by J. L. Doty
“I can’t,” he pleaded, thinking of the d’Hart woman’s words. “I can’t stop them. They’re too powerful.”
“We’ve nothing to lose,” she said. “We’re already dead; we have no dignity left, no pride. You have to stop them—”
A loud thud against the door of the room interrupted her. There was a scuffle, York heard a grunt, then the door slammed open and the room filled with AI uniforms. Instinctively he shoved the injector under the blanket in Maggie’s lap. And then the muzzle of a gun pressed against the back of his head and he froze.
“Ballin,” a familiar voice said only inches from his ear. “You’re so predictable.” Then the gun struck him on the side of the head and he dropped to the floor at Maggie’s feet. He struggled to hold onto consciousness while someone rifled his uniform, removed the small sidearm Palevi had given him. He was on his side on the floor, and he decided to lie still for a few seconds, let the room stop spinning. But hands hoisted him to his feet by his armpits, and turned him to face Juessik.
There were four of them: Juessik, a muscular AI private holding a pistol to the side of Palevi’s head, and the two holding York up. The one on York’s right was a medium height female AI lieutenant. York outweighed her by forty kilos, so he decided to play up his dizziness, leaned on her more than he had to.
Juessik stepped up to him, punched him in the ribs; York grunted and doubled over. The thug on York’s left grabbed York’s hair, pulled his head up until his chin pointed at the ceiling. They repeated the process several times, then they let York drop to the floor where he curled up, came close to vomiting, to losing consciousness.
They hoisted him back to his feet. Juessik leaned forward, grabbed York by the hair, lifted York’s chin and put his nose only inches from York’s. “For a short while you did have us a bit concerned, Ballin. A few of my people panicked when you didn’t show up at Lady d’Hart’s yacht. But I knew you couldn’t leave the Votak whore behind. She was my hold card. If we lost you, all we had to do was wait and watch. I am curious where the rest of your little entourage is holed up. But we’ll get that out of you shortly.”
York had almost begun to believe Juessik knew everything, that AI knew everything, that, as before, they were one step ahead of him. But with Juessik’s words he realized they didn’t know about Cinesstar, or about Yagell’s assault team headed for Prime Central. He met Palevi’s eyes and saw that the sergeant had caught the same message.
Juessik let go of York’s hair and turned toward Maggie, who remained unchanged. He stepped behind her chair so he could face York. He reached down, touched her cheek lightly, almost a lover’s caress. “Quite poignant, actually, that you came back for her. But not practical.” Juessik leaned down, touched his cheek to hers. “She’s actually quite lovely. Perhaps I’ll find some use for her after all. Perhaps . . .”
It was not a quick or rapid motion, not the kind of motion one would make in desperation. It was sudden, but it had the calm, deliberate movement of unpanicked motion. Maggie’s hands had been resting beneath the blanket on her lap, and as Juessik spoke her right hand emerged holding the injector. In a single, efficient motion she raised it, pressed the muzzle against his throat and pulled the trigger. York heard a faint puff. Juessik stopped in mid sentence, straightened, touched his throat and looked at Maggie. “What have you done?”
The thugs holding him and Palevi were focused on Juessik, so York brought his elbow up into the larynx of the thug on his left, heard a satisfying crunch. He was vaguely conscious of Palevi across the room erupting like a madman. York brought his right elbow around, but the element of surprise was gone and he only caught the young lieutenant in the chest. It was enough to stun her, but she had her gun out. York grabbed at the gun, got hold of her wrist and they both went down. She squeezed off a few shots wildly as they rolled over together, the gun emitting the soft phutt of a silenced weapon. York heard another phutt and his side lit up with fire, but the young lieutenant went limp in his arms. Someone had shot at him, shot through him and hit her. He tore the gun out of her hands, rolled over pulling her on top of him, using her as a shield just as the thug with the crushed larynx squeezed off another wild shot. The man was clutching at his throat, shooting wildly at anything that moved. York leveled her gun at him and pulled the trigger twice. The bullets slammed into him and he slid to the floor in a heap.
York tried to stand, fell onto his side. Palevi knelt over him. “You hit, Captain?”
A faint, distant voice pleaded, “Help me.” They both looked up to find Juessik, seated on the floor with his back against the wall, his head bobbing as consciousness slowly eluded him.
York looked Maggie’s way. She was slumped forward in her chair, the front of her blouse soaked in blood. “I’m okay,” York grimaced. “Check Maggie.”
“Please help me,” Juessik pleaded weakly, his words beginning to slur.
Palevi jumped to his feet and crossed the room to Maggie. York pulled open his tunic, checked his own wound. The bullet had punched a shallow hole through his side, just above the waistline. Both entrance and exit wounds were visible. “How is she?” he demanded as he climbed unsteadily to his feet and staggered across the room.
“Not good, Captain. Chest wound.”
Juessik said, “Ahh sha . . . hafff . . .”
“We’re in a goddamn hospital. Get a doctor.”
Palevi was gone in an instant. York lifted Maggie out of her chair and laid her gently on her bed. He took her hand, felt her grip his hand strongly. Her eyes fluttered open. “York . . .”
“Don’t talk,” he said. “We’re getting a doctor.”
Blood spilled out of her mouth. “You . . . have to . . . stop them.”
He shook his head. “I can’t, girl. I can’t.”
Her eyes closed and her grip went slack.
“Yagell,” Terk’s implants growled in the familiar voice of the captain. “Ballin here. Where are you?”
She keyed her implants. “Not far now, Captain. Another hundred meters of corridor, a couple turns here and there.”
“Change of plans. We need to stall for a bit. Find a place to hole up, then get back to me.”
Yagell glanced up and down the corridor. They were in a well-lit, heavily used section of Prime, close to the center of operations. She walked down the corridor looking at the labels stenciled on the doors, found one that read Accounts Payable. She looked over her shoulder at her squad. “Stay with me.”
She opened the door and walked in like she owned the place, walked up to the startled receptionist and handed her the identity card. “Scan this,” she said.
The receptionist did so, and though she was already startled and intimidated by the AI uniforms, what she saw on her screen had the desired effect. “Yes, ma’am,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
“We need an empty office for a few minutes,” Yagell growled arrogantly. “I need a good comp terminal urgently. And I need privacy.”
“Certainly,” she said. “Mister Loring isn’t in today. You can use his office.”
She led them down a narrow corridor to a large, well-furnished office. Loring was obviously a bigshot. “This’ll do fine,” Yagell said. “Now don’t disturb us.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the receptionist said, and backed out of the room.
Yagell keyed her implants. “Captain, Yagell here. We’re holed up. Not sure how long we can sit tight, but we’re out of the way for the moment.”
“Good. McGeahn, get Jakobee, Notay and Hyer in circuit with me, Palevi and Yagell.”
“They’re already in, sir.”
“Good. Listen carefully. There’s been a change of plans. Yagell, when you take Central instead of trashing her take control of her. I want full control of Prime. Notay and Hyer, after you take the docks Hyer leads a squad of one hundred to reinforce Yagell. Terk, Bad, we’re going to leave you behind in control of Prime while we go dig the emperor out of Mare Crisia. I will come back for you, though, or die trying. M
y word, one marine to another.”
Palevi brought back a doctor and two nurses, none of whom were terribly willing. They were even less so when they saw the carnage in Maggie’s room. Palevi pointed the doctor and one nurse at Maggie. “Help her,” he growled. He dragged the other nurse to York, grumbled, “Help him. Forget the rest. They’re already dead.”
“How’d this happen?” the doctor demanded as he started cutting away Maggie’s blouse.
“You know who she is?” York asked as the nurse worked on him.
“Ya,” the doctor said. “She was one of Ballin’s officers.”
“Field prep it,” York barked at the nurse working on him. “I have to move.” To the doctor he said, “Ballin escaped, tried to break her out of here. Keep her alive, god damn it, or I’ll have your balls.”
“I’m trying,” the doctor pleaded. “I have to get her down to surgery.”
“Then do it,” York shouted.
The doctor hesitated. “I have to report this.”
York glanced at his own uniform, an AI uniform. “It’s already been reported.”
“Is it true?” the nurse asked York.
Whatever she was doing to him hurt like hell. “Is what true?”
“There’re rumors everywhere. There’s even a vidcast showing he isn’t guilty, that it was all a setup by the Admiralty Council. Is it true? Is he really the son of the old emperor?”
“Owe!” York grimaced. “Yes, it’s true. A bastard son.”
“Is he going to take over the empire?”
Now that was something York had never considered, not even in his wildest thoughts. York looked across the room at Palevi, and he saw the same question in the sergeant’s eyes. “No,” he said, and he felt an odd sort of calm descend upon him. “He doesn’t want to run the empire. He wouldn’t know how.”
Tathit’s implants spoke in Ballin’s voice. “Palevi and I are headed for a bar just off the docks, name of Down Time Charlie’s. We’ll hole up there. Notay, when we execute you’re going to have to fish us out of there . . .”
Tathit listened to the captain’s instructions with only half an ear, enough to satisfy herself she was no longer needed. Then it was time to wait. She was a marine, and marines were used to waiting. She’d learned long ago how to kill time without taking the edge off.
“Palevi and I are in place,” her implants said. “Everyone check in.”
The squad leaders all checked in quickly, then Ballin gave the command, “Okay, Yagell. Move out.”
Yagell acknowledged him, and quietly they filed out of the office. Tathit held back, held Sierka back too. The son-of-a-bitch cooperated, thinking that staying toward the back was the safest place for him. But as the last of her comrades stepped through the office door Tathit pulled Sierka back and closed it carefully.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
Saying nothing, she locked the door from the inside and turned to face him. She grinned at him. His eyes widened, he lifted his hands and stepped back. “No. Please no.”
She remembered begging him for mercy. She remembered Jainnie begging him for mercy. She just grinned back at him. He opened his mouth to scream, but she shut him up by kicking him in the groin. He grunted and doubled over. Using a plast tether she tied his hands behind his back, tied his feet together then cinched his hands to his feet. She tore off a piece of her tunic, jammed it into his mouth and covered his mouth with a strip of heavy maintenance tape. She’d come prepared.
He lay on the floor on his side, pleading with his eyes and mumbling through the gag. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a small power knife, touched the switch on its side and it hummed to life. His eyes widened even further, and he pissed himself. She grinned and said, “It’s payback time, Commander.”
Yagell marched directly down the center of the corridor and mumbled under her breath, “Thirty meters, Captain.” Directly in front of her the corridor ended at the blast reinforced shields of the last checkpoint. Two, bored AI guards stood casually on either side, rifles slung over their backs. To right and left were two security stations, each protected behind transparent plast shields broken only by gun ports. The only access to the security stations was from within Central, so their only objective was to get into Central. The corridor widened suddenly, allowing a better line of fire for both security stations. “Twenty meters, Captain.”
“Computer,” her implants said in Ballin’s voice. “Load, but do not execute, whore’s brat.”
The emotionless voice of the computer answered him. Loaded and standing by.
The two guards in the corridor looked her way, but seeing more AI uniforms they remained bored. “Fifteen meters, Captain.”
She decided to take the one on the right first. “Ten meters, Captain.”
The two guards were turning toward her as her implants said. “Computer, execute whore’s brat.”
She completed two more strides before it happened, and then suddenly the blast-reinforced shields slid aside with a loud whoosh. Startled, both guards looked back toward the shields, then back at her, but she already had her gun out. She fired as she dove toward the opening behind them, saw the one on the right crumple and fall. A bullet whizzed past her ear as she hit the deck sliding, and the one on the left went down. She slid into Prime Central on her side, caught movement out of the corner of her eye coming from the open hatchway to the security station. She popped the pin on a grenade, slid it along the floor into the security station. She was too close when it blew, too close.
CHAPTER 41: LOYALTIES SHIFT
Prime was constructed with acoustic baffling in its bulkheads, but it was still just a big hunk of metal and plast that transmitted sound like a kettledrum regardless of the efforts of her designers. Yagell’s grenade was too far distant to be heard inside Down Time Charlie’s, but Cinesstar’s guns, a ship’s guns, were a different matter altogether. York had ordered Jakobee to disable any weapon on any ship that might be turned on Cinesstar, specifically the AI cruiser docked in Prime’s Yard. Jakobee wasn’t using Cinesstar’s main batteries, which, from the inside would punch massive holes in Prime’s hull, but the secondaries and defensive stations were taking the cruiser apart piece by piece, and with Down Time Charlie’s close proximity to the docks, the resulting din was frightening. Everyone inside the dimly lit bar looked up from whatever they were doing and froze, for in all the centuries that Prime had been orbiting Terr a ship’s guns had never before been fired inside the station.
“Captain, Simorka here. Three dead, plus Yagell’s in bad shape, probably won’t make it. I’ve got six actives, we’ve got Prime Central, and we’re sealed up tight.”
York looked across the table at Palevi, silently mouthed the question, “Simorka?”
“The green second looie off Irriahm,” Palevi said. “The red head. She’s learned a bit.”
York keyed his implants. “Keep telemetry and com traffic normal. I don’t want anyone to know we’ve done this. Hyer, Simorka needs you.”
“Docks were a pushover, Captain. We’re on our way now, double time, experiencing no resistance. Ten minutes.”
York was about to ask where Notay was, but he got his answer when twenty marines in full combat kit burst through the establishment’s entrance and fanned out, weapon’s at ready. The patrons and employees of Down Time Charlie’s hit the deck, leaving York and Palevi the only two above table level. As York stood a sharp pain shot up his side, the room tilted crazily and he staggered. Palevi caught him and braced him against a wall. “You don’t look so good, Captain.”
The sergeant turned his head. “Medic,” he shouted in that drill-sergeant voice.
They laid York out on a table, and the medic cut away his tunic and removed the dressing they’d applied in the hospital. The medic frowned and shook his head. “This wound ain’t bad enough to cause this much bleeding.”
York gritted his teeth and growled through the pain, “Can you stop it?”
“Sure, Cap’em. Ju
st take a minute, but it bothers me.”
“And give me a kikker.”
The medic pressed the muzzle of an injector against his throat and pulled the trigger. York felt a slight sting, then a wave of nausea washed over him followed by intense anger. “Ahhh!” he shouted. “I hate that shit.”
But it did the job. The medic stopped the bleeding and York could stand on his own. The pain didn’t go away, but it became a distant thing. The marines formed a phalanx around him and Palevi, and they headed for Cinesstar.
“Captain on the bridge.”
York started barking orders before he was seated at his console. “Prepare to cast off. Cappik, what’s our status?”
“Full combat status, sir. Use her and abuse her.”
“Captain, Hyer here. We’ve secured Prime Central. When they want her back they’re gonna have one hell of a firefight on their hands.”
Move, move, don’t stop, don’t think, just move.
York surveyed the carnage in the navy yard. The AI cruiser was a mess; taken by surprise, with no shield power and at close range, even Cinesstar’s secondaries had been devastating. Jakobee, thinking on his own, had disabled every craft in the yard on the chance someone might try ramming Cinesstar. Shell craters from stray fire pocked the rest of the Yard with debris scattered everywhere, but for now the yard was silent and still.
Eldinow gingerly applied power to Cinesstar’s drive and eased her away from the dock. He turned her nose toward the star filled entrance to the yard and nudged her gently forward.
“Captain, Simorka here. Prime’s engineering section got a message off to Fleet, told them we’ve taken over Prime Central. They think we’re feddie saboteurs. Now they’re trying to isolate the command center’s operations access. I don’t think they can, in fact we have more control than they do, but the weapons stations on Prime got the word and won’t take orders from us. I’ve managed to keep the orbital weapons platforms isolated, so we still control them, but I don’t know how long that’ll last.”
