Winning Colors

Chapter Eighteen

In her office, she looked around a moment. She had hardly seen it since it had been Garrivay’s, since she had killed him. Nothing showed in its surfaces, no stains on the rug, no scrapes on the furniture. She sent for a meal—anything hot—and began working through the message stack. Despite reported some garbled transmissions from the planet’s surface. They had also carried out the orbital damage survey. The Benignity commander, intending to put down his own troops, had used less toxic weapons than he might have. Although the two small cities had been flattened, and wildfires burned across the grasslands and forests near them, the rest of the planet wasn’t damaged. It would remain liveable. Heris thought of the pretty little city she had ridden through, with its white stone buildings now blasted to rubble, its colorful gardens blackened . . . it could have been worse, but that didn’t make it good.

She ate the food when it came without noticing what it was. One group of miners wanted to know if it was safe to go back to their domed colony. Another claimed salvage rights on the destroyed killer-escort and asked permission to start cutting it up. She suspected it had already started doing so. Those in the ore-carrier, without any explanation of what they’d been doing, announced that they were going back.

Heris called the bridge, and asked for tightbeams to both Despite and Sweet Delight. The young captain of Despite wanted to explain the mutiny, but Heris cut her off. “That’s for a Board of Inquiry,” she said. “Right now I need to know what you’ve picked up from the planet.”

“We have no estimate of the number of survivors,” Suiza said. “We’ve picked up two transmitters, but one may be an automatic distress beacon. It’s repeating the same message over and over. The other seems to be trying to contact the first, not us.”

“Ah. They probably don’t know who won up here, and they’re trying to collect their forces on the ground. A good sign, though it may be tricky for our people to land if they’re going to be mistaken for hostiles.”

A light blinked on her console. “Excuse me, Captain,” she said; the youngster started, as if she were surprised at the formality. “I’ll get back to you,” she promised. This time it was Jig Faroe on Sweet Delight.

“Come on back,” she said, only then remembering that she’d told him to keep his distance until called. “We’ll need to get those civilians off the yacht, or you off the yacht, I’m not sure which.”

“Yes, sir.” He seemed much older than the other Jig—but then he hadn’t been through a mutiny, and the command of a yacht was well within his ability. Heris still had to find out how Suiza had ended up in command, and how she’d destroyed a Benignity heavy cruiser. “Uh—a couple of them aren’t aboard.”

“Aren’t aboard? What do you mean?”

“Well . . . Lady Cecelia said it was a good idea. Brun’s acting as our liaison with the miners.”

“Oh. Well, make sure someone brings her in.” Another blinking light. This one must be the admiral’s call. “Be sure we know your ETA,” she said, and clicked off.

“Captain—tightbeam from the admiral—”

“Coming.” Heris left for the bridge, very glad of the clean uniform. She nodded to Milcini and sat in the command chair. She hadn’t actually sat down in it before; she’d been too busy running a warship in combat, when she always thought better on her feet. Now she put on its headset and enabled the screen. There on the display was her Aunt Vida, admiral’s stars winking on her shoulders.

“Captain . . . Serrano.” That pause could be signal stretch, an artifact of their relative positions and velocities, but it felt like something else.

“Sir,” Heris said. She was aware of a grim satisfaction in the steadiness of her voice. Defiance tempted her, the urge to say something reckless. She fought it down, along with the questions she could ask only in private.

“Situation?” That was regulation enough; it might mean any of several things, including the straightforward need for information.

“No present hostilities,” she said, back in the groove of training and habit. “Xavier system was attacked by a Benignity force, which destroyed its orbital station and did major damage to both population centers. Damage estimates for the planet and its population are incomplete; we have not established communication with survivors. There are at least two functional transmitters. The population did have some warning, and the local government tried to evacuate to wilderness areas.”

“And Commander Garrivay?”

“Is dead. May I have the admiral’s permission to send an encrypted sidebar packet?”

“Go ahead.” Heris had prepared an account of her actions, and the background to them; now she handed this to a communications tech, with instructions.

“Status of Regular Space Service vessels?” her aunt went on.

“Paradox was lost in combat, no survivors known. Vigilance has structural damage to an aft missile bay from a blowout. Engineering advises that it would not be safe to attempt FTL at this time. Despite is jump-capable, and essentially undamaged, but extremely short-crewed.”

“How dirty is the system?” In other words, how many loose missiles with proximity fuses were wandering around on the last heading they’d followed.

“Still dirty,” Heris said. “And we laid orbital mines around Xavier, nonstandard ones improvised with local explosives. None of those are fissionables, but they’re potent.”

“Very well. Hold your position until further orders. We’ll send the sweepers ahead; we’re laying additional mines in the jump-exit corridors and closing this system to commercial traffic until the new station is up and operating.” A long pause, then, “Good job, Captain Serrano. Please inform your command of the admiralty’s satisfaction.”

“Thank you, sir.” Heris could not believe it was ending like this. Of course there were reasons an admiral wouldn’t get into all the issues even on a tightbeam transmission, but she had expected something, some demand for explanation . . . something.

“Well,” she said to her bridge crew. “Admiral Serrano thinks we did a good job.” A chuckle went around the bridge. “I think we already knew that. Now let’s get things in order for the admiral’s inspection, because if I know anything about admirals, she’ll be aboard as soon as Harrier’s in orbit.”

Brun woke slowly, in fits and starts. It was dark. It was cold. She couldn’t quite remember where she was, and when she reached for covers, she discovered that she was quite naked. The movement itself set up competing fluctuations in her head and belly. She gagged, gulped, and came all the way awake in a sudden terror that slicked her cold skin with sweat.

After uncountable moments of heart-pounding fear, Brun wrestled her panic to a dead stop. She wasn’t dead. She hung on to that with mental fingernails. In twenty minutes, maybe, or two hours, or a day, she might be dead . . . but not now. So now was the time she had to figure something out.

You wanted adventure, she reminded herself. You could have been sitting in a nice, warm, safe room surrounded by every luxury, but . . . no, no time to think that, either. Only time for the realities, the most basic of basics.

Air. She was breathing, so she must have air of a sort. She didn’t even feel breathless, though her heart was pounding . . . that was probably fear. She wouldn’t let herself call it panic. She felt around her . . . finding nothing, at first, in the darkness. Nearly zero gravity, she thought. And air, and not freezing, or she’d be dead. Her stomach wanted to crawl out her mouth, but she told it no. She’d already gagged once; her belly was empty. Dry heaves would only waste energy, she told herself, and hoped that she hadn’t already compromised the ventilation system with vomit.

Still, even if she had air now, she might not always. She had to get somewhere and find out where she was and how long she had. She tried to remember what she’d been taught about zero gravity maneuvers. If you were stuck in the middle of a compartment, someone had said (who? was her memory going too?), you could put yourself into a spin and hope to bump into something. A slow spin, or you’d throw up. And how to spin? She twisted, experimentally, and then drew up her legs while extending her arms.

Something brushed her leg. She grabbed for it, automatically; her hand found nothing, but nausea grabbed her, proving that she’d tumbled. She flung out arms and legs both, to slow the rotation, and felt something brush her left elbow. Maddening—she couldn’t tell what it was. Slowly, she tried to reach across with her right hand. Whatever it was slid along her arm; she was moving again. On her shoulder, down her back . . . it was hard not to grab, but she waited . . . something linear, like a rope or length of tubing. Smooth, not rough. Cool.

Her head hit a surface, hard; she saw sparkles in the darkness for a moment, then her vision settled. Cautiously, she moved her hand up, found the surface, knobbly with switches. Some were rocker switches, smooth curves of plastic. Others were little metal toggles. A few were round, flat buttons with incised lettering—she could feel that, but not what the letters were. A control panel, but on what? She tried to remember what she’d seen before everything went wrong.

The image that came to her was grinning faces, mouths open, singing. A party. It had been a party, loud and happy—the rest of the memory burst over her. The ore-hauler, stuffed like an egg carton with the little four-person pods: the miners had their own plans for dealing with Benignity invaders. Faroe had been horrified—he knew they couldn’t survive a fight with the big ships. She had offered to go talk to them; he’d agreed. Then, against Faroe’s expectation (though she had never doubted it) Heris Serrano had defeated the Benignity ships. And Fleet had arrived: they were safe. The resulting celebration involved mysterious liquids far more potent than the fine wines and liquors her father served, even more potent than the illicit brews at school. The last she remembered was sinking peacefully into a bunk while a group of miners sang the forty-second verse of “Down by the Bottom of the Shaft.” Or perhaps the twenty-first verse the second time around. It had a fairly repetitious form, minor variations on the same few innuendoes, and she hadn’t exactly been paying close attention.

Which meant she was probably in one of the personnel pods, which meant she had seen the control panels before. She didn’t want to push any of the flat buttons. They were all critical; one of them, she remembered, was the airlock main control.

She had drifted closer to the control panel; her knee bumped something with an edge (the desks below or the storage shelf above? It didn’t really matter) and she felt cautiously around with her foot until she was sure she had the foot hooked under that edge. She felt carefully with both hands until she had the little metal tip of a toggle pinched in either hand. Now she was anchored, if she didn’t lose her grip. Her feet defined “down” for the moment. She let the other foot wave slowly until her toes found the same edge and crawled under it. Both feet hooked in . . . now she could release one hand and feel around in a more organized way.

Out to the right . . . the switches ended in a smooth cool surface. That made sense with her memories. Carefully, forcing herself not to rush and break loose, she moved her right hand back, caught hold of the toggle, and slid her left hand across the switches there.

Should she push this switch? Any switch? Panic shook her again, as if some great beast had its jaws around her chest. Think. What would happen if she didn’t? She’d be here, naked in the dark, until she died, and she would have no idea when that might be. Was that what she wanted? No.

The first switch she pushed produced no detectable change. Nor did the second. She hesitated before pushing another. If the electrical system was off, none of the switches would do anything. But if the electrical system was off, the air wouldn’t be circulating, and that tiny draft on the small of her back suggested that it was, though perhaps on a standby system.

Where had the electrical system controls been? On the left-hand side of the consoles . . . if she was right-side up. Now she could think of that, and how to tell. Below the consoles a kneehole space accommodated the person working them; above was the storage shelf with netting. Her toes wiggled down, and found themselves snagged in something tangled. Netting, she hoped. That meant—her mind struggled. It was surprisingly hard to think upside down in the dark . . . the lower left console would now be . . . up here. She felt over it, slowly. The main lighting control should be about halfway up—perhaps this big rocker switch? She pushed it.

Light stabbed at her; she squinted. She was indeed upside down; her stomach lurched, and she fought back the nausea. It wasn’t really upside down, not in zero G, just relatively upside down. That thought didn’t help. Move slowly, Ginese had told her repeatedly. Now, as she tried to turn her head and look across the tiny compartment, one foot came unhooked and she lost her grip on the toggle. Don’t panic, Ginese always said. Just drift, if you have to . . . she drifted, held by her right toes clenched on the shelf’s retracted netting. Light was definitely better. She could put up a hand to fend off the stool that tumbled slowly before her (was that what she’d kicked before?) and she could see that what she’d first felt was indeed a length of tubing, perhaps two or three meters of it. She had no idea what it was for.

After a long struggle, she finally twisted and coiled herself into an “upright” position, with her feet under the consoles. With a firm grip on the edge, she rested and tried to think more clearly. She was, as she’d thought, naked. She saw no sign of a spacesuit, but across the compartment were personnel lockers. Perhaps in there she could find something. Meanwhile . . . with the lights on, she could identify most of the switches. She pushed displays on and the smooth screens to either side of the consoles lit up. For a moment they blurred into fuzzy rainbows as tears rose, but she blinked hard. She could cry later, if she had to. For now, first things first. Air: she had air, more than a hundred hours at present usage. She had electrical power keeping the internal temperature high enough for survival—calories, in that limited sense. Water? She found none listed, but that didn’t mean much; she might find juice in one of the lockers.

Slowly, carefully, she worked her way around checking the lockers. Two plastic flasks with zero G nipples full of clear liquid—the first she tried gave her a fiery drop of the same stuff drunk at the party. She grimaced and pinched the nipple shut. The other was water, pleasantly cool. The next locker was half full of concentrate bars, sticky-taped to the racks. Better and better: food as well as water. Brun alternated sips of water with bites of concentrate.

She still didn’t know why she was in a pod in zero G. Was it someone’s idea of a joke? A political move, an attempt to use her as a pawn in play against her father, or Heris?

“I don’t think so,” muttered Brun. She felt much better even without clothes on, now that a bar of concentrate was doing its work in her belly. She looked at the exterior scans again. The miners had explained their reference system; she could locate Xavier, Oreson, Blueyes, Zadoc. Rock-blips were supposed to be one color, and ship-blips another, which meant—if she was right about it—that there were a lot of ships out there. One of them would be the Sweet Delight, and one would be Vigilance, with Koutsoudas on scan. Somebody should be able to see the pod—if they bothered to look, with the battle over. And there were lots of little blips going by, some of them marked by the scans as thermally active. Thermally active rocks? Brun frowned. Weren’t thermally active rocks found in volcanoes? She’d never heard of volcanoes on anything smaller than a planet.

Ahead, a drift of blips slid across the screen, thickening. She was moving too fast, she realized, relative to those rocks. Pods were tough, but not that tough. It took her a few moments to locate the thruster controls, and confirm the full fuel tanks. Then she began maneuvering, using short bursts, as she remembered someone telling her, trying to work away from the thickest clumps of blips.

“She’s what!” Heris struggled to keep her voice under control. Faroe looked miserable enough, and he wasn’t the one who’d done it.

“She volunteered to go talk to the miners aboard the ore-hauler, to convince them to go back into hiding. I was going to pick her up before our final jump out. When we—you—won, I sent word . . . and apparently they had this party.”

Heris could imagine. An ore-hauler full of drunken miners who had just learned that they weren’t going to commit suicide by attacking warships with pods . . . they’d have been crazy to start with, and the party hadn’t helped.

“—And apparently she passed out, and someone threw up on her, and they cleaned her up and put her in a pod to sleep it off, only someone hit the jettison control by mistake hours later—”

And now Brun was out there in a little personnel pod, unconscious or sicker than sin if she was awake, in space thoroughly contaminated with spent weapons from days of fighting.

“Why didn’t they go after her?” Heris asked.

“They said that whoever hit the jettison control was so drunk he didn’t realize he’d done it—they only realized the pod was gone when they went to give her some clean clothes.”

Great. She was not only unconscious, but naked. Heris could imagine explaining this to Lord Thornbuckle: sorry, sir, but I let your daughter experience war in the company of drunken miners and they dumped her into a pod, unconscious and naked, and shoved her out into the debris of battle. . . . No. Not a good plan. Something had to be done. “Do they have any kind of location on the pod?” she asked.

“No, sir.” Faroe looked miserable, as well he might. “I’ve had our scan techs on it since I heard, of course, but there’s so much—”

“Captain, you won’t believe this.” It was Koutsoudas, from across the bridge. Heris looked up. “Some idiot rockjumper is trying to collect weaponry with a personnel pod.” He pointed to an icon that darted into a drift and then back out. “At least he’s got some sense, but—”

“ ’Steban, put a lock on that pod. Can you do a retro analysis—could that have come from the ore-hauler four or five hours ago?”

“It only turned its beacon on a few minutes ago, but let’s see if I can get any kind of trace on the recordings. Hmm. Yes, it could’ve. Why?”

“Because it’s Brun,” Heris said. Only Brun could be that lucky, although her luck could run out any moment. “You’re going to have to guide Sweet Delight to it for a pickup. Faroe, are you getting this?”

“Yes . . .” He sounded less confident than she felt. He hadn’t been around Brun that long. “It’s pretty thick stuff to take the yacht in. . . .”

“You’re right.” Heris thought a moment. “What we need is in the incoming formations. If we can help her stay alive that long . . . I need a tightbeam to the Harrier,” she said.

Brun had forgotten everything but the scans that told her where the rocks were thickest. She had once thought it must be fun to pilot a pod like this in the rings of a gas giant; now she understood the look she’d gotten when she said so to the miners. And although she’d read that rocks usually drifted along together, all moving about the same vector and velocity, these rocks didn’t act that way at all. She was constantly having to dodge rocks coming in at different angles, different speeds. She was almost glad she hadn’t found any clothes, since she was dripping with sweat.

When the control panel suddenly spoke to her, in a scratchy simulation of a voice she knew, she didn’t notice until it repeated her name the third or fourth time. “Brun! Brun! Can you hear us? Brun!”

Communications. Now where was that switch? She groped around until she found it and another little screen lit up to say that her transmitter had full power. “I hear you, but I’m busy,” she said, flicking the starboard thruster on again. One thing about it, she was getting better at this all the time.

“Brun, is that you?”

“Yes, it’s Brun. There’s a lot of rocks out here.” Then curiosity got past her concentration. “Who is this?” she asked.

“Koutsoudas,” she heard. “Brun, you need to let me give you some guidance; someone’s going to pick you up.”

“Why can’t you just give me a vector over to Sweet Delight?”

“Won’t work,” Koutsoudas said. “And I doubt you’ve the fuel for it.” Brun glanced at the fuel display and was shocked at how much she’d already used. She’d been trying to do short adjustments but—“Give me a tenth-second burp starboard,” Koutsoudas said, before she could think about it. “Now port.” Something slid by in the scan, long and narrow with a thermally active tip.

“I don’t understand all these thermally active rocks,” she said to Koutsoudas. “I thought volcanoes had to be on planets.”

“They aren’t rocks,” he said. While she was thinking about that, he gave her more directions. Now the scan blips thinned out.

“But they’re not ships . . .” Brun said. She could see the ships clearly. These things were a lot closer.

“No,” Koutsoudas said. “They’re weapons.”

“You mean—someone was shooting at me? Why?”

“No, you were crossing drifts of misses—missiles that didn’t hit their target. You’re almost out of it now—”

Brun realized she was shaking. It was stupid; she was almost out of it now.

“Is there a suit aboard?” Koutsoudas asked. “You’ve got ten minutes before your next drift, if you can find a suit—”

She found an EVA suit, a drab utilitarian model nothing like her custom suit. Its owner had been shorter; Brun felt the pressure all along her spinal column once she’d struggled into it. But the locks did fasten, and the internal gauges did turn green. It was fully charged with air, water, and power. Best of all, the suit boots had gripper feet; she now had a solid down.

She worked her way back to the control panel and discovered that it was just possible to handle the switches in gloves. She plugged in the suit com to the pod’s com, and told Koutsoudas she was suited.

“Just in case,” he said, in the same calm voice he’d used all along. “Now—what’s your fuel situation?”

“Down to ten percent.” And she didn’t know what ten percent was, in terms of use. She didn’t even know how long she’d been using it.

“Then give me one-half second, thrusters seven and four.” She could see the fuel display sag at that, and she said so.

“Not much longer,” Koutsoudas said.

When the blow came, it took her by surprise, and slammed her against the adjacent lockers. The suit’s padding protected her, but the boots came unstuck from the deck, and she tumbled. Another blow to the pod sent her tumbling in another direction. The pod rang with noise: clangs, scrapes, piercing squeals. Finally it was still. Brun put out a cautious foot and it stuck. She could hear nothing; the end of the communication cable waved around, making it clear that she’d come unplugged. She moved slowly back to the control panel, and plugged it in. A patient voice was calling her, not Koutsoudas but someone else.

“Brun—Brun—Brun—”

“I’m here,” she said. “Just shaken up.”

“Good,” the voice said. “You’re now locked onto the R.S.S. minesweeper Bulldog, en route to the Harrier. Remain in your spacesuit; do not attempt to leave your vessel until docking is complete and you have received notification.” And that was the end of that; her comlink cut off and would not reopen.

It seemed like a long time later that a gentler series of bumps woke her from a nap. The comlink hissed gently, live again, then another voice spoke to her.

“Brun?”

“Yes,” she said, feeling grumpy. “I’m here.” Where else would she be?

“Your pod is aboard our ship—it’s the R.S.S. Julian Child—”

“I thought I was going to something called Harrier,” Brun said.

A chuckle. “Oh, you are. But Harrier has no facilities for docking like this, and the admiral thought it would be safer to transport you by shuttle, not make you swim tubes.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Admiral. What admiral? Where was Heris? Where, for that matter, was Lady Cecelia?

“We understand you’re in a vacuum-capable suit . . . if you’ll open your hatch—it’s the left-hand flat button—”

“That says exterior hatch, caution. Yes, I know.”

“That will put you in our number six docking bay. It’s not aired up—if you have any concerns about your suit air, please tell me now. There’s an airlock to ship-normal air about six meters to your left, as you exit, and suited personnel will be there to help you.”

Outside the pod, Brun saw a vast cargo bay open to space; craft she had no name for were parked along the sides, and her pod filled the open middle. Beyond the lip of the bay, she could see the hull of another ship, a shape so odd she wasn’t at first sure it was a ship. She stared until someone touched her suited arm, took the dangling cable of her comunit, and plugged it into his own suit.

“It’s a minesweeper,” she heard. “Odd beast, isn’t it? Nothing else could go in after you.”

Then they guided her to the airlock, and on into the ship, where she had a chance to change into a gray Fleet shipsuit before her shuttle flight left for the Harrier.

“Some party,” the admiral said, without preamble, when Brun had arrived in her office.

“I—don’t remember most of it,” Brun said. The admiral looked familiar, though she didn’t think she’d met admirals before. Not this one, anyway.

“My niece tells me you once wanted to run away and join the service,” the admiral said. Niece. Aunt. Brun looked at the admiral again. Graying hair, but the same evenly chiseled dark features, the same compact body, the same confidence.

“You’re Heris’s aunt,” she blurted.

“Yes. And you’re Lord Thornbuckle’s daughter. Tell me—are you cured of your desire for adventure?”

Brun thought a moment, even though she didn’t need to think. “Not really,” she said. “I mean, I’m still alive.”

The admiral nodded, as if she’d expected that answer. “Do you now understand why my niece and her crew insisted that you learn all those boring bits you complained about?”

Brun laughed, which startled the admiral, then she smiled too. “I always understood,” Brun said. “I didn’t realize the complaining bothered them. Doesn’t everyone gripe?”

Admiral Serrano—she supposed they had the same surname as well as the same genes—tipped her head as if to inspect Brun more closely. “You are a remarkable young woman,” she said. “My niece thought so, and you just proved it again. Will you eat with me?”

Brun had no idea what meal might show up, but her stomach was ready for any of them. Any two or three of them. “Thank you,” she said, hoping that the admiral would ignore the far less mannerly answer her stomach gave at the thought of food. “I’d be honored.”

“She’s safe aboard the Harrier,” Koutsoudas said. “If that’s safe . . . they won’t let me talk to her.”

“I don’t think my aunt eats girls for breakfast,” Heris said. “Not even that one. Who, I’m sure, is cheerful and bright-eyed and ready to tell an admiral everything she thinks she knows about everything she’s heard.”

Heris put in a call to Sweet Delight, to reassure Cecelia that Brun had survived. Cecelia, relieved of that anxiety, had a long string of other topics to discuss. Heris really didn’t care, at that moment, about the fate of the breeding farms she’d visited, the status of the financial ansible, or what might happen to the miners who had thrown the party. She would have been far more annoyed with Cecelia, if the conversation had not included an inquiry about each of the former Sweet Delight crew. Cecelia might have her batty side, but she did care about people. She even cared about the present crew, especially Jig Faroe, whom she praised until Heris finally cut her off. She could almost feel his embarrassment through the intervening thousands of kilometers of vacuum.

“You know,” Ginese said, without looking around, “it’s going to be very interesting when your aunt and Lady Cecelia get together.”

Heris had not thought of that. “Oh . . . my,” she said. Those of the bridge crew who had been on Sweet Delight had the same expression she felt on her own face.