As soon as the room emptied of all but the participants, he began the briefing with the truth.
"That ship is going to blow. The engines, by the sound of them, are critically unbalanced, redlining far off scale. We've got the survivors off her. But we've got to get her far enough from the station so that when she goes, she won't take us with her. That's not the only problem. We've got to be sure she'll break into the smallest possible fragments and that they are thrown in a favorable dispersal pattern."
The explosives men grinned at each other. "Easiest thing in the world, Simeon," their spokesman said with a rakish smile. "If you know what you're doing."
"We do," one of the others said, thumping the spokesman jovially on the back. The man didn't so much as rock on his toes.
"That's good to know, guys! Can you tug pilots match their skill by redlining your engines a little to pull her as far away from us as you can?"
"Hell, Simeon," Gus said, "you oughta know we'd have no trouble doing that little thing for you."
"I'll be monitoring and should be able to give you fair warning to get yourselves clear." He paused a moment, anxious despite their obvious disregard for the inherent dangers. "Have I made the situation clear?"
Gus grinned. "Couldn't be clearer, station man," he said, giving his broad shoulders a preparatory twitch in response to the challenge. "And we don't have much time for further chatter!"
Another voice broke in: Patsy's. Simeon keyed her visual transmission to one of the ready-room screens; she was back in the control seat of her tug.
"My, ain't the machismo level high around here? You got one tug already in place, Simeon-mine. Count me in, too."
Gus winced. "Look, Patsy, we're in very deep, ah-"
"Very deep shit," she finished, grinning at him. "Ah know the words, Gus."
Everybody laughed. Simeon looked them over and stifled a wave of bitter longing. A military commander of any stature led his troops from the front, not from an impervious titanium column. Don't worry, if they fail you'llbe the only one left to say what happened, thanks to that same titanium column. If you can live with your conscience, that is.
"I'll keep my eye on the coils and give you enough warning to peel off," Simeon promised.
Almost simultaneously, helmets covered the faces of this small band of heroes.
"This is taking more time than it's worth," Channa said in disgust, giving the control panel a final thump with her fist. The door valved open.
"Damn! And I thought that was a station legend," she said. "Does it work for you, Simeon?"
"Having a servo whack me with a wrench to make me work properly?" he asked. "No, not often. The bridge ought to be right down there. And hurry."
"How are we handling the demolition?" she asked him, stepping through the half-open door and trotting down the darkened way, her helmet light fanning ahead. Mercifully, no bodies floated about this section.
"I've got a team rigging explosives all around the ship to blow it to," he paused, his own nerves making him play the clown, "smithereens. Real, genuine, non-station piercing smithereens. It would be disgraceful, utterly disgraceful, to get holed by flying debris after surviving this morning, don't you think? Ah, the tug volunteers are in place, ready to grapple. Ah! They've broken her out of orbital inertia."
Movement was not obvious this far in the bowels of the dying ship. "Who's in charge of the team?" Channa asked.
"Gus."
"Patsy said he was a good pilot," Channa commented. "Soon as I finish here, I'll join her. Is she still standing by at the hatch?"
"She is, to pick you up and bring you straight back to the station with any information you discover."
"I can scan the info back to you, Sim-mate, but first I have to find it, you know." She stumbled over some jumble piled in the corridor and recovered herself.
"You and Patsy get straight back here. I can't have my brawn risking her neck when…"
"Simeon," she said reasonably, "brawns are supposed to risk their necks for their brains. And if you, the station, are at risk, I am required to reduce that risk any way possible. This time I can do it by helping tug the risk away from here. Have I made myself clear on this point?"
"I don't like it," Simeon said in a disgruntled mumble. "Foolish risk."
"Thank you for your input, but Simeon…"
"Yeah?"
"Don't you ever try to forbid me to do the job I'm here to do. You got that?"
"Right in the forehead, sweetheart."
"Not quite where I was aiming, but it'll do," Channa said.
"If you get through to the bridge of that ship, can I ask you for a download?" Simeon said plaintively.
"Why else am I penetrating this about-to-blow-up wreck?" Channa said. "Patsy, you read me?"
"Welcome to the pahty, Channa," came Patsy's cheerful voice.
"You don't mind my crashing?"
Patsy laughed. "Watch yoah choice of words, girl."
"I just noticed something," Channa said, slowing her pace.
"What?"
"Paper. What's all this paper doing around?" There were sheets of it drifting down the corridor and sticking with static attraction to the rubbery walls.
"This lumbering hulk must be filled with gear so ancient it's exotic," Simeon said.
"Paper storage?" she said dubiously.
"Maybe they regressed."
"Could it originally have been piloted by a shellperson?" Channa asked, suddenly jumping to some conclusions that ought to have been more obvious to both herself and Simeon. If she got the edge on him on this one…
"Highly unlikely," Simeon said patronizingly. "B amp; B ships weren't that common then. All of these little back-of-beyond colonies were literally a shot in the dark, too risky to expend us on. C'mon, forward is to your right, one more passage to reach that control room."
"Aye, sir," she said. She worked her way forward, past leaking pipes and the occasionally sparking control boxes, ruptured by the overloads of the catastrophic deceleration.
"Paper," Channa said in wonder, wishing she could touch the valuable substance with her bare hands.
"And books! At least I think that's what I saw when you glanced into that corner. No, further right. Yes! Books!"
"No time for browsing now," Channa said firmly.
"Right," he said. "Antiquarian reflex, sorry."
"Ah, I am now at the control room," she said.
It was large and circular; most of the consoles were under shrink-shrouds of plastic that looked rigid with age. Raw, hasty jury-rigs had restored a few panels to functionality. She had to duck under festoons of cable which were draped to and fro with no noticeable pattern. In the dimming light, she saw jury-rigged control boxes taped to consoles. The whole bridge seemed to have been reconstructed with mad abandon.
"Ghu! They flew this thing?" Simeon exclaimed. They must have been crazy, he thought and cocked a weather-ear to the sound from the engine. "The log," Simeon reminded her. "Though I'm inclined to doubt that this outfit has anything that fancy. Strip the data bank, too. We want any information we can get."
"You tell me how to retrieve information from this archaic mess and you've got it," she answered, peering from workstation to workstation, trying to figure which one might access the main banks.