by Wil McCarthy
As promised, this was somebody's sleeping quarters. Here were the same bunk, the same shower and sink and dresser drawers as in Ken's own quarters. But the walls were painted a greenish color that, to normal eyes, probably appeared white, and there were no triangular braces in the corners to make the room look like an octahedron. The lighting was the dull orange color Ken knew represented combat red. Klaxons wailed.
“Josev,” Marshe said, “Get the door. Ken, stand by with the stunner.”
Ranes trotted to the exit, and when it did not open for him, pulled the red and white cover off its manual controls. He shoved the lock lever open, grabbed the hand wheel and began turning it. The door slid open a crack.
Shoving the now-useless light into his pocket, Ken straightened his right arm, sighted down the length of it. The corridor outside looked empty, but...
“Roland, shut the tunnel behind us, please.”
“Yes.”
Sounds of the secret door shutting.
Josev continued to crank open the exit. The gap widened to five centimeters. Ten. Fifteen.
“Ken,” Marshe said. “You're first man out in the corridor. Shoot anything that moves.”
“Right.”
The doorway stood twenty centimeters wide, now. Holding the gun out before him, Ken turned sideways and squeezed through. He looked left, saw nothing, looked right.
A man, a sergeant, stared at him from three meters away. Ken aimed the stunner, placed his finger on the trigger. The sergeant opened his mouth, as if to ask a question. Ken fired, and the man collapsed in a flash of light and charged particles.
Ken stared down the corridor. Nobody else around.
“One down?” Marshe asked, right behind him.
He turned. “Yeah. He going to be okay?”
Marshe shrugged, her face grim. “Maybe. If he gets medical attention.” She leaned toward the doorway, cupped a hand beside her mouth. “Let's move, people! Come on! Come on!”
Josev crowded out through he doorway, followed closely by Shenna. Roland and Sipho came through next.
“Where exactly are we?” Sipho asked nobody in particular.
Josev glanced at his flatscreen. “It's this way,” he said, pointing. “There's an elevator around the corner.”
“No, we take the stairs,” Marshe said.
“Oh. Uh, it's still the same direction.”
Marshe nodded. “Okay. Jonson, up front with me. Everyone else follow behind.”
The Six was moving once again.
Ken held the stunner out before him, prepared to fire on short notice. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he felt guilt and remorse for gunning down that sergeant. Perhaps the feelings would get a chance to surface, later on. Right now he was busy, focused. The stakes were high, and time was short. Nothing could be permitted to slow them down.
They came to a corner.
Holding up a hand to stop Marshe and the others, he leaped out into view.
A man and a woman standing together, wearing uniforms of gold foil, fussing with a piece of equipment that might have been a flame suppressor, or a pump of some sort.
Wary of the foil's reflective properties, Ken took aim on the man's head. Fired. After the flash, the man fell back, blood spurting from his eyes and nose. The woman looked up, wearing a bewildered expression. Ken shot her in the forehead, and she collapsed.
Another man, further down the corridor, turning to run.
Ken took aim and pulled the trigger.
A yellow spot flashed on the man's back, visible but, Ken thought, dimmer than it should have been. The man stumbled but did not fall. Ken adjusted his aim and pulled the trigger again, this time without effect.
The man vanished around a corner, yelling something.
“Damn it, Marshe,” Ken shouted. “When was the last time you had this gun charged?”
“Last year,” she replied, stepping around the corner. “What happened?”
“I lost one,” Ken snarled. “Ran off screaming. These, these guns will not hold a charge forever. You know where we can get another one?”
“No time,” Marshe said. She pointed. “There's the stairshaft. Everybody follow!”
In motion again.
“Josev, get the door! Ken, how's your hand-to-hand?”
“It's fine. Stick close.”
She turned, favored him with a steely glare as she ran. “Give me space, corporal. I'm two-eighty out of three.”
Josev reached the stairshaft door, tore the cover off its emergency controls.
“I'm first through,” Marshe said. “Ken, behind me.”
Diligently, Josev cranked the door open. Ken could see no-one on the other side of it, but he crouched, tense, hands held before him like tiny swords.
When the door was open wide enough, Marshe squeezed through. Ken followed. As he'd thought, there was nobody in the stairshaft. He listened for the sound of footsteps on the metal stairs, heard none.
“Everybody through!” Marshe shouted. “Ken, get ready to close the door behind us.”
“We don't have time,” Ken told her.
Suddenly, he felt himself spun around, Marshe's hand gripping his shoulder firmly, her eyes staring into his with arc-welder intensity. “We're on decompression alert, mister,” she growled. “We don't close that door, we don't open any others on this shaft. Get to it!” She shoved him toward the manual control box.
Ken paused for a moment, looking at her, at the way she stood, the look on her face. His commanding officer. His Queen. Belatedly, he turned, popping the cover off the controls, turning the handwheel even as Josev squeezed through the doorway. Ken worked as quickly as he could, but the mechanism was slow, maddening.
“Josev!” Snapped Marshe. “You and me up to the next level. Get the door open. The rest of you stay here until Jonson's ready.”
Stairs spanged behind Ken as the captain and young lieutenant scrambled up them.
“No, Shenna!” He heard Sipho call out. “Stay here!”
“It's okay,” Ken said, slamming the locking lever home. “I'm ready to go.”
The staircase thrummed beneath his feet as he ascended, Sipho and Roland at his sides, Shenna running up ahead. They reached the first landing, turned quickly, their feet skidding across the floor in the lessening gravity. They continued upward.
Josev already had the door partway open when they reached the second landing.
“Ken!” Said Marshe. “You're first through! Come on Josev!”
Barely slowing, Ken threw himself into the narrow doorway, pulled his chest and stomach in, scraped through the opening.
A gray-and-brown-haired woman stood on the other side, pointing a finger at Ken and opening her mouth, as if preparing to admonish him. This shaft is supposed to be sealed, perhaps, or why aren't you at your combat station already?
Ken plowed straight into her, his right elbow forward.
She spun aside and fell to the floor, a look of astonishment on her face. Stopping his momentum against the opposite wall, Ken turned, found his footing, and brought a stiff kick up under the woman's jaw. She flipped backward, her head connecting solidly with the floor.
Ken dropped to a crouch, ready to deal another blow... But she lay unmoving, her eyes open and staring.
Unconscious, he hoped.
“Ken!” Josev's voice cried behind him. “What in God's names are you doing?”
“Shut up, lieutenant,” Marshe said, pulling herself through the doorway. “I expect the same from you.”
“Do...” Ken puffed, suddenly breathless. “Do you want the door closed?”
Marshe shook her head. “No. Leave it open so we block the shaft. Josev, which way do we go?”
“Back this way,” Josev said, pointing behind him.
“Is it far?”
“Yes. This isn't where we wanted to be.”
“People, get out here!” Marshe shouted. “Ken, run ahead to the corner.”
Drawing a deep breath, Ken got moving. He felt li
ght, his feet tingly with low gravity. Half a gee, maybe. Hard to tell with any precision. What level was this? Ken had lost track.
He got to the corner, skidded awkwardly to a halt, peered around. Nothing. The corridor was long, marked with doorways every ten meters or so. Brightly lit. And quite empty.
He turned to Marshe, flashed her the marine hand-signal that meant “all clear”. She looked up, paused, and nodded, seeming to understand.
“Let's go,” she called out to her people. The group trotted toward Ken, skidded their way around the corner.
“Jonson,” Marshe said as she brushed by, “I want you to stay here until we reach the far corner. Watch behind us!”
Her voice increased in volume as she drew further away from Ken. He watched her retreating back for a few seconds, watched her legs and buttocks heave with the motions of running. No jiggle, he thought, and was immediately ashamed for thinking it. But it was true; she was a large woman, yes, but solid.
Belatedly, he did as he was told, and looked back down the gently-curving corridor behind him, past the motionless body of the woman he'd attacked. What, exactly, was he looking for? More victims to beat senseless? Anyone coming down this corridor at normal walking speed would not reach the corner until Marshe and the others were well out of view, so that in fact, his presence here was more of an invitation for trouble than a prophylactic against it.
But then, perhaps Marshe knew what she was doing.
“Jonsooon!” A far-away, echoing voice. For a moment, Ken wondered if it were in his head, one of the many sounds of combat still echoing there. But he turned, looked down the corridor, and saw, in the orange light, the distant figure of Sipho Yeng standing at the far corner, waving him forward with some urgency.
Ken pushed off from the wall and broke into a fast run.
Doorways rolled past him in a blur, barely seen, barely noticed. If one of the doors were to spring open, disgorging a swarm of security guards, he would be doomed. But none of them opened. The figure of Sipho grew in his vision as he approached the far corner.
The world went blurry for a moment, and the air seemed to hum. Ken was shaken off his feet, so that he fell to the smooth floor, skidding and bouncing for several meters while the walls vibrated around him. Then the tremor passed, and he lay still on the cool metal.
He raised his head, looked toward Sipho. The astronomer had also fallen. The event that shook Ken had not been imaginary, nor localized.
A chill ran through him. The station had been hit by enemy fire.
He scrambled to his feet, got moving, ran as fast as he could for the bend in the corridor. He watched Sipho rise, turn, trot past the corner where Ken couldn't see. He continued running, his breath puffing in and out in deep, steady rhythm. He reached the corner, put a hand on it, skidded through a turn, rebounded from the far wall and kept going.
The corridor ahead, like the one at which he'd waited, was relatively short, and curved “upward,” following the cylindrical shape of the station. Sipho was halfway down the corridor, and running in a peculiar, splay-legged gait that didn't seem to be carrying him too fast. Marshe and the others were a hundred meters ahead, now, past a pair of sprawled bodies. As he watched, they vanished, sliding like ice skaters, around another corner. With her four legs, Shenna seemed the most sure-footed of the lot.
Sprinting hard, Ken caught up with Sipho, and scooped an arm around him, dragging him along behind like a parcel. The corner approached. Seconds passed. Ken slowed a bit to negotiate the turn. As he scampered around it, Sipho slipped from his grasp and staggered, nearly falling. Ken left him behind, his eyes fixed on Marshe and the others, now only fifty meters ahead and moving slowly, deliberately. Counting doorways, he realized.
He sprinted for another couple of seconds, then slowed to a run, a trot, a walk.
“Beam hits!” He gasped, pulling even with the group. “The enemy's here!”
“We know,” Marshe said, breathing heavily, not looking at him. “It's just a probing attack. Burn off a couple of turrets, maybe.” She pointed to a heavy black door. “No labels in this damn place. God! It's this one, right?”
“Right,” Josev puffed. “That's right. Uh... We, uh... What do we do now? Knock on the door?”
Marshe cocked her head. “Huh. Yeah, that's a good idea. I was going to crank it open like the others, but...”
Sipho trotted up, wheezing deeply, just as Marshe leaned forward and rapped her knuckles hard against the door.
ClungClungClung!
There was a pause, filled mainly by the panting and gasping of the Six.
Chapter Twenty-Two
If the general were not sitting next to him, Samel Jhee would have buried his face in his hands and wept. His fault. His fault.
No one had brought the accusation up to him, as yet. Perhaps no one would; there was so little time. But the Waisters were here, they had homed in on this very station, singling it out from all the millions of targets in Sol system. No coincidence, he was sure, that Talbott and her crew had penetrated the data security system just before the start of the attack.
Too late. He had shut her down too late to prevent this disaster. She had somehow contacted the enemy, and now they were here, their weapons already probing the station's defenses.
Why hadn't he acted earlier? When the dolphins ran amok, killing their trainer and two others, he had considered imprisoning Talbott's team as a precaution, but had, in the end, clung to the hope that they could still be useful to him. A single data point was all he'd really wanted, a trick, a trap, to prove the wisdom of his investments. But instead, they had gone the way of the dolphins, and Jhee, reluctant to admit another failure, had permitted himself to ignore the extent of their delusions.
Damn it all.
He glanced at the general, sitting patiently with folded hands, head sweeping back and forth, scanning holie after holie. Down in front of them, sat the station's tactical controllers, all busy at their panels.
“Damage control to QC40,” he heard one of the controllers say in a rapid burst.
“QC40 en route,” replied another.
At least, Jhee mused, he and Talbott and the others would die for their sins. He hoped it would hurt like bloody Hell.
“Somebody at the door,” said a controller-voice.
“Pardon?” A different voice returned, in a distracted and somewhat disbelieving tone.
There was a knocking sound down at the entrance, the muted rap of knuckles against hard metal.
“There's somebody at the door,” the controller repeated.
“What the hell?”
“Answer it, would you?” Asked General Voorhis, calmly.
The controller got up and walked to the entrance.
Who the hell could be knocking, Jhee wondered? And then a terrible thought occurred to him.
~~~
The door whooshed open with a swirling of air. A man stood in the doorway, looking out with an angry expression. But his gaze swept across Ken and the others, with their bug-mask faces and their tense, combative postures, and his expression began to shift toward fear. Before the transformation was complete, though, Marshe's fist had lashed out, crushing his nose, sending him sprawling backward.
The fluid that sprayed from him looked, to Ken's eyes, as black as oil.
“Hey!” Someone shouted inside the room. There was the sound of a hand slapping down hard on a control panel.
Marshe stepped into the room, Ken half a stride behind her.
The room was narrow, cramped. In the orange light, Ken saw one central console, a human figure seated on each side of it, and other consoles against each of two walls. All around there were holie screens, with bright tactical and visual displays. Behind, a raised area with a railing, a small staircase, two seated figures.
Eight people, in all.
An alarm sounded, PongPONG! PongPONG! A green-white strobelight began flashing at the back of the room.
One of the figures stood, raising a weapon.
“What in the hell—” He said. It was all he had time for.
Ken dove to the floor, tucking into a roll that swept the man off his feet before he could lower the weapon and fire it. Ken rolled atop the man, drove a fist into his gut, another against the side of his head. He snatched up the weapon where it lay on the floor, aimed it at the nearest human target, and pulled its trigger.
A yellow stunner-bolt leaped out, and Ken's target slumped unnaturally in its chair.
One of the other men was starting to rise. Ken turned, aimed, fired. The man fell senseless against the wall, bounced, and sprawled across his control panel.
Ken got his feet under him, rose into a low crouch.
Marshe brushed past him, driving a third person, a woman, against the wall, slamming her head into it hard. Twice.
“STOP RIGHT THERE!” Shouted one of the men on the raised platform, in a voice of gruff authority. Five stripes on his collar; a general. He had a stunner aimed directly at Ken. There was a flash of yellow—
And a yelp. Shenna had burst into the room ahead of the others, had swept out in front of Ken... There was the sharp reek of scorched hair. Shenna's body slid up against the side of a panel, and lay inert.
Angered, Ken raised his own stunner and dropped the man who'd fired. Behind him, he heard the soft grunts and slaps of hand-to-hand combat. He found a new target and fired again. He advanced toward the platform, where a lone figure now stood. A short man, with short, dark hair, and skin that would undoubtedly look beige in proper lighting, without spectrum-spreaders over one's eyes.
“Colonel Jhee,” he said.
“Corporal!” The colonel cried. His face had the look of a rubber mask that had been stretched almost to the breaking point. “Drop that weapon!”
“I don't think s—”
The back of a chair collided with Ken's chest and right arm, driving him back into the hard, angular surface of a control panel. The stunner flew from his grasp, hitting the floor somewhere behind him, skittering and bouncing off various surfaces, hiding itself.
The chair pulled back, swept the air. The man who brandished it looked frightened, and furious, and completely incredulous. How, his expression seemed to say, can I be having a fistfight when the station is under attack by Waisters?