April (61 page)

"Sir, we have some intelligence there are several copies of the power source we identified on the vessel
Happy Lewis,
in control of one of our agents on M3. We have told the force on the
Cincinnati
that upon securing the station, this is to be a primary objective, to retrieve them and return them for analysis. The agent is requesting evacuation also, as he is concerned he will be burned when the owners find out they are gone." His smile changed a bit to a smirk. "I suspect he is concerned to accompany them to plead his case for a bigger reward too."

"Hmm." President Hadley considered. "Does this agent have sufficient security clearance, to know about something of this importance?"

"Not really. He just happened to be the one to stumble upon them, by sheer luck."

"Then unless he is some special assent which needs preserved the only prudent course seems to be to terminate him, unless you intend to imprison him until the information is no longer sensitive at all. Do you have any reason to go to so much trouble?"

"No, he was just another pair of ears which have served their function. A hotel clerk really. No one important. No need to burden the public keeping him for untold years."

* * *

April stopped in the hall outside her families zero G cubic. Easy and Eddie had both squeezed in the lock with her and her sword didn't make it any easier to cram in.

When they hit the hall Eddie said, "Excuse me. I have to go buy a space ship and talk to Dave." He walked away briskly.

After days in the scooter the hall seemed a huge volume. The Singhs were coming through the lock next with her package and Jeff and Heather were there waiting for it. She was surprised to see her brother Bob and Ruby. There were so many people floating in a ring around the lock, some were holding on a friend's ankle or elbow, because there weren't enough take holds for everyone. She turned to Easy and he saw the upset in her face and turned to her.

"My laser is still mounted on the arm. I don't want to be unarmed if there are going to be soldiers in the station."

Jeff stepped up to her and held out a new laser, identical to the one she left behind. "We figured you might want to leave it on the ship. After we ran new accumulators we made up a few more. We have one for Easy too. And my dad and new stepmom. We'll have to find a new source for heads I imagine. I don't think North America will be letting any more be shipped up to us."

"And I brought this out for you." Easy handed her a sack with several lumpy shapes in it. "Ajay said they were yours."

She opened the sack and withdrew the machine pistol and ammo box and lastly the rank badge the Chinese officer had been wearing. She looked at it briefly. It had a clear plastic clip with caseless ammo, like her grandfather's pistol. She jammed a clip in the handle and jacked a round in the chamber. Easy's eyebrows went up at her easy familiarity. It didn't work much different than her dad's Colt.

"This the safety?" She asked him, pointing at the lever positioned for her thumb.

"Yup. Down is safe. Up is ready. "This one," he pointed to the other side, "is for full auto up or single shot down. I really suggest you try to leave it on single shot, until you can try it at a firing range. It will twist up in your hand like crazy, from the recoil on auto. If you do use auto, turn it sideways and let it walk an arc across the target," he pantomimed. "It also uses the whole clip of sixty up in about three seconds" 

"Thanks." She said. Setting it safe and for single fire. She hooked it's minimalist holster across her tool anchor in the front and clipped the laser there too. The ammo box went on the side. It was unusual to see anyone in a p-suit in the corridors. Walking back with the machine pistol and her sword in her left hand besides, might get a few looks. She was way past caring. She put the badge back in the bag and tossed it to Bob. "Take care of it for me, will you?"

He nodded obviously uncomfortable.

"I'm going home and have a long hot shower. If anyone tries to stop me I'm gonna kill them."

Not a one of them took it for hyperbole.

* * *

Skip called in with the priority signal Jon would never make wait. "Jon we've got Chalmers and the other creep leaving their apartment, with the carrier for the assault rifle. They are going out spin and South. What should we do? I figured maybe they'd go to the South hub to help the shuttle dock, but not outspin."

"Do you see any other weapons beside the case he is carrying?"

"No and if they have anything else it is small and concealed."

"I'm going to start North and when they get off the elevator tell me how far outspin they went." Jon slipped a extra charge for his Taser in a pocket and picked up a black cloth carry bag, which had a pistol grip modern shotgun inside with ammo for it. As he left his office, he dropped a message to everyone who worked for him, describing what was happening.

"Will call for back up if needed," he assured them.

* * *

Chalmers got off the elevator and checked the printout in his hand. "To the left here. It's six doors down, on the North side of the hall." When he got there it was a heavier steel door, so he was sure it was the right place. He motioned to his accomplice Dan, who retreated down the hall five or six meters and laid the case against the wall and opened it up. He withdrew the rifle, loaded a magazine, put an extra in each pocket and closed the case. Dan flattened himself against the wall far enough back he should not be seen by any camera at the door. Chalmers pressed the call key for the door and spoke into it. "Mr. Lewis? Gary Chalmers here to speak with you. I have some important news about the Rock and military authority on the station. Word from the President himself. Can we speak please?"

Inside Steve Lewis got up from his lunch and looked at the security camera on the com console. It had much better coverage than the standard door camera, the two outside imagined. He could scan and zoom the whole corridor and the man slinking against the wall with the military style rifle was obvious. He ran to the front door and hit the manual control, to close and lock the inner door of the emergency airlock. Then he sprinted for the bedroom and the weapon in his sock drawer.

Outside the beefy "chunk" of the inner lock door closing could be felt through their feet.

"Shit, he's on to us. Go six or seven meters away and lay against the side of the corridor, with your feet pointed this way." Chalmers ordered his gunman. The man took one look at the paperback book size block of material he pulled from his jacket pocket and rushed to comply. He gave it an extra meter just to be sure, laying on his belly and covered his ears.

Chalmers split the piece on the center line along a grid precut into it. There was a plastic film on the back, he gripped with his teeth and peeled off. With adhesive exposed underneath, the blocks were jammed in opposite corners of the doorway. He rushed down the other way, pushing plugs in his ears. He looked back to see Dan had assumed the safe position and laid in the corner where the bulkhead met the deck, feet back toward the door. He stretched out arms overhead, radio detonator in his hand. He didn't want to hump his shoulders up and present a bigger cross section. He took a final breath and jammed the button under his thumb.

* * *

Jon felt a pulse under his feet and an instant later heard a muted - Whoomp! - and smacked the elevator wall flat handed in frustration. Nothing would make it go any faster.

April at the other end of the corridor, in a parallel elevator, felt much more as she was closer to her floor. The jolt actually make her reach out and touch the wall for balance, not frustration. The sound was not muted much. The doors were just ready to open and they visibly flexed and rattled from the pressure wave in the hall. When they opened she stood indecisive for a moment and they pulled her helmet faceplate back down and put it in spex mode. She eased her hand around the corner with her laser and used the weapon sight to look down the corridor both ways.

Nobody there, but there was some kind of box or luggage laying against the side down near her home. She double checked the power setting and activated the designator for infrared and started toward her door. The lights went out in the corridor and she brought the laser back up and touched the trigger to activate the targeting screen in her spex. The designator was a bright spot, but it provided enough scatter from the spot to make out the shape of the corridor. Everything was a pale sepia in the false colors of the sight. The lights flickered on for moment and went back out. The flickering on and off was harder to deal with than just staying out.

She got to the entry and it was a twisted wreck. The corridor wall opposite had torn pieces of lock hatch embedded in it. It made her sick to see her home violated. She stepped in carefully, feeling for her footing, both to avoid snagging her suit and to be quiet, holding the laser down and finger off the trigger. She didn't know if someone else might have night vision goggles, or spex that would work the same and could see the designator. Inside she could hear voices low and she turned up the gain on her helmet mics.

"I don't have a pair of goggles. Have you got some kind of light?" She didn't know him, but the voice was Dan.

"Hang on I have it, "Chalmers told him in hushed tones. She heard a whisper of cloth as he found his torch. Meanwhile she took small quiet steps forward, feeling each step before shifting her weight, sweeping left handed with her sword, still sheathed, in front of her knee high for obstacles. She should be able to see the living room and if they needed light to see, she should be safe to use the infrared designator herself.

She held it in close to her but pointed up a bit and touched the trigger lightly. In her helmet the ghostly sepia image showed her aiming dot bright on the opposite wall and two silhouettes. One standing doing something with his hands at his waist and the other hunkered down with the thin shape of a weapon sticking out from his body outline.

The dim image was suddenly washed over by normal vision through her faceplate. Chalmers had turned on a surprisingly bright little flashlight. and the beam made a wide bright pool of light at his feet. They were in normal clothing, unarmored and Chalmers appeared unarmed. Also visible beyond Chalmers was her father, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall between the bedroom doors. Extended in both hands was the .45 Colt she remembered.

A heart beat after the light came on, the muzzle of the .45 threw out a ball of flame as bright as the flashlight and a deafening boom which could be felt even through the sealed suit. Chalmers was violently thrown up and back and spun around from the impact of the big bullet. The flashlight went flying off toward the kitchen, flipping end over end and creating a crazy kaleidoscope of overlapping images, both real and from her spex. There was a second blast of light and sound from the .45, the ball of fire blooming toward where the other man had been in the dark and all sorts of racket as Chalmers fell and both Dan and her Dad moved quickly to new positions in the dark.

Just as quickly as it started the noise cut off, the last sound the flashlight rolling across the hard kitchen floor, where it stopped with an audible clink against something. The flashlight no longer illuminated anything, but a faint glow on the far kitchen wall, beyond the counter. Her eyes recovered a bit from the flashes and she saw a dark shape a bit to her right and the line of a long weapon angled up. She shifted her aim and with the designator illuminated him directly. She could see Dan's face in the false colors of the spex. He was on one knee, the rifle cradled against his stomach. She didn't recognize him. His eyes were comically wide straining to see in what was dark to him. He didn't raise it to his shoulder, but she saw the rifle twitch against his hip and heard a small but distinct metallic - snap - which she did not understand, then realized with sudden dread he had tried to fire from that odd position and she had failed to stop him, something else had, a problem with the weapon. She heard a low muttered - Shit! In the darkness he looked down even though he could not see the rifle and she heard mechanical sounds as he cycled the action. She quickly put the infrared dot in the middle of his chest, before he could try again and squeezed the trigger gently.

The whole room was illuminated in a blinding strobe of back scatter from the laser, like a lightening flash. Every detail frozen in stark shades of green and black. Chalmer's body, thrown carelessly on the floor in a already huge pool of black, loose limbs flung out like a drunk sleeping it off. Her dad squatting below the kitchen counter, his lunch still sitting on it above him, Colt still in both hands but pointed up at the overhead by his right shoulder, eyes like a snake, as unblinkingly intent as Dan's searching the dark. The only non-green in the fleeting scene, a flaring plume of yellow-white hot gas where a massive hole was vaporized deep into Dan's chest.

The laser was silent, but the steam exploding a crater in the man's chest was a wet tearing thud. Then dark when she let off the trigger again. The lights flickered on again for a moment and her dad was looking at her mouth open in a circle of surprise. Then they went off again. April fumbled in the dark to clip her laser back on the front of her suit. She was surprised to find her sword still in her left hand. Finally, hand free, she could get her faceplate flipped up.

The smell was strong of gun powder, blood, a horrible burnt pork stink from the laser and somebody's bowls which had let loose on the floor. All on top of her own tiresome stink in the suit. "You OK?" she called out fearfully.

Another strong voice from the corridor called, "April? Steve? You in there?"

Her dad replied, but showed good sense by going in the kitchen and retrieving the flashlight first, before heading cautiously across the room, staying well clear of Chalmers or his buddy. She remembered her helmet had lights and fumbled about finding the switch and slowly turned and made her way out ahead of her dad, through the remains of their entry, careful of the sharp ripped panels of stainless sheet.