The Stone Dogs (50 page)

Her eyes opened. Lefarge darted a glance at the doctor; the specialist checked the screens, exchanged a whispered word with the technician at the monitoring station and nodded, turning his back.

"Love… you." The words were feint and distorted, but the delirium was gone. "Girls?"

"I love you, too, honey," he said. "The doctor says they're going to be fine, you hear? Just fine."

The eyes closed again, the lids transparent and papery like an old, old woman's. "I… had… to," she said, a word with each fluttering breath. "Put… them… out… the… lock."

"Honey?" He wondered if her mind was wandering again.

"The… bodies… right… away," she said. "Didn' go…
away
."

Her voice grew a little stronger, shriller. "They… floated outside…

the ports… so
hungry."

He swallowed.
The Draka didn't put them out the airlock
after they'd killed them.
Oh, sweet Mother of
God.

He looked down at the purpled bruises on his wife's arms, where she had tapped her own veins.

"Don't… tell them, ever." He nodded. "Told them… made soup." She sighed, and closed her eyes once more. He waited, was almost ready to leave.

"Message," she said at length. "You have to… hear." He bent his head to her lips.

"Sleep now," he said when she was finished. "Sleep now, honey. Get well."

The doctor sighed as he rose. "Well, no worse… six months
minimum
. Then we'll bring her up… Have to transfer to a spun habitat then, anyway; the costs of zero-G would start outweighing the benefits—"

He looked at the colonel's face and stopped, shocked.

BETWEEN THE ORBITS OF EARTH AMD MARS

ABOARD DASCS
SUBOTAI

JUNE 30, 1982

"Makin' remarkable progress, Merarch-Professor," Yolande said. They were teleconferencing, and the astroengineer was suited up; she could see segments of construction material behind him.

He waved a dismissive hand. "These are the heat dispersers,"

he said. Composite honeycomb sandwich, laced with superconductor on the interior, the same system that pulsedrive ships used; superconductors had the additional useful property of maintaining a uniform temperature throughout. Of course, this was a pulsedrive, it just used fusion bombs instead of 10-gram pellets. "We should start assembling the thrust plate soon."

Yolande linked through a view of Hangar B; the near-motionless forms of the prisoners were arranged in neat rows around the shrouded equipment. Skinsuited Auxiliaries were hosing the area down and hauling off the inert bodies; it had gotten quite noisome, with sixty drugged humans and a week's worth of high-G boost.

"We got yo' some additional labor," she said. "I know they don't look like much, but most of them have trainin' in zero-G

construction an' so forth. Well have to give a few to the headhunter to disassemble, of course."

"Good, perhaps it will keep him away from me," the scientist said, with an obscene gesture for any possible monitors.

"Well put controller cuffs on them, maybe minimal-dosage dociline," Yolande continued. "You'll have to supervise them closely, but it ought to come out positive."

"Certainly. Hmmm, what to do with them when the project is completed?"

"Oh… take them back to Luna, I suppose. Maybe the political people can trade them off fo' somethin, or we can just sell them."

Alliance-born serfs had a substantial curiosity value, for their rarity. "Hand them out as souvenirs, whatevah."

"Not to mention hostage value," her executive officer said.

"Too much Yankee heavy iron in the Belt, fo' my taste."

Yolande chuckled. "Well, there are enough of
our
units further out," she said.

"Long ways off."

"Not so far as yo' might think," she said, and laid a finger along her nose. "Between yo', me an' the Strategic Planning Board, there are a few surprises fo' the damnyanks in this. Fo'

one, we've got high-impulse orbital boost lasers in the Jovian system, which we're pretty sure they don't know about. Multiple strap-ons, hey? Iff'n the damnyanks move, our cruisers can leave station around Himalia, boost on strap-ons with low mass." A pulsedrive ship could make much better acceleration with less reaction mass in her tanks—while the fuel lasted. "Do a quick-and-dirty burn to Mars orbit, arrivin' with dry tanks."

She called up a map of orbital positions. "An' notice, just right fo' a quick stopover at Phobos to fill up? So unless the
damnyanks
is willin' to get here empty, leavin' them between us and the outer fleet, with nothin' to maneuver with—in which case we'd wipe them, then proceed to mop up the Belt piece by piece—they just naturally have to keep their iron floatin' out there by Ceres and Pallas."

"Ahhh," the exec mused. "Nice. That still leaves them with three Hero-class here in the inner system, though."

"Update?"

"Ethan Allen
still boostin' fo' the
Pathfinder
like there was no tomorrow." He frowned. "Faster than we could, unless they're burnin' out their thrust plates."

"Well, the Heros have the legs on a Great Khan, but we've got mo' firepower. Anyways, that'll put her out of the picture fo' a whiles. The two in Earth orbit, we may have to see off. Note we're floatin' next to a fuel depot, though. Also, I've got a few ideas bout' usin' some of our industrial equipment. Reminds me, staff conference fo' 1200 tomorrow, we'll go ovah it. Three weeks to encounter, minimum. Wants yo' there, too, Professor."

"Service to the State," he said formally.

"Glory to the Race," the two officers answered.

Yolande yawned. "Time to turn in, Number Two," she said, rising from the crashcouch.

"Just one thing, ma'am," he murmured as she passed his station; the offwatch was handling the bridge, minimum staff.

"Yes?"

"Back there… when yo' saw those bodies come out the airlock, I was set up for a minimal-burn boost back to the flotilla. Yo'

took us on a max speed trajectory, got us here dry. That was like hangin' up a big sign ovah the whole system pointin' to the
Pathfinder.
Why do it that way, ma'am?"

Yolande glanced at her fingernails. "Oh, better tactics.

Impo'tant not to leave the Object unguarded." She thought again of the sleeping faces of the two children.
Yankee
children, she reminded herself again, but… "Or call it as close as I could get to changing my mind."

The commander's quarters of a Great Khan were luxurious, by Aerospace Command standards. Two cubicles, a tiny one for sleeping, a slightly larger one to serve as an office. A few pictures, the ones she took everywhere: her parents, siblings, three shots of Gwen, and her favorite of Myfwany. That showed them on the beach at Baiae, mugging and smooching for the camera… She sighed and finished stuffing her uniform into the cleaner slot; the black coveralls never got quite as ripe as the skinsuits, thank Baldur. Somebody keyed the door for admittance.

"Come in," she said.

The hatch swung out into the companionway. "As ordered, ma'am." It was a rating, with one of the prisoners.

"Oh. Oh, yes; just leave her here, thank yo'." The rating pushed the slight figure in through the hatch and dogged it.

"Alishia Merkowitz, aren't yo?" Yolande asked.

"Yyyes, Mistis." A tiny whisper. About fifteen, Yolande estimated. Thinner, after a week spent comatose, but looking rather better for it; olive skin, curved nose, full lips. Still slightly damp from the hosing. "Please, don't hurt me!"

"Relax, I'm not gain to hurt yo'." The captive huddled in the far corner of the office-space, twice arm's reach away, and stared at her huge-eyed, flicking an occasional glance about in an unconscious search for escape. "Or do anythin' else to yo', either."
Which puts me in a decided minority, wench.

Yolande sighed.
Let's see…
Oh, she'd probably be more
comfortable wearing something.
"That's a locker behind yo,"

she said. "Open it, hand me one of the overalls. Yo' can wear one of the spare shirts until I requisition some Auxiliary stuff fo' yo'."

The girl obeyed; she stepped into the clothing and Yolande pressed the seam closed.
Actually quite
pretty, but far too
frightened,
she thought, watching her struggle into the shirt and tie off the bottom. "Right. Now, that's sternward." She pointed to the padded floor of the cubicle. "Those black things are covers fo'

the restraints. Iff'n yo' hear the acceleration warnin', get there fast, understand? Don't go near the terminal, or anythin' else with the circled-cross symbol on them, because they'll activate yo' controller cuff if you touch them," The prisoner cringed; they had already had the pain-device demonstrated along with the initial obey-all-orders-call-everyone-master lecture. "The nearest head is out that door with the red stripe uppermost, turn left, two hatches down. Now, stay out of my way."

Yolande hooked her feet under the terminal and activated, calling up the schematics for the Alliance Hero class; heavy cruisers in enemy terminology, although they massed slightly less than the Great Khans. Risky design philosophy, in her opinion.

Not enough separate weapons systems, and too many interdependent elements in the beam-weapon guidance routines; fine when everything went perfectly, but dangerous and hard on damage control in action. She began to whistle silently through her teeth as she worked. The prisoner sank into the background of her consciousness; a Draka was used to being observed. A homelike sensation, since she had never been so much alone as on these deep-space voyages. It was several hours later when a bell chimed.

She yawned and stretched. "Time fo' bed," she said. The American girl flinched again. Yolande grinned. "I said I wasn't
goin'
to," she chuckled, as she leaned head and shoulders through the hatchway and rigged her sleeping net. Any flat surface would do in zero-C, but you needed something to keep you from drifting around when you moved in your sleep. "Yo' use the office floor. Draw the acceleration restraints out to max and lock them over yo', crisscross. Here. Like this."

She pulled herself through the hatch and swung around to fasten the net over herself; the bedroom cubicle was more or less useless during acceleration, but even a pulsedrive ship spent the vast majority of its time coasting. As she dimmed the lights, she could hear a hiccoughing sound from the other cubicle; crying, mostly in relief, she thought.
Oh, Freya,
she thought.
I hope she
doesn't keep that up.

"Mistis?"

"Yes?" Yolande sighed.

"What's… what's going to happen to us?"

"Depends. We'll put y'all to work until we head back insystem.

Most probably trade y'all back, fo' somethin' or other." More sniffles in darkness. "To yo', nothin' bad, so long's yo' stays close to this cabin. Lot of bored, horny Draka out there, wench, so be careful."

"Can, um, can I ask a question?" Silence. "Why… why are you… doing this for me?"

Yolande smiled wryly into her private night.
That is
complicated, and I'm not interested in explaining
it. To you, or
myself.
"Call it an offerin' to the gods of mercy," she said softly.

"Lola knows, they get few enough. Go to sleep, girl."

"Status," Yolande said.

"Unchanged," the Sensor Officer said. "No relative motion."

"Good."
An odd situation to describe as static,
she thought ironically.
Bass-ackwards to the end of
beyond.

Not too untypical of a space-warship action, though. She looked at the screens again. An exterior view would have shown nothing but bright dots moving against the fixed stars, if that…

The battle-schematic was much more accurate. A fixed dot, the asteroid; the regular five-minute pulses of its monstrous drive flaring back towards Earth. The flame was only partly shaped by the magnetic fields of the thrust plate; those forces were still too vast and wild for Earth's children, and it hid a good deal behind it from most sensors. An excellent place for her to conceal the vulnerable transports.

Yolande grinned like a shark in the darkness of the command center.
Subotai
and
Batu
were falling back toward the flotilla, with the two Alliance cruisers in pursuit; all on free-fall trajectories, with their thrust plates presented to the enemy.

That was the most heavily armored portion of a pulsedrive ship,
built
to withstand near-miss nuclear explosions. And the drive was the most dangerous weapon in itself; chasing a deepspace warship was a chancy proposition, since getting too close would mean self-incineration. Once you got within a certain distance, in a one-on-one there was virtually no choice but to flip end for end and coast until something changed the situation. You could disengage, of course, but that meant backing off and freeing your opponent from the menace of the nuclear sword.

Perfect,
she thought. The Draka warships had drawn the Alliance craft on just enough; the enemy vessels were slightly faster than hers, and more nimble, but they were farther from base and so obliged to be sparing with their burns. A perfect matching-velocity flip, which meant they must pursue or quit, and pursue precisely in line with the Draka ships for fear of presenting a vulnerable flank. The asteroid was coming up rapidly; the fog of energetic particles around it negated her enemy's superior sensors, too; she did not need to detect much, here.

"Distance," she said.

"Two hundred twenty klicks. Transit of asteroid in seventy-one seconds, ten klicks clearage." Just enough to avoid the worst of the fusion-bomb explosions.

Nothing for it but to wait; all the orders were given, the personnel ready. Sweat soaked into the permeable fabric of her skinsuit, under the armpits and down the flanks, chill in the moving air the ventilators sent across her body. Sixty seconds.

Life or death decided in one minute; victory and glory, or eternal shame.
Genius, or a goat. Which I wouldn't be there to see.

Bones of the White Christ, this sort of thing sounds better in
retrospect. Adventure is somebody else in deep shit far, far
away.