And straight into the bulkhead behind the crossbowman. But now Lee understood why Finder had paused after taking two shots. He had been comparing the trajectory of his fire to the three-dimensional drift of his target. But now Lee's target was raising the reloaded spear gun. Lee fired two rounds.
The spear gunner spun sharply to the right as Lee's first bullet hit him in that arm. The second shot, a blind miss, extinguished whatever fleeting flare of triumph the young lieutenant had felt. Sighting carefully, Lee prepared to spend a fourth bullet on this target—
From behind him, a ten millimeter automatic barked three times. At least one of the rounds hit the wounded spearman in the center of mass. Blood erupted like a thin stream from a child's bubble-making toy, and the man's movements diminished into fitful writhing.
Lee turned to thank the now-pistol armed Roderigo Burns—but the rating was desperately reaching out for the wall, trying to stop the tumble imparted by his own quick sequence of shots. Lee stretched to help him—
Finder's voice was a respectful, if curt, reminder. “You wanted a fast advance, right, Lieutenant?”
Lee paused, nodded, turned back toward the bridge and snapped his hips down so that his feet contacted the deck; as they did, he kicked.
Arrowing forward ahead of his sergeant, he couldn't help smiling at Finder's appreciative mutter over the private circuit, “Not half bad—for a newb.”
* * *
Taking the bridge was pure anticlimax. Although the last two mutineers were armed with ten millimeters, they blasted away at a stray suit glove that Finder spun lazily through the doorway. Only three shots from each, but that was all advantage the top-kick needed. Swimming around the rim of the hatchway with the fell purpose of a stubby piranha, he watched as the hijackers tried to correct their tumbles and took careful aim.
Lee chinned the private circuit. “If they're helpless enough, we could take them pris—”
“Negative, L.T. Look at them; they're reorienting already. They're either Upsiders or have enough training to recover from the tumble. We'll have lost our advantage in another three seconds.”
Lee sighed, “Fire at will.”
They both did: two rounds from each of them finished the job.
That was when one of the door-opening alarms went off to their rear. Tugging themselves around into sharp 180 degree turns, Lee and Finder kicked and soared back the way they had come.
Before reaching the site of the first gun battle, they saw Burns taking cover in a hatchway, the distinctive bark of a ten millimeter causing him to flinch back even farther. Just then, a series of sharp, higher-velocity cracks echoed at them from even farther up the corridor.
“All clear,” signaled Lewis on the open circuit. “There was just one of them. Probably asleep when we came in. I got ‘im. Sarge, I hit him all three times, even though the recoil had me—”
“Great, Lewis, that's great.” Finder turned to Lee. “Well, there goes your chance to interrogate a prisoner, L.T.”
Lee shook his head. “Rotten luck, Sarge, rotten luck.”
Finder switched to private circuit. “That presumes the death of that last hijacker was a matter of luck—that there was no intent involved. Sir.” Finder's glance in Lewis' direction was dour.
Yes, Lee reflected, he and the sergeant would have an awful lot to chat about later on . . .
* * *
Arriving back on the bridge of his customs cutter, Lee relieved the acting XO, Bernardo de los Reyes, with an exchange of lazy salutes.
“Started worrying about you out there, Skipper,” said de los Reyes.
Lee finished pulling off his suit gloves. “Had to go to radio silence before we took out the hostiles about two hours ago. There were five of them.”
“And why so shy during the last two hours?” de los Reyes asked in an almost bored drawl, which was an act for the benefit of the bridge ratings. Bernie knew damned well that the extended radio silence meant something unusual was up. Probably something dangerous.
“No time to chat about that just yet, Bernie. We still have some work to do.”
Finder clumped onto the bridge as well, still in his vacc suit. “Lieutenant Strong's working on a pretty interesting hunch, Bernie.”
“You don't say?” muttered the much-younger de los Reyes. The two were pals from way back, and by all rights and measurements of seniority, it should have been Finder, not Bernie, serving as the brevetted noncom XO aboard their cutter, the Venerated Gaia. However, Finder's wit was not only barbed, but occasionally injudicious. Previous Dirtsider officers had put enough demerits and reprimands into his record to ensure that he never became anything more than he was right now: First Sergeant and EVA team leader.
Lee drifted across the bridge to hover behind the shoulder of the nav rating. “Navigator?”
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“Run a plot for me: trajectory of the Fragrant Blossom for the next three weeks.”
“But sir, the Fragrant Blossom is adrift. She's not under power or on course for any—”
“I know, Rating. Indulge me.”
“Yes, Sir.”
As the first navigator worked, both Bernie and Finder drifted over to watch the process.
The computer flicked between subroutines, cleared, then showed a course plot that intersected one red circle: a possible rendezvous with a charted object.
“Throw that up on the main plot, Navigator,” Lee said with a nod at the computer screen.
Which showed that the trajectory of the Fragrant Blossom would carry it out of the Jovian side of the asteroid belt, and very close to one nearby planetoid, the red-circled 216 Kleopatra.
Lee turned to his two senior subordinates. “The hijackers weren't just drifting. If they had been, they'd still have been more or less on course for Callisto. But they're not. Which means that, after they took the Fragrant Blossom, they used some corrective thrust to put them on a coasting trajectory to that collection of rocks,” he pointed at 216 Kleopatra.
“Why there?” wondered the First Navigator.
“Because,” supplied Lee, “that's where their friends are waiting,”
* * *
Bernie and Finder were the only ones who accompanied Lee into the claustrophobic CO's ready room. As they entered, Bernie reached under the light table—already displaying the projected course to 216 Kleopatra—and flicked a switch. The room was suddenly filled with what sounded—or more accurately, felt—like a pitchless hum: a white-noise generator.
Lee glanced at Bernie. “Well, today seems to be the day for nonregulation surprises.”
Bernie met the glance sheepishly and shrugged. “Guess so, Sir. Now, how long do we have before we're on top of 216 Kleopatra?”
“Two hours and eight minutes,” Lee answered. “Meaning I've got no time to catch you up on what we found aboard the Blossom. Hell, we don't even have time to get instructions from, or clear a farther ops plan with, the brass back on Mars.”
Bernie nodded. It was a little over twenty light minutes to Marsm, which would guarantee at least a full hour's lag time.
“They're not going to be able to offer any worthwhile input before we have to commit to some plan of action,” he agreed. “So we either do this on our own—which means we carry the can for not waiting for confirmation if things go wrong. Or else they send us loose, provisional orders based on the first batch of incomplete data. So that, if things go wrong, they can blame the failure on our sketchy reporting and poor execution. That about what you were thinking, Skipper?”
“Something like that,” Lee acknowledged.
“Which leaves the steaming turd in our laps, either way,” Finder grumbled.
“In my lap, gentlemen, in my lap.” Lee sighed. “I'd be happy to share the inevitable blame with you both, but this is my command, my call, my court-martial.”
Bernie looked at Finder and expelled a histrionic sigh. “Jan, I meant to ask you, are we still having trouble with the lascom array?”
&n
bsp; Finder was blank-eyed for a moment, then nodded sadly. “Oh. Yeah. That. Can't seem to figure out what's wrong with it.”
“And did you log it as being off-line yesterday, when we first discovered the malfunction?”
“I don't think so. I'll have to go back in the records and check. I might need to make a retroactive correction.” Finder was now beaming with positively malicious glee.
“I should report you both,” Lee said, managing not to smile.
“You should, Skipper,” Bernie agreed with a somber nod, “you really should.”
Lee grinned. “Okay, so the lascom will ‘finally' come back on-line after we get to 216 Kleopatra: too late for us to give a sitrep to, or get orders from, the brass on Mars. But just in time to send them word of what we found both there and here. And of course, we can't send by radio because we can't put out an active EM signature while there might be a hostile hull in our area of operations.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” agreed Bernie. “As per regs. Which we always follow around here.”
“So I have observed.”
Finder looked up. “You suspected there was something hinky bout the Blossom's hijacking from the start, L.T.—but why?”
Lee shrugged. “Logically, with an intact drive, the bad guys should have made best speed toward a hidey hole as soon as they could. Just as logically, we'd have spotted their engine signature—or their residual temperature, if we only came across them after they stopped boosting. Either way, they'd have been lit up like a neon sign on our sensors, once we arrived in the area. But they made sure they weren't.”
Bernie frowned. “So are you saying they knew we'd be here? But how?”
“That's the hinky part. The only way they could know we'd be here, running dark, was if they had access to classified information. Specifically, our projected patrol plot.”
“Damn,” breathed Finder, “that's nontrivial access.”
“Yes, but everything points to it. They not only knew we were in the area, they were also prepared for any conventional boarding attempt.”
Bernie frowned. “What do you mean?
Finder shrugged. “After we took down the mutineers and secured the ship, we found out that they'd booby-trapped all the logical ingress points—except the one they either didn't know, or forgot, about.”
“You mean the core-ejection tube?” Bernie shook his head. “Hell, they just probably figured no one was crazy enough to try it.”
Lee smiled. “You mean, they figured no one would be able to look past their superstitious fears and focus on the physics.”
“Yeah.” Bernie scratched an ear. “While we're on that topic, L.T., me and Sarge here couldn't help notice that you're not exactly—well, you're not like the other officers Earth has sent to us.”
“To put it scientifically, you are trying to ascertain why I'm not an arrogant prick?”
Finder guffawed. Bernie smiled broadly. “Uh, yeah . . . something like that.”
“Long story, but let's just say my family isn't exactly beloved by the ‘globally-appointed' politicos back home.”
“And home is where, for you?”
“Tacoma, then Vancouver, then Amherst.”
Finder and Bernie exchanged knowing looks. “Another New World troublemaker, eh?” Bernie asked.
Lee shook his head. “Not me. But my folks were. They're part of a dying breed, I'm afraid.”
Bernie shrugged. “Seems to me the independent spirit doesn't die too easily in ‘the colonies.'”
“Perhaps not”—Lee tried to smile genuinely but felt rue pulling down the corners of his mouth—“but die it does, nonetheless. There are a lot of disincentives for free-thinkers. You don't get prompt access to social services if you're known to be a card-carrying ‘recidivist.'”
Bernie and Finder exchanged long glances. “Yeah. We know.”
Lee leaned back. More and more it seemed that the “long chat” he was going to have with Finder had probably better include Bernie as well. “You guys have been watching me, haven't you?”
Finder smiled as he filled a liquid-bulb with coffee. “You're just figuring that out now? A smart guy like you—Sir?”
“No, I just didn't realize how methodical you've been. And how much more there must be for me to learn.”
Bernie shook his head. “Lieutenant, you don't know the half of it.”
“I'm sure you're right—but it's going to have to wait.” Lee glanced at the clock. “We'll be drifting past 216 Kleopatra in only two hours, and we've got a lot of work to do.”
“Like what?” asked Bernie. “Seems to me we should just back well away from the Blossom without altering its heading, match course, and lie doggo until an extraction ship comes out to pick up the mutineers. Then we hit them while they're in the middle of their personnel transfers and—”
Lee shook his head. “You're presuming that upon reaching Kleopatra 216, they'll have to stop for a long rendezvous, and that the mutineers will stay inside the Blossom, waiting for pick up. But they may go EVA beforehand, and get fetched by a small ROV tug. That way, the enemy ship could stay in the shadows of Kleopatra the whole time.”
Stares went back and forth between Bernie and Finder again. Finder was the first to shake his head and admit, “He's right.”
“Damned if he's not,” muttered Bernie. “Imagine, being schooled in space ops by a Dirtsider. My Ma on Mars will never let me live it down.”
“Then don't tell her,” suggested Lee. “But that EVA pick-up is not the scenario I'm most worried about.”
“Oh?” Finder leaned forward, coffee suddenly forgotten.
“Nope. Since the hijackers weren't interested in hostages, or the ship itself, that means they have other motivations. Motivations we haven't seen yet.”
Bernie shrugged. “Okay, but how does that change anything?”
“It changes things because, if they do have access to our patrol plot, then this is just the messy part of some bigger covert operation. An operation that someone is trying to hide, or to keep plausibly deniable. Which means it has to be perfectly sanitary.” He paused. “Which means that the tools they used to carry it out might need to be sterilized. With extreme prejudice.”
“Damn,” breathed Finder, “the kid—I mean, the lieutenant is right. For all we know, the rendezvous at 216 Kleopatra may only be to get information or proof of mission success. Once the extraction team gets what they need, their next move might have been to grease the hijackers themselves.”
“Yeah,” Bernie agreed with a nod, “it fits.” He folded his arms. “Okay, skipper, so what's the game plan?”
“Are all of our own ROV tugs available?”
“One hundred percent readiness, sir.”
“Excellent. And how many remote passive sensor packages do we have in stores?”
“Six, Sir. Of different marks.”
Lee nodded, then leaned over the light-table plot . “Okay, then. Here's what we're going to do . . .”
* * *
Almost two hours later, the crew of the Venerated Gaia was at general quarters, and wondering why the hell Lieutenant Strong was not maneuvering more aggressively. But the cutter—which they had long ago rechristened the Venereal Gato—continued to match the slow progress of the Fragrant Blossom, drifting side by side with the larger hull, fully in its shadow.
Couch-sized debris tumbled along with them. Having originated from the Blossom's cargo decks, it angled away from the twinned craft, the gap between junk and ships widening steadily.
The Gato was almost as silent as the space through which she glided. The hum of computers and the dampened vibration that resulted from running on batteries were unusually noticeable in the absence of human banter. The possibility of an engagement not only had the crew tense, but evoked a sense of the surreal, so rare was space combat. That the potentials of the adversary were wholly unknown only kept their eyes more firmly riveted to their screens, their fingers tense with waiting for orders to act.
The b
ridge crew had another object to stare at, however. There, in the main viewscreen, 216 Kleopatra—shaped like a 217-kilometer long dog-bone with a maximum width of 94 kilometers—loomed steadily larger. Tumbling end-over-end every five hours, it was a fairly kinetic rock, accompanied at some distance by two planetisimals—three and five kilometers in diameter, respectively. Intermittent sampling and mining ejecta accompanied it as well, the individual objects ranging in size from a handball to a house. And so, depending on the size of the enemy ship—assuming there was only one, of course—it could be hidden behind any of several dozen rocky slabs or lumps in the area, including, of course, the immense Kleopatra herself.
“Kleopatra is now within the outer engagement envelope of our missiles, Skipper,” the first gunner rasped, his throat evidently too dry to get out the words easily.
“Sensors, report,” Lee ordered, not turning to look at the rating in question.
“No change, sir. Of course, we'd get better data if we lit up the active arrays—”
Lee's interruption was quiet but sharp. “Don't even think that thought, Rating. We run dark until I give the word.”
“Yes, Sir, but—”
“I'm well aware that passive sensors don't give us full detection capabilities, much less targeting. For now, just maintain the lascom links to our passive assets and keep me apprised.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Bernie drifted closer. “Lieutenant, you know it's possible that the hijackers don't have anyone waiting for them here, that they just planned to switch to a smaller craft that they stashed here in some little crevice where we'll never see it.”
“It's possible,” Lee admitted.
“But you don't buy it,” Bernie completed the implicit reservation.
“No, I don't. Given all the trouble they went to in setting this up, I just don't—”
“Lieutenant—!” The tense exclamation was in reaction to a sudden orange glow limning the far rim of 216 Kleopatra: a false-colored superimposition of a new heat signature's halo.