But it was beyond imagining, even for him, that an influx of crew members from the three nonhuman sentient species that inhabited the Outworlds as he knew them could account for the strangeness that emanated from the ragged formation in that holoscreen. It was just too alien, and although he did not like Sestians or Kesrans much he did not find them strange—just annoying. And Morthans, even when he had been a child and his cousins had taunted him, were still just as much part of what he was as were humans.
There was nothing familiar out there. The fleet wheeled, and came in toward Narsai in a fan formation that was clearly intended to place that world’s globe within its center.
The ships in orbit around Narsai included armed freighters, twenty-three of them just now; a passenger liner, which had a few defensive weapons but which really was not equipped to fight anyone or anything; and the usual assortment of shuttles, private yachts (rarely affected by Narsatians, though, so there were only a couple of them while an Inner World of similar population would have had dozens cluttering up its orbital pathways), and work-boats for the habitats and satellites that also accompanied Narsai in its annual journey around its sun. In other words, there really wasn’t anything out there that could even consider challenging the fleet of warships.
Maybe some of them could run, though, if their captains had brains enough to realize it was time for that. Yet Casey knew after decades of having protected civilian shipping that civvie officers weren’t trained that way. Heading for open space when they were in trouble was the exact opposite of what they were taught to do, so he was sadly unsurprised to see that although Narsai Control’s commlinks were crackling—alive with frightened voices transmitting questions, making demands for explanations that right now the controllers could not supply—the civvies were staying put.
One blip was not doing that, though. Even on a controller’s monitoring screen that particular blip generated a code all its own, a “top priority” indicator that was supposed to tell everyone who saw it (and every navigational computer that read it) that the vessel it represented was not to be challenged or interfered with in any way.
“Coming through!” was what that code said, and it was a rare circumstance under which anyone who recognized it would do anything else but give it full heed.
George Fralick aboard the Corporate Marshal Service’s long-range shuttlecraft. So small that the alien fleet probably wouldn’t bother to pursue him, so fast that he could be at New Orient—the closest Star Service base to Narsai—in two weeks’ time, easily, if he headed straight there at the shuttle’s maximum warp.
I never thought I’d be cheering for Fralick again! Casey thought, as an incredulous grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. But now I’ve got to. I guess Katy’s right, that guy who was our first captain still is inside that stuffed shirt someplace.
“Of course I’m right!” came his wife’s thought, acerbic and half-distracted. “He’s smart, he’s got guts, he can think on his feet. That’s why he was a good captain, and he hasn’t lost any of it.”
“He’s still a goddamn bastard,” Linc responded, as he gave himself a physical shake to break out of the near-trance that watching the monitors with such utter concentration had caused him to enter. “A sick bastard.”
“Yes. That, too, and someday it’s going to catch up with him. But right now every prayer I know how to say is going with him, because if he can get through and send help back to us he may be the only hope we’ve got.” Katy’s thoughts became even more distracted. “I’m going to get my parents, Linc, as soon as we drop our patient off at MinTar Medical. And I’m ditching this uniform, that may make me a coward but right now I don’t feel the least bit duty-bound to identify myself as a Star Service flag officer. I’m not sure whether Narsai Control is the worst or the best place you could be right now, because depending on that fleet commander’s strategy it could be his next target or it could be the facility he most needs to preserve for his own use later; but I’m going to bet my credits on that last option, it’s what I’d do. So I’ll see you there. Please tell the watch commander not to shoot when we come in low and fast and don’t announce ourselves first.”
“Your patient?” Linc realized he had missed some key events aboard the Archangel’s surviving shuttle, while he had stared in fascination at the alien fleet’s maneuvers. “And you know that fleet’s not under human control, Katy?”
“Of course it isn’t. It still may be the Rebs, though, if they’ve allied themselves with another space-traveling species. From what I’ve been hearing they are desperate enough to do that, and while I can’t imagine what alien species they could have hooked up with it’s clear that most of those ships weren’t built from any design we’ve ever seen before. Could be that it’s Rebs using ships they got from another species that actually has enough vessels so they can sell them cheap—but there’s something about the way they’re handling themselves that feels funny to me, something that makes me believe all those captains can’t possibly be Rebs and humans.”
She paused, awaiting his response. Casey answered her, “I read it that way, too.”
“Good.” All their professional lives they’d served as each other’s sounding boards, and even though neither liked that conclusion the fact that they had reached it independently gave it an astronomically higher chance of proving to be the truth. Romanova continued, “Rachel’s gone into labor, Linc. Months too soon. I had to use a wide-dispersion stunner to get Dan and her separated from Vargas, and afterward when I scanned her she seemed to be okay; but then suddenly her body had just had enough, and now we’ve got to get her to proper care or at best the babies are going to die.”
And at worst, of course, so would Rachel. Katy didn’t say that, but she didn’t have to.
CHAPTER 23
Linc felt the mental touch with disbelief. It couldn’t be, because Kerle Marin had been aboard the Archangel; and he had seen the Archangel die, just minutes ago. Yet there was no mistaking it, this was another Morthan’s mind—and it had to be someone who had touched him before. It was not possible for even a Morthan to reach across space, even at this quite manageable distance, to touch a consciousness that was not already familiar. Establishing a new connection required that the two individuals be in physical proximity to each other.
“It’s me, cousin.” Marin sounded—what? Bemused. The sorrow of losing his shipmates a short time earlier, the physician’s outrage at the destruction of so many lives, and his personal grief for those few beings who had treated him as an equal instead of secretly fearing him—Captain Giandrea, in particular—came through as well; but Marin was a mortal being, after all, and he was not pretending he wished he had died with his ship. And however it was that he’d wound up aboard one of those Reb or alien vessels, clearly he had already been able to get past the resulting fear and sense of strangeness.
“I believe it, but I wish I knew how.” Linc responded even as he tried to broaden the communication to include his wife; and he winced when someone else, not Marin, prevented him from doing so. “Ouch! Who was that? What in hell’s going on, cousin?”
“I don’t understand it all myself just yet, but I do know that they scanned the Archangel before she blew and that they took me off because I’m Morthan. And they also took off every gen who was still alive at that point, and a really furious Sestian and a really puzzled Kesran.”
“How? You can’t teleport unless you’ve got compatible equipment at both ends! And I don’t believe you and all those others hopped onto porter platforms when your ship was about to go up around you, when there wasn’t an ally in sight.” Casey knew what he was talking about, because he’d been there. Clearly in his case the proverbial chestnuts had always been pulled out of the fire successfully, or he would have died in action long ago; but trying to port someplace was the last thing that crossed your mind, if you were on a lone ship engaged in battle with an alien foe.