"Hold your course, Captain," Princess was saying into the radio, her Rigan polite and formal. "Under no circumstances break off. I repeat, do not change course. We're synchronising our computer systems with yours now. I assure you, our calculations are proceeding well within normal parameters."
"Calculations? Normal parameters?" Jason asked, sitting down.
"Their computer's on the fritz," Mark said from Tiny's seat, "and in close formation like that, only the front ship's got any decent sensor readings. We need you to calculate the jump for them."
"To?"
"On your screen."
That explained why Princess was being coy with the Rigans: multiple minutes from jump, 'within normal parameters' meant 'Jason hasn't even started yet.' His screen was showing an entirely basic jump profile to another Rigan colony world. One which, if he remembered rightly, had a major military installation. Good choice. He gave Princess the thumbs-up.
The main viewscreen, meanwhile, showed an evacuation ship on their port side, rather too close for comfort. No wonder Mark hadn't been interested in chit-chat. Close formation flying in the Phoenix was unlikely to be his favourite pastime, especially not with a ship so large it wouldn't even notice if they rammed it. Necessary, though, to get good enough sensor readings to calculate a jump for another ship.
"Our computer is finalising now," Princess said. "Please don't be concerned by the delay. Our protocols are slightly different from yours. Everything's on schedule."
'Our computer' indeed. Jason snorted to himself and set to work.
"Incoming!" That was Keyop, and there was significant worry in his voice.
"Details, G-4," said Mark calmly.
"Multiple mecha. Five minutes to intercept."
"Five minutes?"
"They're small." Keyop sounded thoroughly miserable. "Only just picked them up. Sorry."
"Keep me informed. G-2, can we do this?"
"No problem." Not a difficult solution at all, this. Nice well-defined jump-point. He could do calculations like these in his sleep.
That said, he was calculating for a bunch of giant tin cans, not the Phoenix.
"They can jump together, right?"
"I already told them they had to." Mark indicated Princess, still talking reassuringly into the radio. "They're not entirely happy about it. Sooner you get them some numbers the better."
Jason pointed at his own screen, even though Mark couldn't see it. "Done. Is there even any point refining them? Those things spend days in jump. Crudest jump-engines you ever saw."
"Flatter them. They're nervous as hell."
"I'll leave that to Princess." He continued to refine the solution. It was good practice for their own jump home, even if the lumbering behemoths off their port wingtip couldn't use it.
"They are ready to go, right?"
"Two minutes to jump-point," said Princess, confirming the numbers on his screen. She repeated it into the radio in Rigan. "Coordinates laid in. Good luck, Captain. Your Red Ranger escort will be waiting for you when you come out of jump."
On the screen, the giant ship began to shiver and glow. Very slowly. Nothing like the way the Phoenix erupted into flame. This was more of a tin can heated with a blowtorch glow, and not a very big blowtorch at that.
"One minute," said Princess.
"Problem," said Keyop. "Too slow. Last ship. No time."
"Steady, kid." Jason knew what that degree of frustrated, abbreviated speech meant. He squinted at the sensor output, and he had to agree.
"They'll be on top of us in three minutes."
Mark swore. "Princess, tell the Rigans to hold their course and go for jump no matter what we do."
Time to make a stand. "G-1," he said, "understand this. If we go after those Spectrans, G-5 will die."
"We're not going after them. Is Tiny fit for jump?"
He'll have to be. Medical call. His. "Yes," he said. "How long does it take those things to get into jump?" The wretched thing was cherry red now, but still nowhere near what it should look like to get into jump-space.
Nobody answered.
"Keyop, how long until the Spectrans are in firing range?" Mark asked.
Their sensor operator shook his head unhappily. "Ninety seconds?"
Mark didn't react, still watching the lumbering craft, still shadowing it. The front one was almost completely shimmering flame now, orange-red streamers spreading across most of their front screen. The second, third and fourth, neatly framed in the smaller screens above the main one by a sensor operator who really should have been scanning for Spectrans a little more efficiently, were various shades from bright orange to mildly warm red.
"Get out and push?" Keyop suggested. There was a nervous guilt in his voice which stopped Jason's sarcastic comment in its tracks. The kid felt bad enough already.
The first ship finally - finally - went to jump in a sea of flames, and Jason did some rapid calculations. "It'll be seventy seconds until the last ship hits jump-space."
"Spectrans here by then," said Keyop. "Have to fight them."
"We can't."
"We won't," said Mark, and that was his command voice, the one they all obeyed without question. "Princess, stand by on the weapons, don't fire unless I tell you to. Jase, you'll need to compute the jump without a straight approach. We'll hit the jump-point in sixty-five seconds from...now."
A counter appeared on his screen, blinking and running down in hundredths in the bottom left of his display.
"If you have a solution when we hit the jump-point, make the jump. If not, we'll have to turn and fight."
"Understood." Jason stared at his sensor data as the Phoenix swung round hard to the right, on a course which should look to the Spectran ships as if they were setting up an attack for as long as possible. Until they pulled round hard again and entered the jump-point at a steep angle, accelerating hard. Mark had put an outline of the course he planned to follow on Jason's screen. It couldn't be more unlike their usual jump-entries. They always came in straight. If at all possible, they came in inert, though just occasionally they were trying to outrun something and he had to deal with constant acceleration. He'd never even tried to solve something like this, with a whole bunch of extra terms in the equations.
It was as well that it was a steady, clearly defined jump-point. Without that, he wouldn't have stood a chance. As it was...maybe. He'd have to trust to his instincts, because none of his computerised safety checks were going to work. His screen was already filled with red warnings about instabilities and field variations and just about everything being wrong with their approach which possibly could be wrong. He was going to have fractions of a second to find the solution, and that was Mark at the controls. Not Tiny, who he'd have trusted to be able to hit that course on his screen to within an inch or two. Mark, flying the Phoenix? Maybe ten yards. That was a lot in this situation.
Tiny was dying in the shielded safety of sickbay, alone and in agony. If they got this wrong, Tiny would live longer than the rest of them. Slightly.
Ten seconds. Five. Jason only vaguely heard Keyop yelp that the Spectrans were firing. He was just about aware that they were headed in a full speed dive for a Rigan transport which hadn't quite made it into jump yet. Flames filled the viewscreen, numbers filled his head, and he saw the solution he needed. No time for warnings or protocol - he hauled back on the lever which activated Fiery Phoenix and threw them into jump.
Not bad, he thought. Not great, but not bad. Stomach-churning, head-splitting, burning misery, but that was normal for jump. In sickbay, the door would have sealed, all electrical connections detached, the medical equipment switched to battery power. Isolated, at the exact minimum point of their jump-field, it shouldn't be too bad in there. Jason hoped.
.
They'd barely dropped out of jump when Mark turned to him. "Your call, G-2. What's next?"
"Get us down. G-3, get Chris on the radio and pipe him directly through to the sickbay comm."
He could feel the vibration in the deck as he waited for the sickbay door to unseal. Mark must have the main drive redlined.
He was about ready to drill his way in when there was a sucking sound of seals letting go and the door finally released. Jason swallowed, suddenly unsure of what he would find in there. What if...?
But the monitors were peeping away, and Tiny was visibly still breathing. Far too fast and shallow, and his face had gone from greenish to grey-white.
He's going into shock. Not good. At all. Septic shock could and would kill him very efficiently. Jason tried to be reassured by the shuddering ship around him. Mark had them going flat out. They'd be home in no time, and now they were the right side of jump he could get real medical advice over the radio from the team doctor.
"Hang in there, Tiny," he said, hitting the button to put the intercom into full two way mode. "Chris?"
"Right here. Hit the yellow button on the monitor, and tell me what you've done so far."
"IV, left elbow, running wide open, warmed saline." It sounded pathetically little.
"That's good. Now, you need to get his blood pressure up. Get an IV in his other arm. Wide open saline, just like the first."
Even though nobody was watching, Jason felt himself flush. "I had to do a cutdown to get the first one in."
"With that blood pressure? I'm not surprised. Do the same again. I'm not giving marks for artistry."
It wasn't much better than his first attempt, but he didn't care. Needle in, check valve, withdraw needle, flush the line and connect. The blood pressure line on the monitor stopped dropping.
"Good. Now, in the drug cabinet behind you there's a fluid pack labelled E hyphen two three."
Jason flicked through the ordered rows of emergency drug packs, all labelled 'do not administer before jump under any circumstances.' That was reassuring, at least.
"Got it."
"Attach it to the secondary feed of the first IV."
Jason fumbled with the connections. "What is it?"
"Heavy duty antibiotics and painkillers. Done?"
Take your time, his instructor had always said. If he'd taken his time, maybe he wouldn't have cross-threaded the connector. Jason swore under his breath, yanked the wretched thing off and tried again. More slowly. Persuading stripped threads that they were still there, really. It leaked. After a few rounds of surgical tape, it leaked less.
"Done."
"Good. Has he been vomiting?"
There was a weak chuckle from the bed. "And how."
"Jason, top shelf of the cupboard. Ondansetron."
"Don't you dare move, Tiny," Jason warned, contemplating five million identical ampoules. All had incomprehensible names, and they had clearly been thrown about at some point. They needed a better storage system, one which could handle pulling eight g upside-down. "Chris, I can't find it."
"Plastic ampoule. Yellow label."
Miracle of miracles, everything else appeared to be glass. He could only see three plastic ones, and the first one he grabbed was right.
"Ondansetron. Standard dose four milligrams, it says."
"Give him eight."
One of those bodymass things, then. Tiny did make two of most people.
"Still feeling like crap?" he asked, setting up to add the drug to the line. He decided not to ask how much of the previous few minutes the other had been aware of.
"Pretty much, yeah." No weight behind his voice, eyes barely open, but he was conscious and he was coherent. That was a million times better than it might have been.
Jason had just finished injecting the drug when his bracelet pinged.
"Ready for re-entry when you are," Mark said.
"Go for it." He tossed everything loose into the nearest cupboard and slammed the door before pulling the jumpseat down and strapping himself in. Not a moment too soon. The Phoenix shook and juddered, almost as if a pilot unfamiliar with her quirks was slamming her into the atmosphere much too fast. Funny, that.
Jason leant back, rested his head against the bulkhead, and tried not to covet some of that anti-nausea drug he'd just given Tiny. No windows, no viewscreens, and a decidedly bumpy ride. Not good. It was just as well that the Owl had stopped vomiting - like he'd said, he'd been empty long before they'd got him in here. Jason might well have joined in otherwise.
No vomiting, but he was still groaning despite the painkillers, and Jason took advantage of a slightly smoother few seconds to put a hand on his shoulder.
"Hang in there. Nearly home."
"I feel grim."
"I know. Not long." Or it better hadn't be. Jason wasn't any too clear on precisely what happened when you diluted someone's bloodstream with saline to this extent. He just knew it was an absolute last resort when their blood pressure simply had to come up, and that urgent medical intervention was needed to sort the patient's electrolyte balance out afterwards. Transfusions. Dialysis, maybe. Nothing he could do.
"Jase," Tiny groaned, "too fast."
"Don't worry about it." Tiny always had been a lousy backseat driver.
"We hit the water vibrating like this, we'll break up." It ended in a gasp of pain, and Jason re-evaluated. Backseat piloting or not, Tiny was the expert.
He brought his bracelet up."G-1, G-5 advises this is too fast for water entry."
"Acknowledged." The communication was cut, and the juddering got even worse. Braking like crazy, he must be. What altitude were they at? They'd been in re-entry forever.
A shriek from the engines; a manoeuvre which felt as if they'd gone round the U-bend of a drain followed by a lurch in the opposite direction, and Jason put his head on his knees and fought with himself not to throw up. He won - just. Sitting up carefully, he became aware that the vibrations had gone, replaced with smooth quiet.
"I prefer your water entries," he said to Tiny.
No response. The big man's eyes were rolled up, his face completely slack. Jason went back to the radio.
"Chris?"
"He's gone to meet you in the hangar," another voice said. Chris's latest assistant, Jason thought. He'd had very few dealings with the man, beyond casual greetings.
"G-5's unconscious."
"That's not unexpected. Leave everything as it is. Medical staff will be with you as soon as you dock."
Not unexpected indeed. It means he's in massive trouble. Jason didn't say it. It couldn't help, and in any case at that moment he felt the jarring clang of the clamps locking on the hull. They were in. Two minutes for the pumps to drain the cavern, a few seconds after that for Chris to make his way here.
He unstrapped, folded the seat out of the way, and opened the sickbay door. He could do nothing else. Tiny was unresponsive, his breathing was unsteady, and everything was pointing to conditions which were labelled You Can't Handle This in the paramedic's handbook. Peritonitis, electrolyte imbalance, septic shock...
Chris came through the door faster than Jason had ever seen him move before, towing a trolley and accompanied by another doctor as well as their implant expert.
"How long's he been out?"
"This time? Five minutes. About." It felt like half an hour, but four minutes was how long it took from water entry to cavern drain.
Chris didn't answer. He was already adding syringes to the IV pumps, prepared for him by the second doctor. Mike Bennett had some sort of electronic device under the back of Tiny's neck and was plugging it into a power supply on the trolley. Jason was just plain in the way. He stepped out into the corridor, backed up against the opposite wall, and slid down it to sit on the floor. They might need more information from him. Regardless, he couldn't leave Tiny here without finding something out.