Severely small, Meg told herself, couldn’t move her arm for Ben to get a wrap on it, sleeve and all—spurting blood everywhere, real close to going out.
Like Bird.
No fuss, not overmuch pain, just—going out.
“Hang on,” Ben said, and hurt her with the bandage. “Damn it, Meg, pay attention! Hold on to it!”
Grapples banged loose. She thought, Good boy, Dek…
… Bills every damn where on the table, Bird excused himself up to the bar, talked to Mike a minute, Bird about as upset as she’d ever seen him during the days when they were trying to fix that ship. Bird was working himself up to a heart attack. Meanwhile she sat there looking at her fingernails, telling herself she was a fool for staying with this whole crazy idea.
Old anger, she told herself. So the company won another round. So another kid died. A lot of them had died—
She kept hearing the gunfire behind the rattle of glassware. Watching the rab go down. Kids, with shocked looks on their faces. The company cops with no faces, just silver visors that reflected back the smoke and the frightened faces of their victims.
Lawless rab.
Property rights. Company rules.
“We got to fix this,” Bird said the day Dekker came to them. “What they’ve done isn’t fair.” And she thought, sick at her stomach, Dammit, Bird, they’ll kill you…
Trim jets kept firing. She felt the bursts.
The shuttle’s mains kicked in, in the high lonely cold above Earth’s atmosphere, the transition she loved. You knew you were going home, then, the motherwell couldn’t hold you—
Up, not down—
Black for a while. She felt the push of braking, had Sal’s arm around her, the aux boards in front of her, Sal trying to get her belted in. She reached with the arm that didn’t hurt, took the belt and snapped the clip in, solid click. Tested it for a rough ride. She told Saclass="underline" “Get yourself belted, Aboujib, I got it, all right…”
Another burst of trim jets. Dek was maneuvering, Ben was fastening his belt for him while the Shepherd—Sammy, Sal called him—was filling in at the com, saying, urgently, “They’re warning us to pull back in. That carrier’s moving in fast. The Hamilton’s powering up now—we can’t make it, there’s no time for them to pick us up—”
Trim jets fired constantly at the rate of one and two a second, this side and that—she had the camera view, a row of docked skimmers blurring in the number two monitor as they skimmed along the mast surface—damn close, there, kid—
Static burst from the general com: the Shepherd had cut B channel in. “AMC Twenty-nine Hamilton, this is FleetCom. You’re in violation of UDC directives. Stand down—”
“Cut that damn thing off!” Ben snarled. “We got enough on our minds.”
“We can’t dock,” the Shepherd yelled. Sal was belting in. Ben was. Acceleration was increasing in hammer blows from the main engines. The mast whipped past faster and faster—
Then nothing. Sudden long shove from the bow stabilizers and the mast swung back in view, retreating now—going for decel—another burst of Trinidad’s mains…
No, she thought—Way Out’s mains… we’re coupled. Double mass.—Are we giving up? Going back? Shuttle’s on the mast, Dek, did we miss it. Don’t get rattled, kid…
Ben said something. Dek said something, and the trim jets fired another long burst, taking the ship—God, felt like a right angle to the station.
God, he’s going after the Hamilton—
Mains again, hard push—pain, from the arm, real pain—
This is interesting, she thought, feeling the accel, figuring vectors. Hell of a ride, Dek,—you tell ’em we’re coming?
Big shove. Dark again. She could hear the beeps from the distance indicators, the higher ready-beeps from systems on standby—she thought: that’s nice, nice sound, that, everything’s optimum config, that sumbitch interface back there worked, didn’t it?
Loud argument, and the whine of the forward bay hydraulics.
“What the fuck are you doing?” a man’s voice shouted. “They’re ready to move, dammit, we’re in their blast pattern—they got a carrier on intercept—”
Sal’s voice, clear and sane: “Shut up, Sammy!”
Thank God, Meg thought, listening for the beeps and tones, easier that than keeping her eyes open. Plenty of information there: bay was open, manipulator arm was working—Sammy was saying, “God, you fool, you damned fool…”
Worth a look. She blinked the blurry monitors clear, saw an irregular surface, slotted with dust-deflectors and bolted-onto with tether stanchions—the arm extending out in front of them, white in the spots, shadowed onto the irregular plating—
“Go for it, go for it!” Sal said, “you got it, Ben!”
Neat touch. Hardly felt it.
Attached. To a tether stanchion. The manipulator grip closed and locked.
“Nice job,” she said. She wasn’t sure anybody heard.
The Shepherd yelled, “Go!”
Acceleration started, built and built.
Better dump those tanks, Dek, better just uncouple Way Out, let her go, and just hope to hell the arm mount holds—no way we can decel off what a Shepherd can put on us, anyway…
Ought to tell the kid. But just hard to get organized—hard to get the mouth to work.
Unstable load. Lot of push on. Pressure built in her arm and deserted her brain.
Going up, guys, going up, long and hard as we can…
Quiet. Couldn’t even hear the fans. But no more g.
Taste of blood.
Explosion—
But they weren’t tumbling. Wasn’t the way it had been. He opened his eyes, got the board in focus in this peaceful drifting—neck was stiff, muscles sprained. He turned his head and saw Ben out cold—the Shepherd beside him, headset drifting loose. If there was sound he couldn’t hear it, except the fans.
Then he remembered shutting down. Remembered Meg—tried to move. There wasn’t a muscle that didn’t hurt. But he unclipped, pushed off and turned, getting to Meg’s position.
Blood made a fine mist. She was white as a ghost and cold when he touched her face. She looked dead.
But tension came back, dead one moment, then unconscious, but there, by some subtle change that wasn’t even movement until the eyelids showed stress. Ben was moving—number 2 boards and the best place, his and Ben’s, to ride out the push.
“She make it?” Ben asked fuzzily.
“Yeah,” Meg mumbled, speaking for herself. At least that was what it sounded like.
“Are we still grappled?”
“I don’t know,” Dekker said. “We seem stable.”
Ben freed himself and drifted over to see to Sal—Sal was coming to. The Shepherd was still out. Dekker reached for the headset, heard faint static and a thin voice before he held it to his ear. “… alive in there?” he heard, and: “I’m hearing voices. Their com is open…”
“Yeah,” he said, pulling the mike into line. “This is miner ship Trinidad. Is this the Hamilton?”
CHAPTER 19
HE wasn’t doing a damn thing,“ Ben said—there was blood all over him and Sal, blood dried on his own hands, Dekker saw, Bird’s, Meg’s, he had no idea. There was too much of it.
“Nothing?” the officer asked.
“Cops had me, dammit, he didn’t need to be there, he wasn’t doing a damn thing, just objected to them grabbing me, and some fool—just—pulled a trigger.”