The Way to Glory

by David Drake

  CHAPTER 20

  Big Florida Island on Yang

  Daniel crawled with the diligence of a turtle plodding up a beach to lay her eggs. The most difficult thing was to force himself to keep his eyes raised instead of crunching onward with his nose down as though there were nothing on Big Florida Island that might be dangerous. The back of the thermoplastic commo helmet gouged him between the shoulder-blades, but that was better than a shot in the same place from a wog standing unnoticed on the edge of the gully.

  The island's soil was pebbles in coarse sand. Except where bound by the roots, run-off quickly eroded it when storms swept in from the sea. The gully was bordered by fibrous-stemmed bushes with small leaves, and squat plants which spread up-slanted foliage to catch rain; their rootlets fuzzed the sides where freshets had scoured the ground away despite them. Daniel's shoulder had brushed one patch as he started upward. The touch had seared him like fiberglass, and tips broken off in his skin continued to itch.

  The courier vessel had roared while descending; now it snarled in a hover, its eight thrusters scooping out the soil and flinging the debris in all directions as molten glass. With all that happening on the other side of the Beacon of Yang, there was no longer any point in creeping around.

  "Cinnabars, up and at 'em!" Daniel called, rising as he spoke and leading Hogg for the last twenty feet to the Beacon's port outrigger.

  The partly converted freighter wasn't a large ship in absolute terms, but she was enough bigger than Cutter 614 that it was a momentary shock to see her up close. That was particularly true on land; in the water the pontoons would be almost submerged, but now they loomed as walls of rusty steel.

  There was a ladder at the wedge-shaped tip of the outrigger where it could rise straight to the top instead of following the curve of the sides. Daniel took his sub-machine gun from Hogg, slung it, and continued to lead up the ladder. He knew the interior of a starship better than his servant did.

  The rungs quivered as though the rebel vessel was alive, but Daniel knew that was an illusion caused by the Greif landing close by. The Beacon had electricity because, so long as it got water in sufficient quantities and the bottle itself remained intact, a fusion power plant was nearly as stable as a magnet. Thus far the rebels had met both requirements.

  Nobody'd tested the thrusters in the past nine months, though, so Daniel knew there was a real chance that the reaction mass lines were clogged with debris or corroded shut; the instruments wouldn't indicate that until water began to flow—or didn't. If worse came to worst, he and his crew would have to escape on the aircar that'd brought them. That'd be very dangerous, though there'd probably be less of a load going back.

  Daniel reached the top of the outrigger. Lights shone through a score of hatches that were either open or askew. The air circulating system had broken down; rather than repair it the original owners had sold the vessel to Generalissimo Ma and made delivery to Big Florida Island with a minimal crew who'd worn air suits for the whole voyage. Here on the ground, most of the hatches were open for ventilation.

  That made Daniel's plans easier, though if necessary he'd have taken his party up the boarding ramp on the other side and in the main hatch. Everything depended on the rebels being unprepared and incompetent, but Daniel was willing to count on that in much the same way as he'd have counted on dawn.

  With the sub-machine gun in his hands and Hogg beside him, Daniel trotted along the catwalk running the length of the outrigger. He glanced over his shoulder. Portus was leading Tovera onto one of the horizontal hydraulic struts that advanced and retracted the outrigger. The tube was a meter in diameter, an easy path for Portus, but it wasn't meant for pedestrian use. Adele's servant followed the rigger without hesitation, as she'd said she would.

  Daniel smiled without humor. There was a carrot for Tovera at the other end, of course: as soon as she entered the hull through the service port above the strut, she could begin killing people. Daniel wasn't going to complain. Having Tovera with them would save the lives of people he cared about much more than he did any of those at present aboard the Beacon of Yang.

  The power room was in the stern on E Deck, just above the bulk storage holds. Daniel needed to get to the bridge, forward on A Deck and sixty-five feet above the ground. The external bridge hatch had been lifted upward. Its opening was large enough to pass navigation consoles and similarly bulky electronics, but there was no direct way to get to it from the ground. Daniel and Hogg would enter from the other direction.

  The courier vessel had shut down, so its thrusters no longer backlighted the Beacon with an actinic glare. The visors of RCN commo helmets had darkened to block the dangerous UV. None of the rebels Daniel'd seen when he met the Generalissimo had similar protection, so there was a good chance that anybody who'd been sober enough to awaken was at least temporarily blinded by the exhaust.

  Daniel slung the sub-machine gun and started up the angled strut. It was butted into a great socket on B Deck which, according to the plans Adele had provided, ran transversely through the hull to the starboard socket. A tensioned cable paralleled the strut so that the crew could inspect and repair the hydraulics while the vessel was in vacuum. With the line for a handhold, Daniel and his servant trotted up the tube as if it were a steep hillside.

  People were shouting in the night. Daniel couldn't understand the words, but he suspected there was probably nothing to understand so that didn't matter. Rebels were trying to get the attention of the Greif's crew, but those aboard would keep their vessel closed up for several more minutes against the heat and residual plasma of the landing. The ground directly beneath the thruster nozzles would be molten glass.

  A ladder circled the hull just aft of the socket. Daniel paused to eye the gap, then half-jumped and half-stepped out, catching rungs with his right boot and both hands simultaneously. He scrambled upward quickly, feeling a double clang as Hogg grabbed the ladder below him. It sounded loud, but reason told Daniel that it was very unlikely those aboard the Beacon could tell the difference between the noise they'd made boarding and the pops and pings of the courier vessel cooling nearby.

  He reached the walkway running the length of the dorsal spine and started forward, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that Hogg was following. Hogg was, of course.

  Daniel's right foot stepped onto what should've been a section of plating dimpled with non-skid rosettes. It was empty air instead.

  "Bloody Hell!" he shouted, turning a stride into a leap off his left leg and grabbing a hawser on the dorsal antenna folded overhead. Working in a starship's rigging makes a man subconsciously aware of all nearby lines, just in case—as now.

  He dangled for a moment, taking a good look at the footing as he ought to have done before. "Hogg," he said, "there's a section of catwalk missing. If you're using light amplification, you may not see it."

  Daniel twisted back, then threw himself forward to the other side of the gap. Under his breath he muttered, "Since I obviously didn't see it."

  There was plenty of starlight for the helmet visors to amplify into clear images, but it placed those images without relative distances. The catwalk showed almost the same as the hull plates that curved outward six inches below. Daniel knew he should've been more careful, but a careful man wouldn't have been here in the first place.

  Daniel expected Hogg to use the hawser to swing hand-over-hand across the two-meter gap; instead the servant simply waited for Daniel to get clear, then hopped over. That way he continued to cradle his impeller, ready to shoot.

  Hogg carried a coil of quarter-inch line, too thin to climb for any distance without gloves but easy to carry and sufficient for swinging down through the bridge hatch. He tied it off to a strut supporting the catwalk and handed the rest of the coil to Daniel. They could hear voices from below.

  "How we going to handle this, master?" Hogg said quietly. If he was worried about anything, that fact didn't show in his voice.

  Daniel handed Hogg the sub-machine gun
and slid the baton around so that it was in front of his chest with only the bottom three inches under his belt. "I'll go in," he said. "You follow me with that—"

  He nodded to the sub-machine gun.

  "—but only shoot if you have to."

  "Figured you'd do it that way," Hogg said morosely. He slung the impeller behind him. "I never could get you to understand that a soft heart generally amounts to the same thing as a soft head."

  "Regardless, we'll do it my way," Daniel said, shrugging. "Anyway, remember that we need at least one working console in order to get out of here. A bullet in the wrong place and we're walking back to the aircar."

  "These won't penetrate to the other side of a body," Hogg said, thumbing the raised pin on the receiver that indicated the weapon was charged. "And I don't figure to miss."

  "Ship," said Daniel, keying his helmet. "Team One is in position. Team Two, report. Over."

  "Team One, this is Two," said Portus. His voice was unexpectedly breathy. "We're in position. We had a bit of trouble, but there's no alarm. Over."

  Daniel stepped onto the top of the raised hatch, the coiled line in his hands . . . a bit of trouble. . . . Somebody'd been sleeping in the compartment which Portus and Tovera entered or had challenged the pair when they passed down a corridor on the way to the power room. Somebody was dead, maybe a lot of people were dead, but Daniel's plan and Daniel's crew were intact.

  So be it. He grimaced, but he knew where his duty lay.

  Daniel gripped the coil firmly. "Team Two, execute," he said. He jumped outward, letting gravity and the line on the fulcrum of the hatch coaming swing him into the bridge. He'd dropped the line and had the cudgel out in his right hand before his feet hit the deck.

  Only three of the ten illumination panels in the compartment's ceiling still worked, but they were a brilliant improvement on starlight. There were six people present—no, seven, the last bending over to pull on his trousers behind the command console.

  Daniel swiped the nearest man across the temple; the tubing made a sound like wood striking wood. Half-recovering the cudgel, he belted the fellow turning to gape, flinging him back spraying blood from a pressure cut in the middle of his forehead.

  All of the men were armed, but they weren't thinking first about their weapons. Daniel kicked a screaming woman into the path of the bulky fellow running for the corridor, then stepped forward and knocked the fallen man's face back into the decking as he tried to get up.

  The man on the other side of the console had let his pants go to snatch up a wide-mouthed mob gun; its spreading aerofoils could clear a room. Daniel had him, had him sure before the muzzle came up, but the woman he'd kicked lunged for him with a stiletto. He broke her nose with a straight thrust as though the tubing were a rapier.

  The man coughed blood and dropped the mob gun, pitching forward onto his face. Daniel hadn't heard Hogg shoot, but the air of the compartment stank of ozone and vaporized aluminum driving bands. Hogg's burst had punched four holes in the rebel's bare chest, all of them into the mass of blood vessels rising from the heart. Daniel didn't like killing, but anybody who carried a mob gun knew what the rules were.

  That left a woman making bubbling screams with both hands over her face and two more unharmed for the moment. One was curled up in a ball under the seat of a non-functioning console that'd been cannibalized. The third woman was digging for what was probably a weapon in a pile of clothing.

  That one backed against a bulkhead and raised her hands when she saw Daniel turn toward her. After a moment's consideration, she put on a broad professional smile and tugged her blouse down to bare her breasts. Daniel wasn't even slightly tempted, but he did admire the lady's spirit.

  "Crew, everybody aboard ASAP!" Daniel said as he sat down at the command console. He was using the command-only channel, so he didn't bother with identifiers. "Break. Hogg, close the hatch."

  Instead of obeying, Hogg stepped to the side of the console with the sub-machine gun raised to his shoulder. He kept both eyes open while looking through his sights, so from that position he could watch the corridor while keeping the women within his peripheral vision.

  One of the men was moaning, but none of them were going anywhere. Daniel'd struck with his full strength, so the rebels almost certainly had fractured skulls or worse.

  More Cinnabars were swinging in through the hatch. The third or fourth stumbled, jerking Daniel's attention away from the display that was forming much slower than he'd have liked. Adele was there, wriggling out of Woetjans' grip; the bosun had snatched her off the line so that Barnes could follow.

  Dasi knelt with a roll of cargo tape, trussing the living rebels with the quick brutality of a butcher jointing carcasses. He'd started with the women.

  Hogg fired a short burst down the corridor. Daniel heard the pellets whop into a target rather than the sharp crack they'd have made against steel; nobody screamed, which meant the target couldn't scream. That was why he'd brought Hogg with him, after all. . . .

  He could hear other shots, now. A projectile whanged against the outer hull and howled off into the night, a very different sound from the echoing brap/brap/brap of one hitting the interior of the vessel.

  "Sir, I'm here!" Sun shouted. Hogg and Woetjans were leading a squad down the corridor but other spacers continued to enter through the hatch. "Where's the gunnery controls?"

  "They must be in the turret!" Daniel said as his fingers hammered commands into the keyboard. "If you can get the guns working, take out the Alliance courier first and then work over the headquarters building!"

  Images on the display coalesced enough that Daniel could find the propulsion icon and bring up the plasma thrusters. He switched on the pumps and felt a wash of relief as the Beacon begin to vibrate to their deep, familiar rhythm. He wouldn't have trusted the display, but now he knew in his bones that reaction mass was cycling through the system.

  Next Daniel called up the Beacon's emergency schematics. He'd looked for a damage control display, but there wasn't one—of course, he realized, because this wasn't a warship. Any vessel was liable to a hard landing or a botched orbital docking maneuver, so there was a plan of the internal subdivisions and a way to close them from the bridge as he'd so confidently assured his crew before they set off.

  Daniel hammered the keyboard with the sequence of commands that'd dog Holds One and Two. The icons would switch from red to green while the sound of metal butting into metal rang through the ship. He shrank the emergency display down to a sidebar and prepared to light the five thrusters.

  The icons stayed red. He'd have been willing to believe that was a sensor error, but he couldn't have missed the quiver of the dogs seating even five decks below. The holds were still open.

  "Members of the Light of Free Yang!" the public address speaker in the ceiling crackled. "You are in the hands of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy. Throw down your arms. Leave the vessel unarmed or wait for RCN personnel to take your surrender. Those who surrender will be freed shortly, but those who resist will be classed as pirates and hanged. Throw down your arms!"

  Daniel jerked his head around. Adele was seated at the cannibalized console with the little personal data unit on her lap. She'd apparently coupled it to what remained of the console and was using its hardwired linkages to access the command unit without displacing Daniel.

  The Beacon's systems didn't work worth a damn. Her new RCN crew made up for that, though.

  A ringing clang started Daniel. We've been hit!

  But they hadn't: the personnel hatch of Hold One had dogged shut at last. The guards in Hold Two could still get out, but there was more than one way to skin a cat.

  Grinning broadly, Daniel fed in the commands that lowered the starboard exterior hatch of Hold Two into a full-length ramp. The vessel rocked as corroded seals broke free, then trembled as gears began to pull the hatch down.

  The Beacon's external video worked considerably better than most of her electronics, but Daniel had left the ima
ge as a thumbnail on his display. Now he expanded it.

  As he'd expected, guards were crawling out of the hold before it was more than half open. They dropped to the ground, then scrambled off in the direction of the headquarters building. A few were armed, but most had left their guns in the hold or lost them when they fell out of the ship. They were welcome to go.

  To Daniel's amazement, the Generalissimo was one of those fleeing: there was no mistaking his 400-pound body. He must've escaped before Hold One closed. Mondindragiana didn't seem to be with him. God only knew how they'd have found her again if she'd gotten out.

  The Beacon of Yang rocked with a controlled thermonuclear blast: Sun had fired one of its 10-cm plasma cannon. His bolt hit the Alliance courier forward, in line with where the bridge was on most commercial vessels and almost all warships. Even with an atmosphere to dissipate the stream of charged particles, the short-range impact dished in the hull plating and punched a glowing cavity in the center.

  Steel flashed outward as a vivid red fireball, scattering molten droplets from the edges. The Greif rang like a thousand-tonne anvil struck by a hammer of ions driven at light speed. The piercing sound made Daniel's bones quiver aboard the Beacon of Yang; what it must've been like to those on the ground where the shock waves echoed between the two starships was beyond his imagination.

  Rebels fell flat. Some tried to cover their ears but others had been knocked unconscious. Lines of dust lifted from the gritty soil, collided with one another, and hung dancing in the air.

  Daniel lit the thrusters. The three remaining of the six originally mounted in the bow came to life instantly.

  Daniel flared the nozzles to dissipate the energy until he was ready to move. They threw loose rainbow banners, searing the soil but unable to scoop it out. Light flickered through the open hatch. Daniel felt his skin prickle at the touch of particles that drifted up to him, and his helmet filters slapped down to protect his lungs from the ozone.