Not much of a challenge to a soldier, he thought. But then, what soldier wants challenges? When you put your life on the line, the easier the job the better. For just the flicker of a moment he thought about the fact that he was shooting at unarmed civilians. Perhaps there was a woman aboard that ship, although the HSS intelligence data didn’t indicate that. What of it? he told himself. That’s the target and you’re being paid to destroy it. It’s a lot easier than killing people face to face, the way you had to in Delhi.
That had been a mess, a fiasco. One battalion of mercenary troops trying to protect a food warehouse against a whole city. That idiot commander! Stupid Frenchman. Harbin still saw the maddened faces of the ragged, half-starved Indians, bare hands against automatic rifles and machine guns. Still, they nearly swarmed us down. Only when he was foolish enough to let one of the women get close enough to knife him did his blood-rage surge and save him. He shot her point-blank and led a howling murderous charge that sent the mob running. He stopped firing into their backs only when his automatic rifle finally jammed from overheating.
He pushed the nightmare images out of his mind and concentrated on the job at hand. By the time he was ready to fire again, Matilda’s spin had moved the hab module enough so that it was partially shielded by the big slabs of ores the miners had hung on their central propulsion module. But their main comm antenna was in his sights. He squeezed off a shot. The laser’s capacitors cracked loudly and he saw a flash of light glance off the rim of the antenna. A hit.
Now to get the auxiliary antennas, he said to himself. I’ll have to move in closer.
“Shooting at us?” Nodon’s voice went high with sudden fright.
“Fookin’ bastard,” George growled. “Get into your suit. Quick!”
Nodon bolted from his chair and went to the hatch. He tapped out the keyboard code swiftly and the hatch swung open all the way.
“The air pressure is falling,” he called over his shoulder as George followed him down the passageway toward the airlock.
George was thinking, If we had the bloody laser on board we could give the bastard a taste of his own medicine. But the laser was sitting on the asteroid and its power pack was recharging; at least, it had been until the generator had been hit.
As they scrambled into their suits, George said, “We’d better power down the ship. Save the batteries.”
Nodon was already pulling his bubble helmet over his head. “I’ll go to the bridge and do it,” he said, his voice muffled by the helmet.
“Turn off everything!” George yelled after his retreating back. “Let ’em think we’re dead!”
He added silently, It won’t be far from wrong, either.
Nodon returned from the bridge as George was closing the neck seal of his helmet. Leaning toward the kid so their helmets touched, he said, “Don’t even use the suit radio. Play dead.”
The kid looked worried, but he forced a sickly grin as he nodded back to George.
They got to the airlock and went out together. George grasped Nodon’s suited arm and, without using his jetpack, pushed off toward the big slabs of ores attached to Matildas fusion engine. Get into the shadow of those chunks, he thought. Huddle up close to ’em and maybe this fookin’ killer won’t see us.
Perspective is tricky in microgravity. Once George and his young crewman got to the nearest of the slabs, it seemed as if they were lying on a huge hard bed, side by side, looking up at the slowly-revolving shape of their habitation module as it swung on its long tether.
The other ship glided into George’s view. It was small, little more than a hab unit set atop a fusion engine and a set of bulbous propellant tanks. It looked almost like a cluster of mismatched grapes. Then he recognized the bulky shape of a high-power laser hanging just below the hab module. This ship was meant to be a destroyer, nothing else.