She nodded. “All right. I won’t argue.”
The project director stared thoughtfully at Chilaili, who moved out into the teeth of the storm again to search for more supplies. “At some point, I’d very much like to know what she’s doing here.”
“So would I,” Bessany agreed in a low, shaking voice. “I think I can guess her reasons, but we need more than guesswork. If I’m right, she’s come to pay the debt for Sooleawa’s life by warning us an attack is coming. Probably as soon as the weather clears.”
Sinclair blanched. “We can’t possibly fight, Bessany. Even if we had weapons . . .” He gestured at the broken walls. “We’re simply not defensible. And evacuating is out of the question. The tornado smashed the hangar. There’s nothing left of the aircars, not even much rubble. Most of them were apparently sucked up and carried God alone knows how far.” His voice shook. “From the look of things, the tornado barely grazed the recreation hall, or we’d all have been sucked out with them.”
Bessany shuddered. “I don’t suppose any of our communications gear survived?”
Herve shook his head. “We haven’t found it yet, if it did. The SWIFT unit’s completely gone, along with the room it was in. The field radios are missing, too. Our main radio transmitter is smashed and the tower’s down, twisted into useless junk. We’ll keep looking, but I’m not very optimistic.”
God, we can’t even call for help. . . .
Bessany swayed sharply, fighting waves of exhaustion.
“You’re weaving on your feet,” Herve said gently. “Come on, let’s get you into one of the other shelters, get some food into you.”
Bessany let him pull the coat around her shoulders again, let him steer her outside and across the rubble field to the geology lab. Seven refugees huddled around a blazing fire that had been built in one corner, next to a window cracked open slightly, just enough to let the smoke out. Elin Olsson presided over the fire, keeping it properly stoked. The petite geologist, blonde hair streaked with dark stains, greeted Bessany with a wan smile and scooted over enough to give her room to sit down. The elfin geologist handed her a ration pack with three of the high energy bars they carried while doing field research. Bessany ate one without tasting it and washed it down with cold water from a basin of melting snow.
As she sat beside the crackling fire, watching the flames dance across the carefully stacked wood, her own injuries finally made their presence felt. From scalp to toes, the ache of bruises and multiple stings where she’d sustained cuts and scrapes spoke of the abuse she’d suffered. Her hands were shaking and all she really wanted was to lie down and sleep for about a year.
Elin glanced up and met her gaze. “Bessany?”
“Yeah?”
She expected the geologist to ask about Chilaili. Not for the first time, Elin Olsson surprised her. “Do you think the military help the Concordiat promised will get to us in time?”
Before the Tersae attack us?
The unasked portion of that question reverberated between them. Bessany shook her head. “I don’t know, Elin. I just don’t know.” She bit her lip. “I kept sending messages to my brother-in-law, but he never answered. After Alex’s death . . .”
Elin, who knew the whole story, reached over to wrap a comforting arm around Bessany’s shoulders. “That wasn’t your fault, hon.”
Bessany shook her head. “No. I know it wasn’t. But John Weyman tried to contact me, afterward, and I never answered his messages. I couldn’t. Just couldn’t.” She closed her eyes over burning salt water. “God, Elin, I was so stupid. . . . And now we really need his help, I’m afraid he’s returning the compliment.”
“I can’t imagine he would deliberately ignore you, Bessany. Or any message from Thule, come to that. He’s probably just out on the frontier, fighting the Deng invasion,” Elin insisted quietly, “and hasn’t even seen your messages. So don’t blame yourself, okay? None of this is your fault.”
Bessany sighed. Elin was doubtless right, of course. It wasn’t her fault and John Weyman probably wasn’t spitefully ignoring her. But she knew only too well that even when the promised military help finally arrived at Thule, there was very little chance that help would be directed toward them. The mines were the critical installations on Thule—not a battered group of scientists huddled in the wreckage of their research lab. She said in a low voice, “If they can get to us, they will. If.” She lifted her gaze from the heart of the flames and met Elin Olsson’s frightened glance. “But even if they do manage to bring a fighting force out here before we’re overrun, this station is dead last on anybody’s priority list for defense.”
It was dreadful, watching the elfin geologist come face to face with that bleak assessment. They weren’t defensible, wouldn’t have been, even before the tornado. They couldn’t evacuate, neither by air nor by ground, not with most of their equipment wrecked or simply missing. Walking out was impossible, not with as many seriously injured people as they now had. And Bessany was far too experienced even to hope the cavalry would come over the hill in time.
Chapter Eleven
“This is the goldangdest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Hank Umlani, Rustenberg’s Chief of Industrial Fabrication, stared at the plans Senator had provided, understandably scratching his bushy grey hair and frowning at the technical specs he held. The thing was disarmingly simple. So simple, it didn’t look like much of anything, let alone a weapon.
Alessandra asked patiently, “Yes, but can you make it? With the equipment and supplies on hand?”
Umlani looked up, raking a weary glance across the warehouse where they stood, a warehouse which now held the entirety of Rustenberg’s surviving resources, moved into one protected location inside the perimeter wall, in a depressingly short time. Crews of miners were hard at work around them, conducting a hasty inventory. Ginger Gianesco, Rustenberg’s Ops Director, had not been able to supply them with anything remotely resembling a psychotronics technician, let alone a Bolo systems engineer, which had forced Alessandra and Senator to get creative in planning the town’s long-term defense.
The first step had been to list on a master inventory every weapon the miners could field. The colonists had come up with a surprising variety of personal arms: several very useful modern rifles brought out to defend mining parties from predators, plus sonic stunners, 20 kilowatt laser zappers, hypersonic needle guns, an honest-to-God anesthesia rifle, even a reproduction single-shot Sharps breechloader, which a hobbyist had brought with him.
“Isn’t that buffalo gun a little primitive?” Alessandra had asked dubiously.
The owner, a burly man in his forties, gave her a nasty grin. “Wasn’t too primitive for three of them damn turkeys.”
They’d even counted the two longbows kept in the meeting hall, along with the colony’s other recreational equipment. Senator had protested, saying, “Longbow projectiles wouldn’t even scratch my armor,” then had desisted, suitably impressed, when one of the women put an arrow through a chunk of beef taken from the shelter’s refrigeration unit, demonstrating its effectiveness at piercing protoplasm. Alessandra had sent out crews with the modern guns, putting Senator in charge of turning them into an automated defense system. She could hear his voice booming in the cold air, through the open door of the warehouse.
“A simple computer system is all we will need. Something that will tell the guns to shoot back at anything which fires at the wall. The automated guns will use a triangulation system with range-finding lasers to determine the exact distance to anything shooting at the wall. This will trigger the guns in the most optimal position to fire back. The computers you already have on hand are more than adequate to run this system . . .”
His automated system wouldn’t stop a crazed, lone Tersae with a satchel charge in its claws, but it would drop anything that fired a rifle, mortar, or missile. She’d also sent several parties of miners out into the icy darkness with hand lights and ropes to comb the fissures and narrow gorges surrounding the town, hunting for possible Tersae weapons caches and scouting out good spots to place remotely controlled ambushes.
Still others checked on the mining equipment and the oil refinery. And just in case evacuation became necessary, she’d also sent a search party out through the ruins, hunting up every surviving transport left in town. That, too, comprised a very short list: seven aircars used for two-person aerial surveying teams and three lumbering, automated ore carriers that would hold a lot of people, but wouldn’t top more than ten kilometers an hour.
For God’s sake, she prayed, don’t let us have to evacuate this town. Not in a hurry, anyway. If she and Senator did their jobs properly, that wouldn’t be necessary. But with Senator’s malfunctions, she was hedging her bets every way possible. Alessandra fully expected more trouble, not much later than dawn. She just hoped one malfunctioning Bolo, one battle-rattled brigade captain, and a gaggle of exhausted colonists could put together the necessary defense works before then. Particularly since most of the colonists with military experience had already died.