Haze and the Hammer of Darkness (37 page)

“Shit!” muttered Roget. Just his luck they'd used a non-metallic composite.

The mag-grip skidded along the dropboat's hull, but finally grabbed onto the metallic composite above and aft of the lock. Roget inched his way up the broomstick until he managed to grab the recessed handle next to the lock access panel. Holding on with his injured hand was painful, but he needed the other hand to manipulate the lock controls, while keeping his legs wrapped around the broomstick.

Once he had the outer lock open, he shifted grips, then eased himself and the broomstick partly inside. Eventually he managed to get everything into the lock and close it behind him. His entire body was shaking.

When the lock was pressured, he stripped off the poopysuit, awkwardly opened the inner lock hatch, and tossed the emergency suit into the tiny bunk cubicle behind the control couch, before scrambling into position enough to power up the controls. Then he pulled the Dubietan emergency suit from under his coverall and out of its film wrapper. There were instructions—very brief and clear. He followed them in donning the suit up to the point of activation. That had to wait.

Next he strapped himself into the couch and checked the systems.

Power levels were as he'd left them—roughly 40 percent. That
might
get him close to Dubiety, but he wasn't about to try it yet. He'd ride along with the course vector and velocity already imparted by the
WuDing.
He was gambling on the fact that, so long as he did nothing detectable, the colonel would not be able to persuade the
WuDing
's commander to use the drives for more separation in order to turn weapons on the dropboat.

Three minutes passed, then four. Suddenly the
WuDing
's shields contracted, leaving the dropboat outside them, then expanded, pushing the dropboat away from the battlecruiser and effectively adding a ninety-degree vector to the battlecruiser's—and the small craft's—previous course. Roget swallowed but still did not activate the drives, just letting the dropboat angle away from the
WuDing
on a course that was inclined downward and at about 280 degrees relative to the battlecruiser's course toward Dubiety.

The slight downward velocity would soon carry the dropboat below the Federation formation. Despite the chill in the dropboat, so much so that his breath was steam, Roget was sweating. The hardest part of any operation, especially this one, was sitting tight and waiting.

He scanned the EDI. The Federation fleet was moving at a steady but almost stately pace toward Dubiety, one designed to save power for the weapons that whatever marshal was commanding would soon be unleashing against Dubiety.

Soon? He ran a quick calculation and came up with almost a standard hour before the fleet would be in position to bring everything to bear. Where would he and drop three be in an hour?

He ran another set of calculations. The results were as he feared. If he did nothing, he'd be too far below Dubiety. He reset the parameters and tried again.

If … if he could get away with a thirty-second max angled drive blast in the next few minutes, he'd stay within what he
thought
would be the Dubietan operational envelope, but still far enough from the fleet by the time he was in range of the Dubietan technology to avoid being an easy target for any of the Federation ships. Being in that Dubietan envelope would make him vulnerable to whatever the Thomists might do, but he hoped what he planned would resolve that difficulty.

Thoughts, guesses, and hopes. That's all you've got left.
He pushed that thought away. He'd have had less than that if he'd remained aboard the
WuDing. No doubt about that at all. None.

Once again he waited, letting the seconds tick away until the last possible moment before triggering the corrective drive blasts. His eyes flicked to the EDI, wondering if any of the Federation ships would waste a torp on him.

No one fired.

He'd hoped for that, basing his judgment on three things. First, he wasn't on a direct course to Dubiety. Second, the colonel might well believe that if the Federation succeeded, they could let him drift forever or capture him at leisure. And third, the dropboat had no weapons of any sort and posed little direct threat to any Federation ship.

When the dropboat's drive cut out, Roget checked his course and the EDI again. No torps, and he was headed into the edge of the envelope he'd calculated. Once more, all he could do was wait.

As the minutes ticked away, he kept checking the readouts, but nothing changed except that the fleet—and dropboat three—edged closer and closer to the silver grayish sphere that was Dubiety.

After twenty minutes, the EDI signaled a disturbance, but not from Dubiety. Rather the instruments were suggesting a large energy source coming from outsystem. More Federation ships? Was that the reason for the stately progress of the Federation fleet? Waiting for reinforcements to join up? All that for a single planet?

Because the dropboat's EDI was anything but specific for that distance, Roget kept studying his instruments and worrying. It was almost ten minutes later before his EDI—far less accurate than detectors in the capital ships—gathered enough information. Roget just looked at what appeared on the screen before him. What his instruments registered was not possible.

A single vessel sped insystem, and that ship had to embody more than a hundred times the mass and energy of the largest battlecruiser ever built by the Federation. Roget's eyes flicked from the outsystem screen to the insystem screen, but he saw no change in the speed or course of the Federation vessels.

At that moment, Roget remembered the painting in the museum in Skeptos—an oil painting depicting a ship the size of an asteroid. Was that what his EDI was picking up? Was it real? Or some sort of electronic illusion? But how could the Thomists counterfeit the impression of all that energy?

From the lack of response from the Federation ships, clearly the marshal in command of the attack force believed the vessel showing on the EDI screens was an illusion or a decoy. Roget's guts tightened, telling him they didn't believe it was an illusion of any sort.

He still wasn't within the Dubietan operating sphere. His lips twisted. For all he knew, he might be, but he was assuming that sphere only extended as far as they had been able to launch the dropship. Besides, even the rearmost of the Federation ships was far enough from the dropship that a torp launched at Roget had no certainty of hitting—or inflicting damage.

Roget kept waiting, his attention split between the two screens, watching as the massive Thomist vessel neared. Then he swallowed again because energy flared against what had to be the shields of the Thomist ship. The EDI energy levels indicated that whatever had been in the way of the Thomist dreadnought had not been something insignificant, perhaps even a small asteroid. Whatever it had been, it was gone as if it had never been, with no apparent effect on the monster craft.

The Thomist vessel was still well away from Roget and his dropboat when the EDI registered something like an energy cocoon encircling the largest of the trailing Federation warships. The
ZengYi,
Roget thought, a large attack corvette, the one that had met him. One moment, the energy cocoon and the
ZengYi
were there. The next, they were not.

Roget winced. The crew of the corvette hadn't deserved that. They'd just been following orders, and they hadn't even fired a weapon.

But they would have.
Roget knew that, but he still wished it hadn't been the
ZengYi.

The Federation fleet still did nothing. Not that the marshal could have, because the monster Thomist ship was well out of torp range.

Then something flared from the
WuDing
toward the silver haze of Dubiety—a planet-scouring missile with a modified light-drive. Moments after launch, the missile vanished.

Roget activated the dropboat's drive, pouring full power into propulsion and adjusting his course. He couldn't wait any longer. He had to get as close to Dubiety as possible. The marshal and the Federation vessels weren't about to worry about him and his tiny dropboat. Not with what they faced.

His attention went back to the two EDI screens.

Another energy cocoon formed around a cruiser—the
DeGaulle.
This time the ship's commander applied full power. Roget could tell that from the rapid rise in energy intensity. But nothing happened. The ship did not accelerate, and the energy cocoon only brightened—until both the
DeGaulle
and the cocoon vanished from the EDI.

Two more of the energy cocoons followed, enveloping two corvettes and disappearing them as well.

Roget glanced at the upper corner of the EDI. An energy glow had begun to surround Dubiety itself. Things like that weren't supposed to happen, but, unlike the colonel, Roget wasn't about to argue with what appeared to be reality. As he watched another cocoon of energy encircle another Federation ship, this time most likely the
Shihuangdi,
Roget unstrapped himself from the pilot's couch and scrambled the scant few meters aft to the airlock, where he opened the inner hatch and hurried into the chamber.

Did he want to do what he felt was his only chance?

No. But watching the Federation fleet vanish, ship by ship, was like …
Like the last twist of the knife?

Absently, as he closed the inner airlock door and then pulled the hood of the Dubietan emergency pressure suit over his head and sealed it, he wondered from where that thought had come. He pushed that question away and vented the lock chamber, then let the automatics open the outer lock.

As the hatch opened, he grasped the broomstick and then kicked himself and it out into the vacuum. Nothing seemed to move, not the points of light that were planets, nor the small disk that was Dubiety. He glanced down at the ship, then up and beyond. His eyes picked out a small greenish white disk—the Thomist ship.

He slowly straddled the broomstick and pointed it at Dubiety, not that it would carry him any fraction of the distance toward the hazy planet, and flicked on the gas jets. With what the Thomists were doing to the Federation fleet, the farther he got from the dropboat, the better.

Only after eleven minutes, when the jets gave out, did he press the large distress stud on the front of the emergency pressure suit.

As a certain chill began to creep over him, another set of words whispered through his thoughts.

… consign him to the darkness that lies beyond all darkness, to the blackness so deep that it has no shade, for out of the void came he, and into it will the return be …

 

34

29 LAYU 6746
F. E.

The inbound trip back toward Ceres station had been long and boring, but that was the way space travel was. All interplanetary or insystem travel seemed longer because suspension cradles weren't often used and because more than a few FIS missions were single-pilot.

Roget checked the distance again. Another two hours remained until Digger flight reached the accelerator's grav net and they could begin the exterior-assisted decel. Without the magnetograv decel, they would have had to spend another two to three days for decel on the return leg, and he'd been cooped up in the needle far too long as it was. Like the accelerator, the decel net was harder on the needles. It also required a mass base, such as a moon or a large asteroid, and the environmental purists claimed that the continued use of the system had significantly changed Ceres's orbit. Roget had no idea whether the claims were true, but he didn't see that it would matter much one way or another. Ceres was big enough that the changes wouldn't go unnoticed and far enough away from anything but other asteroids that it shouldn't make that much difference.

As he sat and waited out the last hour or so of the mission, Roget couldn't help but think about the pirate colonists. Had they wanted to stay outside the Federation so much that they were willing to risk everything? How could anyone take such risks?

He almost laughed. The squirrel run had been almost as much of a risk. A little larger pirate torp or a slight variation in course, and Castaneda might not now be with them. The same could have been true of himself, he acknowledged. Any mission against comparable weapons was dangerous, and even missions against militarily inferior opponents carried risk.

Was the Federation that unbearable? There was no point in thinking about that, not when he didn't have any real alternatives.

Before him, the board shimmered, then somehow changed. In front of him, where the farscreens and displays had been, was a wraparound canopy, and on the lower section were projected displays. Roget/Tanner blinked, but the clear, wraparound canopy did not change. The clarity didn't help much, not in the darkness outside the aircraft.

His eyes kept a continual scan across the heads-up display and on the destination, the ultratanker
Deep Resource,
bound for Long Beach. While the tanker held something like six million barrels, even with all the green fuel sources that the United States had developed, that still amounted to just one day's oil imports—and that was with thirty dollar a gallon gasoline and power rationing.

A short burst of static was followed by a transmission. “Blackbolt lead, do not engage unless attacked. I say again. Do not engage unless attacked.”

“Bolt Control,” Roget/Tanner replied, “understand negative on engagement unless attacked.”

There was no response, and Roget did not key another transmission. His eyes were on the RRD display, which showed two ships—high-speed SEVs from their speed—closing from the west on the big tanker. If Ops hadn't wanted him to keep the SEVs from diverting or sinking the tanker, why was he leading a flight out some four hundred miles east of Luzon in the middle of the night?