Rules of Engagement

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. Vissisuan,” Esmay said. “Expect forty intru­ders, in two shuttle loads, small arms only. Accor­ding to backscan, they know we’re here, but think we’ll be easy to subdue. They’ve divided their force, and expect to catch us between them.”

  “Sir. Plan?”

  “Until we have Brun and the girl safely away, that has to be our first priority. Right now it looks like Brun is between us and the incoming shuttle. So we’d better move fast. Beyond that, secure the prisoners we have, and take prisoners if possible.” If they could pick off some high-ranking Militia, perhaps they could avoid a battle and get the children out safely.

  * * *

  Brun hoped the expert system knew what it was doing. It kept shifting them from one compartment to another, supposedly far from the Militia’s person­nel scans. It said it was still trying to retrieve a better vocal synthethizer, too, and had dispatched another two mobile units. She wanted to ask if it had received any answer from Fleet-surely they’d be doing something-but she simply could not get her fingers to work on the keyboard, and Hazel could not understand her gestures. She was so tired . . . she hoped it was only exhaustion and not hypoxia.

  “Brun-wake up!” That was Hazel’s voice; she sounded on the edge of panic. “I feel things in the decking-vibrations-”

  It must remind her of her own capture. Hiding in these vandalized rooms, waiting for someone to come, not knowing who-it must bring back all her ­nightmares. Brun tapped her arm, and grinned. Hazel grinned back, but there was no mirth in it.

  She could feel the knocks and vibrations herself. Someone closer, and more than one. She tried again with the compad keyboard, and keyed “Fleet assis­tance?”

  “I’m not sure,” the expert system said in her ear. “There have been two landings, another two are imminent. Multiple intruders aboard, hostile to one another.” Then some of them must be friendly, Brun thought. But she wasn’t sure. “Not all the same shapes of shuttles, but no recognizable ID codes from the ones that appeared nearby.”

  Appeared? Launched from a larger ship that had microjumped nearby?

  “Try Fleet codes on com channels,” Brun keyed.

  “I cannot access any transmissions from one set of intruders,” the expert said. “I don’t know what frequencies to use.”

  Shielded suit communications. That sounded more and more like Fleet, but how could she contact them? Someone should be listening in for unshielded transmissions- “All bands,” Brun said. “Use the codes I gave you.”

  The deck bucked, and Brun and Hazel lost contact in the low gravity, bouncing into one of the bulkheads. Brun’s compad flew another way, its jack yanked from her suit connection. Hazel scrambled after it, as another series of vibrations and blows shook them. Something must have rammed the station, something with a lot more mass than a single person. Brun could see into the next compartment, where the bulkhead had torn loose at the corner, leaving a triangular hole. The station could be coming apart around them; they might be flung loose into space, tiny seeds from a puffball head.

  Brun fought down the panic. Right now, right this instant, they still had air, they still had intact p-suits, and they weren’t freezing or full of holes. Hazel edged back to her and held out the compad and connector.

  * * *

  The scan tech watching the incoming Militia shuttles reported that one was likely to impact rather than dock. “He’s coming in with way too much relative vee; gonna knock this station sideways-counting down . . . seven, six, five, four, three, two, one-” The deck bucked; in the minimal artificial gravity, a cloud of dust rose and hung like a tattered curtain. “They’ve made a mess out of the end of that arm, but don’t seem to have damaged themselves much, worse luck.”

  “Keep us informed,” Esmay said. She had Meharry and five others with her as she tried to follow Brun’s scan signal through the maze of passages.

  “Lieutenant!” That was the backdoor scan again. “I’ve got transmissions in Fleet code from the station itself-identifies itself as the station expert system.”

  “What’s it want?”

  “Says two employees told it to contact us and gave it the codes. Says it’s trying to protect them, and can we prove we’re friendly?”

  “The only person here who might know any Fleet access codes was Brun-but she was sup­posedly unable to talk.”

  “But it can’t contact this individual now-says a communi­cations device failed.”

  Great. “Can it direct us to her?”

  “It says yes, but it won’t until we can prove that we have a legal right to be here, and that she knows us.”

  Worse and worse. Expert systems had a reputation for rigid interpretation of rules.

  “Tell it to confirm to her that we respond to Fleet codes, and ask her to sign a yes or no accep­tance of our ID.”

  “Yes, sir.” A pause followed, then, “It’s trying, sir.” After another pause, “It says she wants to know who it is. A name.”

  Esmay thought a moment. According to her father, Esmay was the last person Brun would want to see, or should see. But that was a name she’d know.

  “She knows us, Lieutenant,” Meharry said. “Methlin and Oblo-she’ll recognize that.”

  “Go ahead,” Esmay said. “Tell it that.”

  Another brief pause, and then, “It’s agreed. It’s going to mark the way, and tell Sera Meager some­one’s coming.”

  “Tell it to give her a description of our suits, so she’ll know us from the others,” Esmay said.

  Now her helmet display lit with the icons of the intruders: twenty red dots displayed on a graphic of the station wing. Esmay followed the expert system’s directions with her team; the others moved down the main corridor to intercept those landing.

  Here in the secondary corridor, occasional turqoise p-suits lay like dead bodies. Every one gave Esmay a chill, but the expert urged them on, via the relay through the scan tech. At last, a compartment door slid open ahead of them. Cautiously, Esmay edged for­ward . . . and there they were. Brun, recognizable through the facemask of the p-suit, and a scared-looking young girl. Meharry moved past Esmay and cleared her helmet faceshield so Brun could see her. Brun staggered forward, moving as if she had serious damage, and fell into Meharry’s grip.

  “Medical team,” Esmay said. They came at the double, and unfolded the vacuum gurneys that ­allowed life-support access to a p-suited patient outside pressure. Only then did she think of asking scan for the frequency that the expert and Brun’s suit must be using. She glanced around the compart­ment, to see an obvious gap where bulkhead sections had warped apart. Was that from the recent impact of the Militia shuttle, or old damage? She couldn’t tell; it didn’t matter.

  Brun struggled to free herself from Meharry’s grip, and gestured at the girl. The medics unfolded another of the gurneys, and unzipped it. They rolled each woman into her own, then zipped and sealed, and popped the tanks. The transparent tents inflated, leaving sleeved access ports for treatment.

  The girl started talking right away. “Please-she can’t talk-she needs a way to communicate-”

  “Sure, hon . . . what’s your name, now?”

  “Hazel-Hazel Takeris. And she’s Brun-she was using a compad with voice output, but the plug broke.”

  Esmay found the compad, and slid it into the transfer portal of Brun’s gurney. She could see Brun cycle it through, then hold it without using it. Plug broken? It must mean that she had needed to plug it into her p-suit. Brun made the universal sign for Air up? and Esmay responded. Brun popped an arm seal on her suit, just as their safety instructor had taught them: never trust anyone’s word on air pressure. Then she peeled back one glove, and tapped one of the compad’s keys.

  “All correct,” announced the audio pickup from inside the gurney.

  “Sera Meager?”

  “All correct.”

  “Can you describe your current status?”

  “No.” That, as Esmay could see, w
as another button. The thing must have had preprogrammed messages. What was the keyboard for, then?

  “Can you type complete answers?”

  “No.”

  Esmay turned away to consider their overall posi­tion. The Militia that had crunched into this wing were about halfway to their part of the wing, though coming down the main corridor.

  “Trouble . . .” scan said. “Big trouble.”

  “Bad guys on the other end are carrying explo­sives. Can’t see if the ones on this end are, but they could be.”

  * * *

  The mobile units available to the expert system were secondary models which had survived the initial vandalization by looking like simple boxes. It had taken longer than the expert expected to recharge one of them, get its tracks moving, and send it off to Laboratory 1-21 to look for voice synthesizers. But now it was on its way. The expert kept an area of higher artificial gravity moving along with it, to keep its tracks in firm contact with the deck plating. The expert prided itself on carrying out all orders, no matter how complex, simul­taneously. It dispatched another, and then another, in case the first should be disabled somehow. Clearly it was important to get a communications device to the taller human.

  The first unit reached the lab, and extended a ­pincer-arm to pick up one of the synthesizers, just as an impact rocked the station. The unit flipped off the deck, and out of the area of higher gravity; it flew across the lab, into the corridor, and impacted the opposite bulkhead just behind the group of neuro-enhanced marines that had stalked past. The rear marine slagged it before it had time to fall to the floor, yelling “Hostile!”

  “What is it?” Kim Arek asked. She was surprised and delighted to find that her voice didn’t crack.

  “This thing just flew out the hatch at me-”

  “Something bounced loose by the hit?”

  “Looked like one of those robot bomb-crawlers, what I saw of it.”

  “Well . . . keep an eye out for others.”

  * * *

  Pete Robertson, Ranger Travis and Captain of Rangers, had plenty of time to think on the way up from the surface. It was all Mitch’s fault, and God’s judgement on Mitch’s hasty ways and unhealthy attachment to outlander technology was about to land on all of them. He made up his mind, and called the others-they would make sure no one used that heathen station for anything ever again, and that Mitch paid the price for his unbelief.

  He had no real hope that they’d get out of this in good shape-not with the appearance of enemy ships in the system-but at least they’d take care of their own dirty laundry first. And Mitch would never be Ranger Captain: he would see to that himself.

  The two enemy shuttles that had docked to the derelict would present no problem if they simply blew the derelict up-and he’d toyed with the idea of having Yellow Rose and Heart of Texas do that before they went out to fight the invaders, but he’d rather do it himself. It felt right.

  So, huffing a little in his hardened p-suit, he shuffled carefully off the shuttle with the rest of the Travis crew, and led the way down the corridor that lay open before him. Sam Dubois, Ranger Austin, had landed at the far end of the long structure-both groups would set explosive charges as they converged on the enemy, and then retreat-and blow the station. The odd thing was, his personnel scanners detected only a small cluster of life forms way up ahead, in the central core, and two off to the right somewhere. Hadn’t Mitch caught the women yet? He smiled to himself, forgetting for the ­moment the missing enemy from the shuttles.

  When the little tracked crawler trundled out of a side corridor, he spun and with practiced ease drew and fired. Bullets ricocheted off the thing’s hard shell and holed the bulkhead in a scattered pattern. The machine came on, a jointed arm holding some device . . . behind it was another one, just coming into view around a corner.

  “Git those!” he said, and drew again. Behind him, the Travis crew clumped up, and someone’s shot shattered the device the thing was holding. But the crawlers came on, more slowly. “They can’t catch us,” he said. “Come on-” and turned back to move on the way they’d been going.

  Which was now blocked by huge figures in black armor, holding weapons he’d never seen.

  “Get’m boys!” he yelled, and fired.

  Then the strange weapons belched streams of something gray that shoved him back into his men, and glued them all into one immobile mass. When the next explosion came, from the far end, he had a sudden stark fear that it would ignite the charges his crew had left behind, and blow them all. He was not, he discovered, nearly as ready to meet his Maker as he’d always claimed.

  * * *

  “Dumber than dirt,” Jig Arek said, with some satisfaction. “You’d think they never heard of riot control.”

  “We still have one bunch loose,” Oblo said.

  “Belay that,” Meharry said, in what for Meharry was a tense voice. “We’ve got worse problems. Brun and Suiza fell off the station.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  One moment, Esmay had been checking where every­one was; the next, with no warning, the gurney tent ruptured; air puffed out. Live fire, it had to be. Esmay threw herself on the gurney, covering Brun’s body, and slammed Brun’s face­shield shut. Even through her armor, she could feel Brun breathing; she could see Brun’s face, rigid with fury or terror-she couldn’t tell which-but the mask was clear, which meant that air and filters were both working. She pushed herself up a little and locked the elbow position so her armor wouldn’t crush Brun if something hit her hard. Something thumped into her armor once, and again; someone fell over her; excited voices yelled in her suit com. She ignored them; she and her armor were between Brun and whatever was going on, and someone else could handle that.

  Then the deck bucked hard, buckled, and the damaged bulkhead peeled away. She caught a glimpse of other suited figures tumbling-someone grabbing for the other gurney-and some blow thrust her toward the opening, out into the brilliant sunlight.

  By the time she realized she was tumbling ­outside the station, she knew she was still clinging to Brun, the armor’s power-assisted gloves clamped to the frame of the gurney. The view beyond shifted crazily: light/dark, starfield/planet/station. She tried to focus on the helmet readouts, and finally found the ones that gave an estimated relative vee to her “ship”-the station-a mere 2.43 meters per ­second.

  Brun, when she looked, was staring back at her with no recognition. Of course not-Esmay had never changed her faceshield to allow it. Impossible now. She had no idea what to do, but she knew one thing not to do-let go of the gurney frame. Her suit had the beacon.

  “Lieutenant!” That loud shout in her helmet com got her attention; she hoped it was the first call.

  “Suiza here,” she said, surprised that her voice sounded as calm as it did.

  “Lieutenant, have you got the gurney?”

  “Yup,” Esmay said. “She’s alive; air’s flowing.”

  “What about you? Somebody thought they saw a plume.”

  Another look at her helmet readouts was not so reassuring. Her own air was down, and the gauge was sagging visibly. I’ve been here before, she thought, remembering her first terrifying EVA from Koskiusko. And I didn’t like it then.

  “Low,” she said. “And going down.”

  “The blast may’ve pulled your airfeed loose-can you check it?”

  “Not without letting go of the gurney,” Esmay said. “And I’m not going to. What’s the situation?”

  “They’re dead; we’ve got two dead, and four tumblers, counting you and the gurney as one. Max has you all on scan. We’ll have a sled to you in less than ten minutes.”

  She didn’t have ten minutes.

  “What is your air?” That was Meharry.

  “Three minutes,” Esmay said. “If it doesn’t leak any faster.”

  “Is Brun conscious?”

  “Yes. She’s looking at me, but she can’t see me-my helmet shield’s still mirrored.”

  “I’m going t
o transmit to her, tell her to see if she can stop your leak.”

  “No-it’s too dangerous.”

  “It’ll be more dangerous if you pass out and can’t help guide the sled in.”

  She could see the change in Brun’s expression, though Meharry hadn’t patched the transmission to her. Then Brun wriggled around, wrapping one arm in the straps waving from the gurney, and reaching around behind Esmay. Her arm wasn’t long enough; she tapped Esmay’s shoulder.

  If Esmay let go with one hand, and turned, Brun might be able to reach whatever it was. But she might lose her grip on the gurney-they might not find her. Brun’s tap the next time was a solid slug. Esmay grinned to herself. Whatever the damage, Brun hadn’t changed in some essentials. Carefully, slowly, Esmay loosened her grip on the gurney frame on that side, and transferred her grip to one of the grab straps on Brun’s p-suit. Brun wriggled more. The air gauge quit dropping . . . stabilized . . . at eight minutes.

  “Eight minutes,” Esmay reported to Meharry.

  “She’s got the luck, that one,” Meharry said. She did not say whether eight minutes would be enough. Esmay told herself that one minute of oxygen deprivation was within anyone’s capacity. Brun bumped against her, flinging out an arm and leg. What was the idiot doing-oh. Slowing rotation. Esmay extended her legs on the other side. The confusing whirl of backgrounds slowed, as they lay almost crosswise of each other, forming, with the gurney frame, a six-spoked wheel rolling slowly along.

  Then Brun reached up with her webbing-wrapped arm, and pushed up Esmay’s mirrorshield before Esmay could bring an arm in to stop her. Her eyes widened. Then she grinned, as mis­chievous and merry a grin as Esmay had ever seen on her face. She used the same arm to work free the thermal-packed bag of IV fluids sticktaped to the gurney, and very deliberately used her glove’s screwblade attachment to poke a hole in it. Then she winked at Esmay, looked past her-moved the bag around-and squeezed.

  A stream of saline jetted out, instantly converted to a spray of ice crystals that glittered in the sun. Esmay wondered if Brun had just gone completely insane. Then she realized what it was. For all the good it would do, Brun was trying to use an IV as reaction mass to get them back to the station faster.