Starhunt: A Star Wolf Novel (2 page)

“There,” says Barak, tapping at the monitor. “There’s the error—0.00012 degrees.” He drops back into his couch. “We’ll just have to watch it for now. It’s too small to correct. Give it a couple of days to grow.”

Jonesy nods. “I wonder where it came from.”

“Engine room, probably,” Barak murmurs. “One of the generators must be picking up a bit of heat.” He touches a button and the projection on the monitor dissolves.

“It figures,” Jonesy snorts. “Can’t those field jockeys do anything without screwing up?”

“That’s funny.” Barak’s broad face splits into a grin. “They were just asking the same thing about you.”

Jonesy snorts again, pulls his headset back down over his ears, and turns back to his board.

Watching, Korie is troubled. He doesn’t like errors. Even the slightest one could add days to the chase. But Barak knows his business; this one won’t have a chance.

A sound from the horseshoe attracts his attention. Rogers is standing at his gravity control board crying into a microphone, “Now it’s down to 0.89 and still falling. Who’s taking all my power?”

A laconic voice answers from the speaker, “The engine room. They’ve picked up a wobbly, so they’re overcompensating—”

“Yeah, but I need power too! I’m supposed to keep the gravity within 2 per cent Earth normal, and I can’t do it if I don’t have power.”

“Power . . .” sighs the speaker. “Everybody wants power. . . . All right, let me know when it hits critical and I’ll cut the auxiliaries.”

Korie frowns. Than damned wobbly is making its presence known all over the bridge. He swivels left to look at the warp control console.

There, an engineer is yammering into a mike, “Listen, there’s nothing wrong on this end! All of
our
settings are correct. Are you sure your fields are—”

The engineer pauses, scratches his chest. “I’m not so sure. The curve doesn’t feel right.”

“I don’t care what your curve feels like. I know what it feels like down here, and we’ve got static up the
wazoo
!”

Korie’s gaze flickers to the screen. The number three generator is shimmering dangerously, a red piston vibrating faster than the eye can follow. A wide hazy area indicates the depth to the wobbly.

He stabs a button, “Engine room! This is Korie. You’re wobbling too much. Can you correct?”

The answer is immediate. “Sir, we’ve got our hands full just trying to stay on top of it. It won’t respond.”

“What’s causing it?”

“We don’t know yet. Mr. Leen is down in the well now.”

Korie grunts. “Well, damn it—try to hold it within limits. I’m not going to lose that bogie!”

“Yes, sir.” The communicator winks out.

Korie shifts his attention forward to the pilot console. “What’s our warp velocity?” he demands.

One of the officers straightens in his couch, leaning forward to read his monitor. “Uh . . . holding at 174, plus a fraction; but it’s not firm. . . .” Questioningly, he looks back at Korie, his face a dim blur in the dark.

Korie frowns. “Damn. If it starts to drop, let me know immediately.”

“Yes, sir.” The other turns forward again.

Korie glances back to the left, to the warp control console. Angrily, he glares at the flickering red bar on the screen—
that damn number three generator!
Able to do nothing but watch, he beats intensely at the chair arm with a clenched right fist.

“Fix it already. . . .” he mutters. “I’ don’t want to lose that kill. . . !”

The screen flickers redly. Somewhere a warning bell starts to chime. Eyes flicker toward the screen as the oscillation increases, widening past the danger levels.

Sudden red flashes on all the boards—the insistent chiming becomes a strident alarm; its shrill clanging shatters across the bridge. Crewmen turn hurriedly to their controls.

A voice: “We’re losing speed! One hundred and sixty and still falling!”

Simultaneously a communicator bleeps. The first officer hits it with the butt of his fist. “Yes?”

“Engine room, sir.” In the background another shrill alarm can be heard. “Mr. Leen requests permission to shut down.”

“Can’t do it,” Korie snaps. “Is it absolutely necessary?”

“Uh—just a moment. . . .” There is a bit of off-mike mumbling, then the voice returns. “Mr. Leen says no, it isn’t
absolutely
necessary, but, uh, if he had another set of engines, he’d junk these.”

Korie taps indecisively at the chair arm. He stares ahead with pale eyes. The bogie shimmers and flickers across the screen; the wobbly is affecting the sensors too. Agonized, he hesitates—

“Sir?” asks the speaker.

“Just a moment.” He takes his hand off the button, snaps at the officer ahead of him, “What’s our speed now?”

“One hundred and forty-three and dropping steadily. It’s—”

“Never mind.” He stabs at the button on the chair arm. “Radec!”

“Yes, sir?” A new voice on the intercom.

“That bogie—you still have him.” It is as much a statement as a question.

“Yes, sir, of course—but he’s flickering pretty badly—”

“If I have to shut down, can you pick him up again?”

“After we unwarp, sure, I should be able to.”

“How long will you be able to keep him on your screens?”

“Uh—five, maybe six hours. . . . We can’t scan more than a hundred light days, no matter how big his warp is. After that—well, the whole thing gets pretty fuzzy.”

Korie sucks in his lower lip, bites it hard.
Damn!
“Do you have anything else on your screens? Anything suspicious? I don’t want to be caught by surprise.”

“Uh—no, sir. Nothing. No major field disturbances at all—and nothing faster than light.”

“All right.” Korie disconnects him. Hardly seeing it, he stares at the empty red screen ahead. The enemy shimmer coruscates wildly and uncontrollably across the crimson grid.

“One hundred twelve and still dropping,” calls a dark voice.

Damn!

Every eye in the bridge is on him, but he sees only the screen.

“Ninety-six lights.”

The first officer is torn with pain—that flickering blur—

“Eighty-seven lights—sir!”

“I heard you.”

“Sir! The engines are overheating—”

“I know it!”

Suddenly, Barak is standing beside him. “Damn it, Korie! Admit it! We’ve lost him! Now let go! Shut down those engines before they burn out—”

Korie looks at him, his pale eyes suddenly hard. “We’ll shut down when
I
say we’ll shut down!”

“Yes, sir!” Barak spits out the words. “But you’d better do it while you
still have
engines to shut down.”

Korie stares at the other. They lock eyes for a clanging moment—

—And then the moment is over. Korie reaches for the button.

“Engine room.”

The answer is immediate; the crewman has been waiting at the mike. “Sir.”

“Stand by to shut down.”

“Yes, sir.”

Korie disconnects. There is nothing more to say. He looks at Barak, but the astrogator is silent.

Korie turns away then, calls to the warp control console, “Prepare to collapse warp. Neutralize the secondaries.”

The routine takes hold. Crewmen move to obey and orders rattle down through the ranks.

“Remove the interlocks. Stand by to neutralize.”

“Interlocks removed. Standing by.”

“Cycle set at zero. Begin phasing.”

“Cycle set at zero. Beginning phasing.”

Around the horseshoe, crewmen exchange wary glances. The smell of defeat hangs heavy across the bridge. The chase has been abandoned.

Korie sinks lower in his seat; he stares grimly ahead.

(So near . . . so near and yet so goddamned far!)

Confirming lights begin to appear on the boards. Red warning lights blink out, are replaced by yellow standbys. The strident clanging of the alarm dies away, leaving only a slow fading echo and a hollow ringing in the ears.

(So this is how it ends . . . with a whimper. With just a futile petering out of momentum . . .)

The ringing fades into a persistent beeping, a sound that has been continuous for some time. Korie looks at the chair arm. A yellow communicator light flashes insistently.

He flicks it. “Bridge. Korie here.”

“This is Brandt.” The captain’s thick voice comes filtered through the speaker.

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s the trouble? What was the alarm?”

“We’ve lost it, sir. We’ve lost the bogie.”

There is a muffled curse, then a pause. “I’ll be right up.” The lighted panel winks out.

Korie stares at it. (Damn it all anyway!) He bites angrily at his lip, a nervous habit. (Damn! It all happened too fast!)

“Sir.” It’s one of the warp engineers. “The secondary fields are neutralized.”

“Good,” Korie says dourly. It is not good. “Go ahead. Collapse the warp.”

The man turns back to his console. On the screen over his head the third red bar drops to zero. Numbers one and five follow suit; a second later, the rest.

Imperceptibly—on a submolecular level—the ship shudders throughout it length. Its protective cocoon of warped space unfolds, dissolves; the ship mutters back into normal unstressed space. The bright flickering screens that circle the upper walls of the bridge go dark. They become sudden windows of hollow blackness. Space, deep and vast, repeated a dozen empty times, stares hungrily into the bridge.

Simultaneously, the crew reels under the sudden surge of added weight as the excess power flows back into the gravitors. One of the men stumbles in front of Korie while crossing the pit.

“Watch your step,” Korie mutters automatically, hardly noticing.

The man catches himself, cursing softly. He looks up to the horseshoe. “Damn it, Rogers! Pay attention to what you’re supposed to be doing.”

The object of his wrath turns to apologize, embarrassed. He stammers something to the bridge in general.

“Forget it,” the man growls in annoyance, swinging himself up onto the horseshoe. “Answer your board.”

Rogers turns back to his console, flicks glumly at a blinking light. “Gravity control here. Go ahead.”

“This is the galley. . . .” says a gruff, sarcastic voice. “I don’t suppose you would be so kind as to warn me the next time you’re planning to up the G’s like that, would you?”

“I’m sorry, Cookie,” he says. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to—”

“Well, ‘sorry’ isn’t going to bring back a dozen cakes that you ruined. Just watch it, dammit!”

Rogers stammered, “I’ll try—” But the light winks out abruptly, cutting him off. The other crewmen on the horseshoe snort contemptuously at his discomfort.

“Hey, Rogers,” growls one of them, “don’t give Cookie any complaints, huh? You got it rough as it is.”

Rogers ignores him, stares glumly at his control board. Thin and round-shouldered, he toys with one of his safety switches, pretends to adjust it.

The man steps in closer and lowers his voice. “For your own good, huh? Nobody likes having his meals ruined just because some wobblehead isn’t watching his board, so pay attention, huh?” He scowls heavily. “Otherwise, you’re going to be eating your meals alone, boy—”

A sudden motion at the back of the bridge—a panel in the rear wall slides open. The men on the horseshoe turn quickly back to their boards.

Haloed by the orange light of the corridor behind, Captain Georj Brandt of the United Systems Command strides heavily into the room.

A starship is concerned with two kinds of velocity. There is the realized velocity of the ship in warp, and there is the inherent velocity of that same ship in normal space.

A ship’s inherent velocity remains the same, no matter what it does while in warp. If a ship is traveling at 5,000 kilometers per second when it goes into warp, no matter how fast or how far it goes, when it comes out of warp, it will still be traveling at that same 5,000 kilometers per second (plus or minus a fractional gain, but that’s another story).

Even if the warp is motionless, the ship may still be moving within it; or vice versa, if the warp is moving, it is possible for the ship to be at rest within.

—From DR. HANS UNDERMEYER’s

address to the Bridgeport

Opportunities League,

“Understanding Our Cosmos”

Brandt is a big man, heavy-boned and husky. He glances quickly around the bridge, then steps down off the rear ledge to the Command and Control Seat.

Korie glances up, slips out of the chair at his approach. Almost distastefully, the captain drops his wide frame into it and rasps, “All right, what seems to be the problem?”

“We’ve had to shut down the warp. Number three generator is acting up again.”

“Why? What is it this time?”

“Engine room doesn’t know yet—probably this damned ship is getting old.” Brandt doesn’t react; Korie continues, “We’re stuck here until they find the trouble.” He glances forward, but the screen is empty. “And all we can do is watch our bogie escape. Every minute we sit here, he puts another three light hours between us.”

Brandt grunts darkly, but he hasn’t time to sympathize with Korie’s problem. With a thick finger he taps the chair arm. “Engine room, this is Brandt.”

The speaker crackles, “Leen here, sir.”

“Chief, how soon can you have us going again?”

“. . . Mmm, I wish I could tell you, but I don’t know—I don’t even know what’s wrong yet. I’ve got six men up in the webs—and they can’t find anything. Systems analysis doesn’t show anything wrong with the generator. I just climbed out of the well myself. I don’t know what it is, and it’s driving me out of my mind.”

“All right, keep on it. I want to know what it is and how long it’ll take to fix.”

“As soon as I know myself, Captain.”

Brandt switches him off. His iron-gray eyes are troubled. He swivels right to face the astrogation console. “Mr. Barak.”

Barak spins to face the captain. “Yes, sir?” With his dark skin he is almost invisible in the dim light of the bridge.

“How near are we to the enemy sphere of influence?”

Barak thinks a moment. “About nine light years.”

“Any of the ships around?”

“Not this far out, there shouldn’t be—but we’re running a probability check through EDNA to make sure.”