PROLOGUE
Orbital Aid 370
“Move.”
The radioed message from Stost was clear, while sound from outside their suits was muddied and muffled. There was still atmosphere here, for what that was worth. There were also odd vibrations, and strange sounds too, here in the crew quarter zone, the most worrisome being a continuous scratch-scratch-scratch. It was best, Chernak assured herself, not to think too closely on it. After all, they were just passing through.
There was another sound—familiar, even companionable—the sound of breathing not her own, coming through her headset. She concentrated on that, even as she observed the passage they moved down, alert for threats, for traps, for—
The way ahead was blocked by an undogged door, likely last touched by a dead man. The light in hand would have to do; they could not manage their kits and their cases, and the cases could not be abandoned. The beam sprayed about weirdly, the passageway was bent in ways it had not been when they’d boarded. Gravity was wavering.
Calling the ship plan to mind, Chernak realized there was another emergency cabinet ahead, which might be useful. She signed to Stost, behind her, to slow, heard a tap in the troop cadence asking again for speed, which was understandable given the state of the hallway. It went against instinct, but caution was key, here. They could not afford to rush into error; neither could they lay down their burdens: both were required for mission success.
“Patience.” Her voice was perhaps louder than it needed to be, with Stost quite so close.
A touch on her shoulder, fleeting, perhaps even gentle. She took a full breath of the stored air, stood straighter.
They both wore generic soft-suits from the rack, extra flexible, high visibility, patterned with glowing stripes, but without rank marks. Not that Pathfinder Chernak needed to see rank marks to know who she was, who her companion was, or where either stood within the Troop. As equal as might be, male and female versions of the same genotype, date and times of their first breaths so close as to have the same certified minute mark.
Both were pathfinders by training and birth and…she was seven seconds the elder. They shared the seventh minute of the seventh hour of the seventh day, and had been tagged as the “lucky ones” of their cohort by some K-grade staffer, for reasons they had never learned, and now never would; the Third Corps creche-world was long ago dust in a sheriekas raid.
“Patience,” she said again, less loudly. Being second was not easy.
The breathing in her ear changed to an exasperated sigh, overloud in the dimness, and then a rebuttal: “I had patience yesterday, when I knew what I faced.”
Yes, well. Patience.
In fact, they had been patient yesterday, as they sought passage to the station while panic built among the city dwellers. Rumor was loose, rumor and griefers and doubters all reaching a crescendo as ships returned to port telling tales of runs ending in transition failure a dozen times in a row, while others reported successful transitions into systems staggering under the loss of entire planets.
The port authorities at Curker Center would have attached the pair of pathfinders to the garrison as mere soldiers. Chernak and Stost, however, traveled on top level diplomatic ID, which they waved and worked with a fine bluster. The cases—one each—were strapped ’round them, under uniform jackets no longer so brave as they had been, and those they did not show.
Their orders identified them as part of a group of a dozen, but the other ten—
Of the other ten, four had never arrived in-system; two had arrived and had been pressed into local garrison service. Four had died in an explosive ambush at Loadzt, where the histories of seven thousand worlds were being destroyed by attacks from within and without.
It was telling, that none who scrutinized their orders asked where the others of their team were.
Curker Center orbited Loadzt; the station orbited both. They arrived at Curker Center amid riot and screaming. Gunshots were not infrequently heard—it might have been a war zone, itself.
They had orders; a mission. To fulfill the mission, they must find transport to the station.
They killed no one in their transit down to the docks; they used what force was necessary to clear their path—and no more.
At last, they found a shuttle preparing to cast off. They had wrangled, demanded, and bribed freely. Their orders directed them to win through at any cost with those items they had removed from the archives, now packed into the precious cases.
“I’m giving you the last of my pay!” Stost told the shuttle captain, who had wanted a year’s pay, and battle bonuses, too—for two places to stand, no straps, on the overcrowded shuttle to the station.
Grudgingly, the civilian let them by, and Stost had laughed as they rushed aboard.
“Oh, I hope the fool banks all of it tonight, for tomorrow night’s binge!”
There had been riots at Curker Center; on-station, there was chaos.
Cases hidden, they flashed diplomat cards, Troop marks, and high security pathfinder ID. The passenger docks were in riot as ships and crews were beset by would-be escapees. The vessel they had expected to be awaiting their team of twelve was not at the military dock—but they had long ago stopped believing in its existence. It was a matter, now, of the orders, and they were determined to run to the end of them. They were of the Troop; what else had they, but orders?
Against riot, disorder, and violence, the Troops on-station were prepared to act. They were also prepared to absorb a pair of ragged pathfinders into the riot squad until those high security IDs were unleashed. It seemed for a moment that they would be required to contend for the return of those IDs, before the surly half-captain threw the cards back, only slightly stained with her blood.
“Try the trade docks then. Run!”
To the trade docks they ran then, halfway around the station through halls crowded by maddened civilians, arriving while two-minute warnings blared, and in the midst of relative calm found a tech with an air mask ’round his neck, a repair belt over his shoulder, and a senior crew hash on his sleeve, who was willing to see them, hear their orders, and consider their request for passage.
“Soldiers, we’ll be rushing a blockade,” he told them, serious, voice full of warning. “Bad odds!”
They’d glanced at each other, Stost and Chernak, recalling the Over Commander’s dismissal of their team, feeling the weight of their orders, which none had doubted would be their last.
Stost had signaled lead on. Chernak nodded to the crewman.
“Bad odds,” she said, “are better than no odds.”
“Come ahead then,” he told them, and they boarded behind him, seconds before the final-check bell rang—
They moved fast, past an inset ladder with well-worn treads leading up to a pressure seal, past dogged doors and hatches neatly labeled for utility pressure suits, emergency patch kits, spill containment, and one ornately inscribed, Jarbechapik—Bug Hut—past two doors with nameplates affixed, and…
“Pathfinders? Here—only open spots are crew seats back here in engineering quarters.”
“Head’s there.” Their guide tech pointed. “Crew room’s up ahead. Only me now, besides the bridge crew—the rest run off—run home, run to get drunk, run to hide, I guess. Grab a seat back there—” a nod in the direction of the crew room, a semi-salute—and he was gone.
They entered the proper compartment, the passageway a tunnel between stasis-storage units and maintenance lockers—one wall marked with radiation protection signs, it being the rear bulkhead where a push ship might butt, another wall supporting two dozen lockers containing basic low-pressure suits and tools.
“Just strap in,” had been the tech’s orders. “Strap in and wait for me to fetch you out. The crew won’t know you and you might be called for pirates or worse if you aren’t with me.”
They strapped in, each with reference to their down-counting chronometers once they’d taken that catch-up breath, the one breath that signaled each other that now all they had to do was wait for whatever it was the Over Commander had not had the time—or the understanding—to explain.
The ship’s transition into independent orbit when it released from the station had been smooth. But then, in moments, the action had started; bad odds, Stost signed lightly, recalling to both of them bad odds of the past.
They sat, strapped in and humble, during acceleration, during evasion, during the bombardment, accomplished pilots belted like pallets of spare ration bars into a compartment where they commanded no screens, nor any attention whatever.
However humiliating their situation, though, they could take pride in the fact that they were, as per their final orders, and according to Chernak’s chronometer, in space when the zeros matched across nine digits.