Elizabeth Moon - Once a Hero

“The boy’s upset,” he said. “Maybe she was his girl?”

“Too old,” said one of the others. “A nice boy like him wouldn’t have a woman like that.”

“I’m sure he has a girl somewhere on this ship,” the first one said. “We’ll have to be sure we find her.”

He would have heaved again if he’d had anything left.

“What I don’t understand is how they found the self-destruct so fast,” Captain Hakin said. “Not that many people know where it is . . .”

“They grabbed those civilian contractors,” Admiral Dossignal said.

“But how would they know? They’re weapons specialists; they’ve been busy recalibrating the guidance systems . . . oh.”

“If someone suborned the civilians, then they could have disabled the self-destruct—they could have found it while appearing to be working on weapons in inventory. I see . . .”

“What I don’t understand is why they were snatched, if they’d already done their job.”

“They hadn’t,” the captain said. “Remember—until an hour ago, all the signals were secure.”

“Considering the quality of work they did on the weapons, if they’d done it, I’d expect it to be undetectable,” said Commander Wyche. “I’d bet they were snatched simply for their weapons expertise . . . with the data wands the intruders got from the three we know they killed, they’d have high enough access to find that out.”

“So now the self-destruct is out of my control.” Hakin glared at the admirals. “I should have used it.”

“No,” Dossignal said. “It was the handiest way, the easiest and least obvious way, for you to have the power of destruction, but it wasn’t the only. On this ship, with what we’ve got in inventory, and the expertise in the 14th alone, we can prevent capture. We will.”

“I hope so,” the captain said. “I sincerely hope so, because if you don’t we are not the only ones who will suffer for it.”

“ Wraith gives us another possibility,” Commander Wyche said.

“ Wraith ?”

“She still has a third of her weapons, all in portside mountings. And she still has ample firepower to blow Kos . Not from the repair bay—the way she’s locked into the cradles, even if she blew herself, there’s a 72 percent chance that most of Kos would survive. We’d have to reposition her mounts, which would take days. But if we can get her into a position to fire on the core area—”

“She can’t maneuver!” Commander Takkis, head of Drives and Maneuver. “We dismounted the drives when she first came in, and it would take days to remount them. Besides, I have everyone working on the FTL drive for this ship.”

“I was thinking of the drives test cradle. She doesn’t have to maneuver to be slung on there and then towed into position . . . even, if you wish, at the extremity of the lines. The test cradle’s own drive would be sufficient, if necessary, to move her into the best firing position for Kos . . . or she could get some shots off at the Bloodhorde.”

A moment of silence, as they thought it over. Dossignal and Livadhi both nodded. “It could work—certainly, as far as destroying Kos is concerned, and quite probably she could do a fair bit of damage to the Bloodhorde ships.”

Captain Hakin was nodding too. “If those weapons have not been taken off Wraith , and we’re absolutely sure they haven’t been tampered with, then we’ve got our fail-safe back . . . as long as they’re not depleted taking potshots at the enemy.”

“No . . . I can see that there’d have to be strict limits of use, but that should leave enough to do some damage. Especially if we had something else. One of the shuttles, maybe. In the Xavier action, the planetary defense used a couple of shuttles to good effect.”

“They used them for mine-laying . . . I don’t think that would work here.”

“If only we could Trojan-horse them, the way they did to us.” Livadhi smiled briefly. “It would be so satisfying.”

“Get aboard a Bloodhorde ship? I don’t see how. Since they do it, they know it can be done—they’d be watching. And our people would be trying a hostile boarding, against resistance.”

“I was thinking . . . if we had any native speakers of their language, if we could locate one of these intruders and sweat some recognition codes out of him, then our people could pretend to be their own team coming back.”

“Won’t work.” Admiral Livadhi scowled in surprise at the lieutenant commander two seats down. “Sorry, sir, but—we shouldn’t waste time with schemes bound to fail. The Bloodhorde special operations teams—which is what we have aboard—are all members of one lineage. Each team is, I mean. They train together for years, and develop their own distinctive argot. Commander Coston, who went back to Rockhouse recently, had been doing a special study on Bloodhorde special ops. Our people can’t imitate a Bloodhorde pack—not without a lot of training we don’t have time to give. As well, we have only thirteen people aboard who speak the language with anything like sufficient fluency, and their accents indicate different origins.”

“We don’t need negativism now, Commander Nors,” Livadhi said. “We’re at the stage of thinking up possibilities.”

“Sorry, sir. Well . . . suppose one of the Bloodhorde ships were close in . . . and empty or nearly empty of its crew. We’ve developed a fairly good model of a Bloodhorde ship’s control systems, working from the commercial models they’re built on, and information from scavenge. It wouldn’t take long to train our experienced warship crews to use it—or for that matter, import our own scan equipment.”

“Just where do you plan to find a close-in Bloodhorde ship with its crew off it?” asked Hakin with some sarcasm. The question hung a moment, as they all considered, then the same idea flickered across several faces. Hakin’s turned grim. “No. Absolutely not. I am not going to allow more Bloodhorde troops aboard my ship, just for the chance of capturing one of theirs.”

“They’d probably like to use one of the repair bays,” Dossignal said slowly. “ Wraith ’s in one—they know that. The other’s empty . . . the best place for a smallish ship to dock, anyway. Full of stuff they want.”

“No!” Hakin said, more loudly.

“Do you have any information on Bloodhorde boarding procedures, Commander?” Dossignal asked, ignoring Hakin for the moment.

Nors thought a moment. “All we have is reports from the few civilians who survived a Bloodhorde raid on a large civilian ship. They come in wearing protective gear that functions as both EVA and battle armor . . . they were in that case quite willing to damage the ship they’d captured to gain control of it. None of the civs we talked to could tell one level of weapon from another, but one of them did describe something capable of holing interior bulkheads with one shot. Here, though, we’re assuming they want a DSR entire. I expect they’ll do as little damage as possible in capturing it . . . but they do have to board.”

“Another possibility,” said Commander Wyche, “is the weaponry aboard a Bloodhorde ship in a repair bay. Suppose it could be immobilized there. Then its weapons would give us yet another self-destruct capability. They have forward-mounted weapons in every class.”

“ If we were able to get aboard and take control.”

“I think we can take that as given, sir. If they just sit there, they aren’t accomplishing anything . . . they can’t shoot at us without doing the damage they don’t want, and besides, they have no reputation for being patient. I think we can count on them coming out, with an intent to take control of key systems.”