— That is due right now! Agnata realized with a gulp. It was a rushed transfer, one which she’d been pulled out of her bunk to expedite. And, expected or not, she insisted that her work be invariably perfect, which is probably why the duty officer of the RFS Ladoga had interrupted her dreams of hiking in the Carpathian Mountains to handle it.
Well, that and her security clearance, which was evidently why the D.O. had sent her down here without even one deck-hand to provide assistance. She glanced at two of the cryopods, the ones that could not have been released without her direct electronic countersign. Clearly, this was not just any shuffling of near-frozen personnel.
The lights in the cargo bay’s control room strobed at the same moment that orange tabs began flashing on the main control paneclass="underline" the TOCIO lighter had arrived in the approach envelope for docking at her bay. She toggled the secure circuit: “This is RFS Ladoga, bay control D-8, awaiting authorization code.”
“This is TOCIO lighter, B-114. I am in your envelope and transmitting the code.”
Agnata’s computer recognized the code. “Accepted. Stand by to commence hard dock.”
“Standing by.”
Agnata hit the autodocking touchpad, split her attention between monitoring the actual process through the glass panel of her control booth and scanning the telemetry data on her overwatch monitor. The flashing red lights in the outer bay — the part of the loading platform that could open directly unto space — doubled in speed as the muted rush of evacuating air diminished. The relatively small bulkhead doors retracted, revealing a slowly widening rectangle of star-strewn space, the center of which was dominated by a roll-on/roll-off TOCIO lighter. A brief nimbus of thrust limned its stern and the craft drifted forward slowly, the pilot counting down the meters over the comm channel. When the pilot reached the one meter mark, she pulsed the forward attitude control rockets: terminal braking. The craft drifted to a halt a few centimeters away from the cargo bay’s outer coaming, from which four articulated clasps reached out and snugged the lighter against the docking sleeve. As the sleeve started inflating and the so-called “hard rim” clutched the nose of the lighter, the pilot signaled the end of the process: “My instruments show hard dock.”
“Mine also,” Agnata replied. “I shall meet you at the inner bay door.”
“We’ll be there within the minute.”
The pilot had not lied: she and her sizeable, silent cargo-handler were waiting by the time Agnata arrived to check their clearances and cycle them into the actual lading spaces of the Ladoga. She indicated the three loaded standard robopallets and then the partially loaded secure robopallet, which was framed in red and yellow stripes. The pilot strolled past the lashed-down cryopods, aiming her data-slate at each until the inventory numbers matched and showed green. However, at the secure robopallet, the screen of her dataslate flashed red. “This is incorrect,” she muttered, removing her space helmet.
Although protocols dictated that full vacuum gear be worn and sealed at all times in both inner and outer bays, it was traditional courtesy to remove helmets and converse in real air if an exchange was going to be anything other than perfunctory. Agnata removed her own helmet. “What seems to be the problem?”
“Inventory number mismatch. These two secure cryocells: they’re the wrong ones.”
Agnata shook her head. “That is not possible. I checked the physical labels against the inventory code, and then against the order tear sheet that came in from Lord Admiral Halifax.”
“Well, the chips in both of those cryocells are not recognizing their inventory code. Unless — could the physical labels have been switched?”
Agnata started. “It is unlikely — but it is possible.” She moved forward, bending over to inspect the top surface of the first cryocell more closely. “Wait a moment. I shall check to see if the labels have been rebonded to the surface of the—”
Lightning exploded between her temples, froze her, overrode the grinding of her own teeth—
* * *
The pilot nodded to her assistant. After he removed the livestock stunner from the back of the Russlavic cargo-chief’s reddening neck, she tossed her head toward the mass of stacked containers. “Find the two cryocells we need.”
The hulking cargo-handler nodded, started to move off with the secure robopallet. “Do I refile these, or—?”
“Not where they belong. Put them in the holding cage for damaged cargo and pull their lading chips.”
“But then the manifest updating system won’t read them, will show them missing.”
“That’s the idea. Now hurry.”
The pilot ran an implant scanner over the pale, unmoving cargo chief, detected the Russlavic-standard transponder-biorelay in her left tricep. She zipped down that sleeve, then removed a small gray container and a circular scalpel from her own breast pocket. She swiftly scooped out the device located in Agnata’s arm, and dropped it into the container, which was half filled with a nutrient medium surrounding a pulsing EM emitter. It was a sophisticated underworld method for keeping a biomonitor from signaling complete failure — until the emitter’s battery ran out, at least.
Agnata moaned softly, one hand rising toward the red hole that had been cut into her arm.
The pilot’s assistant returned with two new cryocells on the secure robopallet. “I’ll load those,” she said, “you take care of her.”
“Take care—?” He stopped, probably comprehending, but not wanting to.
“Yes. We’re going to take her with us. But it would be needlessly cruel to dump her into vacuum while she’s still alive. Take care of her with that.” The pilot nodded at the livestock stunner, started guiding the robopallet toward the outer bay, their lighter, and their rendezvous at the Slaasriithi ship.
“But I–I’ve never killed a woman.” The assistant’s massive shoulders were slumped.
The pilot rolled her eyes. “You’ll get used to it. Now get going; we don’t have a lot of time.”
* * *
When their armored shuttle came about for nose-first docking, Caine was not immediately certain he was looking at the Slaasriithi shift-carrier. Although it was clearly formed from metals and composites, it did not look mechanical. “It’s so smooth,” he wondered aloud. “It almost appears as though—”
“—as though it was grown, not built or manufactured,” Ben Hwang finished, nodding.
Sukhinin stared sidelong at the two of them. “Gentlemen, I do not pretend to have much grounding in the life sciences, but of this I may assure you: that vehicle is not some great space-plant.”
Downing grinned. “No, but I suspect Slaasriithi metallurgy — probably material sciences in general — employs entirely different processes than ours. Hopefully,” he finished, glancing at Caine and Hwang, “that’s part of the information you’ll bring back home.”
Caine nodded, looked for the complicated and diverse structures found at the bow of any human shift carrier but saw none of them. Instead, a large silver sphere capped the keeclass="underline" almost certainly the command and control section. Starting just behind it was a stack of toruses which resembled a keel-enclosing sleeve of immense, brushed-chrome donuts. They were set off at points by symmetrically arrayed metallic or composite bubbles, and even smaller bean-shaped objects.
As they watched, one of the donuts split into two half-rings. Each half was pushed outward slowly from the keel by what appeared to be self-extruding composite-filament shafts. Once at full extension, the donut halves started rotating around the keel.
Downing shook his head. “Well, that’s a different way to create a gravity-equivalent environment.”