Imperium Restored by Walter Jon Williams

Imperium Restored by Walter Jon Williams

Author:Walter Jon Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-09-20T00:00:00+00:00


She woke in weightlessness. Viswan floated over her, holding her gloved hand, and Ricci was also there, one hand hanging onto Sula’s acceleration cage, the other holding a hand comm from which he was reading. They swam in and out of focus.

Sula tried to speak, failed, then licked her lips and tried harder. “What . . . happened?” she managed.

“You were unconscious,” Viswan said. Her large brown eyes gazed at Sula with concern. “Dr. Gunaydin and a stretcher party are on their way.”

“Blood pressure’s low, but within normal parameters.” Ricci read from his hand comm, and Sula saw that it was cabled to the biomonitor on her suit. He turned to her. “You bounced back, my lady.”

Sula slowly processed what had happened, and then she gave a start that sent her careening around within her webbing.

“We’re not accelerating!” she said. “The engines have tripped!”

Viswan looked at her. Her voice was all concern. “We’ll restart the engines once we get you to sick bay.”

Crew suffering a stroke, cardiac arrest, or other life-threatening condition could trigger an engine shutdown. During combat the shutdown would be triggered only by a threat to senior officers, with ordinary crew left to live or die on their own.

“No!” Sula cried. “We’re a sitting target now—we can’t maneuver! Get back to your stations, and tell Gunaydin and the stretcher party to prepare for high gee!”

“My lady—” said Viswan.

“Now! I’m fine! Get moving! Missiles are on their way!”

“Those missiles were destroyed,” Ricci said.

“There are more missiles where those came from! Get to your seats!”

Ricci looked at his hand comm again and gave Viswan a hopeless look. “Vital signs are nominal,” he conceded.

Viswan sighed and pushed off for her acceleration cage. Ricci disconnected his hand comm from Sula’s biomonitor, swung around Sula’s acceleration cage, and pushed off toward his station.

Sula had already forgotten him and was absorbed in her displays. Splendid was currently drifting through a large, expanding, cooling bubble of radio noise, the remains of fireballs from destroyed incoming missiles. Sensors revealed the rest of Division Nine accelerating away, firing missiles that curled around Splendid before arrowing toward their targets.

Splendid was also firing, aiming into a patch of radio murk that was blazing hot, doubtless where the enemy force was lurking.

The door opened and Dr. Gunaydin floated in, saw Sula, then kicked out toward her. He caught her cage, and she and the cage swung as it absorbed his momentum.

“Doctor,” Sula said. “Get to a couch. We’re about to start acceleration again.”

Gunaydin’s face was stern. “My lady,” he said. “That’s impossible.”

“It’s very possible,” Sula said. “I’m fine, and I need to get this ship out of danger.”

“My lady,” said Gunaydin. “Your heart stopped. Your blood pressure crashed, and you were unconscious for . . .”

“Twenty seconds to engine start,” reported Ricci.

“I’m conscious now,” Sula said, and pointed toward the acceleration couch where the tactical officer would normally sit. “If you don’t want to be flattened like a pancake, you’d better take that chair. You can monitor me from there.



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