Dark Beneath the Moon (43 page)

The hydroponics bay on the lower deck looked like the one above, but this one hadn’t been blown to bits.

Yet. As the elevator doors opened, two more PrimeCorp thugs and a brown-uniformed Chron with pale blue skin ran toward us from the corridor that should lead to the airlock. It was pretty obvious we were their targets—or they were willing to kill anyone on the station—because they opened fire as soon as they saw us. I tucked Pita into the waistband of my pants at the small of my back, under my jacket. It wasn’t the safest place in the world, but it would have to do for now.

Confident now that her force field could stand up to their weapons, Maja threw herself forward to take the brunt of the assault. That turned out to be an unfortunate decision. The field flared at the moment of impact and then pulsed suddenly brighter, hot and white like burning magnesium. Maja grunted and fell to her knees. Baden dropped beside her. I was about to launch myself at one of the attackers, hoping I might bullrush him, when Rei stepped up behind Maja and raised the plasma rifle she’d taken from one of the first trio of intruders. In three quick blasts, barely seeming to take time to sight, she’d dropped our attackers. And they weren’t getting up again.

“And that’s why you don’t stand between me and my ship,” Rei said. She leaned down over Baden and Maja, all joking gone from her voice. “Is she all right?”

Maja lay, pale and shaking, in the doorway to the elevator. She clutched her right arm, where the force field button had scorched a blackened hole in her sleeve. I didn’t know if she’d noticed that the front of her shipsuit also bore a scorched impact ring.

“I don’t think so,” Baden said. “The whole thing must have overloaded.”

Yuskeya pushed past me and joined Baden beside Maja. She pried Maja’s hand away from her arm, tearing the sleeve of her shipsuit in order to examine the wound. I saw blackened skin and raw, blistered flesh before Yuskeya tore the sleeve off entirely and, turning it inside out so the cleaner side would be against the burn, wrapped it loosely. “I’ve got nothing to treat this until we get to the ship,” she said. She ran her hands lightly over Maja’s torso. The blonde woman winced. “Could be fractured ribs, too,” Yuskeya suggested. “I’d rather not move her, but—”

“No choice. I’ll be as careful as I can,” Baden said. He scooped Maja up in his arms, and I saw her face tighten as she stifled a cry. “Let’s go, Rei.”

Rei took point as we moved out of the elevator and past this end of the hydroponics bays. Unlike the level above, there seemed to be no-one on duty here. Likely everyone had been called to other tasks by now—like fighting off invading Chron. The hits on the station continued. Apparently our side wasn’t winning yet, at least not outside the station. As for the inside, I thought we weren’t doing too badly.

Fortunately, the layout of this level seemed to be pretty much the same as the one above. I assumed that the hangars the Chron had told Paixon about were behind us, below where the brig lay on the upper level. It seemed to be mostly crew quarters on this side, as we moved toward the airlock.

“Maybe those three were the only ones down here,” I said.

“Let’s hope,” Hirin said. His face was pasty and beads of sweat dappled his forehead. The pain from his shoulder must be excruciating, but he didn’t lag behind.

When we came in sight of the airlock, the door stood open. Rei stopped short, and Baden almost ran into her with Maja. “Whoa.”

“I don’t like this,” Rei said. “I thought Hirin needed that force-field button and the touchpad to get us in. Why is it standing open like that?”

Hirin carefully pushed past Baden and Maja. “We have to get Maja inside. Maybe those three tried to get into the ship.”

Rei put an arm out to stop him going any further. “And maybe they, or someone else, succeeded.” She flicked her eyes at me. “How about this? Sord and I go ahead to check things out. The rest of you wait in the airlock. You can close the outer door and hunker down there for a minute while we do a sweep.”

“Just the two of you? I don’t like that,” Hirin gasped.

“Yeah, Gramps, but you and Maja are hurt; you can’t wait alone,” I said. “Little Miss Pilot’s right. I’ll go with her, you wait for the all clear.”

Not that I think my vote really carried any weight with him, but he saw the sense in the plan and, after a minute’s hesitation, nodded. Rei and I crossed the corridor to the open airlock door. She poked her head inside and nodded for the others to cross. Once we were all inside, Hirin put a palm to the door and it slid closed.

“Too bad that Chron didn’t tell me how to lock the damn thing as well as open it,” he complained.

“We’ll be as quick as we can,” Rei promised. She moved to the inner airlock door and hit the touchpad to open it. Luckily this one had pictographs for “open” and “close” that were pretty easy to figure out. Apparently the pressure in both rooms was already equalized since the door opened without delay. Beyond the short dockway, the outer airlock door on the
Tane Ikai
also stood open.

Rei glanced at me. I shrugged.

“Maybe they left it open when they took us off the ship? I wasn’t awake at the time, so I don’t know.”

“Yeah, maybe.” She didn’t sound convinced. I wasn’t really, either. We quickly crossed the dockway and walked softly as we passed inside the airlock. The inner door was closed; the built-in failsafe would never allow both to be open at once.

“Can’t open it without making a noise,” Rei whispered to me.

“You stand ready, I’ll press the button,” I told her, and she nodded. I closed the outer door and opened the inner one. We stood and listened for any sound from the ship.

Nothing.

We stood staring straight into the main bridge. Everything appeared exactly the way I remembered it, although the last time I’d seen it there’d been a lot more activity there. Rei pointed right and left and we checked the alcoves next to the airlock where the EVA suits hung. Then we went left through Sensors and into First Aid. A doorway led out of the narrow First Aid bay at the far end, but I’d never been down there to know where it went.

“Isn’t it going to take a while for two of us to check the whole ship?” I whispered to Rei.

“It would. But we’re not doing that.” She opened the door to reveal a square room that was obviously storage; another door stood on the right-hand wall and she opened that one, too. It led into the rear of the head. She punched in a code on the keypad next to that door. “There. That seals off this entry to the bridge from the rest of the ship. We’ll leave it that way until we’ve got everyone aboard. Then there are more of us to do a proper search.”

“Good plan.” We retraced our steps out to the bridge. She edged out near the captain’s chair to peer down the corridor leading to the rest of the ship. Empty. She jerked her head for me to follow her, and we cautiously advanced down the corridor a few feet, to the first door on the left. Her quarters.

“Hold this,” she whispered, passing me the rifle. She slid the door open, scanned the room, and stepped inside. I was more than a little shocked at her trust, but she didn’t leave me waiting long.

She emerged seconds later bearing a beautifully carved rattan staff and held it out to me. “Trade,” she said.

I handed her the rifle and took the staff. It felt light and strong in my hands, almost as good as the polished-wood
vazel
staff I’d had to abandon on the
Hunter’s Hope.

She actually winked at me. “Slightly more useful than a fork, right?”

“Well, that fork did come in handy,” I said. “But thanks.”

“Just in case,” she said. She led me to the mouth of the corridor leading to the bridge. “Now if we close this off—”

A door slid open behind us, and we both whirled. The first door on the other side of the hallway now stood open.

And the men who launched themselves at us weren’t here to talk.

I HONESTLY DON’T
know why they didn’t shoot; they were both armed. Maybe it was because we were females, although I don’t think any man could be more intimidating than Rei was, toting that plasma rifle. Maybe they didn’t want to alert anyone coming behind us that they were laying an ambush. I didn’t have time to think about it, anyway. The one who ran at me swung his right arm across his chest as if he intended to backhand me with the handgun he carried. Stupid mistake.

I guess he wasn’t familiar with
zelendu,
or whatever art Rei practiced with her lovely rattan staff, either. Even without time to think, I leveraged one end of the staff up and then down in a sharp blow to his wrist as he came within reach. The gun dropped, clattering across the metal decking, and he howled, clutching his hand. He reared back, unwittingly setting himself up perfectly for my cross strike with the staff. Although I didn’t have as much room as I would have liked, I managed a modified swing and got a reasonable amount of power behind it. The end of the staff caught him under the side of his jaw and he reeled sideways, staggering into one of the skimchairs.

I’ll give him credit; he tried to recover. He grabbed the arms of the chair and swung it around toward me, then shoved. It skittered across the deck but I brought the staff down and swept to the side, knocking it out of my way. The thug made one final mistake—he lunged down and scrabbled for his gun. A quick down strike connected solidly with the back of his head, and he dropped the rest of the way to the floor.

I poked him with the end of the staff to be sure, and looked for Rei, in time to see her bash the butt of the plasma rifle into the other attacker’s forehead. He sagged to his knees, then fell forward with the slightest of moans.

Rei turned to me, saw the other thug on the floor, and grinned.

I said, “I think I get more points for style.”

She bent and picked up the pin-beam handgun her attacker had dropped. “Granted. But I’ve got a new souvenir, so I’m happy.” She flashed the grin my way. “Welcome to the sisterhood.”

“The sisterhood?”

“The sisterhood of kicking butt.” She tucked her treasure into the waistband of her pants and winked at me.

I suddenly thought of Pita—but she was still securely where I’d left her, too.

Rei closed the bulkhead door that sealed off the bridge from the corridor leading to the rest of the ship, and punched a code onto the keypad beside it. “Let’s get this garbage off the bridge, and get the others inside,” she said, but her voice had lost its light edge.

“What’s wrong?”

She glanced at the bulkhead. “I’m wondering how long those guys were in here, and what they might have done.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Sabotage?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s a possibility. I’ll be glad when we can run a scan and get some eyes around the rest of the ship,” she said.

“All right,” I said, and grabbed my former attacker by the collar of his PrimeCorp jacket. But not before I pocketed his weapon. I figured I deserved a souvenir, too.

THE BRIDGE OF
the station, when I followed the Chron doctor onto it, was smaller than I’d expected—not much bigger than the
Tane Ikai
’s. But at the moment it was as busy as the bridge of the
Tane Ikai
had ever been. It was the command center of people under attack. Perhaps a dozen Chron had filled the room, and I was suddenly struck by the variations in their colouration. Besides the pale buff colour of the doctor’s chitinous skin, their hues ranged from more yellowish tones to light pinks, through a bluish-green. Now it was evident that their bone crests and ridges were highly individual. Some had spots or markings in lighter or darker tones, and several even wore piercings and adornments on their crests the way humans wear earrings.

Chron busied themselves at consoles, held low-voiced conversations, barked orders at subordinates. It was at once wholly familiar and totally alien, and I was glad Viss and Gerazan stayed close behind me.

From here, the space outside the station was visible, on screens and through a clear viewport that encompassed one-half of the ring level. I saw no sign of a planet, so I guessed we must have been taken past the wormhole we’d originally been heading for.

Outside, the scene was chaotic. More ships had arrived, both PrimeCorp starrunners and larger ships—obviously equipped for armed engagements—and Chron vessels like the ones who had attacked the Corvid station. They darted around the station trading torpedoes and laser cannon fire.

“Captain!” Cerevare’s voice broke me out of my contemplation of the battle outside the station. She rose from an eight-sided table where she’d been sitting in obvious conversation—
conversation?
—with two other Chron, one with buff-coloured skin like the doctor and a second with chitinous plates of a pale raspberry colour. Both wore the navy blue, white-lettered uniforms of the station crew. With her bright clothes and multicoloured sash, and her softly furred face among the hard, plated skin of the Chron, she stood out like an exotic flower.

Cerevare waved me over, her eyes shining with a light not of fear, but of excitement. “These are—well, I can’t actually pronounce their names yet, but they’re two of the crew of this station. They thought I might be a spy of some kind because of this—” she held out her arm, showing me again the tattoo on the inside of her wrist.