Threshold

  He stuffed Erin into a crawlspace. A bit tight, and she might suffocate in there if she couldn't work her way out, but probably not. He'd have someone check on her later, once the situation stabilized.

  Another call came in; this one more favorable. Engineering was under control—and he was almost there. Fitzgerald allowed himself a quick smile. Give him a few minutes more, and the inevitability of the results just might even convince Hohenheim that there was no point in fighting. If not, they'd at least get more of the crew to give it up.

  Especially once Nebula Storm was no longer in the picture. That was now the critical task.

  Madeline stared at the suddenly blank screen, her gut tightening. Hohenheim's reactions, the attack on Ceres, her own inside knowledge of how certain people worked, it all fit together. "Jackie, I am assuming command. We are about to come under attack."

  Jackie nodded. "Are you sure? The general seemed almost relieved by our contacting him."

  "I'm sure," Madeline said. "General Hohenheim may not be in command over there any longer. If he is, I suspect he is currently preoccupied with trying to keep that status."

  A.J. winced. "You think there's a mutiny on board? That's crazy, isn't it?"

  "Undoubtedly crazy," she answered, keying in commands and looking over scenarios. "But people like Richard Fitzgerald are only technically sane. Jackie, I want our rotation stopped. We don't need any additional stresses on the ship if we need to maneuver, especially with damage."

  "Slowing rotation. Won't take that long to stop—a few minutes."

  "A.J., I need some intelligence. They know about the Dust now, so there's no need for subtlety. Talk to me."

  The blond head nodded as A.J. fixed his helmet on. "I'm on it. At this range it may take a while—remember how much interference there is, and how very low-power the Dust's transceivers are. Even en masse they're not up to significant broadcast strength. But—" His tone sharpened. "I can confirm something's very not right. Odin is swinging ship, which would bring the coilguns to bear on us."

  "Have you managed to cut their controls to the weapons?" Madeline asked.

  "Not yet. I was starting to get in there during the conversation. Then the Dust went to sleep with the cessation of their transmissions. I've finally got it woken up again, and I'm starting the process. Damn this separation! I've got actual speed-of-light delay on everything I'm doing, and I feel like I'm typing my commands out on some stone-age three hundred-baud terminal. And the bandwidth sucks, since I have to duty-cycle everything to match the available scavenged power."

  "They are closing with us, correct?"

  "As planned," Larry said. "But not all that fast. We've got a differential of less than four kilometers per second. It'll be hours before we reach near approach, which isn't going to be all that near anyway. We cross each other's courses, heading . . ." Maddie saw the slight shift of the astrophysicist's posture.

  "What's wrong, Larry?"

  There was a pause, as Larry seemed to be checking something. When he spoke, his voice was grim. "Odin had better get its personnel issues sorted out reasonably soon. Near as I can tell, they're headed for a landing on Io. And Odin isn't meant for landing, even if you could do it on Io, which I'm not sure any ship could."

  "What about us?"

  "We'll be quite a ways from Io, though still in spitting distance in astronomical terms. Our really close approach will be Europa. But it's not looking like a dangerously close approach."

  Jackie looked pale. "But with their communications out . . ."

  "We can't warn them right now. I know. They have their own navigators on board, of course, but if Maddie's right and there's a mutiny going on, they're not going to be looking at that aspect yet. Hell, they probably already know, but if this goes on, they may not maneuver in time." Conley shook his head in bemusement. "What are the odds? Space is practically empty. A random course change should have almost zero chance of sending you on a collision course with anything."

  "Someone's definitely running out the guns," A.J. interjected from his own position. "And he's using his own protocols and controls, different from the ones normally in place."

  "Fitzgerald," Madeline said, her tone of voice making the name a curse. "Just the type to do that."

  "Hey, it's not all that different from what you did on board Nike," A.J. pointed out mildly.

  Maddie restrained a sharp reply. After a moment, she shrugged. "You're right, of course. The difference is that I think Richard Fitzgerald is doing this for himself, not for the mission. Like a lot of people in my profession, he's a past master of justifying any action that he takes."

  "It's still insane," A.J. said. "He can't possibly believe he can get away with it."

  Maddie laughed bitterly. "How I wish I could agree with you. But he probably does believe it, and if he can get rid of us, he may even be right. It's not as if there are any police out here to check the crime scene to see if it matches the suspect's story."

  "I'm getting into the coilgun control systems," A.J. announced. "Damn slow work, comparatively, but it shouldn't take too much longer."

  "You'd better hurry," Larry said bluntly. "Odin's just about finished lining up for the shot."

  "But there's no real danger, right?" Helen said. "You guys told me that."

  Maddie looked at the screen with gathering foreboding. From everything she knew, Helen was right. There wasn't a chance in hell that the coilguns could fire anything effective at this range. Even the molasses-slow reactions of the Nebula Storm would be sufficient to evade, or should be.

  The problem was that she found it difficult to believe that Richard Fitzgerald didn't know that as well as she did. His actions so far might be reprehensible and even crazy from some perspectives, but he'd been playing in her league all along.

  "There shouldn't be any danger," Madeline Fathom said finally. "But I'd feel a lot better if they never got to fire at us anyway." She looked at A.J. "Shut them down."

  "Working on it," A.J. said absently. "Just a few more minutes, and we can all relax."

  Chapter 35

  Horst Eberhart sat quietly in the tiny, almost featureless cell. Outside he looked calm, but inside he was raging. And, he had to admit, afraid. He didn't know what was going on outside, but the situation couldn't be good.

  It was still gnawing at him how he'd managed to end up here in the first place. He knew he hadn't touched the controls and ruined the Odin's maneuver, yet he also had yet to figure out a plausible alternative.

  Fitzgerald? Could he be doing it? Horst was intrigued by the idea, now that he thought of it. Wasn't one of the classic intelligence-agent ploys to make allies look like enemies? If Fitzgerald was really on Ares' side—working with Madeline Fathom, and just making it look like they were enemies—that would explain what just happened.

  But, no, that didn't make sense. If he was working with them, there was no way that Joe Buckley would have been within a kilometer of the power-control facility when Odin blew it to powder. Fitzgerald might be cold-blooded enough to think it'd help things look more convincing, but there was no way Fathom would have done so.

  Besides, if Fitzgerald were on their side, they'd have known what they were up to from the beginning. He shook his head. There had to be another explanation. Mia Svendsen? As the engineer, she could have pulled that off. Maybe. Certainly after the overrides were authorized—by the general. But before that . . . and again, the same objections applied to her.

  The reason it made all too much sense for him to have done it—and he gave a weak grin as he realized that he was now arguing the prosecution's future case—was that he'd developed a personal relationship with an important member of the Ares/IRI group long after the mission began. And while his relationship with Jackie Secord had remained undefined, it had been getting increasingly close—certainly enough to give credence to the charges against him.

  Added to that, he had discovered the treachery of Odin considerably after they'd left. In this scenario, he w
ould have gotten guilty over his initial, smaller betrayals, and then, after finding out that his own people nearly killed Buckley and did cripple the base, would have decided to turncoat. It was neat and made perfect sense, and even fit with Horst's gut feelings on the whole situation.

  "The real problem," he said finally to empty air, "is that I didn't do it!"

  Given that this was true, though . . . what happened? Horst didn't believe it was an accident, any more than did the general or Fitzgerald. It was too exact, too carefully timed and totally unstoppable by any ordinary means, to be a random glitch or set of glitches. There had been a couple of other close friendships between Ares/IRI and Odin personnel, like that between Dr. Conley and Anthony LaPointe, but none of the people there were capable of the "black ops" programming necessary to pull this off, as Horst was.

  He leaned back and folded his arms, then continued to think on the problem, as there wasn't much else to do in his current situation. Since he'd basically eliminated any possibility of a traitor on board Odin, that left only one answer.

  A.J. Baker. Horst had spent more than enough time around Baker to know that in some ways he'd underestimated the sensor genius. Yes, A.J. was not quite his equal in the programming arena, especially the systems programming that Horst focused on, but he was as smart as his reputation made him out to be, and the Faerie Dust he had was beyond cutting edge and right on the bleeding edge of capability.

  Faerie Dust. Horst sat up as a possibility burst in on him. They had security procedures, of course, but with the capabilities of that Dust, Baker could have smuggled some on board Odin by using the personnel as unwitting mules. You'd practically have to examine each person as they entered under a microscope to have a chance of detecting the stuff. Self-powered and self-mobile, the motes could hide and might well be able to spoof many forms of sensors if properly programmed—and there was no one in the solar system who knew more about programming such things than A.J. Baker.

  But, again, that theory fell under the weight of his own argument, given to Fitzgerald months—no, well over a year ago. It would be totally out of character for Baker to do something like that. After the fact of the attack, yes, he might be able—make that, he would be able—to justify doing it as a wartime necessity, but not while everyone was cooperating. It would be a temptation, but one that Baker would resist.

  Yet it made so much sense otherwise. It was the ideal answer—if Horst could only figure out a way that the Faerie Dust could have made it all the way to Odin without anyone noticing.

  It was the exact phrasing of that thought—placing the Dust itself in the active role—that suddenly crystallized his thoughts into a clear and perfect vision of what had happened. He laughed aloud, both in relief that he understood and in the sheer devilish brilliance of the approach.

  At that moment, the speaker overhead suddenly spoke in the general's voice: "Attention all personnel. Attention all personnel." The words were filled with tension and anger. "The Odin is currently under—"

  The silence that followed was objectively no different than the silence that preceded those cryptic lines, but it now seemed filled with menace. What was going on out there? Horst stood in the middle of the little room, tense and uneasy.

  Without warning, the door slid open, revealing Dominic Alescio, one of Fitzgerald's men, holding one of the specially-modified shotguns designed for shipboard use. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, adrenaline stretching every perception to breaking limits. That was the last horrid piece of the puzzle, and in that moment Horst Eberhart knew he was going to die, as Alescio, without so much as a change in expression, began to pull the trigger.

  Barreling in from the rear, a third figure plowed into Alescio. The gun went off, the explosion deafening in the confined space, and shot ricocheted and whined like a cloud of enraged bees throughout the room. One pellet grazed Horst's cheek, but his location in an adjoining but separate room had shielded him. From the cries of the other two, both combatants had gotten worse.

  Horst Eberhart charged from the tiny cell toward the others. With shock he recognized the bloodied form now underneath Alescio as Anthony LaPointe. Alescio, also bleeding but clearly in far better shape than the astronomer, rolled aside just before Eberhart reached him and came to his feet, trying to bring the gun to bear.

  But Horst was close, he was furious, and he was younger and faster. He was also very strong. Before the other man could pull the trigger or even get the shotgun decently lined up, Eberhart smashed the gun aside and slammed a full-strength right into Alescio's gut. The shock of impact screamed red agony through his fist—of course the guard was wearing armor.

  Still, the impact was enough to make Alescio grunt in pain and stagger backward, trying to get into a combat stance. Horst ripped the gun out of Alescio's hand and spun it around, pulling the trigger.

  Nothing happened. Nothing except that Alescio, bloodied and furious, started backing Horst up with a series of kicks and punches that the engineer could barely ward off even with the gun as a makeshift shield. Idiot! he snarled to himself. The guns were individualized, with a personal-characteristic lock; if the wrong person or persons were to get hold of the weapons, they were useless.

  As guns, anyway. Horst took a kick to his own gut which made him glad he hadn't eaten anything recently, but he'd known it was coming. In the moment of contact, he brought the gun barrel down.

  Alescio gave a high-pitched scream as the metal barrel shattered his kneecap. Horst jumped back and stared incredulously as the other man somehow tried to shrug off the pain and move in on him again. But the pain and injury to his knee—as well as other wounds from the earlier ricochets—slowed him by too much.

  This time the gun barrel cracked heavily against Alescio's temple. He went down like a dropped sack of potatoes and didn't move. Horst paused a moment, breathing hard and letting some of the shaking die down. He was lucky this had happened in the habitat section of Odin. Without gravity, he was pretty sure he'd have lost the fight. He thought he felt the deck quiver under his feet, but there was no way to be sure right now.

  He went over to LaPointe. "Anthony, are you crazy?"

  "So it is crazy to be rescuing your friends? Then, yes, I am completely mad." The English-French astronomer's left arm was bleeding profusely from multiple holes; clearly he'd taken the edge of the initial shot. There were several other small wounds, mostly on his scalp and face, that Horst presumed were the result of ricochets. Fortunately, most of the energy had been lost by those projectiles before striking LaPointe. Only one of them was bleeding, and not badly. The other ricochet wounds were bruises.

  Horst bound the arm tightly, tying a tourniquet high up on the bicep. The bleeding appeared to stop. "Thank you, Anthony. I would have been dead."

  "That is exactly what I was afraid of once I saw Fitzgerald had taken off. So I left the bridge and came here as fast as I could. It did not take a genius to know what he would want done to you." He grunted in pain as Horst pulled him upright, but he stood reasonably steadily.

  "So it's happening. I can't believe it." Horst peered out of the doors. No one in sight at the moment. "We've got to get to your cabin, then find out how we can help the general . . . unless he's working with Fitzgerald?"

  "No, not a chance. He was about to make a deal with the Nebula Storm that would have saved the mission—but not, obviously, Fitzgerald's career. In fact, the bastard would probably have wound up serving a long prison sentence once we returned."

  Now, there was a pleasant surprise. Too bad he didn't have time for the story yet. "Then let's see what we can do to make sure that happens. Can you keep up?"

  "I think I shall have to. Lead on."

  Gun still gripped in his hand, since it was the best club he had available, Horst Eberhart moved out into the corridors of the mutiny-wracked Odin.

  Chapter 36

  "Either help me or get out of the way, Svendsen," Fitzgerald said. "Or I'll bloody well have you shot."

  The Norwegian
engineer glared at him. "You can't afford to shoot me."

  Say whatever else you would about Svendsen, she was not cowardly—and there was enough truth in her statement that Richard wasn't about to kill her casually. He sighed as he continued to maneuver the heavy cylinders toward the loading area. If it had been in an area with acceleration, he'd have needed forklifts and assistants. As it was, he had to be careful not to end up crushed by them.

  "You're right. I can't quite be shooting you when I'll be needing the engineering talent to run this beast," he conceded. "But I can have my boys work you over and lock you in a closet. Which I'll do if you don't either help or sit down and shut up, because I have to get this done fast." He had no doubt that Baker and the rest of the Ares crew were working hard to shut down the coilguns.

  Mia Svendsen glared again and looked like she was going to spit at him. Instead, she settled for something presumably insulting in Norwegian before strapping herself into one of the seats—away from any critical controls. He nodded at Johnson, currently the only other person present to keep Engineering secure. There were about a hundred people on board Odin, and he had less than ten percent of them on his side. Admittedly, they had all the weapons and most of the combat training, but right now things were stretched really, really thin.

  He glanced at Mia again and shrugged. I could have used the help but I suppose it's just as well; she might have tried to bugger things up at just the wrong moment. And with these loads for the coilguns, it would not be a good thing to have anyone screw up.

  The other concern was Eberhart. Poor Alescio was still out, so no one knew exactly what had happened. But it was clear that either he'd screwed up and somehow Eberhart had gotten the drop on him—unlikely, in Fitzgerald's opinion—or that someone else had arrived in time to turn a simple execution into a fight. Since no one had reported securing LaPointe, Fitzgerald was willing to bet that it was the astronomer who'd buggered up that little part of the plan.