Ship's Boy (The David Birkenhead Series) Read online

  …and immediately wished that I hadn’t. It was a virtual sea of red pips, half of them converging on us. “Dad!” I exclaimed, swiveling the monitor to face him. “Look!”

  He glanced over, then his eyes widened. “God above!” he muttered. Then he turned back to his own duties.

  “But…” I complained before biting off the words. I was crew now, not just a silly passenger. So it wasn’t for me to judge if our captain was about to get us all killed.

  We rolled and rolled, then suddenly the ride roughened as Broad Arrow left the taxiway and sought a clean patch of grass to take off from. Meanwhile, something very strange happened on the tactical display. All the blue-- and therefore friendly-- pips were racing towards us! It was a stupid thing to attempt on some levels; even as I watched half a dozen or more of our fighters vanished from the display as they attempted to turn away from their enemies in mid-dogfight and concentrate in order to clear a patch of sky for the Arrow to fly thorough. Men were willingly accepting death in order to save milord, I suddenly realized. For the first time in my life, I wondered why anyone would do such a thing.

  Then a new voice spoke up from Dad’s intercom speaker. It was Captain Saunders. “Tobias,” he asked softly. “How’re we doing?”

  Father bared his incisors for an instant before replying. “As well as can be expected,” he admitted eventually. “We’ll either fly or collapse into a quantum black hole, one or the other.”

  “You run a tight engine room, Tobias,” the pilot replied. “Obviously, there’ll be no verification checks.”

  “Yeah,” my dad agreed, nodding. “I’m liking what I’m seeing so far, all but number five rod. And that’ll do, unless we’re damned unlucky indeed.”

  “Good,” Captain Saunders agreed. There was a long pause while he conversed with the control tower. Then his attention returned to Dad. “In that case, I suppose you won’t mind if we also unship ‘A’ turret during the initial translation.”

  My father’s mouth dropped wide open, and so did mine. A hyperfield’s natural state was to project itself skin-tight over the entire outside of the ship; while it was indeed possible to create small holes at the muzzles for the guns to fire through, each such exception complicated the engineer’s task enormously. Out in flatter space it wasn’t so bad. But during a takeoff, and an emergency one at that…“Are you… I mean…”

  “We won’t make it without at least some of the guns,” Captain Saunders explained. “And the Imperials won’t be expecting them either.” He sighed. “You’re good, Tobias. The best I’ve ever seen. Wing it; that’s an order. I don’t expect the results to be pretty. And if you can’t manage, well…” He left the rest unsaid.

  Suddenly Father’s eyes were wide and the stink of lapine terror filled the engineering spaces. It wasn’t all Dad’s—some of it was mine, too. His jaw worked once, then a second time as if he were about to object. Then his fingers began flying across his control board like I’d never seen before and I knew better than to interrupt him even for an instant. So I looked at the tactical display again—the blue dots were still converging on us, and sure enough a red-free area was developing as the Boyens were forced out of the developing kill-zone. Then the ground shook again and the crimson dot nearest us vanished.

  “Sync navigation to Field core… Mark!” Captain Saunders declared as Father ignored the command to verify the automatic hookup. Clearly he had other fish to fry, and just this once I thought our commanding officer might forgive him. I turned all my attention to the control rods—they were doing fine, just like always, But looking at them was the only way I could help Dad.

  “Close your visor and energize your Field, David,” Dad muttered, and my ear-linings flushed a deep red—in the excitement I’d almost forgotten. Engineers always turned on their Fields during takeoffs and at other key moments for protection from possible radiation surges.

  “Five,” the first officer declared as Father continued to punch keys and change screens and otherwise attempt to compress a week’s worth of complex adjustments into mere seconds. “Four, three, two, one…”

  Then the lights dimmed and Broad Arrow screamed in agony, her poorly-adjusted coils twisting her in directions that no living mind could perceive. And I screamed as well, nightmare visions of contorted space and a collapse into forever slashing across my own suddenly deformed soul. Then Father was screaming too, though he didn’t slow down a bit, “A” turret was blasting away at something…

  …and we were at last lurching across the sky.

  4

  I’d been inside an unbalanced Field before; Dad had rigged a little setup in the back of the hanger so that I could pass the adaptation test before being formally approved as an apprentice. A few unlucky individuals went temporarily insane under chaotic warp conditions and therefore couldn’t be held responsible for their actions. These poor souls had to be strait-jacketed during all translations for everyone’s safety, even as mere passengers. In order to pass my test I’d undergone total disorientating misery for over an hour while performing a task that required my total attention—playing a complex videogame, in my case—and while my score had suffered a little I’d passed easily. But even that experience was poor preparation for what I was undergoing now; Dad’s testing-Field hadn’t been rigged nearly so far out of true as this one, and I also hadn’t been scared out of my wits going in. As it was I tested the sick-tube in my suit for the very first time—it worked amazingly well—and tried to focus my wayward, ever-shifting consciousness on the Field coils. Even as I did so, number five edged up into the amber.

  “Dad!” I cried out, though through my warped perceptions it sounded more like deep-voiced giant saying Dard-de! There was a prescribed way of phrasing reports to avoid confusion due to the distortion, and I used it even though it probably would’ve sounded funny to an outsider. “Double-ewe cee! Rod! Fiv-ver! One-Oh-Thu-ree!”

  My father nodded, but otherwise didn’t respond at all. A hundred and three—one hundred was the yellow area’s border—wasn’t all that bad. Probably the unit was stressed as could be due to the out-of-balance condition, and since he was already doing all he could to fix that, well…

  Just then I heard a series of rapid-fire explosions above my head—they were amazingly sharp and loud. It was ‘A’ turret, which was located only a few feet above us. I’d never heard it fire before, and the sound rather frightened me until I realized what it was. What scared me even more, though, was the way that number-five rod’s temperature shot skyward as the Field warped even further out of true at the insult. “Dad!” I cried out again!”

  “I already know,” he replied, deceptively calm as his hands flew over the keyboard. “Compensating now.” And sure enough, the temp dropped almost as quickly as it’d risen…

  …until suddenly a new string of explosions raced down the hull, this time well forward of us. “Shit,” Dad observed, his voice calm and flat. Once more, the temps shot skyward.

  “We’ve been hit, Tobias,” Captain Saunders informed us unnecessarily. “Compensate with everything you’ve got! I can’t afford to reduce power—we’re borderline on making orbit and I expect we’ll need every erg.”

  “Aye-aye, sir,” Dad responded as all the core-rod indicators soared into the red. “Understood.” Then he turned to me. “David, I’m going to need a spare EVA tank; I fear that we’re going to have to open up the engine room to vacuum. Go get one for me, and another for yourself.”

  My jaw dropped. I’d never heard of letting vacuum into an engine room on purpose before, not for anything!

  “Do it, son!” he urged. “I’ve no time to argue!”

  I nodded; orders were orders and this was hardly the time to question them. “Closing my board,” I acknowledged. “All rods are in the red, sir.”

  “All in the red,” he acknowledged. There was something terribly sad in his voice, though I couldn’t quite grasp what or why. “Go get me those tanks, son! On the bounce, now!”

  Ther
e were spare EVA cylinders stashed here and there all over the place; if Dad had only asked for one I’d have had to go no further than the engineering spaces lock. But because he specified two I had to make my way into passenger country, where a dozen of the things were stowed near the main lock. It was a long, difficult trip even under ideal conditions; Broad Arrow was pretty large as personal VIP spacers went, though of course any space-to-space cargo vessel would dwarf her. Even worse, as in most passenger vessels there were only a handful of places where the ship’s “working” corridors intersected with those frequented by the civilians. So I had to go well-for’ard before working my way back to the lock, then make the same round-about trip on the return leg carrying the cylinders. Fortunately no one challenged me for being away from my station; either Dad had let folks know I was coming, or more likely everyone was just too busy just then to worry much about a mere stray apprentice.

  I was right in the middle of passenger country with an EVA tank in each hand when the artificial gravity failed. Suddenly the half-gravity that was ship’s standard during takeoff transformed itself into the five or so gees of actual acceleration we’d finally worked up to after our no-hardpoint liftoff. I was lucky as could be in that I was caught at the bottom of the main companionway instead of halfway up it, and when the two normally hefty but manageable tanks suddenly turned to lead I simply released them and let myself flop forward, just as the training manual advised. The impact hurt, yes. But I was still a kid and it wasn’t so bad. For heavier and less-flexible adults, such a fall could often be deadly. Then and only then the klaxon that should’ve gone off before the system failure began to sound. “Catastrophic Field failure imminent!” an automated voice advised. “Take shelter! Take shelter!”

  “Dad!” I cried out into my comm-link. If the Field failed under load, no one in the after sections of Broad Arrow could even hope to survive. “Get out of there!”

  “I love you, David,” he responded. “Make your mother and me proud!”

  Then there was a brilliant flash. I felt the torn, unbalanced Field waver sickeningly…

  …and everything aft of the emergency buffer bulkhead collapsed into another universe. Including Dad.

  5

  I didn’t have much time to think about Dad being gone just then—as catastrophic as a Field collapse was for the engineering spaces, the disaster was plenty brutal on the rest of the ship, too. It was sort of like an unbalanced liftoff in that it torqued the hull more ways than ordinary beings could perceive, only about a bajillion times worse. Not a single ship had ever been salvaged once her engine rooms collapsed, not even billion-credit liners. Proud Broad Arrow was now little more than scrap, even her tiniest component parts too distorted for re-use.

  The first thing I had to do, being caught in passenger country at the time of the disaster, was to make certain of the hull integrity of whatever compartment I found myself in until receiving definite instructions from a fully-qualified spacer—my textbook on dealing with space emergencies was very clear on the subject. I pushed myself up off the deck and half-spun in mid-air. The wall indicator was strobing brilliant red, and fast—there was major leakage taking place somewhere! I bounced off the ceiling—a bit clumsily because I’d hadn’t gotten around to advanced null-gee maneuvering training yet—and grabbed the bundle of tarpatches stored behind the telltale. But it wasn’t long before I realized my efforts were hopeless. I’d placed perhaps my dozenth patch when I looked further forward and saw that at least ten structural members had somehow been driven through the main for’ard bulkhead. They were still protruding, so no mere tarpatch could hope to stop the resulting gaps. Reluctantly, for the main companionway was a key ship’s thoroughfare, I grabbed my spare EVA cylinders, fell back and sealed the emergency airlock.

  By then I was almost halfway through my patches, and for what gain? While I might’ve been able to maintain pressure in the corridor I was standing in, I stopped and asked myself what the point would be? My prime duty was supposed to be ensuring the safety of the passengers, after all, and there weren’t any around to breathe the air I might or might not save. Dad had taught me that when in doubt following the book was usually the best thing to do. “Usually” wasn’t the same as “always”, he’d also explained, and I figured that maybe this was one of those times.

  So I looked up and down the corridor for inspiration, and my guts froze. I was in the VIP area now, where the over-large cabins were built right up against the outer hull so that they might be equipped with viewports. That also meant they were up against hard vacuum…

  …and sure enough, every single telltale was solid red, save milord’s own! And even it was blinking fast!

  Cursing myself for blindly following the rules instead of looking around and thinking for myself, I leapt down the passage and grabbed a handhold as I reached milord’s lock. The solid red cabins held only dead men, it was virtually certain, while here there was still at least faint hope. The pressure-door refused to cycle until I entered my crewman’s override code—this was because the air was unbreathable on the far side, on the assumption I was a passenger too silly to read the telltale. Then finally the door rose…

  …and there arose the most ungodly wind I’d ever known as the already-thin corridor air rushed into what couldn’t have been more than a fifth of an atmosphere or so.

  There wasn’t time to think; as the gale eased to a mere strong breeze I released the fitting I’d been holding and let the flow draw me under the still-rising door and inside. Instantly it was clear what was the matter—a line of six evenly-spaced hand-sized dents, presumably the result of hits from an atmospheric fighter’s cannon, ran at an angle just blow the largest viewport. Each was tarpatched—apparently someone had thought and acted quickly, for a passenger. But the cracks at the center of each dent were too large and had sucked the patch-juice on through. Without wasting a second I peeled and slapped two more patches on each dent. The two toughest were the last ones on the far end, where some intelligent but untrained person had tried stuffing their socks down into the leaky juice—it’d probably helped some, but of course wasn’t nearly good enough. I yanked the ruined silk out, then glommed on my double-patches and pushed off for the pressure door. It closed without making a fuss, and was almost all the way down when I yanked open the ‘dump’ valve on my one of my EVA tanks to restore pressure. Next I opened my helmet-visor and listened intently—there was a distinct whistle emerging from the closet, which was set against the now-vacuum-filled cabin next door. I floated inside, closed my eyes, concentrated…

  …and almost without looking slapped my last patch on a stress-crack perhaps half an inch long. For an instant, I let my head hang in relief— milord’s cabin was sound again, or at least sound enough for the moment. But…

  …instantly I was in motion again, my conscious mind registering what I’d previously shut out in my single-minded—and quite proper—focus on restoring pressure. I looked down at the King’s Ambassador as I floated by—he was messily dead, apparently from the five-gee fall. So was Jenkins, milord’s beloved manservant and a Rabbit like me. He was halfway into a survival bubble but hadn’t quite made it. Nearer the viewport lay a now-collapsed bubble that’d been all nice and puffy when I’d first arrived; now that the outside pressure was back up, it’d collapsed. In it lay James, milord’s son, who oddly wasn’t wearing any socks. He was also slowly turning blue.

  And so was milord himself, lying in his bed inside yet another collapsed bubble!

  6

  My Field suit was equipped with an otherwise standard-issue spaceman’s knife that was made out of warp-resistant material. Not that warp-resistance mattered at the moment; my Field had been off since the visor was cracked. Being careful not to cut either victim, I slashed open their bubbles so they could breathe good, clean air. Almost instantly their color improved, which was a good thing since I’d still not had any first-aid training yet. It wasn’t until I got around to removing the bubbles entirely that I realize
d milord was wearing a med-unit strapped to his chest, which was flashing red in two places and yellow in a third.

  And I didn’t have a clue what to do about it!

  Just then James coughed and began to throw up; glad of the distraction I snatched a sick-kit off the wall and helped milord’s son make use of it, then used the attached vacuum bottle to snatch the little gobbets where he’d missed out of the air. There was nothing worse than loose vomit under freefall; the stuff was so corrosive and nasty that extraordinary precautions were justified when accidents happened. By the time I was finished James was floating by his father’s bedside, looking at the same blinking lights that I’d noted earlier. He didn’t seem to have any idea of what to do about them either. Finally, one of the reds went yellow on its own and the yellow quite blinking entirely. “That’s a good sign, I hope,” he said to me.

  “Yes, sir!” I agreed, not quite certain about how to properly address milord’s son. I’d never been much on etiquette and things like that. Unlike most passengers, milord had a ship’s computer at his desk; I curled myself into a sitting position and began pulling up screens, trying to find us some help.

  “The gravity failed,” James offered, sounding younger than his true age. Which was about the same as mine. “Jerome fell, and his neck went at a funny angle. Then Dad had a seizure, and while Jenkins was getting the ‘doc unit running there was a big explosion! The air was already getting thin, and that was enough for Jenkins! He stuffed Dad in a bag, then me. But he… He…” James looked down at the Rabbit’s stiffening corpse.

  “I know,” I answered softly. The computer wasn’t cooperating at all—even the ship’s core systems were mostly down. But I didn’t let the frustration show in my voice. “Who patched the holes?” I asked.