Silent Songs (31 page)

Inside, his troops fought the alien machine, struggling to get it restabilized in its orbit. What would Atle do if he lost not only the ship but the station as well?

Well, it was
Atle
who had failed to pursue the humans still roaming the planet. If Dacris lost the ship, it would be Atle's fault. That warning message had come at the worst possible moment, and Dacris would lay that right at Atle's feet.

He watched the human ship he'd been charged with capturing creep away from the station. It was barely one-tenth the size of the
Flood.
Where was its speed? Whatever was slowing it to this crawl could only be temporary. He scanned the
Patuxenfs
instruments and the myriad translators working frantically to keep up with the barrage of information passing through them.

As far as he could tell, his quarry only had minor damage, but since it was designed for transport, not for combat, its own safety programs were attempting to halt its progress until repairs could be affected. Its crew must be working frantically to override systems carefully designed to ensure their welfare in the inhospitable environment of space.

Still, he needed more information. If only the human computers had known more about his prey. There were no maps, no schematics, little information on its cargo, or its drive. He'd told himself the joy would be in the discovery, but now, he wondered if that joy would be his. He maneuvered the
Patuxent
around his prey, watching his soldiers futilely attacking its locks. They should've defeated its codes by now, they should be calling the ships to dock. Nothing was going as he'd planned. That was why he'd risked taking out this alien vessel. Its systems were compatible with the wounded transport. If his soldiers could not break into

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the larger ship's system, perhaps this vessel could hold the key to its companion's betrayal.

A change in the tank caught his eye. He saw a weakness there, in the large, triangular outriders. He followed the figures. Yes, they could get in there.

Why didn't that please him? Because .. . instinct told him it was too far from the bridge. Those outriders were too exposed to shelter the command center. It had to be elsewhere. Safe. Protected. He didn't relish a long battle to find and capture it.

Two of the ships attached themselves, one to each triangular wing, but the locks hadn't opened yet. But his eyes rested on a small lock near the narrow head of the ship, even though the reports indicated their ships would not be able to break its code. He might waste valuable time here, and even if he could get in, he would still not know where the bridge was.

Dacris' throat pouch quivered and his tail lashed back and forth. His soldiers had special weapons filled with the chemical controls they needed to capture every human on this vessel, but it would do them no good if they couldn't get in. And in his heart he knew he alone would bear the blame if this ship were lost. His colors burned as he maneuvered the
Patuxent
to the head of the wounded transport, lining its lock up with its mate on the larger ship; all his hopes rested in the traitor's kiss of this commandeered shuttle.

"We've got to get out of here," Idoto Okigbo whispered to her companion.

"They'll be through any minute!"

Abdul nodded hurriedly, punching the last few commands into his voder.

The computer announced that the huge cargo lock at the wide end of the wing was about to be breached. He took one last glance at his contraption, and wished he could see the lock from here. However, twenty of them had just finished rearranging the cargo in this cavernous place to match Javier's diagram, and he could no longer see the lock.

The computer announced that the lock had been breached, that ".. .

unauthorized personnel are about to enter the cargo bay." Abdul heard the lock cycle and the doors open.

"Come on!" Idoto hissed in his ear, tugging on his shirt. The dark woman's sculpted face was flushed, her eyes wide.

"Can you see them? Are they coming?"

The tall Nigerian grabbed the chemist by the collar, physically hauling him away from his trap.

"But suppose they
aren't
funneled to this one spot?" Abdul worried. "They aren't deer or fish, they're
intelligent."

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Idoto said nothing, just kept towing the balding chemist till they'd slipped behind the maze of crates and entered the pylon elevator. "It'll work, it'll work," she reassured him, once they were safely behind its doors.

They could hear feet, lots of feet, pounding on the floor, echoing wildly around the cargo. The elevator started to descend, bringing them back to the body of the ship.

They both turned to their voders, watched the scene the small sentry camera relayed back to them. Idoto shivered at the sight of the alien troops searching for them. The elevator descended placidly, as if they were in a department store, not a spaceship, fighting for their lives.

Soon, their screens were so filled with soldiers, they could see nothing else.

"Now!" she said to Abdul. "Now! Now!"

He waited two more seconds, then punched the last command into his voder. Suddenly their voders went gray as thick, cloying smoke engulfed the camera. Alarms in the elevator clanged raucously and lights flashed.

"Attention!" the computer voice intoned. "Attention! There is a fire in B wing, cargo area sixteen. The wing is sealed; fire containment protocol is being enacted."

Abdul and Idoto grinned at each other and hugged, giddy with their success.

Every lock and bulkhead in the entire wing would be impossible to raise now without special override codes punched in by the Captain herself. The elevator stopped, opening its doors into the body of the ship, near their quarters.

Abdul spoke into his voder. "B wing is secure, Captain Stepp. Tell the crew to detach." Now if only the team in A wing was as successful.

Javier and Carlotta tied another invisible trip wire across a wide space framed by a cluster of chairs in the observation lounge. The chairs were a decent anchor for the wires, and the other chairs would block the area so this would seem like the only logical path. He scanned the lounge, hardly believing he'd been killing time here just a few hours before.

He glanced at the nearby airlock, its framework, computer system, and controls all decorated to meld in with, the lounge's decor. The innocuous-appearing airlock was now framed by the strategic placement of chairs. That lock had been the entrance through which Javier had first boarded this ship from the Terran space station that orbited Earth's moon. This lounge had been his introduction to the
Brolga;
it was where those destined to 179

travel to Trinity had first been assembled for introductions and an orientation to the beginning of their new careers. And now, aliens in one of the
Singing
Crane's
own shuttlecraft were hovering outside it, working doggedly to breach it and invade the
Brolga.

Noriko Imanaka sat beside the control panel with a full array of computer equipment, as the software specialist counteracted and overrode the electronic invasion from the other side of the lock. In the last few minutes her intent expression had turned positively grim. Javier nodded to Carlotta.

"Are they going to get in?" the linguist asked bluntly.

"Not if I can help it," the Asian woman grumbled.

Suddenly the lock's lights began flashing, warning that it was about to cycle.

Noriko's fingers flew over her equipment, shutting the cycle down. How long could she keep that up?

"You can't stay here," he said softly. "Put in some codes and come with us."

Noriko shook her head. "You go on. I'll keep them out for as long as I can. I'll leave before they get in. Go ahead!"

He knew she was lying, and by the look on Carlotta's face, the linguist did, too. They'd done all they could here. Their poor traps were all set; Javier and Carlotta's job was finished.

Leaving Noriko in the lounge, they traveled through the halls, closing and locking every bulkhead, running more trip wires, some at ankle height, some at the knees, some at eye level. They attached them to anything they could find. If the invaders entered through the observation lounge lock, they'd have to go through the passenger decks and the dining room to find their way to the bridge.

Javier told himself they'd never get past Noriko as he and Carlotta opened every cabin door on all four decks, even ones that had never been occupied.

Good soldiers would have to check and secure every room ... and some of them held surprises.

Captain Stepp ordered Renata to detach A wing--the second one to go--then sagged against a hibernation unit, exhausted. She couldn't believe what her chrono told her--that it'd only been eighty minutes since they'd docked with the
Singing Crane.
At least they'd managed to disable most of the cumbersome safety programs; the
Brolga
was moving faster now. They were almost at the big moon, and still broadcasting their alarm--though Bruce's had stopped, she wasn't sure when.

The detached wings had large companies of soldiers trapped inside them, and that pleased her. But the
Patuxent
was attached

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to the
Brolga's
body like an engorged tick, ready to send its virus into her vessel. Well, once they were past this moon they'd really pick up speed. She wondered how her uninvited guests would feel about an unprepared jump into metaspace. She pictured them all appearing in Mizari space, with ships full of League Irenics waiting for them.

Her voder flashed and she glimpsed Renata's latest message. The aliens had breached the observation lounge lock. They were in. Actually
in
her ship. Her beautiful, new ship. She blinked, shaking off the sick feeling inside her.

The hibernation area stood between the bridge and the tail, and the invaders were coming from the head. Even so, aliens traveling through the upper decks of the passenger cabins could go
over
the bridge and end up in the hibernation area. So, two of her crew, Brian, the hardware specialist, and Misha, a steward, had unlocked and darkened each and every one of the hundred empty hibernator units. Each unit had a cabinet beneath it, and each of those had been unlocked. And each one would have to be checked by an invader before it could be secured. Having finished, the three of them collapsed together behind one of the sleepers.

Misha handed Jane a makeshift bolo, but she waved it away. She'd never been much good at throwing. He'd secured a medical scalpel onto a sturdy plastic pipe, and Brian hefted a makeshift club. She found herself wishing that she and her crew knew Grus Sign Language, so they could

communicate over their voders in silence, the way the passengers did.

They were sitting near an air vent, and suddenly a Simiu roar echoed out.

"Oh, no," Stepp whispered. She should be with the passengers. How had she ended up here, behind the action?

Her voder flashed, seeming impossibly bright.

"Captain," Renata's voice said tiredly, "they're in the passengers' quarters.

We're still not past the outer moon."

Still within the solar system,
Jane realized.
We still can't go to stellar
velocity.

¦
"Okay," said Stepp, trying to think of what else they could do. She felt incredibly helpless.

Suddenly the harsh mechanical sound of a crude, artificial translator voice blared from the ship-wide intercom. "Passengers and crew. Your ship has been conquered by the Chosen. Avoid injury. Surrender now. You will not be harmed."

The startling announcement lent an air of unreality to everything that had happened, as if those words were more powerful than invading ships, soldiers, or anything else.

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Jane tried to get her voder to bring in an image from some of the safety cameras in the passengers' area, and finally found herself staring at a full-blown battle. A surge of soldiers charged a handful of passengers, then some of the aliens went down. The aliens charged over their fallen comrades, shooting at the passengers with some odd weapon. Other aliens entered into individual cabins, only to have cabin doors slam shut behind them. Fire alarms sounded. There were screams, alien and human.

More troops came into view.

Where are they all coming from?
she wondered frantically.

Just then, Stepp felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to face the deaf ethnobotanist. He'd startled Misha and Brian as well.

"The aliens are in the passengers' quarters," Javier told her.

"Yes, I know. How's it going?"

He paused for a moment. "We lost five people in A wing. They didn't get to the elevator in time. As the aliens go through the cabins, whoever's been captured has been
removed."

"Killed?" she asked, but he only shrugged.

"We were badly outnumbered to start with," he said. "But soon, there'll be only a handful of us left. We need to talk about.. . what will happen if they take the bridge."

If they take the bridge before we get into metaspace, we're finished,
Jane thought. This Wasn't a battleship, it was a passenger and supply vessel, not as fancy as a cruise ship, but with more amenities than a tug. There was only
one
bridge, no real weapons, and--contrary to popular fiction--no auto-destruct sequence.

"You went to all the trouble to come out here to talk to me, so you must have a plan," Stepp said hopefully.

Javier gave her a half smile. "We've got maps of the service tubes. If they take the bridge, they'll probably call on you to surrender again. The rest of us can storm the bridge through the tubes
after
you give yourself up, while you're pretending to persuade us to submit." He watched her, waiting to see what she thought. "While we engage them, you can evacuate the air from the rest of the ship, killing the troops outside the bridge. Without their army, the few left on the bridge will have to yield."

Stepp watched him, her mind working furiously. Suppose the other passengers weren't dead? Suppose they were holding them in the