Walter Williams - Logs

With a frantic effort he tried to roll, his palms and heels fighting for traction against the tile, fighting the dead weight that was pinning him like a silver needle pinning an insect to corkboard. Vertigo swam through his skull. He fought to bring air into his lungs. He gave a heave, every muscle in his body straining.

With a crack his head fell off the stair and banged onto the tile. Despite the pain and the stars that shot through the blackness of his vision he felt a surge of triumph.

Gravity increased. Martinez fought for consciousness.

And lost.

When Martinez woke he saw before him a window, and beyond the window was a green countryside. Two ladies in transparent gowns gazed at the poised figure of a nearly naked man who seemed to be hovering in a startlingly blue sky. Above the man flew a superior-looking eagle, and on the grass below the two ladies were a pair of animals, a dog and a small furry creature with long ears, both of whom seemed to find the floating man interesting.

It occurred to Martinez that the man in the sky wasn't alone, that he, Martinez, was also floating.

His heart was going like a triphammer. Sharp pains shot through his head and body. He blinked and wiped sweat from the sockets of his eyes.

The man still floated before him, serene and eerily calm, as if he floated every day.

It was only gradually that Martinez realized that he was looking at a piece of artifice, at one of the trompe l'oeil paintings that Montemar Jukes had placed at intervals in Illustrious' corridors.

The engines had shut down again. Now weightless, Martinez had drifted gently from the deck to a place before the painting.

He gave a start and looked frantically in all directions. The companion leading to Command was two body-lengths away. So far as he knew the emergency, the battle or whatever it was, had not ended.

He swam with his arms to reorient himself, and kicked with one foot at the floating man to shoot himself across the corridor. Striking the wall he absorbed momentum with his arms-pain shot through his right wrist-and then he did a kind of handspring in the direction of the companion.

He struck the companionway feet-first and folded into a crouch, which enabled him to spring again, this time through the hatch atop the companion.

From there it was a short distance to the heavy hatch to Command. The door was armored against blast and radiation and would have been locked down at the beginning of the emergency. Martinez hovered before the hatch, his left hand clutching at the hand grip inset into the door frame, his right stabbing at the comm panel.

"This is the captain!" he said. "Open the door!"

"Stand by," came Mersenne's voice.

Stand by? Martinez was outraged. Who did the fourth lieutenant think Martinez was, some snotty cadet?

"Let me into Command!" Martinez barked.

"Stand by." The irritating words were spoken in an abstract tone, as if Mersenne had many more important things on his mind than obeying his captain's orders.

Well, Martinez thought, perhaps he did. Perhaps the emergency was occupying his full attention.

But how much attention did it take to open a damn hatch?

Martinez ground his teeth while he waited, fist clamped white-knuckled around the hand grip. Lieutenant Husayn floated up the companion and joined him. Blood floated in perfect round spheres from Husayn's nose, some of them catching on his little mustache; and there was a cut on his lip.

There hadn't been the regulation warning tone sounded for high gee-or for no gee, for that matter. Probably there hadn't been time to give the order. Martinez wondered how many injuries Doctor Xi was coping with.

With a soft hiss, the door slid open after Martinez had been waiting nearly a minute. He heaved on the hand grip and gave himself impetus for the command cage.

"I have command!" he shouted.

"Captain Martinez has command!" Mersenne agreed. He sounded relieved. He was already drifting free of the command cage, heading toward his usual station at the engines display.

Martinez glanced around the room as he floated toward his acceleration cage. The watch were staring at their displays as if each expected something with claws to come bounding out of them.

"Missile attack, my lord," Mersenne said. as he caught his acceleration cage. The cage swung with him, and he jacknifed, then inserted his feet and legs inside. "At least thirty. I'm sorry I didn't let you into Command, but I didn't want to unseal the door until I was certain the missiles had all been dealt with-didn't want to irradiate the entire command crew."

It grated, but Martinez had to admit Mersenne was right.

"Any losses?" Martinez asked.

"No, my lord." Mersenne floated to a couch next to the warrant officer who had been handling the engines board, then webbed himself in and locked the engine displays in front of him. "We starburst as soon as we saw the missiles incoming, but when we hit eight gravities when there was an engine trip."

Martinez, in the act of webbing himself onto his couch, stopped and stared.

"Engine trip?" he said.

"Number one engine. Automated safety procedures tripped the other two before I could override them. I'll try to get engines two and three back online, and then work out what happened to engine one."

So now Martinez knew why he'd suddenly found himself floating. The engines had quit, apparently on their own, and in the middle of a battle.

He pulled his displays down from over his head, heard them lock, began a study of the brief fight.

The Battle of Arkhan-Dohg, from the first alarm, when a targeting laser had painted the squadron, to the destruction of the last incoming missile, had taken a little less than three minutes.

"One failure in the point-defense array," Husayn reported from the weapons station. "Antiproton gun three failed after one shot."

"Just like Harzapid," muttered Mersenne.

"How many decoys do we have in the tubes?" Martinez asked Husayn.

"Three, my lord."

"Fire them immediately. We want to get decoys ahead of the squadron in case the Naxids have a followup attack."

The Command crew looked a little hollow-eyed at this possibility.

"Decoys fired, my lord. Tubes cleared. Decoys proceeding normally under chemical rockets to safety point."

"Replace them in the tubes with another set of decoys," Martinez added.

Primary command crew were drifting through the hatch and quietly taking up their stations. Alikhan arrived lugging Martinez' vac suit by a strap. Martinez told him to report to the weapons bays after putting the suit in one of the vac suit lockers: he didn't have time to put it on right now.

"I've commenced a countdown on engines two and three," Mersenne reported. "We're at five minutes twenty-one."

"Proceed."

"My lord," Husayn said, "decoys' antimatter engines have ignited. All decoys maneuvering normally."

"My lord," said Signaler Roh, "Judge Arslan queries our status."

"Tell them we experienced a premature engine shutdown," Martinez said. "Tell them we expect no long-term problem."

"Yes, lord captain. Ah-Squadcom Chen wants to speak with you."

"Put her on my board."

"Yes, lord captain."

Martinez hadn't strapped on the close-fitting cap that held his earphones, virtual array, and medical sensors, so Michi's voice came out of the speaker on Martinez' display, and was audible to everyone in command.

"Captain Martinez," she said, "what the hell just happened?"

Martinez reported in as few words as possible. Michi listened with an intent, inward look on here face. "Very well," she said. "I'll order the rest of the squadron to take defensive positions around us until we're maneuverable again."

Martinez nodded. "May I recommend that you order more decoy launches?"