"Understood." Hadeishi grimaced. He'd hoped to learn something of the man or woman he faced from the public shipping records in the Cornuelle's database. "We are at two hundred meters. Hold one."
The Fleet pilot looked up questioningly. Hadeishi keyed through a secondary comp panel bolted to the side of the carrel. Builder's blueprints and diagrams flashed past. After a moment, he pointed out a particular assembly.
"Left," he said carefully, "six hundred meters, then in about a hundred and full stop."
The pilot glanced out at the massive shape looming in front of them. Against the mountain-sized bulk of the Turan, the EVA platform was a fly buzzing against a temple column. The woman grinned, showing perfect white teeth in a cocoa-brown face, and gently swung the control stick over. The carrel tipped and scooted along the boundary of an enormous, round ore tank. Hadeishi gripped tighter on the bar, watching girders, panels, lading-ports, a ten-meter high "16" and intermittent singleton work lamps glowing against the darkness, drift past.
Hadeishi turned and caught Felix's eye. "Someone needs to watch the comm wire as we turn into the approach. We'll stop and untangle if we snag."
The heicho bared her teeth in a tense grin. One hand was clinging like a limpet to the overhead retaining bar, the other was steadying the blunt, wicked shape of a six-barreled Bofors Whipsaw squad support weapon. "Tonuac's on it."
"Good." Hadeishi swung round to watch the curving wall of ore tank sixteen drift past – then it ended abruptly, leaving a dark canyon framed by the looming bulk of tank fourteen. Despite an outwardly calm demeanor, Mitsu's hand clamped tight on the bar as the pilot swung the platform into the pitch-black space. "Steady as she goes, Sho-i Asale."
The Mixtec ignored him, her entire body concentrated on the delicate control required by the four maneuvering jets. Without even the faint gleam of the stars or the irregularly-spaced worklights, she was flying blind, guided solely by a carefully crippled radar unit whose power output could almost be measured in candles. Hadeishi gained an impression of vast shapes rising on either side among a forest of girders and pipes. Once the platform made a hard course correction to port, then back again. The sound of his breathing was very loud in his helmet.
Asale was sweating too. He could see silvery beads slithering down her forehead, but the pilot's concentration never wavered. The platform glided to a stop, then rose up, swimming past ill-defined structures. A single light suddenly appeared – a recessed door with an illuminated faceplate and lock window – but the pilot did not stop. The platform continued to rise, minutes ticking past. Then she brought them to a stop, stabilizing the platform with two short bursts.
"We've got a problem." Asale looked up at Hadeishi, biting her lip in thought. "We've got thirty meters to go, to reach the airlock you want. But the space ahead is constricted – some kind of framework running crossways in front of the lock." She fingered the blueprint, showing where they were.
Felix pressed in close, eyeballing the schematic, while Hadeishi was thinking. "We could dismount here and go in on suit thrusters."
"No." Hadeishi wanted to rub his jaw, which was entirely impossible in the suit. "We'd have to move the gear by hand – and we'll need it inside. What clearance do we need?"
Asale consulted the weak, scattered radar image. "Side to side we're fine, but this platform is just a bit too high."
"Felix, cut off the roof." Hadeishi moved himself carefully into the space directly behind the pilot. "We'll crouch down."
"Hai, Chu-sa!" Felix replied immediately, moving into the corner he'd vacated. "Hand tools on cutting blade," she ordered the three Marines floating behind her. "Cut the framework off at one meter. Then we'll push it clear – gently."
Hadeishi settled in to wait. He could feel a vibration in the platform through his boots as the Marines began cutting through the framework of hexacarbon pipe the engineers had taken such care to install. Losing the shroud of absorptive fabric would reveal them to any active sensors in the vicinity, but he hoped the miners had not decided to mount a targeting radar inside the ore-tank shield.
Felix's team worked with commendable speed, and only three minutes later the encasing roof was pushed up and away, drifting back a few meters, hull-fabric standing out stiff from the edges of the cut.
"Let's go." Hadeishi rapped gently on Asale's shoulder. The pilot nodded and the platform began to edge forward. Far ahead, Mitsu thought he could make out the oblong rectangle of an airlock door edged with tiny green lights.
Kosho turned away from the video feed transmitted by Felix's helmet.
"They are almost at the airlock," she announced to the bridge crew. There was a full complement at their consoles, though by shiptime this was early in third watch. Every hand aboard was awake and standing to battle stations. "Hayes-tzin, do you have a firing solution?"
"Hai, Sho-sa." The weapons officer nodded sharply, his face mostly obscured by the helmet of his combat suit. The sho-sa was taking every precaution. At any moment, they could be engaged in a point-blank beam weapon shoot-out with a hostile ship sixty times their size. "One bird, sprint mode. Shall I load out?"
"Proceed." Kosho turned her attention to a camera view shot from one of the point-defense sensor clusters on the skin of the Cornuelle. Hayes tapped a series of commands on his panel. A section of the ship's hull retracted, revealing the mouth of a missile accelerator mount. Gleaming magnet rings shone brightly for a moment and then the snout of an Atlatl-IV antiship missile emerged with graceful speed. The missile exited the ringtrack and drifted free of the ship's hull.
Not the usual kind of launch, Susan thought, suppressing a snort of amusement.
On the screen, three z-suited figures drifted into view, guiding an EVA collar between them. Five minutes of careful work clamped the collar around the Atlatl. Two of the men jetted away, while the third accessed a control panel on the collar. Susan leaned slightly forward, watching for signs of trouble.
"Guidance test underway." Yoyontzin's voice burred on the intership channel. "Test is green."
Hayes tapped a glyph on his own panel. "Remote comm test is go." A v-pane appeared, displayed a variety of results, then vanished gain. "Test shows green. Remote control is live."
After acknowledging the results, the engineer jetted away from the missile and Susan waited patiently until all three men were processing in through number eight airlock. She looked to Hayes and nodded. Her own hand drifted above a preprogrammed point-defense weapons order.
"Sprint One is under secondary power," the weapons officer reported. "Maneuvering."
Susan watched the fully-armed Atlatl move away from her ship, accelerating slowly as the jets on the collar hissed thin streams of white vapor into the black abyss of space. Fifteen minutes later, the missile had vanished from sight, curving away around the mass of the asteroid screening the Cornuelle from the Turan.
"Sprint One has cleared self-destruct distance." Hayes consulted his panel. "Sprint One will be at launch station in sixteen minutes."
Susan nodded, allowing herself to savor an atom of relief. She had moderate faith in Yoyontzin's abilities, but the prospect of anything – much less an antimatter-charged shipkiller – colliding with the hull of the Cornuelle precipitated a cold sweat of tension. "Proceed with inertial guidance check and targeting comp test."