Change of Command

Chapter Eighteen

By the time Margiu and the others landed at Dark Harbor, their worst guesses had been confirmed.

“They’ve got the orbital station,” an angry major told them, the cold wind whipping his uniform around his legs as he stood on the end of the quay. “We bounced your call up, but it was already happening. Bonar Tighe picked up convicts from Stack Three with its LACs, and armed them—used them as shock troops. We think—we hope—that somebody on the station got a tightbeam out and tripped the ansible alarm, but we aren’t sure. The mutineers have cut off all communications from topside, and they can control the system defenses from there too. We know of six other ships insystem—anyone care to lay odds on how many of them are mutineers?” No one did.

“So what can we do?” asked the pilot.

“Damn little. Polacek over at Main has declared a state of emergency, of course, but there aren’t any jump-capable ships onplanet, not even little ones. We don’t have any missiles capable of taking out the station or any of the ships in space—why would we? We’re stuck down a gravity well. I hate planets!”

Margiu had heard this before, from many a Fleet officer, but she was just as glad to be on something solid.

“Think they’ll try to invade?” asked the professor.

“I don’t know.” The pilot shrugged. “Who knows what they’re going to do? They’re not telling us anything. Let’s get all of you under cover, and see what else you might know. Does that corporal you rescued need a medical assist?”

“No, sir; I can walk.” Corporal Meharry still looked pale to Margiu, but he was reasonably steady on his feet.

“Good. Chief, get this craft secured; I’ve arranged transport for the corpse. We’ll need statements from all of you . . . where’s that major?”

“Still pretty groggy, I imagine,” the professor said. “I’m afraid I may have administered a stronger antinausea patch than necessary. I’d like to talk to your base commander, if I might.”

Margiu looked at him. He had been calm and even cheerful until he’d thought of the mutiny, but now his face had stiffened into a grim mask. He caught her eye and managed a smile, but with none of his earlier warmth.

The little base headquarters seethed with tension and activity both. The major who had met them ushered them to the base commander’s office. Lieutenant Commander Ardsan glowered at them for a long moment.

“It’s not your fault, but I could wish you’d figured it out an hour earlier,” he said. “Even an hour might’ve given those people a chance.”

Margiu felt guilty, but the professor clearly didn’t. “Nonsense, sir,” he said. “An hour before, we were dealing with a corpse, a survivor, an oncoming squall . . . and I doubt very much that hour would have done more than prolong the carnage. The mutineers will have had accomplices on that station, as they had on Stack Three.”

“You’re probably right,” Ardsan said. “But it’s so frustrating—we don’t have land lines everywhere, and with the mutineers in control topside, we can’t get anything through the relay satellites.” He pushed a data cube from side to side on his desk. “We have short-range ground radio, but they can interdict that from topside if they choose. They’ve cut off the weather information, too, which is going to make it hard to fly from one base to another. Polacek wants everyone to gather at Main, but that just makes us a handy target, the way I look at it.”

“Are we sure of his loyalty?” the professor asked.

“I’m not sure of anyone right now. I never thought anything like this would happen, but then the whole Xavier mess shocked me. I don’t understand it—”

“I think the point is how to handle it now,” the professor said. “I have a very specific problem in mind. I’m a weapons specialist; I was on my way to Stack Two to consult on the progress of some of their research.” He handed Ardsan a flake. “You’ll want to check my clearance, of course.”

“Of course,” Ardsan murmured. He swung around and slid the flake into a slot in the cube reader. Margiu caught a glimpse of the screen before Ardsan flicked it off. “Well, that’s clear enough.” He looked pale. “I don’t think I ever saw a—” He glanced at Margiu and away. “—Anyone with that level clearance before.”

“Probably not,” the professor said. “But we put our pants on one leg at a time, the same as you. Now. I happen to know that there are weapons under development there which you do not want the mutineers to have. And the fact of the matter is, if someone on that base is not part of this, I’ll be very surprised.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Why else would they start a mutiny here, in this system? Why not meet in some quiet out-of—the-way location, safe from discovery? I would wager that if Commander Bacarion had not been killed—if all had gone according to plan—one of those LACs would have picked up personnel and weapons from Stack Two. I suggest you check the records of the personnel stationed there very carefully.”

Ardsan frowned. “We don’t really have the facilities for that, Professor. I can look up who’s in command, but that’s about all. I’m not even sure I can get a list of personnel. With the mutineers in control of our communications, we can’t access the personnel records back at Main, and we don’t keep copies here at Dark Harbor.”

“I see.” The professor drummed his fingers on his knee for a long moment. “Well, Commander, if I were you I’d figure out a way to send some troops out there to secure the base.”

“But—how?”

“We flew out there before. Can’t we do it again?”

“But we have no weather data—they’ve cut off our feed from the weathersats.”

The professor leaned forward. “Commander, I’m telling you—if you don’t secure that base, and keep the mutiny from getting hold of those weapons, you’ll wish you had to the end of your life, which will probably not be a long one. Now several things can happen. We can try to go back and not make it and crash in the sea. We can try to go back and—if enough of the personnel are involved—they might shoot us out of the sky, if they happen to notice us. We can get there and fail to secure the base, although I believe if you send along enough troops that won’t happen. We can get there and secure the base, and the mutineers topside can land a force and drive us off . . . but if we have enough time, we’ll have destroyed at least the worst of the weapons. Or we can sit here and do nothing, and be dead with no chance of helping out.” He sat back. “I personally think that is the worst option.”

“I—I should contact Commander Polacek.”

“No, Commander, you should not. You’ve already said you aren’t sure of his loyalty. You know communications are compromised. You know what my authority is.”

“He’s right,” Margiu said, surprising herself by speaking up. “If we’re going back out there, we have to do it before they send shuttles down.”

Ardsan looked from one to the other, frowning. Finally he sighed. “All right. All right . . . let me think. We need transport that can land at Stack Two and carry troops—” He touched his desk comunit. “Chief—look up what we have on the personnel at Stack Two. And give me an estimate of our security forces here.”

The professor interrupted. “Are there any heavy cargo craft based here?”

“We have the heavy-duty aircars we use along the coast, but we don’t like to take them out over the open ocean. They sink like rocks if the power plant fails. That’s why we use the amphibs.”

“How long would it be before the mutineers could send shuttles down?”

“Depends on whether the station had any short-field shuttles ready to go. The usual shuttles require longer landing fields; there are only four long fields on the whole planet, and two of them are only used for emergencies. The LACs from Bonar Tighe can do it, of course, but they’ll require refueling and service—at least a couple of hours of turnaround. Those other ships . . . I don’t know which had LACs, and if those LACs were ready for drop. Then unless a ship did a low pass, the LACs would need several hours—I don’t really know how many—to fly in. If they launched additional LACs immediately after taking the station, the mutineers could be on that island now. Or, if they’re delayed, it could be tomorrow or the next day.”

“And the flight times of your available craft?”

“Depends on the windspeed and direction—and we have no weathersats now. Five hours, six—I can’t say exactly.”

One of the enlisted men poked his head in the door. “Sir, Stack Two has thirteen civilian scientist personnel, five officers, and twenty-nine enlisted. Commander’s a Lieutenant Commander Vinet. We’ve got fifteen NEM assault troops, and thirty ordinaries, plus the base police.”

“Thank you. Carry on.” Ardsan grimaced. “Enough to tempt us into trouble, and not enough to get us out—and if I strip Dark Harbor, there’s no one to protect the people here—” Then he shook his head as if to clear it. “All right. It’s something definite, at least. Professor, I assume you’re going—”

“Absolutely,” he said. “You need me to disable those weapons, and the scientists and engineers know me.”

“Ensign, I’m assigning you to the professor, since he seems to have confided in you before. You are weapons-qualified, right?”

“Yes, sir.” She had gone hunting as a girl; she knew she was good with firearms, and her qualifying scores had always maxed out.

“Good. I’ll have the armsmaster issue you weapons; I want you to stick to the professor like glue, and watch his back. Just in case any of the people we send along aren’t as loyal as we think they are.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Professor, it’ll take some time to fuel the aircraft, brief the aircrew, and assemble the troops. You’d better eat and rest while you can. Ensign, you too—but you stick with him, you hear?”

“Yes, sir.” She realized suddenly that she was very hungry, and also tired, and that she would have to go back out over that cold, wet, vast ocean . . . in the dark.

In the mess, where she and the professor ate, she overheard another conversation.

“It’s that damned rejuvenation stuff,” the crew chief said. “It doesn’t take a grand admiral strategist to see what enormously prolonged youth will do to the career curve of anyone below rejuv age. Promotions started slowing down ten or fifteen years ago, right about when they were doing those senior NCO rejuvs . . . you don’t spend all that money on rejuvenating someone and then retire ’em, now do you? And the people who might expect to step into that job see they won’t have a chance. Expansion helped some, but how big a space force do we need?”

“But . . . mutiny, Chief. Can you see mutiny?”

“Not right away, no. And not for me, personally, ever. But there’s been a rumor that something was wrong with the NCO rejuvenations, and some people—not me—said they were bollixed on purpose. It was one thing to have too many young-old admirals, but they didn’t want the enlisted getting ideas.”

“Now that makes no sense,” the professor broke in. “Senior enlisted are the backbone of every successful military organization—always have been. Admirals are fine, and if you have a strategic genius you certainly want to keep him, but day to day, you need senior NCOs.”

“Militaries have made that mistake before. Rank-heavy, officer dominated . . .”

“Well, I used to work in Personnel Procurement,” another chief said. “Back when I was a young sergeant. I saw projections of need by rank and grade, and back then, at least, the planners knew they needed more master chiefs than admirals. So I don’t think they’d deliberately sabotage a rejuvenation program for chiefs.”

“Somebody sure did. Remember Chief Wang last year? We had to watch him every second, or he’d put a six-star fastener in a four-point hole, and tell everybody to do the same. I never saw anything like it, and it wasn’t pretty.”

“I thought they said it was some brain virus or something, from his fishing trips to the mountains.”

“That’s what they said then, but when we got that directive on removing rejuved chiefs from active duty until they’d been checked, that’s who I thought of. ’Course, he was medically retired by then, but I asked Pauli in sickbay, and he said he thought it probably had been a bad rejuv.”

“Bad rejuvs would let the people below move up . . .” a sergeant said softly. “Not that anyone would do something like that . . . I saw Chief Wang right at the end.”

“Maybe they didn’t know what it would do. I remember giving my mom’s pet sarri a cookie once, just sharing, y’know, and it went into convulsions and died. I had no idea they couldn’t eat our kind of food. But it was just as dead as if I’d poisoned it on purpose.”

“That’s true. Never attribute to malice what could be stupidity. It’s just as likely to be a cost-containment effort by procurement or even the manufacturer.”

Margiu had not even realized that some Fleet personnel had been rejuvenated; she couldn’t remember anyone mentioning it in the Academy. She wondered if any of the people in that room had been rejuved. How could she tell?

When the professor finished eating, he touched her sleeve. “Ensign—we’d better get some rest while we can. Do you remember where Commander Ardsan said we could bunk?”

Margiu showed him to the assigned room—clearly an officer’s quarters, now theirs for a few hours. They took turns in the shower, and changed into clean clothes. But before either of them dozed off, the commander told them that transport was ready.

This time the professor donned his PPU over street clothes, and then put his yellow leather jacket on top. “My friends out there will recognize this,” he pointed out.

“You’re a fine target that way.” The major who had met them at the quay was in charge of the mission; Margiu now knew his name—Antony Garson. A Lieutenant Lightfoot commanded the troops.

“True, but if we have to make a hostile landing, at least our side will know who I am.”

Margiu, who had on a clean PPU set to midnight blue, the default night-camouflage color, caught the major’s eye. He shrugged, and went to check on the rest of the group. Though it was only afternoon, the heavy cloud cover and spitting rain made it seem much later.

By the time they neared the Stack Islands again, daylight had faded into murky night. They’d had clouds all the way, which was supposed to be protective, though Margiu found it dreary as the plane seemed to crawl between two layers of darkening gray. As the light failed, no lights came on in the plane—for security reasons, she was told—but she could feel, all around her, the bulky shapes of the NEMs. The professor had fallen asleep, snoring as musically as the first time, and Margiu leaned cautiously against his shoulder, letting herself doze. She couldn’t lean the other way; the unfamiliar sidearm poked her. She woke when the plane slanted downward, and peered out the window into darkness.

“Umph!” That was the professor, almost choking on a final snore. “See anything?”

“No—it’s all dark.” How were they going to land? What if they ran into Stack Two, instead of landing on it? She could feel the plane sinking under her, and her ears popped repeatedly.

Then a sparkle of light appeared, somewhere in the gloom . . . a tiny bright line, then another line.

“Lights,” she said to the professor.

As they drew closer, she could see that the lights outlined an ordinary runway, and other lights showed in buildings nearby. It looked so normal. . . .

The plane landed hard, bounced, came down firmly, and she rocked forward as the brakes caught. Instead of rolling up to one of the lighted buildings, the plane swung aside near the end of the landing strip. The NEMs were on their feet as soon as it landed. Margiu, lacking orders, stayed where she was; she and the professor had earbugs set to the same communications channel. Another plane, then another, came to a stop near them. In the dark, with only faint light from the runway lights, Margiu could just make out dark figures leaving one of the other planes.

Then someone forward opened the hatch of their plane, and a cold breath of sea air swirled into the plane, past the dark forms. Someone else muttered an order, and the troops began to move out into the night. Major Garson’s voice in her earbug sounded calm: “Professor—you and the ensign come on, now.” The professor heaved himself up, and Margiu scrambled out of her seat to follow him.

Outside, it was colder, but slightly less dark; Margiu could tell the professor from the others as a slightly lighter blur. She pulled up the hood of her PPU against the chill and stayed close to his side. A delicate red line pointed the way; someone had their laser guide on. She could feel the rasp of the runway surface under her boots. Was it safe? No one had fired a shot yet, and the troops seemed to know where they were going. She wasn’t sure where the first troops had gone; she couldn’t see them anymore.

“Looks secure for now, Professor,” the major’s voice spoke again in her earbug. “Come on inside.”

Margiu felt more than saw the troops closing in around them, a protective cordon, guiding them to one of the buildings near the landing strip. Ahead, a door opened, spilling out yellow light. She blinked, tried not to stare at the welcome light, but watched for any threat. She couldn’t see anything but the troops who had come with them, and the dark night beyond.

Inside, Major Garson was talking to a lieutenant commander; both of them looked tense and unhappy. Armed guards stood at each exit. Margiu looked past them to the civilians—the other scientists, she supposed—in the large room.

“Oh, Lord, it is Gussie,” one of the civilians said to the others. “Complete with that ugly yellow jacket and a cute redhead in tow . . .”

“She’s not a cute redhead in tow, she’s Ensign Pardalt.” The professor nodded at her. “Show some respect; she’s a very intelligent young woman—”

“Meaning he talked your ear off and you didn’t object,” the other man said, flashing a smile at Margiu. “I’m Helmut Swearingen, by the way.” He turned back to the professor.

“When you didn’t show up this morning, Gussie, and then those people took the station, we were afraid you’d been captured—”

“How far have you gotten?” the professor asked.

The other man grimaced and nodded toward the officers near the door. “Nowhere. As soon as we heard—and Ty was on the radio, trying to find out where you were, so we heard right away—I went to our base commander and told him we should start dismantling the work in progress, destroying notes. He wouldn’t have it—insisted he had to wait for orders, that we were under Fleet discipline. Even said we might be mutineers ourselves. He’s had us under guard, in this room—”

“What’s he like?” the professor asked, in a lower voice.

“A worrier. The only good thing about him is that he’s technically trained, so at least he’s understood some of what we’re doing. He’s actually got an advanced degree, studied with Bruno at the Gradus Institute. But he’s got a serious addiction to regulations, and he claims regulations won’t let him make any independent decisions about what we have here.”

“We don’t have time to waste. What’s his name?”

“Alcandor Vinet.”

The two officers were glowering at each other now. Margiu looked from one to the other.

“Excuse me,” the professor said. “Commander Vinet? I’m Professor Aidersson; you were expecting me this morning—”

“You’re late, Professor,” Vinet said. “But I suppose, under the circumstances, this is understandable.”

“Yes,” the professor said. “Now that I’m here, I’m taking charge of the research unit. We’ll need to start clearing away files before the mutineers can capture—”

“You can’t do that,” Vinet said. “It’s out of the question. I’ve had no orders from Headquarters—”

“Under the circumstances—” the professor began.

“He’s got the highest level clearance and authorization,” Garson said. “And I’ve got orders cut at Dark Harbor, directing you to give your complete cooperation.”

“Dark Harbor’s not in my chain of command,” Vinet said. “And you don’t have the rank, Major. How do I know you’re not all mutineers, anyway?”

“All of us?” the professor’s eyebrows rose steeply. “That’s an interesting hypothesis, but do you have any data to support it? Why would mutineers want to deny other mutineers highly effective weaponry? I’m more inclined to suspect someone who tries to preserve it intact for capture.”

Vinet turned red. “Are you accusing me of being a mutineer?”

“Not at all,” the professor said. “I’m merely pointing out that your refusal to carry through on the very reasonable suggestions of my colleagues, or the orders I’m giving you, could be misunderstood in case of later investigation.”

“That’s ridiculous! This installation is extremely valuable; the equipment alone is worth—”

“Worthless to the Familias if it gets into the wrong hands. Worse than worthless. Don’t you understand that?”

“Well . . . of course, but there’s no proof the mutineers are after it. They may not even know about it.”

“You’re assuming they’re stupid? That’s not a good position to take. Commander, I’m afraid I must insist on your cooperation.”

Margiu noticed Garson’s signal to his troops. So, she saw, did Vinet. He sagged a little.

“Very well. But it’s over my protest, and I will log this. If you had not barged in here with overwhelming force, you’d find yourself in the brig for such nonsense.”

“Thank you,” the professor said, with perfect courtesy. “I appreciate your position, and your assistance.”

He led Margiu back to the cluster of civilians.

“Gussie, we had an idea—” one of them said. “Maybe we could mount the—” he lowered his voice, and Margiu heard only a mumble. “And then attack the mutineers.”

“Mount it on a planet?” The professor pursed his lips. “That’s interesting—that might actually work, if we have time. Do we have the supplies for adequate shielding?”

“Yes, if we dismantle a couple of other things. Oh, and Ty was working on breaking into their communications before Vinet snatched him out of the communications shack and stuck him in here with us.”

The professor glanced at Margiu. “Ensign, you’re going to be hearing many things you should not hear, and which I advise you to forget as quickly as possible. Do you have any specialty background in technical fields?”

“Aside from growing up making what we needed from scrap, no. Basic electronics and carpentry.”

“Well, that may be useful. Come along; we’re going to the labs . . .”

They began with a short meeting in what looked like a snack lounge, with a row of programmable food processors on one wall and battered chairs and couches around the others. A half-finished child’s model of a space station cluttered the low table. Margiu had not suspected scientists of playing with such toys, and someone quickly moved it to a far corner.

“What have we got for communications?” the professor asked. “Ty?”

A skinny man with a bush of black hair came forward. “They’ve got the sats, but we can reach mainland with something I cobbled together. I want to send the specs for it over there, so they can build their own quickly. Getting into the mutineers’ lines is going to be harder; they’ve got tight-link capability up there. But they’ve transmitted some outside that—I suspect to downside confederates—and that I can grab, if I have access to the equipment. I can tight-link if you give me an hour or so—it only takes reconfiguring some modules from one of the labs—but we don’t have anyone to send to.”

“What about scan? Can we detect anything beyond atmosphere?”

“Well—only for whatever’s in our horizon. The problem’s going to be tracking, not to mention what’s below horizon. Knurri had a telescope with a motorized equatorial mount we could’ve used, but he took it with him when he went on leave. We can point something up, but we won’t have an accurate fix if we do find a ship.”

“Do you need anyone else to help you?”

“No, not really. There’s a pretty decent enlisted tech I could use, but I’m a little worried that the mutineers had one or more agents on this base—and he’d be the logical one.”

“Fine—Ensign, get Ty an escort from our group to the communications shack, would you?”

She was supposed to guard his back, but this required only going to the door. Lieutenant Lightfoot was outside, waiting; he called over two NEMs who went off with Ty.

“Now—Cole, you said you had an idea?”

“Yeah—Jen and I think it might be possible to rig the big guy for planet-to-space work. We’ve been trying to come up with the best way to acquire and track the target—”

“Which target?”

“Well . . . we’re pretty sure we can take out the orbital station, and any ships docked there. Distant stuff, without the use of satellite-based scans, is going to be harder—”

“But I think we could do it,” a woman said. “If we take out the station, then get the satellites linked to us—”

“How many hours?” the professor asked.

“Six or seven to mount the weapon, and it’ll take a lot of personnel.”

“We may not have six or seven hours,” the professor said. “We need to know if they’re coming, and how soon. Jen, what about scan within atmosphere? Is there any way to get access to the satellite data?”

“Not right now. What we have here is basically old-style radar, for spotting and guiding air traffic, and a little local-weather scanner. The range is so short that we couldn’t spot incoming LACs in time to do anything useful. We haven’t needed more than that; we had the satellite data for longscan. We really need those satellites, and for that we’ll need to break their lock. It’s not going to be easy, and it’s going to take time.”

“Which, again, we may not have. Bob, what about Project Zed?”

“Operational. And we really don’t want them to have it.”

“It actually works?”

“Oh yeah. If this were a ship, and not an island, I could flip the switch and they’d never find us. A big improvement over the earlier models. Unfortunately, as it is an island, it’s easily located no matter what cloud we wrap around ourselves.”

Margiu realized with a start that they were talking about new stealth gear.

“Could it be used to cover a retreat in the aircraft? If we took the data and ran for the mainland?”

“I suppose.” The other man looked thoughtful. “We haven’t tried it on aircraft . . . how much can those planes lift?”

“I’ll ask,” the professor said. He glanced at Margiu, who headed for the door again. She passed the question off to Lightfoot, and went back to the professor. In that brief interval, the discussion had already turned too technical for her understanding, but it came to an abrupt end when someone pounded on the door.

“Come in,” the professor called.

Ty came in. “I’ve found two things—one’s a datalog showing transmissions to this station from Stack Three five days ago. From Bacarion. I think someone here’s on their payroll.”

“Most likely,” the professor said. “And?”

“And a transmission from orbit to this station, just now. Personal for Lieutenant Commander Vinet.”

“For Vinet! I’d never have guessed he was part of it,” Swearingen said. “He’s such a fusspot. Did you answer it?”

“No, just acknowledged receipt, using the same sig code that was logged for reply to the others. But I did take a look—”

“Wasn’t it encrypted?” someone asked.

“Yah, but a simple one. Not hard to break. Thing is, he’s not only part of it, they were telling him they’d be coming down in a day or so, and not to worry—that they’d prevented anyone from sending word from the station. So here we are, nobody else knows what’s going on.”

Margiu spoke up. “We have to get word out somehow!”

The professor looked at her. “You’re quite right, Ensign. And we have to keep them upstairs from finding out that we’re here, if possible, to give ourselves time to work—to get word out somehow, to destroy what we can’t protect.”

Margiu noticed that he didn’t say “to get away safely.”

“We’ll need the troops that came with you, Gussie, to keep the baddies out of our hair.”

“Right. Ty, did your guard come back with you?”

“No, I left him there to guard the equipment.”

“Ensign, we’ll need Major Garson.” Margiu told Lightfoot, who hurried off, and in a minute or two Garson appeared.

He listened to Ty’s report, scowling. “I’ll put Vinet under arrest, then. I wonder how many baddies were with him.”

“And I wonder how many are with you, sir,” the professor said.

“None, I hope,” Garson said. “Can you people take care of the rest of it?”

“Building a tightbeam with the power to a ship insystem, yes. Building a scan to locate such a ship, yes. Destroy the more delicate research, and the records, yes. But it will take time, Major. There are only fourteen of us, and some of the work is specialized enough that only one person can do it. So we’d best get at it.” He nodded to Garson, and the major withdrew. The professor turned to the group. “One thing worries me.”

“Only one?” Swearingen asked, grinning.

“If they don’t know we’re here, they won’t be in as big a hurry to get down here . . . but when the cloud cover goes, they’ll be bound to take a look. And they’ll see our transports sitting there like a sign in capital letters: TROUBLE HERE.”

“We could send them back,” Swearingen said. “But then we’d be stuck here. Besides, the latent heat would still show on a fine-grain IR scan.”

“If you just want to hide the planes from scan,” Bob said, “we can do that with Zed. Set it for just those parameters. It’d be a good test—”

“And if it fails, they’d not only know we were here, but they’d also know about Zed.”

“It’s a lot quicker to dismantle and destroy than the big guy,” Bob said.

“How many more hours of darkness? And does anyone have a clue about the weather?” The professor looked around the group.

“Local sunrise is at 8:13 tomorrow; it’ll be light before that, of course, if it’s clear.”

“And we have no weathersats . . . but we can always go outside and look.”

When they opened the door, a squad waited to accompany them. The professor told Ty to get back to the communications shack; half the squad went with him. With the others he went outside to look at the weather. Outside, a cold wet wind scoured the ground. Margiu stayed close to the professor, looking up only once to see that no stars showed.

“I can’t tell,” the professor said finally. “Bob, go on and rig Zed to cover the planes. We’ll start dismantling the other stuff—”

“Professor—” That was Major Garson. “We can’t find Vinet, or several others. I want all of you back inside, until we find him.”

“That could take days,” Swearingen said. “Some of the labs are underground, connected by tunnels.”

“Ty’s at the communications shack,” the professor said. “He has guards, but—”

A flare of light, followed in moments by a whoomp. Down the runway, one of the planes was blazing, the flames shooting up to glow on the underside of the clouds.

“Great,” Garson said. “They can spot that right through the cloud cover. Go on now—get inside, get under cover.”

“Where’s Lieutenant Lightfoot?” Margiu asked.

“I don’t know—he’s not answering the com.” Another, brighter flare of light painted one side of the major’s face, and another explosion rolled through the night. The second plane. “Ensign, switch your PPU mask to enhanced, and get these civilians back under cover. That yellow jacket makes a fine target.”

Margiu fumbled for the mask controls, and hit suit reflectivity by mistake. Her suit turned silver, then back to dark blue as she turned it off. Then she found the right set of buttons, and instead of dark clouds and a distant fire, she was looking at a scene painted by someone with a passion for shades of amber and orange. She could see little orange figures moving around, some with green triangles for heads; the blazing fire looked black. As her eyes adjusted, she noticed that the professor had a green triangle, and so did the NEMs around them.

Then a turquoise line stabbed across her vision, to crawl up the professor’s sleeve toward his head. Margiu threw herself at him, hooked a leg behind his, and they fell together as a shot whined past and smacked into the armor of the NEM on the other side. He staggered, then all of the NEMs dropped as one.

“Target acquired,” the one beside Margiu said. “Mark hostile—” Margiu turned her head and saw that one orange figure now had a red square on top. Another of the NEMs fired, and the distant figure went down. She lifted her head, and the NEM shoved it back down. “Not yet, Ensign. May not be dead, and may be others.”

“Casualties?” That was Garson, on the com.

“No, sir. Small arms fire only; didn’t penetrate armor. Civilians all unharmed.”

“Who’s on high guard?”

“Turak and Benits—report!”

“No activity on the roof—nothing, sir.”

“Let’s get them inside.”

The NEMs formed a double row of armor, and the civilians crawled carefully between them into the building, but no more shots were fired. Margiu took a last look through her enhanced mask, and the orange figure still lay where it had fallen. Then a network of turquoise lines appeared, coming from several angles to converge on the antenna cover of the communications building. She leaned out to see, and a NEM yanked her back.

“Are you trying to get killed?” a woman’s voice asked.

“No, I just—”

“Get inside, stay inside, take care of your professor!”

Margiu followed the others into the windowless break room; the professor was looking at her in a way that made her uncomfortable.

“What are they doing?” Swearingen asked.

“I think they’re trying to destroy the antenna array,” Margiu said. “It’s under that dome on the communications building, isn’t it?”

“Yes. And if they succeed, we’re not going to be able to use a tightbeam, even if we construct one.”

“Why a tightbeam?” Margiu asked.

“Goes farther, carries more data. We might even be able to reach the system ansible, if we can get a fix on it. That would get word out.”

“But—wouldn’t a regular broadcast disperse more widely, giving you more chance to warn any incoming ship that wasn’t part of the mutiny?”

The professor looked thoughtful. “You mean—like old-fashioned broadcasting?”

“Yes. If you have enough power—”

“And the antenna is much easier to make. You may have saved more than my life, Ensign.”

The R.S.S. Vigor came through the jump point in textbook fashion. Just because they knew they were coming into a secure system, just because nothing could possibly be wrong, was no reason to be careless. Captain Satir would not have paid attention if anyone had complained, and no one did: Satir was a good captain, and his fussy adherence to every little jot and tittle of the rules had saved lives before.

Now Vigor slowed to scan the system defenses and monitor system message traffic before proceeding insystem, even as her beacon automatically informed the system who she was. As she dumped velocity, the communications officer stripped one message after another, hardly glancing at them as they came off the printer—Captain Satir demanded hardcopy, even if that did mean plenty of recycling. He handed them to the captain’s runner, who took them to Satir. Satir was already alert, peering at the system scan.

“I’ve been to Copper Mountain eight times, and the outer loop’s never been all red,” his scan officer was saying.

“I’ve been here ten times and never seen this many big ships insystem. What’s going on, I wonder?”

“We’re ten minutes out—twenty delay on queries.”

“I don’t think I want to talk to the station. Put us at battle stations, Tony, but don’t light up the weapons.” The alarms rang through the ship; colored lights danced across the various control boards reporting systems in operation. Satir glanced at the sheets of paper in his lap. Trouble. Major trouble.

“Sir, there’s an odd signal coming in—you need to see it now.”

“Odd how?”

“Not the usual frequencies, for one thing. It’s surface propagated, but not a coherent signal—it’s like they didn’t care who picked it up. It’d dissipate to noise within this system, though.”

“And it says?”

“It’s in clear, and it says there’s a mutiny at Copper Mountain, that the mutineers have the orbital station and control of system defenses. It’s begging somebody to get the word out.”

Captain Satir looked at his bridge officers. If this was a hoax, reacting as if it were real could end his career. If it was not a hoax, he had only one chance to get away.

Even as he hesitated, a bank of lights on the scan desks came alight.

“They’re aiming at us,” his scan officer said. “Tracking us—”

“Full ahead, find us a slot and take us to jump,” Satir said. “We’re getting out of here while we can.” Vigor had the speed and the angle; none of the ships insystem could catch them in straight flight, and he was prepared to jump blind if necessary to put more distance between them. The system defenses were preset to defend certain arcs which he could easily avoid. “Make extra copies of all scan data, and try a squirt at the system ansible as we go by—they may have reprogrammed it, but it’s worth a try.”

Four days later, Vigor came in range of an ansible in another system, and transmitted an emergency override command set, followed by the entire load of scan data she’d collected.