April (44 page)

"I have an arrest warrant for the woman Nam-Kah," the officer told Jan and presented the document which Jan examined in some detail. It was all Chinese characters, but that didn't seem to put him off.

"This is fine, but the person this document describes no longer exists. She is now Dr. Singh Nam-Kah and she has the right of passage to accompany her husband where she will."

"I don't recognize her spousal rights over our national security," he snarled.

"I don't recognize your right to come out with pistols in the public corridors. If you don't go back to your cubic and put them away, I may arrest you for violating our security agreement. This is not your sovereign ground out here, to be talking about national anything. The flag waving stuff ends at your embassy entry and doesn't mean anything out here."

"You consort with hooligans! And women!" he screamed, fumbling with the flap of his holster and a dozen weapons swung up pointing at him. The clicking of all the safeties going off was remarkably loud, punctuated by the chunk-clack of Mary racking a round in an old fashioned 12 gauge riot gun with a pistol handle. She had him outgunned all by herself and she seemed offended by his tone about women.

Jan distained to lift his hands out of his pockets. Justine brought his hand up in an arc and there was long Aussie style knife with no guard which had materialized in his hand. He sliced the officer's heavy gun belt in a stroke so his pants fell around his ankles in a heap. The soldier bent his head to look down, but Justine lifted his chin with the point of the blade. When his head was tilted back a bit Justine laid the flat of the blade against the man's throat and slide it down his front from the high collar all the way past where the belt had been. There was a snick, snick, snick, snick as it descended and then the rattle of brass buttons rolling across the floor as he shaved them all off.

The uniform shirt popped open from the belly pushing against it, revealing an old fashioned undershirt. Justine carefully wiped the tiny bead of blood off the point, first one side and then the other on the clean white surface and returned the clean blade under his shirt, stepping back. Mary lowered the shotgun and said, "Damn. It's hard to shoot a man with his pants around his ankles."

"Why don't you stay here?" Jan suggested. "Just me and my men will go up and load the shuttle. I think we've got it don't you?"

Eddie wasn't sure if he was talking to Justine or the officer, but Justine answered him. "Sure, my buddy and I want to go back to the café and have a cappuccino before we leave. We'll turn the other fellow you cuffed up loose for you."

"Do you want a key?" He asked, looking over at one of his men.

Justine just held up a ring of about a dozen hand cuff keys of various styles and jiggled it with a little smile.

Jan shook a finger at him like a naughty child, but smiled and crammed in the elevator with the rest.

The mobsters stood and watched the indicator until the light showed the elevator had reached the axis and then Justine looked at Mary and pointed to the call button. She hefted the shotgun back up. The officer obviously thought he was being executed and threw his arms up twisting away. She blasted a big hole in the wall where the controls were. The twisted cover plate spun away end over end, clanging down the corridor and the button and switch disintegrated. Then they just turned their backs and walked away, leaving the Chinese there unable to recall the elevator.

* * *

Out on the docking boom Easy sat in the left hand command chair, watching the vid camera in the lock. He was nervous and anxious to have his passengers inboard and be away. He was watching the screen with the possibility in mind it might be a hostile force coming into view, instead of his friends. It had a limited view of the wall opposite his lock and not around the corner down the boom which was what he needed. He should really carry some mobile cameras bugs, he could position around the corner and down the boom to watch for him. When he finally saw the crowd come around the bend into view he got a big grin on his face. Their passengers looked real happy and there was Jan Hagen, easing along with his usual casual relaxed look, like he didn't have a care in the world.

Easy went back and opened the inside hatch, grabbed the edge and rolled feet first through the center of the coffin lock. He called back in to April. "I'll send the passengers through one at a time and you show them how to put on the suits and where they tie down. Then I have someone for you to meet."

He directed the woman through first. She was holding a cylindrical package to her chest like it was as precious as a baby. She was remarkably beautiful.

"This has to come with us," she said desperately, as if she expected an argument.

Easy took it and pushed it away and pulled it back sharply a few times, to gauge its mass. "No problem Ma'am. April inside will help you stow it safe."

She seemed tremendously relieved and pushed it through the lock ahead of her.

He turned around and Jan was smiling pleasantly at him. He offered his hand to touch.  "Always a pleasure, Easy," he said. Eddie looked surprised they knew each other.

He went over and looked through the lock into the craft. There were no ports in the boom to look at the outside of it. "A bit cramped. I'm sorry I don't have any heavy weaponry I can give you. Do you carry anything with which to fight the ship, or do you just have to run?"

"Confidential information, Jan," he said, winking, "Tell your spook friends so they'll know why they should be respectful of us. She carries four nuclear fusion generators and can run like a rabbit with a plasma drive. It has multiple heavy laser weapons, a heavy machine gun, they tell me the drive itself can be used as a weapon," and then remembering the case he brought, he added after a hesitation, "and missiles."

"Of course," Jan said, making a flip motion with his hand, "everybody has missiles. I can see where you'd almost forget to mention it." He looked at Easy again oddly and his eyes got big. "My God, you're not joking about any of it are you?"

April came out, did a roll over to orient to them politely and looked down the corridor which ran back through the boom with a distrustful gaze. "I have Eddie helping Mr. Singh with the suit and the thing the lady brought is strapped down securely. She suited up like an old hand. The coffee is brewed. You want a bulb?" She offered them each a full bulb. She noticed nobody had opened up the security terminal to log their passengers out of the station, although there was a mob of Security types hanging there who could do so. It really hit her when they ignored customs procedures, how irregular this trip had become. They were off the log.

Jan took his coffee but spoke to them first. "The Chinese got a little ugly in the outer spin, at the elevator. Tried to arrest our lady. She and Singh got married yesterday, so I refused the warrant. We had to leave some allies with them and I believe I heard some gunfire through the shaft after we left. Don't be surprised if someone gives you a hard time going back. They are certainly desperate to keep her from defecting, if they'll bring weapons out into the common areas here and threaten me. The Swiss don't care for bullying."

Jan took a long pull on the coffee and looked surprised. Started to say something and took another sip instead. "You're sure you don't have a berth open?" he asked.

April took it as compliment on the coffee.

"Don't ever let this man on your vessel," Easy warned April. "We were told once we had to drop into Estonia and deliver him to replace a fellow meeting a local politician," Easy explained.  "He showed up on the ramp to board our jump plane in a Tuxedo, with a big box gift wrapped with ribbons under his arm and explained we had to drop on a country road and ambush a limo going to a fancy country house - yank the driver and passenger out and one of us drive him instead to the party. Oh - and please don't ding up the limo or put any ugly bullet holes in the pretty thing."

Jan handed back the empty bulb. "And they did it just splendidly, although it was hard finding one of them small enough to wear the chauffeur's uniform. He makes it sound like I jumped out with them in a tuxedo and the box under my arm streaming ribbons behind in the air. I pulled a loose jumpsuit on over everything and packed the gift with their gear. Anyway - if any trouble should find you, know you are flying with the best. If you run into any Chinese shuttles today, I hope you ding them all over and leave lots of holes. The little fellows are starting to get on my nerves I'll tell you."

"But talk to Eddie, or Evert, or whatever the hell his name is today, when you get back aboard. I rang up some spooky friends and they confirmed what his people said about the USNA locking down M3 and confiscating the Rock rather soon. I'm afraid you could have both the Chinese and the Americans gunning for you on the way back, if they are worried about you interfering with their operation. Be careful out there," he said seriously by way of a goodbye and gave them each a casual touch on the palm. He turned, sipping the coffee and sauntered to his men, who had been hanging back watching the boom and were to ready to leave.

Chapter 22

April and Easy exchanged a shocked look, once Jan turned away, eyebrows elevated at his calmly delivered warning and pulled themselves through the lock, sealing it up and checked the passengers. Easy was much less worried now, knowing anyone coming up the boom would run into Jan and his men leaving, so he had a few minutes of safety to seal up and undock.

The two crew made sure they hard wired all three passengers to listen and went forward to get seated themselves. Easy looked out and was happy to see the worker had been back and removed the fueling lines.

"You run down the check list and I'll start talking to control." Easy told her.

"ISSII local this is
Happy Lewis
requesting undock and automated departure in approximately fifteen minutes for Mitsubishi 3," he
informed them.

April looked over at him and gave him a thumbs up and pointed to the flat screen with the all green lines and typed an extra message. "Fuel load checks OK."

"
Happy Lewis
, we have a com call from the Chinese Embassy, protesting there is a Chinese national aboard who is subject to arrest. We request you stand down and resolve this issue before departure."

Easy came back on and this time there was irritation in his voice. "I just spoke with your Security Chief in the boom not ten minutes ago. He refused the warrant and cleared us to leave. I suggest you call him and confirm we are cleared."

"Respectfully, the Security Director of the station does not clear traffic. We do. We again request you to shut down and disembark until this is resolved."

Easy had never tried releasing the grapples before asking for control of them. Maybe it was a formality? He brought the software line up on the computer and actuated it. Control not handed off - request release - said the screen.

"Control," Easy said, "requesting video conference on this matter first."

"With whom?" the controller asked, surprised.

"With you. Send your routing. We are coming up on your local net." Easy turned a camera around to face him and assigned a screen to one of the back-up computers isolated from his active systems. He routed the feed to an external antennae and punched in the address his control com screen gave him. Normally control was voice only. There was never a video feed to distract you, when you had so much else to do.

The connection was made and he saw the controller sitting looking in the camera over his board, with a man who was probably a supervisor standing behind him. Both of them appeared to be Chinese.

He leaned over and tapped a message out for April. "Do a net search and find out where the controllers shack is on ISSII and what's around it if you can." He knew almost every area not private was online somewhere. You could do virtual walk through tours of most habitats, for all the space enthusiasts who couldn't afford to come up. "Call Jan too."

"May I ask what nationality you gentleman are please?"

"It's really irrelevant," the controller assured him in flawless unaccented English. Not surprising, as the language of commercial aviation had become the language of commercial space flight. "We're acting on behalf of the international association which governs here. All the positions here such as ours rotate among members on a regular basis, so at any time it's coincidence which part of the team serves you." He continued on in detail, giving examples like a tour guide.

It was obvious he was stalling for time. Easy was sure eventually either there would be soldiers back up the boom to extract them, or a force making its way up the outside to disable the ship and force them out. But he was stalling a little too and his confidence in April paid off as she put two web pages on his other screen. The bad news was she added a note – Can't access voice com to call Jan.

The first page he looked at was the controllers' actual cabin. A number of things marked it right away as a zero G environment. So it had to be in the unspun cap under the boom. No place else in zero G was big enough for the volume. It had two operations consoles and they had an actual port above them looking out along the boom.

The other screen was a external shot, showing the boom hanging away from the camera at an angle and the onion shape of the non-rotating end of the station. Only one small oval showed as a port. One might be behind the column of the boom in the picture, but if it was it was not symmetrical, which was unlikely.

He closed the web pages and brought the laser targeting image off the arm camera on the screen. It was set up with software to take a target off the navigation radar. But the mechanism had started off as a simple inspection camera on an arm and retained all the capabilities to point and see, with a dimensional reticle already a standard feature. It just had four lasers modules bolted on it now, pointing wherever the camera was looking.

He pointed it aft and hung it out a little to look around his own tail. He couldn't see anything but blank white paint glaring in the sun. The servo worked away and swung it all the way to the other side of the ship and he rolled it to look over the rear edge of the ship again. There it was. A small dark oval on the curved shape, about two hundred meters away. He zoomed in a bit and could not see anything but reflections in the glass, but he centered the cross hairs on the window. The scale zoomed with the view and showed the oval port was about three meters wide by one and a half tall, wide enough for two controllers to sit behind.