Chapter Eight

he couldn't decide where the pain came from. Each time he moved, knives stabbed into his chest. The effort of lifting even one eyelid drove photonic needles into his brain. Worst of all was the knowledge that he had failed.

Pier Castro Norlin, sublieutenant and com-manding his first real ship, had failed. He had been killed in action and had lost the lives of his crew.

New pain came to him. Someone shouted in his ear. "He's alive. The automedic is scanning him. We'll have a hologram of his innards in a few minutes."

"I hope he's still alive. I want to kill him with my bare hands He ruined my goddamn en-gines!"

"Computer shows nothing serious. He took a good whack to the skull."

"Is that the scientific term for a trauma?"

Norlin forced open both eyes and stared up

into a bright light. The automedic worked quietly at his side studying his organs for dam-age. A green light blinked giving him a clean bill of health.

"You've got cracked ribs. We're medicating now," said Miza.

"Then can I kill him?"

"Shut up, Tia. He's going to be all right. Just don't excite him. As if you ever could."

"My engines!"

"What happened?" asked Norlin. He forced himself upright. A stab of pain went into his chest. He touched the spot where a medistrip worked to heal cracked ribs. The control room looked as if a bomb had exploded inside it. He tried to remember if the aliens had fired on them. "The aliens did this? Or was it the aster-oid exploding from our shift?"

"The shift did it. We caught a piece of rock the size of your damned head. I ought to use your skull to plug the hole. Went right through my damned drive-exciter chamber."

"Are we still in shift?"

"We can't go much longer," Barse said. "We're going to need a dry dock soon—within a few hours. Either that or a good undertaker." She snorted in disgust. "Cancel that. No undertaker. We'll need a mass spectrometer capable of counting individual atoms. There might not even be that much left of us." Norlin got to his feet and almost passed out. Sarov grabbed him and guided him to a bench along the far bulkhead. Norlin looked for his command chair and saw it had been twisted out of shape. Wires and laser-relay circuits dangled from the base.

"Get it fixed. I can't keep track of the Preceptor without it."

"Right away, you suicidal, murdering son of a bitch."

"That's Captain whatever-you-said."

"Right, Cap'n," agreed Barse. She used a re-mote-control panel to start a half-dozen repair robots working on the command chair. Norlin conducted a cursory examination of the re-mainder of the control room and didn't like what he saw.

"The asteroid exploded and a piece—several —hit us. What about the alien cruisers?" From the way Sarov smiled, he knew the an-swer before his tac officer replied. "Both are space debris, Captain. We took 'em out good and proper."

Norlin nodded curtly and instantly regretted it. The medistrip healed his ribs but the head-ache refused to abate. He dismissed the notion of checking Sarov's station. They needed repair, not another battle. From the condition he was in, navigation might be the full extent of his ability. Or luck.

"Captain Norlin, I must protest," spoke up Liottey. "You are treating me like a child. I out-rank you, have seniority aboard this vessel, and I am older by far."

"Senile is a better description," muttered Miza.

Liottey ignored her jibe. "I demand to be put in charge of something significant."

"Life-support systems aren't important?" asked Norlin. He put his arm around the man's shoulders and guided him away from the others. A few minutes' earnest discussion with Liottey had the executive officer beaming and eager once more.

Barse looked up from her work on the com-mand chair. "What the hell did you say to him? He looks like the ship's cat who just found the only mouse in fourteen light years."

"Do we have a ship's cat?" asked Norlin. "I haven't seen it."

"Neutron is locked up below. He's got gas so bad we only let him out when there's real trou-ble aboard. The gas warfare conventions negoti-ators protest him running loose."

"Better let him out, then. And Liottey will be all right. He'll stay out of everyone's way for a few hours. After that it might not matter."

Norlin studied the readouts on Chikako Miza's console. He let out a deep sigh. He shifted from being caught in one plasma jet to another. The asteroid that exploded from proximity to the shift field had physically damaged too much for the Preceptor to continue to Button II. They had to drop back into normal space soon for repairs.

"Any suggestions?" he asked Miza. The dark-haired woman turned her head sideways and touched contacts in her silver-webbed hair.

"Only one. A rebel base on Murgatroyd."

"Never heard of it," said Norlin. He had little liking for rebels. Colonies choosing not to live under the aegis of Emperor Arian were increas-ing. How they cut their imperial ties varied. Some rebelled, others engaged in lengthy legal battles in the emperor's own courts. Norlin pre-ferred the latter course, even if it took centuries.

"Heavens to Murgatroyd?" asked Barse. "I know it. We can get whatever we need there. They've got a complete base with an orbiting dry dock."

"What will they accept as payment? How much of a rebel base is Murgatroyd?"

"Very," admitted Barse. "But I know them." She stared at him without flinching. "That's my home planet." Norlin accepted it without comment. How people came to the Empire Service didn't con-cern him. That they had useful skills and talents did. Barse had hinted at rebellious leanings be-fore, but he had no idea how deeply committed to them she was.

"Chikako, prepare us to drop out of shift space as close to Murgatroyd as possible."

"What are you going to be doing?" the woman asked, dark eyes narrowed.

"Engineer Barse said the shift-drive-exciter chamber needed work. I'll help her. In my cur-rent condition, that's about all I'm good for. I'll double-check your navigational procedure when you're ready." He spun and left the bridge, brain swinging in wild, crazy orbits around his head. Norlin kept from weaving by steadying himself against a bulkhead. Any less effort would have been un-dignified, and a captain of a cruiser had to remain decorous at all times. He carefully made his way aft toward the engine section. He passed through the triple airlock separating the shift engines from the rest of the ship. He simply stood and stared when he saw the damage that had been done. When Barse had said a "rock" had smashed through the exciter chamber, he had pictured a hunk the size of his fist or smaller. Reality gave him a full meter-di-ameter hole.

"Really spectacular, isn't it?" Tia Barse asked. "No way my robots can get it fixed. Dry dock or nothing."

"Keep them working. If we patch it up as much as we can, it'll speed up repairs in dry dock. I don't want to stay too long in orbit around Murgatroyd. The sector base at Sutton has to know what's happening. I'm not even cer-tain Lyman transmitted complete data on the Death Fleet."

"Just imagine them sitting there on Sutton n —fat, dumb, and as happy as if they had good sense. Here comes the aliens' Death Fleet. What would they do?"

"More than they did on Lyman IV, I hope," he answered. Norlin tried to take his eyes off the gaping hole in the chamber wall. If a hunk of stony asteroid had gone through the Preceptor only fifty meters forward, the cruiser would have been split in half. The shift drive would have turned them into high-energy gamma rays.

"Have Miza wake me. I'll be in my quarters trying to get rid of my headache."

"Sweet dreams, Cap'n," Barse called after

him. "If you have any idea how to get rid of my headache, be sure to tell me." She pointed at the hole.

"That's Murgatroyd?" he asked. The heads-up display worked better than it had any right to. He used the vidscreen for a magnified image of the planetary surface. Small towns dotted the land surface; sailing ships worked the oceans, leaving behind heat profiles that identified them from space. What startled him the most was the size and complexity of the Murgatroyd space station in comparison to the technology level on-planet.

"They're demanding an entry code," said Sarov. "They promise to reduce us to dust if we don't respond."

"I'll talk to them," spoke up Tia Barse. Norlin switched her into the ship's exterior lasercom link. It took almost ten minutes of argument be-fore she told Norlin, "They'll work on us—for a price. I had to call in a lot of markers." She made a spitting noise. "I have to see my old boy-friend. What a pig."

"What do they want from us?" Norlin worried that a world in even quiet rebellion against the emperor might not permit the Preceptor to leave dock. Such a powerful vessel would augment any world's defenses.

Barse didn't answer for five heartbeats. Then she said slowly, "They want both forward laser cannons. Cap'n, I need the exciter chamber fixed or we'll never shift again."

"Very well." Norlin seethed. Without their forward cannon, they lost a significant portion of their firepower. He cursed the need for pragma-tism in the trade. He had to reach his sector base with the data on the Death Fleet. If he had to strip the Preceptor down to its superstructure to accomplish his mission, he would. But it still rankled.

"They promise we'll be on our way inside ten hours."

"Ten?"

"They're good, Cap'n. I know most of them— trained some of 'em myself. And the entire dry dock is automated. They plug in and nothing holds 'em back."

"I'll leave these details in your able hands, En-gineer." Norlin's headache returned, and he wanted nothing more than to turn everything over to his crew. If his XO had been more capa-ble, he might have. Gowan Liottey's lack of abil-ity and common sense put increased burden on his shoulders. For twelve solid hours, he watched the Mur-gatroyd dry-dock robots ripping and tearing at the guts of his ship. Occasional computer checks against optimal repair showed a correlation of almost one. The robotic crew was everything Barse had promised.

"Cap'n, can we get into space?" his engineer asked. Her eyes had rings under them, and she moved as if she'd been dropped on a high-g world.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing." She smiled crookedly. "Vasily is

still the man I remembered, but damn, can he wear me out fast."

Norlin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. More than the Preceptor had been raped to get the repairs done. He couldn't take his eyes off the twin holes forward where the lasartillery battery had been. Still, this seemed a small price to pay—and Barse might have gotten the better of her part of the deal, too. From her sat-isfied expression, he could certainly believe it was true.

"All hands, all hands," he barked into his command circuit. "Prepare for full check. All circuits, all systems. When we're finished, we do a shift-drive simulation for full power."

"No need, Cap'n. They already ran the specs on the new drive alignment for us. It's in the computer."

"Do it anyway." He didn't trust them. Rebels need not be violent or malicious people. While on Sutton he had met several who carried diplo-matic credentials. The only point of disagree-ment he had found lay in how they wanted to be governed. They thought they could do better at a planetary level than Emperor Arian did from the Crystal Throne on Earth. Sometimes, in the dark of night and deep in his heart, Norlin al-most agreed. The genhanced corps surrounding the emperor often seemed cruel and capricious. Overall, though, the Empire Service existed to serve the populace and did a good job. His frown deepened when he thought of the menace facing all humanity. Worlds indepen-dent and isolated from one another had little

chance opposing the aliens. Even with the full might of the Empire Service turned against the invaders, he wasn't sure how effective they'd be. But united, they had a better chance than any single planet facing the dark metal horde.

"Barse, Sarov," he said, a sudden thought striking him. "Have you examined the captured weapons module?"

"I have," Mitri Sarov said. "It appears func-tional."

"How difficult would it be to install in place of the forward lasartillery?" The tactical officer and the engineer argued for several minutes, then came to a grudging agreement about power connections, control, and possible chance for disaster.

"The damned thing will blow up on us," in-sisted Barse. "But I'll wire it in anyway. You're a fool, Cap'n. You let that skin-headed son of a bitch talk you into using it, just to see what it'll do."

"I have an adequate amount of hair on my head," Sarov said angrily. Norlin calmed them. He continued to run full systems checks while Barse's robot work units installed the captured alien scout ship.

When a split image appeared in his command visor, he knew Barse had finished roughing in the weapon mount.

"Murgatroyd is demanding our departure. They are experiencing increasing unrest due to our presence," Miza reported. "I say nuke them and to hell with the whole rebel lot."

"Your opinion is noted and rejected, Subcommander," Norlin said. He didn't want Barse starting another argument. Murgatroyd was her home. Even though they all ought to be loyal to Emperor Arian and the Empire Service, he knew better than to let one officer insult anr other's home world.

"All systems are operating, most at minimum acceptable levels," he announced. "Let's oblige our hosts and get into space. Prepare for un-docking from Murgatroyd station." He watched the summary displays flashing in his visor, appreciating how well the crew worked together when they weren't arguing.

"Excellent," he said. "Navigation punched in and course laid for Sutton II. Set timer to sound when we are at a distance acceptable for using shift engines."

They had just spiraled out and applied power to the ion engines to get up to shift speed when Miza and Sarov both yelled for his attention.

"Report in summary." He watched the data jerk across his field of vision from both officers.

"We've got six missiles incoming," barked the tactical officer.

"We've got range and position on the ship launching them."

"Evasive action," Norlin ordered. He shud-dered as the Preceptor dodged and cast out de-fensive missiles to intercept the six missiles seeking them. With the forward lasartillery gone, their defensive capacity was diminished significantly.

"What do we do, Cap'n?" asked Barse. "Do we run or fight?" Norlin leaned back in the command chair and studied the readouts before making a decision. His finger reached out and touched a single but-ton.