The Black Fleet Crisis_ Tyrant's Test Part 22

"What?" asked Hammax, leaning forward between the couches with a hand on the back of each.

Taisden pointed. "A ready-to-transmit notice for a white-star dispatch, personal to the colonel."

"A notice that can be received only by a military-rated secure hypercomm, " said Pakkpekatt.

"I thought we'd loaded one aboard," said Hammax.

"We did," said Taisden. "This didn't come over our gear. Calrissian apparently has a few more surprises tucked away under the service panels of this s.h.i.+p."

"There is something else," said Pakkpekatt. "Look at the message size."

Hammax squinted. "That's heavy lifting."

"It has to be a mistake. We should send back a verify request,"

said Taisden. "Confirm the originating station, packet size, router. Or request a redirect to our own hypercomm transceiver."

"There is a simpler way to satisfy our curiosity," said Pakkpekatt.

"I would like the bridge to myself for a few moments. Colonel Hammax, I believe you Were headed aft?"

Hammax nodded. "I'll be skinned up in five to ten," he said, turning away and ducking through the hatchway.

"I'll check in with Pleck," Taisden said, climbing out of his couch.

"Page me on the observation deck."

Even though he was alone, Pakkpekatt covered his right hand with his left as he entered his authorization code and switched the viewer to privacy mode as he read the notice.

COLONEL PAKKPEKATT.

ACTIVATION OF FAIR LADY'S P' W' ECK COMPLEMENT RECORDED HERE.

SINCERELY HOPE THIS PRESAGES RESTORATION OF PEACEABLE RELATIONS.

WITH HOST WORLD AND DIPLOMATIC RECOVERY OF EXPEDITION.

PENDING DISPATCh1 CONTAINS LETTERS OF INTRODUCTION, RECENTLY ACQUIRED AT GREAT EXPENSE. TRUST THEY WILL OPEN DOORS FOR YOU.

It bore an apparently authentic Fleet Intelligence watermark and seal but was unsigned.

General Calrissian's friends, Pakkpekatt thought. They should not know that I am in this s.h.i.+p, but they do, and they are still looking after him.

He drummed his thumb-claws on his temples as he considered his response. 'Letters of introduction' can only mean the Qella genetic code- -a.s.sistance that I requested through proper channels, which was denied when the task force was recalled.

There was no real choice before him. With a few light touches on the display, Pakkpekatt entered his send authorization and returned a clear-to- transmit message to his unknown benefactor, noting the s.h.i.+p time as he did. At their present distance, the transit lag for a round-trip to Coruscant should be something more than forty minutes.

If the reply came back too soon or too late, he would know what meaning to give it.

"Colonel Hammax, are you ready?" Pakkpekatt called over the comm system.

"Going through my weapons check now, Colonel."

"Very well. Agent Taisden, please return to the bridge. Agent Pleck, please a.s.sist Colonel Hammax at the airlock. Colonel, during the flyaround, did you identify where you would like to make your entry?"

"Those open ports on the far side looked to be as good a place as any," Hammax said. "I'm going to use a ring charge to cut in, and I can put some hull between myself and the blowback."

"Very well," Pakkpekatt said, taking the yacht's maneuvering yoke in hand. "I'll notify you when we are in position."

Colonel Hammax did not stay aboard the hulk of the cruiser for long. A mere fifteen minutes after he disappeared into the maw of launching port eight, he reappeared at the opening of launching port four.

Raising his right hand in a wave, Hammax squeezed the thruster controls with his left and started across the hundred meters separating Gorath and Lady Luck as they drifted together through s.p.a.ce.

Though Hammax's foray suit had voice, holo, and biomedical comm systems in both open and conductive modes, Pakkpekatt had directed him to observe strict comm silence unless confronted by a threat, and Hammax had done so. So his early return was the object of sudden and intense curiosity. Pleck and Pakkpekatt watched from the flight deck and Taisden from the observation deck as Hammax jetted toward the yacht, knowing only that it was impossible under any conditions to thoroughly search a 450-meter-long wars.h.i.+p so quickly.

"He looks okay," said Taisden. "Maybe he had some equipment problem.

Or maybe he got lucky and found what he was looking for right off."

"If Colonel Hammax had found what he was looking for, he would be returning with two body bags," Pakkpekatt said, tracking the s.p.a.cesuited figure with the laser cannon.

"You're going to make him nervous, doing that," Taisden observed.

"Good. That will help him understand that I am," said Pakkpekatt.

"Go back to the airlock and hold Colonel Hammax there with the overrides until I have satisfied myself."

As soon as the outer lock closed, Hammax broke his silence, using his suit's conductive transmitter. "Colonel, she's well gutted.

Definitely Prakith, though."

Taisden startled at that. "A long way out for a Prakith s.h.i.+p--a long way out. Are you sure?"

"I could still read the blazons on bulkheads here and there.

Colonel, it's a derelict. Nothing's functional, and there are no signs of life--a lot of bodies, but none of 'em are going to get any more use."

"Was there any sign of Calrissian?"

"No," said Hammax. "I checked both brigs--there were five bodies between them, none of them human. I also checked the bridge and the maintenance shop-- no droids of any kind in either location."

"Why did you terminate your search? A Strike - cla.s.s cruiser has two hundred fifty-eight compartments."

"Colonel, with the conditions over there, I wasn't going to find out any more in an hour than I did in fifteen ticks," Hammax said. "I thought the best thing was to come back and leave it up to you whether to commit the time to take it further. If you want all two hundred fifty-eight compartments searched, I'll turn around and get started on it."

"Is it your report, then, that Calrissian's party is not aboard the cruiser?"

"I can't tell you with absolute certainty that the general wasn't aboard when the balloon went up," said Hammax. "But in my opinion, it'd take a forensic sal vage team the better part of a week to be any more certain. Your call."

"Stand by, Colonel Hammax." Pakkpekatt rubbed his temple crests as he checked the comm queue. The "Fleet Intelligence" dispatch was still spooling into Lady Luck's comm buffers, pouring in at 94 percent efficiency of the highest available error-checking transfer rate. But even at that rate, the counters predicted it would take another twenty-three minutes to complete the transfer.

"All stations, conference," Pakkpekatt said.

"Hammax here."

"Taisden here."

"Pleck ready."

"It is my belief that the most probable scenario to explain our findings is that this vessel was destroyed by the vagabond by means of a weapon not previously seen. The vagabond is likely to have been damaged in the confrontation, prompting Calrissian to recall his yacht.

Concur or dispute."

"Concur," said Pleck, "I concur," Hammax and Taisden said simultaneously.

"Proposition: The degree of damage sustained will dictate the current location of the vagabond. If not seriously damaged, she will have jumped out. If seriously damaged, she will have moved off in reals.p.a.ce, perhaps to make repairs. If mortally damaged, she may still be present as an undetected debris field."

Pleck and Hammax agreed.

"Or she may have tried to jump out and broken up in the process, in which case there might be very little debris to find," said Taisden.

"Yes," said Pakkpekatt. "Disposition: We will remain at this location while we conduct a maximum-aperture deep scan for the vagabond, and until we examine the debris field more closely. Colonel Hammax, stand by for possible debris recovery operations.

Agent Taisden, please return to the second seat to supervise the deep scan."

As Taisden reached the flight deck Pakkpekatt was turning the bow of Lady Luck away from the cruiser.

"You said there was a possible body?"

"Let me locate it for you," said Taisden, reconfigur-ing the displays.

"Twelve hundred meters, bearing two-one-zero, plus four-four, relative.

A lot of smaller stuff between us and it, though."

Pakkpekatt responded by reactivating the particle s.h.i.+elds so that they could shoulder aside any debris in their path. "Please begin your scan."

"That'll scatter the field," Taisden said. "Standard recovery protocol calls for deflectors only, with particle s.h.i.+elds at zero."

"I know that," said Pakkpekatt. "But this is not a junker, Agent Taisden, and we are not scavengers." He pushed the yoke forward, and Lady Luck eased away from the shattered cruiser. Within a minute, it had entered the cloud of debris.

The "body" proved tO be a curious object--a rough-surfaced sphere two meters across, carbon-scorched over one third of its surface and encrusted with a thin layer of fragile, long-crystal ice.

Pleck had come forward to the flight deck for a closer look. "Could it be some sort of escape pod?" he asked. "I've heard that s.p.a.celiners used to be equipped with something like the ferry bags S-and-R units use- -you know, not much more than a soft-sided ball with a rebreather, so you can move people off a disabled s.h.i.+p without having to try to get them into s.p.a.cesuits."

Taisden shook his head. "I'm still on pa.s.sive sensing only, but the thing looks solid to me. If the colonel will let me strobe it--" "No,"

said Pakkpekatt.

"Colonel, if it's something interesting, let me go out and get it,"

said Hammax. "At two meters, I should be able to bring it in through the cargo airlock."

"No," said Pakkpekatt. "I do not want it inside this s.h.i.+p. But I do want to know what it is made of. If it is not part of the cruiser, it may be part of the vagabond."

"You say it's iced over?" asked Hammax.

"To a depth of approximately one centimeter," said Taisden, recalibrating his displays for fine detail.

"Sounds like draw-frost," said Hammax. "You only get that on biologicals, and only for a little while, until the remains are desiccated or deep-frozen. See, the pressure differential pulls the water in the epidermal layers toward the surface, but it starts freezing on the skin before it can evaporate. The residual body heat can keep things pumping for a while, but eventually the ice evaporates, too, one molecule at a time."

"Maybe it is a body, then," said Pleck. "Just not a human one.

Colonel?"

Pakkpekatt glanced at the counter on the comm display. "Very well, Colonel Hammax. See if you can move it to the fantail observation deck. I believe there are cargo tie-downs there, and we will not have to concern ourselves with turning the cargo deck into a hy-pothermic cooler--" "Hold everything," Taisden said, sitting forward sharply and frowning at the displays. "I have a deep-scan contact alarm. Colonel Pakkpekatt, there's something coming in fast."

"You are acquiring Colonel Hammax's bad habits," said Pakkpekatt with a hiss. "What sort of contact?"

Taisden shook his head. "She's bow-on to us and still a long way out-- nine hundred thousand kilometers," he said. "It'll be a little while, even for this rig."

He paused, tapping the console with his fingertips. "On the other hand, if she's related to the late Prakith cruiser behind us, she's probably coming in with her don't-shoot-me lights on."

"Combat transponder," Pleck said. "Yes. Scan for it in the high forties-- that's pretty common for Imperial-cla.s.s designs, and I don't think the Prakith are likely candidates for a lot of field modifications."

"I've got it--forty-four two, for future reference.

Uncoded, but in Prak." Then he grunted. "Looks like General Calrissian went for all the options when he bought this yacht. The system's giving me an on-the-fly translation--ha!"

"What?"

Despite the seriousness of the moment, Taisden was briefly consumed by a spell of deep, closed-mouth chuckles. "We are heading for a rendezvous with, and I quote verbatim, 'The gallant and eternally vigilant patrol destroyer Tobay of the Grand Imperial Navy of the Const.i.tutional Protectorate of Prakith, in grateful and loyal service to His Glory, the potent and courageous governor for life, Foga Brill.""

"And you thought your section commander had unreasonable expectations,"

Pleck said, clapping Taisden on the shoulder. "Do you think the Prakith navy holds public fawning compet.i.tions?"

Pakkpekatt pa.r.s.ed the puffery for the one detail that mattered to him.

"Patrol destroyer, Imperial Adz - cla.s.s. Primary armament three cla.s.s-D quad laser cannon batteries, three cla.s.s-B dual ion cannon batteries."

"Sounds like we definitely don't want to be here when they arrive,"

said Hammax. "Colonel, do you still want me to go after the floater?"

Pakkpekatt looked to Taisden. "How long?"