~
Ailyss hung onto the handholds, watching the Captain and Jon Marsden in action. Lascek had taken the helm; his First Mate was operating the console, and the Captain reached over every now and then to hammer a sequence into the keyboard himself, like a pianist in a duet. Marsden and the Captain seemed so tuned into each other, they appeared to share a consciousness.
She peered outside. Rain drenched the mostly Cuban flying team. Yet they responded like a finely tuned apparatus, obeying Rushka’s commands brilliantly despite her being a young girl; she in turn complied instinctively with what her father demanded.
Ailyss lifted her gaze to the wild, rain-whipped sea beyond the deck. The heads and submerged reefs went on and on. The Solar Wind skimmed her way past on the right and then on the left at breakneck speed, and then on the right again, plummeting into troughs and ploughing up swells, and then skated on hydrofoils right over a shoal that was just too near the surface for the heavier Schooners, timing it perfectly with the erratic waves. Ronan Donegal shouted directions from the Crow’s Nest to the bridge over the com, with Shawn piping up every so often, adding something in. Lascek responded to these directions intuitively, also taking into account – to Ailyss’ surprise – several other readings the console showed, which weren’t part of a normal ship console system! The Solar Wind gave constant data about the strength of waves and currents, the probability of submerged rocks as calculated by the behaviour of the water and its turbulences; the strength of the wind and the exact angle, and predictions of momentary currents and eddies and their vectors. Compared to this, radar seemed a crude, old-fashioned apparatus!
Radomir Lascek used it all, enhancing the stability of the ship with small bursts from various drives. Those in use had to be positioned at the very base of the keel. She herself ought to be in the machine room helping Dr Jake, she thought guiltily. He’d have his hands full! But the Captain had told her to stay right here where he could see her.
The Schooners couldn’t get around the Solar Wind. In the first place she was faster; she could simply have outrun them. But this was not Lascek’s plan. Dr Jake in the machine room and Marsden on the bridge exploded advancing torpedoes with nuclear bursts. Not that there was a whole lot of target for those torpedoes!
Ailyss watched, awed. She studied the men at work; Marsden with his suave, smooth appearance and manner, focus across his entire face. The Captain, smiling. Devils of light dancing in his steel-blue eyes. He was having fun! Ailyss could see that he loved the way his ship responded, the way he and his unlikely crew could sail her into near-impossibility, only to veer away from rocks and sandbanks at the last moment, watching with glee how another of the Schooners was drawn in by the tide and the currents, and dragged onto the rocks. Beached, wrecked.
She was amazed, and proud, and miserable. Proud to be on this ship and have the privilege of watching at such close range. Miserable, because she had picked the wrong side and doomed this extraordinary bunch of survivors. It had been wrong from the start. Unicate was a dicey employer; Rebellion, a terrible foe. Life was treacherous to begin with; working as a solitary agent had been her way of slinking past the most slippery bits. She was aware of Jon Marsden casting her searching glances; repeatedly she took a breath, meaning to throw herself at the Captain’s feet and beg for his forgiveness, and every time she shrugged the urge off again. There was no point. Her life was forfeit. She didn’t want mercy, only to be forgiven, but she doubted that she’d get that either.
She’d throw herself at the mercy of the gypsy, she decided. He was the most dangerous of the lot. He’d execute her, that was certain, but she’d implore him to take care of her brother. He had a soft spot for children. Keenan had done nothing wrong; he’d been caught in the crossfire. Federi looked after Shawn well enough.
The Solar Wind surfed over a huge swell, lifted high by the force of the wave, and glided into the trough. Behind her, the last of the Schooners that was still operational, cleared the same crest – almost. The wave had moved on. The Schooner came down on a sandbank, its keel hitting it with such a force that the whole ship cracked open like an egg. Radomir Lascek smiled broadly.
“Peras,” he engaged the ship-to-ship intercom, “I won’t ask you why you are hunting us. I know why. Understand one thing though. That war you’re planning with the Unicate. It’s not going to happen. That’s a promise. I am Radomir Lascek, and I don’t make empty promises.”
A stream of juicy Spanish expressions poured out of the ship com. Radomir Lascek laughed, a loud, hearty laugh. The Solar Wind cleared the system of reefs and furled her sails, waiting for the Rebellion Schooner under Sherman Dougherty’s command to finish rounding the rocks.
Radomir Lascek turned to Ailyss.
“Any comments, Miss Quinlan?”
“War, Captain?”
He smiled grimly. “You had the idea you were working for a noble organization?”
“Captain…” Ailyss sighed. “I know my life is forfeit. I’m only so sorry that I picked the wrong side!” She snapped her mouth shut. There hadn’t been all that much freedom to pick, if she thought about it. If she looked closely, her whole career was really only a dance for survival.
“So am I, Ailyss Quinlan,” said Radomir Lascek gravely. “So am I!”