Elizabeth Moon - Once a Hero

Nearer—five meters . . . four . . . she pushed the makeshift control and a little jet of gas spewed out; she felt the shove as if the ones behind her were leaning on her back. Three meters . . . a very slow progression to two, then one, then she tucked her head, rolled, and felt her boots thud on the hull; her knees took up the impact easily.

The base of the drives test cradle was a maze of cables and attachments, but the test cradle supervisor they’d found knew where the nearest hatch was. Once inside, they rose through the shaft with only short tugs on the line. Then they were at the upper hatch, and Esmay peered through . . . there was the Bloodhorde ship, an angular dark bulk against the starfield. She couldn’t tell if it was occupied, not until she had the instruments in the test cradle up and running. That was a job for the supervisor, who grunted and fumbled around for a moment. Then—

“It’s got active scan leaking all over it,” he said. “Can’t do much without them noticing. Good thing is, with them putting out that much, they’re not likely to notice anything we put on the cable. Want me to signal Kos ?”

“Yes.”

In moments the signal came back: their arrival had been logged, and they were waiting for Bowry’s report from the other test cradle. Esmay reminded herself that his team had had longer to travel, that they had crossed below the line of the Bloodhorde troops coming in. Then, when she thought she couldn’t wait another moment, the signal came.

“Ready?”

“Go.” This was only one tricky bit in the many tricky bits of the plan. Keeping it simple had not been an option. They needed to focus Bloodhorde attention on the repair bays, away from the assault teams who were after Bloodhorde ships. What they had to work with was more in the nature of handwaving and colored smokes than real weaponry or the skill to use it—but to the repair crews of a DSR, handwaving and colored smokes were second nature. Esmay didn’t know what they were going to do, only that it would occur in sixty-second bursts of maximum distraction. They hoped.

The first of the Bloodhorde reinforcements had made it to the cradles when the lights went out. They cursed the stupid Familias sods who had not the sense to surrender without playing childish tricks, and turned on their own searchlights. The beams made harsh moving shadows of the construction machinery, the cradle supports, grapple housings, gantries and the robotics that sprouted on them like barnacles on a dock. In the vacuum of the open repair bays, the laser rangefinders left no trace; the first victims didn’t even see the little colored dots on their suits for squinting into that mass of bright lights and shifting shadows. More curses in the headphones, but they knew how to deal with this kind of resistance. It was tricky, with their own ship now moored in T-4, but they lobbed in some of the little mines called bouncers, and waited until three or four of them had blown up. They had proximity fuses, but would recognize patches on Bloodhorde EVA suits, which made them only very dangerous to play with.

They came on, alert for any more direct resistance. A hundred more had made it alongside their own ship, alongside Wraith , when the lights came back on, flickered on and off several times, and then went out again. Helmet filters darkened, oscillated in response to the rapid changes, and finally cleared as the darkness came back. Again their own lights probed the darkness, and they remembered the confusion they’d seen. They were not novices, to be put off by such basic ploys. They didn’t bunch up; they moved along in a disciplined skirmish line, until their forward elements reached the airlock at the hub end of the repair bay.

Then the big robotic sprayers, which had slid down the gantries centimeter by centimeter in the light, dropping meters whenever the lights weren’t on them, rotated, aimed . . . and fired thick yellow liquid at them. It dispersed to a fine spray in the vacuum, a spray that adhered with equal rapidity to their suits, including the helmet viewplates.

Not all of them got a full dose. Some, near the nozzles, were physically thrown off their feet by the force of the spray, and of those a few managed to curl protectively into balls, so their helmet faceplates weren’t entirely obscured. But it took a critical few moments to realize what had happened, and its effect. In those few moments, their formation disintegrated. A few battered and blundered their way to airlocks. But the rest were blind, their external sensors clogged with spray, in some cases stuck fast to the deck by having unfortunately stepped on a coat of spray before it set completely.

The suits were powered; they could pull free. But they couldn’t see; they couldn’t get the paint off with gloved hands . . . in fact, though they didn’t know it, they’d have needed an unusual solvent to remove the paint without eating through the faceplate.

“They’re wrathy,” said one of those who could understand the language coming out of those suit radios. “They’re cursing the name and the war clan of someone named Vokrais.” Down on the deck of the repair bay, the brilliant yellow suits seemed almost to glow in the shadowy areas. Evidently those mixing the paint had added reflectants and fluorescents to it.

“Good. How many of them did the trap miss?”

The external vidscans, hastily rigged a few hours before to cover areas not usually monitored, showed several clusters of Bloodhorde invaders around the outer edges of the repair bays.

“Perhaps fifty—a hundred—”

“Let’s keep them occupied.” The sprayers lifted much faster than they’d come down, the beaked nozzles rotating inward. Other machinery shifted up and down, back and forth, in an elaborate dance intended to look vaguely menacing. Would that keep the attention of the Bloodhorde from what was happening behind them? One enterprising operator detached one of the sprayers from its usual mounting, and sent it toward the repair bay opening, as if in search of more troops to spray. He ran it out on a boom, its nozzle swinging threateningly from side to side, and watched on the vidscan as the Bloodhorde troops shifted uneasily on their lines. One of them raised a weapon . . . and let off a triumphant screech of Bloodhorde when his shot holed the paint reservoir.

He hadn’t thought what would happen if he succeeded: the bursting reservoir meant a cloud of dispersing paint, still tacky enough to cloud several more faceplates. More screamed curses came over the radio; the other troops lost the last remnants of discipline, and rushed into the repair bay.

Esmay pulled herself into the ship. Both outer and inner hatches were open, which argued that anyone aboard would be in an EVA suit. She edged across to the inner hatch, noting the slightly greasy feel of a substandard artificial gravity generator, and peered around. She was looking into a large open compartment with rows of upright stanchions, each fitted with a top crossbar and several loops. It looked nothing like anything she’d seen in a Fleet vessel. Then she realized how handy that apparatus would be for someone getting into an EVA suit without help. This was where the Bloodhorde troops prepared for boarding.

Where was their bridge? Was anyone there? She waved two of her people forward, and two aft. She herself went forward, behind the other two. She saw the leader’s arm lift, and held her breath . . . they and Bowry’s team had the only five needlers available, weapons that were safe to use in the confines of a warship’s bridge.

His hand jerked twice, and then he moved forward. Esmay followed, alert for movement from any direction. There was none. On the bridge, the Bloodhorde had left two—she had no idea what their duties had been—and both were dead.