The Serrano Connection (52 page)

"Good. And good luck, Lieutenant."

Esmay went back to the command center set up in the 14th's headquarters area.

"I've got a list of volunteers for your crew, Lieutenant," said Commander Jarles. "You seem to be quite popular." She wasn't sure if this was sarcasm or honest surprise. "They're sorted by specialty, then rank-ordered by those with experience in ships similar to the enemy's. I told them to wait for you in R-17."

"That's wonderful, sir." It was indeed; the only problem was knowing how many she should take.

"We've got a link now to the other wings. One of the instructors over in Admiral Livadhi's command has done a tactical analysis—he suggests—"

An alarm went off.

"They're going through somewhere!" Esmay said.

"They're not even off that ship yet," said Commander Palas. "We've been watching."

"Then it's the others—the original intruders. But why? And where?"

"Warn the bridge," Jarles said. "That'll be where they're going—they may not know we've taken it back. Lieutenant Suiza, pick your crew and get in position—I think we can ignore that tactical analysis."

Esmay took the list and looked at it on her way down to R-17. Petty-major Simkins, Drives and Maneuver, had operated the commercial equivalent of the Bloodhorde hulls during the three years he'd tried making it in the civilian world. Two others had less, but some, experience with those ships. Scan—she hoped they'd be able to take some of their own aboard, or tight-link to
Koskiusko
's bridge. No one had a lot of relevant experience, but there was a pivot-major, Lucien Patel, that the entire Remote Sensing unit thought was another Koutsoudas. Worth a try, anyway. For backup in scan, she picked the one person with recent combat experience, and another because he had both commercial and military background. Communications, that was critical . . . that one, and that one, and a backup. Environmental she wouldn't worry about—they'd fight in their suits, and either win this in a hurry or die in a hurry. Weapons—she really needed good weapons people. There were five that seemed to stand out from the rest of the list.

When she got to the meeting place, she was startled by their response—the swift approving murmur, the eagerness on their faces. They looked at her as if she could make this mad enterprise easy. She felt her own heart lift, and gave them back the grin they seemed to be waiting for.

"Told you," she heard someone say. "She's got a plan."

Not yet, she didn't, but she did have a crew list. She read it out, and those named came forward; others looked disappointed.

"Can't you use a few more?" asked a burly sergeant who looked vaguely familiar. "If there's someone aboard, if there's a fight. I've won my share of barroom brawls."

Extras with that attitude couldn't hurt. Esmay nodded, and another half-dozen clustered around. Others lingered, but didn't come forward.

"The rest of you—if you haven't heard, some of the original intruders have gone back into the rest of the ship. And there are plenty of troops coming in. I'm sure you can think of something appropriate to do. The plans we had for dealing with the troops aboard one Bloodhorde ship now need to work for three times that number."

The really worrisome problem was how to get to the drives test cradles unobserved. Both repair bays were now open and floodlit, so that any movement across the gap might be seen . . . would be seen if the Bloodhorde were looking for it. Even though she and Bowry both had guides—specialists who were test cradle supervisors—so that they could approach the keel of the test cradle rather than its upper deck where ships rested—they would be in sight of anyone watching from the repair bays for part of the distance. Esmay did not want to trust that no one would glance over and notice a string of EVA suits going the wrong direction.

"We need something else to get their attention," Esmay said. "More smoke-and-mirrors, like we used to get the intruders well into T-4, but big enough to enthrall however many of them come out."

"If we turned the lights out, they couldn't see you as well."

"Not at first, but they probably have lights of their own. They'll be expecting something . . ."

"We're supposed to have been partially disabled . . . what if our lights go off, then flicker back on? If they've got those fancy faceplates on their helmets, that'll give 'em fits."

"I'll bet we can look really inept," someone else said. "Fluctuations in the artificial gravity, flickering lights—it could seem like the power's out of control."

"But not until we're on our way," Esmay said. "And that means after most of them are off the test cradles—the timing's going to be tight."

"Trust us, Lieutenant," said one of the people she had not picked for her crew. "We're trusting
you
."

Good point. Esmay nodded at her. "Fine—I'll leave it to you, then. Come on, folks—let's get suited up and see about wiping out a Bloodhorde battle group, or whatever they call themselves."

The Bloodhorde ships disgorged EVA-suited figures in clumps that reminded Esmay of strings of frog spawn in the lily ponds back home. Little shiny blobs, two and three together, silvery in the light from the repair bay. They kept coming and kept coming, more than Esmay would have thought would fit in such a small ship.

"Do they know how visible they are?"

"Probably. It helps them find each other, after all . . . though I don't know if other ships they attack have so much light outside. Why would they? It's depressing to think how visible
we're
going to be." EVA suits were intended to be seen; it was a safety feature.

"Too bad we didn't think to spray ourselves matte black or something."

Her gaze fell on the rolls of sheathing for
Wraith
's denuded flanks. "The skin."

"What?"

"The sheathing . . . those rolls . . . they wouldn't shine . . . If only we'd thought of that earlier. But now they'd see us if we tried to use them."

"It's easy enough to peel off the hull," said one of the techs. "Just takes a sonic generator set at the right frequency, depolymerize the adhesive. What were you thinking, wrap it around you? It's not that flexible."

"How flexible is it?"

"It'd make a roll about this big—" The man held out his arms.

"In other words, several of us would fit into it, in our suits?"

"Oh, sure."

"Would it be any good against scans?"

"Most of 'em, certainly, small as you'd be."

But they had no time; it could take an hour to cut and roll enough tubes, and they didn't have an hour. Esmay put that out of her mind and said, "What else might give us some cover?"

"Well—we can't use the high-speed sprayers in the repair bays, 'cause they'd see it, and besides that's part of the plan—" Esmay wondered what plan, but didn't interrupt to ask. "But there's the little hand sprayers in the Small Parts Coating workbay."

One of the EVA suit techs shot down that idea—paint might eat through the fabric, and they had no time to experiment—so they'd prepared to go as they were, silvery suits and all, when one of the cooks' assistants came running up with an armload of dark green waste sacks.

"We'll look like a row of green peas," muttered Arramanche.

"Better than silver beads," Esmay said. "At least they're dark, and not shiny."

Ahead of her, the base of the test cradle loomed, clearly visible in light from the repair bay. Visible too was their shadow, enlarging as they neared. In its center was the little red blinking dot of the rangefinder on her helmet, giving her the distance and rate of approach.

"Now," said Esmay. The lights went out; she had only her helmet readout to go on, and a single chance to make any adjustments that had to be made. But presumably the Bloodhorde attackers would be startled by the change in light—they'd be looking for people in the repair bays, where they were. Seb Coron had told her about night fighting, that no one could resist looking to see where a light had just come on, or gone out.

Nearer—five meters . . . four . . . she pushed the makeshift control and a little jet of gas spewed out; she felt the shove as if the ones behind her were leaning on her back. Three meters . . . a very slow progression to two, then one, then she tucked her head, rolled, and felt her boots thud on the hull; her knees took up the impact easily.

The base of the drives test cradle was a maze of cables and attachments, but the test cradle supervisor they'd found knew where the nearest hatch was. Once inside, they rose through the shaft with only short tugs on the line. Then they were at the upper hatch, and Esmay peered through . . . there was the Bloodhorde ship, an angular dark bulk against the starfield. She couldn't tell if it was occupied, not until she had the instruments in the test cradle up and running. That was a job for the supervisor, who grunted and fumbled around for a moment. Then—

"It's got active scan leaking all over it," he said. "Can't do much without them noticing. Good thing is, with them putting out that much, they're not likely to notice anything we put on the cable. Want me to signal
Kos
?"

"Yes."

In moments the signal came back: their arrival had been logged, and they were waiting for Bowry's report from the other test cradle. Esmay reminded herself that his team had had longer to travel, that they had crossed below the line of the Bloodhorde troops coming in. Then, when she thought she couldn't wait another moment, the signal came.

"Ready?"

"Go." This was only one tricky bit in the many tricky bits of the plan. Keeping it simple had not been an option. They needed to focus Bloodhorde attention on the repair bays, away from the assault teams who were after Bloodhorde ships. What they had to work with was more in the nature of handwaving and colored smokes than real weaponry or the skill to use it—but to the repair crews of a DSR, handwaving and colored smokes were second nature. Esmay didn't know what they were going to do, only that it would occur in sixty-second bursts of maximum distraction. They hoped.

The first of the Bloodhorde reinforcements had made it to the cradles when the lights went out. They cursed the stupid Familias sods who had not the sense to surrender without playing childish tricks, and turned on their own searchlights. The beams made harsh moving shadows of the construction machinery, the cradle supports, grapple housings, gantries and the robotics that sprouted on them like barnacles on a dock. In the vacuum of the open repair bays, the laser rangefinders left no trace; the first victims didn't even see the little colored dots on their suits for squinting into that mass of bright lights and shifting shadows. More curses in the headphones, but they knew how to deal with this kind of resistance. It was tricky, with their own ship now moored in T-4, but they lobbed in some of the little mines called bouncers, and waited until three or four of them had blown up. They had proximity fuses, but would recognize patches on Bloodhorde EVA suits, which made them only very dangerous to play with.

They came on, alert for any more direct resistance. A hundred more had made it alongside their own ship, alongside
Wraith
, when the lights came back on, flickered on and off several times, and then went out again. Helmet filters darkened, oscillated in response to the rapid changes, and finally cleared as the darkness came back. Again their own lights probed the darkness, and they remembered the confusion they'd seen. They were not novices, to be put off by such basic ploys. They didn't bunch up; they moved along in a disciplined skirmish line, until their forward elements reached the airlock at the hub end of the repair bay.

Then the big robotic sprayers, which had slid down the gantries centimeter by centimeter in the light, dropping meters whenever the lights weren't on them, rotated, aimed . . . and fired thick yellow liquid at them. It dispersed to a fine spray in the vacuum, a spray that adhered with equal rapidity to their suits, including the helmet viewplates.

Not all of them got a full dose. Some, near the nozzles, were physically thrown off their feet by the force of the spray, and of those a few managed to curl protectively into balls, so their helmet faceplates weren't entirely obscured. But it took a critical few moments to realize what had happened, and its effect. In those few moments, their formation disintegrated. A few battered and blundered their way to airlocks. But the rest were blind, their external sensors clogged with spray, in some cases stuck fast to the deck by having unfortunately stepped on a coat of spray before it set completely.

The suits were powered; they could pull free. But they couldn't see; they couldn't get the paint off with gloved hands . . . in fact, though they didn't know it, they'd have needed an unusual solvent to remove the paint without eating through the faceplate.

"They're wrathy," said one of those who could understand the language coming out of those suit radios. "They're cursing the name and the war clan of someone named Vokrais." Down on the deck of the repair bay, the brilliant yellow suits seemed almost to glow in the shadowy areas. Evidently those mixing the paint had added reflectants and fluorescents to it.