Succumbing to curiosity, Sean slipped into the cubicle to view the gear used to lift the drones. His eyes widened as he beheld a faded but legible map of the entire complex stenciled on the wall.
"Signe! Cast an eye!" he exhorted in delight.
"Shades of the ancients!"
Twenty minutes later, Jassy glided on noiseless, booted feet into a dimly lit barrack crowded with metal bunks. Planting himself in a strategic position, he stood there, legs apart, eyes pitiless behind the goggles equipped with an imager for aiming the massive electronic weapon. The red dot of the tracer illuminated the chest of one of ten miners awakened by a strident command chillingly couched in a heavy Gaean accent. Madelyn's sword-point pricked the neck of a man lying rigidly still. Red drops welled up to bead the hollow of the Columbian's throat.
"Make a single movement, and we'll wipe half of you before it's completed!" Jassy barked. That ominous warning produced the desired effect.
In the cabin across the corridor, Yuri, flanked by Jess and Malcolm, held the tracer of a second electronic weapon centered on one of seven dumbfounded occupants of the dining hall. In an open area beyond those sites, Teeny aimed a third such device at the entrance to the elevators leading to the lower levels of the mine.
Conor stood nearby, selectively damaging the machinery that operated the commodious, wire-enclosed cages, so as to strand the current shift of ten workers below the surface of the planetoid. Theo guarded the corridor leading to the military base. In the communications cabin, Eric, blade in hand, kept a sharp eye on the board. Morgan and Sean each held at sword-point one of the two officers in charge of the mining operation. In the adjoining office, Signe confronted a hard-bitten spacer.
Rage consumed the Columbian Lieutenant confronting the enemy he instantly recognized. Hair of a silvery hue universally betokening an age in excess of an Earthcentury, uncannily framing a face undeniably that of a young woman, flaunted Signe's identity to her foe. Standing frozen into immobility opposite a lone adversary, the professional soldier gambled against substantial odds.
Possessed of hair-trigger reflexes honed by ten Earthyears of bitter experience gained simultaneously with intensive training in martial arts, the legendary warrior saw her foe's forefinger curl, and caught a glimpse of the blue-black spot marring the fair skin of its tip. Before the Columbian could achieve the necessary peak of mental effort needed to launch the small but deadly projectile implanted under his skin--a missile that would envelop his captor in a cloud of instantly lethal droplets of nerve-poison--the Gaean leader impaled the attacker on her gleaming blade.
A shriek shivered the air, reverberating off the metal walls. Eyes blazing, Signe pulled her steel free as her adversary slumped inertly to the deck, to gasp his last, strangled breaths. In a gesture practical rather than malevolent, the victor wiped her red-stained sword on the tunic of her fallen foe.
Two other Columbians stared past her through the door she slid open, their eyes glued to the dying spacer. "He tried to use his implant," the survivor of the encounter hissed. "Mistake, that."
As Eric forced one of the pair against the wall, Signe thrust the tip of her gleaming blade against the man's chest. "Want to avoid joining your cohort on the deck?" she inquired in a tone calculated to intimidate. The Columbian nodded mutely, seemingly afraid that his voice might not remain steady. "Man this board," she ordered peremptorily. "Take exceeding care. Let slip the faintest hint to the spacers handling the board of the military base that something's wrong here, and my captain will instantly skewer you."
Without speaking a word, the captive thus bluntly adjured seated himself at the panel. "Leave the vid off if anyone calls you," Signe instructed. "Use only the audio. Tell the base the vid malfunctioned, but your partner has the problem all but solved." The Columbian nodded again, glancing uneasily from the silver-haired warrior to the swordsman whose readiness to slay an uncooperative enemy he unerringly divined. Visibly bracing himself, the thoroughly cowed miner concentrated on handling the complex communications center.
Conor appeared in the doorway. "I've trapped the men working down below. There's a shaft sporting a ladder, but I left my subordinate aiming her handweapon through the hatch, and told the crew that over the intercom."
"Good. Take this prisoner to the dining hall." Signe indicated the second captive, who remained flattened against a wall, eyeing the sword Sean held leveled at his vitals. "Bind the miners, and bring the woman guarding them back with you."
Having nodded, Conor strode away, prodding the unresisting head of the mining operation with the tip of his naked blade. A short time later, he reappeared, followed by Jess.
Continuing to refrain out of old, ingrained habit from revealing the names of her warriors in the presence of enemies, Signe addressed Eric. "If this man arouses your suspicion in the least way, kill him, and shut down the board. Let those at the base think it malfunctioned altogether." Pointing in turn to Conor, Morgan, Sean, Jess, and Theo, she commanded, "You'll come with me." Turning to Eric, she announced, "You're in command here. We'll raise you at this station after we gain our objective." Her crisp voice projected magnificent assurance.
Acting as he always did in a situation such as this, the Senior Captain betrayed no hint of his fear for the woman issuing those orders: the person for whom he cared the most of any alive. Extending his steel, he allowed the tip to prick the neck of the man sweating at the panel. "I'd as soon kill you as chance trusting you'll pull this off," the swordsman confided with ominous softness, spacing his words for emphasis while stating utter truth.
Six raiders melted like wraiths through an untenanted, winding, metal-walled corridor. Standing poised to thrust aside the heavy metal door leading to the military base, Signe whispered, "Morgan, you and Sean handle the men in the barrack--first door to the right. Conor, you and Jess target the recreation hall--first left. Theo, hit communications--second door on the left. I'll cover the office."
Two minutes later, Morgan and Sean stood with blades poised to pierce the throats of two spacer-fighters who had lain asleep. Five others lay rigidly still, obeying their captor's stentorian command that they freeze, or see their two comrades instantly slain.
Simultaneously, Conor and Jess regarded the motionless backs of eleven miners who stood with arms upraised, facing a wall in the recreation hall--men paralyzed by dread after one of their number gasped the name of the one Gaean warrior, other than Signe, whose battle-marked face the enemy long ago managed to match with his eminently feared name. In the communications cabin, Theo held the red dot of his tracer-beam on one of four spacers standing stiffly erect, with their hands held palms-out at shoulder-height.
A rapid search mounted by the Commander uncovered a similar weapon. That prize she delivered to Conor. Shortly thereafter, the miners, their hands bound behind them with stout tape, filed into the barrack and dropped to sit cross-legged along a wall. While the scarred warrior held the red dot of the tracer of the now warmed and ready handweapon on the chest of a burly spacer lying supine beneath the bedcover, Morgan, Sean and Jess thrust sword-tips against the throats of three equally motionless Columbians.
Having collected the sheathed swords hanging from belts slung over the foot of each bunk, Signe retrieved seven pairs of pants from an adjuster in the bathcabin, and tossed the garments onto the beds occupied by the spacers sleeping in the nude in accordance with universal custom. When she again stood with bared sword in hand, poised to kill, she snapped an order for one man at a time to sit up, don his pants, and lie back down, warning that the slightest resistance would result in instant carnage.
Stifling impotent rage, seven tough spacer-fighters sullenly obeyed the directive.
Leaving Jess to back Conor, the Commander led Morgan and Sean to the communications cabin, where each of the two men grasped one of the Columbian Captain's arms in a grip of iron.
Signe fronted the officer immobilized against the wall. Appraising eyes studied the trim, compact, supple body, and search
ed the hard-featured brown face lacking any claim to comeliness. Deeming the officer intelligent, the shrewd judge of character inferred competence.
"Your name?" she asked.
"Dahl."
The point of the raider's sword punctured the man's skin, just below his breastbone. "I need your cooperation, Captain," she informed her captive, raking him with icy eyes. "We intend to lift your ship into orbit around this rock, and not a one of us has ever performed that maneuver. You're going to show us how."
"Teach you rebels to operate a military ship? The hell I will!" Dahl neither flinched nor averted his eyes as he couched that reply in a voice as steady as that of his world's archfoe.
The razor-sharp point sank deeper into non-quivering flesh. A small red stain momentarily wet the black fabric of the Columbian's uniform, before the cloth repelled it, producing a transitory wisp of pink cloud. Signe's tone dripped menace. "Are you prepared to die here and now rather than cooperate?"
"Yes."
Strong fingers tightened on the sword-hilt. A wrist of iron advanced an infinitesimal distance, causing a wider stain to test the efficacy of the uniform's adjustment. Backed against the unyielding wall, the Columbian wordlessly conveyed stubborn intransigence to the warrior from whom he expected no quarter. For a span of seconds in which for him, time stopped, he braced for the thrust that would end his life.
No swift impalement occurred. Signe stepped back, breaking the contact of gleaming steel with flesh oozing blood. "A patriot," she rasped harshly, scathingly, enunciating each word with precise care. "In Norman's Fleet ." Her lip curled, but the agate eyes raking her obdurate adversary unmistakably accorded him respect.
Staring unwaveringly into the eyes boring into his, Dahl mastered incipient faintness, even as he cursed what he saw too late as culpable slackness in guarding against even a remote possibility of an attack. How in hell did these supposedly shipless Gaeans dock? No image of any sort whatsoever appeared on our scanning screens! he fumed, fighting the fear fogging his brain.
Having seen the miners placed in the custody of those guarding hostages, Signe issued orders to Conor and Sean to march the entire complement of surviving spacers to the ship. Addressing Morgan, she commanded, "You'll personally escort this captain aboard." Turning, she strode off ahead of the warrior obeying that order.
Following in her wake, his arms raised, the muscles of his back involuntarily shrinking as the needle-sharp tip of the redhead's blade jabbed the skin between his shoulder blades, Dahl fought desperately to conquer the despair threatening to erode the self-command he had thus far so creditably maintained.
As Sean and Conor hustled ten glowering spacer-fighters to the inner lock roofed by the docking module of Dahl's vessel, Signe climbed the semicircular grillwork rising upwards to the juncture where the base of the module had sealed itself to the top of the lock when the ship docked. Knowing full well that the air supporting the lives of all the spacers occupying this enclosure--air supplied from tanks integral to the vessel--could be pumped back into the ship by a foe lurking aboard, the initiator of a hazardous venture felt the hair on the nape of her neck stir. We'll all die spaced, if I've miscalculated, she conceded grimly, even as she forged ahead. But this ship carries a crew of twelve, and we've accounted for that number of spacers.
Rising through the hole in the base of the elevator spanning the width of the docking module, the woman gambling her own life as well as those of comrades and foes stepped warily onto the deck ringing the circular aperture. "Send up five men," she called down to Conor. "If any resists, run him through."
Five sullen, barefooted hostages clad only in pants climbed through the opening onto the elevator platform ahead of Sean, to stand with arms held high as Signe touched the switch, setting the conveyance swiftly rising to the top of the dark well. Exquisitely aware that two master swordsmen could kill or maim all of them if they attacked their captors barehanded, they made no such attempt.
Mounting the short ladder, the Gaean leader rose, naked sword in hand, through the hatch into the bridge of the ship. As she watched, poised to kill, Sean bound with stout tape the wrists the captives reluctantly thrust out at Signe's command.
No enemy materialized. Leaving Sean to guard the five Columbians ordered to lie prone on the deck, Signe turned to her left, and advanced across the width of the bridge, passing between the command center composed of four couches fronting an imposing conglomerate of screens and other electronic gear, and the rear wall lined with lockers. Her every sense on hair-trigger alert, she entered the narrow corridor stretching away in front of her, and halted at the first of two doors, a sliding panel distinguished by a numeral: three. Having thrust the door aside without exposing her body to any enemy who might be lurking within, she entered the cabin, and crossed that cramped space featuring two bunks.
Exhibiting equal caution, she proceeded through the bathcabin, and locked from the outside the door leading from that facility to Cabin Four. A swift but thorough search of Cabin Three resulted in the confiscation of an array of swords and knives. Satisfied that no weapons remained, the Commander imprisoned the first contingent of hostages in quarters designed to accommodate only two crewmen.
Dahl came to a halt within the cylindrical expanse of the inner lock. Turning, he faced the Gaean raider whose height exceeded his own, whose right hand held a gleaming blade leveled at his captive's chest, and whose glinting green eyes actively sought to detect the slightest hint of resistance sufficient to justify a thrust through his charge's vitals. Tales of Signe's ruddy-haired captain's exploits swirled through a mind frantically searching for a way out of a situation guaranteed not only to wreck a cherished career, but also to initiate appalling consequences to Columbia. Poised to demand his guard's name, the prisoner heard a curt order to mount the semicircular grillwork giving access to the elevator.
Fatalistically, Dahl shrugged. I won't live to pass on the news even if I do manage to tag Signe's thrice-damned redhead with a name familiar to us! he railed as smoldering anger flared into hot rage. His nerves quivering, the Columbian preceded his guard through the hatch. Turning, he fronted his captors, while managing to preserve an impassive expression.
"Search Cabin One for weapons, and lock the door leading to Two," Signe commanded. Refusing to allow the unfamiliar complexity of the bridge upon which she stood to daunt her, she issued that directive to Sean in a tone breathing serene assurance. As the recipient of the order strode away to her right, and entered a corridor the twin of the one leading to the quarters on the opposite side of the bridge, thoughts cascaded through the rebel leader's consciousness, momentarily freezing her statuesque body into immobility.
Aware at some subliminal level that Earthmen dead twenty thousand of their planet's years crafted this durable artifact, Signe succumbed to an overmastering accession of awe. This prize I so covet rode to this star-system clamped to the hull of the Gaea , the Columbia , or Johann's Flagship, she marveled. Standing motionless, the martial descendant of galactic pioneers swept a calculating glance over the complex array of navigational and communications equipment forming the dominant feature of the bridge: the board from which those on duty operated the vessel. Fascinated, she surveyed the four couches facing the board, the walls lined with lockers, and the inner plates of the hull curving across the upper reaches of the bridge.
The hatch overhead caught and held her attention. Mentally the raider visualized the exterior of the ship, a sight she had seen only on video screens: the sole method by which members of her civilization could view their inhospitable universe, unless they exited the windowless, water-filled double hulls of ships or habitats to stare into fearsome infinity through a faceplate, while trusting vulnerable respiring bodies to the fragile armor of a pressure suit.
A lofty geometric construct took form in the woman's interior vision: an unimaginably precious warship composed of a horizontal toroidal ring embracing within its circumference a similar but slightly smaller vertical shape, the twin
ned whole encompassing a spherical volume of empty space. Those interlocked structures, the larger over one hundred meters in diameter, would have reminded an ancient Earthman of two doughnuts intersecting at right angles. The imposing sight offered the viewer the sense that the austerely simple main framework rested delicately, improbably, upon the slender column of the docking module. That latter component rose vertically from the rim of the lock that matched its diameter, bearing the far grander body of the vessel on its top, like Atlas standing erect under the weight of a world.
A down-curving, graceful heat shield protected the hull above and the module below its creamy sweep, from the inconceivable heat of water exploding into plasma when the propulsive system activated. A collar of burnished mirror encircled the docking module at a distance, its surface concave, so as to reflect incredibly powerful laser beams issuing from generators rimming the outer edge of the horizontal torus. That concentrated might of intense light the mirror redirected upward and inward, to heat the ring of orifices girdling the top of the module: openings from which direly costly water fuel spewed with reckless prodigality to provide thrust. Designed to lift off airless planetoids and ply the hard vacuum of space, the vessel requiring no aerodynamic shape sported none.
That brief, intense visualization of her priceless acquisition faded. Pressing a switch on the arm of the second helm couch, Signe watched as the board slid upwards, and the seat upholstered in leather-like fabric assumed the position used during launch. A touch on another switch set the flaccid harness integral to the couch, filling with fluid.
At her nod, Morgan thrust Dahl down into the contoured hollow. Crossing her victim's arms, she bound each of his hands to the opposite forearm with sticky glass tape. Deftly, she fastened the top half of the harness over the man's torso and legs, exquisitely aware of the hatred mirrored in the obsidian eyes raking her person.
At the Commander's order, Conor escorted his five captives onto the bridge, where he assisted Signe and Morgan to confine them in Cabin One. Standing in the corridor affording access to that half of the living quarters, the leader following a preconceived plan targeted Conor and Sean with a forefinger. "You'll back those ashore, who guard the hostages," she informed the pair in a tone pitched so as to prevent Dahl's overhearing her words. Indicating Morgan and Theo, she announced, "You two will man the board in the military base."
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