The Serrano Connection

by Elizabeth Moon

  And the little children. But she could not think of that now. One thing at a time.

  "These frequencies and codes are not those in my library for the Regular Space Service of the Familias Regnant," the expert said. It was capable of expression, and it sounded fussy.

  "Check date," Brun keyed in. "Codes change."

  A long pause ensued. "It has been a very long time," the expert said finally. "I assumed the date was an error resulting from damage done when the station was overrun. . . ."

  "Time to intruder arrival?" keyed Brun. Some expert systems were complex enough to lose themselves in endless recursive self-examination. "And transmitter function?"

  "Ninety-seven seconds until transmitters functional; I will send your message as soon as confirmed. There is a high probability that nontarget vessels may be able to intercept the message; you have provided no cipher."

  "They already suspect we're here," Hazel said, voicing Brun's thought. "And if the Militia know we're here, it's better that Fleet knows it too. I suppose, Brun, it's because of your father—"

  "All correct," Brun keyed. She really did want a better voice synthesizer; her fingers were already tired, and she had a lot more to say.

  "ETA of intruder shuttles from the planet now ranges from one hour ten minutes, to three hours one minute," the expert said. "Unless they change course, which they have the capacity to do . . . now, three shuttles apparently approaching from the planet."

  Three shuttles . . . why did they think they needed four shuttles to capture two women? Or were they coming out to fight Fleet with shuttles? Surely they weren't that stupid.

  "Weapons discharge," the expert system said. "Nearby ship, identifying itself as Militia cruiser Yellow Rose, launched missiles at Fleet vessel of unknown type."

  The enemy shuttle had been run right into the gaping hole in one arm of the station. No doubt the Militia knew what was open and what wasn't—assuming they were the ones who'd made it a derelict. If they'd been in a regular warship, Esmay would have lobbed a missile into that bay, and blown the shuttle first off. But an SAR shuttle did not normally venture into hostile territory; it mounted no external weapons, and they had had no time to improvise. With that in mind, Esmay kept the length of the station between her shuttle and the enemy's, and snugged in under one of the power panels at the far end. Again, mission constraints changed the usual procedures. They dared not blow a hole in the derelict's hull, lest Brun and her companion be hiding behind just that piece of hull. They shouldn't be, but no one knew what conditions were like inside. Moreover, it would take at least four hours to rig one of the portable airlocks and carefully incise a new hole in the station hull. So the teams would have to insert through a known entrance, which all concerned knew was the best way to make a target of themselves.

  The best they could hope for was that the Militia intruders weren't already in place. The neuro-enhanced squad didn't seem too worried. Esmay, waiting near the tail of the line, saw the bulky figures pause at the emergency lock, and then move in, far faster than she had expected. Perhaps this meant the station had no air pressure.

  "Lieutenant, the artificial gravity's on."

  That shouldn't be . . . the station was a derelict. But she could feel through her own body the tug of a gravity generator. Which meant a sizeable power source, more than could be accounted for by the tattered, misaligned power panels. Would there be air? Had Brun turned things on? Esmay shook those questions off. What mattered now was getting in. If there was gravity, then the fighting would not favor the zero-G trained.

  Inside, they were met with the chaotic remnant of systematic vandalism, all visible under ordinary ceiling panel lights. P-suits cluttered the corridor, all turquoise with a BlueSky logo and code number on the back. Someone had drawn five pointed stars and other curious symbols on the corridor bulkhead in brown pigment—or blood. The tank locker beside the suit locker was empty of breathing tanks. Air pressure was as near vacuum as made no difference . . . but why was there any pressure at all? Why were the lights on?

  Esmay tried a cautious hail on the frequency Koutsoudas had given as that of Brun's transmission . . . no reply.

  Nothing damaged a man's reputation more than unruly women. Mitch Pardue knew even before he launched that he could kiss the Captain's position goodbye for at least ten years. He might even be voted out as Ranger Bowie. Even if he got them back, those fool women had cost him something he'd worked for twenty years and more.

  The abomination he could understand. She was crazy, even without a voice. But the girl's defection hurt. Prima had been so fond of her, and the other wives as well. She'd worked hard, and they'd treated her like one of the family. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe they'd been too lenient. Well, he wouldn't make that mistake with the little girls. That bossy one, already showing off in the weaving shed—he'd see that she didn't stay bossy. As for Patience . . . he'd already half-promised her as a third wife to a friend of his, but now that wouldn't do.

  Why couldn't the girl have realized how much better off she was in his household? Why were women so perverse, anyway?

  He almost let himself think God had erred in creating women at all, but pulled back from that heresy. That's what happened if you started thinking about women—they led the mind astray.

  If they were on the derelict station—and he was certainly sure they were—he would capture them and make an example of them. The yellow-haired abomination they would have to execute; he hated killing women, but if she escaped once, she might again. The girl . . . he would decide that later, after he learned exactly what had happened. When they'd finally found a witness, it seemed that a man had told her to get in the car. If so, she might not be guilty of anything but stupidly following a man's orders, which was all you could expect of a woman. He hoped that was it.

  "Ranger Bowie!" That was his pilot. He leaned into the cockpit.

  "What, Jase?"

  "There's a weird ship out there, scan says."

  Weird ship. It must be a ship the women had planned to meet.

  "What's our defense say?"

  "Says it's weird, Ranger. Not anything they know, a lot smaller than a cruiser. But it can do those little short jumps like the Familias fleet—"

  "It's looking for them," he said. "It's not a warship, or it'd have shot up our ships first thing, same as we would. A little transport of some kind." The worst of it was that it meant the Familias now knew where they were—and more ships might follow. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, he told himself. First things first. Get these women under control, or all hell would break loose.

  Though if he'd known, he might've asked for a shuttle of space-armored troops from the Yellow Rose. Their p-suits were hardened, but not against the kind of weaponry a Fleet vessel would have. Still, they'd probably hold their fire if they thought the Speaker's daughter was in the midst of it.

  His uncle had been one of those who trashed this godless excrescence in the first place; he'd grown up on the stories. They'd talked about blowing it up time and again, but always decided it might be useful someday. Useful! Just showed what happened when you compromised on a moral duty. He watched as the pilot brought them in to the old shuttle bay. When he felt the solid clunk of the shuttle's grapples on the decking, he stood and pushed his way back to the hatch.

  "Now y'all listen here," he said. "We're goin' in to look for those women. Not to play around gapin' at stuff, or even takin' the time to trash it. There's warships insystem; we need to get this done and get back where we can do some good. Understand?"

  They nodded, but he had his doubts.

  "All the weapons they can have is what that guy had in his shuttle. Maybe a couple of knives, a .45 or two. And they're women, and not used to zero-G or vacuum. They'll have p-suits on, probably ones that don't fit good. So we don't have anything to worry about if we use sense. Just don't go wanderin' off where one of 'em can blow you away too easy. And be sure your personnel scans are set on high power."

&n
bsp; He pulled his helmet shield down, locked it, and checked the suit seals of the man in front of him; the man checked his. Terry Vanderson—good man, reliable. Then he turned and led the way out of the shuttle's airlock.

  The regular airlock from the shuttle dock to the station corridor operated normally, but there was no air inside. He'd expected that. The women would've taken a tank or so from the shuttle when they left it, and they'd be low on air by now.

  Inside the airlock, they stood in a short corridor that ended in a T-intersection. He'd looked at his uncle's old notes, and knew that each arm of the station was a warren of laboratories and storage rooms—they would have to clear each of these. He looked at his scanner. Nobody near—but they would check, then close and secure each compartment.

  "Don't forget the overheads," he reminded his men. Not that they needed it; they'd been on more than one hostile boarding.

  Lewis and Terry peeled off to check the outer end of the arm. It seemed to take forever, but it probably wasn't more than five minutes before they were back. Now they moved along the corridor toward the station hub.

  "I can't believe this," Oblo muttered. "They're just walking along like they're on a picnic." On scan, the twenty suited figures moved in a clump, checking compartments and doors, but without any real caution. Nobody on point, nobody watching their backs. "And they're not in space armor, just p-suits. Brun could just about take them herself, if she had any kind of weapon."

  "They think they're up against two unarmed women," Esmay said. "Once someone calls to tell them we're here—"

  "Someone should have, by now," Oblo said. "Unless they're not listening."

  That led to questions Esmay had no time to answer. Was there someone else in the Militia eager to have this mission fail? And why?

  The assault troops moved forward, secure in the knowledge that their armor would foil scan not specifically designed to penetrate it. Esmay felt the familiar surge of excitement; she wanted to be up with them, but more important was finding Brun and the girl. Scan showed a pair of p-suited life signals on this side of the core, in a compartment off a side corridor. The problem would be letting them know she and the others were friendly—the armor, designed for combat effectiveness, did not have insignia in the visible spectrum.

  All the compartments in that wing had been checked and secured, and Mitch Pardue felt pretty good as he led his men into the central core. Careful scanning had shown nothing there—the women, if they were alive, would be huddling somewhere in the far wing, close to the hotspot where they'd had the shuttle. He felt a pleasant tension as he thought of them—of the fear they would be feeling, the helplessness . . .

  "Let's go, boys," he said, and stepped out into the wider space of the core corridor.

  They passed what had been a lounge area, the chairs now in a random tumble on the deck, and came to the control area. Here, Ranger Bowie paused. It had been a little surprising to find the artificial gravity still on—he clearly remembered his uncle talking about how they had pushed the bodies down the corridors in zero-G—and he wondered if perhaps the women had knocked the controls about by accident.

  "Wait a minute," he said to the others. "I wanta check on somethin'." They drifted across the space with him, as interested in the old station as he was. He leaned over the control panel, trying to read the labels . . . not in decent Tex, but in scripts he recognized as those used in the Familias Regnant, the Guerni Republic, and the Baltic Confederation. Heathens, all of them. Sure enough, the dust had been messed around; he could see what might be the marks of suit gloves here and there. He saw the gravity control panel, and was reaching for it when his vision blanked and he was pulled violently backwards.

  "Lambs to the slaughter," Esmay heard through her comunit. "We should space 'em now, or you want prisoners?"

  "Can you get any ID?"

  "Well, one of 'em's got that star thing on his p-suit, and he looks like the leader of the bunch that took the Elias Madero."

  "Yes, we want prisoners," Esmay said firmly. "Especially that one." She wanted to hear how it went, but finding Brun was still a priority, and the scan traces kept moving—as if Brun were deliberately evading them. Perhaps she was.

  "Team Blue!" That was from outside, from the other team's scan specialist.

  "Lieutenant Suiza here."

  "Two shuttles approaching, with unshielded transmissions. They're planning to go in and kill everyone they find."

  That made no sense—and then it did. If these people were as given to factionalism as reported, then this would be an excellent chance for one faction to rid itself of the leaders of another.

  "They know we're here, right?"

  "Yeah—but they think they can take us. I estimate twenty per shuttle—total of forty, say again four-zero armed personnel. No heavy weaponry."

  That was lucky. If they'd had heavy weapons, or ship weapons, they might have decided to blow the station.

  "Have they indicated where they're going to land?"

  "One of them coming into the same shuttle bay as the first. They want to get in behind the others—the one's going to come in on the end of this wing."

  "Ah . . . the old pincers movement."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Mr. Vissisuan," Esmay said. "Expect forty intruders, in two shuttle loads, small arms only. According to backscan, they know we're here, but think we'll be easy to subdue. They've divided their force, and expect to catch us between them."

  "Sir. Plan?"

  "Until we have Brun and the girl safely away, that has to be our first priority. Right now it looks like Brun is between us and the incoming shuttle. So we'd better move fast. Beyond that, secure the prisoners we have, and take prisoners if possible." If they could pick off some high-ranking Militia, perhaps they could avoid a battle and get the children out safely.

  Brun hoped the expert system knew what it was doing. It kept shifting them from one compartment to another, supposedly far from the Militia's personnel scans. It said it was still trying to retrieve a better vocal synthethizer, too, and had dispatched another two mobile units. She wanted to ask if it had received any answer from Fleet—surely they'd be doing something—but she simply could not get her fingers to work on the keyboard, and Hazel could not understand her gestures. She was so tired . . . she hoped it was only exhaustion and not hypoxia.

  "Brun—wake up!" That was Hazel's voice; she sounded on the edge of panic. "I feel things in the decking—vibrations—"

  It must remind her of her own capture. Hiding in these vandalized rooms, waiting for someone to come, not knowing who—it must bring back all her nightmares. Brun tapped her arm, and grinned. Hazel grinned back, but there was no mirth in it.

  She could feel the knocks and vibrations herself. Someone closer, and more than one. She tried again with the compad keyboard, and keyed "Fleet assistance?"

  "I'm not sure," the expert system said in her ear. "There have been two landings, another two are imminent. Multiple intruders aboard, hostile to one another." Then some of them must be friendly, Brun thought. But she wasn't sure. "Not all the same shapes of shuttles, but no recognizable ID codes from the ones that appeared nearby."

  Appeared? Launched from a larger ship that had microjumped nearby?

  "Try Fleet codes on com channels," Brun keyed.

  "I cannot access any transmissions from one set of intruders," the expert said. "I don't know what frequencies to use."

  Shielded suit communications. That sounded more and more like Fleet, but how could she contact them? Someone should be listening in for unshielded transmissions—"All bands," Brun said. "Use the codes I gave you."

  The deck bucked, and Brun and Hazel lost contact in the low gravity, bouncing into one of the bulkheads. Brun's compad flew another way, its jack yanked from her suit connection. Hazel scrambled after it, as another series of vibrations and blows shook them. Something must have rammed the station, something with a lot more mass than a single person. Brun could see into the next compartme
nt, where the bulkhead had torn loose at the corner, leaving a triangular hole. The station could be coming apart around them; they might be flung loose into space, tiny seeds from a puffball head.

  Brun fought down the panic. Right now, right this instant, they still had air, they still had intact p-suits, and they weren't freezing or full of holes. Hazel edged back to her and held out the compad and connector.

  The scan tech watching the incoming Militia shuttles reported that one was likely to impact rather than dock. "He's coming in with way too much relative vee; gonna knock this station sideways—counting down . . . seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—" The deck bucked; in the minimal artificial gravity, a cloud of dust rose and hung like a tattered curtain. "They've made a mess out of the end of that arm, but don't seem to have damaged themselves much, worse luck."

  "Keep us informed," Esmay said. She had Meharry and five others with her as she tried to follow Brun's scan signal through the maze of passages.

  "Lieutenant!" That was the backdoor scan again. "I've got transmissions in Fleet code from the station itself—identifies itself as the station expert system."

  "What's it want?"

  "Says two employees told it to contact us and gave it the codes. Says it's trying to protect them, and can we prove we're friendly?"

  "The only person here who might know any Fleet access codes was Brun—but she was supposedly unable to talk."

  "But it can't contact this individual now—says a communications device failed."

  Great. "Can it direct us to her?"

  "It says yes, but it won't until we can prove that we have a legal right to be here, and that she knows us."

  Worse and worse. Expert systems had a reputation for rigid interpretation of rules.