Choosers of the Slain

39

Retainer Zero Two, her rotors folded back parallel to her tail boom, sank down out of the night and into the red-lit pool of the hangar bay. As the elevator descended with a howl of heavy-duty hydraulics, Arkady let his head go back against the seat rest and closed his eyes. They were burning and gravelly from too many hours spent staring through a night-vision visor.

Straightening again as they reached deck level, he released his safety harness and popped the canopy latches, breaking away the rime of refrozen snow along the frame.

"How'd it go, sir?" Chief Muller asked as he helped to swing the Plexiglas panels open and to the side.

"Not too bad. A pleasant night out under the stars."

"That's only by comparison, Chief," Grestovitch cut in from the system operator's station. "Anywhere else but here and it would have been hell with the heaters busted."

"Negativism, rampant negativism, that's all I'm hearing out of that backseat anymore. That's a terrible attitude to have, Gus, even if you are telling the truth."

Arkady lifted off his helmet and painfully stood up in the cockpit. "What's the word on our ops status, Chief?"

"That depends, sir, on whether or not you still want Ensign Delany to make another sweep later this morning."

"Yeah. Why?"

"In that case, we got problems. Zero One's still down. We found ice erosion on the blades of the Fenestron, as well as cold fractures in a couple of the panels of the boom shell. We had to tear the whole fantail assembly apart again. I don't know if we can get her back together by zero four hundred."

"Okay, then she'll have to use this bird," Arkady said, swinging down over the canopy rails. "Get her prepped for a fast turnaround."

"Lieutenant, Zero Two is right up to the red-line limit on transmission time. We really need to have a look inside that gearbox before we send her out again."

"Ah, fuck it!" Arkady hooked his thumbs into his belt and scowled down at the deck. "All right, try this. Move Delany's scheduled launch time back to 0430. Any later than that and she won't be able to do anything constructive before the pixies come out at first light. If Zero Two isn't ready to fly by then, we'll just shit-can the whole operation."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Inform Ensign Delany of the situation and the schedule change and keep me advised."

"Will do."

Grestovitch stiffly dropped down beside his pilot. "I got the mission log and the sensor records downloaded, sir," he said, patting the data cassettes in his sleeve pocket.

"Good enough. I'll touch base with the Captain while you drop those off with the duty watch in the CIC. After that, consider yourself free to crawl off somewhere and lose consciousness for a couple of hours."

"Thanks, Lieutenant. That sounds real good."

"Thank you, Gus. Given the past couple of days, I find it a little bit amazing that you're still flying with me."

"Aw hell, sir. After a while, you sort of get used to being crazy."

Amanda Garrett was alone in the wardroom, unaware when Arkady entered. She was slumped forward at the mess table with her head resting in the curve of her arm. A cooling mug of tea and a half-eaten sandwich had been pushed to one side, showing how the need for sleep had won out over hunger.

Nonetheless, when Arkady quietly lowered his helmet and flight harness to the deck, the faint click of metal against Fiberglas snapped her awake like a cat. She jerked upright, looking around wildly.

"The ship is okay, Captain," Arkady said, choosing the words he knew would calm her the most readily.

She blinked and came back into herself. "Oh, hi, Arkady. When did you get in?"

"We recovered just a few minutes ago."

She glanced at her wristwatch and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. "I haven't been out of it for too long, then. How did it go?"

"Not too bad," Arkady said, pulling out one of the mess-table chairs and seating himself. "We swept out about eighty-five miles to the east and didn't kick up anything on the surface except for neutral commercial traffic. I can't be as sure about subsurface contacts, but I ran a couple of sonobuoy lines and spot-checked with the dunking sonar. I think we've got clear water out there."

"I'm glad to hear it. How about the sea states?"

"Still holding at Force Three. Ceiling's down to around five hundred. The surface fog has thinned out, but we're still hitting occasional patches of freezing rain or snow."

"Is it going to give us any problem with the helicopter rendezvous?"

Arkady shrugged. "Not if the Brits know their stuff. Besides, we won't be within range for that until this afternoon. Daylight'11 make things a whole lot easier."

"That's good. Now, what about Nancy? Are you still sending her out tonight?"

"Well, that's kind of problematical at the moment. I'd like to get one more sweep off before dawn, but it looks like we may not have an operational helo. We've got some servicing problems."

"God, that had to be next." She leaned forward again on the table and rested her forehead on her crossed wrists, her hair flowing down to curtain her face. "How bad is it getting with your people, Arkady?"

"It's starting to back up on us a little. This semipolar environment makes for a lot of extra man-hours of maintenance work, and we just don't have the men to produce the hours.

"I think we can keep things glued together for a couple more days while maintaining an adequate safety margin. Beyond that, we're going to have to start cutting back on flight time."

"Give me that couple of days more, Arkady," she asked, her voice muffled. "That's all I'll need."

"How are you doing, Captain?"

She straightened and looked across at him sharply. A spark of anger flared in her eyes, an instinctive denial of her own weaknesses. Arkady met her gaze levelly. Yeah, dammit, I am going to ask.

After a moment, she softened and produced a slight wry smile. "Fraying a little around the edges, but still all here. It's been kind of a heavy-duty few days. Beating that bistatic search system took care of our most immediate tactical problem, though. Now, if I can just get Erikson out…" She let her voice trail off.

"You sound like you're taking this kid personal, Skipper."

"That's because I am, Arkady. If I'd just stuck under weather cover like I should have on the day of that first Argentine air strike, he'd never have been wounded."

"And if your aunt had balls, she'd have been your uncle. The past is the past, good, bad, or indifferent. Monday-morning quarterbacking is a great way to drive yourself crazy with no concrete return out of it."

"No, Arkady. Sometimes the past hangs on, just like that boy is doing down in sick bay."