Lois Bujold: Falling Free

“This is mutiny!” yelled Van Atta.

“No, it isn’t,” Bannerji disagreed cordially. “This isn’t the military.”

Van Atta glared red-faced at Bannerji, who studied his fingernails. With an oath, Van Atta flung himself into the weapons console seat and reset the aim. He might have known—anything you wanted done right you had to do yourself—he hesitated, the engineering parameters of the D-class Superjumpers racing through his mind. Where on that complex structure might a hit not merely disable the rods, but cause the main thrusters to blow entirely?

Cremation, indeed. And the deaths of the four or five downsiders aboard could, at need, be blamed on Bannerji— I did my best, ma’am—if he’d done his job as I’d first requested…

The schematic spun in the vid display. There must be a point in the structure—yes. There and there. If he could knock out both that control nexus and those coolant lines, he could start an uncontrolled reaction that would result in—promotion, probably, after the dust had settled. Apmad would kiss him, just like a heroic doctor, singlehandedly stopping a plague of genetic abomination from spreading across the galaxy…

The target schematic pulled toward alignment again. Van Atta’s swearing palm closed around the firing switch. In a moment—just a moment—

“What are you doing with that, Dr. Yei?” asked Bannerji’s voice in startlement.

“Applying psychology.”

The back of Van Atta’s head seemed to explode with a sickening crack. He pitched forward, cutting his chin on the console, bumping the keypads, turning his firing program to confetti-colored hash in the vid. He saw stars inside the shuttle, blurring purple and green spots—gasping, he straightened back up.

“Dr. Yei,” Bannerji objected, “if you’re trying to knock a man out you’ve got to hit him a lot harder than that.”

Yei recoiled fearfully as Van Atta surged up out of his seat. “I didn’t want to risk killing him.…”

“Why not?” muttered Bannerji under his breath.

Furiously, Van Atta’s hands closed around Yei’s wrist. He yanked the metal wrench from her grasp. “You can’t do anything right, can you?” he snarled.

She was gasping and weeping. Fors, space-suited but still minus his helmet, stuck his head through again from the rear compartment. “What the hell is going on up here?”

Van Atta shoved Yei toward him. Bannerji, squirming uncomfortably in his seat, was clearly not to be trusted. “Hold onto this crazy bitch. She just tried to kill me with a wrench.”

“Oh? She told me she needed it to adjust a seat attitude,” remarked Fors. “Or— did she say ‘seat’?” But he held Yei’s arms. Her struggle, as ever, was weak and futile.

With a hiss, Van Atta heaved himself back into the weapons console seat and called up the targeting program again. He reset it, and switched on the view from the exterior scanners. The D-620-Habitat configuration stood out vividly in the vid, the cold and distant sunlight silver-gilding its structure. The schematics converged, caging it.

The D-620 wavered, rotated, and vanished.

The lasers fired, lances of light striking into empty space.

Van Atta howled, beating his fists on the console, blood droplets flicking from his chin. “They got out. They got out. They got out—”

Yei giggled.

Leo hung limply in his seat restraints, laughter bubbling in his throat. “We made it!”

Ti swung his headset up and sat no less limply, his face white and lined—Jumps drained pilots. Leo felt as if he’d just been twisted inside out himself, squeaking, but the nausea passed quickly.

“Your mirror was in spec, Leo,” Ti said faintly.

“Yes. I’d been afraid it might explode, during the stresses of the Jump.”

Ti eyed him indignantly. “That’s not what you said. I thought you were the hot-shot testing engineer.”

“Look, I’d never made one of those things before,” Leo protested. “You never know. You only make the best possible guesses.” He sat up, trying to gather his scattered wits. “We’re here. We made it. But what’s going on Outside, was there any damage to the Habitat—Silver, see what you can get on the comm.”

She too was pale. “My goodness,” she blinked. “So that was a Jump. Sort of like six hours of Dr. Yei’s truth serum all squeezed into a second. Ugh. Are we going to be doing this a lot?”

“I certainly hope so,” said Leo. He unstrapped himself and floated over to assist her.

Space around the wormhole was empty and serene—Leo’s secret paranoid vision of Jumping into waiting military fire was not to be, he noted gladly. But wait, a ship was approaching them—not a commercial vessel, something dangerous and official-looking…

“It’s some sort of police ship from Orient IV,” Silver guessed. “Are we in trouble?”

“Undoubtedly,” Dr. Minchenko’s voice cut in as he floated into Nav and Com. “GalacTech will certainly not take this lying down. You will do us all a favor, Graf, if you let me do the talking just now.” He elbowed both Silver and Leo aside, taking over the comm. “The Minister of Health of Orient IV happens to be a professional colleague of mine. While his is not a position of great political power, it is a channel of communication to the highest levels of government. If I can get through to him we will be in a much better position than if we try to deal with some low level police sergeant, or worse, military officer.” Minchenko’s eyes glinted. “There is no love lost between GalacTech and Orient IV at the moment. Whatever GalacTech’s charges, we can counter—tax fraud—oh, the possibilities.…”

“What do we do while you’re talking?” asked Ti.

“Keep boosting,” advised Minchenko.

“It’s not over, is it?” Silver said quietly to Leo, as they floated out of Minchenko’s way. “Somehow, I thought our troubles would be over if only we could get away from Mr. Van Atta.”

Leo shook his head. A jubilant grin still kept crooking up the comer of his mouth. He took one of her upper hands. “Our troubles would have been over if Brucie-baby had scored a hit. Or if the vortex mirror had blown up in the middle of the Jump, or if—don’t be afraid of troubles, Silver. They’re a sign of life. We’ll deal with them together—tomorrow.”

She breathed a long sigh, the tension draining from her face, her body, her arms. An answering smile at last lighted her eyes, making them bright like stars. She turned her face expectantly toward his.

He found himself grinning quite foolishly, for a man pushing forty. He tried to twitch his face into more dignified lines. There was a pause.

“Leo,” said Silver in a tone of sudden insight, “are you shy?”

“Who, me?” said Leo.

The blue stars squeezed for a moment into quite predatory glitters. She kissed him. Leo, indignant at her accusation, kissed her back more thoroughly. Now it was her turn to grin foolishly. A lifetime with the quaddies, Leo reflected, could be all right…

They turned their faces to the new sun.