Bran and Tor returned within a couple of hours. Jirik and Bran wandered toward Engineering with seeming aimlessness. Finally, they reached the Engineering dead zone
"There are sixteen of them, total," Bran reported, "but they seem to be stationkeepers. 'Back-area troops', if you know what I mean. All of them are carrying needlers, but most of them are self-conscious and awkward about it. I'd say that, except for the two Boondocker guards, they're not used to carrying weapons.
Jirik nodded. "That probably means that they're not very good with them."
"Right," Bran agreed. "Most of them are techs of various sorts, so I doubt that they'd be very good fighters. The most dangerous of them are probably the two Boondockers bodyguarding Cony."
Jirik nodded again. "How did they react to your visit? Were they suspicious?
Bran grinned. "They were glad to see us. They've been rotating crews every six months, and these guys have been here five. They were almost pitifully glad to see new faces." He chuckled. "They gave us the grand tour. Introduced us to everybody, showed us everything."
"What about the base?"
Bran shrugged. "Three rigid plascrete huts and three inflatables clustered in a tight circle around another rigid hut that serves as a Command Center. There's also an unpressurized cave about a hundred meters from the base that they use for storage. We couldn't get in there without looking suspicious, so we didn't try.
"The rigid huts are the work areas, and the inflatables are the crew quarters. Cony and his goons threw everybody out of the middle inflatable and moved in. The rest of the crew are having to double up in the other two inflatables and they don't like it very much. They're not really thrilled with Cony, either. It seems that he's been throwing his weight around a lot. There's a lot of grousing about it, but not where he might hear."
Jirik was looking thoughtful. "If we caught them asleep, we could probably depressurize and collapse the inflatables with lasers before anyone could get suited up. That wouldn't work with the duty crews in the rigid huts, though. Any suggestions?"
Bran shrugged. "Except during the 'day', I gather that there isn't much of a duty crew. There's always one on duty in the Command Center, and I think that there's one in the Comm hut monitoring the spy-eyes aboard the Lass. It would take a pretty big explosive charge to depressurize the plascrete huts quickly, though, and we don't have the kinds of explosives it'd take."
Jirik grimaced. "Then we'll just have to bust in and kill them. Valt and I . . . "
"Ahem," Bran interrupted. "Far be it from me to criticize, Captain, but don't forget who we are. We're not the Alliance Marines, we're just spacers. You're the only one of us with combat experience. We're in no position to mount an armed assault. Thinking that way will get one or more of us killed! Besides, have you figured out a way to get at the weapons locker without being spotted?"
"Sorry," Jirik replied, "I guess I got carried away. You're right. You guys aren't killers, though I was worried about Valt for awhile. And, no, I haven't been able to figure a way into the weapons locker. There's a spy-eye right across the passage from the hatch; and the weapons are in plain view inside. As soon as we cracked that hatch, that guy in the Comm hut would be bound to see them and sound an alarm." He frowned. "All right. I'm giving Tomys another forty-eight hours. If he doesn't show up by then, we'll assume that his wild-ass idea didn't work. In the meantime, try to think of a way to take out the men on duty."
"One other thing, Captain," Bran put in, "We have to take out that guy in the Command Center. They've got heavy ground-to-orbit weapons emplaced all over this moon. All he'd have to do is retarget them, and cut the Lass to pieces with a heavy laser, or even toss a missile at us."
"Damn!" Jirik looked stunned. "That means we can't just fort up aboard if anything goes wrong. Well," he decided, "It looks like an all-or-nothing roll of the cubes. Think about it, Bran, think hard!"
The crew went about their daily business the next "day." Jirik and the others made sure to visit the base, and to make friends with the base crew. Mostly, though, Jirik wanted to make sure that the terrorists got used to seeing the spacers wandering about. Jirik found it hard to remain casual. He felt as though he was in a race, and he was wearing a blindfold. Would Tomys and his Marines get here? Would terrorist reinforcements arrive first? Would either of them arrive within his 48-hour deadline? Or would the crew have to go on the attack by themselves?
If Tomys' plan failed, and the terrorists sent a supply and crew shipment before the deadline, they might lose their only hope of getting out any time soon. What if reinforcements showed up after they managed to eliminate the base crew, but before they could refuel the Lass and get away? Jirik clamped grimly down on his imagination. He was not a happy man.
Jirik did succeed in meeting with each of the others to discuss their many problems. Valt, unimaginative as always, had no ideas to offer. It was Tor who finally provided the solution to the problem of getting to the weapons. One of the young men on the base had known Tor on Boondock, during his brief flirtation with Actionism. By recycling the Actionist propaganda he had picked up, Tor had become quite friendly with the terrorist. Tor discovered that his "friend" would be on duty in the Comm hut that "night," and had promptly informed Jirik.
Jirik was delighted. "All right. Tonight, you visit him while he's on watch, and distract him from the monitors long enough for us to get to the weapons locker, grab some stuff and get out. We'll hide the arms in dead zones. I doubt that they'll search us again. If there's no sign of the Navy by tomorrow night, we'll have to do it ourselves. With the weapons available, we'll have no trouble taking care of the men in the inflatables. A couple of lasers can slash those things to ribbons before any of them can reach their suits."
Bran wasn't so happy when Jirik told him. "Yeah," he replied, "But that still leaves the plascrete huts. Lasers are a waste of time against them. I don't suppose you have any explosives in the weapons locker?" he added hopefully.
Jirik shook his head. "No, just individual hand weapons. I sure wish we did, though. We need something like explosives to take out the men in those plascrete huts. Somehow, they have to be decompressed so quickly that those men have no chance to sound a warning or get suited up – and that means almost instantaneously. Lasers and needlers could make large enough holes, but they'd take hours, and there's no chance that they could do it undetected. I'd give a lot for a sonic cannon right now!"
Bran snorted. "Might as well wish for a Battle Cruiser Besides, a sonic cannon would be useless. Sound waves don't travel in a vacuum." He suddenly shot bolt upright in his chair. "Sonics!" he exclaimed, "That could work!"
"What could work?" Jirik asked in a puzzled tone, "What the hell are you talking about?"
"I've got an idea!" Bran replied excitedly, "Captain, do most of your weapons collection use military standard power packs?"
Jirik shrugged, but hope gleamed in his eyes. He had come to have great respect for Bran's ideas. "Sure," he replied, "Most of them are military or military-style. Why?"
Bran grinned. "Well, I haven't really had a chance to think this through, but I think that we may be able to make some sonic bombs!"
Jirik's puzzlement was obvious. "Sonic bombs? What the deity are sonic bombs? And what good would they be in vacuum?"
Bran gestured impatiently. "Give me a minute, Captain. I'm thinking out loud. Now, sonics are useless in vacuum unless they're in direct physical contact with an object. Suppose I can rig a gadget that would drain the entire power pack almost instantaneously, and convert the power into a sonic blast on a frequency that would break the molecular bond in the plascrete. In effect," he continued, "the blast would reduce the plascrete to a powder. With sixteen pounds per square inch of air pressure pushing against a wall that suddenly turned to powder, I suspect that the result would be very like explosive decompression!"