Made sense. For the first time she got the feeling Fitch was on the level.
"Meaning we got help possible?"
"Meaning we've caught ourselves a Fleet carrier. Meaning that sonuvabitch Keu is dead V at this star and we're blowing every skimmer Thule's got, disabling the section-seals, we're going to take out that pump, and we're sitting here throwing missiles at those rider-ships they can't throw back, because they don't want to blow the pump or our tanks. We've been getting amnesty-offers for the last half hour."
Fitch surprised her. You got him started and the man could talk.
"Keu won't keep his word," she said. "Kreshov might, he's one captain in the Fleet that might, but not Keu —You trusting Mallory, by any chance?"
"Not by choice," Fitch said.
Funny as hell. Spook officer and an Afriker with the same opinion. She almost appreciated Fitch for that half-second
"Don't trust you, either," Fitch said then. "But you've got Ramey to think about. Ship blowing up's not the worst thing that could happen to Mr. Ramey—not with his particular problem. Boy can't take orders. How long do you think he'd last, on India?"
She didn't say anything. Didn't think it called for it.
"Just insurance," Fitch said. They got to the seal-door airlock, likeliest access with the giant seal-doors disabled from Central. Fitch waved a hand in the general direction of the lock, invited a fool to go ahead, try to open it. "You want to critique the job, Yeager, you go right ahead."
"Hell, no, sir, if Mr. Bernstein or Mr. Smith had anything to do with those airlock controls, I got every confidence. I just want to do me some basic wiring, if you don't mind, sir, a half-dozen AP rounds, just put their caps in and peel their backsides off."
Fitch hitched his shell-slings up on his shoulder. "You want to do that, I'm going to take me a little walk over there."
She halfway grinned. "Know what mof stands for—sir?"
"Yeah," he said, and walked off. The com said: "It stands for, I stand over here, and you wire it, Yeager."
CHAPTER 29
Something blew, you could feel it through the deckplates, and a nervous skut with a glove off, that being faster, doing wiring on a job like this one—really hated to hear sounds like that.
But the air stayed.
Thank God for favors.
In spite of which, she had her tether-hook fastened to the nearest metal strut, because decompression was a real likelihood, and there was an equally good chance of something like a missile coming right up through the deckplates or the blast-wall, a hello from India's number two rider that they knew was out there.
Touchy little job, Fitch was right, you called it a grape-cluster, nobody remembered why—a little group of AP shells with their back ends peeled off and bare wire stuck under their end-seals, right over the little black dot where the contact was. You twisted the tails together for good contact all the way down the bunch, finished it off with a little Gibbs-cap in the middle of the wires, then you just bent the twist-tail of the cluster and hooked it over something convenient.
Mostly you hung them head-high, on girders and such. And in this case, made extra-long twist-tails and a good solid knot in those tails to make sure they held fast.
Another explosion, off in some other section.
She kept at it, with the bare hand freezing, because Thule's power was down, and bitter cold air coming through the vents on the rig, because they had six hours, longer if they didn't ask anything out of the circulation, and longer, too, because she wasn't asking anything out of the armor while she was sitting here making fussy little wire-tails and worrying more about static charges than she was about the booms and blowups around the rim.
At least Fitch wasn't a nag, man sat down and shut up and just watched the way he said, saving it too, faceplate up, talking back and forth to Goddard, maybe clear to Central and Wolfe or Orsini, on Loki's sealed-line phone, there at the pump-station.
She took another cap, turned its tiny edge-dial, set it as number three, was wrapping it in when the dock quaked and Fitch stumbled up to his feet.
She wound the tail, laid it down, unclipped her safety and jammed her right glove on, then grabbed up her gun and the rest of the shells. "Program," she said, "Vent seal, amp 220, gyros."
Second blast as she was standing up. Readout said this one came from dead ahead. Loki's berth—either Loki or the station wall around it.
Dammit!
She ran for Fitch's position behind the main pump housing, came in heavy-footed and needing the gyros on the stop. "They're in, sir, that was the ship took that hit—Get Goddard and NG off, tell them get down here!"
"I just did," Fitch said. "Goddard's on his way out. Your damn merchanter-boy isn't answering his com, Yeager."
"Shit!"
"There's the phone. You're patched into general com up there, you tell him get his ass out here."
She grabbed the phone, unplugged the line and shoved the plug into the com-patch. "NG? NG, it's Bet. Answer your damn page!"
The deck shook. Readout said behind her. Airlock, then. She saw Fitch ducked down behind the pump-housing, figured if the tac-squad was worth anything they'd probed the airlock before they sent anybody through, and they were just going to blast through the layers, one after the other. Took a minute or so more. "NG? Never mind answering, just get suited and get the hell moving! Come on, dammit!"
Flicker of bracketing on the ramp, somebody in a hard-suit.
She hoped it was NG, she didn't think it was.
Goddard's voice said, "I can't raise the son of a bitch."
Could've ducked out before this, maybe nobody was paying attention. Maybe he was on the docks and scared to answer…
Maybe he was gone-out, ducked into some hole on the ship—not tracking on here and now—
That damn hole in back of the storage-rack—
God!
"NG, get out of the ship!"
Flutter of bracketing as Goddard got into cover with Fitch, Goddard carrying an AP and a couple of shell-slings, give him credit for that much, the son of a bitch—
She wanted to kill him.
"NG!"
Wanted her hands on NG at the moment, wanted to shake him till he rattled, damn it, damn his spook ways—
"NG! Get out here!"
More shocks in the readout, marker-dot flashing on the airlock at her back. You didn't need to face a thing in a rig. But she kept looking toward the ramp, hoping for a damned fool to show up.
Dot still flashing, sound-reading coming up, secondary dot intermittent with brackets as Goddard was trying to get his gun loaded—
No more time to spend, no more. She unplugged the line, squatted down with Fitch and Goddard, pulled her safety-clip and attached to the buffer-skirt support on the pump-housing, only thing she could see that might hold. Fitch followed suit, got Goddard clipped.
NG, dammit!
Puff of fire at the airlock, sudden vapor following that—
"God!" Fitch's voice.
Air freezing as it met hard vacuum.
As the dockside blew out the airlock.
She got a grip on the buffer herself, as dust and junk flew past, as the rig's pickups registered a whistling howl of escaping air—