Glen Cook - Passage At Arms

While the screws are tightening he doesn't dare scratch at the wrong instant.

A lot of pressure would come down on a man who became too conscious of that.

It's easier for a Ship's Commander aboard a normal ship. He has his quarters. He isn't on display all the time.

As toed as we are, we won't make much of a showing if the other firm catches up.

Varese still reports unsatisfactory stabilization after twelve hours. That's a lot of getaway time lost. Suddenly, Fisherman shouts, "Commander, I have a tachyon pattern."

I lean and check his screen before the crowd thickens. The pattern is alien. Definitely alien.

I've seen nothing like it before. The Commander orders, "Power down to minimum, Mr. Varese."

The Climber drifts in the track of the destroyed warship. Her neutrino emissions are a candle in the conflagration of the wake.

Running is pointless. The other firm can detect us if we can detect them. The hyper translation ratios of their hunter-killers exceed those of our Climbers. Swiftness is the critical element in destroyer design.

We can't run. The Commander won't go up till the magnetics are stable. So we'll pretend we're not here.

The odor hi Ops grows thicker. Tempers grow shorter. Only Fisherman, preoccupied with his board and prayers, maintains his equanimity.

He is, I suspect, secretly delighted at the prospect of a quick out. Here's a chance for an early encounter with his God. Hey! Big guy in the sky! How about disappointing the silly sack of shit?

The hunters skip here and there, watching and listening. Sometimes they charge right past us, keeping Fisherman's detector chirping like a cricket's convention.

"At least eight of them," he says, after they've been rooting around for three hours. "They look hungry."

"That's a lot of firepower just to keep a second-rate writer from getting a story."

The joke falls flat. He says, "Not much else for them to do, sir. No convoys to watch."

The hunters are stubborn and crafty. One destroyer, doing mini-jumps along the course of the Main Battle, skips right over us. Pure luck saves us being detected. Another, creeping round hi norm, gives herself away only because she hasn't powered down enough to conceal her neutrino emissions adequately. Like us, she's running with sensors passive. Active radar would nail us in an instant.

The hours roll on. Men fall asleep at their posts. Neither the Commander nor the First Watch Officer protests.

Each time I begin to relax, thinking they've moved on, another of their ships whips into detection. I can't sleep through that.

"How come they keep on?" I wonder out loud. "You'd think they knew we're here. That they want to spook us."

"Could be," Yanevich says. "The Leviathan might have gotten some boats away, too. They could be looking for survivors."

Not bloody likely. Not at those velocities.

Yanevich and the Commander are spending more and more time with Westhause. Their faces reflect a deepening concern. The Leviathan's wake is dispersing. It won't mask us much longer. Canzoneri keeps coming and going. The computers must've noticed something else.

I stop the First Watch Officer during one of his forays into my part of the compartment. "What's up? Why the long faces?"

"They're going to get a fix pretty quick. They've been taking readings on our neutrino emissions from before we went silent. Their computers will figure it out. We'll have them in our pockets."

"Damn. Should have known. The ripples never settle in this pond, do they?"

"Nope. They just keep going till they get mixed in with other ripples."

"So what's to do?"

"We run first time it looks good. They know we're around. There's no way we're going to bluff them, even if they can't computer-fix us. They'll keep quartering till they get a radar contact."

"Stubborn bastards. How'd they catch on?"

"Who knows? Maybe the Leviathan had an observation drone in her missile screen. Or an escort we didn't spot. Anything. How doesn't matter."

Fifteen minutes later we have one of those rare moments when there's nothing in detection.

"Power up," the Commander orders. "Engineering, stand by for hyper and Climb." Varese has the magnetics close to stable. Looks like the Old Man is willing to take a chance.

"Case like this," Fisherman says, "it's better to Climb first, then run. Unless they've got somebody doggo right on top of us, they won't get a track on our Hawking point."

"We'll make a hell of a racket getting started. And draw a hell of a crowd of mourners if Mr.

Varese doesn't have the magnetics right."

"Yes sir." He isn't especially worried.

There's a rush to the honeypots. We may stay strapped in for hours.

How much longer can I stand their stink?

"Discharge accumulators. Vent heat. Secure all Class Two systems," the Commander orders.

Acknowledgments and action-completed reports come back as quickly. People are anxious to leave.

"Mr. Varese. How do your magnetics look?"

I don't hear the response. That's not reassuring.

"Commander, I have a tachyon pattern," Fisherman says.

"Very well. Engineering, shift to annihilation."

The feathers on Fisherman's screen are faint but nearly vertical. Their foreshortening is extreme.

The dorsal and ventral lines are almost invisible. The hunter is coming right at us.

The Commander says, "Take hyper. Max acceleration. Mr. Westhause, make a course of two seven zero at thirty degrees declination." His voice is calm, as if this is just another drill.

The Climber stutters, moves out. The compartment lights dim momentarily. The hasty shift in power is touchy but successful. The Climb alarm tramples the Commander's line. Afterward, he adds, "Mr.

Westhause, make your course two four zero at twenty-five degrees declination."

'Type two fool 'em, sir," Fisherman explains. "Show them a course they can fix and hope they think you'll swing way off it in Climb. We'll make a little change instead, and stay up a long time.

They're supposed to look everywhere but where we're at."

"Supposed to?"

"We hope. They're not stupid, sir. They've been at it as long as we have."

My companions grow hazy. The screens and display tank die. The nothing of null peers in through the hull.

We've pulled our hole in after us. We're safe. For the moment.

For the moment. The destroyer has yelled "Contact!" Her friends are closing in. Their combined computation capacity is producing predictions of our behavior already.

Despite Fisherman's prophecy, I'm startled when the Commander doesn't go down after the customary hour. All those drills... wake up, monkey! This is for real. There're people out there who want to kill you.

The air is raunchy. Interior temperature has climbed a half-dozen degrees. The Old Man's only response is to have Bradley release a little fresh oxygen, then blow the atmosphere through the outer fuel tanks. They've been allowed to freeze. Supercold ice makes a nice sink for waste heat.

It isn't a ploy which Command approves. Climbers aren't engineered for it. Our air is rich with human effluvia. It'll contaminate the water as it melts.

Operational people don't care. Heat is the bigger problem. They willingly strain the filters with contaminants.

It takes only five hours for that water to match interior temperature. The ship is generating too much heat.

The Commander lets temperature approach the red line. We're sweltering. The superconductors flash warnings, but they do so long before any actual danger.

The air feels thick enough to slice.

The Commander orders heat converters and atmosphere scrubbers activated at hour nine in Climb.

From then on, in my humble opinion, it's all downhill.

The machines which hold temperatures down and keep the air breathable are efficient and effective, but are powerful heat generators themselves.