A bell chimed, and she roused, cocking an eyebrow at the com section as David Reznick bent over the battle code printer. He tore off the message flimsy and turned to her.
"Signal from Shokaku, sir. One of the fighters is onto something."
"I see." Han scanned the message. "Doesn't say much, does she?"
"No, sir. But her fighter's going in for a closer look. Shall I sound action stations, sir?"
"Not yet, Lieutenant. We're a good three hours behind those fighters-we'll have time. Excuse me a moment."
Han summoned up the com image of Samuel Schwerin, her flag captain.
"Good morning, Sam," she greeted him. "Shokaku's fighters have picked up something-no telling what yet-on our line of advance. They're going in for a closer look, but it'll take us about three hours to catch up with them, so I thought we might advance lunch to get it out of the way if we have to go to action stations."
"Certainly, sir. I'll see to it immediately."
"Thank you, Sam."
Reznick's printer chimed again as Han signed off, and she waited patiently. If using coded whisker lasers delayed communications, it also eliminated the chance of message interception and greatly reduced the likelihood of long-range detection. Then Reznick handed her the message, and her face tightened almost imperceptibly as she read it. She turned to Lieutenant Jorgensen.
"Irene," she said quietly, "punch up your shipping logs and double-check for me, please. According to Shokaku, this is what's left of a Polaris-class liner. I'm afraid it may be Argosy Polaris."
"Yes, sir," the lieutenant was punching keys, watching the data come up. "Argosy Polaris, sir. Two hundred passengers and a priority medical cargo. Reported overdue at Kariphos ten months ago."
"Damn," Han said softly.
"It's the Polaris, sir," Commander Tomanaga confirmed grimly, studying the drifting hulk on his screen. "Somebody ripped hell out of her, too. Must've been quick and dirty to keep her from even getting a drone away. Look at that."
His finger indicated the relatively small punctures riddling the command section of the big liner.
"Primaries and needles," Han said flatly. "They knew she was armed-not that her popguns would've helped much. So they closed in, tractored her, and blew her command and com sections before she could yell for help."
"But how did they get close enough? And what's she doing way out here? We're six transits off the Stendahl-Kariphos route."
"I don't know how they fooled her master," Han said, "but getting her here wouldn't be hard. There's no damage to her drive pods. They just blasted the command deck and then gave whoever was left his options: surrender or see two hundred passengers vaporized. After that, they used the engine room controls to bring her out here so they could loot her at leisure. Not the approved technique, but workable as long as they were in company with someone with intact nav capabilities."
"Sounds reasonable." Tomanaga's words were calm; his face and tone weren't. "But it was sloppy to leave her intact. They should've blown her fusion plants or dropped her into the primary to hide the evidence."
"No, Bob. This is a lonely spot, and that's a hundred thousand tonnes of ship. Lots of spares and replacements to be scavenged out of her."
"Of course." Tomanaga shook his head. "Shall I send in the examination teams, sir?"
"Yes. And call away my cutter. I'm going too."
Han swam down the passage of the dead liner, her powerful lamp illuminating the splendid furnishing of first class-marred in spots by laser burns and occasional scars of pure vandalism. The raiders must have damped the power before they depressurized the hull, for the blast doors stood open. She'd seen one grisly corpse-a crewman dead of explosive decompression-and she was coldly certain they'd dumped atmosphere intentionally to kill any fugitives.
She turned a corner and spun gracefully, landing on her magnetized boot soles beside the Marine search party which had summoned her. Two troopers were busy sealing a transparent bubble to the bulkhead around a closed hatch.
"Afternoon, Admiral."
Major Bryce saluted her, and she returned his salute, then shifted her magsoles to the deckhead, hanging like a weightless bat to watch over the shoulders of the work detail.
"This is the only hatch holding pressure, Major?"
"Yes, sir. We checked out all the others and came up empty"-he seemed unaware of his own grim double entendre-"but there's atmosphere on the other side of this one."
"How much longer, Major?"
"We've just about got her sealed in, sir." He gestured at the plastic airlock. "Soon's we get a little pressure in there, we'll crack the hatch. Not that it's going to make any difference to whoever sealed it."
Han nodded slowly within her helmet. After ten months, no one could possibly survive beyond that hatch.
"Ready, Major," a sergeant said.
"All right, Admiral," Bryce looked at Han, "would you like to go in?"
"Yes, Major. I would."
"Very good, sir."
Bryce managed things smoothly, and Han found herself sandwiched between the looming combat zoots of a pair of Marine corporals as one of them fed power to the hatch from her zoot pack. The hatch slid open, and the plastic lock creaked as its over-pressure bled into the cabin. The corporals moved awkwardly to either side to permit Han to enter first, and she pushed off through the hatch.
It was a tomb.
The first things she saw in her helmet lamp were the rags and plastiseal packed into a pair of ragged holes; one of the primaries that took out the command deck had passed through this cabin. Someone had kept his wits about him to patch those holes so quickly, and the angle of the punctures might explain why the cabin hadn't been searched-they just about parallelled the passage outside, and the single beam had probably pierced at least a dozen suites. Much of first class must have died practically unknowing, and the raiders had probably assumed this cabin's occupants had done the same.
Her evaluation of the patches took only seconds; then she saw the bodies, and her lips twisted with rage.
Children. They were children!
She counted five of the huddled little shapes, peacefully arranged in the beds as if merely sleeping, and saw the body of a single adult-a young woman-at a desk to one side. A candle stub was glued to the desk with melted wax, and her head was a shattered ruin, wrought by the heavy-caliber needler death-locked in her hand.
Han looked away and felt her belly knot. There was no nausea-only a cold, deadly hatred for the beings who had wreaked this slaughter of the children she would never bear.
She mastered herself and bent over the stiff corpse of the unknown woman. There was an old fashioned memo pad magsealed to the desk, and Han eased it gently loose. Then she turned back to the lock.
"Dump the air, Major," she said, and for the first time she hated herself for sounding serene under pressure. "And transport the bodies to da Silva."
"Yes, sir." Bryce sounded wooden, and she realized he'd been watching his minute com screen; he'd seen everything his corporals' pickups had seen. "We'll be taking them back to Cimmaron, sir?"
"No, Major," Han said quietly. "It won't help their loved ones to see this. We'll try to identify them and then bury them in space."
"Yes, sir."
"I'm returning to the flagship, Major."
"Yes, sir. Shall I assign an escort?"
"No, Major. I'd rather be alone, thank you."
"Yes, sir."
Han looked up as Tomanaga entered her cabin. He'd seen the pictures of that cabin and knew his admiral well enough to sense the fury behind her calm demeanor, and he took the indicated chair silently, feeling his way through the storm front of her rage.