“Brun—it’s really strange in there. I found a suit locker right away, but the tank locker beside it was empty. So I had to hunt around. And I’ve never seen a station like it—”
Brun tapped her shoulder, and Hazel stopped. Brun wrote: LABORATORY. GENETIC ENGINEERING.
“Oh. That might explain the broken stuff, then. But listen, Brun, the oddest thing . . . remember how this p-suit’s fitted for males? All the suits in the station lockers—the ones I looked in, anyway—are fitted for females. That’s why I brought two. It’s a lot more comfortable . . . and near’s I can tell these suits have all the functions we need. And I found women’s clothes scattered around, soft shipsuits. Better’n these rough things, if your legs are as sore as mine.”
Brun hated it when haste blurred Hazel’s accent into conformity with that of the locals. But she was right. Already Hazel was unsuiting, packing the pilot’s p-suit away with practiced skill as she came out of it, hardly swaying as she steadied herself with first one hand then another. Brun opened the first turquoise suit and found the clothes. Soft fleecy pants and tops, in colors she hadn’t seen for far too long: bright, clear, artificial colors. Hazel had brought an assortment, bless her, different sizes and colors.
“You’re so much taller,” Hazel said, “I hope what I got is big enough . . .”
Brun nodded. She watched Hazel try to wriggle out of her clothes, wincing, and struggle into the softer ones. She chose dark green; the top had an embroidered design of flowers and swirls. Brun had found a pair of black pants that seemed longer than the rest, and a cream-colored shirt that was bigger around—even bound, her milk-swollen breasts had added to her size.
“Should we use the shuttle’s wastecan before we suit up?” Hazel asked.
Brun shook her head. They would need every recycled bit of air and water. She started trying to shuck her own pants and realized that she was simply too stiff; it hurt too much. Hazel moved to help her; Brun held one of the grabons, and gritted her teeth as Hazel started to pull the stiff pants down.
“Is this the pilot’s blood, or yours?” Hazel asked.
Brun shook her head, shrugged, and then nodded. It made no difference—the pants had to come off. Hazel worked them free, muttering.
“You’re raw . . . from the riding, I hope. I didn’t know it was so much worse without a saddle, or I’d have switched off with you—” She couldn’t have done it, but Brun appreciated the offer, even as the breath hissed between her teeth.
“We have to put something on this,” Hazel said finally. The chill air bit into the raw places and Brun shuddered at the thought of anything touching her. “I’ll look.” Moments of silence; Brun kept her eyes shut and tried to steady her breathing. It wasn’t as bad as being raped; it wasn’t as bad as being pregnant; it wasn’t nearly as bad as childbirth. She had survived all that; this was just . . . an inconvenience. She opened her eyes and smiled at Hazel, who was watching her with a worried look. “I found a medkit, and put it in the other p-suit,” Hazel said. “One of those emergency kits they always put near suit lockers.” Brun nodded, and freed a hand to wave a go-ahead signal.
The bite of the painkilling spray would have gotten a yelp from her if she’d had the voice to yelp with, but the almost-instant cessation of pain was amazing. She’d forgotten how fast good meds worked. Hazel followed that with a spray of antibiotic and skin sealant. Brun unpeeled her hands from the grabon, and was able to snag the soft black pants she’d chosen and put them on herself.
Then into the p-suits, where the plumbing fixtures connected as they ought, and all the gauges and readouts worked. Brun sniffed the air coming from the nose filters—nothing she could smell, and the ship’s suit-check said it was safe. They filled the suits’ water tanks from the shuttle tanks. Brun folded an extra set of shipsuits into padding for the back of her p-suit, and Hazel followed her example. They packed up all the food they could find in the shuttle, and stuffed the p-suits’ external storage.
All this had taken longer than Brun hoped, but according to the shuttle’s scans, no active scan had pinged them yet. Now, she finished setting up the autopilot for what she hoped would be an effective screening action. Ideally, they would have been able to tie into the shuttle’s scans from within the space station, and send it off under remote control. But Brun had long since given up waiting for ideal conditions. She would send it off on a time delay, giving them time to get well into the station. Hazel had left the outer lock open, with an air tank lashed in the gap just in case some officious bit of old programming was still operating and tried to shut it . . . so they didn’t have to worry about entrance.
With the little fuel left aboard, she couldn’t set up a very complicated course, and she had to assume that ground-based radars had plotted their whereabouts anyway. Probably one of the warships was even now maneuvering in for an attempt to recapture them. For maximum acceleration, Brun decided to run the takeoff and insystem drives together . . . something no experienced pilot would do, but it was the only way to get the ship well away in a hurry.
When she was done, she nodded at Hazel, and they both sealed up. They had made their plans; they had said all they had to say, until they were in the station. They crammed into the tiny airlock, and cycled out.
Outside was a confusion of highlight and black shadow; Brun followed Hazel along the length of the shuttle’s hull to the station’s wing. From here, she could see that there was a shuttle docking bay—if she’d known that, they could have been safe inside hours ago, because it looked as if it had passenger tubes still deployed. No time for that now. Hazel led her from one grabon to another toward the emergency lock portal.
They were almost to the portal when the grabon she held bounced in her hand, then vibrated strongly. Brun looked back. The shuttle’s dual drive had come alive, and the little ship slid away from the station, its takeoff reaction engine exhaust glowing against the dark. It moved faster—faster—out into the sunlight, where it glittered like a bright needle.
Would their pursuers believe it? The course she’d plotted would have been hazardous for an experienced pilot, requiring extreme maneuvers to reverse-burn and survive atmospheric reentry, but it was the most direct way to the ground—if you didn’t mind burning up along the way. They had no women pilots; even with what they knew of her background, they might think—she hoped they would think—that she was a panicky female who didn’t understand orbital mechanics, who was running directly for cover.
She hadn’t grown up hunting foxes for nothing.
She looked around again, trying to spot any of the warships. There, possibly—a dark shape blotting out part of the starfield. And there, below them, the more pointed shape of another shuttle, against the cloudfield on the planet below.
She felt her lips stretching in a grin that had no humor in it. Coming to catch her, were they? They’d get a surprise . . .
Sneaking a task force into a system with a single mapped jump point had taken considerable tricky navigation, especially since they knew few details of the defensive layout. Esmay, as Shrike’s executive officer, had checked and double-checked every one of the short FTL hops that had brought them into the system via the jump point in another, nearby—nearby in stellar terms. But it had been a difficult period; some of the jumps had required flux levels well above those recommended. Once in the system, microjumps with low relative-vee insertion had hopped them in, apparently without detection, until they were positioned to observe the escape.
For days now they had hung unnoticed, well above the ecliptic, monitoring all transmissions from the planet. Far out, the rest of the task force waited in case of need, trading hours of scan lag for obscurity. Shrike had acquired several specialist crew who—according to Admiral Serrano—would enhance their chances if anything went wrong. This included Koutsoudas at scan, and Warrant Officers Oblo Vissisuan and Methlin Meharry, all three of whom had worked with Brun before. Esmay, watching Koutsoudas’ enhanced scan at work, helped map everything it picked up.