She dared a glance at the ground rushing toward her. Was there time? H_rd cupped her hands, spreading out to slow her fall. She worked her muscles to hurry the heating process, flailing as she fell. The recon flyer suddenly edged back up toward her, moving carefully in the ferocious wind, guided by the barest movements of its control surfaces. Apparently Alexander could see her against the cold background of the stars.
The flyer came alongside and steadied itself. H_rd took control of her descent, angling her cupped hands to maneuver herself toward the craft. She grabbed the flailing webbing of the gunner's seat. The fans screamed again as the recon flyer braked.
The machine pulled up from its dive at a precarious angle, h_rd dangling from one side. She looked down as the craft decelerated, the frozen earth rushing toward her.
They missed collision with the hard tundra by only a few hundred meters.
"Well, then," she said--talking to herself was an odd habit she had picked up from Rana. "At least I've had a practice run."
Executive Officer
ExO Katherie Hobbes pulled herself through the dark shaftways of the Lynx, wishing she'd put more time into zero-gee practice.
Normally before an engagement, the crew would spend days working out in variable- and zero-gee, preparing for evasive maneuvers and gravity-generator brownouts. But the Lynx had been under heavy acceleration for almost ten days. There'd been no chance for the usual touch-up exercises.
At least the captain had given her time to don a proper pressure suit.
Hobbes checked the ancient chronometer on her wrist. The captain had set the first yaw-axis maneuver for thirty seconds from now. And he had loaned Hobbes his grandfather's timepiece. Good god, the thing was old. It used some ancient circular readout that Zai had explained as she'd slipped into an armored pressure suit. The timepiece was "analog," he had said, using an almost forgotten meaning of that word. As she moved through the cold and silent passageways of the ship, Hobbes's ears registered the almost subliminal pulse of the timepiece's ticking.
Thirty seconds. She wouldn't make it before the first acceleration, a nudge to orient the Lynx away from the Rix warship, but that would be a small one. The deadman launch would come twenty seconds later. Releasing the potential energy stored in the backup drone rail would shove Lynx off its current trajectory, rocking the ship like a meteor collision. Unlike coldjet acceleration, there would be no smooth buildup. The jolt would come al! at once. The first engineer had already been warned by runners, but if she were to help Frick, she had to make it to the bow before things got too chaotic.
Even as Hobbes had left the bridge, the chief sensor officer was warning that the Rix's laser beams had ceased probing the ejecta, and were closing on the Lynx. At any second they could be under fire.
She pushed herself forward with abandon, kicking against the grabby walls as she yanked her pressure hood over her head. At least if she cracked her skull, the suit's thick carapace would afford it an extra layer of protection.
Suddenly, her ankle became tangled in something. She was yanked up short, swearing at whoever had left cable floating free under battle-stations.
But then Hobbes was pulled back forcibly, and she realized that a strong hand held her foot.
"What the hell?" she shouted.
Who was playing around, here in the midst of battle? Hobbes bent her knees, bringing herself face-to-face with the assailant, prepared to unleash a mighty stream of invective.
Then she recognized the woman: Verity Anst, a fourth-class gunnery rating, and an old friend of Gunner Thompson. Anst was one of those whom Hobbes and Zai had suspected of sympathy with the mutiny. They had never caught the last two mutineers. The Lynx was short of gunners, however, and no proof had ever come to light against Anst. They had put her under maximum surveillance, assuming that the ship's monitors would keep her honest.
In darkmode, of course, the Lynx was as blind as it was silent.
Hobbes turned and tried to push away, but Gunner Anst's hold was firm. The gunner's stats flitted across Hobbes' mind: two meters tall, ninety kilograms. Anst held on, spinning Hobbes against a bulkhead with a crack that knocked the wind from her.
She pulled Hobbes toward her, and held a knife to the ExO's throat. The blade was ceremonial, but looked hellishly lethal as it flashed in the red battle lights. "Our little traitor," Anst said, her face only centimeters away.
Hobbes felt the cold steel even through the pressure suit's plastic. She forced down panic.
"I wasn't the traitor, Anst."
"Thompson revered you, Hobbes. He wanted you. Poor bastard couldn't see what a captain's whore you were."
The executive officer blinked, suppressed emotions rising in her briefly. She forced them down.
"So, you were one of them, Anst. I always suspected."
"I know you did, Katherie," the woman said. "I felt you waiting for me to give myself away. But I've been waiting for you, too."
As the woman spoke, Hobbes felt a familiar complaint from her inner ear. The ship was turning, shifting slowly around its y-axis. Here amidships, the maneuver was subtle enough that the grinning woman before her probably hadn't noticed it.
"You played it well, Verity. But you're dead now," Hobbes said. She glanced sidelong at the chronometer, starting a countdown from twenty. "We won't be in darkmode forever."
"We'll see about that." With her free hand, Anst yanked open the hatch on the hullside wall: an escape pod. The executive officer swallowed.
"I've got a few minutes with you," Anst said in a whisper. "You, me, and this knife. And then off you go with a load of HE. Zai won't find enough of you to genoprint. I've planned this well."
Fine, Hobbes thought. Anst wanted to brag. Let her.
Katherie Hobbes willed her body to relax, counting down the few remaining seconds before the coming jolt.
First Engineer
Metal screamed all around the First Engineer. "Get to the far wall!" he shouted to his team.
Damn that idiot Zai! He was turning the Lynx too fast, Frick thought. But then the engineer saw the error he'd made, the realization coming even as he leapt from the shifting mass of armor plates. He had given Zai an absolute limit on acceleration: one-twentieth of a gee, or half a meter per second squared. But that assumed forward or backward thrust, which had an even effect throughout the frigate. Thrusting the ship into a turn, however, worked like a centrifugal gravity simulator: The force was far greater at the ship's bow and stern than it was at the center.