Manticore Ascendant 1: A Call to Duty (eARC) Read online

  But Craddock wasn’t saying anything. In fact, there was every chance that he’d already silently signaled his own entry into the wager.

  Regardless, Yarrow had ten dollars on him. For her sake alone he had to give it a try. Feeling slightly disgusted, both at the wager and at his own willingness to go along with the game, he caught one toe on another anchor ring and gave himself a fresh push. Esterle had farther to go to her end of the vane, but with her head start she had already arrived at the array. Drawing a wrench from her hip kit, she reached out a hand to catch the vane’s edge to bring herself to a halt.

  Travis was looking down, searching for another anchor ring, when the universe lit up like a strobe light in front of him.

  He jerked his eyes back up, his helmet speaker erupting with a babble of exclamations, startled curses and a single short, gasping scream. Esterle was hurling away from Vanguard, her suit sheathed in a fading coronal haze. Over the babble Craddock’s voice cut through like a plasma torch— “Emergency—Dutchman!” he bellowed. “Forward starboard, tracking thirty degrees bow-ventral. I say again: Dutchman, thirty degrees bow-ventral.”

  Travis blinked away the last of the afterimage, his teeth snapping together as someone behind him hauled him up short by his safety line before he could make the same deadly contact with the inexplicably powered array. Only then did he belatedly realize that Esterle’s own safety line was gone, apparently vaporized by the same jolt that had sent her flying. Already she was barely visible as she flew into the darkness, her body spinning slowly, her suit’s lights extinguished.

  And without pausing to think it through, possibly the first time in his life he’d ever done something like that, Travis pulled himself down into a crouch, snapped off his own safety line, and shoved himself off the hull after her.

  “Long!” Craddock barked. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Travis didn’t bother to answer. His full attention was on the body falling toward the distant starscape, tweaking his intercept vector with short bursts from his thruster as he sped toward her. A new set of voices had entered the uproar coming from his helmet speaker as a rescue team acknowledged the accident and prepped a shuttle for launch.

  The one voice Travis didn’t hear was Esterle’s. He could only hope the ominous silence was simply a matter of the electrical discharge having fried her com along with her safety line.

  It seemed to take forever, but it was probably no more than three minutes before he floated up behind her. Steeling himself, he reached out and closed his hand around her arm.

  And instantly lost his grip as she gave a violent convulsion. “It’s okay—it’s okay,” he shouted, even knowing that she probably couldn’t hear him. Her spin had now taken her arm out of his reach; grabbing a leg instead, he pulled himself around her and climbed up her suit until he was facing her.

  Facing, but not seeing anything. Her back was to Vanguard’s distant lights, and the star glow wasn’t nearly strong enough to penetrate her helmet’s tinting. “It’s okay, Esterle,” he called again, remembering this time to press his faceplate against hers before he spoke. The book said physical contact would allow enough sound transference for two spacers to communicate if their coms were out. “It’s me, Long. You hear me? Esterle?”

  “Oh, God,” a faint voice came back, tense and torn and ragged. Bracing himself for the worst, Travis fumbled with his sleeve controls and flicked on his helmet light.

  And caught his breath. Her face, like her voice, was almost unrecognizable. She was staring past him at the stars, her eyes wide, her cheeks pinched, her throat working. Like she was staring hell straight in the face…

  He cursed under his breath. The book also warned about spacer agoraphobia, but he’d never realized Esterle had it. Maybe she hadn’t realized it, either. “Hey!” he snapped, shaking her shoulders. “Esterle! Look at me. Damn it, Esterle, look at me!”

  She started, her eyes lowering from the distant stars to his face as if only just noticing he was there. Her arms, which had been hanging out limply from her body, abruptly came to life, her hands gripping his arms hard enough for him to feel through the material and air pressure. “Long?” she gasped. “Oh, God—”

  “It’s all right,” he said as soothingly as he could. “Just keep your eyes on me. You got that? They’re sending a boat; but until it gets here, keep your eyes on me. You got that, Spacer?”

  A hint of life seemed to come back into the panicked eyes. “Got it,” she said, her voice edging back toward normal. “What happened? There was a flash—oh, God. What did I do?”

  “You didn’t do anything,” Travis assured her grimly. She was still gripping his arms, but he managed to get a hand to the diagnostic epaulet on his left shoulder and pull out the line and jack. “The array was supposed to be tagged out,” he continued, working the jack around and into the readout socket on Esterle’s own epaulet. “I guess someone missed the order. Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” Esterle said, her gaze unfocusing a bit as she apparently ran a mental inventory. “But it’s getting hot in here. I think my life-support must be fried.”

  “Oh, it’s fried, all right,” Travis confirmed grimly, running his eye down the analysis scrolling along the display at the right side of his helmet. “So are your com, your thruster controls, all your readouts—you probably already knew that one—and your locator. Oh, and the surge got your safety line, too.”

  “I didn’t know they were conductive.”

  “I guess if you throw out enough voltage, anything can be conductive.”

  “I guess so.” Abruptly, her grip on his arms tightened. “Wait a minute. Are you all right? I didn’t even ask—”

  “No, no, I’m fine,” Travis assured her. “I just figured that if you weren’t going to stick around and work, why should I?”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet that’s what you thought,” she said, a shiver running through her. “I just—”

  “Eyes on me,” Travis said tartly. “Come on, Esterle—we’re the only two people in the universe.”

  “Right.” She smiled uncertainly. “Are you asking me out or something?”

  Travis’s mouth went suddenly dry. “We are out,” he managed, fighting to keep his tone light. “But okay—let’s say we were looking to have dinner together. Where do you like to go?”

  “I don’t know,” Esterle said. “No, wait, yes I do. There’s this little Italian place in southeast Landing I like.”

  “Okay, that’s probably too far to walk,” Travis said. In the distance behind her, he saw a small set of lights detach themselves from Vanguard and head their way. “But I’m sure we can borrow a car. So what’s your favorite dish there?”

  “Well, I usually order either the parmigiana or else the spaghetti and Italian sausage…”

  They were discussing appetizers, and the relative merits of fried zucchini versus stuffed mushrooms, when the rescue boat arrived.

  * * *

  Travis’s testimony in front of Commander Bertinelli’s board of inquiry lasted an hour. Which was, a distant part of his mind noted, roughly three times longer than the actual incident.

  “Thank you, Spacer Long,” Bertinelli said gravely when the last question had been asked and answered. “We’ll call you back if we need anything more. Dismissed.”

  “Yes, Sir.” Travis hesitated. “A question, Sir, if I may?”

  Bertinelli’s forehead creased, but he gave a small flick his fingertips. “Go ahead.”

  “Will your report be available to those of us aboard Vanguard, Sir?” Travis asked. “Or will it just be going to System Command and the Defense Minister?”

  “Why do you ask?” Bertinelli asked evenly.

  “I’d like to know what happened, Sir,” Travis said. “Whatever mistakes were made need to be—”

  “You want someone punished, Spacer Long? Is that it?”

  “No, Sir, I’m not looking for punishment,” Travis said hastily. “I just want any problems with procedure to
be corrected so something like this doesn’t happen again.”

  “The procedures are fine,” Bertinelli said stiffly. “There were a few small lapses in communication, that’s all. Someone thought the tagged power circuit was an inadvertent holdover from the previous day, while the test that had been scheduled for three days after the vane should have been installed never had its date and time reset. The proper procedures, properly followed, would have covered both problems.”

  “Yes, Sir, I understand,” Travis said, thoroughly confused now. “But if the procedures were adequate, then the people involved must not have followed them correctly.”

  “And back we go to punishment,” Bertinelli growled. “You think anyone who makes a mistake, no matter how small or innocent, should be demoted or spend a night in the brig? Do you, Spacer Long?”

  “I—” Travis broke off, trying desperately to figure out what he was supposed to say. Questions like that one weren’t in the book.

  “Or shall we look a bit farther from carelessness to deliberate violations of regulations?” Bertinelli went on darkly. “Or were you unaware of proper procedure during a Dutchman?”

  Travis felt his throat tighten. That one, unfortunately, was in the book. “No, Sir. I mean, yes, Sir, I was aware of them.”

  “And yet you chose to charge off after Spacer Esterle,” Bertinelli said. “Never mind you could have been just as quickly and easily lost as she was.”

  Travis winced. Except that his suit’s beacon was working, and Esterle’s wasn’t. He’d made that point in his testimony, in fact.

  Still, he could see Bertinelli’s point, and the reason for that particular rule. If he’d missed Esterle, the rescue boat would have had two drifters to retrieve instead of one. “I thought it would make the rescue easier, Sir.”

  “Your job in that situation isn’t to think, Spacer Long,” Bertinelli ground out. “Your job is to follow procedure. If and when modifications are called for, someone with more experience and authority than you will inform you of that fact. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Sir,” Travis said between clenched teeth.

  “Good.” Bertinelli eyed him a moment longer, then lowered his eyes to his tablet. “Fortunately for everyone, in this case the damage and injuries were minor. A set of reprimands for the parties involved, I think, followed by some refresher work and extra drill should take care of the problem.”

  Or in other words, Vanguard’s senior officers were going to downplay the whole mess and try to sweep it under the rug. Never mind that someone could have died, or that the whole gravitics array could have been fried by grounding it to the hull through Esterle’s suit—

  “Unless you have other questions,” Bertinelli continued, in a tone that suggested Travis had better not, “we’re done here. Dismissed.”

  “Yes, Sir.” Executing an about-face, Travis strode out of the XO’s office.

  Atherton was waiting for him in the passageway. “How’d it go?” he asked, falling into step as Travis headed for the lift.

  “About like you’d expect,” Travis growled. “They’re going to pretend the whole thing never happened and tape it over by assigning some procedural refresher work to the systems people who screwed up.”

  “They’d better add some repair work to the mix, then,” Atherton said. “You know that all-ship notice that’s supposed to go out every fifteen minutes when there are spacers on the hull? Turns out the guy who was testing the array didn’t hear it because the intercom speaker in that compartment wasn’t working.”

  Travis snorted. “Great.”

  “Isn’t it?” Atherton said. “Speaking of people and things not working, Esterle’s about to head out, and she wanted to see you before she left.”

  Travis’s heartbeat picked up. “She said that?”

  “Yeah, and if you want to catch her you’d better hustle,” Atherton said. “Shuttle’s leaving in ten.”

  He found Esterle waiting at the shuttle hatchway, one finger hooked around the a handhold to keep from drifting with the air currents. Her forehead, wrinkled with thought or concern, smoothed out as Travis came around the corner. “There you are,” she said as he floated to a landing at the handhold beside her. “I didn’t think you were going to get out of Bertinelli’s inquisition in time.”

  “There was a lot to talk about,” Travis said, looking her up and down. It was the first time he’d seen her since they were taken off the rescue boat and hustled to different sections of sickbay. There were no bandages he could see, or any bulges in her fatigues that might be splints or immobilization casts. “How are you feeling?”

  “Pretty good, actually,” she said. “I figured I’d at least come out of it with a few electrical burns, but I didn’t even get scorched. Turns out those suits are really good at siphoning current along the outside layers.”

  “Frying a few sets of electronics along the way.”

  “Well, there is that,” Esterle conceded. “I hope they’re not going to take the repair work out of my pay.”

  “If anyone’s on the hook for that, it won’t be you,” Travis assured her. Her voice sounded fine, too, with none of the slurring or changes in tone that might indicate brain or neural damage. Maybe Bertinelli hadn’t been as far off the mark as Travis had thought when he described the incident as minor. “So I heard you going on a couple months’ leave?”

  She lowered her eyes. “Not leave,” she corrected quietly. “I’m being transferred groundside. Yeoman or tech work, probably, at either Casey-Rosewood or the Academy. They—” she swallowed “—don’t think I should be in space anymore.”

  “Oh,” Travis said, feeling suddenly off-balance. With his full focus on Esterle’s physical well-being, he hadn’t even considered the possibility that she might have sustained psychological trauma from the incident. “Did they think that, or did—? No, never mind.”

  “Or did I think it?” She smiled faintly. “Go ahead, you can say it.”

  “I didn’t mean anything,” Travis hastened to assure her.

  “I know,” she said. “It’s okay. I didn’t really know it myself. Not until—” She stopped, a shiver running through her.

  “I’m sorry,” Travis said. “I’m—we’re going to miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too.” Esterle glanced around. “Vanguard, not so much. Maybe someday Parliament will give the Navy the money it needs to make these ships something to be proud of again. Until then—” She brought her eyes back to him. “Anyway, I wanted to thank you before I left. For, you know. Everything.”

  “You’re welcome,” Travis said, wondering if he dared reach over and hug her. Out in the open like this, with the shuttle prep crew floating around… “I just wish I could have done more.”

  “You did what I needed,” she assured him. “You’re a good friend, Travis.”

  She hesitated, and for a second Travis thought she was going to offer him a hug. But all she did was reach out and briefly squeeze his arm. “Take it easy, Long. I’ll see you around.”

  And with that, she grabbed hold of the handhold and pulled herself through the hatchway into the shuttle.

  Three minutes later, she and the shuttle were gone.

  All the way back to the gravitics duty station Travis found himself replaying that last scene through his head. Friend. Take it easy.

  No hug.

  Basically, the story of his life.

  With the whole thing still buzzing around his brain, he was a meter into the duty station before he realized that the entire division was present, crammed into the compartment literally from deck to ceiling.

  His first, self-conscious thought was that they’d assembled to honor him for his part in Esterle’s rescue. A second later, to his relief, he realized that they weren’t facing him, but were instead gathered around Craddock, who seemed to be running through a long list of assignments. Craddock glanced over as Travis came into view— “And Long will be helping Bowen,” he said. “Okay, you’ve got your jobs. Get busy.” />
  Like a 3-D version of a parade-ground maneuver, the entire crowd turned in unison and surged for the hatchway. With a quick foot-grab on one of the deck handholds, Travis managed to get himself out of the way before the flow ran over him. “What’s going on?” he asked as Bowen started past.

  “We’re getting Vanguard ready to fly,” she said, grabbing his arm to bring herself to a halt. The extra momentum threatened to drag both of them off the deck, but Travis managed to maintain his foot grip. “Can you believe it? We’re actually being deployed.”

  “Where?” Travis asked, struggling to wrap his brain around this sudden new development. Vanguard had been sitting in Manticore orbit so long that it was a standing joke to refer to her as Rearguard.

  “Manticore-B,” Bowen said. There was an excitement in her voice that Travis had never heard there before. “Unicorn Belt. We’ve been transferred to Gryphon Fleet.”

  “What, all two ships of it?”

  “Don’t be snide,” Bowen admonished. “At least it’s something. Better than just something, really—we’re probably going to end up as the new flagship.”

  With some admiral or commodore coming aboard, no doubt. Briefly, Travis wondered how Captain Davison was going to react to having someone new watching over his shoulder.

  “We’ll be starting with a month of work-up exercises and maybe some gunnery practice,” Bowen continued. “Oh, and get this—we’re going to get to do a real hyperspace jump along the way.”

  Travis felt his eyes go wide. Vanguard was actually going to hoist her Warshawski sails? “That’s great.”

  “Don’t get too enthusiastic,” Bowen warned. “It’s only a little jump, you know, just from Manticore-A to Manticore-B. It’s not like we’re going to Haven or something. There’s also this thing called the wall-crossing ceremony for hyperspace first-timers that you’re not going to find very pleasant.”

  A knot started to form in Travis’s stomach. He’d heard about the crossing-the-wall thing, but no one had ever gone into any detail. “What kind of unpleasant is it?”

  “Let’s just say it’s not painful, but you’d better plan to leave your dignity at the lock,” Bowen said. “But forget that. Everyone who’s ever done hyper has been through it, we all survived, and you will, too. The point is that we get to fly, we get to see something besides Manticore—” she waved her free hand around her “—and we get to use our gravitics for something besides test runs.”