part0030

I left Bekah Franklin with a hell of a lot more concern than when I’d gone after Richter—a professional, sure, but at the end of the day, just one man. I had no idea how many of Cassandra’s grunts would hit the station. But I was pretty sure it’d be more than one.

I moved pretty sprightly for an old … a middle-aged man with three fresh knife wounds. When he’d brought me into the infirmary, Tripp juiced me with something Erkennen had been experimenting with. He used words like “inflammatory mediator” and “recombinant” something-or-other, so I stopped listening. But the upshot was that my natural healing had been accelerated by several orders of magnitude.

And a good thing too, given what was coming. Even my knee felt like I’d traded up for a newer model. I just hoped it wasn’t a twenty-four-hour cure with the warranty about to run out.

I needed every edge I could get.

“Stacks, come in,” Bekah’s voice said in my ear.

“Yeah, I hear you,” I whispered. I might as well practice that discretion. Pretty soon, I’d be my own worst enemy if I forgot the virtue of silence. I’d be embracing Mother Universe with both arms.

“Okay, I’ll monitor you on open comms,” she said.

“I thought they were jamming everything.”

Her voice opened up with a sly tone. “I’ve managed to shield this frequency, make them think it’s part of the station’s maintenance program. Still working on the station’s security system.”

Oh, yeah, that’s right. We had no automated station security to help us out. Well, add that to the list of negatives for the current situation. I made my way to Engineering and Systems Control, wracking my brain for what two geeks and a devilishly handsome but slightly past-his-prime enforcer could do to stop an assault by squads of troopers. Inspiration struck when the door to the ESC refused to open for me.

“Hey, Bekah, that thing you did with Richter—where you locked him out of the War Room. I got an idea for something like that for the ESC.”

There was a pause while she thought about it. “I locked out his specific biometric signature, his DNA,” Bekah said. “I have no idea who’s about to come through the roof. So I can’t prevent their entering—”

“Right,” I said, standing in front of the ESC’s double-hulled blast door, which was sealed up tight. A network of cruxes—a spider’s web of six arms—secured the blast door to the surrounding walls. Heavy-duty, mechanical reinforcement in an age that relied largely on programmed protection. Even if the door had somehow been opened, the crux-web barred anything larger than a frou-frou dog from entering. A good example of why I preferred old tech to new. I still had Gregor Erkennen’s skeleton coder in my pocket I could have used to gain entry, but I had another idea. “But can you reverse it? Code the lock to only open for a certain DNA reading? Like mine.”

Sometimes new tech works, too. Sometimes .

“Sure, of course! I can lock out all biosignatures that aren’t yours.”

“Good. Add yours and Tripp’s to that shortlist. Then lock out anyone who isn’t one of us.”

There was a series of beeps and pings, just like in the sci-fi vids. Bekah, working the keyboard like a Steinway.

“Done. But Stacks…”

“They have guns. Lots of guns.” I could hear the fear in her voice. Bekah Franklin was a coder. A very gifted numbers-language expert, not a commando. “Lots of really big guns.”

“Yeah, they’ll pound their way through eventually,” I said. For her benefit, I tried to sound like I did this every day and knew what I was doing. The reality was, I was making it up as I went along—not something enforcers excel at. Plans and practice—that’s how we get the job done. “Engineering’s always the best shielded unit on any station or ship. Got to protect the power systems first if the big asteroid hits, right? Lose that, lose everything. Your lockout will slow them down some. The double-thick walls, some more.”

Honestly, that’s about all the hope I had of doing anything anyway. Delaying them. For what, I had no idea—the faint hope that Erkennen and his faction flunkies would ride shuttles to the rescue from Prometheus Colony? Stopping the SSR by myself, though? That was a five-dollar fantasy on a cheap sex machine.

“Okay,” she said. “Delay is the game, then.”

“Speaking of which,” I said, the irony of the idea that’d popped into my head making me smile, “unlock every other door on the station.”

I could hear the mental health assessment through the silence in my earbud.

“Why?” Bekah asked, drawing it out.

“Because I want those troopers distracted. I want them stopping every time a door swipes open beside them. Green troops lack discipline. Some of these troopers coming will wonder what treasures Erkennen’s people left behind in their quarters. Some will break ranks to dig around. Some won’t. But every delay is another minute we haven’t lost the station.”

Another minute we were still alive.

“Okay. It’s done. Oh, Jesus!”

“They’re landing. Stacks, they’re landing! They’re at the southwest airlock on Level Three, and Level Two’s moon-side hatch. I wish you had an implant! I’d send you the locations.”

“I know where they are,” I said. I’d had lots of time for walkabouts. Lots of time to commit the station’s floorplan to memory. And I trusted my memory over an implant any day of the week.

I touched the lock on the bulkhead to the ESC, and the six crux arms withdrew. The blast door opened. When I withdrew my hand, the door slammed shut, and the articulated arms of the crux webbed it to the wall again. “You and Tripp keep doing your thing. As long as they think the War Room is shit central, they’ll leave you alone.”

“That’ll only work for so long,” she said. “Eventually they’ll…”

Bekah Franklin’s voice shook. I took a minute before I answered, to make sure mine didn’t. No sense spooking her more than she already was.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Keep that key handy. First sign of a breach of the War Room, use it. Understand?”

There was a pause. Then, a simple “Yes.”

“Good. Is Erkennen’s camouflage program still functional? Can you turn it back on?”

“Sure. Why? I thought you liked the heat on.”

I smiled. Bekah could still make a joke. That was a good sign of a level head.

“Yeah, it’s not the heat I’m interested in. Can you activate it and tag it to my voice commands?”

“Great.” Like I said, making plans up on the fly isn’t helpful to getting good results. I prefer stacking the deck in my favor, every time. But we’d been dealt the hand we had. Time to play it out. “Here’s what I want you to do.”

I knew something about military tactics from the early days of SynCorp. Back then, Tony and the other faction leaders still had to deal with pockets of UN resistance who weren’t too keen about their hostile takeover, and occasionally I’d ride along as Tony’s eyes on the ground.

From what I’d seen on The Real Story , the SSR’s takeover of Callisto and Adriana Rabh’s station had been semi-competent at best. Agitators playing at soldiery. They’d likely learned some lessons since then, but hardened veterans they weren’t.

Through her commanders, Cassandra would urge them to be daring. She wanted Masada Station, and she had days of Bekah Franklin’s brilliant cyber-defense fueling her hunger for a little revenge-victory. But if the troopers were as green as they seemed in the snapcasts, they’d be less gung-ho and more let’s-be-sure. Having Bekah unlock every door to every apartment on the station would appeal to their natural reluctance about charging into danger. Also: human greed.

Delay, delay, delay.

My job was to cut the knees out from under their morale. The easiest way to make any soldier slow down and start looking backward is to make them think the enemy isn’t in front of them, but behind. And fighting them from the front was suicide anyway. I wasn’t that curious about what Mother Universe actually looked like up close.

I took the lift to Level Three and almost ran into a sweep team. I hopped into my old friend the maintenance tube and watched through the grate. They were moving in teams of two, typical, and the faces I saw reinforced my theory—the Soldiers were well-armed but young, their eyes wide open but lacking resolve. Lacking experience.

The first team passed me. I held my breath. If they’d had heat sensors, they’d have seen my rumpled form hanging in the wall lit up like a Christmas tree. But these guys were an ad-hoc army. Even their vac-suits looked like they were pulled from the surplus pile. They were barely spaceworthy with minimal thruster packs. And sure enough, when that first apartment door slipped aside, the forward fire team nearly jumped through the opposite wall. Their comms channel was secured, but I could imagine the dialogue. In that moment, it was likely of the four-letter variety. Then, the first two-man team entered the quarters to check them out. The second team behind them continued up the corridor. When Team Two rounded the corner out of sight, I slipped out of the tube.

“Lights,” I said.

The corridor blacked out. I pressed against the wall where the twosome had entered the cabin. I could hear the rustle of a vac-suit coming. I held my .38 in my left hand for backup and leveled my stunner at head height. The trooper walked through the doorway and turned toward the T-junction. Team Two was nowhere in sight.

I pulled the trigger and his body froze, then dropped to the deck.

So that proved another theory: their vac-suits weren’t MESH woven. Mark one in the plus column for Team Masada.

I hop-stepped across the hall, and the door to the quarters opposite slipped aside. Marveling at my knee’s willingness to cooperate, I knelt and waited. First rule of guerilla fighting. Never stay in one place. One location, one kill. Always moving. Makes one man seem like ten in the paranoid mind of a frightened enemy fighter.

The dead guy’s teammate snapped a helmet light on and flashed it right and left till it found Bubba on the ground. I aimed calmly. He’d have called Team Two back by now, likely in a scared, squeaky voice. I was about to have more company.

Bubba Number Two looked up, his light flashing in my eyes, making me squint. His mouth cried out silently in his helmet. He brought his rifle up. I fired, blinded by the bright light. I was still standing. I’d gotten him first. Closer inspection showed him slumped over Bubba Number One.

I’d just ducked back into the tube and refitted the corridor panel when Team Two rounded the corner.

“Lights,” I whispered. The corridor illuminated again. I wanted the returning team to see my handiwork in all its glory. They halted, brought their rifles up, and began to sweep back toward the airlock where they’d entered the station. One of them knelt to confirm his comrades’ deaths. They were no doubt reporting deadly resistance on Level Three via that secure comms channel of theirs.

More troops were coming from the breached airlock, but two dead troopers should slow things down a bit.

“Bekah, talk to me,” I whispered. “What’s happening?”

“They’re setting off charges on the ESC’s main door,” she said. Not unexpected. We’d planned for that. But her voice wasn’t as confident as I would’ve expected. “They’re smart. They’re hitting the crosshatched cruxes securing the door, not the door itself.”

Hmm. That was smart. Once the spider’s web was disabled, it’d be a simple matter of bypassing the door’s electronic security system. Looked like our delay was getting shortened.

“Security system?” I asked hopefully.

“I’m working on it!”

Stay on target, Fischer.

I hung on the ladder in Level Two’s maintenance tube. Three fire teams were there. One member from each team guarded the door to a different apartment. Their comrades must be inside, digging for treasure. Or, more likely, looting them. I’d surprised the team on Level Three. These guys would be on alert now. They didn’t know where the next attack would come from.

Blackness, like space without the stars. I didn’t bother with quiet. I kicked out the panel and stepped into the corridor. Helmet lights began to snap on and sweep the corridor. Thanks for that, dumbasses! Paint a target on yourself.

The first door guard went down. Bright lights swung toward the falling body, which happened to be my way. Rifles came up. I fired six inches below the brightness, then fell gut-flat against the deck.

Another body hit the floor. Or it could’ve been one of the smarter troopers going prone, like me.

I rolled across the narrow space, then low-crawled forward. One of the braver Soldiers ran forward. He was nearly on top of me when he realized I’d gone low. His helmet arced down, his rifle following. I thrust my stunner straight up and met the resistance of a vac-suit’s crotch. I pulled the trigger half a second before he did.

The shock of the shot jerked his arms up, and his rifle fired wide. He collapsed on top of me, and that probably saved my life.

His buddies exited each of the three apartments, almost at the same time. One brought her rifle up and aimed it at me. I pulled the dead trooper around me like a shield. Her bullets thumped into his corpse. From under his arm, I pointed my stunner and hesitated. I have a rule against killing women. It seemed stupid, silly even, to worry about that now. But my thumb still had its ethics straight and dialed down the stunner’s force setting.

She went down, unconscious but alive.

Her male comrades lost the faith. One backed up and took a knee, adopting a defensive firing position inside a doorway. The other turned and ran up the corridor, and I could almost hear his thoughts: to hell with this! Best to let him go. I needed him spreading the good word of fear-laden defeat. This station ain’t the easy take they told you boys it was.

The man-boy in the doorway was scared. I could smell it. He hadn’t fired his rifle once. Maybe he was superstitious and didn’t want to hit his already-dead buddies. Or maybe he wasn’t sure they were dead.

I hated to kill him. But I was one man against a boarding force. I didn’t have the luxury of morality. Hesitation is suicide in combat.

He knelt there, his rifle aimed in my direction and not firing, his helmet light shining but diffused by distance. All he’d see was a fuzzy haze of blackness and the slightly reflective material of his dead buddies’ vac-suits. But his head shone like a silver pumpkin inside the helmet. His mouth was open in an O-shape. His eyes were wide.