We All Died at Breakaway Station (23 page)

She hit a switch that passed the power out of that circuit and into another, but that circuit was also near its capacity. The added power load drove its needle into the red area. At this point automatic safety controls came into operation, but they were too late. The damage was done. One overloaded circuit broke down, power was redistributed into other circuits that could not handle it either, one after another failing. Red lights flashed on in banks, alarm after alarm screamed.

“Oh, God, oh, God,” Sheila cried. “What have I done?”

Electricity jumped in crazy arcs as whole banks failed under the stress. Circuit breakers kicked out. Power channels cut. Then suddenly‌—‌it all failed, all the circuits in the substation.

And Sheila, naked, frightened Sheila, was plunged into darkness and she screamed.

For twenty-five standard days the three starships had been orbiting Breakaway, had been waiting and hoping, men and women watching the chronometers tick away the seconds, the minutes, the hours, slowly devouring the time until the relief ships would come from Earth, until they could leave, could go on to Earth, to safety, whatever safety there was for mankind as long as the Jillies chose to wage war.

A strange double sensation was felt by most of the crewmen of those starships now, now that they had adjusted to everything else. One was: as the days went by, the likelihood of a Jillie return seemed greater and greater, for some reason, and no one could believe that the Jillies had accomplished their mission as long as Breakaway Station continued to relay messages from Adrianopolis to Earth, from Earth to Adrianopolis, and this she continued to do, despite the continual weakening of her facilities, despite the disaster that had knocked out one of the main substations in the modulation center. Despite all this, Breakaway Station still fulfilled her function, and the Jillies would be back to see that that ended sooner or later, and more likely sooner than later.

Yet, as the tension grew, it was almost counterbalanced by the thought that the starships from Earth
were,
in fact, coming to relieve them. Already they had lifted from Lunaport and were out of the Solar System. They were eight days out of Earth now, and short of a disaster‌—‌which no one aboard the starships in orbit or on Breakaway wanted to consider‌—‌they would pull into Breakaway’s planetary system in no more than six days.

Just six days, and then Captain, er, Admiral Bracer could turn his responsibilities over to his relieving officer and the three battered starships could go home, their crews with a clear conscience, the knowledge and the pride that they had been something like heroes. Why, they might even all get medals for it. The Old Man would for sure.

So the standard minutes grew into standard hours, which in their turn became standard days. They could wait that much longer. They could!

Sometimes, when the time stretched by too slowly, when the conversation became too dull, when the chess games lost their flavor, when the gunnery practice became too tedious, when the memories became too hard to bear, Bracer would think about those ships that were coming from Earth. He would imagine how they must look now, lost in interstellar space, four great spheres of metal and paraglas, clean and unscarred, bristling with their energy cannon, dimpled with missile tubes and torpedo launchers, reflecting distant starlight from their turrets. They would be hard to see with normal vision now, he would think; they would have a ghostlike quality, half transparent as they flickered into and out of reality under pseudospeed, but still they would be beautiful to see.

And sometimes he would recite their names to himself:
Marathon, Normandy, Nicaea, Valencia,
and he liked the sounds of their names. This was a new LSS
Marathon.
The last ship to carry that name, like so many others, had never returned from the Salient. And the
Normandy
‌—‌how many ships before her had borne that name? The last
Normandy
before her had been destroyed by the Jillies off Rombeck, back when Rombeck still thought it could remain neutral.
Nicaea
was a new name for a League starship, he thought, as was
Valencia,
and he hoped that both ships lasted a long time and created legends with those names.

He knew none of their captains. They were all young men, newly blooded in the Paladine and around the Vegan territory, but they were reliable men, or else they would not have been put in command of heavy battle cruisers. There were one of them to spare in the hands of men who were not equal to their demands.

So those ships came, and Bracer sighed and hoped that he would live to meet their captains, and counted down the days like his crew.

Admiral Albion Mothershed was a man sick to his heart. So long. So much. So close. It just wasn’t possible that after all he and his crews and his ships had endured they could not make it home. Not that there was any certainty about it yet, but things continued to look worse.

He paced the deck of the bridge of the
San Juan
, waited for the next report from his engineering officer. There had to be something that could be done to the pseudospeed generators. They couldn’t burn out
now!
Somehow they had to be nursed a little more, pushed to their mechanical limits so that the remnant of the fleet could limp back into the Paladine, could get Mothershed’s message to Earth.

He read again the second message sent by FTL probe from Hybeck. And there was no doubt in his mind that the Jillies were still after them, growing closer all the time, and unless he were able to get back into star drive soon, they would catch up long before they reached Adrianopolis.

Mothershed turned to the
San Juan’s
captain, said, “Well, what do you think, March?”

Captain March Stalinko shook his head sadly. “I have no suggestions, sir. It would be pointless to try to transfer the data to either the
Hastings
or the
Chicago
. They’re in little better shape than we are. And probes‌—‌well, we just don’t have that many probes left.”

Mothershed nodded gravely. “Well, there’s no two ways about it. We either get the
San Juan
home or the League has lost a lot of ships and men to no good purpose.”

There was a blackness in Albion Mothershed’s soul that he had seldom felt before. He had never been a man given to despair, but now it was hard to avoid. His hope was a very fragile and precarious thing.

He turned back to the command console and buzzed engineering. “Engineering,” answered a voice as the tank cleared.

“Mr. Dewey?”

“Yes, sir,” said the face that appeared in the tank, that of the chief engineering officer.

“How are you coming?”

Dewey was silent for a few moments before he answered. “I’m not sure, sir. I believe we can rebuild a couple of circuits and try to bypass some of the burned-out ones, but we can never expect to get up to full pseudospeed again.”

“How soon will it be before you’re certain?”

“Give me half an hour, sir, and then I can say something for sure.”

“Very well, call me back as soon as you have anything at all.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mothershed snapped off the console’s communicator, and turned back to face Captain Stalinko.

“Are you a praying man, March?”

The
Hastings
was the first to sight them, very faintly registering on the scopes and scanners, a squadron of craft moving under pseudospeed at a very great distance, moving directly toward the sub-light human craft. The captain of the
Hastings
immediately informed the admiral.

“Yes, I have them, sir,” the astrogation officer of the
San Juan
said. “It looks like five of them.”

“Can you identify them?” Mothershed asked.

“Do they need identification, sir?” Captain Stalinko asked. “Can there be any question about who they are?”

Mothershed shook his head. “Get me engineering.”

Engineering Officer Dewey’s face formed in the tank. “Dammit, Dewey, what are you doing?”

“Sorry, sir, but I was about to call you,” the agitated engineer said. “Well?”

“I think we can start, sir. I won’t guarantee the generators’ efficiency, but we can get a few hundred microjumps a second, I figure.”

“How long to build potential?” Mothershed asked, looking back anxiously at the astrogator’s scopes.

“Building now, sir,” Dewey said. “We can start jumping in, oh, five minutes, if we’ve got to.”

“We’ve got to, Dewey. Company’s coming”

“Yes, sir!” Dewey said.

“I’m turning control of the ship over to the OC,” Mothershed said. “Follow his orders.”

“Yes, sir,” Dewey said.

Then the admiral turned to the
San Juan’s
communications officer. “Tell
Hastings
and
Chicago
to proceed without us. We’ll follow them shortly.” Then, back to Captain Stalinko. “How many scouts do you have left?”

“Half a dozen, sir.”

“Get volunteers,” Mothershed said slowly. “I want men ready to die. It’s a suicide mission, captain, but I want them to do anything they can to slow those Jillies down.”

“Yes, sir,” the
San Juan’s
captain said. “I’ll find the men.”

“And tell them, March,” Mothershed said, his voice almost broken with emotion, “tell them I’d go with them if I could.”

“I will, sir.”

Soon the
Hastings
and the
Chicago
were flickering into and out of nonreality, increasing in pseudospeed, moving toward the still distant Paladine and away from the
San Juan.

Shortly after that, six tiny scout ships burst from the
San Juan’s
bays, picked up speed, went into star drive and headed toward the approaching Jillie warships. Albion Mothershed knew that none of them would ever return.

Then the
San Juan,
its pseudospeed generators held together by little more than men’s determination, began to flicker itself, began to move again toward distant home. And deep inside it, down in the engineering department, Mr. Dewey watched the gauges and meters and quietly told himself, though he told no other, that the generators wouldn’t make it; there was no way in the universe that they could carry the
San Juan
all the way home. But, by damn! he’d see that they got as close as they could.

It was “morning,” ship’s time, of the twenty-sixth day when Admiral Bracer was awakened by his steward.

“What is it, Jackson?”

“A call from Breakaway Station, sir. Will you take it here?”

“Yes,” Bracer said, fighting down the nameless fear, the obscure but sharp pains that always assailed him upon awakening.

“Get me some breakfast, will you, Jackson?”

“Yes, sir. Eggs, sir?”

“If we have any left. And ham, too, lots of it, and a pot of the blackest coffee you can make.”

“Have it to you in a few shakes, sir.”

As the steward left the cabin Bracer rolled over to his desk and punched a button on the communicator. The face of the communications man on duty appeared in the tank.

“Bracer here. What is it?”

“General Crowinsky calling, sir.”

“Put him through.”

Three-dimensional abstractions flickered in the tank for a moment, then become the thin face of General Herbert Crowinsky, a smile almost breaking the deep lines of fatigue.

“Good morning, admiral,” Crowinsky said. “At least I understand it’s morning to you.”

“Yes, ship’s time. How are you, general?” Bracer still felt awkward in speaking with the general as an equal. He had to be careful to avoid tacking a “sir” onto everything he said to Crowinsky. In fact, as an officer of one of the combat arms, I outrank Crowinsky. No matter.

“Fine, fine,” the commandant of Breakaway Station said. Then he paused for a moment. “Adrianopolis just put in a high priority call to Earth. I was given permission to monitor.”

“Yes?” Bracer asked when Crowinsky paused again, expectantly, like a child waiting for someone to ask him his secret. “What was it about?”

“Admiral Mothershed,” Crowinsky said triumphantly.

“What about him?”

“He’s within a few light-years of Adrianopolis!”

“He made it back?” Bracer asked, suddenly sharing Crowinsky’s excitement.

“Very nearly,” the general said. “Port Abell just received an FTL probe from him saying that he was approaching the system at maximum sub-light speed.”

“Sub-light?” Bracer asked anxiously.

“Yes,” Crowinsky said nonchalantly, as if it were a matter of no great importance, “it seems that he’s having trouble with his pseudospeed generators.”

“Serious trouble?”

“I don’t really know. The message didn’t sound very urgent, at least, not the way I interpreted it.”

“How many ships does he still have with him?”

“I don’t believe he said.”

“General, do you mean he didn’t even say how many ships he had lost?”

“No, he didn’t.” There was an almost angry edge to Crowinsky’s voice as if Bracer were taking all the fun out of telling the story.

Bracer ignored it. “What did he say?”

Crowinsky brightened. “He said that he had information that he believed would win the war for us. He’s found the targets. How’s that for news?”

“That’s excellent,” Bracer answered, momentarily forgetting his concern about Mothershed’s being sub-light that far from Adrianopolis.

“This could be it, Bracer, just what we’re waiting for.”

“If Albion Mothershed says he has information that can win the war, I believe him.”

“Do you know him well?” There might have been something like hero worship in Crowinsky’s eyes.

“I served under him for several years. He’s one of the finest commanders we’ve got.”

“So I’m told.”

“I’m not sure that anyone else could have pulled off a stunt like that,” Bracer said, knowing that what he felt
was
hero worship, and he wasn’t ashamed of it‌—‌Albion Mothershed was a by-God hero‌—‌ “taking a fleet directly into the enemy home-space for a reconnaissance in force. I don’t think that I really believed that even he could do it.”