The Serrano Connection

by Elizabeth Moon

  "Yes, sir."

  "At the same time, I think Captain Hakin's security squads would benefit from your expertise . . ." He glanced at the captain, whose face reddened. "We have hostile forces aboard, and we've already taken casualties. Security hasn't located them or prevented the trouble they've caused so far."

  "If the admiral wishes," Hakin said, through gritted teeth. "My reservations are on file." He gave Esmay a look of cold distaste.

  "Commander Seveche, you will be responsible for the actual detachment of T-4 from the hub. I leave it to you how you're going to keep the necessary preparations from being recognized by the intruders, whom I'm sure are observing what they can."

  "Yes, sir. I think some judicious tinkering with the artificial gravity controls could provide an excuse . . ."

  "Whatever. If events overtake us before detachment is possible, we need a fallback plan. Along with your other duties, Lieutenant Suiza, I'd like you and Commander Atarin to liaise with Koskiusko's security about that. Commander Jimson, you're to make sure that people get what they need out of inventory, without letting any more personnel be captured."

  "We need more security personnel," Captain Hakin said.

  "True, Captain. If it would help you, I'm sure that Admiral Livadhi can suggest individuals now enrolled in one of the tech courses who have sufficient background to be useful and have been aboard long enough to know their way around."

  "I've had Commander Firin make a list already," Admiral Livadhi said. "We have twenty-eight enlisted personnel with a secondary specialty in ship security, and another thirty-four who have done security work at some time or other within the past ten years. All are currently qualified with shipboard small arms. In addition, we have more personnel in the remote sensing course than Admiral Dossignal thinks will be needed for the rest of this mission. They can improve surveillance . . ."

  "I'll be glad of them," the captain said, this time with no resentment in his voice.

  "I must emphasize the urgency of the situation," Dossignal said. "We don't know how long before a Bloodhorde battle group arrives—or how many ships it might contain—or how the intruders will affect our efforts. We—" He stopped as someone knocked on the door. The guard there lifted his eyebrows; Dossignal nodded and the guard pulled the door open.

  A disheveled security guard looked straight at the captain. "Captain, you're needed on the bridge, urgently. We have a situation."

  "Excuse me." Hakin pushed back his chair.

  "What kind of situation?" Dossignal asked. The guard looked at the captain who shrugged irritably.

  "Tell him, Corporal."

  "The emergency oxygen conservation system went off on half a dozen decks of T-5, and knocked out everyone in sickbay and the ship's administrative offices. Two people got out and gave the alarm."

  "I'm on my way. You'll excuse me . . ." It was not a question.

  "I hadn't thought of that," Dossignal said. "I should have—we haven't had any experience of this sort of thing. Lieutenant Suiza . . . can you tell us . . . what sort of mischief might we expect?"

  Esmay gathered her scattered wits. "Sir, they'll try to get weapons, if they don't already have them. With stolen data wands, they can find out where the ship security weapons lockers are, and if they get a data wand keyed for security, it might even give them the access codes. Then they'll try to isolate and immobilize large numbers of the crew, probably by locking them into various compartments. That's what Captain Hearne's allies tried to do to us on Despite. Here I suppose they'd try to cut off the wings from the core. They'll damage systems that give them effective control of ship operations . . . environmental systems, including ventilation as they did here, hatch controls, communications, scan. I'd expect them to take hostages from critical positions . . . if they've been loose in sickbay, they'll have medical personnel and supplies, including gas exchange equipment, so that we can't use the equivalent trick on them."

  "And your response would be—"

  Through her mind flashed what she knew about the DSR. "The same tactics would work against them if the captain initiated them. Manually reset the ship's support systems so that each wing is independent for life support, as it was designed, then isolate the wings. They'll be trapped, and outnumbered wherever they are. If they're not in the core section, they won't be able to get to the bridge. If they are in the core section, they won't be able to use the wings for refuge, and ship security can go through the core first, then one wing at a time, until they're located. Ship security will need a different, secure communications system, because we have to assume the present one is already compromised."

  "But if we do that, we won't be able to set up for detaching T-4," someone said. "And if the other ships come . . ."

  "If we've all been knocked out with sleepygas," Esmay said, "we won't be able to detach T-4 either."

  A moment's silence, as the others digested that, and she realized that she had just implied—no, said—that a commander was being stupid.

  "Lieutenant Suiza," Dossignal said. "I'm putting you in charge of security for the 14th—specifically, T-3 and T-4. Liaise with regular ship security, but don't wait—do what you think needs doing. Atarin, who've you got for her?"

  The door opened again; Captain Hakin interrupted without apology. "They got into Security; they've got the weapons, and gas masks. Riot gas, probably. Maybe more."

  Almost as one, heads turned to stare at Esmay, who was still on her feet.

  "As I said," Dossignal stood also, and the others scrambled up. "Lieutenant Suiza has been through this before; she correctly anticipated their moves."

  "I'm closing off the wings," the captain said, as if Dossignal had not spoken." We'll have to get the support systems isolated, but at least I've ordered the hatches closed, to everything but T-1. I'll give you the new codes, but—"

  Outside a confused clatter, followed by soft pops as of something wet being dropped into a deep fryer.

  "Captain—!" yelled someone outside. The guard at the door opened it and turned to look out.

  Esmay moved before she thought; as the captain started to turn, she tackled him solidly and yelled, "Shut it!" The captain, cursing, writhed and tried to kick her in the head; she released him, rolled to her feet and yanked the guard away from the door, slamming it . . . without taking a breath.

  "What—!" began Dossignal, but stopped when the guard sagged to the floor, his face already bluish gray.

  The captain sat up, red-faced and furious. "You—" he started to say, then gasped and began wheezing.

  "Get him up," Esmay said. "It's heavier than air . . ." If they didn't think to turn off the artificial gravity. If they didn't come right on through the locked door—she took the guard's weapon and used it to smash the internal doorlock control. Wraith's captain and exec scrambled to help the captain up and get him to the table.

  "Gas, I presume," said Admiral Livadhi in a tone of mild intellectual curiosity.

  "The bridge . . ." the captain gasped, struggling for breath.

  "After we get out of here," Esmay said. Preferably before the intruders figured out where this compartment's air supply was, and simply poured the gas in that way.

  "If we can get out of this compartment, I can suggest a safe—or possibly safe—route away from here," Lieutenant Commander Bowry said. "I've been all over T-1 for the past quarter year."

  "The overhead," Esmay said. "Or the deck, but I don't know how to get into it."

  "You could just blow a hole in it," said Captain Hakin sourly.

  "Waste of ammunition," said Wraith's captain, Seska. "We'll go up." He climbed onto the conference table, and pushed aside one of the overhead tiles. "Yep. Just like every other space station, though the one we want is over there—"

  It took longer than Esmay wanted to get the entire group up through the hole in the overhead; the captain was still groggy and uncoordinated, and made an awkward bundle to lift. Esmay went last, guarding their rear with her single weapon, though she knew it
would be useless if the intruders broke in.

  But they wouldn't. She knew that, as if she could read minds. They had isolated the captain and the highest ranking officers, and would let them stew in there as long as they wanted. In the seconds ticking away now, they were wreaking as much havoc as they could. They'd be back at the core, trying to take the bridge, if they hadn't already.

  In the dim, unhandy space between the tiles of the overhead and the base of the deck above, she followed the others—Lieutenant Commander Frees, in this instance—and wished she knew more about Lieutenant Commander Bowry. Did he really know a way out of this section? And just how had the wings been sealed off from the core? She supposed it was like the fire drills, but she didn't know for sure.

  No time to worry about it. Ahead of her, the others had stopped moving. Esmay squirmed around so that she could look back the way she'd come. There was nothing to see but the smudged track of their passage, where they'd disturbed the dust.

  Someone patted her leg, and she turned back; they were moving on again, more slowly. After a minute or two, she realized the leaders were slithering out of the overhead, down into a passage.

  When she got close enough, she could hear voices.

  "Damn near got us all. And you?" That was Admiral Livadhi, sounding more annoyed than alarmed.

  A low murmur she couldn't follow. Frees, in front of her, slid out the gap into helpful arms. Esmay gave a last look back and saw nothing . . . but anyone could follow that track. She turned and dropped through feet first. A couple of enlisted men with Tecj Schools patches replaced the overhead panel as she looked up and down the passage.

  Some meters in both directions, armed security guards kept watch. One of them had an armor vest and helmet; the other had none. Esmay saw openings into several compartments, but no one moved that way.

  "Captain Hakin's still having trouble breathing," Dossignal said. "Does anyone know which gas that was?"

  "Probably SR-58," Bowry said. "They'd have the antidote in the hospital, but—" Esmay didn't know anything about the different kinds of volatiles, but from the tone, the captain's life might still be in danger.

  "We can't get there."

  A shout from the outboard end of the corridor startled them. Quickly, but without panic, they moved into the nearest opening. Esmay flattened against the inner bulkhead, and hoped the security guards had the sense to get out of sight themselves. The footsteps came nearer—more than one person, she thought. They paused outside the opening.

  "Admiral Livadhi likes green pea and leek soup," the newcomer announced in a conversational tone.

  "Carlton," Livadhi said, grinning. "In here, Major."

  The major who came through the opening was festooned with equipment; his brows went up when he caught sight of Esmay and her weapon.

  "The admiral might want to put this on," he said, handing over a face filter. "They've been using sleepygas . . ."

  "They used worse than that," Livadhi said. "Captain Hakin got a faceful; it killed one guard."

  "Yes, sir. I have ten filters with me, and Corporal Jasperson is handing them out to your security detail. Commander Bowry had suggested securing the aid stations and the weapons lockers before he went up to the meeting; we've got enough gear for about fifty. Vests, helmets, comunits, weapons. And the medical supplies."

  "Good work. Where'd you stow it?"

  "This way, sir." Major Carlton led them down one passage, turned into another; two men helped the captain along. Esmay saw more guards, all with gas masks and some with armor. She wondered where they were going, and why waste time going there instead of breaking out of T-1 now, before they were trapped. But she had a weapon, and she stayed back with the rear guard.

  Where they were going, it turned out, was a secure briefing room snugged in among the laboratories of Special Materials Research. "Separate ventilation system, good thick armor all around—it'll take them awhile to get us, long enough to make plans." Admiral Livadhi turned to Carlton. "Any medical personnel in T-1?"

  "I've got someone coming who worked in the wing clinic; the only supplies we have are from emergency lockers, because the intruders wrecked the clinic."

  Captain Hakin had collapsed two turns back, and now he barely roused when Livadhi spoke to him. "Captain . . ."

  "Uhhh . . ."

  "Captain, we have a legal problem: you are the only Koskiusko officer here; we cannot contact the others, and we need to make plans for resistance."

  "We're not going to resist," Dossignal said. "We're going to get this ship back."

  "Do . . . it," Hakin said.

  "Thank you, Captain; I accept your permission."

  In the next few minutes, the admirals agreed on the new command structure required by the emergency, and on goals. Then they settled to considering how to regain control of the ship.

  "We need to get our combat-experienced people over into T-3 and T-4," Dossignal said. "That's where we've got part of a ship, and might with luck capture a Bloodhorde ship. The sooner we get those people off on that mission, the better."

  "Through the blast and fire doors . . . ?"

  "How else?"

  "If they're smart—if they have enough men—they'll be watching all the access points."

  "They don't," Esmay said confidently. "There were only twenty-five of them in sickbay."

  "Not a complete team: they usually send a threefold pack, three tens."

  "You mean we missed some?"

  "No . . . some may have died aboard Wraith. We haven't had time to get into the foamed compartments and look. That'll be where their weapons and gear are, too."

  "But the thing is, they're not going to be able to watch every place we can get through. So where will they be?"

  "Where they're still in contact with each other, for backup," Bowry said. "If they were after the bridge—and I would be, if I were trying this trick—that means they'll be watching on Deck 11, where we might be trying to get to weapons stored in the security weapons lockers, and Deck 17."

  "So . . . let's try Deck 8," Dossignal said. "Commander Takkis can get into the core, to the secondary command center, and make sure that the FTL drive isn't working under their command. The rest of us—"

  "What d'you mean 'us'—you aren't going out there."

  "I certainly am. I belong over there in the 14th, with my people."

  On the way down to Deck 8, they saw no sign of the intruders. Most of the people here were staff or students of the Training Command, Senior Technical Schools Division. Scattered among them were elements of the ship's crew, mostly security, and researchers from the SpecMat Research Facility. They watched, wide-eyed, as the group passed, masked and armed.

  Deck 8 seemed especially quiet when they came out of the stairwell. Esmay, in the lead, stopped short when she saw the first body lying sprawled in the corridor.

  "Trouble," murmured Seveche, behind her.

  "And we don't know if it's gas or something else," Esmay said. There was no other way from here to the firewall doors; she took a breath and edged forward, as quietly as she could.

  "Dead some hours," Seska said as they came up to the body. The man had ship security patches on his shoulder, loose on one corner where someone had hacked at them but given up.

  "Maybe that was one of the first," Dossignal said. "And the attacker then went on to meet the others . . ."

  Esmay wished they would all shut up. She could hear nothing, see nothing. At the first compartment, she looked in. Five corpses lay sprawled on the floor, sagging from chairs onto work surfaces . . . her stomach turned; she swallowed with an effort. Whoever had come here was quick to kill.

  Nearer to the core, they could see the solid wall that cut them off from the rest of the ship. Esmay knew now that this was no simple bulkhead, but instead a section of the hull itself, capable of sustaining pressure if the wing detached. It lay against a similar section of the core: two thicknesses of hull. Once these barriers came down, the only way across was by means of the
override codes, which could open small airlock hatches.

  Admiral Dossignal entered the code, while the others guarded. The hatch did not move. He tried again; again it would not open. "Commander Seveche," he said. "Did you hear the captain give the code?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then you try it; perhaps I misremembered."

  Seveche also entered the number, but again the hatch did not open.

  "Either the captain didn't remember the right sequence, or they've found a way to change it," Dossignal said.

  "Or someone in the crew changed it, perhaps thinking the intruders had it," Seveche said.

  "Amounts to the same thing," Dossignal said. "Now . . . There's got to be another way to get through this."

  Seveche grunted. "Not without the equipment that's over in our section, sir. Two thicknesses of hull—we might manage one, with the tools in SpecMat Research, but not two."

  "What's our communications situation?"

  "We can reach Admiral Livadhi on the headsets; so far I've picked up nothing from the rest of the ship. That's what I'd expect with the wings closed off; we'd need higher power."

  "If we can't go inside, how about outside?" asked Captain Seska.

  "Same problem, getting through the hull."

  "Over on T-3 and T-4, there are airlocks on every deck," Seveche said. He had projected a map of T-1 on the bulkhead and was going through it deck by deck. "This one certainly isn't over provided with airlocks. There's one out at the end of the Special Materials Fabrication Unit, of course, but—"

  "T-1 was designed to be secure from casual interference," said Dossignal.

  "So we have to go all the way through SpecMatFab and hope no one flips the switch. Right. When I design a DSR, it's going to have some add-ons."

  "This one has add-ons; that's part of the problem." Dossignal looked around at his group. "We'd better get out there, then. I think we can assume that all the intruders are somewhere else, probably in the core section. Come on—" He strode off, startling them with his haste. Esmay caught a look between Captain Seska and his exec which suggested they weren't any happier than she was with the admiral's assumption that they needn't worry about the intruders. "Luckily it's on this deck," Dossignal said. Esmay wished he'd slow down and let some of his escort get ahead of him.