Walter Williams - The Praxis

He was kind and warm and asked no questions. He told her she looked very grown-up and was proud of her. She thanked him for his kindness and for looking after her. She hugged him and the daughters he’d brought with him.

His wife, Sergei’s sister, had the sense to stay away.

Later, as the skyhook carried her to Spannan’s ring, and its steady acceleration pressed her into her seat, she realized it was Caro’s Earthday, the real one.

The Earthday that Caro would never see.

Sula jerked awake from a shivering dream, and for a moment Caro’s scent seemed to fill the pinnace. There were tears in Sula’s eyes, and when she wiped them away, she saw something new on her displays.

Five somethings, swinging around from the far side of Barbas. Five ships were burning hard gees, coming around the big planet at an unusual angle. Sula wondered if they were heading for Magaria. No—they burned well past that point.

“Ah. Ha,” she said.

They were looping around Barbas to fly toward Rinconell. And now Sula saw what they intended.

They were going to come between Wormhole 1 and the six survivors of the Home Fleet. There would be a blazing collision as their paths crossed, and the last of the Home Fleet would be annihilated. The five Naxid ships might die as well, if the loyalists had enough missiles remaining, but in any case the last of the Home Fleet would be destroyed.

Frantically, Sula began calculating trajectories. Her own missiles were a third of a light-minute ahead of her, and it would take time for her instructions to reach them. She didn’t want them to maneuver where the enemy could see them, and the only way to do that was to fire their engines when they were behind the huge gas giant Rinconell.

It took Sula almost three hours to calculate the trajectories, triple-check the work, and transmit the missiles’ instructions via communications laser. Then she calculated her own trajectory and her own burn. Because she couldn’t pull the massive gees of her missiles, she couldn’t lay herself on the same track—she’d be a spectator again, whatever happened.

And then she waited. It was nine hours before the tawny gas giant Rinconell became a great crescent on her displays, before her eighteen missiles executed precise pivots and made the furious burn that set them on their new trajectories. And more seconds passed before her own engine punched her and dropped her into nightmare sleep.

But the wait was worth it. On their mad swing around Barbas, the Naxid ships emerged with a velocity of nearly half the speed of light. The missiles coming at them were traveling in excess of.7c. The closing velocity was so enormous that the Naxids were probably never aware of what was coming at them and had a few seconds’ warning at most, not enough to activate their defenses.

Wild, angry joy sang in Sula as she watched the eighteen missiles explode in and among the Naxid ships. Nothing was left of the enemy but stripped ions that glowed fiercely and briefly in the deep, empty night, and then went out.

She reached for the comm unit and punched on the radio, broadcasting on the intership channel to the Naxids, the fleeing Home Fleet survivors, the scattered, cooling atoms that had beenDauntless andGlory of the Praxis, and all the others strewn and lost in the death and fury of Magaria.

“Sula!”she shouted into the transmitter. “It was Sula who did this!Remember my name! ”

She programmed her own burn for the wormhole, and escape.

Five hours after transiting Magaria Wormhole 1, Sula’s pinnace was recovered by theBombardment of Delhi. She pulled herself wearily out of the little boat, and as the riggers helped her climb into the ready room, she saw in the dim emergency lighting that someone waited for her. Her heart surged as she recognized Martinez, and then she realized that a memory had imposed itself on her exhausted mind, a memory of the time Martinez had met her after theMidnight Runner rescue.

The person before her stepped forward, and before her she saw a different memory, that of Jeremy Foote.

“You,”she said, and began to laugh.

Foote looked at her with impatience. He was considerably less immaculate than when Sula had last seen him, at the party he’d thrown to celebrate his promotion: he was without his uniform jacket, and his shirt was grimy and torn. His cowlick was greasy. His sleeves were rolled up, and there was a smear of something on one forearm, a smear that had an echo on his forehead where he’d wiped away sweat.

The riggers took her helmet and unsealed her gloves.

“I’ll need your data foils,” Foote said, his drawl a little more clipped than usual. “The premier sent me.”

“I forgot them in the boat,” Sula said. “Sorry.” She turned to return to the docking tube.

“I’ll get them,” Foote said. “Never mind.”

He dropped into the docking tube and was gone for a few moments. The riggers shoved Sula’s arms over her head and pulled off the upper half of her suit. Her nose wrinkled at the acrid odor of her own body, all the stale sweat and terror and burned adrenaline. The riggers began work on the lower half of her vac suit.

Foote popped up from the access tube. “Turn your back,” Sula told him.

Foote looked resentful. “I’ve seen women before,” he said.

“You’ve never seenme,” Sula said, “and you’re not going to.”

“That’s ‘Turn your back,my lord,’ ” Foote drawled, but he turned anyway. The silent riggers stripped away Sula’s suit and handed her a pair of sterile drawers.

“I forgot about your promotion, my lord, sorry.” Sula stepped into the drawers and tied the string waistband. “It must have been the excitement of seeing you again.”

She was rewarded by a crack in the facade of the riggers’ deadpan faces. She winked at the nearest of them, and was further rewarded by a startled grin.

Foote cast an annoyed look over his shoulder, saw she was clothed, and turned to face her. “The premier says he’s putting you in for a decoration,” he said. “He says you saved us.”

“Give him my thanks,” Sula said. “But isn’t it the captain who does the recommending?”

“The captain’s dead,” Foote said shortly.

The dead captain would have been Captain Foote, the yachtsman, who would have ensured young Jeremy’s continual promotion.

“Sorry about your uncle, Foote.”

He gave a grim nod. “We’re pretty well shot up,” he said. “You’ll be needed on damage control, if you’re not hurt.”

“I need some shoes,” Sula said, “and then I’m with you.”

Bombardment of Delhihad lost its captain, its second and third lieutenants, and everyone else in Command. The forward third of the ship had been decompressed, there were only a dozen missiles left in the magazine, and only one pinnace remained—Sula’s.

But Sula reminded herself thatDelhi was in better shape than all but five other ships of the Home Fleet.

For two days she worked constantly at patching, refitting, replacing, and testing. Toward the end of the second day her party succeeded in recompressing the area around Command and in breaking into Command to retrieve the bodies of Captain Foote and the others. They had died due to fire—not from asphyxiation, because they had their helmets on, but due to fierce heat. Nothing in Command was flammable, but even steel will burn if it gets hot enough, and Command had grown very hot indeed. A rain of molten metal had streaked the walls like tears.

The crisped remains of the dead, little husks of carbon curled like a fetus, were bagged and carried out to the cargo airlock. Sula felt oddly at home amid the dead. She looked at the charcoal on her palms. Take the water out, she thought, and that’s all we are.