Justgetting off the ship had seemed like a good initial goal but Memnonwas planning to kill a lot of people. Was there any way to stop him?
What had Sulaksaid? Maintenance tubes with training systems? A grim smile creptacross her featuresbut it froze, half formed.
Did you know what would happen to mom, you slybastard? Shewouldn’t put it past him, not if this was the only way to preventgenocide.
She shook herhead. Ask him later.Sulak seemed anything but infallible.
She opened a holo andfound the nearest branch of the maintenance tubes that, hopefully,would be just as ignored on this ship as they were on the Mouse.
It was going to be kindof a long crawl unless she wanted to risk returning to the world ofthe surface people and jogging twenty meters up the corridor. “No,thanks,” she muttered quietly.
She shrank the holowindow down to a small call-up point and pushed it out a few feet,giving her just enough light to navigate by. Now that she was outsidethe secured confines of her prison suite, she figured nobody wouldnotice a random holo being used.
Gabriellacrawled along, getting stuck only once when her shorts caught on acable tray. She stubbed a finger, reaching back to free them andnearly cursed out loud.
She found the shell ofthe tube and opened a hole in the side. Nobody was inside. She slidin without hesitation. It was cleaner than the cable tier she’dbeen scrambling through and it was properly lit.
She closed thehole and leaned against the wall of the tube to catch her breath andcollect her thoughts. What have I got to work with here?
She’d escaped fromher captor, sort of. He had no idea she was still on the ship and shenow had decent freedom of movement around the ship.
She didn’t know shitabout spaceships, though – at least, not much more than youraverage republic or empire layperson. She nodded to herself.
Somewhere in this tubenetwork, there would be a training system. She could learn how theship worked and that knowledge would be needed if she had any chanceof saving an entire world.
“No pressure,”she told herself with quiet irony. Gods, listen to me.Talking to myself like I’ve been alone down here for years.She turned aft, hoping to find the training pod somewhere closer toEngineering.
Numbers
The Mouse, Babilim Station
So that’s thesituation,” Gleb told the holograpic Eth. “We’re fairly certainthey’re probing her for defensive information about one of ourworlds.”
“That wouldcertainly explain why we’ve been seeing thesedamned shipping raids in the empire. Someone’sbeen searching ships, trying to get their hands on our people,” Ethsaid.
“We can’t pin downwho’s behind it. They’re all mercs, and they’re hired throughthe usual intermediaries who make damned sure they don’t knowenough to become a loose end.”
Gleb noddedabsently. “And you’re sure the contracts have all beenterminated?”
Eth reached out andpulled a Haidari into view by his ear. “We’ve heard itfirst-hand. Whoever’s behind this has no further need of theirefforts.” He shoved the captured merc out of sight.
“Then the attack, ifit’s coming, is forming up now,” Gleb concluded.
“I’d say we’rewell past the point of uncertainty on this,” Luna said darkly.“It’s happening. I say we call it an opportunity.”
Both men turned to lookat her in surprise.
“We’ve had nothingbut questions lately,” she told them, “and no sign of an answerto any of them. They took Gabriella and we don’t know who they areor where they might be hiding.
“Now we know they’relikely to hit one of our worlds. We can count on them being in one oftwo places. That narrows the odds against us by a pretty widemargin.”
“But which world?”Eth asked. “We can’t afford to split our forces. The enemy sureas hell plans to concentrate all of their ships for this attack.”
Gleb chewed theinside of his cheek for a few seconds. He shook his head angrily.“There are three hundred colonists on Ragnarok who expect us toprotect them andthere are Billions of people on Irth that don’t even know that weexist.” Except for Luna’s family, though they don’teven know where we’re really from.
He looked at Eth.“You’re still at Heliopolis?”
Eth nodded.
“Detail one ofyour corvettes to finda freighter, preferably a willing one, but, if not, I don’t give ashit. They’re to put a security team aboard her. They and the’vette will go directly to Ragnarok.”
“Evac, if stillpossible?”
“Yes.You and your other forces are to path directly to Irth at bestpossible speed. We’ll see you there.”
Into the Crucible
Ghost in… you know…
The Deathstalker, In path
Gabriella watchedher holo. No evidence of crew-members near the aft messhall. She touched a code snippet and stepped through a growingopening behind the buffet-style warming trays.
She opened thehaversack she’d found hanging off a chair during her last foodraid. She dropped a lung fruit inside. Fresh,she noticed. Still breathing.She took a few hardboiled amphibian larvae and a grav-spoof flask ofwater.
The flask was able tomimic the effects of gravity. Even if you dropped it while open, thewater would stay inside. How it knew you were tilting it for a drinkwas beyond her but it wasn’t such a compelling mystery that she hadto return to the training pod.
There was also a trayof fried marsupial legs that did a pretty decent job of replacingfried chicken. She took two, dropping one in the haversack and takinga bite of the other on her way back to the hole.
She was gettingpretty good at being a ghost on the Deathstalker.She’d had more than a week ofskulking around.
She kept walking,dropping the first stripped bone into her bag and pulling out thelung-fruit. It always tasted better if its rudimentary lung was stillfunctioning. Once it died, the sugars would start converting into abitter compound that protected its seeds.
Her feet took herforward without any particular reason and she dropped the first ofher scraps down a shaft that led to the central monorail line.
She turned to theleft and reached a maintenance node meant for some kind of dataupgrade that had never materialized. She’dbeen here a few times, fantasizing about killing Memnon.
The forward bulkhead ofthis space was also the aft wall of his
