Miles swore in frustration. Of course! Oseran full-feedback space armor logically implied an Oseran monitor nearby. He should have realized it instantly. Fool he was, to have simply assumed the enemy was being directed from inside the docking station. He ground his teeth in chagrin. He had totally forgotten, in the overwhelming excitement of the attack, in his particular terror for Elena, the first principle of larger commands: don't get balled up in the little details. It was no consolation that Auson appeared to have forgotten it too.
The communications officer hastily abandoned the game of suit sabotage and returned to his proper post. "They're calling for surrender, sir," he reported.
Miles licked dry lips, and cleared his throat. "Ah—suggestions, Trainee Auson?"
Auson gave him a dirty look. "It's that snob Tung. He's from Earth, and never lets you forget it. He has four times our shielding and firepower, three times our acceleration, three times our crew, and thirty years experience. I don't suppose you'd care to consider surrender?"
"You're right," Miles said after a moment. "I don't care for it."
The assault on the docking station was nearly over. Thorne and company were already moving into adjoining structures for the mopping-up. Victory swallowed so swiftly by defeat? Unbearable. Miles groped vainly in the pit of his inspiration for a better idea.
"It's not very elegant," he said at last, "but we're at such incredibly short range, it's at least possible—we could try to ram them."
Auson mouthed the words: my ship . . . He found his voice. "My ship! The finest technology Illyrica will sell, and you want to use it for a frigging medieval battering ram? Shall we boil some oil and fling it at 'em, while we're at it? Throw a few rocks?" His voice went up an octave, and cracked.
"I bet they wouldn't expect it," offered Miles, a little quelled.
"I'll strangle you with my bare hands—" Auson, trying to raise them, rediscovered the limits of his motion.
"Uh, Sergeant," Miles called, retreating before the rapidly breathing mercenary captain.
Bothari uncoiled from his chair. His narrow eyes mapped Auson coldly, like a coroner planning his first cut.
"It's got to be at least tried," Miles reasoned.
"Not with my ship you don't, you little—" Auson's language sputtered into body language. His balance shifted to free one foot for a karate kick.
"My God! Look!" cried the communications officer.
The RG 132, torpid, massive, was rolling away from the docking station. Its normal space drives blared at full power, giving it the usual acceleration of an elephant swimming in molasses.
Auson dropped, unheeded, from Miles's attention. "The RG 132, loaded, has four times the mass of that pocket dreadnought," he breathed.
"Which is why it flies like a pig and costs a fortune in fuel to move!" yelled Auson. "That pilot officer of yours is crazy if he thinks he can outrun Tung—"
"Go, Arde!" cried Miles, jumping up and down. "Perfect! You'll pin him right up against that smelting unit—"
"He's not—" began Auson. "Son-of-a-bitch! He is!"
Tung, like Auson, was apparently late in divining the bulk freighter's true intentions. Verniers began to flare, to rotate the warship into position to thrust toward open space. The dreadnought got one shot off, which was absorbed with little visible effect in the freighter's cargo area.
Then, almost in slow motion, with a kind of crazy majesty, the RG 132 lumbered into the warship—and kept going. The dreadnought was nudged into the huge smeltery. Projecting equipment and surface housings snapped and spun off in all directions.
Action calling for reaction, after an aching moment the smeltery heaved back. A wave of motion passed down its adjoining structures, like a giant's game of crack-the-whip. Smashed edges of the dreadnought were caught up on the smeltery, thoroughly entangled. Gaudy chemical fires gouted here and there into the vacuum.
The RG 132 drifted off. Miles stood before the tactics room screen and stared in stunned fascination as half the freighter's outer hull delaminated and peeled into space.
The RG 132 was the final detail to be mopped up in the capture of the metals refinery. Thorne's commandos smoked the last of the Oserans out of their crippled ship, and cleared the outlying structures of resisters and refugees. The wounded were sorted from the dead, prisoners taken under guard, booby traps detected and deactivated, atmosphere restored in key areas. Then, at last, the manpower and shuttles could be spared to warp the old freighter into the docking station.
A smudged figure in a pressure suit stumbled out of the flex tube into the loading bay.
"They're bent! They're bent!" cried Mayhew to Miles, pulling off his helmet. His hair stuck out in all directions, plastered by dried sweat.
Baz and Elena strode up to him, looking, with their helmets off, like a pair of dark knights after the tournament. Elena's hug pulled the pilot off his feet; from Mayhew's suffused look, Miles guessed she was still having a little trouble with her servos. "It was great, Arde!" she laughed.
"Congratulations," added Baz. "That was the most remarkable tactical maneuver I've ever seen. Beautifully calculated trajectory—your impact point was perfect. You hung him up royally, but without structural damage—I've just been over it—with a few repairs, we've captured ourselves a working dreadnought!"
"Beautiful?" said Mayhew. "Calculated? You're as crazy as he is—" He pointed at Miles. "As for damage—look at it!" He waved over his shoulder in the direction of the RG 132.
"Baz says they have the equipment to rig some sort of hull repairs at this station," Miles soothed. "It'll delay us here for a few more weeks, which I don't like any more than you do, but it can be done. God help us if anybody asks us to pay for it, of course, but with luck I should be able to commandeer—"
"You don't understand!" Mayhew waved his arms in the air. "They're bent. The Necklin rods."
The body of the jump drive, as the pilot and his viral control circuitry was its nervous system, was the pair of Necklin field generator rods that ran from one end of the ship to the other. They were manufactured, Miles recalled, to tolerances of better than one part in a million.
"Are you sure?" said Baz. "The housings—"
"You can stand in the housings and look up the rods and see the warp. Actually see it! They look like skis!" Mayhew wailed.
Baz let his breath trickle out in a hiss between his teeth.
Miles, although he thought he already knew the answer, turned to the engineer. "Any chance of repairing—?"
Baz and Mayhew both gave Miles much the same look.
"By God, you'd try, wouldn't you?" said Mayhew. "I can see you down there now, with a sledgehammer—"
Jesek shook his head regretfully. "No, my lord. My understanding is the Felicians aren't up to jump ship production on either the biotech or the engineering side. Replacement rods would have to be imported—Beta Colony would be closest—but they don't manufacture this model any more. They would have to be specially made, and shipped, and—well, I estimate it would take a year and cost several times the original value of the RG 132."
"Ah," said Miles. He stared rather blankly through the plexiports at his shattered ship.
"Couldn't we take the Ariel?" began Elena. "Break through the blockade, and—" She stopped, and flushed slightly. "Oh. Sorry."
The murdered pilot's ghost breathed a cold laugh in Miles's ear. "A pilot without a ship," he muttered under his breath, "a ship without a pilot, cargo not delivered, no money, no way home . . ." He turned curiously to Mayhew. "Why did you do it, Arde? You could have just surrendered peaceably. You're Betan, they'd have to have treated you all right. . . ."
Mayhew looked around the docking bay, not meeting Miles's eyes. "Seemed to me that dreadnought was about to blow you all into the next dimension."
"True. So?"
"So—well—it didn't seem to me a, a right and proper Armsman ought to be sitting on his ass while that was going on. The ship itself was the only weapon I had. So I aimed it, and—" He mimed a trigger with his finger, and fired it.
He then inhaled, and added with more heat, "But you never warned me, never briefed—I swear if you ever pull a trick like that again, I'll, I'll—"
A ghostly smiled tinged Bothari's lips. "Welcome to my lord's service—Armsman."
Auson and Thorne appeared at the other end of the docking bay. "Ah, there he is, with the whole Inner Circle," said Auson. They bore down upon Miles.
Thorne saluted. "I have the final totals now, sir."
"Um—yes, go ahead, Trainee Thorne." Miles pulled himself to attentiveness.
"On our side, two dead, five injured. Injuries not too serious but for one bad plasma burn—she'll be needing a pretty complete facial regeneration when we get to proper medical facilities—"
Miles's stomach contracted. "Names?"
"Dead, Deveraux and Kim. The head burn was Elli—uh, Trainee Quinn."
"Go on."
"The enemy's total personnel were 60 from the Triumph, Captain Tung's ship—twenty commandos, the rest technical support—and 86 Pelians of whom 40 were military personnel and the rest techs sent to restart the refinery. Twelve dead, 26 injured moderate-to-severe, and a dozen or so minor injuries.
"Equipment losses, two suits of space armor damaged beyond repair, five repairable. And the damages to the RG 132, I guess—" Thorne glanced up through the plexiports; Mayhew sighed mournfully.
"We captured, in addition to the refinery itself and the Triumph, two Pelian inner-system personnel carriers, ten station shuttles, eight two-man personal flitters, and those two empty ore tows hanging out beyond the crew's quarters. Uh—one Pelian armed courier appears to have—uh—gotten away." Thorne's litany trailed off; the lieutenant appeared to be watching Miles's face anxiously for his reaction to this last bit of news.
"I see." Miles wondered how much more he could absorb. He was growing numb. "Go on."
"On the bright side—"
There's a bright side? thought Miles.
"—we've found a little help for our personnel shortage problem. We freed 23 Felician prisoners—a few military types, but mostly refinery techs kept working at gunpoint until their Pelian replacements could arrive. A couple of them are a little messed up—"
"How so?" Miles began, then held up a hand. "Later. I'll—I'll be making a complete inspection."
"Yes, sir. The rest are able to help out. Major Daum's pretty happy."
"Has he been able to get in contact with his command yet?"
"No, sir."
Miles rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, and squeezed his eyes shut, to contain the throbbing in his head.
A patrol of Thorne's weary commandos marched past, moving a batch of prisoners to a more secure location. Miles's eye was drawn to a squat Eurasian of about fifty in torn Oseran grey-and-whites. In spite of his battered and discolored face and painful limp, he maintained a hard-edged alertness. That one looks like he could walk through walls without space armor, Miles thought.
The Eurasian stopped abruptly. "Auson!" he cried. "I thought you were dead!" He towed his captors toward Miles's group; Miles gave the anxious guard a nod of permission.
Auson cleared his throat. "Hello, Tung."
"How did they take your ship without—" the prisoner began, and stopped, as he assimilated Thorne's armor, Auson's—in light of his immobilized arms, decorative—sidearm, their lack of guards. His expression of amazement changed to hot disgust. He struggled for words. "I might have known," he choked at last. "I might have known. Oser was right to keep you two clowns as far away from the real combat as possible. Only the comedy team of Auson and Thorne could have captured themselves."
Auson's lips curled back in a snarl. Thorne flashed a thin, razor-edged smile. "Hold your tongue, Tung," it called, and added in an aside to Miles, "If you knew how many years I've been waiting to say that—"
Tung's face flushed a dark bronze-purple, and he shouted back, "Sit on it, Thorne! You're equipped for it—"
They both lunged forward simultaneously. Tung's guards clubbed him to his knees; Auson and Miles grabbed Thorne's arms. Miles was lifted off his feet, but between them they managed to check the Betan hermaphrodite.
Miles intervened. "May I point out, Captain Tung, that the—ah—comedy team has just captured you?"
"If half my commandos hadn't been trapped by that sprung bulkhead—" Tung began hotly.
Auson straightened, and smirked. Thorne stopped flexing on its feet. United at last, thought Miles, by the common enemy . . . Miles breathed a small "Ha!" as he spotted his opportunity to finally put the disbelieving and suspicious Auson in the palm of his hand.
"Who the hell is that little mutant?" Tung muttered to his guard.
Miles stepped forward. "In fact, you have done so well, Trainee Thorne, that I have no hesitation in confirming you in your brevet command. Congratulations, Captain Thorne."
Thorne swelled. Auson wilted, all the old shame and rage crowding in his eyes. Miles turned to him.
"You have also served, Trainee Auson," Miles said, thinking, overlooking that understandable small mutiny in the tactics room. . . . "Even while on the sick list. And for those who also serve, there is also a reward." He gestured grandly out the plexiport where a free-fall crew with cutting torches was just beginning to untangle the Triumph from its entrapment. "There is your new command. Sorry about the dents." He dropped his voice. "And perhaps next time you will not be so full of assumptions?"
Auson turned about, waves of bewilderment, astonishment, and delight breaking in his face. Bothari pursed his lips in appreciation of Miles's feudal ploy. Auson in command of his own ship must eventually wake to the fact that it was his own ship; Auson subordinate to Thorne must always be a potential focus for disaffection. But Auson in command of a ship held from Miles's hands became, ipso facto, Miles's man. Never mind that Tung's ship in either of their hands was technically grand theft of the most grandiose . . .
Tung took just slightly longer than Auson to understand the drift of the conversation. He began to swear; Miles did not recognize the language, but it was unmistakably invective. Miles had never seen a man actually foam at the lips before.
"See that this prisoner gets a tranquillizer," Miles ordered kindly as Tung was dragged away. An aggressive commander, Miles thought covetously. Thirty years experience—I wonder if I can do anything with him . . . ?
Miles looked around and added, "See the medtech and get those things taken off your arms, Captain Auson."
"Yes, sir!" Auson substituted a sharp nod for a curtailed attempt at a salute, and marched off, head held high. Thorne followed, to oversee further intelligence gathering from prisoners and the freed Felicians.
An engineering tech in want of supervision descended upon them instantly, to carry off Jesek. She grinned proudly at Miles. "Would you say we've earned our combat bonus today, sir?"
Combat bonus? Miles wondered blankly. He gazed around the station. Thinly spread but energetic activities of consolidation met his eye wherever he turned. "I should think so, Trainee Mynova."
"Sir." She paused shyly. "Some of us were wondering—just what is our pay schedule going to be? Biweekly or monthly?"
Pay schedule. Of course. His charade must continue—how long? He glanced out at the RG 132. Bent. Bent, and full of undelivered cargo, unpaid for. He'd have to keep going somehow, until they at least made contact with Felician forces. "Monthly," he said firmly.
"Oh," she said, sounding faintly disappointed. "I'll pass the word along, sir."
"What if we're still here in a month, my lord?" asked Bothari as she left with Jesek. "It could get ugly—mercenaries expect to be paid."
Miles rubbed his hands through his hair, and quavered with desperate assertiveness, "I'll figure something out!"
"Can we get anything to eat around here?" asked Mayhew plaintively. He looked drained.
Thorne popped back up at Miles's elbow. "About the counterattack, sir—"
Miles spun on his heel. "Where?" he demanded, looking around wildly.
Thorne looked slightly taken aback. "Oh, not yet, sir."
Miles slumped, relieved. "Please don't do that to me, Captain Thorne. Counterattack?"
"I'm thinking, sir, there's bound to be one. On account of the escaped courier, if nothing else. Shouldn't we start planning for it?"
"Oh, absolutely. Planning. Yes. You, ah—have an idea to present, do you?" Miles prodded hopefully.
"Several, sir." Thorne began to detail them, with verve; Miles realized he was absorbing about one sentence in three.
"Very good, Captain," Miles interrupted. "We'll, uh, have a senior officer's meeting after—after inspection, and you can present them to everybody."
Thorne nodded contentedly, and dashed off, saying something about setting up a telecom listening post.
Miles's head spun. The jumbled geometries of the refinery, its ups and downs chosen, apparently, at random, did nothing to decrease his sense of disorientation. And it was all his, every rusty bolt, dubious weld, and stopped-up toilet in it . . .
Elena was observing him anxiously. "What's the matter, Miles? You don't look happy. We won!"
A true Vor, Miles told himself severely, does not bury his face in his liegewoman's breasts and cry—even if he is at a convenient height for it.