Counterweight (23 page)

Out here, he could simply concentrate on the task at hand.

He poked his head out of the exterior hatch, finding the
clip rail to his left. He hooked up and grabbed the bag, levering himself out
of the small chamber. He pulled his way along the rail until he reached the
middle of the dorsal hull, almost directly above the distortion engine.

He placed his feet at shoulder width, one slightly ahead of
the other, and activated the grapplers in his boots. Firmly anchored, he did
the same with the bag, locking it firmly to the hull before opening an
induction channel, using the material of the suit and ship to carry his signal
to the bridge.

“I’m ready,” he told them, remaining in the crouch, grasping
the clip rail with both hands. Inertial compensation was provided by the small
ship’s gravity plating but it didn’t extend all the way up to where Rick was
standing.

He lurched backwards, straining against the rail as the tiny
vessel leaped ahead, moving toward one of the big cruisers. The acceleration
ceased and he was able to let go of the rail, reaching into the bag to take out
the first assembly.

As they passed under the stern of the massive Dactari ship,
he began a gentle swing with his arm, keeping his hand on the assembly until
his mind told him he had a successful release. He looked over his shoulder as
they moved away, seeing it drift up toward the underside of the ship’s
engineering section. As it came within range of its mag grappler, the device
accelerated suddenly, slapping silently onto the hull.

Engine rooms, even on a small ship like the
Brisbane
,
were noisy places and a sudden noise was easily overlooked. It would hardly be
reason for an engineer or one of his ratings to call off a captain’s order to
enter distortion.

Rick’s grin was wiped off his face as his body shifted
backwards and to the right. He had to bend his knees and fall to the hull to
avoid breaking a limb or dislocating a joint. “Shit,” he groused. “Tell me when
you’re gonna change course, will you?”

“Sorry, Rick,” Freya replied. “I’ll disable the auto course
and handle her manually.”

Rick was certain he could hear amusement in her response but
he was somehow certain that Freya was laughing with him, rather than at him.
She wasn’t aiming abuse at an inferior; she was just having a little fun at the
expense of a crewmate.

The next cruiser went just as easily. They drifted under her
at a course that would take them straight for the prime target. The massive
troop carrier was even bigger than the
Canal
and Rick knew his childhood
home represented one of the largest ships ever built by mankind.

But something wasn’t right. They were now heading for a spot
to the carrier’s starboard side. It looked like they’d come no closer than a
hundred feet. It was still doable but why the change?

“Rick,” Freya’s voice filled his helmet. “They just raised
their nav-shielding. It looks like they’re going to jump in the next
centi-day.”

“Dammit!” Rick looked down at the bag on the hull. The last
knockout wouldn’t get through the shields if its mag-grappler was active. He
looked back up at the massive slab of vessel drifting his way.

“I’m going to unhook,” he told her. “I can carry it through
to the hull, hook it on and come back before they jump.”

He reached down and detached the bag from the hull, hooking
the straps over his shoulders as the captain’s refusal sounded in his ears. He
detected something personal in her tone but, whether it was out of concern for
him or a reluctance to fail in her mission to deliver him to her superiors, he
didn’t know.

He deactivated the grapplers in his boots and pushed off,
breaking the stream of protest from Freya in the process. He was halfway to the
troopship when he wondered whether the grappler in his bag was active or not.
He started to pull the bag around to the front, not stopping when he saw
himself pass through the shield. He didn’t know if he was going to pass through
because he shut off an active mag unit or because it was off in the first
place.

Pre-cognitive abilities could be tricky, if you got
careless. He didn’t want to end up stuck to the nav shield of the troopship
like a blood-gnat caught on sweaty skin.

He slid a hand inside the bag, putting a finger on the
rocker switch. It was turned off. He passed through the shield, a bluish haze
the only hint of its presence, and continued on toward the hull. He realized he
would probably rebound off the Dactari ship unless there happened to be a
conveniently located protrusion for him to grab onto.

With fourteen seconds to go, he saw himself bouncing off the
ship like an idiot. He was about to fail the crew but then he realized what he
still had his hands on. He pulled out the knockout assembly and flipped the
rocker switch to activate the mag grappler.

He held the device out in front of himself, grappler first,
and nearly lost his grip on it when its effect horizon reached the ship. His
strong archer’s fingers barely kept him attached as the device suddenly
accelerated to the hull plating.

This time, he heard a faint sound of impact transmitted
through his suit as he pushed his body to the right in order to avoid crashing
into the moderately fragile device. It could survive a rough grappling throw
but not the impact of two hundred pounds of Human and suit.

His right hand let go of the device and caught the hand rail
that he hadn’t been consciously aware of. It would have been just out of reach
if he’d been bouncing roughly against the hull but, now that he was anchored,
he could stretch out and get his hand on it.

Some part of his mind had registered the pre-cognitive
possibility and sent it straight to his muscles. The chief medical officer on the
Canal
referred to the phenomenon as Pre-cognitive Procedural Knowledge.

It was the same thing that made Rick an effective hunter.
His ability could predict the behavior of a target and pass it to motor control
with little interference from other parts of his mind.

He let go of the device with his left hand and began
rotating his body for the return push. He would hold the handrail while he got
himself into position.

Why was there a handrail here? He looked to the spot where a
short search would have led him to an escape hatch. Like the
Canal
,
escape hatches were also used as access hatches for maintenance work. The rail
in his hand led straight back to the hatch.

He clipped his safety line to the rail and dragged himself
along the rail to the hatch’s control panel. He grinned. Even if he hadn’t been
able to decipher the Dheema glyphs, the ubiquitous red button was unmistakable.
He punched it, unclipped his safety line and slid inside the pod.

It was larger than those on the
Canal
, but then he’d
heard the Dactari liked to use them as boarding landers. They had composite
ceramic metal rings around their outer hatches that were loaded with a metal
oxide mix. Once a pod grappled with an enemy ship, the oxides were ignited and
the resulting heat melted straight through the enemy hull, dropping a large
disc of hull plating onto the deck.

Now that he was in, he had no idea why he’d bothered. What
silly impulse had led him to enter the ship? He knew it was the sort of thing a
Midgaard might have done – they adored brash foolishness for its own sake – but
he was a Human.

Still, he’d come this far… He activated the inner door
control and waited while the outer hatch slid shut behind him. The inner door
snapped open and his helmet retracted. He peeked out, already knowing there was
nobody in the corridor.

What was he doing? Was he thinking of taking a stroll on a
ship loaded with a hundred thousand enemies? As he pondered his brash
stupidity, he suddenly looked up the corridor and then slid back into the pod.

A single set of footsteps approached and he edged up against
the inner wall of the pod, just beneath the open hatch. He silently cursed his
predicament. The hatch was still open and the crewman would likely notice it.

Then he almost laughed as he saw what was being thrown in
his path by dumb luck.

“Affirmative, Control,” a voice said in Dheema. “It’s an
open hatch, all right.” There was a slight grunt just outside the opening and,
suddenly, a shadow fell across the outer door. “Probably just another failed
actuator… I’ll check in when it’s fixed.”

This was Rick’s chance. The conversation was done and the
tech wouldn’t be missed for quite a while. He rotated his body, reaching up
with his right arm and grabbing the front of the surprised Dactari’s suit.

With a startled yelp, the crewman was hauled into the pod
and welcomed by a punch of surprising force. He went limp.

Rick dragged him over to the exit hatch and stopped to take
stock of the situation. The prisoner could be valuable but how to get him back
to the
Brisbane
? He had a large bag but not quite big enough to stuff a
Dactari into. But the bag could still be useful.

He reached down and found the manual controls on the Dactari
wrist pad, activating his helmet, just in case it wasn’t automated. He opened
the outer hatch, jumping slightly as his helmet reacted to the first hint of a
pressure change, snapping out and assembling itself before any appreciable
difference in the pod’s environment could develop.

  He laid the bag on the prisoner’s chest, sticking the
Dactari’s arms through the long handles so he could carry him, much like the
arrangement used to move the bifleet. Once out of the hatch, he grappled his
boots to the hull and pulled the handle straps over his own arms, effectively
slinging the unconscious Dactari on his back.

He crouched, looking up to where the scout ship lay waiting.
Taking a deep breath, he released his boots from the hull and pushed off.

It was a much slower trip this time, encumbered by the added
mass of his captive – the resulting acceleration was roughly two thirds that of
his earlier trip. He drifted safely through the nav-shield and continued on
toward the
Brisbane.

He realized this was going to be tricky. He was heavier now
and he had to give some serious thought to how he was going to arrest his
forward motion. They couldn’t use the boarding net – it was too large and bound
to draw attention.

He couldn’t just use the grapplers in his boots – they
weren’t designed to stand up to that kind of force and he’d likely end up with
a suit breach.

Then he saw someone standing out on the hull and he let
himself breathe again. The suited figure threw a small net up into Rick’s path
and he managed to tangle an arm in it. He quickly pulled himself around to get
both arms firmly into the weave and held on for dear life. The net-line began
to retract, pulling him into an ever-tighter arc until he thumped into the port
side of the hull.

The line stopped retracting and Rick pulled his carabiner out
and clipped it to a rail. He touched a hand to the hull. “I’m hooked up,” he
announced. “Making my way back to the ventral escape trunk.” He pulled his way
down to the hatch and unhooked the bag from his arms, grabbing the prisoner and
stuffing him in the hatch. He unhooked and followed him in and activated the
entry sequence.

Thorstein helped haul the Dactari prisoner out of the trunk,
much to Rick’s relief. After just a few moments of heavy exertion in zero
gravity, he felt very heavy now that he was back in the ship.

“How’d you get back in so fast?” he asked the engineer.

Thorstein shook his head. “Captain wouldn’t allow both
engineers to risk themselves at the same time.”

“So who went out with the net?”

“Captain went out,” he grinned at him. “That’s our Freya –
always ready to roll up her sleeves and save an idiot crewman.”

“Hey,” Rick protested, waving at the unconscious prisoner.
“I had a good reason to…”

“We’ll see about that,” Freya cut him off.

They turned to see her standing by the forward hatch, hair
slightly askew from her helmet. She’d obviously come in from one of the forward
trunks. “The difference between dashing and stupid, in a case like this,” she
explained as she approached the prone form on the deck, “is whether or not you
brought back any useful intel.”

She deactivated the Dactari’s helmet and slapped him hard.
“What did you do to him?”

“I hit him,” Rick shrugged. “I had to make sure he didn’t
call for help, didn’t I?”

“Hit him with what, an ox?” She gave the limp form a shake.
“Ahhh, he’s starting to come around.” She hauled him over to the forward
bulkhead and leaned him up against it, crouching in front of him.

The prisoner moaned, head rolling from side to side. “Wakey
wakey,” Freya crooned in Dheema. “You were amazing, last night…”

The prisoner smiled happily until he heard Rick and
Thorstein laughing. His eyes suddenly opened and, instead of seeing his Dactari
sweetie, he was looking at the wolfish smile of a Midgaard shieldmaiden. He
tried to back away but he was already against the bulkhead.

To his credit, he appeared to master his fear, settling into
a pose that could almost be described as nonchalant, though mildly agitated
might have been more apt. “If you animals think I’m going to talk…” He paused
as his eyes focused on the knife Freya held up in front of his face. “Then who
am
I
to argue?” He offered them a wry smile.

“A little fast, isn’t it?” Thorstein shook his head in
reproof. “You should at least let her slice something off before you spill the
honey – for honor’s sake…”

“Fornicate that,” the captive looked up at him with obvious
disapproval. “They say
everybody
talks and I believe it. Why get sliced
up if I’m going to tell you everything you want to know anyway?”

“For honor,” Thorstein repeated. “What part of that are you
not getting?