The Voyage of the Star Wolf (8 page)

“You're not?” Fontana looked around. “The ship is rigged for silent running. We're adrift in The Outbeyond. You're spending most of your time in your cabin. You won't acknowledge your command. If that's not hiding, I don't know what is.”

“I don't know what else to do, dammit!” He snapped right back. “If you have any suggestions—”

“You have the authority, Mr. Korie. I know it. The crew knows it. Everybody's waiting for you to figure it out. Fleet Command is not here to look over your shoulder. No matter what other regulations might be in the book, they're all of secondary relevance. The survival of the ship and her crew come first, and the highest ranking officer must assume command of the vessel.”

“I've done that—I have done everything I can to ensure the survival of this vessel and this crew. I have my personal log to verify that. What I don't have is the
acknowledged
authority of FleetComm, and it would be not only presumptuous of me to assume that authority, it would be dangerous and stupid.”

“You've got five men and two women in sick bay who are dead,” said Fontana. “They're using up oxygen.”

“Not that much—”

“Enough to make a difference.”

“This is Dr. Williger's responsibility.”

“Dr. Williger doesn't handle the paperwork. I do.” Fontana looked disgusted. “It's bad enough the captain shit his pants. Now you too?”

Korie glared at her angrily, then he glanced at the clipboard again. He scanned the list of names unhappily. “Are you sure these are all irreversible?”

“Both Williger and I have signed that document.” She added, “Two of them are unconscious. The others are fading in and out; they're in terrible pain, but there's nothing we can do for them—except this. Listen to me. Williger and I argued for an hour over each and every name on that list, looking for some reason,
any
reason, to not have to make the request. I've had two hours sleep in the past thirty-six. I'm operating on momentum now, but I can't stop until this is resolved. I can't stand seeing
those men and women in pain any longer. Those are my friends down there. And yours too. This is the most generous gift you can give them. Easy release. Please,
Jon
. . .?”

Korie handed the clipboard back to her, unsigned. “You'll have to take the captain's name off the list. I might be able to make a case for terminating the others; but I'll be damned if I'm going to accept the responsibility for Captain Lowell's death. I already have too much that's going to need explaining when we get back. I don't need to look for anything more.”

Fontana paged to the next document and handed the clipboard back. “Williger and I both thought you'd say that. But for humanitarian reasons, we felt we had to give the captain the same chance as the rest of the crew. Fortunately, he's unconscious.”

Korie looked at the screen again. It was the same document, but without Captain Lowell's name. He allowed himself a sour expression. “How many more of these have you got prepared?”

“Don't be nasty,” Fontana said. “This is not an easy job. And you're not making it any easier.”

“I'm the one who's going out onto the skinny branches,” Korie said. He took a breath, closed his eyes, and reassured himself as to the
rightness
of this action. He opened his eyes again and grimly thumbprinted the document. He handed the clipboard back. “I assume you'll testify on my behalf?”

Fontana didn't look amused. She stood up abruptly and crossed to the door. “Your part was easy. You only had to authorize it. I have to watch them die.” She stepped out into the corridor and the door whooshed shut behind her.

Chief Leen actually built three G-scanners; they weren't complex devices: a small jar filled with oil, an array of floating sensors, an isolation mounting, and a battery. A schoolchild could have built it—and many had done exactly that as homemade science projects. Chief Leen's gravity-wave scanners were a little more precise, however.

He mounted one at the tip of each of the ship's three fluctuator spines, then started the ship rolling gently along its axis. Centrifugal force did the rest; the G-scanners tumbled outward to the limits of their cables, a radius of more than ten thousand meters. The result was a primitive gravity lens, but it should be accurate enough to detect the motion of even a ship-size mass within a range of twenty light-hours. The best part was that it was not correspondingly detectable.

Leen dedicated three work stations to monitor and process the feeds from the scanners and reported to Korie that the system was up and running.

Korie's thanks were perfunctory. He was worried about something else. He took Leen by the arm and pushed him toward a quiet corner of the Operations deck. “I've been running simulations.”

“So have I.” Leen was grim.

“Then you know.”

“I told you a week ago,” Leen said. “We're not going to make it on the oxygen. Not unless we use the singularity. If you'll let me recharge the fuel cells, I can buy you another week or two—or better yet, let me rig a gravity cage and I can plug in the osmotic processors.”

Korie was adamant. “It's too risky. Even a gravity cage leaves a ghost. You can see it, if you know what to look for.”

“Sooner or later, we're going to have to power up.”

“I know,” conceded Korie. “I've been thinking about that too. I want you to run your G-scanners wide open and multiprocess the feeds. If we can't detect anything within ten—no, make it fifteen—light-hours, then we'll open a scanning lens and take a quick look around. That'll give us a little precision, at least. If we're clear then, we'll run the singularity at low level and start recharging.”

“And what if we can't?”

“That's what I've been thinking about. We can dismantle the torpedoes, one at a time. We'll use the LOX in the torpedo cells and that might buy us enough time to be self-supporting.”

Leen thought about it. He shook his head. “That leaves us weaponless.”

“We'll recharge them later. I don't like it either. Find me a better way and I'll buy it.”

“If we're spotted, we'll be sitting defenseless.”

“We're already sitting defenseless,” replied Korie. “We're floating adrift in the middle of the biggest concentration of Morthan warships in history. Our only defense is that they don't know we're here—or if they do, that they think we're derelict. I'm reluctant even to start creeping away from here at sublight for fear of leaving a wake.” Korie realized he was getting strident. He forced himself to soften his tone. “Look, Chief—if we hadn't been brushed by the hyperstate ripple, we might have escaped in the confusion. Now, our only hope is to look like worthless debris.”

“You're making an assumption, Mr. Korie.”

Korie swung himself around to face the Chief. They floated in a face-to-face orientation, near what would normally be the deck of the Bridge. “Okay, enlighten me,” Korie said.

“What if they're not hanging around to mop up? What if this was just a smash-and-grab operation?”

Korie nodded. “Can we take that chance? What if we're wrong?”

Leen shrugged. The gesture started him spinning slowly; he reached out and grabbed a handhold on the Bridge railing. “Okay—but it's frustrating just sitting here. The Hole Gang is getting twitchy.”

“Probably because you can't run a still in free fall.”

“They're working on that one too—” Leen admitted. “But that's not the point. It's the inaction. Just sitting here, not doing anything to fight back—it's frustrating. I want to run my engines. I want to go somewhere. I want to do something. And I'm not the only one on the ship that feels this way.”

Korie nodded thoughtfully. “Chief, do you think I
like
this? I know how everybody feels. I feel the same way. I'm not arguing for inaction. The circumstances are doing that.”

Leen grumbled something in reply. “Just so you know how I feel.” His angry expression relaxed. He'd had his say.

“Relax, Chief. We'll get home—and we'll get even too. I promise. How much longer till the mass-drivers can be fired?”

“Two days, maybe three.”

“All right—as soon as they're calibrated, I want you to ready a scanning
lens. If the G-scanners don't show anything, we'll risk a longer look. And if that's clean, we'll talk about a run for home.”

“Any time you want to say go, I can have the singularity online in less than an hour. The fluctuators are the best-shielded equipment on the ship. We'll just check their alignment and—”

“Slow down, Chief. Let's worry about our oxygen consumption first. It's hard to breathe a fluctuator.” Korie dragged Leen back to the holographic display table where Li and Hodel were running a low-level simulation. “All right, let's do a status check. Chief says he can have the engines online in less than a week. Astrogation, can you be ready?”

Hodel considered it. “Without HARLIE I have to do it all on work stations. Don't expect realtime corrections, but I can get you where you want to go.”

“Li, what about weapons? Do we have any defenses?”

Li shook his head. “Same situation. No real-time targeting. Without HARLIE, we're firing blind.”

Korie glanced over to Leen. “Just as I thought. The torpedoes are more valuable for the liquid oxygen.” To Hodel and Li, he explained, “Chief Leen thinks I'm being too cautious. What do you guys think?”

Hodel shrugged. “We could get the ship running again, we have the skillage, but how efficient she'd be—I dunno. If there are Morthan cruisers patrolling this area, forget it.”

Li was still turning the idea over in his head. “Much as I'd like to get in a couple licks, Mr. Korie, I wouldn't even want to try it without HARLIE.” He reached across himself and scratched his shoulder thoughtfully. “With HARLIE, maybe. HARLIE's the best tactical advantage we have. You've read the analyses—the Morthans are maybe a century behind us in sophisticated electronics. That's why they have to build so big just to accomplish the same thing.”

“Unfortunately, that also gives them the brute force advantage,” Korie said. “We outsmarted ourselves. Our technology is so sophisticated and so advanced, we don't build our ships with the same power anymore. There's the real mistake. We thought the implied strategic advantage of the HARLIE series would give the enemy pause, make him think twice before launching an offensive. We were very very wrong.”

Hodel cleared his throat and spoke softly. “I guess we're going to have to find out just how good the HARLIE series really is, aren't we? He's our secret weapon. Let's use him. Let's see how good he is.”

Korie looked from one to the other. “What if I bring him back online prematurely and he goes into irreversible amputation trauma? Then we're doubly screwed.”

“We can run this ship without him,” said Hodel. “We're already doing it. We couldn't be any worse off—and who knows? Maybe he'll work like he's supposed to. Maybe he could be an advantage, if you give him the opportunity.”

“The opportunity . . .” Korie echoed the thought. “There is that. He's as much a member of this crew as anyone. I suppose he's entitled to the same consideration. Let me think about this—”

Leen touched Korie's shoulder and spoke very softly. “It's not right to keep him dead, Mr. Korie. He's not like the others . . .”

“I know,” said Korie. “But he's still a consciousness, he can feel, he can hurt. As much as we need him, we also need to be
compassionate
.”

“In the middle of a war?” asked Hodel, unbelievingly.

“If not here, where better?” Korie met his gaze. “You don't have the responsibility for this decision. I do. If we start chipping away at those things that make us human, then bit by bit, we'll give the best parts of ourselves away. We'll turn into the very thing we're fighting. I'm not going to let my shipmates die alone and unknown.”

“You already signed one order,” said Leen. “I know that wasn't easy—but you did it because it had to be done. Maybe this decision is another one of those.”