But for the moment they were all breathing.
Almost all of them.
Zai had lost thirty-two crew. The flockers had killed nine, and twenty-one had fallen in the beam weapon attacks. The Rix range-finding laser had holed one side of the Lynx, lancing through to burn, tearing open a swath of the hull to naked space. In the final attack, chaotic gravitons had given half the crew various sorts of cancer. Even now, the medics were injecting nanos into the worst-hit victims (although these were secondaries: nanos that cleaned up their larger cousins, the ones who had actually consumed the amok tissue of a gravity burn). Another mutineer had unmasked herself trying to kill Hobbes, and had died from decompression. And of course there wasTelmore Bigz, the engineer-rating who had saved the Lynx. A true hero. Unfortunately, along with half of the laser casualties and eight of the flocker deaths, Bigz would never be reanimated. His body no longer existed, except as exotic photons in a sphere that expanded at the constant. In fifteen years, some far-sighted telescope array on his home planet of Irrin might see the flash of his death. But the Lynx had accomplished her mission.
In the hours since the battle, the magnitude of their success--and good luck--had finally penetrated Captain Zai's exhausted brain. They had destroyed the Rix receiver array, preventing contact between the enemy battlecruiser and the Legis XV mind. And they were still alive.
Captain Laurent Zai had lived to see an Imperial pardon, survived an assassination attempt and a suicide mission. He had Jocim Marx, Katherie Hobbes, and of course Telmore Bigz to thank, so far. But there was still a war on. Their sacrifices and brilliance would be wasted unless Zai and his ship ultimately survived both the Rix and the Risen Emperor's displeasure.
And it would all be meaningless to Zai unless he saw his love again.
He wanted his ship back in fighting shape.
"Captain?" Hobbes interrupted his thoughts.
He turned to look at the woman. It was good to have her back on the bridge, as good as being able to move his artificial limbs again.
"Report."
"We're seeing more acceleration flares from the battlecruiser."
Zai shook his head. The Rix were at it again. Two hours ago, they had launched two long-range drones after the Lynx. They were remotes that could make six hundred gees, and they had closed with the frigate in a little over an hour. Gunner Wilson had powered up the dorsal lasers and destroyed them at thirty thousand klicks. As defenseless as the frigate might be, it couldn't be threatened by a pair of scout drones. The two craft had managed to sweep the Lynx with active sensors, however.
The tenacity of the Rix was surprising. Her mission had failed, yet the battlecruiser's captain was still in pursuit, still sending valuable drones to harass and probe the Lynx. True, the frigate had humiliated the larger warship, but it was not like the Rix to seek revenge.
Zai wondered if there were something he was missing. Some unresolved aspect of this engagement.
"Hobbes."
"Captain?" "What sort of active sensors are we running?"
For a few seconds, Zai watched his executive officer's eyes drift in the middle distance of the ship's infostructure.
"We're focusing all the transluminals on the battlecruiser, sir. And we're still operating close-in-defense sensors at battle level. There are also a few scout drones running point, sweeping for meteoroids basically."
"Is that all?"
"Captain?" Hobbes couldn't hide her disbelief. "Three-quarters of our sensor personnel are in hypersleep, sir. They went on alert six hours before the rest of the crew."
"When can we wake a few up, Hobbes?"
"Right now, if you want, sir."
"I mean, when can we reasonably wake them up? I don't want to psych anyone."
"We're running hypersleep cycles of two hours, sir. I can get you a crew of four in forty minutes without interrupting any dreams."
"Very good. When you have a full crew, refocus some translumi-nals onto the Rix approach path."
"Their original path into the system, sir?" *:.
"Yes. I just want to make sure that we haven't missed anything."
Hobbes blinked, clearing her secondary vision. Her expression sharpened, eyes widening.
"Missed another Rix ship, Captain? I certainly hope we haven't."
"I do as well, Hobbes. I do as well."
Zai turned back to the airscreen. He wondered if he were simply getting in the way of his ship's healing process: waking up what few of the exhausted crew were able to rest, rattling his ExO's nerves. Perhaps he should put on a hypersleep helmet himself. The airscreen blur had gotten worse over the last hours, and Zai didn't think it was just the Lynx's processor shortage. It was his brain getting fuzzy, and it took considerable fatigue to blur secondary sight.
Zai wondered if he might be tending toward paranoia. "Hobbes, belay that order. Give anyone you can a full two cycles of sleep."
"Yes, sir. But we'll take a look once we're at full strength."
"Certainly. In the meantime, I'll be taking a cycle myself. Be ready to take one when I wake up."
"But we still have twenty repair crew who haven't had a chance--"
Captain Zai reached out and touched the bandage on Hobbes's arm. Their was still blood on her uniform; Hobbes hadn't even had time to change. He could feel the flechette pistol she now wore strapped to her wrist. It was pulled from the captain's stores; only the two of them knew she had it. There might be other mutineers seeking revenge.
"Two more hours awake, Hobbes. Then sleep," he commanded.
She nodded in defeat.
Before retiring, Zai called up the Legis system picture on his personal 153 visual channel. The Rix had sent an assault craft across the light-years to take the Empress, and a battlecruiser with a crew of a thousand to follow up. A considerable commitment to a mission that had failed. Had they sent anything more?
compound mind
Alexander felt the infinitesimal prick in its awareness, and exalted.
The repeater's senses were terribly limited. It could see only in a low-grade, four-bit grayscale, its four eyes giving it a mere 180 degrees of peripheral vision. But this narrow, shadowy view was sufficient to find others of its own kind against the snowy background.
The compound mind moved its new appendage clumsily across the grainy terrain, closing on another of the repeaters. The ten-meter journey took ninety seconds, the little creature's mobility generally limited to finding sunlight for power and maintaining even distribution of the colony in the event of heavy damage to its numbers.