Kill Station (33 page)

And at the same time, Takawabara's other flailing hand reached out and clamped onto the front pack that Evan was wearing, and started to rip it off.

Oh, no, you don't! Evan thought, and grabbed at the other arm. Two-handed they grappled, and the situation was not a good one for Evan. Slugs came tearing out of the arm that didn't have the braided laser, and rattled and howled against Evan's breastplate and helm. He gasped for breath, unable to hear himself think, if thinking had made any noise, and praying silently that the chest and helm wouldn't give at such close range. They weren't really designed for such impacts. But they seemed to be holding for the moment.

Something kicked him in the shins. He ignored the pain

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and concentrated on keeping the front pack on, forcing his hand between Takawabara's clutching fingers and the woven fabric of the bag. It was Kevlon, theoretically un-tearable, but no one seemed to have told Takawabara's suit-makers about this. The stuff was ripping.
He must have a hint of what's in there;
Evan thought, in a rush of angry pleasure.
And if he's reacting this way, then I must be right!

Abruptly he let go the man's hand, instead shoving his own into what remained of the bag and managing to grab two of Joss's little black boxes. Now there was only one problem; to keep that damned laser off his case for a few seconds, just a few-He was still hanging onto the other arm, the one with the laser. It fired another time or two into the emptiness, but Evan was almost past being scared of it now.
As long as it doesn 't hit me from behind
— He flipped himself end-for-end, kicked away Takawabara's other wildly waving arm, and positioned himself with some care; then he kicked Takawabara's helm hard, twice, once more for good luck. He shoved away from the man and kicked his jets in one last time, heading toward the ship.

Only the slightest result—the gauges in his heads-up display—showed the fuel gauges to his jets empty. He threw an anxious glance back at Takawabara. The man was moving slightly, whether from Evan's kick or under his own power was hard to tell. Evan didn't waste time wondering. Not even the best-cushioned helm could protect well against heavy close-up "mechanical" impacts like that. Evan had had some internal bracing added to his own, so that he had mostly to deal with noise rather than impact. Takawabara's armor, though, seemed to have been built on the concept that no one would ever get close enough to do anything so crude or low-tech as to merely strike. Its bracing was not what it might have been.

Evan pointed his own slug-firer behind him, gave it several short bursts. They pushed him in the direction he needed to go, a little more quickly than the jets would

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have. He resisted the urge to make small running motions. Everyone did that, when they were terrified, and something nasty was behind them. His breathing was loud in his ears. He looked with some anxiety at his oxygen mix; it was getting a bit on the low side. He kicked the suit over onto rebreathing mode, and hoped that all this wouldn't take him too much longer. The rebreather was only good for half an hour or so before it needed to be recharged.

He glanced over his shoulder. A little feeble motion.
Didn 't kick him hard enough,
Evan thought regretfully.
Too concerned about evidence. For all my warrior's talk, they 've made a sop of me at
last.
He laughed shortly.
Hope they don't have to write that on my memorial. Won't be anything left
to put under a tombstone—

The ship was no more than ten meters from him. He was approaching it from its blind side, down below. Doubtless Takawabara's people had orders not to fire. He had probably been quite sure he would be able to finish Evan off by himself. Hubris, Evan thought, as he reached the ship. He hauled himself along by the convenient handholds, found a service power port, pried it open, and slapped Joss's baby into the contacts.

In his helm he could hear that scream of building power again. He turned, looked at Takawabara. He was floating there, pointing the arm that had the braided laser with great care at his own ship, and Evan. Evan had no doubt whatever that he would fire. He had thrown his own people's lives away easily enough elsewhere.

The scream built. Evan hung on, hung there, staring his enemy down.

It built in his ears, deafening. Built—

—And cut off.

Nothing happened. No heat, no blast of braided blue fire. Takawabara hung there pointing, to no effect.

Evan smiled.
Commlink to the ship's computers,
he thought;
it was the only way that made sense.

No way that suit had enough processing. Now, then—

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He clambered up over the body of the ship. Takawabara was jetting toward him, but slowly. Either he hadn't noticed Evan's trick with the guns, or thought it beneath him.
Never make a real suit jockey out of the man,
Evan thought, as he made his way up to where Takawabara's elevator was, his little pedestal. It was retracting as he came to it, for though the people in the ship were at no angle at the moment to shoot at him, it had certainly occurred to them that he was in a position to get inside. That, however, was far from Evan's mind. He put a hand out, grabbed the elevator platform just before it sank level with the hull; and held it there. Through his feet, braced against the hull, he could feel the groaning of resisting machinery. Evan smiled, and pulled harder.

The groaning stopped. Then, with a wrench, the platform came off in his hand. He held it for a moment, watching the approaching Takawabara, watching the man fighting his jets, trying to stop as he realized he couldn't get back into his ship, that he was stuck out here, with Evan.

Evan hefted the platform thoughtfully. He had been good with discus at University. He wondered whether Takawabara's helm would just come right off at the neck, or whether the neck would break and the helm stay on. The thought of the experiment was tempting.

But Lucretia would be frightfully annoyed. She was probably annoyed already, what with the nuke and all. Filling out the environmental impact statement was going to be enough of a nuisance, without an investigation into why Evan had killed someone wanted for questioning. He tossed the platform away.

And then the explosion hit him.

It was bad. He was sure he blacked out several times in succession: the world came and went like a slideshow, in fragment-images of billowing light and coaldust smoke, and somewhere above it all, HighLands gleamed like a glass toy. When consciousness came back to stay, he found that his feet hurt; and that suggested what had saved him:
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he had been standing on something explosive when it went off, and so was offering the least possible surface area for the blast to work on. He was sailing through the dark at a fair clip, and underneath him was a roiling cloud with most of the fire gone out of it. Hanging not too far away was
Nosey,
shining a searchlight through the cloud.

"You've
got
to stop just shooting everything you see!" Evan said.

"Sorry," said Joss's voice in his ear, rather tinnily; it sounded as if the audio circuitry had taken some damage. "But I could hear their comms, thanks to you getting my little widget onto their hull. They were preparing to launch missiles and then blow themselves right there, with everything they were carrying, to get rid of both you and their boss. Apparently he had left orders not to be taken."

"No surprise," Evan said. "You might have let me know you were coming."

"Too much chance they might have heard," Joss said. "Besides, I was concentrating on the best place to hit them to involve as little of the HE they were carrying. You wouldn't have wanted to be there if the whole load had gone off, boyo, indeed you wouldn't."

"Where's Takawabara?"

"Looking for him now. Getting some faint signals. His suit's still with us, I think, even if he isn't. You'd better hope he is, though."

"Tell me about it," Evan said. "Lucretia the Terrible will be after us both. You should have let me work on him a little more."

"I prefer you in one piece, thanks," Joss said.

"Me, too," said Talya. "You were terrific!"

Evan smiled. "A woman who knows when to keep quiet," he said, "is worth more than gold."

"Thank you. I think."

"There he is," Joss said suddenly. "Still in one piece, and still alive. I'll get him. Come on home, why don't you?"

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"Glad to," Evan said, and pointed his slug-firer away from the ship. "My feet hurt." "What cop's don't?" said Joss.

THE DEBRIEFINGS TOOK THEM ONLY A COUPLE

of days on the Moon. Joss and Evan had the satisfaction of knowing that miners and their ships would not be disappearing nearly as often any more. The data they had found was being sorted through with the finest of fine tooth combs by both the SP and the judiciaries of various countries on Earth, and the nationalist terrorist groups Taka-wabara and his companies had founded, or funded, would not be able to pull anything clandestine for a long time. Takawabara's machinations had been suspected by numerous jurisdictions on Earth, but none of them had been able to do anything without evidence. They had it now, in plenty. He was under arrest, in the hospital on (ironically) HighLands, which had the equipment best suited for saving the life of a man suffering from hypoxia, marginal brain damage, systemic shock, renal failure, and numerous bruises and contusions that suggested someone had kicked him in the head, and elsewhere, very hard.

In areas of concern closer to home, the pirate base had been confirmed as Mell's. And to Evan's considerable surprise, expense accounts were not mentioned during their briefings, nor were environmental impact statements. But neither were they given medals, which he and Joss both thought they deserved.

Lucretia looked at them unbelievingly at the end of the last debriefing. "What do you think you are?" she said. "Some kind of special cases? We sent you out on a job. You did it. I ought to get a medal for every piece of paper that crosses this damned desk, if that's the way we're going to run things."

Joss and Evan looked at each other. "We did a nearly impossible job," Joss said, "without anything like the men
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or material we needed. You'd think that would be worth some recognition."

Lucretia gave them the gentle look that Evan suspected she usually reserved for the chronically insane.

"You are both people of surprising intelligence and resourcefulness," she said, "even if you do spend entirely too many of those valuable brain cells drinking stuff that even yeasts refuse to admit is alcohol after they're through with it, they're so ashamed. And you did exactly what I thought you would do, which is turn a nasty situation to your advantage somehow and make it pay off. When you do something that
surprises
me, I'll give you medals. Meanwhile, clear the hell out of here before I change my mind about the two weeks' leave. And I want your final written reports by tomorrow noon." Whereupon Lucretia began rummaging about on her desk in a way that suggested she was looking for something to throw at them.

Therefore they did the wise thing, and got out.

"No gratitude," Joss said. "None. I think we should show them how upset we are."

"What did you have in mind?" said Evan.

Joss looked thoughtful. "We could always go see if the yeasts are really that ashamed."

Evan smiled slightly. They headed off for the hanger domes.

FOUR DAYS LATER THEY WERE ON WILLANS.

Seven days later they were still on Willans, and the party that had started when they got there had not really stopped yet, though it had changed venues from bar to bar, and Evan had lost count of exactly how many establishments he had been hi at all. Joss had been making hopeful notes for the
Guide Michelin
in between times. The Thai food on Willans was extremely good.

The atmosphere of the community toward them had changed a great deal since the news got out of what Joss

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and Evan had found, and what they had been up to. No one, even Leif the T\irk, seemed content to greet them without also buying them a drink. Leif did start a fight with Evan, just for old time's sake, and was sat on by nearly half the population of one bar, while sincere apologies were made by those not actually on the pile at the moment. Later on, Leif was fine again, and joined Evan (to his utter astonishment) in a rendition of "We'll Keep A Welcome in the Valleys," in flawless northern-accented Welsh. Evan spent a long while wondering about this, until someone abruptly produced a barrel of homemade mead. He forgot to wonder about Leif, or anything else, for a day or so.

On the seventh day was the naming party for
Nosey,
and her new paint job was sorely tested, as large amounts of newly-minted ethanol were poured over every square inch of the hull, and her name or an approximation of it was pronounced in every language then current on Willans.

Mell and Evan stood off to one side of this, watching, while Joss toured with the christening crew, himself armed with a squirt-bottle of hooch, making sure nothing was missed. "Can't let our ship have any weak spots," he was saying to the rest of the reeking crew, as they worked their way around.

Evan smiled a bit at that. "Finally," he said.

"Hmm?"

"Our ship."

Mell nodded. Her smile was slightly somber. "So it is," she said.

Evan glanced at her; together they walked off a little way, toward the hangar's inner doors. "So," he said.

"What about you, now that you're a rich lady who owns a space station?"

"Now I have to keep it," Mell said. She smiled a bit. "Not that anyone here would try to take it from me.