00-Falling Free

by Lois McMaster Bujold

Bannerji cringed visibly. "And do you have any idea the kind of legal liability that situation would present to Security?"

  "So deputize 'em—"

  A beeping from Chalopin's desk console interrupted Van Atta; a com tech's face appeared in the vid.

  "Administrator Chalopin? Com Center here. You asked us to advise you of any change in the status of the Habitat or the D-620. They, um—appear to be preparing to leave orbit."

  "Put it on up here," Chalopin ordered.

  The com tech produced the flat view from the satellite again. He upped the magnification, and the Habitat–D-620 configuration half-filled the vid. The D-620's two normal-space thruster arms had been augmented by four of the big thruster units the quaddies used to break cargo bundles out of orbit. Even as Van Atta watched in horror, the array of engines flared into life. Stirring a glittering wake of space trash, the monstrous vehicle began to move.

  Dr. Yei stood staring open-mouthed, her hands clapped to her chest, her eyes glistening strangely. Van Atta felt like weeping with rage himself.

  "You see"—he pointed, his voice cracking—"you see what all this interminable dithering has resulted in? They're getting away!"

  "Oh, not yet," purred Dr. Yei. "It will be at least a couple of days before they can possibly arrive at the wormhole. There is no just cause for panic." She blinked at Van Atta, went on in an almost hypnotically cloying voice, "You are extremely fatigued, of course, as are we all. Fatigue invites mistakes in judgment. You should rest—get some sleep. . . ."

  His hands twitched; he burned to strangle her on the spot. The shuttleport administrator and that idiot Bannerji were nodding, reasonable agreement. A choked growl steamed from Van Atta's throat. "Every minute you wait is going to complicate our logistics—increase the range—increase the risk—"

  They all had the same bland stare on their faces. Van Atta didn't need his nose rubbed in it—he could recognize concerted noncooperation when he smelled it. Damn, damn, damn! He glowered suspiciously at Yei. But his hands were tied, his authority undercut by her sweet reason. If Yei and all her ilk had their way, nobody would ever shoot anybody, and chaos would rule the universe.

  He snarled inarticulately, wheeled on his heel, and stalked out.

  * * *

  Claire woke without yet opening her eyes, snugged in her sleep sack. The exhaustion that had drenched her at the end of last shift was slow to ebb from her limbs. She could not hear Andy stirring yet; good, a brief respite before diaper change. In ten minutes she would wake him, and they would exchange services; he relieving her tingling breasts of milk, the milk relieving his hungry tummy —moms need babes, she thought sleepily, as much as babes need moms, an interlocking design, two individuals sharing one biological system . . . so the quaddies shared the technological system of the Habitat, each dependent on all the others. . . .

  Dependent on her work, too. What was next? Germination boxes, grow tubes —no, she could not yank grow tubes around today, today was Acceleration Day—her eyes sprang open. And widened in joy.

  "Tony!" she breathed. "How long have you been here?"

  "Been watching you abou' fifteen minutes. You sleep pretty. Can I come in?" He hung in air, dressed again in his familiar, comfortable red T-shirt and shorts, watching her in the half-light of her chamber. "Gotta tie down anyway, acceleration's about to start."

  "Already . . . ?" She wriggled aside and made room for him, entwining all their arms, touching his face and the alarming bandage still wrapping his torso. "Are you all right?"

  "All right now," he sighed happily. "Lying there, in that hospital—well, I didn't expect anyone to come after me. Horrible risk to you—not worth it!" He nuzzled her hair.

  "We talked about it, the risk. But we couldn't leave you. Us quaddies—we've got to stick together." She was fully awake now, reveling in his physical reality, muscled hands, bright eyes, fuzzy blond brows. "Losing you would have diminished us, Leo said, and not just genetically. We have to be a people now, not just Claire and Tony and Silver and Siggy—and Andy—I guess it's what Leo calls 'synergistic.' We're something synergistic now."

  A strange vibration purred through the walls of her chamber. She hitched around to scoop Andy out of his sleep restraints beside her, folding him to her with her upper hands while still holding Tony's lowers with her lowers, under the sleep sack's cover. Andy squeaked, lips smacking, and fell back to sleep. Slowly, gently, her shoulderblades began to press against the wall.

  "We're on our way," she whispered. "It's starting. . . ."

  "It's holding together," Tony observed in wonder. They clung to each other. "Wanted to be with you, at this moment. . . ."

  She let the acceleration have her, laying her head against the wall, cushioning Andy on her chest. Something went clunk in her cupboard; she'd check it later.

  "This is the way to travel," sighed Tony. "Beats stowing away. . . ."

  "It's going to be strange, without GalacTech," said Claire after a while. "Just us quaddies . . . what will Andy's world be like, I wonder?"

  "That'll be up to us, I guess," said Tony soberly. "That's almost scarier than downsiders with guns, y'know? Freedom. Huh." He shook his head. "Not like I'd pictured it."

  * * *

  Yei's suggested sleep was out of the question. Morosely, Van Atta returned not to his living quarters, but to his own downside office. He had not checked in there for a couple of weeks. It was about midnight now, Shuttleport Three time; his downside secretary was off-shift. It suited his foul humor to sulk alone.

  After about twenty minutes spent muttering to himself in the dim light, he decided to scan his accumulated electronic mail. His usual office routine had gone to pot these last few weeks anyway, and of course the events of the last two days had blown it entirely to hell. Perhaps a dose of boring routine would calm him enough to consider sleep after all.

  Obsolete memos, out-of-date requests for instructions, irrelevant progress reports—the quaddie downside barracks, he noted with a grim snort, were advertised as ready for occupancy at fifteen percent over budget. If he could catch any quaddies to put in them. Instructions from HQ viz wrapping up the Cay Project, unsolicited advice upon salvage and disposal of its various parts . . .

  Van Atta stopped abruptly, and backed up two screens on his vid. What had that said again?

  Item: Post-fetal experimental tissue cultures. Quantity: 1000. Disposition: cremation by IGS Standard Biolab Rules.

  He checked the source of the order. No, it hadn't come through Apmad's office, as he'd first guessed. It came from General Accounting & Inventory Control, part of a long computer-generated list including a variety of lab stores. The order was signed by a human, though, some unknown middle manager in the GA&IC back on Earth.

  "By damn," Van Atta swore softly, "I don't think this twit even knows what quaddies are." The order had been signed some weeks before.

  He read the opening paragraph again. The Project Chief will oversee the termination of this project with all due speed. The quick release of personnel for other assignments is particularly desirable. You are authorized to make whatever temporary requisitions of material or personnel from adjacent divisions you require to complete this termination by 6/1.

  After another minute his lips drew back in a furious grin. Carefully, he pulled the precious message disc from the machine, pocketed it, and left to go find Chalopin. He hoped he might rout her out of bed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  "Aren't you about done out there yet?" Ti's taut voice crackled through Leo's work suit com.

  "One last weld, Ti," Leo answered. "Check that alignment one more time, Tony."

  Tony waved a gloved hand in acknowledgment and ran the optical laser check up the line that the electron beam welder would shortly follow. "You're clear, Pramod," he called, and moved aside.

  The welder advanced in its tracks across the workpiece, stitching a flange for the last clamp to hold the new vortex mirror in place in its housing. A light on the beam welder's top flashed
from red to green, the welder shut itself off, and Pramod moved in to detach it. Bobbi floated up immediately behind to check the weld with a sonic scan. "It's good, Leo. It'll hold."

  "All right. Clear the stuff out and bring the mirror in."

  His quaddies moved fast. Within minutes the vortex mirror was fitted into its insulated clamps, its alignment checked. "All right, gang. Let's move back and let Ti run the smoke test."

  "Smoke test?" Ti's voice came over the com. "What's that? I thought you wanted a ten-percent power-up."

  "It's an ancient and honorable term for the final step in any engineering project," Leo explained. "Turn it on, see if it smokes."

  "I should have guessed," Ti choked. "How very scientific."

  "Use is always the ultimate test. But power up slowly, eh? Gently does it. We've got a delicate lady here."

  "You've said that about eight or ten times, Leo. Is that sucker in spec or out?"

  "In. On the surface, anyway. But the internal crystalline structure of the titanium—well, it just isn't as controlled as it would have been in a normal fabrication."

  "Is it in spec or out? I'm not going to jump a thousand people to their deaths, dammit. Especially if I'm included."

  "In, in," Leo spoke through his teeth. "But just—don't horse it around, huh? For the sake of my blood pressure, if nothing else."

  Ti muttered something; it might have been, Screw your blood pressure, but Leo wasn't sure. He didn't ask for a repeat.

  Leo and his quaddie work gang gathered their equipment and jetted a safe distance from the Necklin rod arm. They hung a hundred meters or so above Home. The light of Rodeo's sun was pale and sharp here within an hour of the wormhole jump point; more than a bright star, but far less than the nuclear furnace that had warmed the Habitat in Rodeo orbit.

  Leo seized the moment to gaze upon their cobbled-together colony ship from this rare exterior vantage. Over a hundred modules had finally been bundled together along the ship's axis, all carrying on—more or less—their previous functions. Damned if the design didn't look almost intended, in a lunatic-functional sort of way. It reminded Leo a bit of the thrilling ugliness of the early space probes of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries.

  Miraculously, it had held together under two days' steady acceleration and deceleration. Inevitably items here and there Inside had been found to have been overlooked. The younger quaddies had crawled about bravely, cleaning up; Nutrition had managed to get everyone fed something, though the menu was a trifle random; thanks to yeoman efforts on the part of the young airsystems maintenance supervisor who had stayed on and his quaddie work gang, they no longer had to cease accelerating periodically for the plumbing to work. For a while Leo had been convinced the potty stops were going to be the death of them all, not that he hadn't grabbed the opportunities himself for the final touching-up on their vortex mirror.

  "See any smoke?" Ti's voice inquired in his ear.

  "Nope."

  "That's it, then. You people better get your asses Inside. And as soon as you've got everything nailed down, Leo, I'd appreciate it if you'd come up to Nav and Com."

  Something in the timbre of Ti's voice chilled Leo. "Oh? What's up?"

  "There's a security shuttle closing on us from Rodeo. Your old buddy Van Atta's aboard, and ordering us to halt and desist. I don't think there's much time left."

  "You're still maintaining com silence, I trust?"

  "Oh, yeah, sure. But that doesn't prevent me from listening, eh? There's a lot of chatter from the jump station—but that doesn't worry me as much as what's coming up from behind. I, um . . . don't think Van Atta handles frustration too well."

  "On edge, is he?"

  "Over the edge, I think. Those security shuttles are armed, y'know. And a lot faster than this monster in normal space. Just 'cause their lasers are classed as 'light weaponry' doesn't mean it's exactly healthy to stand around in front of 'em. I'd just as soon jump before they got in range."

  "I read you." Leo waved his work gang toward the entry hatch to the work-suit locker module.

  So it was coming at last. Leo had devised a dozen defenses in his mind, upended beam welders, explosive mines, for the long-anticipated physical confrontation with GalacTech employees trying to retake the Habitat. But all his time had been gobbled up by the vortex mirror, and as a result only the most instant of weapons, such as the beam welders, were now available, and even they would have no use Indoors in a boarding battle. He could just picture one missing its target and slicing through a wall into an adjoining crèche module. Hand-to-hand in free fall the quaddies might have some advantage; weapons cancelled that, being more dangerous to the defenders than the attackers. It all depended on what kind of attack Van Atta launched. And Leo hated depending on Van Atta.

  * * *

  Van Atta swore into the com one last time, then dealt the OFF key an angry blow. He had run out of fresh invective hours before, and was conscious of repeating himself. He turned from the comconsole and glowered around the security shuttle's control compartment.

  The pilot and copilot, up front, were busy about their work. Bannerji, commanding the force, and Dr. Yei—and how had she inserted herself into this expedition, anyway?—were strapped to their acceleration couches, Yei in the engineer's seat, Bannerji holding down the weapons console across the aisle from Van Atta.

  "That's it, then," snapped Van Atta. "Are we in range for the lasers yet?"

  Bannerji checked a readout. "Not quite."

  "Please," said Dr. Yei, "let me try to talk to them just once more—"

  "If they're half as sick of the sound of your voice as I am, they're not going to answer," growled Van Atta. "You've spent hours talking to them. Face it—they're not listening any more, Yei. So much for psychology."

  The security sergeant, Fors, stuck his head through from the rear compartment where he rode with his twenty-six fellow GalacTech guards. "What's the word, Captain Bannerji? Should we suit up for boarding yet?"

  Bannerji quirked an eyebrow at Van Atta. "Well, Mr. Van Atta? Which plan is it to be? It appears we're going to have to cross off all the scenarios that started with their surrendering."

  "You got that shit straight." Van Atta brooded at the com, which emitted only a gray empty hiss on its vid. "As soon as we're in range, start firing on 'em, then. Disable the Necklin rod arms first, then the normal space thrusters if you can. Then we blast a hole in the side, march in, and mop up."

  Sergeant Fors cleared his throat. "You did say there were a thousand of those mutants aboard, didn't you, Mr. Van Atta? What about the plan of skipping the boarding part and just taking the whole vessel in tow, back to wherever you want it? Aren't the odds a little, um, lopsided for boarding?"

  "Complain to Chalopin, she's the one who balked at drafting help from outside Security proper. But the odds aren't what they appear. The quaddies are creampuffs. Half of them are children under twelve, for God's sake. Just go in, and stun anything that moves. How many five-year-old girls do you figure you're equal to, Fors?"

  "I don't know, sir." Fors blinked. "I never pictured myself fighting five-year-old girls."

  Bannerji drummed his fingers on his weapons console and glanced at Yei. "Is that girl with the baby aboard, the ones I almost shot that day in the warehouse, Dr. Yei?"

  "Claire? Yes," she replied levelly.

  "Ah." Bannerji glanced away from her intent gaze, and shifted in his seat.

  "Let's hope your aim is better this time, Bannerji," said Van Atta.

  Bannerji rotated a computer schematic of a superjumper in his vid, running calculations. "You realize," he said slowly, "that the real event is going to have some uncontrolled factors—the probability is good that we're going to end up punching some extra holes in the inhabited modules while we're going for the Necklin rods."

  "That's all right," said Van Atta. Bannerji's lips screwed up doubtfully. "Look, Bannerji," added Van Atta impatiently, "the quaddies are—ah, have made themselves expendable by turni
ng criminal. It's no different than shooting a thief fleeing from any other kind of robbery or break-in. Besides, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."

  Dr. Yei ran her hands hard over her face. "Lord Krishna," she groaned. She favored Van Atta with a tight, peculiar smile. "I've been wondering when you were going to say that. I should have put a side bet on it—run a pool—"

  Van Atta bristled defensively. "If you had done your job right," he returned no less tightly, "we wouldn't be here now breaking eggs. We could have boiled them in their shells back on Rodeo at the very least. A fact I intend to point out to management later, believe me. But I don't have to argue with you any more. For everything I intend to do, I have a proper authorization."

  "Which you have not shown to me."

  "Chalopin and Captain Bannerji saw it. If I have my way you'll get a termination out of this, Yei."

  She said nothing, but acknowledged the threat with a brief ironic tilt of her head. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, apparently silenced at last. Thank God, Van Atta added to himself.

  "Get suited up, Fors," he told the security sergeant.

  * * *

  Nav and Com in the D-620 was a crowded chamber. Ti ruled from his control chair, enthroned beneath his headset; Silver manned the com; and Leo—held down the post of chief engineer, he supposed. The chain of command became rather blurred at this point. Perhaps his title ought to be Official Ship's Worrier. His guts churned and his throat tightened as all lines of action approached their intersection at the point of no return.

  "The security shuttle has stopped broadcasting," Silver reported.

  "That's a relief," said Ti. "You can turn the sound back up, now."

  "Not a relief," denied Leo. "If they've stopped talking, they may be getting ready to open fire." And it was too late, too close to jump point to put a beam welder and crew Outside to fire back.

  Ti's mouth twisted in dismay. He closed his eyes; the D-620 seemed to tilt, lumbering under acceleration. "We're almost in position to jump," he said.