"How do you know this?" How did he not know this? The Heart of Stone was Cho's ship. His. Not Krisk's.
The engineer snorted. "I helped design the fukking ship for the Navy, didn't I."
After this was over, he was going to have a talk with Krisk. Pry him out of his engine room and find out why he'd been hiding…
"Captain!" The hatch slammed against the bulkhead, and Almon charged into the control room. "Nadayki's not on board! He's still on the ore docks."
"Then he's dead," Cho said bluntly.
Almon's eyes darkened. "You left him there to die!"
Cho ducked the first wild swing, and then Nat appeared, nose streaming blood, and jabbed a trank into Almon's neck. He staggered sideways and hit the deck hard.
"Bastard slammed a pointy elbow in my face when I tried to stop him." Nat rolled him over with the toe of her boot. "My best guess is he'll be out for a couple of hours. What do you want me to do with him, Cap?"
"Drag him to his quarters and lock him in." Cho stared past Nat at Dysun. If he'd thought her fukking hair had been annoying before, now it was so agitated it seemed every hair moved independently. Her eyes were so dark no orange showed. "Big Bill vented the docks," he said. "Not me. You want to get back at him, avenge Nadayki, you stay at your station and we grab that armory and we come back weaponed up and kick his ass!"
Her hair slowed and her eyes lightened. "Your word that we come back."
"William Ponner thought he could take what was mine. Thought he could tell me what to do. No one does that."
Dysun stared at him for a moment, then took a deep breath and slid back into her seat. "Ready to blow the clamps, Captain."
"We'll make a pirate of you yet," Huirre snorted.
"Fuk you."
"In three, two, one!" Cho sent the codes.
The Heart of Stone shuddered, jerked… "What the hell?"
Torin dove behind the armory as bits of metal and plastic shot toward her. "The Heart just exploded the docking clamps and ripped away from the air lock."
"Last resort blow. So as not to go down with a damaged station."
Craig lived on his ship. He should know.
Torin ducked behind the armory, legs drawn up, as pieces of debris ricocheted back and found herself shoulder to shoulder with Craig. "You okay?"
"So far."
Yeah. She fukking hated zero G shrapnel in an enclosed space. "Question." They headed back to opposite sides as things cleared. "Is the Heart making a run for it, or lining up with the hatch to grab the armory?
"The Heart's armed, Torin. And Cho's got to be pretty pissed."
"So the odds are high he'll come back shooting. Let's get this thing clear!"
They'd had to tip the armory onto its side to get it out of the storage pod-the cables, fed around a rod lowered from the runners, were attached at the lower edge of the armory with magnetic pads, and then the cables retracted. It was bit like threading a needle with explosives. Once out, Craig began moving the rod, and the horizontal armory tucked up against it, toward the doors.
Torin would have been happy to just fling it toward open space, but neither the runners nor the cables were set up for that. Nor for speed, she growled silently emerging from yet another duck and cover. Ressk might be able to remove the safety protocols that kept them at a sedate crawl-weightless or not, the usual loads through here had sufficient mass to crush mere flesh and bone-but without Ressk on call, they needed to come up with another solution. "Leave the cables attached so that we have something to hold, but let them run free."
"Let the cables run free? You want us to drag this thing out of here by hand?" Craig sounded incredulous. "I know you hate to hear this kind of shit, babe, but we're neither of us in great shape."
Torin no longer felt an urge to comment on the endearment. "Cables have got it moving. Overcoming inertia, that's the hard part. Right now, we could both be missing a leg and still be able to move faster."
"Yeah, but…"
"The Heart's armed, Craig. And Cho's got to be pretty pissed."
"You're a hard person to argue with."
She could hear the smile in his voice, and her lips twitched in response. "You're not the first to say it."
It was going to hurt. Craig's foot. Her ribs. Not to mention assorted mutual bruising. But it was going to hurt a lot less than having either Cho or Big Bill reclaim the armory.
Hurt a lot less than being hit by one of the remaining chunks of blown docking clamp.
Running was an acquired skill in zero G, and the armory skewed slightly sideways as Craig struggled to keep up. Torin adjusted her rhythm, matched her pace to his, and noted silently that the exit was about three times wider than the height of the armory, so even if they went through spinning on the long axis, there'd be room. It'd be the next thing to a clusterfuk, but there'd be room.
"I'm not going to be happy if you puncture a lung."
"Me either."
Craig was panting. Or she was. The sound of labored breathing filled her helmet, hard to separate into his or hers. Hers might have been a bit wetter. In a military suit, like the one that had saved her life, she'd have hit the foam the moment they cleared the dock and immobilized the broken rib. Unfortunately, without that option, all she could do was clamp her arm against her body and tell herself she'd survived worse. Her right hand, swollen to fill the glove, had immobilized itself.
"Release the clamps on three," she called as they approached the edge of the ore dock. "One. Two. Three!"
As the cables retracted, Torin, Craig, and the armory shot out into space.
"There's the Star!"
"And there's the Heart." Twisting to look back at the station, Torin could see the flares of half a dozen ships. "Looks like the docking clamps have unlocked." "Captain! Seven-no nine-ships are launching!"
"ETA?" Cho snapped, hand clamped white-knuckled around the edge of his screen.
Huirre turned to stare. "ETA? They're right there!"
"Coat of Brown and Thegris Tay are powering weapons! No lock on us yet," Dysun added. "But it's a matter of minutes."
"Nat! Grapples out!"
"Almon was…
"Almon's unconscious, thanks to you! Get the fukking grapples on that armory!" Craig caught the line from the Star with one hand and Torin with the other as its movement whipped him past her. "Hang on! You can't do this with one hand!"
"Want to bet?" But he felt the tug as she grabbed his tanks and gave thanks she favored practical over posturing. "We're in Mashona's shot! Move!
"Mashona's is not the shot I'm worried about!" What looked like a Navy shuttle retrofitted for Susumi had a line on the Star, the armory, and, more importantly, the two of them. "Do not let that bastard get the armory!"
Confused, Huirre frowned. "What bastard?"
"Big Bill fukking William Ponner!" Cho snarled, on his feet. How the hell was he supposed to just sit there? He could slave the weapons screen to his board, but a good captain knew when to delegate to those who were more skilled. Who could blow those fukkers into their component atoms! "The ships out there are working for him, but right now, they're all yours!"
Huirre's nose ridges flared. He grinned and danced the fingers of both hands and the toes of his foot across the board. Instinct had Torin duck her head down in her helmet as the first energy burst flashed by. "I hate being shot at when I can't shoot back!"
"Good thing they're crap shots!"
"They're trying too hard not to hit the station." Well, Big Bill's ships were, she amended as a shot from the Heart left an elderly cargo vessel floating dead in space and another sent a di'Taykan design tumbling sideways. Problem was, no matter how good the gunner on the Heart might be, more and more ships were pulling away from Vrijheid and, in the end, numbers would tell.