The High Ground (36 page)

“Depends. Our view might be blocked by the station.”

“I kind of hope it is… blocked I mean. I only have so much fear and worry to go around,” Sumiko muttered. A thin thread of hysteria ran like a leitmotif through the words.

“Only fear? I’m at flat-out bowel-loosening terror,” Tracy said, hoping he’d infused some humor into the words. Behind the distorting faceplate he saw her smile so it must have worked.

Sumiko whispered, “I don’t want to die…”

“Hugo’s not going to let that happen,” Tracy said and realized he’d said exactly the wrong thing.

“And
I’m
not going to let Hugo die,” she snapped.

“Of… of course not.” Tracy cut the link.

He found himself pondering the delicate dance between the genders that was taking place. How would they resolve centuries of training that said men protected women—not the other way around? Of course Mercedes was doing that for him right now, and he wasn’t having a big problem with it. So maybe it wasn’t going to be a thing.

They reached the spoke. The hub hung like an exclamation point at the center of the five converging spokes and the ten cables running from the top and the bottom of the ring and attaching at the end points of the hub. Though with the wing-like solar panels the hub had the look of a hapless insect trapped in a web of steel.

“Long walk,” Hugo grunted.

“Then we better get started,” Tracy said.

* * *

Boho beamed the coordinates of the mystery ship to her console. “Are you okay?” he asked gently.

“Yes. No. I don’t know. You?”

“Someone is trying to get through the door and into computer ops. I’m doing what I can to prevent that. With luck I’ll force them to have to get cutters. Still, we better hurry.”

“I can’t just blaze right at them,” Mercedes argued. “I’m using the
cosmódromo
for cover, trying to get around where the sun will be behind me.”

“They’ll still read you.”

“Which is why I’m going to fire chaff the minute I begin my approach.”

“Sounds like you’ve thought of everything, my dear,” he said softly.

“I hope.”

“I sent off a tight beam warning to the planet,” Boho added.

“Good thought. Though I expect the satellites will have noted the station moving,” Mercedes said. “Where are the others?”

“On the spoke now moving toward the hub. Do you want me to patch you through to your father?”

The suggestion brought a surge of memory—warm embraces, the rasp of stubble from his cheek at the end of the day, the smell of whisky on his breath, his basso hum as he sang her to sleep after a particularly bad nightmare. It was a fist to the gut and tears tightened her throat.

“No. I need to concentrate so I need you to go away now too.”

“All right.
Te adoro
, Mercedes,” he said softly.

The click had a finality that left her shaking. It affected the trim of her fighter, and she had to struggle to get it under control. The sensitivity of the coach controls had a downside when you were actually scared. She was good against simulators. Good against drones. This time she would be matching wits with actual human minds. If she succeeded they would die. If she failed she would die.

The hijackers were burning the trim rockets on the station. Mercedes used their brilliant flare to hide the boosters on her fighter. She worked with the computer to calculate the best route to place her with the sun behind her
Infierno.
She burned as long as she could then abruptly changed trajectory and cut the engines. Inertia would have to do the rest. She just hoped the station and its escort wouldn’t move too fast for her to get situated for maximum effect.

Apart from her breaths the silence in the cockpit was total. “Te adoro,
Mercedes
.” Boho’s voice throbbing with suppressed emotion.
“Go get ’em, girl.”
Tracy’s voice as he jacked her helmet into the
Infierno
, and gave her a slap on the top of her head to show she was secure. One a voice of fervency and passion. The other a voice of admiration and confidence.

She flicked a finger to bring up her weapons load. Not at full capacity with either missiles or slugs. Well it was what she had. It would have to do. She longed to know what she was up against, but didn’t dare paint the enemy ship with her radar or lidar. If she did it would be like lighting a flare and screaming,
Here I am!

Silence. She knew she was moving only because of the pressure of her body against the restraints and the acceleration couch. The distances were just too vast and objects too small for her to see any real appreciable movement. She knew from her display that she was closing the distance with the other ship, but it didn’t feel real. She had to figure out when to light the engines again and start firing. She couldn’t just spray and pray. She needed her limited shots to count.

The minutes dragged, the silence filled with her heartbeats and breaths. She keyed her radio on a tight beam to Tracy. “Hey,” she said softly.

“Hey yourself.”

“Where are you?”

“Little over halfway to the hub,” he replied. “It’s slow going.”

“I’m a bit closer than that.”

“You’ll be fine. You’re the best among us.”

She sat with that for a moment, forced into unnatural stillness by the sensitivity of the couch. Once again the difference between the two men was evident. “How do you always know what to say?”

“I don’t. Most times and with most people. I only know with you.” It was said humbly, almost apologetically.

“Tracy, I want to ask—”

“Shit! Shit! Oh God, no!”

“What’s wrong? Tracy? Tracy?” But the connection had been broken.

* * *

“Tracy, I want to ask—”

It was again sensation not sound that gave him a millisecond of warning. A shifting beneath his boots that told him something had changed. Sumiko’s helmeted head swung around, and he saw her face behind layers of plexicrystal. He watched as her eyes widened and her mouth opened in a scream.

Tracy tried to spin around, and wrenched his back as his boots refused to release. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a snake writhing across a backdrop of stars. It took a moment before his mind resolved what he was seeing. One of the massive cables that connected the ring to the hub had broken loose and was snapping like a silent whip.

“Shit! Shit! Oh God, no!” He broke the connection to Mercedes and went on open band to his companions. “Down, down! Everybody down!”

Against the stars the cable had seemed a thread. Hugo was directly in the path of the massive braid of metal. Tracy lunged toward his friend, hand outstretched. Too late. With the speed of a falling blade the cable sliced Hugo in half at the waist. It was grotesque. From the hips down the legs remained upright, held in place by the magnetized boots. A halo of blood crystals sparkled around the body. The upper torso was floating away from the station following the trajectory of the cable that had killed him. Tracy had a glimpse of Hugo’s slack face before the body spun away, blood crystals and dangling intestines like the tail of some monstrous comet. As he watched the battle armor tried to seal the massive tear in a futile attempt to save a dead man.

Bile, hot and sour, rose through his throat. Tracy fought it down. Vomiting in the suit could doom him.
But Hugo!
His mind was screaming. His friend. Perhaps his closest friend.
I killed him. God forgive me.

Sumiko’s screams clawed at his ears, pulling him out of his panic and grief. Davin was also screaming. He had been next to Hugo. Tracy yanked his horrified gaze from Hugo’s body, searching for Davin. He too had been torn loose from the spoke and was tumbling wildly in space. As Davin spun around Tracy was able to see that his right arm was missing. The screaming stopped. This time the suit did its job and sealed the tear. Shock, blood loss, and a sedative applied by the suit had knocked Davin unconscious. Which meant he couldn’t fire his maneuvering jets and return to the station. Someone was going to have to go after him. Which would alert the lurking ship.

Sumiko was sobbing, a heartbreaking sound in the darkness. “Hugo, Hugo, Hugo. No. No. Please. Hugo. No.”

“What’s happening?” Cullen’s voice ringing in his ear. Tracy ignored him.

Ernesto grabbed Tracy by the shoulders. “What do we do?” His voice was cracking with fear.

Tracy chinned on the radio. “Mercedes. Take out that ship. NOW!”

“What? Why?”

“Just
do it
!”

“How dare you address—” Cullen began.

“SHUT UP!” Tracy bellowed. There was a flare of light against the darkness. An answering flare from the mystery ship.
Please God, keep Mercedes safe. Let her save us all.

“You piece of shit—” Cullen began again.

“Boho, SHUT UP.” It was the soft-spoken Ernesto and Tracy stared at him in surprise. It also seemed to surprise Cullen into silence. “Hugo is dead and Davin’s hurt.”

“And we’ve got to get Davin,” Tracy added. He stared at the rapidly receding bodies. He kicked loose from the skin of the spoke and fired his maneuvering jets. And immediately put himself into a tumble. He fought back panic and nausea and tried to analyze what he’d done wrong. He worked out the amount of force needed to produce thrust in the proper direction and thumbed the jets again. This time he shot straight to Davin’s body. He braked a foot away and analyzed the wild tumbling. If he just grabbed he’d be pulled into the same giddy whirl. He worked out the direction, fired the left jet, and grabbed Davin’s utility belt. Davin stabilized. Tracy cut the jet, tethered a line to Davin’s suit and towed him back to the spoke. Ernesto had recovered his composure enough to catch Davin and pull him down.

“What do we do now?” Ernesto asked.

“Nothing’s changed. We still need to get to the control room.”

Ernesto rolled an eye toward Sumiko’s hunched figure. “We should send her back to the ring with Davin.”

“No. I need everybody. You and I can’t do this alone.”

Ernesto shook his head. “So what? You’re just going to tether Davin to a clip and
leave
him out here?”

“No. We’ll take him with us. At least get him in atmosphere.”
And he might still be useful
, Tracy thought, but he didn’t say that out loud.

Ernesto looked back at Sumiko. “I still don’t think she’ll be much use.”

Tracy stepped to the woman and touched her on the shoulder. She looked up at him; her face was blotched and wet with tears. Snot hung on her upper lip. The moisture had begun to fog her faceplate. “Sumiko. We’re going to get to the hub and kill the bastards who forced us to be out here. Okay? You want to do that?” She gave a gulping snort followed by an emphatic nod. “Good. Let’s go.”

Ernesto looked toward the still distant hub. “It’s going to take a while.”

Tracy looked to where flashes sparked against the blackness of space. “No. We don’t have to walk any more. That ship has bigger problems than us right now.”

Something had happened. Something bad. Tracy’s order to her had been blasted on an open channel, which meant she heard what he was hearing. Sumiko sobbing. Boho blustering. Ernesto screaming at Boho to shut up. It sounded like good advice. She needed to focus. To concentrate. She cut the link with her friends and began scanning her instruments. Go in slow and sneaky? Or try to intimidate them with a frontal assault?

“Don’t be stupid.” The words emerged like an order. She decided to obey herself.

She still had a momentary advantage from the sun, but the ship had no doubt heard the order and would be scanning for her and it wouldn’t take long for them to spot her. She needed them to find her, but hopefully miss the present she was going to schedule for late delivery. She programmed three missiles to delay for forty seconds before igniting and heading for their target. At the same time she fired the missiles she was going to fire the engines, give the
Infierno
full throttle and send it looping beneath the stealth ship. At that point she could paint the enemy and read its specs.

The maneuver would bring her to a position on the bow of the ship. Hopefully her sudden appearance would distract them and they wouldn’t notice the three small but deadly objects waiting at their stern. She needed to capitalize on that.

She sucked in a deep breath and realized that she was oddly calm. She had one wildly inappropriate little thought go fluttering past—
Daddy’s going to kill me for this!
—just before she executed her plan. Acceleration crushed her into the couch. Holos flickered all around her. Alarms blared as the mystery ship painted her. She painted back and stared at the readout. The ship was a Talon. And not just a Talon, a SEGU black ops ship. Stolen? How had the terrorists obtained an older model League assault vehicle? She remembered El-Ghazzawy telling them they were being sold as surplus.
Maybe not the League’s best plan
, she thought.

She couldn’t worry about that right now. If she survived she’d bring it up with her father and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Right now it was time to drive home the distraction. Breathless because of the gee forces, Mercedes sent a message on an open channel.

“You bastards wanted me. Well, here. I. Am!” The defiant yell she’d been hoping to achieve emerged more as a breathless little squeak.

Other readouts informed her that her opponent was delivering its own deadly gifts. She allowed her eyes to lose focus so she could see the entirety of her display and not concentrate on just one image. Five missiles were streaking at her. There was no time for fear. She relaxed and let her body, glances of her eyes and flicks of her fingertips take control. Working in concert with the
Infierno
’s sensors she launched slugs on intercept paths with the incoming missiles. She felt the fighter jerk as the slugs were hurled from the rim of her craft.

Another display informed her she would intercept three of the incoming missiles. The other two would hit. Evasive maneuvers held only a thirty-two percent chance to avoid one. To avoid both was a scant thirteen percent.

Now the fear arrived copper bright in the back of her mouth. She fought the impulse to close her eyes. Was it worse to see death approaching? She wanted to simply give up, cry for her daddy, but her body was reacting, instructing her fighter to evade even though she knew it to be hopeless.
One fights for life
, she thought as her slugs tore apart three of the missiles. Then the other two simply detonated. A mist of fragments swept past the
Infierno
, a few large enough to patter against the hull.