Haze and the Hammer of Darkness (36 page)

The surface was far more uneven than before, but that and three small craters were the only outward indications of the destruction created by the three needleboats.

Record and document,
Roget ordered the system.

Recording.

Roget checked the scanners and all the instruments, but outside of fast-fading residual heat, there was no sign of life below, and certainly no energy emissions.

Digger flight, report status.

Digger lead, two here, shields amber, all other systems green. Four torps remaining.

Digger lead, three, all systems green, no torps.

That was to be expected, since Roget had pulled two off the attack when his shields had gone amber.

Once the system announced,
Documentation complete,
Roget called up the nav system, then eased the needle away from the pair of asteroids.

Digger three, take station on my quarter. Digger two, close up and trail our shields.

Two closing up this time.

Roget nodded. That positioning would at least minimize the strain on two's shields for the long return flight to Ceres station. There was always the chance of debris of various sorts, perhaps even debris that they had recently created, or debris that dated back billions of years. Either way, impacting it without shields, or with damaged shields, was not something good for a needleboat—or its pilot.

Recommended return course set. Please approve,
requested the system.

Roget checked, then cross-checked it.
Digger flight, sending return course this time.

Digger two, stet.

Digger three, stet.

Digger flight, turn to return course this time.

Stet
. Both other pilots responded as one.

Commence return course,
Roget ordered the system.

Only when the needleboat was on the return course did Roget lean back in the pilot's couch and remove his helmet.

Had some of those in the colony survived? Roget had no way of knowing, and no ability to verify whether there were survivors or not. Even if there were survivors, life would be grim and most likely short—even if they had another functioning fusactor shielded deep within the asteroid. Power was vital but not necessarily sufficient, especially on a basalt-nickel-iron rock without much in the way of ice.

Why had the pirate colonists attacked the slow-boat at Themis? If they hadn't, Roget doubted that Belt Control would have sent out a three-needleboat flight for a two-week-plus mission, not with the equipment and costs involved.

Yet, he reminded himself, how else could those on the asteroid have gotten equipment? No one would sell it to them. What other choice had they had, except to surrender and beg for mercy? Mercy, in a relocation camp after marooning and leaving the slow-boat crew to die?

Earth hadn't been big enough, in the end, for many conflicting cultures and views. Would the same prove true of the solar system? Or the galaxy? Or did the problem lie in the Federation's views? That didn't necessarily follow, either, since there had been rebels and outcasts long before the Federation, and even old America had been founded by rebels.

Was there an answer?

Roget looked to the controls, not really seeing the readouts before him.

 

33

27 MARIS 1811
P. D.

Roget lay stretched out on his bunk, his eyes open, wearing the same coverall he'd worn on his descent to Dubiety, with its still mostly undischarged capacitors. While he'd been waiting for the inevitable, he'd thought about projecting Hildegarde into the narrow space between the bunk and the bulkhead flanking the hatch, but he'd decided against it. His internals were operating normally, if not even better than usual, aboard the
WuDing,
and he could easily sense all the snooping and scanning gear focused on him. If the colonel had a record of him viewing—or talking to—the image of a centuries-old painting of a dachshund, that would be grounds enough for immediate confinement in the brig as mentally unstable … and that would make what he had to do even more difficult.

His eyes flicked toward the stateroom hatch—little more than a composite door, as were most quarters' hatches, for all the imported nautical terminology and the remote electronic lock that had not yet been activated. He smiled, faintly, and went back to waiting.

Less than twenty minutes later, the annunciators blared.

“All hands to battle stations. All hands to battle stations.”
All hands to battle stations.

Almost simultaneously, the stateroom door locked itself.

Roget had expected both. Certainly, Colonel Tian would wish him contained while the
WuDing
led the attack against Dubiety.

With his first moves, Roget slipped the heavy, flat bag that held the Dubietan emergency pressure suit out of his pack and up inside his nightsuit coverall. Then he powered up the concealment features of the nightsuit and pulled the hood over his head. Moving to the stateroom door, he slipped two tools from the flat container inside his waistband. In less than a minute, he was out in the passageway, empty because it was in officers' country. He closed and locked the door behind him, deliberately but swiftly, and stowed the small tools.

Could he get to one of the airlocks aft of midships before the
WuDing
provoked the Dubietans into action? That was likely, since the
WuDing
and the Federation fleet didn't have the advantage of the Dubietan technology.

Moving quickly, he headed aft toward the first ladder. At the top of the ladder he flattened himself against the wall. Two ship's marines rushed up the ladder and past him in the direction of his former stateroom, proving the usefulness of the camouflage suit against the pale blue of the bulkheads.

He swung down two levels of the ladder and headed outboard, moving to one of the maintenance ways that he didn't think was snooped as thoroughly as all the main passageways were. He made it down almost to the outer ring, where the maintenance way ended, before he sensed another pair of marines. He eased open the maintenance hatch, just a crack, but the marines were not yet in sight. So he swung the hatch inward, then used the heavy hinges as an aid to wiggle upward and to wedge himself into the narrow overhead, hoping he didn't have to wait too long. The camosuit blended into the dark blue.

Roget waited, easing out one of the narrow picks from his waistband.

In less than a handful of minutes, he heard voices.

“Sensors say he's here somewhere.”

To your right somewhere … hard to get readings down there.

“There's an open maintenance hatch.”

Check behind it.

One of the marines stood before the hatch, looking down it, a heavy shocker in hand.

Roget flicked the pick as far back up the maintenance way as he could.

Clink.

“He's got to be up there by that niche.” The first marine charged through the hatch and toward the sound.

The second stepped inside the hatch and halted.

That made it all too clear that the marines hadn't been in any kind of real combat or fight for all too long. Roget struck, coming down with his left boot squarely into the marine's eye and nose at an angle that slammed the hapless man into the solid bulkhead. The marine did not move, although Roget sensed rather than saw that, because he kept moving, swinging himself out through the hatch, then flattening himself against the main passageway bulkhead, on the side opposite the hatch hinges.

“Carteon!” The second marine whirled, then moved quickly back down the maintenance way. As he peered through the hatch, Roget moved, yanking him forward so that his boots caught on the hatch lip, then dropping him. In another quick movement, he had the marine's shocker. He used it on both marines, then grabbed the unused weapon from the first marine.

Holding the shocker in one hand, Roget sprinted to the next ladder aft and swung down. He stopped halfway down, moving slowly so that the camosuit would not blur. Less than ten meters away was the hatch that was the entrance to the midships maintenance bay. Also less than ten meters away stood two crewmen in combat space armor, but without helmets, guarding the hatch that led to the maintenance area and the lower midships locks. Both men held heavy-duty shockers.

Roget eased forward a step at a time, keeping the shocker on the side away from the guards and hoping the camosuit was blending the weapon into the blueness of the bulkheads. He didn't have that much time, not before more marines with heat-imaging units reached him, but he needed to get closer to use the weapon.

“You see something?” murmured one guard. “Down there a ways?”

“All I see is blue and more blue.”

In the moment that both crewmen were not looking directly at Roget, he took two steps and froze. He was almost close enough. Almost.

“Spray the—”

Roget darted forward and fired.

“—passageway!”

The second crewman got off a shot, and Roget's right arm erupted in flaming agony. His entire body shivered, almost uncontrollably. Both crewmen were down, but Roget could hear more marines thundering down the ladders.

He pressed the hatch-access stud. The big hatch began to open. The maintenance area beyond the hatch went dark, as did the passageway behind him where the fallen guards lay. Roget jumped through the hatch just before it closed in response to the power cutoff.

He staggered against the nearest bulkhead, and at the impact his arm flared into more agony. Going to nightsight didn't help Roget because he wasn't in low-light conditions, but in no light.

The colonel hadn't cut power to the area to blind Roget, but to disable any equipment he thought that Roget might try to use. The power loss also meant Roget would have to find the emergency personnel lock in the dark and operate it manually.

Roget smiled. If … if he could remember the location, the power cut might be to his advantage because without power there were no snoops … and the emergency locks were designed to be opened manually—especially for times when there was no ship's power.

He forced himself to concentrate, despite the lines of nerve flame running up and down his right arm, then began to move toward the aft side of the maintenance bay. While it felt as though it took hours to find the emergency lock, it was less than a minute according to his internal systems.

Although the lock wheel turned easily, it took several minutes before he was able to rotate it enough times left-handed to open the inner-lock door. He swung the heavy door toward himself, wincing momentarily as the emergency-lock lighting struck his dark-adjusted eyes. Once he was inside the lock itself, he had to repeat the process to close the inner door. He couldn't vent the lock chamber without the inner door being closed, and without venting, there was no way he could swing the outer door into the chamber even after he'd rotated the wheel to the open position.

At that moment, power returned to the area, and that meant the marines would be after him in moments. As he'd recalled, there was a broomstick racked beside the outer door. There was also a soft emergency pressure suit with an equally soft helmet—a poopysuit. He checked the broomstick propellant, then winced. Less than 20 percent. Not much margin for error. He pulled on the poopysuit, except for the helmet. Poopysuits usually held less than an hour of oxygen, if that, but the indicator showed forty minutes, and that should suffice.

While he'd thought to vent the lock last, he changed his mind, donned the helmet and sealed, then twisted the lock vent open immediately. That way the marines wouldn't be able to open the inner-lock door. Then he went to work turning the outer-lock wheel—again left-handed and even more clumsily in the heavy suit gauntlets.

Once he had the lock open, he grabbed the broomstick in his left hand and eased out into vacuum, forcing his almost-numb right hand to hold to the recessed grab-bar outside the lock.

With the disorientation of weightlessness, several moments passed before he finally located the tether—aft of the largest maintenance lock. His dropboat was still linked to the tether, and fortunately, not all that far from the rear of the large maintenance lock.

Abruptly, the tether separated from the dropboat, and a quick blast of gas from the tether pushed the dropboat outward. The colonel definitely didn't want Roget getting to the dropboat.

Roget straddled the broomstick and aimed it and himself at the dropboat's lock, giving both gas jets a solid jolt and hoping that his aim was good. If he missed, he was as good as dead … and not immediately. He hadn't planned to be in vacuum for more than a few minutes in the poopysuit. The emergency suits didn't have much insulation, and if he missed the boat, whether he'd asphyxiate or freeze first would be the only question left to ponder, and probably not for that long, because he couldn't reach the distress alarm in the Dubietan emergency suit without breathing vacuum.

He pulsed the broomstick's left gas jet just momentarily, correcting his course more to the right. After a moment, he could see that he was closing on the empty dropboat. He forced himself not to use the jets more. If he came in too hard, the absorber wouldn't handle the jolt, and the mag-grip wouldn't hold.

Another minute passed, and he was within ten meters of the dropboat. He glanced to his left. So far, he and the dropboat had only slid back fifty meters along the
WuDing
's hull, and separated less than twenty. That was good because that left him too close to the battlecruiser for the colonel to deploy weapons against him or the dropboat.

The mag-grip on the end of the broomstick hit one of the patches repaired by the Dubietans. While the recoil absorber took up most of the shock, the mag-grip began to slide sideways.