"If you want to save her, you'll have to find Kate," he said.
Sal strapped himself in. He didn't have any choice. His hands were shaking as he reached out and grasped the controls.
"Hold on," he said.
He brought them in fast, but the black ship was waiting. It attacked as soon as they were close enough. Shards burst from it like porcupine quills and punched into their hull. They felt the impacts through the floor.
"What was that?" Tamara asked with her eyes closed.
Damage reports clamoured for Sal's attention. He pulled up a summary. "Multiple kinetic hits, like a shotgun blast," he said. "We've lost the cameras on the port side and we're leaking air."
Behind him, Dieter held the back of his couch. Tamara looked sick.
"Can you bring us around, get the starboard cameras on the derelict?" she said.
"I'll try."
On the tactical display, the black ship was a shadow moving against the stars; he had to infer its shape from memory. Off to one side, the star known as Green Scar burned against the pale wash of the Milky Way.
The derelict fired a second volley. The Wild Cat shuddered as it hit and the lights in the Star Chamber flickered.
"I just keep thinking too much," Sal said.
He felt the gun press into the back of his neck. Dieter said, "What?"
Sal pictured Kate and Laurel-Ann. He felt the weight of the last two years, pressing down on him.
"I just want it to stop," he said.
He aimed the Wild Cat's nose at the alien ship and threw open the throttle.
There are two kinds of courage. There's the kind you get from knowing that what you're doing is right. And there's the kind you get from knowing it's hopeless and wrong, and just not giving a damn.
In the seconds before the impact, his fear vanished. He was ready to go out in a blaze of glory if it meant wiping the slate clean. He let out a loud laugh: this was how it used to be on a random jump, how it used to feel. He was totally connected to the moment. Adrenalin hammered in his veins. Everything felt fierce and primal and inevitable. And it all moved so damn fast.
He'd almost forgotten how good it felt . . .
For half a second, in the roar of the exhaust, he thought he heard Kate calling to him. Only this time, it wasn't fear in her voice, it was forgiveness.
"Nothing in the main corridor," Petrov reported.
Sal didn't bother to reply; his attention was taken up with the thermal imaging scan, which produced a ghostly image of the two figures in the narrow corridor.
"Nothing but this crap," Kate said, eyeing the slimy, dripping walls with distaste.
She moved like a dancer, lightly on the balls of her feet. The slug thrower in her right hand wavered back and forth with the sweep of her gaze.
"Are you picking up any signs of life?" she said.
Sal could feel the tension in his back and forearms; his fists were clenching and unclenching. He tried to relax, but he'd heard the stories, same as everyone else.
"There's nothing on the monitors," he said.
"I hear you, my friend." Petrov was already chipping away at the walls with a chisel.
"Hey, careful," Kate said. She sounded so close that it was easy to forget she was three kilometres away, in the belly of a strange and potentially dangerous alien derelict.
"I love you," he said, into the microphone.
5.
The Wild Cat crashed against the hideous black ship and the impact cracked her tough hull. Her spine buckled; her heat shield tore apart, and she fell from the larger vessel like a bug falling from a windshield.
In the spherical Star Chamber at her heart, the virtual screens flared and died; part of the ceiling collapsed; sparks flew from crippled instrument panels and burning plastic fumes filled the air.
Sal Dervish sagged against the crash webbing in his couch. His neck hurt. With most of the external cameras gone, he was blind and disorientated; unable to tell where he was, or what state his ship was in. His only functioning screens showed empty space, distant stars.
He looked around for Dieter. Without straps to restrain him, the young man had been catapulted forward and smashed against an instrument panel. There was blood in his hair and his head lay at an awkward angle.
In the co-pilot's position, Tamara Vance lolled against her straps, unconscious. They were here because of her. Her eyes were closed, her face slack. He reached out to touch her hand and she started.
"What happened?" she said. There was blood on her chin, where she'd bitten her lip. "Did we kill it?"
Sal shook his head. "We hit it, but I don't think it noticed. It slapped us aside and kept right on going."
"And we survived?" She sounded unsure. She rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand.
He nodded. He ran his fingertips over the unresponsive instruments. His pulse was racing, hammering in his ears. There was a bubbling laugh in his throat and he had to bite down hard, afraid to let it out.
"I told you this ship was tough," he said. "How's the leg?"
"Painful." She dabbed tentatively at the blood on her chin with the sleeve of her flight suit. Her ponytail was coming loose and untidy strands of coppercoloured hair fell around her face. Sal gave her a grin. He could see she was shaken but he couldn't help it. A burden had been lifted from him. He'd done penance for his cowardice, thrown himself into battle and emerged alive, if not triumphant.
"Did you get it all on film?" he asked.
The corner of her mouth twitched upward. She still held the recorder in her lap, although the cables connecting it to the ship's systems had been ripped loose.
"Everything up until the crash," she said.
He unbuckled and reached for Dieter's gun. He picked it up and blew dust off the barrel. It was a matt black plastic pistol. It looked ugly and vicious and expensive, and it felt great.
"What are you going to do with that?" she said.
"I don't know." he said, shrugging. He just wanted to hold it. It was a victory celebration, like a finger of defiance to the universe that had—once again—failed to kill him.
He pointed it at Dieter. "Why didn't you tell me who he was?" he said.
"Because I knew you'd never let him on board, and getting both of your reactions was too good an opportunity to pass up," Tamara said.
She swivelled around and tapped the instrument panel with distaste. The few functioning readouts showed only that the Bradley engines were offline and haemorrhaging fuel.
"So, how do we get home? We're still venting oxygen and it looks to me like the ship's pretty wrecked."
He knew he should be angry with her for lying to him, but he couldn't summon up the energy. Instead, he closed one eye and sighted the gun on Dieter's forehead. He pictured himself pulling the trigger.
"We've got an automatic distress beacon," he said.
"No-one's going to hear that before we run out of air. We're in the middle of nowhere."
He closed his eyes. His euphoria was gone and all he really wanted now was to go back to his cabin, grab a shower and get some sleep.
"The chances are slim," he admitted.
"Then what do you suggest?" she said through gritted teeth.
He scanned the room. There was an emergency locker marked with red flashes. He pulled it open and brought out a couple of lightweight pressure suits.
"We'll use these," he said. "Their air recyclers are good for days. We'll have time to think of something."
She looked down. "What about Dieter?" she said.
Sal grunted and put a hand on the back of his neck, where it still hurt. "Let's stuff him in one of the emergency sleep tanks and worry what to do with him later."
They were quiet for a moment, unwilling to look at each other. They both knew that with his injuries, there was a good chance Dieter wouldn't survive the freezing process.
Eventually, Tamara pulled herself upright and looked down at her bloody thigh. She smoothed back her hair and folded her arms.
"Screw him," she said.
Over the next few hours, the Wild Cat faded around them like a candle guttering. Sal didn't think she'd ever fly properly again; her back was broken, her engines wrecked. Despite the efforts of her auto-repair packages, her vital systems were failing one by one, leaking away or freezing in the darkness.
He sat there, in his control couch, with the black box resting on his knees and Dieter's pistol in a thigh pocket. The air in his suit smelled of sweat and fear. The overhead lights sparked and fluttered fitfully as the power fluctuated in the damaged reactor. And all the while, he thought of Kate.
"Tell me about her," Tamara said, in one of her lucid moments.
Sal wrinkled his nose; he didn't want to talk about her, not now, at the end.
He said, "She was just the most incredible person I ever met."
He hugged himself as best he could in the cumbersome suit. The temperature on the bridge had been falling steadily and was already well below freezing.
He began to feel light-headed and drowsy. Despite what he'd told Tamara, the air recyclers weren't designed for long duration use and probably wouldn't last much longer, certainly no more than a day.
She coughed and muttered. The painkillers had worn off and she was slipping in and out of a tormented sleep. Beneath her visor, she looked weak and pale.
"This wasn't how it was supposed to be," Sal said, aware he was talking to himself. A long, drawn-out death wasn't something he'd bargained for when he decided to ram the alien ship. He'd hoped to go out in a blaze of glory and redemption, not linger here, slowly fading. His empty stomach was an uncomfortable knot. His throat was dry. His suit itched and chafed. But somehow, none of it really mattered. What mattered was that he'd come here to make peace with the past. He'd made a decision and faced the consequences. His only regret was that Tamara had to share his fate. But then, without her cajoling, he might never have come back. He might have died alone, on Pik Station, in disgrace.
He used the functioning console to divert the last of the ship's power to the self-repair packages, hoping it might buy them a bit more time. And then he lay and looked at the ceiling. Beside him, sexless in her thick pressure suit, Tamara groaned and swore and thrashed. She was disorientated from the drugs. She clawed at her faceplate with gloved fingers until he used the medical interface on the wrist of her suit to trigger morphine into her system.
"We're going to die," she sobbed, her cries melting into the warmth of the drug. "We can't last more than a few days without water. We're both going to die."
He did his best to keep her comfortable. He thought about putting her into one of the emergency sleep tanks next to Dieter's, but couldn't summon the energy. As the hours wore away, his eyelids became heavier and heavier. His thoughts became slippery and vague. He saw Kate's face. He saw the dark muddy water of Lowell Creek. And then . . .
An insistent beeping in his headphones woke him. He stirred, moving stiffly. His lips felt cracked and his fingers and toes hurt because they were so cold.
Beneath a thin layer of frost, there were a handful of lights blinking on the control console. The self-repair packages had brought the Bradley engines back online.
He nudged Tamara. "Hey, we've got power," he said.
But even as he spoke, something caught his eye. On one of the remaining functional screens, something big and black moved purposefully against the stars. A proximity warning pinged on the main flight console as the ship's autopilot tagged the intruder, logging its position and vector as a possible threat.
Tamara opened her eyes. She looked awful. Her head swayed from side-toside, weighed down by the helmet.
"We can go home?" she said.
Sal bit his lip. They could jump into hyperspace, but the heat shielding was damaged and they had no way to navigate.
"The black ship's coming back," he said.
He glanced over, but she'd closed her eyes again. He ran a quick check on her air supply and frowned at the result. She was good for a couple of hours, maybe. She had enough oxygen to make it back to Pik Station, if he could take them straight there. But he had no way to navigate. They could end up anywhere, if they didn't burn up in the process.
He felt his lips twitch in a smile.
"No air and a damaged heat shield," he said. Surely this would be the ultimate random jump—if they survived it, he'd get his reputation back, whether he wanted it or not.
He looked at the screen: The black ship was closing. It would be in striking range in six seconds.
Four seconds.
He reached out and placed his gauntleted hand on the touch screen that controlled the Bradley engines. Despite the cold, his palms were sweating.
Two seconds.
One.
His lips peeled back in a fierce grin. He pressed down on the screen and the Wild Cat groaned. She shook herself like a wounded animal, and leapt.