"Program," she said to the rig. "Fleet-com."
She got sputter back, got the hiss of distant voices, not the clear transmission of a rider-ship com close by:
"Number one? Number one?"
Some poor skut was lost out there, distant across station.
She heard, more distant still, full of breakup, "… Charlie niner one, that's forty."
And after a few seconds: "We copy forty—" . She cut back to channel B on manual, said to Fitch, "Just dropped into Fleet-com. They're 'lagged from each other, they're moving."
On the retreat. Fast.
Standard ops. Rider-captain's standing orders, always—cover your carrier. If a situation goes to hell, tac-squads are on their own, cover your carrier—
No way out for them now. They're trapped. They know it. Carrier's stuck in system.
"Time to get ourselves deep in station," Fitch said. "We're going to hear from that carrier, round-trip, damn soon. Keu's not going to take this real passive.—Come on, Yeager, dammit…"
She ignored the pull on her arm, muttered, "Go to hell. Sir." And tried to think, tried to remember where you could detach the main cables, and figure how you could set up that kind of a trap and spring it without being where you could see when to throw a switch, and you could, from Engineering—but not without monitoring the core didn't have and there hadn't been time to set up. So it had to be the dirty way—a hands-on job, where you could see your targets, get them all where you wanted them. Then throw the power on. And maybe go with it.
She walked out on the grid, turned her helmet light on, heard, "Damn fool," out of Fitch, and just kept walking, sweating, hoping like hell the cable had burned itself away, which, by all she could figure, it had—
She scanned the shadows, sweeping her light from side to side, scared to keep to the grid, which might be melted through and loose, a broken connection that she might accidentally bridge with a step—scared of that and scared to step off the walkway and risk running into that cable in the dark.
Sun swept slowly past again, threw light and shadow onto the wreckage of the core: gridwork and pipe and the glare of sun on ice where a conduit had sprayed surfaces, ice-glare on bodies, ice coating white armor—
Long hanging shapes from one core-bundle, pieces of burned hose—
Or free-hanging power cable.
Surfaces glazed in ice, bodies embedded in it, shadow again as the sun passed the area.
She looked around, swept her light past the ominous shape of cables, saw motion bracketed, spun around with the AP in hand, fire-bracket and motion-bracket overlapped as her hand centered—
Civ hardsuit! God!
Shot slammed into her, knocked her down, smoke hanging in a cloud as she came up again, motion in the smoke, smoke from her shot, smoke from his—
She froze with the gun aimed up, he froze with his level, a nerve-twitch off, that was all that had missed him—a figure up against the forward bulkhead, man with a rifle and no lights, just sun-bounce shining off the girders, off his suit-surfaces, a hardsuit that never would have survived a direct hit.
He had to have figured it out, then, or he was out of shells: he wasn't firing again, was just wedged in there, into what cover the bulkhead and the shadow of the struts afforded.
"NG?" She tried Loki's frequency. She wasn't sure he could hear, wasn't sure NG was hearing anything or seeing anything that wasn't years back, some other boarding—
People in armor—
She let her gun down, lifted her left hand, walked back along the grid with a stutter in her motion, shaking in every joint—
Signed to him, Come out.
She saw him lift the gun again.
And stop.
She beckoned again. Slowly NG started hauling himself up under the hardsuit's stationside weight.
Her motion-sensor suddenly bracketed something else—Fitch standing in the core access doorway, she hoped to hell it was Fitch.
NG staggered as far as the walk. She got his arm, helped him up onto the grid, patted his shoulder as she steered him toward the door.
Fitch said, "Get our asses out of here, dammit."
Fact was, she suddenly realized, Fitch didn't know the reverse toggle on the cable-grip.
Fact was, Fitch was mad as hell about it.
Till they got downside and halfway across the docks and had sudden contact with Orsini coming in on their com, telling them that something big had just dropped into system, using Mallory's ID.
She grabbed NG, brought his helmet into contact with hers, yelled it at him till he understood it, "Norway's dropped into system! Riders deployed! We got help, understand? India's low-V, Keu hasn't got a chance."
First time, maybe, NG was really sure which of them was which.
He damn sure wouldn't have put his arms around Fitch.
CHAPTER 30
Lines of refugees again, scared people, headed out into the patch-together tube that crossed Green dock, waiting, with their meager belongings, line moving only now and again, but you couldn't tell them to wait anywhere else, people had a ship waiting out there that could take them, and people wouldn't follow instructions and take numbers and wait for the next shuttle out, they just jammed up and made their line and wouldn't leave it.
It was worth a riot to argue with it. Wolfe said let 'em, Neihart, whose ship was the biggest that had come in, said let 'em, Mallory was God knew where.
The jam-up in the corridor played hob with ship's personnel trying to get back and forth, you had to bust people out of their priorities, which meant upset, panicky stationers, but people got out of the way of Loki crew, figuring, Bet supposed, they were about one jump worse than Mallory's bunch and only one better than Keu's.
They got out of her way when she went down to the docks, they moved their baggage over and gave her a clear path.
But she stopped when she recognized a man in line and recognized the woman next on.
Man looked up, worried-looking.
"Mr. Ely," she said. She didn't put out her hand till he did: a lot of stationers weren't anxious to be friends.
"Ms. Yeager," he said, and: "My wife, Hally Kyle."
"Ms. Kyle, pleased to meet you." She saw Nan Jodree offer her hand, too, at her left, turned and took a cold-as-ice, still steady grip.
"Good to see you," Nan said. "Good to see you, Bet."
"Tried to find you," she said. "Mate of mine said he'd seen you on the list, but things were pretty scrambled."
"Going out again," Nan said.
"I got to bust ahead of you," she said. "I do apologize, I got to be on this one. Going back to Pell, too, they're going to ferry us, at least our front end. All that matters of a ship, anyhow… You all right?"
"We will be," Ely said. "You? We were worried about you, Bet."
"I'm fine," she said. They were sounding the board-call. "Damn, I got to get down there—See you at Pell!—Nice meeting you, Ms. Kyle."
Bernstein was upset, patches all over, jury-rigged messes patched into the can-hauler's hull, three weeks to do that linkup, and Smith said it was all right, Bernie said it was a hell of a mess, Musa said he'd seen worse—
Mostly, she figured, it was better than they'd been going to do, on their own.
Better than they had done, getting into Thule.
Lot of the boards were shut down. Systems was mostly dark. Most of the ship just wasn't there, her tail-section due to take a ride into Thule's sun, along with Thule Station.
Piece of history going away.
She walked up to NG, said, "How's it going?"