There were two shots as Legion survivors were executed. Sula didn’t look.
She heard no shooting from the common room. Zero gees followed by everyone crashing to the deck in three gravities had stunned all parties into silence.
Sula felt warm liquid trickling down her cheek. Smashing into the landing had opened the cuts on her face.
She led her group up two decks on Green, then along a curving corridor to Stairwell Red. She peered cautiously around the door, then looked down two decks and saw members of the Legion on the landing and the stairs leading to the common room. From what little she could see they were in some disorder, not having quite recovered from her trick with acceleration.
Time to do it again. Red seemed to pulse on the extremities of her vision, but Sula managed to brace herself on the landing, her leg hooked through the guardrail. Spence settled herself in next to her, and Macnamara hooked an arm through the same rail, his rifle at the ready. Everyone else secured themselves to something solid, or to each other.
Spence prepared a bomb and handed Sula a grenade.
The next few seconds throbbed in time with Sula’s heartbeat. She raised her hand comm and told Ikuhara to cut the engines again.
She heard shouts and growls from the Torminel as they began to float. She turned to Spence and nodded.
Spence triggered the timer on her bomb and tossed it, in slow motion, toward the Torminel. She and Sula leaned back over the landing as soon as the bomb was released.
Three, Sula counted to herself, two, one. A well-designed detonator, for once.
The bomb blast was far beyond what Sula had expected. She flapped like a flag in the wind as hot waves of concussion bounded and rebounded in the confined space of the stairwell, but she kept her knee locked on the guardrail and managed not to get thrown into a wall.
Metal shrapnel flew past, clinked on the metal stair. The stair shuddered and groaned. Torminel shrieked and squalled.
Sula pulled herself toward the guardrail again, looked down. Several of the Torminel had been blown off the landing and were swimming through the air, trying to reach a handhold. Others were trying to rescue them. They were all shouting and screaming at once, but they had all been deafened and no one heard.
Sula set her grenade for three seconds and launched it, again in slow motion, toward the target, then pushed herself away from the stairwell.
The sound was much less impressive than Spence’s bomb, but its fury was demonstrated by the rattle of shrapnel flying up and down the stairwell. The screams echoing up the stairs took on a panicked timbre.
“Three gees,” Sula told Ikuhara, and a few seconds later gravity threw her on her back and knocked the breath out of her. The gridded metal surface of the landing imprinted itself on her flesh. She stared at the landing above her and took one breath after another and listened to the shrieks of Torminel falling nearly twenty decks to the bottom of the stairs. The metal stairsteps crackled and clanged in high gee. She wondered if Spence’s bomb had torn something free.
Then the weight came off Sula’s chest, and she dragged herself to her feet. She swayed, or perhaps the staircase did, as she readied her Sidney Mark One. “Macnamara,” she gasped. “Give us cover. The rest of you, follow me.”
Her party couldn’t follow at once, because they took some time to recover from being flattened by gravity. Eventually they were all on their feet, weapons in their hands, and following Sula down the stairs while Macnamara leaned out over the rail, his rifle pointing down, and shot at any target that displayed itself.
Sula swiped at the blood running down her face, then went down two flights to the next deck, then another length of stairs, and turned the corner carefully, deep in a crouch. The Legion recruits were fully visible on the landing below, huddled away from the guardrail and Macnamara’s fire. Some were wounded, and all were half stunned. Sula went down on one knee, brought the Sidney up to her shoulder, aimed, and pulled the trigger.
The chatter of automatic fire must have been terrifying to the Torminel armed only with pistols. She heard screams and cries, saw Torminel fall and the bright sparks of rounds hitting the guardrail or whining off the composite wall. Shots came back, but none found her.
She fell back to reload, and Spence stepped up with her own Sidney. As the second gun opened up, Sula heard a collective moan of fear and terror from the Torminel survivors. Then more screams. Then the sound of panicked flailing.
Spence emptied her magazine, and Sula took her place only to see a pair of terrified Legion recruits break free of the others and stagger through the door into the common room. Since the belligerence of Torminel was legendary, she found herself surprised by this display of terror. She signaled to those above her.
“Move up! I’ll cover!”
The others rattled down the swaying stairs, their weapons pointed toward the black mass of Legion recruits on the landing below. No shots came in reply.
The only firing came from Sula’s party, finishing off any Torminel still alive.
Macnamara came down the stairs and helped Sula to her feet. Sula didn’t go all the way to the landing—she didn’t want to get near the blood-soaked pile of limp, warm bodies—and so she detailed two people to hold the door and everyone else to shift the bodies out of the way. While Torminel were being dragged and rolled down the stairs, Sula called first Alana Haz, then Vijana, to let them know to join in when shooting started.
Sula took a breath, walked across the blood-smeared landing, and prepared herself for what she hoped was the last slaughter of the day.
The one-sided fight started with Ming Lin throwing a bomb into the middle of the common room, followed by a grenade lofted in underhand by Spence, so that it would go off near the ceiling and rain shrapnel down on the people below. Then Macnamara and Sula stood on opposite sides of the door and began firing.
What remained of the Legion sheltered behind the furniture and benches in the common room. With Vijana and Giove firing at them from the front, and Haz and Sula on either flank, they had no way of protecting themselves from the fire, and they were slaughtered. A few fled into the gift shop at the far end of the common room, but another of Lin’s bombs was tossed in the door and blew the windows out from the inside. A fire started in the clothing racks, and that triggered a rain of pale green fire suppressant. A cautious advance sloshed toward the gift shop and discovered that no one inside was left alive, including the hapless Lai-own female who had been working in the shop when the fight had started.
Sula told Ikuhara to shut off the fire suppressant, which he managed after a few minutes fumbling through menus. Sula cautiously entered the common room and saw Haz and Vijana advancing toward her. Haz’s wig had come askew, but it looked jaunty tilted on the side of her head, and she wore it like a panache. “Where’s Safista?” Sula said. “Has anyone seen his body?”
Haz attempted a laugh. “Maybe he’s too busy courting Lady Koridun to have noticed what we were up to.”
“Maybe he—” Sula’s nerves jolted as Vijana fired two shots. Sula spun and saw that he had just executed two wounded Torminel with his pistol.
Vijana saw her look and raised his eyebrows. “What?” he said. “They’re just animals.”
“Battle’s over,” said Sula.
“Tell that to Sidney. They shot him.”
Sula snarled. “You might have mentioned that earlier,” she said. She hurried past the purser’s desk, half shattered by bullets, and into the series of offices and storerooms beyond. Sidney seemed asleep, propped up behind a desk with one of his fine custom shotguns in his lap. His curled mustachios stood out against a face drained of color, and someone’s mustard-colored jacket was pressed to his side. The jacket was turning red.
Sula dropped to one knee and took Sidney’s hand. His eyes opened, and he tried to smile.
“You don’t look so good, either,” he said in a whispering voice, and then he coughed for a while. Fine red drops spattered from his mouth and dropped down his chin
.
Sula carefully took a hold of the jacket to draw it away and examine the wound. “May I?” she said.
“Don’t,” Sidney said. “There’s air coming in and out.”
She got out her hand comm and called Ikuhara. “Page the ship’s doctor to the purser’s station,” she said. “We have a casualty.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“The doctor’s Torminel,” Vijana said from behind her. “She may not—”
“She will,” said Sula. She turned to face him. “How did this happen?”
Vijana shrugged. “He’s never been in zero gee before. He made a wrong move and drifted out into plain sight. Rebecca was pulling him to safety when one of the Legion got off a shot.”
“I want a smoke,” said Sidney.
Sula looked at him. “I don’t think so.”
He winked at her. “Worth a try,” he said.
Vijana checked his pistol. “There are still a couple guards in Engine Control,” he said. “And Safista’s still on the loose.”
“No. You stay here.”
She dropped next to Sidney again, took his hand, and told him she’d be right back. Then she left the purser’s offices and went into the common room. Dead Legion bodies and broken furniture lay under gelatinous fire retardant. The air was a chemical stew, explosives and retardant and death, and it turned Sula’s stomach.
Sula sent Alana Haz with six others to Engine Control. “Don’t shoot them if they don’t resist,” she said.
“We don’t have enough personnel to guard them,” Vijana said.
“Go,” Sula said to Haz. She turned to Vijana. “I’m not in the mood for more massacres today,” she said.
“You’ll get used to them. It’s us or them.”
Sula glared at him. “You’re distracting me,” she said. “If there’s going to be more killing, it’s going to be on my order, not yours.”
Vijana considered this for a half second, and then braced. “Yes, my lady,” he said.
“We may have to send parties for Safista.” And then she remembered what Haz had said and thought that he really might be with Lady Koridun. She spoke a query into her hand comm, and the comm turned it into text and sent it to Koridun.
The reply came. safista with me in restaurant. Sula collected Spence and Macnamara and Giove, and they went to Staircase Green and up to the restaurant level, where they cautiously entered the restaurant to find Lady Koridun sitting on a table with a pistol propped in one hand and a cocktail in the other. Lord Arrun Safista lay dead on the floor, his limbs splayed. Sula halted in the doorway.
Lady Koridun’s fangs flashed. “You should see your faces!” she said. Delight danced in her large blue eyes.
Sula lowered her Mark One and absorbed the scene. “What happened?” she managed.
“He was going to follow the rest of his company down to the common room as soon as he could raise his guards in Command. I didn’t want him trying to take Command back, and since he’d sent everyone else away I threw him headfirst into a bulkhead and then strangled him with my belt.” She raised her cocktail. Methanol simmered dangerously behind greenish glass. “I’m finally rid of him! I’m celebrating!”
Sula’s head whirled. Koridun’s face took on an expression of concern. “Are you hurt?” she said.
“I got scratched and bit. Nothing serious.”
“We eat raw meat, you know,” Koridun said. “You should get a shot so you don’t get infected.”
“I’ll do that.” Sula made another attempt to find sense in this situation. “You’re lucky it was us who came here,” she said. “If someone else saw an armed Torminel, they might shoot.”
Lady Koridun put the pistol down on the table. “There,” she said. “Now I’m harmless.”
Sula hardly thought so. Koridun picked up a hand comm. “This is Safista’s,” she said. “I’ve been sending out false messages, saying that the fighting is a mistake and that everyone should hold their fire.”
Sula took a moment to absorb this. “Good work,” she said. “Have any messages come in from people we’ve missed?”
“Not in the last ten minutes or so.”
Sula took the hand comm and looked at it. “Maybe you should go to your suite,” she said. “I’ll join you later once things are settled.”
Koridun waved her cocktail glass. “I’ll make another drink first,” she said.
Sula sent out a message to any of Safista’s recruits who had managed to survive the massacre to report to the hatch outside Command, then told Ikuhara to let her know if anyone showed up. She and her group returned to the purser’s offices. The Torminel doctor had arrived and was looking at Sidney.
“He’ll need surgery,” she said. “I’ll need two people to take him to sick bay on a stretcher and help me prep. I’ll have to look up the procedure, because I don’t know it that well.”
“Whatever you need,” Sula said. After she detailed two of her group to go with the doctor to bring the stretcher, she knelt next to Sidney. The blood-soaked jacket had been taken away, and his shirt cut off: a pale blue temporary bandage sealed the wound. From the ashen look of his face there seemed not an ounce of blood left in him. She took his hand. His eyes opened narrowly and regarded her.
“You should have let me smoke,” he said, and died.
Working with an air of quiet competence, and operating under Macnamara’s wary eye, the Torminel doctor repaired the cut on Sula’s forehead. She bandaged the fang wounds and gave the shot against infection. The doctor then performed a septoplasty on Ming Lin’s broken nose, and for the next few hours treated sprains and broken bones that the wild shifts in gee had inflicted on crew and passengers. The crew that had been evacuated—“for their safety”—to the hold had been thrown around badly in the large hold spaces, and few had come through without injury. They would have been safer in their own cabins.
The two Legion recruits in Engine Control had surrendered without trouble and had been locked in a small second-class cabin and placed under guard. No more Legion members were found on the ship.
Sula wanted nothing more to do with dead bodies or blood and absented herself from the cleanup. Crew carried the Legion bodies to the hold and put them in a shipping container for disposal later. Sidney and the Lai-own vendor from the gift shop were put in body bags—the ship actually carried a few—and were stored in the freezer. Fire retardant was mopped up from the common room and from the ruin of the gift shop.
The Terran assistant purser was put in charge of his department. Firearms were distributed among the Terrans or locked away. Because paranoia was never far from Sula’s mind, Spence and Macnamara were put in charge of feeding the Terrans, so that Striver’s crew wouldn’t poison them.
The food wasn’t necessarily better, but it became less predictable, and that was an improvement.
While the crew were deployed carrying away bodies and swabbing away the blood, Sula planned the next stages of the journey. The journey to the next wormhole gate was supposed to take seven days, but Sula decided to do it in four. Accordingly, as soon as Striver was cleaned and secured, she ordered everyone aboard into their beds or into acceleration couches, cut the engines, pitched the ship over, and began accelerating for the wormhole at three gravities.
Three gravities, she decided, wasn’t too punishing if you were prepared. But it also meant you had to fight for every breath, and you had to be careful when you moved. You couldn’t commit sabotage or plan rebellion when under high acceleration, and when gees were cut so that you could use the toilet or take a meal, you were too tired to do anything else. If the crew or Striver’s captain had any intention of retaking the ship, Sula was going to make certain they wouldn’t have the energy.
When Striver passed through the wormhole into the Toley system, she disabled the ship’s transponder. With its antimatter torch blazing against the interstellar night, Striver couldn’t go completely dark, but at least it could stop advertising the fact that it wasn’t where it had be
en ordered to be.
Toley was a system of gas giants and asteroids, barren of habitable worlds; but it was also a crossroads, with one wormhole leading eventually to Harzapid, another to Colamote, and another to Zarafan. Foote’s squadron was in a race with the two squadrons from Zarafan to arrive at Toley first, and Striver had to keep ahead of them or get caught up in a battle it had no way of winning.
Because of the three strands of traffic meeting at Toley, the system was filled with spacecraft, and no one paid Striver any attention. Sula was amused to see that the yacht carrier Corona was sailing on at least ten days ahead of Striver. Martinez was still parading through system after system, with his transponder pinging away, announcing his presence to anyone who cared to look for him.
Well, Sula thought, if trouble comes, maybe it will find Martinez before it finds me.
Chapter 21
After her coup, Sula kept the second-class room she shared with Spence. She used the room only for sleeping when she wasn’t on duty, and the punishing schedule of accelerations made the pleasures of first class inaccessible anyway.
So Spence was on the bunk below when Sula woke screaming and clawing for the pistol under her pillow. Three gravities had torn tears out of her eyes and tracked them down her face. She felt the fading touch of hands on her throat. Her forearm, where the Torminel had bitten her, throbbed with pain. The scent of blood filled her senses.
“My lady!” Spence called. “My lady! It’s only a dream!”
Sula gave a gasp and let gravities push her back into the bed. The dream faded, and she struggled for words.
“It’s been a long time since I had one of those dreams.”
“Me too.”
“Not since I was on Terra.” And her mind, then, had regularly replayed the bloody scene of Ermina Vaswani dying in her arms, and Tari Koridun’s snarl as she tried to tear out Sula’s throat.
“I had forgotten what war was like,” said Spence.
The Accidental War Page 36