Rimrunners (39 page)

nothing you could do but stand there while it climbed and lurched past the core…

Thump, thump, thump of the fueling pump, louder than the siren for a few

seconds, whole floor of the lift shaking—

If that bastard Fitch is conning me, if he just wants me to move—

The ship rang and shook as if a hammer had hit it. She grabbed for the

safety-rail and white-knuckled it, taste of blood in her mouth where she had

bitten her lip—

God! Have we been hit, or was that fire?

Little ship, pinned to station, could be us doing the firing—

Could be—

The lift stopped at the top, opened on the bridge. She headed out as the siren

quit, passed Goddard yelling at her, Goddard sitting at his post, a khaki blur

to her as she ran. It was the topside locker she was headed for, and that was

standing open, Fitch was in there already suiting up.

"What was it?" she said, jerked the zip open and started peeling, fast.

Fitch said: "Friends of yours."

"The hell!—Is it Africa?"

"They've used every ID in the book. We don't know a hundred percent who it

is.—Shit!"

"Easy, back it up—you're going to strip those damn ring-seals." She grabbed

after Fitch's problem, but he got it, shoved her off, and she stepped into her

own armor-breeches, threw the lever that seated it solidly around her, rammed

her feet down into the boots and worked her toes into those while she came up

under the hanging top-section and wriggled her arms and her body up into it,

helmet and all.

Solid mate. Throw the latches. Sleeves last, mating at the mid-shoulder, left

and right, tension engaged, screw the rings tight and not too tight.

She beat Fitch by a second, seals and all. She heard her own breathing and

Fitch's, felt a shock rock the ship and saw the audio reading jump.

She muttered: "Was that them firing or us?"

"Us." Fitch turned, flat-footed the way a neo learned to move, powered-on and

lurched after balance.

Firing every time the station's rotation gave them a target. "We're assuming

they want the fuel we're holding?"

"Say it's a good assumption."

"What've we got on us? Rider, carrier, or both?"

"Suppose, Yeager, you just leave the thinking to somebody else."

"What they're going to do, sir, they're going to knock hell out of this station,

leave us with a major problem, like a couple thousand people with no fuckin'

life-support, sir—"

"That hasn't bothered you before now, has it, Sgt. Yeager?"

She got a breath, kept her body loose, kept on the track. "They're going to

chaff our fire, sir, after which they're going to punch a major hole in Thule

Station, after which there's none of our guns any fuckin' use, sir."

"We understand the situation, Yeager, trust us we know our options—"

"Twenty years on Africa, tac-squad sergeant, sir, I ran these operations from

the other side. You got yourself a boarding situation, sir, and my advice—"

"Twenty years on this ship, out-fighting you and your murdering friends—and you

can take your advice to hell, Yeager!"

"My advice, sir, is get ready to blow the tanks they want and the pump, let 'em

kmow that, and get ourselves out on that dock and get ourselves some room, sir,

because they got no trouble getting into this ship, from inside or outside, I

can swear to that, sir."

Just the breathing. Then finally: "Ship out there is probably India. It's using

a merchanter ID. That's a rider-ship inbound. Maybe two of them."

"It's Ganges or it's Tigris, we got two AP's and two rigs and either of them's

got at least thirty, at least one whole tac-squad with the weapons-sync we

haven't got, and they aren't fools. They can use an insystemer dock, they'll get

their squad on station, core or rim—rim, if they know Thule, they'll punch right

through the section-seals, and meanwhile we may have the other rider coming up

under us and a second squad coming right through our hull into Personnel with

another thirty guys, that's what."

Fitch didn't like that. Didn't say a thing.

"So you give the orders, sir, whatever you want from here."

Two little blips on station-scan, other side of station, one more on long-scan,

only the best-guess of position. Absolutely. Goddard didn't like having her

standing behind him, Goddard probably didn't like being there himself. "We're

going to dockside," Fitch told him, on outside-speaker. "You're on your own.

Tanks go at your discretion."

"Yessir," Goddard said, and glanced away for a second to flip a switch. "Good

luck, sir."

Hadn't heard the lock cycle. Usually you heard the hydraulics work, it even got

through the pump-noise, and she hadn't heard a sound. She kept thinking, He's

waiting, we're still firing, he's waiting to the last minute—

God, God, NG, get out—

"Where's crew?" she asked Fitch when they got into the lift. "Station shelter?"

"Deep as we can get them." The lift started down. "Holding Central at gunpoint.

We got some faint hearts. You ought to be right at home with that situation."

"As happens," she said, calm and quiet. "Yessir." She fired a shot of her own.

"You volunteer for this?"

"I got my pick of crew," Fitch said.

"Tanks are rigged?"

"Tanks are rigged. Goddard's got that business."

"Goddard going to get clear?"

Silence.

Son of a bitch, she thought. And didn't say anything. Couldn't say anything.

The lift touched bottom. She kept thinking, walking out behind Fitch, I could

kill this bastard.

Take him apart.

Joint by joint.

"You going to order Goddard clear, sir?"

"Goddard's in command up there. It's his choice." Fitch opened up the

weapons-stowage. "This is what we've got."

AP 200's, shells, caps, remotes. She picked up a remote and a roll of fine wire,

spotted a box of Gibbs-caps and reached for it. Fitch got his hand in the way

and took charge of the remote.

"We got heavy demolitions? Station's got to have, sir, miner-supplies."

Fitch didn't answer her. Fitch passed her an AP and a handful of slings of

shells.

"Demolitions," she repeated. "Sir. Where?"

"We're taking care of that."

"Dammit, sir, you trying to commit suicide, or what?"

Fitch shifted around, looked her direction. Clumsy. And she wasn't. Damn right

she wasn't. Maybe Fitch was thinking about that. Likely Fitch was thinking all

along about that.

"Do these rigs have a direct comlink with theirs?"

Reasonable question. "Yes, sir, they can have. Riders are probably trying to

pick up Loki's internal stuff. Might get a bit of it. Just keep to channel B,

between us. They probably haven't got the 'ears they'd need for that, not on a

rider-ship."

"Can you get into their comlink?"

Second reasonable question. "Can't mimic their ID, sir. I can talk to 'em, I can

hear 'em, but I'll show up as another number on their board the second I go onto

Fleet-com, and I'll show as Africa. They thought of that a long time ago."

"Don't think they'd welcome you?"

"Nossir. My codes aren't current and they'll blow me to hell on a special

priority. That relieve your mind, sir?"

"No end," Fitch said, picked up his stuff, laid a hand on her shoulder and

pushed. "Out."

She moved, slung her AP and her shells over her left shoulder, tucked the wire

and the caps in a third shell-sling and headed for the lock, thinking right then

that there was an outside chance, she could go onto India-com, she knew names,

lot of old drinking-buddies on India and they knew her and they knew Teo and

Bieji Hager. They might at least wait-see, damn, she could go on that band and

Fitch wouldn't know—

Tell them watch out for a schiz Systems man and get him out alive—

On India. Take NG into the 'decks.

Sure, he'd thank her for that.

She followed Fitch out the lock, down the ramp, onto docks she had bad dreams

about.

Section-seals-were in place, like walls at either end of the section. Personnel

access to get through those was down at the coreward edge of the seals, airlock

passage in the arch of the seal-doorways. Four section-seals on Thule, to

separate the docks and keep a decompression from going station-wide. Up above,

she could see the constant yellow flash of movement in the hoses, the pump still

shoving its load into Loki's gut.

They said Mazian still had ways of supplying himself, said he had some deep

base, maybe old Beta Station itself, where nobody in his right mind would go—but

supply lines only went so far, and Fitch said India was that desperate. That

meant India was likely being shoved, run, pushed off her regular supply points,

off in the deep—and that meant Alliance ships able to keep her from moving on

stations.

Little Loki could have gone on as she was, sat silent while India refueled and

provisioned herself off Thule—and Loki instead put herself in the way of

trouble. Chance was, Loki hadn't known India was coming in, just had the bad

luck to be going into dock, leaving a heat-trail India could pick up like a

beacon, and Loki couldn't run.

But chance also was that Wolfe had known India was in the game. Chance was, when

they'd dodged out-system in a hurry that had killed a man, when Wolfe had been

on the general com after that, saying they'd had a carrier-class bogey—Wolfe had

known what he was playing tag with.

They'd talked with some Alliance ship, Wolfe had said that much. They'd traded

information, after which Loki had jumped to Thule.

Old spook, her systems chancy to the point of suicide—a mostly-stripped station

due for demolition—

Easy equation, the way high commands did math.

"Know something?" she said to Fitch. "We were supposed to have help here. And we

sit out there waiting. But we got to have fuel, we don't get this ship out of

here without it, so we decide to move on our own, we were going to go in, raid

that fuckin' tank, blow the pump and get out, hell with the stationers. But it

wasn't our support showed up, it was India—am I right?"

No answer from Fitch, she thought. Then:

"Half-right. We come in on inertial approach, close and quiet as we can. We

could've blown that pump, could've ordered station to do it. If we could get

that fuckin' carrier out of the equation our last rendezvous could have spared

us enough to get us to 'Dorado, but it wasn't and they couldn't. So we come in

here with a problem, Ms. Yeager, and it hasn't gotten anything but worse. Right

now, we got those riders sepped off at low V. The way they're acting, the speed

they used getting here, we're right and they're that low, no mass in those tanks

to speak of. So we're playing dumb little merchanter—like they can move in here

real fast and easy and make a little ship like us spit it up again. Only by now

they've got a look at us up close, now they know they got a real problem unless

they can take us, and they know it's a trap that's going to close. That what you

want to know?"

Made sense. For the first time she got the feeling Fitch was on the level.

"Meaning we got help possible?"

"Meaning we've caught ourselves a Fleet carrier. Meaning that sonuvabitch Keu is

dead V at this star and we're blowing every skimmer Thule's got, disabling the

section-seals, we're going to take out that pump, and we're sitting here

throwing missiles at those rider-ships they can't throw back, because they don't

want to blow the pump or our tanks. We've been getting amnesty-offers for the

last half hour."

Fitch surprised her. You got him started and the man could talk.

"Keu won't keep his word," she said. "Kreshov might, he's one captain in the

Fleet that might, but not Keu —You trusting Mallory, by any chance?"

"Not by choice," Fitch said.

Funny as hell. Spook officer and an Afriker with the same opinion. She almost

appreciated Fitch for that half-second

"Don't trust you, either," Fitch said then. "But you've got Ramey to think

about. Ship blowing up's not the worst thing that could happen to Mr. Ramey—not

with his particular problem. Boy can't take orders. How long do you think he'd

last, on India?"

She didn't say anything. Didn't think it called for it.

"Just insurance," Fitch said. They got to the seal-door airlock, likeliest

access with the giant seal-doors disabled from Central. Fitch waved a hand in

the general direction of the lock, invited a fool to go ahead, try to open it.

"You want to critique the job, Yeager, you go right ahead."

"Hell, no, sir, if Mr. Bernstein or Mr. Smith had anything to do with those

airlock controls, I got every confidence. I just want to do me some basic

wiring, if you don't mind, sir, a half-dozen AP rounds, just put their caps in

and peel their backsides off."

Fitch hitched his shell-slings up on his shoulder. "You want to do that, I'm

going to take me a little walk over there."

She halfway grinned. "Know what mof stands for—sir?"

"Yeah," he said, and walked off. The com said: "It stands for, I stand over

here, and you wire it, Yeager."

CHAPTER 29

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Something blew, you could feel it through the deckplates, and a nervous skut