“My lifeboat has a meteor laser. I could try to pick a couple—”
“You stay here. Like it or not, you’re our insurance policy. We need your help in this, so consider yourself a hostage.” Powell turned to face Baker. “They won’t kill us until they have you. Perhaps we can take a few of them
Baker silently watched the scrims while the minutes fell away, marked only by the calm voice of an ensign noting its passage. The Valli fighters surrounding the sphere did nothing. “Ten minutes. Destroyer within attack radius.”
“Final weapons check.”
Baker asked, “What weapons?”
Without breaking his concentration on the master computer, Powell replied, “Laser rifles, gloves, even a few automatic pistols and old machine guns. Ever try to correct for Coriolis while firing inside a Bernal? Good fun.”
“This is a suicide fight.”
Powell kept his gaze on the scrims. “Don’t you think my men know that?”
“I’m the reason they’re going to die.” Baker pushed away from the command seat. “You could have spaced me and told them I wasn’t here—”
“They’d have looked for you anyway. We were doomed the moment you appeared on radar.”
“You should have blasted me then.”
“You’re probably right. We’re in for it now, though, so we fight.”
“Eight minutes. We have visual.” A telescopic view of the destroyer appeared on several scrims. Its nuclear engines no longer glowed blue-white and its shape could clearly be seen. It rotated about into attack position, an off-white armored slab a hundred meters wide and two hundred long. A battery of lasers and missile launchers crested its fore end, clustered like a giant child’s overflowing carton of lethal toys. The bottom third of the destroyer bulged elliptically to hold its nuclear fuel.
“Go to internal oxygen,” a disembodied voice commanded.
“How about us?” Baker asked, watching a scrim of men and women in pressure suits busily adjusting their air flows.
“We’re airlocked,” Powell replied simply. “If the integrity here fails, we’ve lost anyway.”
“I’m not dying here.” Baker floated in front of Powell. One arm reached out and pulled him back into place.
“Relax—you’re as safe here as anywhere. If not”—Powell punched a few buttons and pointed—“There—on the center right scrim. Your lifeboat. In
three minutes you can be in there and ready to transfer out, if you have any idea where Circus is.
First, though—” He punched another button and threw a series of switches. A bank of lights glowed green around him.
“This is Commander Norman Powell of Fadeaway acknowledging receipt of your request. Virgil Grissom Kinney sits behind me. We are prepared to repel your attack. We—”
Something thundered throughout the habitat. Even ComStat vibrated.
“Simultaneous Valli bombardment from all sides,” a voice called out. “Zero integrity on sphere. Atmosphere draining.” Other voices joined in.
“Twenty millimeters pressure. Fifteen.”
“Four minutes.”
“Ten millimeters. Five.”
“Twenty-four blast holes each eight to ten meters—”
A dozen light arrays simultaneously blazed red.
“Zero pressure in main sphere.”
“How many men lost?”
“Look!” a shocked old voice cried. “They’re fighting outside! ” Scrims lit up with the view of troops, sucked out through the blast holes by the voiding atmosphere, still ready for battle. Half of them were dead; the survivors—flung into space toward doom—unleashed their fire against the Valli fighters and the approaching destroyer.
“It’s pointless! They can’t harm anything from there.”
“ ‘The brave may fall, but never yield,’ Jord.” Powell opened the hatch to the airlock. “Now you know why I kept you up here. They wouldn’t blast ComStat knowing you’d probably be inside. They’ll have to board and storm to capture you.” He scanned an array of scrims. “Now. Get to your boat. There’s a suit in the lock.”
“It’ll take me too long to—”
“We’ll hold them off. Get out now!”
Baker kicked down the tubeway into the lock and slammed the hatch. He removed his jet pack, slipped on the bulky suit as fast as possible and cycled the atmosphere. From the safety box he seized a fuel bottle.
“Boarding ships launched from destroyer.”
“How many men left?” Powell’s voice asked, sharp and calm on Baker’s
headset.
“Telemetry received on seven hundred fifty-three still inside, sir.”
Baker tightened the jet harness and kicked out toward the shuttle bay. He fired up the engine and tried not to look anywhere but along his direction of flight.
“Deploy them evenly around the blast holes,” Powell said, “until we’re sure which ones the ships will use.”
Baker ignored the ensuing spate of orders and troop movements. He glanced down just once to see ant-people running up to black, pool-sized holes inside the sphere, above and below him. Buildings had been toppled, plants uprooted. Debris lay spiraled toward the holes as if toward a drain, turned clockwise on one side of the equator, counter-clockwise on the other, looser twists in the higher latitudes, tighter ones in the middle.
Baker rocketed along the axis toward the docking bay.
“Reroute companies Bravo, Echo, and Oscar to hole one-thirty west, forty north. The first ship’s rammed us there.”
Baker looked around. Above and behind him, he saw the blunt nose of a boarding craft jammed into the blast hole. Laser fire from the craft attempted to clear the area, but there were too many places for the defenders to hide. Suddenly, hatches sprung open and armed troops swarmed outward. Brilliant points of light flared against their armor.
Some fell. The others walked over them, firing indiscriminate laser fusillades.
From behind a broken tree, a sphere of blue gunsmoke blew outward and an invader several meters away flew backward against the ship’s hull as though hit by a meteor. His pressure suit exploded, boiling his lifeblood into the airless void.
Baker turned away from the upside-down scene in time to see the south pole of the sphere speeding toward him . He reversed and cut his engines just before reaching the hatch-way. A woman motioned to him, pointing toward a corridor; then she turned to join the fighting as soon as he had safely passed.
Hand-over-hand he pulled along the weightless passage. He felt the rumble of a another boarding craft ramming into Fadeaway.
What now? He turned the corner of the access shaft to the docking bay and continued along. I have to die again to get away from death? Is fake or real better? And where to? Circus is gone somewhere—
Yanking his way into the docking bay, he sealed the pressure doors with one hand and muscled toward the shuttle.
They’d see the ship if I move it out of the docking bay. The shuttle’s doors responded to his touch. I’ve got to transfer from inside.
Something reverberated throughout the bay. The airlock bulkhead bent inward as if hit by a battering ram. He cycled the pressurizer and removed his helmet.
“Can you take verbal commands?” he shouted to the boat’s computer. Lights turned green. The word YES appeared on a viewscrim. Strapping in, he spoke a series of carefully worded orders, all the time watching the docking bay doors; a bright point of light appeared at one corner and began to trace an outline.
“Do you understand these orders?”
YES.
Baker poised his finger over the transfer button.
“Come on. What are you waiting for?” They’re cutting the hatchway open. Come on.
Baker bit his lip and watched the outer doors slowly bend inward under the light thrust of a boarding craft. The steel plating easily gave way until part of it touched the nose of Baker’s shuttle, pitching it forward. Through the opening hatch of the boarding craft, he saw masks hiding behind the muzzles of laser rifles.