The Praxis by Walter Jon Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

prevent blood pooling and to prevent bedsores—faded as she floated free in her harness. The soft darkness retreated from her perceptions, and she could fill her lungs with air.
    She checked her own vital signs, found elevated heart rate and blood pressure, but not in the critical ranges. She hadn’t stroked out during the acceleration—which sometimes happened even to the fittest young cadets—nor had she given herself some kind of weird heart murmur or arrhythmia.
    The composite organics of the ship’s hull cracked and snapped as they reacted to the end of the relentless acceleration. Sula scanned the displays, then raised a hand to send a message both to the Los Angeles and to Operations on Zanshaa.
    â€œCadet Sula reporting. Diagnostics report optimal conditions following deceleration.” Thanks for not killing me, she added mentally.
    She stretched in her acceleration couch, forcing sluggish blood to her reluctant muscles. The cockpit of the pinnace was tiny, with Sula in her pressure suit taking up most of the available volume. There was even less room than normal, because she was flying a two-seated trainer in case she had to take Blitsharts aboard.
    Funny. She’d volunteered for pinnace duty in part because it meant getting time to herself, away from ship quarters where the cadets were crammed together, each living in the other’s armpit. What she discovered was that even here, alone in the infinity of space, there wasn’t room enough to so much as stretch her arms above her head.
    A light glowed on her communications board, the signal that messages had been recorded for her. She’d noted the light since deceleration ceased, but hadn’t felt up to interacting with the command structure till now. She triggered the display and discovered a continuous stream of tracking data from Zanshaa’s ring sensors showing Blitsharts’s tumbling craft. Another was a communication from Operations Command, a message the pinnace had received directly, followed by a copy of the same message forwarded by the communications officer aboard Los Angeles.
    Sula played the recorded message. A dark-browed, lantern-jawed young man looked out of the display. There were staff tabs on his collar, the sign of a lord commander’s pet, and Sula found herself loathing him on sight.
    The lieutenant spoke. “Lieutenant Martinez at Operations to any rescue pilot. I have analyzed the way in which the target boat is tumbling, and the results don’t look very promising.” A simulation of Midnight Runner filled the display, and Sula leaned forward, studying the fix Captain Blitsharts had got himself into.
    The voice went on. “I can’t see any way to dock with the boat’s hatch, which is too far forward. At best you’d get knocked around badly; at worst you’d kill yourself, Blitsharts, and his dog Orange.”
    Har har, Sula thought. The lord commander’s pet had a sense of humor. Wonderful.
    â€œI’ve worked out a way you can dock with the yacht, if not with the hatch,” Martinez went on. “You’ll have to exactly duplicate with your own boat the precise fashion in which Blitsharts is tumbling, then slip inside his rolling motion to dock.” A pinnace appeared in the simulation, rolling and pitching just as Blitsharts’s boat was doing, and then the two moved together to mate, the pinnace fitting carefully into a whirlwind corkscrew cone formed by Midnight Runner’s off-center spinning nose.
    â€œYou’re going to have to screw it in,” Martinez said, and Sula felt a surge of memory. She’d heard the message, live, as she received it—only she’d been unconscious through most of it.
    â€œYou can’t access the hatch from this position,” Martinez continued, “but once you’re clamped onto him, you can use your own maneuvering thrusters to damp down the movements of Blitsharts’s boat. When