In his fists he clutched Imposs/Alt’s clearance badge and id tag as if they were precious enough to ransom his entire species.
More guards rushed into the confusion. At last their training took hold: half a dozen of them forced an aisle through the wailing tumult; others threw open the doors; still others helped move Imposs along. Abrim Len shrieked at the Members to clear the hall. If they’d been able to obey, the crush would have made it impossible to remove Imposs. But reinforcements arrived in time to block the Members and their staffs out of the way.
At a run, Ensign Crender and the other guards impelled Imposs or Alt from the hall. Immediately Chief Mandich ordered the doors closed again. Men and women who didn’t know what they were doing kicked Hashi from side to side. In self-defense, he picked himself off the floor just as the high portal slammed shut.
Across the moil and din Ing shouted fiercely, “Sit down! Sit down! Get below the blast!”
His yell produced an instant of frozen silence. But before anyone could move, obey, a detonation as heavy as thunder shook the chamber.
The blast was too close to the doors: they cracked from top to bottom. The floor bucked in the concussion. People staggered; some lost their feet. Powdered plaster, paint, and cement filled the air as the shock wave hit the walls and ceiling.
Then it was over.
The Members stared at each other with dismay on their faces and dust in their hair. For a moment they seemed stunned to find that they were still alive.
Unaware that a smile stretched his thin face like a rictus, Hashi stooped to the floor and started looking for his glasses.
• • •
Apart from Nathan Alt/Clay Imposs, only one man died. A GCES Security guard too close to the explosion was blown to pulp. And only one was seriously injured: Ensign Crender lost his left hand and forearm. For the most part, however, Chief Mandich had taken effective measures to muffle the blast and protect lives. A number of Security personnel—both GCES and UMCPED—suffered damaged eardrums and other symptoms of concussion, but they were spared any lasting harm.
When the ensuing pandemonium had eased, and order had been restored, President Len offered to adjourn the session so that the Members would have time to recover. To his surprise, virtually all of them declined. Under the circumstances, the consensus of the Council was that the UWB Senior Member’s Bill of Severance should be brought to an immediate vote.
The Bill was rejected by a significant margin. The Members were too shaken to approve it. They heeded Cleatus Fane’s assertion that severance would disrupt the efforts of the UMCP to protect them. Any kind of centralized authority seemed preferable to terrorist attack.
In their fear, the Members felt too vulnerable to accept responsibility for their own survival.
The fact that Cleatus Fane himself had been the kaze’s apparent target gave his arguments added weight. The threat came, not from humankind’s enemies, but from the UMC’s. Therefore the UMC should deal with it.
When the extraordinary session was adjourned, Captain Vertigus limped out of the hall. However, his carriage was erect, uncowed. He might have been on his way to make humankind’s first contact with the Amnion.
Koina Hannish couldn’t contain her indignation. To that extent, her professional mask failed her. “How did he get in?” she demanded repeatedly of Forrest Ing. “Is this the best ED Security can do? Why did I work so hard to put Chief Mandich in charge of Security here, if he isn’t capable of stopping a kaze? A kaze I warned him about?”
The deputy chief, poor man, had no answer.
But her ire had another, truer question behind it. Implicit in her outrage was the assumption that if a kaze hadn’t gained entrance to the chamber, the Bill of Severance might have passed.
Hashi deemed that plausible. He’d heard Captain Vertigus’ arguments, and they were better than Cleatus Fane’s. Even Members bought and paid for by the UMC might have been swayed.
Nevertheless the DA director considered the session a success.
Warden Dios had assured Koina she was in no danger. Apparently he’d meant that the danger wasn’t aimed at her personally. The earlier attacks on Captain Vertigus and Godsen Frik didn’t imply that she was next. They had another significance entirely.
In the aftermath of Nathan Alt’s death and Sixten Vertigus’ defeat, Hashi Lebwohl could see that significance clearly. Events in flux had resolved themselves: he was sure of their position.
On the other hand, he had no idea what might happen next.
MIN
She was already on her way to the bridge when Punisher’s fire alarms began yowling like banshees.
The cruiser was nearing the huge asteroid swarm where Deaner Beckmann had hived his bootleg lab, and Min wanted to be at the center of information and command. Nevertheless the unexpected squall of the klaxons seemed to change everything. Her instincts hadn’t warned her: she hadn’t felt the ship’s ambient vibrations mounting toward an emergency.
Surprised by disaster, she launched herself forward in the zero g equivalent of a run.
Dolph Ubikwe hadn’t arrived yet when she coasted onto the bridge, stopped herself on a handgrip. Command Fourth Hargin Stoval sat at the command station, barking orders at the intercom. Data and engineering shouted back and forth: the other bridge stations clung fiercely to their tasks while her people fought to assess and answer the damage.
“Status!” Min demanded as soon as Stoval paused for breath.
He hadn’t seen her enter the bridge. When he heard her voice, however, he flung his g-seat around to face her and snapped a salute. “Director Dormer. We’re on fire.” He named a section of the ship’s infrastructure near the core. “So far we don’t have a clue what started it, but it’s pretty bad. Hot enough to feed off every bit of plastic, debris, and oil it can find. We already have two dead, others hurt.”
He hesitated momentarily, then said, “I should get down there. If you’ll take the bridge, Director—”
Min jerked a nod. “Go.” From what Dolph had said about him, she guessed that Stoval was the best man aboard to take charge of the damage-control parties. Captain Ubikwe wouldn’t feel slighted if she watched over his command for him briefly.
As Stoval unbelted himself and headed off the bridge, she left her handgrip for a new hold on an arm of the command station. From that position she could see the console and readouts without assuming Dolph’s authority.
After a quick glance at the indicators and screens, she turned to the other officers. “Anything else I should know right this minute?”
The bridge crew came from a mix of watches: individual duty rotations had shifted to compensate for lost personnel. Glessen on targ and Cray on communications shook their heads. “We’ve reached the trailing edges of the swarm, sir,” Patrice reported from helm. “In another hour we’ll approach the main body.”
Porson, the scan officer, punched vehemently at his board until Min gave him her attention. Then he muttered, “Looks like we’ve lost that entire sensor bank for good, Director. The one we’ve been working on ever since you came aboard. Fire must have got the wiring.”
“Compensate,” Min instructed him. “Tell helm what you need to cover us. We can’t afford blind spots.
“Data,” she went on, “this is your department. What happened?”
The data officer was a young woman named Bydell. When Min spoke to her, she flinched. “Engineering—” she began. “The computer—” She was too young for her duties; too vulnerable to the prolonged strain Punisher had endured. “I don’t know—”
She conveyed the impression that she was coming apart.
“Reconstruct it,” Min answered firmly. Bydell’s distress was Dolph’s problem. Min didn’t know his people well enough to take their individual personalities into account. But she had no intention of letting them slip into paralysis while their ship burned.
“That’s what computer simulations are for. Let’s not make Captain Ubikwe wait for answers when he ge
ts here.”
“Aye, sir.” The data officer did her best to confront her board like a woman who knew what she was doing.
Min turned back to the command board, tapped a few keys to call up new information, then paused to think.
Any fire was bad enough aboard a ship; but this one was more than that. If it spread, it might do severe damage to Punisher’s control systems. Worse, it could conceivably breach the core—If Stoval didn’t put it out quickly, it could cripple the ship.
Already one of the sensor banks was gone. She confirmed that on the command console, even though she didn’t doubt Porson for an instant. One whole scan array had failed, leaving Punisher blind forward across an arc of nearly thirty degrees.
A bit of weight nudged her toward her boots as helm began adjusting the ship’s attitude in relation to her course.
Min clenched her fists against the familiar fire in her palms and waited for Captain Ubikwe.
He arrived no more than five minutes after she did. Surging onto the bridge as if he were shouldering off fears and weakness, he coasted straight to the command station, pulled himself into his g-seat, and clasped his belts. “Thanks, Director,” he said to Min. His voice projected the power and certainty of a pneumatic hammer. “Sorry I kept you waiting. I took the time to talk to Hargin. We’ve got the moral equivalent of an inferno in there. What’s the situation here?”
Min glanced at Bydell and decided to take a chance. “Data was just about to tell us,” she drawled calmly.
“Right, sir,” the woman said as if she were gulping for air.
“I didn’t see what happened,” she began at once. “We didn’t get any warning—at least not any warning we understood. But I’ve been running simulations, trying to construct a scenario that fits. This is what I’ve been able to come up with.”
We’ve got micro-leaks in some of the hydraulic systems, the bosun had told Min when she’d first come aboard. We haven’t had time to trace them. But she’d already known that: she’d read Punisher’s reports. And there hadn’t been anything she could do about it.
Now she was learning what her decision to take this ship despite the cruiser’s condition cost.
The sequence of events, as Bydell reconstructed it, was this. Acid from one hydraulic line and oil from another had drifted together. That should have been impossible, of course: such lines lay in sealed conduits. But if lines could crack, so could conduits. While Punisher ran in zero g, without internal spin or navigational thrust, the leaks had accumulated until they formed considerable quantities of fluid. Then the cruiser began veering and hauling her way through Massif-5, ducking obstacles by the hundreds to follow Trumpet. Pools of acid and oil were sloshed and pulled in every direction until they found cracks. And those cracks led to other conduits, more cracks.
In the meantime Punisher’s people were still at work on the wiring to one of the main sensor banks. External repairs had been jury-rigged earlier: now the internal lines were being restrung. To do the job, repair techs needed repeated access to a portion of the ship’s infrastructure. Unfortunately the bulkhead door they used was sticking. At times its servos cycled for three or four seconds before they built up enough pressure to shift the door.
While they labored they generated heat as well as pressure, more and more heat as the action of the door deteriorated.
Somehow considerable quantities of oil and acid had come together in the lines around the straining servos. When the fluids caught fire, they exploded with such force that they crumpled the bulkhead, killed two techs, flash-burned two more, and started a blaze which Punisher’s people, hampered by zero g and navigational thrust, didn’t know how to control.
In the process, of course, the sensor bank was lost.
Captain Ubikwe felt the strain: it showed in one of his familiar outbreaks of irascibility. “Damn it,” he muttered as if he didn’t think anyone was listening, “this is too much. I’m starting to believe in curses. How long has it been since any of us were on a ship that actually caught fire?”
No one responded. Min flexed her fingers and counted the beats of her pulse to keep herself from issuing orders.
“Damn it,” he repeated. “We’ve got decisions to make.”
Abruptly he changed his tone. “Confirmation on that sensor bank, Porson? It’s really dead?”
“Worse than useless, Captain,” scan replied. “I can’t even get static out of it. The computer has already routed around it like it isn’t there.”
Dolph nodded. “How are we compensating?”
“I’m stretching the arc on the other banks, Captain,” Porson continued, “but I can only pick up a few degrees. The rest is up to helm.”
“Sergei?” Dolph asked the helm officer.
“Usual procedure, Captain,” Sergei Patrice answered, “if anything about this situation is ‘usual.’ I’m rotating the entire ship around her core. You can feel the tug—we’ve picked up a couple of pounds of g. So what we have in essence is a one-second blind spot sweeping our scan field. We can make it shorter or longer, whatever you want.
“But, Captain—” Helm hesitated.
“Spit it out,” Captain Ubikwe rumbled. “I’m already in a bad mood. You aren’t likely to make it worse.”
“Sorry, Captain.” Patrice grinned humorlessly. “I just thought I ought to say—we can’t go into combat like this. We can’t afford the inertia. At some point we’ll have to choose between defending ourselves and being able to see.”
Dolph smiled back at him. “I was wrong. You can so make it worse.”
At once he thumbed his intercom.
“Hargin,” he called. “Can you hear me? Hargin Stoval. I want a report.”
The intercom speaker brought distant shouts over a roaring background to the bridge. Then the connection popped as the pickup on the other end was activated.
Stoval’s voice shed frustration and alarm like sparks. “We aren’t getting anywhere, Captain. The automatic systems can’t handle it And it’s so damn hot, we can’t get close enough to use portable extinguishers.
“This g hurts us,” he added. “Seems to concentrate the fire. It’s hotter all the time.”
Captain Ubikwe grimaced. “I hear you, Hargin. Stand by. We need to change something. I’ll let you know as soon as I decide what.”
He clicked off his pickup and turned to Min.
“Director Dormer.” His tone was steady, incisive, but the dull, combative smolder in his eyes made him look desperate. “This is your mission. I have to ask you. Is there any reason why we shouldn’t cut all thrust and let ourselves coast while we fight this fire?”
Min allowed herself a sardonic snort. “If I tried, I could probably think of six. But none of them will matter if we let a fire cripple us. Do what you have to do, Captain. We’ll deal with the consequences later.”
A flicker of gratitude showed in his gaze. He didn’t take the time to articulate it, however. Wheeling his station, he began, “All right, Patrice—”
“Shit!” Porson croaked in sudden dismay. At once he murmured tensely, “Sorry, Captain,” running commands as fast as he could hit the keys. Scan readouts on the screens jumped and blurred as he changed them. As if he couldn’t help himself, he groaned again, “Shit.”
Dolph growled a warning. But he didn’t need to demand an explanation. Min didn’t need one. Porson had already put the data which shocked him up onto one of the main displays.
Out of nowhere ahead of Punisher another ship had appeared.
Literally out of nowhere. Scan identified the characteristic burst of distortion—the impression that physical laws were being fried—which followed vessels emerging from the gap.
Counters along the bottom of the display measured lag. That ship had come out of the gap practically on top of Punisher: less than sixty thousand k away. She could have opened fire already if she’d known Punisher would be there. And if she hadn’t resumed tard at nearly .2C; three times the cruiser’s velocity.
 
; She angled toward the main body of the asteroid swarm at a speed which any human captain would have considered insane.
“Lord have mercy,” Glessen breathed from targ as he studied the display. “They’re out of their minds.”
“Id!” Dolph demanded sharply. “I want id.”
Was the vessel friendly or hostile?
She was big: scan already made that clear.
“She’s not broadcasting, Captain,” Cray answered. “I don’t hear anything except gap distortion and emission noise.”
“You’ve got her signature?” Captain Ubikwe asked scan.
“Aye, Captain.” Porson pointed: the numbers were already on the display.
Min recognized them long intuitive seconds before Dolph said, “Bydell, what do you have on that emission signature?”
Flustered, Bydell was slow coding an analysis. “Sorry, Captain,” she muttered, repeating herself like a stuck recording as she entered commands, accessed databases. “Sorry, Captain.”
Min couldn’t wait. “Targ, lock onto that ship,” she snapped. “Matter cannon, torpedoes, whatever you have ready. Prepare to attack.”
If the stranger fired, Punisher would get no advance notice at all. Light-constant blasts would reach her as fast as scan. Her only hope of warning depended on scan’s ability to detect whether the other ship’s guns were charged.
Dolph flashed a look at her; apparently decided not to question what he saw. “Do it, Glessen,” he confirmed. “Full alert. Screens and shields on maximum.”
A heavy finger on his console set Punisher’s battle klaxons screaming.
Then he keyed his intercom. “Hargin?” Without waiting for a response, he called, “We’re going to battle stations. Don’t stop what you’re doing. That fire takes precedence. I’ll give you fair warning if we have to hit thrust.”
“I hear you, Captain,” Stoval answered. “We’re doing our best.”
“Locked on, Captain,” Glessen announced. “We’re out of effective torpedo range. Lasers probably aren’t powerful enough for a target that big. Matter cannon might take a piece out of her—if we don’t hit a particle sink. But at the rate she’s pulling away, we’re losing her. In another twenty seconds, she’ll be out of reach.”