by Jake Elwood
Much of Rivendell resembled a scrapyard. Tom picked his way through the main service bay, stepping around a giant steel stump where some piece of ore-processing equipment had once stood before the place was repurposed. He wondered if there was really a point to bringing the Kestrel inside. There were some quite serviceable-looking maintenance bots and machines, though. Maybe it would be worthwhile.
He moved deeper into the base, and the impression of dirty, improvised restructuring persisted. The place seemed less like a quasi-military base than an abandoned building taken over by rambunctious children.
Rivendell's medical bay, though, caught him by surprise. It was a large, airy space with high ceilings and plenty of light. A dozen modern medical pods lined the walls, top-of-the-line machines built into the walls and floor. That had to be why the original mining company had left them behind.
Everything seemed to be in working order, too. There was a patient in every pod. Crew from the corvette, judging by the uniforms discarded on the floor. He glanced into one pod and saw a woman's leg emerge for a moment from a cloud of medical foam. Her skin was red and cracked. She'd been terribly burned, and he looked away, filled with sudden regret.
Until an image rose in his memory. The Kestrel's mess hall, with men and women lying shoulder to shoulder on the tables and along the walls, dying slowly from radiation poisoning.
No regret, he told himself. We didn't start this war.
But still …
He moved through the bay, eyes straight ahead, but something in his peripheral vision made him pause. He glanced sideways and saw a familiar face glaring at him from the third pod on the left. It was Fagan, the former leader of Alice's crew, and there was murder in his eyes.
Dr. Vinduly must have decided the pods were a better option for treating the stump of Fagan's left arm. Tom looked away from his unnerving gaze. The man was rabid in his hatred of the United Worlds. Nothing would change that fact.
Vinduly was at another pod, tapping the pod's control panel as he peered inside. Tom moved past him and entered a small private ward at the back of the bay. The hulking form of an armored marine filled much of the available floor space. It was Harper, and he moved aside as Tom entered, then palmed the door shut.
"This is Mr. Ham. He's from Neorome."
Ham, lying on a cot in the middle of the little room, lifted a bandaged hand in a weak wave. Drying medical foam covered every part of his face. Bandages swathed his feet where they jutted from under a thin blanket. More foam daubed his lower legs. He looked as if he'd just been dragged out of a collapsed house.
"The Dawn Alliance," Harper said dryly, "have been asking Mr. Ham some pointed questions."
Tom stared down at the man on the cot and felt the last of his regret for the casualties on the corvette evaporate. "You're safe now," he said. "We'll take you with us when we leave. We'll do what we can to keep you safe. We'll take you back to Garnet."
Ham opened his mouth, struggled to speak, and closed it again. His eye closed for a moment as he gathered himself. Then, at last, he spoke. "Meeting," he said. "Trap."
The effort seemed to exhaust him, and his eye drooped shut. His lips kept moving, though, as if he was still trying to speak.
"It's all right." The voice belonged to Alice Rose. Tom, thoroughly distracted by the man on the cot, hadn't noticed her standing against the wall. Now she stepped forward, resting a hand gently on the back of Ham's bandaged hand. "It's okay," she said. "You told us. We'll explain it all to the captain. We'll do what needs doing."
Ham's head moved ever so slightly in what might have been a nod. His lips stopped moving and he relaxed, his eye remaining shut. Alice looked at Tom, her face stricken. She nodded toward the doorway behind him and raised an eyebrow.
He nodded and led the way back out, through the medical bay, and to the corridor beyond. Harper and Alice followed.
"There's an office over here," Alice said. She moved past Tom and tapped the touch pad beside a closed door. The door slid open a couple of centimeters and stopped. Alice grabbed the edge of the door and heaved, dragging it open.
The office within was dusty and forlorn. A table with a dead plant stood beside a steel desk and a single chair. Alice perched herself on the desktop. "The controls on the inside work."
Tom tapped the door panel and the door slid shut. Harper kicked the chair toward him, then sat beside Alice on the desk.
Sitting on the chair would put his head well below the other two, so Tom stood. "What's this about?"
"They tortured him," Alice said. Her eyes filled with tears, which she brushed away impatiently with a quick swipe of one hand. "They tortured him, and he broke. He told them about the meeting."
She was clearly upset, so Tom hid his impatience and waited.
"There's a meeting point in deep space," she said. "That's what Ham told us. The last ship here before the Dawn Alliance arrived was an armed freighter from Neorome. They told him about the meeting. And now he's told the Dawn Alliance." She scowled ferociously at Tom. "It's not his fault! You didn't see what they did to him."
"I saw enough," Tom said gently. "I'm not judging him."
"The rendezvous is tomorrow," she said. "Half the free ships from Neorome and Tazenda will be there, and any ships from the rest of the Free Planets that are willing to fight the DA. Now the Dawn Alliance will ambush them." She punched the desktop beside her hip, making a surprisingly loud thump. "They're probably already waiting. Right after Ham broke, all the ships here left."
Tom stared at her for a moment, thinking. "How far away from here is the rendezvous point?"
"I don't know!" Her hands rose to shoulder level in a quick, frustrated gesture. "What does it matter? It's already too late!"
"It's at a place called Black Betty," Harper said. "He says it's a rogue planet."
Rogue planets were rare, or at least were rarely discovered. Drifting through the vast empty gulf between stars, they were frozen lumps of rock almost impossible to detect except by chance. Humanity had stumbled across no more than six or seven of them in all the long decades they'd been exploring the stars.
Tom turned on his suit radio. "Onda? I need you to do some research for me. I'm looking for the coordinates of a rogue planet. It might be called Black Betty. That might just be a local nickname, though. It'll be somewhere in the Green Zone."
"There's only one rogue planet in the Zone," Onda said promptly. "I forget the name, though. Stand by, Sir." There was a long pause, during which Alice stuck out her lower lip and frowned at the floor. Finally Onda said, "It's gotta be the same one. The official name is BLB 417. It's about five light-years from here."
"Thank you," Tom said, and cut the connection. He was tempted to fuel the ship and race off for the rendezvous. He would do no good, though, by blundering into a Dawn Alliance ambush and getting the ship destroyed. No, the wisest choice was still to slip away and go quietly back to Garnet.
But his instincts told him the Kestrel wasn't quite done here. It might yet be possible to disrupt the ambush, or rescue survivors. It seemed doubtful he could achieve anything worthwhile, but it felt cowardly to sneak away without even trying.
Whatever he did, he would need a sturdy ship, one that could survive the rigors of combat, never mind the paltry threat of hyperspace storms.
A creak of fabric made him look down. He was startled to see that his fists were clenched. He'd been carrying around a sour knot of anger ever since the capture of the Laureline, and it had grown worse when he saw the tortured colonist. He wanted to act. To lash out. He turned, staring at the wall beside him, staring in the direction of the Kestrel. I'm going to kill some of you shit rats. I'm going to blow your hulls apart and leave you sucking vacuum. And I'm going to laugh while you're dying.
He shook his head, dispelling the rage. The days when he could indulge his temper were long gone. Still, if the chance presented itself ….
I need to be ready to act. I need a ship that's ready for anything. He poked at the
radio controls on his forearm. "Onda."
"Sir?"
"I want you to move the ship into the repair bay. Recall a helmsman. Whoever is least busy. And coordinate with Sawyer. Don't do anything fancy, but make her spaceworthy. Get her ready to fight. "
Chapter 17
The Exchange Pit was the deepest, most distant part of Rivendell. Alice had to squeeze her way through a gap between massive hinged doors that had rusted in place and descend a filthy staircase to reach a jumble of machinery and control stations in a broad chamber with metal walls and a stone floor. The machines and stations had long since been pillaged for usable parts, and now sprouted dangling wires and jagged cuts where components had been sliced away.
The base's artificial gravity generators hung from the ceiling, which meant she had only the planet's natural gravity as she shuffled across the floor. The ceiling hung low enough that she was in real danger of banging her head if she took an incautious step. A frustrating feature of the force field generators was that they exerted a slight upward pull from their undersides. Each time she took a step directly underneath a generator she would hang suspended for a moment before drifting back to the floor.
Once she made it past the bulk of the machinery, though, the floor dropped another meter. Some huge machine had once squatted here in this shadowy space. Now only the mounting brackets remained, steel blocks that had to mass a couple of tonnes each, with bolts sunk deep into the stone floor and steel rings above for attaching whatever machine had once been here.
An exchanger, she supposed, whatever an exchanger was. She wondered how the mining company had removed the machine without demolishing half the base.
Beyond the brackets, against the back wall of the pit, stood a set of old-fashioned metal-working machines. There was a laser drill, a drill that used titanium bits, a bender, a press, and a lathe. Made almost obsolete by modern fabricator technology, these relics had been banished to the deepest corner of the base. They still had their uses, however, for modifying or repairing something you didn’t want to create from scratch.
Behind the bender she found a bin of metal scrap. She knelt and started to rummage, looking for a large adjustable wrench. She'd seen one on her last visit to Rivendell, seen the handle bend in the grip of a robot that was too strong for the tool. The wrench was not in any of the tool racks upstairs. She hoped to find it here, banished to the scrap heap until someone needed it.
She needed it now. It would be just the thing for removing chunks of hull plate from the laser battery they'd cut from the hull of the corvette. She figured she could use the bender to straighten the handle, or cut the bent part away and weld on a new handle if she absolutely had to. It was the kind of improvisational problem-solving that colonists excelled at, but the Navy boys didn't really understand. When something broke on a Navy ship, they just requisitioned a replacement.
Alice sneered to herself as she started lifting chunks of metal scrap from the bin. If the United Worlds crew wanted to survive in the Green Zone, they'd have to learn from the people who lived here.
Footsteps scraped on stone as someone shuffled across the floor behind her. She called, "I'm back here," but didn't get up.
"Alice."
She froze, startled. The voice belonged to Fagan. What was he doing up and around? Wasn't he supposed to be in the medical bay?
And under arrest?
"I need to ask you something." Fagan's voice sounded odd, kind of strained. Well, he was barely back on his feet after losing an arm.
She wondered if she should stand up, look at him. But she was annoyed with him, and she didn't want to face the accusation she knew she would see in his eyes. So she stayed on her knees and lifted out another scrap of metal. "What?"
"You were always a loyal member of the crew. I know the Navy boys have turned your head. But I need to know. Deep down inside, where do your loyalties lie?"
For some reason cold prickles danced across her skin, and her first impulse – to tell him off – died away. "I'm loyal to the Free Planets," she said impatiently. "First, last, and always."
For ten long seconds he stood there, somewhere behind her, breathing loudly through his nose. Then he said, "Good enough." She heard the soft scrape of his feet as he shuffled away.
She couldn't see him from behind the bender, but she stared in his direction anyway, trying to shake the feeling that she'd just had a near-death experience. Fagan was crippled, unarmed, and without followers. He was harmless.
Wasn't he?
"Bloody fool," she muttered, not sure if she was addressing Fagan or herself. Then she returned to her work.
It took another minute or two to find the wrench. The bend in the handle was less than she remembered. Either someone had already tried to straighten it or her memory was tricking her. She hefted the wrench, glad for the reduced gravity. It was a big piece of steel, as long as her arm, with a business end that could be spun open wide enough to fit around a bolt head bigger than her fist. The handle had a bend of about twenty degrees. It was usable, but awkward. She looked at the bender and decided she'd at least try to straighten the thing.
Voices rose in the distance, and steel clattered against steel. She couldn't make out the words, but several people were shouting. They sounded angry, and Alice shook her head. Repair work was frustrating and stressful at the best of times. With no idea when the Dawn Alliance fleet might return and kill everyone, nerves had to be fraying badly.
She opened the top of the bender, peered inside – and stiffened as a gunshot echoed through the pit. She wasted a moment standing rigid in shock, then dropped to a crouch behind the bender, the wrench still in her hands. Her laser rifle was upstairs somewhere. The wrench was the only weapon she had.
More shouts. Then silence. Then an amplified voice that might have belonged to Harper, echoing from the walls and the stone floor. "Lay down your arms. This won't end well for you otherwise."
Alice stood, wondering why she felt so relieved. Because it's not the Dawn Alliance. Or if it is, it's a pocket of DA personnel who escaped, or who hid during the original sweep. Most likely it's that idiot Fagan. The main thing is, the DA fleet isn't back. We're not all dead.
She headed across the pit, the wrench dangling in one hand. When she clambered up to the raised part of the floor she saw people, almost a dozen of them, scattered near the staircase leading up to the rest of the base. They were using the old machines and consoles for cover. Several people were armed, uncertain expressions on their faces, holding laser rifles or pistols but not pointing the barrels in any particular direction.
They were all colonists, she saw as she drew close. Fagan must have handled this very carefully to avoid the notice of the Navy and Marines. He hadn't managed to gather every colonist in Rivendell, but he had almost half of them, a mix of former Free Bird crew from the Kestrel and liberated prisoners from the base.
There, at the bottom of the staircase, was Fagan himself. He wore blue hospital pyjamas, his left sleeve neatly pinned up, his right hand gripping a silver handgun. He must have found it somewhere in Rivendell. It wasn't Navy issue. It was an old-school gunpowder slug thrower.
His head swung around as she approached, and she found herself staring down the muzzle of the gun. The air seemed to thicken around her until she stood frozen, her pulse thumping in her ears, sudden terror turning her limbs to ice.
Beneath the terror, though, was an ember of rage. Who the hell did he think he was? She'd served under him loyally for years, and he was pointing a gun at her?
Her fingers tightened on the handle of the wrench, but she didn't move.
"Alice," he said. "Good of you to join us. I wasn't going to invite you. Not so sure of your loyalties, you see." He grinned. The expression looked bizarre on him, like someone behind him was pulling on the skin around his mouth. He looked intoxicated, distant. She wondered if Dr. Vinduly had given him something that was interfering with his brain functions.
"I'm staging a small revolt," he sa
id, the gun wobbling a bit in his grip but continuing to point at her face. "Do you have any objections?"
For an awful second she couldn’t make herself move. She imagined staring at him, frozen by terror, until he lost patience and pulled the trigger. Then, slowly, millimeter by millimeter, she shook her head.
"Good." He lowered the gun until it was pointing somewhere in the vicinity of her knees. "I could use your help, after all."
"What …" She hated the timid squeak of her voice. "What are you going to do?"
"We," he corrected her. "We're taking over the base."
His voice rose a bit at the end, and Harper called from outside, "That's not going to happen. You're outnumbered and outgunned. It's time to wake up and smell the cordite, son."
Fagan whirled, pointing the barrel of the gun up the stairs at the gap in the steel doors. For a moment he stood panting, his arm straight and rigid. Then he lowered the gun. "You'll give me what I want," he called. "Or I'll finish him off."
Finish him off? Alice looked around, then felt her breath catch in her throat. There was one more person in the room, a man sprawled behind a console just past the staircase. He wore a Navy uniform, and he clutched his thigh with both hands. Blood, red and bright, coated the backs of his hands and leaked between his fingers. Alice couldn't see who it was. His face was lost in shadows, but he looked chunky and middle-aged and thoroughly ordinary.
Just one more person who'd signed up to serve in the Navy. Someone who didn't deserve to be shot, then left to bleed while an idiot made wild demands.
"Your negotiating position's not as strong as you thinks," Harper drawled. "It's your own life you'd best be worrying about right now. But I's willing to listen. Briefly. What is it you wants?"
Fagan had jerked the pistol back up when Harper started to speak. Now he lowered it again. He didn't seem to know what he wanted. Finally he said, "I'll start with the rest of my people. Send down the other colonists. And no tricks!"
