Temporary Duty (57 page)

«You don’t know what the fuck you are doing,» Keezer snarled. «If the ferassi get aboard we could all get dead.»

«Ferassi? Ferassi are people?»

«As if you didn’t fucking know,» Keezer sneered. «Now get your face-fucking selves away from the fucking consoles and let
people
take over.»

First things first. "Emergency all hands, emergency all hands," the formula that put him on the all-call, "visitors are hostile. Repeat, visitors must be assumed hostile. Take cover, repeat, take cover." Heads went up all around, and Peters told the Grallt, «Keezer, we don’t have time for this. We’re on your side. Take the lead on Number One, and tell us what settings to use.»

She held his eyes for a beat, then scurried off aft. Peters took that in with a glance, then told Rupert, "I’m gonna have to translate. Handle it." He caught a glimpse of wild eyes and gaping mouth under the helmet, then pounded off after Keezer.

"Translator," he gasped to Bannerman, and caught the nod before saying to Keezer, «You’re in charge. What are the settings?»

«Mass to maximum, speed to zero.»

Peters relayed that, and sailors started spinning knobs. The controls were verniers, with geared pointers for indicators; it took sixteen turns to go from max to min. «Anything else?»

«When you have both settings, push the mass knob until it clicks, hold it, and go right as far as it will go.»

Peters spoke urgently; the others started to comply. Console Four now had a pair of Grallt, and Cunningham had moved to back up Rupert. «Got it,» Peters told Keezer. «What now?»

«Now we wait to see if it works,» Keezer clipped out.

«What does that function do?»

«With a little luck it keeps them from coming into the bay.»

«Complete block?»

Snarl: «It’s supposed to be.»

"Green three-seven, can you tell us anything?" came over the earbug. "Commander Bolton wants to know if there’s anything he and the other officers should be doing."

Green lights flashed at lower left and lower right of the stranger’s front; a thud was transmitted through the fabric of the ship. "It ain’t clear, chief, but they just shot at us."

"I noticed that. Is anybody shooting back?"

Their attacker wasn’t getting any closer. More flashes, more thuds. "I’ll ask."

"Do that."

«Keezer, can we respond to their weapons?»

«No. All of
Llapaaloapalla
‘s weapons are directed forward.»

"Stupid design," Peters commented. «We have a few weapons. Can we usefully contribute?»

«If you have personal weapons, get them ready in case the ferassi get aboard.»

Peters nodded. "Chief, Keezer says to start passin’ out weapons. If these guys get aboard it’s likely to be real bad news." Flash. Thud.

Pause. "Right. All hands, all hands. If you’re near the armory, get a weapon and get to the ops bay." Grimly: "You’re supposed to shoot the bad guys, not yourselves." The sailors along the starboard side started rushing for the quarters hatch. "Green three-seven, can we use the planes?"

«Would the fighting-ships be useful in this situation?»

«Not likely. The ferassi can disable their breakbeams.» Keezer shook her head. «They made them in the first place.»

Well, ain’t that a thing? «They didn’t make ours,» Peters pointed out.

«I had forgotten that.» Keezer looked forward, a grim expression on her face. «They might be able to do something, if their weapons work and they can get out in time.»

«How long are we likely to have?»

«I don’t know. Right now they’re waiting for us to stop and open up for them. There’s no way to know how long it will take for them to get impatient and start really shooting.»

"Chief, Keezer says the planes might help if we can get them out in time, but there ain’t no way to know how long we’ve got."

"It can’t hurt to try." Pause. "Can we launch in High Phase?"

Keezer snarled when that was relayed. «Ssth. Didn’t you feel it? The ferassi brought us down. We can’t go to High Phase as long as they’re out there.»
Flash. Thud
.

«Understood.»
Pictures of home!
the music player sang. "Chief, the bad guys done turned off the
zifthkakik
an’ we’re not in High Phase any more. If we can get ‘em manned we can launch."

"Roger that." There was a pause, probably Joshua giving instructions on another channel. A sailor started toward the bow at a dead run, and officers in poopy suits and helmets were straggling out their quarters hatch and pounding toward the hangar accesses. After a minute the hatches started retracting, relatively quietly thanks to Warnocki and the maintenance crews, but the bow door would take longer; the sailor had half a kilometer to cover before he could reach the override control. Guys with M22s were popping out of the EM quarters hatch, some taking up guard stations there, others running across to cover the hangar accesses and elevator.

Flash flash thud thud!

«They are starting to get impatient,» Keezer noted. The Grallt complexion was duskier than the average for the humans, but she was a shade lighter than Todd.

«Yes… Don’t they have more effective weapons? All they’ve done so far is make noise.»
Flash thud
, as if to emphasise that.

Snarl: «Of course they do, and they could start using them any tle. They could destroy us in an antle or less, but what use would it be? They want to raid, not destroy.»
Flash
, brighter and yellow,
wham
, a more distinct shock. «They are starting to escalate now.»

First a Hornet, then a Tomcat, rolled out of the hangar access under their own power, a flat miracle in so little time. The armorers were walking–well, half running–alongside, trying to tinker with the HEL pods. A crackle, and Commander Collins’s throaty alto: "Hornet Two Zero One is rolling."
Flash flash wham! wham!

Keezer spun. «What the fuck was that?»

«It’s a
radio
, one of our communicators, salvaged from the damaged ship.» That had occasioned some debate, but it had been decided that the extra UHF radio would be most useful to control approaches and recovery. They now really needed an LSO, but Joshua had managed enough force to keep Lieutenant Carson out of the bay; Howell should have handled it.

Flash flash wham! WHAM!
Howell wasn’t here. "Hornet Two Zero One, this is Green Three-Seven at the retarders. Read you five by," Peters told the mike.
Smoke on the water – fire in the sky
blared from across the bay.

Crackle.
"Roger, Green Three-Seven. Tomcat One Zero One is saddling up now."
Flash flash wham! wham!
Debris drifted by the aft opening.

The bow door was grinding open, 201 and 207 were side by side with redshirts scrambling to get the pods closed, 102 was moving up, and things were starting to get confusing. Peters had no training as an Air Controller; nobody in the detachment did–repair and maintenance people had been considered more important, especially when they’d found out communications would be limited or nonexistent. That being the case, he shut up and let the pilots handle it among themselves.

The aft opening lit up in a yellow flash that half-blinded them and projected a wave of heat. «The field seems to be holding,» Peters remarked.

«For now,» Keezer agreed with a short nod. «If they crank up the power any more»
FLASH
«anything could happen.»

The Hornets launched without benefit of Warnocki’s theatrical gestures, and the first Tomcat followed, the access hatch of its HEL pod flopping. A sailor was down, a redshirt who’d been caught by the gear; a couple of others grabbed and dragged him clear before the next Tomcat finished the job.
FLASH FLASH.
This time the waves of heat were enough to make Peters glad of the helmet visor; Keezer winced aside, covering her face with her hands.

FLASH FLASH WHAM! WHAM!
More debris spun by, but the planes were launching at such close intervals that one would still be short of the bow when another started rolling. Access hatches were flopping or absent, one Tomcat was entirely missing the lower rear panel that had once covered the engines, and more than one canopy wasn’t properly secured. It didn’t really matter–all the crews were in
kathir
suits–but Peters thought it sloppy. Hmph. Quick and dirty.

FLASH FLASH WHAM! WHAM! FLASH WHAM!

The UHF was crackling, the short clipped comments of pilots getting formed up and ready. The bad guys were getting more insistent, the flashes and shocks getting stronger and stronger, and more debris floated by. Some of it had arms and legs; Peters’s internal hope that it was all property damage was cut off in mid-thought. Six Hornets and four Tomcats were out, the later ones a lot more shipshape than the first few, two more of each were moving up, and the music screamed
yeah, yeah, yeah, space truckin’, yeah, yeah, yeah, space truckin’
.

FLASH!
A bar of green light, looking solid enough to cut slices off, slammed across the bay, blinding everybody momentarily and glancing off the deck, catching one of the Tomcats square in the tail. The F-14 launched anyway, trailing bits of aluminum and composite that had once been aerodynamic control surfaces but weren’t exactly necessary in vacuum. A second beam caught a Hornet midships, and that one wasn’t going anywhere; the two halves went spinning up the bay, scattering people and airplane parts up the port side, where the prep crews waited. Maybe they were all behind the vertical beams. Maybe not.

The third one didn’t come, and Peters shook his head grimly and looked aft, just in time to see one of the panels he thought were windows on the front of the ferassi ship explode in a shower of bits and pieces. Another explosion chopped a chunk off the lower left corner, where one of the weapons was, and a pair of fleeting shapes–Hornets, from a subliminal impression–flashed from "overhead" and skimmed the enemy vessel, more shards flying off it as they did so.

The ship rotated in an eyeblink, trying to bring its guns to bear, but a couple of Tomcats approached from "high" and to the right as a trio of Hornets scissored in from the left. Big chunks went flying.
"Gotcha, you son of a murdering bitch,"
came from the UHF.

"Kill, don’t brag,"
followed immediately; the voice sounded like Collins. The planes proceeded to do just that. They were tiny compared to the ferassi ship, but the enemy seemed to have weapons emitters only on its front face, and no matter how it turned the humans had two or three coming from the other way. More big chunks flew. The lasers didn’t make visible flashes, but they carved pieces off just fine, thank you.

At last it quit moving. The front face was again toward them, and the steady green light at lower center–now upper right–was out. A cloud of debris surrounded it, all made of its own substance; the humans had been too quick, and the ferassi too surprised, for any of the planes to get caught by its weapons. Some of the debris was human-shaped, and some of those were wiggling. Two Tomcats and a Hornet took up station between the ferassi ship and
Llapaaloapalla
, and the front face of the enemy started coming apart in methodical blasts, top left to lower right, two per second as if keeping march time.

"Cease firing, cease firing,"
the UHF said in Bolton’s voice.
"Home Base, what’s your status?"

Keezer’s face was slack. «Im-fucking-possible,» she breathed.

"Home Base, Tomcat One Oh One,"
the radio said again.
"What’s your status?"

Peters grabbed the microphone. "One Oh One, this’s Green Three–" he shook his head; Howell wasn’t there "–One. We got casualties, sir, one Hornet destroyed an’ personnel casualties."

"How many casualties, Green Three One?"

"Unknown, sir, but it’s like to be a bunch, probably some fatalities."

Pause.
"Roger, Green Three One. Can you recover aircraft at this time?"

Peters looked around. People were scrambling, including a couple who were doubling across the bay with a stretcher. "I don’t advise it at this time, sir. The deck ain’t clear. We got a mess here, sir."

"Understood, Three One. Can you estimate how long to clear the deck?"

Peters looked around again. The scramble was starting to subside a bit, purposeful effort replacing confusion and shouts. The closing strains of
When a Blind Man Cries
drifted across the bay. Peters liked the rest of the program, but he hated that song. "One Oh One, my first estimate’s five to ten, but let me check with Chief Joshua on that, sir."

"Standing by for update. One Oh One to all crews. Blazer, you and Hotshot stand by on guard. Everybody else, search pattern three. We need to know if there’s any more of these bastards out here."
A series of mike clicks, and the planes started breaking off, fanning out in a spiral pattern.

Two years ago Peters had never heard of a spaceship, outside of vid recordings and old science programs. Actually driving one–piloting, flying, whatever the right verb was–hadn’t even been a real dream. If he’d been told then that he’d be operating a real live space ship he’d have called the teller an idiot. If whoever it was had added that he’d be towing a second one to berth it on yet a third, he’d have snorted and left the conversation.

If they’d added that he’d be doing it with trace chains he’d have been tempted to hit somebody.

Getting across the interface between zero gee outside and normal gravity inside at near-zero speed was tricky; that was why they usually approached with way on. That wasn’t practical now, because the ferassi ship would just fit–they’d measured–with a couple of meters clearance, and it was too massive for the freight haulers to get up to speed with any kind of control. All three of them working together could manage to move it–Hell, a kid with a rope could have moved it, given a place to stand–but getting it lined up right was a bitch.

«Approaching the entrance,» said Vredig over the earbug. She was at top left; Peters was top right, wearing blue-and-white on his
kathir
suit, which left Gell, the most experienced ship operator stupid enough to volunteer for this evolution, the tricky bottom middle position, which had to guide the other two.