The crew brought food back to us. It was heated crew-packs, not much for flavor, but they did bring a small spice bar we could use. I may be the only vet who actually liked the Tuna with noodles entree.
“I’ll take any seafood or chicken you have,” I said. “I really prefer not to eat mammals. I’ll swap.”
Glenn said, “I think Angie becomes more awesome all the time, with that attitude.” He grinned.
I shrugged it off. I don’t like eating mammals, and people who do are happy to swap with me. It works both ways.
Bedding was limited, but we weren’t under much G. A thin pad and two blankets worked okay. Teresa showed me how to fold them.
“This one has two layers under, one over, and this one has two layers over, one under. Then you have the pad underneath. Gives about three centimeters of cushion and three layers for warmth. Almost as warm as an Arctic bag, so you can open the top for ventilation.”
“That looks rather comfortable,” I said. I used a rolled towel for a pillow.
It was odd. We were billeted in a cargo bay, but still had all our personal gear from Bounder.
I guess Mira and Juan had to be debriefed. We didn’t see them for a while.
I looked at Roger and said, “I take it no one is going to tell me how one of our stealth boats got into this system undetected.”
With mock cheer he said, “You’re right! Besides, it’s not important right now.” Or maybe it wasn’t mock.
“Are we docking at some point?”
“Sort of. We’re passing by.”
I said, “Docking control doesn’t like that. But I guess they can’t see us.”
“That’s the plan.”
Mira came back and said, “We’re going to unrein a pod and toss it at them.”
“That’ll break some surface stuff.”
“And then explode mightily, if I did my job right.” She was always so perfectly collected.
“When did you rig that?”
She said, “Ongoing. You remember certain shipments stayed with us and just changed manifests.”
“Ah, yeah. How big a blast are you talking?”
“Hopefully enough to cripple the station. Evac will tie them up.”
“Was something like this behind the evac on Station Ceileidh?”
“No, not sure why that one happened.”
Mira and Shannon went EVA over to Bounder, which was in a parallel orbit, drifting in-system. She’d managed to steer that way on the planetary maneuver, barely skimming the surface, while arranging a gravity kill for the UN ship. I can’t even imagine the math that goes into that.
“They can’t see us, but why can’t they see Bounder?” I asked.
Juan said, “Powerplant is at idle, it’s in free trajectory, and the close approach and changing thrust gives a huge cone of possible vectors. They also have no reason to think we’d go anywhere near a station, now that we’re identified and wanted. Also, politics dictates they search the volume around the point and planet first, to ensure we don’t attack another vessel. Every seg they don’t catch us is several more in which they won’t. This is going to be a long flight.”
Mira and Shannon started detaching pods and shoving them around with a pneumatic jack. They also equipped some with maneuvering jets. They went out several times over several days.
Shortly we were in a formation of pods and loose cargotainers, our own little flotilla.
It was a long flight, as Juan said. We had a very respectable vid and music library. There was a small but effective gym and we had room to spar. We actually went on a schedule a lot like recruit training, reveille, PT, breakfast, minor chores and maintenance, lunch, any necessary shipboard drills and ongoing training, along with whatever news we could pull from Selous’ sensors. After dinner we were free for a couple of div and a bit. I hated being regimented like that, but it probably kept me sane. I wasn’t as tense and aggravated as I had been behind that power panel.
The head was small, but did have a shower pan big enough to sprawl in, and we all took turns cleaning it. I expect everyone else was using it the way I was, too. I know how people look when sated. No one was physically frustrated, but I really could have used human flesh. But we were at war.
Some of the boat crew went out with Mira and Shannon. Then Jack and Teresa went along. I knew something was up.
Teresa wouldn’t say much.
“We were making changes and repairs to some of the ‘tainers, and to Bounder itself,” she said.
“Can you tell me? I’m bored and dying to know.”
“You’ll see when it happens.”
Shannon came over and handed her a bottle. She measured three shots into a squeeze tube, said, “Thank you,” handed him back the bottle, and started sipping it.
“What’s that?”
“Medical tequila.”
“‘Medical’?”
She nodded. “We can choose our flavor. It’s partly to aid as a vasodilator to improve circulation after EVA. Between radiating heat and the suit tension on the skin, you get a warm core and cold extremities.”
She took a long, slow drink, and took a deep breath.
“Second is because floating in complete darkness outside the range of any safety line is terrifying to some people.” It was obvious she included herself in that. She was still more calm than I had been.
She finished it.
I said, “Yeah, I like space, but from a loader or station shell, not from floating in it.”
She shrugged. “Our training isn’t as intense as the Blazers’ training, but it was pretty rough in spots. We never did anything like this, though. They did, and they said to expect it. I never thought we actually would.”
“I never thought being a flaky tourist laborer would pay off, either,” I said.
“What’s your favorite station?” she asked.
“Breakout always was. Partly because it’s home, you know? It’s our oldest, so it’s got the best facilities and a lot of traffic, so there’s a lot of culture. There’s a lot of beached spacers and dropouts, though. But that’s where I learned about underdeck culture.”
“It’s been useful. It’s amazing how many variations there are, little microcosms in each station or even section.”
“Yeah, you fit to your surroundings. I guess any engineering plan assumes a bunch of people who aren’t accounted for.”
“About twenty percent,” she said. “Higher back home since we don’t track anyone, but even Earth admits they can’t actually do anything about a lot of them.”
“What could they do?” I asked. “If they spaced that many people, it would be noticed. If they tried to account for them and feed them through official channels, it would take more infrastructure.”
“There are scholars who study it,” she said. “We couldn’t get any of them who we could trust. They either weren’t available, or from other systems, or questionable as to loyalty.”
“A lot of them are Earthies,” I agreed.
“Or elsewhere. Being from the Freehold doesn’t make them more trustworthy of itself, but it means skin in the game. Anyone else starts off with questions.”
I wasn’t clear on what the “technicians” were, only that they weren’t quite Blazers themselves. Either that, or the six teammates were something more skullkicking than Blazers. From watching them fight, I could believe that. Their movements were explosive, almost like acrobatic dancing. Then someone’s shoulder was dislocated, or a neck broken, or ribs crushed. They didn’t have any problem killing people. I did notice they tried to avoid civilians. They seemed to genuinely like killing cops, though. More than they liked killing enemy troops.
I wasn’t sure I blamed them.
The gym was a small unitized component. You climbed in, strapped in, and grabbed the handles. It felt your leverage and adjusted resistance to match. I chose from the existing programs, and it worked me through legs, back, arms, core on a daily rotation. I’d do two sets taking ten segs. Then I’d showe
r while the next person lifted, then I’d clean our area, then I’d catch up on briefings. It worked. We kept moving and didn’t crowd each other too much.
CHAPTER 32
It was twenty-three days before anything happened.
Juan called us to informal formation.
“We are back in combat, though mostly we’ll be observing, Mira and the boat’s cargo specialist, ‘Jerry,’ will take charge of maneuvering Bounder remotely. We get to watch. If this ship gets detected, there will be emergency maneuvering. Everyone remain fastened for the duration. We start in three segs.”
That was just time for a head call. I didn’t really need to go, but if we were going to be strapped down, I didn’t want to be uncomfortable later.
I strapped in and waited. We got a flat image projected on the forward bulkhead of the bay, broken up by a strut, but adequate for our needs. We weren’t doing it, just watching the game.
A tag showed up from the status identification transponder, but it was for a completely different ship name, the Umara, registered out of Mtali.
The track shifted, and Juan explained, “We are doing a slow maneuver to place us in the sensor shadow of our decoy. It’s not really a secret that this ship uses string drive.”
I didn’t know they could fit one that small. This thing was a boat, not a ship. There are rescue cutters larger than it.
We did move into the shadow, and ahead another SIT identified the station. It was tagged Salin Port of Entry.
“That’s entirely a UN station,” I said. “It’s barely even local on paper, and only as a territory. This place has never managed a stable government.”
Juan said, “Right. It’s also distant from us by a fair piece, which means in response they’ll have to disperse their forces even wider.”
Mira apparently sent an automated request for trajectory plan and approach. Scrolling data showed next to our tag, and I had no idea what any of it meant.
Juan said, “Rest break, ten minutes.”
Yeah, it had been a full div, almost three hours Earth, and we’d been staring at the screen.
We used the head quickly. One of the crew handed us each a protein bar and a Neurade, and we fastened back down.
After that, it got interesting.
Control called and said, “Umara, you appear to have loose cargo. Please verify train integrity.”
I could just see Mira in the compartment ahead, which seemed to be for electronic warfare and payload control.
She sat there, wearing a mic, not answering.
We were about five light-seconds out, I think. It was over twenty seconds before they sent again.
I could see what they meant, though I’m guessing our display was built from passive sensors. Several tainers seemed to have separated and were loose. A slight deceleration had let them move ahead. There wasn’t much separation yet, but there was going to be in time.
“Umara, we must have a status report if you are functional. If not, please use flares, engine flash or some other signal.”
This time she responded. “Control, we are operating within parameters.”
Lightspeed lag pause.
“Umara, we show debris or separation. It is imperative you correct any discrepancies at once. Extreme danger.”
“Control, we show everything where it should be, over.” She still sounded calm.
I realized she was being completely truthful, with different definitions.
“Umara, our impact defense system will fire on anything that poses a collision threat. Can’t you see the clutter around you? It looks like several large pods or a broken one has spilled cargotainers.”
“I see something now, Control.”
She waited five seconds before responding further.
“Control, we have a loose pod. We will attempt to secure or jettison. We are engaging per your instructions now.”
She did something, and Bounder shifted slightly, but her velocity increased more.
There was a flash onscreen and one of the pods disappeared in melting globs.
But the one right behind it blew through the cloud.
“Umara, please declare your status and intentions. Imperative. If you do not, we must treat you as a threat to life and astrogation, and fire to destroy you. Please communicate with us on this.”
The tech genuinely sounded distressed, not scared.
The loose ‘tainers were pulling ahead, but Bounder increased thrust again.
I heard Teresa mutter, “Looks as if I wired everything right.”
Bounder ran at them, engines at max plus the thirty percent we’d been told they could handle in an emergency, and a bit more.
Pieper. Her name was Henri Pieper. Bounder Dog was just a cover.
I guess it didn’t matter. I had no idea which name was real, or if either was. She felt like Pieper to me, though.
There was another deceleration, then a long, slow roll that changed attitude slightly, without changing heading.
The station beamcast and we caught fragments of it even with the debris in front of us. They were in a panic, and we watched, as invisible as one could get. We had it on five screens in five spectra, from UV to IR to radio.
“Umara, you must respond at once. We are going to be forced to fire. Perform a yaw maneuver, a pitch maneuver, use flares or engine flash. Please indicate you are in danger, or we must consider you an intentional threat.”
Behind Pieper now was the lifeboat and cargo tug, in free flight and trailing, along with all her pods and more loose cargotainers. The connections to the train cable came loose. Everything started to spread out behind her.
Then she retro-braked, and the pods closed the gap and moved ahead.
Control said, “Umara, our automated defense will fire in twenty seconds from this message. You are ordered to engage maximum retrothrust and course change. We have ruled your intention hostile.”
Mira fluttered her fingers over the screens, and did something. I couldn’t tell what.
Station Control fired something, particle beam or laser, and the first pod burst into bright flashes. I figured it was foil, to create a cloud in their sensor images. I know there are ways to defeat that, but they take time.
They caught a second pod, which broke into several large sections. The struts had been pre-cut. Now they had several large decoys, and hundreds of bits of chaff. In vacuum, they didn’t scatter much other than from a little internal turbulence. They made a large, slowly dispersing screen with the rest of the mass hidden.
Mira said, “That’s titanium and aluminum powder, which we were transporting for electrically isolating paint for components. Now it’s a cloud that will ruin their sensors and coat everything with dust.”
Pieper kept closing, with her escorts.
Mira said, “They’ve got a parallax image, either civilian with good sensors, or they managed to launch a boat.”
“I’m on it,” One of Selous’ crew said.
A pinpoint flash turned into an accelerating trace of a small missile. It didn’t launch from our boat. It came from some drone somewhere. Long seconds later, possibly a seg, another flash.
“Got them,” he said.
It was fascinating to see a space battle fought by proxy. Some systems were self-guiding, others were remote, so there were long delays. We, meaning Mira, had some control over the maneuvers.
The beam fired again, so hot it was visible. There’s always atmosphere residue and chemical leakage around a station. Then there was all the dust we’d thrown. That all turned to plasma as the beam front hit it.
Pieper became a glowing dot, then trailed like a comet, then broke into pieces that continued to glow.
And that was her end. She’d gone from being an insystem cargo hauler to a transsystem tramp, and now she was a missile. She burned in the dark.
The station recharged their cannon and aimed it at the first cargo pod. It took only a hit to flash into vapor, but it glowed a lot brighter.
“What’s t
hat?” Glenn asked.
“Zirconium and cesium. You know those containers marked ‘mill shavings for recycling’?”
“We’ve had those a long time.”
“Yes, and now they have that flash, the decoys and Pieper’s guts and reactor core fogging their sensors.”
I saw what was happening.
The next canister burst, and it fluttered into a cloud of fog.
Mira said, “Uranium dust and oxygen. Deflagrates rapidly in plasma.”
I don’t know what else we threw, but the pods kept bursting into clouds of debris, creating more and more chaff cloud, which would coat every sensor and mess with mechanicals.
They got several pods, but then the first one slammed against the shield. That was meant to stop particles and gammas, not multitons of mass.
They got another one, but two more sailed through the vapor and crashed.
Then the next one started tumbling from all the debris impacting it.
I don’t know what the guys put in the lifeboat, but when it hit, the explosion damped the display.
The rest of the containers tumbled into the fireball. It might not destroy the station, but it was doing all kinds of havoc. Structure, hull integrity, sensors all took a beating. The shock would travel along struts and crack rivets and joints. There is no such thing as “minor damage” to a habitat that can’t put everyone into a suit plumbed into life support.
That was a lot of damage. They might not need to evacuate, but they wouldn’t be docking or transshipping anything large for weeks, possibly months.
I said, “She was old, but I’m sad to see her burn. She was only a cargo hauler, but she was my home longer than any other ship.”
Mira replied, “She was a warship when she died.”
I guess that was so. She’d done well for a merchant ship.
We were behind and closing, though we were changing course slightly. I saw the explosion for just a moment in the screen, even as the view pivoted. We passed over the scaffoldock fast. It wasn’t functional, the control dome was destroyed, and I could see atmosphere leaking. I could tell from the dust and trash blowing out with it.
We’d openly attacked them now.
There was complete panic on comm. I heard begging, pleading, crying, shouted anger, every negative emotion.
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