Dry, No Lube Ch. 03: Disrupted

"You told her she could use the star plotter. Automated system." She was starting to lose it, her whole mind controlled now by the overwhelming image of herself, disappearing into some sort of thermonuclear celestial body. And nobody would ever know. "So that's based on the light field, too. We'll need to drop completely out and do multiple star sights. Optically." She was breathing faster already. "And we still might not be able to figure out where we are before they come up on us."

"And even then, they'll just do it again when we swing back up into lightspace." He was nodding soberly. "Hell. We could be heading for a supernova or something even as we speak." She felt her throat constrict.

"We need to drop out, sir. Probably can't wait, either."

"Yes." Reye leaned over and smacked the intertube. "Full stop, Ms Klonmyre. At once."

Pixy leaned toward the auxiliary tube and dialed up Ana the Tygon Whore. "Ana. I need a hit of Drag in the wardroom. Now." She considered. "Two grams." It was a hefty dose, but Pixy already felt her heart trip-hammering against her ribs. The captain was on his way back up to the bridge already, his feet disappearing even as the dropout alarm made the whole ship shake. Pixy gritted her teeth and punched in the general alert code. "Officers to the wardroom. Don't waste your time about it, either." She heard her own voice out in the corridor, sounding tinny as it came from every speaker in the ship. She wondered how deeply the optical star-scopes were buried in the storage pit at the back of the charthouse as the two hatches in the far wall began to slide open.

Pixy was still at the coding table as the officers came oozing in, each in various states of dress and sobriety; an off-duty Service Fleet officer had very little to do. Curious stares met hers, most of them turning skeptical as the ship began to rattle around them with the strain of the emergency deceleration. Pixy felt her insides going all watery and decided she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. But.

She'd called them in here, and if she didn't figure out something lucid to say, she'd look stupid. And that was completely intolerable. So she took a deep breath and found the naked Falgada, emerging from the senior officers' hatchway with his head cocked sideways and his dick hanging low. Pixy kept her eyes up. "Mr Falgada, we need to pinpoint our position in space. That means digging out all the manual navigation tools from wherever the fuck they're stowed, and putting everyone who's ever been trained to use them at a viewport. You'll supervise and do the math when the data comes back."

The first officer nodded thoughtfully, scratching at his balls. "Huh. When do we do this?"

Pixy gestured around her at the vibrating ship. "Feel us stopping?" He nodded warily. "That's why we're stopping. So don't wait. Comprehend?"

To his credit, Falgada got the point. "Locate the scopes and octants, Mr Donskoi," he snapped. "Bring them here. The rest of you? Figure out who in your departments can use them, and get those people here. Now." He looked back at Pixy, who was already busy with the coding gun. "Are you going to be joining in, ma'am?"

"Shortly." Pixy had been good at star sights as a junior lieutenant; she wondered whether she could still do it. "First I'm going to find you the manual so that you can look up the math. Then?" She looked back at the angry red indicator on the repeater. "We need to get a contact report to Fleet." She blinked and once again ignored her liquid guts. "Quickly. In case we get wasted."

"Fuck," Chief della Sera bit out. Pixy spoke again, into the pause.

"So that's the deal. Get your brains online and start remembering your constellations while Donskoi gets his shit together." The vessel was lurching now. Ordinarily, a ship coming out of lightspace did it gracefully, almost imperceptibly, the dampers and compensators getting a chance to do their jobs. But not this time. They could all hear terse reports from up the ladder, where the bridge watch was obviously worried about the ship holding together under the overwhelming forces at play. She glanced around, the coding gun waiting in her hand. "Bend over, motherfuckers," she advised.

"Dry." Amusuul's sardonic Tygon drawl. "No lube."

"Welcome to Fleet." Ana chose that moment to come slinking into the wardroom, pushing a little handcart full of crusty old navigational instruments. Pixy watched as the Tygon Whore shoved the cart toward the wardroom table, kiting the big dose of Drag to Pixy while everyone was diving for the octants. The drug went into Pixy's arm en passant, without her missing a beat in the coding, and she felt the rush along with the sense of helpless peace she always experienced at times like these: decisions made, actions taken, and now nothing to do but wait around.

One thing was certain, she reflected: Fleet wouldn't like her message.

The important stuff was all there, obviously; Pixy was carefully professional, always. Technical specs, confirmation of the Combat Bulletin, scanner signatures of the Hive signature, as well as her own observations and suggested countermeasures. But she'd added a postscript, and that was the part they wouldn't like.

Thanks for sending us out here to get our asses handed to us. It's been fun.

Nope. They wouldn't like that at all. But Pixy was growing more and more certain she wasn't going to live much longer, so who cared what they thought? She made sure she signed it under her own code, though; wouldn't do to let Reye take the blame for her cynicism, even posthumously.

She knew something was wrong even before the Pulver had fully dropped out. She was still formatting her message for a snap low-beam broadcast when she realized she had no idea where to send it; antenna alignment mattered with the low-beam, and she wouldn't know where to shoot it until after Falgada's data came through. But she immediately realized she might not have that long: the entire port side of the ship was already perceptibly warmer than the starboard, which could only mean they'd drifted perilously close to a star.

When Pixy popped her head through the bridge hatch, she could sense at once that she wouldn't be useful there: this kind of proximity to a celestial body meant gravity issues of an imminent and probably fatal nature, so Reye and Klingmann were currently balls-deep in trying to save the ship. Klonmyre, her abilities as a watch officer hopelessly outmatched by this kind of emergency, looked as if she wanted to bolt for the latrine again. Pixy caught the captain's eye and mouthed general quarters? The nod she got in return was tight, controlled.

Well. The good news was that there'd be no real difficulty in taking a proximate star sighting.

"Lieutenant Falgada!" She twisted her body on the ladder, ignoring the protest from her lower back as she shouted down into the wardroom, "fuck that octant shit. General quarters; hit the alarm."

"Ma'am?" Falgada was at the table with a vox-box at his elbow, his finger holding a manual page open while his other hand fidgeted with his abacus. "Say again? No more star sightings?"

"Put your hand on the port hull, Falgada," Pixy snarled, leaping down into the room. "That's your sighting. We're going to take some punishment in a few minutes; put everyone on damage control." Her mind was on fire; she needed to figure out what star that was, and at this range the computer would probably be as accurate as she needed it to be. So it should all come across the plot repeater in a few more seconds. Then she could orient the antenna, squeeze off her message, start plotting an escape course, help out with the evasive maneuvers, log the new position, and with any luck live to see tomorrow.

"Full vanes," Captain Reye was rasping up on the bridge. "Go to 12% baffles. You need to be faster on the connector levers, Klingmann." Pixy could feel the heat moving slowly from the port side, toward the stern as Reye got the ship around. "I need more engine power, Ms Klonmyre."

"I... I'm not the engineer anymore, captain."

"No shit. You're the officer of the deck. So get on the intertube and tell Ms van Kleck to key in the emergency thrust. I need it on standby."

"Oh." Pixy could practically hear Klonmyre gulp. "Aye aye, sir." In a daze, Pixy dragged her attention back toward Falgada, still with no clothes on, sitting hunched over his vox box barking out damage-control scenarios. She wondered, in vague irrelevance, just why he hadn't found time yet to summon a set of clothes. Her eyes, roaming the room, finally found the repeater again just as it spat out the star plotter's conclusion.

She swallowed. Time to get back to work.

She fought through the Drag, calling up distant memories of Professor Ignace and her Stellar Geography class, which had seemed so useless at the time. She and the other cadets had glanced at each other with their eyebrows nudging their hairlines, wondering what the point was in memorizing star positions in these days of neuralized computing and science people with five lobes in their brains. And yet, here she was, with the computer telling her the ship's ass was currently being roasted by its tortuous proximity to a class F5 star called Eta Scorpii, a name that dated back to the Hearth, to old Greeks staring up at the night sky. A name of a star that was now well, well within Cathos Vremein territory.

Eta Scorpii.

Pixy lunged back to the coding table, her brain spitting up and rejecting the scores, even hundreds, of stars she'd had to learn for her navigation certifications as a sublieutenant. Fuck. So much to remember, and if she screwed this up... Maybe it would be the Disruptor Hive, maybe the nearby star, but something was about to destroy them all. And Fleet would never know unless she could get the goddamn antenna angled.

She was guessing at the back-right-ascension to the Core as her trembling hands punched in the orientation, the ship shuddering all around her as van Kleck found Captain Reye's spare power. An unoccupied corner of Pixy's brain was screaming in frustration at the amount of extra sublight fuel they were burning right now, fuel she and Donskoi had to supply, some of it probably fuel she'd sucked dick to get. And now Reye and van Kleck were blasting it toward a fucking main-sequence monster that was trying to reel them into its gravity well.

The antenna clicked into place like a ponderous old bus wheezing into its docking bay, and as soon as the green light flashed Pixy was firing off the broadcast. Dimly she heard Falgada behind her, screaming into his vox, pleading with Chief Quannax to lock down the starboard clobbets, and she had the presence of mind to glance around to make sure nobody else was there.

It was bad for people to see officers smack each other.

Falgada looked up wild-eyed as Pixy backhanded him once, then again, marveling distantly at the steel in her own voice as she gave the naked man a clenched-teeth reprimand. "Hey!" He blinked up at her, a trickle of blood sprouting at the corner of his lips. "Get it together, dumbass! Nobody needs to hear you freaking out over the vox. They need to hear you calm, smooth, and super-cool. Like this." She cleared her throat and keyed the box, disgusted. "Hey, uh, Chief? This is the XO. Look, that clobbet's really limiting our options, and securing it needs to be your top priority right now. Comprehend?"

"Comprehend, ma'am," the graveled voice drifted back, and Pixy stared down at the first officer.

"Not so tough, right? Now. Teo." The name tasted badly in her mouth; first names always did, but it was what the man needed. "I'm going up to the charthouse to figure out a rescue azimuth in case the captain pulls our asses out of this shitpile. But first? I'll handle damage control here while you summon a fucking uniform and make yourself look like the first officer. Right?"

He swallowed and wiped at his mouth. "Right."

"And then? We're going to solve the problem of having a swarm of fucking mutant enemy assholes trying to destroy us. Right?"

"Right." He was scrambling to find a staytab so that he could call for some clothes.

"And then?" She licked her lips. "We can get on with doing our actual goddamn survey mission. So let's go, huh?"

"Right." You could see the man force himself to get control, like a footracer psyching himself up before the race, and then she wasn't paying attention to him anymore; she needed him sane and functional, mostly because she had her own work to do, and if giving him a few moments in the midst of a crisis so that he could put away his penis was enough to get his head in the game, then so be it.

He was back in just a few minutes, pale but calm, his shirt still fastening itself. "Um. Thank you," he said quietly.

"No problem." Pixy's reply sounded fierce even to herself, despite the Drag. "You get the hang of shit like this. I'm off to the charthouse." And she was away, flying up the ladder, her brain clicking along clearly once more. But it was perceptibly warmer up here on the bridge, the stink of sweat everywhere, even though it looked like the captain was holding everything together. She crouched down to whisper quickly to him, smelling the man's fear. "I'll be plotting a new course, sir. I don't think we can escape at sublight."

He nodded without looking at her.

"I don't think we can escape in lightspace, either," she ground on viciously, under harsh control. "We're actually pretty far over the border already, it seems."

"How?"

She shrugged and had to restrain herself from patting his shoulder. "It's that shit with the altered lightspace course. It's why they're called Disruptors, sir."

"Mm." Reye was looking at the engine readouts. "Fleet needs to know about that."

"They already do." If the antenna was angled properly. "Sir." She straightened to her feet, ignoring her back again, and then jumped into the smelly little charthouse. Her senses were calming down; a lot of that was the Drag, but she was also aware on some level that the bridge was calming, the ship not rattling quite so much, the temperature perhaps even sinking just that little bit. Pixy tried never to focus on things she couldn't control, and right now her job was the rescue course; the bridge watch was busy saving the ship, and she tried not to think about them.

But, see, the bridge was right there, just one broken hatchway away...

"Squaring away, sir," Klingmann was saying now, her voice a mix of strain and relief, and Pixy registered that in some automatic part of her brain and felt a sudden surge of confidence. Good. She'd probably still die today, but at least she wouldn't do it by plunging unstoppably into the fissile heart of Eta Scorpii. "Gravity effects are now down under forty thousand meters per second." Pixy shuddered; that was a hellishly dangerous situation, but the numbers were improving all the time.

"Ms van Kleck says she's normalizing down there, sir, but that she can't yet build her reserve back up." That was Klonmyre, mindful of her dignity as deck officer, wanting to show she was keen.

"Very well." Captain Reye, still controlled. "Weapons? What does your scan show?"

A pause; Pixy was checking her course, pretty sure it could work but unclear on where its start point would be. Assuming the gravity numbers kept falling. Chief Surman came back with a sobering report. "No aspect change, captain; range is decreasing consistently, though."

"As expected," sighed Reye. Pixy worked fast now, knowing he'd ask for a report soon and never, ever wanting to sound like an idiot. "Okay. Get the First Officer up here; it's time we all calm down and get ready for the next problem."

Falgada would be up the ladder in a few seconds, Pixy realized, and she had things to say. "Captain!" she called, forcing herself to the casual air, the offhand tone, as she leaned into the bridge. She still wasn't sure her course would work, but she'd decided not to give Reye a choice. Things were moving too fast. "Best course is eleven point four by two-one-seven, declination of three. That will get us into the furthest orbital plane in about an hour on normal thrust, depending on when we change over." Wait. "No, sir. Not best course; only course. That'll turn us away from the fucking Hive."

"Mouth, Ms Pfeiffer." He nodded though, sweeping an eye over the plotter. "Sounds good. Do it, Klingmann."

"Sir." Klingmann repeated the course in one of those voices that sounded like dull metal filings being dragged behind a magnet; she'd been on duty for hours already, through the worst of the crisis. The entire bridge crew looked like they needed a nap. "Squaring away now."

"Sir?" Falgada was coming up the ladder at last, kicking the hatch closed behind him, blinking around at all the excitement. "Damage control is being handled from the wardroom. I've got deceleration disruption on four decks now."

"Fine." Reye waved his hand as though he was warding off a bad smell. "Decel damage won't matter if we don't get moving. General quarters puts you at the helm, First Officer. Let's get the other officers up here where they belong, maybe give this shift a rest. There's an hour or so before our next hard-time."

"Sir?" Pixy had been thinking. "We can do a quick lightspace acceleration once we're past the last orbit in this system? Put some distance between us and the Cathos Vremein?" She frowned, still working all this out. "A series of tiny, preplanned accelerations, with navigational fixes in between?"

"Negative," Reye said flatly. "They'd figure it out in about the first two accelerations, then we'd be back to what we're dealing with now."

Amisuul was settling into the weapons station, getting a terse status report from Surman while he brought up the targeting globe. "So. What's this target, again?"

Pixy rolled her eyes. "Okay," she called out. "While everyone is getting settled in. This is a Cathos Vremein Disruptor Hive. They detect you a few million klicks out, in lightspace, and then they alter the way lightspace curves matter. The upshot is that they can steer the ship someplace else without us knowing it." She shrugged as the targeting data scrolled across the plotter. "And there we go."

"There we go?" Amisuul traded a veiled glance with Surman as the chief shrugged and stalked off toward the hatch. "There's got to be more. Can we shoot them? Can they shoot us? Are they manned? Do they operate independently?"

Pixy smiled over at the Tygon. "Fleet will know a lot more about Disruptor Hives soon. Like, as soon as they receive our contact report at the Core." She glanced at the chronometer and did some hasty math. "Should take about a week for my initial report to reach them. If I oriented the antenna correctly."

"Speaking of which," the captain mused, nudging Falgada's shoulder with his foot, "let's use this time wisely. Make sure we get good, solid eight-point bearings on all the nearby stars."

"Aye aye, sir." Falgada glanced back at Pixy. "What's the best way to evade these guys?"

Pixy was about to reply, but the captain talked over her. "We'll figure that out right now. Ms Pfeiffer?" He was jerking his head back toward the charthouse, wagging his eyebrows meaningfully. "Charthouse."

"Sir." She looked past him. "Closure rate, Mr Amisuul?"

He frowned into his globe. "Zero, ma'am. They're just keeping pace with us now. Range is constant at ninety thousand kilometers. Good thing we publish our weapons specs," he added. She could hear the irony in his voice; max range on Pulver's Type Eleven torpedoes was about 88,000 klicks.

"Thank Musk for a free press," Reye mused, leading the way into the charthouse. The space was small, crowded, reeking of lube and ozone, and private. Pixy kicked the hatch closed behind her. "Jesus Buddha," Reye told her quietly, running a hand through his short hair. "Quite a day."