by Peter Grant
“You can take them to those tables, Ma’am,” he replied courteously, indicating a row of tables behind which more Marines waited. “Please be as quick as you can.”
“What’ll happen to the things I don’t send aboard?”
“They’ll be disposed of, Ma’am.”
“But they’re –”
The rebel interrupted. “Fergoshsakes, Mrs. Pakise, get on with it! We ain’t got all morning!”
Battista murmured to his Exec, “This is the first family out of how many?”
“They said about three hundred, Sir – a little over a thousand people in all.”
The Lieutenant-Colonel rolled his eyes. “And we’ve got just three days to get them all processed, re-clothed and shipped up to orbit. If each family takes this long, it’ll take three weeks!”
“I’ll see what can be done, Sir. We can ask our rebel liaison team to talk to the families in their assembly areas, before they’re brought here. If they can be given an attitude adjustment before they arrive, that should speed up their processing.”
“Let’s hope so!”
It seemed to take forever for the first fifty family members of the rebels to be processed through the row of tents and prefabricated buildings set up to handle them. As the last emerged, all now wearing military-issue coveralls, Lieutenant-Colonel Battista came out of his command vehicle and joined his Exec once more.
“Almost three hours!” he snorted angrily. “At this rate we’ll never be finished on time!”
“I’ll crack the whip, Sir.”
“Yes, do that – diplomatically, of course.”
“I’m told part of the problem is the uniform fabber. It’s taking longer than expected to make reduced-size coveralls for the kids. Its artificial intelligence control module keeps complaining that the measurements are impossibly small for soldiers.” They shared a grin. “It has to be manually overridden every time.”
“When you send up the measurements to the ship so it can produce replacements, make sure you warn the crew to check their own fabber for the same problem.”
“Will do, Sir. By the way, Maxwell was right – again. Some of the rebels were trying to conceal weapons or contraband in their luggage or clothing. If he hadn’t discussed that with the Qianjin spacers, so that they insisted on searching and re-clothing them before boarding, there’s no telling what some of them might have tried to do aboard the freighter.”
Battista nodded. “He’s one of the best things that’s happened to us on this mission. It was a stroke of good luck when he was detached to help us planetside.”
“Have you processed my recommendation yet, Sir?”
“Not yet. It’s exactly what I wanted, but I’ll wait to see how things go with this operation in case we need to update it. We can’t move it further along until his skipper gets back, anyway. I wonder what he’s planning?”
“He didn’t tell you, Sir?”
“No. I gave him carte blanche, remember? We can’t do a lot of things we want to do, thanks to our orders and the ultra-tight supervision on this assignment. He understands that if I know too much in advance I might be duty-bound to stop him, or at least ask Captain Davis’ permission to proceed. This way I can honestly say I had no idea what he was up to. He’s made himself into a lightning conductor to protect all of us.”
“I hope he hasn’t wrecked his career by doing this.” There was real worry in the Exec’s voice.
“He may have, and we may suffer repercussions too; but that’s the way it goes.”
“Yes, Sir.” Emory hesitated. “Gunnery Sergeant Kinnear told me something. Maxwell apparently said to him that if hostages were killed because he wouldn’t act, a future career built on their bodies wouldn’t be worth having.” He heaved a sigh. “That may not be politically or militarily correct, but dammit, he’s morally right!”
“Amen to that! That’s why I let him go ahead.” Battista was silent for a moment. “Whatever he’s planning, I hope it works.”
“From your lips to God’s ears, Sir!”
~ ~ ~
Turgay withdrew his head from the inspection hatch and sighed wearily. “OK, that’s the last one.” He glanced at his companions. “Unless either o’ you saw something I missed, I’ll tell the boss everything’s been cleared on the freighter.”
The two rebels, both former spacers, shook their heads in unison.
“Not me.”
“Nothin’ here.”
“Let’s head for the bridge and have ’em send the signal, then you can go to your quarters. No need f’r us t’ go back planetside. I’ll make a final check of the shuttle, then tell the boss to come on up. I’ll rejoin you later to help bed down the families as they arrive.”
“You don’t need help to inspect his bird?” one of his colleagues asked.
Turgay snorted. “An itty-bitty cargo shuttle? Nah. What’s to worry about?”
On arrival at the shuttle he headed for the pilot console and, with Kwok’s help, went over every tank that had been installed planetside. He checked all the sensors and used the test valves on every tank to ensure that they contained the right liquids. At last he nodded with satisfaction.
“It all looks fine to me. I’ll signal the boss to come on up.”
“You don’t want to check anything else?” Kwok asked.
“Naw. Already did that planetside. I just wanted to make sure you’d filled your tanks. You’ve got enough supplies to operate for three months. With that taken care of, I guess the boss can look out for himself if he has to.” He glanced at the pilot, his face sober. “Make sure ya keep him happy. He’s stretched tight as a drum right now. Get on his wrong side an’ he might lash out. Just givin’ ya a private heads-up, one spacer to another, unnerstan’?”
“I hear you. Thanks.”
“Can’t say I’m sorry to be leavin’ him here while I head back to the freighter. Right now he scares me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
In their carefully concealed compartment, Steve and Kinnear watched through the sensor network and listened to the exchange. Steve glanced at the Gunnery Sergeant. “We’d better keep that in mind as well,” he said softly, careful to keep his voice low enough to avoid being overheard through the thin metal partition.
“Yeah. If he’s that wound up, we may find it difficult to catch him off-balance.”
“We’ll just have to wait for the right moment. He’s human. Sooner or later, he’s bound to make a mistake or lose focus for an instant.”
“He hasn’t made many mistakes so far that I can see, Sir.”
“Then we’d better hope his good judgment runs out real soon now!”
~ ~ ~
A Marine assault shuttle docked with the cargo shuttle two hours later. Turgay was waiting at the airlock to greet Bairam as he warily emerged, looking around suspiciously, pulser clutched in his hand.
“Hi, Boss. Nothin’ ta worry about. I stayed t’ meet ya an’ answer any questions ya might have about this thing.”
“Thanks, Turgay. Good idea.” Bairam holstered the pulser, eyes flickering from left to right, up and down. “You can tell me more once we’ve got the hostages aboard. After I’m satisfied, the rest of them will join us.”
Twenty men, women and children stumbled through the airlock, faces lined and drawn with weariness and fear, escorted by three armed rebels. Bairam watched as his people hustled the hostages to the rows of bunks, where each was assigned a bed and told to stow their small bags of belongings in drawers beneath each mattress.
At last one of the guards came back to him. “All done, Boss.”
“Good.” He craned his neck to look at the uniformed Marine watching him impassively from the airlock. “You can tell your pilot he can undock now, t’ make room for the next shuttle.”
“Will do.” The Marine turned on his heel and closed the airlock behind him.
“Don’t think he likes you, Boss,” the rebel sniggered.
“Yeah. I bet he thinks w
e’re real mean an’ nasty to hold hostages like this. Well, he ain’t had to go through what we’ve endured on that damn dirtball all these years. He might sing a different tune if he had.” Bairam turned to Turgay. “All right, herd the spacers into their lifeboat an’ keep ’em there while I plant the explosives.”
“Will do, Boss.”
Kwok and his spacers had been warned to expect this. They entered one of the cargo shuttle’s small lifeboats without complaint and allowed Turgay to stand in the airlock door, blocking their view. Bairam ordered the hostages to lie on their bunks with their faces turned away. The guards enforced his order while he positioned three explosive charges against the shuttle’s hull, made sure they weren’t visible to casual observers, taped them to cross-members to hold them in place, and tested their circuits. As soon as a green self-test light showed that each was operational, he linked it to the console attached to his belt, then switched its detonator to live, fail-deadly mode. He didn’t know that Steve and Kinnear were watching him on their screens.
“That charge is right outside this compartment, Boss,” Kinnear said in a soft whisper at one point, well aware that the rebel leader was less than a meter away on the other side of the steel. “Guess he hasn’t realized the false partition isn’t the inside of the hull. If he blows it while we’re in here, it’ll take us out.”
“We’d better make sure he doesn’t get the chance to do that.”
“You said it!”
Bairam placed the last charge, integrated it into the wireless circuit, then synchronized all three detonators. Instantly a loud, repetitive beep! sounded from the console as it demanded an updated safety code. He used the unit’s calculator function to produce it, multiplying a base figure by an increment derived from the current time, then entered the solution carefully and watched in satisfaction as a red flashing light went out, a green light came on, and the warning was silenced.
“All right, Kader, everything’s working as it should,” he told his second-in-command. “We can radio the second shuttle to deliver the rest of the hostages.”
“How often d’ya have t’ enter a code like that?” the other asked. “I’m askin’ ’cause I gotta do it when ya sleep, y’know?”
“Yeah, I know. It can be as little as five minutes, might be as long as an hour. It’ll vary every time. You know how to calculate the new code, right?”
“Yeah, ya made me practice it often enough.” The man shivered. “Still feels creepy to be puttin’ in a code, knowin’ I’ll be blown to hell an’ gone if I get it wrong or don’t finish in less than sixty seconds.”
“Get it right an’ type faster, then ya won’t have to worry,” Bairam advised him unsympathetically.
Kader pointed at an orange light on the console. “What’s that one?”
“That’s in case the console loses communication with the detonators an’ they get out o’ sync with each other. You got three minutes to fix the problem – change the batteries, unmask the aerial, whatever it takes. It’ll flash orange for two minutes, then red for the last minute.”
“An’ if I can’t fix it in three minutes?”
“Then there’ll be a big bang an’ all your troubles will be over.”
The man visibly flinched. “You’d better show me how to fix it, then.”
“I’ll run you through the most likely problems, but don’t worry. In a small space like this it’s just about impossible for the detonators to get out o’ sync with the console.” He pointed to an aerial clipped along the rear of the console. “Just make sure that don’t break off or get blocked by something metallic, like this storage locker.” He slipped the console into the narrow gap between the locker and the hull. Instantly the beep! sounded again, the green light was extinguished, and the orange light began to flash. Pulling the unit out again, Bairam calculated and entered another code and the green light came on once more.
“Damn, Boss, I wish you wouldn’t do that!” Kader complained shakily. “Every time I hear that buzzer it scares the willies out of me!”
“It’s s’posed to. It’s remindin’ ya t’ fix the problem real quick. All right, let’s get the other hostages aboard, then we can send Turgay back t’ the freighter an’ tell ’em planetside to start loading our people aboard her.”
The second shuttle had been waiting nearby to be called in. It docked at the airlock, disgorging another twenty hostages and three more rebel guards. Bairam watched as the new arrivals were ushered to their bunks and told brusquely to lie down and wait for further orders. His lips curled in frustration as one little girl burst into tears, evaded the hands of the guard trying to lift her onto an upper bed and dived beneath a bottom bunk, wriggling out of sight behind its supporting framework.
“Get that damn kid outta there!” he ordered sharply.
“She’s afraid of your men,” her mother said, voice quavering with her own fear. “She watched them kill some of her friends when they took over. Now, if any strange man gets too close, she shrinks away and tries to hide.”
“Then you get her out! I ain’t got time to waste on a damn fool kid. If she gives us trouble, I’ll put her out the airlock without a spacesuit. Control her, or else!”
“I – I’ll try.”
The woman got down on her hands and knees. It took her a couple of minutes of sweet talk and pleading before her daughter slowly, reluctantly, crawled out from beneath the lower bunk. She clung like a leech to her mother’s legs, and began screaming when told to lie on a bunk on her own. Her mother looked appealingly at Bairam.
“Could I please take her into my bunk? It’ll help her settle down.”
Bairam let out a lurid curse, making the woman flinch. “If that’s the only way t’ make her shut up, yeah, go ahead – but remember what I said. Any more trouble after this an’ out she goes!”
He turned to Turgay. “All right, you can head back to the freighter. Hitch a ride on that Marine shuttle at the airlock. Keep me posted on how things are goin’ there. Soon as all our people are aboard, let me know, then head back here t’ get the coordinates. I ain’t sendin’ them over the radio. No sense tellin’ the Governor where you’re goin’.” He noticed that the grizzled spacer’s face was disturbed, and he kept glancing at the young girl weeping in her mother’s arms. “Whassamatter? Worried about that damn kid?”
“She’s still a baby, Boss. You can’t expect her to behave like a woman grown.”
“She won’t live to be one unless she learns to do as she’s damn well told!”
Turgay hesitated. “You never had kids o’ your own, did you, Boss?”
“Naw. So what?”
“So you never learned how to deal with them. She can’t be more than three, four years old. They can’t think at that age, Boss – only react. You gotta handle ’em gently.”
“No time for that here. What I said stands. She gives any more trouble, I’ll get rid o’ her.” Bairam’s voice was hard and uncompromising.
Turgay sighed. “OK, Boss. It’s your call; but I wish you’d ease up. Since Luna… died, you been real hard on all o’ us. I don’t reckon we deserve that. We’re doin’ the best we can.”
Bairam bit his lip to hold back a vicious rebuke. After a moment, clearly fighting hard to control himself, he said, his voice tight, “You done good work for me an’ been loyal so far, so I’m gonna let that slide, just this once; but don’t challenge me again, Turgay. Don’t challenge me. Get it?”
The spacer licked his suddenly dry lips. He knew his peril. “G – got it, Boss.”
“Then get goin’.”
Behind the partition that concealed them, Kinnear looked at Steve, his face grim. “I hadn’t thought about the kids. When we appear out of nowhere to tackle Bairam and his goons, they’re likely to panic. We may have screaming kids running all over the place, getting in our line of fire.”
“You’re right. I hadn’t thought about it either.” Steve considered a moment. “We’ll have to pick our moment very carefully, when as many
kids as possible are either in their beds or over in the big lifeboat. That may not be possible, of course.” He shrugged. “We’ll just have to do the best we can when the time comes. One thing’s for sure, though. When the time comes, we put down all the rebels fast and hard. We can’t afford the time to give them a chance to surrender. If kids run into our line of fire, they may use them as cover to make a move or try to grab one of them and hold a gun to their head. We daren’t take that chance.”
~ ~ ~
As Turgay rose to enter the freighter’s airlock, the Marine loadmaster, a Sergeant, said to him, “I saw how you tried to calm down your boss in the cargo shuttle. That took guts. I thought for a moment he was gonna pop you right there and then.”
The grizzled former Bosun nodded. “You and me both,” he agreed fervently.
“Is he always like this?”
“He wasn’t, but ever since we lost the big fight in Surush an’ had to run for it, he’s been broodin’. We was betrayed by one o’ our leaders, an’ I think he never got over that. He trusted Arne like a brother. To have him turn traitor like that shook him right down to his toes. After that, he never trusted anyone quite as much again. Then, a few days back, another o’ his leaders turned against him when he wanted to kill some hostages t’ force the Governor to play ball. Way I heard it, she didn’t want the kids harmed. She tried to shoot him, but he shot first. That made him even worse. I dunno if he’s thinkin’ straight right now.”
The Marine made a mental note to report the conversation as quickly as possible. “Yeah. Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for standing up for the kid. Do me a favor, would you? Keep thinking about her, and do what you can for all the kids on that shuttle. I got a young girl like that at home. I’d hate to think of anyone treating her like that.”
The spacer looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. “I had young ’uns o’ my own once. They’re grown now, but I ain’t forgot how they were at that age. I’ll keep it in mind.”
“What’s a decent man like you doin’ with a guy like that, anyway?”