The process would continue in infinite sequence until there was a point Daniel had calculated before the Princess Cecile lifted from Kostroma; or until the Princess Cecile and her Cinnabar crew disintegrated in a gush of molten metal because her young captain had cut things a little too close.
“You’re not authorized to be here,” said the older female soldier who seemed to be in charge of the guard detail. “This place is top security!”
“We were just lifting off to launch a message cell,” Adele said. “The ship blew up and damaged us, so we had to dock here. We need to contact the Bremse so they can send down aid to the surface.”
She picked at the cuffs of her gauntlets. She couldn’t see them clearly because of the way the sleeve ballooned, and she hadn’t paid any attention to the method of closure when Woetjans sealed them for her.
“Somebody help me off with these damned gloves,” Adele said peevishly. She held her hands out to Dasi, ignoring the guns pointed at her and her fellows. The node was weightless, but everyone aboard it was floating within thirty degrees of the hatch’s alignment.
“How did you get here?” asked a technician; a man in his sixties, at least twice the age of the other Willoughbies. “Only the supply vessels are supposed to be able to dock without being destroyed by the defenses.”
Willoughby was a center of electronic manufacturing and had provided a haven for disaffected Alliance citizens. The latter had been both a thorn in the side of Guarantor Porra and the key to the recent Alliance capture of the planet: feigned refugees had subverted Willoughby’s automatic defense array when the Alliance fleet arrived.
“Of course we weren’t destroyed!” Adele snapped as Dasi drew her gloves off. The sailors were keeping silent, waiting for her to tell them what to do. “We’re the Katlinburg’s cutter, I told you.”
Another Willoughby opened her mouth to speak. The senior technician shushed her with a quick gesture.
The technicians understood that friendly or not, the cutter shouldn’t have been able to approach the command node without setting off the close-in defenses mounted on wands projecting from the node’s hull. These would blast a hail of faceted tungsten pellets in the direction of any object that tried to approach without the proper codes. Only the cutters bringing supplies from the Bremse should have had those codes.
Dasi removed the right gauntlet and started on the other. The Bremse sent not only supplies but changes of guard: Adele could see that by the relatively good health of the soldiers compared to the sallow puffiness of the technicians.
The cruiser/minelayer maintained gravity by constant acceleration. Its High Drive used water molecules for conversion. A ship in station above Kostroma could replenish its tanks by dipping down to the surface for an hour every few days.
The command node was a satellite with only maneuvering jets. Those aboard her would feel the effects of weightlessness within days; the technicians had been in this high-technology prison for the full two weeks since the Alliance invasion.
“Paltes, call the ship and see what the fuck we’re supposed to do about this,” the Alliance noncom said. “You lot—”
She waggled her submachine gun toward the Cinnabars and drifted slightly back in reaction. Unlike the sailors, the Alliance guards weren’t used to weightlessness.
“—get into the airlock again till they tell us what to do. I shouldn’t have let you in.”
Dasi removed the other gauntlet. He was between Adele and the guards. She reached into the pouch on her equipment belt with her left hand. “All right,” she said calmly to the noncom, “but you’re going to be in trouble—”
As Adele’s hand came clear of the pouch, she shot the noncom through the bridge of the nose. Recoil—even the pistol’s slight recoil—spun Adele sideways. She fired twice more as she rotated.
The guard whose right forearm Adele had shattered with a pellet meant for his upper chest jerked the trigger. His gun pointed toward the far wall. Pellets raked a programming alcove. Faint gray smoke drifted from holes punched in the structural plastic.
Adele bounced off the airlock. She turned desperately to see what was happening. Barnes and Dasi had the uninjured guard between them; Dasi was bending the man’s gun arm over his knee to break it. Woetjans held the guard who’d fired by the throat with one hand as she hit him an unnecessary second time with the wrench in the other hand.