ship had all the attendant sounds of coming and going for a while—
And then nothing. Nothing for a very long while. Allison fretted, ate and drank
in the long dark hours because she had reached the point of fatigue, and she had
to, not because her stomach had any appetite for it
Neither Deirdre nor Nell offered suggestions—not since the first, when they felt
the breakaway from the grapple and knew that they were going in on their own.
Now there were machinery sounds missing, like the noise of unloading. That took
comp, to open the holds and run the internal machinery… and that meant that the
Mazianni had not gotten the keys—in some sense or another. Bravo, she tried to
think; but the other chance occurred to her too, that they were dead up there.
And the silence continued, from the part of the ship they could hear.
She could make a fatal mistake, she reckoned, foul it all up—either by sitting
too long or by rushing ahead when she ought to sit still and wait—and take their
losses and hope—
For what? she thought. Sandor had never reckoned on being hauled into station,
docked and occupied at leisure. There was no percentage in waiting for Mazianni
to get what they wanted and move a crew in. She conceived a black picture,
herself and her crew surviving in the crawlways, waiting a chance when some
Mazianni crew should try to take Lucy out—and launching an at tack. But they
would be debilitated by hunger and inactivity, at disadvantage, underarmed—the
Mazianni could crew Lucy with a dozen, and tilt the odds impossibly against
them.
She turned on her suit light *Going up, she signed to the others, making out
only blank faceplates casting back her light in the darkness. But the blank
heads nodded after a moment, and Neill patted her ankle with a clumsy glove.
They were willing.
She moved ahead in the shaft, reckoning that somewhere toward the bow had to be
a crawlspace leading to main level: they were downside as they had docked,
because they were under the bridge/lounge area, and she recollected the
geography of main level, went on the best estimate she had reasoned out over the
hours, where the access shaft might be. It was slow-motion movement, carrying
the weight of the suits and slithering forward, trying not to hit metal against
metal—She kept the light on, and turned and signed *quiet to the others—needless
caution. They knew. A slip, the banging of a plastic clip or metal coupling
against the metal of the shaft might set any occupation wondering.
She had to stop from time to time—stopped when she had found what she had hunted
for, staring up into the access shaft-disgusted with herself because she was out
of breath and doubting she could make the climb in one G.
She had to, that was all. Could not send Neill up there to get killed because he
was strongest. She had to be ready to use the gun and use it right; and none of
them had ever fired a gun except in light-sensor games.
She sucked in a breath and started, a slow upward climb, taking the same
cautions. The weight of the pack dragged at her arms, threatened to tear her
hands from the rungs, bruising bones in her fingers even through the gloves. She
took it on her legs as much as possible, a dozen rungs, a few more; and reached
a hatch beside the ladder in the shaft. She hooked an elbow around the rungs,
almost disjointed by the weight, got the gun from its holster and hooked the
edge of that hand into the unlock lever of the access panel. It hung, took
another shove that tore muscles all the way to the groin, gave with a crash her
pickup magnified,
The door swung out: a coveralled man had stood up from the number one seat,
whirling in an adrenalin-stretched instant. She fired, a panic shot—watched in
cold disbelief as the man folded and fell. She thrust her leg over and through
the access threshold, at the corner of the maintenance corridor, stumbled out
and fell skidding to one knee as terror, the deck slope, and the weight of the