Motherload | Page 8

bucket of this paint just lying around in stowage somewhere?"
She chuckled mirthlessly. "No, and it wouldn't work that way anyway. That polymer would have to be applied by a computer that could spread a uniform depth with a uniform distribution of iron atoms over the entire surface. We couldn't hope to match that here, even if we could whip up a batch of the stuff -- which we can't."
"Can't? We can't fix those scratches?"
"I don't know yet... lemme think..."
That was Sally-speak for "Don't bug me for a while", so I took the opportunity to update the others. I found them both to the fore, in the little cockpit that stood in for a bridge, and I hung out in the hatchway while I talked. Bayern clucked and fretted, wondering aloud if he should step in and handle things personally. Both Genness and I ignored him, and I think he ignored himself too. I was about to leave when I noticed a flashing light on Genness's board. It was a proximity alert.
"What's that?"
He looked over and hurumphed, then jumped screens a few times.
"Hello..." he muttered, "...and where's my audible tone...gone with the power-down? How long was this flashing, Ejoq?"
"I just noticed it now. I take it it's new?"
"Maybe," he replied, while focusing the boat's full suite of passives on the coordinates.
"What's wrong?" Bayern asked, confused.
"What was the trigger?" I wanted to know. "What's prox-sen 5 set to? Infrared?"
His brow furrowed uncharacteristically as he pulled up the sensor datalog on one side of his screen. "Graviton," he replied.
We had company from outside the star system.
Bayern appeared grim and focused, which meant he couldn't follow this at all.
"A ship," I told him, by way of explanation.
"A pirate...?" He suddenly looked anything but mean and determined. "Do we have missiles active yet?"
"We can't open the hatches on the any of the bays without power. It's way too early to fret over, anyway -- we don't have any idea who this is. What's their transponder say, Genness?"
He had a deep frown on his face that I didn't like while he checked his boards.
"I'm not getting a transponder. A quick diag says...no, we're good. They just don't want anybody to know they're here. No active sensors from them either." He swore, and turned to Bayern at last, saying, "I don't like this. These guys are acting shady. This might be the real thing after all."
I swore too. Bayern looked like someone told him nine months after a really bad bender that he was a father; and I, anyway, felt like I'd been punched in the stomach.
"We're in a bad way right now," I said, knowing even then just how inane that was. "Genness, what's our EM output?"
"...uh, I don't know. How...?"
"Set your general passives all the way up and key a full-spectrum run, but zero-out the bogey."
He played with the keyboard for a while.
"Um...I read 7.85% of normal. I assume that's us, but...?"
"Okay, no output...or dang little output, anyway. Bechels have an average of seventeen centimeters of polynium alloy for the hull and another twenty in composite armor -- all the wrong stuff for a stealth vessel, but maybe it's enough to scatter our signature right now...especially if that ship out there is only using passives like we are..."
But then I thought of something scary, and turned to kick off down the companionway, back to Engineering. Bayern grabbed my calf, and stopped me.
"What's going on, Ejoq?" He looked genuinely scared and perplexed.
"They don't want anyone to know they're here, right? Well, neither do we!"
I was gone from there before he could reply with something insipid, hoping against hope that I'd be on time.
Sally was just switching on the laze when I came in, the errant emitter sitting under it like a diseased grapefruit. The cramped space hampered my movement, so all I could do immediately was scream at her to shut it down, which she did with a startled jump.
"Ejoq, what the flux...?!"
"Pirate! Inbound. I don't think he's made us yet because of our power-down, but any big draw might flag us."
Her eyes were big and very serious then, as she looked around at the gutted mess that Engineering had become.
"How far off?"
"Not far enough. Maybe two light seconds it looked like -- spinward/thirty degrees off-plane. Tell me you can work magic, Sally..."
"In my cabin, maybe! If they catch wind of us now, we're stool-out-of-luck, Ejoq, and no mistake!"
A graceless bump and an umph at the open hatch behind me announced Bayern, who'd followed me down.
"We need power, Sally!"
"I know, Bayern..."
"No, I'm not kidding around! We've got a hostile out there, and we need power right now!"
"Get him out of here, Ejoq."
"Didn't you hear what I said?! It's a pirate!"
"Now, Ejoq, or I'll kill him!"
"We need weapons! We need engines! We're sitting ducks here!"
Sally snatched up