Fifty seconds...
Geyl and Nutmeg were rolling and lurching around the floor, hips locked together, grunting and cursing. Nutmeg had still had her automatic rifle on entering the module but must have dropped it. Peter saw nothing in the nearly complete darkness and fell to his hands and knees, feeling around near the struggling women for the rifle. He felt sure Nutmeg would have thrown it deeper into the module, so he searched away from the port into even blacker darkness.
Nutmeg shrieked; Geyl must have connected somewhere. He looked up in time to see Nutmeg stand, staggering. Geyl landed a kick right to Nutmeg's breastbone, propelling her out the port and beyond sight.
Nutmeg is good, but Geyl is desperate. Do not underestimate her!
So the mission in a sense had succeeded: Peter and Geyl stood at opposite sides of the capsule in deep shadow. Peter heard her panting furiously. Unlike him, Geyl had no supercharger in her bloodstream, to concentrate the thin oxygen of Dis' high plain. She must be exhausted by now, and easy prey.
Thirty seconds.
As softly as he could, Peter came up behind Geyl. She was only two meters from the port—easy throwing distance. Peter lunged, taking her shoulder with one hand and hooking another around her thigh. He threw her roughly toward the port, but she spun with unexpected savagery and sank her boot into his crotch. Peter gasped and dropped to his knees in nauseated agony; evidently the complex pain was more difficult to suppress than other kinds.
Twenty seconds ...spit in Filer's face if you can!
|If I stop long enough to spit, he'll split me wide open!|
It took precious time for the Sangruse Device to sort out the nerves in Peter's groin. Peter got to his feet, to face Filer coming up the ramp, knife in one hand. Peter ducked to one side as Filer slashed. Peter struck the inner wall of the cylinder and rebounded. Filer was panting too, and a little slower than he had been—slow enough for Peter to get one sideways kick to his hip, sending Filer to one knee. Peter aimed his other foot for Filer's chin, but just before it struck Filer jerked his head back and sprang. Peter, off balance, ducked to the side and heard Filer's blade clang against the module's wall.
Ten seconds.
Peter leapt past Filer into the shadows, hoping for an advantage in night vision. He saw Nutmeg dash back up the ramp into the cylinder and collide with Filer; both went down to the floor.
Five seconds.
Geyl, now gasping rhythmically, stood leaning by the port, the assault rifle in one hand, struggling to aim it at Nutmeg but clearly attempting to spare Filer.
Three seconds.
In an agonized moment of decision, Peter recalled the words of his abbot: "... but if it looks like you or your team cannot prevent her from attaining the Moravec, a bullet will be called for." Peter had clips full of bullets—and nothing to fire them with. If Geyl was to be kept from lifting with the Hans Moravec, there was only one way to do it.
Two seconds.
He yelled at the top of his lungs and plowed right at her. Peter and Geyl hurtled out of the module, rolling down the ramp just as a throbbing jolt shook the entire craft. The ramp snapped upward with a hydraulic hiss, and as quickly as it had struck the ground the module shot straight back up into the star-scattered sky, its ring of fire now extinguished.
Peter's right hand touched the grass, and found the assault rifle. He scrambled back and raised it just as Geyl wobbled to her knees. He heard a dull plurp in the distance, and a brilliant magnesium flare flooded the sky with unnatural light. All around them black-suited men were running into place and standing with weapons at ready. Peter saw their sleek assault helmets and the glint of the golden daggers on their collars, and smiled.
Peter stood. "Get up, Geyl. Game's over. Hell won."
Part IV. Hell Hath No Fury
Interlude
In the utter darkness of the ascending module, Filer Fitzgerald lay flat on his back and felt that his own weight was crushing the life from him. He could not move even his hands. If the madwoman beside him had so much as a paring knife, he was doomed.
"Hey, Filer."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"You're damned good."
"Thanks. So are you."
"So good I don't want to fight you anymore."
"I don't want to fight you either." Even speaking was a horrible effort. It could be a trap, not that he could do much to avoid it. He hurt in a hundred places, and while the air in the module seemed richer than the air outside, he still had to labor to take each breath.
"My name is Nutmeg. I'm a sicaria for the Ralpha Dogs. You're a Moomoo—I want to know what you're riding this elevator for."
"I'm trying to keep Hell from invading Earth."
The woman did not reply for several seconds. "Huh? I'm trying to keep Earth from invading Hell. One of us must be crazy."
Just like the Ralpha Dogs, forever assuming Earth was ready to pounce on Hell and level it. "I think we're both crazy."
"Hey, so why don't we team up and steal this thing? That way nobody invades anybody." She spoke with a bizarre manic cheerfulness, and no hint of labored breathing.
"You really are crazy."
"They don't call me Nutmeg for nothing. And you're the shitkickinest fighter I ever tangled with. Slabbing you'd be a waste. I can talk Snitzius into letting you go once we get back down to Hell. Come on! It'll be fun. How often does anybody get a chance to steal a starship?"
"It's been done, Ma'am."
"Well, not by me it hasn't. And..."
Without warning bright lights came on in the module, illuminating steel-gray walls and net hammocks hanging above them. Filer saw the hammocks and groaned; the weight of his limbs was an agony. Slowly the feeling of crushing weight lessened.
At the top bulkhead of the module a port popped open, and a young man stuck his head down into the nearly empty space. "Hey! They told me I was going to have a hold full of warriors!"
Nutmeg didn't hesitate for a moment. "The Ralpha Dogs attacked the Moomoos, and we barely got on with our lives. It's a slaughter down there! Hey, I got an important message for the Governor General."
The man gestured with one hand. "Then get up here pronto! The traverser has to be most of the way to the hub before this module heads back into the atmosphere." That said, he backed away from the port and was gone.
Filer watched Nutmeg get unsteadily to her feet and trudge to a bright steel ladder built into the module wall. He shoved against the floor, groaned, and sat upright. It took titanic effort to get to the ladder. Nutmeg was already halfway up. "C'mon, Filer! What's two Earth G's to a stud like you?"
He shook his head and, with agony in every muscle, began to climb.
The traverser was a circular room, with a low ceiling that forced Filer to walk slightly hunched. Its circumference was transparent, and outside was a dazzling view of Hell's cloud-flecked blue oceans, that swung slowly but visibly as he watched.
"Grab a seat, any seat," said the young traverser pilot from a console at the room's center, beside a thick cylindrical column that Filer realized the skyhook's cable passed through. Dozens of acceleration cots were molded into the soft material of the floor. Filer gladly lowered his body into one, grateful for something to support the still-hateful heaviness of his body.
Nutmeg wriggled into a second cot immediately beside his. She swung the crash web over her midsection, then reached over and gave his hand a squeeze. "This is so cool!"
A low hissing roar rose around them. The heaviness returned as the traverser began to accelerate up the cable toward the hub of the Hans Moravec. The comfort of the cot compensated to a degree, and Filer's thoughts collapsed into exhausted sleep.
Nutmeg shook him awake, and he was falling. In terror he flailed about him, until he realized that she was hanging in the air above him. So this was zero-G...it felt more like a waking nightmare. He forced himself calm, but was surprised by the distress signals his stomach was sending him, and was glad it held nothing of consequence, hungry as he was.
<
br /> The traverser pilot herded them hastily to a port, which led into a meter-wide translucent flexible pipe. Filer hand-over-handed his way through the pipe, gripping the flexible handholds every half meter. Nutmeg danced through the weightless air as though born there. Once they were both out of the pipe, a man with a rifle peeked into the pipe over their shoulders and then closed the port behind them. It sealed with a ragged hiss.
"This is all?" the guard asked. On his sleeve and over his pocket was an insignia like the ancient American flag, only with a galaxy instead of stars.
Nutmeg ignored him. "I'm Geyl Shreve, and this is Peter Novilio. We're on a special mission for the Governor General of America. Didn't they tell you?"
He shook his head. "I was expecting warriors with motion sickness. But hey, you two look like you know zero-G, at least, and we need the help. This is a lot of ship for twenty guys to run."
Filer forced himself to look incredulous. "You mean they sent you out here with only twenty men to run a thing this size?"
The man nodded. "Look, it wasn't my idea. We never have enough men to do anything. So we're always busting ass."
Nutmeg looked at Filer, and she winked. "I'm real good at busting ass," she said, and with lightning speed landed her right foot in the man's crotch.
Filer reached up and easily tore the rifle out of the writhing man's hands. He felt his old smile coming back. "One ass down. Nineteen asses to go."
16. The Assault on the Hans Moravec
“Coming up on ten. Clear to lift, sir?" The young pilot's right hand hovered over a fluidic switch.
"Clear to lift, Nelson," Snitzius replied from Peter's left.
It was too quiet to be a spacecraft. There was no audible countdown. There was no thrumming of pumps, whirring of fans, or mechanical voices chattering about their status. Peter felt that he was on a ship in mild seas, as the height of the Roton amplified the gentle rocking of the barge on the quiet ocean. He heard the click of the switch, and somewhere beneath them the sigh-suck noises of fluidic valves changing state.
Then, at once, a roar.
From the corner of his eye Peter could see through the spacecraft's transparent nose the igniters retract on their hydraulic arms. The Roton shook for a moment as its rotor gained speed, and outside, steam plumes writhed and churned. Finally, he felt (but could not hear against the rising cry of the rotor engines) the barge grapples release the Roton's legs.
Freedom arrowed into the sky, its acceleration growing cautiously and linearly. Five klicks east, Peter knew, Justice was preparing to ignite its rotor, and would be well into the sky before the ocean swells generated by Freedom's launch could reach it. Five klicks still further east Genius counted the seconds until its own turn, and beyond it Vengeance waited on its barge to complete the force.
That morning, Snitzius had sent a dispatch via cyclopograph from Nemo Station to the Rho Alpha Delta Masterhouse in Moloch, from which it was distributed to the several newspapers in Hell's major cities. The long-awaited war with Earth had begun. The newspapers were given photos and descriptions of the long-secret Roton spacecraft, equipped with new radio and radar systems that had been developed in Rho Alpha Delta's clean rooms. By the time the papers hit the streets, they said, thirty-one sicarii and a captured female spy from Earth would be closing in on the largest starcraft Earth had ever built, to either seize it for Hell or destroy it to ensure it would not endanger Hell's future.
Tofir Snitzius himself would be leading the force, wearing a pressure suit and seated directly behind the pilot of Freedom. Peter knew that that decision had not been popular with Rho Alpha Delta's directors, and Snitzius' response, reported third hand, settled the matter for all time: "I will not send our best to any place I myself would not go."
The female spy was being taken as an unwilling guide to the enormous spacecraft in Hell orbit. She had already experienced agonil, and had been told that silence or misdirection would be rewarded by another crystal—or five.
Hell's children had long since been scattered across the countryside. The orderhouses in the cities opened their deep shelters and began to watch the skies. Lead-lined bunkers at the southern Arctic circle aimed glistening radio antennae northward, quartz-encased sacrificial radio modules at the roots of the driven antenna elements. One switch, and current would flow, to inform Moloch when starcraft folded into being over Hell's south pole. In hours or days, once the MGIDs had destroyed the first modules, others would be plugged into their places.
There was cheering in the orderhouses and on the streets. If there was to be war with Earth, so be it. Hell had radios. Hell had spacecraft.
Suddenly, Hell had hope.
The hub of the Hans Moravec moved at an orbital altitude one-third the radius of Hell. Although the Rotons were capable of lifting twenty men plus cargo into a low orbit, inserting to orbit at twenty-three hundred klicks strained their abilities to the limit. Eight men and weapons per craft were all that could be allowed. Snitzius had been frank about the number of men in the force. He had not emphasized that they carried only hand weapons and a few grenades.
Once Freedom had passed the MGID magnetopause, its copilot engaged the Roton's electrical system. The Hans Moravec had been found visually as a bright star soon after the bulk of the atmosphere was behind them; now Freedom's fledgling radar ranging system displayed its slowly decreasing distance on the craft's nanofluid displays.
Snitzius' plan was as simple as it was audacious: Match orbits with the giant starship at three klicks' distance and drop the force, which would cross the gap to the Moravec individually and gain entrance at two different points. All present had spent hours under bright lights, studying prints of the Hans Moravec. The starship was a piece of solid asteroidal nickel-iron, with occasional burrows. The best entrances to force were those where the traversers docked, at the two cable mooring points, where airlocks had been constructed conventionally outside the hull. All other known man-sized entrances were basically plugs set into iron, most with pressure on the inside and no easy way to open them from outside.
Peter tried to keep himself calm. He had had close combat and vacuum combat training for the SIS, but had never thought it would ever be used.
|What do you think our chances are?|
Actually, quite good. Although I'm sure 1Earth prepared for possible attacks on the cable modules, I doubt they expect an attack from space. Furthermore, the internal structure of the Hans Moravec favors close combat between small forces. Once inside, our force will be difficult to eliminate. The challenge is to take the command and control areas near the point. Staying visor-down while inside will thwart 1Earth's well-known reliance on nonlethal deterrence...
"Sir!" The copilot's gloved index finger pointed to one corner of the new radar display, where an unexpected echo had appeared. Peter craned to see. An identical echo was now visible in the opposite corner. "We're getting the cable modules on radar now. They're way too close!"
No one spoke; this was not in the plan.
Snitzius broke the silence at last. "They're reeling in the cable. Karl, calculate an estimated time to completion. We can't know why, but assume that once the cable is fully furled and the modules stowed, they will fold. Gentlemen, we're within negligible distance of the largest Hilbert drive ever created. If we don't have the planet itself between us and the Hans Moravec when it happens, that fold energy will be fatal. We either board before they fold, or we will be ash—along with whatever face of Hell lies below us when it happens."
The copilot tapped numbers on his armrest keypad. Peter saw the luminous blue digits over his shoulder. "Looks like they've been at it for awhile, sir. At this rate we have a little under two hours."
"Rendezvous?"
"Thirty minutes."
"Then once we get there we have barely an hour to get on board, fight our way to the bridge and stop the fold. Vikas, alert the others." Freedom's radio officer began to tap on his code key. Snitzius turned toward the pilot. "Nelson, this changes
everything, and all to the worse. Do you understand our new problem?"
Nelson Threader, Hell's first Roton pilot and arguably its best, ran gloved hands over his face. Peter saw the glint of sweat. "I do, sir. The Moravec is winding in its cables. That means it's rotating. Fast."
"A little under one rev per minute," the copilot offered.
"The traverser airlocks are at the rim, which is currently moving tangentially at one hundred seventy klicks per hour." No one spoke. Snitzius turned to his pilot. "Nelson, you're considering something. Out with it."
Peter saw the young man gulp. "Sir. How about this: We move the Rotons inside the Moravec's fold radius. If they fold…we go with them. That's not ideal, but it's better than being vaporized. We pogo to the Moravec's face at its center, and climb down to the rim. Copilots stay with the Rotons to make sure they don't drift outside the fold radius. That buys us time against the fold and lets us work our way down to the rim."
"And allows anybody with a grenade launcher to destroy our only way back to the surface." One of the sicarii in the rear row was speaking.
In the subsequent silence, Peter knew all present were considering the geometry of a Hilbert drive: An ellipsoidal volume of space with the Hilbert ring at its equator was what moved when the drive folded. The Hans Moravec was just that, except that the ellipsoid had been cut in half at the ring, and one half removed. Its fold radius embraced the half of asteroid 22096 Gwyllion that had been cut away. There was plenty of room there for four Rotons—but they would have to be close enough to the Moravec to be vulnerable to hand weapons as minor as rifles.
"Your point, Oystein?"
The young man hesitated, plainly regretting having spoken out. "Sir, it means we win or we die."
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