Free By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 by Debra Doyle, James D. MacDonald

that they were still alive—and that no new alarm lights had joined the ones already flashing—was the only testimonial he needed.
    A few seconds of relaxation were all he granted himself, however, before leaning forward again to check their position. The navicomp had already finished cross-referencing beacons and starfields and assorted other aids to galactic navigation, and the result put them safely beyond the range of anything on Suivi that didn’t have hyperspace engines.
    He turned to the woman in the copilot’s seat. “Captain Yevil, it’s time for you to signal your ships. Let them know that you’ve sworn to the Domina, and tell them not to make a move until they hear from you—or from her, or the General of the Armies, directly. Anyone else gives them orders, they say no, and shoot if they have to.”
    Yevil reached out for the comm link handset. Then she paused. “We will be joining up with them, won’t we?”
    “Not immediately,” LeSoit said. “First I have to check things out and see how badly we’re hurt. And I’m going to do some repairs.”
    “I can read a status board, even on a merch, and this isn’t a p-suit job. You’re looking at spacedock work.”
    “So I’ll get the ’ Hammer into a spacedock.”
    “Where?” asked Yevil. “You sure as hell can’t go back to Suivi Point. And the way things are right now, there’s no guarantee that anywhere else will take you either.”
    “I know,” LeSoit said. “Don’t worry. I’ve got a place I can take us.”
    “Gyffer?”
    LeSoit shook his head. “Not Gyffer,” he said. “Someplace where they owe me—you don’t need to know where.”
    “Ah,” said Yevil, looking knowledgeable. “That kind of place.”
    “Right,” said LeSoit, not entirely truthfully. He didn’t think the Space Force captain would consider even the outbreak of war a sufficient excuse to ignore some things—and what he intended to do was certainly one of them. “But first, let me go see if we’re in shape to get anywhere at all.”
    They were, it turned out, but just barely. LeSoit’s walk through the ship—those areas that weren’t sealed because of pressure loss—showed him that conditions were fully as bad as he’d expected. The hyperspatial reference block had shaken itself out of alignment during the ’ Hammer ’s fight against the tractor beam, and their breakout from the docking bay had left gaping wounds in the freighter’s hull.
    But the old Libra -class freighters were built tough, LeSoit reflected, designed for long-haul runs with high-risk cargo back when the civilized galaxy was a lot less civilized than it was now. And this particular Libra -class had been modified until she was even tougher. She had the strength and the heart for one more jump, and then—
    Then Ignac’ LeSoit would see what kind of credit he had these days.
    Beka told me to lift ship, he thought. She didn’t tell me where to go.
    All the same, LeSoit took his time putting the reference block back in synch. He checked again to make sure that the airtight doors and bulkheads were keeping what remained of the ‘ Hammer’ s atmosphere inside the ship where it belonged. When he couldn’t put it off any longer, he headed back to the cockpit, where Yevil was waiting.
    “Can we make it?” the Space Force captain asked.
    “As long as we don’t try anything fancy. You have your signal ready to transmit?”
    “I’m ready,” Yevil said. “How long is our little side trip going to take, anyway? I have some people who need to know.”
    “They don’t need to know that bad,” said LeSoit. “They can wait until we show up again. Besides, I won’t know how long the repairs will take until I get there.”
    “I see,” Yevil said. She picked up the handset again. “Hi-comms or lightspeed, do you think?”
    “Lightspeed.” It was good to have an easy question for a change, LeSoit reflected. “It’s the only sure means. Hi-comms are unreliable as hell right now; the