Heart of the Nebula (35 page)

He pointed his gun at the door before
palming it open. Sara and the others followed him up the emergency
stairwell into the control room, guns held at the ready.
Fortunately, the place was empty.

“
It’ll be a while before
the AI gains control over the station,” said Sara as she ran to the
nearest terminal. “We might be better waiting here until it
does.”

“
How much time?”

She slipped the jewel out of her ear and
shrugged. “How should I know? It might be minutes, it might be
hours.”

“
We don’t have hours—and in
any case, it’s better to strike while we have the element of
surprise.” Not to mention that he didn’t want to be anywhere near
the station when the super-intelligence came to full
strength.

“
But—”

“
You handle the AI, I’ll
rescue the prisoners. Trust me.”

He sat down at a different screen and
brought up a map of the station. The main barracks were on the
other side from the freight yard, and he guessed that was where
most of the soldiers were. The supplies they’d stolen were in a
holding area just off to the side, while the armory was closer to
the barracks. As for the prisoners, it wasn’t clear where they were
being held.

“
Are we going back for our
supplies?” one of his men asked. The wrench in his hand was bloody,
and his hands still shook with nervous energy.

James thought for a minute. Without an
inventory of the supplies aboard the colony ship, it was hard to
make a judgment call. If the pirates hadn’t left them enough to
live on, stealing back some of their confiscated equipment could
save their lives—but if the Nabattans caught them in the act, they
could all die.

“
Not yet,” he said.
“Prisoners first, then supplies.”

But damn, how tempted he was to get those
wrist consoles back! It would certainly make coordinating their
attack easier. True, they risked the pirates seeing them before
they could rescue the prisoners, but—

No,
he told himself, clenching his fists to stop himself from
trembling.
Stay calm. Take one thing at a
time.
A cold sweat had formed in the back
of his neck, but he ignored it as he searched the map for any sign
of a prisoner holding area.

Where would he keep the girls if he were a
pirate? The meat locker? No, too small. The auxiliary cargo holds?
If the Nabattans had stolen supplies from all the other colony
ships, they were probably all full by now. The hydroponics modules
and waste treatment vats were out of the question, and as for the
barracks, they seemed a little tough to guard. If he were in
charge, he’d put them in an enclosed space with only one exit, such
as—

—
the station’s main docking
arm. Of course.

His eyes skimmed the map for confirmation.
All the ports along the arm were listed as occupied, even though
they had looked empty on the way in. The transport had docked at a
major freight airlock on an auxiliary arm, used only by large
haulers. But the final thing that convinced him was the fact that
the wall separating the main terminal from the barracks had been
removed, giving the pirates direct access to the arm itself.

Which also meant that every Nabattan on the
station would fall upon them the moment they raised the alarm.

“
Done,” said Sara, striking
the last key on the terminal with a bit of flourish. “Nina is loose
in their network and gaining self-awareness.”

“
Excellent. Can you give it
specific directives, like telling it to shut down cameras or lock
down doors?”

“
I don’t know. It’s
independent now, so it can choose to obey or disobey my commands. I
did give it the overriding objective to help us, but since it’s
self-learning, it could theoretically reprogram itself to do almost
anything.”

A
super-intelligence.
Shivers ran down the
back of James’s neck. Better make things quick—they had more things
to worry about now than just pirates.

“
Here,” he said, “I think
I’ve found the prisoners.” Sara peered forward along with the men
as he pointed to the map. “I think they’re being held here, in the
docking arm. It’s only got one entrance—well, one that doesn’t open
into hard vacuum—and it’s right next to the barracks.”

“
Then what’s the plan?” one
of his men asked. His face was noticeably pale.

“
I don’t know,” said James.
“If we’re going to do this quietly, we’ll either have to overwhelm
the guards the same way we did at the airlock, or—”

“
Why don’t we go in through
the freight mag-rail?” a young man asked. He looked to be James’s
age. “The two levels of the arm don’t connect internally, but if we
docked a shuttle at one of the nodes, we could connect them that
way.”

James smiled. “You’re a merchanter, aren’t
you? What’s your name?”

“
Alex, sir.”

“
All right, Alex, there
should be a shuttle in one of the bays on the colony ship. Do you
think you can hug the station close enough that you don’t show up
on the Nabattans’ sensors?”

Alex grinned. “Can I ever! I used to buzz
asteroids on my patrol runs just for fun.”

“
Then get out there and do
it. I’ll give you five minutes. If you don’t return before then,
I’ll assume you’ve found the shuttle and you’re on your
way.”

The boy nodded and sprinted out the door. A
few moments later, James saw him dash across the empty freight yard
towards the airlock, not bothering to hug the walls. The sight made
James cringe.

“
Sara, what about those
cameras?”

“
I’ve sent the order, but I
don’t know if Nina will obey. I assume she’s still in the
developmental stages.”

“
Good.” He turned to the
rest of the room.

“
All right, men, listen up:
I want to form a chain running along this mag-rail from the main
freight yard to the passenger arm. The weak points will be here—”
he said, pointing to the junction just below the terminal, “—and
here,” pointing to the inner airlock just below the connecting
passageway to the barracks. “I want armed guards posted at these
points, as well as watchers along the corridors leading to the
freight yard. We’ll run the chain through the corridors rather than
straight through the mag-rail line, to keep out of open spaces as
much as possible. If you see any soldiers, make for the colony ship
and warn everyone else along the way. Got it?”

The men nodded. James stood up straight.

“
Let’s go.”

* * * * *

Sara followed James down the maintenance
catwalk along the freight mag-rail, staying low with her back to
the wall. Up ahead, the inner airlock separated them from the
docking arm, but a small door next to the main lock showed that the
catwalk continued on the other side. She hoped it wasn’t
locked.

James stopped and motioned for the others to
be still. A small hatchway opened to a flight of tall, narrow
stairs leading up. According to the map, the barracks weren’t
far—only two levels above their current position. In the silence,
the sound of distant laughter filtered through the ventilation
shafts, making her shiver.

Very carefully, James swung the door until
the hatch was almost closed. Before he could close it, however, the
door groaned on its hinges, making him stop. Sara’s heart skipped a
beat—in the near silence, the groan sounded like a bomb blast.
Those with rifles pointed them at the hatchway, their hands
shaking.

No one came down. Apparently, the pirates
hadn’t heard the noise.

“
Let’s go,” James
whispered, motioning to the door. Without a word, Sara and the
others followed.

The door was unlocked, and it hissed open
when they palmed the access panel. James tinkered with it for a
moment to make sure it would stay open—they couldn’t risk making
any more noise than they had to. When he was finished, they stepped
briskly through.

“
Are you sure you want to
do this?” he asked as Sara walked up beside him. “It’ll be much
safer on the—”

“
I’ll be fine,
thanks.”

He nodded, and they slowed to a stop in the
center of the docking arm. Mid-sized freight airlocks poked off
from the docking nodes on all sides like apartments on a hallway
for giants, with the mag-rail line running down the middle. The arm
was relatively short, perhaps five hundred meters, but the eerie
silence of the place made it feel much larger. Sara’s stomach
flipped, probably from the weakened gravity this far out from the
station. That, and her own nerves as well.

“
Now we just need to figure
out which port they’re docked at,” James wondered aloud. “If only
we had our wrist consoles.”

A grinding noise only a couple nodes down
signaled the arrival of a ship. James raised his rifle and crept
forward. The airlock hissed open, and Alex leaned out.

“
Are you ready? Let’s
go!”

James stepped quickly into the shuttle’s
cargo bay, Sara and the others following close behind. Alex led
them up a steep stairwell, through a hatchway, and down the narrow
aisle of the passenger cabin to the main passenger airlock. They
stopped, and James motioned for the men with rifles to join him at
the door. Sara leaned over the faded blue seats to let them
pass.

“
On three,” said James. The
men pointed their guns at the door, while Sara ducked behind the
nearest row of seats.

“
One,” James counted. “Two.
Three!”

The door hissed open, and the three men
rushed in. A few women screamed, but no gunshots were fired, and
the noise soon quieted. Sara rose up and followed the others
through to the other side.

The sight on the other side made her gasp.
Torn mattresses and dirty blankets covered the mag-rail tracks and
catwalks, and the place smelled thick of urine and human waste.
Packed all up and down the hall were almost a hundred women, some
half-naked, almost all of them battered and bruised.

“
Sol, Earth, and Luna,” she
whispered, glancing across the room. The women stared back, some of
them frightened, others too far gone to care.

James lowered his gun and raised his hand.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, his voice barely loud enough to carry.
“We’re here to rescue you.”

A rumble of hushed conversation spread
through the crowd of prisoners, while the young men glanced about
uncertainly. James turned to Sara.

“
Can we fit them all on the
ship?” he whispered.

“
I—I don’t know,” she
answered truthfully. “The maximum capacity was eight hundred, but
there’s almost—”

“
We’ll make it work.” He
turned to his men. “All right, let’s lead them out in groups of
five—one leader for every five women. Move as quickly as you can,
but try to keep quiet, and don’t crowd the corridors. Got
it?”

His men nodded. Those with guns gripped them
tightly.

“
All right, then, let’s
move!”

The next few minutes were a blur of
activity. James decided to move all the women to the lower arm, to
put some distance between them and the soldiers—not to mention the
stench that permeated the upper docking arm. Sara went around
helping the ones who had been victimized the worst. What she saw
absolutely horrified her. Some were so battered they could barely
walk, while others huddled with their knees hugged up against their
chests, only getting up after several long minutes of cajoling.
Time blurred, and she soon lost track of how many she’d helped.

Many of them were people she
recognized—friends of friends, former academy classmates, and other
familiar faces from home. Most of them were from the other colony
ships, telling her that the Nabattans had done the same thing to
all the colonists.

As she helped coax the last prisoner to the
airlock, a noise sounded at the far end of the empty docking arm.
It sounded like someone at the—

“
James!”

The door hissed open just in time for James
to catch the first pirate in the chest with a crack shot. The man
went down with a grunt, while the sound of muffled shouts carried
into the empty docking arm.

“
Get inside!” James
shouted, waving at her. She grabbed the nearest prisoner and
practically dragged her into the shuttle as gunshots echoed
throughout the long hall. One of James’s men slipped past her and
fired at the pirates from the open airlock, the
ratatat
of the bullets beating a grim
rhythm. Sara turned, adrenaline pushing her forward, but hesitated
at the open doorway, not sure what to do. Fortunately, James came
running in a few moments later.

“
Shut it! Lock it down!”
His men quickly complied, ending the gunfight.

“
What’s going on?” asked
Alex. His eyes were wide, his face pale.

“
We’ve got to get back to
the ship,” said James, rushing past him to the lower airlock. “How
many are left?”

“
About forty, maybe
fifty.”

He stopped and cursed just as Sara caught up
with him. “That’s too many to take down the corridor—how many can
you take in the shuttle?”

“
I don’t know—twenty,
maybe,” said Alex. “But—”

“
Cram them in—we’ll take
the others through the station. Sara?”

“
I’m right behind
you.”