Torchship (7 page)

She moved to the full
spectrum scanner. Maybe there was another ship out there. The scanner showed nothing
on the voice channels except Kronos’ background radiation. A high frequency
channel showed a strong signal. Mitchie frowned and tuned the speakers to it.
White noise. Something out there was transmitting a lot of data.

She studied the sky. The
chasm they were hiding in was narrow but long. She opened up the communications
console and switched the scanner’s cable from the omnidirectional to a
parabolic antenna. Rotating that would show what direction the signal came
from. If a research ship was out there she might be able to hit it with a
tightbeam distress signal. Two ships cooperating might be able to keep the
pirate out of cannon range if it found them again.

The crank for the parabolic
was set into the deck. Mitchie braced herself against the console and started
turning it. Every thirty degrees or so she peeked up to see if the scanner
display had changed. It had started with the signal at high intensity which
should mean the antenna pointed straight at it. After 180 degrees the signal stayed
strong, only showing minor fluctuations. She turned it through another full
circle before accepting the bad news. Mitchie pressed the intercom button for
Bing’s handcomm. “Hey. Um. We’re transmitting something.”

“What?” The first mate didn’t
want to believe it either.

“There’s a high-frequency
data transmission coming from our ship.”

Bing cursed. She’d been
napping in the hold to keep an eye on the passengers, and because she didn’t
have a bunk any more. Now she unhooked her tether and bounded over to where the
astronomers slept. Once she had a firm foothold she grabbed the nearest grad
student by the ankle and shook him hard. “Is that thing on?” she barked.

“Gah! What?” protested the
hapless academic.

“Your camera! Is it on?”

“Of course it is, it’s
collecting data continuously.”

“Is it transmitting anything?”

“What? No! That’d get us all
killed!”

“Check it.” She flung him at
the gadget. He didn’t land gracefully, just wrapped himself around the
observatory and held on enough to not bounce. One look at First Mate Bingrong
was enough to make him swallow all complaints. He turned to align himself with
the controls and started typing.

The commotion had woken up
most of the passengers. When the grad student shrieked, “Holy shit!” even Billy
woke up. A frantic flurry of keystrokes ended with a report of, “Okay, it’s off
now. Someone turned on the real-time imagery broadcast.”

Bing had already taken a
headcount. “Where’s Mr. Mussa?” she called. Uncle John launched himself at the
portable refreshers. He yanked open both doors. Empty. The astronomers all
began babbling their denials of responsibility for the disaster. Her handcomm
added to the noise with Mitchie’s confirmation that the transmitter was off. “Everybody
shut up! Who saw Mussa last?”

Bing’s victim said, “He was
in his tent, next to mine, when I went to sleep.”

“Anyone else see him go
anywhere?” demanded Bing. Headshakes all over the hold. As she scanned the
faces a drifting object caught her eye. Mussa’s dumb-reader, its back panel
open, revealing an empty compartment where a library’s worth of read-only datacrystals
should be. “Billy! Go below and look for him. Be careful.” The deckhand gave
her a vague wave and headed for the hatch. Bing pulled out her handcomm. “Guo,
what’s your status?” No answer. “Guo, report!”

The answer was Mussa’s voice.
“He’s fine, Mate Bingrong. Just going to sleep a bit longer than he planned is
all.”

Bing switched channels. “Captain!
It’s in the impeller!”

“On my way.”

She switched back to Guo’s
channel. Mussa was saying, “—so don’t bother trying to get at me. And I’ve taken
a few key pieces off the converter so we’re all staying here for a while.”

Billy gave up wrestling with
the hatch. “It’s jammed good. I can suit up and go in the lower airlock.”

Bing shook her head. She
spoke into the handcomm. “You realize you’ve locked yourself into a ship with a
lot of people who don’t like you very much now, right? But if you come back to
our side now we’ll be nice instead of making you learn how to breathe vacuum.”

Mussa laughed. “I think I’m
safer on this side. And much better paid. I suggest you find a way to hand the
girl over that doesn’t leave you all in a vacuum.”

Captain Schwartzenberger
arrived in the hold. The passengers gathered around him and Bing as she briefed
him. “When did the broadcast start?” he asked. One of the grad students went
back to the observatory to check. Five hours ago during Billy’s sample
collecting. “Billy, disconnect the lower deck air feed.” One of the teenagers
gasped in shock. The captain grinned in a not reassuring way. “They’ll still
have air. But it’ll get stale in a while. We’ll see if that makes him flexible.”

“Could you cut open that
hatch?” asked a passenger.

“We could, if we didn’t keep
the welding gear in the converter room.” Several less-practical suggestions
were tossed at the captain. He dealt with them calmly. Billy’s request to try
the airlock met a gentle reminder that the airlock hatches were as easy to jam
as the deck ones. When acrimony broke out among the astronomers over who should
have been protecting the gadget from Mussa the captain let his mate handle
calming it. He took Bobbie and John aside for another discreet chat. “I hope it
doesn’t come to this but I have a firearm. I can lend it to you if you’re a
better shot.”

John answered for them. “Thank
you, but we’re equipped.”

“Offnet capable?”

“Yes.” John was too
professional to take offense at the accusation he could be that naïve.

“Good. You’re welcome to
shift to my cabin. Left-hand door at the end of the corridor. Access combo
one-two-three.”

“Thanks again. We’ll do that
if we need to. For now I’d rather be where we can see what’s coming.”

“Your business. Let me know
if there’s anything else I can do.” Schwartzenberger went back up to the
bridge, stopping at his quarters on the way. He filled Mitchie in. She took it
more calmly than he’d expected. A quick test confirmed that Mussa had taken the
converter out of action.

“I could run the maneuvering
thrusters off the auxiliary. But we’d get less than a grav out of them,”
Mitchie said.

“Don’t bother,” the captain
replied. “At this point we’re just hoping the Navy gets here in time. Well—if
you see a boarder coming do that. We can try to run his jetpack dry.”

“I’ll keep an eye out. But
this place is going to be in full dark in a couple of hours.” The chasm was lit
only by sunlight reflecting off one rim already. “It’ll be seven hours until
sunrise then.” Schwartzenberger grunted. “But I’ll watch for any torch plumes,”
she promised. A loud buzzing started up. “What the hell is that?”

“A reaction mass pump running
with no load,” growled the captain. “Mussa’s figured out how to cover the noise
of us getting boarded.”

“That must be really loud in
the hold.”

“Probably. I’ll go help Bing
hold down the panic.” By the time Schwartzenberger reached the hold everyone
was calm if tense. The tension kept going up as they waited.

The first one to snap under
the strain was the pump. The steady buzz became a rhythmic beat. “Great. Now
we’re going to have to completely replace that,” groused the captain to Bing.
She reassured him that it would be covered by Bobbie’s insurance. He replied, “
If
we get her home.”

The sought after passenger used
the beat to sing along to. She and her friends were veterans of the same
camping program. The campfire songs were close enough for the pump to count as
accompaniment. One of the grad students offered a boy’s version of a song. Soon
most of the passengers were singing non-parentally-approved verses.

Only John noticed when the
deck hatch popped open and a grenade flew out. “Eyes!” he yelled, covering his
own.

The grenade’s flash was
bright enough to briefly blind anyone looking that direction. Even the
reflection off the walls was enough to leave victims looking at green
afterimages. The deafening shockwave spread out too much in the huge hold to
stun anyone. The viewing window held. Two meter long cracks appeared at each
corner.

John fired into the hatchway
before the spacesuited boarder came through. A few bullets hit the boarder but
no blood appeared. John leapt for Bobbie. The intruder returned fire at John.
Heavy bullets left a line of stars in the window. He stopped firing when John
got close to Bobbie. John grabbed her away from her clutching friends,
scattering them, threw her toward the upper hatch, and kicked off to follow
her. More bullets followed him. The last couple hit the wall instead of the
window.

The intruder had magnetic
boots. He began walking after Bobbie. Bing looked at the window and yelled, “Air
leak! Everyone into survival bubbles!” She hastily zipped her own closed.

Over a dozen shots had hit
the transparent aluminum viewport. Cracks in its crystalline structure spread
as Billy watched. He looked around the hold. Most of the passengers had gotten
to the ladder or rescue bubbles. Bobbie’s two friends had been knocked off
their grips in the scuffle and were drifting through the air. He leapt for the
nearest, grabbed her by the waist, and threw her toward the girls’ sleeping
tent. A quick rebound off the deck let him grab the other girl. Their momentum
took them toward the professor’s observation gear. He kicked off it to get them
to the tent. In a moment all three were in it as he turned to seal the
entrance.
Thank God for vacuum-proof zippers,
he thought.

He had it closed just as the
window gave way in a roar of escaping air. The tent’s air pressure pulled its walls
tight. A sharp whistle came from the entry. “Fuck.” A quick inspection showed
Billy some bent teeth were letting air through the zipper. He slapped his palm
on the leak. The whistle stopped. No sound except the girls crying in fear. “Only
one leak, that’s easy. Got any water?”

One held up an empty bottle.

“Crap.” The suction on his
hand hurt. He pulled his hand off and yanked his fly open. A stream of urine splashed
messily around the leak. Some was on target. Most bubbled away. Enough froze to
seal the leak with an irregular block of ice. Quiet fell again. “Um, sorry,”
Billy said over his shoulder as he refastened. “Only idea I came up with.”

The brown-haired girl
muttered, “I thought boys thinking with it was an
expression
.”

***

The cabins by the hatch to
the hold were both empty. Captain Schwartzenberger waited in the starboard one,
feet and shoulders braced in a corner. He aimed his pistol at the latch side of
the cabin hatch. He heard the deck hatch unbolt. A great whoosh as corridor air
escaped into the hold. Then the hatch rebolting. A few magnetic footsteps. A
creak as the other cabin’s hatch opened.

The captain pulled his hatch
open and braced himself on the rim. The intruder held a mirror to peer around
the hatch into the right-hand cabin. Schwartzenberger fired half a dozen shots
into the back of his head. The lead bullets blasted the dark grey paint off the
gleaming armor of the helmet. The intruder back-kicked the captain off his
perch, sending him spinning into the middle of the cabin.

A marksmanship instructor’s
mocking voice echoed in his head. “
Always
aim for the center of mass.”
Schwartzenberger tried a couple of shots as he spun. Neither came close. He
landed well on the far wall but the intruder had followed too closely for him
to get a shot off. The captain blocked a punch to his face but an arm bone
broke under the suited fist. A kick to the knee was even more painful. The
intruder dodged a left-hand punch then slammed his hand into the side of
Schwartzenberger’s head.

Blackness.

***

Bobbie and John waited in the
captain’s cabin, feet braced on his bed. She was amazed at how cheerful she
felt. It must be the familiarity of it. John ran her through a hide and ambush
drill at least twice a month. If she could hit the pop-up target before he put
three holes in it there’d be ice cream. Lately he’d been threatening to change
it to two holes.

She almost fired as the hatch
opened. Nothing was visible in the gap. Then some fingers grabbed the edge, a
mirror mounted to their back. Bobbie’s shot missed. John missed the fingers but
shattered the mirror. They vanished, then flicked back into view as they threw
something into the cabin.

Bobbie couldn’t see what it
was, just John’s back as he sprang to intercept. He grabbed, cocked his arm to
throw, the grenade went off. His body went limply across the cabin. The
concussion shook Bobbie but she had drilled in far worse condition than this.

The intruder came through the
hatch, still using the magnetic boots to maneuver. John had trained her to aim
for the least armored part of her target. The first bullet into the faceplate
sent cracks from top to bottom. She emptied the magazine before the intruder
could reach her. The faceplate was almost pure white in the center, spider webs
of cracks going to the edge.