Angel of Destruction (31 page)

There would be a system alert this time, Hilton was sure of it. There were supposed to be system alerts any time a portal was opened between the maintenance hull and the ship’s interior.

They had three things in their favor.

One was the possibility that no one on board would notice the visual alert; that was what the Corense lines used on hull access.

Then, since their commando attack had been carefully planned to come while the crew was busy, if anybody did notice the telltale alert they might just ignore it — assuming it to be some mechanical malfunction — until the excitement was over and there was slack time to investigate.

And, finally, they could hope that if anybody noticed, whoever on board went to check on the alert would come alone or in pairs, to be easily overpowered by Langsariks. Real ones.

Shilla cracked the seal on the access to the opening edge of the hatch to judge the potential air-pressure differential between the outer hull and the interior of the ship, to get an advance warning on whether or not the interior doors on the freighter were open or closed. Hilton didn’t hear any hiss or sigh of air moving as she pushed the hatch open; so either the ship was open inside — or someone unsympathetic had opened the connecting door to whatever room this hatch led to and was waiting for them with a weapon at the ready.

They flattened themselves against the inner wall of the maintenance passageway, hiding themselves as best they could to be ready for an attack if one should come. Shilla pushed the hatch cover full open, with her body blocking anyone’s view of the passage behind her. Hilton was impressed by her courage — it took nerve to expose yourself to enemy fire in order to win time for your team to respond.

Nobody shot Shilla.

Sticking her head through the open access port quickly, she checked left, then right, then left again; and then climbed through.

After a moment she was back. “All clear,” she said, but quietly. A mere gesture might have been coerced at weapons point; this way they knew that she was her own woman and could follow her through with confidence.

Storeroom, and almost filled with crates except for the safety requirement of the clearway to the door.

The crates all carried Combine markings; but in the low light Hilton thought he could see the ghost of other seals, altered but not entirely obliterated.

So this was where at least some of the contraband was stored. On a freighter, in orbit. There would be little chance of the stores being discovered under Combine seal — and the foreman, Fisner Feraltz, had the chop. Ingenious. He would have to remember that. He had to complete his mission first and foremost, though, so Hilton went to the doorway, to listen.

All of the doorways would be open, if the evidence of this one could be taken as a measure. Freighters habitually opened all their doors when they were docked, to get the maximum benefit of free air circulation and replenishment. Trading old air for new.

He heard someone moving, but the sound was indistinct; he couldn’t quite make it out. He was going to have to get closer. Hilton slipped out into the corridor, with his people behind him concealing themselves within open doorways and following as they could.

Somebody spoke.

“Well, that’s done, then.”

Hilton knew the voice.

“Come on, let’s go tell the boss. Wonder if he’s got all the cargo ready, yet.”

It was Ippolit, from the warehouse construction site at Port Charid.

Hilton looked back over his shoulder at Vilner and Shilla, who were closest, and gave the sign.
At least two. Probably not more than three
. They had a small advantage of number if there were three. The advantage of surprise more than covered any potential difference.

Hilton straightened up and stepped across the threshold, a glad expression on his face.

“Hey! Ippolit! I didn’t know you were here, friend, it’s good to see you. What are you doing here?”

They could well know that he was at Honan-gung Yards, he’d gotten leave from Feraltz in person after all. He could almost see the calculation in Ippolit’s face, the swift assessment of risk factors leading to a conclusion and a plan for action.

“Shires. Well. As I live and breathe. Have you met Berd, Shires?”

Reaching out for him to put a hand to Hilton’s shoulder in friendly greeting, Ippolit advanced on Hilton. Hilton knew he couldn’t let Ippolit lay hands on him, and retreated into the corridor. “I thought this was a Bortic ship. Second job, Ippolit?”

Ippolit followed; Hilton gave him no other choice. This was going to be tricky. Berd was still inside the storeroom, watching. Hilton needed to dislodge Berd from his defensive position in order to control the situation.

Ippolit helped.

“Well, it’s a little more complicated than that, I’ll tell you all about it. Berd! Berd, this is Hilton Shires from the warehouse. Langsarik. I’ve told you about him, come out and shake his hand.”

The others on his team were nowhere in sight. Hilton didn’t know which nearby open doorway might be sheltering whom. He certainly hoped that they were nearby.

“Oh. Yeah. Right, Shires, from the warehouse.” Shifting himself out from behind the cargo crates that he’d been rearranging, Berd followed Ippolit out into the corridor. Hilton retreated from Ippolit’s advance, hoping he wasn’t too obvious, wondering where his people were.

“Say. Guys. What’s this all about? You should be at Port Charid. Why were those crates marked Combine, if this is a Bortic ship?” Hilton asked nervously, backing down the corridor. Ippolit and Berd came on with steady confidence, as if secure that Hilton couldn’t get away. He was backing up toward the front of the ship. There would be more of the raiding party waiting there, clearly.

“It’s very simple, really,” Ippolit assured him. “You see, Shires – ”

Ippolit charged.

Right past an open doorway that let into a darkened storage room.

Torbe was there.

Stepping out swiftly from his concealment, Torbe clubbed Ippolit as he went past. As soon as Torbe made his move, Vilner and Shilla made theirs; they had Berd restrained and silenced before Berd had time to react.

Maintenance tape, three times around the wrists behind the back, twice between, and the tag end pressed down firmly on the outside of the hand. The same thing again around the ankles, to control movement of the feet and prevent bolting or kicking.

Maintenance tape again in a broad patch over the lower part of the face, to cover the mouth. It could be worked loose over time, of course, with determination and enough spit. But it would do for as long as they needed to keep the two men from giving an alarm by calling out.

Two down.
   

How many to go?

They had to hurry.

Vogel would stall on the outside for as long as he could. They had to be ready to finish the act before the raid leader realized he was discovered and took some desperate measure to avoid capture.

Hilton wanted all of these people alive.

He would settle for nothing less than complete exoneration.

###

When the
Melrick
’s captain finally deigned to make an appearance Garol retreated from the dock-master’s office into her secured room and pulled a detail scan up on screen. The dock-master herself went out to talk to the freighter captain.

The freighter captain was not someone Garol recognized — he looked vaguely familiar in form, perhaps, but no more than that, and even that could just be his ethnicity — but there was no sense in making the false assumption that the freighter captain would not recognize him after he’d been in Port Charid for days.

Listening in on the conversation between the dock-master and the freighter captain, Garol waited.

“Ah, I’d hate to come across as ungrateful for your help,” the freighter captain was saying. “Is it me, or is this taking a little longer than we’d hoped?”

Garol knew what the problem was: Shires hadn’t shown up. They would particularly want Shires’s presence on the record, as well as being sure to collect him for general purposes of leaving no survivors. The load-out was going as well as anyone could wish, the cargo manifest almost made up and ready to load. The raiders would want to quarantine the warehouse crew as soon as the work of fetching the booty had been completed.

“I think everybody’s here,” the dock-master replied, reassuringly. “You’ve got their full cooperation, no question about that.”

Garol got the signal from Shires.

The freighter was secure.

It was time.

He pulsed the dock-master in turn; and she made a suggestion to the freighter captain, as if it was an afterthought.

“I’m not sure I see one of my people, though, you’re quite right about that. Maybe Jevan knows, he and Shires were teaming on maintenance earlier. Hey! Jevan!”

Garol watched on the internal monitor, inside the dock-master’s inner room. Jevan came into view on the screens, trotting across the floor to join the freighter captain and the dock-master. He wanted Jevan to be with the freighter captain, so that he would be able to take them together. The freighter captain would be relying on Jevan to know where everybody was.

“Jevan. Where’s Shires? I don’t see him.”

Jevan looked from the dock-master to the freighter captain, but the picture was too small for Garol to decide on his exact expression. “He said he was going to go call up the people in the remote tunnels. Ames and Teller. They’re here, he must have said something to them.”

The dock-master nodded. “Well, I’ll just go find out. No, you stay here, Jevan, entertain the captain, I’ll be right back.”

Garol had warned her to get clear of the freighter captain when the time came for him to make his move, to avoid any unpleasantness with hostage-taking. Turning around, the dock-master moved toward her work crew, calling for the people Jevan had identified. “Hey. You two. Over here, I need to ask you something.”

That was his cue.

Garol left the dock-master’s inner office, checking the transmits as he passed. He wanted this on record. He’d promised the First Secretary something to look at.

He opened the door of the dock-master’s office and stepped out into the docking bay. The two people that the dock-master had called didn’t pay much attention to him. As far as they were concerned he was probably someone from the freighter, which explained why they didn’t know him.

The freighter captain stared, though, and Garol greeted him with a cheerful wave.

“Hello there,” Garol called. “My name is Garol Vogel. Bench specialist. And you’re under arrest.”

The shock on the freighter captain’s face was quickly replaced with an expression of satisfied vindication. The freighter captain clearly could hear the people leaving the freighter, behind him. He didn’t have to look to know that they were his men and they were armed.

“I don’t think so,” the freighter captain — the raid leader — said. “Specialist Vogel. The man we Langsariks have to thank for our vacation here at Port Charid, and all of this lovely loot. Really very much indebted to you, sir.”

It was too bad for the raid leader that the people he heard coming out of the freighter were not his troops with weapons. They were Langsariks with weapons. Jevan was looking behind the freighter captain at the people coming out of the freighter, and there was horror clearly evident on Jevan’s face. He probably recognized Shires right off. He might not recognize Shires’s commando, but he wouldn’t have to know them by name to realize who they were.

“You’re not Langsariks, and it hasn’t been a vacation, but I will accept responsibility for the arrest. You’re Dalmoss, I expect.”

The raid leader’s confidence seemed to falter for the first time. None of the assembled warehouse workers was staring in shocked alarm at the armed men he clearly believed he had at his back. The dock master had clued them in by now, and they were watching with keen interest, but no fear. The raid leader did not go so far as to look over his shoulder to see what was there: not yet. He glanced with almost perfectly concealed nervousness up toward one of the docking bay’s security monitors, instead.

“My name is Noman,” he said.

Well behind the raid leader, Shires had stepped clear of the captured crew of the freighter, unshipping a peculiar set of small stones or spheres that hung at the end of multiple strands of cord that looked to be about as long as he was tall.

“Just as well.” It took Garol a moment to realize what Shires was doing. Once he grasped Shires’s plan, Garol did what he could to put it forward. This was a dangerous and determined enemy, one they had been lucky to manage as well as they had done so far. They could not afford to risk any uncontrolled events so close to a complete triumph. “Dalmoss went to Geraint, after all. Funny thing, though. How do you suppose he turned from Pettiche into Dalmoss? And rose from the dead, because there were no survivors at the Tyrell Yards, were there? Especially not Dolgorukij ones.”

Out behind the raid leader Shires had started his ropes spinning. All of the spheres were tethered to a common ring; he put them into motion one by one, over his head.

When he had them all moving together he started to walk forward. Garol imagined he could hear the sound that the heavy spheres made whistling through the air, straining at the ends of the ropes. A rotor. A windmill. A wheel of a theoretical sort, but deployed hub to rim by wrist action rather than rim to hub by friction.

“I don’t know anything about Dolgorukij.” The raid leader seemed determined to carry his course through. “But I am grateful to that fat old Madlev. His warehouse is a great hiding place. You could tell him I said so — if you weren’t going to Hell — ”

There it was, the telltale twitch of the hand toward the blouse, the reach into a pocket. For a bomb. Garol braced himself to spring, aiming low, knowing he had to cross the distance between them before the raid leader had a chance to arm his suicide device.

A whistling sound of thrown spheres sliced through the air like knives, the rope-wheel wrapping itself around the raid leader with a ferocious impact that pinned his arms and dropped him to the floor of the load-in bay in one swift movement. The raid leader shouted once in pain as the spheres took him, then once again as his head hit the ground; it happened too quickly for Garol to be able to reach him in time to break his fall.