Star Peregrine Page 14

  "I don't think they really wants to die with you," Harper said. "That's what's going to happen, by the way. We're going to chat for a bit, and then we're going to run out of patience, and then two or three marines in full battle armor are going to come down these steps and kill every last one of you. I'd do it by myself," he added. "I don't actually need any help. But it's good training for the others. So I'll let them come along."

  Fagan had the pistol back up. "I'll kill him! I'll kill your man!"

  "You live as long as he does," Harper said calmly. "And about two seconds longer. So you think real hard before you pull that trigger."

  "I … I …" Fagan lapsed into silence. He looked around at the other colonists without seeing them. The whites of his eyes showed all around the irises, and Alice almost felt sorry for him.

  Almost.

  "I want the ship," Fagan said. "We're taking the Kestrel."

  Harper laughed. By the sound of it he was genuinely amused. The laugh went on for several moments, and then he said, "Try again, Mr. Fagan."

  "I want …"

  "I'm running out of interest in what you want," Harper said. The laughter was gone from his voice. "We're under a deadline here. I'll be coming down there pretty soon."

  "We're all staying," Fagan said desperately. "We're staying here. You can have the rest of the base. We'll stay here. It's a Free Planets base anyway. You shouldn't even be here!"

  "Fine," said Harper. "Just bring up your hostage and we'll leave you be."

  "You'll kill us all!"

  "Maybe," Harper conceded. "But if you keeps dicking around, I guarantees you'll be dead as the vacuum of space in less than five minutes. So make up your mind."

  Alice shook her head, then shook it again as she realized her terror was gone. It should have grown even worse, she supposed. In addition to Fagan shooting her for being loyal to the Navy she now had to worry about the marines storming in and shooting her for being with the colonists.

  But her fear was gone. Instead she felt weary and frustrated and above all angry. Harper was right. They had a deadline. The Dawn Alliance was on its way, and Fagan was interrupting repairs. He'd shot an innocent spacer. He'd pointed a gun at Alice. She was suddenly fed right up with him.

  She looked at the others. Most of them looked scared. A few looked ashamed. Not one of them, she was sure, shared the fervor that drove Fagan. Most of them probably hadn't realized what he planned when he took them aside and urged them to join him in the pit.

  "Fagan," she said. When he ignored her she raised her voice. "Fagan!" He didn't turn to look at her, but she could tell from his posture that he was listening. "What the hell is this about? What do you think you're doing?"

  Now he looked at her. His eyes glittered. He looked exhausted, but he vibrated with energy. He was high, she realized. Not on any drug. Well, there were undoubtedly some medical concoctions in his bloodstream, but he was high on adrenaline and power and conviction. He was a fanatic. She hadn't realized it before. Maybe it hadn't been true before, until he lost his ship, his crew, his arm.

  Nothing mattered to him now but his twisted vision of the cause. He'd had that gun in his hand when he walked up behind her at the bending machine and asked her about her loyalties.

  If she'd given a different answer he would have killed her without hesitation or remorse.

  Instead of frightening her, the realization made her weary. "Put the gun down," she said. "Just drop it."

  His eyebrows rose. He shook his head as if he couldn't believe his ears. "Drop it?" His shoulders rose in a bewildered shrug. "Don't you see? I'm doing this for all of us."

  "We're all going to be dead in a few minutes," she snapped. "Stop doing us favors!"

  "Not us." He made a circling gesture with his hand, indicating the cluster of colonists. Since he held a gun in his hand, several people flinched as he pointed. "Us!" His next gesture had him pointing at the ceiling as the gun made a circle in the air. "Everyone in the Free Planets."

  "The Free Planets are occupied by the Dawn Alliance, you idiot! That's our enemy!"

  His voice rose to a shout. "We're allied with the Dawn Alliance! The United Worlds is the real enemy of the Free Planets."

  "Neorome is a Free Planet," she said. "So is Tazenda." She grimaced, remembering what she'd seen in the medical bay. "Garth Ham is a citizen of the Free Planets."

  The gun swung up and centered on her face. He was wild-eyed, trembling. "If you're not with me, you're against me!"

  Metal scraped against metal somewhere at the top of the stairs and Fagan whirled, pointing the gun at the gap in the doors. Alice took a step forward, brought the wrench up high, and slashed down, using both hands. The tool might have weighed less in the reduced gravity, but it had plenty of mass, and she got that mass moving at a hell of a clip. Fagan started to turn, the gun swung toward her, and the fat end of the wrench slammed into his forearm. She heard his radius break, and then the gun clattered onto the floor.

  He cried out, then shrank back as she lifted the wrench. He tried to lift his arm to protect himself, then moaned and let it fall. He settled for scuttling backward until his shoulder blades were against the back wall.

  Alice turned to the others, wrench above her head. "Does anyone else want to point a gun at me?"

  No one quite met her gaze. A woman said, "We never meant for-"

  "Shut it," she snapped, and turned to the stairs. There was no need to tell Harper anything; he'd been listening. Strong hands were already hauling the rusted doors farther apart. A moment later three marines came surging down the steps, Harper in the lead.

  Alice gestured at the injured hostage. Then she put her wrench down, retreated to one corner, and let her legs sag until she was sitting on the floor, utterly spent.

  Chapter 18

  Tom stood in the ship repair bay, watching vast robots pull hull plates from the Kestrel. The robots were a marvel, gangly long-legged things that could lift plates from anywhere on the ship's hull. They could reshape warped plates as well, even curved plates, by scanning the mounting struts and the adjacent plates. Step by step, they were smoothing out the damage done in the battle at Sunshine Base.

  The ship looked ugly. Frigates always looked ridiculous with their cargo pods removed, the spine absurdly small, like the handle of a dumbbell connecting the forward and aft sections. The Kestrel looked bad even for a frigate without cargo, though. Bright unpainted blotches showed where the robots had filled in holes in the hull plates. Some hull plates were brand-new, fabricated in the last few hours. They gleamed a discordant silver. Other plates showed black marks where the paint had been burned by lasers or by missile strikes. Beneath the discolorations, though, the entire forward section was smooth. The robots were currently refurbishing the aft section.

  Not everything could be done with robots. Off to one side Alice and a couple of colonists were putting together a collection of metal struts and a large tube. Alice wielded a massive wrench with a bent handle, tightening a nut on an enormous rusted bolt she'd scrounged from somewhere.

  The end result, she'd assured him, would be a missile launcher able to accommodate the missiles they'd scrounged from the corvette. According to Gunnery Chief Franco, the Dawn Alliance missiles couldn't be fired from the Kestrel's missile tubes. Alice, though, was sure her contraption would work.

  Unfortunately the missile launcher could only be fired from the ground. Still, it would give them a defense while the ship was helpless inside the bay.

  She's proven her loyalty, he thought. She's becoming indispensable. He trusted her, he realized. Some combination of instinct and observation of her actions had won him over completely.

  Not everyone shared his faith. Unger stood a dozen paces or so from the group of colonists, pretending to look up the ship as he watched them from the corner of his eye. His assault weapon was in his hands.

  Tom sighed and decided not to interfere. The marines didn't have much to do, after all. The prisoners were in the Exchange Pit w
ith the doors closed and a single marine keeping guard. There was only one way in or out. They were no longer a threat.

  A chirp in his ear drew his attention to the screen built into the sleeve of his vac suit. He had a message from Vinduly, succinct and to the point. I want to send a cast kit into your improvised brig for Mr. Fagan.

  Tom frowned and sent a brief reply. No. A voice in the back of his head told him he was being childish, even unethical, but the truth was, he was furious with the injured former pirate. Fagan had shot Spacer Fox in the thigh. The man had almost bled to death. He'd suffered terror and agony during Fagan's hopeless little uprising. A broken arm was the very least the man deserved.

  "If he wanted medical treatment, he shouldn't have shot anyone."

  "Pardon?"

  Tom looked up, startled. A man stood beside him, a stranger in a beige vac suit with hand-painted stars on his helmet. A marine named Lachance watched from several paces away, looking relaxed with her assault weapon cradled in the crook of her elbow. But the muzzle of the gun just happened to point directly at the man in beige. He must have noticed her, but he pretended she wasn't there.

  "Can I help you?" Tom said.

  "I'm Dupuis," the man said. "I was here when you people came in and, er, liberated us."

  Tom nodded.

  "I talked to your Lieutenant Sawyer. She had me rig a bomb in the powerplant. She said I should tell you when it was ready."

  Tom blinked. "You did what, now?"

  The look of alarm crossed the man's face. "Your lieutenant said …"

  "Yes, yes." Tom shook his head. "Just tell me what you've done."

  "I put a lot of work into this place, over the years," Dupuis said. "I hate to see it go to the benefit of those sons of bitches in the Dawn Alliance." His face collapsed into a furious scowl that made Tom suddenly glad they were on the same side. "Especially after what they did to Garth."

  Tom didn't speak, just nodded.

  "I went to see your Lieutenant Sawyer," Dupuis went on. "I told her I wanted to smash this place but good, when we left. She said it was a good idea."

  "Engineers do like wrecking things," Tom agreed.

  "Anyway, the powerplant is the weak point. It's more expensive than the rest of the base put together, and it'd be a real pain to replace. Take away the power, and this place is just about useless."

  Tom said, "So you …"

  "Set a bomb," Dupuis said cheerfully. "I used a warhead from one of those missiles. Right now it's snuggled up against the power core in the main generator."

  Tom said, "Um, good?"

  "It's on a timer," Dupuis went on. "It's set for thirty minutes. Every fifteen minutes or so, I go and crank the handle back to thirty. That way, if we have to leave in a hurry, we don't have to do anything. We just leave, and the base blows up behind us." Seeing the look on Tom's face, he said, "It's perfectly safe. It's not like I'm going to forget to go turn the timer back."

  "No," Tom said doubtfully.

  "You Navy boys are always doing things by the book. But there's no book for a situation like this. You need us to teach you how to make do and improvise."

  Tom glanced over at Alice. She and her helpers seemed to have finished the missile launcher. They were carrying it toward the airlock, a robot trundling along behind them with a dozen captured missiles. "You may be right, Mr. Dupuis."

  "Course I am." He shot a resentful glance at Lachance. "We're on your side, you know."

  "Of course you are." Tom clapped him on the shoulder. "You're a valued member of the team." He gestured at the marine. "She's just following you around to make sure you don't get bitten by a rat."

  Dupuis stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing. "A rat. Right." He shook his head, then became serious. "I'd like to come with you when you leave, Captain. If you'll have me." He scratched the side of his nose. "I think most of the gang wants to leave with you." A wry smile lifted the corners of his mouth. "It's not the Dawn Alliance we're scared of. It's Alice and her wrench."

  Tom grinned back. The grin faded, though, as he thought about the ramifications. "It won't be comfortable here after that bomb goes off. But you'll be alive. If you leave with us?" He shrugged. "There's no guarantees. Frankly, staying would be safer."

  An ugly look came over Dupuis's face. "I'd go with you if your ship was leaking air and the whole DA fleet was breathing down your necks."

  Tom felt his eyebrows rise.

  "I heard about what happened to Garth." Dupuis leaned to one side and spat. "I'm ashamed I helped those dirty cockroaches for as long as I did. I won't help them again." He folded his arms. "God help me, I won't do it. I'll fight 'em with my bare hands and make them shoot me if that's what it takes."

  Tom stared at him for a moment, then nodded. "You can come with us."

  "Good." Dupuis glanced at his forearm. "I should go."

  "Wait. Your bomb. Will it endanger the prisoners in the Transfer Pit?"

  Dupuis shook his head. "The lights will go out on 'em. That's all. Oh, we should seal the hatch leading into the repair bay." He gestured around them. "This place will lose pressure. The rest of the base will still have air, though."

  The prisoners would suffer, but so long as the Dawn Alliance returned within a few days, they would survive. That, Tom decided, was good enough. He nodded.

  "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go reset that timer." Dupuis gave Tom an ironic salute and moved away.

  "Captain?"

  He didn't know the name of the young woman in a Navy vac suit who came walking up with a tray in her hands. Plates covered the tray, each plate overflowing with sliced fruit. He saw bananas, strawberries, mangoes, and his mouth started to water.

  "The galley here is full of fresh food. We didn't want to leave it for the enemy." He reached for a slice of banana and she said, "Take lots. There's plenty."

  More figures with trays moved through the bay behind her. He saw men with teapots and women with some sort of pastry. He scooped fruit from the tray in front of him, mumbling his thanks around a mouthful of food.

  "We couldn't find anything better to do," she confessed. "We're not engineers or technicians. There's nothing we can do for the ship. So we raided the kitchen, and we started baking." She smiled. "There's pumpkin bread coming in a few minutes."

  Tom swallowed, grabbed a handful of strawberries, and said, "Great."

  "Is there anything we should be doing instead?" she said. "Normally we're supposed to ask supervisors and team leaders." Her face went sad. "My team leader is dead, though. We appointed Krystal our new team lead. But she doesn't know what else we can do."

  "This," said Tom, holding up a strawberry, "is an excellent example of initiative." He popped the strawberry into his mouth and mumbled, "You're doing fine."

  She beamed and walked away, carrying the fruit tray to where Sawyer and a group of technicians stood beneath one of the gangly robots.

  Tom tried to savor the rest of the strawberries, but he found himself gobbling them in spite of himself. He ate the last one and looked around for the woman with the tray of pastries.

  Instead, he saw Vinduly, face drawn and haggard, plodding determinedly in his direction.

  "Forget it, Doc. You can keep treating the prisoners who are already in the medical bay, but you're not sending any supplies into the pit."

  Vinduly shot him an irritated glance. "That's not what I'm here for." He finally reached Tom's side. The man looked dreadful up close, his face deeply lined, the skin under his eyes nearly black. By the look of him, a good sneeze would be enough to knock him flat. "I need some people to move Mr. Ham. We can't leave him here."

  "No." Tom thought of the terrible injuries inflicted on the man. "We can't. I'll find you some people and send them to the hospital bay."

  Vinduly nodded and turned away. Tom looked around and spotted a handful of people with empty trays, heading back toward the base kitchen. He intercepted them. "The surgeon needs your help. I need you to go to the hospital ba
y."

  "Right," said a young man, collecting trays from the others and dumping them on a nearby bench. "Where is it?"

  "It's …" Tom hesitated, thinking of the route to the medical bay, which was convoluted and difficult to describe. He shook his head. "It's this way. Follow me."

  Ham looked … not good exactly, but better than he did before. He was sitting up, with his back resting on a pillow and his mangled feet mercifully covered by a blanket. His bruises had faded and spread, giving him a jaundiced look. The medicinal foam was gone, replaced by bits of bandage and skin sealer. He held himself quite still, as if moving hurt him, but his eyes were clear and he looked alert.

  His bed had antigrav machinery. Vinduly positioned one of the newly-arrived volunteers at each corner of the bed, then knelt and started fiddling with the controls.

  Tom looked down at Ham, who squinted up at him, still only able to open one eye. "I'm Tom Thrush, acting captain of the United Worlds frigate Kestrel. We liberated this base, let me see, twelve or thirteen hours ago?" Looking at the man's battered body, he added gently, "I'm sorry it took so long."

  Ham said, "How big is your fleet?"

  Tom winced. "There's no fleet. Just one damaged frigate that ran out of fuel and had nowhere else to go."

  Ham closed his eye for a moment, a pained grimace on his face. "I broke under torture."

  "I know." Tom kept his voice gentle. "You couldn't help it. No one could have."

  A curl of Ham's lip revealed his self-disgust. "I told them about a meeting for the snow geese."

  "Alice told me," Tom said.

  Ham didn't seem to hear him. "That's what we call the ships that got away from Neorome and Tazenda. Snow geese. The Council decided we needed to get together, compare notes and pool resources."

  "I know."

  "But it's not too late!" Ham started to lean forward, then winced and sagged back. "You have to go there. Warn ships off as they arrive."

  Tom said gently, "A fleet of Dawn Alliance ships left from here just before we came in. They'll already be at the rendezvous. I'm sorry. It's too late."