Yolande grinned. It was a much less pleasant expression than the intellectual interest of a moment before. “To business, then. Can you get me retanked on reaction mass? I ran it down somethin’ fierce, matchin’ velocities here.”
“Oh, yes. Trivial. Do you wish water or liquid oxygen?”
“Hmm. No, we’re rigged fo’ 02, we’ll go with that. How long?”
“Two days for your ship, and one to rig the stills. A week for the rest of the fleet.”
“Do it, then. First priority. We need the intelligence data on that Yankee ship.” And an installment payment on the debt they owe me, she thought. A small, small payment on a very large account.
* * *
ABOARD TRANS-AMERICAN SHIP PATHFINDER
EARTH-CERES
JUNE 12, 1982
The lounge of the Pathfinder had acquired a certain homeyness in the month and a half of transit, Cindy decided. It was on the second-highest of the eight decks in the pressure section, a semicircle on one side of the core tube, across from the galley and stores. One corner was posted with drawings and projects; she and several of the other mothers held classes for the children there, around the terminal they had appropriated. Young Alishia Merkowitz showed real talent in biology; she really should talk to the girl’s parents . . . There was a big viewer, but the passengers generally only screened movies or documentaries; the sort who moved to the Belt didn’t go in for passive entertainment.
There was a group mastering the delicate art of zero-G darts, another arguing politics. The coffee machine was going, scenting the air; it looked odd, but you did have to push the water through here. A courting couple were perched by the sole exterior viewport, but they were holding hands, oblivious to the spectacle of the stars. Two young men were building a model habitat from bits of plastic—scarcely a hobby, they were engineers and had a terminal beside them for references. She could catch snatches of their conversation: “ . . . no, no, you don’t have to use a frame and plating! Just boil out the silicates, inject water, heat and spin and the outer shell will . . . ”
Dr. Takashi moved his piece. Cindy Guzman Lefarge started and returned her attention to the go board.
“Oh, lordy, Doctor,” she said. “You’re never going to make a go player of me.”
“You show native talent,” he said, considering the board. It was electronic, and they were using light-pencils to move the pieces; the traditional stones were a floating nuisance in space.
“I’m surprised you don’t play the captain,” she said, frowning. A quarter of her pieces were gone . . . which still left her with more than her opponent, who had started with a substantial handicap. But far too many were nearly surrounded.
“Ah.” He smiled; Professor of Cybernetic Systems Analysis Manfred Takashi was a slim man, fifty, with dark-brown skin and short wiry hair. “Captain Hayakawa is impeccably polite, but I doubt that he would welcome social contact. Not from me.”
Cindy raised her brows. “Well, he is fairly reserved. I would have thought, though, you being Japanese—”
The professor laughed. “Half Japanese, my dear Mrs. Lefarge, half Japanese. Even worse, half black.”
The woman winced, embarrassed. Overt racial prejudice was rare these days in the cities of North America, even more so in space. Of course, some of the family in the South Carolina low country were still unhappy about her mother’s marriage to a Maya from Yucatan, even a much-decorated naval veteran of the Pacific campaigns back in the Eurasian War.
“Actually,” the man continued, “it is an interesting change. In Hawaii it was the Japanese side of my heritage which created problems.”
She nodded. The Imperial occupation in the early ’40s had been brutal, and the angers had taken a long time to dissipate. Even now some of the older generation found it difficult to accept how important Japan had become in the councils of the Alliance.
“You must be eager to get to work, on”—she lowered her voice—“the Project.” Best to change the subject.
“Indeed.” He turned the light-pencil in his hands. “I—”
Tchannnng. The sound went through the hull, like an enormous steel bucket struck with a fingernail. Conversation died, and the passengers looked up.
“Attention!” the captain’s voice. “We have suffered a meteorite impact. There is no danger; the hull was not breached. I repeat, there is no danger. All passengers will please return to their cabins until further notice.”
“I must get back to Janet and Iris,” Cindy said, rising briskly. She forced down a bubble of anxiety; a meteor strike was very rare—odd that the close-in radars had not detected it. “Continue the game after dinner, Doctor?”
“I hope so,” he said quietly, folding the board as he stood. “I sincerely hope so.”
“Distance and bearing,” Yolande said.
“One hundred k-klicks, closing at point-one kps relative,” the sensor officer said.
Yolande could feel the strait tension in the ship, a taste like ozone in the air. A week’s travel. Overcrowded, since she had dropped off most of the ship’s Auxiliaries who handled routine maintenance and taken on another score of Citizen crew from Batu. The main problem with Draka was keeping them from ripping at each other. Constant drill in the arcane art of zero-G combat had helped. And now action. Not that the pathetic plasma-drive soupcan out there was any menace to a cruiser, but they had to capture, not destroy. Much more difficult.
“Bring up the schematic,” she said. They would not detect the Subotai for a while yet; her stealthing was constructed to deceive military sensors.
Two screens to her left blanked and then showed 360-degree views of the Alliance vessel, Pathfinder. A ferrous-alloy barrel, basically, the aft section holding a reaction-mass tank and a simple engine. An arc broke the mass into plasma, and magnetic coils accelerated it out the nozzle, power from solar receptors or a big storage coil. Thrown out of Earth orbit much as the Subotai had been, then additional boost from a solar sail. That was still deployed, square kilometers of .05-micron aluminum foil, rigged on lines of sapphire filament; but soon they would furl it and begin velocity matching for Ceres. A long slow burn; plasma drives were efficient but low-thrust.
Would have begun their burn, she corrected herself. It was odd, how vengeance always felt better beforehand than after . . . Sternly, she pushed down weakness. There was a duty to the Race here, and to her dead. If she was too fainthearted to long for it, then nobody else need know.
Yolande reached out a hand; that was all that could move, with the cradle extended and locked about her. The couch turned on its heavy circular base to put her hand over the controls. The schematic altered: command and communication circuits outlined in color-coded light. Provided this is up-to-date—
“When’s their next check-in call?’ she said.
“Five minutes.”
There were no Alliance warships nearby or in favorable launch windows, but it was important not to give them more warning time than was needful. She wanted to have Subotai back with the flotilla long before anything could arrive; this was direct provocation, and it could escalate into anything up to a minor fleet action. Probably not. Still . . .
Her fingers played across the controls. “Here. See this rectenna? Throw a rock at it first. Time it to arrive just after they report everything normal.”
“Making it so,” the Weapons Officer said, keying. “Careless of them, all the com routed though that dish.” A low chuckle from some of the nearer workstations.