Keith Laumer: Thunderhead

Carnaby shook his head. “It’s too late in the day to start down; you’d be caught on the slope. We’ll take it easy up to the Roost; in the morning you’ll have an easy climb down.”

“Sure, Lieutenant. Don’t worry about me.” Terry drew a breath, shivering in the bitter wind that plucked at his snow jacket.

“What do you mean, lost him!” the bull roar of the commodore rattled the screen. “Are you telling me that this ragtag refugee has the capability to drop off the screens of the best-equipped tracking deck in the Fleet?”

“Sir,” the stubborn-faced tracking officer repeated, “I can only report that my screens register nothing within the conic of search. If he’s there—”

“He’s there, Mister!” the commodore’s eyes glared from under a bushy overhang of brows. “Find that bandit or face a court, Captain. I haven’t diverted a ship of the Fleet Line from her course for the purpose of becoming the object of an Effectiveness Inquiry!”

The tracking officer turned away from the screen as it went white, met the quizzical gaze of the visiting signal lieutenant.

“The old devil’s bit off too big a bite this time,” he growled. “Let him call a court; he wouldn’t have the gall.”

“If we lose the bogie now, he won’t look good back on Vandy,” Pryor said. “This is serious business, diverting from Cruise Plan to chase rumors. I wonder if he really had a positive ID on this track.”

“Hell, no! There’s no way to make a Positive at this range, under these conditions! After three years without any action for the newstapes, the brass are grabbing at straws.”

“Well, if I were you, Gordie, I’d find that track, even if it turns out to be a tramp, with a load of bootleg dran .”

“Don’t worry. If he’s inside the conic, I’ll find him…”

“I guess… it’s dropped twenty degrees… in the last hour,” Terry Sickle’s voice was almost lost in the shriek of the wind that buffeted the two men as they inched their way up the last yards toward the hut on the narrow rockshelf called Halliday’s Roost.

“Never saw snow falling at this temperature before,” Carnaby brushed at the ice caked around his eyes. Through the swirl of crystals as fine as sand, he discerned the sagging outline of the shelter above.

Ten minutes later, inside the crude lean-to built of rock slabs, he set to work chinking the gaping holes in the five-foot walls with packed snow. Behind him, Terry lay huddled against the back wall, breathing hoarsely.

“Guess… I’m not in as good shape… as I thought I was,” he said.

“You’ll be OK, Terry.” Carnaby closed the gap through which the worst of the icy draft was keening, then opened a can of stew for the boy. The fragrance of the hot meat and vegetables made his jaws ache.

“Lieutenant, how you going to climb in this snow?” Sickle’s voice shook to the chattering of his teeth. “In good weather, you might could have made it. Like this, you haven’t got a chance!”

“Maybe it’ll be blown clear by morning,” Carnaby said mildly. He opened a can for himself. Terry ate slowly, shivering uncontrollably. Carnaby watched him worriedly.

“Lieutenant,” the boy said, “even if that call you picked up was meant for you—even if this ship they’re after is headed out this way—what difference will it make one way or another if one beacon’s on the air or not?”

“Probably none,” Carnaby said. “But if there’s one chance in a thousand he breaks this way—well, that’s what I’m here for.”

“But what’s a beacon going to do, except give him something to steer by?”

Carnaby smiled. “It’s not that kind of beacon, Terry. My station’s part of a system—a big system—that covers the surface of a sphere of space a hundred lights in diameter. When there’s an alert, each station locks in with the others that flank it, and sets up what’s called a stressed field. There’s a lot of things you can do with this field. You can detect a drive, monitor communications—”

“What if these other stations you’re talking about aren’t working?” Terry cut in.

“Then my station’s not going to do much,” Carnaby said.

“If the other stations are still on the air, why haven’t any of them picked up your TX’s and answered?”

Carnaby shook his head. “We don’t use the beacon field to chatter back and forth, Terry. This is a Top Security system. Nobody knows about it except the top command levels—and of course, the men manning the beacons.”

“Maybe that’s how they came to forget about you—somebody lost a piece of paper and nobody else knew!”

“I shouldn’t be telling you about it,” Carnaby said with a smile. “But I guess you’ll keep it under your hat.”

“You can count on me, Lieutenant,” Terry said solemnly.

“I know I can, Terry,” Carnaby said.

The clangor of the General Quarters alarm shattered the tense silence of the chart deck like a bomb through a plate glass window. The navigation officer whirled abruptly from the grametric over which he had been bending, collided with the deck chief. Both men leaped for the Master Position monitor, caught just a glimpse of a vivid scarlet trace lancing toward the emerald point targeted at the center of the plate before the apparatus exploded from its mounting, mowed the two men down in a hail of shattered plastic fragments. Smoke boiled, black and pungent, from the gutted cavity. The duty NCO, bleeding from a dozen gashes, stumbled toward the two men, turned away in horror, reached an emergency voice phone. Before he could key it, the deck under him canted sharply. He screamed, clutched at a table for support, saw it tilt, come crashing down on top of him…

On the message deck, Lieutenant Pryor clung to an operator’s stool, listening, through the stridency of the alarm bell, to the frantic voice from command deck:

“All sections, all sections, combat stations! We’re under attack! My God, we’ve taken a hit forward—”

The voice cut off, to be replaced by the crisp tones of Colonel Lancer, first battle officer:

“As you were! Sections G-987 and 989 damage control crews report! Forward armaments, safety interlocks off, stand by for firing orders! Message center, flash a code six to Fleet and TF Command. Power section, all selectors to gate, rig for full emergency power…”

Pryor hauled himself hand-over-hand to the main message console; the body of the code yeoman hung slackly in the seat harness, blood dripping from the fingertips of his dangling hand. Pryor freed him, took his place. He keyed the code six alarm into the pulse-relay tanks, triggered an emergency override signal, beamed the message outward toward the distant Fleet headquarters.

On the command deck, Commodore Broadly clutched a sprained wrist to his chest, stood, teeth bared, feet braced apart, staring into the forward imagescreen at the dwindling point of light that was the Djann blockade runner.

“The effrontery of the damned scoundrel!” he roared. “Lancer, launch another covey of U-95’s! You’ve got over five hundred megaton-seconds of firepower, man! Use it!”

“He’s out of range, Commodore,” Lancer said coolly. “He booby-trapped us very neatly.”

“It’s your job to see that we don’t blunder into traps, by God, Colonel!” He rounded on the battle officer. “You’ll stop that pirate or I’ll rip those eagles off your shoulders myself!”

Lancer’s mouth was a hard line; his eyes were ice chips.

“You can relieve me, Commodore,” his voice grated. “Until you do, I’m battle commander aboard this vessel.”

“By God, you’re relieved, sir!” Broadly yelled. He whirled on the startled exec standing by. “Confine this officer to his quarters! Order full emergency acceleration! This vessel’s on Condition Red at Full Combat Alert until we overtake and destroy that sneaking snake in the grass!”