Theirs Not To Reason Why: An Officer's Duty Part 27

She severed the four-limbed "hand" from the rest of the dead alien, then cut through the joint of the macrojuncture, ignoring the blood seeping from the limb. From the elbow at the end of the arm-bone to about where the midforearm would be on a Human, the Salik version of an arm split into two suckered tentacles. Below the macrojuncture lay the microjunctures, where each tentacle again split in two, forming four longish, tapered digits lined with yet more suckers.

Carrying the severed pair of limbs over to one of the consoles, Ia studied the controls for a long moment, long enough to rock through another explosion. Then, with great care to match up what she saw in the timestream possibilities, she draped the tentacles just so over the pressure-sensitive controls. Prodding into the flesh with the flat of her knife, she gently squeezed air out of key suckers, working more patiently than quickly.

"Anything I can do, sir?" Kipple asked her.

"Yes, actually." Gently prying up a misplaced sucker, she tugged the tentacle into better position and carefully pressed the segment of flesh back into place. "Okay, I'm going to need some help on this. Private Natmah, you're already out of your suit. Get over here. Kipple, get out of your suit and join us. We'll need at least five hands to pull this off, if I remember right."

"Aye, sir." Moving over to join her, Natmah wrinkled his nose at the dead pair of limbs sprawled over the otherwise smooth-surfaced console. "Uhh...what sort of help, sir?"

Ia winced as something banged into the sealed doors protecting them from invasion by the rest of the ship's very much alive crew. "We're going to save ourselves, that's what."

"How?" Culpepper demanded over the whines and hisses of Kipple powering down and opening up his mechsuit. "Our ship had to flee to draw off that second cruiser while we were still in the act of boarding this one. The rest of the shakking frogs out there could blow us up at any moment, or burn through and eat us! How are we going to save ourselves?"

"We're in the engineering section, Private," Ia reminded him. "With the bridge destroyed and voided to s.p.a.ce, we control what's left of this ship. Natmah, pay attention. When I tell you to, on count one, I need you to press down right here, and pull up over here. Then on count two, you'll press down on these two spots, and on count three, end with pulling up on these two, and stretching your pinky finger over to press down here."

Kipple, free of his armor, joined her. "Lemme guess, we're playing with the controls, sir? Gonna muck up lifesupport for 'em?"

She shook her head. "By now, lifesupport is on independent systems in the intact parts of the ship. No, we're going to mess with the one thing we can affect. As for you, Kipple, on count one, I need you to pull up here, and here. On count two..."

"Wait, sir. I have a highlighter in my thigh pocket," Kipple told her. Retreating to his armor, he opened up the compartment. Grabbing the oversized pen, he brought it back and uncapped it. "Here, mark all the spots, so we know exactly where to touch, sir."

"Good idea, Corporal," Ia praised, pleased by his creativeness.

Natmah grimaced. "It won't be easy to see, given this meioa was chartreuse and the pen is yellow, but I suppose it's better than getting the wrong spot..."

Nodding, Ia took the pen and carefully marked with tiny numbers and up or down arrows. She didn't dare press hard, but she did ink over everything a few times to intensify the color. When she was through, she tucked the pen over her ear, under the band of her headset, and grabbed her own spots on the carefully draped limbs. "Places, everyone..."

Another explosion shuddered through the hull, making Natmah's fingers pull up unexpectedly. He quickly released the tentacle, but the monitors up above their heads-placed so that the eyes of a Salik could comfortably read them, not the eyes of a Human-flickered and changed, a symbol appearing. Both men froze while Ia carefully pressed down and up in three spots, two of them thankfully close together. The screen returned to its normal view.

At her nod, they returned their hands to their starting positions. "Okay...on the letters countdown. Charlie...bravo...alpha...One! And...two! And...three! Good job!"

They lifted their hands away, Natmah surrept.i.tiously scrubbing his fingertips against the edge of the console below the sensitive zone. Ia noticed it peripherally, but it wasn't important. Most of her attention was on the rising blue bar on the center right screen. It gradually darkened, slowly turning purple. Orange lights started flashing, and an almost musical alarm started wailing up and down. Reaching down, she grabbed two of the tentacles and lifted up on certain spots, then pressed down on a third control. The indigo violet hue stalled and stabilized, and the Salik version of a klaxon cut off, though the orange lights still flashed, clashing with the greenish hue of the overhead lights.

"What did we just do, sir?" Kipple ventured to ask as she sighed and straightened.

"We just increased the gravity field in every other part of the ship that still has gravity. Specifically, to 3.1Gs Standard. I can guarantee that any unsuited Salik within range of the weaves under the deckplates is flat on their front or back at the very least, and most likely suffering from broken flipper-joints...and struggling just to breathe. The suited ones might be upright, but they're struggling just to breathe, too." She looked away from the monitor and smiled grimly at the others, including the unnerved Culpepper. "Salik are lightworlders, like the Gatsugi. Their bodies are not designed to stand in anything heavier than 2.5Gs max for anything longer than a handful of seconds. The only reason their gravity weaves go higher than that is for the insystem safety fields, to help counteract abrupt acceleration forces. The moment I realized their lightworlder physiology had a weakness, I asked an engineering friend versed in Sallhash how to disable the standard Salik overrides a few years back."

"Well, that's just fine and dandy for you, sir," Private Bissel retorted, "but the rest of us are lightworlders. You could stroll out of here at any time, but we're stuck in here."

"Yes, we are, Private, but only until we're rescued. It'll take a few hours, but most of the Salik will have pa.s.sed out or died from oxygen deprivation by then," Ia told him. "I need to stay in here and monitor the controls, since I'm the only one fluent enough in Sallhash to try something like this. But I need two of you to volunteer to go back into the boarding pod, and cycle through the other airlock. There's a chance there were suited Salik in the non-gravitied parts of the ship. We cannot afford to let any survivors blow a hole in that pod. Not when it's the only thing keeping the air in this section of the ship."

"I'll go, sir," Kipple volunteered, heading back toward his mechsuit.

"And I'll go," Lee volunteered, hefting her oversized rifle.

"Good meioas. It won't be more than a couple hours at most," Ia promised her crew. "The fleet knows we encountered two Salik ships, and launched boarding pods. They'll be coming in force to read the lightwaves and look for survivors. Use your suits to broadcast on lightwave bandwidths about our situation. I would try to figure out the communication system on this ship, but I suspect that the comm systems are probably b.o.o.by-trapped with pa.s.scodes, to prevent their enemies from figuring out what frequencies they use."

Nodding, both meioas headed for the side chamber where the rearmost of the two boarding pods had clamped onto the enemy ship. Ia lifted her chin at the monitors overhead.

"Natmah, keep an eye on that screen. If anything on it changes, tell me at once," she ordered. "I need to check on Private Dixon again."

Crossing to the woman on the floor, Ia knelt at her side. When Ia touched her face, Dixon managed to pry open her eyes. "I...heard you...sir. I held on..."

"Good meioa," Ia praised. "Keep it up, and I'll take you back into the fold as soon as your leg's been restored."

A twitch of her lips might have been a smile, or might not. Dixon parted her lips, breathed in deep, then stiffened. "How...how bad, sir?"

Ia didn't sugarcoat it. "You've lost everything from the knee down, right side. But I cauterized it fully. Of course, this means they'll have to cut off the dead flesh, and then you'll probably have to spend four or five months stumping around with your leg in a goo-cast."

"If they...get in here...shoot me first," Dixon muttered.

"Like h.e.l.l I will, Private," Ia countered. "I'm shooting them first! You'll just have to wait for your turn, like everyone else."

That provoked something closer to a hint of a smile than the first one. Patting her on the shoulder, Ia rose, glad the other woman would live. Helia Dixon was very, very good at repairing and working with force field technology.

Ia intended to recommend the private be placed on board one of the capital ships patrolling the Blockade after the first month of regenerative healing had begun; on a capital ship, she could stump around and still do her job. From there, things would start to fall into place for the other woman. With the right roll of the percentages, Ia would be getting a better-trained, combat-ready force field tech, one used to the needs of a much bigger vessel than a Delta-VX, and a force field tech who was comfortable serving under Ia and her sometimes unorthodox ways.

She looked at the others, Kipple sealing up the last panels of his suit, Lee waiting by the door that led to the pod, Bissel and the others.

"Remember this trick, and try to think of others for situations like this. There are always options. Even giving up and allowing yourself to be captured is technically an option," she added, earning a few odd looks. "Between the moment of being captured and the moment of being eaten, there is the possibility that you can escape. But do try to find other ways, first. Your duty as soldiers is to complete your mission. My duty as an officer is to see the mission is completed with the greatest effect for the least loss of lives and supplies. I cannot do that without you.

"Now, let's keep an eye on our situation, inside and out. We still have a few more hours before we're out of this mess."

MARCH 11, 2495 T.S.

SYSTEM'S EDGE

SS'NUK LULK 53

Part of one of the outlying star systems beyond the Blockade dropped off her internal radar. When Ia finally realized it was missing, she discovered why. Sort of. Ia already knew it was one of the secret Salik military bases, but not one that she could reveal to her superiors, so she hadn't kept more than a peripheral awareness of it in the back of her mind. For one, there was no way to reveal it, without revealing her own abilities. That, she could not yet risk. For another, after the third week, the blank spot started to move away from the hidden base.

Whatever it was, it stayed away from inhabited systems, tracing a snaking course between stars at FTL speeds. She knew it was "missing" because anything to do with that part of s.p.a.ce/time had turned a misty, impenetrable shade of grey. The problem was, any deviation from the expected was a danger to her mission. The base, she could still leave alone. This blank spot was the problem.

It was almost as if the Salik had developed their own version of Meyun Harper. Which was impossible, because there was no way in a slimy h.e.l.l that Ia would ever fall in love with one of them. Yet whatever-it-was acted just like a Meyun-style void, thwarting her ability to predict its immediate surroundings, and being detectable mostly only because of the fact that it left a bubble-shaped void in the waters of Time.

Now she sat on the edge of a system the void would soon skim. It had taken her four weeks to both build up the courage to confront that void and find a spot in her patrol schedule where she and her crew weren't actually needed. The risks of the unknown it represented had to be confronted, however. If she didn't, many, many more voids would pop up in the near future, that much was clear. That would threaten to unravel her careful weaving of the coming wars, and that, she could not allow.

Taking the Audie-Murphy two full star systems beyond their a.s.signed patrol zone would raise numerous eyebrows among her superiors. Doing so without reporting their new position the moment they emerged from hypers.p.a.ce would raise even more. It was a double-violation of procedures that could get her into serious trouble.

Waiting in the dark, with most of the ship's systems shut down to minimize their lightwave signature, Ia practiced her excuses over and over in her mind, fine-tuning them depending upon each version's shift of the probabilities.

"Sir?" Corporal Kipple finally asked from his position at the engineering station. "Shouldn't we be changing duty shifts by now, sir? It's been two and a half hours."

Ia shook her head. In the next few minutes...more or less...the epicenter of that blank spot would reach this point and stay here for a little while. Probably to refuel, considering they'd emerged perilously close to the thin band of ice chunks floating in the system's Oort cloud zone. "Stay alert, and stay at your posts. Eyes to the boards, thoughts on your tasks."

"What are we waiting for, sir?" Culpepper asked, his tone skeptical. He was another rising problem, but one that would be easy enough to deal with, sooner or later. If they survived whatever-it-was that was headed their way, that was. She had placed him at the ship's systems post, since he was very good at mult.i.tasking in a crisis, but there was no way she would've let him get near the gunnery controls. That position was covered by Private Sikmah.

For the first time since she was a child, Ia felt the urge to chew her nails. She refrained; any show of nervousness on her part would make her bridge crew equally unsettled. Or rather, more unsettled. Culpepper's question needed to be answered with the same unflappable calm she had displayed on all other, more temporally visible occasions.

Plus, she decided, it might help cover my asteroid if my crew knew my "reasons" for deviating so far from their orders. "I've been having dreams, for the last few weeks. A very strong and disturbing dream. The world I come from, you learn to pay attention to repeating-Holy!"

Her shout startled the bridge crew. Zapping out of faster-than-light in a flash that lit up their primary screens, a huge monstrosity appeared. Simultaneously, a wave of white static overwhelmed Ia's brain. Gasping in pain, she curled over against her restraints. Her left hand was still stuck in the flight glove, and instinct kept it carefully still, but her right came up to clutch at her forehead in a futile attempt to contain the pain.

The problem wasn't physical, however. It was psychic. Gritting her teeth, Ia forced herself through her grounding and centering exercises, pushing up stronger, harder shields-until that made things worse. Quickly backing off, she let go of all efforts to use her abilities. Only then did the pain recede, leaving her mind-blind and reeling. Grabbing for the only thing that made sense, her physical senses, she stared at the screens displaying the object now coasting toward them, slowing no doubt to collect ice from the fragments of old comets giving them a sc.r.a.p of cover.

It was wrapped in the dark grey, mirror-polished contours of ceristeel plating, of all treacheries, but bore the distinct configuration of a Salik warship, like a flattish, elongated, five-lobed star. If a warship could be four times the largest seen to date, that was. It almost qualified as a Battle Platform in size...and the moment Ia realized that, she knew out of sheer, paranoid instinct that it could take on a Battle Platform.

"Holy shakk..." Culpepper swore, staring at the ship bearing down on them.

"Ah, sir?" Private Sikmah asked from his position at the gunnery controls. "It's headed straight for us, sir. We have maybe two minutes before we're in range of its guns. What do we do, sir?"

"We...we have to destroy it." Ia murmured, staring at her screens. It was the only thing she could think of to do.

All three men choked. Kipple recovered first, spluttering. "What? Sir, have you lost your shakking mind? That ship will eat us for lunch, never mind the Salik who built it!"

Her resolve firmed. Ia didn't take her eyes off her primary screen. "Corporal, we have to destroy it. That thing is big enough, it can take on a Battle Platform and win." Switching on the ship's intercom, she broadcast to the rest of the crew. "All hands, this is Lieutenant Ia. You have twenty seconds to lock and web yourselves in place, mark! Engineering, you have twenty-five seconds to bring all systems back online, mark!"

"You're crazy!" Culpepper argued as lights started coming back on across their boards. "I didn't sign up for a suicide run!"

"Neither did I, Private," Ia snapped, bringing her right hand back to the controls. "Eyes to the boards, thoughts on your tasks. All hands, brace yourselves!"

Her head still hurt, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but the wild scheme that was their one shot at survival. Flexing her fingers in the glove, she hit the thruster controls with her free hand. There was no way they could escape from a dead stop, not when pointed nose-first at a ship that was headed almost straight toward them. No way they could escape detection, either. Any moment now, the Salik version of lightwave a.n.a.lysis would pick up their own existence, and the Salik version of capital ship guns would turn toward them.

The only choice left was to confront their unexpected, utterly unwelcome problem. Now, before they were noticed.

"Sir!" Kipple called out as the Audie-Murphy picked up speed. "Do I send a message to the Fleet?"

"Send our coordinates and emergency beacon only, then cut all power to the hyperrelay and shunt it to the hyperarray. We don't have time for anything else. Engineering, give me every last sc.r.a.p of spare power to the insystem thrusters and the aft shields in twenty seconds!"

"Sir...we're headed straight for that warship," Sikmah warned her, eyes on his screens. "When do you want us to fire, sir?"

"Negative. All gunnery pods, shunt all power to thrusters and aft shields. I repeat, all power to thrusters and aft shields-dammit, I said aft shields, Gundrich, not fore!" Ia snapped into her headset mike, seeing the wrong set of telltales lighting up around the second of the two miniature ships displayed on her second tertiary screen. Her fingers danced across the controls. "Warming up the hyperarrays."

"Sir, we're not going fast enough!" Kipple protested. "We don't have enough room-the wormhole will collapse on top of us!"

"Sir, the Salik warship is powering up its lasers!" Culpepper warned her, his voice overlapping Kipple's. "Projectiles launched!"

"Not on us, Kipple," Ia half growled, half prayed. Head aching from the instinct to try and use her gifts, she danced her right hand over the controls, warming up the hyperjump dish at the nose of the Audie. The Salik ship loomed huge in her primary screen, the distance between her tiny vehicle and the behemoth shrinking rapidly. "And lo, I followed the will of the Prophet, for the Prophet was never wrong!"

"Message away, sir-Sir! We're-Ungh!" Sikmah cried out, just as Ia swirled the paired ships, dodging the incoming missiles in a spiral that swapped port and starboard. Her hand danced again, warming up the nosecone on the Murphy half. Sikmah's voice rose into a broken squeak. "Sir, we're going to hit them-!"

Ia sparked the hyperrift with a smack of her thumb and sc.r.a.ped the thrusters down with her fingers, shifting all power to the dorsal panels on the Audie. That, combined with the snap of her left hand, flipped them over and shoved them downward just enough to get them angling off-course from that spark of light. Golden white energies swirled into existence right on the nose of the enemy craft. Brighter, redder lights exploded as they rushed past, skimming so close to the underside of the alien ship that the collision klaxons blared. Kipple shouted, and Culpepper screamed, clutching at his harness, while Sikmah choked on a curse.

Snapping the heel of her left hand in the thruster glove as they flew past, right hand cutting the thruster grid for just a moment, Ia flipped the Audie-Murphy once more fore to aft, and sparked the second hyperrift onto the rear of the behemoth as they flew by. It, too, exploded, the view shifting from her primary screen to her third tertiary. Pulling out of the snap before they could tumble off-course, Ia shoved her fingers up the power controls, pouring everything into the rear thrusters.

The second hyperrift swirled open, then imploded onto the engine section of the Salik ship, triggering a cascade of explosions that raced back to meet the first implosion and its own chain reaction. Energy met energy, as the abruptly compressed matter created a pair of very brief, very bright b.a.l.l.s of artificial fusion. Her third tertiary screen, the one showing her the view of everything behind her, blossomed golden white, then blacked out as the sensors protectively shut down.

A second and a half later, the fireball caught up with them, vibrations rumbling through the ship as the plasma molecules strafed their hull. Pings and bangs and crunches warned them of debris. .h.i.tting the paired ships. With the debris came a release from her headache so abrupt, it was almost a new pain of its own. Dropping waist-deep into the timestreams, Ia flexed and flicked her hands blindly, dodging the wreckage of the ship hurtling upon them from behind.

She dodged most of it-the worst of it-but not all of it. A final hard clannnng was followed by the rumbling shriek of tearing metal. Instinct made her hit the emergency release clamps. The Audie parted company roughly from its twin, sending both ships into a tumble. "Yeoman Bunker, take the Murphy! Shields to all sides!"

The Audie jolted again, triangular wings catching on the plasma waves still burning out from the condensed remnants of the warship. They tumbled roughly, almost helplessly. Ia tried to guide the ship, but with the shields still imbalanced, the ship took increasing damage, burning off thruster panels and shorting out sensors. She did manage to slow most of the spin, turning it into a slow tumble, but couldn't stop their forward motion. Lights winked and blinked on the bridge, and the gravity plates beneath the decking stuttered, threatening everyone with nausea.

"All hands, gravity off. I repeat, gravity is off inside the Audie," Kipple announced, broadcasting the warning to the whole ship. The bridge suddenly went weightless. Hair floated away from heads, limbs drifted away from keyboards, bodies b.u.mped against restraint belts.

"Thank you, Corporal," Ia muttered. The weaves had a limited range, just a dozen or so meters. They were also monodirectional, which meant if they weren't balanced just right, they could stress the ship in odd ways. Given the battering the Audie had just taken, it was safe to say that any extra strain on the hull or its interior should probably be avoided. As much as Ia wanted to check the timestreams to be sure, her head throbbed too much to try, now that the worst of the emergency was over. As it was, she was now beginning to feel other pains, strained tendons and bruised flesh from being jolted in too many directions. Physical aches as well as psychic ones.

"Okay...Is everyone on the bridge alright?" she asked. "What's the status on the rest of the crew?"

"Ugh," Sikmah muttered. "I'll live, if that's what you meant, sir."

"I'll live, too, sir," Kipple reported.

"What the shova v'shakk did you think you were doing?" Culpepper railed at her, tugging at his restraints. He didn't remove them, but he did use them for leverage so he could turn and glare at her in the weightlessness of the bridge. "You almost got us killed!"

"Watch your language, Private!" Kipple snapped before she could. "If you hadn't noticed, the Lieutenant just saved us from certain death!"

"I don't shakking care!" Culpepper yelled. "I am going to have her hide hauled up for reckl-"

Ia stabbed her mind into his, knocking him unconscious. It gave her a raging headache to do so, one that squeezed her right eye shut from the blinding pain that seared like a migraine, but the abrupt silence, both physical and mental, was a relief.

Ia cleared her throat. "I think the, ah, excitement was too much for Private Culpepper. Hopefully he's just pa.s.sed out. Status report. Sikmah, anything on the scanners?"

Kipple blinked and pushed to the side, reaching out for him. He snagged a wrist with his fingertips. "His pulse is still there. Let's hope he didn't have a heart attack. Trying to do chest compressions in zero G sucks."

Turning back to the few screens still flickering with life, Private Sikmah took a few moments to study the readings. "Several of the sensors got burned out, but since we're tumbling, sir, I'm getting something of a reading all around. I think the Murphy is off to, uh...well, to one side by about half a klick, maybe a bit more. It's hard to give a heading when you're spinning and half the ship is lightspeed blind."

"Any immediate threats to our vicinity?" Ia asked him.

He studied his few functioning screens for a minute, then shook his head. "No, sir. Nor to the Murphy. There are still chunks of the enemy ship floating around, but I'm not getting any energy readings from them. The pieces seem to be traveling on an explosion trajectory only, sir."

"All hands on board have reported in, sir. Internal comms are working, and we have no serious injuries on the Audie," Kipple reported from his station. In addition to engineering, he had taken up Culpepper's job of monitoring the other ship functions. "Thrusters are spotty at best, I'm afraid, but the hydroengines are still good, so aside from the lack of gravity, we do have power. Lifesupport's a bit mucked up, but otherwise functional for now. And...we do seem to have external comms, still. At least, here on the Audie."

"Confirmed, Lieutenant. I can try to contact the Murphy if you like, sir?" Sikmah offered.

Ia removed her hand from the control glove and unbuckled her restraints. Maneuvering carefully in the weightlessness ruling the bridge, she pushed herself toward Culpepper's chair. "Do so. I'm going to check on Culpepper, here, make sure he didn't have a heart attack or whatever. Get ahold of the Murphy if you can and see what condition she's in. Then see if you can raise the Fleet-you did get a message off before things fell apart, right, Sikmah?"