Sarah Zettel - Fool's War

Al Shei raised her eyebrows. Yerusha shrugged. “This is not just about you, is it?”

Al Shei sighed and looked away. This was no time to refuse help. This was no time to think about the outside world either. That would have to take care of itself. She had to concentrate.

Resit was nowhere in evidence. Al Shei wondered where she was, and if it was perhaps time for prayer.

“Let’s get going.” She cycled open the airlock and led her crew out into the docking bay.

Business module 56 was all the way around the ring from the Pasadena. Al Shei and the others huddled themselves into the back of a crowded elevator and tried to hold still through the shifts of gravity and calmly breathe the air that was warm and thick from too many people trying to use it. But by the time they were able to get off in Business Module 55, they were the only ones left in the car.

“Mostly storage, over here,” said Schyler as he followed Al Shei and Yerusha into the stairway. “Gases, fuel, spare parts, maintenance drones.”

“Drones like us,” said Yerusha with her strange, grim cheerfulness. Al Shei glanced back at her. She could almost swear the woman was starting to enjoy this.

Halfway up the flight, Al Shei signalled them all to stop. She crouched down in front of one of the maintenance panels that lined the walls, lifted it away from the wall and flipped it over. The under side was engraved with a diagram of the circuits, wires and pipes revealed by the square hole. She skimmed the labels and tried to ignore the camera staring at her back.

I belong here, she thought toward it. I belong here.

“All right, Klien, Forrester” she said to Yerusha and Schyler. “Here’s what you need to do.” They both bent over her, and so did Schyler, effectively shielding the diagram from the camera. “We might have a minor glitch in here, so I want you to trace this set of wires…” Yerusha held out her memory board and Al Shei pulled out her pen and wrote quickly.

The blue pipes are the hydraulics for the clamps. Trace them back through the panels and you should come to a command breaker. That’s where you make your splice.

“And if you can’t find anything, you call in.” She handed the board back to Yerusha. “Understand?”

“Right.” Yerusha knelt on the stair, laid the board in front of her and pulled another panel off the wall. Schyler stood right behind her.

“And I,” Al Shei opened up her kit and pulled out a band lamp. She strapped it across her forehead. “Am going to talk to our truants.”

She trotted up the rest of the flight of stairs and stopped in front of a bulkhead with a sealed airlock marked Business Module 56. The entrance light was red. She laid her palm on the reader and waited.

For a long time, nothing happened. Al Shei wondered if they were simply going to refuse to answer. Lipinski must have shouted at them half-a-dozen times by now, pretending to be the voice of the Landlords. They would have to respond. If they didn’t, they’d risk bringing down the greens rather than just the blacks. They must know that.

Unless, of course, they’d traced the source of the calls back to Lipinski instead of to the Landlords, despite Tully’s catburglars. In that case, they could be setting up that trap Schyler was worried about. They must know they’d been found out on at least some level. They must be reading the transmissions between the Free Homes. A cold thought touched Al Shei. What if they know, and they just don’t care?

The airlock cycled back slowly. Inside, stood a broad-faced young man. A shot gun hung from his shoulder by a black strap.

Al Shei couldn’t help but stare at it. A shot gun! Aboard a space station! It had a small barrel though. It probably fired low caliber shot, sufficient to pass through a human body without punching through deck plate, or the hull. Actually, it was a good compromise, she thought clinically. It was more lethal than tranquilizer darts or a taser, but it was less hazardous to the can than a flash-burn.

She gathered her wits and remembered her role.

“Brown, maintenance.” She stepped briskly across the threshold. She presented her pen. He stared at it like she’d just offered him a live wire. “You’re overdue,” she said. “You should have been notified by now.”

He took the pen and his gaze flickered from it to her. Skepticism filled his expression, but not absolute certainty. Over his shoulder, she saw the far side of the airlock had not cycled open. Behind her, she heard the station side hatch crank shut. Now they were trapped. If the clamps released now, the airlock would seal automatically, leaving the two of them rattling around inside until the can was reattached to the station, if they lived that long.

“Let me just check on this.” He side-stepped to the intercom beside the far hatch and jacked her pen into the wall socket. He did not take his gaze off her.

Al Shei measured the guard up. He was a lot bigger than she was, and he had the gun dangling by his right hand. Speed was her only hope.

She launched herself at him and caught him in the chest with her shoulder. He hit the hatch with a “whoof!” She grabbed his hand and slammed it against the palm reader. He wrenched himself around, but she dropped to the floor. He wasted a second looking wildly around for her. The airlock cycled open. Al Shei rolled across the threshold as soon as there was room and scrambled to her knees, dragging her spares kit with her behind the retreating hatch. She was in a corridor full of waldos, cameras and drones. She spotted a hatchway to her right and she dove for it. It cycled open. A store room.

“Stop!”

She stared up at the guard with his gun. She climbed to her feet with her spares kit clutched to her chest.

This was it. If Yerusha and Schyler hadn’t found the command breakers and overridden them, Al Shei was dead where she stood. She backed up until her spine pressed against the wall.

“Put the box down, Katmer Al Shei.” He smiled, quite obviously knowing he’d gotten the name right on the first try.

A low grinding noise reverberated through the walls. The world plunged into darkness and spun out of control.

As soon as Dobbs touched her surroundings, a packet slammed up against her. She grabbed it. One touch told her it was stuffed full of random strings of numbers. She reached inside it for the command code, and it disintegrated in her grip. One tiny piece flitted off into the network.

Oh, hell. Dobbs lunged for the fragment, and missed.

She barely had time to wonder what was going on before the next packet hit. She ducked the one after that, but not the next. Now the path was full of them, all rushing at her, battering at her sides, demanding her attention. It was like being in a swarm of maddened bees. It was like being shouted at by a hundred people and not being able to understand one of them. She could barely think. She couldn’t move under their clamour and pressure. She tried batting them away, but it was no good. One would splintered if she stabbed at it, but a dozen others swarmed up the path to take it’s place.

Then, she felt Cohen’s touch like a fresh breeze. What was he doing here? She hadn’t sent the all-clear. He’d come anyway. He would. She tried to reach him, to warn him, but it was too late. He’d already picked up one of the random packets and now a swarm of them bore down on him.

Very slowly, Dobbs felt herself begin to panic. The things swirled around her, smothering her senses, choking off all awareness of everything but their endless, meaningless noise. She struck out randomly. Through a brief clearing she heard Cohen call her name. A packet clogged the hole, cutting her off from him.

An idea flared inside her.

Dobbs forced herself to hold still. She hardened her outer layers and did her best to hold her wound closed. The packets slammed against her, piling one on top of the other, burying her in a solid layer of random numbers and alien code.