Elizabeth Moon - Once a Hero

She was sitting the wrong board, though the Bloodhorde hadn’t figured that out. They’d come in screaming and shooting, and by the time they’d done, what with bodies all over the floor and the noise everyone was making . . . they hadn’t noticed her changing nametags with a dead woman. At that point, she wasn’t sure why she’d done it. Some instinct had urged her, and when they left the communications board empty, and she moved to environmental, where Corporal Ascoff usually sat, she began to think what she could do. None of her shipmates had commented, though she’d gotten some looks . . . but after what happened to Sergeant Blanders they didn’t look anywhere but at their own work.

The environmental systems board cross-linked to ship security, another board the Bloodhorde had left empty after they changed the override codes. Possibly they didn’t know that; she wouldn’t have known it, sitting comm as she usually did, but she and Alis Ascoff had been working the same bridge shift long enough to share details of their work. Either Security or Environmental might have reason to close off the wings from the core, or take control of life support.

If they were watching too closely—as they had with ten of them always alert, always stalking around behind people—she could do nothing. But if they left only three . . . at some point, she would not be observed for a moment, and . . . what would be the best thing to do? If she opened all the wings, would the sleepygas simply spread to the core and put everyone there to sleep?

The captain had gone to T-1 to confer with the admirals. She knew that; she’d seen the captain on the bridge shortly before the Bloodhorde commandos burst in and took over. So if the captain was still alive, he was in T-1, and maybe the admirals too. If he wasn’t gassed. If he wasn’t dead.

If you can’t make up your mind, her mother always said, do something anyway. Luckily, the core environmental system needed frequent adjustment when it was cut off from the wings. She had explained this, earnestly, when she first needed to touch the board. The Bloodhorde had leaned over, far too close for comfort, and stared at the display a long time before giving her permission to touch it. After the tenth or eleventh change, they’d paid less attention, only asking now and then when the display showed a yellow band instead of green just how long she proposed to let it go?

The three left behind would be nervous. She listened as the others left, and did not turn around. Someone else did; she heard the blow and the angry command to get back to work. They would be watching . . . but would they understand? A yellow flicker on her board, just as before. The core, unlike the wings, did not have a large hydroponic/garden area for oxygen production and carbon dioxide uptake; oxygen was supplied from electrolysis of the water in the Deck 1 pool, and she had to keep the hydrogen collectors from overfilling. As well, she needed to put new CO2 scrubbers online. She started to enter these commands, and as she expected one of the three came up behind her.

“What now?”

“The hydrogen, sir.” She pointed. “It needs a new collector unit. And I need to put another ten CO 2packs online.”

“No tricks, understand?” The muzzle of his weapon stroked her cheek. She shuddered, nodded, and her fingers trembled as she entered the values. She heard him walk away.

The question now was, how long did she have, and how could she do the most the quickest? She would open the T-1 access, she’d decided, but not T-5, because she knew T-5 had been gassed. If she had time, she’d reset the override codes for all the wings, so that the captain or any of ship’s security who were still alive and awake could use them.

“Sir!”

Admiral Livadhi looked up; one of the security guards stood panting in the doorway. “Yes?”

“Sir, the hatches are open . . . we’re not cut off from the core . . .”

“All the hatches? All decks?”

“Yes, sir—at least, that’s what the system says.”

Livadhi looked over at Dossignal, who was hunched awkwardly in his chair. “I don’t think this is their doing.”

“No—I’d say go for the bridge, with everything we have.” They had planned an assault on the bridge, but had not been able to breach the barrier.

“You can handle this end?”

“I can hardly run yours,” Dossignal said, grimacing. “Having been stupid enough to get shot.” Then he grinned. “Confusion to our enemies,” he said.

“I intend a good deal worse than confusion,” Livadhi said, and spoke into his headset. “Bridge team: go ahead.”

“You stupid—!” The snarl came just before the blow that knocked her to the deck. Corporal Ginese would have been furious with herself for not remembering that the barrier status lights showed clearly on the board, if she’d been able to think. A savage kick in the ribs curled her around the pain. She said nothing. She thought, with all the intensity of her being, Please, please, please . . . let it work. Let someone be alive there, awake . . . .

Now two of them were on her; she heard bones snap as one of them kicked savagely at her arms, her ribs. It hurt more than she’d expected . . . and more noise . . . she couldn’t think why it should be so noisy, all that clatter and roar and shouting. If they were going to make that much noise, why not just shoot her?

She hardly noticed the blows had ceased . . . then it was quiet again. Someone wept in the distance. Nearer, footsteps . . . she wanted to flinch away, but couldn’t move.

“I think . . . she’s alive,” someone said.

Not one of them. Not someone from the bridge. She opened the eye that would open, and saw what she had hoped to see: shipmates, armed, and just beyond them, a Bloodhorde corpse. She smiled.

“They’re trying to get through the barrier up on Deck 17,” the sergeant minor said. “They’ve got the core-side barrier open, but the interlock we put on the wingside barrier’s holding.”

“Are they really committed?”

“It sounds like it.”

“Then I think it’s time for Brother Ass and the Cactus Patch,” Esmay said.

“What!”

“Folk tale from my home planet, slightly revised. As long as we provide enough resistance, they’ll be sure we didn’t want them there. Only we do want them there, because it’s our trap.”

“How long do we make ’em wait?”

“Long enough to—” A shout from down the passage.

“Suiza!”

“Yes?”

“Our people have the bridge! The barriers are operable on the old override codes!”

Esmay swung back to her comunit. “Now—let them in now.” If they knew they’d lost the bridge, they might not come into the trap. “Be sure to lock the gate behind them, once they’re onto another deck.” By all combat logic, they should be hoping to clear T-4 from the top down . . . if they found the top deck empty, they should go looking for resistance.

The scan techs had installed additional surveillance near the hatch and in the passages beyond. Esmay watched as the hatch slid aside . . . the Bloodhorde commandos still wore their Fleet uniforms, now bloodstained and filthy, under light armor they’d stolen from the ship security. Helmets and respirators . . . they couldn’t be gassed, but the respirators were noisy enough to affect their hearing. The helmets were supposed to compensate with boosted sensitivity . . . but that had its shortcomings. They each carried several weapons, the light arms intended to suppress shipboard violence.

“They’re outnumbered, but we’re still outgunned,” said the petty-chief looking over her shoulder.

“Guns aren’t the ultimate weapon,” Esmay said. Would they choose the well-lit passage ahead, or the dim one to the left, among the garden rows? They’d had only a few concussion shells, taken from Wraith ’s damaged starboard battery, and she hadn’t been able to seed every possible route.