Read Online The Praxis by Walter Jon Williams - Free Book Online Page B

world to back off—she had no reason to think that Captain Blitsharts was alive—and had every cause to fear the outcome.
    But still, she thought. But still…
    Maybe she was just stubborn.
    She closed her helmet and triggered the comm unit. “Cadet Sula to Operations Control. I’m going to try once again.”
    As soon as she ended the transmission, her hands went to the maneuvering controls and—before she could change her mind—she began triggering jets. She wasn’t going slowly this time, no cautious addition of yaw to roll to pitch, but moving in all three planes at once. Don’t think about it, she told herself, just do it.
    Vertigo surfed through Sula’s skull. She felt gravity tug at her lips and cheek, felt her suit clamp down on her arms and legs. She kept her eyes focused on the strip of dancing bright orange, on making the dancing orange carpet stand still.
    The orange horizon moved only in two planes now. Stinging acid rose to her throat, and she fought it back down, clamping her jaw and neck muscles to send blood to the brain. Now the horizon moved only in one plane, bobbing up and down like the bow of a rowboat, until she stilled that movement as well. Her stomach took a sudden lunge into her throat, and she battled it back down.
    â€œDisplay: reverse angle.” The words fell from her lips like a faint prayer. Suddenly the angle was reversed, and she saw Midnight Runner standing still in the blackness, the bright orange carpet fixed to its back. She nudged both controls, and the yacht crept closer. She could feel tears whipping across her face as the boat’s frenzied gravities tore them from her eyes, and was thankful that tears could not blur the virtual display burning in her mind.
    But gravities would. The orange carpet was not as bright as once it had been. Her vision was going black. She could barely see the Runner’s shiny black prow as it slid under her. She braked, hoping she had slowed her boat’s movement to a crawl, and as her vision darkened she cried out, “Grapples: engage!”
    Both the yacht and the Fleet pinnace were made of layers of resinous polymer stiffened by longitudinal polycarbon beams—nothing a magnetic grapple would adhere to. But ferrous degaussing strips ran the length of the hull, charged to repel radiation, and these provided a lodging for the grapples.
    There was a shuddering boom as the two hulls came together, followed by a tone in Sula’s headset that told her the grapples had successfully adhered. And then she was working the thruster controls again, fighting the two boats’ mad tumble through emptiness.
    â€œDisplay: kill the artificial horizon! Display: show the plane of the ecliptic!” The words came from her in a choked scream. Two boats were heavier than the pinnace alone, and sluggish to respond to the controls. She could barely see the plane of the ecliptic even as it was projected onto her visual centers, a green gridiron that flashed over and around and across…
    She battled the swinging weight of the locked boats, and then a new jolt of terror shrieked through her nerves as she felt something else resisting her—Runner ’s thrusters were firing again. Blitsharts was fighting her . Fury at this treachery raged in her heart. She battled on, struggling against the chaotic movement, battling to remain conscious as her vision darkened…A wail rose to her throat, a bubbling cry of frustration and anger.
    The boat juddered and moaned as gravities warred within its frame. Then Sula gave a shout of triumph as she realized her vision was returning. She saw the plane of the ecliptic rolling around her in a simple pattern…she applied thrust, damping the ship’s oscillations, then felt a surge of weary triumph as the gridiron plane stilled, stretched like a carpet beneath her feet from one horizon to the other.
    Blitsharts’s boat gave a single blast from its thrusters,