Starship Castaways

The clan ship's ignoring us, and if its captain was going to bother finishing us off that would be happening right this minute-so I'm betting they' re going to leave us right where we are. Abandoning us to die, is what they think they're doing! But we aren't going to cooperate."

When had Pappaniku switched from a direct bridge-to-engine room call to a shipwide broadcast? Lansing hadn't noticed, but she realized now it had happened because her surviving crew members weren't staring toward her and straining to eavesdrop. They had their heads lifted, and their faces wore the slightly vacant expressions of humans listening to a voice that was (from their viewpoint) disembodied.

"We aren't going to lie down on our decks and die," Captain Pappaniku was saying with absolute determination. "That's probably what 'Clan honor' expects, since we're out of the battle and the ship we're supposed to be guarding with our lives is lost no matter what we do or don't do now. But committing suicide by giving up isn't part of my code of honor, and I don't believe it's part of anyone else's here, either!" The tempo of her speech picked up as she said that last sentence, as her tone went from defiant to galvanizing. "Department heads and deck bosses. Get your areas secured; put together a list of repairs you can make, and start your people on them immediately. Put together another list of repairs you can't make, and bring it with you to my ready room 30 minutes from now. I want casualty lists then, too. We're going to figure out how we can stay alive, and after that we're going to figure out how we can get this ship to safe harbor somewhere until help can reach us. Get busy, now! Pappaniku out."

From all over the engine room, Rilla Lansing heard sighs. The people under her command, those who were still alive and conscious and able to react to their captain's speech, threw despair aside and went back to work with a grim enthusiasm that five minutes earlier Lansing wouldn't have believed possible.

* * *

On her bridge, Captain Irina Pappaniku slumped as she closed the commlink. Making that announcement had taken the last of her strength...or almost the last of it, anyway.

She had one more thing to do. Her first mate, her executive officer in the parlance of the Defense Service to which she'd belonged for so many years out of the life she would lose today, was bending over her with poorly concealed horror in his eyes.

Pappaniku didn't want to know how she looked, and Mitchell Dufrain's eyes came far too close to serving her as a mirror. Yet she couldn't afford, not just yet, to close her own lids; because once she did that, she doubted she would have enough strength (physical strength, at least) to pry them open again.

Strength of will she still had, but that could only carry her ruined flesh so far. Beyond that, lay death-and for the first time, death looked inviting and peaceful to Irina Pappaniku.

They'd promised her it would be this way when her time finally came, had her teachers during the early years of her career. She'd tried her best to believe them, but she hadn't quite managed it until now.

Now what she felt most keenly was gratitude at discovering that they were right after all.

"Captain, we don't have a sickbay anymore. But can't I at least get you onto the couch in your ready room? You've got to let someone dress those burns, and give you enough painkiller to knock you out. What you just did, talking to the crew like that-you've made the difference.