The High Ground

by Melinda Snodgrass

  “What do we do now?” Ernesto asked.

  “Nothing’s changed. We still need to get to the control room.”

  Ernesto rolled an eye toward Sumiko’s hunched figure. “We should send her back to the ring with Davin.”

  “No. I need everybody. You and I can’t do this alone.”

  Ernesto shook his head. “So what? You’re just going to tether Davin to a clip and leave him out here?”

  “No. We’ll take him with us. At least get him in atmosphere.” And he might still be useful, Tracy thought, but he didn’t say that out loud.

  Ernesto looked back at Sumiko. “I still don’t think she’ll be much use.”

  Tracy stepped to the woman and touched her on the shoulder. She looked up at him; her face was blotched and wet with tears. Snot hung on her upper lip. The moisture had begun to fog her faceplate. “Sumiko. We’re going to get to the hub and kill the bastards who forced us to be out here. Okay? You want to do that?” She gave a gulping snort followed by an emphatic nod. “Good. Let’s go.”

  Ernesto looked toward the still distant hub. “It’s going to take a while.”

  Tracy looked to where flashes sparked against the blackness of space. “No. We don’t have to walk any more. That ship has bigger problems than us right now.”

  29

  SOMETHING TO BURY

  Something had happened. Something bad. Tracy’s order to her had been blasted on an open channel, which meant she heard what he was hearing. Sumiko sobbing. Boho blustering. Ernesto screaming at Boho to shut up. It sounded like good advice. She needed to focus. To concentrate. She cut the link with her friends and began scanning her instruments. Go in slow and sneaky? Or try to intimidate them with a frontal assault?

  “Don’t be stupid.” The words emerged like an order. She decided to obey herself.

  She still had a momentary advantage from the sun, but the ship had no doubt heard the order and would be scanning for her and it wouldn’t take long for them to spot her. She needed them to find her, but hopefully miss the present she was going to schedule for late delivery. She programmed three missiles to delay for forty seconds before igniting and heading for their target. At the same time she fired the missiles she was going to fire the engines, give the Infierno full throttle and send it looping beneath the stealth ship. At that point she could paint the enemy and read its specs.

  The maneuver would bring her to a position on the bow of the ship. Hopefully her sudden appearance would distract them and they wouldn’t notice the three small but deadly objects waiting at their stern. She needed to capitalize on that.

  She sucked in a deep breath and realized that she was oddly calm. She had one wildly inappropriate little thought go fluttering past—Daddy’s going to kill me for this!—just before she executed her plan. Acceleration crushed her into the couch. Holos flickered all around her. Alarms blared as the mystery ship painted her. She painted back and stared at the readout. The ship was a Talon. And not just a Talon, a SEGU black ops ship. Stolen? How had the terrorists obtained an older model League assault vehicle? She remembered El-Ghazzawy telling them they were being sold as surplus. Maybe not the League’s best plan, she thought.

  She couldn’t worry about that right now. If she survived she’d bring it up with her father and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Right now it was time to drive home the distraction. Breathless because of the gee forces, Mercedes sent a message on an open channel.

  “You bastards wanted me. Well, here. I. Am!” The defiant yell she’d been hoping to achieve emerged more as a breathless little squeak.

  Other readouts informed her that her opponent was delivering its own deadly gifts. She allowed her eyes to lose focus so she could see the entirety of her display and not concentrate on just one image. Five missiles were streaking at her. There was no time for fear. She relaxed and let her body, glances of her eyes and flicks of her fingertips take control. Working in concert with the Infierno’s sensors she launched slugs on intercept paths with the incoming missiles. She felt the fighter jerk as the slugs were hurled from the rim of her craft.

  Another display informed her she would intercept three of the incoming missiles. The other two would hit. Evasive maneuvers held only a thirty-two percent chance to avoid one. To avoid both was a scant thirteen percent.

  Now the fear arrived copper bright in the back of her mouth. She fought the impulse to close her eyes. Was it worse to see death approaching? She wanted to simply give up, cry for her daddy, but her body was reacting, instructing her fighter to evade even though she knew it to be hopeless. One fights for life, she thought as her slugs tore apart three of the missiles. Then the other two simply detonated. A mist of fragments swept past the Infierno, a few large enough to patter against the hull.

  Mercedes knew she hadn’t done a damn thing. The remaining missiles had spontaneously detonated. No, nothing just spontaneously exploded, she realized. There had to have been a command from the enemy AV to self-destruct. But why? Why not blow her out of space? Only one conclusion—because of who she was. On the station they had wanted her alive and a hostage. Even out here as she tried to kill them the enemy still wanted her alive. Why? They couldn’t hope to capture her now.

  Forty seconds had elapsed. The rockets on her missiles ignited. It was detected by the enemy ship and in response their starboard engines fired. Her sensors picked up their chaff being released as the Talon attempted to evade.

  She watched for return fire from the dark running Talon, but it didn’t come. Her computers ran simulations based on the enemy ship’s trajectory. It had been pacing the cosmódromo. Now it was moving to intercept. Mercedes had no idea if her friends were still exposed on the skin of the station. She couldn’t take the chance. She fired off a barrage of depleted uranium slugs, and worked with the targeting computer to create an intricate trajectory for her remaining missiles.

  She then tensely watched for returning fire, and waited for her weapons to reach the fleeing ship. Minutes ticked past. The enemy AV began frantic evasion maneuvers. In addition to her new barrage one of her original missiles had survived the cloud of chaff and was still doggedly pursuing.

  In a few minutes the Talon would be too close to the cosmódromo for her to safely fire a third time. Her friends aside, there were civilians aboard the station. She pictured Dani and Cipriana, the injured nun and the little girls all huddled in a storeroom. She couldn’t be punching holes in the habitat. Sensors informed her that one of her plugs had torn through the AV. A little halo of frozen air and other detritus tumbled into vacuum. One of the readouts indicated two bits of floating trash were organic. I just killed two more people. The thought flickered through her mind. It had no power. Not like the armored soldier she’d killed. This really was just like the simulator. She began calculations to decide if a final assault could safely be made when the decision was made for her. One of the missiles found its target. There was a bright blossom of fire as the oxygen in the ship burned an angry orange against the blackness. The ship went into a tumble, shedding parts of its structure as it went.

  She frantically ran calculations as to the angle of impact. She hoped the missile strike would throw most of the debris onto a new trajectory and not into the station. The pieces weren’t big enough to penetrate the ring, but they would kill Tracy and the others if they were still exposed.

  * * *

  When they reached the airlock the panel was green, signaling it was ready to open. Tracy and Ernesto exchanged glances and Tracy shifted Davin’s inert body higher onto his shoulder. “Our first piece of good luck or come into my parlor said the spider to the fly?” Tracy asked.

  Ernesto chinned his radio. “Boho, the airlock is ready to cycle—”

  “Yeah, I know. I opened it for you guys.” The nobleman sounded impatient.

  “So why didn’t you open the damn docking bay?” Tracy growled as Ernesto keyed the panel.

  “Because my counterpart on the other side was monitoring like crazy and he sp
otted every hack I tried.”

  “So what’s changed?” Ernesto asked as they piled into the airlock and the outer door rolled closed.

  “I’m not getting pushback. It’s like he’s gone or distracted.”

  “Mercedes,” Tracy said softly. “But he’s not going to miss an airlock into the hub opening.” He gently shoved Davin up to the ceiling and unlimbered the shotgun. Tracy lightly touched Sumiko on the elbow. “Are you okay to do this?”

  She gave a sharp nod and drew a pistol from a utility pocket on the thigh of her armor. She gripped a stun grenade in her free hand. Tracy studied the line of her mouth, the set of her jaw and the vast emptiness in her eyes. He cleared his throat. “All righty then.” He waved them to either side of the inner door.

  He kicked loose from the floor and sent himself drifting to rest with a foot against the ceiling of the airlock. He grabbed hold of Davin by his utility belt. The inner door cycled open with a sigh. A barrage of gunfire greeted them. Bullets whined and pinged off the interior. Sumiko tossed out two stun grenades. A thunderclap resulted. His helmet adjusted volume so Tracy wasn’t deafened. He hoped their opponents were out of their helmets.

  “Demagnetize,” Tracy subvocalized, then he kicked hard and sent himself and Davin diving toward the floor of the airlock. As he flew past the door he shoved Davin’s body into the corridor. He had a brief flash of two figures crouched in the corridor bringing their weapons to bear on Davin’s form. Tracy fired. His shotgun blast took the man in a cosmódromo uniform in the groin and thighs. He staggered, driven backwards by the force of the bullets impacting his body. And not just from Tracy’s gunfire, for Sumiko and Ernesto were blazing away as well.

  As he hit the floor Tracy tucked, rolled; a touch of one foot had him flying through the airlock door. In trying to avoid Davin’s limp, floating body, Tracy misjudged his trajectory and smacked into the far wall of the corridor. The impact sent him careening off on a tangent. His helmet screens recorded bullet impacts and suit integrity reduced by forty-six percent. The emergency suit was not designed to withstand gunfire.

  “You bastard! You fucking bastards! You killed him. I’m going to kill you!”

  The magnetized boots had Sumiko lurching across the corridor. Her target was slow raising his gun. Panic hammered in Tracy’s temples because like him Sumiko wore a normal spacesuit not battle armor. Female voice, Tracy thought. He’s hesitating because of that but dear God what is she doing?

  He struggled to find purchase on a wall, ceiling, floor—anything so he could go to her aid. Ernesto shot past Tracy forming a human spear in the air and slammed head first into the terrorist. Sumiko was climbing their enemy, battering at the faceplate with her pistol. Tracy joined in the pile-on, trying to grip the man’s wrist and keep him from bringing his pistol to bear. It was a flailing confusion of arms, hands and legs. Whoever he was the man was far more at ease in zero gravity than the three students. He plucked Sumiko off his chest and threw her down the hall. An elaborate somersault in the air dislodged Ernesto. He then fired his suit jets directly into Tracy’s face, burning and scarring his faceplate. Blinded by the fogged faceplate Tracy panicked, yelled and pushed away. There was no choice; he pushed back his helmet and saw the terrorist flying around a turn in the corridor.

  “Come on! Come on! We’ve got to get to Control,” Ernesto babbled.

  Tracy brought up the schematics of the hub and they set off using handholds to help propel themselves through the corridor. The elevators were in lockdown, but they cut through the ceiling and went up the elevator shaft to the top level.

  Mercedes’ voice rang through their radios. “Ship is neutralized! I repeat ship is… dead.” Her voice was filled with excitement, wonder and an edge of hysteria.

  “Brava, Highness!” came Boho’s voice.

  At the same time Tracy said, “Nice work, Mer—Highness,” he quickly amended.

  “Where are you? Are you all right?” There was now worry and tension in her voice.

  “We’re fine. Almost to Control,” Tracy soothed.

  Boho joined the conversation. “Holy shit!” His voice was a hoarse whisper.

  “What?” Tracy demanded.

  “Oh my God!” Mercedes said.

  “Good,” was Sumiko’s comment.

  “Why?” from Ernesto.

  Since Tracy wasn’t wearing his helmet he had no access to the pictures they were clearly seeing.

  “What’s happened?” he demanded.

  They rounded a final corner. The doors to Control were in front of them. “You’ll see soon enough,” Ernesto said as he overrode the door lock.

  The doors slid open. There were five bodies in battle armor on the floor. Their helmets were back, their eyes were bleeding holes and their heads bloody pulps with the top of their craniums blown off. It was what happened to a skull when a shotgun was placed beneath a man’s chin and fired.

  “Why?” Ernesto repeated in a tight voice.

  Tracy considered possible explanations while Sumiko said in a hard tone, “I don’t care. I’m just glad they’re dead.”

  Mercedes got to the answer first. “No exit strategy. I blew it out of space.”

  “So we never had to do this. Cross the struts, get Hugo ki… ki…” Sumiko couldn’t say the word, and the look she gave Tracy left him feeling as if he’d been bathed in acid.

  “No, it was necessary,” Ernesto said quietly. “We had to get control of the cosmódromo.”

  “And now we’ve got to get it stopped before planetary defenses blow us out of space,” Tracy concluded grimly.

  * * *

  Stopping a giant space station and returning it to its stable LeGrangian orbit proved to be harder and far more complex than they expected, but fortunately the trio had help from engineers on Ouranos, and many of the actual cosmódromo personnel had been detained and not killed. In fact Tracy, Ernesto and Sumiko were firmly shooed away. Once that happened Sumiko retreated to a corner, tethered herself into a seat and just sat rocking back and forth in misery while she silently cried. Tracy and Ernesto sidled up next to each other and cast helpless glances at the girl.

  “Should we say something?” Ernesto asked.

  “What? I have no idea what to say,” Tracy muttered.

  “Me neither.” They stood in silence for a moment. “I should get some medics. Go get Davin.”

  “Yeah. Good idea.” Tracy coughed. “I should go recover Hugo… his body… I guess.”

  “Yeah.” Ernesto called for a medical team and they all went off to recover Davin who was still floating in a corridor four levels down. Tracy went along since he would need to use the same airlock to recover Hugo. Or what was left of him.

  Ernesto and the medics strapped Davin onto a backboard and headed for a hospital. Tracy stood outside the airlock and tried to force himself back out onto the strut. Hugo’s upper body was lost forever. Locating it would be a Herculean task and they had other more pressing issues, but shouldn’t he at least bring back something for the family to bury? Of course what would be returning might be more horrifying than comforting. Tracy tried to decide what was best. Go into vacuum and cut the body loose? Tell the family Hugo had been swept away by that snapping cable rather than cut in half?

  Through the radio chatter he picked up the information that Mercedes was bringing the battered Infierno into a docking bay in the hub. He decided on cowardice and headed there instead.

  30

  NOT WITHOUT COST

  The bay doors were closing at a glacial pace. Mercedes lay quivering in the cockpit couch. Despite the clear dome, claustrophobia seized her and she desperately wanted out of what now felt like a coffin. The screen flared green indicating that atmosphere had been restored to the docking bay. She keyed back the dome, yanked out the helmet jack, pulled off the helmet and scrambled out of the Infierno. She ended up against the roof of the docking bay with the force of her exit. Her braid had come loose and tendrils of hair wove in a dance over her head.

&
nbsp; There were a lot of people entering the docking bay. Most wore station uniforms. One wore a spacesuit and magnetized boots held him to the floor. It wasn’t conscious, she just flew to him and Tracy caught her. His arms closed around her and despite the metal and composite material that separated them she felt warm and safe.

  “You did it. I knew you would,” he whispered.

  She pressed her cheek against his and their floating hair, dark and light, entwined over their heads. He felt hot to the touch. “And so did you. You retook the hub.”

  A shiver went through him. “Not without cost.”

  “What happened?”

  “Hugo is dead and Davin’s badly hurt.” It emerged flat and harsh.

  Mercedes pulled back and pressed a hand against her mouth. “Oh Dios. So I guess this is what it’s like,” she said softly. “Really like.” Their hands reached for each other. Reassurance against the inevitable darkness.

  “Can you do it?” Tracy asked softly.

  “I don’t know.” She paused and thought about Davin and his pranks and practical jokes. Would that cheerful and blithe personality be warped by this? Hugo she hadn’t known all that well, but his death— “Oh God, Simi. How is she?”

  “Not good. It would probably help if she had a woman to talk to.”