I shut up. Aul pulled up the diplomats’ positions on zis pilot screen and overlaid the trajectory of the debris. Then ze started moving the shuttle forward. Aul stared at zis pilot screen, typed furiously into it, and never looked up.
I on the other hand looked at the external view monitor and saw a distant rising mass of debris, and our shuttle moving inexorably closer to it. We appeared to be on a suicide mission straight to the heart of that debris. I glanced over to Aul but ze was in focus, all attention drawn to the screen.
At almost the last possible instant I saw on the monitor a white starburst which I registered—too late!—as a vacuum suit we were going to hit head on, just as the debris rose like a leviathan below us. I sucked in a breath to shout, saw the images on the monitor streak, and then clenched for the violence of the debris smashing into our shuttle from below. As Aul promised, it would be over quickly.
“Huh,” Aul said, and spoke into zis headset. “You get them? Yes. Yes. Right. Good.” Ze looked over to me. “Well, that worked,” ze said.
“What worked?” I asked.
“High-speed rotation around the target,” Aul said. “It takes a tiny bit of time for the shuttle’s inertial field generators to register a new entity and adjust its velocity. If I picked up our new passengers on a straight path at the speed I was going, they would have turned into jelly against the interior of the shuttle. So I rotated us very quickly, to give the field just enough time to register their presence and match them to us.”
“Oh.”
“That’s the short version,” Aul said. Ze was entering commands into zis pilot monitor, presumably to pick up the two remaining diplomats. “I also had to tell the shuttle what speed I wanted the targets to have relative to the interior of the shuttle, and burn off the momentum we suddenly had dumped into the system. And such. Point is, it worked.”
“Where’s the debris?”
“Behind and above us. It missed us with a couple plint to spare.”
“You almost killed us.”
“Almost,” Aul agreed.
“Please don’t do that again.”
“The good news is, now I don’t have to.”
Picking up the other two human diplomats was the very definition of anticlimactic.
As we headed back to the Conclave’s asteroid, Aul restored air to the cabin and opened up the pilot’s compartment. “One of the rescued diplomats would like to speak to you,” Aul said.
“All right.” I ducked and found my way to the main cabin. As I did so a Fflict nudged past me, nodding; the co-pilot, anxious to get back on duty. I ducked again and entered the cabin.
The rescue team were busily attending to the diplomats, all of whom were covered in self-heating blankets and sucking air through masks. All except one, who was covered only in what I now recognized was a Colonial Defense Forces combat unitard. The unitard’s owner was kneeling, speaking to one of the diplomats, a woman with dark, curled hair. She was holding his hand with a grip that I imagined would be uncomfortable for anyone other than a genetically engineered supersoldier, which is what the unitard’s owner was. His green skin gave him away.
The soldier saw me and motioned to the woman, who stood up, shakily. She removed her mask and shrugged off her blankets—a bad idea because she started shivering immediately—and walked over to me, hand extended. The soldier stood with her, slightly behind.
“Councilor Sorvalh,” the diplomat said. “I’m Danielle Lowen, of the United States Department of State. Thank you so much for rescuing me and these other members of my team.”
“Not at all, Ms. Lowen,” I said. “Welcome to the Conclave’s headquarters. I am only sorry your entrance was so … dramatic.”
Lowen managed a shaky smile. “When you put it that way, so am I.” She began shivering violently. I glanced over at the soldier, who picked up the hint, stepped away, and returned with a blanket. Lowen accepted it gratefully and slumped slightly into the solider, who bore her weight easily.
“Of course, we of the Conclave cannot take all the credit for your rescue,” I said, nodding at the soldier.
“I regret to say that I was only seventy percent successful with my own rescue attempt,” the soldier said.
“No, you were one hundred percent successful,” I said. “You got seven safely to the Chandler, and you knew that if you got the other three away from the ship, we would come find you.”
“I didn’t know,” he said. “I did hope.”
“How lovely,” I said. I turned to Lowen. “And you, Ms. Lowen? Did you hope as well?”
“I trusted,” Lowen said, and looked at the soldier. “It’s not the first time this one’s tossed me out into space.”
“I was with you the whole way the last time, too,” the soldier said.
“You were,” Lowen said. “That doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it.”
“I will keep that in mind,” the soldier said.
“The two of you have an interesting history, clearly,” I said.
“We do,” Lowen said, and then motioned to the soldier. “Councilor Sorvalh, if I may introduce you to—”