She did not feel the vibration; what she felt first was a tiny push that made her sway forward. She stiffened against it. Then something tapped the back of her helmet, and a new voice spoke in her ear.
“Doin’ good, Suiza. Just don’t wiggle . . . while I . . . get this tank attached . . .” Random bumps and prods, which she tried to resist so that she wouldn’t move enough to trigger the pod’s notice. She eyed her oxygen gauge. Nine. Had she really been standing there waiting more than six minutes? Apparently so. The gauge flicked down again, to eight. She could hear clicks and squeaks from her suit as her unseen rescuer tried to hook up the auxiliary tank with the least possible movement.
“Gauge?” asked the voice.
She looked. Now it read seven. “Seven,” she said.
“Damn,” said the voice. “It’s supposed to—oh.” She didn’t know what that “oh” meant, and it infuriated her. How dare they mean whatever “oh” meant? An irritating scritch, repeated over and over, as she tried not to watch the gauge. It seemed a long time, but it hadn’t flicked down to six when the indicator whipped over to the green section.
“Gauge?” asked the voice again.
“Green,” Esmay said.
“Number,” the voice said, with a bite of disapproval.
Esmay swallowed the “uh” she wanted to make and blinked to focus on the number. “One four seven.”
“Good. Now I’m going to hook into your telemetry—you’ve been out more than your suit’s rated for—”
Another set of scritches; Esmay didn’t care. She was breathing; she would not run out of oxygen.
“Your internal temp’s low,” the voice said. “Turn up your suit heater.”
She complied, and warmth rose from her bootsoles. The tremor she’d been fighting to control eased—had it been only cold, and not panic after all? She wanted to believe that, but the sour smell of her sweat denied it.
Chapter Thirteen
“We have a problem, Suiza,” said the voice in her ear. Esmay thought they could have said something more helpful. She knew they had a problem—she had a problem. “If that’s the only mine, if it blows it will probably damage only those forward compartments, which as far as anyone knows are empty anyway. And you, of course.”
No comment seemed necessary.
“We haven’t spotted any other mines—but we can’t figure out why there’s only one. If there is only one.”
Did they expect her to figure it out?
“It’s not like the Bloodhorde, but there’s no doubt that the ships that attacked were Bloodhorde ships. Came right in for the kill—Wraith got unequivocal scan data—and then broke off when Sting and Justice closed and started raking them.”
Esmay wondered about that. By rumor, if a Bloodhorde group closed with prospect of a kill, it would not break off just to avoid contact with another ship. Unless its ships were having trouble . . . she wished she could see the scan data herself. Not likely, if the mine blew. But . . . she dared a transmission. “Were they close enough to plant the mine by hand?” she asked.
“Don’t transmit,” the voice said. “If it hears you—”
“You wanted to know why,” she said. “Is Wraith’s scan tech available?”
“Wait.”
She could imagine the scene in Koskiusko’s communications shack—perhaps Major Pitak was there; certainly the captain was. A different voice came with a tiny physical tap on her EVA suit. “You’re going to upset ’em, Lieutenant.” That voice sounded amused; she wasn’t sure what it meant. She shrugged enough to move the shoulders of the suit; a chuckle came through the link. “You got an idea, huh? Good for you. I can’t figure out why that thing hasn’t blown us both—but I’m willing to live with that.” Another chuckle. Esmay felt her own stiff face relaxing into a grin.
“Suiza, just in case you’ve got an idea, we’ve patched you through to the Wraith senior scan tech. Just try to keep your transmissions short, do you understand?”
“Yes, sir. Did the Bloodhorde ships come close enough for an EVA team to plant the mine by hand, or by pod?”
A pause. Then yet another voice. “Uh . . . yes . . . I suppose. We were trying to rotate, because of the damage to the starboard shields and hull. They got pretty close . . .”
Esmay wanted to yell “NUMBERS, dammit!” but she could hear a roar in the background that might be the scan tech’s supervisor saying the same thing, for the next transmission gave her the figures she wanted. Close enough indeed; her mind raced through the equations for both EVA and pod movement . . . yes. “How soon after that did the Bloodhorde ships pull away?”
“As soon as Sting and Justice came back,” the tech said. Esmay waited, confident in that background bellow. Sure enough, the tech came back on with the precise interval. Esmay felt as if someone had run a current down her spine. Maybe they’d spotted the Fleet ships before they were fired on, or maybe they hadn’t. They’d planted a smart mine, programmed for a specific task, and then they’d gone away, leaving Wraith damaged but not killed. And why?
What did the Bloodhorde expect to happen next? A damaged Familias military vessel would not be abandoned, so they couldn’t have hoped to capture it—in fact, if they had, why mine it? Damaged Familias vessels . . . went to repair facilities. Either dockyards, in this case too far away for a cripple like Wraith to reach, or the mobile dockyards called DSRs . . . Koskiusko. What would the Bloodhorde know about DSRs? Whatever was in the public domain, certainly—and Esmay knew that the public knew DSRs were capable of taking the smaller Fleet ships into the DSR’s vast central repair bay.
That made sense. She thought it all through, then transmitted it. “The Bloodhorde chose a small ship to disable, planted a smart mine, then withdrew, so that Wraith would lead the way to a DSR. The mine’s programmed to go off when Wraith enters the repair dock—disabling the DSR. It’s not strong enough to destroy it, but it would probably be unable to make jump—”
“Certainly unable to make jump,” came Pitak’s voice in her ear.
“And thus would be immobilized for attack.” Esmay paused, but no one said anything. “Either they followed Wraith and her escort to this system, or the mine will also have a homing module to lead them here. They want the DSR, almost certainly for capture, since they could have covered Wraith with enough mines to blow the whole DSR if they’d wanted.”
Another long pause, during which the contact hissed gently in her ear. Then: “It makes sense. Never thought the Bloodhorde were that sneaky . . . and what they want a DSR for, unless they’ve got significant battle damage somewhere . . .”
Esmay rode the wave of her confident intuition. “They lack technical skills they need; they don’t have a military-grade shipyard. They want a DSR to upgrade their entire space effort. In one blow they get manufacturing facilities, parts, and expert technicians. Given a DSR, they could upgrade any of their ships to Fleet equivalency—or quickly learn to manufacture their own cruisers.”