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  With NAVSTAR coordinates and mapping, it was possible to get an accurate reading to within the nearest meter. Not that a JumpShip needed such accuracy. Once a jump was authorized, the coordinates of the final destination were plugged into the computer. The last digits would determine the jumping ship's exact exit point.

  To make the jump, the ship began at a designated point in the gravity well of the system, a point where all forces from the planets and the central star were reduced to absolute zero. With the coordinates of the next point already plotted, the ship rotated until the navigational heading was correct. The transitional authorization code was called up from the computer's memory. The JumpShip's Kearny-Fuchida drive sent a burst of energy plasma from the titanium-germanium alloy in its liquid helium bath to the field initiator. The energy produced the hyperspace field that was further amplified by the K-F drive itself. Like opening a door and stepping through into another room.

  Hartwell watched the digital display of current/future location. The door opened, the ship stepped through. Then there was a sharp jolt as the threshold was crossed. There wasn't supposed to be a jolt, but it did happen occasionally that something in the doorway could cause an accident. Unfortunately, JumpShips had limited meteoric shielding to protect them from such an event.

  The shudder increased. Hartwell grasped the arms of the command chair to keep from being hurled across the bridge. The navigation officer was not so lucky. He'd been lounging at his station, one leg thrown over the arm of his chair. He'd disregarded the first shudder with veteran aplomb; the second one caught his attention. With the Raiden's bridge at zero gravity, there was nothing to drop into for support.

  The navigator scrambled for his seat, but the forces were too great and too sudden. Hartwell saw a look of surprise and then fear flash across the navigator's face as the man's body hurled past the command chair. The navigator opened his mouth to scream, but whether it was in fear or a call for help, no one would ever know. Before he could draw a bream into his lungs, the man's body had struck the environmental control console and literally come apart on impact. The upper torso was ripped from the hip girdle and continued to spin away toward the cargo access doors. The legs lodged between the life support and internal security panels.

  The environmental specialist, Fourth Officer Maria Savoyard, had just stepped through the access port from her quarters when the second jolt wrenched the Raiden. Not a seasoned veteran of jumps, she'd taken the first shudder as only a warning. It had not completely prepared her for the second event, but she was much better off than the wise and experienced navigator. By wrapping both arms around the emergency operation and override wheel next to the door, she kept herself from flying completely across the starship's wide bridge. It also saved her in another way.

  By tripping the emergency override system, she froze the door in the open position. Had she not done so, the airtight door would have slid shut, just as all other doors and ports were doing on the Raiden. With thousands of kilograms per square centimeter behind the doors, there was nothing—certainly nothing human—that could have prevented complete closure. She hung on, gasping for breath.

  Hartwell had no time to mourn the death of the navigator or to worry about the fate of the environmental specialist. While his body fought the violent bucking of his ship, his mind tried to make sense of what was happening. The master console by his command chair was going wild. The engineering lights that monitored the major functions of the power system flashed a phalanx of emergency red. The navigational and polar coordinate readouts were going crazy. Vector numbers flashed across the screen: 2753 ... 9829 ... 0080 ... 1513. They came so fast and were so divergent that he couldn't comprehend them. The range reader flashed 0000000.0000000, and then went wild as it climbed to 9999999.9999999. The vector plot showed the same number: 9999999.9999999.

  Hartwell felt his stomach churn and his mouth go dry. The Raiden was nowhere that was real.

  Then the violence stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

  Except for the panting, labored breathing of Savoyard, still wrapped around the emergency wheel, the bridge was silent. The forward viewscreen began to clear, showing myriad stars against the black void of space. The cameras swept across the emptiness, programmed to find and lock on to the nearest star system. The search had begun.

  Hartwell called up a report from engineering and got the bad news all at once. The helium containment vessel for the K-F system showed major damage; helium was leaking into the access passageways. Worse still was news from the fusion power core. The containment bottle for the nuclear reactor was also damaged. The JumpShip Raiden was not in good shape.

  The rest of the command crew slid into the weightless-ness of the bridge, floating in, pushing off from the access shafts to drift across to their stations. Hartwell, meanwhile, turned to the comunication consoles and began to deal with the hysterical DropShip captains.

  Like everything else not weighted down the hips and trunk of the unfortunate navigator began to float as well, drawn by the eddies and currents created by the movements of the passing command staff. A yeoman quietly corralled the pieces and herded them into a solid-waste disposal chute. Savoyard tentatively released her grip on the door control and moved toward her chair. Hartwell silently pointed her to the navigation station; her regular place at environmental control still showed the stains of the unfortunate navigator.

  The Raiden would never make another jump; that much was obvious to Hartwell. Both the K-F drive power system and the fusion core had been damaged and were leaking containment. In addition, the surge of energy that had been part of the force that had thrown the ship off course had burned out most of the control and communications systems. The pulse continued to attack modules within the ship. The self-diagnostic and automated repair procedures carried the surge with them as they probed the vessel. Each time the crew checked or attempted to repair, the pulse was there to disrupt and destroy. The loss of the internal gyrostabilizers was the final blow.

  Shortly after exiting from jump, Hartwell made the decision to abandon the Raiden. The only question was how long the ship would remain habitable, and that was dependent on its structural integrity. Hartwell could have extended the Raiden's life by casting off the DropShips, but that would have been unconscionable. There was no place for the DropShips to go, at least no place known to be as safe. For a while at least, the JumpShip still had the sensors to locate a planet in whatever system they'd hit, a planet where the humans now huddled in varying levels of panic in their carriers might find haven.

  The hyperspace transition had also played havoc with the electronics of most of the DropShips. Many would be unable to navigate the necessary interstellar distances to a safe haven, they would have to be ferried close to a planet before they could be cast off.

  This became Hartwell's mission. Find a planet and get the Raiden as close as possible, transfer his crew to one of the attached ships or the Raiden's small lifeboat, and cast off for their new home.

  The third day after exiting from jump, the scanner had positively identified two habitable locations. One was a large planet and the other a huge moon. Hartwell chose the planet, but he kept a solid reference on the moon as an alternative. Day six of the transit toward the planet was Hartwell's target. If the Raiden could make it that long, the DropShips would have a good chance of navigating the rest of the distance. Events, however, conspired against the Raiden, her passengers, and her crew.

  Late on day five, the JumpShip's fusion core reached critical, and they had to scram the plant. It was a simple process of merely venting the whole core clear of the hull. This reduced all power within the ship to emergency cells only. There were enough of those to maintain life support and command function for a period of fourteen days, but many had been damaged during the misjump.

  Crew members crawling through the access passages detected structural failings. Two of the techs entered crawl space 23B/886 and never came out the other end. A life-sense scan detected no h
eartbeats or respiration within the passage, and the climate of the tube was indicated as a toxic environment. Both ends of the compartment were sealed shut and bonded.

  Another structural failure was detected on the JumpShip's spine. The flaw was working its way down the skin of the ship, rupturing the access passage that connected the docking collars. No crew movement was possible between the DropShips unless the individual making the move was in complete life gear.

  Then the life support, structural integrity, and engineering panels on the bndge flashed red, every panic light coming on. Indeed, the rosy hue from so much red light gave the bridge the almost cozy look of light from a campfire. But those who knew what was happening didn't find the effect either cozy or comforting. Instead, the bridge crew took the precaution of donning their life support gear. The Raiden lurched violently, spilling people and equipment throughout the DropShips. More emergency lights blinked on but never blinked off. The spinal rupture raced down the surface of the ship. Hartwell hit the emergency evacuation signal.

  The emergency signal shrilled down the long, now-vacant corridor. Doors that had not been secured hissed shut. The preprogrammed un-docking procedures went into effect. DropShips were cast off whether they were ready to depart or not. Within minutes the bridge was clear. Hartwell was the last to leave, then he thrust himself down the passage toward his lifeboat station. As he pushed in, he made a quick count of the other people inside. They were a crowd of huddled figures swathed in life suits, their masks closed down and locked. The door snapped shut followed by a sibilant hiss as the lifeboat pressurized, and then the docking collar released. The thrusting jets pushed the boat clear of the tumbling ship.

  Hartwell watched out the side vision port as the boat got clear. The Vulture DropShips were also breaking free. Most of them were safe, but one had become caught by its own collar, which had become twisted out of shape by the spinal rupture. The ship was firing its main thrusters in a desperate attempt to break clear, but to no avail. The blast of the jets only drove the ship deeper and deeper into the collar, wrenching the oculus into a useless wreck. The DropShip would never get free. Hartwell saw the DropShip's frantic thrashing become more and more violent, a snared animal trying to break clear of the trap. The force was too much for the skin of the ship. Hartwell saw the first rupture in the fuselage. Tiny at first, it suddenly split down the wing root from the; trailing edge all the way to the cargo door. A cloud of moisture blasted from the hull, instantaneously freezing in the void. Bodies spewed out as well.

  The DropShips began to drop away, headed toward the surface of the planet. The onboard computers had been given the coordinates of the surface, and they would head for that point even without control by the human crew. The computers might not pick out the best landing zone, but they would get the ship down. Four of the ships were clumped together. They would land close enough to be able to support one another on the ground. The other ships fanned out, the side of one of the fleeing Vultures brushing the hull of another. Locked together and out of control, they tumbled downward. Hartwell watched them go and hoped that both crews were dead. A two-day fall, with no chance of survival, was more than he cared to even contemplate.

  The space around the Raiden cleared of the departing ships. Watching from his lifeboat, the Master and Commander held his position near his vessel until he saw no further signs of movement. Then he was startled to see the sail used to collect solar energy to fuel the JumpShip's K-F drive suddenly deployed. Some impulse in the dying computer had decided that it was time to start re-charging the drive. The great sail would mark the ship for eternity. Some latent surge in the pulse had burned off all the absorptive material, and the fabric shone white. Then Hartwell turned his lifeboat and followed the DropShips and the rest of the lifeboats in their unforeseen journey toward the blue orb waiting in the distance.

  Part I

  November 7, 3056

  Salford, Draconis Combine

  3

  The Scout Class JumpShip Telendine held position in its designated space at the rim of the control area. The control station that hung clear of the jump point had directed the ship there as soon as it had emerged from its jump into the system. The master of the vessel, Reston Bannin, had been fuming ever since. For fourteen days the Telendine had hung there recharging its propulsion system; he was ready to go but still had been issued no clearance, and he still had no cargo.

  Or no cargo aboard ship, that is. Waiting for him right now on the surface of Salford was a DropShip packed bulkhead to bulkhead, deck to overhead, with valuable cholobara wine from the planet Shibukawa. Cholobara was a delicate and short-lived beverage of amazing potency. Not only was the natural alcoholic content more than twice that of normal wine, but the cholobara fruit was also an amazing aphrodisiac. Both features made demand for the brew astronomical. But the wine would only maintain its aphrodisiac qualities for a period of just under two months. That made speedy transport a priority for those who wanted the profits that the wine's dated amphorae commanded. Bannin should have had the cargo loaded and ready for transport to the planet Hartshill as soon as the K-F drive was recharged, but he'd been held in orbit instead.

  A Scout Class starship like the Telendine was too inefficient to carry bulk cargo. The few still in use by the Draconis Combine military served to carry single DropShips of high military priority. In the civilian world Scouts were used for valuable single cargoes, one-DropShip loads like Bannin's cargo of cholobara. Bannin had bought the Telendine at auction precisely for the purpose of making these high-profit runs. And now he was stuck with his cargo going bad on the surface and no clearance to jump.

  "Message from station," said First Mate Elizabeth Hoond as she looked up from the companel. "They want another report on our readiness status."

  "Tell them to refer to my report of three hours ago," snapped Bannin. "Tell them that I've been waiting here fully charged, for the last four days, and they know it. Tell them that if they don't give me clearance to take cargo and depart, I'll report their dereliction to planet control." Bannin began to heave himself from his command chair, scattering bread crumbs that instantly formed a zero-G cloud that floated behind him as he moved. He'd been in almost constant residence in the command chair ever since the K-F drive was recharged and ready to go. He had a day cabin just off the bridge, but like most ship commanders, he preferred to live on the bridge when he was operational. And when Reston Bannin lived somewhere, he really lived there. He took his meals there and he slept there; he never moved except for absolute necessities. The remnants of the last three meals were splattered across his ample belly.

  Hoond watched her Master and Commander, waiting for the spasm of anger to pass. She had served with Bannin for years, and she knew what would happen now. Bannin would froth and fume for a few moments before subsiding again into acquiescence. She watched as the commander made to lift his, bulk from his chair, only to sink back again immediately. His countenance changed from the flush of anger to pale fear. Had Hoond sent the message as stated there would have been an equally abnipt reply from the station. The result would probably have been for Bannin to spend another fourteen days in orbit.

  "Just tell them we're ready," he sighed, settling into the command chair once more.

  "Message sent, sir," noted Hoond as she turned back to the console. She'd known what the message would be even before Bannin spoke again, and she had keyed in their current status. The message flashed across the seventy kilometers to the station. "They're sending again." First Mate Hoond watched the panel as the message scrolled across the screen. "Cargo approaching from Salford. We have jump coordinates and clearance to depart. Priority One."

  "Priority One? Why Priority One? We've been hanging here for days, and now we get a Priority One departure order. Why don't those people ever get it right?" Bannin tapped the master control on the arm of the command chair and the message appeared. He scanned down the text, most of which was administrative garbage concerning account numbers and oth
er administrivia.

  His onboard computers would have a fine time digesting the material, which would of course be turned over to the appropriate bureaus of the Draconis Combine and ComStar. That was how the various Great Houses kept track of all the ships operating throughout the Inner Sphere. It was how they could tell if there were any unauthorized expeditions. And if there was one thing the leaders of the Draconis Combine did not like it was unauthorized visitors to its star systems. Such occurrences could only mean activity by pirates or black marketeers—or worse. At the time Bannin had bought the Telendine, he had carefully considered the choice between legitimate operations or entering that shadow world of pirate jump points and black market dealings. The profits from illegal trading were enormous, but the risks were equally high. Bannin liked the thought of credits building up in secret accounts, but he didn't like the thought of what the Draconis Combine would do to him if he got caught. The stories of what had happened to others who'd been arrested for such crimes were enough to make a strong man's blood run cold, and Reston Bannin was not a strong man.

  As he reached the end of the message, his face went purple with rage. "What!" he shouted. "What is this nonsense? Military cargo? I've been given military cargo?" Bannin pounded the arm of the command chair in frustration. Damn them to hell! he thought, rueing the day he had ever signed a contract with the government of the Draconis Combine. He knew that, legally, they had every right to commandeer his ship, but that didn't mean he had to like it.