The Shadow of Saganami

'It seems you're going on a little excursion with us, Mr. Kagiyama. I don't know what we're likely to be walking into over there, but my people will look after you. Just remember two things. One, you're a midshipman on your first deployment, not Preston of the Spaceways. Stay out of trouble, keep an eye on the people around you who've done this sort of thing before, and leave your sidearm holstered unless somebody tells you differently. Second, your skinsuit's a hell of a lot better at stopping pulser darts and other nasty things than bare skin, but it's not battle armor. So do all of us a favor and try to keep the battle armor between you and any unpleasantness we run into.'

It was, Aikawa reflected, like being told to keep his hands in his pockets. Which, under the circumstances, he found almost comforting.

'Do you think Lieutenant Hearns is right to be concerned, Sir?' he asked after a moment.

'I don't know.' If Mann thought Aikawa's question was out of line, no sign of it showed. 'But I do know she's not the kind to jump at shadows. I suppose we'll find out in a few minutes.' He looked back at Crites and McCollum. 'Let's get our people helmeted up.'

'Aye, aye, Sir.'

The battle-armored Marines locked their heavily armored helmets into place while Aikawa sealed his own clear, globular helmet. Never a large person, he felt like a midget in his standard Navy skinsuit beside the towering, armored Marines. The soot-black battle armor's limbs swelled with exoskeletal 'muscles,' and the pulse rifles most of them carried looked little larger than toys in their gauntleted hands. The two plasma gunners had exchanged their energy weapons for tri-barrels, and he knew the grenadiers carried only standard HE and frag rounds without any plasma grenades. He still felt dwarfed and insignificant armed with nothing more than the pulser holstered at his right hip.

As he waited to leave the pinnace, he thought about what Mann had just said. It was interesting. All of Hexapuma's Marines seemed to accord Lieutenant Hearns' judgment a degree of respect Aikawa was fairly sure was rare for someone of her rank. Especially a naval officer of her rank. She seemed completely unaware of it, too. He wondered how much of it went back to what had happened in Tiberian and how much of it was the effect of Lieutenant Gutierrez's presence.

'Two minutes, Lieutenant Mann,' he heard the pinnace's pilot announce over his skinsuit com.

'Understood,' Mann replied, and made a 'wind it up' circular gesture with his right hand at Crites and McCollum. Both noncoms nodded, and Aikawa-obedient to Mann's admonition-stayed carefully out of the way while the hulking, armored Marines moved towards the airlock.

* * *

Helen followed SCPO Wanderman down the passageway towards Environmental Three. Paulo d'Arezzo had been split off to accompany Commander Lewis to Anhur's single remaining fusion plant, and Lieutenant Commander Henshaw had sent her with Wanderman while he picked his way through the wreckage to what was left of the after impeller rooms. She was -astonished by how much she missed d'Arezzo. His standoffishness was a pain in the ass, but his apparent calmness had been more comforting than she cared to admit. He was the only person in the entire boarding party who approached her own youthful lack of experience, and she'd taken an unexpected sort of strength from that sense of shared identity.

'Just a minute, Ma'am,' Wanderman said suddenly, and she came to a halt behind him. The petty officer and the other two ratings with him blocked her view, and she wondered what the problem was.

'What d'you think, Senior Chief?' one of the ratings asked.

'I don't think it was a direct hit. Looks more like a secondary explosion. But whatever it was, it made a hell of a mess.'

'Wonder how they got pressure back in here?' the rating said.

'One of the reasons I think it was a secondary,' Wanderman replied. 'Anything that got this deep from the outside and did that kind of damage would've left a breach all the way in that would've been hell to seal. But if something like a superconductor ring blew this deep in, it could have shredded the passage this way and opened a small breach clear to the skin without opening up the entire side of the ship.'

'Kinda makes you wish they'd lost the grav plates, doesn't it?' the other rating put in.

'Freefall would help,' Wanderman agreed. 'But I think if we stay to port we'll be all right. Just watch your footing.'

Helen's curiosity was almost more than she could stand-especially since, technically, she was the senior (as in only ) officer present. Under the circumstances, however, she wasn't about to attempt to assert authority over a noncom with Wanderman's years of experience. And if she'd been tempted to, the thought of Commander Lewis' reaction to her temerity would have depressed the temptation immediately. But she still-

Wanderman and the others moved aside, and Helen abruptly wished they hadn't.

The entire right-hand side of the passage ahead had been ripped as if by a huge, angry talon. It was splintered and broken, half-melted and recongealed in places, for a distance of nine or ten meters. The damage crossed one of the ship's emergency blast doors, and the door's starboard panel had obviously never had a chance to move before whatever titanic blow had torn the passage apart froze it.

And neither had the crewmen who'd been in the passage when that blow hit.

She couldn't even tell how many of them there'd been. The port bulkhead was pitted where fragments of the starboard bulkhead had ricocheted from it, but the marks were hard to see because of the blood patterns splashed across it. It looked as if some lunatic with a spray gun of gore had been interrupted halfway through repainting the passage, using bits of human tissue and scraps of human bone to provide texture to her work. Severed limbs, blasted torsos, fingers, bits of uniform, an intact boot with its owner's foot still in it, a human head canted up against the lower edge of the frozen blast door like a discarded basketball... And, worst of all, the contorted body of a man who'd obviously been badly hit by the explosion but miraculously not killed outright when it shattered both his legs. A man whose rupturing lungs had vomited blood from mouth and nose while his fingers clawed at the deck as the passage depressurized about him.

Wanderman's right, a small, still voice said beneath her horror. It couldn't have been a direct hit. This big a breach would've depressurized the passage almost instantly if it went all the way through. And he must have taken several minutes to die, lying here, unable to get away...

She felt the senior chief watching her from the corner of one eye, and she made herself stand there for a moment, looking out over that scene of unspeakable carnage. Then she drew a deep breath.

'I believe you suggested keeping to port, Senior Chief?' she said, gazing at the badly damaged decksole along the starboard side. Her voice sounded strange to her, without the quivers of shock she felt running through her body.

'Yes, Ma'am.'

'Well,' she said, 'since I'm the lightest person here, I suppose I should go first to check the footing.'

Chapter Twenty-Six

Ragnhild Pavletic and Aikawa Kagiyama floated across the crystal vacuum towards Bogey Three. This far from Nuncio-B, they might as well have been in the depths of interstellar space. The system primary was no help at all when it came to making out details of the freighter's damage, and Aikawa wished at least one of the pinnaces had remained close enough to lend the assistance of its powerful lights. But Lieutenant Hearns had been adamant about withdrawing both of them to a safe distance.

Probably another reason I wish they were close enough, he thought wryly. I don't like the notion of their needing a safety perimeter.

Lieutenant Hearns hadn't specified what she was leaving a safe distance against, but it didn't take a hyper-physicist to figure it out. The Dromedary was unarmed, and it sure as hell couldn't hope to ram something as small and agile as a pinnace, even if it had possessed a functioning impeller wedge. But it did have a fusion plant, and that plant was still active, according to the ship's emissions signature. And if someone put his mind to it, he'd had time to get around the safety interlocks if he'd really wanted to.