Mathew West sat alone on the stage of the Stardust Ballroom, a glorified lounge on Freedom Station. According to the clock he was supposed to be in the middle of his first set, but the room stood empty. Towering stacks of chairs marked the spots where the staff, in a panic, had abandoned their duties. He still didn't know what was going on. All he'd heard was rumors, wild tales of hostile ships swooping in through one Gate or the other. None of it made any sense.
He'd ventured briefly into the corridor outside, and found it jammed with panicky people elbowing each other aside without actually knowing where they were going. So he'd retreated to the stage, the closest thing to a safe place he could find in this unfamiliar tin can floating in deep space.
Jessica rested against his knee. She was his best guitar, a hand-crafted Patricia Stratton six-string, almost forty years old but the closest thing he'd ever found to acoustic perfection. She was locked securely in her case, the one concession he'd made to the apparent crisis.
From time to time an excited voice would harp at him from the speakers set in the ceiling. Some fool was shouting into a microphone somewhere, the volume overloading the system so that all West heard was an incomprehensible burst of sound.
He hoped it wasn't anything important.
If the crisis was real, he decided, he'd write a song about it. If not, he would write something melancholy about a man left behind on an empty stage while people rushed off to do important things. He hummed a few bars to himself, trying to piece together a few lines.
Outside, storms may blow and wars may rage/I'm safe here on my empty stage.
A man stuck head and shoulders through the doors at the far end of the room. He spotted West and said, "You have to get out of here, man! They're shooting at us. They already breached Deck Nine."
The man vanished before West could ask any questions. He swallowed, felt his ears pop, and frowned. For a long moment he sat there, weighing his options. Then he stood, lifted Jessica, and headed for the doors. He leaned his ample stomach against the door frame and leaned outside.
Instead of chaos he found the corridor eerily empty. That scared him, and he hurried down the corridor, imagining emergency pressure doors slamming shut and trapping him on the wrong side. He came to a broad staircase and paused, dithering. Voices shouted and footsteps echoed somewhere above, and he felt air moving past his face. The air was flowing down, which meant the hull breach, if there was one, was down below.
He lifted the guitar and hurried up the steps.
He found a dead man on the first landing. He stopped, staring. It was a skinny middle-aged guy, his head twisted at an impossible angle, his eyes staring blindly at the ceiling. It felt wrong to do nothing, but the man was beyond help.
West trotted up the stairs, panting.
A terrible thunderclap of sound came from somewhere far below, and the banister trembled under his fingers. The faint breeze against his face was suddenly a strong wind, and someone screamed up above. West muttered a curse and broke into a run, taking the stairs two steps at a time. He gasped for breath, wondering if it was the unaccustomed exercise or a lack of air.
He reached the top of the staircase and suddenly there were people everywhere, running from left to right. He joined the flow, his terror feeding on their terror. He wanted to ask what was going on, but he didn't have the breath.
"Evacuation," said a voice from hidden speakers. Either the acoustics were better up here or the man on the microphone had stopped shouting. "Make your way to the closest lifeboat. I repeat—" the speaker died in a burst of static, and West, with no idea where the nearest lifeboat was, continued to follow the crowd.
The corridor went dark, gravity failed, and his last step took him sailing upward. He clutched Jessica to his chest, his scream blending into the screams of everyone around him.
Gravity returned and he plunged toward the floor. He hit carpet, felt a stab of pain in his ankle, then grunted as his elbows hit the floor, followed a moment later by his forehead. Knees crashed against his ribs, and someone cried out as they tripped over him.
Lights came back on, and West heaved himself to his feet. He staggered, light-headed, wondering if it was anoxia. It was the gravity, he decided. It was on at no more than fifty percent. The pain in his ankle was fading, which was a relief.
Beside him a woman rose to her feet, crashed into his shoulder without seeing him, and fled down the corridor. He looked around, trying to get his bearings.
Flashing light caught his eye. There was a smart panel on the wall beside him, and it showed the words EMERGENCY LIFE BOAT in giant letters. An arrow flashed underneath, and he followed it into a narrow side corridor. A hatchway loomed before him, and he smiled, filled with a sudden relief. He could see "LIFEBOAT" stenciled above the opening.
He had one foot through the hatch when strong fingers closed on his shoulders from behind. Someone yanked him backward, and he turned, clutching Jessica to his chest. There were four men, burly and rough-looking, eyes wild with terror. The man in the lead, a thick-stomached man with hair the color of ketchup, tried to shove him aside, but there was simply no place to go. A fist crashed against West's forehead and he landed on his backside, halfway through the hatch. Grasping hands tore the guitar case from his fingers, and he cried out. Then fists and boots hammered into him. It was a mindless, frenzied attack, and he curled his arms around his head and drew his knees in, protecting himself as best he could.
A low buzz cut through the noise, and an electric tingle lifted the hairs on his arms. He looked up and saw one of his attackers flopping against the wall.
The buzz sounded again, then again. He recognized the sound of a stunner, less dramatic than it sounded in the vids. One man after another fell to lie twitching in the corridor. The one with the garish hair was still aiming a kick at West, oblivious to the attack, when one last stun beam caught him and he collapsed.
A man and a woman came forward, sturdy figures in blue coveralls. They filled the narrow corridor, working shoulder to shoulder as they dragged his attackers back to the corridor behind. When the last man was gone West rose to his feet.
A man stood at the junction of the two corridors, a slim, elegant figure in a business suit. He was in late middle age, with sharp, confident features. He held a stun pistol in his hand, and he said, "Mr. West. Are you all right?"
West nodded shakily.
"I couldn't let them harm you. You're a national treasure."
That was overstating things, but West said automatically, "Always nice to meet a fan."
"It was all for nothing anyway," the man said. "This lifeboat's damaged." He gestured at a red light blinking beside the hatch. "Come with me. We have to hurry."
West hurried after him, a figure in blue coveralls on either side. They had the corridor to themselves for a hundred meters or so. When they came to the next lifeboat station, they found a jostling crowd fighting for position. It looked like bedlam to West, just a hair short of a riot. He was sure that nothing short of liberal use of the stunner would bring the mob to anything resembling order.
His savior didn't raise the gun, though. He just said, "All right, that's enough." West, a professional musician for the last twenty years, knew a thing or two about projecting his voice. This man, though, could have given him lessons. His voice cut through the babble like a laser through tissue paper, and there was a moment of shocked silence.
"Form a line," the man said. "The next person who shoves someone gets left behind."
A big man turned, a belligerent challenge in his eyes, and the man in the suit looked at him. That was it. Just a look, from eyes that flashed with authority and righteous indignation. The big man had to be half again the man's weight, but he wilted like a scolded child. In moments there was an orderly line snaking back and forth, with people moving briskly down the narrow corridor that gave access to the lifeboat.
The man took West by the arm. "I want you on board that ship. You're a cultural icon. I won't have you dying here."
He took a step toward the front of the line, but West planted his feet. "I'm not jumping the queue."
The man gave him a hard look, and West almost gave in. Then the man nodded. "I can respect that. We'll wait our turn." The two of them moved to the end of the line. "I'm Dalton Hornbeck. I arranged for your visit."
West felt his eyebrows rise. Hornbeck was the administrator of Freedom Station, essentially the most powerful man in the entire star system. "Mr. Hornbeck. I've been wanting to thank you for bringing me all the way out from Earth. Now, though …"
Hornbeck laughed, then shook his head and grimaced. "I'm not sure if that's funny or not."
"Do you know what's going on?"
The administrator made a face. "Nothing good." He leaned closer and lowered his voice. "A Navy battleship came through Gate Six, and then, fifteen minutes later, we started getting emergency calls from all over. Three different ships and a research station either came under attack or just went silent. I know for certain that one ship was destroyed. Now the station is taking fire." He touched his ear. "The main data node is down, but I know at least half the station has lost air."
West shuddered. Sudden, catastrophic depressurization was every space traveller's nightmare. "Do you know who's doing it?"
"It has to be rebels from one of the colonies," Hornbeck said. "It's strange ships. Like nothing I've ever seen. Certainly hostile, though. They seem to have crippled that Navy ship."
West looked uneasily at the queue in front of him. More than a dozen people still shuffled along. He guessed he was a minute from the safety of the lifeboat.
Almost there. Looks like I'm going to make it.
A metallic boom echoed through the corridor, and a woman screamed. There was a sudden wind, and West leaned sideways, planting his feet. One of Hornbeck's companions, the woman in the blue coveralls, staggered, and he caught her by the shoulder, steadying her until she had her balance.
He glanced at Hornbeck, and the man surprised him by grinning. "I didn't get to hear your show, but at least the evening hasn't been dull!" If the man was frightened he hid it well, and by the look of him, the idea of jumping the queue hadn't even crossed his mind. West grinned back.
We won't die screaming, trying to trample the people ahead of us. We'll die like men.
Despite a sick knot of fear in his guts he thought,
This is going to make a hell of a song.
Step by step he shuffled forward, trying to catalog every sensation, every sound and smell. If he lived, it was going to be the stuff of a legendary ballad.
The man in blue coveralls stooped and moved through the hatch into the lifeboat, followed a moment later by the woman. West glanced at Hornbeck, who made an "after you" gesture.
West ducked, then glanced one last time into Freedom Station. Hornbeck stood straddle-legged, the wind whipping his silver hair around his face, waiting stoically for West to get out of the way.
"So long, Jessica," West murmured. Then he stepped through the hatch and into the lifeboat.
Hammett stood in the port-side lounge, fighting the urge to beat his fists on the steelglass in frustration. Every maneuver, every order, every communication took a maddeningly long time. His tactics were working, though. Cadet messengers had reported the destruction of half a dozen small alien craft and the damaging of several more. The little ships seemed to be pulling back now, out of the effective range of manually-aimed lasers. The actual range of the lasers was tremendous, of course. With a computer to assist in targeting, he could have carved the invading fleet into scrap.
Where the starboard lounge was laid out like a saloon, with tables and chairs and a bar along one wall, the port lounge was designed for quiet introspection. The only seating was a long couch facing the window. There was a telescope on a pedestal at one end of the room, and Hammett walked to it. He swiveled the cylinder around until it pointed at the distant gleam of Freedom Station, and pressed an eye to the eyepiece.
And swore.
A lifeboat filled his view, with little alien ships swarming around it like wolves pulling down a stag. He watched a chunk of the lifeboat's hull peel back and then tear away, felt his gorge rise as bodies erupted from the hole.
Beyond the lifeboat the station burned. There were gaps in the hull, and swirling walls of smoke where fires burned behind emergency force fields.
He tracked sideways, scanning the hull of the station. He saw a larger alien craft, perhaps half a dozen of the smallest ships joined together. It hovered a dozen meters or so above the station, playing a pillar of fire across the station hull. They seemed to get more firepower when they joined together.
A voice cried out somewhere nearby, a shout of triumph, and in the corner of his eye Hammett saw chunks of debris drifting past the window. The cadets were doing good work with the laser batteries. It seemed to catch the attention of the aliens. The amalgamated ship in the telescope broke off its attack, tilting and then surging toward the
Alexander
. Hammett felt a cold lurch in his stomach. It was worth it, though. A second lifeboat rose up behind the approaching vessel, then raced away into the darkness.
Hammett walked to the doorway of the lounge. "Good shooting," he bellowed. "It's working! We're drawing them away from the station." A cynical corner of his mind wondered if that would inspire the cadets, or discourage them. They were good kids, though. They always were. You didn't take up the profession of arms because you wanted to keep yourself safe.
He returned to the telescope and watched the amalgamated ship loom larger and larger. More ships merged with it, until he left the telescope and found he could see it with his naked eye. It was coming up rapidly from the aft. If more ships really meant more firepower, it would be capable of fearsome damage by the time it reached the
Alexander
.
Would it be big enough for the missile crew to hit it with the nuke?
He was turning away from the window when the enemy ship fired. A column of scarlet flame stretched toward him, and he flinched back from the steelglass. Fire touched the hull somewhere below his feet, one or two decks down. Laser fire lashed out, and he saw gleaming circles of red play across the surface of the enemy ship. If the laser batteries were doing any damage, he couldn't see it.
"It's got some kind of shield," he muttered. "But only when a bunch of ships come together." Well, that was what missiles were for.
The
Alexander
shuddered, and a cloud of vapor momentarily obscured his view. When it cleared he could see wreckage, spinning and tumbling as it moved away from the
Alexander
. He saw jagged chunks of hull, a couple of chairs, and then the body of a cadet.
"Christ!" He ran to the doorway and bellowed, "Thruster control! Can you hear me?"
A woman's voice echoed down the corridor, barely audible. "I'm on thruster control."
"Fire now!" He didn't know which thruster she was at, and he didn't care. The
Alexander
needed to move.
He heard the hum of a thruster, felt the deck move beneath his feet. A glance over his shoulder showed the stars sliding past, the enemy craft falling away aft as the
Alexander
turned. It was enough to spread the damage around and save them from another hull breach. He didn't need the ship spinning out of control, so he shouted, "Cut thrust!"
The thruster hummed for several more seconds, then stopped.
Hammett could smell scorched metal and burned plastic. People screamed in the distance, and he heard running feet. The emergency force fields would not have come up, not without computer control. The automatic fire suppression system wouldn't work either.
He had a small core of experienced crew, though, and plenty of willing cadets who would pitch in to help. Someone would be patching the hole by now. Someone would be fighting the fire.
In the meantime, he had that enemy ship to worry about. Was it big enough and close enough to hit with a missile?
He was about to find out.
A metallic clang echoed through the ship, then another, and another. He imagined the blond cadet slamming that fire extinguisher against the deck plates. There was a fourth clang, and then a fifth. And then silence.
Hammett wanted to run to the starboard lounge. He wanted to watch the missile race toward its target. The ship was still turning, though, so he stayed where he was at. The stars moved past in stately majesty, and then he saw the alien ship.
Relief hit him hard enough that he staggered. Not much remained of the enemy vessel. A small alien craft, perhaps two of the smallest ones joined together, tumbled through the void less than a kilometer from the
Alexander
. There were other bits of metal, small ships ripped apart by debris from the explosion. These, he guessed, were outlying craft that had been coming in to link up with the larger ship. They had been shredded when the nuclear explosion had reduced the larger craft to so much jagged shrapnel.
Of the larger ship, nothing remained. Whatever hadn't been vaporized in the blast had been flung into the depths of space. It was simply gone.
The
Alexander
continued to spin, and the wreckage slid aft and disappeared from sight. What had the range been when they fired the missile? Five hundred meters? Eight hundred? What were the odds of hitting anything smaller than a space station by dead reckoning at that kind of range?
We were lucky
, he thought.
We were very, very lucky
.
Without scanners it would be very difficult to tell how many alien ships remained. He saw nothing through the windows. Were they annihilated? He doubted it. Fleeing in disarray? Regrouping, and preparing for another attack?
Swarming Freedom Station instead?
He had done what he could for the station, Hammett decided. He'd given them time to evacuate. It was time to retreat from the battlefield and see if he could repair what was left of his ship.
"Hello?"
Hammett turned from the window and walked to the doorway of the lounge. A cadet stood at the intersection of two corridors, a familiar pile of firefighting and medical equipment near her feet. She peered in every direction and said, "I'm looking for Captain Hammett."
"Over here." He waved.
She trotted down the corridor and said, "Lieutenant Rani says to tell you she has the main engines working."
"Go tell her to fire them up. Tell her it doesn't matter which way we're pointing." There was very little to run into, and nowhere in particular to go. They simply needed to flee.
The cadet ran toward engineering. Hammett watched her go, collecting his thoughts. He would visit a couple of thrusters, and have the cadets make random course adjustments. Wherever they ended up, it would be impossible for the enemy to predict. He plodded down the corridor, deep in thought. "What we need is a destination."
A face appeared ahead of him as a woman peeked around a bend in the corridor. She was out of uniform, he was surprised to note. He didn't recognize her until she spoke. "How about Baffin?"
He said, "You're that reporter."
She nodded. "Now I'm your civilian auxiliary corps." She grinned.
"That was you firing the thruster?"
"Yup. Did I do all right?"
"You were perfect." He frowned. "What did you say before? About a puffin?"
"Baffin. It's a research and mining station on Kukulcan."
He frowned, irritated that a civilian knew more about the system than he did. "It's new, I take it?"
"They built it six or eight months ago." She closed her eyes for a moment, thinking. "There's only about a dozen people there. Most of it's automated."
It didn't sound like much of a haven, but it was all he had. "All right," Hammett said. "I'll need you to stay at the thruster controls. You're an expert now." He moved past her and headed for the nearest ladder. Navigating to Kukulcan was going to be just about impossible. Just getting the ship pointed in roughly the right direction would be a logistical nightmare that he didn't want to contemplate.
"If you see any cadets," he said to Janice, "send them to the bridge." He was going to run them ragged, but he was going to get the ship to Baffin.