Elizabeth Moon - Rules of Engagement

“Lieutenant, the artificial gravity’s on.”

That shouldn’t be . . . the station was a derelict. But she could feel through her own body the tug of a gravity generator. Which meant a sizeable power source, more than could be accounted for by the tattered, misaligned power panels. Would there be air? Had Brun turned things on? Esmay shook those questions off. What mattered now was getting in. If there was gravity, then the fighting would not favor the zero-G trained.

Inside, they were met with the chaotic remnant of systematic vandalism, all visible under ordinary ceiling panel lights. P-suits cluttered the corridor, all turquoise with a BlueSky logo and code number on the back. Someone had drawn five pointed stars and other curious symbols on the corridor bulkhead in brown pigment—or blood. The tank locker beside the suit locker was empty of breathing tanks. Air pressure was as near vacuum as made no difference . . . but why was there any pressure at all? Why were the lights on?

Esmay tried a cautious hail on the frequency Koutsoudas had given as that of Brun’s transmission . . . no reply.

Nothing damaged a man’s reputation more than unruly women. Mitch Pardue knew even before he launched that he could kiss the Captain’s position goodbye for at least ten years. He might even be voted out as Ranger Bowie. Even if he got them back, those fool women had cost him something he’d worked for twenty years and more.

The abomination he could understand. She was crazy, even without a voice. But the girl’s defection hurt. Prima had been so fond of her, and the other wives as well. She’d worked hard, and they’d treated her like one of the family. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe they’d been too lenient. Well, he wouldn’t make that mistake with the little girls. That bossy one, already showing off in the weaving shed—he’d see that she didn’t stay bossy. As for Patience . . . he’d already half-promised her as a third wife to a friend of his, but now that wouldn’t do.

Why couldn’t the girl have realized how much better off she was in his household? Why were women so perverse, anyway?

He almost let himself think God had erred in creating women at all, but pulled back from that heresy. That’s what happened if you started thinking about women—they led the mind astray.

If they were on the derelict station—and he was certainly sure they were—he would capture them and make an example of them. The yellow-haired abomination they would have to execute; he hated killing women, but if she escaped once, she might again. The girl . . . he would decide that later, after he learned exactly what had happened. When they’d finally found a witness, it seemed that a man had told her to get in the car. If so, she might not be guilty of anything but stupidly following a man’s orders, which was all you could expect of a woman. He hoped that was it.

“Ranger Bowie!” That was his pilot. He leaned into the cockpit.

“What, Jase?”

“There’s a weird ship out there, scan says.”

Weird ship. It must be a ship the women had planned to meet.

“What’s our defense say?”

“Says it’s weird, Ranger. Not anything they know, a lot smaller than a cruiser. But it can do those little short jumps like the Familias fleet—”

“It’s looking for them,” he said. “It’s not a warship, or it’d have shot up our ships first thing, same as we would. A little transport of some kind.” The worst of it was that it meant the Familias now knew where they were—and more ships might follow. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, he told himself. First things first. Get these women under control, or all hell would break loose.

Though if he’d known, he might’ve asked for a shuttle of space-armored troops from the Yellow Rose . Their p-suits were hardened, but not against the kind of weaponry a Fleet vessel would have. Still, they’d probably hold their fire if they thought the Speaker’s daughter was in the midst of it.

His uncle had been one of those who trashed this godless excrescence in the first place; he’d grown up on the stories. They’d talked about blowing it up time and again, but always decided it might be useful someday. Useful! Just showed what happened when you compromised on a moral duty. He watched as the pilot brought them in to the old shuttle bay. When he felt the solid clunk of the shuttle’s grapples on the decking, he stood and pushed his way back to the hatch.

“Now y’all listen here,” he said. “We’re goin’ in to look for those women. Not to play around gapin’ at stuff, or even takin’ the time to trash it. There’s warships insystem; we need to get this done and get back where we can do some good. Understand?”

They nodded, but he had his doubts.

“All the weapons they can have is what that guy had in his shuttle. Maybe a couple of knives, a .45 or two. And they’re women, and not used to zero-G or vacuum. They’ll have p-suits on, probably ones that don’t fit good. So we don’t have anything to worry about if we use sense. Just don’t go wanderin’ off where one of ’em can blow you away too easy. And be sure your personnel scans are set on high power.”

He pulled his helmet shield down, locked it, and checked the suit seals of the man in front of him; the man checked his. Terry Vanderson—good man, reliable. Then he turned and led the way out of the shuttle’s airlock.

The regular airlock from the shuttle dock to the station corridor operated normally, but there was no air inside. He’d expected that. The women would’ve taken a tank or so from the shuttle when they left it, and they’d be low on air by now.

Inside the airlock, they stood in a short corridor that ended in a T-intersection. He’d looked at his uncle’s old notes, and knew that each arm of the station was a warren of laboratories and storage rooms—they would have to clear each of these. He looked at his scanner. Nobody near—but they would check, then close and secure each compartment.

“Don’t forget the overheads,” he reminded his men. Not that they needed it; they’d been on more than one hostile boarding.

Lewis and Terry peeled off to check the outer end of the arm. It seemed to take forever, but it probably wasn’t more than five minutes before they were back. Now they moved along the corridor toward the station hub.

“I can’t believe this,” Oblo muttered. “They’re just walking along like they’re on a picnic.” On scan, the twenty suited figures moved in a clump, checking compartments and doors, but without any real caution. Nobody on point, nobody watching their backs. “And they’re not in space armor, just p-suits. Brun could just about take them herself, if she had any kind of weapon.”

“They think they’re up against two unarmed women,” Esmay said. “Once someone calls to tell them we’re here—”

“Someone should have, by now,” Oblo said. “Unless they’re not listening.”

That led to questions Esmay had no time to answer. Was there someone else in the Militia eager to have this mission fail? And why?

The assault troops moved forward, secure in the knowledge that their armor would foil scan not specifically designed to penetrate it. Esmay felt the familiar surge of excitement; she wanted to be up with them, but more important was finding Brun and the girl. Scan showed a pair of p-suited life signals on this side of the core, in a compartment off a side corridor. The problem would be letting them know she and the others were friendly—the armor, designed for combat effectiveness, did not have insignia in the visible spectrum.

All the compartments in that wing had been checked and secured, and Mitch Pardue felt pretty good as he led his men into the central core. Careful scanning had shown nothing there—the women, if they were alive, would be huddling somewhere in the far wing, close to the hotspot where they’d had the shuttle. He felt a pleasant tension as he thought of them—of the fear they would be feeling, the helplessness . . .