Eric Flint - Threshold

If Richard could take them out of the equation, he'd have plenty of time to remove the evidence of the coilguns and plant evidence that indicated the disaster had been caused by enemy action coming from the-now happily destroyed-Nebula Storm. That evidence probably wouldn't fool a really good and determined forensic team, once they returned to Earth orbit. But Richard was quite sure his patrons at the ESDC and in the E.U. Commission of Enterprise and Industry would see to it that whoever investigated the affair would be safe and reliable.

There was still Mia Svendsen, of course. She'd have to be silenced also, eventually. He still needed her expertise, but he couldn't allow her to mingle with other survivors of the crew. That was going to be a tricky situation, but he was confident he could deal with it. Right now… And then he thought to check theOdin 's course. Straight for Io, possibly the least hospitable spot in the solar system outside of Jupiter itself or the surface of Venus. He growled and gestured to Jackson to keep an eye on Svendsen; he moved ahead of her, with Feeney ahead of him taking point. God damn them! That spineless Hohenheim, A.J. Baker and Horst Eberhart. Together they had managed to buggereverything up. He'd had the situation completely under control until they'd created a total cock-up in the coilgun systems. Baker, well, he could understand that, but couldn't the general at least realize that taking out theNebula Storm would end up being for the good of everyone in the long run? Fitzgerald had been hired to do a job-so had the blasted general himself, for the love of Christ-and then bloodyeveryone had to keep getting in the way. To put the cherry on top, they'd managed to get theOdin turned into a colander. Mia Svendsen had told him that it was going to take her weeks to get the engines back on line-and they didn't have weeks before their up-close meeting with the most volcanic body in the system. That left only one option for anyone who wanted to stay alive: theMunin. The lander/transport-and its missing twin, Hunin -were the largest pieces of cargo ever transported between planets, each massing five hundred tons fully loaded. And for convenience and efficient use of space, theMunin had been loaded with maximum supplies as soon as they had set out. It would hold up to ten people, and that would be more than enough, it seemed. Of the total of one hundred or so original crew of theOdin, there probably weren't more than a dozen left alive. Twenty, at most. But most of them were cut off. He couldn't afford to spend hours dragging possibly injured people out ofOdin 's wreckage, or arranging spacewalks to reach them. And, being realistic, at this point the fewer people from the expedition who survived, other than his own team, the better. There would be no way now to continue on to Enceladus, so the original mission was in the crapper. The only thing left to do was to survive until they could be rescued, which would probably take years. Then, perhaps, he could cash in eventually on the inevitable fame that would accrue to him from being the surviving officer of the ill-fated expedition. The prerequisite for that, however, was that no one could survive until rescue other than himself, his team, and whatever crew members were completely ignorant of what had happened. So those of them who were already dead or would die soon were simply saving him the trouble of disposing of them later. It was an unfortunate situation, certainly, but Richard was no stranger to hard times. He'd get through it well enough, he thought.

And there was one bright spot at the moment: Hohenheim had apparently not survived. The general's life signs had gone to zero shortly after the disaster. Shame that, but you brought it on yourself, boyo. If you'd only just listened to old Richard, we'd both be sittin' pretty right now. The sporadic connection to the formerly seamless shipwide network sputtered back to life. He could access data about the hangar area now. Oh, bugger me. "Feeney! Hold up." "What is it, Chief?"

"Someone else got to the hangar bay first," he said calmly. He really should have predicted this, but then, there hadn't been much time.

"And they're trying to talk to our old friends off onNebula Storm."

He queried the net, using his security authorization. The answer was, in its own way, rather gratifying. "Well, well. It's Horst Eberhart and his sidekick, LaPointe." Vanna Desplaines looked concerned. "If they're already aboardMunin, that's a problem. We can't force the doors." "Of course not," agreed Fitzgerald. "But there are ways to convince 'em to come to us." He grinned. "There are always ways, you know."

"-ingOdin. You are on a collision course with Io. You will need to change course. The following is the most efficient…" Horst glanced at Anthony, who nodded. "They are accurate." "A shame that we cannot do that," he said. Once they'd managed to access theMunin 's communications gear, it hadn't taken long to pick up on theNebula Storm 's automated warning. He activated the transmitter. "Nebula Storm, Nebula Storm, this is Horst Eberhart onOdin. There is no point in continuing to broadcast. We can do nothing." A few moments later, Jackie's voice responded. "Horst! How bad is it?" "It is hopeless, Jackie," he answered soberly. "The NERVA drive is damaged and would take weeks to repair out here. Lateral thrusters cannot produce the delta-V we need, even if enough of them were intact, which they are not. There are maybe twenty of us left alive. If that."

"Jesus Christ." That was A.J. "Eighty percent of youdied? "

"Everything went wrong at once, A.J. Some must have been killed by Fitzgerald's people. A lot of them were in the habitat ring, which was shredded by the blast. Most of them wouldn't have been in suits, so they'd have been killed by the decompression even if they'd been otherwise uninjured. And getting to whatever survivors there might still be on the ship would be hard, if it was possible at all." "And of those twenty," Anthony put in, "at least four are Fitzgerald and his people." "Marvelous," Maddie said. "So he's got all the weapons, and the survivors are divided." "But we are onMunin, which is the only escape," Horst said with a touch of grim satisfaction. "If he wants to live, he's going to have to play our way. He cannot force the doors on something this size, especially if he wants it intact."

"Don't get cocky," Maddie said. "He may have overrides or other plans.

If there's nothing else we've learned about Fitzgerald by now, it's that he's a cunning bastard." "I will try to remember that," Horst answered. "Once we getMunin out, we will be able to escape from Io. I believe theNebula Storm could then tow us eventually to safety, with the right computations, yes?" There was silence-silence for so long that Horst thought for a moment that they must have lost the connection. Then Jackie's voice came on, this time heavy with regret.

"I'm afraid not, Horst. We could have… but Fitzgerald got us."

"How?" demanded Anthony LaPointe. "It is too far, and you are too small. It is beyond belief that you could have failed to see the attack or avoid it." "Fitzgerald was a smart one," A.J. said. "Those shells weren't like the little fat bullet he shot at Ceres. These were big, relatively smart cans of armor-piercing BBs the size of my thumb.

He bracketed us with his shots, and then the damn thingschased us when we tried to dodge. So… short story is, he got our reactor." "No way to repair it?" "Not without at least a place to sit her down. Or a spacefloating drydock. I need a place that either has gravity or that's enclosed so I can work on the ship opened up without worrying about where stuff might drift off to," Jackie said quietly. "And we haven't got what it takes to-" Her voice dissolved into a mass of static. Horst blinked, then swung toward the instruments ofMunin;