Star Peregrine Page 11

  Or should we wait? Even a corvette could do us a lot of damage. Maybe it will leave. We should stand down from Battle Stations. I should go back to bed. I'm in no shape to make good decisions.

  He would never get back to sleep, though. He stood. "Stand by. I'll be back shortly."

  There was no coffee in the wardroom. He started a fresh pot brewing, then went into the head, wincing when he saw his reflection. His hair was plastered to his skull on one side, standing up in tufts on the other. He looked dreadful, with dark bags under his eyes and crust on his eyelashes. He scrubbed his face, then filled the sink with cold water and plunged his whole face under the surface. He shook his head back and forth under the water, banging his nose on the curved steel of the sink, then stood up straight, feeling cold drops trickle down his neck.

  He felt a good deal more awake. It was a trick he'd learned during Basic Officer Training, when getting enough sleep had been a pure impossibility. He did what he could for his hair, then dried his face and went to see if the coffee was ready.

  By the time he returned to the bridge he felt alert and reasonably clear-headed. He resumed his seat. "Any fresh developments?"

  "The corvette is adjusting its orbit," Harris said.

  Tom leaned forward in his seat. "Is it moving to a higher orbit?" That could mean it was getting ready to leave the system – or attack the Kestrel.

  "Lower orbit," O'Reilly said.

  That was a pity. He'd really been hoping the corvette would leave. And if it attacked the Kestrel, well, he'd have one less decision.

  The Kestrel's main engine was still engaged, he realized, sending the ship hurtling faster and faster toward the distant planet. The odds of being seen were fairly small, since the bulk of the ship would hide the burn of the engines.

  Still …

  "Cut thrust."

  "Cutting thrust," O'Reilly acknowledged.

  "What's our time to the base?"

  "One hour, fourteen minutes," O'Reilly reported. "We'll need a small course adjustment when we're closer, but we're pretty much pointing straight at the Boot."

  If we don't attack, we need to decide now. Make a course adjustment early, while we're harder to spot. But turning away would be a mistake. This was their chance, and it would be foolhardy to squander it. "Maintain course," he said. "We've got an hour to gather intel. We'll accelerate when we get close." The risk of being spotted would grow as the distance closed. He wanted the Kestrel moving quickly by the time she was detected. "Stand down from Battle Stations."

  "Standing down," Onda said, and tapped his console. The "All Clear" signal sounded over the bridge speakers.

  Now that I'm awake with a stomach full of coffee, I should really try to take a nap. Acid burned at the back of his throat, reminding him he'd been getting by on coffee and stress instead of real food. He looked around the bridge. The crew was alert without being tense, ready without being too afraid. He could leave the ship in their hands.

  "Let me know if anything changes." He stood. "I'm going to get some breakfast."

  There was a note on the cooler in the wardroom, reminding everyone that the ship was now on reduced rations. Tom ignored it, dropping a couple slices of bread into the toaster and putting water on for oatmeal. The overworked steward hadn't been in for a while. Tom, Vinduly, Harper, and Sawyer were largely fending for themselves.

  I need to tell O'Reilly he's got wardroom privileges. He's Acting First Officer, after all. And he's more likely to start a fresh pot when he empties the last one. Tom sat down, tapped his bracer, and sent a message to Bridger while he waited for his breakfast to cook.

  Cancel rationing. Let people eat as much as they want.

  One way or another, everything was about to change.

  The toaster beeped, telling him his toast was ready, the sound almost drowning out a chime from his bracer. "Captain. The corvette is landing."

  Landing? What does he mean? Maybe I'm not as awake as I think I am. "What are you talking about?"

  "The corvette. It's going into Rivendell. It's landing at the base."

  For a long moment all Tom could think was that he would have to abandon his breakfast and hurry to the bridge. He was hungry, and he hated to walk away from hot food. "I'll be right there."

  By the time he reached the bridge his vexation was gone. The corvette had just handed him a massive tactical advantage. With luck, the other ship was going in for a complete overhaul. More likely it was refuelling, or rotating crew. It probably wouldn't be docked for long, but if he could get there in time …

  "Accelerate hard," he said as he walked into the bridge. "I want us at close range before they can get back into open space."

  "Accelerating," said O'Reilly, sliding a finger across the navigation console.

  "How quickly can we get there?"

  "Fourteen minutes if we keep accelerating," O'Reilly said. "Twenty if we want to stop when we get there."

  That meant ten minutes of hard deceleration, with the Kestrel's blazing engines pointed straight at the base. They would be spotted immediately, and ten minutes was plenty of time for the crew of the corvette to react.

  "I want … let me see … four minutes of deceleration when we get there."

  O'Reilly promptly tapped his screen. "I'm cutting acceleration now." He did more tapping. "At our current velocity, we'll arrive in twenty-seven minutes. We'll need four minutes and thirty-eight seconds of deceleration."

  "I can live with that." Tom, standing in the centre of the bridge, looked at his chair and decided not to sit. "Sound Battle Stations when we're ten minutes out. Oh, and I want people in the Forward and Aft Observation Rooms." He looked around the bridge. "Am I forgetting anything?"

  After a moment of silence O'Reilly said, "I don't think so, Sir."

  "In that case, I'm going to finish my breakfast."

  The Kestrel plunged toward the Boot tail-first, engines blazing, with nothing visible through the bridge windows but empty space. Tom put a tactical display on one screen of his console and the view from a tail camera on the other screen. He watched the Boot emerge from the darkness of deep space, a black smear barely discernible from the void behind it. Zin was inconsequential at this distance, hardly brighter than any other star.

  As the planet grew he leaned closer to the screen, trying to pick out the base. It took him a couple of minutes to figure out that the base was over the horizon. That gave him a rush of hope mixed with fear. The corvette wouldn't see them coming, not unless someone had set up scanners on this side of the planet.

  On the other hand, it meant the Kestrel wouldn't see Rivendell until the last possible moment. There could be a heavy cruiser sitting on the planet's surface. There could be anything.

  "Cutting engines," O'Reilly announced, and the stars moved as he turned the ship around. The dark bulk of the planet swung in from one side, then tilted and dropped as the Kestrel levelled out just above the surface.

  Tom tapped at his screen, switching to a view from a ventral camera. The surface of the Boot swept by, too dark to make out any details. It was an airless world, he knew, about the size of Earth's moon. The surface would be crater-pocked and arid, the regolith dark brown.

  "The base should be just over this ridge," O'Reilly said, his voice tense. Tom couldn't see a ridge ahead of them, just a dark line where the stars ended, but he caught a glimpse of a bright wireframe display on O'Reilly's console showing the contour of the ground below. How do I get that view?

  "There it is," said Harris.

  Three points of light appeared in the distance, growing and spreading as the ship rushed closer. Tom glanced down and saw that his tactical display had changed. It now showed a view of Rivendell constructed from radar and infrared scans.

  A perfectly conical mountain dominated the view, a vast heap of tailings from the long-ago mining operation. A spindly superstructure stood beside it, a frail-looking thing almost a kilometer high. At the base of the superstructure, close by the skirt of the mountain,
huddled a cluster of buildings.

  He zoomed in the display. Domes surrounded a large rectangular structure, with warehouses and blocky workshops scattered around it. The biggest structure, the rectangular building at the heart of the base, had a roof that opened like the lid of a box. The lid was at about forty-five degrees, and it was rising.

  "I see the corvette," Harris said. "Permission to fire missiles?"

  Tom couldn't see the ship, but he was prepared to trust Harris. "Do it."

  He looked up in time to see the blazing tails of three missiles as they raced away from the Kestrel. They hurtled straight toward the top of the large rectangular building, then vanished one by one. Tom saw the glitter of a laser beam and watched one missile crash without exploding against the inside surface of the rising roof.

  Only then did he realize that the corvette was inside that enormous building. She was, in fact, about to launch through the opened roof.

  "She can't see us over the top of the wall," Tom said. "Fire the next missile straight ahead. Blow a hole in the side of that building. Put the next missile through about half a second behind it."

  Harris didn't respond, just worked his console. Two more missiles flashed out, so close together the glow of their rocket engines almost merged. They were visible for barely a second before an explosion erupted against the side of the large building. Tom threw a hand up, shielding his eyes, and lowered it in time to see a second explosion glowing over the top edge of the wall.

  Then the corvette rose into view. Four more missiles flashed out from the Kestrel, Harris not waiting for permission. Several alarms sounded at once, announcing laser strikes and incoming missiles. Tom looked down at his tactical display and saw that the Kestrel's automated systems had destroyed half a dozen missiles in the blink of an eye.

  The corvette had done just as well, taking out all four missiles in the Kestrel's second volley.

  For a moment it was a battle of lasers, the Kestrel jerking from side to side to throw off the aim of the enemy ship. The corvette, only just clearing the walls of the rectangular building, couldn't dodge, and Harris crowed in triumph. Three more missiles flew toward the corvette, and this time, one missile struck.

  We must have destroyed one of their laser turrets. We've got them now.

  "Slow us down," Harris said. "We'll overshoot."

  O'Reilly tapped at a screen, and the Kestrel's forward navigational thrusters fired. Tom felt the faintest hint of a tug as the ship's internal force fields absorbed the change in momentum. He could see the corvette with his naked eyes now, a compact, rounded shape that made him think of a shark. It was lit by its own running lights, and by a light high in the superstructure above.

  It was also lit by flames. A cone of fire sprayed from the nose of the ship on the lower port side. They had a fire on board, and a slow air leak.

  A shower of sparks erupted from the side of the corvette's hull. "That's their last forward-facing laser turret," Harris said. "They're sitting ducks now." Without taking his eyes from the tactical console he said, "Shoot them down, or see if they want to surrender?"

  Then he cursed as an alarm sounded, and lifted a finger, holding it poised over his console without quite touching. "Missiles," he said. "But we got them."

  "She's turning," O'Reilly warned, and Harris said, "That'll bring their aft turrets to bear."

  A navigational thruster flared just above the wound in the nose of the corvette as it began to spin. Tom said, "Shoot them down."

  The missile was free of the Kestrel and hurtling toward the corvette before he finished speaking. It took the smaller ship halfway between nose and tail, and the explosion was spectacular. Hull plates spun away and the corvette dropped. It landed hard on the slope of the mountain of tailings, then rolled down, turning over several times before it came to a stop against the base of a scaffold.

  For a long, frozen moment silence reigned on the bridge. Then Harris said, "I think we got him."

  Chapter 15

  "Remember, we're all on the same channel. So keep the chatter to a minimum."

  Alice Rose stood in the Kestrel's shuttle bay with a laser rifle in her hands, listening as Lieutenant Harper lectured the team that was about to storm Rivendell. He'd created four squads, each led by a marine and bolstered by a mix of spacers and revolutionaries. Her own squad consisted of Unger, herself, Collins, and five tense-looking spacers, all of them armed, all of them in vac suits.

  "Notice that our suits don't match," Harper went on. "Take a good look at your squad. Look at the other squads. I don't want any friendly fire incidents."

  The marines wore matte black suits with plenty of armor, the same gear they'd worn when they stormed the Free Bird. The spacers wore suits designed to be visible, in blue with padding and fixtures done in white.

  Among the revolutionaries, every suit was unique. Alice's suit was burgundy, with heavy black abrasion pads along the forearms and across the chest and back. She'd painted tiger stripes on her helmet. She knew the suits of her shipmates by heart, but the spacers and marines wouldn't. Don’t be the first person through any doorways, she told herself. The marines are all right, but these navy types look jumpy.

  The marines carried some kind of souped-up super rifle, a massive thing that would no doubt make them grateful for the Boot's reduced gravity once they got out onto the surface of the planet. By the look of it, Unger's weapon could fire slugs, flechettes, grenades, or laser beams.

  The rest of the squad carried either crater guns or laser rifles, but she noted cynically that she and every revolutionary she could see held a laser rifle. The crater guns were much more dangerous, and it was clear the marines wanted them kept away from people they viewed as pirates.

  They hadn't let the revolutionaries join up in a single squad, either. Alice and her shipmates had served together for months, some of them for years. They made a good team. But they were divided among all four squads, and Harper had shut down any discussion of that fact.

  Distrustful cockroach.

  "Keep your eyes open," Harper said. "Watch your targets. Be sure before you pull the trigger. And don't fixate on the first target you see. Keep looking around. Now, let's move out."

  Harper led the way through the force field at the front of the bay, hopping down to the umber soil of the Boot. A pair of marines flanked him, and the three of them set off at a kind of bouncing trot, each step carrying them high above the surface.

  "Fingers off triggers," Unger said. "Remember to watch your step as you leave the ship. It's quite a big gravity change." He lifted a finger to the side of his helmet. "Close faceplates and follow me."

  Alice closed the faceplate of her helmet and felt cool air blow across her lips and chin as the suit's air system activated. Someone swore, the sound transmitting through her helmet radio, and a different voice said, "Cut the chatter."

  Unger strode across the deck, Alice and the rest of the squad falling in behind him.

  She'd scoffed inwardly at his warning about the gravity change. She wasn't some pampered navy slob spending months at a time on a huge ship with perfectly reliable gravity. Still, the combination of an eighty-percent gravity drop and the need to hop down more than a meter to reach the ground meant she staggered as she landed.

  Collins landed better, but he spent a moment wobbling before he took his first step. A spacer came down behind him, falling to one knee. The next spacer fell flat, dropping his crater gun. Alice turned away to reduce the woman's embarrassment, but she couldn't suppress a grin.

  The squad loped across a short stretch of rusty regolith, puffs of dust rising from their boots. Ahead of them, Harper and his two flankers reached the base of the large rectangular building. The marine on his left took a fist-sized object from his belt, fiddled with it, then released it. Alice watched as the little machine rose, then zoomed into the ragged hole the missile strike had left in the wall.

  A tap on her shoulder made her look to her left. Collins made an impatient gesture, then f
ollowed the rest of the squad as they circled to the left. She looked around. Another squad was circling right. She hurried after Collins, then dropped to one knee, rifle ready, as Unger positioned the squad members with waves and a pointed finger.

  Strangely, there was no conversation from the three marines. They had to be using a separate channel, she decided, only broadcasting to the others when they chose.

  Harper checked the screen on the sleeve of his vac suit, then touched a pad on the wall in front of him. Only when a vertical bar of light appeared did she realize the three marines were standing in front of an airlock.

  Knuckles rapped her helmet. She looked up into Unger's face. He gave her a disgusted look, used two fingers to indicate his own eyes, then pointed around at the shadowy landscape. The message was clear.

  Stop staring at Harper. Look around.

  She flushed and obeyed, noting from the corners of her eyes that the entire squad was fixated on the airlock. Unger went from one person to another, getting their attention, telling them to look around.

  "Alpha squad. Move in."

  When Collins stepped in front of her she remembered that Alpha was her squad. She rose to her feet, taking a last glance around. The Kestrel loomed in the background, a huge shape made tiny by the gargantuan superstructure above it. Two more squads were arrayed between the ship and the buildings of the base, tense figures with rifles in their hands, watching as Alpha Squad started to move.

  She followed the rest of the squad as Unger led them toward the airlock. She could see inside the lock now. It was brightly lit, an empty rectangular space big enough to accompany a large truck. There was plenty of room for the squad.

  As she reached the entrance to the airlock she saw the faint shimmer of a forcefield. As she stepped through it the air quality indicator light inside her helmet turned yellow, indicating air pressure, then green, meaning the air was clean and breathable.

  Still, they waited for the outer doors to close before the inner doors slid open. It was a wise precaution, she supposed. The building had been clobbered with a missile. A mechanical failure or an angry saboteur could shut down the force field without warning. Having both doors open simultaneously would be convenient – but foolhardy.