“And not be killed.”
He smiled grimly. “I can’t be killed. I’m already dead.”
It didn’t seem there was any way to talk him out of it. The only choice she could see, morally and otherwise, was to count on him for cover and get out those who had to go. If she understood any of this complicated mess or could argue well with the computer, she would have chosen to disable Kincaid and just arrange not to stop. Being unable to do any of that, she knew she would have to do it his way.
And she would have to do it fast. The ever-present countdown clocks said there were only hours left to go.
Angel didn’t use those hours idly, nor waste them in sleep or recrimination. She had a Situation, as her trainers would have called it, and it demanded that choices be made and stuck to.
One by one she contacted the cabins of those she’d determined were just ordinary passengers. As crisply and professionally as possible she explained the basics of the situation, and that their only chance was the lifeboats, which Kincaid could protect and launch remotely. Some refused to believe her. Some simply were too scared or convinced that this somehow didn’t apply to them and would blow over if they ignored it. She didn’t have much of a choice with the latter. They were told they would get one chance, and if they did not take it, they were on their own.
In each case, once told, the life module’s computer isolated them from the lounge and public areas. They could get deliveries to their rooms, but that was all. They would have to watch their cabin clocks; when instructed, they were to proceed, following the lifeboat signs, and board.
She was particularly gratified by the few who offered to stay and fight it out with Kincaid, but she rejected that course. This wasn’t their battle, and the opposition was far too powerful. In this case, dying just wasn’t a particularly productive strategy, and even if you could take some of the nasty ones with you, well, what was the long-term point that was worth lives?
Ari Martinez and Ming Dawn Palavri were two she felt confident she could place in charge of individual lifeboats. She planned on taking the third out herself. Tann Nakitt was still something of a question mark, but she allowed him to make his own decision, although he was, of course, monitored to ensure that he tipped off none of the bad guys.
Not that they needed to be tipped off. Jules Wallinchky sent the Rithians and Mallegestors on an all-out search to find out where the hell everybody had gone. When they determined that almost everybody had remained in their cabins for the last day and night, Wallinchky knew something was up. When he determined that the lifeboats would not respond to the general emergency access panels, he had the plot pretty well figured out.
“What do you want to do?” Teynal asked him. “If we can’t get off, we will have to go with them. Inconvenient, and they are water breathers.”
Wallinchky seemed singularly unworried. “We’ll take care of it. You know I never go into a place unless I have good protection and multiple exits. They can shut off corridor access to us when they need to, so I say let ’em go. If they can’t be picked off, so be it.” He did, however, palm and pass several pieces of paper between his people and himself, actions that could be observed by the monitors but not read by them. In all cases, they ate the messages, so there would be no reconstruction. Clearly he wasn’t going to give away his game plan to Jeremiah Kincaid.
Sealed off on the bridge with his monitors, Kincaid was frustrated by this most primitive of devices, nor could he be certain from that vantage point what conversations of theirs were for real and which ones were for his benefit.
It was simply a matter of waiting that eternity until the clock ticked down and they were ejected from null-space back into the normal universe. In the meanwhile he could only try to anticipate everything and wonder what he’d missed.
When the clocks read seven days, twenty hours, fifty-one minutes, no seconds, there was a shudder that shook the entire ship, and everyone once more had that feeling of falling into a deep, bottomless pit. Alarms went off then, and the ship’s “voice” said, “Attention! Attention! We have experienced an emergency, and to avoid loss of life and minimize discomfort we have been forced to reenter normal space short of our destination. Please remain calm. For your safety, all passengers are directed toward the lifeboats designated for their immediate sections. Do not be alarmed. It is a routine procedure. In the event of a life-threatening situation, the lifeboats can take you without harm to safety. This will probably not be necessary, but to ensure that everyone is where they should be, please follow the flashing lines in the direction they indicate to your lifeboats now.”
In the lounge, Wallinchky nodded to the Rithians and whispered something in the ears of each of his beautiful companions. All of them immediately set off into the corridors, while the Mallegestors took up protective station with Wallinchky in the lounge.
Kincaid couldn’t quite figure out what was going on, but he spoke into the two-way in his environment suit on a channel only he knew was operational. “Execute final option, priority code Ahab. Good luck, City of Modar. You are on your own.”
“We will do our best, Captain,” came the response from the control panel. “Good luck.”
Jeremiah Kincaid had to stifle a chuckle at that, even at this most tense of moments. A computer had just wished him good luck. He wasn’t sure he liked discovering that computers believed in luck.
The area they were in represented a huge amount of space, and he had only an approximation of where the other ship would emerge. Even a few seconds here or there could mean tens of thousands of kilometers; minutes might turn into millions.
He’d turned off the ship’s local distress calls, but the other ship would have something, probably from the water sections.
Almost as if on cue with the thought, his sensors picked it up, the scanners locking in on the frequencies. There was no way to break their code at this point, of course, but he noted with some approval that the ship seemed to be having some success in either jamming or dampening their signals. The more time the better.
Back on board, Angel saw that the loading of the lifeboats was going pretty well. A few didn’t come, but most did, particularly that family Angel had worried so much about. The computer had instructions to launch as soon as the lifeboats were filled, and at least one, with Ari in command, Angel hoped, had already left. She went down to the second one to check on it and saw Ming at the entrance but making no move to board.
“Why aren’t you aboard? You must leave!” Angel cried urgently to the other woman. “I will go back and catch any stragglers.”
Ming shook her head. “Sorry, can’t do it. I wanted one last check to see if anybody else was coming, then I’m sealing it up.”
“But—why?”
“Because I’m a kind of a cop, that’s why, and because my job is to prevent the transfer of that device even if I have to blow it up.” She turned and stuck her head in the door. “Everybody just follow the instructions of the holographic boatswain and you will be fine. Good luck!”
Angel almost moved to put a martial-arts-style kick on Ming’s rear that would have propelled her into the lifeboat, but for some reason she held back. She hoped she wouldn’t regret it.
The hatch swung shut, there was a loud hissing sound, then vibration as the lifeboat detached from its moorings and fully powered up, the corridors shaking as well, and then the lifeboat was gone.
Angel looked at Ming and saw that she had a full-power laser pistol stuck in her belt, which she now removed and checked. “How—How did you even get that on board?” Angel asked her.