Endymion

24

The Raphael is on the final part of her return ellipsoid, rushing in-system toward Parvati’s sun at .03 of light-speed. The archangel-class courier/warship is ungainly—massive drive bays, cobbled-together com-pods, spin-arms, weapons’ platforms and antennae array protruding, its tiny environmental sphere and attached dropship shuttle tucked into the mess almost as an afterthought—but it becomes a serious warship now as it rotates 180 degrees so that it hurtles stern-first toward the projected translation point of the ship it pursues.

“One minute to spindown,” de Soya says over the tactical band. The three troopers in the open sally-port air lock do not need to acknowledge the transmission. They also know that even after the other ship appears in real space, it will not be visible to them—even with visor magnifiers—for another two minutes.

Strapped in his acceleration couch with the control panels arrayed around him, his gauntleted hand on the omnicontroller, his tactical shunt in place so that he and the ship are effectively one, Father Captain de Soya listens to the breathing of the three troopers over the com channel while he watches and senses the other ship’s approach. “Picking up Hawking-drive distortion reading down angle thirty-nine, coordinates zero-zero-zero, thirty nine, one-nine-niner,” he says into his mike. “Exit point at zero-zero-zero, nine hundred klicks. Single vehicle probability, ninety-nine percent. Relative velocity nineteen kps.”

Suddenly the other ship becomes visible on radar, t-dirac, and all passive sensors. “Got it,” Father Captain de Soya says to the waiting troopers. “On time, on schedule… damn.”

“What?” says Sergeant Gregorius. He and his men have checked their weapons, charges, and boarding collars. They are ready to jump in less than three minutes.

“The ship’s begun accelerating, not decelerating as we’d guessed in most of the sims,” says de Soya. On the tactical channel he enables the ship to carry out preprogrammed alternatives. “Hang on!” he says to the troopers, but the thrusters have already fired, Raphael is already rotating. “No problem,” he says as the main drive kicks on, boosting them to 147 gravities. “Just stay within the field during the jump. It’ll take just an extra minute to match velocities.”

Gregorius, Kee, and Rettig do not respond. De Soya can hear their breathing.

Two minutes later de Soya says, “I have a visual.”

Sergeant Gregorius and his two troopers lean out of the open air lock. Gregorius can see the other ship as a ball of fusion flame. He keys the mag-lenses so he can see beyond that, raises the filters, and sees the ship itself. “Pretty much like the tacticals,” says Kee.

“Don’t think that way,” snaps the sergeant. “The real thing’s never like the tacticals.” He knows that both these men realize that; they have been in combat. But Sergeant Gregorius was an instructor at Pax Command on Armaghast for three years, and the instinct is hard to break.

“This thing’s fast,” says de Soya. “If we didn’t have the bounce on them, I don’t think we’d catch them. As it is, we’ll just be able to match velocities for five or six minutes.”

“We only need three,” says Gregorius. “Just get us alongside, Captain.”

“Coming alongside now,” says de Soya. “She’s painting us.” The Raphael was not designed with stealth capabilities, and now every instrument records the other ship’s sensors on her. “One klick,” he reports, “still no weapons activity. Fields on full. Delta-V dropping. Eight hundred meters.”

Gregorius, Kee, and Rettig unsling their plasma rifles and crouch.

“Three hundred meters… two hundred meters…” says de Soya. The other ship is passive, its acceleration high but constant. In most of the sims de Soya had factored in a wild chase before matching speeds and disrupting the other ship’s fields. This is too easy. The father-captain feels concern for the first time. “Inside minimum lance range,” he reports. “Go!”

The three Swiss Guard troopers explode out of the air lock, their reaction paks spurting blue flame.

“Disrupting… now!” cries de Soya. The other ship’s fields refuse to drop for an eternity—almost three seconds, a time never simulated in the tactical exercises—but eventually they drop. “Fields down!” calls de Soya, but the troopers already know that—they are tumbling, decelerating, and dropping onto the enemy hull at their prearranged entry points—Kee near the bow, Gregorius on what had been the navigation level on the old schematics, Rettig above the engine room.

“On,” comes Gregorius’s voice. The other two confirm landing a second later.

“Boarding collars set,” pants the sergeant.

“Set,” confirms Kee.

“Set,” says Rettig.

“Deploy from three,” snaps the sergeant. “Three, two, one… deploy.”

His polymer bag gossamers into sunlight.

On the command couch de Soya is watching the delta-V. The acceleration has risen to more than 230 gravities. If the fields fail now… He shoves the thought aside. Raphael is straining to her utmost to keep velocities matched. Another four or five minutes, and he will have to fall away or risk overtaxing all the ship’s fusion-drive systems. Hurry, he thinks toward the combat-armored shapes he sees in tactical space and video screens.

“Ready,” reports Kee.

“Ready,” comes Rettig’s voice from near the stern fins on the absurd ship.

“Set charges,” orders Gregorius, and slaps his onto the hull. “From five… five, four, three…”

“Father Captain de Soya,” says a girl’s voice.

“Wait!” orders de Soya. The girl’s image has appeared on all the com bands. She is sitting at a piano. It is the same child he saw at the Sphinx on Hyperion three months before.

“Stop!” echoes Gregorius, his finger above the detonate button on his wristplate. The other troopers obey. All are watching the vid broadcast on their visor inserts.

“How do you know my name?” asks Father Captain de Soya. Instantly he knows how stupid the question is: it does not matter, his men need to enter the ship within three minutes or the Raphael will fall behind, leaving them alone on the other ship. They had simulated that possibility—the troopers taking command of the ship after capturing the girl, slowing to wait for de Soya to catch up—but it is not a preferable scenario. He touches a presspoint that sends his vid image to the girl’s ship.

“Hello, Father Captain de Soya,” says the girl, her voice in no hurry, her appearance showing little or no stress, “if your men try to enter the ship, I will depressurize my own ship and die.”

De Soya blinks. “Suicide is a mortal sin,” he says.

On the screen the girl nods seriously. “Yes,” she says, “but I am not a Christian. Also, I’d rather go to hell than go with you.” De Soya looks intently at the image—her fingers are not near any controls.

“Captain,” comes Gregorius’s voice on the secure tightbeam channel, “if she opens the air lock, I can get to her and get a transfer bag around her before complete decompression.”

On the screen the girl is watching, de Soya’s lips are still as he subvocalizes on the tightbeam channel. “She is not of the cross,” he says. “If she dies, there’s no guarantee that we can revive her.”

“The odds are good the ship’s surgery can bring her back and repair her from simple decompression,” says Gregorius. “It’ll take thirty seconds or more for her level to lose all of its air. I can get to her. Give the word.”

“I mean it,” says the child on the screen. Instantly, a circular section of hull opens under and around Corporal Kee, and atmosphere blasts into vacuum, filling Kee’s boarding collar bag like a balloon and tumbling him into it as both crash into the external field and slide toward the stern of the ship. Kee’s reaction pak fires madly, and he stabilizes himself before being blown into the fusion tale of the ship.

Gregorius sets his finger on the shaped-charge detonator. “Captain!” he cries.

“Wait,” subvocalizes de Soya. It is the sight of the girl in her shirtsleeves that freezes his heart with anxiety. Space between the two ships is now filled with colloidal particles and ice crystals.

“I’m sealed away from the top room,” says the girl, “but if you don’t call your men back, I’ll open all the levels.”

In less than a second the air lock blasts open, and a two-meter circle opens in the hull where Gregorius had been standing. The sergeant had burned his way through the collar bag and jetted to another location as soon as the girl spoke. Now he tumbles away from the blast of atmosphere and small debris jetting from the opening, fires his thrusters, and plants his boots on a section of hull five meters farther down the ship. In his mind he can see the schematic, knows that the girl is just inside—a few meters from his grasp. If she was to blow this section, he would catch her, bag her, and have her in the Raphael’s surgery within two minutes. He checks his tactical display: Rettig had jumped into space seconds before a section of hull opened under him. Now the other was station-keeping three meters from the hull. “Captain!” Gregorius calls on the tightbeam.

“Wait,” orders de Soya. To the girl, he says, “We mean you no harm—”

“Then call them off,” snaps the girl. “Now! Or I open this last level.”

Federico de Soya feels time slow down as he weighs his options. He knows that he has less than a minute before he has to throttle back—alarms and telltales are flashing throughout his tactical connections to the ship and across the boards. He does not want to leave his men behind, but the most important factor is the child. His orders are specific and absolute—Bring the child back alive.

De Soya’s entire tactical virtual environment begins to pulse red, a warning that the ship must decelerate in one minute or automatic overrides will kick in. His control boards tell the same story. He keys the audible mike channels, broadcasts on common bands as well as tightbeam.

“Gregorius, Rettig, Kee… return to the Raphael. Now!”

Sergeant Gregorius feels the fury and frustration surge through him like a blast of cosmic radiation, but he is a member of the Swiss Guard. “Returning now, sir!” he snaps, peels off his shaped charge, and kicks off toward the archangel. The other two rise from the hull with blue pinpricks of reaction thrusters. The merged fields flicker just long enough to allow the three armored men to pass through. Gregorius reaches the Raphael’s hull first, grabs a holdon, and literally flings his men into the sally-port lock as they float by. He pulls himself in, confirms that the others are clinging to web restraints, and keys his mike. “In and tight, sir.”

“Breaking off,” says de Soya, broadcasting in the clear so that the girl can also hear. He switches from tactical space to real time and tweaks the omnicontroller.

Raphael cuts back from its 110 percent thrust, separates its field from the target’s, and begins to fall behind. De Soya widens the distance from the girl’s ship, keeping Raphael as far away from the other craft’s fusion tail as he can: all indications are that the other ship is unarmed, but that term is relative when the thing’s fusion drive can reach a hundred kilometers through space. Raphael’s external fields are on full defensive, the ship’s countermeasures on full automatic, ready to react in a millionth of a second.

The girl’s ship continues accelerating off the plane of the ecliptic. Parvati is not the child’s destination.

A rendezvous with the Ousters? wonders de Soya. His ship’s sensors still show no activity beyond Parvati’s orbital patrols, but entire Ouster Swarms could be waiting beyond the helio-sphere.

Twenty minutes later, the child’s ship already hundreds of thousands of klicks ahead of Raphael, the question is answered.

“We’ve got Hawking-space distortion here,” Father Captain de Soya reports to the three men still clinging to restraints in the sally-port lock. “Her ship is preparing to spin up.”

“To where?” asks Gregorius. The huge sergeant’s voice reveals none of his fury at the near miss.

De Soya pauses and rechecks his readings before answering. “Renaissance Vector space,” he says. “Very close to the planet.”

Gregorius and the other two Swiss Guard troopers are silent. De Soya can guess their unspoken questions. Why Renaissance Vector? It’s a Pax stronghold… two billion Christians, tens of thousands of troops, scores of Pax warships. Why there?

“Perhaps she doesn’t know what’s there,” he muses aloud over the intercom. He switches to tactical space and hovers above the plane of the ecliptic, watching the red dot spin up to C-plus and disappear from the solar system. The Raphael still follows its stern chase course, fifty minutes from translation vector. De Soya leaves tactical, checks all systems, and says, “You can come up from the lock now. Secure all boarding gear.”

He does not ask their opinion. There is no discussion of whether he will translate the archangel to Renaissance Vector space—the course has already been set in and the ship is climbing toward quantum leap—and he does not ask them again if they are prepared to die again. This jump will be as fatal as the last, of course, but it will put them into Pax-occupied space five months ahead of the girl’s ship. The only question in de Soya’s mind is whether or not to wait for the St. Anthony to spin down into Parvati space so he can explain the situation to the captain.

He decides not to wait. It makes little sense—a few hours’ difference in a five-month head start—but he does not have the patience to wait. De Soya orders Raphael to prepare a transponder buoy, and he records the orders for Captain Sati on the Anthony: immediate translation to Renaissance Vector—a ten-day trip for the torchship with the same five-month time-debt that the girl will pay—with readiness for combat immediately upon spinning down to RV space.

When he has launched the buoy and tightbeamed standdown orders to the Parvati command, de Soya turns his acceleration couch to face the other three men. “I know how disappointing that was to you,” he begins.

Sergeant Gregorius says nothing, and his dark face is as impassive as stone, but Father Captain de Soya can read the message behind the silence: Another thirty seconds and I would have had her.

De Soya does not care. He has commanded men and women for over a decade—has sent braver, more loyal underlings than this to their deaths without allowing remorse or the need for explanation to overwhelm him—so he does not blink now in front of the giant trooper. “I think the child would have carried out her threat,” he says, his tone of voice conveying the message that this is not open to discussion or argument, now or later, “but that’s a moot point now. We know where she’s going. It may be the one system in this sector of Pax space where no one—not even an Ouster Swarm—could get in or out unseen and uninterdicted. We’re going to have five months to prepare for the ship’s arrival, and this time we won’t be operating alone.” De Soya pauses to take a breath. “You three have worked hard, and this failure in Parvati system is not yours. I’ll see to it that you are returned to your unit immediately upon arrival in Renaissance Vector space.”

Gregorius does not even have to glance at his two men before speaking for them. “Begging the father-captain’s pardon, but if we have a say in it, sir, we’d choose to stay with you and Raphael until this young ’un’s safely in the net and on her way to Pacem, sir.”

De Soya tries not to show his surprise. “Hmmm… well, we’ll see what happens, Sergeant. Renaissance Vector is Fleet Headquarters for the navy, and a lot of our bosses will be there. We’ll see what happens. Let’s get everything tied down… We translate in twenty-five minutes.”

“Sir?”

“Yes, Corporal Kee?”

“Will you be hearing confessions before we die this time?”

De Soya works again to keep his expression neutral. “Yes, Corporal. I’ll finish the checklist here and be in the wardroom cubby for confession in ten minutes.”

“Thank you, sir,” says Kee with a smile.

“Thank you,” says Rettig.

“Thank ’ee, Father,” rumbles Gregorius.

De Soya watches the three jump to tie-down activities, shedding their massive combat armor as they go. In that instant he catches an intuitive glimpse of the future and feels the weight of it on his shoulders. Lord, give me strength to carry out Thy will… in Jesus’ name I ask… Amen.

Swiveling his heavy couch back to the command panels, de Soya begins the final checklist before translation and death.