The Serrano Connection

by Elizabeth Moon

  "But the foam bed blew apart—"

  "Well, maybe it needed to be thicker . . . but it was thick enough to aim the ejecta in a direction that doesn't bother us. Notice where it's going?"

  "Away from Kos is all I know or care," Esmay said.

  "Toward the jump point exit," the sergeant said, grinning. "We can always hope some fool Bloodhorde ship comes roaring in here and gets a mouthful of its own bullet."

  "Suiza!" That was Pitak, wanting to know if she could find someone to go into inventory and get the lights and limbs of the idiot who insisted they didn't have any more temporary hull curtains in stock and would have to wait until more were fabricated. "I know what I've used," Pitak said. "And I know what I put into stock, and what was on the inventory when we left Sierra Station. There ought to be sixteen more of 'em, and I want 'em two hours ago."

  "Lots of blood," said the nanny at the forward triage station.

  "At least they're breathing." The extrication team rolled the slack shape in blood-soaked uniform off the board and onto a gurney with practiced skill, then reached for the next. "They're all unconscious; we did a quick-scan of the first two and found blood levels of slow-oxy . . . probably someone popped the emergency supply when the hull blew."

  "So you don't have a survey?"

  "No—if they aren't missing limbs, we're just bringing them out with all due precautions." All due precautions to preserve whatever spinal cord integrity was left.

  "Number?"

  "Thirty or so, I think. I'm not sure yet. We're just now getting access to the most forward compartments."

  The extrication team turned away, heading back for another load.

  Esmay watched as Wraith's damaged bow edged into the repair bay. It was easy to forget how large that bay was, empty, but the ship gave a reference for the eye.

  "Suiza!" That bellow had to be Pitak. "Quit looking at the view, and give me a readout."

  "Yes, sir." Esmay glanced at her board. Pitak's concern was the change in center of gravity as Wraith entered Koskiusko's artificial gravity field. Rapid changes could stress the internal structure of Koskiusko beyond safe limits. "Is Wraith's artificial gravity on in any part of the ship?"

  "No, it's not."

  "There's a torque force developing in the contralateral midsections . . . only 5.4 dynes right now, but it's increasing in a linear relationship to the mass of Wraith within Kos's field."

  "That's expected . . . not desirable, but expected. Transfer a plot of that to my screen and to Power."

  "Yes, sir." Esmay locked in the curve, keyed for the transfers, and continued to watch her board. Her gaze kept twitching upward to the view of Wraith's approach, but she yanked it back each time. The strain she'd noticed dipped below the curve; she called Pitak. "It's dropped below line—"

  "Good. That means Power is compensating. But watch for that bulge ahead of the damage—that's something we can't really model for the field generator."

  Centimeter by centimeter, Wraith edged in. When the mooring lines were secured, warning bells rang throughout the DSR. "Cradles shifting in T-minus 15 minutes. Cradles shifting—"

  Esmay transferred her final readouts to Major Pitak and Power, then withdrew to a monitoring station behind the double red lines. Only a few essential personnel would ride the cradles during shift.

  "I hate to think what that mine would have done to the cradle mechanisms," someone said behind her. She glanced back. Barin Serrano, his dark brows lowered.

  "It's taken care of," she said. She wondered what he was doing there; his assignment, in scan, wasn't needed at the moment.

  "Lieutenant Bondal sent me down here to see if Major Pitak had decided where to put the new RSV units," he said, anticipating her question.

  "She hasn't told me—but I'll check for you. Have you heard anything about Bloodhorde ships coming in?"

  "No . . . and I'm sure I would have, because . . . well, anyway, I would have. But I do know that Sting and Justice have jumped out."

  "Why?"

  "They delivered Wraith . . . and they're supposed to be patrolling out wherever they were. Maybe they thought they'd spot anyone following Wraith's trail in."

  * * *

  Gar-sig (Packleader) Vokrais woke to the bustle of a medical ward; when he turned his head, he saw his pack-second Hoch staring back at him.

  "What happened?" he asked, in his best Familias Standard.

  "Effing sleepy gas," Hoch said. "We got hauled in as casualties . . . I don't think this is the same ship."

  They lay, listening to the chatter around them.

  "We're on the DSR," Hoch said finally, with a wolfish grin. "Right inside."

  "All two of us," Vokrais said. He lifted his head cautiously since no one seemed to be paying any attention to him. He was wearing a clean pale blue shift of some crinkled fabric, and all up and down the rows of beds were the rest of his assault team dressed the same way. Most of them, anyway. He counted only twenty-five of the original thirty, and Tharjold wasn't there—their technical expert, the one who knew most about Familias technology. Nor Kerai, nor Sij . . . his mind ticked off the missing, and consigned them to either of the two possible eternal destinations. The rest were there, all butt-naked in hospital gowns . . . but all awake now, staring at him in wild surmise.

  Before he had time to worry about how he was going to get his team clothed and out of medical, a heavyset man with a scowl worthy of a Bloodhorde senior sergeant bustled down the aisle between the beds.

  "All right, sleepyheads," he said. "You're awake, and none of you got worse than a dose of trank. Come with me—I'll get you clean clothes and put you to work . . . we'll need your help to get Wraith repaired."

  "Our IDs?" Hoch asked. He sounded half-strangled, but it was probably just his attempt to control his accent.

  "I've got 'em—already passed on the stats to Supply, so you'll have something close to fitting."

  Vokrais rolled out of bed, surprised to find that he wasn't at all dizzy. The others followed; he saw arms twitch as the automatic habit of saluting conflicted with awareness of their position. Their guide didn't notice; he was scowling at a list in his hand.

  "Santini?"

  Vokrais scrabbled through his memory of the alien vocabulary, and finally remembered that the nametag on the uniform he'd stolen had been something like that, in their misbegotten tongue. "Uh . . . yes, sir?" Someone sniggered, three beds down, to hear him say "sir" to a Familias enemy. Someone would feel the lash for that later.

  "Wake UP, Santini. Listen—says here you were a specialist in ventilation?"

  "Sir," Vokrais said, wondering which of several meanings he knew for that word mattered here. Ventilation? As in, artificial breathing? As in, perforating?

  "That's good—I'll send you over to Support Systems as soon as you've got your gear. Oh, and Camajo?" Silence again. Vokrais prayed to the Heart-Render that someone would have the sense to say something.

  After too many heartbeats, Hoch coughed—an obviously fake cough, to Vokrais's ear—and said, "Yes, sir?"

  "I guess you're all still a bit dazed—they told me to give you another hour, but we need help now. Camajo, you'll report to Major Pitak, in H&A. Now, let's see . . . Bradinton?"

  This time, the others caught on quicker, and someone said "Yes, sir," almost brightly. Vokrais wondered if the others remembered the names on the uniforms they'd stripped from dead men, or if they were just answering blind. It probably didn't matter. Supposedly the Familias ships had a fancy way of figuring out who was really one of their own, but so far he hadn't seen any sign of it.

  Eventually all of them had answered to their new names—names which felt uncomfortable even held so lightly, names with no family chant behind them. For a moment Vokrais wondered if the strangers had families . . . if those families had chants of their own . . . but this was not the right kind of thought for the belly of an enemy ship. He pushed it away, and it fell off his mind like a landsman off the deck of a dragonship in rough s
eas. Instead he thought of the battle to come, the hot blood of enemies that would soak his clothes, not cold and clammy this time but properly steaming. He had not minded stripping the dead and putting on their blood-soaked uniforms . . . not after the rituals of the Blooding . . . but it had been distasteful to feel it already cold.

  His pack followed him through the enemy ship; he could feel their amusement even as his own bubbled just beneath the surface. The enemy . . . more like prey than enemy, like sheep leading a wolf into the fold in the mistaken notion that it was a sheepdog. Even as he accepted a folded pile of clothes, he was sure that his pack could have taken this ship bare naked, with only their blood-hunger. Instead . . . he dressed quickly, carefully not meeting anyone's eyes. He had worn Familias clothing before, in his years as a spy . . . the soft cloth, the angled fastenings, felt almost as familiar as his own.

  The lack of weapons didn't. He missed the familiar pressure of needler and stunner, knocknab and gutstab. Familias troops carried weapons only into battle . . . and DSRs didn't fight.

  The helpful enemy had leapfrogged them over the first two phases of the plan, handing them the chance to disperse throughout the ship. With any luck at all—and the gods definitely seemed to be loading luck upon them—no one from Wraith would notice that the men wearing the uniforms of shipmates were not shipmates at all.

  Vokrais followed the route displayed on the palm-sized mapcom, sure that he could deal with whatever he found when he arrived.

  "No, I'm not going to send anyone from Wraith back over there—not after they've been knocked out for a week or so with sleepygas. Their cogs won't be meshing for another two shifts, and we don't want accidents." Vokrais heard the end of that and wondered whether feigning mental illness would do anything useful. Probably not. They might send him back to the medical area, where he could end up in bed with no pants on. Better to seem dutiful but slightly confused—the confusion at least was honest enough.

  Familias technology impressed him as it had before—so much of it, and it worked so well. No familiar stench of sweat and gutbreath. Clean air emerged from one grille, and vanished into another; the lights never flickered; the artificial gravity felt as solid as a planet. The little communications device and the data wand he'd been given were smaller and worked better than their analogs on the Bloodhorde ships.

  This was what they had come for, after all. The technology they had not been able to buy or steal or (last and least efficient ploy) invent. Bigger ships, better ships, ships that could take on Familias and Compassionate Hand cruisers and win. The technicians to keep the technology working . . . Vokrais eyed the others around him. They didn't look like much, but he had somewhat overcome the prejudice of his upbringing; he knew that smart minds could hide in bodies of all shapes. But hardly one in fifty looked like any kind of warrior.

  Meanwhile . . . meanwhile his pack was dispersed throughout the DSR, very handily. Probably several supervisors would decide, as his had, to assign them simple duties. Eventually a meal would come, and they'd have access to eating utensils, so easily converted to effective hand weapons.

  An hour . . . two. Vokrais worked on, willing enough to sort parts, package them in trays, stack them on automatic carriers. There was no hurry; they had gained time by being put to sleep and admitted as casualties, an irony he hoped to be able to share at the victory feast with his commander. Once he caught a glimpse of another pack member, carrying something he didn't recognize; for an instant their gazes crossed, then the other man looked away. Yes. Huge as this ship might be, they would locate one another, and their plan would work. And the longer they had to explore it, to learn its capabilities, the easier to slit its guts open when the time came.

  Esmay glanced up as a shadow crossed her screen. camajo, the nametag said, clipped to a uniform that fit its wearer like a new saddle . . . technically fitting, but uneasy in some way. The insignia of a petty-light had been applied recently, and not quite straight, to his sleeve.

  "I was told to report here," the man said. "To Major . . . Major Pitak." His eyes roved the compartment as if scanning it for hidden weapons; his glance at Esmay had been dismissive. Her skin prickled. He reminded her of something—someone—her mind, suddenly alert, scrabbled frantically in memory to figure out what. She looked back at the screen before she answered.

  "She's in with Commander Seveche. Are you from Wraith?" She couldn't imagine anyone from Koskiusko giving her quite that look. It wasn't the "you're not really Fleet are you?" look, or the "you're that kid who commanded Despite, aren't you?" look, or any of the others she'd have recognized.

  "Yes . . . sir." The pause snagged her attention away from the screen graphics again. "We were . . . in the forward compartment . . . the sleepygas . . ."

  "You're lucky to be alive," Esmay said, instantly forgiving the man's odd behavior. If he'd been through all that, he could still be affected by the drug. "We've got Wraith in now; work's already started. You can wait here for Major Pitak, or at Commander Seveche's office."

  "Where's Commander Seveche's office?" the man asked. The shipchip in his pocket bleeped, and he peered cross-eyed at a space between him and Esmay. She knew what that meant—the shipchip was projecting a route.

  "Just follow your shipchip," she said. He turned, without the proper acknowledgement; Esmay started to say something, but . . . he had been gassed, and might be still a bit hazy. Something wasn't quite right . . .

  "Petty-light . . ." she said. He stopped in mid-stride, then turned jerkily. Something not right at all. His eyes were not the eyes of someone dazed by drugs . . . his eyes had a bright gleam half-hidden behind lowered lids.

  "Yes . . . Lieutenant?"

  She could not define what was wrong . . . it was not anything so positive as disrespect, which she had experienced often enough. Respect and disrespect occurred in a relationship, a connection. Here she felt no connection at all, as if Petty-light Camajo were not Fleet at all, but a civilian.

  "When you do see Major Pitak, tell her that the simulations for fabrication have arrived from SpecMat."

  "The simulations have arrived . . . yes . . . m . . . sir." Camajo turned, moving more decisively than someone fogged on sleepygas, and was gone before Esmay could say more. She scowled at the screen. Yes . . . m . . . sir? What had he been about to say?

  She felt uneasy. Had Wraith had traitors on its crew? Was that why it had suffered such damage? Why was Camajo alive, uninjured, after such a hull breach between him and the rest of the ship?

  This was ridiculous. She had not noticed anything amiss in Despite, had not recognized that any of the traitors were traitors. She had not been uneasy this way then. Perhaps that experience had made her paranoid, willing to interpret every discrepancy as ominous. Camajo had been lucky, that was all, and now he was disoriented, on a strange ship with none of his familiar companions.

  That didn't work out. The casualties on Despite, traitor or loyal, had none of them stumbled over the familiar Fleet greetings and honorifics. With blood in his mouth, as he died, Chief Major Barscott had answered "Yes, sir . . ." to Esmay. How many of the survivors in those forward compartments had been lucky? How lucky? And was it luck?

  Camajo's eyes . . . his gaze . . . reminded her of her father's soldiers. Groundpounders' eyes . . . commandos' eyes . . . roving, assessing, looking for the weaknesses in a position, thinking how to take over . . . Take over what?

  Scolding herself, Esmay flicked to the next screen, but her mind wandered anyway. In the civil wars—she called it that now, though to her family it was still the Califer Uprising—both sides had tried infiltrating the others' defensive positions with troops wearing stolen uniforms, using stolen ID. It had worked a few times, even though both knew it was possible. She'd never heard of such a thing happening in Fleet. Ships weren't infiltrated by individuals . . . they were attacked by ships. Very rarely in Fleet history were attempts at hostile boarding mentioned; battle zones were too dangerous for EVA maneuvers. Pirates sometimes boarded in
dividual commercial vessels . . . but that wasn't the military. It would take . . . it would take a single badly damaged Fleet ship, one that could not detect the movement of individuals in EVA gear . . . a hull breach that let them in . . . a way to get the right uniforms . . . no. She was being silly.

  Major Pitak came in while she was still arguing with herself. "That Camajo fellow from Wraith must be still half-tranked," she said, dropping a half-dozen cubes onto her desk. "I couldn't get out of him which simulations were in . . . sent him on down to E-12; they can use him for a runner if nothing else. Can't cause much trouble that way."

  Esmay lost her argument with prudence. "Major, I was wondering about a security breach . . ."

  "Security breach! What are you talking about?"

  "Camajo. I'm not sure, but . . . something wasn't right."

  "He'd been out for a week; that scrambles anyone's brain. How could he be a security breach?"

  "He just didn't react the way he should," Esmay said. "The way he looked at me—it wasn't a tranked-out sort of expression."

  Pitak looked at her, alert. "You've been through one mutiny; if it hasn't made you paranoid, maybe you would notice something wrong. So you think he might be a traitor, like Hearne and Garrivay?"

  "No, sir. I was thinking . . . what if someone infiltrated Wraith. Through the hull breach maybe. Couldn't Bloodhorde troops have gotten in there, before Wraith jumped out?"

  "You mean like boarding a watership in a pirate story? Nobody does that, Suiza, not in real life in deep space. Even pirates send people over in pods. Besides, how would they survive through jump?"

  "Well . . . there were survivors in the forward compartments."

  "But those were Wraith crew, in Wraith uniforms, with their names on the crew list. I was there myself, Suiza. I didn't see anything that looked like Bloodhorde commandos, just wounded who'd been knocked out by sleepygas to conserve oxygen."

  "You're sure."

  Pitak looked at her with a combination of exhaustion and irritation. "Unless you're suggesting that the Bloodhorde cleverly dressed their soldiers in our uniforms—uniforms that just happened to have the right ID patterns in the cloth, and the right nametags on the pockets—and wounded them, drenched them in their own blood, then left them there to jump in a damaged ship—?"