The Serrano Succession (33 page)

You may not approve, my love, but you will understand.

She hoped her children would.

Finally, she turned the torch off, and left the bit to cool. She had not mended it properly, but she had made a start. That was sometimes the best a person could do.

Neil waited by the outer gate.

"Goodnight, Neil," she said. "I made rather a mess in the old forge—that broken Simms bit. You were quite right; the little torch isn't hot enough."

"It'll come right in the end," he said.

She hoped it would. She would do her best to see that it did.

Beatta Sorin, head teacher for the Little Lambs class of Shepherd's Glen Primary School of Baskar Station, led the way to the transit station. Every few steps, a quick glance behind showed her the neat crocodile of uniformed students, assistant teachers, and volunteer parent helpers. The adults wore an official tabard with "Shepherd's Glen Primary School" on the left and a picture of a gamboling lamb on the right; in the pockets were their official IDs, their locator chips, their emergency kits. Around each adult neck, a lanyard and whistle to supplement the earpiece and mic, and the assistant teachers wore—as she did—an adult version of the school uniform, white shirt and plaid slacks. She herself held the braided end of the organizing ribbon, to which each child was supposed to cling. So far, they all had their little hands on it . . . but they were still almost in sight of the school. They could still be sent back, to spend a boring day in the nursery class.

At the station, she handed in the school's credit cube, and the file of seventeen children and ten adults moved into the loading area. This early in the trip, the children were still behaving well, though her experienced eye recognized that Poro Orinios already needed to use the toilet, and Mercy Lavenham had something sticky in her pocket and on the fingers of her left hand. She detailed her first assistant, Uri, to deal with Poro's needs, and herself excavated the pocket, wiping Mercy's fingers carefully as she did so. Mercy's mother, it seemed, could never resist sending her youngest out without a personal treat, even when it was strictly forbidden.

Uri came back just in time, and the crocodile edged its way on board the transgrav tram that would take them on a tour all around the station. Beatta, always organized and efficient, had made prior arrangements with station transit authorities, and this tram had enough slack in its schedule to allow extra time here. They had a reserved car, and each child was properly buckled into the seat, a motion-sickness patch in place, before the tram slid away from the station, one car entirely full of Little Lambs and their keepers.

Beatta had run this same field trip eleven times before. She knew from experience how to plan the route to provide the most in thrills, education, and efficiency. First, the slow part, through the densely populated shopping and residential district. Shrill voices piped up, pointing out home blocks, or the store where Mam bought bread. The tram stopped frequently. Then, as it swung away on the first of the transgrav segments, Beatta tapped her classroom bell for quiet.

"We're going to go oopsie," she said. "Everyone remember to breathe and hold on." Safety bars swung down in front of each seat; Beatta took this opportunity to insert her earplugs. No amount of discipline would keep the children from squealing when the tram made gravity transitions, and the ear-piercing quality of Little Lambs would have rendered her deaf years ago if she hadn't taken precautions.

The tram gathered speed, rumbling a bit, and the lights blinked three times, a final warning of transition. Then the tram plunged into the dark, and Beatta's body tried to insist it had just fallen off a cliff. Even through her earplugs, the children's shrieks of mingled fright and excitement were painfully loud.

Gravity returned gradually, but not to normal. Heavy Cargo, their first stop, maintained only 0.25 G. Beatta, who had watched closely, noticed that none of her class had thrown up; this year, at least, the mothers had believed her about the need for a light breakfast. The tram emerged from a dark tunnel into a vast lighted cavern. Beatta flicked out her earplugs with a practiced twitch, and picked up her microphone.

"Attention, children! This is the cargo servicing area for most incoming shipments. Bri, your father works in Heavy Cargo, doesn't he?"

Bri, halfway down the car on the right, nodded.

"Well, this is where he works."

"I been here before—he tooked me!"

"Yes, Bri, but the others haven't. Please pay attention. When we come to the station, you'll be able to see—out Bri's side—the exit hatches of the container transport system, and the tracks of the transport system itself. If we're very lucky, you'll get to see a line of cargo containers coming through." She knew they would be lucky; she had scheduled the field trip for a time when one of the big container haulers was in, and she had checked on the transport schedule with its cargo chief. She also knew the color-coding and shape-coding for different types of containers, and was prepared to explain which carried food products and which industrial raw materials, or manufactured merchandise.

Bix and Xia were bouncing in their seats, testing the light gravity and their restraints . . . Beatta looked at them with that immemorial teacher expression, and they settled back, a little sulkily. Twins were always a problem, in her opinion, and the current fashion for twins annoyed her. Thanks to Lord Thornbuckle's daughter Brun's well-publicized pair, hundreds of thousands of parents were opting for twins on their next pregnancy, and Beatta foresaw a great deal of work for teachers in a few years.

The tram slowed for the cargo handlers' station, and Beatta reminded the children to look out the righthand windows to see the cargo containers. Sure enough, huge colored bins butted through the heavy curtains at the hatches, and bumped and rumbled along their assigned tracks. Some shunted off this way, and others that, and Beatta answered the predictable questions without really thinking about it.

"The optical sensors read the coding on the labels, and there's a cross-check by color-coding from another set of sensors . . . this allows the AI system to route each individual bin where it should go."

"Where's my daddy?" asked Bri, now looking as if he were going to cry.

"Working somewhere," Beatta said. "I really don't know for sure." She should have known; she should have made sure that Bri's father was in sight for this brief stop.

"There he is!" Bri said excitedly, patting the window in his glee. Beatta wasn't at all sure the orange-suited figure running a scanner along the markings on a cargo bin was Bri's father, but if it made him happy—her breath caught as someone in a tan shipsuit stepped out and hit the orange-suited one over the head. The top of the bin lifted, and four . . . eight . . . twelve . . . more tan-suited men crawled out. The orange-suited one lay motionless on the floor.

"Somebody hit him," Bri said. His voice rose even higher. "He's hurt, my daddy's hurt!"

"I'm sure he's not, dear," Beatta said. Experience kept her voice even, and experience made her look quickly out the other side of the car for something to distract the children. "Look!" she said, before her brain had finished processing what she saw. "Look at all the funny little cars they run around on!"

It was too late to wish she hadn't done that, because all the children except Bri had turned obediently, and had clear view of the firefight as the passengers on the funny little cars attacked first the workers on the floor, and then drove right up to the tram.

The tram gave a convulsive jerk, as if the driver had started to pull away, then stopped again. Three of the children started to cry; the other adults stared at Beatta with white faces.

"Now, children," she said, in her best teacher's voice. "There's nothing to cry about, just a little bump. Stay seated, please. Mag, would you help Bri calm down, and Sivi, you see to Crowder—" The adults responded, and by the time the man with the obvious weapon opened the car door, the children were all sitting quietly, listening to Beatta tell the story of the Brown Bunny and the Spotted Snake.

"Oh, shit!" the man said. "There's
chillen
on this tram!" He had a strong accent made all too familiar by newscasts of the previous two years.

"We don't use that sort of language," Beatta said firmly. The muzzle opening on his weapon looked big enough to swallow the tram, but she made herself look at his face. "Please do not upset the children."

"Just stay there," the man said, backing out. Beatta had no intention of doing anything else.

On the transportation board, a light blinked twice and then went red.

"Babytrain's got a problem," Kyle said. The yearly field trip had its own code name which the school knew nothing about.

"What?" His supervisor, Della Part, was trying to listen in to a conversation between an R.S.S. security advisor and her own supervisor.

"Don't know yet." Kyle hit the com button. "Transgrav 4, what's your problem?" No answer. Any problem that could pull a transgrav tram driver off his seat might really call for help. If one of the kids had been hurt—

"What compartment's Babytrain in?" Sash called across the control room.

"Heavy Cargo Two."

"I've got a slight but significant rise in pCO
₂
, and ambient temp's up slightly."

"Kids got loose? Running around?"

"Where's our video?

"Blank—it's been blinky the last few days."

"Ask station security."

Kyle called down to the stationmaster. "We've got a problem in Heavy Cargo Two. What've you got on scan?"

"Lemme see." Pause. "CO
₂
's up a bit, O
₂
consumption's up, also ambient temp . . . visual . . . the transgrav's stopped at the station. Wasn't Babytrain on for today?"

"Yeah. They've popped a red and I can't raise 'em."

"Looks normal. Cargo containers coming in from
Freedawn 24
. Cargo handlers—wait—what color's Heavy Cargo this year?"

"Orange. Changed from tan—"

"Would anyone be in the old—oh, hell!"

"What?"

"None of the Heavy Cargo crews would be carrying firearms. We have an intrusion."

"In
there
? What about the kids?"

In the appalled silence that followed, Kyle could almost hear his heart thudding. He gulped, hit the supervisor's code, and said it. "We have a Level Five emergency. Hostile intruders in Heavy Cargo Two, and a trainload of kids—that preschool field trip."

The R.S.S. officer opened his mouth and shut it again, but looked sideways at the supervisor.

"Cut out the alarms to that sector, put us on Level Five Alert. Patch to the stationmaster and the emergency response teams. Call in the second shift as backup . . ."

Then to the R.S.S. advisor. "What else?"

"How many certified emergency personnel do you have?"

"Counting security, medical, damage control—maybe five hundred."

"Find out—you need to know exactly. And I recommend you inform the picket as well; we can presume this intrusion is of foreign origin."

"Stationmaster'll have to approve—"

"I do." Kyle was relieved to hear the stationmaster's voice over the com.

"Can they help?"

"Maybe. Then recall all R.S.S. personnel on station and collect them—check MSOs . . . specialties . . . for security, demolitions, and emergency medical."

Sergeant Cavallo had chosen to finish out his present tour in mess, in part because the supply and mess personnel had more chance of a few hours on stations during otherwise boring picket duty. The weekly green run always meant 24 hours on station, and sometimes more. He liked the bustle of the markets, he had—thanks to his grandmother's gardening passion—an unusually good eye for quality produce. He knew that Purcell's Family Grocers sometimes imported fresh fruits from planetside groves, and hoped to find either cherries or cherrunes. The exec's tenth anniversary was coming up, and he liked cherries. The other part was his sense of the ridiculous: few if any neuroenhanced troops ever had the chance to indulge a harmless interest.

He was only five minutes from the station when a red light came up on the board. The shuttle pilot grimaced, and switched channels. Cavallo saw the telltale hardening of the jaw, then the pilot's hands moving to change settings on the board.

"What?" Cavallo asked.

"They've got an intrusion," the pilot said. "They don't know what, but armed hostiles in Heavy Cargo—and they've taken hostages, a whole tramload of preschool kids."

Cavallo started to ask what a tramload of preschoolers had been doing in Heavy Cargo's 0.25 G, but that wasn't the most urgent question. "Who've they got with antiterrorist experience?"

"I don't know, but they've got a Major Reichart on station, and he's ordered all Fleet personnel to assemble—that's why we're shifting docking assignment. Sorry, Sarge, but it looks like we're all part of this for the duration."