civilian ring at the far end. Beautiful curved lines—cool grey against black. Yes. This was what Les remembered. What she had wanted to see again.
With a reluctant exhale, she left the bay and began her trek back toward the station proper, in a better mood than she had been in for many months. Her gait did not change as a group of grim men approached, weapons drawn, but her eyes narrowed in expectation, while she did a quick tally. A dozen. Not a welcoming committee, that’s for sure.
The tall, pale man in the lead leaned over her with a sneer as he took her sidearm. “Why’s an old bat like you snooping around here at night?”
“What business is it of yours?”
“The question is, what business is it of yours?” His eyes flicked to his nearest companions. “Bring her.”
Two men grabbed her arms. She stiffened then relaxed; she couldn’t win against them all.
“What do you want?” she asked as they hurried her along.
“From you? Nothing. But you could get in the way. Since you want a nice stroll down memory lane, we’re going to give you one. And when your body is discovered, everyone will think the senile old goat just tripped and fell into the Shaft while mooning over the reactors.”
The Central Shaft? Her heart tripped faster and her stomach lurched into her feet. The kilometer-long Shaft housed not only the Orion Station’s four fusion reactors but the two computer cores as well. “But why?”
“Shut up.”
Les did as she was told, not in obedience but because she would get no more information that way. She had to use her brain. And her ears. They might yet say something that she could find useful. If she lived to use it. Who was she fooling? She couldn’t overpower all these men, even in her youth. Her only chance was to survive the fall. But how? Think, old woman. Think.
Despite that maintenance workers used jetpacks, and safety rules abounded, regulations demanded the Shaft be kept at quarter-grav. But still, even reduced gravity plus speed equaled a messy splat. What were the odds that she could snag a support girder for one of the reactors before her speed increased too much? At her age? Having been behind a desk and not in top condition? She snorted to herself.
They approached a locked maintenance hatch and one of the men opened it. So. Was at least one of these men on maintenance or had they stolen a key? What else could they access then? What schemes did these men have that made murdering her so important?
Once inside, they continued along the maintenance corridor, the grav level diminishing. A few of the men swallowed several times, faces pale, obviously not used to being in reduced grav.
As they neared the platform that opened into the Shaft, her stomach roiled in emphasis that falling almost kilometer and having to try to grab something to save herself was a lousy plan. Looking ahead at the reactor to avoid the gut-churning distance under her feet, she determined to at least try to take some of them with her.
Two of the men dragged her toward the edge, their hold on her upper arms. She slammed a fist down into one man’s groin. He let go and she rammed her shoulder into the other man’s stomach, knocking them both backwards. Falling with exaggerated slowness to the floor, she rolled onto her back while he tried to pin her arms down. She tucked her knees between them and thrust. Back he flew into the Shaft with a scream.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot,” the leader yelled. “It will set off security alerts!”
Three men reached down to grab her. She kicked one man’s knee and he crumbled, rolling, holding his leg and howling. One man hauled her up, but she used the momentum against him and spun, twisting her arm out of his grasp. He fell back, teetered at the edge, and disappeared with a strangled cry.
She felt many hands seize her and glanced at the leader while they shoved her toward the edge. His eyes glittered in his hard face. As she was thrown off the platform, her stomach heaved up her throat in fear and panic. Her arms and legs shot out to stay horizontal, trying to slow the fall. A dream. A horrible nightmare—she should jump awake now! But wind continued to rush past her face. Her heart pounded.
The first girder loomed just below her. Could she grab it? No choice—in only seconds she would have too much speed to try again further down. Her left arm hooked the beam and a cry of pain escaped as her body snatched to a wrenching halt. Fire tore through her arm and radiated through her body. Broken. No doubt her arm was broken. And her shoulder felt ripped from its socket.
Cursing silently at old, brittle bones, she grabbed at the metal with her right hand, the muscles in that arm burning as she took one slow, long inhale, gritted her teeth and swung one leg up. The boot slipped off the girder, and she clenched her jaw against the agony in her left arm. Too old for this. Her attention on the metal beam, she tried again. Success! With painful slowness she struggled up onto the girder, her breathing so ragged that her chest felt compressed. She focused on the wall as she started her crawl toward it and the ladder that led to the nearby platform marking a maintenance corridor.
Did the men stay to watch her fall? Could they see she had managed to thwart their intentions? No time for that worry. Get off the girder, out of sight, and take control of the base. Complete control. That meant accessing one of the two computer cores and locking the other out. Then she could try to find out what in the galaxy was going on.
Cradling her left arm and taking deep breaths to ease the tightness in her chest, she wound her way through the bowels of the base toward the walkway tube of the nearest computer core. Few others knew such ways to get to her destination unseen.
Les stopped—Core Control One, the room housing the first computer core should be at least singly manned. Could she handle fighting again? With a busted wing? Les leaned against the wall for a moment, eyes closed, thinking while trying to get her breathing back to normal. Despite the pain, her lips tipped in a slight smile and she hurried to the nearest sub-armory.
Les had no trouble with access. Of course, the quarter-master was being alerted, but Les didn’t plan to stick around for the soon-to-arrive security detachment. With one weapon tucked in her beltband, and one in her right hand, she hurried back to the walkway tube. No one in sight—she ducked into the tube and across to Core Control One.
Weapon in hand, she opened the door, sliding inside and to the left so it would shut behind her. The tech stared wide-eyed, his hand straying to his sidearm.
“I wouldn’t. Drop it—slowly—and get out.”
“B-but Colonel—”
“Now!”
Face ashen, he obeyed and sidled to the door. After he left, she entered a security code to override any attempt to unlock the door—if it were still enabled. The green light turned red and an amber one began to flash. Les smiled.
“Hello, Baby,” she murmured, sitting down and letting her broken arm rest in her lap. She took a deep breath, trying to rid herself of the heaviness she felt. “Mama’s going to protect you from whatever these men are doing.”
Years of training, battles, and injuries forced her mind off her arm as she worked. She shut down the other computer core, routing all systems through this one. While monitoring systems, she locked out or restricted all functions of the station except life support. Powered transportation halted; docking bays sealed. Communications only worked through specific official channels.
As the commander and his men yammered in confusion, Les smiled, but her jaw set when she discovered an active, unauthorized frequency, cleverly hidden. She found no humor in those conversations. The Orionis Axis planned to take over the base as a precursor to a coup of the sector.
“Not my Baby,” she muttered as she began recording all conversations. Pain and fatigue weighed on her and she leaned back in the chair with a sigh. A familiar voice among the OA conspirators startled her back into a more alert state. Stu?
“You idiots! If you had let her alone and postponed your plans, she would have done her inspection and left. But no, you had to try to kill her!”
“Try to? She fell into the Central Sh
aft. She’s a smear at the bottom now.”
Stu swore unimaginatively. “She’s not dead! Who do you think is behind all these ‘malfunctions?’ Do you think that half-brained commander could be doing this?”
“But how could she be behind it?”
“Didn’t you listen when I told you who she was? She designed this place! Stem to stern.”
“So she’s an engineer as well as an officer, but the computer experience not to mention the codes necessary for what you’re suggesting—”
“Are all in her sharp, old brain. She’s alive. And could be listening to us now. Keep spread out. If she can net us together, it’s over.”
“It’s over anyway, my old, dear friend,” Les whispered, her heart in a slow simmer at his betrayal. He had been her back in battle after battle; they had saved each other’s lives. They had both survived Mars.
“What about our ships? They’ll be arriving in a few hours.”
“Worry about ourselves at the moment. I don’t know if I can override her or get to her, but I’m going to try.”
“You do that,” Les murmured with a quiet chuckle.
She needed outside help. Ellicott should be the one to call, but... Les pursed her lips, her eyes narrowing. Stu mentioned more than once that the commander was incompetent? If so, how did Ellicott get this position? She pulled up his file. A mediocre career but—Stu Graham recommended him for