Permanence

by Karl Schroeder

  This time Rue took up position behind a stack of boxes and Sola went to the door. He was three steps from it when it flew open. A crimson flash caused her faceplate to polarize momentarily; then she saw Sola tumbling backward, his chest smoking. Another flash and the boxes in front of her exploded.

  Rue rolled across the floor, firing her taser as she came back to a crouch. Sparks flew around the doorway, then someone leaped through it. The man was in a pressure suit and held an antipersonnel laser.

  The laser looked just like the one she'd seen dangling from an arm of the submarine back on Oculus. This might even be the man who'd shot Max.

  Rue jumped to one side just as he fired. She fired back, raising another cascade of sparks from the boxes where he now crouched. Even a near miss with the taser might short out his suit's systems, leaving him helpless— but she was having no luck.

  Fire engulfed her hand. The taser exploded and the slap against her palm spun Rue around. She fell back against the smoking remains of the table.

  He stepped out from behind the boxes, between her and the inner door now. The door opened and another figure dressed in an R.E. suit entered.

  He glanced back, then casually took aim at Rue with the laser. She flinched and scarlet light blinded her.

  There was no pain. As her faceplate depolarized she saw the man in front of her collapse to his knees and then fall on his face. The back of his suit was a blackened mess.

  The soldier who had fired stepped over his body and knelt in front of Rue.

  "Are you all right?" The voice was that of a woman. Rue shook her head in confusion.

  The soldier reached up and undogged her own faceplate. "It's me, Mina!"

  Mina. This was the woman Rebecca had begun seeing when they were aboard the Envy. She was one of Crisler's people, but obviously not on his side.

  Suddenly Rue understood why Rebecca had left Oculus with Crisler. "She came back for you," she stammered.

  "Come on," said Mina. She extended her hand to help Rue to her feet. "I've been managing to swing shifts so I could be with your people," she said. "It paid off, I guess."

  Rue stooped to examine Sola. His eyes were open and lifeless.

  She forced herself to turn away. With difficulty she made sense of what Mina had just said to her. "Are they here?" she asked.

  "See for yourself." Mina pointed to the inner doorway. She could see two people standing on the other side. Rue ran to the door.

  Rebecca and Blair both ran forward when they recognized her. They were alone in this small room. Both began talking at once and Rebecca grabbed onto Rue's gloved hand like a free-faller reaching for a safety line. A hot stab of pain in her hand made Rue pull back. She looked down and realized with a shock that her right glove was burned and fused. Waves of pain were radiating from her hand.

  "I've been shot," she heard herself say. She had to keep her priorities, she reminded herself. "Where are Corinna and Evan?"

  "They're aboard the cycler mother," said Mina. "Crisler's using them as explorers."

  The room was spinning. "Rebecca, my people are outside," Rue said. "Get them…" She couldn't manage the rest, as everything blurred and roared together. For a few seconds she was sure she was going to pass out and she sat down heavily on the deck waiting for it. The tide slowly receded and she looked up to see the four remaining members of her squad crowding into the room.

  This place had been set up as a prison cell. The walls were cut off near the top, as elsewhere on this level, but here they'd been stapled into the folds of hull material. There were four cots, a small table and a footlocker.

  Blair was grimly rummaging through the locker. Rue's men clustered around Sola; he was obviously dead.

  Rebecca was crying. "Rue, you're alive," she said. "They told me you'd drowned."

  "How did you get here?" asked Blair. He was filling a satchel.

  "It's a long story," she said, trying to smile. "Are those your records, Blair?"

  He nodded to Rue, looking grimly relieved. "They were going to wipe it all. All my work." He had recorded everything, from the day they left Erythrion to Rue's discovery of the Lasa habitat builder at Jentry's Envy.

  "What do we do about Sola?" asked Barendts sharply. "Leave him?"

  They had discussed this before the mission. Casualties might have to be left behind; these men were here because they had accepted that risk. Now that they were in the situation, though, Rue found herself shaking her head.

  "We take him as far as we can," she said. "If we have to abandon him to escape, then that's what we'll do. But I'm not leaving anyone behind if I don't have to."

  "Have you taken over the ship?" asked Rebecca.

  "Not yet," she said. "That's next on the agenda."

  Mina nodded sagely. "So those are your ships out there."

  "Yeah." Rue waved one of her men over. "I'm hurt, can you give me something?"

  All four of them were suddenly looming over her, scrambling in their belt pouches for analgesic patches. "Your glove's been wrecked," Barendts pointed out. "We'll have to seal it."

  "Go ahead."

  He sprayed the glove with a plastic aerosol that hardened on contact. Meanwhile Rue fumbled her faceplate open with her other hand and let someone apply a patch to her forehead, which was the only exposed piece of skin large enough. She was sure she looked like a dolt now, with a military-black square on her brow like a little target. But there was nothing for it and anyway, the pain was receding now like a half-remembered dream.

  "Crisler'll have to surrender now," said Mina. She took Rebecca's hand. "You're sure the halo'll have me?"

  "Of course."

  "I know you must have taken a cycler to Maenad," said Mina. "What I can't figure out, though, is how you managed to bring a big enough force with you to be able to take over Crisler's other ships. And you faked the transmissions perfectly— I mean, you even got the voices and faces right."

  Rue and all her men turned to stare at Mina. "What?" said Rue.

  "Admiral Crisler relayed the chatter through inscape," said Mina. "Half an hour ago— we watched the video feed from here, from the freighter and the other cruisers…" She stopped. "Why are you staring at me like that?"

  Rue got to her feet. "What freighter? What cruisers? How many?"

  "The… the three cruisers. You know, the old decommissioned ones Crisler had refitted and moved to Maenad."

  Rue looked at her men. They looked back expectantly.

  Sola was gone. It was up to Rue now; she would have to improvise. "Plans have changed. Everybody, get ready to abandon ship. Mina, tell me more about these ships."

  Mina looked confused now. "They came out of hyperdrive an hour ago, just twenty thousand klicks away. Like I said, a freighter and three decommissioned cruisers. Crisler managed to get the rights to them after they were liberated from the rebels a couple years ago. They signaled us right away. I thought you must have been aboard them, I mean that you faked out Crisler… But if those aren't your ships, where did you come from?"

  "Ma'am," said one of the soldiers, "we can't abandon ship. We'll be fried as soon as we leave the hull."

  "Maybe not," said Rue. "I have an idea. Anyway, Crisler's got reinforcements coming. If we stay here…"

  "But our boys will take them out," said the soldier.

  Rue checked the time in her suit's HUD. "They appeared much closer to here than we did," she said. "Crisler's ships may reach us before our interceptors reach them. In which case, he's got both us and the construction shack as hostages. No, we've got to get back to our own ship and get out of here."

  But we'll go through the shack if we can, she told herself. I won't leave Corinna and Evan behind if there's any way to get to them.

  * * *

  TEN MINUTES LATER they crowded into an airlock above the collapsed levels of the habitat. They had encountered no more resistance on their way here; it seemed that Crisler's people were spread out, perhaps mostly in the construction shack. If there was a
way to get up past the hub and down to the other habitat without being lasered, they might well have been able to take over the Banshee. The hardened defenses of the starship were too strong, though.

  Rue undogged the cover over a small quartz window and gawked up through it. "Yeah, there they are. See?" She stepped back and let Barendts look.

  "Big black plates," he said. "Halfway up the cables. What the hell are those?"

  "Antimatter generators," said Rue. She'd heard all about this stuff from a scientist who'd chatted her up shortly after they embarked for the Envy. "The Banshee can direct the particle stream coming in from the ramscoop through those tungsten plates. The radiation mostly just heats the plates on the way through, but a tiny fraction gets converted to antimatter and collected with magnets. That way, the Banshee can replenish her antimatter supply just by, say, orbiting close around a star and turning on the ramscoop."

  "So?" said Barendts. "What's the point?"

  "The point is those plates are designed to be put in the way of energy beams. The Banshee's lasers aren't going to get through one."

  Barendts nodded. "So if we cut one loose…"

  "Exactly. Do you think we can get there outside?"

  Barendts shook his head. "We'll have to go up the elevator shaft." The shaft was an inflated tunnel that paralleled the cables, joining the habitat to the central hub of the ship.

  "All right, let's do it."

  They piled out of the airlock. A set of elevator doors faced the airlock in the attic of the habitat. Two of her men set to prying the doors open.

  Blair was pacing up and down, trying to get comfortable in his suit. They'd taken suits from the tasered R.E. soldiers for both Blair and Rebecca. Blair's was too small.

  Something behind the door broke and they slid open. Barendts jogged over and stuck a mirror on a pole out into the shaft. He examined it for a few seconds, then said, "There are autoguns in there. Antipersonnel tasers, I think."

  "Can we take them out?" she asked. If not, they were stuck here.

  "Simplicity itself," said Barendts. He laid the mirror pole down on the deck so that the mirror was inside the shaft, righted it so the mirror pointed upward and unslung his laser rifle. "Guys, come here. Sight off the mirror."

  Rue was amazed at their ingenuity: they proceeded to shoot up the shaft by bouncing their shots off the mirror on the pole. The tasers inside the shaft had no way to shoot back, except at the pole itself. Several did just that, sending cascades of sparks back along it. Barendts and his men were standing well back and they ignored the jolts.

  Sparks and bits of flaming metal fell down from above. After a minute, smoke drifted down as well. Then there came one of those rushes of air like a god inhaling and the smoke vanished. The pole twirled and would have fallen into the shaft if Barendts hadn't grabbed it. He peered into the mirror for a long while, then said, "That's all of them. Let's go."

  Climbing the shaft was simplicity itself. There was a ladder inset into the wall. Barendts and two of his men went first, then Rue, with the others behind her.

  The shaft towered up to a seemingly infinite height. It was almost half a kilometer to the hub from here. But as Rue climbed, her weight lessened and it became easier the farther she went. About halfway up, Barendts said, "Elevator coming."

  The other men swore. "What is it?" asked Rebecca. "Reinforcements?"

  "Probably," said Barendts. "Captain, may I have your permission to get ugly on this wall here?"

  "I thought you were going to put up one of those inflatable airlocks and drill through inside it."

  "The elevator would run over it. Yes or no? It's coming!"

  "Yes!"

  Barendts swung out from the ladder and slammed a disk-shaped charge against the wall of the elevator shaft. It stuck and he swung back. "Everybody hold on!"

  The explosion was deafening, even through the suit. The ladder shook and tried to throw Rue off. She held on and looked up again to see smoke swirling and disappearing into a miraculous gale that had sprung up in the shaft.

  Above, the elevator car had stopped moving. Rue could see the shapes of hatches in its floor. If those could be opened from the inside, then she and her people were about to be lasered.

  "Come on!" shouted Barendts, his voice way too loud in Rue's headphones. He swung out and around again, but this time he was holding onto a line that he'd tied to the ladder. He disappeared into the gale. The man behind him followed an instant later.

  There was no time to think. Rue grabbed the line and swung out. The wind caught her instantly and pushed her straight at a ragged black hole in the side of the shaft. She fell sideways out into night.

  Barendts had calculated perfectly. As the wind vanished into vacuum around her, Rue fell against the outside of the shaft. Looming over her was one of the petallike tungsten plates. It hid any view of the hub above— so the lasers there could not touch her. One by one the others shot out of the bright tear in the side of the shaft and Barendts's men caught them. When they were all hanging from the lip of the tear— not so hard, since gravity was much reduced here— Barendts clambered up and began gluing handholds to the underside of the plate.

  Rue could hear several persons' ragged breathing coming through the com lines. She said, "Everybody up now. We're going to have to use our suits' reaction jets to fly this thing. When Barendts cuts us loose we're going to fall, but coriolis effect will take us away from the habitat. Our main task is to keep the plate from spinning. If we cut loose at the right time we'll be aimed at the horizon of the shack and if we can get over that, we're safe." One after another, they climbed up. "No, don't grab with your hands," said Rue as Mina clutched at one of the new grips on the plate. "Put your feet through them. The plate is going to be our new 'down' when we cut loose. We'll fly it like those guys on Earth used to fly on ocean waves. What did they call it? — surfing."

  She demonstrated. Soon they were all hanging feet-down off the plate, with the glowing habitat below and the stars streaming past under that. "Ready," she said to Barendts.

  He had attached another charge to the gimbal joint that connected the plate to the shaft. Now he unslung his laser again and prepared to laser the charge.

  "Ten, nine, eight, seven…" Barendts was counting down. As the Banshee slowly spun, he was lining up so that centripetal force would throw them at the shack. "…three, two, one—"

  He fired the laser and a silent explosion silhouetted him. The plate shook over Rue's feet— but nothing else happened.

  "Oh, shit," said Barendts. It hadn't worked.

  "Everybody shoot the joint!" shouted Rue. The others unslung their lasers; she saw one rifle fall away; it arced out over the stars for a few seconds before vanishing in a flash of light. Destroyed by the hub lasers.

  "Wait," said Barendts, "We have to line up another throw at the shack. We'll miss it if we drop now!"

  "Too late!" Rue saw shadows moving inside the ragged hole in the side of the shaft. Whoever had been in the elevator car, they were out now and coming.

  Bright spots appeared on the gimbal joint and in a few seconds metal was flaring intolerably bright. I hope the joint's not tungsten, too, she thought.

  Without warning they were falling. Everybody seemed to be shouting or screaming, up turned down, the habitat whipped by and the stars were tumbling past—

  "Jets forward!" shouted Rue as she brought up her own reaction pistol. She fired and several others did too. The plate wobbled under her feet, the Banshee's cables and shaft came into view and then the hub was peeking over the edge of the plate.

  Light flashed and someone screamed. Rue was momentarily shrouded in smoke but she kept her feet braced in the straps and fired her pistol. After several agonizing seconds, the hub crept down over the plate's horizon again. Just as it did, the edge of the plate began glowing dull red, then orange.

  "Who did we lose?" asked Barendts.

  Silence for a few seconds. Rue looked around, but visibility was limited in her suit and
in this dark.

  "N-nobody," said Mina finally. "The laser caught my reaction pistol— blew it out of my hands. I've got a little leak in my glove, but nothing I can't seal."

  Rue was watching the stars turn. "Jets back," she said. "Two second burst." They all fired and stabilized the plate again.

  She could see the construction shack. It was above and to her left, but it was hard to know if they were headed in that direction. The plate they were riding was massive; she doubted if they could change its trajectory easily.

  The metal under her feet glowed again, then faded. At least it looked like the plate would hold.

  There was a long silence, as it sank in that they had, for now anyway, escaped. Then Blair's dry voice filled Rue's head.

  "Well, Captain, this may not be the best ship I've crewed for you, but right now I wouldn't trade it for anything."

  26

  MICHAEL GRABBED THE autotroph canister by its handles, peering momentarily through its little window at the spiral-shaped thing inside. "You asked to be here, here you are," he said to it. Then he hauled it to the airlock and cycled through. The others were already outside, preparing to jump off the interceptor as they approached the construction shack.

  The only light source outside was the stars, but the shack glowed in infrared and his suit helmet translated that into an image. The shack was huge and its quilted surface undulated slightly in places, like the fabric of a hotter-than-air balloon Michael had once seen on Kimpurusha.

  "It's that ferrofluid again," said Herat. "These Lasa are nothing if not consistent." Likely there was no solid hull under that liquid, only a moveable matrix of powerful magnets. The shack's size and shape were a matter of convenience. Right now, it was a cylinder over a kilometer long and almost half that in thickness.

  They slid behind the shack relative to the Banshee; as its glowing habitats vanished behind the horizon of the shack, their pilot said, "Fire," and the rail-shaped cart they hung onto pulled away from the interceptor. Michael had little sense of movement unless he turned to watch the interceptor depart.