Conquerors' Pride

16

"Confirmed," Quinn said, glancing at the course setting and then at the status boards. "Final check; all fighters."

One by one the six pilots checked in. "Acknowledged," Quinn said. "Stand by for mesh-out."

He keyed off the intercom. "All right, Max," he said. "Let's go."

"Yes, Commander," the computer answered. "The Peacekeeper base appears to be attempting communication. Do you wish an orbit plot that will bring us into full contact range?"

"Negative," Quinn said. "We don't have the time. Kick it."

"Acknowledged." There was a flicker from the boards, a creak of metal from some uncompensated stress line, and they were off.

Aric took a deep breath. "Well," he said. "Here we go."

"I guess so," Quinn said, doing something with the board. "You ready for this?"

In the distance, from all around them, came a series of dull thuds as fueler/fighter interface hatchways were sprung. "I hope so," Aric said. "You're Hydra and I'm El Dorado, right?"

"Right," Quinn nodded. "When I was a pilot, fighter crews always used tag names when they were together and away from other personnel, which would mean pretty much from now on. I suppose that could have changed in the past few years, though. Masefield will introduce us to the others; listen to see what he calls them and take your cue from that."

There was a flicker of a shadow outside the control room, and a slender young man with close-cropped sandy hair appeared at the doorway. "Commander Quinn?" he said, offering his hand. "I'm Tom Masefield; Clipper. Good to meet you, sir."

"Same here," Quinn said, taking the other's hand. "This is my tail, Cavanagh—El Dorado. I'm Hydra."

Clipper cocked an eyebrow. "Really. I understood it was Maestro."

Quinn glanced at Aric. "It was. Once. What else did Bokamba say in that private message?"

"Not much," Clipper said, giving Aric a speculative look. "All I know is who you are and that Bokamba has transferred this command to you. Unofficially, I presume?"

"Quite unofficially," Quinn agreed. "Did he say anything about the mission?"

Clipper shook his head. "He just said to trust him. And you."

He broke off and moved aside as a second man, dark in hair and complexion, floated into view beside him. "Hydra, El Dorado, this is my tail," he introduced the man. "Lieutenant Sieyes; Delphi."

"Honored, sir," Delphi said, offering his hand to Quinn. "I noticed on my way in that the others were assembling in the wardroom."

"Good," Quinn said. "Let's go get acquainted."

The last of the other ten men were squeezing their way in as Aric and his group arrived. Even empty, the wardroom had always struck Aric as being pretty small. With fourteen men filling it from floor to ceiling, it was long past the borderline into claustrophobic.

"All right, men, dress it up," Clipper called, easing past Quinn into the wardroom as the others deftly repositioned themselves to line up with their commander's definition of vertical. "In descending seniority order. Khirkov and Asquith: Shrike and Crackajack. Bethmann and Marlowe: Jaeger and Watchdog. Vanbrugh and Hodgson: Wraith and Augur. Atkinson and Young: Paladin and Dazzler. And Kempis and Savile: Harlequin and Bookmaker. Don't ask about that last one, by the way. Gentlemen: this is Quinn, our temporary commander, and Cavanagh. Hydra and El Dorado."

"Good to meet you all," Quinn said. "Let's get right down to business. If you'll look at the display there—"

"A question, first, if I may, sir," Jaeger spoke up. "I'd like to know what exactly our authorization is on this."

"You saw our orders, Jaeger," Clipper reminded him.

"Yes, sir, I did," Jaeger nodded, his eyes still on Quinn. "I don't recall any mention of a Commander Quinn in them. Watchdog also noticed something else unusual as we were bringing the fighter into dock. The Peacekeeper markings on the side of the fueler seemed to be a bit smeared."

"You're very observant, Watchdog," Quinn complimented him. "You're right, the markings are fresh. This ship has only recently been recommissioned into service."

"I see," Jaeger said, his voice studiously neutral. "Have you official orders confirming that, sir?"

Quinn glanced at Clipper. "Let's go ahead and cut through the noise here," he said to Jaeger. "This is not, in fact, a sanctioned Peacekeeper mission. I have no orders; I'm not even a reserve officer anymore. I needed an escort on an unofficial but important mission into unknown space. Bokamba offered to get me one. You're it."

Aric looked around the tiny room, his mouth dry. He'd known this moment would eventually come, but he'd hoped they would be too far along for anyone to turn back easily when they learned the truth. Here, barely minutes out, Quinn was not only inviting them to leave, but to arrest the two of them in the bargain and haul them straight back to Dorcas.

"Quinn," Wraith said suddenly. "Of course. Maestro."

A murmur of surprise rippled through the room. "Maestro?" Dazzler said. "The Maestro?"

"There was only one," Clipper said, his voice and face both a little pinched. Small wonder; with Bokamba's private message to him, he was effectively an accessory before the fact here. The team could haul him in, too.

"I see," Dazzler said, pushing himself gently away from the wall to drift toward Quinn. "You're the one who made all the noise that forced the Peacekeepers to reevaluate their screening procedure. Kept a lot of people out of the Copperheads. Including my brother."

"That's enough, Dazzler," Clipper said. "Get back to your position."

"No, that's all right," Quinn said, his voice sounding tired. "Let him have his say."

"Thank you, sir," Dazzler said, maneuvering to a stop directly in front of Quinn. "It was my older brother, sir. Charleston; four years older than me. He'd wanted to be a Copperhead since he was fifteen. The day after his eighteenth birthday he went down and enlisted. He went through the tests, the preliminary pilot training—the whole slate. He was two weeks from getting his Mindlink implant when the NorCoord hearings forced everyone to undergo new certification. He didn't make the new cut."

"I'm sorry," Quinn said.

Dazzler shook his head. "Don't be," he said. "It took him six months to get over it; but at that point he realized that going into the Copperheads would have been the worst mistake of his life. He wasn't anywhere near to having what it took to be a professional warrior."

And to Aric's surprise Dazzler held out his hand. "A long time ago he told me that if I ever ran into you, I was to thank you for saving him from the rashness of youth. His words."

For a pair of heartbeats Quinn didn't move. Then, looking as if he didn't quite believe it, he reached out and took the other's hand. "Thank you," he said quietly.

"No thanks needed," Dazzler said, releasing Quinn's hand and floating back toward his place in the group. "You helped take some of the glamour out of being a Copperhead. Speaking strictly for myself, I'd rather not fly with people who came in looking for glamour. I want the best. You helped make sure that's what we got."

For a long minute the room was silent. "You were going to tell us about the mission," Clipper said.

"Yes." Quinn took a deep breath, and Aric could see the effort in his face as he forced the ghosts of the past back down where they belonged. "You all know about the Conqueror attack on the Jutland task force," he said. "What you don't know is that the body count came up one short. Commander Pheylan Cavanagh, captain of the Kinshasa."

"Cavanagh?" Harlequin asked, looking at Aric.

"My younger brother," Aric said.

"Ah," Augur said knowingly. "So that's why we're going off half-cocked this way?"

"It's nothing of the sort," Aric said, keeping his voice level. "We tried to get the Peacekeepers to mount a proper rescue mission. Admiral Rudzinski turned us down."

"All the more reason we shouldn't be here," Jaeger said. "This is well past just being unsanctioned, Maestro. It's been effectively forbidden."

"Is there any evidence Cavanagh's still alive?" Delphi asked.

"Nothing positive," Quinn said. "Just the fact of no body and no debris from his escape pod. And the reasonable assumption that the Conquerors would want to take at least one live prisoner for examination."

"I watched those recordings very carefully," Shrike said, his finger fidgeting through his beard. "It was my understanding that all pod emergency beacons had been silenced before the watchships left the scene."

"That's true," Clipper put in. "But there's been some speculation that the Conquerors were using the beacons to locate and destroy the pods. It's possible Commander Cavanagh figured that out and shut his off before they got to him."

"And had his prudence rewarded by being taken prisoner," Crackajack said. "Some deal. You have any idea where to start looking?"

"We have the incoming vector that the Jutland and Dorcas garrison computed," Quinn said. "My plan was to look for likely systems that direction and check them out."

"That will take time," Jaeger pointed out. "And meanwhile the worlds of the Commonwealth are open to enemy attack."

Crackajack snorted. "After what happened to the Jutland, I hardly think six Corvines are going to make a lot of difference."

"That's irrelevant," Jaeger said sharply. "Our job is not to decide whether our presence is important or not. Nor is it to take our ships wherever we ourselves think proper. Our job is to go where ordered and to do there whatever needs to be done." He looked at Quinn, then at Clipper. "We have no legitimate reason to be here, Commander. I respectfully but strongly suggest we turn around and go back."

A muscle in Clipper's cheek twitched. "Maestro?"

"You're welcome to go back, Jaeger," Quinn said. "All of you are, in fact, if you don't want to continue. El Dorado and I are going on, whether you stay or not."

"I'm staying," Dazzler said. "You're going to need a tail, anyway."

"Sorry, Dazzler, but you can't lose me that easily," his partner Paladin said. "Looks like you've got yourself a wingman, Maestro."

"Delphi and I are in, too," Clipper said. "Call me old-fashioned, but I don't much care for the idea of Command simply abandoning Cavanagh to the Conquerors. Our people deserve better than that."

"So do all the people of the Commonwealth," Wraith said. "We're wasting time, Jaeger."

"Yes," Jaeger said, looking around. "Who else is coming back with us?"

"And if you want to leave, this is the time to do it," Clipper added. "If you don't go now, you're in for the duration."

Aric looked around the group. None of them looked especially comfortable, but none of them spoke up, either. "I guess it's you two, then," Clipper said at last to Jaeger and Wraith. "You'd better get going before you lose any more distance. Maestro, you want to go back to control and mesh us in?"

"That won't be necessary," Wraith said, pushing off a wall toward the wardroom doorway, his partner Augur following him. "We can disengage in mesh." His lip twitched in an almost reluctant half smile. "Besides, right now you need all the distance you can get. The farther you are from Dorcas when we blow the whistle, the less likely they'll send someone chasing after you."

"You're probably right," Quinn agreed. "Thank you."

"Consider it our contribution to the cause." Wraith nodded to Clipper. "Good luck, sir. We'll see you at the court-martial."

"Thank you," Clipper said dryly. "We'll bring you back a piece of Conqueror ship as a souvenir."

The four men left the room, disappearing into the complex of small rooms between them and the hull. "All right, Maestro," Clipper said. "What's the plan?"

"As I said, it's going to have to be a physical search," Quinn said, floating over to the wardroom repeater board. A tactical star map was displayed there, with several colored lines, circles, and a slender cone superimposed on it. "Here's where the Conquerors hit the Jutland force," he said, indicating the tip of the cone. "Dorcas didn't have a baseline, so the incoming vector's a little vague. Clipper, I asked Bokamba to see if the lab people had come up with an estimate of how far the ships had come. Was there anything in his message about that?"

"No," Clipper said. "I've heard from other sources that they're still having trouble getting zero-point friction and heat-capacity readings from that piece of hull they found."

"Okay," Quinn said, studying the map. "In that case I guess we take potshots and hope for warrior's luck. With a twenty-degree uncertainty on the vector and assuming a hundred-light-year range, we wind up with eighteen systems to check out. If we don't find anything, we'll try expanding the cone."

"What happens when we find them?" Bookmaker asked.

"You four Corvines will fly cover while El Dorado and I go in for a closer look," Quinn told him. "I trust you haven't neglected your atmospheric combat work."

"The rust rubs off quickly," Clipper assured him. "I don't suppose this fueler is armed?"

"As a matter of fact, it is," Quinn said. "We've got two shredder guns and a bank of five space/space missiles."

Clipper gave Aric a speculative look. "You ever had experience with military hardware, El Dorado?"

"No," Aric said. "But I won't be the one using it. Max, say hello to everyone."

"Good day, gentlemen," Max's voice said smoothly. "My name is Max. I'll be handling all shipboard functions for the duration of the trip."

"Interesting," Bookmaker said, cocking an eyebrow at Aric. "Is that a parasentient?"

Aric nodded. "A Carthage-Ivy-Gamma. Class Seven DM capabilities."

"Decay-driven randomized, right?"

"Right," Aric said. "Modified Korngold-Che."

Bookmaker looked at Clipper. "Well, old man Cavanagh didn't scrimp on equipment, anyway. Carthage-Ivys are the current top of the line, a couple of notches above anything else on the market. Expensive as hell, too."

"He probably cut himself a discount," Clipper said. "How will it do in combat?"

"About as well as any parasentient would," Bookmaker said. "Much faster than any human, naturally, but a little short on combat imagination."

"That's all right," Clipper said. "Two shredder guns and five missiles aren't likely to strain its capabilities. Max, how does the ship itself look?"

"All systems are working properly," Max said. "It seems to have been kept in good repair. We have an extensive assortment of replacement modules aboard, too, should something go wrong."

Clipper shifted his attention to Quinn. "You ever worked with this computer before?"

"No," Quinn said. "But Lord Cavanagh handled the installation personally. I would presume he chose the best."

"Bookmaker seems to agree," Clipper said. "All right, then. How are we fixed for supplies?"

"We had about three weeks' worth," Quinn said. "With two fewer ships and four fewer men, we can stretch that out a bit."

Clipper pursed his lips. "We can," he said. "But I'm not sure we should. Jaeger and Wraith had a valid point: our sworn duty is to the Commonwealth. In fact, the more I think of it, the more I think you're pushing things as it is. Eighteen systems—you're talking something close to a month there."

Quinn glanced around at the other Copperheads. "How many systems would you feel comfortable with?" he asked Clipper.

Clipper gazed at the display, a pained look in his eyes. "I don't think we can afford to do more than five," he said bluntly. "If we haven't found Commander Cavanagh by then, we should turn back."

Aric felt his stomach tighten. "Five systems? That's—"

He broke off at Quinn's gesture. "You realize, of course," Quinn said to Clipper, "that if we don't bring Commander Cavanagh back, we're going to be in that much more trouble."

"I'm extremely aware of that," Clipper said, looking him straight in the eye. "Don't forget that as accessory before the fact, my head's on the block right next to yours."

Quinn grimaced. "You're right, of course," he agreed soberly. "My apologies. Very well: five systems it is. And we hope for warrior's luck."

"That we do." Clipper turned to the others. "All right, gentlemen. Briefing's over, and we've got gear to stow and fighters to deprep. Let's get to it."

There was a noisy but organized exodus from the wardroom until only Aric and Quinn were left. "Went better than I expected," Quinn commented.

Aric nodded mechanically, his eyes on the display. Five systems. Out of the billions of stars in the galaxy, they had just five to look at. It was like a roll of the dice, with Pheylan's life and the careers of a lot of good men on the table.

A lot of good men, and one good woman. "Max, was that the Cavatina you were picking up just before we meshed out?" he asked.

"The wake-trail registered as an Effenzeal-Royce star yacht," the computer replied. "No further identification was possible."

"No, of course not," Aric murmured. "Thank you."

"We knew she was going to be in trouble the minute the Cavatina arrived," Quinn reminded him.

"She was already in trouble," Aric said. "Those attempts to contact us weren't just Holloway calling to say good-bye. I just hope there's something Dad can do to calm him down."

"I'm sure there is," Quinn said. "Your father still has quite a few high-level contacts in both Parliament and Peacekeeper Command. He can probably arrange some kind of house arrest for her back on Avon until we get back."

"I hope so," Aric said. "I'd hate for her to be stuck in the brig on Dorcas."

"Stockade," Quinn corrected. "Or guardhouse, if she's a temporary prisoner. Brigs are aboard ships."

Aric snorted gently. "Thank you."

"Don't worry, she'll be fine," Quinn said. "If you're going to worry about anyone's safety, I suggest you worry about ours."