Angelmass

CHAPTER 26

Hanan screamed, a long, agonized wail almost inaudible above the violent sleet-storm of gamma-ray crackling that filled the control cabin. "What's happening?" Forsythe shouted over the din.

"Radiation surge!" Chandris shouted back. Ornina was at Hanan's side, fumbling under his shirt for the exobrace cutoff switches. Chandris reached for her restraints—

"Chandris, get us some rotation," Kosta called from behind her. "If you don't, the hull's going to get cooked."

Ornina found the switch, and Hanan collapsed trembling in his seat. "He's right, Chandris," Ornina shouted to her. "Do it."

Cursing under her breath, Chandris turned back and keyed in the command. The displays were unreadable through the multicolored snow that had suddenly appeared on them, and for a moment she wasn't sure whether or not the command had made it through. "You got it?" Kosta shouted.

"Hang on," she shouted back, trying to see through the snow on the displays. The numbers were still impossible to read, but she could feel her weight starting to increase. "Okay," she said. "Rotation's speeding up."

She turned back to Hanan. Ornina and Forsythe had gotten him out of his seat now and were supporting his weight between them. And the look on Ornina's face... "Ornina?"

Ornina turned a pale face to Chandris. "He's very bad," she said, her voice nearly lost in the gammaray noise. "We've got to get him to the medpack right away."

"I'll help you," Chandris said, popping her restraints.

"No," Forsythe said sharply. "We can handle him. You and Kosta get us out of here."

"But—"

"Don't argue!" the High Senator snapped. "You want to end up like that other ship?"

Chandris swallowed, the image of the burned and battered Hova's Skyarcher flashing through her mind. "We'll try. Kosta, get up here."

"Right." Kosta scrambled past the others and dropped into Hanan's seat. "What's working?"

"I'm guessing the major control lines are okay," Chandris told him, toggling through the Gazelle's sensor packs. "They've got a lot of redundancy and extra shielding. But I can't get anything out of the sensors."

"Burned out," Kosta grunted. "That, or the data lines are down."

"Must be the lines," Chandris agreed. "I don't get any response from the feedback register circuits, either."

"You don't need registers to fly the ship," Kosta pointed out impatiently. "If the control lines still work, fire up the engines and get us out of here."

"Yeah, well, there's just one problem," Chandris snarled. Her throat was beginning to hurt from the need to keep shouting over the gamma-ray noise. "I don't know where Angelmass is anymore."

"Is that a problem? We were heading more or less toward it. Just turn around and go."

"We could; except that with the registers gone I won't be able to tell when we've done a one-eighty."

Or maybe it wasn't just the shouting that was hurting her throat. Maybe it was plain, simple fear.

"You said yourself that the Hova's Skyarcher must have gone in pretty deep."

For a long minute the only sound in the control room was the roar of the gamma-ray static. Chandris kept toggling through the sensor packs, searching for something—anything—that could still be read.

But it was all uniform snow. "What about the ship's inertial nav equipment?" Kosta asked. "Does it have an external case display?"

Chandris had to search her memory of the Gazelle's spec manual. "It's got one, but you have to get the cover off to get to it. I don't think we've got enough time." Out of the corner of her eye she saw Kosta suddenly hunch over Hanan's board. "Wait a minute," he called. "I've got an idea. Check your VK-5 display."

She keyed for it. It was the same pattern of colored snow that was on all the others. "So?"

"Keep watching. The static should increase and decrease, with about a half-minute period."

She glared at the display, wondering what game Kosta was playing. But he was right. It was tricky to see, but the cycle was definitely there. "Okay, it's there. So?"

"That's the feed from my experiment package," he told her. "It's tied into one of the command lines, so we can still get data from it."

And the highest intensity snow would be when the package was pointing at Angelmass... "Doesn't help," she shook her head. "Not enough. We could wind up running lateral to Angelmass instead of away from it."

"Hang on, I'm not done," Kosta said, clearly working this out as he talked. "Okay. We're already rotating around our centerline; so what we do now is put a slow dual-yaw rotation on the ship and watch the display. The sensor cluster I'm tied into is in the bow, and it's also recessed a little. That means the only time the snow pattern will be steady will be when we're pointing away from Angelmass. Right?"

Chandris thought about it. "It sounds like it could take awhile. I don't know if we've got that much time to spare."

"It's that or risk running us in closer," Kosta countered. "You have a better idea?"

"If I come up with one, I'll let you know," Chandris gritted, keying in a dual-yaw command. "All right, here we go. Keep watching."

She could sense the slight change in inner ear pressures as the Gazelle began its sluggish midpoint rotation. On her display the snow continued its barely detectable rise and fall. Distantly, she wondered if they really had a chance, or whether the radiation from Angelmass would burn out their control lines—and them—before they could figure out which direction was the safe one.

Wondered if Angelmass had already killed Hanan.

"I think it's starting to even out," Kosta called.

Chandris peered closely at the display, the stuttering lights hurting her eyes. Maybe; but with all that background gamma-ray sparking it was hard to tell. If there were just some way to block off some of the radiation coming through the hull...

Maybe there was. Reaching for her board, she keyed in a command. "Keep watching," she ordered Kosta.

For a single heartbeat nothing happened. Then, just for a few seconds, the snow on the displays faded a little. The pattern she'd been trying so hard to see was suddenly right there—

"That's it!" Kosta shouted. "We're there. Go!"

Chandris jabbed at her board; and the scream of the gamma-ray crackling was joined by the deeper roar of the drive. "You sure?" she shouted to Kosta.

"Positive," he called back. "I was able to get a halfway clear look at the numbers during that dip in the static. What did you do, anyway?"

"Dumped all our drinking water and half our fuel," she told him. "I thought it might block some of the gammas."

"Shouldn't have worked," Kosta said. "Not enough mass there to make a visible difference. Can't argue with success, though."

And on his last word, as abruptly as it had begun, the surge was over.

For a minute Chandris just looked at Kosta, her ears ringing with the sudden silence. A stray gammaray spark crackled, sounding almost friendly in comparison to what they'd just been through. "I didn't think we were going to make it," Kosta said at last.

"Me, neither," Chandris said, wondering vaguely at her willingness to admit such a thing in front of Kosta.

Kosta held her eyes a moment longer. Then, looking almost embarrassed, he turned back to his displays. "Did we take any damage?"

Chandris was turned halfway back to her own displays when it hit them simultaneously. "Hanan!"

Chandris got the word out first.

Kosta was already poking uselessly at the intercom. "Not working," he said tightly. "Go—I'll watch things here."

"Right." Chandris popped her restraints and slid out of her chair—

And came to a sudden stop. Forsythe was at the door, a grim expression on his face. "You need to get on the radio right away," he told her, handing her a data cyl. "Call Central and tell them we've got an EmDef blue-three emergency—here are the authorization codes. They're to give you a priority catapult back to Seraph."

Chandris's heart skipped a beat. "Hanan?"

Forsythe nodded. "He's still alive, but not by much. Something to do with his exobraces—I'm not sure what. Ornina says it's critical that he get back to ground medical facilities as soon as possible."

Chandris spun around and climbed back to Kosta's seat. Not Hanan, she pleaded silently. Please.

"The radio?" she breathed.

"Starting to come back," Kosta said, his voice as grim as Forsythe's as he took the cyl. "Go on. I'll make the call as soon as I can get through."

"All right." Taking a deep breath, unlocking suddenly stiff knees, she headed for the door.

"Blue-three," Forsythe reminded Kosta as Chandris came up to him. He looked down into her eyes, just for a second—"And if they give you any trouble, you put my name on it. Understand?"

He looked at Chandris again. "Come on. I'll take you to him."

The proximity alarm on the Komitadji trilled its warning. "Catapult remote: launch when ready,"

Commodore Lleshi ordered. The paraconducting underskin gave its usual stutter of protest; and abruptly, the stars vanished from the viewscreens.

After all these months in the middle of nowhere, the Komitadji was going home.

Lleshi gave his displays a quick check, but it was more from habit than anything else. The Komitadji had been ready for this flight for a long time.

"Breakout in five seconds," the helmsman announced. "Three, two, one—"

The stars came back. "Position check," Lleshi ordered.

"Position computed, Commodore," the navigator said a minute later. "We're just under three million kilometers from Scintara."

Lleshi nodded. Considering that they'd started nearly seven hundred light-years away with an essentially untested catapult, they were lucky to have gotten even this close. "Compute course for Scintara," he said. "Engage when ready. And get a comm laser on the planet; let them know we're here."

"They already know, Commodore," the comm officer spoke up. "Message coming in."

Lleshi keyed his board, and a moment later a familiar face appeared on his screen. "This is Captain Horvak aboard the Pax Warship Balaniki," he said. "Repeat: Captain Horvak calling Commodore Lleshi."

"We've acknowledged, Commodore," the comm officer said.

Lleshi nodded, mentally counting off the twenty seconds it would take for the signal to make the round trip. He'd reached twenty-one when Horvak's face changed. "Welcome back, Commodore," he said briskly. "You're the last to arrive—the rest of the task force has been assembled for nearly a week now. Everything seems to be go; we got a kick pod from the Skean two days ago with the cocoon's confirmation that it's built itself a hyperspace net. At least it thinks it has," he amended. "I suppose we won't find out for sure until we try to use it. Final green light came from the Supreme Council yesterday, along with the usual spate of last-minute amendments to the plan. Nothing major—I'll dump you a copy."

His lip twitched. "And the doomsday pods are here, sitting under heavy guard in far orbit. That's making us very popular with the people of Scintara.

"That's about it from this end, unless you have any questions. If you can give us your ETA and status report, we'll set up the operation count-down."

"Navigation?" Lleshi invited.

"ETA will be a little over thirty hours, sir," the navigator said. "Plus probably an hour for orbit insertion. We're too low on fuel to make more than a tenth-gee acceleration."

Lleshi glanced at the proposed course profile on his board. "How much can we cut that by having Scintara send out a fuel ship to rendezvous with us?"

Across the balcony, Telthorst stirred. "There's no need for that, Commodore," he said. "A few hours'

savings isn't worth the effort of sending out a fuel ship."

Lleshi glared at him. First that power-play nonsense about moving their catapult halfway across the solar system, and now this. "You heard Captain Horvak," he said, keeping his voice as civil as he could. "The task force is waiting. Has been waiting, for a week."

"Then a few hours one way or the other isn't likely to make a great deal of difference to them,"

Telthorst countered coldly.

Lleshi turned away from that thin face, resisting the urge to push the exchange into a full-fledged argument. He should have expected Horvak's mention of the four doomsday pods to spark this kind of reaction from Telthorst. With two hundred kilograms of painstakingly created antimatter in each pod—an explosive yield theoretically in the gigaton range—they represented a huge expenditure of Pax money. But there was no way around it. The four hyperspace nets that sealed off all approaches to the Lorelei system had to be taken out if this attack was to accomplish anything at all.

And given the Empyreals' fancy sandwich-metal construction this was the only method that the experts had come up with that had a chance of doing that.

But Telthorst undoubtedly didn't see it that way. Until the assets of the Empyrean lay open before him, he would see nothing but how much this whole operation was costing.

He probably hadn't even gotten around to considering the danger the pods in their current positions represented to the people of Scintara. Except, perhaps, for how much an accidental detonation would cost to repair.

"Inform the Balaniki we'll be arriving at Scintara in approximately thirty hours," he instructed the comm officer quietly. "Mission refitting will begin at that time."

"Yes, sir," the comm officer said, and turned back to his board.

Lleshi leaned back in his seat. Someday, he told himself silently, the Adjutors would overreach themselves. They would push the rest of the Pax just that little bit too far and bring destruction down upon their own heads.

He could only hope that he would be there to see it.