minutes, ever since the sensors had been blinded by the ship’s swing around the far side of the system’s star. Valessanna quickly studied the positions and vectors of
Vigilant’s
Vazilek assailants. She wanted to know as rapidly as possible what, if anything, had changed since the last time she had seen their relative positions displayed. One Vazilek ship lay close by the aberrant world, accelerating away from it but still moving so slowly that its progress was barely perceptible. The other two were just completing the long, sweeping arc of the braking maneuver that would put them directly between the
Vigilant
and her objective.

“
Vigilant
,” she ordered, “add small craft icons to spatial plot.” A yellow diamond, apparently the barge, appeared and looked to be still at the extraction point on the dark side of the aberrant world. Valessanna rotated the image this way and that, zoomed it in and out, but was unable to locate the cutter anywhere in the vicinity.

“Colvan, I’m only showing
Albatross
on my plot. Where’s Lindy?”

There was a long pause before Busht answered, and when he did so, he spoke mournfully, anguish encrusting his lugubrious response. “That is Lindy. The transponder on
Albatross
has ceased transmission.”

Valessanna took a closer look at the tiny identification numbers that hung beneath the icon. Busht was correct; it was the
Talon
. She swung her chair to the right and looked the Exec in the eye. “What do you mean the transponder has ceased transmission?” she asked, knowing all the while that one of her worst fears had been realized and yet hoping against hope that somehow it wasn’t true.

Busht stared back at her with haunted eyes. “They’re gone, Val,” he said softly. “Blown to bits, according to Lindy. I just reestablished contact with him. He says
Talon
is searching for survivors now.”

Despite her dread of just such a happening, it still took a few moments for the report of so many deaths to register on Valessanna’s brain. When it did, she gazed at Busht in horror, her mind accepting his words, but her heart still unwilling to believe. At last she blinked several times and came back to herself. She rotated her command chair forward, saying nothing more to her second in command. There was nothing adequate to be said.

“Communications,” she ordered, “get me Lindy.”

Almost immediately the self-assured voice of the pilot echoed from her headset. “This is
Talon
.”

“Lindy”, she nearly shouted, “what in the name of the Rock is going on down there?”

“The
Albatross
has been destroyed. We have picked up one survivor, and we are awaiting rendezvous with
Vigilant
. Stand by to take us aboard. And Captain, please make your best speed. With three Vazilek ships in the system, I feel certain that we will both be under fire before
Talon
is recovered. I believe our only alternative is a sweep.”

Only Lindy would make such a foolish request
, Valessanna thought. The onboard computer on
Talon
was not programmed to make docking maneuvers at the wildly differing velocities the two ships would be making if
Vigilant
blew by the planet at full acceleration. If left up to the cutter, its machine mind would simply abort the rendezvous, abandoning its crew to a fiery death at the hands of the Vazileks. Since
Vigilant
was going to be unable to slacken her speed with the raiders in hot pursuit, and as there was no time to totally reprogram the
Talon
to accept new docking parameters, the landing would have to be done entirely under manual control. Any sane pilot would have at least inquired if it were possible for
Vigilant
to back off her thrust a bit during the procedure, but not Lindy. Only he would demand all the speed the engines could deliver.

It had always been Valessanna’s personal opinion that Lindy’s self-confidence sometimes stepped well over the line into recklessness, and his current request seemed a testament to his overly audacious ego. But even as captain she had very little say in such matters. He answered to her only when aboard
Vigilant
; once off on his own ship he operated as her counterpart, not a subordinate. As long as nothing went awry, her pilots’ actions when in control of their own craft were subject to review only by the senior pilot aboard or fleet command back in the Union—and Lindy was the senior pilot on
Vigilant.
Furthermore, he had never come close to cracking up a ship and had never caused injury to himself or any crew-members serving under him. If he was capable enough to back up his daring with his actions, no one, besides herself apparently, cared what he did while sitting at the controls. As far as fleet was concerned, a pilot was not overly intrepid until he got himself or someone else killed or maimed. Any flying done that stopped short of precipitating such an event, no matter how seemingly rash the maneuvers involved were, was regarded simply as the result of pilot skill. There was no such thing as luck in the eyes of the high command.

In the current situation her opinions concerning Lindy’s flying mattered even less than they normally would have, as there was no choice but to push the envelope. The Vazileks would see to that. So whether he was the foolhardy flyboy of Valessanna’s nightmares or the peerless pilot he obviously believed himself to be, Lindy was going to have to make what was a near impossible rendezvous if he and his crew were to survive. And as much as Valessanna may have been loath to admit it, Lindy was the only man she had ever known who might actually be able to pull it off.

“Don’t worry,” she answered sarcastically, trying to match his nonchalance. “We’ll be going as fast as the engines will push us.”

“Roger that. See you soon.
Talon
out.”

Valessanna had no time for pique over Lindy’s brusqueness. Putting the pilot out of her mind, she spoke to her ship. “
Vigilant
, enable intraship address, please.” The PA system activated. “This is your captain speaking,” she said clearly and with as much spirit as she could muster. “Prepare for incoming fire. We are going to have to fly past three Vazilek raiders in order to retrieve our shipmates. Then we’re headed home. It’s going to be a rough ride, but we’ve a good ship and a good crew. So hang on, do your duty, and we’ll all make it through. Captain out.” She fervently hoped that her words had not betrayed the deep-seated doubt she felt about
Vigilant’s
short-term prospects or the demoralization that had begun to eat into her being since she had learned of the loss of the barge. A captain’s negative feelings could spread through a crew like plague if one was not careful to hide them.

“Defense,” she snapped, trying hard to put those thoughts behind her, “activate the shields. Maximum protection over the bow if you please.” She continued, not waiting for an acknowledgement. “Weapons, open the ports, raise the emitters, and charge the capacitors. We will engage on my command.”

“Understood, Captain,” came the perfunctory responses.

The tactical plot showed
Vigilant
accelerating, rapidly closing the distance between herself and the two Vazilek ships that blocked her path, while the cutter still lay hidden on the far side of the aberrant world. There was no noticeable reaction from the third raider. It was still moving away from the planet, garnering speed as it went. Either they were somehow unaware of the cutter’s presence or simply did not consider it a target of high enough priority to warrant their attention.

Abruptly, a tactical realization struck Valessanna squarely between the eyes. The cutter was bait. The Vazileks knew full well exactly where
Talon
was; they hadn’t destroyed her because they wanted to use the little ship to draw
Vigilant
under their guns. Without the presence of
Talon
, the Vazileks might have sniffed at
Vigilant’s
exhaust, maybe gotten close enough to bang a few plasma balls off her shields, but that would have been the extent of the encounter. With nothing to draw her back, the big cruiser would have simply disappeared beyond the light barrier and the three raiders would have in all probability never seen her again. But the cutter was an enticement Valessanna could not ignore. She had to go back—back where the Vazileks would get their chance to kill her ship and her crew.
Well, screw you
,
you bastards,
she thought.
I’m coming to get my people; let’s see you stop me!