Just the breathing. Then finally: "Ship out there is probably India. It's using a merchanter ID. That's a rider-ship inbound. Maybe two of them."
"It's Ganges or it's Tigris, we got two AP's and two rigs and either of them's got at least thirty, at least one whole tac-squad with the weapons-sync we haven't got, and they aren't fools. They can use an insystemer dock, they'll get their squad on station, core or rim—rim, if they know Thule, they'll punch right through the section-seals, and meanwhile we may have the other rider coming up under us and a second squad coming right through our hull into Personnel with another thirty guys, that's what."
Fitch didn't like that. Didn't say a thing.
"So you give the orders, sir, whatever you want from here."
Two little blips on station-scan, other side of station, one more on long-scan, only the best-guess of position. Absolutely. Goddard didn't like having her standing behind him, Goddard probably didn't like being there himself. "We're going to dockside," Fitch told him, on outside-speaker. "You're on your own. Tanks go at your discretion."
"Yessir," Goddard said, and glanced away for a second to flip a switch. "Good luck, sir."
Hadn't heard the lock cycle. Usually you heard the hydraulics work, it even got through the pump-noise, and she hadn't heard a sound. She kept thinking, He's waiting, we're still firing, he's waiting to the last minute—
God, God, NG, get out—
"Where's crew?" she asked Fitch when they got into the lift. "Station shelter?"
"Deep as we can get them." The lift started down. "Holding Central at gunpoint. We got some faint hearts. You ought to be right at home with that situation."
"As happens," she said, calm and quiet. "Yessir." She fired a shot of her own. "You volunteer for this?"
"I got my pick of crew," Fitch said.
"Tanks are rigged?"
"Tanks are rigged. Goddard's got that business."
"Goddard going to get clear?"
Silence.
Son of a bitch, she thought. And didn't say anything. Couldn't say anything.
The lift touched bottom. She kept thinking, walking out behind Fitch, I could kill this bastard.
Take him apart.
Joint by joint.
"You going to order Goddard clear, sir?"
"Goddard's in command up there. It's his choice." Fitch opened up the weapons-stowage. "This is what we've got."
AP 200's, shells, caps, remotes. She picked up a remote and a roll of fine wire, spotted a box of Gibbs-caps and reached for it. Fitch got his hand in the way and took charge of the remote.
"We got heavy demolitions? Station's got to have, sir, miner-supplies."
Fitch didn't answer her. Fitch passed her an AP and a handful of slings of shells.
"Demolitions," she repeated. "Sir. Where?"
"We're taking care of that."
"Dammit, sir, you trying to commit suicide, or what?"
Fitch shifted around, looked her direction. Clumsy. And she wasn't. Damn right she wasn't. Maybe Fitch was thinking about that. Likely Fitch was thinking all along about that.
"Do these rigs have a direct comlink with theirs?"
Reasonable question. "Yes, sir, they can have. Riders are probably trying to pick up Loki's internal stuff. Might get a bit of it. Just keep to channel B, between us. They probably haven't got the 'ears they'd need for that, not on a rider-ship."
"Can you get into their comlink?"
Second reasonable question. "Can't mimic their ID, sir. I can talk to 'em, I can hear 'em, but I'll show up as another number on their board the second I go onto Fleet-com, and I'll show as Africa. They thought of that a long time ago."
"Don't think they'd welcome you?"
"Nossir. My codes aren't current and they'll blow me to hell on a special priority. That relieve your mind, sir?"
"No end," Fitch said, picked up his stuff, laid a hand on her shoulder and pushed. "Out."
She moved, slung her AP and her shells over her left shoulder, tucked the wire and the caps in a third shell-sling and headed for the lock, thinking right then that there was an outside chance, she could go onto India-com, she knew names, lot of old drinking-buddies on India and they knew her and they knew Teo and Bieji Hager. They might at least wait-see, damn, she could go on that band and Fitch wouldn't know—
Tell them watch out for a schiz Systems man and get him out alive—
On India. Take NG into the 'decks.
Sure, he'd thank her for that.
She followed Fitch out the lock, down the ramp, onto docks she had bad dreams about.
Section-seals-were in place, like walls at either end of the section. Personnel access to get through those was down at the coreward edge of the seals, airlock passage in the arch of the seal-doorways. Four section-seals on Thule, to separate the docks and keep a decompression from going station-wide. Up above, she could see the constant yellow flash of movement in the hoses, the pump still shoving its load into Loki's gut.
They said Mazian still had ways of supplying himself, said he had some deep base, maybe old Beta Station itself, where nobody in his right mind would go—but supply lines only went so far, and Fitch said India was that desperate. That meant India was likely being shoved, run, pushed off her regular supply points, off in the deep—and that meant Alliance ships able to keep her from moving on stations.
Little Loki could have gone on as she was, sat silent while India refueled and provisioned herself off Thule—and Loki instead put herself in the way of trouble. Chance was, Loki hadn't known India was coming in, just had the bad luck to be going into dock, leaving a heat-trail India could pick up like a beacon, and Loki couldn't run.
But chance also was that Wolfe had known India was in the game. Chance was, when they'd dodged out-system in a hurry that had killed a man, when Wolfe had been on the general com after that, saying they'd had a carrier-class bogey—Wolfe had known what he was playing tag with.
They'd talked with some Alliance ship, Wolfe had said that much. They'd traded information, after which Loki had jumped to Thule.
Old spook, her systems chancy to the point of suicide—a mostly-stripped station due for demolition—
Easy equation, the way high commands did math.
"Know something?" she said to Fitch. "We were supposed to have help here. And we sit out there waiting. But we got to have fuel, we don't get this ship out of here without it, so we decide to move on our own, we were going to go in, raid that fuckin' tank, blow the pump and get out, hell with the stationers. But it wasn't our support showed up, it was India—am I right?"
No answer from Fitch, she thought. Then:
"Half-right. We come in on inertial approach, close and quiet as we can. We could've blown that pump, could've ordered station to do it. If we could get that fuckin' carrier out of the equation our last rendezvous could have spared us enough to get us to 'Dorado, but it wasn't and they couldn't. So we come in here with a problem, Ms. Yeager, and it hasn't gotten anything but worse. Right now, we got those riders sepped off at low V. The way they're acting, the speed they used getting here, we're right and they're that low, no mass in those tanks to speak of. So we're playing dumb little merchanter—like they can move in here real fast and easy and make a little ship like us spit it up again. Only by now they've got a look at us up close, now they know they got a real problem unless they can take us, and they know it's a trap that's going to close. That what you want to know?"