We Few

Well, they'd make it, or they wouldn't. He loved civan, but he'd come to the conclusion that there were even more marvelous transportation options waiting beyond Marduk's eternal overcast. He'd lusted after the humans' shuttles from the instant he'd seen them in flight, and he'd been told about, and seen pictures of, the "light-flyers" and the "stingships" available on Old Earth. He wondered just how much they cost... and what he was going to be earning as a senior aide to the Prince. A lot, he hoped, because assuming they survived for him to collect his pay, he was bound and determined to get himself a light-flyer.

"How's it going?" a voice asked, and he looked up as Rastar appeared at his shoulder.

"Not bad," Honal replied, raising a warning hand to the civan as he sensed the lips drawing back from its fangs and its crest folding down. "About as well as can be expected, in fact."

"Good." Rastar nodded, a human gesture he'd picked up. "Good. They think they'll finish loading in a few hours. Then we'll find out if the engines really work."

"Won't that be fun?" Honal said dryly.

"Engaging phase drive—" Amanda Beach drew a deep breath and pressed a button "—now."

At first, the image of the planet below seemed unchanged on the bridge viewscreens. It was just the same slowly circling, blue-and-white ball it had always been. But then the ship began to accelerate, and the ball began to dwindle.

"All systems nominal," one of her few surviving engineering techs said. "Acel is about twenty percent below max, but that's right on the numbers, given our counter-grav field status. Runs one, four, and nine are still out. And charge rate on the tu

"And eleven hours to the Tsukayama Limit," Beach said, with a sigh. "Looks like it's holding. We'll find out when we try to form a singularity."

"Eleven hours?" Roger asked. He'd been standing by in the control room. Not because he felt he could do anything, but because he thought his place was here, at this time.

"Yeah," Beach said. "If everything holds together."

"It will," Roger replied. "I'll be back then."

"Okay." Beach waved a hand almost absently as she concentrated on her control board. "See ya."

"I've just had a suspicion I don't much care for," Roger said to Julian. He'd called the sergeant into his office, the former captain's office, once the phase drive had turned out to work after all.

"What kind of suspicion?" Julian crinkled his brow.

"How in the hell do we know Beach is headed for Alphane space instead of Saint space? Yes, she seems to have burned her bridges. But if she pops out in a Saint system with the ship—and me—they're going to be somewhat forgiving of any minor lapses on her part. Especially given conditions on Old Earth."

"Ack." Julian shook his head. "You've picked a fine time to think about that, O My Lord and Master!"

"I'm serious, Ju," Roger said. "Do we have anyone left who knows anything about astrogation?"

"Maybe Doc Dobrescu," Julian suggested. "But if we put somebody on the bridge to watch Beach, she's going to know damn well what we suspect. And I submit that pissing her off would be the worst possible thing we could do right now. Without her, we're really up the creek and the damncrocs are closing in."

"Agreed, and it's something I've already considered. But beyond that, my mind is a blank. Suggestions?"

Julian thought about it for a moment, then shrugged.

"Jin," he said. "Temu Jin," he clarified. Gu

"Why Jin?" Roger asked, then he nodded. "Oh. He's got the whole ship wired, doesn't he?"

"He's in the computers," Julian said, nodding in turn in agreement. "You don't have to be on the bridge to tell what the commands are, where the ship is pointed. If Dobrescu can figure out the stellar positions, and where we're supposed to be, then we'll know. And none the wiser."

"So now you want me to be a star-pilot?"

Chief Warrant Officer Mike Dobrescu glowered at the prince in exasperation. Dobrescu liked being a shuttle pilot. It was a damned sight better job than being a Raider medic, which was what he'd been before applying for flight school. And he'd also been damned good at the job. As a chief warrant with thousands of hours of no-accident time, despite surviving several occasions where accidents really had been called for, he'd been accepted as a shuttle pilot for the small fleet that served the Imperial Palace.

Not too shortly afterwards, he'd been loaded aboard the assault ship Charles DeGlopper and sent off to support one ne'er-do-well prince. Okay, he could adjust to being back on an assault ship. At least this time he was in officers' country, instead of four to a closet, like the rest of the Marines. And when they got to the planet they were headed to, he'd be flying shuttles again, which he loved.

Lo and behold, though, he'd flown exactly once more. One hairy damned ride, with internal hydrogen tanks and a long damned ballistic course, and then landed—damned nearly out of fuel—in a deadstick landing on that incomparable pleasure planet, Marduk.

But wait, things got worse! There being no functional shuttles left, and him being the only trained medic, he was stuck back in the Raider medic business, making bricks out of straw. Over the next eight months, he'd been called upon to be doctor, vet, science officer, xenobiologist, herbalist, pharmacologist, and anything else that smacked of having two brain cells to rub together. And after all that, he'd found out he was a wanted man back home.

It really sucked. But at least he was back to having shuttles under his fingertips, and he was damned if he was going to get shoved into another pigeonhole for which he had no training and less aptitude.

"I ca

"I don't want you to pilot the ship," Roger said carefully. "I want you to figure out if Beach is piloting it to Alphane space. Just that."

"The ship determines its position in reference to a series of known stars every time it reenters normal-space between tu

"Turn right at the first star, and straight on till morning," Dobrescu muttered, then shook his head. "I had a course in it—one one-hour course—in flight school, lo these many eons ago. I forgot it as fast as it was thrown at me. You just don't need it for shuttle piloting. We did a little of it on that ballistic to Marduk, but I was given the figures by DeGlopper's astrogator before we punched the shuttles. I don't think I can figure it out. I'm sorry."

"You look sorry," Roger said, shaking his head, and gave another of those one-cheek grins. "Okay, go ask around. I know Julian and Kosutic don't know any of it. Ask the rest of the Marines if any of them even have a clue. Check with all of them, because we really, really need a crosscheck on her navigation. I want to trust her, but how far is the question."