Downbelow Station (26 page)

“Clear, clear, all in now but Europe and Libya,” com reported.
 
No mean feat of navigation, to find Omicron so accurately, to come in within middle scan, right in the jump range, after a start from near Russell’s, far away. Fail their time, and they would have been in the jump range when something else came in, and that was disaster. “Good job,” she sent to all stations, looking at the reckoning Graff flashed to her center screen: “Two minutes off mark but dead on distance; can’t cut it much closer at our starting range. Good signals being received. Stand by.”

She took her pattern in relation to Omicron, checked through data; within the half hour there was a signal from Libya, which had just come in. Europe came in a quarter hour after that, from another plane.

That was the tale of them, then. They were in one place, at one time, which they had not been since their earliest operations. Unlikely as it was Union would come on them in strength here, they were still nervous.
 
Computer signal came in from Europe. They were given breathing space, to rest.
 
Signy leaned back, took the com plug from her ear, unharnessed and got up finally while Graff moved to the post she had vacated. They were not at the disadvantage of some: Norway was one of the mainday ships… her main command staff on the schedule they were following now. Others, Atlantic, Africa, and Libya, were alter-day, so that strike hours were never remotely predictable, so that there were ships with their main crews available on either schedule. But they were all mainday now, a synchronization they had never undergone, and the alterday captains did the suffering, jump and reversed hours combined.
 
“Take over,” she bade Graff, wandered back through the aisle, touched a shoulder here and there, walked back to her own nook in the corridor… passed it by. She walked on back instead to crew quarters, looked in on them, alterday crew, most drugged senseless, to get their rest despite jump. A few, having an aversion to that procedure, were awake, sat in the crew mainroom looking better than they probably felt. “All stable.” she told them. “Everyone all right?” They avowed so. They would drag out now, safe and peacefully. She left them to do that, took the lift down to the outershell and the troop quarters, walked the main corridor behind the suiting area, stopped in one barracks after another, where she interrupted knot after knot of men and women sitting and trading speculations on their prospects… guilty looks and startled ones, troopers springing to their feet in dismay to find themselves under her scrutiny, a frantic groping after bits of clothing, a hiding of this and that which might be disapproved; she did not, but the crew and troops had some quaint reticences.
 
Some here too slept drugged, unconscious in their bunks; most did not… gambled, in many a compartment, while the ship shot her own dice with the Deep, while flesh and ship seemed to dissolve and the game continued on the other side of a far-stretched moment.

“Going to be a bit slow down here,” she would say in each case. “We’re in pattern and we’re all stable; at your ease down here, but keep yourselves within a minute’s prep for moving. No reason to think there’s a problem, but we take no chances.”

Di Janz intercepted her in the main corridor after the third such visit, nodded courtesy, walked with her through this private domain of his, seeming pleased in her presence among his command. Troops braced when Di walked with her, came to blank attention. Best, she thought, to pull the pretended inspection, just to let them know command had not forgotten them down here. What was coming was the kind of operation the troops dreaded, a multiple-ship strike, which raised the hazard of getting hit. And the troops had to ride it out blind, useless, jammed in the small safety the inner structure of the ship could afford them. There were no braver when it came to walking into possible fire, boarding a stopped merchanter, landing in some ground raid; and they took in stride the usual strike, Norway sweeping in alone, hit and run. But they were nervous now… she had heard it in the muttered comments which filtered over open com—always open:

Norway tradition, that they all knew what was going on, down to the newest trooper. They obeyed, would obey, but their pride was hurt in this new phase of the war, in which they had no use. Important to be down here now, to make the gesture. Queasy as they were with jump and drugs, they were at their lowest, and she saw eyes brighten at a word, a touch on the shoulder in passing. She knew them by name, every one, called them by name, one and another of them. There was Mahler, whom she had taken from Russell’s refugees, looking particularly sober and no little frightened; Kee, from a merchanter; Di had come years ago, the same way. Many, many more. Some of them were rejuved, like her, had known her for years… knew the score as well, too, she reckoned, as well as any of them knew it. Bitter to them that this critical phase was not theirs, could not be.
 
She walked the dark limbo of the forward hold, round the cylinder rim, into the eitherway world of the ridership crews, a place like home, a memory of other days, when she had had her quarters in such a place, this bizarre section where the crews of the insystem fighters, their mechanics, prep crews, lived in their own private world. A whole other command existed here, right way up at the moment, under rotation, ceiling down the rare times they were docked. Two of the eight crews were here, Quevedo’s and Almarshad’s, of Odin and Thor; four were off duty; two were riding null up in the frame… or inside their ships, because locking crews through the special lift out of the rotation cylinder took one rotation of the hull, and they could not spare that time if they jumped into trouble. Riding null through jump—she recalled that experience well enough. Not the pleasantest way to travel, but it was always someone’s job. They had no intent to deploy the riders here at Omicron, or two more sets of them would have been up there in the can, as they called it, in that exile. “All’s as it should be,” she said to those in demi-prep. “Rest, relax, keep off the liquor; we’re still on standby and will be while we’re here. Don’t know when we’ll be ordered out or with how much warning. Could have to scramble, but far from likely. My guess is we don’t make mission jump without some time for rest. This operation is on our timetable, not Union’s.”

There was no quibble. She took the lift up to main level, walked the shorter distance around to number one corridor, her legs still rubbery, but the drugs were losing their numbing effect. She went to her own office/quarters, paced the floor a time, finally lay down on the cot and rested, just to shut her eyes and let the tension ebb, the nervous energy that jump always threw into her, because usually it meant coming out into combat, snapping decisions rapidly, kill or die.

Not this time; this was the planned one, the thing to which they had been moving for months of small strikes, raids that had taken out vital installations, that had harried and destroyed where possible.

Rest a while; sleep if they could. She could not. She was glad when the summons came.

It was a strange feeling, to stand again in the corridors of Europe, stranger still to find herself in the company of all the others seated in the flagship’s council room… an eerie and panicky feeling, this meeting of all of them who had been working together unmet these many years, who had so zealously avoided each other’s vicinities except for brief rendezvous for the passing of orders ship to ship. In recent years it was unlikely that Mazian himself had known where all his fleet was, whether particular ships survived the missions on which they were sent… or what mad operations they might be undertaking solo. They had been less a fleet than a guerrilla operation, skulking and striking and running.
 
Now they were here, the last ten, the survivors of the maneuvers—herself; Tom Edger of Australia, lean and grim-faced; big Mika Kreshov of Atlantic, perpetually scowling; Carlo Mendez of North Pole, a small, dark man of quiet manner. There was Chenel of Libya, who had gone on rejuv—his hair had turned entirely silver since she had seen him a year ago; there was dark-skinned Porey of Africa, an incredibly grim man… cosmetic surgery after wounds was not available in the Fleet. Keu of India, silk-soft and confident; Sung of Pacific, all efficiency; Kant of Tibet, another of Sung’s stamp.
 
And Conrad Mazian. Silver-haired with rejuv, a tall, handsome man in dark blue, who leaned his arms on the table and swept a slow glance over them. It was intended for effect; possibly it was sincere affection, that open look. Dramatic sense and Mazian were inseparable; the man lived by it. Knowing him, knowing the manner of him, Signy still found herself drawn in by the old excitement.
 
No preliminaries, no statement of welcome, just that look and a nod. “Folders are in front of you,” Mazian said. “Closest security: codes and coordinates are in those. Carry them back with you and familiarize your key personnel with the details, but don’t discuss anything ship to ship. Key your comps for alternatives A, B, C, and so on, and go to them by that according to the situation. But we don’t reckon to be using those alternatives. Things are set up as they should be. Schematic—” He called an image to the screen before them, showed them the familiar area of their recent operations, which by stripping away vital personnel and leaving chaos on the stations left one lone untampered station like the narrowing of a funnel toward Pell, toward the wide straggle of Hinder Stars. One station. Viking. Signy had figured the pattern long since, the tactic old as Earth, old as war, impossible for Union to resist, for they could not allow vacuum in power, could not allow the stations they had struggled to gain to fall into disorder, plundered of technicians and directors and security forces, deliberately allowed to collapse. Union had started this game of station-taking. So they had rammed stations down Union’s throat; Union had then to move in or have stations lost, had to supply techs and other skilled personnel, to replace the ones evacuated. And ships to guard them, quickly, one after the other. Union had had to stretch even its monster capacity to hold what it had been given to digest.

It had had to take Viking whole, with all the internal complications of a station never evacuated… take it latest, because by ramming stations down Union’s gullet in their own rapid sequence, they had dictated the sequence and direction of Union’s moves of ships and personnel.

Viking had been last.

Central to the others, with desolation about it, stations struggling to survive.
 
“All indication is,” Mazian said softly, “that they have decided to fortify Viking; logical choice: Viking’s the only one with its comp files complete, the only one where they’ve had a chance to round up all the dissidents, all the resistance, where they could apply their police tactics and card everyone, instantly. Now it’s all clean, all sanitary for their base of operations; we’ve let them throw a lot into it; we take out Viking, and hit at the others, that are hanging by a thread in terms of viability… and then there’s nothing but far waste between us and Fargone; between Pell and Union. We make expansion inconvenient, costly; we herd the beast to its wider pastures in the other direction… while we can. You have your specific instructions in the folders. The fine details may have to be improvised within certain limits, according to what might turn up in your sectors. Norway, Libya, India, unit one; Europe, Tibet, Pacific, two; North Pole, Atlantic, Africa, three; Australia has its own business. If we’re lucky we won’t face anything at our rear, but every contingency is covered. This is going to be a long session; that’s why I let you rest. We’ll simulate until there are no more questions.” Signy drew a slow breath and released it, opened the folder and in the silence Mazian afforded them to do so, scanned the operation as it was set up, her lips pressed to a thinner and thinner line. No need for drill: they knew what they were about, variations on old themes they had all run separately. But this was navigation that would try all their skill, a mass strike, a precision of arrival not synched, but separate, disaster if jumpships came near each other, if an object of mass like the enemy just happened to be in the vicinity. They were going to flash in close enough to Viking to give the opposition no options, skin the hair off disaster. The presence of any enemy ship where it statistically ought not to be, the deployment of ships out from station in unusual configurations… all manner of contingencies. They took into account too the positions of worlds and satellites in the system on their arrival date, to screen themselves where possible. To flash out of jump space with nerves still sluggish, to haul dazed minds into action and try to plot instantly the location of friend and enemy, to coordinate an attack so precisely that some of them were going to overjump Viking and some underjump it, come in from all sides at once, from the same start—

They had one advantage over Union’s sleek, new ships, the fine equipment, the unscarred young crews, tape-trained, deeptaught with all the answers. The Fleet had experience, could move their patched ships with a precision Union’s fine equipment had not yet matched, with nerve Union conservatism and adherence to the book discouraged in its captains.

They might lose a carrier in this kind of operation, maybe more than one, come jolting in too close, take each other out The odds were in favor of its happening. They rode Mazian’s Luck… that it would not. That was their edge, that they would do what no one sane could do, and shock aided them.
 
The schematics appeared, one after the other. They argued, for the most part listened and accepted, for there was little to which they wished to object. They shared a meal, returned to the briefing room, argued the last round.
 
“One day for rest,” Mazian said. “We go at maindawn, day after tomorrow. Set it up in comp; check and doublecheck.”

They nodded, parted company, each to his own ship, and there was a peculiar flavor to the parting as well… that when next they met, they would be fewer.
 
“See you in hell,” Chenel muttered, and Porey grinned.