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He waited for Herrod to lodge a protest, or at the very least grant permission; but it seemed Herrod had grown accustomed to his retirement. “What’s our strategy?”
“Our strategy,” Greg said, loudly enough for the others to hear, “is to clear the comm signal, get to the civilian vessel, and avoid deadly force as much as we can. Which means we threaten the hell out of them and get them to stand down long enough for us to get our people out. Darrow, Bristol?”
“Sir,” they said simultaneously.
“You perceive a credible threat that you can’t disarm, you defend, understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
He kept Sparrow on a clean vector and watched for the shuttle’s telemetry: it seemed to have some power, and he held out hope Elena was all right. After several minutes, the wreck appeared on the horizon, and as they grew closer, he saw enough to feel relief. The shuttle, intact but flat on its back, was surrounded by massive cargo bins: the food the colony so sorely needed. Without weapons—why the fuck do freighters drop in war zones without weapons?—she had defended her ship with the only leverage she had: the cargo they were trying to steal.
“Sparrow, what’s in the area?”
“Four hundred and sixty-two people,” Sparrow said calmly.
“Moving?”
“Yes.”
“In the same direction?”
“No.”
“Put them up on tactical.”
They were clumped in two groups, relatively even in number, and they were moving toward each other. Typical Yakutsk: domes so interested in choking each other off that they missed all of their common ground. He would have left them to their futile devices, but Elena’s downed shuttle was right in between them.
He swore again, and tried comms. “This is Sparrow calling the shuttle off of Budapest.” Pick the fuck up.
“The other shuttle is not receiving comms,” Sparrow told him.
“Can they send?”
“No.”
“Are we close enough to break a comms jam?”
“No.”
“How long until we reach her?”
“One minute seventeen seconds.”
Eternity. Shit. “Are any of those people targeting the shuttle?”
“Insufficient information to determine target.”
“Is the shuttle in the line of fire?”
“Yes.”
“How likely are they to light up?”
“Direct impact at a range of less than two hundred meters will result in ninety-four percent likelihood of an incendiary event.”
Damn, damn, damn. What he wouldn’t give to just open up on both groups of colonists. He recognized it as frustration, but he found himself long over the impulse to rescue people who would shoot at those sent to help.
“What are they firing?” he asked the shuttle. It was remotely possible they were using something old, something that might be vulnerable to a generated EMP or even a radio jam.
“Plasma P7 rifles,” Sparrow said.
“How many?”
“Five hundred and forty units. Two hundred and twelve with the group south of the shuttle, the rest with the group north of the shuttle.”
More guns than people. Never a good equation. “Sparrow, keep an eye on Budapest’s shuttle. If any of those rifles locks on her, fire on the shooter. Understood?”
“Understood.”
If Sparrow shot a colonist, it would be an act of war. It might also come far too late to save Elena and Arin Goldjani.
But Greg would sleep better.
Behind him, all nine of his passengers were pulling on env suits. Herrod returned again, and said, “I can pilot, Captain.”
Greg met Herrod’s eyes through the clear fabric hood of his suit. Serious, military, entirely straightforward. He nodded, and stood. Herrod slipped into his seat.
“The comms jam is broken,” Sparrow said as they approached.
Greg tied into the colonists’ comms. “Drop your weapons!” he shouted. “This is Captain Greg Foster of the CCSS Galileo. That shuttle you’re targeting contains people in need of medical help. According to the Armed Conflict Act of 2976—”
One of the colonists pointed his P7 upward and took a shot at Sparrow.
They were high enough that the shot did nothing but scar the shuttle’s hull, but the message was clear. Before Greg could shout an order, Herrod was keying in a command, and Sparrow laid down a line of shots ten meters before each group of colonists. Greg saw them stop, saw some of them throw up their arms before their faces, saw a few turn and run. You guys are the brains of the outfit, he thought at the fleeing people. Herrod dropped Sparrow to the ground in front of the others.
“Stand the fuck down, all of you,” Greg shouted over the comm, “or we’ll shoot straight next time!”
They did not, he observed, drop their guns, but they stopped advancing and avoided pointing anything at his ship. He stood, grabbing one of the large shoulder cannons from the back of the ship, and slung it next to his ear. “Sparrow, keep us covered,” he told the shuttle, and opened the door.
The colonists watched him, wary, as his platoon filed out of the door, Greg among them. “Anybody fires,” he told them, “the ship will take you out.”
“That’s illegal,” someone called resentfully.
“Your next of kin is welcome to sue.” The platoon, weapons raised, gave him cover as he backed around Sparrow’s nose until he was completely sheltered by the shuttle’s hull.
He turned to the others. “Keep them back,” he said, then slung the cannon over his shoulder and ran toward the wreck of Budapest’s shuttle. “Elena?”
“I’m here,” she commed back. “We need to get Arin out of here.”
We need to get both of you out of here, you damn fool.
He covered the last ten meters to the shuttle’s open doorway, and squeezed in between the upended shipping containers.
And there was Elena, hanging on to a handle on the wall, hovering over a battered-looking civilian who had to be Arin Goldjani. Goldjani was young indeed: rangy, all knees and elbows, a patch of hair shadowing the brown skin of his jaw. The kid was conscious, and his color wasn’t bad, but his nose was clearly broken; through the hood of his suit Greg could see most of his face was covered in blood.
Elena herself … well, he had seen her look better. Her env suit was covered in dust and grime, and through the clear hood, he could see long strands of hair hanging in her eyes. He squinted and looked closer; he thought some of her hair was blue instead of her natural dark brown. If she was pleased or surprised to see him, she did not let on. Her expression, beyond concerned, was singularly irate.
“Can you get us out?” she asked him.
“Are you abandoning this bird?” he asked.
She looked as if she hadn’t considered the question, and he realized she must be very worried about the kid. “I think we have to for now,” she said. “Maybe we can come back for it later.”
“I don’t think so,” he told her. “I think as soon as we get out of here, they’re going to throw themselves at each other.”
“But we brought food.” This came from Goldjani, and he seemed genuinely confused. “More than enough. What do they need to fight for?”
“I don’t think need comes into it at this point,” Greg told him, but he kept his voice gentle. There were some truths about humanity that were never easy to learn, even when they were laid out before your eyes. “Let’s get you out of here, and take you somewhere that has a doctor.”
“It’ll have to be Galileo,” Elena told him.
She looked at him, saying nothing else, and he realized what she was telling him: the kid’s injuries were beyond the limits of simple first aid. Worse than he looks. Whatever she had seen on the shuttle’s small med scanner had spooked her. Budapest may have had a full-service med kit, but she thought Goldjani needed a surgeon. “You ever been on a Corps starship, Goldjani?” Greg asked him.
The kid smiled. “No, sir.”
“As long as you’re a civilian,” Greg corrected him, “I’m not ‘sir.’ You can call me Captain, or just Greg, if you like.”
“I’d like to see Galileo, Captain,” Goldjani said.
“Excellent. Then let’s get you out of here.” He turned to Elena. “We need some kind of a stretcher.”
“Come on, Elena,” Goldjani put in. “I can walk.”
She ignored him. “We’ll need to pull one of these containers apart,” she said. “We dumped all the usual supplies off this bird to make room for the seed.”
They poured the contents of one container into the sand outside the door. Greg took a quick look; the colonists were still milling around in front of Sparrow, murmuring to themselves, their hands still on their weapons, eyeing Greg’s infantry with increasing boldness. We are running out of time, he thought. Behind him, Elena had brought out a power saw and was running it rapidly through the corrugated material of the container. “I’ll need to reinforce it,” she told him, eyes on her work. “It’s too flexible.”
“Isn’t there anything I can do?” Goldjani asked plaintively.
Elena’s jaw set. “You can stay home next time,” she snapped, and the boy fell silent. Greg glanced at him; his expression had closed. Goldjani didn’t know her well enough to recognize fear.
Just then, Greg heard a hail of footsteps on the ship’s hull, and the whole structure shook. He turned to look out the door and saw people jumping to the ground, shooting toward the other set of colonists. His platoon was shouting, but the colonists were leaving them alone. Damn, now they really were in the middle of a firefight. “Move it, Elena,” he said.
She finished fastening three horizontal panels on the bottom of the sheeting. “Watch your fingers,” she warned Greg, lowering the makeshift stretcher to the ground next to Goldjani. “The edges are a little rough.”
Goldjani, subdued, didn’t resist when Greg and Elena slid him gently onto the stretcher. If they hurt him further, he didn’t let on. Stubborn kid. Greg remembered himself at nineteen, powered by nothing but hormones and self-righteous anger. He would have been equally stupid in Goldjani’s situation. “I have to warn you,” he said, hoping to cheer the kid up, “my doctor’s kind of a dick.”
“Then why do you keep him?” At least Goldjani was making an effort.
“Because he mixes really good drinks and lets me win at cards,” Greg told him. Goldjani smiled, and Greg thought it was partly genuine.
“Anything here you need to bring?” he asked Elena.
“No. Wait!” She dashed to the front of the shuttle and retrieved something off the floor: a box, about fifteen centimeters across. From the way she lifted it, it was either empty or contained something quite light. She tucked it into her pocket. “Bear’s going to have my damn head,” she said, giving a resigned glance around the shuttle. Then she looked back at him, businesslike, determined, familiar. “Let’s get out of here before somebody drops a nuke on those guys.”
She took Goldjani’s head, and Greg lifted the corrugated sheet at his feet. He commed Bristol and Darrow. “We’re coming out with wounded,” he said. “Cover us.”
They lifted, and he backed out of the shuttle, steadying himself in the dirt before Elena came out after him. The colonists were all in front of Sparrow now, ignoring Herrod’s repeated exhortations for a cease-fire, shooting determinedly at each other. Along with the shooting, there were a couple of fistfights. In the training vids, enemies were always expert and organized, with a strategy discernible after a few minutes of observation. In reality, colony squabbles were almost always made up of a bunch of homeowners engaged in a deadly slap-fight with their neighbors.
Before they could make it to the door, a plasma flare sped past Greg’s head, and he swore. “One more shot like that,” he shouted, “and we’ll blow it up, do you hear me? We’ve got wounded here! Stand the fuck down!”
Another shot went wide, and they started scrambling for the door. “When we get inside,” Greg told Darrow, “fire one shot directly back at Budapest’s shuttle, and withdraw.”
Goldjani protested. “You really want them to blow up the cargo?”
“Plasma cannon won’t breach the cargo containers,” Elena told him. “But it’ll destroy the shuttle and make a hell of a statement. They’ll leave us alone long enough for us to get out of here.”
Another shot caught the side of Sparrow, and Greg cursed. “Now, Darrow!” he shouted, hauling his end of the stretcher into the ship.
Darrow aimed the cannon and fired, and Greg realized they should have been farther away.
The shuttle blew instantly, the chemical flame lighting up the landscape. The shipping containers, as advertised, were jostled by the blast but undamaged. But the seed they had dumped into the dirt was vaporized, a cloud of dust sinking slowly in the low gravity. Greg knew the colonists could see it, too.
The platoon hustled inside, the door closing behind them. Greg and Elena set Goldjani’s stretcher down, and he left her to seal the door while he went to the pilot’s seat to get them out of there. Herrod was already standing, giving up his place.
The grain distraction had worked, at least in part. Some of the colonists had rushed over to the cargo containers, tugging at them, desperately trying to pull them aside. Desperately. There was a lot of seed, but their actions suggested they needed every bit of it, including what had been destroyed. “Is there more?” Greg asked Elena.
“On Nova Ganymede,” she said. “Six weeks away.”
Of course. “Get him secure,” Greg told his soldiers grimly. “We’re getting out of here.”
More colonists had surrounded the containers, ignoring Sparrow’s weapons. They were squabbling again, shoving at each other. Someone behind the row of colonists began to fire, and the people began to drop, one by one in a row, from both sides. “But—” Arin broke off. “Can’t you stop them?”
“We’ve got nothing to stop them with,” Greg said, as gently as he could. And he lifted them off, abandoning the chaos, pointing Sparrow’s nose at the pristine stars.
CHAPTER 7 (#ulink_f375355c-6033-5f9b-8553-477fa8b0a26a)
Greg lifted them off slowly, most likely in deference to the people on the ground, but Elena didn’t think his consideration would be necessary much longer. She had seen far too many squabbles go this way. In a few minutes, Yakutsk would be down five-hundred-odd colonists, and the dome governments would be back to accusations and raids. Or worse.
And she wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing to help.
She sat on the floor next to Arin, gripping the bench as the shuttle rose through Yakutsk’s light gravity and began generating its own field, stabilizing them. Shit. She was going to have to comm Bear.
“Greg,” she said, “can I have comms control?”
Across from her, Admiral Herrod sat in silence. She wanted to tell him to say something; his silence was unnerving. But he had helped, she realized. He had kept the shooters off them long enough for them to get Arin to safety. He had done something good.
Even a stopped clock is right once a day.
