“I know.”
Hal shrugged, trying to shunt attention away from his emotional outburst. Complaining about it wouldn’t do any good, anyway. “You got other business. Just leave the equipment to me. I’ll wreck what we can’t take.”
Carl nodded and left.
Hal watched him go. Then: Kill Digger?
Not if he had anything to say about it. Maybe Digger had to die; Hal hadn’t forgotten that much about soldiering. But there was ways of carrying out an order, and then there was ways. By golly, the least they could do was let him die honorably in combat—and since Mark XX Model M “Moseby” units had been designed for slash-and-dash raids behind enemy lines, maybe Digger would give these invaders a rude surprise or two before they killed him. That’s what Digger’d want, for sure. Hal waited until the Bolo returned from the fields that evening. Everything else was set. He’d wrecked what they hadn’t crated; then he’d rigged explosive charges throughout the compound, setting things so the whole installation would go the minute any life form larger than a housecat was detected inside the main buildings. The bastards might occupy Matson’s World, but they’d pay dear for it or Hal Abrams wasn’t a Marine Engineer.
The last thing he told faithful old Digger, so antiquated he qualified for admission to the War Relics and Monuments Commission roster, was: “Digger, I want you to check out that new orchard in the back forty tonight. Stay out there for a couple of days, work on those cultivars we been gussying up. I’m leavin’ it up to you, Digger, to take care of things. You just keep right on with your mission, Digger, same as I programmed you. Battle Reflex Alert inside colony perimeter. Understand?”
“Understood, Commander. I will continue the work for which I am programmed. I will develop new cultivars, plant and harvest test acreages, and protect the colony’s crops and physical plant until such time as I am relieved from Battle Reflex Alert.”
“That’s good, Digger,” Hal said, wishing he didn’t feel quite so choked up. He wanted to say goodbye, but didn’t have the heart to tell the faithful old machine he wouldn’t be coming back. Better to let him die not realizing he’d been betrayed and abandoned by friends. “You’d best be getting on out to that orchard, Digger.”
“Understood, Commander.”
The hulking machine backed neatly on its ancient treads. It turned in the moonlight and trundled obediently across the fields, taking the access road it had built the previous year. Backhoes, plowshares, bulldozer blades, manipulator arms, reaper extensions, sampling baskets, and harvesting prunes festooned its moonlit hull, all but obscuring the ominous snouts of infinite repeaters which hadn’t cycled in two hundred years.
Hal sighed.
That was about to change.
He just hoped Digger put up a good fight.
—2—
Drone Xykdap 221-K5C encounters Enemy emissions on Hyper-L vector incoming. Engage stealth mode. Wait. Wait. Attack. Navigational systems destroyed. Propulsion system damaged. Communications beacons damaged. No return fire. Target drops to sub-light. Match speed. Strike. Renew attack. Propulsion system destroyed. Communications beacons destroyed. Break attack. Aims achieved. No damage sustained to Drone Xykdap 221-K5C. File salvage coordinates and vector. Continue mission: protect incoming fleet. Silence all units capable of sounding warning.
—3—
Tillie Matson scrambled through the makeshift nursery on hands and knees, struggling to thrust screaming children into life suits. Another explosion rocked the Star Cross. Lights dimmed, flickered, went out. Oh, God, no . . . Strident sirens sounded through the whole ship. Then the hull shuddered like a mare trying to dislodge biting flies. Even Tillie screamed.
They dropped out of hyper-light with a disorienting jolt. The children’s screams turned to terrified whimpers in the darkness. “M-mamma—”
Another explosion somewhere aft brought new cries. Emergency lights came up, flickered, dimmed, came up again.
“Into your suits!” Tillie shouted at the older kids.
A few of them snapped out of terror long enough to comprehend her order. They knew the drill. Under the goad of an adult voice, they scrambled to obey. Tillie’s hands shook as she thrust whimpering toddlers into life suits and sealed the latches. Saros Mysia, his face a terrible shade of green in the emergency lighting, stumbled through the open hatchway and helped her finish the little ones.
“Into the corner!” the colony’s education administrator ordered suited children. Kids scrambled to obey.
“Into a suit, Tillie,” he added sharply.
“You’re not suited, either. Zip up, stat.”
They both struggled into life suits, fully expecting the hull to blow at any second. But no more terrifying, inexplicable explosions rocked their transport. The sirens continued to hoot, but whatever had happened, it was over. Or so Tillie thought.
The good news arrived in the person of Kelly McTavish. The ship’s Passenger Steward, suited against hull breach, poked his faceplate into the nursery and looked directly at Tillie.
“We’re spaceworthy.”
In two words, he relieved their greatest terror. Tillie sagged inside her life suit, trembling. “What happened?” Good God, is that my voice?
“We were attacked. Don’t know by what or why; but it was a deliberate attack.”
“Attack?” Tillie echoed. “My God, we’re not at war with anyone.”
“Weren’t at war with anyone,” Kelly corrected harshly. “We sure as hell are now.” He glanced at the wide-eyed children behind her. “Uh, sorry. I really shouldn’t have said that.” He cleared his throat. Through the faceplate, Tillie read stark terror in his eyes.
Tillie made a fast decision. “Saros, stay with the children, please. I need to find out what our status is.”
Once in the corridor, away from the nursery, she asked, “Is it safe to take this helmet off, Mr. McTavish?”
He nodded, solemnly unbuckling his own. “Yeah. We’re spaceworthy. No hull breach in this sector, anyway.”
Tillie swallowed hard. “Then there was a hull breach?”
He glanced at the nearby bulkhead. “Yeah.”
“How bad is it?”
Kelly McTavish wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Bad, ma’am. I’ll, uh, update you soon. Real soon, I promise. You’d better see to your people, ma’am. Find out how many casualties you have. Get someone to check the livestock. I’m afraid all ship’s personnel are going to be, uh, real busy for a few hours.”
He started to leave.
“Mr. McTavish . . .”
He halted; turned reluctantly to face her.
“Just how many crewmen were killed?”
He lost another shade of color, which she wouldn’t have believed possible. Carrot-red hair and freckles stood out from the pallor, reminding Tillie of the scared children back in the nursery. Very slowly, and with a sinking sensation in her middle, she realized he really wasn’t much more than a kid. Twenty, maybe. Not much older. Just what was the chain of command on a passenger/cargo freighter?
“I’ll update you soon as I can, ma’am. I just wanted to make sure you understood you’re in no immediate danger. Hang tight, long’s you can. I’ll be back. Or someone will. I promise.”
With that, he left her standing in the corridor with nothing but fear in her mouth and tremors in all her muscles.
The bad news arrived in the guise of a crewman Tillie hadn’t met yet. She was hip-deep in crises of her own, trying to calm hysterical colonists with the little she knew of their situation.
“—but who attacked—”
“—or what—”
“—how long will repairs take—”
“—my baby’s due in three weeks!—”
“—our children are having hysterics—”
“Please, people,” Tillie lifted her hands, trying to shout over the babble of frightened voices. “You’ve already heard everything I know. There was a hull breach somewhere, but I don’t know how serious it was. Everyone felt us drop out of FTL into normal space. The crew has asked us to verify our status—”
“Why the hell don’t they verify theirs!”
“We paid ’em enough for this passage!”
Tillie shouted to be heard. “The sooner we know how we are, the sooner the crew can help us get through this crisis. Itami, Saros, please take charge of the roster. Verify everyone’s situation—injuries, losses, whatever. We’ll worry about the livestock later. Right now we sort out ourselves . . .”
They were still working on the casualties list when several people stared past her shoulder. Tillie turned and found a lean crewman with a torn, stained uniform and haunted, dark eyes standing in the open bulkhead doorway, watching them.
Pandemonium erupted.
“—what’s—”
“—how soon—”
“—you must—”
Thin lips went thinner just before the explosion: “QUIET!”
Whoever he was, he had Command Voice down to a science. Shocked colonists shut up. A few—unaccustomed to paid underlings barking orders—gulped like fish drowning in a sea of oxygen. His dark gaze flicked to her. “Dr. Matson?”
“Yes?”
“Would you join me, please. We have a lot to discuss.”
The order—phrased as a polite request to preserve an illusion of normalcy—was nevertheless clearly an order. Tillie knew in that moment they were in more serious trouble than even she had thought.
“Itami, Saros,” she said quietly, “have the casualties roster updated by the time I get back.”