“Want me to take him to one of the storerooms?” one of the other terrorists suggested.
Forste shook his head. “A waste of time. Where did you say all that construction was?”
“Decks Three through Six, West Quadrant,” the other said. “I only glanced in there, but it’s a real maze.”
“That’s where he’ll be, then,” Forste decided. “You and Niende go find him.”
“Right.” The other flipped an abbreviated salute and left the room, taking one of the others with him.
“And as for you,” Forste added, gesturing to Bob with the gun, “it’s time for you to join the others.”
The other rangers were gathered in a tight conversational knot in the back of the monitor complex as Bob was escorted back in. The knot broke as the pressure door slammed shut behind him, surging forward like bees whose hive has just been hit by a thrown rock.
Even so, Drexler got there first. “How is he?” he demanded.
“He’ll be all right,” Bob assured him. “He’s out of danger and in a quick-heal coma.”
Drexler looked back toward the pressure door, his eyes simmering like overheated circuit coils. “Damn them,” he ground out. “Damn them all.”
“Careful,” Kelsey warned. “They could have painted a bug or two on the wall before they put us in here.”
“There aren’t any bugs,” Drexler said. “I’ve already checked.”
“So what about this plan of theirs?” Renfred asked, playing nervously with his mustache. “It can’t possibly work, can it?”
Drexler’s lips compressed. “Well, that’s the real hell of it. It just might.”
“You’re kidding,” Bronsoni said, his mouth dropping open.
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Drexler growled. “This place was designed to take the biggest sub-nukes they had available back then, which means you’ve got a hell of a lot of metal and collapsed ceramic in your hull. That means a lot of sensor shielding; and that means the escort ships may very well not spot the telltale missile and laser EM
signatures until it’s too late.”
“But what about you?” Kelsey asked. “Aren’t you supposed to check in or something?”
“Of course we are,” Drexler bit out. “But Forste has to know that. I’m guessing they’ve either cracked our code and can fake a message, or else they’ve got an agent on one of the escort ships who can do it for them.”
“And they did know who you were,” Hix murmured. “That means they know a lot about the President’s plans.”
“That point had not escaped me,” Drexler said icily. “Regardless, we can’t assume that this scheme will be cracked at the far end. That means it’s up to us.”
He looked at Bob, visibly bracing himself. “So we need a plan; and Part One of that plan is getting us out of here. Is Ranger Wimbley clever enough to figure that out?”
Bob shook his head. “I’m sorry. But like I’ve told everyone else, Giff is on Ceres.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Drexler insisted. “You flinched when Forste asked you about him.
Why would you do that if he was on a simple supply run?”
Bob glanced at Kelsey, and the pained look on Kelsey’s face. “Because it’s an illegal supply run,” he said reluctantly.
Drexler frowned. “An illegal supply run? What’s he getting, elephant tusks?”
Bob sighed. “He’s picking up a shipful of electrical equipment, plumbing supplies, and enough construction webbing to at least start putting the West Quadrant back together again.”
Drexler frowned even harder. “What’s illegal about that?”
“The fact that we’re buying the stuff ourselves instead of going through Park Service Procurement,” Kelsey told him. “Bypassing bureaucratic banana slugs is a Class E felony these days. Or didn’t you know that?”
“No, I didn’t,” Drexler said between clenched teeth. “So that’s it. The entire opposition is conveniently locked together in this room. Terrific.”
“Don’t give up hope yet,” Bob said. “We still have one ally that Forste may not have figured on.”
“Who?” Drexler asked. “Our comatose Agent Cummings?”
“No,” Bob said, smiling the smile of a man stuck too long on the same dead-end post.
“Space Fort Jefferson.”
Tredje got the door halfway open before it jammed. Cursing, he eased his way sideways through it, hoping his barrel chest wouldn’t get stuck.
“We could try one of the other doors,” Niende offered from behind him.
“Shut up,” Tredje advised, exhaling and pushing. A second later, he was through.
He stepped to one side as Niende joined him. The whole area, as far ahead as he could see, was one huge collection of scaffolding, barriers, supply piles, and drop cloths. Over against some of the walls were rolled-up sections of carpet, either freshly pulled up or else hoping to be put down some day, and here and there were islands of tool cabinets.
Some of the barriers seemed to be warning about drums of rust remover and other cleaning chemicals that had been gathered together; others were guarding against actual holes that went clear through the deck. The whole mess, he knew from their initial sweep, covered nearly a quarter of the circumference of the wheel-shape that was Space Fort Jefferson.
And this was just the mess on Deck Three. Decks Four, Five, and Six were in the same shape.
This, he decided, was going to be a long day. “All right, give me some space,” he told Niende, drawing his gun. The rangers weren’t supposed to be armed; but then, they weren’t supposed to be hiding either. “Let’s find him.”
“Easy,” Annen warned as Sjette and Femte eased the rolling carrier down the corridor, wincing every time it bounced over an uneven section of decking. The Disabler torpedo wasn’t especially fragile; but if it should somehow happen to go off, the discharge of high-voltage current would be unbelievably spectacular for the entire quarter second it would take to burn the three of them into unrecognizable lumps of carbon.
Down the corridor, the lights flickered. Again. Annen swore, glancing up at those overhead for signs of similar flickering. Somewhere nearby he could hear the occasional soft click of a spark bleeding current off a bad ground in the clusters of cables running along both lower edges of the corridor. This whole section of the station, clearly, was an electrical disaster just itching to happen.
He shook his head in disgust and a growing sense of uneasiness. The timing and positioning of the flyby, unfortunately, gave them no choice as to which quadrant of the station they needed to use to launch their attack. Even more unfortunately, the zone of necessity was well off both the tourist and living areas of the station and clearly in the advanced-degenerate stage of its life. Uncertain lighting and power were bad enough; but if something else went out—
“Hold it,” Sjette said suddenly, straightening up from his half of the carrier in front of a door with the universal “men’s room” symbol on it. “I have to.”
“Make it quick,” Annen said, glancing around. The quiet snapping was getting worse; he doubted the power had been turned on down here for years. Any minute now the corridor would probably blow all its circuit breakers and plunge them into darkness.
“As quick as I can,” Sjette said with just an edge of sarcasm. He pushed open the door and disappeared inside, unzipping as he went.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Femte muttered, twitching at a particularly loud snap.
“What if the power goes out at a crucial moment?”
“Never mind the power,” Annen said. “What about the air system? What about simple basic hull integrity?”
Femte shook his head. “You know, if we can’t paralyze both escorts at the same time, one of them will surely sacrifice itself to protect the President.”
“And then Space Force One will land its Marines on top of us,” Annen said grimly.
“We’d better make sure—”
He broke off at the sudden bellow that came from inside the men’s room. “Sjette!” he snapped, yanking out his gun and dashing around the back end of the Disabler. If that missing ranger was skulking around in there—
He skidded to a halt as Sjette staggered through the door, soaked from forehead to shins.
