“Long jumps—longer than we made coming in. I’d expect them to go for the short one, with so few of them aboard.”
“Now on the connecting lines—how does this ship handle series jumps?”
“It doesn’t. Or rather, in theory it can, and we did coming out after you, but usually there’s a pause of several hours for recalibration between jumps.”
“Besides,” Esmay said. “They’ll want to get more of their people aboard. The intruders have been working as hard as we have—without relief, and shorthanded.”
“So we’ve got roughly sixty hours before you think we’ll come out of jump, and until then all we have to cope with is the ones aboard.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Captain Seska wants to know how far the repairs on Wraith can get by then,” Frees said.
Commander Jarles shrugged. “We have no access to the main inventory stores—and we can’t move anything from SpecMat while we’re in FTL. I suppose Major Pitak will know about the structural repairs—” Esmay decided this was no time to tell him that nothing was going to come from SpecMat by the exterior transport system until it was rebuilt.
“Sixty hours,” Bowry said. “Nobody can come in from outside while we’re in FTL flight—and surely those Bloodhorde are getting tired by now. There aren’t that many—if we can get back in contact with the rest of the ship, we might be able to take control back.”
“And get ready for whatever’s waiting when we come out of jump,” Esmay said. “If they’re jumping to a place where they have a battle group waiting . . . how many ships would that be?”
“With the Bloodhorde—five or six, probably.”
“A two-part plan,” Bowry said. “Get control of this ship, and defeat whatever’s waiting for us.”
“For which we need warships,” Jarles said. “We can’t mount weapons on Koskiusko.”
“Who’s here for Weapons?” Esmay asked. “I know Commander Wyche is in T-1.”
“It can’t be done,” Jarles said firmly.
Esmay looked at him, then glanced at Bowry. Bowry spoke up.
“I think, Commander, to make best use of the resources of the 14th, the senior person in each department should assist in our planning.”
For a moment he puffed around the neck, exactly like the frogs Esmay remembered from home. Then he relented. “All right, all right.”
When the fourth person started to remind the group that they couldn’t do what they usually did, Esmay lost patience.
“Now that we know what we can’t do, it’s time to start thinking what we can do. Fifty-eight hours, at this point: what can we do in fifty-eight hours? Thousands of intelligent, inventive, resourceful people, with the inventory we have available, can come up with something.”
“Lieutenant—” began Jarles, but Commander Palas held up his hand.
“I agree. We don’t have time for the negatives. Do any of you know what the senior officers were planning in case of a Bloodhorde assault?”
Bowry outlined it quickly. “So,” he finished, “I’d think that getting a Bloodhorde ship into T-4 would still work. Is there some way to get it . . . sort of stuck, so they can’t move it? I think they’d come boiling out, and if they were somehow diverted away from it, some of our people could get in—if it could be unstuck . . .”
“There’s that new adhesive . . .” said someone in back. “Really strong, but depolymerizes in the presence of specific frequencies of sound. We could coat the barriers—”
“That’s what we need to hear. Now we know we don’t have that many troops capable of close-contact fighting—someone think of a way to immobilize Bloodhorde troops, who will be wearing EVA battlesuits.”
“So gas won’t work,” someone muttered. “If we knew the signal characteristics of the suits . . .”
“What about gluing them down?”
“Then our people couldn’t get to the ship—the stuff stays tacky too long.”
“You’ll think of something,” Esmay said. “Now—about getting to the rest of the ship—”
“Once we’re out of FTL, we could rig a communications cable back around to T-1 . . .”
“Once we’re out of FTL, the airlocks will work. And we have lots of EVA suits; our people work in vacuum a lot.”
Commander Bowry nodded. “Then to head the team that’s going to get Wraith as ready as possible to be put out on the drive test cradle: Major Pitak, because she’s Hull and Architecture.”
“I’ll need to pull people from—”
“Go ahead. If there’s a conflict, get back to me. Commander Palas, could you head the team that will plan the capture of a Bloodhorde ship, assuming we can get one into T-4.”
“Certainly. May I ask where you’ll get your crew?”
“That was my first assignment from Admiral Dossignal; I’ll choose a crew from those who’ve served aboard warships fairly recently. Lieutenant Suiza, I’d like you for my exec, when the time comes, but in the meantime, I’d like you to work on the assignment Admiral Dossignal gave you: prepare Security here to defend these wings against the intruders. I suspect they’ll try to get into T-4 to prepare it for their own ships.”
“Yes, sir.” Esmay wondered how she could possibly get ready for both, but having argued against negative thinking, she knew better than to say anything.
Vokrais grinned happily at his pack. Bloodied, bitten, but not defeated, and they had the bridge, its surviving crew demoralized and—at least temporarily—cooperative. The ship had made its jump into FTL without falling apart. The wings were locked off, helpless. Three of them had been reduced, at least largely, to unconscious dreamers and corpses. T-3 and T-4 so far held out; he’d expected more resistance there, but it didn’t matter. When they came out of jump in a few hours, the ship pack would be waiting, with enough warriors to manage them. After all, they had no real weapons over there, and they were only mechanics and technicians anyway.
His people had even gotten some rest; it didn’t take the whole pack to subdue these weaklings. Three of them were sleeping now. By making the bridge crew work longer shifts, they’d kept them tired enough that there’d been so sign of rebellion. He stretched, easing his shoulders. They had done everything they’d set out to do, done it better than predictions; their commander had not believed they’d be able to get the ship through jump. He was waiting for a message; he’d be delighted to get the whole prize.
Still, he hated leaving any part of the job undone. He had missed out on four years of raiding; the pack had fewer shipscars than any other of their seniority. They’d paid—paid dearly, in honor and opportunity—for the preparation necessary for this operation. He didn’t want to share the glory with anyone. If he could offer his bloodbond the ship entire, he could raise his banner any time he chose, independent command.
He glanced around. Hoch looked bored; he had tormented the Serrano cub until all the fun was out of it. Three of his remaining pack would be enough to hold the bridge against the unarmed, spineless sheep that now sat the controls.
Excitement roiled in his gut again. “Let’s do it,” he said in his own tongue. His pack looked up, eager. Who should stay behind? As he described what they were going to do, he looked at their faces, looking for the slightest hint of weakness, exhaustion, or even worse, contentment.
First they would unlock the barriers to T-4 . . . with the crippled Wraith in T-3, most of the personnel would be in T-3. Could they repair Wraith in time? He doubted it, but even if they did it could not outfight a whole ship pack. Vokrais considered which deck they should use. According to the ship maps, Deck 17 contained hydroponics and even a few small gardens tucked among the gantry supports. Unlikely anyone would be watching for them up there, and they’d have a good view of the entire repair bay. They could work their way down, using their weapons and gas grenades to subdue anyone in their way, and drive them to a holding area at the base . . . and they had no way out. Not if he opened only the Deck 17 hatch . . . they’d be sure to close it behind them.