He ordered all fleet elements to regroup—by elements, by squadrons, and then into main fleet formation. Regrouping, at the very least, requires a visible standard for soldiers to head toward. This battleground was a little short of signposts. Ships hunted for their leaders. Com links were a bleat of confusion. None of it was helped by Gregor's own stream of impossible-to-obey commands.
Sten's forces pulled away.
Team Sarla, with no one left to kill, had already pulled back onto their assault ships. Cind stood to one side of the assembly deck, the normal silence/battle of post combat letdown unheard. She had learned something that day indeed from Sten. From then on, she resolved to dance close attendance on him. To learn, and to... She smiled to herself.
Sten's getaway appeared to be working. He chanced a bit of humanity and ordered ten ships to pick up survivors from the crippled Bhor ships. As they could... if they could. They were to try to get the ships under power, but abandon any ship not capable of full drive.
It would get ticklish now. At full drive, his units would soon start running out of power.
He gave more orders. Bhor ships closed on the stolen convoy. On each, their best fueling techs were waiting. Only two Bhor craft ran dry—and Sten had full-powered ships ready to slave to them and transfer energy.
"Y' jus' might hae pulled th' biggest heist a' all, Admiral."
Sten managed a grin, then forced himself to another station. "Casualties?"
There was not much joy in this victory. He had lost almost half of his force. Otho walked up beside him and looked at the same figures. "Better than I had expected. Worse than I had hoped. But the gods decide."
Sten nodded. Perhaps. But why the hell did they have to be so murderous?
"Remember that pool, Sten."
Sten remembered. And now he had fuel to fight his war.
BOOK THREE
PATER PATRIAE
CHAPTER TWENTY
Five minutes after boarding the Santana, Raschid decided that Pattipong could have added several more deep deeps to his description of the drakh he was stepping into. Then he wondered why it had taken him so long to realize it.
It had probably been the mad scurry. Both Captain Jarvis and Mate Moran seemed to go into Overdrive Decision Time as soon as they hit the field. It could have been, Raschid thought, that if they hesitated to consider anything other than immediate lift, unpleasant alternatives would come into play.
The Santana was several generations beyond qualifying as a tramp. It must have been marked for salvage several times before its owner decided there was still life and profit in the hulk.
Beauty there had never been. As the port gravsled deposited Jarvis, Moran, and their new cook at the ship's boarding ramp, Raschid had tried to figure what the Santana had been designed for. He was blank. The ship consisted of three elongated acorns, X-braced together fore and aft. In the middle, between the acorns, a long cylinder stretched above the main hulls. Engines and drive area, Raschid guessed. But why in front? Could the tub have been originally built for some other drive than AM2? Impossible. No one would have bothered converting such a dinosaur. Nor would they have kept it in commission. Would they?
One acorn contained control rooms and crew quarters, the other two cargo. The crewpod was as puzzling inside as the Santana's exterior. Raschid got lost several times before he found the galley and his quarters. Passageways had been sealed off, then cut open at a new owner's whims. He passed compartments filled with long-abandoned machinery that must have been cheaper to chop from a system than rip out for scrap. Raschid was expecting the worst when he reached his kingdom. He was an optimist. The twin stoves were so old that they were probably wood-fueled. Later for that problem. He found his compartment and was grateful. It was pig-filthy, of course. But at least cook's hours and cook's privileges gave him his own quarters.
The bunk—if the sagging pallet against one wall deserved the title—had safety straps. Raschid seriously, if illogically, considered strapping himself in before lift. That way, if the Santana disassembled, as it seemed to have every intention of doing, there might be a recognizable corpse for the pauper's field burial.
Raschid wryly thought that this, indeed, was going to be every bit the adventure Pattipong had promised and waited for the ship to lift off Yongjukl.
Ships did not "scream" into space, except perhaps in stone-age film documentaries or in embarrassingly amateurish livies. But the Santana did just that—or perhaps he was anthropomorphizing. He felt a little like screaming himself. The McLean generators told him that "down" was half a dozen different directions before the Yukawa drive went on. The bridge held the ship on Yukawa until the Santana was out-atmosphere. A gawd-awful waste of energy—but most likely shifting to AM2 drive in-atmosphere with this scow was an invitation to demolition.
A com buzzed.
"Cookie. Stop arsin' about. Officers' mess, one hour. Crew to follow."
Raschid went back to the galley where he was met by Moran. Raschid noted that the mate was carrying a side arm. Moran took Raschid to a storeroom, unlocked it, and told him to select whatever he needed.
"How many bodies am I cooking for?"
"From these supplies—me, the skipper, first engineer. Crew's supplies are off the galley. You'll be sloppin' twelve of them."
Raschid was not surprised to find that the supplies in the locked room were not the same as in the crew larder. Officers' rations were standard ship-issue, but the crew's victuals appeared to be long-stored military-type goods—issued to a military that would have mutinied itself into oblivion generations earlier. Yes. Mutiny.
Raschid planned menus with what he had. He was a genius, he felt, at being able to cordon-bleu any drakh given him. Genius, yes, but not a god. Spices? Some sweet syrupy-tasting synthetic. Salt... and those old military rations appeared to have been salt-cured. What other condiments were in the larder had long since passed into tastelessness.
He combined foodstuffs into a concoction he hoped would be taken for a stew, put that on the heating range, and made dinner for the officers.
He need not have worked too hard. Jarvis had retired to his quarters to reward his abilities at getting the Santana once more outward bound. Moran ate—if a conveyor-belt blur of consumption was eating—whatever was in front of him and made a valiant try at his napkin. The first engineer, a morose woman named D'veen, consumed half of what was in front of her and disappeared into the engine spaces. She, like Moran, was armed.
Then he had to deal with the crew. He was in for it.
He was not—at least not for six watches, while the sailors sobered enough to appear at the table and hold down what he put in front of them.
Raschid spent the time cleaning his galley and thinking. What was he doing there? More importantly, why did he feel he was in the right place? Unanswerable. Clean the galley. Moran turned down Raschid's request that he be allowed to suit up, seal the galley, dump the atmosphere, and let the grease boil into a residue.
"First... I don't know if the bleed valve works. Second, I ain't chancin' hull integrity. Third, there ain't no guarantee we can reseal after you get done. Fourth, ain't no pig down there'd appreciate the work. Fifth, I got drakh on my mind. Get your butt off my bridge. Next time you won't walk off."