She cut it back quickly, started dumping velocity, no comfortable process, and the slightly speed-mad telemetry and slightly drug-mad human brain fought for precise location; overestimate that dump and she could take Norway right into that rock or into another ship.
“Clear, clear, all in now but Europe and Libya,” com reported.
No mean feat of navigation, to find Omicron so accurately, to come in within middle scan, right in the jump range, after a start from near Russell’s, far away. Fail their time, and they would have been in the jump range when something else came in, and that was disaster. “Good job,” she sent to all stations, looking at the reckoning Graff flashed to her center screen: “Two minutes off mark but dead on distance; can’t cut it much closer at our starting range. Good signals being received. Stand by.”
She took her pattern in relation to Omicron, checked through data; within the half hour there was a signal from Libya, which had just come in. Europe came in a quarter hour after that, from another plane.
That was the tale of them, then. They were in one place, at one time, which they had not been since their earliest operations. Unlikely as it was Union would come on them in strength here, they were still nervous.
Computer signal came in from Europe. They were given breathing space, to rest. Signy leaned back, took the com plug from her ear, unharnessed and got up finally while Graff moved to the post she had vacated. They were not at the disadvantage of some: Norway was one of the mainday ships… her main command staff on the schedule they were following now. Others, Atlantic, Africa, and Libya, were alter-day, so that strike hours were never remotely predictable, so that there were ships with their main crews available on either schedule. But they were all mainday now, a synchronization they had never undergone, and the alterday captains did the suffering, jump and reversed hours combined.
“Take over,” she bade Graff, wandered back through the aisle, touched a shoulder here and there, walked back to her own nook in the corridor… passed it by. She walked on back instead to crew quarters, looked in on them, alterday crew, most drugged senseless, to get their rest despite jump. A few, having an aversion to that procedure, were awake, sat in the crew mainroom looking better than they probably felt. “All stable.” she told them. “Everyone all right?”
They avowed so. They would drag out now, safe and peacefully. She left them to do that, took the lift down to the outershell and the troop quarters, walked the main corridor behind the suiting area, stopped in one barracks after another, where she interrupted knot after knot of men and women sitting and trading speculations on their prospects… guilty looks and startled ones, troopers springing to their feet in dismay to find themselves under her scrutiny, a frantic groping after bits of clothing, a hiding of this and that which might be disapproved; she did not, but the crew and troops had some quaint reticences. Some here too slept drugged, unconscious in their bunks; most did not… gambled, in many a compartment, while the ship shot her own dice with the Deep, while flesh and ship seemed to dissolve and the game continued on the other side of a far-stretched moment.
“Going to be a bit slow down here,” she would say in each case. “We’re in pattern and we’re all stable; at your ease down here, but keep yourselves within a minute’s prep for moving. No reason to think there’s a problem, but we take no chances.”
Di Janz intercepted her in the main corridor after the third such visit, nodded courtesy, walked with her through this private domain of his, seeming pleased in her presence among his command. Troops braced when Di walked with her, came to blank attention. Best, she thought, to pull the pretended inspection, just to let them know command had not forgotten them down here. What was coming was the kind of operation the troops dreaded, a multiple-ship strike, which raised the hazard of getting hit. And the troops had to ride it out blind, useless, jammed in the small safety the inner structure of the ship could afford them. There were no braver when it came to walking into possible fire, boarding a stopped merchanter, landing in some ground raid; and they took in stride the usual strike, Norway sweeping in alone, hit and run. But they were nervous now… she had heard it in the muttered comments which filtered over open com — always open: Norway tradition, that they all knew what was going on, down to the newest trooper. They obeyed, would obey, but their pride was hurt in this new phase of the war, in which they had no use. Important to be down here now, to make the gesture. Queasy as they were with jump and drugs, they were at their lowest, and she saw eyes brighten at a word, a touch on the shoulder in passing. She knew them by name, every one, called them by name, one and another of them. There was Mahler, whom she had taken from Russell’s refugees, looking particularly sober and no little frightened; Kee, from a merchanter; Di had come years ago, the same way. Many, many more. Some of them were rejuved, like her, had known her for years… knew the score as well, too, she reckoned, as well as any of them knew it. Bitter to them that this critical phase was not theirs, could not be.
She walked the dark limbo of the forward hold, round the cylinder rim, into the eitherway world of the ridership crews, a place like home, a memory of other days, when she had had her quarters in such a place, this bizarre section where the crews of the insystem fighters, their mechanics, prep crews, lived in their own private world. A whole other command existed here, right way up at the moment, under rotation, ceiling down the rare times they were docked. Two of the eight crews were here, Quevedo’s and Almarshad’s, of Odin and Thor; four were off duty; two were riding null up in the frame… or inside their ships, because locking crews through the special lift out of the rotation cylinder took one rotation of the hull, and they could not spare that time if they jumped into trouble. Riding null through jump — she recalled that experience well enough. Not the pleasantest way to travel, but it was always someone’s job. They had no intent to deploy the riders here at Omicron, or two more sets of them would have been up there in the can, as they called it, in that exile. “All’s as it should be,” she said to those in demi-prep. “Rest, relax, keep off the liquor; we’re still on standby and will be while we’re here. Don’t know when we’ll be ordered out or with how much warning. Could have to scramble, but far from likely. My guess is we don’t make mission jump without some time for rest. This operation is on our timetable, not Union’s.”
There was no quibble. She took the lift up to main level, walked the shorter distance around to number one corridor, her legs still rubbery, but the drugs were losing their numbing effect. She went to her own office/quarters, paced the floor a time, finally lay down on the cot and rested, just to shut her eyes and let the tension ebb, the nervous energy that jump always threw into her, because usually it meant coming out into combat, snapping decisions rapidly, kill or die.
Not this time; this was the planned one, the thing to which they had been moving for months of small strikes, raids that had taken out vital installations, that had harried and destroyed where possible.