The Stardance Trilogy (94 page)

“Look at it this way,” Jay called back. “You’re getting tonight’s rent free.”

“Too right,” he said, and closed his door again.

“God,” Rand said, “Fat and the others must be freaking out in there. If they had the window closed when the power failed, they’re in minimal emergency lighting: it could take them an hour to find the manual door release, let alone figure out how to use it.”

“Hell of a welcome to the Shimizu,” Jay agreed. “Come on, let’s go try and calm them down.”

They jaunted in the eerie pale red light to Suite 427. “We’ll never convince Fat the place is safe now,” Jay complained as they neared it. “Shit, I just don’t
believe
this. The only thing I can imagine taking out the Shimizu system is a comet right through the core crystals—and we didn’t feel any impact. It just doesn’t…oh, you asshole.” Automatically, he had stopped in front of the door and waited for an AI to ask his business. “Hit that release for me, will you, bro?” he said, pointing.

Rand pulled open the access hatch indicated and pulled the handle inside. It moved easily—but the door did not move. “Seems to be broken,” he reported.

Jay grimaced. “Naturally. Things never go wrong one at a time.” He put his hands on his hips. “Christ, the door’s soundproof—we can’t even bang out ‘Calm down’ in Morse code.”

“What’s Morse code?” Rand asked.

“Eva would know, but it doesn’t—wait a god damn minute! What do you mean, ‘broken’? That’s a mechanical latch: it can’t be broken.”

“Okay,” Rand said agreeably. “Then what
does
nonfunction and a blinking red light mean?”

“A blinking—”

In free-fall one almost never pales visibly; blood does not drain from the head as pressure drops. But even in the poor light, Rand could see his brother’s expression come apart. He jaunted quickly to Rand’s side and stared at the little flashing pilot bulb. After a few seconds, he began to shake his head slowly back and forth, the picture of denial.

Rand grabbed his shoulder,
hard,
and shook him. “What does it mean?” he cried.

Jay turned to him. There was horror in his eyes. He needed three tries to get the words out, and when he did, they were barely audible. “There is no pressure on the other side of that door.”

High Earth Orbit
25 February 2065
 
 

S
ULKE
D
RAGER HAD ALWAYS HATED IT
when everybody talked at once. Thirty years as a member of a telepathic community had taught her a great deal about handling multiple inputs—more than any human being had ever known—but never before in history had so much of the Starmind all been sending at the same time. And underlying it all, pervading the whole Solar System like a taste of metal in the back of the mouth, was the wordless shriek from Saturn.

And naturally, the “voices” she most needed to “hear” were the weakest. They were also the closest, but distance means nothing to a telepath; signal strength and bandwidth were all that counted.

So she borrowed energy from every Stardancer in the heavens who was
not
shouting something, and used it to drive a message that had never before been sent across the matrix.

Shut the fuck up!

The System seemed to echo in the sudden relative quiet. Even the wordless wail from the Ring halved its “volume” and “pitch” and dropped back down into the region of speech. The words—
Save him, Sulke!
—repeated endlessly, like a mantra.

And now Sulke could clearly hear the gentle voice she most needed to hear.
All right so far, cousins,
Reb said.
We are all unharmed so far, which means they intend to parley. Be calm.

She knew his location precisely now. The vessel in which he was imprisoned was superbly stealthed—the combined power of the United Nations could not have found it—but she had detection gear no battle cruiser could match, if the target was another telepath. Reb had been one years before he’d met his first Stardancer; a natural adept. So were Fat Humphrey and Meiya.

So were four other humans currently in space, and fourteen on Terra. About average for humanity. All of them had been kidnapped too, at the same time as Reb, Fat and Meiya—every one was now a prisoner—but
this
vessel was Sulke’s pidgin: the one she personally happened to be close enough to do something about. She instructed her subconscious to monitor the other ongoing rescue operations for data relevant to her own problem, and consciously ignored them.

She fed Reb’s location to those who were good at orbital ballistics, grabbed the report that echoed back and swore.
You’re going nowhere fast! Your trajectory is taking you up out of the ecliptic, and there’s nothing there!

He was still calm.
Naturally. We knew they must have a covert base in space; now they’re leading us to it. We already know where the ones dirtside are being taken.

Yeah, and we can’t touch the place. What if where you’re going is just as well defended?

Then we will have to be very clever. And very lucky.

She went briefly into rapport with those who had had military training back in their human lives, and swore again.
We have Stardancers vectoring to intercept your projected path at multiple points…but there’s no way to know where you’re going until they decelerate. And if they maneuver in the meantime, we could lose you completely.

They probably will. They’re paranoid; they’ll assume their stealthing may not be good enough, and try every trick there is.

I can match orbits with you right now,
she said.
You’re coming right at me, near enough.

What about relative speeds?

She was already adjusting her lightsail, spinning out Symbiote like pizza dough.
You’re a bat out of hell—but if I can grab hold, and it doesn’t kill me…
She had an unusually powerful thruster on her belt she had never expected to use; she poked it carefully through the Symbiote membrane, borrowed a hundred brains to help her aim it, and fired it to exhaustion.

What can you accomplish?
Meiya asked.

Tear off antennas, bugger up their communications, bang on the hull and distract them while you jump ’em…if I have to, I’ll unscrew the fucking drive with my fingernails.

There was a hint of a chuckle in Reb’s voice.
I love you too, Sulke. Whoops—they’re about to drug me…

Me too,
Fat Humphrey said
. Watch your ass, Sulke.

She could see them now, by eyeball, and they were indeed coming on fast. But she was confident; she had learned to board a moving freight when she was eight years old, leaving a place then called East Germany.
Yeah?
she sent back.
I’ll give you a two-kilo gold asteroid if
you
can pull off that trick, pal.

His answering giggle was the last thing she ever heard. She never saw the white-winged figure who came up behind her and put a laser bolt through her brain.

The Shimizu Hotel
25 February 2065
 
 

J
AY REMEMBERED AN OLD STORY
from the dawn of spaceflight: a Skylab astronaut had awakened to a lighting failure, and had taken nearly twenty minutes to find the backup switch—in a sleeping compartment the size of a phone booth. Darkness and free-fall were a disorienting combination.

He knew his way around the Shimizu about as well as anyone alive—but in the eerie, feeble glow of emergency lighting, everything looked
different.
In places even the emergency lights had failed, and almost everywhere he and Rand encountered adherents of the ancient philosophy, “When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.” There was absolutely no doubt in Jay’s mind that somewhere Evelyn Martin was hemorrhaging and tearing his hair out in clumps.

For the first time in his life, Jay did not give a damn about offending guests; he and Rand went through them like buckshot, leaving a trail of outrage and broken bones that was sure to give birth to expensive litigation.

The destination that would most efficiently allow them to find out what was going on, report what had happened, and do something effective about it, was Kate Tokugawa’s office. There were other nerve centers, but that was the only one Jay was confident he could find in his sleep without
AI
assistance. It was startling to realize how much you depended on the damn things.
God help me if I suddenly need a cube root or something,
he thought wildly, bouncing a fat bald groundhog off a bulkhead.

Rand deked expertly around the ricocheting guest and pulled up alongside him. “They couldn’t have started losing pressure before the blackout, or we’d have heard alarms. To reach zero by the time we tried that latch, they must have blown out
fast
.”

“The whole window must have gone,” Jay said.

“Is that possible?”

“No. Not without help.”

“So they’re dead?” He clotheslined an employee who was, quite properly, trying to prevent them from speeding recklessly through a developing riot—and, since it was the quickest way to explain, regretfully sucker-punched the woman as he went by.

“Probably. But maybe not.”

“How do you figure?”

“I ask myself, what could take out a whole window? I come up with a ship designed for the purpose. I think they’ve been snatched. I think when they jaunted into that room, the window was already gone:
they saw a holo of one
. And at some point they all got sleepy…”

“And somebody came through the holo and towed them away…wouldn’t somebody
notice
a fucking barnacle attached to the Shimizu?”

“Remora,” Jay corrected. “It moves. Not if it was stealthed well enough. Fat’s room is all the way around from the docks. And by now it’s gone—and the sphere of space within which it could possibly lie is expanding every second. You can spot even the best-stealthed ship by eyeball, by occultation of background stars—but you have to know just where to look.”

“Maybe we should quit dawdling, then.” They were into the final corridor now, a straight run of perhaps two thousand meters; perhaps a dozen flailing figures cluttering the way between them and the door to Management country. He lifted his head, bellowed “FORE!” at the top of his lungs, tucked his chin and triggered all his thrusters at max.

Jay did likewise. Miraculously, everyone managed to scatter out of their way. Halfway to the door, they shut down, flipped over, and began to decelerate—and discovered that they had both burned themselves dry. They impacted with bone-jarring crashes, desperately grabbed handholds, and nearly had their arms pulled out of their sockets by the rebound. Jay’s first thought was for Rand, but his brother threw him a shaky grin and a circled thumb and forefinger.

Jay found the manual doorlatch and released it. He was greatly relieved when this one worked; he had not been sure he would find pressure in Management—and had had no idea what to do if he didn’t. They scrambled in together, then resealed the door to keep out guests who wanted a refund. There was nobody at the front desk, nor in the outer offices beyond it. “Where the hell
is
everybody?” Rand snarled.

“I don’t know,” Jay snapped, even more nervous than his brother. This was wrong, wrong—“Wait a minute.” He doubled back, went to the front desk. “I filled in for a guy once or twice,” he said as he got there, and began tapping code on a drawer under the counter. “Let’s see if they still…ah!” He got the drawer open—and took from it a totally illegal police-issue
GE
hand-laser. “Sometimes Security doesn’t show up fast enough when you call them,” he said, checking the charge and clicking off the safety. “
Now
let’s go see what’s in back.”

“I’ll go first and draw fire,” Rand said. He and Jay exchanged a glance. It became a grin. “The Hardy Boys in High Orbit,” Rand said.

“And in a big-ass hurry.”

They worked their way back through the outer offices to Kate’s door cautiously but quickly, Rand preceding his brother through every doorway. Finally they floated outside her office.

“No point in listening at a soundproof door,” Jay said.

“No point in knocking, either,” Rand agreed, and opened the manual release compartment. “I’ll go first, again.”

“No need. I’ll
know
where the target is, if there is one.”

“Okay. If there’s trouble in there, you go right and I’ll go left.”

“Which way is that?” They happened to be upside down with respect to each other.

“You go away from me and I’ll go away from you.” Rand unlatched the door. It let go with a pop, and opened a few centimeters. He gripped the release latch to brace himself, and slid the door the rest of the way open. He and Jay entered together, and stopped.

And then both began to laugh.

They knew it was inappropriate; that only made it worse. Facing them was one of the most ridiculous sights they had ever seen: Evelyn Martin, holding a gun.

Laughing, Jay tried to move away from Rand as agreed—and remembered that his thrusters were dry. He still was not worried; he and his brother could outjaunt a spastic like Martin with muscles alone.

Then he saw Katherine Tokugawa well to his left, also armed. His laughter died away. They were outgunned. He shook Rand’s shoulder and pointed her out. After a microsecond’s thought, his own gun steadied on Martin. If he were going to be killed by one of these two, he preferred Kate. More dignity.

“Drop it,” Martin yapped.

Jay thought hard for a whole second, then opened his fingers. The gun, of course, stayed where it was.

“Lose it,”
Martin corrected, expressing his exasperation by putting a bolt into the wall beside the doorway. The smell of burning bulkhead plastic filled the room faster than the air-conditioning could suck it away. Jay gave his own gun a finger-snap, like a child shooting marbles; it drifted away toward Martin. Ignoring the man, he turned and addressed Kate.

“I should have figured you’d have to be in on this,” he said. “But I’m damned if I can see how you expect to come out of it with your job.”