The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III (29 page)

And the ship was killing her people. No, worse, it was
exterminating
them, wiping them out the way a human crew would hunt down and destroy an infestation of rats.

The best chance for regaining ship control had gone out the lock with Wellingham. More would die the longer they remained aboard.

It was the work of a moment to contact Spencer and confirm her conclusions. She received the orders she had expected, dutifully logged them and ejected a copy on a beacon pod for the record, doing the job by rote, without thinking.

Carrying out those orders would be the hard part.

She plugged a jack from her suit into the ship’s intercom and set the controls to ALL HANDS. Suit radios would pick it up.

“This is First Officer Chu speaking on behalf of the captain,” she said. “All hands are ordered to prepare to abandon ship. Section leaders, follow standard abandon-ship drill. It is vital to your own safety that our evacuation be orderly. Rescue and medic-trained crews to the sickbay to aid in transport of wounded. The priority task is assistance to injured and trapped crew. Get your hurt comrades to escape pods. There is no immediate danger to the ship, and there is no need for panic. Do your assigned tasks and we will all get away safely.”

She shut off the intercom and leaned wearily against the command chair.
All of us?
she thought. No, that wasn’t true. There was one aboard who could never leave the
Duncan
alive.

For there are certain things expected of a commander, no matter how brief her tenure.

Chapter Sixteen
Deathblow

The captain’s gig
Malcolm
eased into the
Banquo’s
docking bay. A huge grappling clamp at the end of a mammoth manipulator arm took the gig gently between its jaws and swung it around, plugging it into a docking port. The port’s air lock cycled and the gig’s inner hatch swung open.

Ratings in pressure suits swarmed over the gig almost before the arm was retracted. They hooked in hold-down straps and retaining arms, securing the gig, ensuring that she would stay in one place—and one piece—once the
Banquo’s
fusion drive lit. Someone on the berthing deck plugged a datalink into a jack on the
Malcolm’s
hull. The starboardside display panels suddenly began echoing the
Banquo’s
key status reports and tactical displays.

It looked to be a tight ship. Spencer, a hundred conflicting drives and emotions rushing through his soul, fought back the urge to punch up the commlink and issue his own orders. Tallen Deyi had the situation well in hand, and Spencer had no desire to second guess or undermine his old executive officer. Not when his new one was about to die.

An alarm hooted inside the confined spaces of the gig, startling everyone. “Acceleration warning, repeating from the
Banquo,”
Shoemaker said apologetically, shutting off the sound.

The
Banquo’s
engines lit, shoving the
Malcolm’s
four passengers flat down into their acceleration couches. About four Gs, Spencer estimated. The
Banquo
had no hope at all of catching the
Duncan
—but already the escape pods were streaming forth from the big ship. Hundreds of sailors would need rescue. Every civilian ship’s captain who could possibly render aid would assist in the rescue, but
Banquo
and her sister ships were the fastest, most powerful craft at hand. They could get there first, and pick up the most survivors.

Indeed, the rescue had already begun. After all, the
Banquo
had picked up the
Malcolm.
Spencer forced that thought from his mind. He squirmed in his crash couch, but it was not the G-forces that made him uncomfortable.

Captain Allison Spencer did not like thinking of himself as a refugee.

Banquo
flew on into deep space,
Macduff
and
Lennox
following at fifty-thousand-kilometer intervals. After twenty minutes of high-G boost, the three destroyers performed a synchronized throttle-down, proceeding at one-G acceleration.

Spencer checked the repeater screen, echoing the displays from the
Banquo’s
plot board. He nodded. At current heading and acceleration, the destroyers would reach
Duncan’s
jump point a little more than an hour after the big ship. But the ships would have to break formation long before then to pick up the cruiser’s escape pods. The course Tallen Deyi had selected would keep the smaller ships close to the
Duncan’s
course all the way out—vital if they were going to be able to match course and velocities with the pods.

“Dostchem,” Spencer said. “Take your G-wave detector up to the engineering section. I want copies of it made immediately, and I want the plans for the copies transmitted to the other destroyers. No pod is to dock with any of our ships unless it is certified clear of the parasites. I don’t know or care about the civilian ships. Intelligence confirmed that there are no jump-capable civilian craft in system. If the parasites take civilian ships over, the enemy can’t get out into the Pact. Besides, if my guesses are right, the pods will be clean.”

“Why clean?” Suss asked.

“The parasites want to get
out
of this system. They’ll be smart enough by now to know we can detect the parasites, and won’t allow them aboard these ships if we can help it. They should know that grabbing a pod would be a longer-odds proposition than sticking with the ship they’ve already grabbed.”

“It sounds good,” Suss agreed.

“But I’m not taking chances. Dostchem, get moving. Shoemaker, go with her as escort. The crew is going to be jumpy, not too thrilled about letting aliens wander the ship.”

Shoemaker nodded, unwilling to speak. Horror was in his eyes. Suss looked at him and knew that he would carry his part in causing this nightmare to his grave. Dostchem, too, chose not to speak.

Suss waited for the others to leave the small craft before she turned to Spencer.

“Aren’t you going to go aboard yet, Captain?”

“No, not yet,” he said quietly. “You go ahead.”

Suss rose and left, with infinite reluctance. She stole a glance at his face before she stepped through the pressure lock. He was looking up, through the gig’s forward port, staring at a hole in the
Banquo’s
hull, as if he could see through the blank hull metal into space, into the sky where his ship was dying.

How could anyone who had not
felt
the duty of a ship understand? The lives, the treasure, the power that was a major ship, all under your control. How could anyone who did not understand the mere command of a ship dream of understanding what it felt like to
lose
a ship? The death of a child, a family wiped out, it must be like that.

She could read the loss in the set of his chin, the barren sorrow of his eyes. It was there, clear and unmistakable. Loss, pain, failure, guilt shrouded his dark-skinned face. She shivered, much unnerved. In some strange way, his wooden, unmoving expression was more chilling, more frightening than tears or howls of anger or hysterics would have been.

Suss looked again at her friend. There was an emptiness in his eyes, a blank spot in his soul burned away and left naked to the world, made visible. It was a look that she had never seen before, and one hoped never to see again.

She hurried out the hatchway and into the
Banquo.

Tallen Deyi watched his display boards with a fierce determination. They were
not
going to lose a single goddamned escape pod, and that was final. Even if they were still at extreme range—Hold it just a second. On the tactical screen. “Communications, was that a—”

“Yes, Sir, a pod. We weren’t expecting to see any this soon. This one must have launched before the abandon ship order.”

“Can he get to us under his own power?”

“Should be able to. We can adjust our acceleration to match—”

“Do it. And keep doing it for every pod we can see. Coordinate with the other ships so we don’t waste effort trying for pickup on the same pods.”

The thrust levels aboard
Banquo
surged and pulsed once or twice, and Deyi watched on the screen as the pod’s engines matched boost with the big ship. They were forced to shut down the engines long enough for the pod to dock, but by the time the engines were powered back up, the team working the rescue port was able to report an infuriated Chief Wellingham was aboard, being needlessly poked and prodded by a medic.

Then, radar began to detect the first full waves of capsules streaming away from the
Duncan.
There were too many of them to allow maneuvering the destroyer to make each pickup. Tallen Deyi ordered the
Banquo
to shut down her engines at a good average velocity match, and allow the auto-homing thrusters aboard the pods to do their job. The other destroyers followed suit, each at a slightly different velocity and range from the
Duncan,
thus increasing the chance that a given pod could reach a ship.

Even so, some pods could not reach
Banquo
or the other destroyers under their own power. The destroyers deployed their auxiliary craft to go out and haul in those survivors. None would be left to the civilian ships if Deyi could help it,

Aux vehicles reported an awkward moment when a crew went aboard the
Malcolm
in order to use her in the rescue plan. Captain Spencer was still aboard her, staring into nothingness. He came to himself in a start, apologized, and retreated to the
Banquo’s
wardroom, still dressed in the ill-fitting flightsuit he had found aboard the
Malcolm,
still barefoot, his many minor injuries untended.

Tallen Deyi knew that strict protocol required him to invite Spencer to the bridge, but he knew this man needed to be left alone. He had commanded
Banquo
for even less time than Spencer had commanded
Duncan,
and Tallen could not even imagine the depth of his own shock and sorrow, his own sense of loss, if luck had decreed that
his
ship had been the one to die. He gave strict orders to vacate the wardroom.

The man had to be alone in spirit. Let him be alone in goddamned fact.

###

The pods in the first wave were full of the badly injured. More than one pod docked with a destroyer or an aux ship with none but the dead aboard to rescue.

At last the destroyers relit their engines and boosted again, continuing their long stern chase of the renegade cruiser. Twice more they shut down their engines and pulled in more escape pods. The smaller ships were beginning to get overcrowded.

Banquo
was in worse shape than the others, as she still carried the
Duncan’s
full complement of marines, standing in guard against a second mutiny that had never come close to happening.

But sod the overcrowding,
Deyi thought. They can stand on each other’s shoulders if it came to that. Banquo was picking up every pod possible.

Besides,
he told himself bitterly,
there weren’t all that many pods coming in.

Duncan
would have many brave companions escorting her into the land of death.

###

No one was left.

Tarwa Chu stood on the be-gloomed, smoke-filled deck, alone. Battery-powered emergency lights lit the compartment in murky red, giving the place the feeling of an unhappy dream. But things were not as bad as they might be. All of the bridge crew had gotten away. As best she could tell, virtually every surviving member of the
Duncan’s
complement had escaped.

You call that success?
she asked herself. Tarwa knew herself, knew that she would always chase after hope. It was hard not to lie to herself, hard not to seek after a non-existent chance for victory. Tarwa could nearly convince herself that the abandon ship order had been needless after all. The parasites had ceased their attacks on the crew. Maybe the parasites were tired, maybe whatever they used for a power source was weakened, or their power over the ship’s circuitry was fading.

And maybe the legendary Easter Bunny would come to
Duncan’s
rescue.

No, the parasites had stopped the battle because they had won, because they had driven off the crew and there was no need to further damage the ship that would carry them to a new world, a wide-open universe.

She heard a distant rumbling double
thunk
shake through the deck, and knew another pod had got away. She wished them well. There would not be many more. Too many good men and women had died. With most power out, and intraship communication spotty at best, she had no way of knowing who was still aboard, or where they were, or what their circumstances were. Whoever was still aboard was nearly out of time.

She checked the bridge instruments and had to blink once or twice, struggling to read them, wondering why she could not understand them. Then she recalled that all bridge power had been cut hours ago. She shook her head in dismay. Her mind must be
soaked
with exhaustion if she was trying to read blank screens. She shook her head and checked her suit’s chronometer. Half an hour until the jump point, at best estimate.

But that would be too long to wait. Perhaps the parasites could find a way to boost faster, or jump sooner.

She had wanted to delay the inevitable as long as possible, but now the time for the inevitable had come.

She sat down, for a weary last time, in the command chair and felt a wave of hatred for the damn seat wash over her. How could she ever have imagined it a thrill or an honor to sit there? What pleasure was there in this sort of power? For a long moment, the bright clear plains of Breadbasket, of the homeworld she would never see again, swept through her mind.

But there was no longer time for that.

She punched in a code and flipped open the emergency control panel. She had entered the preliminary codes from another panel hours before. Now she shut down all the fail-safe devices. It only remained to activate the destruct switch. She set the dial to fifteen-minute delay and shoved home the plunger. Locked away, deep in the bowels of the ship, matched canisters of matter and antimatter emptied their contents into magnetic bottles. In fifteen minutes, the magnetic fields would die.