Kill Station (25 page)

"Yes. But much more small stuff. And some of it seriously overengined. Look at that one there. What the hell kind of driver have they got stuffed into that little shell? Or worse," Joss added, "what kind of weapon have they got attached to it? Makes you think, doesn't it?"

"No question," said Evan, sounding somber.

Joss nodded. "This is going to be interesting," he said. "Shall we go closer?'

"I think we'd best."

Joss nodded. For the first time in a good while he sat down at the command console and took control of the ship away from the computer. "Now," he said, "we tiptoe."

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181

He spent another six hours, all told, edging the ship in closer and closer to the base they were stalking.

When people had money of the kind it took to buy state-of-the-art weaponry, there was no telling what kind of imaging equipment they had. But the image system hadn't yet been invented that could cope with a trace that was hardly moving at all. Joss moved them in closer and closer at what was barely more than a walking pace, though it made him half mad with anticipation.

At seventy kilometers he let
Nosey
coast to a dead stop, with only one blast of the attitudinal jets to help, and said to Evan, "I think this is a good place to consider our options."

Evan sat down by him and nodded. They both considered the holograph.

At the middle of it was an asteroid: a fairly big one, about ten kilometers by five by five. Its own radar signature made it plain that there were large holes in it; it had been extensively slagged out. Various vessels were moored to its surface. Every now and then the asteroid's signature changed as a vessel came out of it. There never seemed to be less than five or six small vessels in space around it at any given time.

"Close patrol?" Joss said to Evan. "They're in and out of ten kilometers, usually.''

"Possibly. Possibly just training maneuvers of some kind."

Joss nodded. "Not a lot of incoming traffic at the moment. But there seems to be some outgoing, heading sunward. Larger vessels. Cargo, perhaps?"

Evan tilted his head, thinking. "Probably."

"And our young friend," Joss said, "just popped inside there. Did you see that? For service, probably.

Check the tires and water, then go out again and try to shoot up the sops who shot up the last ship out.

Anybody who sees the vessel without looking for a specific radar signature will see just another mining ship. Until it blasts them to kingdom come."

182
SPACE COPS

Evan looked at him. "It would be a useful way to hide a little space navy," he said. "Further in toward the Sun, who looks twice at a beat-up trawler with a Belts registration? A poor cousin, in from the sticks to see the big city lights."

"And carrying one of his own," Joss said.

"I should very much like to go in and blow them all up," Evan said, "but I think we're a bit outgunned.

What do you think, Officer O'Bannion?"

"Officer Glyndower," Joss said, "I think this is a good time to hold very still, and very quiet, and scream like hell for backup."

He went off to get his pad and write a note to Lucretia.

SIX

AND TWO AND A HALF HOURS PASSED; AND

two and a half hours more; and they were very, very long.

"What's a six-letter word for diatribe?" Evan said.

Joss shook his head at him, staring at the hologram. Evan sighed and leaned back. He had been that way for a good while now, not very communicative at all. Evan's grandmother would have said he looked

"fey," which meant grim and dangerous to most people, but with Evan's grandmother the word had been meant to indicate any expression she didn't like the look of. As a rule, she would hit anyone who was wearing such an expression, as hard as she thought appropriate for their age, and ask, ' 'What's up your tail, then?"

Evan wouldn't have minded having his grandmother around at the moment.

But there was someone else he would have preferred having around even more.

"Penny for them," he said to Joss.

"Huh?"

"I said, a penny for your thoughts."

Joss stretched and sat back, faking an annoyed expression. "I would have thought they were worth more."

Evan's mouth set wryly. ' 'Some might think so. But are they people who know you?"

'You're no help," Joss said. "What the hell is keeping Lucretia?
That's
what I'm thinking."

"The thought had crossed my mind as well," Evan said.
183

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SPACE COPS

There was a deep, black silence for a few moments. "You know," Joss said, "even if they send us the whole damn Space Forces as backup, how long is it going to take them to get here?"

"There
is
that problem. And how are they going to get in here without being massively noticed? And possibly cut into many tiny pieces?"

Joss nodded. It was a conclusion that was difficult to avoid. The Space Forces were famous for the speed of their craft—which most sops described as "nine speeds of reverse"—and for the oversize and antiquity of their weapons, bought for them slowly and grudgingly by an acquisitions department that found anything more advanced than rubber bands "needlessly complex and likely to malfunction in combat.' The truth of it was that the Space Force had very little to do, since the planets had become federated. The nations on Earth were at peace with one another, by and large, and as far as the planets themselves were concerned, it was economically unfeasible for them to make war on each other. Each of the worlds had resources that the others vitally needed, and any one of them who tried to attack or invade another would pay for it within months with the utter collapse of its own economy. Space travel was not
that
cheap, not yet, and maybe wouldn't be for centuries yet.

The Space Forces were still there because whenever anyone suggested dismantling them, there was a ruckus similar to that long ago when someone suggested that the Swiss army might benefit from being abolished. The Space Forces were widely seen as a far-flung peacekeeping force, like the armed detachments of the old United Nations, and people had become fond of it in the worst possible way. That is, they had come to think peace depended upon it, rather than upon them.

But the Space Forces were fairly useless when it came to quick mobilization or any kind of military intervention that didn't involve planetkiller bombs. "When they do show up," Joss said gloomily, "these little ships will come
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186

out and cut them in pieces. That's all. Those huge scows they have bobbing around out there have all the delicate maneuverability of an elephant seal in a double sink."

Evan nodded. But then he looked up at Joss with an expression of growing horror.

"You don't suppose ..."

"What?"

"You don't suppose they're dragging their heels about answering us so that we'll go in there and try to sort this mess out ourselves?"

Joss made an unhappy face at him. "One Ranger," he said, "one riot."

"I hate you sometimes," Evan said.

"Possibly not as much as you should," Joss said, "but fortunately, it always seems to be temporary."

They looked at each other for a few minutes.

"No way," Joss said finally. "I come down with limb paralysis at the damnedest times. This is a little above us, boyo.

Us and about five heavy cruisers, yes. But alone??"

Evan shook his head.

"Let's wait," he said.

They both sat back and listened to the silence for a few seconds.

"And what if they don't say anything at all?" Joss said. "For, say, a few days?"

Evan raised his eyebrows. "By then," he said, "you'd think someone would have found us. We're not exactly a long way away from these people."

"If we don't move, we're all right."

"But the odds still favor their stumbling on us sooner or later, Joss. We might
have
to do something."

"Horrible thought," Joss said, and made a great show of going back to
Pride and Prejudice.

Evan bent back over Joss's crossword pad and started worrying away at the six-letter word for "diatribe" again.

"Evan," Joss said, "tell me something."

Evan looked up, raised his eyebrows again.

"Do you really think you love her?"

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SPACE COPS

Evan's mouth fell open. Then he closed it and thought.

"I think it has to be love," he said, and put the pad down, folding his arms. "She seems to get in everywhere. I can't stop wanting to talk about her, even when it feels stupid to do it. I don't want to believe bad things about her, even when I know they might be true. I feel like part of me is missing." He shook his head. "I don't know what else to call it."

Joss looked at him, almost pityingly, Evan thought. Had it come from anyone else, Evan would not have been able to cope with that look. From Joss, it was acceptable, even slightly funny. "What are you going to do about it?" Joss asked him. "Your lifestyle, if that's the word for what we have, isn't going to make for much of a married life. If that's what you have in mind. Not that you necessarily do. Not that there aren't married sops, of course."

"Hadn't thought you were going into counseling," Evan said, a little drily.

Joss waved his hands in a negative gesture. "Don't be an idiot." And he fell silent.

Evan looked at him and shook his head. "Joss," he said, "I don't know what I'm going to do. Really I don't. I just want to know where she is. I just want—"

Joss nodded and picked up the book again. "Right," he said, in the voice of one man who was desperately sorry he had brought the whole thing up.

One of the alarms at the control console went off and Joss jumped up to see to it, much more quickly than usual. He had hooked various proximity alarms to the radar and the mass scanners, just on general principle. Though they were well above the plane of the Belts proper, there was still a chance that some random rock might come drifting into them. And there were more immediate dangers which might find them and poke holes in them with missiles or something even more destructive.

Joss stood over the holograph, which he had hyped up to the best view they could get from that distance without waking up someone's targeting radar. "Just a couple more
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ships popping out of the inside of the asteroid," he said. "Probably another patrol."

"Does it seem to you that they're getting a bit more active?" Evan said.

Joss shrugged. "Hard to say. Our statistical sample is on the sparse side."

"So what else is new?" Evan looked over at the holograph, then said, "Wait a minute. Was that another one?"

"Yes," Joss said, and sat down to watch the holograph for a moment or so. Another small bright dot—another ship—popped suddenly into existence. And one more.

"That's the most we've seen formating at once," Evan said.

"And here come a few more. What is this?" Joss said.

They watched ship after ship suddenly appear around the asteroid. "Ten of them now," Evan said.

"Look at that," Joss said. "They're doing a real formation."

There was no more movement for a few minutes. Then an eleventh ship appeared, took its place at the front of the formation of ten, and slowly they moved off together.

Sunward.

Joss and Evan looked at each other.

"What's the total we've counted there so far?" Evan said.

"I make it about fifteen total," Joss said. "At least, there are fifteen sets of signatures I recognize, including five sets of signatures that belong to ships we were investigating as reported missing." He sat down at the comms console and began tapping at it. "Which is something I want to look at. Keep an eye on that for me, if you would."

"Right," Evan said, and did so. But there were no changes, really; the formated ships simply continued to head away from the asteroid.

"Where are they going?" Evan said.

"Tell you hi a minute," Joss said. "I'm working on something else right now. They still all together?"

"Yes, they are."

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SPACE COPS

"Good."

There was no more sound for several minutes, as Joss worked on his console. "There now," he said, and in the holographic display there appeared the black box signatures of each ship in the group, the broadcast ID number and name of each.

"They're splitting up," Evan said.

"I thought they might," Joss said. "Keep an eye on them."

He tapped at his console again. The course of the group as a whole appeared in the holograph; a long line reaching straight out of the display, ever so slightly curved. Joss tapped at the console and increased the scale. The line reached out, up above the Belt, heading inward.

"There," Joss said. "I thought they might do that. Look at the IDs."

They were changing. One by one, the patterns of letters and numbers were replaced by new ones. "Fake transponders." Joss said. "Stolen. Look at them."

Evan looked at the annotation Joss brought up in the bottom on the holograph. "Some of those," he said, thinking a bit, "are out of Willans, aren't they?"

Joss nodded. "And some of them are ships that haven't been reported as missing. Yet. See that one on the left?
Lark?

That's the ship that belongs to the people who passed us as we first came in. You remember: the ones who spat at us, and told us to move
Nosey
out of the way." He looked grim. "Want to bet the pilots are dead?"

"I wouldn't take your money," Evan said softly, looking at the other IDs changing one by one. "So now they're heading into the inner system—all separately. The country cousins, in to look at the bright lights. And that's not a course for Mars; they'd be heading way over this other side. This bunch is going to Earth." He looked at Joss.

"What's going on near Earth over the next few days?"