While her concern for the outriggers was genuine, that was not her main motive for the proposal. She was more interested in seeing who accepted the offer—and who didn’t. An all-suit would be a convenient place for a fugitive to hide. If the clone warrior had infiltrated the spine, this would narrow down the suspects.
“We shall take your words into consideration,” said Byrne. “Now, what about strategy?”
“Well, we need a plan that will give us time to get in, do what we have to do, then get out again,” said Roche. “And it isn’t going to be easy. A sneak attack by a small number of scouts would be worse than useless. They’d eventually be detected, and that would warn Rufo that a larger attack was imminent, enabling him to prepare his defenses.
“Sneaking up on them isn’t an option either,” she continued. “They’re not blind and they’ll be expecting us to try something. Even a small group will stick out in a featureless sky. They’d be shot down long before they’d get anywhere near the station.
“So, our best hope lies in getting a large assembly as close as possible without being seen and striking hard and fast. If we can penetrate their defenses quickly and get inside, the battle becomes one of internal security. That will take the pressure off the attacking force, allowing it to conserve resources and regroup if necessary. That’s assuming of course that we don’t completely knock out their defenses on the first pass; if we can do that, getting in and out will be considerably easier.”
She looked around the quorum. Not being able to see the expressions of those she was addressing was frustrating, but the fact that there was no movement whatsoever from the all-suits gave her the impression she was at least being listened to.
“We do have something of an edge,” Roche went on. “Once I get the Box inside the station, we can use it to shut down external security. This will only work for a while—until they manage to re-route it through the internal security shell—but we need all the time we can get. The Box should also be able to tell us where Maii and Cane are held in the station. I doubt they’ll be together, so I imagine the landing party will have a lot to do. It’s basically me and Ameidio versus the entire internal security, since we’re the only ones with legs.”
She glanced over at Mavalhin. “Disisto has told me he doesn’t want to assist us against his employer, but I’m hoping Myer Mavalhin here will be able to give us some insight into the operation of Galine Four: blind spots or security weaknesses, points of entry, ways to move freely inside, weapons caches—that kind of thing. Any help he can provide would be useful at this point.”
Mavalhin looked over to Disisto’s blacked-out suit floating beside him, then back to Roche. “I’ll do what I can,” he said.
“Good,” she said. “Then you will be part of the boarding party, too.”
“But can he be trusted?” said one outrigger.
“We’ll find that out soon enough, I guess,” Roche replied. Then, addressing the quorum as a whole, she said, “Now, does anyone have any suggestions? I presume some of you have had combat experience?”
“Unfortunately, we all have,” said Auditor Byrne. “We are better at running than fighting, but we stand up for ourselves when we have to. As you know, we possess many tools that can serve as weapons. Many of them would be useful in the attack.”
“Good,” Roche said. “They’ll add some mass to the assault. The Ana Vereine has a stockpile of surveillance micromachines. The Box might be able to reconfigure some to attack the station’s external surfaces—either the observation systems or the hull itself. Do you have any way to deliver such devices en masse?”
“We have nano seeders,” said Lud. “Bullet-shaped and grain-sized. We could send a cloud in ahead of us. They might take it for nothing more than space junk—until it starts eating into them.”
“Perfect. Anyone else?”
“What about the crust-rippers?” asked another outrigger.
“Too destructive,” said Lud.
“We could use them as a threat. Load Wide Berth spine with as many as we’ve got and threaten to ram if they don’t surrender.”
“An empty threat,” said Idil. “We could never use them. If we did, the explosion would wipe out everything for a million cubic kilometers. Including the Ana Vereine and our only way out of here.”
“We can use ion drilling cannon to cut through the hull if the micromachines don’t work,” suggested another.
“And blind singleships with spectrometry bombs,” said yet another
“And we still have the leftover slag from the asteroids we carved before everything went wrong,” said Lud. “We could use it as cover for the nano seeders. Mostly carbon and ice, a bit of iron, nice and irregular in size and shape. The seeders will blend right in.”
“Good thinking,” said Byrne.
“We also have access to the subsystems of a dozen or so prowling mines,” said one. “They are an older make and easily subverted, the same ones the clone warrior used to destroy the Armada base around Cemenid.”
“Has anyone considered using drill rigs to boost our own thrust?” came still another suggestion.
Roche relaxed slightly in the suit and let them workshop. She noticed Haid watching her to one side, and signaled him privately, reducing the volume of the outriggers’ chatter to a minimum.
“What do you think? Do we have a chance?”
“Depends on how far Rufo will go to keep what he has,” Haid replied. “If his life depends on it, he’s going to do everything in his power to get rid of us once and for all. Last time he at least tried to pretend that he was doing the right thing. This time there’ll be no charades.”
“That’s true,” said Roche. “He knows we have Disisto and Myer. If we didn’t know the truth by now, then we wouldn’t be worth worrying about in the first place.”
“And do we know the truth? Even now?”
“I’m sure we don’t,” Roche said. “Not entirely. But I know we’re a damn sight closer than we were a few days ago.”
She quickly returned her attention to the quorum when she heard someone ask:
“What do we do if something goes wrong?”
“If something goes wrong, we’ll surrender,” Roche said. “That is, I will surrender, not you. If we let them have the Ana Vereine, they’ll be probably be happy.”
“And what happens to you then?”
“That’s up to Rufo,” she said. “It should be no concern of yours. Don’t even think of trying to rescue us; you should concentrate on hiding. Galine Four won’t be here forever, and there’s always a chance a rescue team will arrive in time. Remember, the collapse of the system is still some weeks away.”
“If that is your wish,” said Byrne, “we will abide by it.”
“Good.” Despite what she and the Box had decided, Roche hoped it wouldn’t come to that. “Now, Myer. Any suggestions on how to get in?”
The pilot cleared his throat. “Well, everything will be locked up pretty tight, as you can imagine.”
“Yes, but despite the Kesh, it’s not a military station,” she pointed out. “There must be some weak points.”
“Of course there are. Or rather there were. I don’t know if anything will have changed since I last looked.”
“I guess that’s a risk we’ll just have to take.” She fought the urge to tell him to stop procrastinating. Antagonizing him now would be counterproductive.
“The best bet would probably be the old freight transfer point on deck 17D. No one’s used it for months, so the old codes should still work. And if they don’t, we can always cut through. They shut it down because of an acid spill; the seals are corroded and could be nice and brittle. Bad for safety, but good for you. I mean, us.”
Roche ignored the slip. “How many singleships does the station have, and what other defensive measures can we expect?”
“There are usually fifteen singleships at the ready, from a pool of thirty. I don’t know how many you wrecked when you left. The station has the usual
stock of E-shields and anti-assault cannon. Nothing too destructive. Getting close enough to get in shouldn’t be too much of a problem. It’s once you’re in that you’ll have difficulty.”
“Go on.”
“Well, you’ve seen it. It’s big and full of people. Bad enough that you want to get to one specific area—but two, or even three? If I wasn’t coming with you, I wouldn’t give you any chance at all.”
“That’s exactly why you’re coming with us, Myer.”
“So I gathered,” he said. “Anyway, you’ll need to bypass as much as possible. Try to keep us off the monitors, or at least covered somehow. If your AI can’t do that, you’ll have to arrange distractions. Hit them from every angle and they won’t know where to concentrate their efforts. You might be able to slip through that way.”
That was pretty much what she’d been thinking; maybe not so destructive as blowing up a scutter, though, like last time. “No loopholes we can utilize?”
“Not without knowing exactly where we’re going.”
“No way of cracking into the second security level?”
“None I’m aware of. Disisto might know, though.”
“And he wouldn’t tell me if he did.” She thought for a second. “I’m not sure I agree that getting in will be easy. The singleships are faster than all-suits, better armed and armored. There are more of us, and sheer numbers may win the day, but on the other hand they might not. If we plan for every contingency, we might just turn things around to our favor; at the very least, we’ll save lives.
“Auditor Byrne, we’ll leave you to sort out who wants to fight and who wants to piggyback on the Ana Vereine. I’ll download the schematics of the station and any other relevant data once I can lay my hands on it so you can discuss possible tactics and ways to minimize your losses.
“Meanwhile, we’ll work out what to do from our end. We have some time to play with, anyway. Even at full burn, it’d take us a day or two to reach the station from here.”
“Unless it’s moved,” said Haid.
“Yes, but there’s not much we can do about that from here—not with the information lags as they are.”
“Very well, Morgan Roche.” The sharp-tipped all-suit bobbed gently in the microgravity; some of the outriggers around her were already breaking ranks. “We will keep you informed of our progress.”
Auditor Byrne’s silver tear was among the last to leave. Roche waited for them all to disperse before moving herself. She scanned the skies briefly before she did, and in doing so noticed Yarrow, all but invisible in his black all-suit, hanging like an accusation in the starless sky.
Roche felt as though the mysterious outrigger was watching her, and the idea of this made her feel uncomfortable. Why would he have saved her if he wasn’t who Byrne thought he was? So far he had done nothing to arouse her suspicion, except be silent.
She stared back at him for a few minutes, but when it was apparent he wasn’t going to move, she turned away and started tugging Disisto’s limp suit back into the courier’s airlock. When she glanced back a moment later, she saw Yarrow’s all-suit disappearing into one of the moon’s shafts.
* * *
Roche smiled.
Roche considered the suggestion. That would mean docking Daybreak to the Marauder while undergoing acceleration—a tricky maneuver at the best of times.
she said with some uncertainty.
the Box broke in.
she said wearily.
Roche sighed to herself and closed the line. She lay back on the bunk, but realized after a few minutes that she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Instead she went to the bridge and called up a communications display. She was curious after what Haid had said earlier about not detecting any incoming signals from the Box.
As before, there had been no voice transmissions, coded or otherwise, sent to or from the courier during the time of her talk with the Box. The only transmission she couldn’t account for was one intense burst lasting a second or two, not long after their last conversation. It had been sent from the courier to a destination farther in-system.
She didn’t know what that meant. Maybe the Box had downloaded part of itself into the courier, and that smaller part had communicated their conversation to the larger one in a single concise spurt after the fact rather than in multiple transmissions during. That would make sense: after all, the Box itself seemed to be just a smaller chip off the High Human called the Crescend; no doubt the process was repeatable to a smaller degree. But she did doubt that there was room in the courier’s available memory for an AI with the sophistication of the Box. And if the Ana Vereine was hiding behind Kukumat as the Box claimed, then the transmission had gone in the wrong direction—although there was the possibility that it could have been sent via a relay.
Tapping at the console, she instructed the communications system to notify her every time any such bursts were received or transmitted by the courier.
The voice in her head came as no surprise; she had half expected her actions to prompt the Box to intervene.
The Box was silent for a moment. Not long, but long enough.
She frowned.
“Is everything all right?”
She started at the unexpected voice outside her head. She turned and saw Disisto sitting up in his suit, helmet off but otherwise immobile. Next to him, Mavalhin lolled like a broken-backed doll, unconscious.
“I thought you were asleep,” she said.
“Not me. I’ve spent too much time in the dark just lately.” When she ignored the gibe, he said: “I don’t suppose you’d care to give me some sort of mobility? My nose is itchy as hell.”
She sent a command to allow him to move, although restricting those movements to the crash-couch. “How’s that?”
He flexed his arms. “Much better. Thanks.”
“You think I’m being too tough on you, don’t you?”
He shook his head slowly. “Not really,” he said. “The way I see it, I’m lucky to be alive at all. Most of your buddies would have shot me by now.”
Roche smiled, although there was no evidence of humor in his tone or his face.
“I think you exaggerate a little.”
He held her stare evenly. “Maybe,” he said. “But the fact is they don’t take well to uncooperative prisoners.”
In the quiet that followed she said: “You know, you could still help me.”
He sighed heavily. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: I won’t help you attack the chief—”
“I’m not asking you to do that,” she said. “I’d just like to know what he’s doing here, that’s all. As do you. All I want is your help finding out that information.”
Disisto ran a hand over the stubble dusting his dark face and scalp. “I can’t do that without helping you in other ways too.”
“You could mediate,” said Roche. “Rufo and Shak’ni and all their Kesh pals will be intent on blowing us away once we return. Personally, I’d rather talk than fight—and they might listen to you if you try to mediate. Should Rufo give us the information we need—along with Maii and Cane—then we’ll leave him alone. Hell, we might even take him out of the system if he wants us to. I’m sure he doesn’t like being dependent on the Kesh for that.”
The Dying Light Page 27