Sky Hunter (27 page)

“
Got it. Good news bad news. It’s past
geosync so it won’t fall to Bellac if it disengages. But that means
we can’t stop it.”

“
Heard, Tower. That’s kinda the part
that worried me.” Nova steered the cruiser down along the tether to
meet the arriving cargo pod. She closed her seat restraint when she
spun down the ship’s gravity to avoid exerting its pull on the
tether or the climber.

“
Lieutenant,” she heard another voice,
this time the station commander.

“
Yes, Colonel,” she said. “How much
time do we have?”

“
None. The climber will reach the
station in minutes. The lower levels are sealed. We are evacuating
whom we can but we just don’t have the pilots or the planes to get
them all off.”

“
Respectfully, sir, this just isn’t the
sort of information I need right now.”

There was a babble of voices and she winced
when all of it sounded panicked and none of it intelligible. She
slowed when the ship’s instruments showed her the climber now
approaching from below. She swung around it. This one had one open
cargo platform stacked with the sort of supply containers she had
seen on the station. It also carried one of the bulky, closed cargo
pods designed to be transferred from the climber to a waiting ship,
already processed and cleared by the Union base for forwarding
shipment. “I’m there,” she said. She rolled the cruiser and
carefully matched the climber’s speed, letting the ship calculate
distance and velocity to its smallest increment.

“
Lieut… Lieutenant?” a thin voice broke
through her ear piece.

“
The only one here,” she said, focusing
the ship’s cameras onto the climber’s grasp on the ridiculously
thin tether.

“
This is Sol Josel, station engineer.
I’ve confirmed that our systems were… were tampered with. I won’t
be able to reset them quickly. That… that means… I
mean.”

“
Look, Josel. Pull up your pants and
tell me how to stop this thing. Can you do that? And I mean
disengage it gently. Because if this thing blows it’ll probably
blow the tether, too.” She looked over her displays. “I’ll need
them to shut down the upper shield network along the tether or I
won’t be able to get close.”

“
That… that would not be recommended.
There is still some debris in orbit from the sabotage so it could
possibly—”

“
Colonel?” she said. “Getting a little
short here.”

“
Shields are coming down, Whiteside,”
he replied. “Mr. Josel, if you please.”

“
What do I have that’ll work?” Nova
asked, having already sent the cruiser’s specs up to the
station.

“
There is a forward utility laser. You
should be able to reach the upper clamp guard with it.”

“
Heard.” Nova directed the cruiser to
hover to the left and engaged the laser’s tracer to seek out the
spot she needed. “Is that it?”

“
No! That’s the belt guide! You don’t
want to touch that.”

“
How about we pretend that I’m a pilot
and you’re the engineer. You can see what I see. And you can see my
tracer, right?”

“
Yes, to… to the left. That green
hook-shape. If you can break that it’ll loosen the clamps
sufficiently. It’ll take a lot of power.”

“
And then what’ll happen?”

“
The climber should drift away from the
ribbon.”

“
When you say ‘drift’, do you mean spin
off and crash into my ship?”

“
Possibly.”

“
Going to invert, if you don’t mind,
Colonel.” She moved her ship above the speeding climber and
re-adjusted her gun.

“
Clock’s ticking,
Whiteside.”

“
I can hear it from here,” she said,
never actually having heard the ticking of a clock. “Wait, this
won’t work. I can’t get my tracer in there.” She focused on her
neural link, adjusting the ship’s position again and again to
achieve a different angle but each attempt brought another obstacle
between her laser emitter and the target. “I can’t get this. Is
there any other way, short of making Bellac stop
spinning?”

“
Not without risking an
explosion.”

“
We’re already doing that.” Nova cursed
and looked around the narrow cockpit. “What about guns?” She
reached up to pull a laser rifle from its holder on the bulkhead.
“Got a Tan-Wat rail here.”

She heard what might have been prayer over
her earpiece. Resolutely, she locked the plane into a stationary
position next to the climber and hurriedly dug through the storage
bins near the ship’s doors. It took only moments for her to climb
into a space suit and find a helmet that would connect to her
neural interface. Knocking her gloves into place, she studied the
external camera displays to send her mental commands to the
navigator.

“
Don’t anyone breathe,” she murmured to
no one in particular as she moved the ship to align its external
door with the top of the cargo pod. The systems faithfully
continued to match the velocity of the climber toward the station.
Satisfied that she was as close as she was going to get, she locked
her helmet and engaged the air supply before opening the cruiser’s
small airlock chamber. An overhead compartment dropped a tether
designed for exterior maintenance. She hooked the line to her
harness, hooked up her gun as well, and opened the gate.

“
Did I mention that I haven’t done a
spacewalk in… well, a while,” she said. She peered out and down at
the climber, certain that if she tried to look toward the distant
planet she’d upchuck into her helmet. Somehow it didn’t look quite
so dizzying when viewed from inside the orbiter. Looking up toward
the station approaching much too fast would probably have the same
result.

“
Easy, Lieutenant,” the colonel’s
suddenly very gentle voice reached her. “You want no reverb at all.
We have no idea how they packed the explosive.”

She grasped the rail on the inside of the
door and looked along the side of the ship. It was not one of the
sleeker builds and she thought she could pull herself along without
needing to touch the cargo container beneath her. She reached out
and grasped the first of the planned handholds and pushed away from
the door. She swung silently, letting the inertia carry her forward
and to the next point. “This suit is made for Caspians, by the
way,” she said, fumbling when the thick stub that accommodated a
Caspian’s additional thumb caught on something. It also explained
the ridiculously oversized boots that now bumped against the ship.
“This gap looked a lot more narrow from inside the ship,” she said
when suddenly confronted by a whole lot of nothing between the
cruiser and the climber’s roller assembly.

“
Lieutenant,” Josel began, still
sounding nervous.

“
Call me Nova,” she suggested. “Just in
case we never meet again. Where from here?”

“
There is a service rail. That red bar
just ahead. You can use that to anchor yourself. You will have to
push off from the ship. Softly!”

She braced a massive boot against the cruiser
and shoved forward. For a breathless second she floated in space,
secured only by the tether that bound her to the cruiser. The rail
slipped into her hand as planned but her legs moved too far and
bounced against another component of the climber which she didn’t
understand any better than the one she was about to shoot. She
waited a moment for the climber, the cruiser, and herself to
explode in a quiet storm of spare parts. She exhaled slowly when
that didn’t happen, willing her heart to return to a more
reasonable pace.

“
All right,” she whispered. “I’m
there.”

“
Whiteside,” the colonel said. “You’re
doing a fine job.”

“
Always nice to hear, sir.”

“
If you can’t disengage the climber,
we’re out of options and out of time. Get yourself out of
there.”

“
I’m in place.” She wedged her foot
behind the rail and reached for her gun. “Is that it, Josel? Tell
me it is because I’m about to shoot it.”

“
Yes. Yes, that’s it. Your tracer is
placed correctly. If that springs loose the rest will follow. Is…
are we sure this a secure com line? Because this information… What?
Oh.”

“
Can we all be quiet now?” Nova said.
She steadied the gun and engaged the laser. Nothing happened for
several seconds and then the color of the clamp guard changed and
the unit twisted under the assault of her weapon. Briefly, she
wondered if the gun carried a full charge.

“
It’s gone!” she cried. “Tore loose and
slipped behind that white thingie.”

“
That
thingie
took a team of
engineers five years to design,” Josel said peevishly.

“
Get out of there now, Whiteside,”
Colonel Thedris said. She thought she heard a smile in his voice.
“If that didn’t do it nothing else will.”

Indeed, when she looked up she saw a space
appear between the roller mount and the actual tether although a
protective shield hid most of the attachment points. The elevator’s
graphene cable seemed to tilt away and she realized that the
crawler itself was moving away from it. “Uh, I think it’s loose but
it’s not moving anywhere fast.”

Her comment was met only with silence.

“
Hello? Could use a little help here.
Something tells me that ranch is getting awfully close.”

“
Heard, Whiteside,” the colonel said,
now sounding all business. “Climber is not abandoning its
trajectory. At this angle it will still hit the
station.”

“
Hell, no,” Nova muttered. She let the
gun spin away and bent awkwardly to detach the clasp holding her
line to the ship, her movements made clumsy by the six-fingered
gloves. Gripping the service rail with one hand, she snapped the
fastener onto it. A bead of sweat coursed its way into her eye and
she blinked it away. The Caspian who usually wore this suit had set
the controls far too high for her liking. “Why do they have fur,
anyway?”

“
Nova?”

“
Busy. Call back later.” Completely
untethered now, she turned slowly and groped for the gently
undulating line leading back to the cruiser. For a giddy instance
she considered what might happen if she missed. Would they ever
find her among the skyranch shrapnel before she ran out of air?
Muttering about things she’d rather being doing right now, she
pulled herself hand over hand to the ship and bumped awkwardly into
the open air lock chamber.

“
If you’re attempting what I think you
are…” Josel said.

“
I am.” She unsnapped the tether from
the interior of the ship and clapped it onto the outside before
punching the controls to pressurize the space. “I’m guessing a pull
is better than a push right now.”

“
May the Gods find us all,” he
whispered.

She pulled off gloves and helmet and floated
into the cabin to resume manual control of the ship. With infinite
care, she rolled the ship, using that motion to tug the climber
away from the elevator. “Am I doing this right? I can’t see a thing
from this angle.”

“
Fall off a little more now,” the
colonel said. “The cable is taut. No sudden jerks.”

A small power burst allowed her to veer away
and gently tow the freefalling crawler to a safer distance. Dimly,
she became aware of the sound of several voices shouting with
excitement and even one or two jubilant hoots. She wondered if that
was the colonel hooting like that.

“
Whiteside,” she heard his voice only
moments later. “That was some damn fine precision.”

She smiled tiredly as she twisted to climb
out of the awkward suit. “Thank you, sir.” She hung upside down
above the controls and set her course. “What do you want me to do
with this thing?”

“
Take it up to graveyard orbit. We’re
sending a salvage team to defuse it. Two of the rebels are still
alive and are being questioned.”

“
What are their names?”

“
Who? The rebels?”

Nova shook her head. She had seen Djari go
down. And she had seen the look on the faces of Beryl’s men. He
would not be among the survivors. There was a tight, bothersome
feeling somewhere in the center of her chest and she was unsure if
it was grief or anger or a bit of both. Whatever it was, she wanted
it gone.

How many had died here today? How many might
have died if the rebels had succeeded? What battles were still
raging at Siolet and the jumpsite? Did this have to happen?

“
Sir, permission to join the engagement
on Bellac?”

“
Are you sure? You’ve done your share
for the day.”

“
Positive. This ship is fully
equipped.”

“
All right. Drop off the climber and be
on your way. Make sure they know that you’re on a cruiser.” He
paused for a moment. “Targon would be mad to deny your Hunter
Class, I think.”

Hours passed before Nova brought her plane
down onto the landing apron of Skyranch Twelve and slipped into the
clutch of the air lock pogs. Her eyes felt gritty for lack of
sleep, her bruised ankle throbbed, she was hungry and wished for
nothing more than a hot bath and a soft bed, neither of which was
available on this station. Perhaps she could sneak into the therapy
pool in the med station.