Change of Command

Chapter Fourteen

Beatta Sorin, head teacher for the Little Lambs class of Shepherd’s Glen Primary School of Baskar Station, led the way to the transit station. Every few steps, a quick glance behind showed her the neat crocodile of uniformed students, assistant teachers, and volunteer parent helpers. The adults wore an official tabard with “Shepherd’s Glen Primary School” on the left and a picture of a gamboling lamb on the right; in the pockets were their official IDs, their locator chips, their emergency kits. Around each adult neck, a lanyard and whistle to supplement the earpiece and mic, and the assistant teachers wore—as she did—an adult version of the school uniform, white shirt and plaid slacks. She herself held the braided end of the organizing ribbon, to which each child was supposed to cling. So far, they all had their little hands on it . . . but they were still almost in sight of the school. They could still be sent back, to spend a boring day in the nursery class.

At the station, she handed in the school’s credit cube, and the file of seventeen children and ten adults moved into the loading area. This early in the trip, the children were still behaving well, though her experienced eye recognized that Poro Orinios already needed to use the toilet, and Mercy Lavenham had something sticky in her pocket and on the fingers of her left hand. She detailed her first assistant, Uri, to deal with Poro’s needs, and herself excavated the pocket, wiping Mercy’s fingers carefully as she did so. Mercy’s mother, it seemed, could never resist sending her youngest out without a personal treat, even when it was strictly forbidden.

Uri came back just in time, and the crocodile edged its way on board the transgrav tram that would take them on a tour all around the station. Beatta, always organized and efficient, had made prior arrangements with station transit authorities, and this tram had enough slack in its schedule to allow extra time here. They had a reserved car, and each child was properly buckled into the seat, a motion-sickness patch in place, before the tram slid away from the station, one car entirely full of Little Lambs and their keepers.

Beatta had run this same field trip eleven times before. She knew from experience how to plan the route to provide the most in thrills, education, and efficiency. First, the slow part, through the densely populated shopping and residential district. Shrill voices piped up, pointing out home blocks, or the store where Mam bought bread. The tram stopped frequently. Then, as it swung away on the first of the transgrav segments, Beatta tapped her classroom bell for quiet.

“We’re going to go oopsie,” she said. “Everyone remember to breathe and hold on.” Safety bars swung down in front of each seat; Beatta took this opportunity to insert her earplugs. No amount of discipline would keep the children from squealing when the tram made gravity transitions, and the ear-piercing quality of Little Lambs would have rendered her deaf years ago if she hadn’t taken precautions.

The tram gathered speed, rumbling a bit, and the lights blinked three times, a final warning of transition. Then the tram plunged into the dark, and Beatta’s body tried to insist it had just fallen off a cliff. Even through her earplugs, the children’s shrieks of mingled fright and excitement were painfully loud.

Gravity returned gradually, but not to normal. Heavy Cargo, their first stop, maintained only 0.25 G. Beatta, who had watched closely, noticed that none of her class had thrown up; this year, at least, the mothers had believed her about the need for a light breakfast. The tram emerged from a dark tunnel into a vast lighted cavern. Beatta flicked out her earplugs with a practiced twitch, and picked up her microphone.

“Attention, children! This is the cargo servicing area for most incoming shipments. Bri, your father works in Heavy Cargo, doesn’t he?”

Bri, halfway down the car on the right, nodded.

“Well, this is where he works.”

“I been here before—he tooked me!”

“Yes, Bri, but the others haven’t. Please pay attention. When we come to the station, you’ll be able to see—out Bri’s side—the exit hatches of the container transport system, and the tracks of the transport system itself. If we’re very lucky, you’ll get to see a line of cargo containers coming through.” She knew they would be lucky; she had scheduled the field trip for a time when one of the big container haulers was in, and she had checked on the transport schedule with its cargo chief. She also knew the color-coding and shape-coding for different types of containers, and was prepared to explain which carried food products and which industrial raw materials, or manufactured merchandise.

Bix and Xia were bouncing in their seats, testing the light gravity and their restraints . . . Beatta looked at them with that immemorial teacher expression, and they settled back, a little sulkily. Twins were always a problem, in her opinion, and the current fashion for twins annoyed her. Thanks to Lord Thornbuckle’s daughter Brun’s well-publicized pair, hundreds of thousands of parents were opting for twins on their next pregnancy, and Beatta foresaw a great deal of work for teachers in a few years.

The tram slowed for the cargo handlers’ station, and Beatta reminded the children to look out the righthand windows to see the cargo containers. Sure enough, huge colored bins butted through the heavy curtains at the hatches, and bumped and rumbled along their assigned tracks. Some shunted off this way, and others that, and Beatta answered the predictable questions without really thinking about it.

“The optical sensors read the coding on the labels, and there’s a cross-check by color-coding from another set of sensors . . . this allows the AI system to route each individual bin where it should go.”

“Where’s my daddy?” asked Bri, now looking as if he were going to cry.

“Working somewhere,” Beatta said. “I really don’t know for sure.” She should have known; she should have made sure that Bri’s father was in sight for this brief stop.

“There he is!” Bri said excitedly, patting the window in his glee. Beatta wasn’t at all sure the orange-suited figure running a scanner along the markings on a cargo bin was Bri’s father, but if it made him happy—her breath caught as someone in a tan shipsuit stepped out and hit the orange-suited one over the head. The top of the bin lifted, and four . . . eight . . . twelve . . . more tan-suited men crawled out. The orange-suited one lay motionless on the floor.

“Somebody hit him,” Bri said. His voice rose even higher. “He’s hurt, my daddy’s hurt!”

“I’m sure he’s not, dear,” Beatta said. Experience kept her voice even, and experience made her look quickly out the other side of the car for something to distract the children. “Look!” she said, before her brain had finished processing what she saw. “Look at all the funny little cars they run around on!”

It was too late to wish she hadn’t done that, because all the children except Bri had turned obediently, and had clear view of the firefight as the passengers on the funny little cars attacked first the workers on the floor, and then drove right up to the tram.

The tram gave a convulsive jerk, as if the driver had started to pull away, then stopped again. Three of the children started to cry; the other adults stared at Beatta with white faces.

“Now, children,” she said, in her best teacher’s voice. “There’s nothing to cry about, just a little bump. Stay seated, please. Mag, would you help Bri calm down, and Sivi, you see to Crowder—” The adults responded, and by the time the man with the obvious weapon opened the car door, the children were all sitting quietly, listening to Beatta tell the story of the Brown Bunny and the Spotted Snake.

“Oh, shit!” the man said. “There’s chillen on this tram!” He had a strong accent made all too familiar by newscasts of the previous two years.

“We don’t use that sort of language,” Beatta said firmly. The muzzle opening on his weapon looked big enough to swallow the tram, but she made herself look at his face. “Please do not upset the children.”

“Just stay there,” the man said, backing out. Beatta had no intention of doing anything else.

On the transportation board, a light blinked twice and then went red.

“Babytrain’s got a problem,” Kyle said. The yearly field trip had its own code name which the school knew nothing about.

“What?” His supervisor, Della Part, was trying to listen in to a conversation between an R.S.S. security advisor and her own supervisor.

“Don’t know yet.” Kyle hit the com button. “Transgrav 4, what’s your problem?” No answer. Any problem that could pull a transgrav tram driver off his seat might really call for help. If one of the kids had been hurt—

“What compartment’s Babytrain in?” Sash called across the control room.

“Heavy Cargo Two.”

“I’ve got a slight but significant rise in pCO₂, and ambient temp’s up slightly.”

“Kids got loose? Running around?”

“Where’s our video?

“Blank—it’s been blinky the last few days.”

“Ask station security.”

Kyle called down to the stationmaster. “We’ve got a problem in Heavy Cargo Two. What’ve you got on scan?”

“Lemme see.” Pause. “CO₂’s up a bit, O₂ consumption’s up, also ambient temp . . . visual . . . the transgrav’s stopped at the station. Wasn’t Babytrain on for today?”

“Yeah. They’ve popped a red and I can’t raise ’em.”

“Looks normal. Cargo containers coming in from Freedawn 24. Cargo handlers—wait—what color’s Heavy Cargo this year?”

“Orange. Changed from tan—”

“Would anyone be in the old—oh, hell!”

“What?”

“None of the Heavy Cargo crews would be carrying firearms. We have an intrusion.”

“In there? What about the kids?”

In the appalled silence that followed, Kyle could almost hear his heart thudding. He gulped, hit the supervisor’s code, and said it. “We have a Level Five emergency. Hostile intruders in Heavy Cargo Two, and a trainload of kids—that preschool field trip.”

The R.S.S. officer opened his mouth and shut it again, but looked sideways at the supervisor.

“Cut out the alarms to that sector, put us on Level Five Alert. Patch to the stationmaster and the emergency response teams. Call in the second shift as backup . . .”

Then to the R.S.S. advisor. “What else?”

“How many certified emergency personnel do you have?”

“Counting security, medical, damage control—maybe five hundred.”

“Find out—you need to know exactly. And I recommend you inform the picket as well; we can presume this intrusion is of foreign origin.”

“Stationmaster’ll have to approve—”

“I do.” Kyle was relieved to hear the stationmaster’s voice over the com.

“Can they help?”

“Maybe. Then recall all R.S.S. personnel on station and collect them—check MSOs . . . specialties . . . for security, demolitions, and emergency medical.”

Sergeant Cavallo had chosen to finish out his present tour in mess, in part because the supply and mess personnel had more chance of a few hours on stations during otherwise boring picket duty. The weekly green run always meant 24 hours on station, and sometimes more. He liked the bustle of the markets, he had—thanks to his grandmother’s gardening passion—an unusually good eye for quality produce. He knew that Purcell’s Family Grocers sometimes imported fresh fruits from planetside groves, and hoped to find either cherries or cherrunes. The exec’s tenth anniversary was coming up, and he liked cherries. The other part was his sense of the ridiculous: few if any neuroenhanced troops ever had the chance to indulge a harmless interest.

He was only five minutes from the station when a red light came up on the board. The shuttle pilot grimaced, and switched channels. Cavallo saw the telltale hardening of the jaw, then the pilot’s hands moving to change settings on the board.

“What?” Cavallo asked.

“They’ve got an intrusion,” the pilot said. “They don’t know what, but armed hostiles in Heavy Cargo—and they’ve taken hostages, a whole tramload of preschool kids.”

Cavallo started to ask what a tramload of preschoolers had been doing in Heavy Cargo’s 0.25 G, but that wasn’t the most urgent question. “Who’ve they got with antiterrorist experience?”

“I don’t know, but they’ve got a Major Reichart on station, and he’s ordered all Fleet personnel to assemble—that’s why we’re shifting docking assignment. Sorry, Sarge, but it looks like we’re all part of this for the duration.”

Cavallo said nothing; he was aware of the irony of his present position. He had chosen mess duty as a welcome break from the tedium of being a Special Response Team leader on a picket ship where nothing happened . . . and here he was, back in his own territory, but without any of his equipment or a trained team.

“Better let the major know I’m coming in,” he told the pilot, who shot him a quick glance.

“You, Sarge? But you’re a cook—” The pilot had known Cavallo only in his present duty; perhaps he thought the extra bulk was a supply sergeant’s overindulgence.

“Not entirely,” Cavallo said. “My primary specialty is NEM Special Response.”

The pilot looked nervous, the usual reaction to someone discovering that he was sitting next to one of the few Fleet personnel trained to kill in hand-to-hand combat. “You’re a NEM?”

“Yup. So call me in.”

“Yessir.”

Although the supply shuttle had not been fitted out with a combat mission in mind, all Fleet shuttles carried some basic emergency equipment. There was no combat armor to fit Cavallo, but he grabbed the largest p-suit and the ready pack of demolitions supplies, intended to create a small hull breach if that should be necessary in an emergency. Three bricks of LUB explosive, five standard fusing options and the components for others, detonation signallers . . . he checked it all, and by the time the shuttle docked, he had repacked it and was ready to dive out the tube.

Sarknon Philios had been celebrating the successful auction of the Mindy Cricket II—the old tub had sold for more than he paid for her, though not more than he’d sunk into her—and the sale of his interest in the minerals they’d towed in. His crew, equally delighted with the outcome, and the promise of a new—or at least better-quality used—ship on the next run, had joined the celebration as well. While they hadn’t quite drained the Spacer’s Delight dry, they’d made its proprietor richer, and as the morning commuters rushed past, Sarknon was finally ready for bed. Bed was two stops away on the station tram; he gathered his crew and led them across to the tram stop.

There a man in Security green demanded their IDs—even though they wore their shipsuits with patches prominent on the left shoulder, and even though it should have been clear who and what they were.

“What is, man?” asked Sarknon. “We been at the Delight, you musta seen us crossin’ oer. We’s shipcrew, we bother nobody.”

“Your IDs, Ser.” Station Security normally went unarmed, but this one carried an acoustic weapon slung over his shoulder. Down the platform, Sarknon could see two more Security men, now looking this way. Annoyed though he was, Sarknon didn’t intend to cause trouble.

“Foodlin’ shame, I say, leapin’ on folks as is just shipcrew come to spend money at station.” He fumbled in his shipsuit’s pocket and brought out his ID folder. “ ‘Tisn’t enough to let yon pubkeeper charge twice too much for his wares, now you have to act as if you don’t know who we are.”

Even when Security did ask to see ID, which happened rarely, they always just glanced at it. Not this time. Sarknon stood, swaying slightly as the man glanced from his papers to his face, again and again, and finally had had enough.

“What, you think I am not Sarknon Philios? You never heard of Mindy Cricket, of our strike? Or am I too ugly for you?”

“Take it easy,” the man said, closing the folder and handing it back. “We’ve trouble—we’re looking for rockhoppers with demolitions experience. Looks like you’re it.”

“A contract?” Sarknon blinked; he knew he was not a good negotiator when he was drunk; that’s how he’d ended up paying too much for the Mindy Cricket II. “Can’t talk contract now, m’head’s fuzzled. Next shift, maybe, when the drink’s left me.”

“Now,” the man said. The other two had come nearer, without Sarknon noticing, and now he found himself facing drawn weapons.

“Trouble, Harv?” asked one of the others.

“No—found us a demo crew, but they’re soused. Help me get’m to medical.”

Sarknon had paid good money for his drunk, and was not inclined to see it dispersed for nothing. “I’m not goin’ to med; they’ll just waste my money . . . I earned that drunk; it’s mine—”

He saw the hand coming towards his face, but was too uncoordinated to evade it. When he woke again, he was on a cot in the station medical clinic, and he woke entirely, in an instant, with the unnatural clarity of the detox patient. “Dammit,” he said. “An’ I bought a whole jug of that Surnean ale!”

“Never you mind,” said the young woman who slid the needle out of his vein. “You save those kids and I will personally buy you two jugs.”

“Well, then.” Sarknon sat up, not regretting the headache he didn’t have, thanks to detox, and looked around for his crew. “If it’s that kind of job . . .”

“It’s that kind of job.” He didn’t recognize the man’s uniform, but the tone of voice was unmistakable. Sarknon followed him along the corridor to a compartment full of people in EMS vests, and five minutes later he was explaining all he knew about demolition.

Instead of the organized, disciplined planning groups Cavallo was used to, a roomful of civilians were muttering, arguing, and even (in the case of one fat man in the corner) shouting. Cavallo spotted the major at once, and made his way over. “Sgt. Cavallo, sir; NEM Special Response Team.”

“That’s good news—how many of you?”

“Just me, sir. I was inbound on a supply run—I’ve been acting as supply sergeant for the picket boat.”

“A NEM supply sergeant? No, don’t tell me—later, when we have time. We have a real bad situation here.” Quickly, the major laid it out—the intruders, the preschool field trip, the information he had so far on station resources. “They don’t have anything equivalent to your training,” he said. “Good basic emergency services, but nothing to handle large-scale terrorist actions. They’d been warned, but they didn’t really know where to get the information they needed. That’s why I was here. And those kids are really our problem now. The med staff has told me that they’re more susceptible to sudden pressure changes than adults—they get shock lung more easily, and it’s harder to treat. Same is true of chemical riot-control agents, or the acoustics. We’re going to end up hurting the kids no matter what we do, so we have to be very, very fast.”

“Negotiation, sir?”

The major shrugged, with an expression Cavallo couldn’t quite read. “They’ve got the usual complement of mental health professionals, and two of them have some experience in small-scale stuff. Man holding his ex-wife hostage and threatening the kids, that sort of thing. But nobody with this kind of experience, and I’m not sure they realize how different it is. I suspect that our bad guys wouldn’t talk to a Fleet officer . . . and as you can tell I have an accent that won’t quit.”

“These those New Texas guys?” Cavallo asked.

“Don’t know yet. So far we have no contact. The stationmaster cut all com right away; I’ve been unable to convince him to reopen at least one line. He’s afraid they’ll override the security precautions to the main computers, I think.”

“We can fix that, sir,” Cavallo said. “I brought the demolitions and communications kits from the shuttle.”

“Good man. Let me get you to the stationmaster.”

“If they want to kill the children, to make a statement or something, the kids are as good as dead—if they aren’t already. We can’t prevent it. What we can do is talk to them. Our sources tell us they have very strong family connections, especially to their children. We can hope they are less likely to kill children, more likely to negotiate where children are concerned.”

“But they think our children are heathens—”

“Yes, but they didn’t hurt the children from the Elias Madero. They wanted to save them. They aren’t likely to have planned this for the one day a year the preschool has its field trip.”

Cavallo’s Irenian accent had amused his Fleet associates at first. After twentysome years he could turn it on and off like a tap—his implants helped—but at the moment it might be useful.

“Anybody there?” he asked, drawling it out.

Silence followed. Then, in a thick accent made familiar by the newsvids of Brun’s captors, “Who you?”

“I’m lookin’ for that teacher—Sera Sorin. We’re worried about those children.”

Silence again, but not so long. “What children?”

“Those children in the tram. It’s time they was home, don’t you think?”

“What you mean havin’ chillen in a transgrav tram? Don’t you care about ’em?”

“Of course we care; that’s why I’m callin’. Can I talk to the teacher, please?”

“Puttin’ chillen in the care of a woman like that. Boys too. Downright disgustin’. No, you cain’t talk to her; she’s doin’ what she’s tol’, keeping them chillen quiet.”

“But they’re all right? I mean, you know kids, they need the bathroom, and they get hungry and thirsty—you got enough snacks for ’em?”

Another voice, this one older and angrier. “No, we don’t got food for kids. Your kid down here, mister?”

Cavallo had considered trying to impersonate a parent, but kids that age couldn’t be fooled easily. If he claimed to be some boy’s father and the boy said “That’s not my dad!” they’d be worse off than they were now.

“No,” he said. “Not mine—but it might’s well be. Children are everyone’s responsibility, where I come from.”

“And where’s that?”

“Irene.” They might or might not know anything about Irene, but if they did, that would fit—Irenians had a Familias-wide reputation for idealistic child care.

“Oh.” A pause; Cavallo wished he’d been able to get a vid tap in; facial expressions would tell him a lot. But the vid pickup was still snaking its way through the utility lines, a good seventy meters from Heavy Cargo Two. “Well . . . it’s too bad about the kids, but—”

“I can get you supplies for them,” Cavallo interrupted. “Food and water. For you, too,” he added as if this were a new thought rather than an orchestrated tactic.

“Listen, you, whoever you are—”

“Fred,” Cavallo said, choosing an uncle’s name at random. “Fred Vallo.”

“Well, Fred, thing is, these chillen are dead if we want ’em to be.”

“I understand that,” Cavallo said.

“So you better give us what we want—”

“If the children die,” Cavallo said, letting the steel into his voice, “none of you will get off this station alive.”

“If you want ’em alive, you do what we tell you,” the voice said. Behind it, another younger voice protested, “But we can’t kill children.”

Cavallo smiled to himself. Trouble in the enemy camp, and talking to a negotiator . . . they had already lost. If only small children hadn’t been involved.

“I need to speak to someone who can assure me that the children are unharmed,” he said. “If not the teacher, one of the other adults on the tram.”

“Wait,” said the older voice.

Cavallo muted his mike and turned to the major. “You heard, sir? There’s at least one who’s going to cause their leader trouble if he hurts the children, and so far they’re willing to talk.”

“Yeah . . . but how long will it last? Wonder if he’ll really let you talk to one of the adults?”

“I—” The light blinked on his set, and he turned the mike back on.

“Go on—” said the voice he was used to. “Tell them the chillen aren’t hurt.”

“But they want to use the toilet—” came another voice, a man’s.

“Tell ’em.”

“Uh . . . this is Parkop Kindisson . . . with the Little Lambs field trip? . . . you know about that?”

“Yes, Ser Kindisson,” Cavallo said. “Are the children unharmed?”

“Well, they aren’t hurt, but they’re scared, especially Bri because he saw his father get hit, and they need to use the toilets, and they won’t let us, and they’re getting hungry, and they won’t let us get them anything at the tram station snack bar, and—”

“Enough!” The angry voice was back; Cavallo could just hear the distant protest of the other man. “You know this Kindisson fellow?”

“Not personally, no,” Cavallo said. He had skimmed a file on all the adults with the field trip, and knew that Kindisson was a single parent, taking a day off his job as a coater for the housing authority to help chaperone the children.

“Seems kinda excitable, not like a normal man—”

“He’s worried about the children. So am I. How about if we arrange some snacks for ’em? Or carry-pots, so they can use the toilet right on the tram?”

“The tram has toilets?”

“No—that’s why I said carry-pots. Families have them here, to take along with a small child, if there’s not a toilet around.”

“There’s toilets in the tram station, though, aren’t there?”

“Sure, but if you don’t want to let them off the train. Little children—I’m sure you know about them, and how they run around getting into things—it’s smart of you to keep them safe, in one place.”

Flattery couldn’t hurt, he was sure.

“We want to talk to our women,” the voice said.

Cavallo felt his eyebrows going up. “Your women?” he asked cautiously.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. Those Rangers’ wives you stole, and their chillen—we want to tell ’em to get theirselves home.”

“Just a second—” Cavallo blanked the mike and called to the stationmaster. “Are there any of those NewTex women at this station?”

“No, they left awhile back. Why?”

“Because these fellows came to take them home, that’s why. Do you know where they went?”

“No. I can look on the passenger lists, but that’ll only tell me which ship.”

“Which we don’t want to tell these lads,” Cavallo said. He flipped the mike back on and spoke into it. “I just asked the stationmaster, and he says they aren’t here. They were, but they left awhile back.”

“Yer lying! You git us our chillen, or we’ll take yours.”

“I can get you a list—” Cavallo waved, and the stationmaster came back over. “We need a list or something, so these men know those women aren’t here—”

“There’s a directory accessible from the public dataports in Heavy Cargo, but we cut the lines—”

“Well, put in a shielded line.”

“We’re gonna blow up this whole place if you don’t give us our women and chillen!” That was another voice, one that sounded entirely too excited. He heard a confused scuffle in the background, and a yelp. He hoped it was from an adult.

“Now just a minute,” Cavallo said. “We don’t none of us want children hurt. Let’s see what we can figure out here—” Someone held a display screen in front of him, with the message data display at tram station active for our use. “It’s true your children aren’t here anymore—and it’s true I don’t know where they are. You—what’d you say your name was?”

“Dan,” said the older voice. “You kin call me Dan.”

“Dan, I reckon you think children should be with their parents—”

“Yeah, that’s right. So if our chillen ain’t here, we wanta know where they’ve gone.”

The vid scan was in, though distorted by the wide-angle lens. Scan specialists ran tests, converting the image to a corrected 3-D version. Cavallo made himself ignore that, until they were done, and someone moved a screen close to him so he could see it.

Now when Dan spoke, he could see the computer’s best guess at the face—middle-aged, as he’d guessed, the face of someone who had taken difficult responsibility before.

“How’d you plan to get ’em away?”

“Steal a ship. We done it before.”

“Good plan,” Cavallo said, mentally crossing his fingers. He scribbled Find a small, cheap, simple ship on the pad and handed it to the major.

“We kin just take these chillen instead, if ours is really gone.”

“But it’s not the same,” Cavallo said. “And these children should be with their families.”

“You offerin’ to let us go?”

“Would you?”

“Might.”

Cavallo watched the man put down the mike and turn away, talking to the others. He boosted the audio pickup.

“You said they was here!” he heard one man say; he couldn’t pick out features from the fish-eye view.

“That’s the best word we had.”

“I tell you, I’m gettin’ sick of this. We come all the way from home, workin’ like dogs on that damn ship, because you didn’t want to spend the money for tickets, which would’ve been worth it if we’d killed the old buzzard, but we didn’t, on account of somebody else beat us to the draw.”

“It wasn’t supposed to take that long—”

“And who picked out that ship? Then you say let’s go get those kids back—and they’re not even our kids—and we have to work our passage again, comin’ here, and when we get here they ain’t. I don’t know’s I believe they ever have been.”

“Ever’body in that bar said they was!”

“Ever’body in that bar was drunk, Dan. They ain’t here, and they ain’t been here, and what in Sam Hill are we gonna do now?”

“I’ll think of sumpin’—just give me a minute, will you?”

“We could take these kids—”

“Hell, Arnett, I don’t want these kids. These ain’t our kids, or Ranger kids. And what’d we take ’em in, anyway?”

“Well, what d’you want to do, give up and let them kill us like they did them Rangers?”

“We ain’t done nothin’ yet they’d kill us for.”

“I ain’t surrenderin’ nothin’.” That was Arnett, Cavallo could tell by his voice.

“Well, I’m not killin’ any chillen.” That was the one who had protested in the beginning. “Why don’t we trade ’em for a ship out of here?”

“A whole ship? You think godless heathens would give us a whole ship for just a bunch of chillen? They don’t care about chillen.”

“How’s it going?” the major asked. Cavallo sat back, still watching the vid.

“They’re fighting over whose fault it is. If I understand them right, this bunch wanted to assassinate Lord Thornbuckle, and when they found out someone else had, they decided to hunt up the women and children and capture them. I don’t think they’re NewTex Rangers; I think they’re a bunch of idealistic fools that went off by themselves.” He tapped the mike, and heads turned in the vid. Dan came over, almost reluctantly, to pick it up.

“Dan! Dan . . . listen. Are the children still all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, they’re fine for now.”

“Dan, the stationmaster tells me the women and children left eleven days ago on a passenger ship, the Dolphin Rider.”

On the vid, two of the other men threw up their hands, and one spat on the deck.

“Now I can’t change that, Dan, but here’s what I could do.”

“What?”

“I don’t know if you’d—but if you’d—I mean, if we could get you a ship, Dan . . . and then the children wouldn’t get hurt—”

“You mean trade the chillens for a ship? You’d do that?”

“Yeah, of course. It’s children we’re talkin’ about.”

“A whole ship—a ship that actually works?”

“Of course.” Cavallo glanced up as someone leaned over and handed him a pad with Mindy Cricket II scrawled on it.

“I dunno. We’d need supplies.”

Cavallo dared a grin at the major, as he flicked the mike off. “They’re gonna take it,” he said. “Now if they don’t cross us—and there’s some of them I’m pretty sure won’t—where’s that ship docked?”

It had taken another twelve hours of ticklish negotiation before the children were reunited with frantic parents, the NewTex terrorists were finally aboard the Mindy Cricket II, and the little ship lurched away from the station with her usual grace.

“You didn’t really have to do anything,” Sarknon said. “She’s not goin’ to get ’em anyplace real fast.”

“Especially not now,” Cavallo said. He had applied the bricks of LUB to best advantage. Mindy Cricket II wouldn’t make it to jump distance in one piece. Two hours out, a safe distance from the station, and she’d blow. “We don’t need that kind of scum wandering around causing trouble.” He stretched, and grinned at the major. “Guess I’ll go finish the shopping now, if it’s all the same to you.”