— 78 —
Haget was in a mood where he thought everything he said was funny. Everyone else thought he was being nasty. Jo was tired of making allowances.
They had visited the first two stations. They had come up with zeroes. All right. So it was not going to be a stroll. They had known that. Why get irritable and sarcastic?
The Traveler was coming up on the third station now. Everyone, including Seeker, had a job. This was no time for emotional distractions.
Jo and her squad were convinced. This was the jackpot. They were ready.
Breakaway. Haget went to the bridge to oversee communications with the station. AnyKaat offered Jo a compassionate glance.
“Kark! Look at that thing!” Degas said. “Straight out of the Stone Age.” He and Vadja were in charge of plundering station data.
AnyKaat said, “I make it three ships docked. One Hauler and two Travelers.”
“Curious.” Jo looked over her shoulder. The schematic had Travelers docked side by side around the wheel from the Hauler. “Suggestive?”
“Maybe. But an old station might have a wobble it damps with its porting arrangements.”
Jo looked around. Too early to have gotten anything else.
Haget stepped in. “They aren’t pleased to see us. You’d think a tramp station would be eager to suck anybody in.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Watch them, Jo.”
What did he think she was doing? “Yes, sir. Have they assigned us a berth?”
“Eight. Beside a Hauler.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
AnyKaat said, “Lieutenant, I’m starting to get heat readings from both Travelers.”
Jo looked. She was only a touch more familiar with the equipment than AnyKaat. “Colonel, can you look at this?” He had been a WatchMaster.
“They’re warming up to pull out,” he said. “We’ve made somebody nervous. Yell if they undock.” He returned to the bridge.
They would have seen nothing had they been a normal Traveler. Civilians did not need gear that could see such things.
The Probe team began to get results. “Lieutenant, there’s a lot of running around going on.”
Why? Guilty consciences? Making with coverups they did not feel were needed for a Hauler?
There was a ping. Degas said, “Jackpot.”
They had penetrated the station’s system, starting with the obvious, records of arrivals and departures. The entry following the departure of the suspect Horigawa Hauler was: dpt sveldrov trav gregor forgotten.
The Traveler that had behaved so oddly at M. Shrilica. Interesting.
“That Hauler is Horigawa,” Haget tossed in the hatchway.
Jo felt a touch, found Seeker beside her. There are some of Them there. Mind picture of a Messenger thing. Three. Possibly four. They may sense my presence.
“Would that explain the activity?”
Perhaps.
“Activate the weapons systems. Warm screen generators.”
“All right!”
“Hoke!”
“Yes, ma’am,” sheepishly. Hoke was on a CT cannon he wanted to try.
“Probe. Do we have anything nonhuman?”
“Three possibles, Lieutenant. Not enough resolution to confirm yet.”
Good enough. She went to the bridge hatchway. “Colonel, we have at least three Messenger types on station. One or more in the hub and two headed for the Travelers.”
Haget smiled. “That’s interesting. We can take off the mask, Smokey.”
Jo returned to her post. Degas and Vadja had pinned the identities of both docked Travelers as false. “What do they have for defenses on that dump?”
“Nothing. Not even shield generators.”
“Then all they can do is run.”
AnyKaat interjected, “Those Travelers are heating up fast.”
Probe said, “The alien in the hub is headed for the Travelers, Lieutenant. It’s a big one.”
Haget stuck his head in. “What’re they doing?”
“The Travelers are getting ready to run.”
“Shoot their asses off so they can’t do anything if they undock. Then suit a team to go take control.”
He was having fun now.
So were all the Weapons team. She gave the signal. Twenty-five seconds passed. Time. Twin-fire lilies blossomed. “Hey! All right!”
“Get those targets assessed, Hoke. See if you need to pop them again. The rest of you get suited. Full armor and weapons.” The squad hurried out, leaving their stations live. AnyKaat, Degas, Vadja, Haget, and Seeker some, could cover the critical functions.
“Got them both, Lieutenant,” Hoke said, rising. “Those suckers want to go anywhere they’ll have to put out oars and row.”
“Stay. The Colonel may need a trained hand on weapons. Colonel Vadja, it’s all yours.”
Jo ran to the after-refrigerated hold, which they had converted into an armory. The squad was climbing into their suits. She stripped. “Let’s be careful. We don’t know what we’ll run into. Those Outsiders are fucking crazy.”
They got suited, through the activation checklists, armed, and forward in plenty of time. Jo checked her command channels. AnyKaat told her one of the Travelers was adrift. Degas, covering Probe, said station personnel had stopped running around. She had them send schematics.
Haget told her, “We’ll offload you and back away. That loose Traveler has a couple popguns. Don’t want it butt-shooting us.”
“I understand.”
“Jo... Do you have to go yourself?”
“I am a Soldier, Colonel. It’s my command.” Her tone was cool, but she was pleased.
“Of course. What support do you need?”
She put the schematics up on her faceplate. “Tell that Hauler to get its people aboard and button up.”
“Already done.”
“Good. We’ll move out against the spin, pushing them ahead of us. Once we clear the section, knock a hole in it and let the air out so they can’t sneak up behind us. We’ll breach the radials as we go.”
“Right. Don’t take chances, Jo.”
Chunk! Clack-clack-click-clack. The Traveler was in, held by drive. Some station genius had secured the docking mechanisms. A demo charge opened the station side lock. Jo checked the schematic. Probe saw nothing that looked like resistance. But there were people out there, apparently carrying on with business. “Go!”
The first two out covered the rest. They drew no fire. When Jo hit the dock she saw a lot of nothing. In the distance several civilians ran like hell up the curve. “Let’s move.”
Four soldiers went left, to seal the accesses from the next section. Two went to breach the radial to the hub. There would be few EVA suits on station, none designed for combat.
She assigned two soldiers to seal the lock behind them. She did not want the section decompressing before they left it.
Station shivered as charges holed the radial. Jo started up the curve. Her people spread out. Those with assignments would catch up. She came even with the Hauler. It was closed up tight.
So quiet.
She did not have outside sound. She switched on and got all she could handle: breach alarms, riot alarms, computer voices repeating calm warnings.
She found a dozen frightened civilians caught at the section boundary, unable to pass the decompression doors. She checked them over while she waited for the welders.
Degas came on. “Looks like an ambush shaping up ahead of you, Jo.”
“I see it. Colonel Vadja. Can you get into the station system deep enough to override the commands to this decompression door?”
“Can do, Lieutenant.”
“Open on my mark, then.”
She moved the civilians out of the line of fire, disposed her troops, relayed her schematics on squad tac, assigned someone to each of ten targets.
The ambush had been laid in the expectation she would use demos to come through one of the personnel hatch
es.
“Now, Colonel.”
The big door shot up.
The shooting started.
The shooting stopped.
Five ambushers were dead. Three were wounded. Two were in flight.
Another fusilade.
Nine dead now. One escaped. For the moment.
“Move those civilians over here. Colonel, shut the door after we’re through. Hoke, blow that section as soon as he does.”
Degas came on. “Jo, you’ve got them all stirred up around the other side. The big alien is headed back for the hub.”
“Feed that to Fire Control. Hoke, when that thing gets halfway along the radial put one right through it.”
“I can’t hit the spoke from here, Sarge.”
“Then move the damned ship. You’re Weapons.” She grinned at her faceplate. Hell. She was WarAvocat here. Even Haget had to take her orders as long as the team was engaged.
The station staggered as Hoke put two Cts into the section just cleared.
The alarms went berserk.
“Let’s move up.”
Station shivered again as Hoke took out the Outsider.
They received sporadic rifle fire, mostly inaccurate. None was effective. The other side had no weapons capable of dealing with Guardship soldiers in full combat armor.
There was a brisk, one-sided fight at the next sector boundary. They took several prisoners.
Hoke came on net. “Lieutenant, you want that section breached after you’re out?”
“No. Let’s not do any damage that isn’t tactically necessary. We got to leave something for the honest folks. Degas. That next section shaping up as hairy as it looks to me?”
“Yes.”
“How many of those people you figure for civilians?”
“No telling.”
“I’m not getting my ass shot off for their sake. Colonel Vadja. This time open all the accesses so they don’t know where we’re coming from. Shut them as soon as we’re through. Hoke. When the doors close behind us put a round through the section. They can’t fight if they can’t breathe.”
“I might hit you....”
“Put it through the far end.” She disposed her troops, sent the civilians and prisoners back up the curve so they would not be hit. “Open up, Colonel.”
The doors opened. Massed small-arms fire poured through. It died as gunners realized they had no targets. She let them sweat for six minutes before she ordered, “Go!”
They flung through behind grenades, got down, got behind things. The doors slammed shut. Seconds later the far end of the section flared with the blinding light of matter annihilation.
Jo waited till the pressure had fallen below a level that would sustain life. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
“What we got is a lot of dead people,” somebody said.
She let it slide. He was not a false prophet.
She was surprised there were so many. And few were civilians because they were all armed.
“Sarge!”
One of the methane breathers, inside some kind of pressurized, motorized tank, was headed toward her. She shifted to microwave output and gave it a whole charge pack in one blast. Its tank exploded.
“I think it wanted to talk, Lieutenant.”
“Tough shit.”
That was the last shot fired on station.
The picking through the ruins began.
— 79 —
Lupo scanned the report again. “What business could she have in the Black Ring?”
For three days a Valerena Other had been seen going into the Black Ring. The past two Provik ground people had tried following her and had failed. This Other seemed to have no existence outside its jaunts. Where it came from was as mysterious as where it went.
“Smells to me,” Three said.
“You and Four go see if you can pick her up today. Be careful. Have the regular team back you up.”
Three and Four left before he changed his mind, fleeing routine.
Lupo returned to work but twenty minutes later yielded to a hunch. “One. Call Operations. Tell T. W. to scatter stationary watchers around where she turns up.”
Four trailed Three by twenty-five meters, self-conscious there in the fringes of the Black Ring, though nobody paid her any attention.
Three gave the Other more room. The two men of the regular ground team kept pace across the street.
Four became uneasy as they approached the area where the Other had vanished twice before. She loosened her weapon.
It was a wide open aisle between ranks of warehouses where surface transports could maneuver into loading docks. But there were no transports there. There were no workers. The warehouses had been sealed up and broken open again by thieves and vandals. The walls were enscribed with folk literature that was short, pithy, anything but ambiguous.
Three hesitated, stepped out after the Other. Four exchanged looks with the ground men, shrugged, followed.
She saw it coming before it started. She was amazed that Three did not.
She shot the Other before it finished giving the signal to the assassination team. Shooting with mechanical precision, she blew three of those out of their hiding places before the ground men reacted.
One had icewater for blood. But the weapon he chose was a camera. He stood there taping while the shit flew. The other shot back, with no more luck than the rattled ambushers.
Four shot three more before the rest ran for it. She shot two of those. Two got away while she slapped a new charge pack into her weapon.
No matter. She knew where to find one of them.
She went to Three, knowing there was nothing she could do. He’d been hit at least twenty times.
The Other groaned.
Four stepped over. The Other looked up, eyes appealing.
“Goodbye.”
“No!”
Four shot her once through the forehead. The burn looked like a small caste mark.
She shot each of the attackers the same way, alive or dead. Then she set for a wide beam and worked her way back, collecting weapons and charring the right hand of each corpse.
It was a message from Lupo Provik nobody in the Black Ring would misinterpret.
She crisped the Other’s face, too, so nobody would connect it with Valerena Tregesser.
“What about him?” the man with the camera asked.
Without exception the captured weapons were House issue. Their charge packs could be used as grenades. Each had a timer that could be set for a delay up to twenty seconds.
She told the ground men what to do.
They did it, then ran.
There was enough energy in the captured charge packs to consume Three and turn the eight weapons to slag.
Four shouted, “But they even had House weapons!”
Lupo looked at her. She had kept cool till she had gotten back. She’d even retained the presence of mind to isolate the ground men. But now she had broken.
“I tell you it’s too pat. Come. Let’s do an update.” To spread some of that emotion around, to dilute it, before it poisoned her.
“Don’t you even care?”
“Come and find out.”
After the meld Lupo asked, “Were we supposed to notice where the Other came from or only meant to follow her into a trap where I could be burned?”
Two said, “The Worgemuth kill.”
“Right. Valerena didn’t order that. Blessed couldn’t have. We need to see him.” He fiddled. A street map appeared on one wall. “Four. Here’s where the stationary observers picked up the Other. Coming this way. Suggest anything?”
Four’s hysterics had vanished but her emotional state remained ragged. The meld could not adjust hormonal balances. “That’s a hundred meters from the place we used to slide Simon in and out of the Pylon.”
“Right.”
“Have you been in there yet?”
“No. You and Five go watch it. Don’t disturb anyone. Two and I will see Blessed. One.
Hang on here.”
— 80 —
Valerena grumbled. Everything wanted attention at once. She could not keep up even with her Others helping. She summoned the most trustworthy from the adjoining office.
“I just had a call from my father’s Other. He wants to talk to me about Lupo. Right now. I don’t have time. Go down and listen to his latest paranoid fantasy. Nod in the right places. Don’t mention the Guardship.”
The Valerena Other entered the new office assigned the Simon Other. He greeted her with crazy laughter. She asked, “What about Lupo now? I’m pressed for time.”
“The load will lighten soon, Valerena.”
“What about Provik?”
“What about Provik?” More laughter. “This about Provik. He’s dead.”
“Since when?”
“Since an hour and a half ago down in the Black Ring.” The Simon Other’s bell drifted to one side. Another Valerena Other stepped from behind it. She carried a hairsplitter.
“What the hell?”
“The Others are running amuck, Valerena. They’re taking over the world.” More mad laughter.
The hairsplitter rose.
“Wait a minute!...”
Sodium shrapnel cooked her brain.
The Valerena Other dropped the hairsplitter, started stripping the still twitching body. “Damn! She shit herself.”
“Just put on her outer clothes. Rinse them out if you have to. Hurry. Before Blessed or T. W. hear about Provik. If you don’t get control of the security forces, we’re dead.” He started grumbling about the massacre in the Black Ring. It had claimed a quarter of his hired hands.
The Valerena Other left smiling. As far as anyone would ever know she was Valerena Tregesser.
Valerena glanced up as the door opened. “What did the silly sack want this time?”
The Other gaped. Her jaw moved but no words came out.
A chill struck Valerena. This was not the one she had sent.... It was trying to pull a gun....
Valerena dived into the knee space beneath her work center. “Blazon!” she shouted. “Enemy!”
A roaring whir, like the beating wings of ten thousand small birds. The desk thrummed. Glass broke. Things fell. The Other mouthed one gurgling scream.