The Parafaith War (36 page)

He looked up. Ulteena Freyer, standing alone in Service greens as station and other ship personnel passed, gestured.

“Yes?” He walked toward her. “I wanted to say good-bye. You look disturbed. I hope you’re not taking the Farhkans too seriously.”

“How can I not take them seriously?” He forced a laugh. “They keep asking these questions that pilots shouldn’t consider.” Her forehead crinkled.

He could see the fine lines running from the corners of her eyes, and wanted to reach out, but his hand never left his side.

“They ask you questions?” she finally asked, as if each word were a struggle. “Usually about ethics. What about you?” “Mathematics. That was my doctorate. They ask about the applicability of certain … parameters.” Trystin found him self moistening his lips. “I have to go. I’m already late to report.” Her hand touched his shoulder for a moment, and dropped away as she smiled briefly. “Good luck. I mean it.” “Same to you.”

He watched her brisk stride for a moment until she disappeared around the curve in the corridor. She had seemed almost human. He snorted-more than human-like a real live woman, or was he imagining that?

Finally, he turned and started up to admin. He needed to find out about Salya before he headed back to the Willis to relieve Liam. If they’d tell him anything … And Liam could wait. So could his questions about the Farhkans, at least until he was back on the. ship.

The Willis slewed as Trystin recomputed the red torp launch to compensate for a multiple-thrust

vector created by his efforts to avoid the seemingly endless lines of revvie scouts. “Take her in, Trystin,” James ordered. “Weapons, the lieutenant has the con. Follow his commands.” “Stet, ser.”

“Commence torp changeover,” Trystin ordered. “Commencing changeover.”

A single revvie torp flared against the Willis’s screens, and Trystin punched up the thrusters to one hundred ten percent for twenty seconds as soon as the rev’s torp energy flared away.

“Red one is ready.” Liam’s tinny voice reported through the net and both pilots’ implants.

Trystin juggled the multiple inputs of the three scouts converging on the Willis, recorrected the course line, and swallowed. At least there weren’t five of them all at once-this time. His forehead was streaming sweat, and he automatically wiped the dampness away on the back of his shipsuit’s sleeve. “Red one go!” His voice was ragged. “Red one is go.” “Red two.” “Red two is go.”

Trystin kicked in more thrust for another quick pulse as the loaders set up the next two red torps. “Red three.” “Red three is go!” “Red four.” “Red four is go.” “Changeover to standard torps.” “Changing over this time.”

Even before Liam acknowledged the changeover, Trystin was twisting the ship into a head-to-head with the lead scout, using his implant, and feeling the lines of figures flowing through him, like powered arrows. His stomach was in his throat, unsurprisingly, since the ship had been on minimum internal gee for most of the engagement.

Even with the possible sensor overload, he couldn’t afford to desensitize, not with three revs nearly on top of them, not for more than a moment or two at least. To get close enough to the troid had meant letting the revvie scouts cover the escape positions, and there was no way the Willis would survive running through the debris caused by the troid’s explosion. “Changeover complete,” Liam reported. “Fire one! Two!” Trystin snapped the direct-feed commands into the system.

As the tubes reloaded, Trystin shifted full power to the left thruster momentarily, then recomputed on the nearly head-to-head course with the first revvie scout. He wished the Willis had greater simultaneous torp-fire capability, like the new cruisers. Stop wishing! Idiot! He pursed his lips. “Fire one! Two!”

Two more torps pounded out toward the rev that blocked the Willis.

Less than two seconds to red-torp impact! “Desensitizing!” he snapped, ignoring the check-crosscheck procedure, shutting down the sensors. Then he dropped the thrusters off-line and fed the excess fusactor output into the ship’s shields, letting the Willis run toward the rev blindly.

Ten seconds after computed impact, he barked, “Removing desensitizing.” “Receiving input.”

The beefed-up shields flared with another torp impact, and the amber telltales flared on the capacity board.

Trystin ignored the amber warnings, just as he ignored the nightmares and the might-have-beens and the what-ifs. “Fire one! Two!”

The representational screen showed that the revvie troid ship had not fragmented totally, but split into two, no, three, large chunks.

Finally, after six torps, and two that seemed to impact, the one revvie scout flared.

Two more blue-dashed trails continued to converge on the Willis, and Trystin lowered the shields to normal and powered the cruiser into a three-gee turn. He could almost feel the plates creaking as the ship centered head-on-head on the next rev. While head-on-head was a hard torp shot, the position gave the Willis the greatest shield advantage and the smallest target exposure, and with the cruiser’s multiple-torp firing capability, a greater opportunity for potting a scout.

Theoretically, the shields would brush aside a scout, but Trystin didn’t ever want to try that. Besides, the shields wouldn’t stop a pair of torps that impacted simultaneously at the same point, and that was exactly what a revvie pilot should try in those circumstances. “Fire one! Two!”

Trystin rechecked and torqued up power from the fusactor and the accumulators, letting the fusactor rise to one hundred ten percent output for almost a standard minute before dropping output to just shy of max.

As more scattered telltales began to flash amber, Trystin shut down the ventilation system and, as soon as the tubes reloaded, loosed two more torps.

The system redlined him a message that he was down to four torps. He swallowed, breathing against the gee load and trying to ignore the sudden stuffiness of the cabin. He moistened his dry lips.

In the screens, he could see two scouts hammering at the Mishima, with another pair working toward the lzanagi. The Morrigan was already dust and expanding energy. But the Campbell was free and sliding out to support the lzanagi. “Fire one! Two!!”

Although the rev raised full shields, they weren’t enough, and Trystin permitted himself a tight smile, until he realized that the third scout was tailchasing, and that was the Willis’ weakest shield point.

He calculated, though the data took nanoseconds, then cut the thrusters, and used the attitude jets to flip the Willis end over end. Another full blast on the thrusters, and then he diverted the power to the shields. They flared amber as the rev’s torp impacted. Flared amber, but held, as the rev flashed toward the Willis. “Fire one! Two!” Trystin flipped the ship again, ignoring his own nausea and a retching sound from aft, and put full power on the thrusters.

The combination of the thrusters’ energy flow and the torps was sufficient, and entropy was increased with the scattered fragments of another revvie scout.

Trystin scanned the screens, noting that heavy green-tinged dashes ran from the Campbell’s screen image toward the fragments of the troid. All three troid killers impacted, and this time the fragments were of suitably infinitesimal size.

Continuing to power the thrusters, Trystin pushed the Willis toward the Mishima.

One of the rev scouts flared away from the other cruiser. Trystin calculated and grinned. “Fire one! Two!”

The dashes representing the last two torps streaked across the screen toward the broadside exposure of the fleeing revvie scout.

“No torps remaining. No torps remaining!” the system redlined at Trystin.

The revvie scout vanished from the screen with the twin torp impact. “How…?”

“Shield malfunction. That was probably why he broke off the attack.” Trystin answered the captain’s unfinished question as he continued to scan the system.

Two corvettes and the Willis, the Mishima, and the Campbell-those were all that remained.

Trystin nodded as his senses verified that the Mishima-and Ulteena-had made it. He hoped the next troid was a long time coming-a very long time-as he eased back on the thrusters.

“Sledge team, this is Sledge Control Alternate, return to base this time.”

Trystin looked at James as the captain broadcast. He hadn’t realized that James was the senior officer remaining. Trystin wasn’t sure that James had known it either until he’d taken stock of the casualties. Trystin wiped his forehead again. He’d need to do more laundry once they returned to outer orbit control. This one had been almost as bad as his recurring nightmare.

The accumulators were hiccuping again, and the shields were still running in the amber, and most of the sensors were operating at reduced efficiencies. He couldn’t mentally sum up the smaller amber warnings.

At least the most sensitive EDI screens showed no troids in range, and that meant a few months’ respite-maybe more.

The crew and the ship all needed it. So did Trystin.

Maybe he could find out about Salya … except no one knew, or would say. Maybe he could make more sense out of a war that got bigger and never changed. Maybe he could understand what the Farhkans wanted. Maybe … he shook his head. Across the cockpit, James frowned.

Trystin eased the Willis into the docking slot. The recon run had shown no troids and no revs-the

marshal occasionally sent out the cruisers to take advantage of their longer-range EDI detection capabilities. “Magnetize holdtights.”

By the time he and the captain had finished the checklist, through the implant and the ship’s net, Trystin could sense that Muriami had fastened the mechanical holdtights. “Power changeover.” “Standing by for changeover.”

Once full station gravity hit the cruiser, Trystin unstrapped and sat up. “Captain?” came from the quarterdeck.

“Yes?” answered James.

“Dispatch case for Lieutenant Desoll,” Albertini announced. “They had it waiting. One for you too. Captain.”

Trystin forced himself to walk slowly back to the quarterdeck.

Albertini extended the case toward him. Trystin wiped his forehead again with the back of his shipsuit’s sleeve before he took the case and opened it. The first sheet of paper was simple.

Effective the first of sixta-eighteen days away-he was Major Trystin Desoll.

The second sheaf comprised hard-copy orders. He began to read.

“Congratulations, Trystin.” James flashed his boyish grin. “I’d guess it’s your promotion to major and orders to your own command.” “Maybe … I did get promoted.” “When, ser?” asked Muriami.

“One sixta.” Trystin continued to read, focusing on the key words.

The captain slowly opened his case. Like Trystin, he frowned.

After a moment. Tech Muriami finally asked, “Captain, ser … if it wouldn’t be too much trouble … could someone tell us what’s happening?” Trystin looked at the orders again. “… on or about 15 septem 796 … report to Medical Center, Cambria, for Farhkan f/up study… . Upon completion of home leave, no later than 32 septem, report SER-COM … FFA …”

Another Farhkan physical, not that he minded that much … and then some staff assignment at Service Command? Relatively junior majors didn’t get staff assignments these days-those were for screenpushers or incompetents. Had he screwed up somewhere that he didn’t know?

James Sasaki frowned, then smiled. “What is it, ser? If I might ask?” Trystin added.

“There were four sets of orders. Yours-and congratulations again-your replacement’s, mine, and my replacement’s.” “What?”

“They’re phased. You go first, and you’re actually being replaced by my replacement for a month or so, and then your eventual replacement comes, and I go.” “That’s a little odd, isn’t it?”

“Not really. You’re being groomed for Something, Trystin, but for what I couldn’t tell you.” James frowned again, and Trystin wondered whether he were just trying to cheer Trystin up. “Someone wanted you to be familiar with larger ship operations first.”

“Where are you going, ser?” Trystin wondered if the major had finally gotten his promotion, but didn’t want to ask. “Strat U.” James grinned. “Does that-?”

“Absolutely. I can put on the triangles immediately.” “That merits two sets of congratulations.” “Ser?” pleaded Muriami.

James flashed a boyish grin. “My promotion was effective fourteen days ago. So I can put on the triangles now. Lieutenant Desoll will put on the third bar in eighteen days. Sometime in the next month. Major Watachi will report, and he will take Major Desoll’s place while he gets familiar with the ship. Then around the first of octem, a Lieutenant Valada will report, and I will leave. Is that clear?”

“Mostly,” said Albertini. “We got to break in two new officers.”

“Major Watachi was the second on another cruiser, and had a tour in corvettes.”

“It sounds like there’s some experience there,” Trystin offered. James nodded.

Trystin looked at his orders again. For further assignment? Was that good or bad? He didn’t know. He didn’t even know anyone who’d ever received orders like that.

“Often, indefinite orders like that mean something special that no one wants to put on the net.” James looked at Trystin. “I told them that you were the best pilot I’d ever shipped with.” “They asked?”

“I got a questionnaire from the Service detailer a while back.”

Trystin tried not to take too deep a breath. His orders might be very good, but he had his doubts. He forced a smile. “Time for a celebration.” “How, Lieutenant? We’re on outer orbit station.” “I don’t know. I’m sure the captain could find a way.” James nodded slowly.

Trystin closed the dispatch case and put it under his arm. He had some thinking to do, but it could wait-a little while.

Trystin looked at the kit bags on his cabin floor and at the flimsies in his hand. The wrinkled top one was simple enough, except that it wasn’t.

Major Trystin Desoll:

The commanding officer of the Mishima would request the honor of your presence prior to your departure for further assignment…

What did Ulteena want? Their schedules almost never coincided because the Willis and Mishima anchored the two opposing long-range recon sections. And how did one offer small talk to a cruiser’s CO? Or even get to see her? He couldn’t just march up to the lock and announce himself.