“It should, it’s covered in neutronium.” She turned her head to Jonah. “Well?”
He sighed. “Offhand, I can’t think of a better solution. When you can’t think of a better solution than a high-speed collision with a rock, something’s wrong with your thinking, but I can’t think of what would be better to think . . . What do you think?”
“That an unshielded collision with a rock might be better than another month imprisoned with your sense of humor. . . . Gott, all those fish puns . . .”
“Computer, prepare for minimal burn. Any distinguishing characteristics of those rocks?”
“One largely silicate, one eighty-three percent nickel-iron with traces of—”
“Spare me. The nickel-iron, it’s denser and less likely to break up. Prepare for minimal burn.”
“I have so prepared, on the orders of Lieutenant Raines.”
Jonah opened his mouth, then frowned. “Wait a minute. Why is it always Lieutenant Raines? You’re a damned sight more respectful of her.”
Ingrid buffed her fingernails. “While you were briefing up on Wunderland and the Swarm . . . I was helping the team that programmed our tin friend.”
* * *
“Are you sure?”
The radar operator held her temper in check with an effort. She had not been part of the Nietzsche’s crew long, but more than long enough to learn that you did not back-talk Herrenmann Ulf Reichstein-Markham. Bastard’s as arrogant as a kzin himself, she thought resentfully.
“Yes, sir. It’s definitely heading our way since that microburn. Overpowered thruster, unusual spectrum, and unless it’s unmanned they have a gravity polarizer. Two hundred G’s, they pulled.”
The guerrilla commander nodded thoughtfully. “Then it is either kzin, which is unlikely in the extreme since they do not use reaction drives on any of their standard vessels, or . . .”
“And, sir, it’s cool. Hardly radiating at all, when the fusion plant’s off. If we weren’t close and didn’t know where to look . . . granted, this isn’t a military sensor, but I doubt the ratcats have seen him.”
Markham’s long face drew into an expression of disapproval. “They are called kzin, soldier. I will tolerate no vulgarities in my command.”
Bastard. “Yessir.”
The man was tugging at his asymmetric beard. “Evacuate the asteroid. It will be interesting to see how they decelerate, perhaps some gravitic effect . . . and even more interesting to find out what those fat cowards in the Sol system think they are doing.”
* * *
“Prepare for stasis,” the computer said.
“How?” Ingrid and Jonah asked in unison. The rock came closer, tumbling, half a kilometer on a side, falling forever in a slow silent spiral. Closer . . .
“Interesting,” the computer said. “There is a ship adjacent.”
“What?” Jonah said. His fingers slid into the control gloves like snakes fleeing a mongoose, then froze. It was too late, and they were committed.
“Very well stealthed.” A pause, and the asteroid grew in the wall before them, filling it from end to end.
Tin-brained idiot’s a sadist, Jonah thought.
“And the asteroid is an artifact. Well hidden as well, but at this range my semi-passive systems can pick up a tunnel complex and shut-down power system. Life support on maintenance. Twelve seconds to impact.”
“Is anybody there?” Jonah barked.
“Negative, Jonah. The ship is occupied; I scan twinned fusion drives, and hull-mounted weaponry, concealed as part of the grappling apparatus. X-ray lasers, possible rail-guns. Two of the cargo bays have dropslots that would be of appropriate size for kzin light-seeker missiles. Eight seconds to impact.”
“Put us into combat mode,” the Sol-Belter snapped. “Prepare for emergency stabilization as soon as the stasis field is off. Warm for boost. Ingrid, if we’re going to talk you’ll probably be better able to convince them of our—”
—discontinuity—
“—bona fides.”
The ripping-cloth sound of the gravity polarizer hummed louder and louder, and there was a wobble felt more as a subliminal tugging at the inner ear, as the system strained to stop a spin as rapid as a gyroscope’s. The asteroid was fragments glowing a dull orange-red streaked with dark slag, receding; the Catskinner was moving backward under twenty G’s, her laser-pods star-fishing out and railguns humming with maximum charge.
“Alive again,” Jonah breathed, feeling the response under his fingertips. The wall ahead had divided into a dozen panels, schematics of information, stresses, possibilities; the central was the exterior view. “Tightbeam signal, identify yourselves.”
“Sent. Receiving signal also tightbeam.” A pause. “Obsolete hailing pattern. Requesting identification.”
“Request video, same pattern.”
The screen flickered twice, and an off-right panel lit with a furious bearded face, tightly contained fury, in a face no older than his own, less than thirty; beard close-shaven on one side, pointed on the right, yellow-blond and wiry, like the close-cropped mat on the narrow skull; pale narrow eyes, mobile ears, long-nosed with a prominent bony chin beneath the carefully cultivated goatee. Behind him a control-chamber that was like the one in the Belter museum back at Ceres, an early-model independent miner—but modified, crammed with jury-rigged systems of which many were marked in the squiggles-and-angles kzin script; crammed with people as well, some of them in armored spacesuits. An improvised warship, then. Most of the crew were in neatly tailored gray skinsuits, with a design of a phoenix on their chests.
“Explain yourzelfs,” the man said, with a slight guttural overtone to his Belter English, enough to mark him as one born speaking Wunderlander.
“UNSN Catskinner, Captain Jonah Matthieson commanding, Lieutenant Raines as second. Presently,” he added dryly, “on detached duty. As representative of the human armed forces, I require your cooperation.”
“Cooperation!” That was one of the spacesuited figures behind the Wunderlander, a tall man with hair cut in the Belter crest, and adorned with small silver bells. “You fucker, you just missiled my bloody base and a year’s takings!”
“We didn’t missile it, we just rammed into it,” Jonah said. “Takings? What are these people, pirates?”
“Calm yourzelf, McAllistaire,” the Wunderlander said. His eyes had narrowed slightly at the Sol-Belter’s words, and his ears cocked forward. “Permit self-introduction, Hauptmann Matthieson. Commandant Ulf Reichstein-Markham, at your zerfice. Commandant in the Free Wunderland navy, zat is. My, ahh, coworker here is an independent entrepreneur who iss pleazed to cooperate wit’ the naval forces.”
“Goddam you, Markham, that was a year’s profits yours and mine both. Shop the bastard to the ratcats, now. We could get a pardon out of it, easy. Hell, you could get that piece of dirt back on Wunderland you’re always on about.”
The self-proclaimed Commandant held up a hand palm-forward to Jonah and turned to speak to the owner of the ex-asteroid. “You try my patience, McAllistaire. Zilence.”
“Silence yourself, dirtsider. I—”
“—am now dispensable.” Markham’s finger tapped the console. Stunners hummed in the guerrilla ship, and the figures not in gray crumpled.
The Commandant turned to a figure offscreen. “Strip zem of all useful equipment and space zem,” he said casually. Turning to the screen again, with a slight smile. “It is true, you haff cost us valuable matériel . . . You will understant, a clandestine war requires unort’odox measures, Captain. Ve are forced sometimes to requisition goods, as the Free Wunderland government cannot levy ordinary taxes, and it iss necessary to exchange these for vital supplies vit t’ose not of our cause.” A more genuine smile. “As an officer ant a chentelman, you vill appreciate the relief of no lonker having to deal vit this schweinerie.”
Ingrid spoke softly to the computer, and another portion of the screen switched to an exterior view of the Free Wunderland ship. An airlock door swung open, and figures spewed out into vacuum with a puff of vapor; some struggled and thrashed for nearly a minute. Another murmur, and a green line drew itself around the figure of Markham. Stress-reading, Jonah reminded himself. Pupil-dilation monitoring. I should have thought of that. Interesting: he thinks he’s telling the truth.
One of the gray-clad figures gave a dry retch at her console. “Control yourzelf, soldier,” Markham snapped. To the screen: “Wit’ all the troubles, the kzin are unlikely to have noticed your, ah, sudden deceleration.” The green line remained. “Still, ve should establish vectors to a less conspicuous spot. Then I can offer you the hozpitality of the Nietzsche, and we can discuss your mission and how I may assist you at leisure.” The green line flickered, shaded to green-blue. Mental reservations.
Not on board your ship, that’s for sure, Jonah thought, smiling into the steely fanatic’s gaze in the screen. “By all means,” he murmured.
* * *
” . . . zo, as you can imagine, we are anxious to take advantage of your actions,” Markham was saying. The control chamber of the Catskinner was crowded with him and the three “advisors” he had insisted on; all three looked wirecord-tough, and all had stripped to usefully lumpy coveralls. And they all had something of the outer-orbit chill of Markham’s expression.