Sporting Chance

Chapter Twenty-one

On the bridge, Heris heard Meharry’s first report with disbelief; she located the rest of Cecelia’s staff and sent them down. Meanwhile . . .

Meanwhile the Compassionate Hand ships continued to close, but did not attack.

“What are they waiting for?” Ginese asked. “Do they think we can take them?”

“Nice thought. Let’s hope they think so until Meharry gets back up here. Maybe they think we’ll surrender if they give us time.”

Issi Guar said, “There’s something coming into the system—something big.”

“Not Labienus and the Tenth Legion again,” Heris said. They had been dragged through innumerable ancient texts on warfare in the Academy: ground, sea, air, and space. One of the clubs had put on a skit about Labienus and the Tenth Legion—the way the Tenth Legion kept showing up like an adventure cube hero in the nick of time—which they all thought very funny until one of their professors reminded them of Julius’s career stats. Nonetheless, it had become a byword among officers of her class.

“No . . . I doubt it.” His fingers flew over the board, trying on one screen after another. “I wish we’d gotten that VX-84 you found, Oblo.”

“She said nothing stolen,” Oblo said, with a sidelong glance at Heris.

“I said nothing illegal,” Heris corrected. “But you didn’t pay any attention to that—what stopped you this time?”

“Guy wanted more than I wanted to pay . . . I don’t like messy jobs.” Messy, to Oblo, could have several meanings. “Let him take care of his own family problems,” he continued. Heris let it roll over her and tried to figure out what the Compassionate Hand commanders were doing. The yacht was running flat out, on a course that the gas giant and its satellites would curve into a blunt parabola. They had emerged from jump too close to its mass to do anything else. The two larger C.H. vessels paralleled it, slowly catching up; the signal delay from them was down to five seconds. The third had been unable to gain on them.

Meharry appeared at the bridge entrance, bloodstained and breathless. “Captain—it wasn’t Sirkin after all. It was Skoterin. Sirkin’s been shot; she’s alive—”

“INTRUDER YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. UNDER THE JUSTICE OF THE BENIGNITY OF THE COMPASSIONATE—”

“Now, Arkady!” Heris said.

“—HAND YOU STAND CONDEMNED OF TRESPASS, REFUSAL TO HEAVE TO—”

“They never said ‘Heave to’; they said ‘don’t maneuver’,” Oblo said. “Weapons away, Captain. And it’s supposed to be ‘convicted,’ not ‘condemned.’ ”

“—AND OTHER SERIOUS CRIMES FOR WHICH CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS THE CUSTOMARY SENTENCE. PROTESTS WILL BE REGISTERED WITH YOUR GOVERNMENT AND INDEMNITY DEMANDED FOR YOUR CRIMES. BY THE POWER VESTED IN ME AS AN OFFICER OF THE—”

“Targeting . . . incoming, live warheads, much faster than before.”

“BENIGNITY OF THE COMPASSIONATE HAND, SENTENCE IS HEREBY CARRIED OUT. JUSTINIAN IKLIND, COMMANDER—”

“I think those little warts were just testing us before—” Ginese sounded more insulted than worried.

“Get off my board, Oblo, and let me at them,” Meharry said.

“Spoilsport.” They switched places smoothly, and Oblo returned to his own console. His brows rose. “My, my. Look who’s come calling.”

“Unless it’s half a battle group, I don’t care,” Heris said, her eyes fixed on the main screen. The incoming missiles jinked, but relocked on the yacht; their own seemed to be going in the right direction but—no—she lost them in the static from the incomings, which had just blown up far short of their target.

“If they thought all we had was ECM to unlock targeting, they’re going to be annoyed,” Ginese said.

“That wasn’t a bad guess, Captain,” Oblo said. “Although it’s only one cruiser.”

“Our side?”

“By the beacon, yes. By behavior—we’ll have to see when their scans clear. It says it’s Livadhi again.”

Livadhi’s cruiser had arrived with far more residual velocity than the yacht, and more mass as well—it appeared on the scan with its icon already trailing a skewed angle. Livadhi, it seemed, meant to be in on the action.

The Compassionate Hand ships, on the other hand, made it clear what they thought of his interference. One engaged him at once, with a storm of missiles. The other changed course, angling across the yacht’s path to come between the yacht and Livadhi’s cruiser. The third—

Heris reached out for the tight beam transmitter they weren’t supposed to have. “Oblo, get me a lock on Livadhi’s ship.”

“Why? He’s got Koutsoudas on scan one—d’you think he’d miss anything?”

“No, but he’s being shot at. Give him a break, can’t you?”

“Right.” Oblo nodded when he had the lock.

Heris flipped the transmitter switch. “Livadhi—third bogie on your tail—watch it.”

As if he’d been waiting for her signal, her own tight beam receiver lit. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Heris. You got bad data at Rotterdam. You’ve got a traitor aboard. That’s why we’re here.”

“Not for long if you don’t watch it,” Heris sent back, eyeing her own scans. But Livadhi, in a fully crewed cruiser, had more eyes to watch than she did, and the first attacking missiles died well outside his screens. She wondered what his orders were—if he had any—because his counterattack was already launched. She had never thought of him as a possible rogue commander, but here he was deep in someone else’s territory and opening fire.

“Something else I wish we had,” Oblo muttered, watching. “Screens that would stop something bigger than a juice can.”

“Wouldn’t fit, remember?” Military-grade ship screens ate cubage and power both; offensive armament could be crammed into small ships without room for shields.

Both Compassionate Hand cruisers now engaged Livadhi’s ship. Heris began to hope everyone would forget about her . . . given enough time, they could continue their swing around the gas giant, reach a safe jump distance, and disappear. That would leave Livadhi in a fix, but he seemed to be doing very well. His first salvo sparkled all over one of the enemy’s screens, an indication that he had almost breached them. And if he had come to rescue them, give them a chance, then the smart thing to do was creep away and let the professionals do the fighting. She didn’t really like that, but the yacht was no warship.

“Captain—” That was Petris, on the intercom. “Medical report: We’ve got three dead, two critical, three serious—”

“Lady Cecelia?”

“Alive, conscious, in pain but she’ll make it. Skoterin, Mr. Smith, and Haidar are dead. Sirkin and Lady Cecelia’s communications therapist are critical—we may lose them without a trauma team, which we don’t have. Three others of her medical team are in serious condition. Lady Cecelia’s physician is unhurt, but trauma’s not her specialty—she’s a geriatric neurologist—and she says she’s out of her depth with open chest and belly wounds.”

Heris fought down her rage and grief. That wouldn’t help. She felt her mind slide into the familiar pattern . . . a cool detachment that allowed rapid processing of all alternatives, uncluttered by irrelevant worries. They had dying passengers; they needed medical care. The nearest source of trauma care was . . . right over there, being shot at.

And of course it was the best excuse for getting involved, although she pushed back a niggling suspicion that that carried more weight than it should.

“Thank you, Petris,” she said. “We’ll do what we can. Livadhi’s out there now, and he has a trauma center. Assuming we win the battle.”

Silence for a moment, as he digested that, and calculated for himself the probability that the yacht and Livadhi’s ship might be in one piece, in one place, able to transfer patients, before they died. “Right. I’m going back down to check the damage—stray shots hit some circuits around there, and now that we’ve no live environmental specialists—” It was not the time to tell him that one of the things she loved about him was his ability to stick to priorities.

“I think,” she said, in a thoughtful tone that made Oblo and Meharry give her a quick look, “I think those Compassionate Hand ships have decided we’re not worth bothering with. They seem to think the important thing is keeping Livadhi away from us.”

“Yes, Captain?” Oblo looked both confused and hopeful.

“Well, they got between us. All of them—” Because the trailing third ship had risked a microjump—a huge risk, but it had worked—to catch up to the battle. Dangerous, but it had worked. “And nobody’s targeting us. Now speaking as a tactical commander, don’t you think that was stupid?” None of them answered, but they all grinned. “I think they just put themselves in our trap. Oblo, how much maneuvering scope do we have?”

“Not much—but we can close the range on them, if you want. It’ll cost us another half hour to a safe jump range.”

“Jump won’t get our wounded to care any sooner,” Heris said. “But Livadhi’s got a perfectly good sickbay over there, if somebody doesn’t blow a hole in it. Let’s make sure no one does.”

The Compassionate Hand ships clearly thought they had an enemy cruiser locked in their box; for all that Heris’s scans could detect, they paid no attention to the yacht’s change of course that brought her swinging out toward the warships. They were too busy pounding at Livadhi’s ship, and dealing with his salvos. If the yacht had not existed, it would have been a well-conducted attack, almost textbook quality.

“Of course, when we do fire, they’ll be all over us,” Heris said.

“If they don’t notice us another minute or so, we’ll be close enough to blow one of them completely,” Ginese replied.

“One of them . . .” Meharry said softly. “But the other two will have to acquire us, get firing solutions . . . we have time.”

That minute passed in taut silence. Livadhi’s attack breached one of the enemy ship’s shields, but it neither broke up nor pulled away. Major damage, was Oblo’s guess, but he couldn’t understand the Compassionate Hand transmissions, which were in a foreign language and encoded anyway. “I think they rolled her, though, to put the damaged shields on this side.”

“That’s your prime target,” Heris told Ginese. “You know wounded C.H. commanders—they get suicidal. How much longer?”

“At your word, Captain.”

“Now.” The yacht shivered as Ginese sent a full third of its ballistic capability down the port tubes and out toward the wounded C.H. ship. Oblo rolled the yacht on its axis to present the remaining loaded tubes to the fight. Seconds ticked by. Then the yacht’s missiles slammed into the enemy cruiser, one after another exploding in a carefully timed sequence. The external visual darkened, protecting its lenses from the flare of light as the cruiser itself ruptured and blew apart.

Heris spent no time watching. “Oblo—maximum deceleration, now.”

He gave her a startled look but complied. The yacht could not withstand extreme maneuvers, but a course change like this might be enough to surprise the enemy. And avoid any late-arriving missiles that Livadhi had sent at that cruiser. Unfortunately, it would blur their scans just when they needed them clear, but—

“There they go—Livadhi did have a couple on the way.”

“I would hate to get blown away by my rescuer,” Heris said.

“I have a lock on the second cruiser,” Meharry said. “Permission—”

“Do it.” Again the yacht shivered; she wasn’t built for this kind of stress. But the salvo was away . . . Heris tried to calculate what that did to their gross mass, and what that meant to maneuvering capability, but at the moment the figures wouldn’t come.

The scans had adjusted to their new settings; she could see that the other two Compassionate Hand ships were changing course, the trailing one swinging wide now, losing range to take up a safer position, where Heris could not attack it without risking Livadhi in the middle or performing maneuvers beyond the yacht’s capacity. The nearer enemy ship and Livadhi continued to exchange fire, and Oblo reported that the nearer ship was trying to get a targeting lock on the yacht.

With their course change, it took seconds longer for their salvo to reach the enemy, and this time someone had been watching. Heris felt a grudging admiration for a crew that could react that quickly to a new menace. Half their missiles detonated outside the ship’s shield, and the rest splashed harmlessly against it. Return fire, already on its way . . . but Meharry and Ginese were able to break the target lock of some, and the timers of the rest.

This time it was Livadhi’s crew that exploited an opening—or perhaps defending against Heris’s attack had taken just that necessary bit from the shields—for Livadhi’s salvo blew through, and the enemy cruiser lost power and control. It tumbled end over end, shedding pieces of itself to clutter the scans.

“And that leaves number three,” Ginese said.

“And their reinforcements. It may take them a while to get here, but they’ll arrive.”

The third ship now fell farther back. Heris didn’t trust that, but she didn’t have the resources to pursue it. Instead, she changed course again, returning to maximum forward acceleration, and put a tight beam on Livadhi’s ship.

“We have critical casualties,” she said. “Can you accept five patients?”

“How’s your ship?”

“Not from that—from a fight inside. That traitor you mentioned.”

“I see. Frankly, I don’t want to risk docking with you while that other warship’s untouched . . . I can send over a pinnace with a trauma team, would that help?”

“Yes.” It would help, but would it be enough? She could see Livadhi’s point—if she’d commanded the cruiser, she wouldn’t want to have some civilian ship nuzzled up close when an attack started. “But we have no supplies for trauma, and just empty space . . . send what you can.”

“Right away. Stand by for recognition signals—”

“Why not Fleet Blue—I already know that.”

He actually laughed. “Of course—sorry. Fleet Blue it is.”

The pinnace should be too small to attract fire from that third ship; Heris could barely find it on scans herself and she was much closer.

Time passed. Heris could not leave the bridge, not with a hostile ship out there; she sent Petris to help the pinnace mate with their docking access tube and reported its safe arrival to Livadhi. Was it too late for their casualties? She heard nothing from the medical team—of course, they would be busy. Better not to interrupt. Another hour, and another. The third Compassionate Hand ship continued to fall behind, though it did not turn away.

“Sorry it took so long.” That was Petris, as blood-streaked as Meharry. “I wanted to patch up a few things—near as I can tell, nothing really important got holes in it. I’ll have to read up on the systems, though.”

“And our casualties?”

He shook his head. “Can’t tell yet. They brought two trauma surgeons and their teams; Sirkin’s the worst, but they’re still working on her. Said if they could stabilize them, a regen tank would do the rest, but there’s no way to load a regen tank on a pinnace.”

“Lady Cecelia?”

“Is spitting mad, near as I can tell. A fragment got her synthesizer, and her communications specialist died, so she’s having a hard time making herself understood. She got a shallow flesh wound—probably the same fragment that ruined her synthesizer—but she’s fine. Wants to see you, when you’ve time, but I explained you wouldn’t.”

“Where is she?”

“In the thick of things. Insists she wants to stay with Sirkin, and the med teams are too busy to carry her out—her hoverchair got a solid hit and it’s down, too.”

“Have you found out any more about Skoterin?”

“Only what I heard as I came on the scene. She was a deep agent for the Compassionate Hand, before she joined up, and a relative of that mole who died on your first voyage.”

“And perhaps that guard who died on Sirialis, the one who shot young George,” Heris said. “Iklind—that was the name. Livadhi claims we got bad chart data from Rotterdam Station, which is why we ended up here . . . and Skoterin is the one who fetched the charts from the Stationmaster.”

“And altered them on the way? Could be done. She could’ve been messing up Sirkin’s work, too—we trusted her, old shipmate as she was.”

“Lady Cecelia tried to tell me—said it wasn’t Sirkin—but I wouldn’t believe her. And now three people are dead—”

“One of whom should be.” Petris reached out a hand and drew it back. Heris saw the movement, and wished they were not on the bridge in a hostile situation; she needed that touch, some comfort in a bad time. “If it’s any comfort, not one of us caught on; we all made the same mistake.” The others on the bridge nodded.

“I had liked Sirkin a lot,” Meharry said. “So I cut her more slack than the rest of you—kept thinking it was delayed grief reaction or something—but it never occurred to me it could be sabotage. Just like you, and Petris, I trusted Skoterin just because she’d served with us even though I knew some of that crew were Lepescu’s agents. I didn’t know her before, but—she was military, she’d been a shipmate, that was enough. And that was flat-out stupid.”

“That may be,” Heris said, “but I’m still at fault.”

“That’s true.” Oblo turned around and grinned. “The great Captain Serrano makes mistakes—what a surprise! We thought you were perfect!”

“I didn’t,” Guar said. “I always said her nose was too short.”

“All right, all right,” Heris said, fighting back a chuckle. “I get your point. We’re all old friends and we all made a mistake, and we go on from here, sadder but wiser. If Sirkin dies, a lot sadder.”

“I’d bet on her to make it,” Petris said. “With Lady Cecelia sitting there radiating mother-hen protectiveness. She doesn’t need speech to convey how much she cares.”

Heris’s tight beam receiver lit again, and she picked up the headset. “Heris, how close are you to your critical jump distance?”

She looked at Oblo and mouthed, “Jump? How long?” He looked at his plot and punched in some corrections, then looked again.

“Less than an hour, Captain—looks like we might make it. Forty-three minutes and a handful of seconds, to be more precise.”

Heris relayed that to Livadhi. “Good,” he said. “If nothing else lights up, I’ll expect you to jump out of here as soon as you can—take my medical teams with you for now—and I’ll cover your backtrail. Don’t tell me your destination, but do you need any coordinates for a safe jump out?”

“Yes,” Heris said. “I’d like to clear the Benignity with one jump—possible?”

“Yes—here—” He read off a string of numbers that Heris passed to Oblo. When she read them back, he said, “Fine. Now—I am authorized to say that the situation we both know about is extremely unstable. The Council would like to speak with Lady Cecelia at her earliest convenience; Lord Thornbuckle has filed a Question with the Grand Table; the Crown asks if you can transport a certain Mr. Smith and his friend back home.”

“Medical intervention must come first,” Heris said, her mind beginning to buzz with the implications of Livadhi’s report.

“Of course. I understand. I would urge extreme caution, and suggest that we rendezvous for your return so that we can provide an escort. You might also consider rearming—”

“Thank you,” Heris said. “Give me a contact coordinate.” Another string of numbers followed. Then Livadhi broke contact. Minute by minute the yacht edged closer to safety. Heris kept expecting something else to go wrong—another Compassionate Hand ship appearing in their path, another crisis aboard—but nothing interrupted them, and at last Oblo was able to put them back into jump mode, into the undefined and chaotic existence that lay between the times and spaces they knew.

Livadhi’s trauma teams had turned two of the guest suites into sickbays. In one, Sirkin lay attached to more tubes and wires than she had arms and legs. Beside her, on a stretcher, Lady Cecelia lay on her side holding Sirkin’s hand. Across that room, two of the less critically wounded were dozing, their bandages making humps and lumps under the bedclothes.

“Lady Cecelia,” Heris said. Her employer looked only slightly better than Sirkin, pale and exhausted.

“I . . . told . . . you . . .” Her own voice, with its cracked and uneven tone, was just understandable.

“You did, and you were right. I’m very sorry. I should have listened to you.”

“If . . . I . . . could . . . talk . . . dammit . . .”

“I know—you have so much to say—and your people died, too. Must be much worse for you—”

“Thought . . . we . . . all . . . die . . .”

“So did I, for a while there. Let me tell you what happened.” Heris outlined the events, and then waited for Cecelia’s response.

“Damn . . . lucky . . .”

“It’s not over,” Heris said. “We have to get you all to Guerni; we have to get you home safely, and survive whatever’s going on. And find out who’s doing it, and why.”

“Lorenza . . . Tourinos,” Cecelia said. “Remember . . .”

“I will. But you’re going to be able to give your own testimony.”

The Guerni Republic’s customs were as quick and capable with incoming medical emergencies as with casual trade. Heris requested the fastest possible incoming lane; customs sent an escort alongside to do a close-up scan.

“You’ve been here before; your references are good; you’re cleared with the usual warnings,” the escort officer said.

“Thanks. What about a medical shuttle from the Station?”

“We’ll arrange it. Actually, trauma cases may not need to go downside; we have major medical available on all stations. We normally handle everything onstation unless that facility is full—saves transport stress and time.”

Heris was impressed all over again. It made sense, but in Familias space, most stations transferred serious trauma down to the planet. She had heard it explained as being more cost-effective, but the Guernesi were supposed to be the galaxy experts on cost-effectiveness.

When they arrived at the Station, medical teams awaited them dockside, and the casualties were transferred quickly to the Station trauma center. Cecelia would be shuttled down to the neuromedical center later; she had agreed to have Meharry and Ginese escort her there. Heris would stay up at the Station until Sirkin was out of danger. As soon as she had arranged a private shuttle for Cecelia, her surviving attendants, and her bodyguards, Heris went to the Station hospital.

“Just barely in time,” she was told. “That artificial blood substitute saved her, but you really pushed its limits—should have been using exterior gas exchange as well . . . I’m surprised your doctors didn’t.”

Heris decided not to explain the limits of transferring medical equipment between ships in deep space while in hostile territory. “When they’ve finished packing up on our ship, maybe they’ll talk to you about it,” she said. After all, Livadhi’s medical teams had already said they wanted to explore the medical riches of the system.

“And we have a newer substitute with a better performance you might want to consider stocking—a license to manufacture would be available through our medical technology exports office—”

Typical. To the Guernesi, every disaster had the seeds of profit in it. “When can I see our casualties?” she asked. “Especially Brigdis Sirkin . . .”

“The two worst, not for at least two days. They’ll have two long sessions in regen, but they need transfusions first. The other three will be out of the regen tanks in another six hours, so any time after that—”

Heris went back to the yacht, and found that Livadhi’s teams had scoured the areas they’d been using; these now smelled like any sickbay. But one of them stopped her in the midst of her thanks.

“What’s this, Captain?” The woman held up an unmistakable cockroach egg case. Heris had a sudden vision of being detained forever on a charge of importing illegal biologicals.

“An egg case,” Heris said, trying to sound unconcerned. Inspiration hit. “We had to evacuate Lady Cecelia from Rotterdam in haste; we had no time for proper disinfection procedures. And she was living at a training stable.”

“Ah. I presume you disinfected the ship—?”

“Oh, yes. I can’t be sure we got them all, but we’ll do it again. It was on my schedule, but then we came out of jump in the wrong place—”

“Oh—of course.” The woman’s accusing expression relaxed. “I’d forgotten about Lady Cecelia’s luggage . . . and from a stable yard . . . it’s just that contamination from vermin is a serious problem.”

You don’t know the half of it, Heris thought. At least they’d found an egg case, and not one of the albino cockroaches. She wasn’t about to tell this starchy person about the cockroach colonies down in ’ponics.

“They were telling me in the hospital here that they have a newer, more efficient oxygen-exchange fluid for blood replacement,” she said. Sure enough, that took the woman’s attention off cockroach egg cases.

“Really! Expensive?”

“They said something about a license to manufacture—if you found something the Fleet wanted to use, it might make your time here worthwhile.”

“Certainly—thanks. I’ll just get the team together—”

Sirkin was asleep, curled on her side like a child, when Heris arrived. She looked perfectly healthy, with color in her cheeks again, and no obvious bandages. Heris had made herself visit Cecelia’s attendant first, though she didn’t know the man at all . . . now she sat beside the bed and waited for Sirkin to wake. Once an attendant peeked in, jotted down some numbers off the monitor above the bed, smiled at Heris, and went back out. Heris dozed off, waking when Sirkin stirred.

“Captain . . .” Her voice was drowsy.

“You’re almost recovered, they tell me,” Heris said. “I’m sorry—all of us are. We should have trusted you.”

“I—don’t know. I didn’t trust myself. And I don’t know how she could—she had been on your ship—”

“Don’t worry about her. Let’s talk about you. You know Lady Cecelia stood by you all along?”

“Yes—she came to my cabin and said she knew it wasn’t my fault.”

“She’d like you to stay with us, Brig, though no one will blame you if you don’t. We all want you to.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course. I can make stupid mistakes, but I can also admit them. It wasn’t your fault; you did good work and someone else messed it up. You’ll do good work again. It’s more a matter of whether you trust us—if you’re sure of us.”

“I want to,” Sirkin said. “I like you.” That almost childlike admission struck Heris to the core. She could have cried. “You were all so . . . so good when Amalie died. Even Lord Thornbuckle’s daughter . . .”

“Even? Brun’s a remarkable young woman, if she did happen to be born rich. She liked you; I daresay if she’d been aboard she’d have chewed my ears about you, and made a dent in my suspicions.”

“I really like her . . .” That was said so softly Heris barely heard it, and Sirkin flushed. Heris mentally rolled her eyes. Youngsters. Meharry had told her privately that Brigdis and Brun were likely to go overboard. Clearly Sirkin had. But they’d have to work that out; she never interfered in her crew members’ romantic entanglements unless it endangered the ship. This wouldn’t . . . in fact . . .

“Not surprising,” she said dryly. “Considering—” Considering what, she didn’t say. “One of us will be by every shift, until you’re out of here. You’re under guard, because we still don’t know how much trouble we face, but you can call the ship any time you’re concerned. I’ve got to go down and see how Lady Cecelia’s coming along.”

“Thank you,” Sirkin said. Completely awake now, she had begun to regain that sparkle she’d had at first. Resilience, thought Heris, and wondered again if she would be able to afford rejuvenation someday. And what her employer would think about it.