Chapter Fifteen
Two hours until the freighter left jump. Two hours until they reached Atalia. One hour until “dawn” as measured by the freighter’s internal time. Colonel Rogero lay on his narrow bed in his very small quarters, staring up at the tangle of wiring and ducts that made up the overhead.
The sense that something was going to happen had been growing. Indefinable, perhaps only a new manifestation of the old jump-space nerves, but still it had kept him from sleeping much this night and brought him fully awake well before he needed to get up.
He sensed a trembling through the structure of the freighter before he could consciously feel it. The trembling grew with shocking suddenness, turning into an irregular beat of many feet in the passageway outside. Whoever they were, they were moving quickly and silently.
Rogero’s feet were hitting the deck when he heard the sentries outside Bradamont’s new quarters down this same passageway shout warnings and commands. He paused only for the barest fraction of a second, deciding between his sidearm or heavier armament and choosing the latter. He was reaching for the door when the shouts of the sentries were submerged in a roar of sound that erupted in the passageway as at least a hundred throats shouted hate.
As he opened the door, a crash sounded down the hall, the unmistakable sound of a grenade detonating nearby and only slightly muffled by having exploded inside some room off the passageway. Almost certainly, that room had been Bradamont’s quarters. A small portion of Rogero’s mind wondered where the mob had acquired a grenade, and resolved to find out. If one of his soldiers had lost or bartered away a grenade…
But that would be a priority for later.
Rogero came out of his stateroom, not wearing armor but his pulse rifle powering up. Every passageway on the freighter tended to have a lot of people in it, but right now this passageway was packed solid with the mob pushing toward Bradamont’s quarters.
One of the uglier things about iron discipline was that when it cracked, it didn’t simply cause minor disruptions. Any crack tended to be catastrophic. Which meant responses had to be immediate and overwhelming.
He would have had to react the same even if Bradamont had not been the target of this mob.
“Comply!” Rogero shouted over the tumult, then without waiting fired a shot into the worker immediately in front of him. The pulse rifle blew a hole completely through the worker and knocked down another in front of that man. “Comply!” Rogero yelled on the heels of the shot and fired again right after that.
This time three workers in the congested passageway dropped, Rogero pushing forward over their bodies. “Comply!”
A third shot, two more down, but the others finally grasping what was happening, workers reacting from habit and fear drilled into them, twisting to put their backs to the nearest bulkhead, raising their arms to place both hands on their heads, staring outward without speaking as Rogero bellowed the command a fourth time. “Comply!”
There was a small group before the door to Bradamont’s quarters, trying to push their way inside past a door loose on its hinges but still somehow holding them back as if solidly braced from behind. Traces of smoke from the grenade explosion drifted past the edges of the door from inside. Caught up in their efforts, reacting more slowly to the sounds of the shots and the commands, some were still pushing when Rogero fired a fourth, fifth, and sixth time without pausing.
Silence fell then, except for a couple of wounded workers gasping in pain. Everyone else had their backs flattened against a bulkhead, hands locked on their heads in compliance.
The two soldiers who had been on guard were trying to struggle to their feet when Rogero reached them. He wasted a precious second looking them over, searching for evidence of whether they had resisted the mob or just given in. But uniforms were torn, bruises and scratches were evident, and one of the soldiers, face drawn with pain, cradled an arm broken in at least one place.
“We locked arms,” the other soldier reported. “But we couldn’t hold.” She stood at attention now, almost trembling in anticipation of two more shots aimed at punishing her and her comrade for their failure.
But Rogero lowered his weapon. “You tried.” The grenade detonation and the shots he had fired had set off alarms inside the freighter, the frantic tones stuttering warnings that no longer had any purpose. “There should be more soldiers here very soon. See that you are checked in the freighter’s autodoc.”
He turned to the broken door and carefully knocked in a special pattern. After a moment, the door finally gave way, falling inward to reveal a figure in battle armor standing amid the wreckage created by the grenade explosion in the small room. “Are you all right?” Rogero asked.
Bradamont nodded, unsealing the suit’s faceplate to speak to him directly. “The armor took some damage from the grenade. I’m all right, though. With the help of the armor, I could hold that door for a while.”
It had been the only possible solution. While all eyes had been on Bradamont as she shifted her belongings out of her old quarters and began walking to this one, while this passageway had been temporarily cleared of anyone else in the name of security for Bradamont’s move, Rogero had quickly brought his own armor out of his quarters and slid it inside Bradamont’s new living space. If the soldiers outside held long enough, and she had any extra warning, Bradamont would be able to get into that armor and hold off an attack until relief arrived. So he had hoped.
The alarms cut off as someone on the freighter’s bridge shut them down, the silence now filling the passageway holding an ominous quality as Rogero turned to confront the workers and low-level supervisors lining the bulkheads, all of them trying their best to be motionless but more than one quivering with terror.
Executive Ito came running down the passageway, her face contorted with anger. “Who did this? Who led this? Talk, you miserable low forms of life!”
Rogero stopped her with one raised hand. “Get the names of everyone here. Organize a working party to get the bodies packed up.” He looked down at the two still-living-but-wounded workers trying not to writhe in pain, both of them literally biting their lips to keep from moaning.
A few moments ago he would have killed them without hesitation. Now they were helpless. They might have information.
A half-dozen soldiers came dashing up, grim expressions taking in the scene. Lieutenant Foster saluted, his own face rigid. As immediate unit commander, he might also face the severest form of discipline for any failure of his soldiers to protect Bradamont.
But she was unharmed. How would I have reacted if she had been badly hurt or killed? Hopefully even then I would have recognized that punishment would serve no purpose when men and women had done their best.
Rogero jogged his head toward the two battered guards. “Your soldiers did their duty. See that they are looked after. Try to keep those two wounded workers alive. I want them able to talk.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Post half of your unit on guard here, four-hour shifts on and off, until Captain Bradamont leaves this ship.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Captain Bradamont, I recommend you remain in that armor until we can get you aboard a shuttle at Atalia.”
“Yes, Colonel,” Bradamont said, her own voice subdued but betraying no feelings. She looked outside, at the carnage wrought by the mob and by Rogero’s suppression of it, and he wondered what she was thinking.
She was seeing the Syndicate way. Cowering workers against the walls and deadly force against disruptions. He had never liked it even when it was necessary to prevent worse things. I know what Honore will think of it. What will she think of me?