Kodell, on speaker: “Power drain, Captain, when I reinforced shields! Trying to stabilize now!”
“Kodell, I need control.”Garrett watched as the ship swung inexorably lower, being pulled into a perpendicular toward the gravity well. We’re heading nose down, no, no!“I need it now!”
“Can’t do it, Captain! That last surge knocked out the power couplings to the thrusters. They’re offline and I can’t reroute fast enough. Auxiliary power is tied up with the shields, I can’t rob…”
Garrett didn’t wait to hear the rest. Their angle was getting too steep and they were out of time. “Glemoor, launch photon torpedoes! Now!”
“Aye!” Glemoor stabbed at fire control. “Torpedoes away!”
“On main viewer!” The viewscreen swam as the angle changed, and then Garrett saw the tiny red-orange sparklers that were the torpedoes streaking away from her ship, and she imagined she could hear them sizzling across space. “Time to detonation!”
“Eight seconds!” Glemoor cried. “Seven, six!”
“Captain!” shouted Kodell. “Maneuvering thrusters nominal!”
“Four, three!”
“Thrusters!” Garret brought her fists crashing into the helm and felt the shuddering of the thrusters firing. My ship—she jerked her head back up to the viewscreen and saw the torpedoes fading, the violet and pink space swinging by in a dizzying arc and if it had been any other time or place, she would have marveled at how much beauty could exist in the heart of death— my ship!
“One!” Glemoor cried.
The viewscreen flooded with white light, and then gravity must have failed because Garrett felt her body rise out of her chair and hurtle backward to slam against the deck.
The viewscreen went black.
Chapter 27
“Just hold still.”
“I am.”Garrett’s fingers plucked at the thin green fabric of the patient’s tunic she wore. Stern and her nurse had stripped her out of her uniform when she’d been brought to sickbay—only Garrett had no memory of that, having been unconscious for a half hour after the torpedoes blew. In fact, she was a little foggy for the five minutes or so before the torpedoes went off; retro-and antegrade amnesia went with the territory when you had a concussion, Stern said. Garrett remembered giving the order to arm the torpedoes but not the order to fire.
She sighed. Her scalp itched, and her uniform was a mess from all the blood. Her eyes crawled to the soiled clothing still lying in a heap on the floor next to the biobed. Her nostrils twitched with the faint, sickly metallic aroma of wet rust.
“I’m fine,” she said, not believing it but hating having to lie there and do nothing. All doctors are overprotective.“When can I get out of here?”
“When I’m done,” came Stern’s voice. Garrett could hear the frown. Garrett was on her back and facing left so Stern could work, and she couldn’t see the doctor’s face.
“But I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh. Sure, it’s every day you get knocked senseless and need stitches. Honestly, Mac was right. All captains are the galaxy’s worst patients. I’m almost done.”
Garrett sighed again, resigned to the fact that she wasn’t going anywhere until Stern decided she was good and ready. She heard the steady hum of Stern’s autosuture as Stern repaired the wound on her scalp and, outside the small treatment alcove she picked out the buzz of voices, the shuffle of feet, the blip of monitors above biobeds. “What about the survivors?”
“Ten cases of radiation poisoning, two serious. All of them members of the crew, not the passengers.”
“Who got it the worst?”
“The ship’s engineer, and the captain. The engineer got a double whammy when she took their mains offline. Radiation flooded the compartment, though not enough to kill her straight off. But she knew she’d been exposed and so she volunteered to stay on the bridge, keep their shields up as long as she could. At least that’s how the rest of the survivors tell it. Engineer hasn’t regained consciousness yet. Hell of a brave woman.”
“And the captain?”
“Stayed with his engineer. Moved the rest of his crew from exterior portions of the ship but not to engineering; engineering could only accommodate the colonists, and so the captain decided the colonists took priority. Damn shame, you ask me. All those people wanted was a fresh start on a colony world, only they get it all blasted to hell by a bunch of pirates who chase them into the nebula and then leave them for dead.”
Stern straightened, clicking off the autosuture. “I’ve done all I can for the time being. The engineer and captain are on life support. Now we wait, let nature take its course. That ought to do it, by the way. You’re done.”
Stern brushed Garrett’s auburn hair back over the wound that ran from the tip of Garrett’s right eyebrow and along Garrett’s scalp, ending just behind her right ear. Stepping back, Stern cocked her head to one side, seemingly admiring her handiwork.
“Not bad,” she said, finally. “You’re going to have a lump the size of an egg on your forehead there for awhile, nothing I can do about that. But you’re lucky. The old days, you know, I would’ve had to shave off all that hair.”
“Lucky me.” Garrett blew out in exasperation. She was tired of lying flat on her back. And she hated the way they never gave out sheets or blankets in sickbay but had you lie there in your uniform or a patient tunic, and freeze your butt off.
Garrett pushed up on her elbows. “Someone bringing…?” She’d been about to ask if someone was bringing her a fresh uniform when a wave of nausea made her moan and roll back onto the biobed.
“That’ll teach you,” said Stern, the trace of a smirk on her lips. “I didn’t tell you to get up yet. Just sit tight, and I’ll have someone bring you a fresh change of clothes.”
“Thanks.” Garrett blinked, swallowed. Closed her eyes until the urge to vomit passed. She waited quietly until Stern came back. Then she asked, “Why do I feel sick?”
“Because you have a concussion, that’s why. Here.” Stern turned aside, replacing her instruments on their tray and then plucking up the gray tube of a hypospray. Jabbed the business end of the spray into the angle of Garrett’s neck and right shoulder, and depressed the jet with her thumb. There was an audible hiss as the jet dispensed its contents into Garrett’s bloodstream. “That ought to help with the nausea. You’re going to have a whopper of a headache for a little while, though, and you’re bound to be stiff tomorrow. Next time, pick something softer to land on than the deck of a starship. Actually, you were lucky,” Stern amended, popping the empty vial of analgesic from the hypospray, “Castillo breaking your fall like that. Scared him out of a year’s growth, though. Scalp wounds bleed like stink. The way he sounded when the bridge hailed, I think he thought you were dead.”
Head still throbbing, Garrett eased off the biobed. The floor was icy against her bare feet. She straightened millimeter by millimeter. Her ribs complained, and she was certain she’d be black and blue for days. “How he’s doing now?”
“Castillo? Other than a knot the size of a grapefruit on the back of his head, he’s fine.” Stern eyed Garrett. “I just want to ask you one question. What the hell made you fire off those torpedoes?”
Garrett almost shook her head then, remembering her vertigo, thought better of it. “Just a hunch. Piloting the ship reminded me of flying in an atmosphere, and then I remembered how birds, hawks and condors, they’ll ride thermals for hours. So I thought: heat. Not a thermal exactly, but I thought if I could just get us shallow enough then detonate a couple of torpedoes, part of the shock wave would be absorbed by the black hole itself and the rest ought to blast us clear. We rode an energy wave.”