"Who ordered that?" Gretchen examined a secondary panel controlling the medical bay environment. A thought had occurred to her and she wanted to just check one thing…
"I can guess," Maggie snarled, exposing her incisors. "A cursed carrion bird watching us from the branches of a dead, rotting tree!"
"Who?" Gretchen found the control set she wanted and tapped out a series of commands. A pale violet light flickered on in the examining room. "A bird? Oh — you mean a hummingbird." She glanced up at the surveillance camera. "He's just making sure our guest doesn't get out. Dai — does the outer hatch work?"
The gunner shook his head. He'd been trying to get the lock to override for five minutes — all to no avail. The door out of Medical into the rest of the hab ring was sealed tight. "We're still trapped," he said, running his hand over the metallic surface. "High-ex rounds from this Luger might penetrate."
"Not inside the ship," Gretchen said in a sharp voice. Her whole attention was fixed on the examining room, where the slow pulsing violet glow seemed to etch every surface in sepia tone. "Well, now…"
The Cornuelle
Hadeishi overhanded onto the bridge, tunic straight, uniform jacket entirely neat. Kosho and Hayes were seated at the main navigation station, heads bent over the display. The Marine heicho standing watch near the hatchway coughed sharply, then straightened to attention. A difficult task in z-g, but he was an Imperial Marine.
Heicho Tonuac started to announce Hadeishi's presence, but the captain shook his head minutely as he slid nimbly into his shockchair. Kosho and Hayes looked up in surprise, catching sight of his entrance, and the exec immediately moved to her own station.
"Sho-sa, sound battle stations. Recall all work crews and prepare to take us out of orbit," Hadeishi said without preamble as he settled into his chair, powered motors whining to align the shockfoam with his back and legs. "Full emissions control, Thai-i Hayes. Release active control of the weather satellites and spin the hyperspace generators down to minimum. Tell Engineering I want as shallow a gravity dimple as possible."
The bridge was filled with immediate activity; men and women shifting to combat stations, low voices keying comm to the various ship's departments. There were no questions, only a swift response. Hadeishi felt a stab of pride. A fine crew.
Kosho keyed open the all-hands channel, her oval face only showing the faintest hint of exasperation at Hadeishi's abrupt announcement. "All hands, zero-g in five minutes. Acceleration in nine minutes. All hands stand to battle stations."
A warning tone sounded throughout the Cornuelle and every starman and Marine aboard rushed to secure whatever compartment they were in. Even through the mass of the ship, Hadeishi felt the rumble of the hab rings spinning down, and the more distant, muted thunder of the hyperspace drive wicking to a low flame. A schematic of the ship unfolded on his side panel, each compartment showing status, each airlock and transit point glowing in a soft outline. One by one the sections changed color as they sealed and locked.
"One minute to z-g," Kosho announced, finally sitting down and letting the arms of her shockchair fold around her. There was a flurry of movement and a tousled-headed midshipman Smith slid into his own station, fingers working busily to seal his jacket. Hayes looked back to the captain from his panel.
"Satellites are ready to release — shall I force orbital decay?"
Hadeishi nodded, his stylus sketching a trajectory on his main panel. "A lengthy descent, Mister Hayes. I want no debris to reach the ground. Work crews?"
"All aboard," Kosho replied, listening to the boat officer on her earbug. "Hyperdrive has spun down. Skin mesh is active, comm arrays withdrawn, active tracking cold. We are on passive detection only."
"Sublight engines at low power, Mister Hayes. Here is your plot." The captain flicked a glyph with his stylus and the motion plot appeared in the threat-well. Hadeishi felt a tug of disappointment — Ephesus Three had no moon, which would have made the Cornuelle's escape path much shorter — and he'd been forced into a long ellipse to swing away from the planet. "Refine please — we must orient our engine flare away from the planet. Once we have moved out of the plane of the ecliptic we can go to higher power, but only if the body of the ship blocks line-of-sight to our thrust plume."
"One minute to boost." Kosho began to count seconds.
Hadeishi felt the engines come up as a faint, thready vibration in the panel under his hand. Acceleration tugged at his sleeve, but in the tight embrace of the shockchair he barely noticed.
The Cornuelle began to move, slowly and carefully, swinging away from the planet and the distant dot of the Palenque. From Hayes's reworked plot, Hadeishi saw they could shift to cruising speed in approximately sixteen hours. A long slow pull, he thought with a flash of irritation. My thoroughbred forced to plod in the mud.
"Time?" Mitsuharu looked to Kosho with interest. The exec flushed, one slim hand diving into the pocket of her duty jacket, then looked guiltily to the clocks on her command panel.
"Seven minutes," she said. Hadeishi thought he could see a faint blush on her cheeks.
"Excellent."
After thirty minutes of acceleration gentle enough to win Thai-i Hayes a pilot's berth on a Pochteca starliner, Hadeishi ordered the crew secured from battle stations and raised himself from the captain's chair. Feeling Kosho's eyes on him as intent as any targeting laser, the chu-sa turned to the Navigation and Weapons stations. "We will discuss finding the Tyr in thirty minutes, after the duty watch changes."
Hadeishi returned to his cabin, where the steward had cleaned up his abandoned tea and put away the usual litter of books and 3v readers which accumulated around the captain's desk and workstation. Ship's night had already come, the dinner hour passed and a fresh off-duty uniform was laid out for him. Hadeishi took a moment to strip down and shower. After his allotted six minutes, he combed out his hair — grimacing at the threads of white beginning to appear among the oily black — and tied back a heavy queue behind his head. Kosho might boast a longer fall of raven hair, but Hadeishi thought he could present himself at court, if the need arose.
Which, he thought ruefully, is extremely unlikely. He owned an admirable service record, but his "secret" personnel jacket — where a Fleet officer numbered one's patrons among the Imperial clans or in the Diet — was sadly lacking. There was a single letter, carefully preserved, expressing the gratitude of the Laird MacLaren for the timely intervention of the Bara-class destroyer Toge during a Megair raid on the MacLaren-owned mining world of New Devon. But Mitsuharu doubted the MacLaren household even remembered the incident at this late date.
When he returned to the bridge, Kosho and Hayes — who had obviously not had the luxury of a shower — were waiting on either side of the threat-well, the softly glowing holospace crowded with indicators, icons and velocity markers. Hadeishi paused in the entryway and spoke softly into his comm. "Kusaru-san, please bring three teas — very sweet — and two tubes of miso."
There was barely a grunt in answer from his steward, but Hadeishi knew the old man would see to the matter immediately.