Ariane’s jaw clenched at the scraping sounds; then she winced as she felt the module jerked about roughly by the manipulator booms.
“Aether’s Touch,” she said, in response to Tahir’s questioning look.
Tahir looked shocked. Apparently, the idea of a ship following them never entered his head.
It took two minutes to get them into the large sample bay and secure their capsule. To her, it felt like hours and she cringed with every metallic screech, wondering if fragile joints on the manipulators were being damaged. At long last, the comm indicator lit.
“Whoever’s at control better haul ass toward Sophia One!” she said quickly. Since Matt would have brought them in without a scratch and was probably still on the Pilgrimage , she had to be talking to Joyce. She didn’t think anybody else could have gotten past Aether’s Touch security, bolstered by Muse 3.
“Ari, are you in need of medical care?”
She froze. The voice was Muse 3. While the AI could certainly run the autopiloting software, she didn’t believe Beta Priamos would have released the ship under AI direction—unless it blew the ship away from the station, meaning there was damage. We won’t be able to dock until we fix the clamps.
“No, Muse, we’re not hurt. We have a—” She decided she better be specific. “We have a prisoner. And, ah, Muse? Is Joyce on the control deck?”
“No, Ari. The sample bay has been pressurized so you may leave the evacuation module.”
This explained the clumsy use of the manipulator boom; Muse 3 was only able to use one manipulator to retrieve the module. The second manipulator was inside the forward sample bay and had to be operated by human hands.
“Open it.” She gestured and pointed the stunner at Tahir, who moved to the hatch. While he opened the module, she ran through some instructions for Muse 3, realizing that the AI would be saving her a hefty and possibly debilitating radiation dose. “Muse, set the autopilot for maximum burn toward Sophia One, with final destination behind the planet. Have the autopilot plot a high-gee braking maneuver as close to the planet as possible. Don’t set any economy parameters—we need to get into the protection of that magnetosphere as soon as possible.”
“I understand, Ari.”
She motioned, indicating Tahir should precede her through the small sample bay. She felt the ship begin its boost toward Sophia I, using the gravity generator to bleed off gee to N-space so they didn’t get smeared across the bulkheads. What a miracle N-space was, that it could swallow TD waves and move gravitational force both ways. Sort of like an interstellar energy dumping ground.
“Where are we going? There’s nowhere we’ll be safe.” Tahir protested as she pushed him up a level and along a corridor.
“We’ve got a protected data array compartment. This is a second-wave prospector and its most precious cargo is its data.” She wasn’t going to bother answering any more of his muttered questions. He was partially right; the normal layers of directional polymer, containing specially oriented superconducting strands combined with the normal layers of composite and aerogel, wouldn’t protect against the bursts of radiation they’d receive from heavy coronal flaring.
She used her thumbprint to unlock the array compartment. Tahir stepped through the hatch and turned around in the small space, looking dismayed.
“This is going to be a tight space for three of us, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Three? Oh—we’ll fit okay. Muse will be down in a moment. He’s small.” She was tired and making mistakes. Tahir couldn’t be witness to the illegal use of an AI.
She closed the hatch behind her and looked about. She hadn’t been in this compartment since Athens Point. Matt had puttered about in here, but it was pristine as always. To her left, the console ran along the entire side of the compartment, which was barely two meters long. When inactive, the console was a bare counter with two undermounted stools and plenty of empty wall space—all covered with flexible displayable surface so that she or Matt could have hundreds of view ports open at one time.
“I don’t think I’ve seen this much crystal before, other than in a tour of a vault.” The right wall had distracted Tahir, where sapphire-shielded edges of the crystal arrays peeked out of their sockets and glowed in patterns.
“That’s what Aether’s Touch is. It can be fitted with nearly half a vault of crystal.” She glanced down as her fingers changed the setting on her stunner. “Think of this ship as one big spacefaring data array, operated by two humans and carrying around bunches of sensor equipment and bots to gather data.”
“Are you going to cut power to these?” His face was turned away, so he didn’t see her raise the stunner and press the trigger.
“Sorry,” she said as he fell against the back wall and quivered down to slump on the floor. “You ask too many questions.”
She regretted having to stun him, again, and at such a high setting, but she couldn’t have him learning about Muse 3.
“Muse Three?” She told the AI which systems to shut down and which angle to orient the ship to have the most protection from solar radiation, using the Penrose Fold referential engine to their advantage. She had the AI echo its autopilot settings to the array room so she could double-check them; they were on the right course, using the ship’s top boost that could bleed real-space gee to N-space through their gravity generator.
She also had to protect Muse 3. “Unload all the noncritical routines that you can from temporary memory.”
“Yes, Ari.”
She safed the stunner and strapped it to her leg, still easily accessible. Sitting with her back against the closed hatch, she relaxed.
“What the hell?” Matt gasped.
He was still gripped by the ship, but at least his face was uncovered. The room appeared empty and smaller than before. He moved his eyes back and forth, but his angle of view was too tight to see the whole room.
“Matt? You okay?” David Ray’s voice came from his left. “I can’t see anything. There’s goo over my eyes.”
“Yeah, I’m fine . . .” Matt’s voice trailed off as he saw Warrior Commander extrude from the wall across from him. The Minoan appeared more as a growth from the wall, than from within the wall. Its horns still caused the ceiling to pucker up to avoid it, but Matt thought Warrior Commander looked different. He couldn’t identify the difference exactly; was it taller, was its torque different, or did the set of its shoulders look unusual?
Warrior Commander strode to the center of the room, still within Matt’s view. The center platform suddenly rose from the floor; only then did Matt realize he’d missed its presence. While the body language of the Minoans, according to Terran somaural experts, wasn’t open to interpretation, Matt thought the jerky, strong movements and the set of the shoulders indicated anger.
“Warrior Commander?” he ventured.
The tall dark figure wheeled around to look at him. Was it surprised? Why? Warrior Commander held a gloved hand out parallel to the floor, above the platform. A console rose and the Minoan’s hand rested on it. After a moment, Warrior Commander nodded slowly.
“Can you release us?” Matt asked.
Warrior Commander turned back to the console, above which a three-dimensional hologram showed part of the Pilgrimage with the wartlike extension of the Minoan ship. They had apparently docked. The warrior reached to the beads dripping from its torque. With a quiet slurp, the walls released Matt by pushing him outward and into a standing position. The same happened to David Ray, to his left.
“What just happened, Warrior Commander?” David Ray asked. “Was Knossos-ship attacked?”
They waited for the answer while Warrior Commander appeared to evaluate what the console was displaying.
“Someone violated the 2092 Weapons Testing Treaties by sending a temporal-distortion wave into what you call nous-space. Do you know the violators?” Using a rougher voice than before, the tall Minoan took a long step toward them.
Matt’s mouth opened in surprise. The warrior,
big and covered in flowing black, was so much taller when it came within arm’s reach. Matt quickly stepped back. Temporal-distortion wave? Only TD weapons generated those and if someone had such a weapon here in G-145—somebody’s in trouble, by the looks of things. He didn’t want to think about what the Minoans might do about a treaty violation.
“We don’t know anything about a TD wave. Do we still have the buoy?” David Ray was thinking faster than Matt.
Matt closed his mouth and berated himself silently. He hadn’t realized they might be the next Ura-Guinn. TD weapons were the only way humankind could destroy a Minoan time buoy—not that any sane person would want to do that.
“The buoy cannot be assessed until we can run diagnostics. It may still be operational, because the violators pushed most of the temporal distortion into nous-space,” Warrior Commander said, after a pause.
“Where’s Contractor Adviser?” Matt asked.
“Contractor Adviser will not be activated until Pilgrimage-ship is secured.” Warrior Commander reached into the wall and withdrew its baton.
Matt tried to remember where Warrior Commander’s baton had been when all the weirdness started. He looked around, puzzled, as the Minoan stalked toward the wall, which sighed and opened.
“Wait! We have to go with you.” David Ray’s plea, plus scuttling close behind the Minoan and jumping into the opening, stopped Warrior Commander.
When Matt saw that the opening held and the wall didn’t squeeze David Ray, he stepped forward to stand beside the counselor. Looking past Warrior Commander, he expected to see the hallway by which they’d first entered. Instead, they entered a semicircular room on the rounded side. It was large enough that the eight waiting guardians took up half the room’s volume. He shook his head. He’d lived on habitats and ships all his life, but Knossos-ship confused him. It obviously had the capability to alter itself.
Warrior Commander looked down at David Ray. Matt thought the Minoan seemed a bit peeved by the delay. If so, there was nothing to lose by pushing for everything.
“We’ll need weapons too.” Matt pointed at the batons held by the guardians.
David Ray made a disapproving sound in his throat.
“Might as well ask.” Matt shrugged. It couldn’t hurt, could it? He squirmed as the silence grew, however, and when he looked up at Warrior Commander, he wished he hadn’t been such a smart-ass. They waited.
“This will work temporarily, and only on Pilgrimage-ship. It will harm only evolved, multicellular organisms. If you wish, you may use it in hand-to-hand combat.” Warrior Commander reached into the wall, withdrew a baton of the size used by the guardians, and handed it to Matt. “Knossos-ship will not be responsible for your safety, or the safety of the Pilgrimage-ship crew members.”
“What about me?” David Ray raised his eyebrows.
“You are not qualified with projectile or stun weapons, and you have no hand-to-hand training. What can I provide you?”
“Then I’ll stay with—er, Owner of Aether Exploration.” David Ray looked at Matt, who shrugged again. He’d taken training classes, at Ari’s recommendation, but he wasn’t placing much hope on two-year-old instruction. He wondered how the Minoans knew about the training.
The warrior turned toward the guardians. Without any overt communication, the Minoans lined up and strode through an opening in the wall.
“That’s not the same Warrior Commander. It even sounds different than the one we first met,” Matt said softly.
“I noticed. I’m wondering if the first one got killed or destroyed—but right now, we’d better follow.” David Ray ran for the same spot where the last guardian disappeared.
Matt winced, expecting David Ray to rebound off the wall. Instead, the counselor disappeared into something with the same consistency as the gelatinous goo they swam through to get into the ship. He sighed and followed.
“This sucks. As weapons officers, we should get the exciting jobs during boarding missions—but because this is a civilian habitat and we have all these commandos instead of our normal personnel, we have to sit around and do nothing.” When Lieutenant Maurell sulked, his face looked disturbingly like Oleander’s youngest brother, who was twelve.
“I’m kind of tired after doing nothing,” Oleander said mildly. She queried her implant with her slate, noted the level of bright was falling in her bloodstream, and opted to take her next dose early.
“Oh. I meant that I’m doing nothing.” He looked sideways at her. “Sorry, forgot you’ve already done a shift. But if we were boarding a military vessel, one of us would be on the bridge and the other would be leading—”
“Lieutenant Oleander?” boomed a fully armored commando who moved to stand at attention in front of her. She looked up at his faceplate, a good thirty centimeters above hers. His equipment, a self-sealing environmental suit with armor and exoskeleton, helped him tower over her. She and Maurell were equipped with standard AFCAW-issue suits, which were tougher than civilian, self-sealing environmental suits but had armor only in the torso area.
“Master Sergeant Pike?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The commando pushed controls on his forearm and the faceplate swiveled back. His face was hard, with lines down the sides of his mouth. He had squint lines at the corner of his eyes that she thought could be laugh lines, under other circumstances. Right now, Sergeant Pike didn’t look like he ever laughed and his expression discouraged even the suggestion of frivolity.
“We’re ready to open the final doors, ma’am.” He jerked his head toward the airlock, where two of his people worked to force the Pilgrimage’s external side open. As usual, the outer airlocks had no windows. “We have no idea what they’ve got on the other side.”
“Where do you want us, Sergeant?”
Pike looked at her silently in a measuring manner, so she added, “Don’t worry about asking us to stay out of your way.”
One of his eyebrows rose and the corners of his eyes crinkled a little. “All right, Lieutenants—you can watch our backside. We need an alarm, ASAP, if we get flanked or cut off from the Bright Crescent.”
Lieutenant Maurell blew his breath out audibly, sounding exasperated. When Oleander and Pike looked at him, he reddened and looked down at the deck. “Okay, okay. Just don’t call me ‘son,’ and I can deal with this.”
The crinkles deepened at the corners of Pike’s eyes. “You’ve been issued combination combat rifles that do double duty as high-performance stunners, and yes, I checked your qualification records before approving the issue. I suggest you keep the weapons set to stunner. Orders of engagement say no firing at civilians unless necessary and no aggressive moves toward Minoans. We don’t know if they think we’re the good guys.”
“Control deck is first priority?” Oleander asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
There were exclamations on the team channel and a woman’s voice overrode them with, “Sergeant Pike, this is Greco. We’ve got smoke.”
Pike turned toward the doors and pushed past commandos waiting on the shipside of the airlock. Most of them had been leaning against the bulkheads, bored, as their postures suggested. Everybody, Lieutenants Oleander and Maurell included, straightened and jostled to see into the airlock.
Pike’s team had forced their way to the Pilgrimage side of the airlock. Through the interior windows was an obvious haze. If there was smoke, that meant fire, which space crews feared almost as much as vacuum.
Matt fell to his knees after pushing through the goo that the Minoans used to keep their ship sealed. The lingering stench made him retch. David Ray was standing, leaning over, and gagging, with his hands on his knees. Their noses had suddenly started working again.
Once they could move on, Matt noticed the Minoan ship had extended a fleshy tunnel into the Pilgrimage, forcing open all the airlocks. They walked out into the eerily empty docking ring. There was a light, smoky haze that might have made Matt panic and hit the fire alarms, but when he sniffed, he smelled nothing. If
there was a sense crèche-get trusted implicitly, it was their sense of smell.
“Where’d the guardians go?” Matt whispered. “What’s hanging in the air?”
“They went toward the control deck—fast.” David Ray looked around. “Let’s hope everybody’s hunkered down in quarters or somewhere safe. I want to get to Lee’s lab.”
“Let me test this first.” Matt frowned as he examined the baton closely. It was about as long as his arm and there were two studs about three-fourths of the way from one side. There were two little nibs on the other end, which he took to be sights.
“Be careful. You don’t even know which end fires.” David Ray looked impatiently around.
Making sure that neither end pointed toward an “evolved multicellular organism,” Matt arranged the baton so the studs were closest to his hand and pressed the nearest stud. Smoke, or rather haze, gushed out the other end and expanded so fast that they couldn’t see more than a meter down the hall. Strangely, they weren’t coughing and they couldn’t smell anything.
“Well, that explains things, doesn’t it?”
“Come on, we’ve got to get to the labs.”
“One minute.” Carefully, Matt pressed the other stud and a thin yellow line of light came out the other end, quite visible in the haze. He released the stud quickly.
“Let’s go—somebody’s coming.” David Ray pulled his arm and they went down an inward spoke hall. Matt heard the sound of boots, quite a few of them, moving at a jog in military precision.
The footsteps passed them by, continuing toward the control deck. Equipment squeaked and hissed in the hazy main corridor and Matt was happy to leave.
“I think the isolationists wanted something specific when they boarded Pilgrimage. Like our fertilization and genetic labs, our crèches.” As he whispered, David Ray was moving quietly, pausing at corners.
The emptiness of the corridors was beginning to spook Matt. Where were the other seven hundred people on this ship? He scuttled behind David Ray, leaning around the older man with the baton ready. This reminded him too much of a v-play, such as Temple of Terror, where he felt the metal of the “weapon” from the v-play gloves, much like this baton felt.
Vigilante Page 30
