If the captain ordered any serious maneuvers, the hullalloy plates would tear from their uncertain moorings and crash through the ship like a runaway maglev.
And there was no hardwired compoint here in the cargo bay, no way to reach the captain. Apparently, the designers of the Lynx had never imagined that the bow cargo area would become a prime tactical station. Frick realized now why Navy ships seldom even drilled in true darkmode; doing without second sight was frustrating, but losing communications could be deadly.
"Pressure hoods up," Frick ordered his team. If the plates got free, decompression was a high probability. And it was cold here, this close to the hull. The ship was running on minimal life support, nano-rebreathers for air, insulation to maintain internal temperature.
"You," he said, pointing at Rating Metasmith. The woman was the best athlete on the engineering team. In gravity, she was a dribble-hoop demon, and had the highest freefall workout scores on the Lynx except for a few marines. "Get back to the forward gunnery station and use the compoint. Warn the captain not to accelerate above one-twentieth."
"Understood," she said, and sailed toward the open hatchway with an effortless shove. Frick flinched as she soared through, missing collision with the hatchway's coupling fringe by a few centimeters.
The first engineer sealed the hatch behind Metasmith. If the plates did get loose, his team might do some good here in the cargo bay. They could attempt some sort of damage control.
"Pick an armor plate and tether yourself," he ordered. "And if you smell something cooking, it's you."
Frick pushed himself toward the central armor plate. The plates weren't grabby, so he employed his pressure suit's magnets. He settled against the hullalloy, feeling its reassuring mass between himself and the Rix gravity cannon.
Five minutes to go, as near as he could figure.
The silence of the Lynx was awful. At least on the bridge they could watch the incoming fire, judge how close the shots were falling. But here in the bow, he and his team were hiding deaf and blind, not really knowing if their silence protected them at all.
Commando
H_rd soared to meet the cloud-seeding dirigible, the rendezvous only a hundred kilometers from the entanglement facility's wire.
The recon flyer was at the upper limit of its altitude. The fans whined pitifully, and the craft's electromagnetics stretched tenuously downward, a swimmer's toes searching for solid ground. The air was thin up here, but breathable for a Rixwoman.
The dirigible came down to greet her, operating at the lower extreme of its functional altitude range. Thus the two craft formed a precarious and narrow union of sets. H_rd rose slowly to a standing position on the recon flyer's armored carapace. The straining flyer reacted to every shift of her weight with the jitter of a tightrope. Alexander's piloting would be tested by this maneuver. H_rd had removed the military governors, giving control of the craft to the compound mind. She would have to go very high to approach the entanglement facility undetected.
The dirigible, also under Alexander's control, came nearer, its sphere of emptiness looming like a black hole in the dark sky. The airship's tiny props tried to steady it, fighting the strong winds of this high place. H_rd's sable coat spread out from her, black wings against the stars.
It was twenty-five degrees below freezing. For the first time in her life, the Rixwoman felt her fingers grow numb.
H_rd steadied herself, and reached for the dirigible's payload bas 93 ket. She stripped the scientific instruments to lighten the craft, replacing them with the pack she had prepared for this mission. Then she removed the sable coat, which was too heavy to take with her, and sadly let it fall. She locked the muscles in her hands, leaving them arched like a pair of hooks. There was no provision for a person in the dirigible's small payload basket. She would have to hang from the airship until it reached the proper position.
She knelt, gathered herself, and leaped from one craft toward the other.
The recon flyer dipped away as her weight pushed against it, and a sudden gust of wind pulled the dirigible from her locked hands. A very human gasp escaped her lips.
H_rd reached the zenith of her leap, then fell through the cold air like a stone.
"A runner in forward gunnery has a message from the first engineer, sir."
"We have our promised armor?" Captain Zai asked. It had taken long enough. Zai had questioned the value of reinforcing the forward cargo area in the first place. But the crew needed to feel that they were doing something to protect themselves. "A necessary misdirection," as Anonymous 167 called these minor deceptions of one's own subordinates.
"Yes. But the plates are not secure, sir," Hobbes relayed. "Frick is requesting no maneuvers above point-oh-five gees. They could tear loose if we use the main drive."
Captain Zai cursed. "I knew I'd pay for that armor."
"They can secure it with torches, sir, once we get out of range."
"By then we won't need it," Zai said.
Hobbes nodded.
Zai flexed the fingers of his natural hand. Going to darkmode had apparently worked. The Rix almost certainly weren't going to find them without a wild stroke of luck. In five minutes, plus another hundred seconds for safety, they could switch synesthesia back on. They would have communications, status reports. He would get command of his ship back.
And he would be able to move again. At the moment, Zai's lower back was aching from holding himself rigid in the shipmaster's chair. If he relaxed for a moment, he would topple over onto the floor.
"Any answer for Frick, sir?"
"No. We'll have communications back in a few minutes anyway. Keep that runner on station at the compoint, in case something serious comes up."
"Yes, sir." The tone of Hobbes's voice showed that she agreed.
It was odd, sitting here with her in the near-dark. The captain's and executive officer's stations were physically close, but the two inhabited different worlds. Hobbes often seemed absent, adrift amid the myriad channels of the Lynx's infostructure, while Zai tried to stay focused on the overall picture. He'd been an ExO himself, and had to resist the temptation to wallow in the vast information resources of his ship. But the war sage was unwavering on the importance of delegation; the captain left data mining to the ever-competent Katherie Hobbes.
Here in darkmode, however, wrapped in silence and cut off from the rest of the Lynx, there was an unfamiliar intimacy between them. Zai had always rated Hobbes an excellent officer, but now that his life seemed daily on the line, he appreciated her all the more.