The Dark Colony
Page 22
Tommy was next, with the “Destroy” screen. ‘I believe I can make eight of these exploding rats from four of our missiles. That leaves us only eight for defending Dancer, but we need to account for some not getting through. These are each one kilo of HE, two will compromise what’s in that equipment room. Shutting off coolant will cause the reactor to go dormant. The equipment they have here is not enough to repair it.
‘I have two scenarios for delivering it: military and sneaky. Military means carrying one bomb in to break the screen apart, then standing off the enemy long enough to place the other two, retire and detonate. I don’t rate our chances highly. Sneaky means getting the women to take them in, then having the bombs walk to their targets and detonate on command after they have gone.
‘We can’t get Shani and Minah into the women’s room without raising the alarm. Even with veils the women will know they are new. Sneaky means putting our whole trust in two of the slave women.’
‘What about the other four bombs?’ asked the captain.
‘One on the eighth floor under the commissioner’s desk, the others as high as we can get,’ said Tommy.
‘I… know where you’re coming from, but the men are not our primary targets,’ said Lisa. ‘Let’s hold them in reserve and see how things go. I agree that sneaky is our only choice, if we can be confident that those women will not betray us. Shani, my biggest concern is that the moment we put weapons in their hands they’ll start slaughtering the men with no plan. Any read on that?’
‘It is certainly possible. We absolutely must not put weapons in the hands of children. Even if they succeed in killing, we would be placing a burden on them that is… unacceptable. Promising the women that some of the bombs will be sent upstairs might be a powerful incentive to be patient. We must decide when we have more information.’
‘Tommy,’ said Stjepan. ‘Will there be a radiation release from exploding the equipment? Or a melt-down afterwards? I don’t want to rescue all these people and then watch them die of radiation sickness.’
‘No,’ said Tommy. ‘the reactor cores we use are sealed internally. The worst you get is a shut-down. There’s a chance it will overheat and destroy the core, but the design intent is that it shuts down and waits to be reconnected. I can see glimpses of the core, and it’s a standard unit just like we have on Terps station. I’d love to know where these bastards got it—’
‘Not our problem,’ said Lisa, ‘focus, Tommy.’
Next up was Sou, with the “Rescue” screen. ‘We have lots of problems, but our worst problem is timing. We have a bunch of things we want to make happen, but any one of them will grab the enemy’s attention, and not a single one of them can be achieved if the enemy is paying attention. Everything we do up to strike time must seem innocent. I’m afraid I must join the voices calling for a strike on the eighth floor and above. If the enemy has his wits about him, we are dead. I know that means innocent women will be killed if they are in the men’s rooms at the time, but that is…’
‘What we may have to do,’ said Lisa. ‘Lay out the plan, and we will see.’
Sou continued. ‘The basic idea is this. We gather the girls from the farming tunnels close to the hangar. We prime the women in the women’s room to be ready to go. Somehow, we hijack that boat the enemy is using, and Stjepan and Tommy fly it in, pretending to be the regular crew. When the bus comes to meet it, they subdue the bus driver without raising an alarm, one man drives the bus back to the hangar and gets it inside. Balloon goes up, women from the tunnels and the ship run down and pack into the bus. It will be a very tight fit. We cycle it through the airlock, and then the gig pops over the horizon, and together with the enemy’s boat, they carry the bus away.’
‘What!’ everyone not in on the secret was astonished. ‘Carry the bus away? It’s not a space vehicle,’ said Minah.
‘What’s a space vehicle?’ said Tommy. ‘It’s a habitat with a rocket on the back. A bus is a habitat with wheels.’
They sat back for a minute, as everyone absorbed the idea.
‘I don’t like that delay while you cycle the lock,’ said Lisa. ‘That’s a big lock. Can’t you blow it instead?’
‘Not without leaving wreckage or damaging the bus,’ said Tommy. ‘A vessel that can stand vacuum can’t necessarily take explosive decompression. I have another concern though. The women and girls from the third floor must be out of the ship before the bombs go off. The equipment room explosions will do a lot of damage.’
‘Agreed. Distraction explosions first, destruction later. Look for other options for the airlock, please, but the overall plan looks…’ insane… ‘good.’
‘Finally then, “Escape”,’ said Stjepan. ‘We can’t take all the girls and women home with us. Even if we could cram them all in, our life support is not up to the task. We can create a second tier of escape, using the bus. If the girls can bring some portable air units from the farm tunnels, we can hide the bus somewhere out here, lending it our thermal generator. That means no refuel on the way back, which is do-able if we fall into Terps like a grain barge, and rely on the tugs to catch us.
‘This means we can be selective about who we take with us. If we are not sure of someone, it may be better to leave them in the bus. Of course, it means we must be absolutely sure to come back here in a matter of weeks to rescue them. Life support in the bus will be primitive.’
‘We only have one medic,’ said Shani, ‘and only one Chinese-speaker. Difficult choices.’
‘Yes, they are,’ said Lisa. ‘But we need more information. We must decide how far to trust Dekker, see how she reacts. We need the spider’s information on where the boat goes. One thing for sure, we need to refuel Dancer and the boats, and that will take most of tomorrow. Especially if we’re giving away our RTG to put it on a bus!
‘Excellent work, everyone. I think we’ve gone from one chance in a million to one in a thousand. Stjepan, take the watch, please. I’ll get dinner.’ Use up some of those favour points.
33 Fuelling Up
Lisa let Sou organize the refuelling operation, taking the watch herself. Tommy and Shani held back for a while, and Shani asked for a conference. They put their heads together, Lisa keeping close to the watch screens.
‘We have been talking…’ said Shani.
‘That’s nice,’ said Lisa. ‘You have concerns?’
‘We do not want to challenge your authority,’ said Shani, ‘but we wanted to explore another possibility.’
Lisa was pleased to hear them talking as a couple. Maybe there was more to the relationship than sex lessons. ‘Go ahead. All options are open.’
‘We were wondering,’ said Tommy, ‘whether it might be better to help the prisoners capture the ship, rather than destroy it. Take out its propulsion system, so it can’t go anywhere, but leave it as a viable colony.’
‘I know how you have doubts about human rights,’ said Shani, ‘but the principle of self-determination, they have a right to chose their own lives.’
‘Rights?’ said Lisa. ‘Oh you mean that stuff with the judge and the dog lady. I haven’t really thought that through. Mostly I follow people I trust, keep my promises… you had us all read the charter, write essays on it and so on. But we’ve all been reading history, on the way in. You remember the history of “regime change,” where outsiders support a rebellion against a strong-man regime?’
Lisa was distracted by images from outside. ‘Second Officer Papadakis,’ she said, in her Captain Hornblower voice. ‘Tell those scurvy knaves I’ll keel-haul the next rogue who throws snow at you rather than the ice machine.’
‘Aye-aye, Cap,’ said Sou. They had not actually worked out keel-hauling in a space vessel.
‘Where was I… strong-man regimes, yes. Present company excepted. What happens when you overthrow them? Tommy?’
‘You either get a democratic regime, or chaos, followed by another strong-man, usually worse.’
‘Yes,’ said Lisa. ‘And what determines which you get?’
‘Hold on,’ said Lisa. ‘You may have an idea though. Is it practical, Tommy, to leave the reactor running but disable the drives?’
‘If we… kill their engineers, yes,’ said Tommy. ‘They have the machines to build a rocket, but the girls couldn’t do it. It is rocket science, you know.’
‘There’s a third option then,’ said Lisa. ‘Occupation. Kill or imprison the men, and run the operation as a “protectorate,” I think is the polite word. I believe it may even be legal. Thinking of the colony as a ship, I’d be reclaiming her for the Belt, and we’d be the prize crew.’
‘I wonder sometimes if your legal training comes from Hornblower videos,’ said Shani. ‘If this is truly possible, how will we… how will you decide?’
‘Both options meet my primary mission, stop the bad guys escaping with the ship. So it must come down to the safety of the prisoners. And ourselves. I’d like to keep both possibilities in mind. Tomorrow we get our spies in, talk to Dekker. We’ll have a better idea then. And we’ll talk this through with the whole crew, tonight. Thanks for this.’
‘Nae problemo,’ said Tommy. ‘We’ll suit up and help the others.’
After a lunch break, Sou took the watch and Lisa joined the fuel party. By evening Dancer and both her boats were fully fuelled, and the snow had been returned to innocent-looking curves.
Discussion around the dinner table did not eliminate the occupation option, but it did not displace the rescue option either. By the time the port was passed around and knitting began, they were no closer to a resolution.
‘Orders,’ said Lisa. ‘I don’t want any uncertainty here. If you have to make a choice and cannot consult,’ she was looking particularly at Shani and Minah, ‘rescue is still the plan. We need to keep occupation in the back of our minds, as a fall-back position, but we must not talk about it to the slaves. Understood?’
The enemy boat had still not returned with the spider, so they had no more information.
‘Tommy, you’re on eight and eight,’ said Lisa. ‘Take the watch, please. Everyone else, sleep now, tomorrow starts early and is going to be very long.’
When Lisa dragged herself out of bed for the midnight watch, Tommy had worrying news. ‘I didn’t think it was worth waking you, but about half an hour ago we got buzzed. There was a burst of radar, and I briefly got a picture from our spider, just a random bit of surface imagery. They must be doing a systematic search of the whole rock, looking for us.’
‘That makes sense, it’s what we expected them to be doing. Good call, letting me sleep. ’Night, Tommy.’
‘’Night, Cap’n.’
When Lisa got up at seven thirty to begin breakfast, it was just after midnight Long ship time. The sun was setting at their location, on its eleven-hour schedule, and it was high in the sky at the enemy ship. So many clocks, so little time. Lisa wanted a time when the enemy would be asleep and the sun would be down. Let’s see, five hours from now, say 1230 Dancer time. Sou was still on watch, and the others were starting to filter in, picking up bulbs of coffee and cereal bars.
‘We have two big areas of uncertainty, but they might find us, so we can’t wait,’ said Lisa. ‘Infiltration today. I want Shani and Minah in place and hidden by 1230 today. Work everything backwards from there. We’re installing them at the farm tunnels, yes Tommy? How do we get them inside?’
‘Each of the farm tunnels has a hatch at both ends, like the ones we use. One end is attached by the connecting tunnels to the colony, the other is open, for when you add another tunnel or for evac. These have boat-type hatches, not the slow bubble hatches we use. We’re going to have to risk using the blob; the gig is too directional. I fly it in, dock to the hatch, and Minah and Shani climb through. Simple.’
‘Why are you flying this?’ asked Lisa. ‘Sou is our top pilot.’
‘That thing was never designed for three; I’m smaller. We tried fitting ourselves in earlier, and it is just do-able.’
‘Hmm, I expect you did,’ said Lisa. ‘This is extreme flying, in the dark with no lights. We can’t even risk IR illuminators… Very well. Minah, Shani, any thoughts on weapons? For yourself and to smuggle in to Dekker?’
‘Tommy has made us some lovely little stilettos,’ said Minah. ‘A girl’s best friend in that environment. We will take three each, and also stun-guns. I was tempted to take in real guns, but it is just too dangerous. If we immobilise a man with a stun-gun, he can die of “natural causes” before he wakes up. Fire a gun and everything is in the open too early. We have a phone for Dekker, and two spares, all the undetectable kind.’
‘OK,’ said Lisa. ‘Be ready for 1100 departure. Hide the boat nearby until the flies tell us everything is clear. Questions? Carry on.’
As the time approached, the enemy boat still had not returned. Minah and Shani emerged, looking weird in their robes and hoods, the veils open. They had done something with eye makeup that looked authentic, as far as Lisa knew. There were hugs all round as they squeezed into the boat beside Tommy, but nobody spoke.
Tommy set off, on a similar peak-skimming route, but a little further west than last time, aiming for the crater wall above the farm. Five minutes in, there was a burst of expletives from Tommy, and then the sound of the main engines firing.
‘Hansen. Sitrep!’ said Lisa.
‘Hold on, I’m landing,’ said Tommy. ‘Just a minute. I came over a ridge just back of here, and the radar detector lit up. I also got a burst of video from the spider and saw lights on the ground. I’ve stumbled on that damn boat. I had to go inertial until I’d passed their horizon, even the steam jets would have showed up.’
‘We don’t have time for this,’ said Lisa. ‘Carry on with your mission, and investigate on the way back. Over.’
‘But… sure, you’re right. Will do, over.’
I know I’m right, I’m the captain, it’s my job to be right, Lisa thought but did not say. Five minutes later, Tommy reported that he was in place behind the ridge. One of the flies was positioned at the start of the farm tunnels, near the cramped hostel where the children and the two trustys slept. Another was in the central square of the warren, and a third on the ninth floor, outside the surveillance office. The hacked view of the controller’s screen showed nothing unusual. He seemed to spend most of the night watching women undress, but there was not a lot of that going on, either. The fourth fly was in the engine room; it was so critical to the operation, they did not want to risk moving it again.
‘Go, go, go,’ said Lisa. Now seemed as good a time as any. They saw the view from the blob lift up the outer cliff, and the lighted bowl of the colony appeared. Then it tilted down and quickly settled at the end of the farm tunnel. They had hoped to be able to connect the hatches on the ground, but in the limited light they could see the hatch was a good 30cm too high. Tommy raised the boat, kicking up a lot of gravel and dust, then quickly moved it starboard, engaging the latches. When he turned off the motors, it dragged the end of the tunnel down, a creaking noise transmitted through the structure.
‘Freeze now,’ said Lisa. ‘Do nothing for a minute in case someone is looking out.’ None of the flies showed movement, but the surveillance men must have seen something. They had switched to a camera that was scanning the farms from high up. It was an IR camera, and luckily the blob looked like part of the tunnel. The normal two-by-two array of images resumed, and they all let out a breath.
‘Go, now,’ said Lisa. They heard the sounds of Minah and Shani struggling through the hatch, then it closed on both sides, and Tommy released the latch, dropping to the ground again and letting the tunnel resume its shape.
Tommy lifted over the ridge, dropped to the other side, and engaged the main drive to send him back towards the lights he had spotted earl
ier. The women had no shoulder cameras, but they reported they had found crops to hide behind, to wait until morning.
Tommy’s boat returned to the place he had found earlier, approaching more slowly this time. As soon as he had a signal from the spider, he dropped into a crater and landed. The spider was still looking out of the front of the boat, but not seeing much. He slowly turned it around, not sure if someone was watching it.
Scanning around, he could see that the boat was parked in front of a low building similar to the small hangar Lisa had found on Terpsichore. The hangar door was open, and inside was another boat, similar in size and armament to the one they knew about.
‘Do nothing, do nothing,’ said Lisa, knowing that Tommy, like her, would be itching to blow up both boats where they sat. ‘Tommy, do you have any of your rats with you? And do they operate in vacuum?’
‘I never go out without my rats,’ said Tommy. ‘I have two here on the tool rack, I gave the girls three each. And yes, they are fine in vacuum. They won’t be able to walk on snow though. They are meant for floors.’
‘Understood,’ said Lisa. Damn. ‘Tommy, can you…’
‘Land on the roof of that hangar and drop off a couple of rats? Sometimes, Lisa Johansen, I think you’re as crazy as me. Proceeding.’
The view shifted as the blob lifted just over the ridge, down the side and over the top of the hangar. Without moving out into the lighted area, it backed off again, reversing over the ridge. Two rodent’s-eye views appeared on the screen, looking out from the roof of the hangar.
‘I am dropping off another transponder to talk to our beasts, and heading back to Dancer,’ said Tommy. ‘Incidentally, that’s our last transponder.’
Lisa flew the spider off the boat sitting outside, and walked it into the small hangar. There was not a lot to see in there, just a closed door into the side of the cliff. She walked the rats, lemming-like, over the edge of the hangar, trusting Tommy to have made them sturdy, then walked one over to the parked boat and the other inside the hangar. Options were open. She heard Tommy docking the blob and he returned to the bridge.