The assault troops moved forward, secure in the knowledge that their armor would foil scan not specifically designed to penetrate it. Esmay felt the familiar surge of excitement; she wanted to be up with them, but more important was finding Brun and the girl. Scan showed a pair of p-suited life signals on this side of the core, in a compartment off a side corridor. The problem would be letting them know she and the others were friendly—the armor, designed for combat effectiveness, did not have insignia in the visible spectrum.
All the compartments in that wing had been checked and secured, and Mitch Pardue felt pretty good as he led his men into the central core. Careful scanning had shown nothing there—the women, if they were alive, would be huddling somewhere in the far wing, close to the hotspot where they’d had the shuttle. He felt a pleasant tension as he thought of them—of the fear they would be feeling, the helplessness . . .
“Let’s go, boys,” he said, and stepped out into the wider space of the core corridor.
They passed what had been a lounge area, the chairs now in a random tumble on the deck, and came to the control area. Here, Ranger Bowie paused. It had been a little surprising to find the artificial gravity still on—he clearly remembered his uncle talking about how they had pushed the bodies down the corridors in zero-G—and he wondered if perhaps the women had knocked the controls about by accident.
“Wait a minute,” he said to the others. “I wanta check on somethin’.” They drifted across the space with him, as interested in the old station as he was. He leaned over the control panel, trying to read the labels . . . not in decent Tex, but in scripts he recognized as those used in the Familias Regnant, the Guerni Republic, and the Baltic Confederation. Heathens, all of them. Sure enough, the dust had been messed around; he could see what might be the marks of suit gloves here and there. He saw the gravity control panel, and was reaching for it when his vision blanked and he was pulled violently backwards.
“Lambs to the slaughter,” Esmay heard through her comunit. “We should space ’em now, or you want prisoners?”
“Can you get any ID?”
“Well, one of ’em’s got that star thing on his p-suit, and he looks like the leader of the bunch that took the Elias Madero.”
“Yes, we want prisoners,” Esmay said firmly. “Especially that one.” She wanted to hear how it went, but finding Brun was still a priority, and the scan traces kept moving—as if Brun were deliberately evading them. Perhaps she was.
“Team Blue!” That was from outside, from the other team’s scan specialist.
“Lieutenant Suiza here.”
“Two shuttles approaching, with unshielded transmissions. They’re planning to go in and kill everyone they find.”
That made no sense—and then it did. If these people were as given to factionalism as reported, then this would be an excellent chance for one faction to rid itself of the leaders of another.
“They know we’re here, right?”
“Yeah—but they think they can take us. I estimate twenty per shuttle—total of forty, say again four-zero armed personnel. No heavy weaponry.”
That was lucky. If they’d had heavy weapons, or ship weapons, they might have decided to blow the station.
“Have they indicated where they’re going to land?”
“One of them coming into the same shuttle bay as the first. They want to get in behind the others—the one’s going to come in on the end of this wing.”
“Ah . . . the old pincers movement.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Vissisuan,” Esmay said. “Expect forty intruders, in two shuttle loads, small arms only. According to backscan, they know we’re here, but think we’ll be easy to subdue. They’ve divided their force, and expect to catch us between them.”
“Sir. Plan?”
“Until we have Brun and the girl safely away, that has to be our first priority. Right now it looks like Brun is between us and the incoming shuttle. So we’d better move fast. Beyond that, secure the prisoners we have, and take prisoners if possible.” If they could pick off some high-ranking Militia, perhaps they could avoid a battle and get the children out safely.
Brun hoped the expert system knew what it was doing. It kept shifting them from one compartment to another, supposedly far from the Militia’s personnel scans. It said it was still trying to retrieve a better vocal synthethizer, too, and had dispatched another two mobile units. She wanted to ask if it had received any answer from Fleet—surely they’d be doing something—but she simply could not get her fingers to work on the keyboard, and Hazel could not understand her gestures. She was so tired . . . she hoped it was only exhaustion and not hypoxia.
“Brun—wake up!” That was Hazel’s voice; she sounded on the edge of panic. “I feel things in the decking—vibrations—”
It must remind her of her own capture. Hiding in these vandalized rooms, waiting for someone to come, not knowing who—it must bring back all her nightmares. Brun tapped her arm, and grinned. Hazel grinned back, but there was no mirth in it.
She could feel the knocks and vibrations herself. Someone closer, and more than one. She tried again with the compad keyboard, and keyed “Fleet assistance?”
“I’m not sure,” the expert system said in her ear. “There have been two landings, another two are imminent. Multiple intruders aboard, hostile to one another.” Then some of them must be friendly, Brun thought. But she wasn’t sure. “Not all the same shapes of shuttles, but no recognizable ID codes from the ones that appeared nearby.”
Appeared? Launched from a larger ship that had microjumped nearby?
“Try Fleet codes on com channels,” Brun keyed.
“I cannot access any transmissions from one set of intruders,” the expert said. “I don’t know what frequencies to use.”
Shielded suit communications. That sounded more and more like Fleet, but how could she contact them? Someone should be listening in for unshielded transmissions—“All bands,” Brun said. “Use the codes I gave you.”
The deck bucked, and Brun and Hazel lost contact in the low gravity, bouncing into one of the bulkheads. Brun’s compad flew another way, its jack yanked from her suit connection. Hazel scrambled after it, as another series of vibrations and blows shook them. Something must have rammed the station, something with a lot more mass than a single person. Brun could see into the next compartment, where the bulkhead had torn loose at the corner, leaving a triangular hole. The station could be coming apart around them; they might be flung loose into space, tiny seeds from a puffball head.
Brun fought down the panic. Right now, right this instant, they still had air, they still had intact p-suits, and they weren’t freezing or full of holes. Hazel edged back to her and held out the compad and connector.
The scan tech watching the incoming Militia shuttles reported that one was likely to impact rather than dock. “He’s coming in with way too much relative vee; gonna knock this station sideways—counting down . . . seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—” The deck bucked; in the minimal artificial gravity, a cloud of dust rose and hung like a tattered curtain. “They’ve made a mess out of the end of that arm, but don’t seem to have damaged themselves much, worse luck.”
“Keep us informed,” Esmay said. She had Meharry and five others with her as she tried to follow Brun’s scan signal through the maze of passages.
“Lieutenant!” That was the backdoor scan again. “I’ve got transmissions in Fleet code from the station itself—identifies itself as the station expert system.”
“What’s it want?”
“Says two employees told it to contact us and gave it the codes. Says it’s trying to protect them, and can we prove we’re friendly?”
“The only person here who might know any Fleet access codes was Brun—but she was supposedly unable to talk.”
“But it can’t contact this individual now—says a communications device failed.”
Great. “Can it direct us to her?”
“It says yes, but it won’t until we can prove that we have a legal right to be here, and that she knows us.”
Worse and worse. Expert systems had a reputation for rigid interpretation of rules.
“Tell it to confirm to her that we respond to Fleet codes, and ask her to sign a yes or no acceptance of our ID.”
“Yes, sir.” A pause followed, then, “It’s trying, sir.” After another pause, “It says she wants to know who it is. A name.”
Esmay thought a moment. According to her father, Esmay was the last person Brun would want to see, or should see. But that was a name she’d know.
“She knows us, Lieutenant,” Meharry said. “Methlin and Oblo—she’ll recognize that.”
“Go ahead,” Esmay said. “Tell it that.”
Another brief pause, and then, “It’s agreed. It’s going to mark the way, and tell Sera Meager someone’s coming.”
“Tell it to give her a description of our suits, so she’ll know us from the others,” Esmay said.
Now her helmet display lit with the icons of the intruders: twenty red dots displayed on a graphic of the station wing. Esmay followed the expert system’s directions with her team; the others moved down the main corridor to intercept those landing.
Here in the secondary corridor, occasional turqoise p-suits lay like dead bodies. Every one gave Esmay a chill, but the expert urged them on, via the relay through the scan tech. At last, a compartment door slid open ahead of them. Cautiously, Esmay edged forward . . . and there they were. Brun, recognizable through the facemask of the p-suit, and a scared-looking young girl. Meharry moved past Esmay and cleared her helmet faceshield so Brun could see her. Brun staggered forward, moving as if she had serious damage, and fell into Meharry’s grip.
“Medical team,” Esmay said. They came at the double, and unfolded the vacuum gurneys that allowed life-support access to a p-suited patient outside pressure. Only then did she think of asking scan for the frequency that the expert and Brun’s suit must be using. She glanced around the compartment, to see an obvious gap where bulkhead sections had warped apart. Was that from the recent impact of the Militia shuttle, or old damage? She couldn’t tell; it didn’t matter.
Brun struggled to free herself from Meharry’s grip, and gestured at the girl. The medics unfolded another of the gurneys, and unzipped it. They rolled each woman into her own, then zipped and sealed, and popped the tanks. The transparent tents inflated, leaving sleeved access ports for treatment.
The girl started talking right away. “Please—she can’t talk—she needs a way to communicate—”
“Sure, hon . . . what’s your name, now?”
“Hazel—Hazel Takeris. And she’s Brun—she was using a compad with voice output, but the plug broke.”
Esmay found the compad, and slid it into the transfer portal of Brun’s gurney. She could see Brun cycle it through, then hold it without using it. Plug broken? It must mean that she had needed to plug it into her p-suit. Brun made the universal sign for Air up? and Esmay responded. Brun popped an arm seal on her suit, just as their safety instructor had taught them: never trust anyone’s word on air pressure. Then she peeled back one glove, and tapped one of the compad’s keys.
“All correct,” announced the audio pickup from inside the gurney.
“Sera Meager?”
“All correct.”
“Can you describe your current status?”
“No.” That, as Esmay could see, was another button. The thing must have had preprogrammed messages. What was the keyboard for, then?
“Can you type complete answers?”
“No.”
Esmay turned away to consider their overall position. The Militia that had crunched into this wing were about halfway to their part of the wing, though coming down the main corridor.
“Trouble . . .” scan said. “Big trouble.”
“Bad guys on the other end are carrying explosives. Can’t see if the ones on this end are, but they could be.”