A Mind For Trade Part 22

Aboard the North Star, Rael Cofort held her breath as she watched the growing pinwheel of fire on the big screen in the survey lab. She was subliminally aware of fresh air wafting against her cheekj'smelling slightly astringent; she'd added some biotic scrub to it, to make sure that they didn't catch some disease after the long days of stale air. Power use was safe again, here only forty thousand kilometers above the h.e.l.l building below them. That amount of EM and particle flux could mask the output of a far larger ship-now their worry was the ship's shields.

She sucked in a deep breath, appreciating the sweet tang of fresh air. It would be a long time before she took it for granted again.

A long time if- She stopped the thought, and ran another scan on the spectacular evidence of the magnetic storm tearing at Hesprid's atmosphere. Somewhere, under the center of that maelstrom of ionization, was the Queen. Had been, for a month.

She touched a control; false color spilled across the display. Rainbow brilliance symbolized the intensities of the EM fields and particle fluxes lashing the archipelago where the ship had landed. She shook her head, her mind racing now to figure what kind of damage this might have done to the Queen's crew, right down to the cellular level. She and Tau would have to begin a course of treatments for them all, as soon as- If they- No. She turned her thoughts firmly back to the medical lab, and the full range of treatments that every ship carried for all types of radiation damage. She was glad that she and Tau, while they'd had the chance on Exchange, had run data surveys on the latest techniques and treatments and had laid in those as well.

As she watched the astonishing light display over the planet, she firmly kept her mind on those new medicines and the syndromes they treated; this led her to wonder what effect, if any, the heightened EM over the planet had had on the mysterious bond between the four apprentices.

When she ran out of speculations, she leaned down to tab the intercom to broadcast. Better to listen to the talk of the others than to be left alone with fruitless worries and fears.

". how long the Patrol will take to arrive?" Van Ryke was saying.

"If we were lucky enough to be heard at all, way out here," came Kosti's gravelly voice.

"Oh, we were heard, I'll guarantee that. Issuing a Nova Cla.s.s Alert would just about a.s.sure that they arrive ASAP and in force; the Patrol is known for its efficiency," Van Ryke retorted.

"We can guess when they heard it," Steen came in to say. "Unless there's a Patrol base we don't know about that's closer than the one on Sarmege II, a response would take a minimum of fifteen days until we could expect a response."

"So they could be here already."

"Or a week off," said Kosti gloomily.

Rael thought soberly, And even if they get here in time, then we get to worry about whether or not they'll consider our problems here to be Nova Cla.s.s Alert in size-and if not, the Charter we strove to protect will be revoked by people on our side.

Stop it. Stop it.

". don't know if those Shver const.i.tute 'unfriendly alien contact,' but I think what's going on below will qualify for planetary-scale disaster," Ya said with dry humor.

"Except there don't happen to be any sentients in danger-"

"Except ours," Jan said with a chuckle.

"Rip and the others?" Rael heard herself speak.

"And us, if we don't get moving soon," Jan added, still with high humor.

"We wait," came Jellico's voice. "Until the Queen lifts off, now no more than an hour away if they expect to make it."

"Wonder if the down crew saw the gas cloud," Tang Ya said. "I'm sure they'll have accessed the comsats by now."

They were chattering something ordinarily the captain tolerated only minimally unless they were either docked or safely in hyper. But he knew that the strain of waiting for something that mjght not happen would be the worse if they were all isolated with little to do except listen to the gibber of internal voices.

"We'll a.s.sume then that they are about to lift off."

We'll a.s.sume that they are still alive.

She must have spoken the thought, because Jellico said, "The pirates are acting as if they are."

Then Rael heard a short intake of breath, and Ya's voice, tight with excitement: "Signal-they've lifted off."

A short time later, a pinp.r.i.c.k of light materialized from the center pinwheel of light on the big screen and raced outward, seeming to move with agonizing slowness against the bulk of Hesprid IV below.

Rael tapped into the main computer, and an orbital plot windowed up, glowing lines showing two pirate ships, the first on an interception course. The third, Rael knew, was waiting on the other side of the planet.

"Their courses show they haven't seen us," Steen said, as Rael struggled to make sense of what she saw.

Jellico spoke a terse agreement.

Jan Van Ryke appeared in the lab and silently joined Rael. In this battle the two of them had nothing to do but wait. And watch.

And hope.

A flash appeared on the vid.

"Intruder firing," Ya said.

Rael held her breath, her gaze locked onto the glowing green line representing the Queen. It did not wink out, or glow into a sudden light burst, indicating a hit. Slowly, steadily, the point of light lifted away from the planet, its velocity seeming to fall. Rael realized that was an illusion.

"He's staying low," Ya said. "Problems?"

"More likely he's going for an entire orbit to lose his escape course in the EM from the islands," Steen responded.

"And we'll be in position by then," Jellico said. "We'll dump some coolant between them and the pirate-that and their own jet exhaust cloud will divert the blaster beam from the Solar Queen."

"Ah," Jan said, smiling at the screen. The brilliant colors washed over his face and glowed weirdly in his white hair. Rael smiled a little, feeling comforted by his presence.

"It will only work once, so it will have to be enough," the captain added.

They watched until the Queen disappeared over the limb of the planet, followed by the pirate ship. Then Jellico triggered the jets. Weight returned, reached 1.0 gee, pa.s.sed it.

"One-point-six gees," said Steen. He grinned. "Seems appropriate."

Jellico permitted himself a faint smile.

"Just so. Now, unfortunately, we have a bit of high-gee cargo-wrangling ahead-Jan? Rael, help him-let's spread a little trash in their way."

"Trash?" Rael said.

Van Ryke mirrored her surprise, and then they both laughed.

"Come, let us essay a creative gesture," Jan said. From the timbre of his voice, Rael guessed that the man was delighted to be able to take some action at last.

Moving with amazing speed for a man of his size and bulk, he zoomed down to the cargo area, Rael propelling herself after him at a breakneck pace. Once there, he grabbed a guide-handle, propped his other fist on his hip, and surveyed the neat rows of crates. To Rael the display meant nothing, but of course he knew what was in each.

Then suddenly he launched himself forward, and for an unmeasurable s.p.a.ce of time they hastily unsealed crates and packages, ushering an amazing variety of objects to the locks, where Kosti had jury-rigged a number of message torpedoes into trash launchers. While they worked, Van Ryke kept up a continuing stream of comments, some of which had Rael laughing so hard her middle ached.

". they've been teasing me about these Norsundrian noserings for years," he said, brandishing a fistful of gaudy objects with glitter-decorated trailers of plasweave. "So it was a bad buy. A very bad buy. I thought there'd be some race somewhere that might start a new fashion. Never admit a bad buy to the apprentices, of course. They have to think me omniscient, or they won't listen. Noserings!"

The noserings joined the jumble of other weird objects now piled in the cages that Kosti had welded to the torps.

". now, here's a valuable lesson. Never, ever, trust a Myrkwudi Trader when he, she, or it-you know they have a taboo about revealing their gender-offers to translate at the Emporium of Universal Congeniality on Durgewarth Five. Thought I was getting rare gems, and what I discovered in the crate after liftoff was Pipli toe molds. Of course I've told the others these are ritual items known all over the Rigelian frontiers. Not," he added with a laugh over his shoulder, "that they believed me. But they pretended, at least. One has to think of one's self-respect."

Never had she had so much fun while in so much danger! It seemed only minutes later-though her body ached from the unaccustomed exercise, after their days of inactivity-Jan tabbed the com, and said, "Locks full, Captain, and I'm about to seal them."

They retreated into the hatchway, the cargo master sealed the locks from the outside, and they retreated to the survey lab.

When they got there, Jellico's voice came over the com: "You in the lab. You won't want to miss your show."

"We're here and ready."

"Trash first," Steen said. "Fire One!"

Rael watched the torp drift out of the lock, att.i.tude jets flickering as it oriented itself. Then its main rocket flared and it abruptly vanished. She smothered a laugh at the idea of throwing crushed jakek tubes at a pirate ship armed with colloid blasters.

Except at the speed the pirates were traveling, those tubes could be as lethal as a laser strike on the hull- "Fire Two."

Another torp drifted out, oriented to a different course, and vanished. Jan heaved a mock sigh. "Those noserings were kind of intriguing," he said.

Rael snorted, her gaze riveted to the screen.

"Destruct One," Steen said. Rael envisioned the torp exploding, transforming its cargo into a high-velocity hailstorm of metal and plastic and frozen garbage. "Destruct Two. Destruct Three." He paused. "Orbits appear to be within parameters."

And just then Rael saw the fleeing Solar Queen arc.over the limb of the planet.

Jan was now silent. Rael and the cargo master watched without speaking, every moment stretching the suspense, until suddenly Jellico's voice came: "Show time." The captain triggered the retros, and they dropped like a stone from heaven toward the planet.

"Intruder, dead ahead-"

A double hammer blow hit the Solar Queen.

"Ariadne!" exclaimed Lossin; then his neck fur fluffed again. He said something in his own language, and then said, "North Star."

By any name, the angular ship now dwindling astern like a reddish comet, its hull glowing at the edges, was a welcome sight-but Rip felt sweat trickle into his eyebrows as he struggled to fathom Jellico's tactics.

Then the North Star's jets winked out, and sudden understanding galvanized him. He shut down the Queen's jets. Moments later the malevolent glare of the colloid blaster detonated astern, wiping out the view of the North Star with a wash of flame- -that followed the ion track of the North Star, bending away from the Solar Queen.

But the blast still tossed the ship violently upward. The jets stuttered as Rip triggered, them again, fighting for control. Gravity slammed him back as the ship jolted violently. He fought the controls,, battling against the raging violence of the weapon's wake, h A violent pulse shocked the bridge. Console lights went red. The Queen bucked and fought him like a wild animal- without the computer compensating he would have lost the battle. With the autopilot to damp the most violent movements, he brought the ship back on course. But its song was harsh now. There was a burring edge to it that spoke of hull damage, and air friction raking at a wound in the Queen's hull.

Craig Tau's report confirmed the feeling in the controls. "Hull temperature at ninety-five percent and climbing rapidly," Tau reported, his voice carefully pa.s.sionless. "We lost the port-under coolant tank; discharge in three minutes."

The Queen's cooling capacity had been crippled by the near miss, and her aerodynamics compromised. In less than three minutes, the ship would purge itself of excess heat- that, or risk the certain explosion of a coolant system already overstressed by the loss of a third of its capacity.

And then the jets, their efficiency sacrificed to the gush of superheated gas carrying away the heat from her hull, would no longer sustain her against atmospheric friction, now clawing with increased strength against the sear mark in her flank.

Rip could almost see it, so vivid was the image, just like the wound on the North Star when they'd found her.

The Queen was dying, and her death would plunge them into the h.e.l.l that was the rebirth of the Phoenix Trees.

Already the pinwheel of auroral light was all of the planet they could see, so bright it looked as though one of the planet's moons was reenacting its ancient birth from the planet's flank, lifting again from the gouge its genesis had torn in the crust of Hesprid IV.

"Intruder out of range," said Lossin, and in the next breath, "Retrofire ahead, five mark sixty-five, seventy-five hundred kilometers and closing."

It was the first of the pirates, dropping from its slower orbit to intercept the Queen in her swifter pa.s.sage.

Rip tapped frantically at his console.

"One minute to discharge," said Tau. "Hull temperature one hundred ten percent and rising."

Rip felt a sharp increase in the energy of the psi link. The minds of the others were buoying him up, ideas flooding his mind without invasion, sudden shifts of perception that fled even as his rational side tried to grasp at them. He shook his head to break his own focus, and concentrated on his screens.

Vast sheets of lightning tore across the sky below them, and above, yet still below the fleeing ship, the auroral light waxed almost solid. The slow wheel of electrical fire was mesmerizing; from its center reached a whisp of whirling light, a faint tornado of ionized particles questing blindly for the electrical connection that would fulfill the trees' destiny and give rebirth to Hesprid IV.

Were the Floaters now far enough away?

Another sheet of lightning glared up at him from the screen.

Was the Queen far enough away?

Not that it mattered.

"Intruder at three mark thirty-nine, thirty-four hundred kilometers and closing."

Intercept course. They were making sure.

Without warning, the perception shift tore at Rip's mind one more time. All four were there, a wheel of energy and awareness and suddenly, without any sense of ident.i.ty but a compelling clarity, Rip felt the pirate captain give the order to fire.

And suddenly, somehow he knew what to do.

Acting instinctively, Rip shut down the jets and triggered the coolant discharge manually, leaving an expanding cloud of vapor behind the fleeing ship that glowed and twisted weirdly as the particle storm from the sun and the EM from the cielan-ite islands tore at it.

The ship lurched. Again his straps pulled at him. The Queen's nose tipped downinto the maelstrom of light.

Seconds pa.s.sed in agonizing suspense. Had he imagined it?

A hammer blow worse than the first slammed at the ship, nearly blacking him out. His nose burned; blood. He blinked tears from his eyes, and concentrated fiercely. From the viewscreen, boiling flame flared across the sky above, beaming from a point of light stooping toward them- -and then bending up, over the ship, into the glowing cloud of gas the coolant discharge had left behind. A sphere of light detonated, expanding in an intricate flower of light.

And then, as if attracted by the beauty of a flower, the tentacle of light reaching from the center of the whirlpool quested outward and gently touched the surface of the sphere.

Almost slowly, light grew beneath the clouds, far below the wheeling auroral light, boiling up brighter and brighter until the clouds went black against the glare and dissipated as a tornado of electrical flame, a narrow tube of h.e.l.lfire, struck out and upward along the tentacle.

It hit the sphere, which blossomed like an enormous dandelion into a tracery of actinic light that raced around its surface to converge on the spot where the blaster track had created it. From there the world-spanning lightning bolt flashed up and hit the point of light that was the pirate ship. Light flared, a rosette of flame blossomed slowly, then tore to rags and blew away as the energies of the magnetic storm tore at its delicate structure. When the last wisp vanished, there was no trace of the pirate ship.

No one spoke; then Rip heard Tooe's small voice, "We did that?"

Dane's voice came, low and urgent, trying for distraction: "Yes, and no. We created an ionized cloud that turned their blaster beam into a direct tap into the planetary storm. A planet-sized lightning bolt. But nothing would have happened to them if they hadn't fired."