Rimrunners

CHAPTER 29

Something blew, you could feel it through the deckplates, and a nervous skut with a glove off, that being faster, doing wiring on a job like this one—really hated to hear sounds like that.

But the air stayed.

Thank God for favors.

In spite of which, she had her tether-hook fastened to the nearest metal strut, because decompression was a real likelihood, and there was an equally good chance of something like a missile coming right up through the deckplates or the blast-wall, a hello from India's number two rider that they knew was out there.

Touchy little job, Fitch was right, you called it a grape-cluster, nobody remembered why—a little group of AP shells with their back ends peeled off and bare wire stuck under their end-seals, right over the little black dot where the contact was. You twisted the tails together for good contact all the way down the bunch, finished it off with a little Gibbs-cap in the middle of the wires, then you just bent the twist-tail of the cluster and hooked it over something convenient.

Mostly you hung them head-high, on girders and such. And in this case, made extra-long twist-tails and a good solid knot in those tails to make sure they held fast.

Another explosion, off in some other section.

She kept at it, with the bare hand freezing, because Thule's power was down, and bitter cold air coming through the vents on the rig, because they had six hours, longer if they didn't ask anything out of the circulation, and longer, too, because she wasn't asking anything out of the armor while she was sitting here making fussy little wire-tails and worrying more about static charges than she was about the booms and blowups around the rim.

At least Fitch wasn't a nag, man sat down and shut up and just watched the way he said, saving it too, faceplate up, talking back and forth to Goddard, maybe clear to Central and Wolfe or Orsini, on Loki's sealed-line phone, there at the pump-station.

She took another cap, turned its tiny edge-dial, set it as number three, was wrapping it in when the dock quaked and Fitch stumbled up to his feet.

She wound the tail, laid it down, unclipped her safety and jammed her right glove on, then grabbed up her gun and the rest of the shells. "Program," she said, "Vent seal, amp 220, gyros."

Second blast as she was standing up. Readout said this one came from dead ahead. Loki's berth—either Loki or the station wall around it.

Dammit!

She ran for Fitch's position behind the main pump housing, came in heavy-footed and needing the gyros on the stop. "They're in, sir, that was the ship took that hit—Get Goddard and NG off, tell them get down here!"

"I just did," Fitch said. "Goddard's on his way out. Your damn merchanter-boy isn't answering his com, Yeager."

"Shit!"

"There's the phone. You're patched into general com up there, you tell him get his ass out here."

She grabbed the phone, unplugged the line and shoved the plug into the com-patch. "NG? NG, it's Bet. Answer your damn page!"

The deck shook. Readout said behind her. Airlock, then. She saw Fitch ducked down behind the pump-housing, figured if the tac-squad was worth anything they'd probed the airlock before they sent anybody through, and they were just going to blast through the layers, one after the other. Took a minute or so more. "NG? Never mind answering, just get suited and get the hell moving! Come on, dammit!"

Flicker of bracketing on the ramp, somebody in a hard-suit.

She hoped it was NG, she didn't think it was.

Goddard's voice said, "I can't raise the son of a bitch."

Could've ducked out before this, maybe nobody was paying attention. Maybe he was on the docks and scared to answer…

Maybe he was gone-out, ducked into some hole on the ship—not tracking on here and now—

That damn hole in back of the storage-rack—

God!

"NG, get out of the ship!"

Flutter of bracketing as Goddard got into cover with Fitch, Goddard carrying an AP and a couple of shell-slings, give him credit for that much, the son of a bitch—

She wanted to kill him.

"NG!"

Wanted her hands on NG at the moment, wanted to shake him till he rattled, damn it, damn his spook ways—

"NG! Get out here!"

More shocks in the readout, marker-dot flashing on the airlock at her back. You didn't need to face a thing in a rig. But she kept looking toward the ramp, hoping for a damned fool to show up.

Dot still flashing, sound-reading coming up, secondary dot intermittent with brackets as Goddard was trying to get his gun loaded—

No more time to spend, no more. She unplugged the line, squatted down with Fitch and Goddard, pulled her safety-clip and attached to the buffer-skirt support on the pump-housing, only thing she could see that might hold. Fitch followed suit, got Goddard clipped.

NG, dammit!

Puff of fire at the airlock, sudden vapor following that—

"God!" Fitch's voice.

Air freezing as it met hard vacuum.

As the dockside blew out the airlock.

She got a grip on the buffer herself, as dust and junk flew past, as the rig's pickups registered a whistling howl of escaping air—

"You got to get them when they show!" she said to Fitch and Goddard. "Got Loki at our backs, another damn squad coming behind us—"

Things left the ground and flew, stuff hit the seal-wall and stuck under the wind-pressure, stuff skidded and rolled across the decking, a couple of shipping cans flew like so much foil-scrap, and lights started going out, old-fashioned floods popping in the vacuum, other things started exploding, less and less audible as the air went away.

No way the tac-squad was standing in the path of that storm. They were hooked in, tucked down, never in the rigged airlock when it blew, just out there waiting for Thule to bleed to death.

Same as they were.

Coming through the first instant it was safe, and she had the remote, Fitch and Goddard had the AP's, and when the India team came through they met a barrage and started handing it back, firing as they went for the cover of girders on either side.

She let them. She hit 001 on the keypad, and the clusters blew, head-high, about the time wave two came in, straight into the AP fire, and the three-team came through—

002, 003.

Didn't want to look at what it did.

Faceplates were where you didn't want to get it.

"We got 'em," Goddard gasped.

She said, "We got 'em up our ass, dammit!" She unclipped, grabbed up the shell-slings and her gun and stood up. "We got one ship down there to deal with, we got more of 'em coming up our backsides—they breached the ship, they got to come here, dammit—"

She didn't care where Fitch and Goddard were going, she heard Fitch's, "Wait, Yeager," and she didn't stop to argue, she ordered the rig to max and headed up the ramp for Loki's airlock.

Airlock blew out, all of Loki's air hit her like a fist, knocked her down, the gyros brought her up and she rode the limb-movements, synched with them and had the rifle up before the rest of her was, was halfway up when vibration on the ramp told her something heavy had hit it running—

Gut told her it was armor, brain didn't have time to debate it: hands knew where to put the shell and the conscious brain got the fact a target was bracketed before it knew it had already pulled the trigger.

Conscious brain wondered was it a hardsuit or armor before the explosion went off in the guy's face.

Before she knew a shell had hit her and knocked her flat and the rig was bouncing her up again, headed for Loki's insides…

Didn't stop for grace.

Didn't stop when she came face-on in the airlock with half a tac-team who maybe for a couple of critical ticks didn't reckon an oncoming rig belonged to a spook ship—till she got another one and took a shell from him, and yelled Program-gyros-off, while she was wondering if that leg was breached, it wasn't moving right.

She fired up as her opposition came up on gyros, got him in the groin and blew him out the inner door, as his AP tore hell out of the bulkhead and you couldn't see anything for smoke.

Spatter and soot all over her faceplate. She was still moving, leg still worked, loose, but it worked, she felt cold there and maybe the autoseal was working, didn't know, heard Fitch panting and gasping, "Goddard's dead—"

She walked Loki's downside deck, she had a rattle in her armor, wasn't sure whether that tension screw in the left shoulder hadn't gone, wasn't sure that leg wasn't freezing in vacuum, she was getting that body-display that meant armor problems, whole left leg blinking red, shoulder blinking yellow…

They got to the lift shaft. The door was open, the car wasn't there, just lines hanging in the dark of the shaft, the kind troopers used for a fast drop. "Core," she said to Fitch, "they got in from the ship core."

She wanted, dammit, to stop and get on ship-com, see if she could raise Engineering, but there wasn't time, was a chance of any damn thing happening—

Explosion somewhere. The ship quaked.

"That might be the tanks," Fitch said.

"Shit!" She grabbed one of the hanging lines, pulled up the latch-down on her left shoulder, clamped it on the cable. "Going to the core—" She pulled Fitch a line close, threaded his hoist, wrapped her line under her right leg, pulled the lever down and held it.

Teeth slipped a little on the cable, scary as hell when you were halfway up.

Scary as hell when you thought about somebody getting into that shaft above or below and potshotting you on that cable. Had to use the night-glows, no way to see in the dark and cold what they were doing or where they were going, and it was help enough for somebody waiting at the core-access with a rifle—

Fitch was coming up all right, she saw the other cable tight, saw the cable attachments coming up fast above her on the support struts for the core-access bulkhead, good clear attachment, no gymnastics needed: she ordered the gyros, swung her feet up and planted her boots on the lip, leaned forward and made it, facing into absolute dark past the dim edges of the open access.

Graffiti on the wall, something painted—

Fitch bumped her, went back off the edge as she grabbed him, damn good thing she was holding the support. Her rig complained, the left arm slipped, but it hauled him up and his gyros got him steady.

Lot of dark. No sound except their own breathing, nothing from the pickups. Total vacuum.

The core access was standing wide open. Somebody had to have used an emergency crank to get both doors like that—big white circle and slash spray-painted across the lock controls—

—where you could see it only coming from this direction.

Fitch grabbed her arm, sudden shock of rig against rig.

Goddard's sign-off, maybe, when they rigged the tanks to blow?

Warning Loki crew out?

No pump, she thought. No vibration through the deck. It had stopped.

The core went straight back from here, whole length of the spine, long, dark void. The glows and the night-sight got just the beginning of the conduits, the start of the grid that was the in-dock walkway along the downside.

She stood still, spooked. Fitch wasn't moving either.

Shaft of light came into the core. Floods from the rider-ship, she thought for a heart-pounding second, then she realized it was sunlight coming through a wound in Loki's shielding, blaze of light and glare bouncing off surfaces down the walk, glancing and dazzling off ice, so that the display and the readouts struggled to cope with contrast. The light made huge shadows out of the two giant conduit-bundles as Thule's rotation carried the sun past their zenith. Moving bars of light and shadow touched the walkway and showed blazing white shapes lying on it, the walkway itself showed bent and melted—and iced…

Eyes wouldn't make sense out of it.

The glare from the star passed, moved up the wall, glare dimming to twilight.

She jerked a metal utility clip off her rig, threw it onto the grid.

No sparks…

Fitch caught her arm, no force against her amped rig, nothing but noise, a scrape of ceramics. "Yeager, we got nothing to do here, let it be, we got two rider-ships and a fuckin' carrier unaccounted for, come on, Yeager!"

You couldn't yell out to anybody, to see if anybody was still alive in here, you couldn't do anything, there wasn't any air to carry the sound, and the whole core was a trap, whole tac-squad wiped out—except the point-men that had gotten through and gone down the lines—

Not Goddard's work, couldn't be Goddard's work—

Power on that scale—Hell of a job. Cable from Loki's whole damn electrical system, run right to that grid.

"Yeager!"

"Program," she said to the rig. "Fleet-com."

She got sputter back, got the hiss of distant voices, not the clear transmission of a rider-ship com close by:

"Number one? Number one?"

Some poor skut was lost out there, distant across station.

She heard, more distant still, full of breakup, "… Charlie niner one, that's forty."

And after a few seconds: "We copy forty—" . She cut back to channel B on manual, said to Fitch, "Just dropped into Fleet-com. They're 'lagged from each other, they're moving."

On the retreat. Fast.

Standard ops. Rider-captain's standing orders, always—cover your carrier. If a situation goes to hell, tac-squads are on their own, cover your carrier—

No way out for them now. They're trapped. They know it. Carrier's stuck in system.

"Time to get ourselves deep in station," Fitch said. "We're going to hear from that carrier, round-trip, damn soon. Keu's not going to take this real passive.—Come on, Yeager, dammit…"

She ignored the pull on her arm, muttered, "Go to hell. Sir." And tried to think, tried to remember where you could detach the main cables, and figure how you could set up that kind of a trap and spring it without being where you could see when to throw a switch, and you could, from Engineering—but not without monitoring the core didn't have and there hadn't been time to set up. So it had to be the dirty way—a hands-on job, where you could see your targets, get them all where you wanted them. Then throw the power on. And maybe go with it.

She walked out on the grid, turned her helmet light on, heard, "Damn fool," out of Fitch, and just kept walking, sweating, hoping like hell the cable had burned itself away, which, by all she could figure, it had—

She scanned the shadows, sweeping her light from side to side, scared to keep to the grid, which might be melted through and loose, a broken connection that she might accidentally bridge with a step—scared of that and scared to step off the walkway and risk running into that cable in the dark.

Sun swept slowly past again, threw light and shadow onto the wreckage of the core: gridwork and pipe and the glare of sun on ice where a conduit had sprayed surfaces, ice-glare on bodies, ice coating white armor—

Long hanging shapes from one core-bundle, pieces of burned hose—

Or free-hanging power cable.

Surfaces glazed in ice, bodies embedded in it, shadow again as the sun passed the area.

She looked around, swept her light past the ominous shape of cables, saw motion bracketed, spun around with the AP in hand, fire-bracket and motion-bracket overlapped as her hand centered—

Civ hardsuit! God!

Shot slammed into her, knocked her down, smoke hanging in a cloud as she came up again, motion in the smoke, smoke from her shot, smoke from his—

She froze with the gun aimed up, he froze with his level, a nerve-twitch off, that was all that had missed him—a figure up against the forward bulkhead, man with a rifle and no lights, just sun-bounce shining off the girders, off his suit-surfaces, a hardsuit that never would have survived a direct hit.

He had to have figured it out, then, or he was out of shells: he wasn't firing again, was just wedged in there, into what cover the bulkhead and the shadow of the struts afforded.

"NG?" She tried Loki's frequency. She wasn't sure he could hear, wasn't sure NG was hearing anything or seeing anything that wasn't years back, some other boarding—

People in armor—

She let her gun down, lifted her left hand, walked back along the grid with a stutter in her motion, shaking in every joint—

Signed to him, Come out.

She saw him lift the gun again.

And stop.

She beckoned again. Slowly NG started hauling himself up under the hardsuit's stationside weight.

Her motion-sensor suddenly bracketed something else—Fitch standing in the core access doorway, she hoped to hell it was Fitch.

NG staggered as far as the walk. She got his arm, helped him up onto the grid, patted his shoulder as she steered him toward the door.

Fitch said, "Get our asses out of here, dammit."

Fact was, she suddenly realized, Fitch didn't know the reverse toggle on the cable-grip.

Fact was, Fitch was mad as hell about it.

Till they got downside and halfway across the docks and had sudden contact with Orsini coming in on their com, telling them that something big had just dropped into system, using Mallory's ID.

She grabbed NG, brought his helmet into contact with hers, yelled it at him till he understood it, "Norway's dropped into system! Riders deployed! We got help, understand? India's low-V, Keu hasn't got a chance."

First time, maybe, NG was really sure which of them was which.

He damn sure wouldn't have put his arms around Fitch.