“Shit,” Jonah said, with quiet conviction. “Report. And stabilize that spin.” The streaking pinwheel in the exterior-view screen slowed and halted, but the control surface beside it continued to show the Catskinner twirling end-over-end at a rate that would have pasted them both as a thin reddish film over the interior without the compensation fields.
The screen split down the middle as Ingrid began establishing their possible paths.
“We are,” the computer said, “traveling at twice our velocity at switch off, and on a path twenty-five degrees further to the solar north.” A pause. “We are still, you will note, in the plane of the elliptic.”
“Thank Finagle for small favors,” Jonah muttered, working his hands in the control gloves. The Catskinner was running on her accumulators, the fusion reactor, and its so-detectable neutrino flux shut down.
“Jonah,” Ingrid said. “Take a look.” A corner of the screen lit, showing the surface of the sun and a gigantic pillar of flare reaching out in their wake like the tongue of a hungry fire-elemental. “The pussies are burning up the communications spectra, yowling about losing scoutboats. They had them down low and dirty, trying to throw the slugs that went into the photosphere with us off course.”
“Lovely,” the man muttered. So much for quietly matching velocities with Wunderland while the commnet is still down. To the computer: “What's ahead of us?”
“For approximately twenty-three point six lightyears, nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“Hard vacuum, micrometeorites, interstellar dust, possible spacecraft, bodies too small or nonradiating to be detected from our position, superstrings, shadowmatter—”
“Shut up!” he snarled. “Can we brake?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, this will require several hours of thrust and exhaust our onboard fuel reserves.”
“And put up a fucking great sign, 'Hurrah, we're back' for every pussy in the system,” he grated. Ingrid touched him on the arm.
“Wait, I have an idea… is there anything substantial in our way, that we could reach with less of a burn?”
“Several asteroids, Lieutenant Raines. Uninhabited.”
“What's the status of our stasis-controller?”
A pause. “Still… I must confess, I am surprised.” The computer sounded surprised that it could be. “Still functional, lieutenant Raines.”
Jonah winced. “Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?” he said plaintively. “Another collision?”
Ingrid shrugged. “Right now, it'll be less noticeable than a long burn. Computer, will it work?”
“97% chance of achieving a stable Swarm orbit. The risk of emitting infrared and visible-light signals is unquantifiable. The field switch will probably continue to function, Lieutenant Raines.”
“It should, it's covered in neutronium.” She turned her head to Jonah. “Well?”
He sighed. “Offhand, I can't think of a better solution. When you can't think of a better solution than a high-speed collision with a rock, something's wrong with your thinking, but I can't think of what would be better to think… What do you think?”
“That an unshielded collision with a rock might be better than another month imprisoned with your sense of humor… Got, all those fish puns…”
“Computer, prepare for minimal burn. Any distinguishing characteristics of those rocks?”
“One largely silicate, one 83% nickel-iron with traces of—”
“Spare me. The nickel-iron, it's denser and less likely to break up. Prepare for minimal burn.”
“I have so prepared, on the orders of Lieutenant Raines.”
Jonah opened his mouth, then frowned. “Wait a minute. Why is it always Lieutenant Raines? You're a damned sight more respectful of her.”
Ingrid buffed her fingernails. “While you were briefing up on Wunderland and the Swarm… I was helping the team that programmed our tin friend.”
“Are you sure?”
The radar operator held her temper in check with an effort. She had not been part of the Nietzsche's crew long, but more than long enough to learn that you did not backtalk Herrenmann Ulf Reichstein-Markham. Bastard's as arrogant as a kzin, she thought resentfully.
“Yes, sir. It's definitely heading our way since that microburn. Overpowered thruster, usual spectrum, and unless it's unmanned they have a gravity polarizer. 200 G's, they pulled.”
The guerrilla commander nodded thoughtfully. “Then it is either kzin, which is unlikely in the extreme since they do not use reaction drives on any of their standard vessels, or —”
“And, sir, it's cool. Hardly radiating at all, when the fusion plant's off. If we weren't close and didn't know where to look… granted this isn't a military sensor, but I doubt the ratcats have seen him.”
Markham's long face drew into an expression of disapproval. “They are called kzin, soldier. I will tolerate no vulgarities in my command.”
Bastard. “Yessir.”
The man was tugging at his asymmetric beard. “Evacuate the asteroid. It will be interesting to see how they decelerate, perhaps some gravitic effect… And even more interesting to find out what those fat cowards in the Sol system think they are doing.”
“Prepare for stasis,” the computer said.
“How?” Ingrid and Jonah asked in unison. The rock came closer, tumbling, half a kilometer on a side, falling forever in a slow silent spiral.
Closer…
“Interesting,” the computer said. “There is a ship adjacent.”
“What?” Jonah said. His fingers slid into the control gloves like snakes fleeing a mongoose, then froze. It was too late; they were committed. “Very well stealthed.” A pause, and the asteroid grew in the wall before them, filling it from end to end.
Tin-brained idiot's a sadist, Jonah thought.
“And the asteroid is an artifact. Well hidden as well, but at this range my semi-passive systems can pick up a tunnel complex and shut-down power system. Life support on maintenance. Twelve seconds to impact.”
“Is anybody there?” Jonah barked.
“Negative, Jonah. The ship is occupied; I scan twinned fusion drives, and hull-mounted weaponry. Concealed as part of the grappling apparatus. X-ray lasers, possible railguns. Two of the cargo bays have dropslots that would be of appropriate size for kzin light seeker missiles. Eight seconds to impact.”
“Put us into combat mode,” the Sol-Belter snapped. “Prepare for emergency stabilization as soon as the stasis field is off. Warm for boost. Ingrid, if we're going to talk you'll probably be better able to convince them of our bona fides.”
The ripping-cloth sound of the gravity polarizer hummed louder and louder, and there was a wobble felt more as a subliminal tugging at the inner ear as the system strained to stop a spin as rapid as a gyroscope's. The asteroid was fragments glowing a dull orange-red streaked with dark slag, receding; the Catskinner was backing under twenty G's, her laser-pods starfishing out and railguns humming with maximum charge.
“Alive again,” Jonah breathed, feeling the response under his fingertips. The wall ahead had divided into a dozen panels, schematics of information, stresses, possibilities; the central was the exterior view. “Tightbeam signal, identify yourselves.”
“Sent. Receiving signal, also tightbeam.” A pause. “Obsolete hailing pattern. Requesting identification.”
“Request video, same pattern.”
The screen flickered twice, and an off right panel lit with a furious bearded face. Tightly contained fury, in a face no older than his own, less than thirty. Beard close-shaven on one side, pointed on the right. Yellow-blond and wiry, like the close-cropped matt on the narrow skull; pale narrow eyes, mobile ears, long-nosed with a prominent boney chin beneath the carefully cultivated goatee. Behind him a control chamber that was like the Belter museum back at Ceres, an early-model independent miner. But modified, crammed with jury-rigged systems of which many were marked in the squiggles-and-angles kzin script; crammed with people as well, some of them in armored spacesuits. An improvised warship, then. Most of the crew were in neatly tailored gray skinsuits, with a design of a phoenix on their chests.