The Devil and Deep Space (30 page)

They stopped him at the entrance to the observation deck, signaling for admittance; when the door opened, Security turned around and went away, leaving Rukota alone — or as alone as a man could get, on board a cruiser–killer — to step across the threshold on his own.

The observation deck over the engineering bridge was a gentle curve of clear–wall, railed off, but otherwise with a full range of sight — and sound. Ordinarily they would be able to hear everything that was going on, but the feed seemed to have been turned off temporarily.

Either way, the people working below in the engineering bridge couldn’t hear them. It was better not to distract ship’s engineers while they were concentrating. A momentary distraction could have serious consequences during a vector spin, and what might earn an inattentive Security troop an especially pointed thump on the head on the exercise floor could cost the entire ship its very existence, if it came at the wrong time.

Pausing on the threshold, Rukota took it all in. It was dark on the observation deck, to cut down on distractions. But the command structure of the entire Ship was here, the Captain — acting Captain — ap Rhiannon, the Ship’s First Officer, the Intelligence Officer, even the one other Lieutenant who had been unfortunate enough to be assigned here. Command and General Staff, Fleet Jurisdiction Ship
Ragnarok
, with sauced–flats and — so help him — bappir. Bappir, on the observation deck of the engineering bridge.

He was dead, and gone to his reward. Or he was dead, and for his next task — a few octaves with Jennet ap Rhiannon, trying to teach the mulish young officer about self–preservation and protocol.

“General Rukota.” Ap Rhiannon beckoned him in, waving him to a place at the rail where he, too, could look down over Serge of Wheatfields’s dark close–cropped head to the great visual field that occupied one wall of the engineering bridge. “Come in, sit down. Have a flask of bappir. Have two, you may as well.”

He couldn’t see well enough to be able to read the mechanicals’ displays from their removed vantage point. It didn’t help if he squinted. The First Officer handed him a slice of sauced–flat, adding an extra handful of ponales across the top in a gesture that was apparently intended to be friendly.

Santone could eat ponales; their mouths had all been cauterized from the inside out by a steady diet of the acerbic fruit from childhood. If First Officer expected him to eat ponales, however, he was going to need more than two glasses of bappir.

“What’s this all about?”
Your Excellency
. He’d forgotten the “your Excellency.” He remembered in the middle of a mouthful of sauced–flat, and by then it was too late.

“Well, in the simplest possible terms, it’s this.” Ap Rhiannon hadn’t seemed to notice. She was leaning on the railing with a flask of bappir in one hand, tracking a scan somewhere down in the pit of the engineering bridge as if it meant something to her.

“We’re being set up to take the blame for something we didn’t do, and there are lives at stake. That preliminary assessment team had cleared the craft implicated well before anyone broke into Security. And Brecinn’s been telling us we can’t get resupply on critical goods, but once you leave Pesadie Training Command’s sphere of influence, the shortages don’t seem to exist.”

Once you leave Pesadie Training Command
? Of course. Why not? It was major resource deployment contrary to standing orders, that was all, unless anyone really believed that Brecinn had had some place other than Laynock in mind when she’d released the
Ragnarok
to go to resupply. A little spot of failure to obey lawful and received instruction. Oh, maybe a little mutiny. Just a little one.

“I’m not about to give away four crew. As nearly as we can tell” — glancing at First Officer for confirmation — “most of the rest of the crew doesn’t like the idea either. Either that, or they realize that four is never enough for Fleet. We feel the only real option is an appeal.”

Much good that would do her. An appeal could be accepted or rejected at the Pesadie level, and that would be that. What was she talking about? The only “appeal” worth making would be to the Fleet Audit Appeals Authority. And that was clearly out of the question.

“I’ve never seen the
Ragnarok
do a vector spin,” ap Rhiannon concluded, straightening up, standing away from the rail. “And we know we haven’t been providing you with much by way of entertainment. Are there any ponales left?”

The Intelligence Officer was keeping to herself, eating a custard. Two wouldn’t be able to get much out of watching, not glassed–in as they were. Perhaps she was hearing transmissions. Or perhaps she was simply enjoying the custard, in the company of the
Ragnarok
’s other officers. The
Ragnarok
’s soon–to–be–cashiered officers. The
Ragnarok
’s lucky–if–they–weren’t–all–summarily–shot officers.

“You’re going to Taisheki.” He might have known, the moment she’d started talking about vector spins. She would hardly be making so much fuss out of simply returning to Pesadie Training Command. “You are out of your mind. Individually and collectively. With respect. More bappir in that jug, is there? Lieutenant Seascape?”

Grinning, the Lieutenant pushed a full jug of bappir across the curved rail–table toward him. Ap Rhiannon laughed, but it didn’t sound as though she had much pleasure in it.

“General, either I go to Taisheki, or Pesadie helps itself to the
Ragnarok
’s crew as it sees fit. And for no purpose, no valid purpose that supports the rule of Law.”

Maybe ponales on sauced–flats weren’t quite so bad. Maybe it was strong bappir. They all looked as though they hadn’t had much rest over the past few days; even Two’s pelt betrayed a suspicion of dust, around the feet. The hands. Whatever. He had done nothing but rest. The bappir went past them, and right to his head.

“Well, it’s your career. And your career. And his, and quite possible yours as well,” he noted, glancing around him at ap Rhiannon, the First Officer, and Wheatfields, in the pit of the engineering bridge below them, and the solitary Lieutenant left on board. “Can it really be worth hauling the entire ship to Taisheki? For what? All right, four lives. All right, four innocent lives.” The enormity of the undertaking rather stunned him, bappir or no bappir. “Seven hundred people on board this ship, Captain.”

And each of them willing to accept the blame and the burden, the permanent brand of a troublemaker and a dissident, to go crying to the Fleet Audit Appeals Authority at Taisheki over a mere four lives? Howsoever dirty the plot, howsoever innocent the lives, there were just four of them, and there were more than seven hundred people on board the
Ragnarok
.

“None of them with a great deal to gain,” ap Rhiannon countered, somberly. “And all of us with entirely too much to lose.” Yes, advancement, promotion, hope for the future in Fleet. A career. No, that wasn’t what ap Rhiannon had been getting at, at all. “If we don’t fight it, we may as well have colluded from the beginning, as though we’re the kind of crew that really would sell ourselves just to stay out of trouble — ”

“Attention to the Engineer, with respect, Captain,” Mendez interrupted, gesturing toward the pit of the engineering bridge with his flask of bappir. “Might want the sound up. Lieutenant?”

Ap Rhiannon looked confused for a moment, but Mendez wasn’t talking in her direction. It was Lieutenant Seascape who made the necessary arrangements, plaiting them into the braid.

“ — increase spool rate on plasma sheath,” Wheatfields was saying. The plasma sheath was the ship’s respiration, and the faster the ship was to move, the more quickly it had to breathe. “Cassie, reduce your rate of acceleration. We’re going to come up on it smoothly. I said reduce your rate, Cassie — ”

There was urgency, but little sharpness, in the Engineer’s voice. “Thank you, Cassie, sorry about that. Sela. We should be starting to cook in tertiary furnace.”

And the plasma sheath had to thicken to catch the increased rate of particle bombardment, as well. Which of course implied that the ship’s engines would start to run hotter than the usual tolerances. The only thing that could draw the extra energy off the furnace before the activity level began to reach critical parameters was to thin the sheath and slow the ship down — or take the energy and turn it into speed, enough speed to take a mass of the
Ragnarok
’s dimensions and shoot it like a projectile into the vortex of the vector, where even the
Ragnarok
could experience something akin to faster–than flight.

“Tersh and quat both coming along nicely, sir. Preparing overflow energy dump to the pintle batteries.”

Space was mostly empty, and the vectors were the fastest way through it. The vectors were characterized by the absence of large objects in their vicinity; some speculated that they were pinholes in the fabric of space of some sort, formed long ago by the passage of a mass so dense that it had left a relatively stable deformation in the universal fields behind, clearing out most of the existing matter from the area as it went. They had to be old, if so, because enough minute particulate matter had accumulated in the area over time to feed the
Ragnarok
’s engines.

“All right. Watch it, Cassie. Ilex. Start the spin. Don’t forget that we’ve selected left–helical twist, and get ready to set your mark.”

The vector was clearest — fastest — in its center, the vortex, but getting there and staying there could be a bit complex. They needed the correct trajectory to counter the characteristics peculiar to the vector itself. The
Ragnarok
had to line up on the vector and gauge its approach just right to ensure that they would hit the vortex and go straight through to Taisheki.

“Begin your offside roll, mark. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Mark.”

They didn’t feel a thing, of course. They wouldn’t. If they were out in the maintenance atmosphere standing on the hull, perhaps they would feel some vibration, but no more than that. But the blank star field on the massive display at the far end of the engineering bridge cleared, and re–imaged on a vector dynamic that made the speed and character of the ship’s maneuvers graphically accessible, even to a mere Fleet Ground Landing Forces officer like himself.

“We hit that one just a shade too hot. Cassie, you’re going to have to back down just a slice. Pumet, give me a fractional retard and second and third.”

There were machines here to do to work of setting the ship on vector spin. It could be done without the help of mechanicals, but only theoretically, and only with smaller craft — with correspondingly less complex characteristics.

The fact remained that even the expert systems on this experimental model failed when confronted with the combined effects of seemingly unrelated factors. The mechanicals, the expert systems, the professional machines —
Ragnarok
relied upon them to maintain life support, motivation, respiration. It was more of a job than a mere seven–hundred–plus organics could manage between them. But only organics could manage the chaotic interplay of multiple events at the extreme limits of the on–board systems’ tolerance.

“Stay on acceleration. Perfect. Coming up on second mark. Are we pulling any extra drag on that hull–flap section we had to seal manually?”

All of which taken together meant that although the Engineer might not be able to get the
Ragnarok
on vector without the mechanicals, the mechanicals alone could not get the
Ragnarok
on vector as well as they could with the Engineer to make adjustments.

The mechanicals only knew whether or not there was extra drag on hull–flap section whatever. They had no way of knowing why it might be so, or what kind of other effects the manual seal was liable to have.

The ship’s spiral hit the second glowing graph point on the screen’s display. Serge of Wheatfields was tapping the rail on his console, clearly deep in concentration. “That’s good. Pumet, left retard. Sela, check the spool to speed, how are we doing?”

The third mark was coming up on–screen, and Rukota almost thought he could see the fourth — still faint and dim. “That’s as it should be. Cassie, we’re feeling a little sluggish — do you agree? Pumet, let it warm up a couple of layers.”

They hit the third mark, and the spiral path on the display screen was beginning to make Rukota dizzy. The fourth mark was up within a scant eighth of the third, and the marks came ever more quickly as the
Ragnarok
gained momentum and the spin it needed to hit its mark on vector.

“Lift those retards, Pumet, keep it as smooth as you can.” Wheatfields had less to say, and was speaking softly and quietly — careful not to disturb concentration. “All right, now, gentles. Seven eighths to vector spin. Go for it.”

The cruise–marks on the display screen blurred into a single point of light that circled around the screen’s perimeter, spiraling ever inward. Rukota took hold of the railing to keep his equilibrium. Watching the target blips as the ship’s course proceeded was like watching a sleep–spinner. He didn’t want to embarrass himself by falling over.

“This — is going to be — the smoothest — sweetest — vector spin, in the history of the Jurisdiction Fleet — ”

And the single point of light that was all Rukota could see of the ship’s course markers circled closer and closer to the center of the screen, each rotation tighter, each period shorter and shorter and shorter.

“Two eighths to vector spin,” Wheatfields said.

The light point was a throbbing pool in the center of the screen, the target blips too close to one another to distinguish them individually. Then — as Rukota stared in fascinated wonder — the light point shuddered and condensed into a single solid point dead center in the screen that fixed and held and shrank into oblivion.

The Engineer turned at his post and looked up at the observation deck, to where ap Rhiannon leaned over the rail intense concentration.

“Captain, we have the Recife vector.”

Unclenching her hands from the railing, ap Rhiannon took a few deep breaths — as if she had been holding her breath, and hadn’t realized it. There were subdued gestures of triumph and relief from the crew down in the engineering bridge pit; ap Rhiannon keyed the cross–transmit.