Chapter Eleven

"make certain there are plenty of genius missiles in the magazine," said the Preceptor's new captain. "I want to shoot things." Pavel Pensky jumped onto the command chair and put his feet on the bottom pneumatic cushion.

He wrapped his impossibly long arms around his doubled knees and rocked forward. Norlin watched in astonishment. The gen-hanced officer's balance was nothing less than superb. Norlin wished he could make that claim about any other aspect of the man's behavior. Turning over such a powerful ship to a madman might mean their deaths.

"Full armament, Captain," spoke up Sarov. The burly tactical officer didn't seem uneasy at the irrational way Pensky acted. Norlin tried to put his fears into perspective. He had seen many genhanced officers during his five years at the Empire Service Academy. He had thought some were strange, others eccentric, and a few com-pletely irrational. Those few who seemed to have lost all contact with reality proved them-selves the most brilliant in simulated combat tests. One of the saner instruction officers claimed they had no distractions to complicate their decisions. They saw the kernel of the prob-lem and solved it.

Pensky might prove to be one of the geneti-cally altered tactical geniuses. Norlin still wished he knew how the captain had been reen-gineered. It might give him some insight—and faith—in the man's abilities.

"We've taken on a full complement of missiles. Record-time loading. Congratulations, Captain Pensky. You know how to make them shake their tails."

"Can I fire them yet?" Pensky called out. He hadn't bothered to don the command visor with its summary displays of the major systems.

"Let's leave the station first," suggested Miza. She glanced at Norlin and shrugged, as if say-ing,

"Everyone has their quirks."

Norlin found a dropseat in the corner of the bridge and sat down. He had nothing to do. Pensky fired off orders, most of which sounded legitimate. The few that weren't could have been jokes to ease the tension—or they might have been stark, raving madness. The crew ig-nored those and concentrated on the reasonable orders.

"Ready to launch. What are we heading out to do, Captain?" asked Miza.

"Nothing! Everything! I don't know. We're being invaded. We have to fight our way out. I knew it would happen. I told Arian we should put up a big wall around Earth."

"A wall of sensors? Or warships?"

"Brick! I wanted it to be brick. Barbed wire isn't good enough. Too easy to get through. They can sneak under when your back is turned. Let's launch and go after them!"

Pensky expertly guided the Preceptor from dock and spun the ship on its axis. A small ap-plication of power, a precession to get into posi-tion and then the cruiser leaped with a sudden acceleration that pinned Norlin to the poorly cushioned seat. He marveled at Pensky's ability to control the vessel without using the com-mand visor. How did he know where they blasted without constant update information?

Norlin had never heard of a genhanced officer with telepathic powers. Such were rumored and always mathematically disproved. Action at a distance was a myth.

How did Captain Pensky know where they traveled? The space around a major base was filled with traffic and presented considerable approach and departure problems for con-trollers.

"We're finally free of sector control and on our own," came Liottey's voice.

"And they're madder than hell, too," spoke up Miza. "We almost collided with an incoming Earther freighter loaded with electronics parts."

"Main engine shutdown," bellowed Barse over the all-stations comlink. "Shut the damned jets down or we'll blow up!"

"After them! They're everywhere. We can take them. I'm braver than any thousand of the swine!" Pensky climbed up onto the command chair and waved his arms around like a rotary-blade fan. Norlin felt part of the human-created air current brush across his face and evaporate the sweat beading there. On takeoff, Pensky hadn't known where he vectored. He had simply cast away from the dock and ordered the ship out at random. They might have collided with any number of vessels. Norlin closed his eyes and tried not to think about it.

"Shut down the goddamn engines!" roared Tia Barse. The engineer stood in front of the command chair and shoved her scowling face within a centimeter of Pensky's. "I don't want to end up a flash of plasma because some brainburned cousin of the goddamn emperor wants to get his rocks off!"

"Barse! You're talking mutiny." Govvan Liot-tey had followed her in and stood nervously by the door to the control room. "Hush. It's not that bad."

"It is. Every light on my panel is red. I need to shut down and repair or the whole damned ship is going to explode. Do I make myself. clear?" She shoved her chin out truculently and stopped just a hair short of colliding with Pensky's.

"Engineer Barse, how nice to see you. Would you care for a spot of green tea? It's so difficult finding anyone who drinks the refined beverage out here on the frontier. Such an ugly place."

"What?" Barse stepped back and stared.

"The cha-no-ya tea ceremony. It is the rage at court. Even the emperor is learning the com-plete ritual. It's ancient and ever so compli-cated. None of the commoners learn it."

"What's this got to do with my damned en-gines?"

"Take tea with me and I'll order them turned off or whatever you wanted."

"I'd walk through hell barefoot to put them right." Barse glanced back at Norlin. He nod-ded. He'd see what could be done while she drank tea with the ship's captain.

Norlin left the bridge and made his way to the engine room. On the way, he stopped and let out the ship's cat. The black feline with white back paws and chin whiskers stared up at him, yowled, and trotted off, tail high. Norlin fol-lowed.

"You're the only one left on board with any sense," Norlin told the cat. "You don't want any-thing to do with this crew of madmen." The cat jumped up and perched on a wrist-thick super-conducting cable feeding power into the drive engine's exciter chamber. Norlin's nose wrin-kled and he backed away.

"Barse said you had gas. I didn't realize she meant it literally." He warily skirted the meth-ane-releasing feline and studied the engineering board. A few minutes' work at the computer console showed major problems developing. Barse hadn't been out of line demanding imme-diate engine shutdown. If the Preceptor tried to shift, it would simply vanish in a puff of vapor. Trying to jet about inside the Sutton system seemed even riskier. Norlin saw a dozen places where fuel leaks had developed and sent cryogenic temperature sprays into the main compartment. He strug-gled with the engineering computer and sum-moned several RRUs from other parts of the ship, making sure he didn't take any from duty on the life-support system. An hour of hard work later, he had metallic crews repairing the most obvious problems.

"Good, you got most of them," said Barse as she joined him. "I feel better having you on-board. You've got more sense in your little finger than he has in his whole goddamn head." She reached over and scooped up the fat black

cat from his perch. "I see you let Neutron out. He's my secret way back."

"How's that?"

"If we run out of fuel, I'll hook his ass up to a hose and run it directly into the fuel-mixing chamber. A spark for ignition and whoosh! we're on our way home with a limitless meth-ane supply."

"What do you feed him?"

"Whatever he wants to eat. He's an indepen-dent son of a mouser." They turned to the job of repairing all that had been neglected back at sector base. The Pre-ceptor might carry a full complement of genius missiles but it lacked the ability to deliver them. After six hours, Norlin called a halt to the work.

"What else is there?" he asked.

"Nothing the robots can't handle on their own, Cap'n," Barse said. He looked at her and shook his head sadly. He liked being called captain, but he lacked any real position aboard the Preceptor. He was sup-posed to advise Pensky, but the genhanced of-ficer had ideas of his own.

From the erratic way Pensky commanded, it was difficult deciding if he had any sane pur-pose to his orders.

"I'd better see how we're doing," he told the engineer. .

"Norlin," she said. Their eyes locked for a mo-ment. "Go see what Captain Crazy is up to." He smiled crookedly, nodded, and left the en-gine room. His knowledge of the mechanisms was limited but greater than anyone else's

aboard ship except for Barse. Likewise, he knew more about each system than anyone but the expert. He couldn't operate the weapons com-puter with Sarov's flair, but he could keep the cruiser from being destroyed. His abilities in life support matched Liottey's; he had been in training for executive officer. Of all the posi-tions, he knew only a smattering of what it took to work Chikako Miza's station. Norlin vowed to bone up on communications and detection. With Pensky in charge, he would have the spare time.

He slid through the shielding baffles leading to the bridge and stopped just inside the hatch. Pandemonium reigned. It took him several seconds to understand that the Preceptor was at full battle alert—and that Mitri Sarov worked to load missiles for firing.

"Who's attacking? The Death Fleet?" he called across to Miza. She shook her head. He had never seen her so pale.

"Please, Captain Pensky," she pleaded. "It is giving all the proper recognition signals. It's one of ours!"

"It's been taken over by the aliens. Trust me. I know. It's an enemy ship. Tactical Officer, fire a full barrage. Complete spectrum of missiles. Get the forward lasartillery ready for use. They'll come for us if we miss."

"Captain," pleaded Miza. "That's our de-stroyer. We can't fire on our own vessel. It's the ES

Montgomery, out of Sutton."

"She's right, Captain." Sarov swung around at his station. "I'm receiving counterlock signals. They know we've homed in on them and are de-coupling. The destroyer is friendly and trying hard to keep us from firing."

Pensky's finger stabbed down on a button at the edge of his command chair. The Preceptor shuddered as one flight of missiles launched and the autoloaders slammed replacements into the tubes.

"An enemy! It's an enemy!"

"We're getting recall notice from sector base, Captain. They're waving us off the destroyer."

"Don't listen. It's an alien trick. They know everything about our communication tech-niques. I told Droon we should have changed our recognition codes. They know everything about us!" Norlin looked helplessly from the ranting captain to Sarov and Miza. He had no standing on the ship. He had been assigned to advise and nothing else. But they had fired on a friendly ship. Both Miza and Sarov would not mistake an alien craft. They'd never hesitate—and both moved indecisively, Pensky doing their work from the command chair.

"Captain," came Miza's wail. "Base says they'll declare us outlaw and order the fleet after us if we do not break off the attack imme-diately on the Montgomery."

"Lies! They're tricking us." His finger worked across the toggles for the forward lasartillery. When it failed to fire he screamed and sent out another flight of missiles.

"Direct hit," came Sarov's hollow voice. "We

scored a complete on the destroyer. There's not a speck of dust left."

"Sir," cut in Miza, "base has ordered four cruisers and a battleship to intercept us and—"

"Blow us out of space," finished Sarov. "I picked up the same message on my classified frequency lasercom to base. Sir, we just killed a friendly—and now we're the target!" Pier Norlin went cold inside with shock. Cap-tain Pavel Pensky had turned them into an out-law ship slated for destruction in less than a day of patrol.