Elizabeth Moon - Once a Hero

Esmay had wondered how far beyond the ship’s surface artificial gravity projected. As they came over the edge of T-1, with the dome of the bridge ahead of them, she could feel nothing . . . but when she looked, her legs had drifted toward its surface.

The transport track led directly over the domed core of Koskiusko , and Esmay thought that if she had not been both rushed and frightened, she would have enjoyed the view. The five blunt-ended wings splayed out around them, the dome itself studded with shield generator points and an array of retractable masts for communications and remote sensing. She looked for, but could not see, any other ship shapes against the stars. The escorts were out there somewhere . . . but too far to occlude a noticeable patch of the starfield.

It was easy to lose track of time in that long traverse of darkness. The glowing numerals inside her helmet flicked through the tenths of seconds, then seconds, then minutes. She did not look at her oxygen gauge; if it went too low, too fast, there would be no helpful bomb disposal team to hook up a new one for her.

“Trouble.” That was Seska; Esmay looked his way. Beyond him, the starfield shifted suddenly. Her mind froze up, but even as Seska said, “They’re maneuvering,” she had figured it out. Someone had decided to rotate the ship . . . and that someone could not be the captain.

But it could very well be the Bloodhorde commandos, in control of the bridge.

She told herself not to panic. She told herself that despite the seeming solidity and immobility of Koskiusko , the ship had never been really immobile: all ships moved, all the time, and she was no more likely to lose her grip and fall off when it was under drive than when it was moved only by the old laws of physics. Kos wasn’t a warship; it couldn’t develop the acceleration of the most anemic civilian cargo vessel on insystem drive.

Bowry’s voice, elaborately casual, broke into her thoughts. “Lieutenant—I don’t suppose you know whether the FTL drive is irretrievably broken?”

The FTL drive. At once she knew what the Bloodhorde was going to do, and kicked herself mentally for not seeing it before. Of course they were going to take their prize away from possible rescue before trying to open it, like a jay with a sweetnut. “No, sir,” she said to Bowry. “Drives and Maneuver seemed to think it was most likely sabotage, but the sequenced jumps out could have knocked something loose.”

“Those escorts ought to be doing something useful,” Seska said. “Like blowing us away, when they see us moving under power.”

Esmay had forgotten about the escorts, too. Her mouth went dry. Here she was, clinging to the outside of a spaceship under power, which was likely to come under fire . . . her EVA suit felt about as protective as facial tissue.

“Unless our crew’s doing it, and they’re talking to them.” Bowry didn’t sound really hopeful. “I suppose they could be moving away from the jump point and closer to the escorts.”

“No . . .” That was Frees. “Looks to me like we’re heading for it, but on a different vector . . . without the nav computer, I can’t be sure, but—didn’t this jump point have four outbound vectors?”

“Yes,” Seska said. “I can’t judge the approach, but you’re probably right, Lin. We’re less than a half hour from jump, I’d guess, and a lot more than a half hour from any place we can get into the ship. This should be interesting . . . pity we have no way to record the experience of the first people to die going through unprotected jump.”

“The commandos survived,” Esmay said, not knowing she was going to say it. Silence followed; she assumed the others were watching the wheeling starfield that proved Kos was moving under power.

“They were in Wraith ,” Seska said.

“But there was a hull breach and forward shield failure. There’s nothing wrong with Kos ’s FTL shields.” She didn’t know anything about shield technology, except that all FTL-capable ships had FTL shields. “If we get off this thing and down onto the hull . . .”

“Good idea, Suiza.”

It took almost the entire half hour to clamber down, carefully clipping and unclipping and reclipping safety lines, from the high smooth arch of the materials transport track to the hull. Here, for the first time, Esmay could feel through her bootsoles a faint lateral tug, another proof that Kos was moving on her own, arguing with the inertia of her former path.

They were perhaps two-thirds of the way across the bridge dome from the Special Materials Fabrication Unit, its bulge hiding from them T-1 and all but the tip of SpecMat. Suddenly, light behind them, a flare that spread into a glow overhead. Esmay ducked instinctively, and looked up. The materials transport track flared into blinding vapor at its highest point, and shed flaming pieces that streamed along a track revealing their progress.

“Let’s see,” Seska said. “Now we’re on the outside of a ship headed for jump and someone’s shooting at us. I wonder where the adventure cube camera crew is?”

“On the other escort, of course,” Frees said. “That’s why they’re not shooting at us yet.”

“I would wonder what else could go wrong, but I don’t want to give the universe ideas,” Bowry said.

Esmay grinned. She suddenly realized one other thing she’d been missing . . . humor that felt right to her.

“If they’re at standard distance, they can’t get mass weapons to us before we go through jump,” Seska said. “And that’s only an escort, isn’t it? Two more LOS shots ought to wipe them out for recharge, and then we’ll be gone.”

“Assuming the other one doesn’t fry us,” Bowry said. Light flared again, and this time the haze thickened. The rest of the transport track peeled away. “Good tracking, but they’ll burn out their power supply if they don’t let it go.” Abrupt darkness; Esmay blinked, and the stars showed again.

“If the other one wanted to, they’d have done it already. What I heard in the first conference was that one of the escorts was waffling and probably would jump out pretending to go for help.”

“Desertion . . .” mused Frees.

“Butt-covering,” Bowry said. “How I hate the prudent ones.”

“Doing all right, Lieutenant?” Seska asked, not as if he were worried, just checking.

“Fine, sir,” Esmay said. “Just trying to remember if there’s an airlock access around here somewhere.” Because even if they could survive jump on the outside of the ship, they’d run out of air before they finished . . . even a short jump lasted days longer than the air supply in an EVA suit.

“That’s an idea,” Seska said. “Get back in and go for ’em?”

“No, sir . . . not just the four of us, with only four light weapons. I was thinking, just stay in the airlock, with the outer hatch cracked so no one can get into it from inside, until we drop out of jump. Then go on.”

“Might work,” Seska said. “We can use suit—”

Koskiusko bulled its way into the jump transition with an uncanny slithering lurch and a vibration that ground its way through Esmay’s boots into her sinuses. The stars were gone. She could see nothing beyond the readouts in her helmet and they looked very strange indeed. Her com was silent, as dark a silence as the visible dark around her. Under her, the vibration went on and on, unhealthy for the ship, for the connection of wing to core, for the stability of the drives themselves. If the drives failed, if they dropped out of FTL at some unmapped point . . .

She clung to her handholds, and tried to talk herself out of the panic she felt. Of course it was dark; they’d outrun the light. If her readouts looked strange, she could still see them. Oxygen, for instance, gave her two hours more . . . but as she watched none of the values clicked over. The time-in-suit display was frozen in place, unmoving.