Bast slapped some sort of mechanical linkage to a padeye and hooked it down. The other end connected to the hatch’s grip handle.
I couldn’t believe we were egressing through the escape hatch while in station, and that there wasn’t some sort of alarm glaring on someone’s board.
“And out we go. Angie, lead the way please.”
I wiggled my butt into place and slide down the chute. I landed between the ways under the ship, then had to move fast to avoid being squashed as Sebastian came down.
“Fastest way out, walking like we’re on a bust,” Juan said.
I gestured ahead and he did so.
He led, I was second and offered occasional directions.
“How long do we have?” I asked.
“About three more minutes before they lock.”
Roger came alongside.
“You’re still walking stiff. Okay for now?”
“I can walk, yes. I can’t dance, lift loads or do anything complicated.”
“Good.” He stepped ahead of us.
“This way,” he said, and he led the way.
I was jealous that he knew his way around. It felt like he was cutting into my job. But I couldn’t know every route in every station, and they’d had time.
Shortly, we were at a standard docking ring. Jack attached some sort of device, punched a code, and the lock popped. Pressure was just different enough for a whuff of air.
I followed Jack through, and had a braintwist moment.
“This is the Pieper,” I said.
“Undocking and departing in ten minutes,” Juan said as he moved past me.
They were crazy fuckers.
“How?”
“Too long to explain.”
I asked the next question.
“So why did we risk ourselves on that ship?”
“They’re looking for us there now, and assuming we can’t use this one. If we pulled the docs right, this reads as sold at auction. Actually, we sold it to one of our own cover outfits.”
I said, “But anyone here knows it wasn’t.”
“Here, yes, but others might not.”
“‘Might’?”
“Nothing’s guaranteed in war, lady.”
Mira said, “And right now, our IFF is telling everyone we’re a completely different ship, which was in airdock and was due out tomorrow.”
“So you programmed . . . whichever ship that was to respond with passable comments?”
With a single shake of her head, she said, “Nope, not at all. They’re running silent. That complicates their response.”
“Hopefully they don’t just blow it up.”
She shrugged. “Unlikely, but if they do, it’s not our war crime.”
I guess I understood that, and it was war, but wow.
The rest of the crew came from somewhere. I gave Shannon a glance as he walked past, and he said, “Your cubby behind the Backy shop. I had to leave a couple of guns there. They’re probably going to toss his place.”
“Only if you left them in the open . . . how do you know about that place?”
“No, they’re well-hidden, but I anonymously told the cops where.” He waved a stick.
“Huh. He’s an asshole anyway.”
“You’re welcome.” He smiled. “I have the file of your interrogation. I won’t read it but it is stored for archive and we’ll destroy it as soon as we can. I think Mo managed to wipe their copy before we left.”
“Thanks,” I said. But even assholes like Tad didn’t deserve UN Fed attention.
I hit my rack and strapped down, and we were shoving off. I didn’t know if they’d hacked a system or bribed someone, but we were out.
Only, ships don’t move fast near stations. If they went to full drive, the distortion would really rip local astrogation, and get a real quick military or Space Guard response, and Sol Space Guard did mount cannon and missiles. I don’t know if they’d used them in years at that point, but they could slag us to debris.
And if we moved slow, we were easy to intercept with that same response, once they figured out what happened.
Only, the hijacked ship, the Montrose, was keeping commo silence. First that confused everyone, then it got an emergency alert.
The commo was full of chatter, asking for data from any ship, asking Montrose to respond, calling Space Guard to pursue and rescue, reassuring Montrose there was help coming.
Mira had a disturbingly sexy grin.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I think they’re figuring out it’s plotted for the military terminal.”
“That’s . . . about three Earth hours, right?”
She nodded. “So they’ll be trying to reach it from both ends. That keeps them busy.”
“If they don’t decide it’s a suicide run and slag it.”
I didn’t find that grin sexy anymore. She was aroused, and amused, by risking a shipful of innocent trampers we’d hijacked with false ID and guns. I guess they were my people, even if I didn’t know them personally. To her, they were just a tool.
I knew, if the UN would tie me down, half drown me, zap me, club me and toss me in a cell, they’d blow those poor people away. That’s if they even knew someone was aboard.
“This is wrong,” I said.
Next to me, Teresa said, “Angie, it’s war. I’m sorry it’s hard on you.”
“Yeah,” I said. I guess it’s useful to look at it like that. I was still struggling with it.
Shannon came on. “Departure plotted, we’re in the slot, we’ll deviate in a few hours but we’re solid for now.”
I unlatched, stretched, and lay there for a moment.
Teresa slipped across the deck and eased her way onto my rack. That was . . .
A hug.
“How are you recovering?”
I said, “Hell, I’m still in pain and feel disgusting. I need a shower.”
“I don’t think you should yet,” she said.
“Yeah, you think they’ll chase?”
“They will,” she said.
I hadn’t touched anyone in weeks. It did help. I gripped her shoulder. Her hair was rubbing with mine.
“You’ll get grubby just touching me,” I said.
“We’re all a mess, don’t worry about it.” But she rolled to her feet and went off to do something.
CHAPTER 21
I guess I fell asleep. I woke up, checked the terminal, and it was an hour later.
The rescue bands still had talk about the Montrose but much less. There was a military gunboat shadowing them, and some sort of intel boat, and the Space Guard.
We were holding low thrust with intermittent emgee.
Shannon announced, “Rotate for food and hygiene. Keep it brief, buddy nearby. Angie, Teresa, go.”
I grabbed a clean brief and coverall, and went to the head, Teresa following. She waved me in first, and I spent three segs getting really clean. It felt a lot better, and some of the ick washed away with the actual dirt. The drain bubbled brown with dust and crud. We’d done a job on ourselves.
I got out in the shipsuit, she moved right past me and in, naked. She didn’t have the gym-rip Mira had, or the men, but she was still in really good shape. If I was more into women, and she wore skintight over that in a club, I’d have thought about taking her home. I had with women, once or twice, if I was really tense. And once I was just really turned on. I thought about it, if we’d had privacy and she’d offered. I wanted human flesh, not synthskin toys, especially as all I wanted was human warmth.
I went forward and made up sandwich wraps in instant seal packs with heaters, and bulbs of soup. That would keep things safe from spills or burns even if we had to maneuver.
I delivered a tub of them to the C-deck.
Jack said, “And they’ve remoted into Montrose and have control Looks like they had a remora punch into the power section and backdoor it. They should be safe now.”
I didn’t feel good even then. I figured those
poor crew were going to get interrogated until someone figured out they were victims. It wasn’t us doing it, but that didn’t make me feel any better.
Juan said, “So, they’ll know where we are now, as in, which vessel. That’s further than I thought we’d make it.”
And I wondered what was next. If this was further than he thought, what had he planned?
“Well, we’re queued to jump,” Mira said. “In less than twenty minutes, it will get harder for them.”
Just because UN BuSec could deduce which ship we were on didn’t mean it happened at once. We made the jump back to NovRos, with almost empty racks, and then had the problem of what to do. Docking would mean we’d have to abandon ship and disperse. Not docking would draw attention shortly. I also wasn’t clear on where we could go once positively IDed.
We hung back and boosted slowly, but that was only delaying the inevitable.
“What do we do when?” I asked Mira.
“That’s why I’m saving reaction mass now.”
“Ah. Got it.”
We were going to run. The question was where.
And it was right then that NovRos Jump Control pinged us.
“NCA Pieper, please assume following vector.” There was the beep of received nav code.
Juan said, “They have us. Prepare for silent running and minimal signature. C-deck, Galley, Head and Bunks. Everything else cold. Sebastian, can you hear me back there?”
“I got you, Captain.”
Juan said, “As we discussed,” then clicked for shipwide. “All hands to command deck.”
The techs and Dylan came forward only seconds later. A disciplined crew was a good thing. I wondered what was going on.
A moment later, Mira and Sebastian had sidearms out. They were at opposite corners of the space. They were aiming at Dylan.
Juan said, “I need to be sure. Comment?”
Dylan looked at them, completely cold. “I don’t think I have one.”
“How long?”
“All along,” he said. “The best way to fight a grossly unfair system is from inside.”
Juan almost seemed angry. “Oh, god and goddess, not that crap. There’s enough of it on the propagandacasts.”
“Maybe you should consider that ninety-nine percent of humanity is right.”
Juan raised his eyebrows and asked, “Anything else?”
Dylan said, “You do have to consider that—”
Juan gave a fractional nod, and they shot him, chest, chest and head. He flailed to the deck and lay in a puddle of lumpy blood.
“Shannon, Teresa, check his stateroom, carefully. Jack, clear the deck. Angie, can you assist?”
“Yes,” I said briefly. I didn’t want to talk. I’d just seen a court martial and execution take place in twenty seconds. They’d rescued me. They’d shot him.
“UN plant,” Juan explained, but I’d already guessed. “He’s why we’ve had several targets displace. And how you got taken.”
“Why are we still alive?” I asked, as I grabbed a sorbpack from a spill kit and kicked it around the spreading pool. It turned pink and the pool turned to trails of drops.
“I think they wanted to get intel on other units. Which is part of the reason why we generally don’t interact with them.”
“He didn’t fight,” I said, watching the blood suck up into the crystals.
“No point.”
That was disturbing. He’d been completely fatalistic, and they’d wanted just enough confirmation to kill him where he was. I suppose he couldn’t carry any obvious defense around his own buddies, and starting a fight wouldn’t have made any difference with their training. He could have killed me in seconds, or any normal ship crew, but the team were as uber as he was. He’d have lost regardless.
It felt cold and vicious to stuff his limp flesh into a trash bag and haul it aft. Once there, Jack took charge. He stuffed the body into a fluid tub, went to a tool kit and pulled out a large brush tool, and started whacking off chunks of limbs. I felt nauseous and saw everything through a green tinge.
“He was how I got caught?” I asked.
Jack said, “We think so. First you, then the rest of us. They seem to have had several overlapping plans to either find if we have other elements, or to stop us if they didn’t get better leverage.”
“Do you need me further?” I asked. I wanted away from the scene.
Her gave me a sympathetic look. “Just for washup. I’ll handle this part.”
“Okay,” I said.
It was revolting, and I couldn’t turn away. Hack, hack, hands. Hack, hack, feet. Forelimbs and upper limbs took the saw blade. His neck had to be chopped, sawed and pried to separate it. Each piece, Jack fed into the recycler.
I helped hose out the blood and some assorted bits of flesh, and some other, less pleasant fluids. Then I went to my rack and kept a light on all night. I didn’t sleep.
I understood what had happened and why. It terrified me how matter of fact it had all been. Identify mole, confirm, shoot dead, dismember, feed into recycler, wash off, and get dinner. Jack had gotten dinner, that is. I didn’t.
Then I realized Dylan had risked his own life to stop us. Even if he was an enemy plant, he had guts. That, and staring down the guns that were going to end his life, and did.
Juan had even said, “We’ll need to see if we can pick up a replacement on some leg. Make sure he’s demanifested when we dock.”
Teresa said, “NovRos, at least, makes that easy. I’ll make his pay disappear from the account, we can cash it for extra goods, and he debarked to go visit family, looking for another leg. No, we don’t know.”
Wow. They were even going to spend his pay. Well, it wasn’t really his pay, but . . .
Vicious.
CHAPTER 22
We were still wanted, though, and it’s hard to hide a ship anywhere near other ships or habitats.
We’d ran dark. They knew we’d pulled out, and they probably had a rough idea we were “those” people. About that, I still had no idea why we were still in the same ship.
Shannon said, “Pressure protocols, there is some risk.”
“What are we doing?” I asked. I was on my way back to my rack to strap in and watch vid until something happened. Or, I was going to pretend to watch vid so no one knew I was ready to scream about the likelihood we were going to be glowing vapor soon.
“Dead zone from a previous engagement. I’ve got the ephemeris. There’s a bunch of debris from both target and intercept. We’re going past it.”
“Do we know who the target was?”
“No one you know, but yes, one of our other clandesties. They’re gone. They did make the UN pay.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said. They’d lost friends, I could tell.
“Thanks.”
So we drifted through unsafe volume while wondering if we’d eat tungsten shot or gammas. I figured Earth was going to mine every approach that could be a problem. I just wondered what they’d do with all that loose debris later.
War got unsexy very fast.
“We have pursuit,” Mira reported. “Astern, not crossing. Harder for them to catch us, easier to shoot us.”
I felt what I call combat cold. It wasn’t the first time I felt it, but it was the first time I noticed it. My mind, emotions and hormones just shut down. There was nothing I could do, and whether I lived or died depended entirely on what others did. So I felt nothing.
Juan kept up chatter about schedule and plans. I think it was to keep the rest of us occupied. He couldn’t be that concerned with them like this.
We were under steady drive, at near G acceleration. That wastes a lot of fuel, but it moves you places fast. I didn’t think this old beast could do that for long, and it certainly couldn’t go much higher unless we cut the cargo train loose.
Deep space combat can be slow. They didn’t want to launch until we were positively IDed, or positively refused signal. They pinged and pinged, and we ignored them. It w
as three hours, us at 1 G, them at more. First they had to match velocity, then they had to exceed to close the gap, then they had to plot intercept for missiles.
“NCA Pieper, you are ordered to cut thrust and cooperate with boarding for inspection.”
Mira was all over her screens, both viewing and flat. Figures scrolled as she wrote across it.
“We’re not going to make the Jump Point in time to slam them,” she said.
Juan shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t going to work more than a couple of times anyway. Plan B it is.”
“On it.”
He and Mira cut thrust and coasted.
“NCA Pieper, you are complying, but we are not receiving responses. If you are receiving this signal, please indicate with a double-tap of thrust, then resume free flight.”
They sat and watched the seconds tick by. Three full minutes later, Juan burped the engines.
“NCA Pieper, understood on commo problems. Please continue to follow instructions and we will assist with repair.”
“Are they Navy or Space Guard?” I asked.
“Navy.”
It made a legal difference. Space Guard had law enforcement status. They had limited rules of engagement for shooting. A UN naval vessel could shoot under laws of war if they felt threatened for any reason. We needed to make them feel safe.
I realized later that everyone had been milling about prepping various things in their duty stations, and sorting gear. I warmed rat packs for everyone, and made sure they stayed hydrated. I even monitored fluid levels through the head usage.
“Juan, Mira, Sebastian, you all need to drink a half liter or better.”
Juan looked at me.
“Thanks. I appreciate you monitoring. We’re going for half that at present, but will catch up on the rest later.” He grabbed the two bulbs I held, snapped the top off one as he handed the other to Mira, and sipped it.
It was another two hours before the UN craft was in proximity, and they did all the maneuvering, since they thought we were helpless.
“I think that’s close enough,” Mira said.
Juan said, “Then Plan B it is.”
They cleared the deck so fast I wasn’t even sure they’d all been here.