“Don’t forget the beer. We’re going to have some prisoners, too,” Mele advised. “Is the invasion fleet a done deal?”
“Destroyed or surrendered,” Rob said.
“I’ll pass that on to my opponents.”
“How are your people?” Rob asked.
Mele took a moment to answer. “I’ve still got Yoshida with me. Gamba and Buckland died. Giddings and Lamar were badly wounded.”
“Damn . . . Giddings is all right on Shark.”
“So I heard. Lamar should be okay, too.”
“Mele . . .”
“Yeah.”
They understood each other. There wasn’t anything else to say.
* * *
• • •
Carmen huddled next to a blown-out window on the top floor of the Central Coordination Building, exposing just enough of herself to gaze out into the streets below as the sun began to rise. The occasional sound of a shot or an explosion echoed across the city. Both sides seemed to be running short of chaff rounds, but smoke from fires and the remnants of earlier chaff clouds drifted through those streets and among the buildings. Tinted red by dawn’s early light, they looked like the clouds of fine dust that had often billowed among the cities of Mars, sifting through any available crack or crevice to eventually form a layer of reddish drift like old blood coating everything inside.
She’d hated that dust.
But the dawn created the illusion that it had followed her here, across the many light years from where Mars orbited about the star Sol. As if Mars itself had followed her here.
Fine. She’d beaten it once. She’d beat it again.
Carmen leveled her rifle, peering through the scope as she slowly traversed her view across the streets and buildings held by the invading forces. The scope itself was a thing of wonder, capable of not only magnifying the view but also automatically compensating for range and environmental factors like wind and air temperature. Even if Carmen hadn’t gotten a lot of practice with the weapon in the last year, she’d still be able to hit far-off targets thanks to that scope.
Someone came into view as her scope swept slowly across a courtyard. A small group of soldiers in partial battle armor, their helmets off in such a “safe” spot. Another small group came to meet them, standing there while the men and women in the first group gestured about and spoke to a man standing in front of the second group.
Carmen knew a briefing when she saw one. Someone of higher rank getting a rundown on what was happening. Maybe a top commander who’d come down in one of the surviving enemy shuttles that had dropped in during the night.
She aimed as carefully as she could, the scope image helpfully shifting the aim point to compensate for everything that might send the bullet awry, waiting as a drift of red mist temporarily obscured her target, squeezing the trigger slowly. The buck of the weapon against her shoulder surprised her as the shot fired.
She kept her eye on the scope, waiting.
The high-ranking enemy officer fell sideways.
Two of those in the second group grabbed their fallen leader and carried him into the nearest building. Most of the others in the courtyard scattered, either running inside as well or looking about for the source of the shot.
But then they all started looking upward, pointing. Carmen lowered her weapon and gazed up into the sky turning from black to blue as dawn triumphed.
Something moved across the sky, something large, moving too fast, atmosphere heating it so it left a fiery trail. As Carmen watched, pieces broke off, forming small bright streaks that accompanied the larger streak of fire.
The wreck of something, dying spectacularly in the atmosphere of this world. But what? That was too large to be a destroyer, wasn’t it?
She tried to get a signal through the waves of jamming that filled the city, finally picking up part of the net. A freighter. The spaceship dying in fire was a freighter. Which meant it was an enemy.
A sudden chatter on the net, interrupted by agile jamming that broke it off. Carmen looked up again, seeing far off the blossom of an explosion like a new star suddenly appearing high in the morning sky. Another ship?
She focused her scope back on the enemy soldiers she’d seen earlier. They were still staring upward, and if she was any judge of body language they weren’t happy with what they were seeing.
Carmen slid away from the window, careful not to expose herself to sight through it, searching for a landline she could link in to. She wouldn’t let herself hope. Not yet.
* * *
• • •
“Hey, want to go somewhere private?”
Lochan looked in surprise at the woman standing in the doorway to his cabin on the Oarai Miho. The same one who had talked to him about backup plans and his previous experience against pirates. “That . . . depends.”
She smiled. “We haven’t really talked much. I’m Freya Morgan.”
“Lochan Nakamura. What’s your reason for being aboard?”
“I’m a trade negotiator.”
He nodded, thinking something didn’t fit in that description of her. “And what is it you want to negotiate with me?”
Freya smiled again and winked at him. “You know.”
Lochan hesitated. But why the hell not? It wasn’t like he and Brigit Kelly had any relationship yet. Certainly, they hadn’t made commitments to each other. And with that pirate heading for an intercept with this ship, it seemed all too likely that he might not get another chance with any partner. Having spent far too many hours already sitting alone in this cabin watching the pirate grow steadily closer to the Oarai Miho, Lochan welcomed the chance for something else to do. Especially with someone like Freya Morgan. “Okay.”
“Come on. I know a place.”
He followed Freya through the passageway outside their cabins and through a smaller cross passage. At the end of that, Freya opened a sealed hatch about a meter in diameter. “In here. It’ll be a little tight with both of us inside. I hope you won’t mind.”
He didn’t think that’d be a problem. Lochan, still a little wary, let her go through first, then crouched to come through the hatch.
It was tight. She reached past him to pull the hatch shut. “Whew. Now we can talk.”
“Talk?” Lochan wondered if he’d sounded as lame as he thought he just had.
“I’m sorry,” Freya said, smiling apologetically. Her body pressed lightly against him in the small compartment but without any hint of passion. “Lochan, your cabin is probably bugged. I know mine is.”
“Bugged? The captain has the cabins bugged?”
“No.” Freya shook her head. “One of our fellow passengers. I don’t know which one for certain. There might be more than one. Listen, I am sorry for misleading you, but I needed a way to get you here without anyone’s suspecting I had any other motive.”
Lochan’s sense of humor came to his rescue. “I certainly didn’t suspect it.”
“I hope you understand—”
“Ever since I came down and out I’ve been meeting women younger than me who want to know me for reasons that have nothing to do with physical attraction,” Lochan said dryly. “This is part of the pattern. Why exactly are we in here?”
“The pirates.”
“You think we can hide in here when they board the ship?”
“Of course not. Even if the captain didn’t rat us out, which I’m pretty certain she would, they’d check the passenger manifest and search the ship until they found us. No, I have an idea for dealing with that pirate ship,” Freya said.
“An idea involving what?” Lochan asked.
“A bomb.”
He paused, studying her again. “Exactly who are you?”
“I told you. Freya Morgan. Trade negotiator. For Catalan.”
“Trade negotiator.” Lochan waited a moment longer, but
she said nothing else. “All right. Just what does a trade negotiator know about bombs?”
“A girl has to have a hobby,” she explained in a low voice. “Lochan, I need backup on this. One person can’t handle the physical aspects of it. It has to be someone I trust, and on this ship that’s you.”
“Why? You don’t know me.”
“No. But I know people who do know you, and I talked to them when you came aboard at Kosatka. They said if I needed help, you could be counted on.”
“Thanks.” Her reasons made sense to him, as did the need to do something. “If this plan could help stop the pirates, why aren’t you asking the captain for help?”
Freya shook her head. “Because that’d be a bad idea. One, because so far the captain is playing the old game of going along with demands in the hopes of minimizing her losses, and two, because it’s possible the captain has been paid off to not cause any trouble when the pirates showed up. Taking that kind of bribe can just be good business, you know. And three, this freighter is owned by a company that operates out of Hesta that is now effectively controlled by executives from Scatha.”
“So they’re supposedly neutral, and maybe still thinking of themselves that way, but to all intents and purposes they’re the enemy because they know they’re answering to bosses who work for Scatha. But what makes you think I can be trusted to help you with a bomb?” Lochan pressed.
“Self-interest,” she replied. “I don’t want to end up in the hands of those so-called pirates, and neither do you, right? More than that, though, I’ve done my research. I know your merit.”
“So you think I’m the sort of guy to help you build a bomb.” Lochan gazed at her, wondering what Freya Morgan was like and realizing that he’d spent too much time researching information about his mission and too little time learning more about his fellow passengers. “Why do I trust you?”
“Because I’m being honest with you on what I want to do and what I want you to help with. And, it’s probably our only chance to avoid a sudden detour to a secret prison at Apulu or Scatha.”
“Or Turan.” Lochan looked at her again, wondering why parts of Freya reminded him of Mele Darcy and parts of Carmen Ochoa. But did the reasons for that matter as much as the fact that she was reminding him of women who had proven their right to be trusted? On top of that, Freya’s arguments were solid. There wasn’t any other option that Lochan knew of that offered any chance of escaping those pirates. “All right. I’m in.”
Freya smiled. “Brigit told me I could count on you.”
“Brigit? Brigit Kelly?” Lochan was abruptly glad that he hadn’t made any effort to collect on Freya’s implied promise that had lured him here. “You know her?”
“Let’s say that she and I share some history and similar goals. And from what she told me while this ship was at Kosatka, I think you share those goals as well.”
“I’m working for Kosatka,” Lochan said, remembering that Brigit had suggested he might find a friend on the ship if he needed one. He suddenly understood that hadn’t been about hooking up but a guarded reference to Freya Morgan if problems like a pirate showed up.
Freya shook her head again. “You’re working for us all, aren’t you?”
He considered those words before nodding in reply. “I guess I am.”
“Good. I’ll need to set some things up. When it’s ready I’ll stop by your cabin. We need to pretend that you and I are having a sudden and intense interest in playing reindeer games with each other. Trying to keep that quiet, sneaking about a little, will look totally natural to anyone who notices.” Freya smiled again, ruefully. “I’m sorry, I know it’s tight, but we should stay in here a little while longer. Just in case someone watched us. We want it to look like . . . what it looks like.”
“I promise to be smiling when we leave.”
She laughed. “You are a fine one. It’s too bad you’ve got a thing with Brigit.”
“I don’t actually have a thing with Brigit yet,” Lochan protested.
“Yeah, you do. You and Brigit just actually haven’t figured it out yet.”
* * *
• • •
Dinner that night didn’t vary on the surface from the usual during the trip so far. Like most other freighters, the Oarai Miho tended to favor cheap, bulk food with long shelf life and simple preparation requirements. Like most such foods, the heat packs were labeled with colorful pictures and grand names such as Beef Teppanyaki Multi or Chicken Grande Ulti, and also like most such foods the contents bore little resemblance to the labels and tasted primarily like mush with slabs of cardboard mixed in. Usually, several of the twelve total passengers would eat in the mess/rec room, the others taking the food back to their cabins.
Lochan usually ate in the rec room to avoid having the off-putting smell of the food linger in his room, but he’d rarely interacted much with his fellow passengers, the majority of whom seemed equally uninterested in socializing. He didn’t change that, though he stole some glances at Freya as she ate, noticing that she didn’t look his way. Lochan did spot a couple of the other passengers giving him a look, followed by glances at Freya and a whispered conversation that provoked knowing smiles from the two.
The tall, thin man who was certain that piracy wasn’t a thing, an actual pirate on intercept vector for this ship apparently not shaking his certainty in the least, spent his meal talking in a low voice to a shorter woman. They seemed to be in agreement on just about everything, though the bits of conversation that Lochan caught made it difficult for him to not jump in with some contrary opinions and actual facts.
When the freighter’s first officer passed by, one of the passengers called out a question. “How long until that other ship reaches us?”
The first mate paused, shrugged, and gave the shortest possible answer. “Twenty-six hours.”
Lochan kept his eyes on his unappetizing food to avoid looking toward Freya again. He had a feeling whatever she was planning would go down during the coming ship’s “night,” when the passengers and most of the crew were asleep.
Sure enough, late that evening he was roused from a light slumber by the door to his cabin opening. “Come on,” Freya whispered. “I need you now.”
The careful use of a phrase with a double meaning to confuse whoever had likely bugged his cabin made Lochan smile despite his nervousness. But even if the bug had vid capability, a smile would be natural enough, he thought.
This time they headed back toward where Lochan knew engineering lay, though he knew that only because he and the other passengers had been warned so many times not to ever go into that part of the ship. “How many are awake?” he whispered in Freya’s ear.
She rolled her eyes contemptuously. “One’s supposed to be awake on the bridge, but that one always sleeps. There’s also supposed to be an engineering watch awake, but every time I checked they were asleep, too. In the crew compartment, not even bothering to stay in engineering while they sleep. They depend on the ship’s systems to warn them if anything is going wrong and wake them with alerts.”
“No one is awake at night? Is that . . . legal?”
“No,” Freya replied in a matter-of-fact voice. “But, in addition to all of the other things humanity left behind at the Old Colonies and Old Earth, we also left the kind of people and organizations who enforce safety regulations on ships like this.”
They reached a large, wide hatch with a smaller hatch set into it. Freya looked around the darkened, quiet passageway carefully before pointing to something above the hatch. “Security and safety camera. This one is broken and hasn’t been repaired, which is handy for us.”
“What if it had been working?”
“I’d have broken it. They just saved me the trouble of doing that.” She opened the smaller hatch, going through and waiting for Lochan to follow before closing it.
He looked around the engineeri
ng section, which was also dimly lighted at this hour of the ship’s day. Several equipment consoles and displays, another hatch labeled with a variety of warnings as well as the words Power Core Access, and a wide, short passage at the back.
Freya went straight to that passage. By the time Lochan caught up with her, she’d found a powered multiwheeled device with grabber arms and was using the handle controls to back it out and toward another wide hatch that was latched open.
Inside was a sort of storage shelf with rectangular objects bearing rounded sides and corners lined up along it, each one strapped in securely to some sort of heavy-duty mechanism. Each of the objects was over a meter in height and a little wider in diameter.
“What are those?” Lochan asked, as Freya unlatched the straps holding the last in line of the objects.
“Fuel cells,” she said absentmindedly as she got the last one free of its holder.
“Fuel cells?” Lochan didn’t think he’d sounded as calm as Freya had. “Aren’t those really dangerous?”
She paused to look at him. “Yes and no. What do you know about fuel cells?”
“They’re what’s used to keep power cores going.”
“Right. The fuel cells used by warships are bigger because of the differing power requirements, but they all work basically the same way. There’s a lot of stuff in each of these that contains a lot of energy. The power core releases that energy in a controlled fashion. When one fuel cell is nearly expended, this feeder shelf loads in a new one. They’ve got all kinds of protection built into their construction to keep them from going unstable or releasing energy outside the power core, which is why the idiots running this ship haven’t even bothered to keep that hatch locked as it should be to prevent unauthorized access to these fuel cells.”
Lochan frowned at her. “And we’re going to . . . ?”
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