"What are you going to…?"
Torin cut him off. "I'll decide when I get there." She glanced down at the camera on the edge of the control panel, thought briefly about pretending to forget it, and changed her mind. Ultimately, rescuing Craig trumped her ego. "Whatever happens," she muttered, reaffixing the camera to her tunic, "you're editing this bit out."
Torin would have preferred to have avoided the Hub entirely, but it was the only way to get from the docking arms into the station. "Remember," she said quietly, pitching her voice under the noise of the games on the big screens and a fight between two di'Taykan under the nearer one, "play nice. Recon only. Do not engage."
"If they swing first?" Mashona asked, arms folded.
"Win." Torin swept a disdainful gaze around the Hub. At first glance, she couldn't tell the pirates from the station crew. The thieves and murderers from the support staff. Fukking Werst. "Might makes right with this lot." The two di'Taykan were rolling around on the deck. Given they were di'Taykan, it wouldn't be a fight much longer. "If it comes to it, I want this lot to think twice about pissing us off."
Wrest flexed his toes against the deck, cracking the knuckles. "Just twice?"
"Twice is fine. It's 0341 now; if we're not back at the ship by 0830 station time…" Five hours was more than twice the time Ressk said he'd need. "… assume we've been caught. Abandon subtlety. Blow the docking clamps, haul ass, and call in the Marines to deal with the armory."
"This is subtle?"
"Werst."
His nose ridges flared. "These are bad guys, Gunny. You get caught doing bad things, they'll assume it's because you're a bad guy, too. Not because you're a good guy trying to screw them."
"Figuratively speaking," Mashona muttered under her breath.
"You get grabbed," Werst continued ignoring her, "precedent suggests you'll haul your ass and Ressk's out of the fire. We'll wait."
Torin opened her mouth to tell him she'd just given him an order and, from his expression, he knew exactly what she was about to say. Easy enough to figure out his response. With less than fourteen hours, they didn't have time to argue. "Fine. Presit can call in the Marines. She'll know before you do." Nodding toward the nearest bar, she added, "Put your drinks on my tab."
Mashona grinned. "So we can skip out without paying it."
"Cherish the small things," Torin agreed. "Now go before I get any older and this plan gets any more ludicrous."
There were three ways to get to System Administration from the Hub. With no reason to be anywhere near the staff quarters or the maintenance tubes, Torin took the obvious and most public route. What was your business in Admin? would be a lot easier to answer than, Why were you skulking about? should her journey come to Big Bill's attention in the next…
Torin glanced at her slate.
… twelve hours and forty-one minutes.
The section of corridor directly off the vertical was utilitarian. Gray. Cleaner than the public areas, granted, but also less streamlined. Not all the mechanicals were hidden and it reminded her of the engineering sections of a battle cruiser. It was stupid o'clock in the morning station time, between shifts, so she expected to be alone, but four meters away at the access to a second vertical, a Krai in maintenance overalls stood swearing at an open panel. Glanced up as Torin's boots hit the deck, dismissed her as unimportant, and returned to profanity. Big Bill could almost definitely pick the Grr brothers out of a crowd, but his maintenance workers? Not likely. Not unless they were behind on their fifteen percent. Ressk would get to Communications right after she did, and no one would see him coming.
System Admin had its own set of decompression doors.
According to the schematics, Communications was at the end of the next corridor, the last in a line of closed, unlabeled hatches leading to Records, Finance, and Weapons Control.
Torin couldn't see the surveillance cameras, but she didn't doubt they were there. To be on the safe side, she stayed as far from the locks as the corridor allowed. Her new code opening them in sequence would sure as shit attract the wrong kind of attention. Enough attention to justify waking Big Bill should he have gone to sleep.
The hatch to Communications was already open.
Unable to see how it could possibly be a trap, Torin stepped in over the lip. A glance at her slate showed Ressk's sweeper program had picked up no surveillance in the room. So far, so good.
Communications was long and narrow. Two extended boards ran along both side bulkheads with a double row of monitors over each. The monitors offered a tour of the station's surveillance cameras, three seconds on each view. Torin noted four different angles on the Hub, the interior of half a dozen bars or half a dozen interiors of the same bar, interiors of the shops-Vrijheid had a masseuse? Pirates got stressed?-and one fuk of a lot of empty corridors. Looked like a dedicated monitor on the last hatch before the ore docks. Each monitor had its own station. The room also held two wheeled chairs; minimum staff to cover maximum distance. An ocher-haired di'Taykan sprawled in one chair. The other chair was empty.
The di'Taykan looked up and frowned. Although the Taykan showed few visible signs of aging to non-Taykan, Torin's experience with Staff Sergeant Beyhn on Crucible made her think this was a di close to turning qui. That meant she wasn't here because she was young and stupid. She was here because she chose to be here.
"Who the fuk are you?" she demanded.
New plan.
"New hire," Torin said, moving closer, careful to make it look like she was watching the monitors.
"And I'm supposed to train you? At this hour? Fuk that. Wait…" Her eyes darkened, most of the ocher disappearing as the light receptors opened. "… I saw you with the boss. Couple of times."
"That's what I said. New hire."
"What, and you're here to keep an eye on me? I don't fukking think that…"
As a species, the Taykan had long slender necks. Easy to get an arm around. Lots of room to cover the mouth and nose. Easier for Torin to kill her than disable her, but Werst had made that impossible. Ignoring the fingers clawing at her sleeve, Torin wondered if she should thank him.
As the ends of agitated ocher hair stung her face, Torin moved her mouth in close and murmured, "Big Bill sent me."
The di'Taykan stiffened momentarily before finally going limp. Message received.
The thin plastic panels fronting the vertical bottoms of the control boards-solid and unchanging under her touch-were easy enough to slide off although Torin had to open up four sections before she had room for the unconscious di'Taykan. Stretching her out on her side, Torin turned her masker up full, slid the panels back on, and stood. No way the di'Taykan would be out for the full twelve hours and thirteen minutes, but she'd be out of the way for a couple of hours at least. And when she came to, she'd remember Big Bill had been responsible and she wouldn't raise the alarm.
For a while.