by Steve White
“I think they assume you’ve taken charge, Alana,” said Andrew.
“Don’t keep them waiting,” Gallivan added grimly. “Lead forth your prisoners.”
They all went down to the main personnel port. Morales emerged first, followed by Gallivan and the all but two prize crew. Andrew and Reislon remained concealed inside the port, each to one side. Andrew peered surreptitiously out, not certain what to expect in the next few seconds but sure that the Kappainu would not simply open fire on the humans as long as they were behind Morales.
His heart sank as he saw Zoltan da Silva emerge from the rank of guards and advance to the ramp.
Morales stopped halfway down the ramp. Da Silva halted at its foot and addressed her in a string of syllables that Andrew recognized as the Kappainu language as mispronounced by a human-configured throat.
Morales stood, unable to speak.
Da Silva frowned and spoke again, more peremptorily than before. As he did, he seemed to glance at the file of humans behind Morales—perhaps noticing that Gallivan’s was the only familiar face among them—and his frown deepened.
Morales’ paralysis broke. “Ah . . . I regret that I suffer from a rare condition which makes it impossible for me to pronounce any but a human language while in this—”
Without warning, Da Silva screamed an order to the guards. Simultaneously, he drew a laser pistol from his belt and fired at Morales.
She was drawing her M-3 and twisting desperately to her right side as he fired. She screamed as the coherent energy glanced searingly against her upper left arm.
“NO!” roared Gallivan He flung himself forward, pushed her down, and grabbed the M-3 she had half drawn. Fortunately, she had already set the weapon for autoburst fire. It blasted Da Silva’s head apart.
All this took less than a second. The Kappainu guards were still bringing their carbine-sized laser weapons into line, and the prize crew were still going prone on the ramp.
“FIRE!” Andrew roared into his wrist communicator to the two crewmen who had not accompanied Morales but were manning City of Osaka’s two point-defense lasers. They already had their orders from him, based on his recollection of the hangar deck’s layout.
X-ray laser weapons could be produced without the need to detonate a fusion bomb by using free-electron laser to ionize carbon material, the resultant plasma undergoing a population inversion and giving off coherent x-rays. They were ideal for space combat, where nothing less was energetic enough across the distances involved. They were never intended for use in atmosphere, which absorbs X-rays and therefore reduces their range to almost nothing. But “almost nothing” was precisely the range involved within the hangar bay.
These lasers were small weapons of their kind, comparable to the antiaircraft guns mounted by the previous century’s wet-navy ships. But within an enclosed space—even one of this size—the crackling roar as tunnels of vacuum were drilled through air was deafening. The air grew thunderous with ozone, and the heat of energy exchange made it almost unbreatheable. One of the gunners sent a rapid-fire series of X-ray pulses down the line of guards, who simply exploded into pinkish-gray mist at the touch of energies beyond any ever intended for antipersonnel use.
The other laser fired at the glassed-in control mezzanine that overhung the hangar bay. It exploded outward in a sheet of flame and a shower of debris. Andrew hoped those controls had included the only ones by which the atmosphere screen could be turned off, leaving the hangar bay in vacuum as a tornado of air sucked them all out into space. It was not an unreasonable hope; deactivating such screens was, for obvious reasons, made almost impossible to do by accident and difficult enough to do on purpose.
Andrew, drenched with sweat, ran down the ramp to where Morales lay. Gallivan, using a knife Andrew hadn’t even known he was carrying, was cutting open her left sleeve to expose the ugly laser burn. Reislon came immediately behind.
“I thought this might be useful,” the Lokar remarked as he applied pain-deadening antiradiation salve from a tube in a first-aid kit, then slapped on a seal that restored the light-duty vac suit’s integrity.
“Kozlowski!” Andrew shouted to a first-class petty officer. “Get the weapons distributed to everyone. You, and the rest of Section One, will come with me and Reislon. Lieutenant Davis, you stay here with the rest and guard the ship—and set up our little surprise. Now get Lieutenant Morales inside to sick bay.”
“Like hell.” Morales struggled to her feet, swaying in the ovenlike heat. Gallivan helped her upright. She resisted . . . but, Andrew thought, not too hard. “I’m coming, Captain.”
“As am I,” said Gallivan.
“God damn it, this is no time for goddamned insubordination! I could have both of you shot!”
Even in this hellish time and place, Gallivan’s grin was infectious and his brogue was back in full force. “Sure now, Captain, darlin’, you’ll not be reducing your already none-too-numerous following by two?”
“I can handle an M-3, Captain,” said Morales quietly. “And I won’t slow you up.”
“I’ve got no time to argue,” sighed Andrew. Kozlowski was passing out bandoliers of grenades and a choice of weapons. Reislon picked a Rogovon flamer, which fired a devastating but short-ranged discharge of superheated plasma—ideal for combat inside a space habitat if one wasn’t overly concerned with damage to property or bystanders. Andrew took an M-15A gauss submachine gun, firing hypervelocity 3mm bullets like the M-3’s, only more of them. “Do you know how to use one of these?” he demanded of Gallivan.
“I’m not unacquainted with it.”
“All right. Let’s go!”
He led the way at a run toward the hatchway he remembered, and hoped he could remember the rest of the route he had taken before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They advanced rapidly through the passageways Andrew recalled, occasionally pausing to clear side-passages and compartments of resistance with grenades tossed through doorways followed by bursts of automatic fire. Reislon withheld use of his flamer; its fuel supply was limited, besides which the resistance they encountered was too light to require such a terror weapon.
Andrew was certain that in a human military installation—or, he was almost equally certain, a Lokaron one—they would have had to fight their way through determined if improvised defenses while counterattackers worked their way around, through the maze of passageways, to flank the intruders. But the Kappainu, heirs to the genes of a million years’ worth of ancestors who had survived by concealment, subterfuge, and indirection, were ill-prepared to cope with a direct, brutal assault by enemies who knew their secrets. Andrew was counting on it, for it was the only thing that gave his plan even a hope of success. So far the theory seemed to be panning out; as often as not, any Kappainu they spotted were simply running away.
“Now remember,” Andrew cautioned the others as they trotted along in the half-crouching gait everyone except Morales had to adopt in these Kappainu-scaled passageways, “our primary objective is to take Valdes alive but our secondary objective is to rescue Ms. Arnstein. He’ll be the clinching proof we need.”
“But what if he’s shifted back to his natural form?” asked Morales. She had been as good as her promise to uncomplainingly keep up with them, although the pain-lines were visible on her face. “We won’t even be able to tell him apart from the other Kappainu.”
“Then we’re pretty much fucked,” said Andrew forthrightly. “But I’ve consistently gotten the impression that a volitional shape-shift, in either direction, takes a bit of time and effort for them, which is why the ones masquerading as humans prefer to keep on doing so even when they’re here and don’t need to. It’s one of the things I’m counting on.” One of the many, he didn’t add.
Then they reached the steps Andrew remembered and ascended to the more spacious and ornamented precincts above. They were almost suspiciously empty. Then they were through the hangings and into the chamber where Valdes had interviewed his prisoners.
It too was empty.
“Secure this compartment,” Andrew ordered, and men moved to cover the two doors Andrew remembered in the opposite wall. He was just telling himself that something didn’t seem right when a roar of explosions came through the doorway they had just entered. Kozlowski acknowledged something on his wrist communicator. “Rear guard’s under attack, Skipper. They’re coming in here—they’ve lost two men, and they can’t hold.”
At that moment the opposite doors opened and Kappainu rushed in—only to be ripped apart by M-15A fire from the two point men. Morales ordered men forward to secure the doors. They used the standard tactics—grenades, then poorly aimed blasts of automatic fire—after which no more Kappainu came through.
Grenades don’t seem to be a favorite Kappainu weapon, thought Andrew. They’re probably not used to combat in this kind of environment. Thank God for that.
In fact, this doesn’t seem to be a particularly well-executed counterattack in general. But, he amended as he saw the remains of his rear guard scurry through the entrance, turning around to fire through the doorway at their pursuers, it seems to be good enough to have trapped us in here.
These split-second reflections had barely flashed through his mind before he barked an order at Morales. “Lieutenant, we’ve got to push on ahead. It’s our only chance.”
“Aye aye, sir. Uh . . . which door?”
And there was the rub. Andrew thought fleetingly of “The Lady and the Tiger,” then shouted, “The right-hand one!” for no particular reason. “Reislon, see if you can slow down the ones behind us.”
The Lokar stepped back to the ingress door and fired a gout of superheated plasma flame. From down the passageway came the eerie sound of what Andrew assumed was Kappainu screaming as the hangings and any nearby flammable plastic ignited. The two men of the rear guard fired follow-up bursts for good measure, then they all sprinted to the door Andrew had indicated. Grenades and another roaring flame-discharge from Reislon’s terror weapon cleared away any Kappainu who might have been waiting on the other side.
“Go!” Andrew yelled. Kozlowski motioned the point men through the door. He, Andrew, Morales, Gallivan, and the others followed them as quickly as they could squeeze through the door into the hellish heat of the blackened, devastated chamber beyond.
Dehydration will be the death of us yet, thought some imp in the shielded depths of Andrew’s mind.
Then there was no time for inner gallows humor, for they were through and into a chamber beyond—and into an inferno of fire from Kappainu behind an improvised barricade of piled furniture. One of the point men died before the barricade was cleared using some of their diminishing stock of grenades—they dared not use Reislon’s flamer in a small enclosed space holding any of their own people.
After that it became a timeless hell as they fought their way through one compartment after another. The Kappainu might be physically feeble, but they were nightmarishly hard to kill. It even grew hand-to-hand—Andrew once glimpsed Gallivan plunging his knife into a Kappainu and then gutting the being before his protoplasm could simply reconfigure the wound out of existence. Another time he saw Morales thrust the muzzle of her M-3 into a Kappainu’s mouth before firing a burst that shattered the flimsy-looking alien head. But in the midst of horror he forced his mind—one segment of it, anyway—to focus on memorizing the layout of the passageways they were traversing.
It didn’t last. The Kappainu could not stand up under this kind of fighting. They scattered, and all at once Andrew and the half-dozen or so who still followed him found themselves in the clear.
They had broken into what was clearly a control center, oblong in shape, the side walls a mass of instrumentation and consoles. But Andrew had no eyes for any of that. At the far end were figures. One was a human female, tall and slender, her left arm pulled up behind her in what was obviously a painful hold by a short, compact male who, Andrew knew, was only seemingly human. For a split second her eyes and Andrew’s locked.
“Rachel,” he gasped, then shouted at his followers, “Hold your fire!” He advanced slowly. “Let her go, Valdes.”
Valdes brought up his right hand from behind his captive. It held a laser pistol—Earth manufacture, Andrew automatically noted—whose muzzle he instantly pressed against her head. “One more step and her brain is deep-fried.”
Andrew halted but didn’t drop his M-15A. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Morales had Valdes covered with her M-3. “We’re taking you with us, Valdes,” he said evenly. “If Ms. Arnstein is released unharmed, we’ll be as nice about it as possible.”
“Otherwise . . .” What Gallivan put into that one word would have chilled the blood of anyone who knew humans half as well as Andrew thought Valdes surely must.
“No, you’re not taking me, Roark. I’m leaving through that hatchway a few feet behind me. After which, you’re welcome to Ms. Arnstein—I’ll push her back through the hatch as I’m going out. The hatch is heavily armored, by the way—nothing you’ve got will be able to break it open so you can follow me.”
Andrew risked a small step forward, betting that Valdes wouldn’t throw away his shield lightly. “You know, we’re really trying to do you a favor. If you stay here, you’ll die along with everyone else on this station. Even as we speak, my people back in the hangar bay are planting a nuclear device—”
“Oh, come on, Roark! That ploy again? Reislon used it before, but this time—”
“This time, knowing precisely what we were getting into, wouldn’t we have been stupid not to do it? It’s no bluff now. We brought a bomb with a very short detonation sequence, which we plan to initiate just as our ship departs.” Looking closely, Andrew saw that the Kappainu simulation of the human body was perfect right down to the ability to sweat.
“You’re lying! But just in case you aren’t . . . I think I’ll keep Ms. Arnstein with me, after all. You won’t blow up the station with her aboard it.”
“Are you sure of that?” Andrew dared not meet Rachel’s eyes.
“Besides,” Valdes went on, “blowing it up wouldn’t do you as much good as you think. You may have noticed that the hangar decks are largely empty. That’s because our warships are almost all deployed. We’ve been doing extensive patrolling ever since Broadsword escaped.” Andrew forced himself not to let his relief show and hoped everyone else was doing the same. “I’m sure you didn’t come here unsupported, but any stealthed Rogovon rebel forces will find themselves in difficulties as soon as you lead us to them by rendezvousing with them.”
“That won’t do you, personally, much good,” Andrew pointed out.
“Oh, I was planning to depart anyway, aboard my personal ship. Legislative Assemblyman Valdes’s junket in the outer solar system is due to end shortly. I’ll simply advance my schedule . . . leaving Ms. Arnstein here, of course. And now . . .” Valdes began to back away toward the hatch, carefully keeping Rachel positioned so as to make it impossible for Andrew or Morales to risk a head shot.
In doing so, he left himself open to Reislon, who could hardly do any precision shooting with his flamer.
With a single motion, the Lokar dropped the flamer to the deck with a clang and brought up his left arm. With a crackling snap, a burst of slivers from his implanted needler whipped past Rachel’s cheek at a distance of millimeters and through Valdes’s laser pistol and the hand holding it.
The Kappainu’s hand didn’t even have time to bleed before reconfiguring itself around the tiny holes. But it startled him, and the laser pistol was knocked out of line before he could press the firing stud.
Rachel broke free and brought an elbow back into Valdes’s midriff. At the same instant, Morales sprang forward like a leopard, dropping her M-3 so as to use her good arm to grip his right wrist and wrench the laser pistol from it. Together, the two women wrestled him to the deck.
Andrew touched the human-seeming forehead with the muzzle of his M-15A. “If you try to transform back into your natural shape, I’ll destro
y your brain. We happen to know that instantaneous death halts the process and leaves you in human form.” Valdes only glared.
Andrew noted a trickle of blood from a hairline cut on Rachel’s cheek. “You took an awful chance with that shot,” he remarked to Reislon.
“My weapon implant incorporates a neural targeting feature that projects crosshairs directly onto my optic nerve,” the Lokar explained. “It’s quite accurate.”
“I’m glad you risked it,” said Rachel. “Thank you. Thank you all.” For an instant her eyes met Andrew’s, and what he saw caused warmth to seep back into his soul.
“Let’s get back to the ship,” he said gruffly.
“First,” said Gallivan, “we might want to make certain our friend here can’t raise an alarm about our little surprise package.” With his knife he cut two strips from Valdes’s sleeve. One he used as a gag, the other to tie Valdes’s wrists behind him. While he worked, Andrew spoke into his wrist communicator to Lieutenant Davis, in charge at the ship.
“The hangar bay is still secured, sir,” reported the very young officer in a commendably steady voice. “They’ve got all the exits—including the one you went through—blocked off, and they’ve tried a couple of probing attacks, but not very hard. Maybe they’re afraid we’ll use the ship’s lasers again if they succeed in breaking in.”
“Sit tight and prepare for immediate departure—and for activation of the detonation sequence. We’re on our way. Out.” Andrew turned to what was left of Section One. “All right. Let’s go. Reislon, bring up the rear. On your way out, use your flamer’s last fuel on this control center.”
They returned the way they had come, through devastated compartments and passageways, seeing few Kappainu. Valdes’s hostage value proved sufficient to get them past those few without resistance. Then they were nearing the hangar bay, and Andrew could see the Kappainu barricade ahead.
Andrew grabbed Valdes by one upper arm and shoved him forward while holding his M-15A to his head. “Attention!” he yelled. “We have Valdes. If we are fired on, he dies!”