Starhawk

Chapter 53

“HELLO.” IT WAS a female voice. Priscilla, fighting back tears, couldn’t place it. “What happened? Is Jake okay?”

“Who is this?”

“I’m Samantha Campbell. We’re in the lander. What happened to Jake?”

“We lost him.” Her voice broke up. The idiot. Dead to prove a point. Goddam it. At the other end, she heard screams.

“I told him not to do it,” said Samantha. “I told him. I told him.”

Priscilla was still trying to breathe.

“Priscilla, you there?”

“Yes,” she said. “Are you guys okay?”

“We’re okay. We even have some extra air tanks.”

“Good.” She was getting her voice under control. “Drake’s on his way. He should be alongside in a few hours. Tell the AI you want to brake, but make sure everybody’s locked in before you do.”

“We got all that from Jake.”

“Okay. You guys know how to use the Flickinger units, right?”

“Yes.” She had to stop to blow her nose. “It’s no problem, Priscilla.”

“All right, Samantha. I’ll see you back at Union.”

“Where are you?”

“Pretty much the same place you are: in the middle of nowhere.”

* * *

A CROWD WAS waiting when she arrived back at the Wheel. Mostly, they were WSA people, technicians and construction specialists, who knew what it would have meant had the Venture blasted into the space station at a quarter million kilometers per hour. There was applause when she climbed out of the lander. They lined up and shook her hand, said they were grateful she’d been out there, that they were sorry about Jake, that they’d never forget her. One young woman, whom she hadn’t known and could never have identified later, simply said, “Thanks, Hutch.”

A few others, assuming that was her name, picked it up. “Incredible, Hutch.”

“Bravo zulu, Hutch.” It was the old naval code for well done.

“Welcome back, Hutch. Thank God.”

Frank and Patricia appeared from nowhere. They wore sad smiles. Patricia embraced her, the first time Priscilla could remember a show of affection from the director. “You all right?” she asked.

“More or less.”

And then McGruder, with his aides and his Secret Service guys, showed up. “I can guess what you’ve been through,” the candidate said, “but we owe you. We all do.”

Eventually, she was able to ask Frank about Drake’s effort to overtake the Venture lander.

“He’s still in pursuit,” Frank said. “But he’s closing. Should reach them in a few hours.”

* * *

THEY WATCHED FROM Patricia’s office, munching cheese sticks and drinking coffee, as the Baumbachner closed on the hurtling lander, which had done as much braking as it could, but to little effect. It was still traveling at an outrageous velocity. “I didn’t want to ask before,” said Priscilla, “but how’s Drake going to get turned around again? He can’t possibly have enough fuel left.” Even a ship with a full tank couldn’t accelerate for an hour and a half, then execute a U-turn and come back.

“We were worrying about that, too,” said Patricia. “This was strictly a one-step-at-a-time operation. But Drake said it would be no problem.”

“Oh,” said Priscilla, as the lights came on. “He’ll do a couple of jumps.”

“Exactly,” said Frank.

“That’s clever.” He wouldn’t even have to leave the solar system. A jump out in any direction would reduce his speed to a standard 20,000 kph. Then he could turn around without using a ton of fuel and jump back in.

“Drake tells us that’s standard operating procedure.”

That was embarrassing. “We were about to do an exercise with runaway engines, but we got distracted. We never got back to it. But I should have known—”

“Don’t worry about it, Hutch,” said Patricia. “You’re the hero of the hour.” She got another squeeze from the boss.

“Do we have any idea who did this?” Priscilla asked.

“We’re working on it. But no, so far, we haven’t a clue. If the FBI has anything, they’re keeping it to themselves.”

“I assume Jake told you about the transmission from Lyda Bergen?”

“Yes,” said Patricia.

“I’d think it would be easy enough to track down the source.” Off-world transmissions carried a charge. “How was it paid for?”

“According to the record,” said Patricia, “the caller was Lyda Bergen. The call was made from the Starbright. But the hotel has no record of anybody named Bergen staying there.”

“That’s no surprise. So who paid for it?”

“The hotel.”

“Somebody rigged their AI.”

Patricia nodded. “They don’t have anyone at their service desk between midnight and 0700 hours. You check in with the AI.”

“And,” said Priscilla, “if you know what you’re doing—”

“—You can go behind the counter and download a virus. They’d never had a problem, so they seem to have dismissed any notion of a risk.”

“All it would have taken,” said Frank, “was a call to the Venture to trigger the virus.”

Patricia nodded. “It looks as if it’s another one of our techs. Somebody who had access to the Venture. We might have been wrong in assuming that Carlson was a loner.” She looked tired. “The immediate question now is whether we can trust the crazies to accept Kosmik’s promise that they’ll quit.”

“How many techs do we have who could manage something like this?” she asked.

The director exhaled. “Listen, Priscilla, why don’t you let us handle this? You’ve been through enough.”

“Okay.”

“If you really want to know, I’d say there are two. But they were both here. On the station. So if it was one of them, he didn’t expect to survive.”

* * *

PRISCILLA’S JOURNAL

Impossible to believe he’s gone. Have I really only known him a few months?

—March 7, 2196