Then a sparkle of light appeared, somewhere in the gloom . . . a tiny bright line, then another line.
"Lights," she said to the professor.
As they drew closer, she could see that the lights outlined an ordinary runway, and other lights showed in buildings nearby. It looked so normal. . . .
The plane landed hard, bounced, came down firmly, and she rocked forward as the brakes caught. Instead of rolling up to one of the lighted buildings, the plane swung aside near the end of the landing strip. The NEMs were on their feet as soon as it landed. Margiu, lacking orders, stayed where she was; she and the professor had earbugs set to the same communications channel. Another plane, then another, came to a stop near them. In the dark, with only faint light from the runway lights, Margiu could just make out dark figures leaving one of the other planes.
Then someone forward opened the hatch of their plane, and a cold breath of sea air swirled into the plane, past the dark forms. Someone else muttered an order, and the troops began to move out into the night. Major Garson's voice in her earbug sounded calm: "Professor—you and the ensign come on, now." The professor heaved himself up, and Margiu scrambled out of her seat to follow him.
Outside, it was colder, but slightly less dark; Margiu could tell the professor from the others as a slightly lighter blur. She pulled up the hood of her PPU against the chill and stayed close to his side. A delicate red line pointed the way; someone had their laser guide on. She could feel the rasp of the runway surface under her boots. Was it safe? No one had fired a shot yet, and the troops seemed to know where they were going. She wasn't sure where the first troops had gone; she couldn't see them anymore.
"Looks secure for now, Professor," the major's voice spoke again in her earbug. "Come on inside."
Margiu felt more than saw the troops closing in around them, a protective cordon, guiding them to one of the buildings near the landing strip. Ahead, a door opened, spilling out yellow light. She blinked, tried not to stare at the welcome light, but watched for any threat. She couldn't see anything but the troops who had come with them, and the dark night beyond.
Inside, Major Garson was talking to a lieutenant commander; both of them looked tense and unhappy. Armed guards stood at each exit. Margiu looked past them to the civilians—the other scientists, she supposed—in the large room.
"Oh, Lord, it
is
Gussie," one of the civilians said to the others. "Complete with that ugly yellow jacket and a cute redhead in tow . . ."
"She's not a cute redhead in tow, she's Ensign Pardalt." The professor nodded at her. "Show some respect; she's a very intelligent young woman—"
"Meaning he talked your ear off and you didn't object," the other man said, flashing a smile at Margiu. "I'm Helmut Swearingen, by the way." He turned back to the professor.
"When you didn't show up this morning, Gussie, and then those people took the station, we were afraid you'd been captured—"
"How far have you gotten?" the professor asked.
The other man grimaced and nodded toward the officers near the door. "Nowhere. As soon as we heard—and Ty was on the radio, trying to find out where you were, so we heard right away—I went to our base commander and told him we should start dismantling the work in progress, destroying notes. He wouldn't have it—insisted he had to wait for orders, that we were under Fleet discipline. Even said we might be mutineers ourselves. He's had us under guard, in this room—"
"What's he like?" the professor asked, in a lower voice.
"A worrier. The only good thing about him is that he's technically trained, so at least he's understood some of what we're doing. He's actually got an advanced degree, studied with Bruno at the Gradus Institute. But he's got a serious addiction to regulations, and he claims regulations won't let him make any independent decisions about what we have here."
"We don't have time to waste. What's his name?"
"Alcandor Vinet."
The two officers were glowering at each other now. Margiu looked from one to the other.
"Excuse me," the professor said. "Commander Vinet? I'm Professor Aidersson; you were expecting me this morning—"
"You're late, Professor," Vinet said. "But I suppose, under the circumstances, this is understandable."
"Yes," the professor said. "Now that I'm here, I'm taking charge of the research unit. We'll need to start clearing away files before the mutineers can capture—"
"You can't do that," Vinet said. "It's out of the question. I've had no orders from Headquarters—"
"Under the circumstances—" the professor began.
"He's got the highest level clearance and authorization," Garson said. "And I've got orders cut at Dark Harbor, directing you to give your complete cooperation."
"Dark Harbor's not in my chain of command," Vinet said. "And you don't have the rank, Major. How do I know you're not all mutineers, anyway?"
"All of us?" the professor's eyebrows rose steeply. "That's an interesting hypothesis, but do you have any data to support it? Why would mutineers want to deny other mutineers highly effective weaponry? I'm more inclined to suspect someone who tries to preserve it intact for capture."
Vinet turned red. "Are you accusing me of being a mutineer?"
"Not at all," the professor said. "I'm merely pointing out that your refusal to carry through on the very reasonable suggestions of my colleagues, or the orders I'm giving you, could be misunderstood in case of later investigation."
"That's ridiculous! This installation is extremely valuable; the equipment alone is worth—"
"Worthless to the Familias if it gets into the wrong hands. Worse than worthless. Don't you understand that?"
"Well . . . of course, but there's no proof the mutineers are after it. They may not even know about it."
"You're assuming they're stupid? That's not a good position to take. Commander, I'm afraid I must insist on your cooperation."
Margiu noticed Garson's signal to his troops. So, she saw, did Vinet. He sagged a little.
"Very well. But it's over my protest, and I will log this. If you had not barged in here with overwhelming force, you'd find yourself in the brig for such nonsense."
"Thank you," the professor said, with perfect courtesy. "I appreciate your position, and your assistance."
He led Margiu back to the cluster of civilians.
"Gussie, we had an idea—" one of them said. "Maybe we could mount the—" he lowered his voice, and Margiu heard only a mumble. "And then attack the mutineers."
"Mount it on a planet?" The professor pursed his lips. "That's interesting—that might actually work, if we have time. Do we have the supplies for adequate shielding?"
"Yes, if we dismantle a couple of other things. Oh, and Ty was working on breaking into their communications before Vinet snatched him out of the communications shack and stuck him in here with us."
The professor glanced at Margiu. "Ensign, you're going to be hearing many things you should not hear, and which I advise you to forget as quickly as possible. Do you have any specialty background in technical fields?"
"Aside from growing up making what we needed from scrap, no. Basic electronics and carpentry."
"Well, that may be useful. Come along; we're going to the labs . . ."
They began with a short meeting in what looked like a snack lounge, with a row of programmable food processors on one wall and battered chairs and couches around the others. A half-finished child's model of a space station cluttered the low table. Margiu had not suspected scientists of playing with such toys, and someone quickly moved it to a far corner.
"What have we got for communications?" the professor asked. "Ty?"
A skinny man with a bush of black hair came forward. "They've got the sats, but we can reach mainland with something I cobbled together. I want to send the specs for it over there, so they can build their own quickly. Getting into the mutineers' lines is going to be harder; they've got tight-link capability up there. But they've transmitted some outside that—I suspect to downside confederates—and that I can grab, if I have access to the equipment. I can tight-link if you give me an hour or so—it only takes reconfiguring some modules from one of the labs—but we don't have anyone to send to."
"What about scan? Can we detect anything beyond atmosphere?"
"Well—only for whatever's in our horizon. The problem's going to be tracking, not to mention what's below horizon. Knurri had a telescope with a motorized equatorial mount we could've used, but he took it with him when he went on leave. We can point something up, but we won't have an accurate fix if we do find a ship."
"Do you need anyone else to help you?"
"No, not really. There's a pretty decent enlisted tech I could use, but I'm a little worried that the mutineers had one or more agents on this base—and he'd be the logical one."
"Fine—Ensign, get Ty an escort from our group to the communications shack, would you?"
She was supposed to guard his back, but this required only going to the door. Lieutenant Lightfoot was outside, waiting; he called over two NEMs who went off with Ty.
"Now—Cole, you said you had an idea?"
"Yeah—Jen and I think it might be possible to rig the big guy for planet-to-space work. We've been trying to come up with the best way to acquire and track the target—"
"Which target?"
"Well . . . we're pretty sure we can take out the orbital station, and any ships docked there. Distant stuff, without the use of satellite-based scans, is going to be harder—"
"But I think we could do it," a woman said. "If we take out the station, then get the satellites linked to us—"
"How many hours?" the professor asked.
"Six or seven to mount the weapon, and it'll take a lot of personnel."
"We may not have six or seven hours," the professor said. "We need to know if they're coming, and how soon. Jen, what about scan within atmosphere? Is there any way to get access to the satellite data?"
"Not right now. What we have here is basically old-style radar, for spotting and guiding air traffic, and a little local-weather scanner. The range is so short that we couldn't spot incoming LACs in time to do anything useful. We haven't needed more than that; we had the satellite data for longscan. We really need those satellites, and for that we'll need to break their lock. It's not going to be easy, and it's going to take time."
"Which, again, we may not have. Bob, what about Project Zed?"
"Operational. And we really don't want them to have it."
"It actually works?"
"Oh yeah. If this were a ship, and not an island, I could flip the switch and they'd never find us. A big improvement over the earlier models. Unfortunately, as it is an island, it's easily located no matter what cloud we wrap around ourselves."
Margiu realized with a start that they were talking about new stealth gear.
"Could it be used to cover a retreat in the aircraft? If we took the data and ran for the mainland?"
"I suppose." The other man looked thoughtful. "We haven't tried it on aircraft . . . how much can those planes lift?"
"I'll ask," the professor said. He glanced at Margiu, who headed for the door again. She passed the question off to Lightfoot, and went back to the professor. In that brief interval, the discussion had already turned too technical for her understanding, but it came to an abrupt end when someone pounded on the door.
"Come in," the professor called.
Ty came in. "I've found two things—one's a datalog showing transmissions to this station from Stack Three five days ago. From Bacarion. I think someone here's on their payroll."
"Most likely," the professor said. "And?"
"And a transmission from orbit to this station, just now. Personal for Lieutenant Commander Vinet."
"For Vinet! I'd never have guessed he was part of it," Swearingen said. "He's such a fusspot. Did you answer it?"
"No, just acknowledged receipt, using the same sig code that was logged for reply to the others. But I did take a look—"
"Wasn't it encrypted?" someone asked.
"Yah, but a simple one. Not hard to break. Thing is, he's not only part of it, they were telling him they'd be coming down in a day or so, and not to worry—that they'd prevented anyone from sending word from the station. So here we are, nobody else knows what's going on."
Margiu spoke up. "We have to get word out somehow!"
The professor looked at her. "You're quite right, Ensign. And we have to keep them upstairs from finding out that we're here, if possible, to give ourselves time to work—to get word out somehow, to destroy what we can't protect."
Margiu noticed that he didn't say "to get away safely."
"We'll need the troops that came with you, Gussie, to keep the baddies out of our hair."