Jo Clayton - Shadow of the Warmaster

“Yeh.”

“I thought I recognized the configuration. Under all those meters.” She laughed, a nice sound; she was feeling pleased with herself. “It’s viable?”

“Yeh.”

“That’ll do it. We’d better be outside the skin when it blows.”

“Yeh.” I wasn’t going to argue with that; the Warmaster was big and tough enough to absorb a lot more punishment than one little torp, but she was older than time and there was rot in her hide. “Tubeflow?”

“I’ve reset the tubeflow from your gate, it’ll take you straight in to the clone interface. I’ve given you two minutes to get to the interface, starting when we finish this, five to get set up, plus three for holdups. The three will kick on only if you haven’t gone through the gate there before then. The flow switches outbound automatically, endpoint the lander lock area. Where we’ll be sitting, waiting for you.”

“Bridge?”

“I’ve programmed the mainBrain to clamshell after we’re out.”

“Any sign of the Proggerdi?”

“I haven’t bothered looking.”

I gave a yell for the teddybear. His ears were up fluttering, his lips curled back to show his tearing teeth. He didn’t need telling to watch out for ambushes, but I told him anyway. “That fruitcake could be anywhere,” I said. “Get hold of the tug before you start and have a bodyguard waiting at the tubegate. Adelaar, no arguments. I don’t get paid if I don’t get you back to Helvetia and I intend to collect. You hear?”

She laughed again. Almost hysteria, coming from her. “I hear,” she said. “Time is, Quale. Get yourself in gear or miss the boat.” The screen went dark.

“Right,” I said. “Hop on, Jamo, you and your friend, it’s time to roll.”

The curved wall of the massive sphere was a gray-black chimera behind the container shield, there and not there, ominous though not quite tangible, the mass of a small star prisoned in gossamer. Parnalee brought the dolly to a gentle stop before it, lifted the link from the seat beside him. “Open,” he murmured, then waited for the Dark Sister to coax an opening for him.

The surface shimmered, a black pinhole appeared, dilated swiftly until it was wide enough to admit the dolly then pulsed like a wet black mouth, a mouth that could close on him if it chose; he eyed it with distaste, but the bulk of the Bright Sister was in there and there was no other access. He edged the dolly toward the opening, took it through.

Thinking he was a repair tech, the Bright Sister brought up the lights so he could see what he was doing.

He eased the dolly and its burden as deep into her heart as the narrowing serviceways between the Brain’s components would let him go. Then he cycled down the power of the liftfield, let the dolly sink to the floor, gently, gently, don’t crack the egg, not yet. Not. Yet. Off. Yes. He slid the link into his belt pouch, climbed over the bench back and squatted on the bed beside the torp. He activated it, set its timer for an hour on; he needed an interval to get back to the interface where he’d be in touch with and protected from the fury of the Dark Sister. Before he touched the triggering sensor and started the timer humming, he set his hand on the casing of the torp and savored the triumph that was going to be his. One hour. He patted the bomb. Gently. Very gently. “Yes.” He set his forefinger on the sensor and felt the hum in his bones. “Yes.” He slid off the dolly and trotted for the mouth.

As soon as he was outside, he touched on the link. “Close,” he said.

The hole in the sphere grew smaller, smaller, swiftly smaller, was a pin prick of darkness again, was gone. He put the link away and began the long run to the interface, buoyed by the knowledge that nothing could go wrong now, nothing could stop the explosion that killed the Bright Sister. All he had to do was sit and wait.

I looked round the interface. “Yeh,” I said. “This is it. He was here.”

Jamber Fausse nodded. Store cabinets were open, some of their contents spilled onto the floor, evidence of a hasty search, there was a bottle of brandy on the console with about an inch of liquid left in it, a bubble glass beside it with a brown smear drying in the bell; the stink of the brandy was thick in there, along with a stale smell that clung despite the labors of the fans in the ducts. “Where is he now?”

“Who knows? It’s a big ship. Keep an eye on the door, will you, the two of you? I’d better get to work. We don’t have that much time.”

I let the bed down, started arming the torp. Didn’t take long. When I finished, I thought a minute, then I opened up the dolly’s motor casing and removed a few vital parts. If-when-Parnalee got back, I didn’t want him driving off with our little surprise. There wasn’t much else I could do. Even if the three of us could muscle the torp off the bed without fatally herniating ourselves, there was no place in here where we could hide the thing.

The young raider left, but Jamber Fausse stopped me at the door. “What if he comes back before it blows? What if he disarms it?”

“You want to stay and argue with him, be my guest,” I said. I wasn’t all that happy with that antique timer; I was sure it’d trigger the torp sometime, I just wasn’t sure when. And I didn’t want to be anywhere around when it turned over. “Look,” I said. “It’s a randomized circuit and not all that easy to counterprogram. Not like pulling a few wires on hope and a prayer. I’ve set the thing to blow in half an hour. If he gets here in a minute or two, maybe he can do something; if he’s later than that, no way. We take our chances, that’s all we can do.”

He didn’t like it, but he was no more into suicide than I was, so he nodded and we took off for the tubegate.

I dropped the tug into orbit a quadrant away from the Warmaster and waited there.

Adelaar glanced at her chron. “Two minutes,” she said.

The ship hung motionless in the center of the screen. The Hanifa was standing behind me again, I could feel her hot breath on my neck. When I looked around, I was almost nose to nose with her, but she wasn’t noticing anything but the Warmaster. The rest of them were pretty much the same. Hungry.

The Warmaster trembled. A shine spread over her, then localized at the drivers. She moved. Slowly at first. Ponderously. She began picking up speed, angling away from Tairanna. As soon as she got wound up, it was like she vanished, collapsing to a pinpoint and then to nothing. “Well,” I said. “She’s on her way. Horgul in two hours. Good-bye, battleship.”

“What about the torp? How do we know if it blew?”

That was Jamber Fausse; he was a man to keep his teeth in an idea until it squealed. “We don’t,” I said. “Unless she turns up again. Then we know it didn’t. Back off, everyone. Show’s over. We’re going down.”

Parnalee had slowed to a fast walk by the time he passed through the next to last hatch. He felt the sudden liveliness in the ship as she began to move. He stopped, flattened his hand hard against the wall. He could not have described the difference he felt in her, but he knew what was happening, she was on her way to the sun. He smiled. So they thought. Let them think it, fools. He started moving again, an unhurried trot. He passed through the last hatch, glanced at his chron, smiled again. He’d made better time than he’d expected. Only half an hour. He sighed with pleasure as he thought about stripping down and letting the fresher scrub him clean again, about stretching out on the fur, a hot meal on the console beside him and another bottle of brandy while he waited for the Dark Sister to come alive and take over the ship. He saw the door, open like he’d left it, hurried toward it.