Тим Пауэрс - Bugs and Known Problems

"We were drinking in a little pool room just the other side of the Strip," Rudolf said, "and must be a dozen Sovereigns come in, pretty well oiled already. We tried to get out but they grabbed us."

He swallowed. "I broke away, but I guess they still got Mack. We gotta get him back cause they’re pretty mad."

"Right," Woetjans said. "Can you find this place again, Rudolf?"

"Yeah, sure," the midshipman said. "We didn’t know it was a Sovereign place, we were just playing pool and having a couple beers."

"Well, let’s go then," Woetjans said. "We don’t need the cops."

She started toward the quay, her arm around Rudolf’s shoulder just in case he needed support of one kind or the other. She couldn’t quarrel with not wanting a fight against that kinda odds, but she didn’t figure you left a shipmate behind to save yourself some bruises.

"Woetjans!" Abnason said. "We’re on bloody watch, we can’t just leave the ship open."

Woetjans turned. Abnason added, "I’m not afraid of a fight, but this is a job for the Shore Police."

Woetjans looked at the hesitating liberty party. She made a face but said, "All right, Abnason. Give your wrench to Balliol—" a black-bearded rigger with arms almost as long as Woetjans' own "—and take Mulcahy to fill the watch."

Relieving off the watch book was a bloody serious offense, but that didn’t count for much right now. And Mulcahy was legless, so he wouldn’t be much use in a dust-up.

"Balliol, you got the balls?"

"Sure, Ellie," he answered, taking Abnason’s wrench. "Come along, you guys. We can find something for you when we get there, but with just some pussies from the Sovereign to worry about, we may not need to."

Woetjans knew that the quicker they reached Mckinnon, the likelier it was that he’d be able to walk back under his own power. She also knew, though, that it wouldn’t do any good to push her people beyond what their bodies could do.

Come to think, Mckinnon himself had reminded her of that lesson. She grimaced. She really hoped they’d get there in time. She didn’t let herself dwell on what "in time" might mean. They half walked, half jogged, along the next street back from The Strip facing the water.

"They wanted us to sing while they recorded us," Rudolf said. He’d got his breath and seemed to stand taller now that he was backed by four veteran riggers. " 'We’re middies from Renown, and we love to bugger sheep.' "

"That was when you took off?" Woetjans said.

"Well, Mack yelled run for it and I did," Rudolf said. "Only he started laying about him with the butt of his pool cue instead of following like I figured. I decided I’d better get help."

Woetjans didn’t say anything. She might’ve done in a moment, but the midshipman pointed down a side-street and said, "It’s just along here. On the left side."

Several spacers stood on the pavement, facing a shop whose sign read FROSTY’S above a pair of crossed pool cues. The clothing store to the left was closed, and a pair of bouncers guarded the door to what was probably a knocking-shop to the right. The bouncers kept careful eyes on the rescue party, but they didn’t intervene when Woetjans led the rush.

A quick right and left from her baton laid out two of the Sovereigns, and Renzler and Dowd pitched the third through the pool hall window. One of the panes had already been broken from inside.

Balliol was a hair ahead of Woetjans going in the doorway, but there were plenty of targets left for her when she followed swinging. The spacers in the pool hall were taken completely by surprise. They’d clustered in front of the manager’s office on the opposite wall. When they turned, it was the spacer flying through the window who drew their attention rather than the Renowns coming in the door.

Balliol was mostly right about not needing weapons, though he didn’t drop the wrench. Woetjans kept laying about with her tubing as long as there was a head raised. Dowd and Renzler were used to working as a team in the rigging. They did the same thing here, hurling Sovereigns into whichever was the nearest wall. One human missile went halfway through the partition beside the door marked MANAGER.

"Where the hell is the kid!" Woetjans bellowed, looking around. She stooped to make sure he wasn’t lying under one of the three pool tables.

"Renown!" somebody shouted. The office door was sturdier than the wall it was set in; it flew open.

Mckinnon stood in the doorway, the butt of a pool cue in his hand. His tunic had been ripped off and there was blood on his scalp—but on the pool cue also.

When he saw Woetjans, he braced to attention, and said, "Ma’am! What next?"

"Next we get our arses back to the ship before the cops arrive!" Balliol said.

"That’s a bloody good idea," Woetjans said. She paused to wipe the business end of her tubing on the tunic of a fallen Sovereign.

Dashiell City on Mantanega wasn’t Woetjans' first dismount, but she sure wouldn’t be sorry if it was her last. They were guarding the headquarters of the Loyalty Party in the western suburbs, and the operation had been snakebit from the start.

Lieutenant Bowerby was supposed to be leading the detachment of twenty spacers, but she’d screwed her knee up boarding the ground truck that was supposed to carry them to the site. Instead of replacing her with another lieutenant, Captain Ogawa had assigned the detachment’s Number Two, Midshipman Dimitrovic, to command.

Dimitrovic wasn’t a bad kid but he didn’t give Woetjans the impression of being the guy she wanted in charge if it started to go tits-up. Now she stood on the roof in the sheltered doorway at the head of the stairs from the second floor, eyeing the three-story building across the street. Balliol stood at the edge of the roof, looking down over the six-inch parapet into the street. Woetjans didn’t hear any traffic.

"You know…" Balliol said as he walked back. Like Woetjans, he held a stocked impeller. "This district is supposed to be all Loyalty Party, but they sure-hell don’t seem very friendly to me."

A volley of shots came from the building opposite, through third-floor windows and from the roof. Balliol’s left leg went out from under him. He sprawled forward, then rolled onto his back and started shooting at the hostiles on the roof. He was likely to break his shoulder, using a full-sized impeller with a hard surface behind him, but Woetjans supposed Balliol didn’t have much choice.

She did, though. She stepped out onto the roof, pointed the impeller toward the opposite building, and shot off the entire magazine as fast as she could jerk the trigger. Huge clouds of beige stucco spewed up from every round. The wall must have been cinder block underneath because moments later a section you could walk through collapsed into rubble. Three or four slugs hitting pretty close together had crumbled it.

The shooting from across the way stopped. Woetjans didn’t figure she’d hit anything except the building, but the racket of the shots and then the slugs smashing blocks would make most folks drop their heads while it was going on.

She tossed her empty impeller through the doorway behind her, then took Balliol under the arms and dragged him back out of sight in the stairhead. He’d kept hold of his weapon but he’d only gotten off a couple shots before the pain really hit him. His face looked gray.

"Medic!" Woetjans bellowed down the staircase. The detachment hadn’t brought a Medicomp along, but there was a good chance that somebody knew more about first aid than she did. "Balliol’s got one in the leg!"

The upper thigh of Balliol’s trousers was sodden, but the blood wasn’t spurting. Bloody hell, whose idea had this dismount been? Nobody close enough to hear the shooting, that was for sure—or who’d figured to be that close.