“All passengers are to go to their cabins and remain there until further notice.”
Lochan listened to the announcement along with the others nervously waiting crowded together in the rec room. He gave Freya an obvious inquisitive look, and she returned an obvious nod. Everyone headed for their cabins, but after only a few minutes Lochan left his again after grabbing his bag.
He encountered Freya almost immediately. She gestured to one side and Lochan followed along a tight passageway to a different hatch than the one they’d used the first time, this one set near the deck.
The compartment on the other side was some sort of access, long and low. They could barely sit up in it. “What if this doesn’t work?” Lochan asked in a whisper as Freya got the hatch closed and settled down near him.
“We get to see some parts of Scatha, or Apulu or Turan, that most people never see,” Freya said, bringing out her pad. “All right, then. I need to link in to the freighter’s systems and . . . done. What does this say? Am I reading it right?”
Lochan leaned close and squinted. “Twenty minutes to intercept. That pirate ship is close.”
“As close as we want it to get. All right,” Freya said again. “Here’s the feed to the lifeboat video cam. I’m inserting this other image of you and me, with time marks making it look like this is happening right now. And . . . activate hatch alarm.”
“I don’t hear anything,” Lochan said.
“It probably only sounds on the freighter’s control deck. Now . . . this . . . and . . .”
Lochan felt a jolt run through the freighter as the protective cover for the lifeboat blew off, followed by another jolt as spring-loaded rams shoved the lifeboat away from the freighter. “So far, so good.”
“Yeah. And now it’s all on auto. Escape boost.” Freya scrolled through commands on her pad. “Here’s the freighter’s exterior display again. There’s the lifeboat boosting away as we make our escape.”
“Where are we escaping to?” Lochan asked.
“The Bruce Monroe. They jumped into Tantalus from Kosatka a few days behind us, remember? They’re following our track because they have to in order to get to the next jump point. We’re trying to get to them so we can convince them to turn around and jump out before the pirates finish dealing with this ship and come after them.” Freya’s smile held a wicked edge. “I might have mentioned that someone could do that where someone else could hear me.”
Lochan nodded, wondering why he felt fairly calm. “Could that have worked? I mean, as an alternative if we didn’t want to use a bomb?”
“No way,” Freya said, biting her lip as she stared at her pad. “I ran the math on my desk unit in my cabin, just to provide a little more misleading evidence. Even on the best trajectories available, we couldn’t escape that way. The lifeboat isn’t fast enough. But you and I are panicking, taking the only available means to escape. Most of those watching will assume we’re two lovers on the lam, but there are others on this ship and the pirate who I’m sure will see other reasons for our wish to avoid being captured and questioned by those alleged pirates. They know who you are, a representative of Kosatka’s government, and they’ll see I came from Catalan, and they’ll want to make sure we don’t get away.”
Lochan, slightly hunched over as he sat, couldn’t help smiling despite his discomfort. “I’m a secret agent fleeing with an attractive fellow spy, eh? This is like one of those wish-fulfillment simulations.”
She gave him a sidelong look, smiling. “Thanks for the compliment. What makes you think I’m a spy?”
“Nothing. You’re just an average, everyday trade representative. I must have forgotten that while you were rigging that bomb.” Lochan shivered. This compartment had some sort of insulation problem, rendering it uncomfortably cold as well as cramped.
“Listen,” Freya cautioned. She kept the volume low, but Lochan could hear the captain’s voice.
“Damned fools! Two of them! They’ve launched my lifeboat!” Lochan couldn’t help flinching as the captain raged on the interstellar rescue frequency. “It’s not my doing!”
The reply from the pirates was short and sharp. “Two of your passengers? Who?”
“Nakamura and Morgan. We’ve got vid of them at the lifeboat, and they’re not anywhere aboard. Nakamura came on at Kosatka, and Morgan has been riding us since Catalan. I have nothing to do with this!”
“Maintain your current vector,” the order came.
“The pirates are changing vector,” Lochan said, watching the relay of the freighter’s display.
“Yes. Let’s see. The freighter’s systems are showing it maneuvering to catch the lifeboat. Excellent.”
“It looks like an easy move for them.” Lochan shook his head. “You were right. We wouldn’t have stood a chance if we’d tried to run for real.”
“If this doesn’t work,” Freya replied, “we still won’t stand a chance. Keep as quiet as you can. If we’re found now it could ruin everything.”
Lochan found that he couldn’t look away from the relay of the freighter’s display shown on Freya’s pad. He could do nothing to change anything that was happening. Yet still he kept his eyes fixed to the display as if his attention were critically important to the outcome.
“They’re getting close to catching that lifeboat,” Lochan whispered.
Freya nodded, keeping her own gaze locked on her pad as she replied. “This freighter’s systems are estimating five more minutes.”
The pirate ship looked externally much like the Oarai Miho. Boxy, with main propulsion much smaller in proportion to the ship than would be the case on warships. Merchant freighters didn’t waste money on using up more fuel cells than required, sticking to economical if slow rates of acceleration and deceleration. But Lochan could see what appeared to be an extra main propulsion unit added on the pirate vessel, allowing it to outaccelerate other freighters, and there were at least two extra bulges on the hull of the pirate craft that Lochan suspected concealed weapons. “I wonder if that really is the Brian Smith?”
“The one you said was taken at Vestri three years ago? It could be. You don’t remember any distinctive features?”
“No. Not on the outside of the ship, anyway,” Lochan said. “And it looks like they’ve done some work on the outside, so anything I remembered might be wrong. But it fits, doesn’t it? Using a captured freighter as another privateer. That would help prevent anyone from tracing the sales record of the ship to see where it came from. And they’ve had plenty of time to add weapons and more propulsion to the Brian Smith.”
“It’s still not much to have us all so scared, is it?” Freya said. “A destroyer would take it apart in no time if anyone ever sent destroyers to patrol star systems like this and clean out pirates and privateers.”
“In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” Lochan quoted. “With only us and the Bruce Monroe to worry about, and both freighters completely unarmed, that guy is the biggest dog in the neighborhood.”
“So you’re a philosopher, too, eh?” Freya asked. “Brigit’s a lucky girl.”
“Brigit and I haven’t—”
“You will. Assuming our plan works and we don’t both disappear into those secret prisons.”
An alert appeared on the freighter’s display, showing that the pirate Brian Smith was on final approach to the lifeboat, which following its automated flight pattern had stopped boosting away from the Oarai Miho and was now only coasting through space. “Grapnels,” Lochan said. “Is that what that says? Is that something that lets a ship grab a lifeboat?”
“Apparently. Half a minute,” Freya read off the display. “Keep your fingers crossed, and if you’ve anyone and anything to pray to, now’s the time.”
The seconds counted down. “Contact,” Freya said, disappointed. “The proximity detonator signal failed.”
“How long until we know if your manual backup—” Lochan began.
A brilliant, white flare of energy appeared where the lifeboat had been, engulfing a large part of the freighter. They heard nothing, of course, but Lochan’s imagination supplied a vast boom to match the size of that explosion, a sound that felt so real it was almost as if he’d really heard it.
As the flare of light faded, several large, broken segments of what had once been the pirate Brian Smith could be seen tumbling away from where the burst of energy had torn apart most of the ship.
“Do you think we got them all?” Lochan asked.
Freya nodded, smiling once more. “Oh, yeah. See? They brought the lifeboat alongside their crew section. That was completely swallowed up by the energy released when the fuel cell let everything go at once. Scratch one pirate ship and one pirate crew, who’ve probably hurt a lot of people in the past.” She entered commands rapidly, waiting. “And scratch everything on this pad that shows what I’ve been doing with it. But, since it’s possible one of the freighter crew is the sort of hacker who can recover even triple-wiped and overwritten data . . .” She popped open the back of the pad, pulled out the memory coins, and held them up. “These are pretty hard to break.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
Freya wriggled around enough to access some of the insulation and shoved the coins behind it. “That.”
“Now what?” Lochan asked. “We have to come out of here sooner or later.”
“Yeah. And the captain’s going to be very unhappy with us,” Freya said. “But they’ve got no evidence that we did anything.”
“Those images of us at the lifeboat hatch—”
“Show us going there but don’t show us opening it before the cam broke for reasons that won’t be easily discovered.” Freya grinned. “Don’t you remember? We actually walked on past it, on our way to a private place where we could have one last deeply meaningful mutual physical experience before the pirates caught us.”
“This has been one of the most passionate imaginary affairs I’ve ever had,” Lochan said. “I hope it was good for you, too.”
“You’ve satisfied my every desire, Lochan Nakamura,” Freya said with a laugh. “I wanted to build a bomb and blow up that other ship, and we did.” Her smile went away. “Don’t forget. There’s likely at least one enemy agent on this ship. All they’ve tried to do is spy on us so far. With the pirate ship out of the picture, they might try something more permanent before we reach Eire.”
“I’ll stay on guard,” Lochan said.
There wasn’t anyone in sight when they popped the hatch and struggled out, a bit stiff from the confinement inside. They were still working out the cramps as they walked when they encountered a member of the crew running along the passageway.
The sailor snarled at them. “In your cabins! What are you doing out?” She ran on several steps, halted, and spun about to look at them again. “Who are you?”
“Freya Morgan,” she answered as if unconcerned.
“Lochan Nakamura,” he said.
“But you’re . . . Don’t move!” the crew member shouted at them. “No! Come with me! Right now!”
Word must have gotten around quickly about what had supposedly happened. Lochan saw people staring at him and Freya as if they were seeing ghosts. He tried to look puzzled as to what had happened, while also trying to spot any disappointment in the eyes of those watching at seeing him still alive, but if anyone aboard the Oarai Miho felt that particular emotion, they hid it very well.
The captain, on the other hand, didn’t try to hide anything. When her gaze fell upon him it was so intense that Lochan felt physically threatened. The captain vented on them with an amount of rage that rivaled the output of the exploding fuel cell. The rage only multiplied as Freya and Lochan expressed confusion about what had happened.
But, as Freya had said, there wasn’t any evidence that either she or Lochan had launched the lifeboat or caused the explosion. When the captain pressed her demands that they explain what they’d been doing when the lifeboat launched, Freya gave a lurid and graphic description of activity that Lochan wished he’d actually experienced. That apparent candor left the captain even less happy since it left no room for further questions.
She turned on Lochan with a new line of attack. “Why did the lifeboat explode like that?”
“It really exploded?” he asked, not giving away anything.
“Yes!”
“I don’t know much about lifeboats,” Lochan said, having long ago learned the importance of appearing to answer one question with a completely different piece of information.
“What made it explode?” the captain demanded.
“I’d guess the pirates must have done something to make it explode,” Lochan offered, which was true enough since they’d tripped the backup detonator system.
“That lifeboat was an expensive piece of equipment!”
“At least it looks like whatever caused the lifeboat to launch also took out the pirates,” Freya interjected, as if trying to mollify the captain.
“Shut up! Both of you! You’ll stay in your cabins every moment until we reach our next stop, then you’ll be put off! If I catch either of you outside your cabins, or in each other’s company again, I’ll put you both in full body restraints and press charges for disobeying orders in an emergency situation! Get ’em out of my sight!”
As they were led to their cabins, past the shocked gazes of the other passengers who still had little idea what was going on, Freya blew Lochan a kiss. “See you at Eire!”
As he heard his cabin being locked from the outside, Lochan stretched out on the bunk, tired. He was still worried about what that mysterious agent aboard might do, but that was a possibility of trouble ahead. That didn’t come close to matching what had, until a short time ago, seemed the certainty of being taken by those so-called pirates.
Sooner or later the crew of this ship would figure out a fuel cell was missing, but they shouldn’t be able to pin that on Lochan and Freya, either. It was always possible that the captain would try to press charges despite the lack of physical evidence tying them to the missing fuel cell or the launch and explosion of the lifeboat, but Lochan didn’t expect that. The captain would have to admit to violating a lot of important safety regulations if she tried to explain how two passengers could walk off with a fuel cell.
His safe trip to escape the fight at Kosatka had turned out to be a little more dangerous than anticipated. He wished he could tell Carmen about all this.
His elation vanished as Lochan thought about Kosatka again. The image of the invasion fleet approaching the planet, as it had been when the Oarai Miho entered jump space, haunted his memory. What was happening there? Was Carmen all right?
Carmen, once again looking out a high window in the Central Coordination Building, narrowed her eyes as she studied the enemy-held buildings facing her. The sun was setting, painting the higher portions of the tallest structures in pink and gold, like some fairy city. If fairies fought wars that wrecked the buildings their ingenuity could construct.
The enemy had launched one attack at midmorning, thrown back by defenders energized by the sight of invasion fleet shipping being blown apart in the space above the planet. Since then, the invaders had been quiet. Carmen didn’t trust that but also didn’t know what it portended.
She leveled her rifle, using the scope to magnify the images as Carmen slowly panned across what she could see. There was motion, but not the sort of movement that spoke of troops moving up for another attack. She’d seen that often enough to know how it felt, the slow, erratic increase in detections of movement, the buildup in enemy communications, the sense of unseen pressure getting ready to unleash toward her. This felt different.
Like . . . less pressure.
She’d found a landline link in this room and plugged into it for communications that were mostly free of jamming. Setting her scope to download what it was seeing, she sent out a report. “I don’t know what’s going on opposite the Central Coordination Building, north side. It feels like the enemy may be pulling back.”
Hearing Loren Yeresh’s voice respond was a pleasant surprise if also disorienting. Loren belonged to a different time, when this city had been a living thing instead of a war zone. “Carmen, we’re getting similar reports, but nothing solid. If they’re falling back to the north, you should be able to spot movement from their forces south of you through adjacent buildings as they try to join up with the others.”
“I’ll go look,” Carmen said. “I might not be able to find a working landline connection on that side, so I’ll report as soon as I can.”
“Sure. Be careful.”
“What could happen?” Carmen unplugged her rifle from the landline and hastened through the deserted hallways toward the east side of the building. Many stretches of the hall were untouched by battle, creating the eerie illusion that nothing had really happened, that outside everything was normal, perhaps the very early close-to-dawn hours when this building was almost deserted and the lack of sound outside meant peaceful sleep instead of wary combatants for the moment lacking targets.
Some executive had occupied a nice corner office with big windows that faced west and north. The desk had been left in perfect condition, everything lined up neatly. Everything about the office, in fact, carried the mark of someone who demanded an almost sterile level of perfection.
Carmen reached out as she crawled toward the windows, shoving the perfectly aligned desk contents into a jumble.
A landline link sat in the floor next to the desk. She pulled out the link wire from her scope and plugged in her rifle. Symbols appeared on the scope when Carmen looked through it, confirming that the landline link was active.
Reaching the miraculously unbroken windows, she lay flat on her stomach and sighted through her rifle’s scope, scanning the buildings across the way.
There. Something. Something else. There. Carmen waited, spotting more flickers of movement. “Are you guys copying this?”
“Yeah,” Loren replied. “Getting some analysis done now. But our gut feeling is you’re seeing movement to the north, like you thought you saw at the other location.”
“Are they concentrating their forces?” Carmen asked, her eye to her scope as she continued to track her view across the windows of the facing building.
“We’re trying to get someone in position to confirm, but we think they may be withdrawing everyone to the north.”
“Withdrawing? You mean evacuating the city?”
“Maybe,” Loren said, his voice cautious. “If they pulled out to the north, they could head for Ani and try to link up with the rebel forces there. That’s their only chance. They’re cut off here, isolated, without any way to get more food or ammunition. They can maintain power for a while using solar in places we can’t hit, but not at a level necessary for combat operations.”
Carmen squinted, zooming in more with her scope as the setting sun sent its rays directly into the windows of the building opposite. “Did you see that? Clear as day. A half dozen soldiers running north through the building.”
“Yeah. Got it. I’ll notify command.”
“Are we going to let them go?” Carmen asked, feeling angry at the idea.
“Oh, hell, no. I’ve heard the combatant commanders talking. They’ve been hoping this would happen. When the enemy tries to retreat across Centrum under cover of darkness, they’re going to find things a little difficult. Carmen, I need you there.”
“Dominic is wounded. He’s in the basement of this building.”
Loren took a moment to reply. “I need you there.”
“I need to keep an eye on Dominic!”
“If we take out the enemy forces in this city, Dominic will be safe. We need good tactical intelligence to take out the enemy. I need you at Centrum.”
“Dammit, Loren, I’m a volunteer! You can’t order me to go there!”
“I’m asking you to volunteer to go there.”
Carmen lowered her face to the floor, gritting her teeth in anger. He was right. She knew he was. And she hated knowing that and knowing what she had to do. “Okay,” she muttered.
“Thanks.” Loren was smart enough to leave it at that.
Carmen unplugged her rifle and wriggled backward to ensure she wasn’t seen from the buildings opposite her, finally getting onto her feet in the hall and running. She wanted desperately to stop by and see Dominic, but the sun was setting and the enemy was moving and there was no time to waste and she hated this war and the people who’d started it.
On the ground floor, strewn with the castoffs of battle and scarred by fighting, Carmen saw the remnants of Dominic’s unit gathering. “What’s going on?” one of the officers called as she ran by. “We got an alert to prepare for an advance.”
“The invaders are withdrawing to the north to try to escape the city,” she called in reply. “We’re going to hit them as they try to cross Centrum.”
The low cheer that answered her words sounded almost like the growls from a pack of wolves seeing their prey stumble.
She had to run a few blocks to the west to get past the edge of the area to the north held by the invaders, dropping to a walk occasionally to catch her breath. Going past the edge of the defender’s perimeter on the southwest corner of the enemy enclave, she warned the soldiers there of the enemy withdrawal and turned north, heading for the area of the city known as Centrum.
Urban architects had been enjoying a golden age as humanity spread out to the stars and new cities rose on new planets. The ones who had laid out Lodz had made it almost two cities, divided by a broad rectangle of mass transit lines, parks, plazas, and pathways called Centrum. Centrum ran straight from the east to the west between the north and south parts of Lodz as if a huge bulldozer had cut a path over half a kilometer wide through the middle of the city. Some residents of Lodz loved Centrum, others hated it, but in a few years it had already become an icon of the city.
And now that open area was, paradoxically, a barrier to the enemy withdrawal to the north. In order to get out of Lodz and head for the region around Ani where they could find refuge, the invading troops would have to pass through Centrum. They were going to try at night, whose darkness offered far less cover than it once had but was still better than trying to cross that open space in daylight.
By the time Carmen got to the edge of Centrum the sun had nearly set, dark shadows stealing across the plazas and parks. An open-air amphitheater was being turned into a hastily fortified strong point as Carmen reached it. She went a little farther, finding the piece of public sculpture most people called the Torch, a hand rising from the ground and holding aloft a torch in what Carmen had been told was a mimicry of a famous monument somewhere on Old Earth. The narrow ledge running around the base of the Torch’s “flame” offered Carmen an elevated view of the parts of Centrum east of her, which was where the invaders should try to cross.
She settled down, grateful for the chance to lie there, feeling guilty about leaving Domi. After a moment, Carmen picked up her rifle and began trying to find a link.
She locked in to the net surprisingly quickly. Enemy jamming was falling off as they abandoned equipment for which they could no longer supply power, and because with the loss of the invasion fleet in orbit and the destruction of their last shuttles and warbirds they no longer had means to jam broad areas from above.
Carmen knew what it was like to feel trapped, without enough resources and too many enemies all around. She wondered what morale was like in the enemy ranks.
“Carmen?”
She perked up as Loren Yeresh’s voice came over her comm link. “Here. I’m in position.”
“I see. That’s a beautiful observation spot, Carmen. Headquarters is going to want the best feed you can give us of what’s happening east of you.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Carmen said, lowering her eye to the scope and beginning to study the ground to the east. “Have we been able to confirm the withdrawal has been ordered?”
“We’ve been able to confirm that enemy units are withdrawing, but it seems more like a mutual decision to run like hell than a coordinated operation under unified command,” Loren said. “Their high command tried to make it down to the surface. They were aiming for somewhere around Ani.”
“Tried? Did any of them get down?”
Loren laughed. “Oh, yeah, they all reached the surface. But they were going a lot faster than they should have been when they got there, courtesy of our warships in orbit. There are some new craters outside Ani where the enemy high command ‘landed.’”
Carmen felt her lips draw back in a smile that had more snarl to it than anything else. “We’ve cut off the head of the dragon. The body can still do a lot of damage as it flails about.”
“Let’s see how much of the body we can take down tonight. Am I seeing something?”
“Yeah,” Carmen said, zooming in her scope. “Scouts, I think, checking to see if there’s a safe way across.”
“The forces on the north side and to the east and west have been ordered to hold fire until the main body of the enemy starts across Centrum. We don’t want them holing up in the buildings facing Centrum instead of trying to cross. Our forces to the south are going to start moving forward to push the invaders into Centrum.”
“Good.” Forces to the south. That would include the remnant of Domi’s unit. She felt guilty relief that he wouldn’t be among those attacking what must be an increasingly desperate enemy in the dark.
She kept catching glimpses of the scouts moving forward, encountering no opposition as the defending forces melted away before them to avoid warning the enemy of the trap that Centrum already was. “Loren, I’m seeing a big surge of movement on the south side of Centrum. It looks like they’re starting across in strength.”
Immediately after that gunfire and other sounds of battle erupted to the south, the sounds muffled and distorted by the buildings between the fighting and where Carmen was in Centrum. “More movement. The attacks to the south have spooked them, I think. They’re coming across, Loren!”
He didn’t answer.
The reply came in the form of a sudden explosion of fire from the eastern and western sides of Centrum facing the enemy withdrawal. Carmen saw the shadowy shapes of enemy soldiers break into runs, abandoning attempts to sneak through the darkness, stampeding north to where they thought cover from attack awaited.
Moments later the roar of battle sounded from the buildings to the north as the blocking force there opened up.
The enemy kept running forward. They knew they couldn’t go back. She’d wondered if they had any chaff grenades left, but none popped, proving the enemy soldiers were out of concealment munitions and leaving them exposed.
Mortars whomped in the distance. Flares appeared overhead, illuminating with harsh light the figures of the enemy caught in the open, increasingly frantic groups of invaders rushing in different directions as fire flayed them from every side. Other mortar rounds fell among them and exploded, cutting down attackers as they surged to and fro among the sidewalks and stumps of ornamental trees and broken benches and scarred pieces of public art.
Carmen kept her scope moving to transmit as much of the situation as she could to those viewing the information back at headquarters. But every once in a while she paused to aim and fire at a figure who was clearly giving orders, clearly someone in authority. She felt no particular hate for the average enemy fighter, even a little regret when allowed time to think about having to kill them, but their officers, their leaders, were another matter. If they’d come from Mars, the officers had been drawn from the ranks of gang chiefs and associates, or jeds in the Thark and Warhoon mobs, or from executives and enforcers for oligarchs and dictators. Carmen had spent her youth fearing them and now pitied them not at all as they died.
Where had the others come from? The unemployed masses of Old Earth and the Old Colonies? Men and women whose jobs and lives had become obsolete and unneeded? Or people with options, other ways to make it, who had chosen the one that had led them here to assist in trying to enslave the world of Kosatka?
They’d have to sort out the prisoners when this was done. For now, Carmen tracked the activity, aiming and firing whenever she saw a leader, watching others die as Kosatka’s defenders hit them from every side and above.
They didn’t break all at once. Carmen started seeing individuals and small groups who dropped to the ground and huddled there like small children hiding from monsters. Others dropped their weapons and stood still, arms raised in pleading.
From those small beginnings it spread, like a chemical reaction that raced through a solution. One moment the enemy was still striving to cross Centrum, pushing against the defenders, and the next the invaders were milling about, all direction lost, no longer fighting. A large group that Carmen could see held out a few moments longer. Perhaps they were former professional soldiers from an Old Colony or part of Old Earth. Or maybe places like Apulu were already developing that sort of professional military. But, whoever they were and wherever they’d come from, they could tell when further resistance would mean nothing but certain death. They, too, dropped their weapons and raised their hands to surrender.
Carmen watched Kosatka’s forces moving into Centrum, collecting weapons and herding the prisoners into groups that were forced to sit with their hands on their heads. “Loren? Is it done here?”
“Yeah,” he answered, sounding as tired as she felt. “No fighting registering anywhere around Centrum. If anybody got away into surrounding buildings, they’re lying low, and we’ll have to dig them out when daylight comes.”
“What about Drava?”
“The same thing seems to be happening there. An attempt to withdraw toward Ani while we cut them to pieces. Getting Ani back is still going to be a struggle, but we hurt these scum bad, Carmen.”
She held her position a while longer, streaming video to headquarters, but eventually Loren told Carmen that was no longer needed. Getting down off the Torch was unexpectedly difficult, her muscles having stiffened considerably during the time spent lying on the ledge.
The last flares overhead were fading, being replaced in portions of Centrum by bright lighting as some of the public light poles were turned back on for the first time since the invaders had landed. Carmen walked slowly through lighted patches and back into darkened areas between them, her mind numb with weariness and spent emotion. But she jerked to awareness as she heard the low crack of an energy pulse weapon being fired. The fighting had stopped. Why the hell was someone firing a weapon?
She headed in the direction of the sound, hearing the crack of a second discharge.
Carmen finally spotted a group of Kosatka’s forces standing, weapons in hand. A large number of disarmed prisoners were sitting on the ground near them, under guard.
A major was near the sitting prisoners. Two bodies sprawled not far from him. The major was in the act of pulling a third prisoner to his feet.
Carmen broke into a run, bringing her rifle up. “Hey! Halt!”
The major got the prisoner erect and stood back, leveling his pulse rifle toward the prisoner’s head.
“Stop!” Carmen yelled, wondering why no one else was doing anything.
The major’s finger was reaching for the trigger when Carmen rested the muzzle of her rifle against the side of his head. “I said stop.”
“What?” Only the major’s eyes moved, giving Carmen a sidelong look whose icy emptiness chilled her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Carmen kept her rifle muzzle against his head. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, sir?”
“Cleaning house. Eradicating vermin. Go away,” the major said, his voice flat.
“No,” Carmen said. “Lower your weapon.”
“I’m ordering you to drop your weapon and get out of here. You’re threatening a superior officer and disobeying orders in a war zone. I could have you shot.”
Carmen shook her head. “I don’t have to obey an illegal order or stand by and let you commit atrocities. Did I mention that I’m intelligence? This scope has been recording everything you’re saying and doing. It’s already been uploaded, Major. You can either turn yourself in or wait for someone to show up and arrest you.”
The major hesitated, appearing uncertain.
Some of the other soldiers nearby finally moved, a lieutenant reaching to gently pry the major’s weapon from his grasp.
The major stared about him wordlessly, then abruptly sat down, his head buried in his hands.
The lieutenant looked at Carmen, ashamed and confused. “We didn’t know what to do. He said . . . and . . .”
“Lieutenant,” Carmen interrupted, “you all knew what you should do.”
“But they—”
“We’re not them.”
The lieutenant nodded, avoiding her gaze.
Carmen saw some officers running their way and stepped back. As an angry colonel took control of the situation, Carmen turned and walked off.
So easy. So very easy to stand back, to do nothing. It frightened her to see how quickly some of Kosatka’s people had fallen into that.
By the time she made it back to the Central Coordination Building another dawn was beginning to paint the sky and Carmen’s mind was a gray fog in which fatigue and shock swirled together. The building felt deserted as Carmen made her way to the basement, past the regions of darkness to the emergency medical station.
The room was empty except for two pallets that each held a body, sheets pulled up over their faces.
Trembling, Carmen raised each sheet enough to look on the face of the dead. Neither was Dominic. She staggered back into the hallway, shaking with relief but also confused and too tired to think.
“Hey,” someone said. Carmen saw a couple of volunteers approaching. “Is there anybody in there?” the one who had already spoken added.
“Just . . . two dead,” Carmen managed to answer.
“Two dead.” The volunteers went in, crouching to get identity readings and enter the location of the bodies on their pads. “We’re going to make sure they’re picked up,” the first told Carmen as they left the room. “Was one of them someone . . . ?”
“No,” Carmen said. “Do you know where they went? Were taken? The wounded in here?”
“They should have been evacuated to hospitals in the city. Those are all up and working again on backup power.”
“Thank you.” Carmen leaned back against the hard, cold wall behind her, unable to stay on her feet.
“Are you okay? Do you need anything?”
“I just . . . have to rest.” Carmen let her back slide down the wall until her bottom hit the floor. She had a vague sense of dropping to her side, her rifle cradled in her arms, before exhaustion overtook her and she finally slept.
Lochan had long since learned that for the most part the freighter Oarai Miho, like most freighters, confined the sounds and vibrations it generated to those of the life support systems. The gentle whisper of the fans circulating air, the soft gurgle of pumps moving liquids here and there, the low hum of a small robotic cleaner passing as it vacuumed up the dust that somehow appeared as if spontaneously generating out of the air. At odd and irregular intervals there’d be louder noises, scrapings and bangs and rattles, often accompanied by the distant echo of obscenities and curses as the crew worked on some piece of equipment.
But on rare occasions a series of mild jolts would mark the firing of thrusters pitching the ship around to face in a different direction, followed by a deeper, heavier vibration that rolled through the ship as the main propulsion fired to accelerate or slow down the Oarai Miho.
Lochan lay in his bunk, trying to figure out why that was happening now. If his memory was right, they were still a ways from the next jump point. And in any event, the freighter had been on a vector directly for that jump point, curving across the outer edges of Tantalus Star System from the point they’d arrived at from Kosatka and ending at the jump point for Eire. The Oarai Miho shouldn’t have to maneuver at all before jumping out again.
He rolled up to a sitting position and tried activating the desk display. Since the lifeboat incident it sometimes wouldn’t come on, obviously blocked on orders from the captain. Other times it did activate, perhaps reflecting a system reset that required someone in the crew to notice that Lochan’s display was once again active and selectively shut it off again.
This was one of the lucky times. The display came to life, Lochan bringing up the image of the freighter and its path through space.
Everything looked the same. Why was the main propulsion lit off?
Had he felt thrusters firing before that? Had that been what woke him up? But in the image this freighter still seemed to be aligned with the same vector it had been using since arrival.
Lochan scratched his head, puzzled. Maybe if he asked for the projected course, he’d see some indication of why this ship’s main propulsion was lit off.
The line extending outward from the Oarai Miho, indicating both her path through space and by its length her velocity, still pointed along the same curve. But the length was steadily shortening.
The freighter was braking velocity. Why? There wasn’t anything around to explain that. Aside from the pieces of the former pirate ship that were still tumbling off into empty space, the only other human objects the display showed were this ship, and far off, back along the same vector, the freighter Bruce Monroe. The Bruce Monroe’s path exactly matched that of the Oarai Miho because the most efficient vector between the two jump points was the most efficient vector. Every ship followed the same one, and every maneuvering system would set the same vector with only tiny variations.
Lochan sat on his cabin’s bench/bunk, staring perplexedly at the display as the freighter’s main propulsion kept rumbling and the line marking the ship’s velocity got shorter and shorter.
Eventually, it hit zero.
The main drive kept going, and the line began growing again.
In the opposite direction. The same vector, but reversed.
They were heading back toward the jump point for Kosatka.
And then, Lochan suspected, if this ship couldn’t turn him and Freya over to the invasion fleet, it would jump for Hesta and deliver the two of them to Scatha there.