Once a Hero

Chapter Eighteen

“What did you think you were doing hiding out up in the rafters all this time? I was told you were going over to T-1 to some kind of conference with the admiral and Commander Seveche and other important brass.” Commander Jarles, head of Inventory Control, was the senior commander aboard T-3. Esmay had met him briefly, at one of the officers’ socials, but she did not know him well. Now he was angry, his stocky body thrust forward in his chair, his cheeks flushed.

“I did, sir.”

“And with everything else going on, you just lazed your way the long way round? You can’t tell me you got past the blast doors, or that you didn’t hear the allcall telling everyone in this wing to get their tails to assembly points!”

Esmay interpreted the emphasis on “important brass” to mean that Commander Jarles of Inventory Control had had his nose put out of joint because he wasn’t invited to that conference. Now he was feeling very much on his dignity.

“Sir, if I may ask—how is communication with the rest of the ship, especially T-1?”

“We’ve got a link to T-4, thanks to the access tunnel, but no one else. Why?”

“Then you might not be aware that the captain was gassed and in critical condition; Admiral Dossignal was injured in a firefight, and that’s why the admiral didn’t come along. I have his orders here.” Esmay fished them out of her pocket and handed them over. Jarles pursed his lips, and gave her a nod that clearly meant Tell the rest.

“We couldn’t get past the blast doors out of T-1,” she said. “The captain gave us the override codes, but they didn’t work. The admirals felt it was imperative to get Captain Seska and his exec back to Wraith—the reasoning’s in that order cube, sir. So we got out the SpecMatFab far end, and followed the transport track partway over the ship.”

His eyes widened. “You crossed the whole ship?”

“Yes, sir. I don’t know if the scans here picked it up, but the ship took hostile fire from beam weapons—the shields held, but the transport track was destroyed.” She waited a moment for any questions, then sprang the big one. “Then it went into jump. That’s why it took us so long to get back.”

“You’re telling me . . . you were on the outside of this ship . . . during jump insertion?”

“Yes, sir.”

A long pause. “Lieutenant, you’re either crazy or lucky or blessed by some combination of deities I never heard of. The officers with you confirm this story?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. I presume you need a little time to . . . eat . . . or something. We’ve got a scratch mess set up; my clerk’ll direct you. Give me a time to read these orders, then I’ll want a complete report, down to each breath you took, and from the others as well. You can have an hour.”

Pitak was waiting for her outside. “Where have you been?”

Esmay was too tired to smooth it out for her. “Crossing the outside of the ship during the fighting, the jump, and FTL flight. Thanks, by the way, to whoever turned on the repair bay lights. We were having problems up until then.”

Pitak’s brows went up. “Well. Somehow I suspect I’m losing you permanently for Hull and Architecture. I’ll take you down for what passes for food. Where’s the admiral?”

“In T-1, as far as I know—he was hurt, but alive. The captain was gassed, and maybe dying, when we left.”

“And here we are, hijacked like any fatbellied trader, going someplace we don’t know and into trouble we can only imagine. Much good our escorts did us!”

Esmay found a toilet, then food . . . basic mush, but it was hot and the temporary cook had spiced it with something that gave it an actual flavor. She had expected to feel better after eating, but the warmth in her belly made her sleepy instead; she felt she could sleep standing up, and maybe even walking. It made no sense . . . she woke with her cheek on the table. Major Pitak was a few feet away, talking on the com. Esmay struggled to get her head up as Pitak came back.

“You need sleep,” she said. “I talked to Commander Jarles, and he said what with the jump and all he’ll need longer to assess the admiral’s orders. You’re going down for a half-shift at least.”

Esmay would have argued, but when she pushed herself up, her head swam. Pitak found her an empty space in a nearby corridor, in a row of other sleeping forms, and before she knew it Esmay was asleep on the hard deck. No dreams troubled that sleep, and she woke clearheaded.

She made her way around the other sleepers, found a working toilet and shower—it was hard to believe that with all the emergencies they still had enough extra water to use for showering, but she needed it. Then she went back to Commander Jarles’s office, where she found Commander Bowry dictating his own report of their experiences.

He grinned at her, but kept talking. “—Then the lights came on, which made it easier to find our way to T-3 and the overhead access . . . whatever those openings are really called . . . Anyway, once back inside the ship, we found normal gravity, and our suit instruments began working again.” He turned off the recorder. “Did you fall in a heap, too? I did, and I’ve just talked to Seska and Frees aboard Wraith—they said they’d barely gotten aboard when they couldn’t stay awake. Scared hell out of their crew.”

“Maybe it was being outside the FTL shields,” Esmay said.

“Maybe. Maybe it was having had a long and interesting day. You know, you’re really good at this kind of stuff—how’d you get stuck in a DSR, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“That mutiny, probably. I’d guess they didn’t want any of those involved where they’d get into similar trouble, and since I ended up commanding, they sent me as far away as possible.”

“Where you promptly found a use for your newly acquired expertise. Yah. They might as well put you back in command track; you’re a lightning rod.”

“I was technical track before. Scan.”

“You?” He shook his head. “Your advisor messed up; you’re a natural, and I don’t say that lightly. Put in for transfer.”

“That’s what my boss here said once. Major Pitak, in Hull and Architecture.”

“Believe it.”

She almost did. From someone like this, a seasoned veteran who had observed her . . . maybe it was true, and maybe she was not just lucky, but good at it.

Commander Jarles came out of his inner office. “Lieutenant Suiza—glad you’re here.” He sounded much more cordial than the day—was it day?—before. “Hope you’re rested, both of you. Captain Seska says he’s staying aboard Wraith, but Lt. Commander Frees is coming to liaise with us on a plan to retake the Koskiusko and fight off any attempted boarding. Lieutenant Suiza, Admiral Dossignal seems to have a lot of faith in you.”

Esmay couldn’t think what to say—Yes, sir seemed a bit too pushy—but Bowry spoke up.

“Considering that she saved the captain’s life, and later the admiral’s, I’d say he had reason.”

“I suppose.” He looked down at the files in his hand. “He wanted you to take over all security for T-3 and T-4, and said you had helped develop a plan to trap a Bloodhorde ship. Frankly, with the admiral out of communication, I’m not comfortable putting that much responsibility on a junior officer I don’t know very well. I’ve consulted with Major Pitak, who gives you a favorable review, but I’m not sure.”

“Got a plan yet?” came a voice from the door. That was Frees, whom rest and food had restored to an almost bouncy quality. “Captain Seska sends his regards, and says he’s got a guess how long we’ll be in FTL flight.” He waited a moment for that to sink in, then waved a data cube. “Nothing wrong with Wraith’s nav computers, though she couldn’t give us any scan data. But from where we were, there are four primary mapped routes that we know—and know the Bloodhorde knows. They’re on all the standard references. Two we can pretty much dismiss; they won’t go back where they attacked us, because they can figure that our ships will be out there looking for them. In the same way, they won’t backjump where you came from, because they don’t know if there were more Fleet ships there. But there’s Caskadian, which has a direct route into Bloodhorde space at Hawkhead. And Vollander, which is offset to most routes, and a long jump to Bloodhorde space . . . but direct, and a long way from any Fleet pickets.”

“Put it up on the screen,” Jarles said. Frees complied, and they stared at the tangle of lines, thicker or thinner with flux values, edged with colors that told which political entities were known to use those routes.

“Wraith’s onboard systems say we went through the first jump point some 43 hours ago. We need someone from Drives and Maneuver to give us the figures on this ship’s FTL drive, and then we might know which route we’re on, and when we might drop out.”

“How long are they for regular travel?”

“Caskadian should be about 122 hours, maybe longer given the slow insertion and assuming the same exit. Vollander would be about 236 hours.”

“Long jumps—longer than we made coming in. I’d expect them to go for the short one, with so few of them aboard.”

“Now on the connecting lines—how does this ship handle series jumps?”

“It doesn’t. Or rather, in theory it can, and we did coming out after you, but usually there’s a pause of several hours for recalibration between jumps.”

“Besides,” Esmay said. “They’ll want to get more of their people aboard. The intruders have been working as hard as we have—without relief, and shorthanded.”

“So we’ve got roughly sixty hours before you think we’ll come out of jump, and until then all we have to cope with is the ones aboard.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Captain Seska wants to know how far the repairs on Wraith can get by then,” Frees said.

Commander Jarles shrugged. “We have no access to the main inventory stores—and we can’t move anything from SpecMat while we’re in FTL. I suppose Major Pitak will know about the structural repairs—” Esmay decided this was no time to tell him that nothing was going to come from SpecMat by the exterior transport system until it was rebuilt.

“Sixty hours,” Bowry said. “Nobody can come in from outside while we’re in FTL flight—and surely those Bloodhorde are getting tired by now. There aren’t that many—if we can get back in contact with the rest of the ship, we might be able to take control back.”

“And get ready for whatever’s waiting when we come out of jump,” Esmay said. “If they’re jumping to a place where they have a battle group waiting . . . how many ships would that be?”

“With the Bloodhorde—five or six, probably.”

“A two-part plan,” Bowry said. “Get control of this ship, and defeat whatever’s waiting for us.”

“For which we need warships,” Jarles said. “We can’t mount weapons on Koskiusko.”

“Who’s here for Weapons?” Esmay asked. “I know Commander Wyche is in T-1.”

“It can’t be done,” Jarles said firmly.

Esmay looked at him, then glanced at Bowry. Bowry spoke up.

“I think, Commander, to make best use of the resources of the 14th, the senior person in each department should assist in our planning.”

For a moment he puffed around the neck, exactly like the frogs Esmay remembered from home. Then he relented. “All right, all right.”

When the fourth person started to remind the group that they couldn’t do what they usually did, Esmay lost patience.

“Now that we know what we can’t do, it’s time to start thinking what we can do. Fifty-eight hours, at this point: what can we do in fifty-eight hours? Thousands of intelligent, inventive, resourceful people, with the inventory we have available, can come up with something.”

“Lieutenant—” began Jarles, but Commander Palas held up his hand.

“I agree. We don’t have time for the negatives. Do any of you know what the senior officers were planning in case of a Bloodhorde assault?”

Bowry outlined it quickly. “So,” he finished, “I’d think that getting a Bloodhorde ship into T-4 would still work. Is there some way to get it . . . sort of stuck, so they can’t move it? I think they’d come boiling out, and if they were somehow diverted away from it, some of our people could get in—if it could be unstuck . . .”

“There’s that new adhesive . . .” said someone in back. “Really strong, but depolymerizes in the presence of specific frequencies of sound. We could coat the barriers—”

“That’s what we need to hear. Now we know we don’t have that many troops capable of close-contact fighting—someone think of a way to immobilize Bloodhorde troops, who will be wearing EVA battlesuits.”

“So gas won’t work,” someone muttered. “If we knew the signal characteristics of the suits . . .”

“What about gluing them down?”

“Then our people couldn’t get to the ship—the stuff stays tacky too long.”

“You’ll think of something,” Esmay said. “Now—about getting to the rest of the ship—”

“Once we’re out of FTL, we could rig a communications cable back around to T-1 . . .”

“Once we’re out of FTL, the airlocks will work. And we have lots of EVA suits; our people work in vacuum a lot.”

Commander Bowry nodded. “Then to head the team that’s going to get Wraith as ready as possible to be put out on the drive test cradle: Major Pitak, because she’s Hull and Architecture.”

“I’ll need to pull people from—”

“Go ahead. If there’s a conflict, get back to me. Commander Palas, could you head the team that will plan the capture of a Bloodhorde ship, assuming we can get one into T-4.”

“Certainly. May I ask where you’ll get your crew?”

“That was my first assignment from Admiral Dossignal; I’ll choose a crew from those who’ve served aboard warships fairly recently. Lieutenant Suiza, I’d like you for my exec, when the time comes, but in the meantime, I’d like you to work on the assignment Admiral Dossignal gave you: prepare Security here to defend these wings against the intruders. I suspect they’ll try to get into T-4 to prepare it for their own ships.”

“Yes, sir.” Esmay wondered how she could possibly get ready for both, but having argued against negative thinking, she knew better than to say anything.

Vokrais grinned happily at his pack. Bloodied, bitten, but not defeated, and they had the bridge, its surviving crew demoralized and—at least temporarily—cooperative. The ship had made its jump into FTL without falling apart. The wings were locked off, helpless. Three of them had been reduced, at least largely, to unconscious dreamers and corpses. T-3 and T-4 so far held out; he’d expected more resistance there, but it didn’t matter. When they came out of jump in a few hours, the ship pack would be waiting, with enough warriors to manage them. After all, they had no real weapons over there, and they were only mechanics and technicians anyway.

His people had even gotten some rest; it didn’t take the whole pack to subdue these weaklings. Three of them were sleeping now. By making the bridge crew work longer shifts, they’d kept them tired enough that there’d been so sign of rebellion. He stretched, easing his shoulders. They had done everything they’d set out to do, done it better than predictions; their commander had not believed they’d be able to get the ship through jump. He was waiting for a message; he’d be delighted to get the whole prize.

Still, he hated leaving any part of the job undone. He had missed out on four years of raiding; the pack had fewer shipscars than any other of their seniority. They’d paid—paid dearly, in honor and opportunity—for the preparation necessary for this operation. He didn’t want to share the glory with anyone. If he could offer his bloodbond the ship entire, he could raise his banner any time he chose, independent command.

He glanced around. Hoch looked bored; he had tormented the Serrano cub until all the fun was out of it. Three of his remaining pack would be enough to hold the bridge against the unarmed, spineless sheep that now sat the controls.

Excitement roiled in his gut again. “Let’s do it,” he said in his own tongue. His pack looked up, eager. Who should stay behind? As he described what they were going to do, he looked at their faces, looking for the slightest hint of weakness, exhaustion, or even worse, contentment.

First they would unlock the barriers to T-4 . . . with the crippled Wraith in T-3, most of the personnel would be in T-3. Could they repair Wraith in time? He doubted it, but even if they did it could not outfight a whole ship pack. Vokrais considered which deck they should use. According to the ship maps, Deck 17 contained hydroponics and even a few small gardens tucked among the gantry supports. Unlikely anyone would be watching for them up there, and they’d have a good view of the entire repair bay. They could work their way down, using their weapons and gas grenades to subdue anyone in their way, and drive them to a holding area at the base . . . and they had no way out. Not if he opened only the Deck 17 hatch . . . they’d be sure to close it behind them.

Corporal Jakara Ginese kept her eyes on her screens, obedient and to all appearances as scared as all the rest. She had not indulged in the sidelong glances that got Sergeant Blanders a beating; she had not struggled when one of the Bloodhorde fondled her and told his friends what he planned to do with her later. Above all, she had not revealed, by the slightest change of expression, that she understood everything they said in their own language. While she could do nothing, she did nothing.

But now . . . she thought it over, while appearing to cower away from the leader’s rough bloodstained hands. “You will be good, won’t you?” he asked. “You wouldn’t think of giving any of us trouble . . .” She gave a little moan, and trembled, and told herself that it would be over soon, one way or the other.

She was sitting the wrong board, though the Bloodhorde hadn’t figured that out. They’d come in screaming and shooting, and by the time they’d done, what with bodies all over the floor and the noise everyone was making . . . they hadn’t noticed her changing nametags with a dead woman. At that point, she wasn’t sure why she’d done it. Some instinct had urged her, and when they left the communications board empty, and she moved to environmental, where Corporal Ascoff usually sat, she began to think what she could do. None of her shipmates had commented, though she’d gotten some looks . . . but after what happened to Sergeant Blanders they didn’t look anywhere but at their own work.

The environmental systems board cross-linked to ship security, another board the Bloodhorde had left empty after they changed the override codes. Possibly they didn’t know that; she wouldn’t have known it, sitting comm as she usually did, but she and Alis Ascoff had been working the same bridge shift long enough to share details of their work. Either Security or Environmental might have reason to close off the wings from the core, or take control of life support.

If they were watching too closely—as they had with ten of them always alert, always stalking around behind people—she could do nothing. But if they left only three . . . at some point, she would not be observed for a moment, and . . . what would be the best thing to do? If she opened all the wings, would the sleepygas simply spread to the core and put everyone there to sleep?

The captain had gone to T-1 to confer with the admirals. She knew that; she’d seen the captain on the bridge shortly before the Bloodhorde commandos burst in and took over. So if the captain was still alive, he was in T-1, and maybe the admirals too. If he wasn’t gassed. If he wasn’t dead.

If you can’t make up your mind, her mother always said, do something anyway. Luckily, the core environmental system needed frequent adjustment when it was cut off from the wings. She had explained this, earnestly, when she first needed to touch the board. The Bloodhorde had leaned over, far too close for comfort, and stared at the display a long time before giving her permission to touch it. After the tenth or eleventh change, they’d paid less attention, only asking now and then when the display showed a yellow band instead of green just how long she proposed to let it go?

The three left behind would be nervous. She listened as the others left, and did not turn around. Someone else did; she heard the blow and the angry command to get back to work. They would be watching . . . but would they understand? A yellow flicker on her board, just as before. The core, unlike the wings, did not have a large hydroponic/garden area for oxygen production and carbon dioxide uptake; oxygen was supplied from electrolysis of the water in the Deck 1 pool, and she had to keep the hydrogen collectors from overfilling. As well, she needed to put new CO2 scrubbers online. She started to enter these commands, and as she expected one of the three came up behind her.

“What now?”

“The hydrogen, sir.” She pointed. “It needs a new collector unit. And I need to put another ten CO₂ packs online.”

“No tricks, understand?” The muzzle of his weapon stroked her cheek. She shuddered, nodded, and her fingers trembled as she entered the values. She heard him walk away.

The question now was, how long did she have, and how could she do the most the quickest? She would open the T-1 access, she’d decided, but not T-5, because she knew T-5 had been gassed. If she had time, she’d reset the override codes for all the wings, so that the captain or any of ship’s security who were still alive and awake could use them.

“Sir!”

Admiral Livadhi looked up; one of the security guards stood panting in the doorway. “Yes?”

“Sir, the hatches are open . . . we’re not cut off from the core . . .”

“All the hatches? All decks?”

“Yes, sir—at least, that’s what the system says.”

Livadhi looked over at Dossignal, who was hunched awkwardly in his chair. “I don’t think this is their doing.”

“No—I’d say go for the bridge, with everything we have.” They had planned an assault on the bridge, but had not been able to breach the barrier.

“You can handle this end?”

“I can hardly run yours,” Dossignal said, grimacing. “Having been stupid enough to get shot.” Then he grinned. “Confusion to our enemies,” he said.

“I intend a good deal worse than confusion,” Livadhi said, and spoke into his headset. “Bridge team: go ahead.”

“You stupid—!” The snarl came just before the blow that knocked her to the deck. Corporal Ginese would have been furious with herself for not remembering that the barrier status lights showed clearly on the board, if she’d been able to think. A savage kick in the ribs curled her around the pain. She said nothing. She thought, with all the intensity of her being, Please, please, please . . . let it work. Let someone be alive there, awake . . . .

Now two of them were on her; she heard bones snap as one of them kicked savagely at her arms, her ribs. It hurt more than she’d expected . . . and more noise . . . she couldn’t think why it should be so noisy, all that clatter and roar and shouting. If they were going to make that much noise, why not just shoot her?

She hardly noticed the blows had ceased . . . then it was quiet again. Someone wept in the distance. Nearer, footsteps . . . she wanted to flinch away, but couldn’t move.

“I think . . . she’s alive,” someone said.

Not one of them. Not someone from the bridge. She opened the eye that would open, and saw what she had hoped to see: shipmates, armed, and just beyond them, a Bloodhorde corpse. She smiled.

“They’re trying to get through the barrier up on Deck 17,” the sergeant minor said. “They’ve got the core-side barrier open, but the interlock we put on the wingside barrier’s holding.”

“Are they really committed?”

“It sounds like it.”

“Then I think it’s time for Brother Ass and the Cactus Patch,” Esmay said.

“What!”

“Folk tale from my home planet, slightly revised. As long as we provide enough resistance, they’ll be sure we didn’t want them there. Only we do want them there, because it’s our trap.”

“How long do we make ’em wait?”

“Long enough to—” A shout from down the passage.

“Suiza!”

“Yes?”

“Our people have the bridge! The barriers are operable on the old override codes!”

Esmay swung back to her comunit. “Now—let them in now.” If they knew they’d lost the bridge, they might not come into the trap. “Be sure to lock the gate behind them, once they’re onto another deck.” By all combat logic, they should be hoping to clear T-4 from the top down . . . if they found the top deck empty, they should go looking for resistance.

The scan techs had installed additional surveillance near the hatch and in the passages beyond. Esmay watched as the hatch slid aside . . . the Bloodhorde commandos still wore their Fleet uniforms, now bloodstained and filthy, under light armor they’d stolen from the ship security. Helmets and respirators . . . they couldn’t be gassed, but the respirators were noisy enough to affect their hearing. The helmets were supposed to compensate with boosted sensitivity . . . but that had its shortcomings. They each carried several weapons, the light arms intended to suppress shipboard violence.

“They’re outnumbered, but we’re still outgunned,” said the petty-chief looking over her shoulder.

“Guns aren’t the ultimate weapon,” Esmay said. Would they choose the well-lit passage ahead, or the dim one to the left, among the garden rows? They’d had only a few concussion shells, taken from Wraith’s damaged starboard battery, and she hadn’t been able to seed every possible route.

As she’d hoped, they headed down the dimmer passage. They moved as she remembered her father’s troops moving, cautious but swift. It was on the basis of that trained advance that she’d planted the shells where she had . . . and when they passed the marked point, the shells burst around them. Esmay had the sound turned down . . . but they hadn’t. They were flat on the deck, firing at nothing, and unable to hear anything but the racket they made and their own ringing ears . . . she was sure of that.

The top level of T-4 was too big for them to check thoroughly; she had counted on that, and on their reaction to resistance. From one position to another, they followed what seemed to be a retreating force of slightly lesser strength. They would be trying to pick up its communications through their helmets . . . surely they would change channels until they found it. And what they heard would sound authentic . . . Esmay had discovered that the 14th had its own Drama Club, its members eager to create and record a script full of dramatic conflict. It had multiple branches, just in case the enemy didn’t follow the main plotline, and one of the communications techs cued the different segments while watching the vidscan to see what the intruders were really doing.

She keyed to listen herself for a moment.

“Hold ’em at Deck 15—we can hold ’em if they don’t come down that inboard ladder—”

“Corporal Grandall, cut off that ladder—”

“—Here’s the ammo, sir, but we’re running—”

Sure enough, on the vidscan, the Bloodhorde had turned back, looking for, and finding, the inboard ladder. Poppers wired into sensors blew off as they started down. Smoke swirled . . . Fleet uniforms wrapped around bundles of insulation moved, fell, were dragged backwards.

“Whiteout! Whiteout! They’re on the ladder—”

“HOLD them—”

“We’re TRYING—NO! They got Pete!”

“—More gas masks! They’re using more . . .”

It would have been fun to watch, like being behind the scenes when an adventure cube was being taped, except that more than half the sites needed someone live, on the scene, to produce a realistic effect. The enemy didn’t know which targets were live, but Esmay did. She had argued at first for a less risky approach—dousing the intruders with that adhesive, if nothing else—but the capture of an enemy warship would be easier if it thought it was coming into a ship controlled by its own people.

Ideally, they’d get to the base of the repair bay just as the ship came out of FTL flight. They’d find the lockers of EVA suits; they’d open the repair bay—it was all set up for automatic use, with new—and newly aged and scuffed—control panels and instructional labels.

Esmay switched to the secure link to the bridge: they had opened a T-3 access hatch and fed an optical link through it. She knew the captain was alive, but in critical condition, now in a regen tank in Medical, which had been purged of the sleepygas. The casualty count was rising, as search teams found more and more bodies . . . most were bodies, but a few had been wounded. Barin hadn’t been found yet.

A jolt like stepping off a ledge in the dark bumped her spine on the chair. She glanced at the clock. An hour early?

“Jump point exit,” said someone unnecessarily. Moments later: “Caskadian System, low-vee exit.”

So they were where they’d expected to be, and in one piece. A low-vee exit meant scan would clear soon, and they’d know how much trouble they were in. Esmay wondered what jump exit would have looked like from outside and shuddered. They could not have survived the whole trip outside, she was sure.

“Prelim scan: six, repeat six Bloodhorde ships. Weapons analysis follows . . .”

Now where were the Bloodhorde intruders? She looked back at the vidscan . . . at Deck 10. Too far up; she wanted them able to contact their own ships, and for that they had to be at Deck 4.

“Release, release!” she said. The communications tech nodded, and switched to the final segment: anguish, terror, harsh breathing . . . resistance melting away in panic. Predictably, the Bloodhorde team followed, and although they came out into the repair bay control compartment with some remnant caution, they didn’t hesitate long.

They had made good use of their data wands . . . one pair went straight to the control centers, and the others to the EVA lockers. The communications tech put on the post-battle tape—if they kept listening, they’d hear individuals trying to find each other, trying to decide what to do, where to take the wounded.

The two who could speak—or at least understand—the Bloodhorde dialect tuned in the output of the communications desk in the repair bay. What would they say to their ships?

The Bloodhorde ship looked nothing like the sleek blackovoids of the Fleet.

“Damn converted tramp hauler,” someone muttered through the comlink. Esmay wished they’d shut up, but she agreed. Slightly larger than a Fleet escort, and perhaps a third shorter than a patrol craft, its hull had a more angular outline suggesting its origin as a civilian freight carrier.

“Part of that’s bare metal,” someone else said. Esmay spotted the oblong patch, glinting dully in the repair bay’s spotlights. The rest was probably the same organoceramic material that most ships used, its scarred uneven coloring suggesting patches of different ages and origins. Along the flank, bright-painted symbols that must mean something to the Bloodhorde. Near the nose, rows of stylized eyes and jagged teeth. She shivered.

The ship edged in, still untethered but now in easy reach of the grapples. Someone nudged her; she followed the gesture to see tiny figures in EVA gear moving on the plates of Deck One. That would be the Bloodhorde intruders, come out to welcome their friends and let them aboard. One of them moved to the control board for the grapples on her side; another stood at the controls for the other set of grapples.

She could not see their hands on the controls, but she could see the result, the shift of the grapple heads as they moved into position, and the sharp pings in her helmet as the grapples released from the heads and then impacted the ship. The sling buffer at the inboard end of the repair bay deployed, as if released by the grapples . . . they hoped the Bloodhorde would think that. She watched the intruder at the grapple controls spin around, and imagined his surprise. But nothing more happened. He made some hand signal to another of his team, out of her sight, then turned back to the controls.

The Bloodhorde ship barely moved, drawn by the retracting grapples. Esmay boosted the magnification on her helmet scan, and watched as the intruder pushed the grapple controls to maximum. She grinned through her tension. She’d thought they would do that . . . the plan would work anyway, but this was a bonus.

The ship moved faster, as all the grapples exerted full power. They must think the sling buffer would halt it if it moved too fast . . . and it would . . . after jolting the passengers a bit.

She watched in fascination as the ship moved slowly, inexorably, past the marked safety point . . . stretching out the grapples again, swinging like a ball on an elastic line. As if in automatic response, another buffer sling deployed—and another. The enemy ship rammed into them, nose first, stretching the first to its limit—one . . . two . . . bands ruptured and flung back across the bay with an indescribable noise. The impact shook the entire bay. Now . . . would they notice anything? The second held, and the third, barely deformed. The enemy ship shuddered, held by the buffer slings’ adhesive coating and the taut grapples behind.

“We did it,” she said aloud. “We got ourselves a warship!”