Wasteland of flint

tools on cutting blade,' she ordered the three Marines floating behind her. 'Cut the framework off at one meter. Then we'll push it clear – gently.'

Hadeishi settled in to wait. He could feel a vibration in the platform through his boots as the Marines began cutting through the framework of hexacarbon pipe the engineers had taken such care to install. Losing the shroud of absorptive fabric would reveal them to any active sensors in the vicinity, but he hoped the miners had not decided to mount a targeting radar inside the ore-tank shield.

Felix's team worked with commendable speed, and only three minutes later the encasing roof was pushed up and away, drifting back a few meters, hull-fabric standing out stiff from the edges of the cut.

'Let's go.' Hadeishi rapped gently on Asale's shoulder. The pilot nodded and the platform began to edge forward. Far ahead, Mitsu thought he could make out the oblong rectangle of an airlock door edged with tiny green lights.

Kosho turned away from the video feed transmitted by Felix's helmet.

'They are almost at the airlock,' she announced to the bridge crew. There was a full complement at their consoles, though by shiptime this was early in third watch. Every hand aboard was awake and standing to battle stations. 'Hayes-tzin, do you have a firing solution?'

'Hai, Sho-sa.' The weapons officer nodded sharply, his face mostly obscured by the helmet of his combat suit. The sho-sa was taking every precaution. At any moment, they could be engaged in a point-blank beam weapon shoot-out with a hostile ship sixty times their size. 'One bird, sprint mode. Shall I load out?'

'Proceed.' Kosho turned her attention to a camera view shot from one of the point-defense sensor clusters on the skin of the Cornuelle. Hayes tapped a series of commands on his panel. A section of the ship's hull retracted, revealing the mouth of a missile accelerator mount. Gleaming magnet rings shone brightly for a moment and then the snout of an Atlatl-IV antiship missile emerged with graceful speed. The missile exited the ringtrack and drifted free of the ship's hull.

Not the usual kind of launch, Susan thought, suppressing a snort of amusement.

On the screen, three z-suited figures drifted into view, guiding an EVA collar between them. Five minutes of careful work clamped the collar around the Atlatl. Two of the men jetted away, while the third accessed a control panel on the collar. Susan leaned slightly forward, watching for signs of trouble.

'Guidance test underway.' Yoyontzin's voice burred on the intership channel. 'Test is green.'

Hayes tapped a glyph on his own panel. 'Remote comm test is go.' A v-pane appeared, displayed a variety of results, then vanished gain. 'Test shows green. Remote control is live.'

After acknowledging the results, the engineer jetted away from the missile and Susan waited patiently until all three men were processing in through number eight airlock. She looked to Hayes and nodded. Her own hand drifted above a preprogrammed point-defense weapons order.

'Sprint One is under secondary power,' the weapons officer reported. 'Maneuvering.'

Susan watched the fully-armed Atlatl move away from her ship, accelerating slowly as the jets on the collar hissed thin streams of white vapor into the black abyss of space. Fifteen minutes later, the missile had vanished from sight, curving away around the mass of the asteroid screening the Cornuelle from the Turan.

'Sprint One has cleared self-destruct distance.' Hayes consulted his panel. 'Sprint One will be at launch station in sixteen minutes.'

Susan nodded, allowing herself to savor an atom of relief. She had moderate faith in Yoyontzin's abilities, but the prospect of anything – much less an antimatter-charged shipkiller – colliding with the hull of the Cornuelle precipitated a cold sweat of tension. 'Proceed with inertial guidance check and targeting comp test.'

The weapons officer nodded, keying a new set of commands into his panel. There had been some problems with reconfiguring the Atlatl to acquire target, lock and ignite within the minute acceleration time frame required by their current situation. The manufacturers had not envisioned using the heavy-class shipkiller at knife distance. Susan wondered if the code modifications would hold up in a split second of reaction time. As the gods will.

She looked away from the view of the stars, returning her attention to the feed from Felix's helmet.

Hadeishi swung out of the platform, tucking in his legs to clear the ragged edge of the now-missing frame. Felix and her men had unloaded all of the gear, anchoring the crates to the refinery hull in a semicircle around the airlock door. Corporal Felix and Tonuac were crouched at the lock access panel, having removed the faceplate, with a cluster of cables snaking from the blocky comm relay into the opening. They were watching a hand-held spin through millions of control code combinations. At the far end of their hardwire, the Cornuelle's main comp was prying at the commercial-grade control circuits in the lock mechanism.

'Almost through…' Felix motioned to the chu-sa. 'Thirty-five seconds, kyo. Please stand out of the line of fire. Maratay and Clavigero will enter first.'

Obediently, Hadeishi touched down beyond the ring of equipment, letting his boots adhere to the scarred, blackened hull. He found it wryly amusing that the EVA platform now seemed to be hanging in the air overhead. The two Marine privates shifted themselves to include him inside the immediate fire perimeter. Both men were crouched and braced against the hull, shipguns out and armed.

'Sho-i Asale,' Hadeishi clicked open the comm. 'You should back off, out of this confined space. Take station a hundred or so meters from the exterior ring of ore tanks and stand by.'

The pilot frowned – Mitsu could see her worried expression through the glassite of her faceplate. 'Kyo – what if you need extraction? I should stay close.'

'We might not need pickup from this particular airlock,' he replied, keeping an eye on the darkness among the gantries and space framing joining the ore tanks to the refinery hull. 'Take your time and stay clear of the hardwire.'

Asale nodded dubiously, but ran through her flight check and then – in a faint cloud of vapor – began to back the platform away from the airlock. At the same time, Felix stood and took up position to cover the airlock opening.

'We're in,' she said, thumbing the safety on the Whipsaw to live fire, single-shot.

Hadeishi crouched down as the two privates swung round and took hold of the locking bars on the face of the lock. He did not bother to check his own sidearm. If things degenerated to a firefight, his own nominal skill with a pistol or assault rifle would not make much of a difference.

The airlock unbolting vibrated through the hull. Hadeishi could see the seal outgassing and then a brighter light flooded out as the heavy pressure door recessed and slid aside, leaving a half-moon–shaped section exposed. Maratay ducked inside, crabbing around the corner, gun first. Clavigero followed a heartbeat later and their voices – low and clipped – filled the comm channel.

'Clear. No hostiles.'

'Clear. Inner door seal intact. No warning lights.'

Felix signed for him to enter and Hadeishi swung 'round and inside in a single motion. He felt the tug of a differential gravity interface inside the white-painted chamber and oriented himself by the g-deck logo stenciled on the wall. Clavigero was already at the inner hatch, peering this way and that, watching for opposition.

'Chu-sa? We could use a hand here?' Felix was standing above him, boots still adhered to the outer hull, looking down impatiently. Tonuac was releasing the first of the equipment cases from its anchor.

'Of course,' Hadeishi flashed a reassuring smile. Some officers would have been content to stand aside, but he did not believe in shirking and speed was of the essence. He braced himself and took hold of the lanyard attached to the first case. A blocky gray container marked with the ownership glyph of the Engineering department drifted solidly into his hands. Hadeishi swung it aside to the wall of the airlock and thumbed the adhesion patches 'live'. The case attached itself to the wall with a solid thump.

As Hadeishi hauled the equipment inside, Felix angled through their midst with the octopuslike assembly of the comp interface. There was a second access panel beside the inner door. She removed the faceplate with her hand tool in a series of crisp, flawless actions. Hadeishi, watching her out of the corner of his eye, was pleased to see the endless round of sims had imparted noticeable effects.