God! Have we been hit, or was that fire?
Little ship, pinned to station, could beus doing the firing—
Could be—
The lift stopped at the top, opened on the bridge. She headed out as the siren quit, passed Goddard yelling at her, Goddard sitting at his post, a khaki blur to her as she ran.
It was the topside locker she was headed for, and that was standing open, Fitch was in there already suiting up.
"What was it?" she said, jerked the zip open and started peeling, fast.
Fitch said: "Friends of yours."
"The hell!—Is it Africa?"
"They've used every ID in the book. We don't know a hundred percent who it is.—
Shit!"
"Easy, back it up—you're going to strip those damn ring-seals." She grabbed after Fitch's problem, but he got it, shoved her off, and she stepped into her own armor-breeches, threw the lever that seated it solidly around her, rammed her feet down into the boots and worked her toes into those while she came up under the hanging top-section and wriggled her arms and her body up into it, helmet and all.
Solid mate. Throw the latches. Sleeves last, mating at the mid-shoulder, left and right, tension engaged, screw the rings tight and not too tight.
She beat Fitch by a second, seals and all. She heard her own breathing and Fitch's, felt a shock rock the ship and saw the audio reading jump.
She muttered: "Was that them firing or us?"
"Us." Fitch turned, flat-footed the way a neo learned to move, powered-on and lurched after balance.
Firing every time the station's rotation gave them a target. "We're assuming they wantthe fuel we're holding?"
"Say it's a good assumption."
"What've we got on us? Rider, carrier, or both?"
"Suppose, Yeager, you just leave the thinking to somebody else."
"What they're going to do, sir, they're going to knock hell out of this station, leave us with a major problem, like a couple thousand people with no fuckin' life-support, sir—"
"That hasn't bothered you before now, has it, Sgt. Yeager?"
She got a breath, kept her body loose, kept on the track. "They're going to chaff our fire, sir, after which they're going to punch a major hole in Thule Station, after which there's none of our guns any fuckin' use, sir."
"We understand the situation, Yeager, trust us we know our options—"
"Twenty years on Africa, tac-squad sergeant, sir, I ran these operations from the other side. You got yourself a boarding situation, sir, and my advice—"
"Twenty years on this ship, out-fighting you and your murdering friends—and you can take your advice to hell, Yeager!"
"My advice, sir, is get ready to blow the tanks they want andthe pump, let 'em kmow that, and get ourselves out on that dock and get ourselves some room, sir, because they got notrouble getting into this ship, from inside or outside, I can swear to that, sir."
Just the breathing. Then finally: "Ship out there is probably India. It's using a merchanter ID. That's a rider-ship inbound. Maybe two of them."
"It's Gangesor it's Tigris, we got two AP's and two rigs and either of them's got at least thirty, at least one whole tac-squad with the weapons-sync we haven't got, and they aren't fools. They can use an insystemer dock, they'll get their squad on station, core or rim—rim, if they know Thule, they'll punch right through the section-seals, and meanwhile we may have the other rider coming up under us and a second squad coming right through our hull into Personnel with another thirty guys, that's what."
Fitch didn't like that. Didn't say a thing.
"So you give the orders, sir, whatever you want from here."
Two little blips on station-scan, other side of station, one more on long-scan, only the best-guess of position. Absolutely. Goddard didn't like having her standing behind him, Goddard probably didn't like being there himself. "We're going to dockside," Fitch told him, on outside-speaker. "You're on your own. Tanks go at your discretion."
"Yessir," Goddard said, and glanced away for a second to flip a switch. "Good luck, sir."
Hadn't heard the lock cycle. Usually you heard the hydraulics work, it even got through the pump-noise, and she hadn't heard a sound. She kept thinking, He's waiting, we're still firing, he's waiting to the last minute—
God, God, NG, get out—
"Where's crew?" she asked Fitch when they got into the lift. "Station shelter?"
"Deep as we can get them." The lift started down. "Holding Central at gunpoint. We got some faint hearts. You ought to be right at home with that situation."
"As happens," she said, calm and quiet. "Yessir." She fired a shot of her own. "You volunteer for this?"
"I got my pick of crew," Fitch said.
"Tanks are rigged?"
"Tanks are rigged. Goddard's got that business."
"Goddard going to get clear?"
Silence.
Son of a bitch, she thought. And didn't say anything. Couldn't say anything.
The lift touched bottom. She kept thinking, walking out behind Fitch, I could kill this bastard.
Take him apart.
Joint by joint.
"You going to order Goddard clear, sir?"
"Goddard's in command up there. It's his choice." Fitch opened up the weapons-stowage. "This is what we've got."
AP 200's, shells, caps, remotes. She picked up a remote and a roll of fine wire, spotted a box of Gibbs-caps and reached for it. Fitch got his hand in the way and took charge of the remote.
"We got heavy demolitions? Station's got to have, sir, miner-supplies."
Fitch didn't answer her. Fitch passed her an AP and a handful of slings of shells.
"Demolitions," she repeated. "Sir. Where?"
"We're taking care of that."
"Dammit, sir, you tryingto commit suicide, or what?"
Fitch shifted around, looked her direction. Clumsy. And she wasn't. Damn right she wasn't. Maybe Fitch was thinking about that. Likely Fitch was thinking all along about that.
"Do these rigs have a direct comlink with theirs?"
Reasonable question. "Yes, sir, they canhave. Riders are probably trying to pick up Loki'sinternal stuff. Might get a bit of it. Just keep to channel B, between us. They probably haven't got the 'ears they'd need for that, not on a rider-ship."
"Can you get into their comlink?"
Second reasonable question. "Can't mimic their ID, sir. I can talk to 'em, I can hear
'em, but I'll show up as another number on their board the second I go onto Fleet-com, and I'll show as Africa. They thought of that a longtime ago."
"Don't think they'd welcome you?"
"Nossir. My codes aren't current and they'll blow me to hell on a special priority. That relieve your mind, sir?"
"No end," Fitch said, picked up his stuff, laid a hand on her shoulder and pushed.
"Out."
She moved, slung her AP and her shells over her left shoulder, tucked the wire and the caps in a third shell-sling and headed for the lock, thinking right then that there wasan outside chance, she could go onto India-com, she knew names, lot of old drinking-buddies on Indiaand they knew her and they knew Teo and Bieji Hager. They might at least wait-see, damn, she could go on that band and Fitch wouldn't know—