Vectors 24

Pexlini

"Three can keep a secret if but two of them are dead," Hal Welti quotes at me in lugubrious tones.

And seventy-odd stood no chance at all. Whoever's earwigging Delta Command communications is listening out for Hazari chatter too, and this gathering must have shown up on their radar. Dunno how much they actually know, but it was enough to pass on to the Vaadwaur.

And the Hazari planetoid is uncomfortably close to an uncharted Underspace exit, it turns out. So, when the Vaadwaur ship popped out of that, with its damping-field satellite in tow, we had only a couple of minutes to respond - and we hadn't even got within weapons range when the satellite went live, and our power systems went dead. The Hazari frigates picketing the planetoid, and the Timor, were caught in the field too, and are now drifting uselessly in elliptical orbits. Like us.

Damn it. I hate being useless.

We're so useless the Vaadwaur didn't even bother to kill us. The interdictor cruiser is hanging in high orbit, just far enough on the other side of the satellite that it's not caught in the damping field. The huge curving antennae on that satellite make the field highly directional - it engulfs the planetoid and the near orbitals, but the Vaadwaur ship can stay within a few kilometres on the back side of it, monitoring it and feeding it energy. And monitoring the other satellite assembly, too. The one that's the other half of a really pretty neat orbital siege package....

Directed energy weapons will diffuse to uselessness in the damping field; torpedoes will lose motive power and control. But the railgun, squatting out by the Vaadwaur cruiser like a malignant stinging insect, is delivering pure kinetic projectiles, chunks of meteoritic nickel-iron most likely, simple slugs that cross space to the planetoid in seconds, and are meticulously pounding the Hazari station into wreckage.

Sound doesn't travel through space. It's just my imagination that's adding the ka-THUMP every time that railgun fires.

"We got any sort of capabilities yet?" I ask. I should know better, but I ask anyway.

"Main power is out, auxiliary is fluctuating," Goyar reports. "Computer core keeps going into power-save mode. I can keep life support going, but generating countermeasures -" He shakes his head.

"Dammit, dammit, dammit," I mutter. "The Vaadwaur got their shuttles through the damping field -"

"They went through on thrusters only," says Ajbit. "Besides, they know the frequencies of the field... they can tune out at least some of the effect. Pex, face facts, there's nothing we can do. I know you want to play the angles, to find some way, but it just isn't going to work."

"Those Vaadwaur troop shuttles were antiques," I mutter, "but we're an antique, too, practically - Wait." Something's glimmering in the back of my mind. "What did you say just then?"

"I said, there's nothing we can do." Ajbit is sounding exasperated.

"After that." The thought coalesces in my mind. I jump up out of the command chair. "Come on."

Ajbit shakes her head. "Where to?"

"Shuttle bay." I look around. Goyar needs to stay at engineering, to keep life support online. I need one science officer at least trying to crack this damn field, so that leaves Voesyy out - Hal is versatile, he can help them - "Veb, you and Ajbit with me."

The Pakled smiles. "We make the shuttle go?"

"That's the plan. Thrusters only, but the shuttle's an antique like the Vaadwaur, it's got decent speed and manoeuvre capacity on thrusters, right?"

"And no shields or weapons," Ajbit points out.

"Won't need 'em. Shuttle doesn't have an EPS grid either, so no power fluctuations, so its computer will work." I head for the bridge doors. "Gonna need the computer. Seriously, guys, I've got an idea here."

Vebanillo follows with alacrity. Ajbit follows with a frown, but she follows, which is all I could ask. We work the hydraulics on the door.

We think of ships like the Ostankino as Kazon heavy raiders, but in fact they were designed, and most of them built, by a species called the Trabe, who kept the Kazon as sort of pets. Worked out about as well for them as you might have expected. Point is, though, the ships they built for their pets are robust, simple, and largely idiot-proof, which they kinda had to be, because they were crewed by idiots. A heavy raider in a good state of maintenance - which the Ostankino is, despite all the crud on the main viewscreen - is a pretty effective ship, really. And it is simple and durable, so if things go wrong, there is always a way around it. Power is being diverted from trivia like the sliding doors, but we can hand-crank 'em with the hydraulics. The same goes for the doors of the small shuttle bay, though they'll need some hard cranking. Which is what Ajbit and Veb are here for.

It doesn't take long to reach the shuttle bay. But it's long enough for another ka-THUMP from that railgun, more than one in fact. I don't want to think about what must be happening inside the Hazari station. I rummage in a locker, drag out an EV suit, and start putting it on.

"Pex," Ajbit says, "what exactly is the plan here?"

"Playing the angles, like you said. That railgun is banging away in a predictable pattern, and we can use that."

"Until they change it," says Ajbit.

"They won't. They can't. Their own troops are down there, comms are gonna be sketchy at best, they must know the schedule so they can be somewhere the railgun rounds aren't coming down." Even so, it's a hell of a risky plan, cavalier with the lives of their own soldiers as well as the civilians on the station. Typically Vaadwaur, in fact. I shrug into the EV suit. "I'm taking the shuttle out, and I'm gonna break that pattern for them."

"And likely the shuttle too," Ajbit points out.

"Eggs, omelettes, whatever. C'mon, I need to be onboard." Veb has cranked the main bay doors open already, bless her. The three of us work on extending the internal docking tube that latches onto the shuttle's hatch. Once it's locked, I clamber through. Ajbit starts to follow.

"No need," I say. "Don't need a tailgunner, or an engineer, or a radar operator. This'll only take one of us, believe me."

Ajbit stops. She looks at me very hard indeed. "I hope to hell you know what you're doing, Pex," she says.

"I am on this," I assure her, and I duck through the hatch before she can come up with a comeback. I settle myself in the pilot seat of the shuttlepod, put my suit's gloves and helmet on the deck beside me. "OK. Pull the docking tube and release the main latches," I say into the comms. Standard wiring, no EPS grid, still works. Antique tech, gotta love it sometimes.

There are clunks and bangs against the hull. I turn around and fiddle with the comms board. "Got a laser link going," I say. "Oh, yeah, testing, testing, come in Ostankino, all that."

"Receiving you," says Ajbit's voice. The laser link will degrade in the damping field, but it should hold up long enough. I can't take too long about this anyway, entirely too many ka-THUMPs have already gone by. "Main latches retracted, shuttle is clear for exit."

"OK, then." I hit the controls. The main drive is dead, but the thrusters work just fine. Reaction mass hisses through the RCS arrays, and through the forward viewport I see the wall of the docking bay slide away, revealing the stars and the round bulk of the planetoid beyond. I punch the control board again, and the shuttle moves forwards and down, away from the ship.

Got to be sparing of that reaction mass.... I turn to the other side of the cockpit, and start banging the parameters of the problem into the shuttle's computer.

It's a simple one, really, in concept at least. In practice, it needs precise calculation, way more precise than I or any organic being can muster - but, hey, that's why we have computers. Maybe Unity should be here instead of me -

I think that, and then I think, no. My crazy idea, my risk. Them's the rules.

"What exactly are you doing?" Ajbit's voice asks.

"Like you said. Playing the angles. Those domes on the surface, over the docking bays, they're armoured, right?" And we have specs on that Hazari armour. We have specs on a whole bunch of things we probably shouldn't have, that's kinda the point of us.

"Not hard enough. The railgun slugs are punching straight through."

"'cause they're coming straight in," I say absently, as I study the computer simulation. It is possible. Chancy, but possible. My mouth goes dry as I realize I'm actually gonna have to do this. "Give one a nudge, make it hit at an angle, it'll glance off, right?"

"You can't nudge a railgun slug with the shuttle!"

"Well," I say, "I reckon I can't nudge more than one railgun slug with the shuttle, but one might be enough, right? It glances off, it's got to go somewhere."

"You're trying to set up controlled ricochets to -?"

"Simple problem in trajectories, right? We know all the factors." And the computer has them laid out, glowing lines describing the vectors I need - I start checking the mass factors, though I already know what they'll say.

"You're insane. There's always an error factor, and even the slightest error -"

"Not at this close range. That satellite's antennae are big." I set the automated sequence into the navigation board. The shuttle's computer is pretty stupid. Good enough to calculate the angles, not quite good enough to realize it's committing suicide. Poor computer.

The seat kicks against my spine as the main thrusters fire. The shuttle turns, then straightens out again.

"If they realise what you're up to, one burst from that cruiser -"

"Will fade out in the damping field, and a torpedo won't reach me in time. Besides, they'll just think like you, they'll reckon I'm crazy and it won't work."

Ajbit is silent for a moment. Outside, everything looks deceptively still. I'm not moving anywhere near fast enough for apparent star motion, and I can't see the planetoid from this angle, and everything else is just a bright dot in space.

"OK," she says, "it's worth a try. But I don't know how we're going to recover you if it doesn't work."

"Well, that's my problem, right?" I say as airily as I can. I've set up a countdown, and the numbers are already getting too small for my liking.

"You'll need to eject inside the next minute," says Ajbit.

"Yeah," I say. I twist around far enough to reach the engineering console, and I make all the adjustments I can.

"Seriously. If you don't eject right now, you'll be in the danger radius if - when - the shuttle blows."

"Um, yeah, about that," I say. I slip on the suit's gloves and seal them, pick up the helmet and push it into place. The suit's comms take over seamlessly. "See, this kinda depends on hitting the slug with all the mass I've got available. Like, all the mass. Once I've expended the reaction mass to get to the intersection point, well -" I shrug. "Can't lose any more. Them's the breaks."

"Pex -!"

"Relax. I've dumped everything into the inertial dampers, and I'm turning my suit's fields up to max, and anyway it'll be a glancing blow, right? See you on the flip side. Probably. If not, can you start the paperwork to get a new shuttle, like, now? Quicker the better, you know what Logistics Bureau is like out here."

The stars are still, the sky is motionless. But somewhere up above me, the railgun is proceeding on its remorseless pre-programmed sequence, and my countdown is in its dying instants, and the railgun has already gone ka-

The THUMP hits me everywhere at once, a jolt that goes right through every molecule of me in an instant of pressure that transcends pain. It's followed by a moment of absolute nothing, silence, blackness and free fall. Perhaps I'm dead. It'd make sense.

Then blurry vision returns, and with it a physical sensation, a sort of solid all-over ache as if my whole body's been turned to pain. Stars. I see stars, mostly not inside my head. They are swirling and turning, and I see a lot of them through the viewport -

No. Not through the viewport. The entire nose of the shuttle is gone, I'm looking at naked space. I look down a little, and for a brief moment spot the control console. Then it breaks free, torn loose by inertial forces, whirling off into space.

The shuttle is coming apart. Only to be expected. I push against the arms of the pilot's seat, and the pain gets an awful lot worse, but I lever myself up and drop gracelessly forwards and out through the big hole where the front of the shuttle was. I reach my wrist control with what feels like the last of my strength, and touch the emergency button. The suit's thrusters go into "bug out" mode, firing, pushing me in any direction so long as it's away. That hurts, too, rather a lot.

At some point, somewhere behind me, the wreck of the shuttle blows up. Dimly, I feel a waft of expanding gases push into me, and a couple of glancing blows from more solid debris. Something knocks the heel of one boot, hard, and I start spinning. Thrusters are drained. So am I. No way to stop....

I hang there, revolving in the heavens. The planetoid, some distance away, spins past me. I can't see if there are any fresh impact scars on the armoured domes. I hope there are. And they're on the ones I aimed for....

Simple physics. Well, simple if you've got a computer to do the sums. The railgun slug took a glancing hit from the shuttle, and that made it glance off one dome, then ricochet off another - and then off into the depths of space. Only, if the computer and I got it right, paying one last call on the Vaadwaur's damping satellite.

Something blasts into my ears. That hurts, too. Let's face it, everything hurts. But this hurty thing is a voice, and after a little while I work out what it's saying.

" - field is down, we have main power online! Timor is moving to engagement range with the Vaadwaur! Pex, we're moving to assist just as soon as we've recovered you, don't move! Pex, respond, please!"

"Don' worry," I mumble into the suit's mic. "Tol' you I'd see you on th' flip side, right? Don' worry... not goin' anywhere...."

Actually, I'm going plenty of places, spinning on some random course above the planetoid, a course I can't even make a vague guess at. There's nothing I can do about that, though. After a while, the revolving starscape starts to make me nauseous, so I close my eyes.