“If we think of this as a children’s game, Sun,” Daniel said, “us hiding in the shadows waiting to jump out and surprise our friends, then it doesn’t seem so frightening, does it?”
“Sir, I was raised in a tenement that looked out at Harbor Three,” Sun said. “It was a tough place, I grant. But I don’t recall having any friends with six-inch guns.”
After a moment he chuckled at the thought; a moment later, Betts guffawed. Daniel smiled with appreciation. They were a good lot, a good crew for hard times.
And this was a very hard time.
A bell chimed through the ship. Machinery purred or hissed according to its needs, but the vessel’s human environment remained the same. The watches would change at the next bell, but not now; this was the last hour of sleep, the last hour of watching silent gauges or the alien night before giving the boring duty over to your relief.
If it was going to happen, it wouldn’t be long; and it was certainly going to happen.
Daniel had issued small-arms to half the crew. He’d chosen from among the solidest personnel, but he’d also picked men and women who’d used guns in the past and were comfortable using them again—on human beings.
That eliminated many otherwise suitable members of the crew. A man wasn’t necessarily a coward because he wasn’t willing to kill another person; a woman wasn’t necessarily a monster because she was willing.
He glanced at Adele, who was doing something at her console—the only unit on the bridge which was active. He, Betts, and Sun sat quietly at their posts, ready to act when the balloon went up but electronically silent till then.
Normally at this hour only the duty officer would have a live console; they had to assume that the Goldenfels could tell whether or not that was so tonight. Adele said hers needed to be operating, and Daniel assumed she had a reason. She always had in the past.
The Klimovs were in shock cradles in their own quarters, not in the bridge annex. “For your safety,” Daniel had told them; but in all truth, to keep them out of the way when he and his Sissies had to react instantly and possibly in unplanned fashions. The Klimovs weren’t fools, but they were sometimes willful. Survival tonight required discipline.
And skill. And not a little luck. . . .
Daniel’s eyes fell on Tovera, sitting on the deck with a sub-machine gun where she couldn’t be seen through the open access hatch. She was smiling faintly. Sometimes, of course, people willing to kill other people are monsters.
Though Hogg, prepared to fire his stocked impeller from the hatch beside her, wasn’t inhuman: he was just a countryman who killed as a normal part of life and in the full knowledge that he too would die in his time. It didn’t seem to make much practical difference; but it made a difference in Daniel’s mind.
“They’re about to move,” Adele said. She didn’t sound tense, but she spoke very precisely. “They’re passing orders—by voice only. They’re being careful.”
“For what we are about to receive,” Betts said, voicing the warriors’ ancient joke, “the Lord make us thankful.”
All the lights aboard the Princess Cecile went out. Metal shrieked on the Goldenfels, the shutters sliding open to unmask the hidden turrets.
“Wait for it!” Woetjans bawled from B Deck, audible up the forward companionways. “Don’t nobody fucking move!”
Daniel poised with his mouth and eyes both open. He heard the four guards outside the Sissie’s main hatch run aboard, their boots clanging. Nothing more happened for a beat, a second beat—Captain Bertram wasn’t acting rashly. Then, from hundreds of throats on the other side of the burned-over clearing, came the cry, “Urra!”
Adele’s wands flicked. All the lights and displays aboard the Princess Cecile returned to full brightness.
“Initiating ignition sequence . . . ,” Daniel said. His finger stabbed Execute on his virtual keypad, sending reaction mass to the thrusters to be stripped of electrons and expelled. “Now!”
The Princess Cecile jolted as if eight trip-hammers had struck her hull in close sequence. Normally he’d have brought the thrusters up gently, equalizing the impulse into perfect unison before jumping them to real power. This wasn’t a time for delicacy.