Starplex (27 page)

"One-point-four degrees to port, Magnet," said Jag.

"You're going to miss the shortcut."

"Adjusting course."

"Sixty seconds, mark."

"Everyone hold on," said Lianne. "It's--" Blackness.

Weightlessness.

"God damn it!" Thor's voice.

Barking--Jag speaking'. No translation from PHANTOM.

Flickering lights--the only illumination in the room: Rhombus saying something.

"Power failure!" shouted Thor.

Red emergency lighting came on, as did emergency gravity--a priority because of the Ibs. There were loud splashing sounds from either side of the room: the water in the dolphin workstations had swelled up into great dome shapes under zero gravity, domes that had collapsed, splattering liquid everywhere as weight returned.

No holographic bubble surrounded the bridge; instead its blue-gray plastiform walls were visible. Keith was still in his chair, but Jag was on the floor, obviously having lost his balance during the brief period of zero-g.

The three consoles in the front row--lnOps, Helm, and ExOps--flickered back into life. The back-row stations were less critical, and stayed off, conserving battery power.

"We've lost the Rum Runner," said Rhombus. "It was cut loose when the tractor beam died."

"Abort the shortcut insertion!" snapped Keith.

"Way too late for that," said Thor. "We're going through under momentum."

Keith closed his eyes. "Which way did the Rum Runner go?"

"No way to tell until I get my scanners back on-line," said Rhombus,

"but--well, we were hauling her in, meaning she would have been moving pretty much in a line back toward the green star . . ."

"The number-one generator blew," interjected Lianne, consulting readouts. "Battle damage. I'm switching over to standby generators."

PHANTOM's voice: "Re-in-ish-il-i-zing. Onqine."

The holographic bubble re-formed, beginning as a burst of whiteness all around them, then settling down to the exterior view, dominated by the green star, the rest obscured by the pursuing tendrils of dark matter.

Keith looked in vain for any sign of the Rum Runner.

Thor's voice: "Ten seconds to shortcut insertion, mark.

Nine. Eight."

Lianne's voice, overtop, coming from the public-address speakers. "We should have full power back in sixty seconds.

Prepare--"

"Two. One. Contact!" The red emergency lighting flickered.

The shortcut appeared like a ring of violet arcing around thems visible above their heads and beneath their feet, as the infinitesimal point expanded to swallow the massive ship.

Everything to the stern of the ring was the now familiar sky of the green star and the pursuing dark matter. But in front of the ring was an almost completely black sky. The passage through the shortcut took only a few moments as Starplex hurtled through at breakneck speed.

Keith shuddered as he realized what had happened.

Rhombus's lights swirled in Patterns of astonishment. Li-anne made a small sound in her throat. Jag was reflexively smoothing his fur.

All around was black emptiness, except for an indistinct white oval and three smaller white splotches high above their heads, and a handful of fainter white smudges tossed at random against the night.

They had emerged in the empty void of intergalactic space.

The white splotches weren't stars; they were whole galaxies.

And not one of them looked like the Milky Way.

Rissa felt her throat constricting as the Rum Runner was flung away from Starplex.

"What happened?" she called.

But Longbottle was too busy to answer. He was twisting and turning in his tank, fighting to bring the ship under control. On her monitors, Rissa saw the green star swelling ahead of them, its surface a roiling ocean of fiery emerald, jade, and malachite.

She fought down a wave of panic, and tried to assess for herself what had gone wrong. There's no way Keith would have cut power to the tractor beam, so either Gawst had used some sort of interfering transmission to sever the tractor, or Starplex had suffered a power failure. Either way, they'd been hurled away from the mothership, and almost directly toward the star. Through the clear wall between her air-filled chamber and Longbottle's water-filled one, Rissa saw the dolphin sharply arcring his body in what seemed to be a painful way, and bashing the side of his head against the opposite wall, as if by that sheer additional effort he could force the ship in the direction he wanted it to go.

Rissa looked at her monitors, and her heart skipped a beat. She saw Starplex disappear through the shortcut to--to wherever it had gone.-The great ship's windows were dark, confirming that a power failure must have occurred. If the ship was truly without power, Rissa hoped it had come through the shortcut network at New Beijing or Flatland--where there would be other vessels to help it.

Otherwise, it might not be able to return through whatever exit it emerged from--and a search of all the active exits might not be completed before Starplex's batteries ran out, leaving it without life support.

But Rissa only had a few moments to think about the fate of her husband and colleagues; the Rum Runner was still heading toward the green star.

The bow window had already darkened considerably, trying to filter out the inferno ahead of them. Longbottle was still struggling with the controls attached to his flukes and fins. Suddenly he flipped around in his tank, and Rissa saw the green star wheel away from view.

Longbottle was bringing the main engines around to face the star, and firing them as brakes. The ship rattled; Rissa could see Longbottle disabling emergency cutoffs with presses of his snout.

"Sharks!" shrieked Longbottle. At first, Rissa thought it was just a swear word for the dolphin, but then she saw what he was referring to: tendrils of dark matter were now obscuring half the sky, the gray spheres within the miasma of luster-quark gravel like the knots on a cat-o'-nine-tails.

Longbottle twisted to his right, and the ship followed suit.

But soon a much more sharply defined blackness obscured their view.

"Ship of Gawst," said Longbottle.

"Damn," said Rissa. She brought her hands down on the two grips that controlled the geological laser. She wasn't going to fire unless he did, but -- Ruby dots on Gawst's hull. Rissa'moved her thumb over the laser's twin triggers.

Longbottle must have seen her do that. "ACS jets," he said. "Not lasers. He, too, tries to get away from darmats."

The view in the window changed again as Longbottle

. altered the Rum Runner's course. Green star to the rear, enemy ship to port, darmats to starboard and coming in above and below. There was only one course possible.

Longbottle jabbed controls with his snout. "To the shortcut!"

he shouted in his high-pitched voice.

Rissa flipped keys, and one of her monitors showed the hyperspace map, the maelstrom of tachyons visible around the exit point.

"More maneuverable are we than Starplex," said Long-bottle.

"An exit we may choose."

Rissa thought for half a second. "Can you tell where Keith and the others went?"

"No. Shortcut rotates; I can match their angle of approach, but no time to work out if that will mean we exit at the same place."

"Then--then go for New Beijing," said Rissa. "Starplex will eventually end up there for repairs--if it can."

Longbottle squirmed in his tank, and the Rum Runner arched upward then down, coming at the shortcut from above and behind. "Insertion in seconds five," he said.

Rissa held her breath. There was nothing visible on her monitors.

Nothing at all--A flash of purple.

A different starfield.

A massive black starship.

A starship firing on a flotilla of United Nations vessels.

Four--no, five!--dead hulks pinwheeling against the night, surrounded by clouds of expelled atmosphere.

Everything was bathed in bloody light from the red dwarf that had recently emerged from this shortcut.

It flashed in front of Rissa's eyes, the words fully formed, like a chapter title on some future textbook screenThe Rout of Tau Ceti.

Waldahud forces attacking the Earth colony, seizing the one shortcut that serviced human space, a giant battle cruiser easily dispatching the tiny diplomatic craft normally stationed there-- A giant battle cruiser that had all its force screens aimed forward, protecting it from the returning fire being launched by the UN ships-- A giant battle cruiser that the Rum Runner was directly behind.

Rissa had never killed before, had never even deliberately injured before, had The Rout of Tau Ceti.

She swung the handles that aimed the laser, and leaned on the triggers.

PHANTOM wasn't here to animate in the beam for her, and the Waldahudin battleship was too far away for her to see the red dot moving across its hull -- Moving across its thruster fuel storage tanks--Ripping them open--Igniting the fuel--And then-- A ball of light, like a supernova-The bow window going completely black-- Longbottle arching in his tank, moving the Rum Runner away from the expanding sphere of debris.

Rissa took her hands off the triggers. The window grew clear again.

She was shaking from head to foot. How many Waldahudin had been aboard a ship that size? A hundred? A thousand? If they'd planned to actually move on to Sol system and storm Earth and Mars and Luna, perhaps as many as ten thousand soldiers--All dead.

Dead.

There were other Waldahudin ships in the area, but they were tiny one-person fighter craft. The big black vessel must have been their mothership.

Rissa exhaled noisily.

"You acted well," said Longbottle gently. "You did what you had to."

She said nothing.

The UN ships were banking now--New Beijing was a human-dolphin colony--and coming in to attack the small Waldahud fighters. The Rum Runner buffeted slightly as it passed through the cloud of expelled atmosphere from the destroyed battleship.

Rissa's console beeped. She looked at the glowing red indicator, like a drop of blood, but did not move. Longbottle eyed her for a moment, then nosed the similar control in his tank. A woman's voice came over the speakers. "This is Liv Amundsen, commander of the United Nations police forces at Tan Ceti, to Starplex auxiliary craft." Rissa glanced at her monitors. Amundsen's ship was still three light-minutes away; no point in trying a real-time conversation. "We have identified your transponder signal. Thank you for your timely arrival. Our casualties are heavy--over two hundred dead--but you've saved New Beijing. You can bet they'll pin a medal on your chest, whoever you are aboard that ship.

Over."

A medal, thought Rissa. Jesus Christ, they give medals.

"Rissa?" said Longbottle. "Do you want me--?"

Rissa shook her head. "No. No, I'll do it." She tapped a key. "This is Dr. Clarissa Cervantes aboard the Rum Runner; I'm here with a dolphin pilot named Longbottle.

Starplex was also attacked by Waldahud forces; it headed through the shortcut network to destination unknown, but may require emergency drydock facilities. Can you accommodate?"

She watched the stars drift by as she waited for her signal to reach Amundsen's ship, and the reply to make its way back. The Waldahud forces were repelled at Tau Ceti, said the history book in her mind.

But what was the next chapter? Two hundred from Earth or its colonies were dead . . . Dolphins didn't believe in vengeance, but would the humans demand it? Would this be the one skirmish, or were we about to see all-out war?

"Negative, Dr. Cervantes," came Amundsen's voice, at last. "Our dock facilities were the first thing the Waldahudin fired on." Of course, thought Rissa. Pearl Harbor all over again. "Suggest Starplex try the Flatland drydocks--although it should be careful when moving through the shortcut to there. Remember, a G-class subgiant recently emerged from that shortcut. We can, however, offer repair services here for a small ship such as yours."

Rissa looked at her monitors. The battle wasn't quite over. Police ships were still engaging a few Waldahud craft, although some of the invaders seemed to have surrendered, jettisoning their own engine pods.

"We more fuel need," said Longbottle to Rissa. "And thrusters must be allowed to cool--I overworked them badly."

"Fine," said Rissa into her microphone. "We're coming in." She' nodded to Longbottle, and he rotated in his tank, moving the ship.

Rissa's heart was still pounding. She closed her eyes, and tried not to think of what she had done.

"Lianne, damage report!" snapped Keith.

"I'm still tabulating everything from the battle, but there were no new problems caused by the high-speed shortcut passage."

"What about casualties?"

Lianne tilted her head, listening to reports over her audio implant.

"No deaths. Lots of bone fractures, though. Couple of concussions.

Nothing too serious. And Jessica Fong got out of docking bay sixteen all right, although she has a broken hip and arm, and a lot of bruising."

Keith nodded and breathed a sigh of relief. He looked around the hole bubble, trying to make out detail in the faint smudges of white against black infinity. "God," he said under his breath.

"All the gods," replied Jag, softly, "are a very, very long way from here."

Thor turned around and looked at Jag. "It is intergalactic space, isn't it."

Jag lifted his upper shoulders in agreement.

"But--but I've never heard of any shortcut exit this far ou,,Thseaid Lianne.

shortcuts have only existed for a finite time," 'said Jag. "Even hyperspace signals from one in intergalactic space might not have reached any of the Commonwealth worlds yet."

"But how can there be a shortcut in intergalactic space?"

asked Thor. "What's it anchored to'?."

"That's a very good question," said Jag, bending his head down to look at his instruments. "Ah--there it is. Check your hyperspace scanner, Magnor. There's a large black hole about six light-hours from here."

Thor let out a low whistle. "Adjusting course. Let's give it a wide berth."