The three of them exchanged glances. It was Elizabeth who said, You can stop spin, Auntie Star?
“If I have to.”
Without Archy?
“Yes.”
How?
“Don’t ask. Your father and I put something together just in case.” Paddy gave a low whistle. Caleb said nothing, perhaps because from lack of familiarity with Ellfive he didn’t have a clear idea of what stopping spin entailed. “I don’t want to. We’ll never make commissioning if we have to clean up after a stop-spin, and there’s always the possibility that if we don’t restart spin soon enough that Ellfive could destabilize and begin to tumble.”
There was a brief silence. Caleb held up his rifle. “Stun or kill?”
“What?”
“You want the rifles set on stun or kill?”
“I didn’t know we had a choice.”
Things got a little quiet out. “Have you ever fired one of these rifles before, Star?” Caleb said, almost timidly, as if he was afraid of the answer.
“No,” I said. “The last rifle I shot was a twenty-two. On Terra.” I thought, and added, “I was nine.” I saw the identical horrified expressions on my three-man army’s faces and said defensively, “How hard can it be? You just pick it up and shoot, right?” I leaned down and grabbed one of them.
Caleb dodged back out of the way and plucked the thing out of my hands. “This end against the shoulder, this end does the shooting.”
“Oh. Okay. Where’s the trigger?”
Right here, Auntie Star. You put your hand here, on the grip, see? And this is the sight.
“Okay, I got it, I got it. When this is all over, Elizabeth, you’re going to tell me how you know all this stuff.” I sighted along the barrel.
The first thing that showed up in my scope was Rex, standing in the doorway with a covered box in each hand, from which a low humming could be heard.
“She’s going to be out in front, right?” Rex said to Caleb.
“Right,” Caleb replied.
“I was going to learn how to shoot the damn things,” I said belligerently, “I just never found the time.”
“Uh-huh,” Caleb said. “How much do you know, Rex? Where’s Lodge?”
Rex set down the boxes. “They hit us four hours ago, the Doughnuts, the Frisbee, the power station, and the hangarlock all at the same time. At first they were mostly here, but about an hour ago I saw a full company pull out of the hangarlock on a liberty shuttle and head down toward the South Cap.”
“The Frisbee,” I said, certain of it.
“Maybe, I haven’t heard a word from anyone there since they first notified me they were under attack. Lodge is here, Star. I think he’s in O’Neill Central. And he’s pulled Archy’s plug.”
“I know,” I said curtly. “Where have you been?”
“Hiding out in the hangarlock. There are still about two hundred Patrolmen in the North Cap area, I’d guess from the p-suits cluttering up the cargo bay.” He smiled, a distinctly nasty smile. “Their owners won’t get far when they put them back on. What have you got there?”
“Sonic rifles,” Caleb said, tossing him one.
“Son of a gun,” Rex said. “You bring them up with you?”
“Nah,” Caleb said, gesturing toward the open ceiling panel. “Star had them hidden here.”
“There are no weapons on Ellfive,” Rex mumbled as he strapped on a charge belt. “And while I’m boss here there never will be.”
I remembered my first day home. “Rex, you sneaky bastard, you were eavesdropping.”
“I was monitoring the situation,” he said, engrossed in his rifle.
“Here’s the setting,” Caleb said to me, pointing to the sonic rifle I held loosely. “Stun or kill?”
The sheer logistics of getting to where we were had left no room for fear or fatigue or rage, but now all my anger at this usurpation of my position, this rape of my very own Ellfive, was back and in full force. “Lodge has taken Ellfive from us,” I said, trying to steady my voice, and failing completely. I saw Elizabeth swallow hard. “We are here to take it back however we have to.” I set my rifle to kill.
“Ah, in that case—” Caleb said.
“What?”
His breathing was back to normal and his green eyes met mine with their usual bland expression. “I may have something in my office that might even the odds a trifle.”
More he would not say and mystified, we followed him down the hall on tiptoe, starting at every sound and probably making more noise in our attempt to be sneaky than we would have if we’d walked normally. As it turned out our precautions were unnecessary. We didn’t see or hear anyone, although I was puzzled by a distant thumping sound.
Inside Caleb’s office, he reached under his desk and tugged. Wc heard Velcro rip and he pulled out a Remington scattergun that shot exploding pellets. It was not a weapon as neat as a sonic rifle, but it was guaranteed to take the heart out of the most rabid crowd. It had an ammunition belt wrapped around its butt, which Caleb proceeded to unwind and buckle about his waist.
I stared from the scattergun to Caleb and back again. “You—” I caught myself and started over again in a lower voice. “ ‘Orchid stuff?’ Fifty-five kilograms of ‘orchid stuff?’ ”
“Most of it,” Caleb said, unabashed.
I moved up until we stood nose to nose. “You smuggled that weapon aboard this habitat, in direct contravention of my standing order?”
“Yes.”
“I love you,” I said.
Rex cleared his throat and said, “I’ve got something that’ll give us an edge, too.”
“What?”
He pointed toward the two boxes, which were still humming menacingly and which he had insisted on carrying to Caleb’s office, encumbered as he was by sonic rifle and a bandoleer of chargepaks. “Bees,” he said laconically.
I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. I could tell from Caleb’s and Paddy’s faces they weren’t either. “What did you say?” I said cautiously. “It sounded like ‘bees’?”
“Bees,” he confirmed. “It’s two hives from the fifth bee shipment—or is it the sixth?—anyway, I thought we could shake them up good and toss them into the middle of the first Patrol squad we see. Ought to scare them a little, especially since none of those guys has seen anything with more than two legs in years.”
“Those son-of-a-bitching bees,” I said, half in awe, half in admiration. “Rex, you are a genius.”
“And me picking this day to be leaving me shillelagh at home,” Paddy lamented.
Quelling a hysterical giggle, I said with more calm than I felt, “All right. Caleb, you’re the military expert. Any suggestions?”
He smacked an ammopack into the scattergun. “We don’t have time for a lesson in tactics. Let’s just hit them hard and fast and pray their force is scattered all over the habitat.”
At my nod we slid out into the corridor, armed to the teeth with sonic rifles, scattergun, beehives, and no brains. We were just far enough away from the door not to be able to run for cover when we heard the pad of running feet in the hallway behind us. In a single, synchronized movement that would have made a drill instructor proud, and would’ve got our tails shot off if there had been hostiles coming at us from the opposite direction, we turned and snapped our weapons to our shoulders.
The running feet belonged to Roger. His face wore its usual mournful expression; over his shoulder he carried three long, slender javelins, their points sharp, metal-tipped, and lethal-looking.
Nobody laughed. For a moment no one was able to speak. “Where did you get those spears, Roger?” Rex asked after a moment, with what seemed like genuine respect.
“I stopped by Owens Arena on the way here, and they’re javelins,” Roger said. “What are we all standing around here for? I haywired Demeter and found out Lodge is in your office. Let’s get him out of it before one of his idiot Patrolmen breaks a seal we can’t fix and all my plants start dying.”
&nbs
p; “What are you planning to do to Lodge with a javelin?” Caleb said, recovering his voice. “Outpoint him?”
“Roger does know how to use a javelin, Caleb,” I said diffidently. “He was at Riyadh the same year I was at Anchorage.”
Caleb rolled his eyes and grumbled something beneath his breath. We probably weren’t quite up to the New South African standard of guerrilla warfare.
We made it all the way to the door of the stairwell that opened into the corridor that ran past my office before hearing any shots. What we did hear sounded lively indeed, a mixture of dull thuds, sharp cracks, and a strange sizzling sound. We waited for a lull, our hearts thudding and our breath coming fast.
Caleb put one massive shoulder against the door to prevent it from sliding open. Several shots thudded into the corridor walls and a bitter burning odor seeped under the door. I nodded at him and he allowed the door to slide open a fraction. We put our eyes to the crack.
It took a moment to see through the smoky haze, thick with the sickening smells of singed cloth and burnt blood and charred flesh. The solar panels were out, replaced by the battery-powered emergency spots shining from every corner.
The first thing we saw was several very dead Patrolmen.
Caleb touched my arm and pointed silently. One of the bodies had a neat, clean, ten-centimeter hole punched right through his silver-and-black uniform, a hole that extended all the way through his chest, and he lay in a slowly widening pool of his own blood. I’d never seen a wound like that in my life and judging from Caleb’s expression neither had he. Similar smoldering holes could be seen scoring a haphazard pattern in the walls from floor to ceiling.
I put my mouth to Caleb’s ear and hissed, “What weapon leaves that kind of wound?”
He shook his head. His face had gone a little gray. He leaned up against the wall to jack a cartridge into the firing chamber of the scattergun. He wrapped the strap once around his wrist to brace the weapon against his arm. He looked at me, waiting.
My knees were shaking so hard I couldn’t force myself to take that first step. I was scared, I realized with something of a shock. I didn’t think I’d ever been quite so scared. Who said courage was not the absence of fear, but the taking of action in spite of that fear? All right, I thought, stiffening my spine, you’re scared. You’re still a leader. There’s a fight, lead the way.
Still I couldn’t force my legs to move. Caleb was watching me. “Want me to go first?”
I shook my head fiercely.
His mouth quirked up at one corner. “Then battle for freedom wherever you can.”
I almost laughed. “And if not shot or hanged you’ll get knighted,” I agreed, and was able to move at last.
The most courageous action I have ever taken in my life was stepping out into that corridor after seeing the victim of a ten-centimeter hole punch, but I did it. As cautiously and silently as I could with legs that threatened to give out with every step. I plastered myself to the wall, pressing up against it until I could feel reassuring firmness on the backs of my trembling knees, sucking in my gut, trying to make myself as small a target as was possible. Never have I regretted my size more. I inched down the corridor, and peeked around the curve.
Ten meters from where I cowered what looked to my fearful eyes like an entire division of Patrolmen was deployed around the door of my office, their sights trained on the door. There wasn’t time to wonder why they were facing toward it instead of away, although I remember thinking it an odd way to post a guard.
My second thought was one of sharp elation. With this much of their force in one place, Lodge had to be nearby. I slithered back into the stairwell and beckoned to Rex. He leaned his sonic rifle up against the wall and carried the two hives to the door. Picking them up one at a time by their handles, he whacked them against the stair rail, once, twice, three times. The humming increased in volume and menace. He grinned at me and showed me how to crack the lids. Each carrying a hive, we slide out into and down the corridor.
I looked at Rex. He nodded. Together, we ripped the lids off the hives and threw them as far as we could. I didn’t wait to see what happened; I hustled back to the stairwell as fast as my feet would take me with Rex pounding behind me all the way.
We rearmed ourselves and stood against the wall, catching our breath and listening. At first there was nothing to hear but silence. Then I heard someone say, “What the hell?” and then a woman screamed, and all at once there were frantic shrieks filling the corridor.
Caleb was shaking with suppressed laughter. I said, “Elizabeth, you stay behind. When the fighting stops, if you don’t hear me call you to come out, you go back up to the roof and fly home at once, do you understand?”
She nodded, her eyes bright with excitement.
It wasn’t necessary to sneak down the corridor this time. An armored column could have rumbled up and the Patrolmen wouldn’t have taken any notice. They were hopping around as if they had St. Vitus’s dance en masse. They had abandoned their weapons to slap frantically at the air and their bodies, colliding with each other and the walls with panic-stricken shouts. One of them ran past without even seeing us, waving his hands around his head in a frantic attempt to keep off a determined cloud of bees that would not be eluded.
To this day I don’t understand why the bees didn’t attack us. Maybe they did and we were too busy to notice, or maybe those bees were just Ellfive bees to the core and hostile to the silver-and-black by instinct. At any rate, the Patrol officer in charge of the squad was the first to realize our presence. He dived for his laser pistol and the fun was over.
Sonic rifles were silent in discharge, and unless the victim made unpleasant noises when his autonomic system short-circuited he died without uttering a sound. The Patrol officer folded up with a look of surprise on his face that will stay with me for the rest of my life. “Good shot, Star!” Paddy cheered, and I looked down at my sonic rifle as if I’d never seen it before.
I looked up again and saw the Patrol corporal pinned to the wall with a still-quivering javelin through his throat, and Roger’s face smooth out with satisfaction. Rex and Paddy were firing steadily as body after body slumped to the floor.
A woman with a chevron on her sleeve raised herself into a kneeling position and sighted coolly along the barrel of her pistol. A hank of my hair floated away and I grabbed for a piece of floor. Behind me I heard a kind of a thwock. There was a hideous scream as her face bloomed with a hundred tiny red flowers that merged and melted to run down off her chin. Again Caleb fired and two more clawed at their throats, gurgling. After his third shot the Patrolmen fell back in disorder, down the corridor, around the corner, and out of range, and The Battle for the Boss’s Office was over.
I lay where I was for a moment, forehead resting on the stock of my rifle. Finally I drew my legs beneath me and drew myself slowly to my feet. Every muscle and bone in my body ached. Elizabeth waved at me from beside the stairwell door. Her little face looked as if she were trying very hard not to be sick. Caleb, Paddy, Roger, and Rex were all unhurt. The blood lust pounding through my veins eased and I was afraid I was going to throw up. I set my teeth and shoved the headless body of the woman with the chevron to one side. I flattened myself against the wall next to my office door. Caleb was right behind me and Roger behind him. Paddy and Rex took up positions on the opposite wall with their backs to each other.
I waved Elizabeth back into the stairwell. She went, and I shouted, “Lodge! It’s Star Svensdotter and I’ve got an army out here! There’s no way out! Throw down your weapons and come out one at a time!”
There was a momentary silence that lasted about a year, and then someone cleared his throat. “No need to be so pushy, Star,” I heard a familiar voice say. “Come on in.”
My jaw dropped. Caleb started to grin. I straightened up and went through the door, where I found myself staring into the ten-centimeter maw of a shoulder-held optics cannon, the kind used for core sampling on Luna. I didn’t know where
she had found it but it lent a great deal of emphasis to anything Charlie might care to say. I knew now where the holes on those bodies in the hall had come from.
“About time you got here,” Simon said, his feet propped up on my desk, a standard-issue Patrol laser pistol dangling carelessly from one hand. “I was getting ready to put in a call to Jorge to ask him about the mysterious Plan A.”
You make as much of your own luck as you can and then you pray to the Luck Fairy. She must have been wired in on a tight beam to me because Grayson Cabot Lodge the Fourth was there in my office, too. His dignity was ruffled by the fact that he was bound back to back with Emily Holbrook Castellano, who herself appeared less than thrilled by this proximity to her hero. Half a dozen Patrolmen wearing officer insignia sat on the floor with their legs forced into the lotus position and their hands clenched on top of their heads.
“Elizabeth!” I called. “Come!”
Elizabeth streaked through the door and Caleb locked it behind her. All at once the muscles in my arms were unable to take the sonic rifle’s weight and I stood it shakily against the desk. My family was safe and whole and right where I could see every one of them. I took my first real breath since Luna.
Simon looked the six of us over with a quizzical expression, and said politely, “An army?”
Charlie folded Elizabeth in her arms and hugged her fiercely. Over the top of her daughter’s tiny head she shot me a look that should have flayed the skin from my bones. “You brought my daughter into a war zone?”
I made her bring me, Mom, Elizabeth said, and ran to her father.
There was a little buzzing sound and Charlie let out a yell. “What’s that son-of-a-bitching bee doing in here?”
Listen, Elizabeth said. Other soldiers are coming, Dad. I can hear them.
Second Star (Star Svensdotter #1) Page 18
