Static burst from the general com: the Shepherd had cut B channel in. “ AMC Twenty-nine Hamilton, this is FleetCom. You’re in violation of UDC directives. Stand down—”
“Cut that damn thing off!” Ben snarled. “We got enough on our minds.”
“We can’t dock,” the Shepherd yelled. Sal was belting in. Ben was. Acceleration was increasing in hammer blows from the main engines. The mast whipped past faster and faster—
Then nothing. Sudden long shove from the bow stabilizers and the mast swung back in view, retreating now—going for decel—another burst of Trinidad’smains…
No, she thought— Way Out’smains… we’re coupled. Double mass.—Are we giving up? Going back? Shuttle’s on the mast, Dek, did we miss it. Don’t get rattled, kid…
Ben said something. Dek said something, and the trim jets fired another long burst, taking the ship—God, felt like a right angle to the station.
God, he’s going after the Hamilton—
Mains again, hardpush—pain, from the arm, real pain—
This is interesting, she thought, feeling the accel, figuring vectors. Hell of a ride, Dek,—you tell ‘em we’re coming?
Big shove. Dark again. She could hear the beeps from the distance indicators, the higher ready-beeps from systems on standby—she thought: that’s nice, nicesound, that, everything’s optimum config, that sumbitch interface back there worked, didn’t it?
Loud argument, and the whine of the forward bay hydraulics.
“What the fuck are you doing?” a man’s voice shouted. “They’re ready to move, dammit, we’re in their blast pattern—they got a carrier on intercept—”
Sal’s voice, clear and sane: “Shut up, Sammy!”
Thank God, Meg thought, listening for the beeps and tones, easier that than keeping her eyes open. Plenty of information there: bay was open, manipulator arm was working—Sammy was saying, “God, you fool, you damned fool…”
Worth a look. She blinked the blurry monitors clear, saw an irregular surface, slotted with dust-deflectors and bolted-onto with tether stanchions—the arm extending out in front of them, white in the spots, shadowed onto the irregular plating—
“Go for it, go for it!” Sal said, “you got it, Ben!”
Neat touch. Hardly felt it.
Attached. To a tether stanchion. The manipulator grip closed and locked.
“ Nicejob,” she said. She wasn’t sure anybody heard.
The Shepherd yelled, “ Go!”
Acceleration started, built and built.
Better dump those tanks, Dek, better just uncouple Way Out, let her go, and just hope to hell the arm mount holds—no way we can decel off what a Shepherd can put on us, anyway…
Ought to tell the kid. But just hard to get organized—hard to get the mouth to work.
Unstable load. Lot of push on. Pressure built in her arm and deserted her brain.
Going up, guys, going up, long and hard as we can…
Quiet. Couldn’t even hear the fans. But no more g.
Taste of blood.
Explosion—
But they weren’t tumbling. Wasn’t the way it had been. He opened his eyes, got the board in focus in this peaceful drifting—neck was stiff, muscles sprained. He turned his head and saw Ben out cold—the Shepherd beside him, headset drifting loose. If there was sound he couldn’t hear it, except the fans.
Then he remembered shutting down. Remembered Meg—tried to move. There wasn’t a muscle that didn’t hurt. But he unclipped, pushed off and turned, getting to Meg’s position.
Blood made a fine mist. She was white as a ghost and cold when he touched her face. She looked dead.
But tension came back, dead one moment, then unconscious, but there, by some subtle change that wasn’t even movement until the eyelids showed stress. Ben was moving—number 2 boards and the best place, his and Ben’s, to ride out the push.
“She make it?” Ben asked fuzzily.
“Yeah,” Meg mumbled, speaking for herself. At least that was what it sounded like.
“Are we still grappled?”
“I don’t know,” Dekker said. “We seem stable.”
Ben freed himself and drifted over to see to Sal—Sal was coming to. The Shepherd was still out. Dekker reached for the headset, heard faint static and a thin voice before he held it to his ear. “… alive in there?” he heard, and: “I’m hearing voices. Their com is open…”
“Yeah,” he said, pulling the mike into line. “This is miner ship Trinidad. Is this the Hamilton?”
CHAPTER 19
HE wasn’t doing a damn thing,” Ben said—there was blood all over him and Sal, blood dried on his own hands, Dekker saw, Bird’s, Meg’s, he had no idea. There was too much of it.
“Nothing?” the officer asked.
“Cops had me, dammit, he didn’t need to be there, he wasn’t doing a damn thing, just objected to them grabbing me, and some fool—just—pulled a trigger.”
Dekker stared at the backs of his hands, seeing what he hadn’t been there to see. Seeing Meg in the lift, holding on to Bird.
Sal said, “ Isaw it. They were arming guys straight off leave, some of them still higher than company corruption: green kids, didn’t know shit what they were doing.”
“It was a soldier.”
“Damn right it was a soldier. Marine. Couldn’t have been twenty.”
The Hamilton’spurser clicked off the recorder. “We’ve got that. We’ll send it before we make our burn.”
Dekker said: “How is the fuel situation?”
“Not optimum,” the purser said.
“Shit.” Sal shook her head. The purser left. Ben didn’t say anything, just got a long breath and clasped his hands between his knees.
It was as much information as they’d gotten. The same information as they’d gotten since they’d come aboard. Hadn’t seen Sammy—Sammy had gone offshift, probably in his own bunk asleep or tranked out if he hadn’t gotten the news yet. Sammy—Ford was his last name—had been fairly well shaken up, hadn’t asked for the position he’d been handed—the situation at the dock had gone to hell, the shuttle crew hadn’t answered, the 8-deck group hadn’t answered, they’d suspected their com was being monitored: Mitch had gone next door to use the restaurant’s phone to get contact with his crew and hadn’t come back, arrested or worse, they still hadn’t found out. Sammy wasn’t flight ops, he was the legal affairs liaison, a Shepherd negotiator, for God’s sake, who’d come aboard R2 to deal with management, if the plan had gone right, if the soldiers hadn’t come in…
Sammy’d done all right, Dekker decided. All right, for a guy who’d probably never gotten his hands dirty. Had to tell Meg when she came to. She’d get a laugh out of it.
Another officer, this one straight past them, where they waited in the tight confines of the medstation. Right into the surgery.
Angry voice beyond the door, an answer of some kind.
“Think they’ve got a hurry-up,” Sal muttered.
More voices. Something about paralysis and another thirty minutes. Voice saying, quite clearly, “… doesn’t do her any good if she’s dead, Hank, we haven’t got your thirty minutes. Get your patient prepped, we’re moving.”
Man came back through the door then, looked at them, said, more quietly, “We’ve got your ship free, we’ve got a positional problem and we’re doing a correction burn, about as fast as the EV-team can get in and I can get up to the bridge. Best we can do. You’ve got belts there. Use them. Staff’s got take-holds.”
Bad, then. Dekker clamped his jaw and reached for the belt housed in the side of the seat as Sal and Ben did the same. The officer was out the door and gone.
“Shit-all,” Ben muttered. His hands were shaking. Sal’s were clenched in her lap.
They were in trouble. No question. Headed into the Well, nobody had to say it. “Positional problem” on a Jupiter-bound vector meant only one thing, and a hurry-up like that meant they were on their own, no beam, just the fuel they had left—which wasn’t a big argument against the Well’s gravity slope.