Joan Vinge - The Outcasts of Heaven Belt

But the starship—even he, Raul, had discovered hope again in what it could offer Heaven… and, specifically, the Grand Harmony. Why would Abdhiamal, of all people, try to make sure that neither of their governments got its hands on the ship? Abdhiamal was a fair man—but was he fair to the point of insanity, of genocide? And the woman who piloted the ship… why would she run such risks to keep a promise to a place like Lansing? Were they both insane, were they all? Or was there something he wasn’t seeing?… Too many things that he couldn’t see. But if she kept her promise, if that ship was falling right into his hands… that was the only answer that he would ever need. Ever.

“Can’t you raise Lansing, Pappy?” Betha moved stiffly up from the rendezvous program on the control board.

Clewell pulled the ear jack wearily away from his head. “No. I’ve got the ship monitoring all up and down the spectrum. If anyone talks to us we’ll hear it.”

“Maybe the transmitter broke down,” Shadow Jack said. “It’s out about half the time, seems like. They have a hard time keepin’ it repaired.” Bird Alyn floated beside him above Betha’s head, gazing at the magnified image of Lansing on the screen. Betha watched the cloudy, marshmallow softness of the tent passing below: a shroud for a dying people, who would live a little longer because of the Ranger.

Discus hung above and to the left, tilted and indistinct, a tiny finger’s jewel. And somewhere in the closer darkness: three fusion ships from the Demarchy. Not one of them had begun deceleration to match velocities with Lansing and the Ranger. Their mission was one of murder… Betha glanced at the latest tracking update; less than ten minutes left to offload the hydrogen.

“Well, our time is a little limited… I’m sure that Lansing won’t mind if we drop you and the tanks into low orbit, and then get ourselves out of here.” She smiled up at Shadow Jack and Bird Alyn, forcing warmth into her voice. “They should be glad to see you two coming home with eight hundred tons of hydrogen.”

“They will,” Shadow Jack said. They nodded, their faces shining clean and smiling bravely above the collars of their pressure suits. “But… are you sure you’re goin’ to be all right when we go?” An odd longing edged his voice, and a secret shame. “Just the—two of you?” He glanced away at Clewell’s drawn face, cracking his knuckles.

From the corner of her eye Betha saw Wadie look at her… impeccable Abdhiamal, in embroidered jacket and faded dungarees. She smiled in spite of her self. “We’ll be all right,” she said, managing a confidence her own aching, battered body did not really believe, for his sake. She would not play on his guilt to make, him change his mind. They had come this far; they would find a way to do the rest, somehow. Later… she’d think about it later. “Don’t crack your knuckles, Shadow Jack. You’ll ruin your joints.”

Shadow Jack grinned feebly and stuffed his hands into his gloves.

Wadie touched her shoulder. “Look.”

As they spoke the Ranger had slipped a quarter of the way around Lansing. On the near horizon, they saw a blunt protrusion of naked stone, the tent lapping its slope like clouds below a mountaintop.

“The Mountain,” Bird Alyn said. “There’re the radio—antennas, an’ the moorage… there’s one of our—”

“Hey.” Shadow Jack tugged at her arm. “That’s not one of our ships! I never saw anythin’ like that; where’d it come from?”

“Maybe it’s salvage.”

“No, look, there’s another one.”

Betha increased the magnification. “Pappy, those look like—”

“—Ringers! Ringers, go back, it’s a trap, a—” A woman’s voice burst out of the speaker, was choked off.

“Mother!” A small cry escaped from Bird Alyn.

“Those look like chemical rockets down there.” Clewell finished the sentence, his voice like dry leaves rattling.

Wadie’s hand tightened on her shoulder. “My God, those are Ringer ships; fifty million kilometers from Discus…” His voice sharpened with disbelief. “The Demarchy knew the Harmony had a couple of high-mass-ratio strike forces, but nothin’ like this. To be here now, with only chemical rockets, they must’ve started right after they first attacked you. And even then they’d need a mass ratio of a thousand to one—”

A new voice came over the speaker: “Outsider starship! This is Hand Nakamore of the Grand Harmony. Maintain your present orbit. Do not activate your drive or you’ll be fired upon. One of my ships will approach you now for boarding.” Betha looked down on the airless mountain, at three cumbersome Ringer craft, each hardly more than a mass of propellant tanks surrounding a tiny crew module. At last she saw one of them begin to rise, its invisible backwash kicking up clouds of surface rubble. Trapped… Her hands knotted at her sides. The best the Ranger could ever do was one gravity; and now she could only get one-quarter of that, with the load strapped to its hull. The Ringer chemical rockets could do several gees for more than long enough to close with them.

The seconds passed; the Ringer ship rose slowly, almost insolently, toward them. The minutes passed… and with them, the Ranger’s last hope of avoiding the Demarchy fleet as well. Christ, why must we lose now, when we’re so close!

Wadie hooked a foot under the rail along the panel, steadying himself. “Betha, that was Djem Nakamore’s half-brother, Raul, on the radio. He’s a Hand of Harmony, an officer in their navy. A high-ranking officer. Let me talk to him. He probably knows what I did at Snows-of-Salvation, but we were friends, once.”

“Better wait, Abdhiamal,” Clewell said quietly. “We’ve got more company, sophisticated wideband.” He touched a switch and another segment of the screen brightened.

“Lije MacWong,” Wadie said; Betha saw the easy grace tighten out of his body.

“Captain Torgussen: If you’re receiving this, you must realize that the Demarchy has pursued your ship. The distance-velocity gap between us is small enough now so that you can’t outrun our missiles; do not attempt to leave Lansing space.” Behind MacWong’s self-satisfied face Betha could see a control room half the size of the Ranger’s and a ship’s officer in a sun-gold jacket. Farther back in the room she saw cameras trained on the screen, saw a cluster of demarchs, like bright-painted wooden dolls—company representatives overseeing their interests. She saw Esrom Tiriki, felt her mouth tighten.

She signaled at Clewell to transmit. “I hear you, MacWong. And I’m impressed. Have you actually come all this way just to destroy my ship? You can’t take us now; all you can do is destroy us in passing…”

She hesitated. MacWong’s startling blue eyes still stared blindly from the screen. She realized, chagrined, that even closing at eight hundred kilometers per second the Demarchy ships were still millions of kilometers away; light itself took half a minute to bridge the gap.

At last MacWong reacted, looked past her to Wadie. For an instant she saw apology and regret; another second, and she saw only triumph. “On the contrary, Captain Torgussen. We have no intention of destroyin’ your starship—if you obey our instructions. Our ships will pass through your vicinity in about four thousand seconds. You have that much time to dismantle and deactivate your drive. If, by that time, you haven’t satisfactorily proved that your ship will be immobilized till we return for it, you will be fired on and destroyed. The people want your ship intact, Captain, but if they can’t have it, they don’t intend to let it go to anybody else.”