Their Master's War (31 page)

the other without doing damage to itself. The asteroid population must have been wondering if anybody was left alive on the cluster ship or if it was just a drifting hulk sending an automatic signal. The interpreter seemed to derive a lot of entertainment from imagining the state of mind of what was now being thought of as the enemy. It seemed to take a positive delight in directing the overall operation. A more serious warning came in.

"Reverse spatial motion or we will be forced to deflect you with our heavy weapons. Please acknowledge."

This was the moment to change signal. A prepared message was sent. The deliberately desperate voice of lantere cut through the storm of jagged static. The fac that it was a lantere sending should have alerted the base to. the fact that things were very wrong on the cluster ship. The big crustaceans were natural engineers, but they never operated ship-to-ship communication.

"We are reducing spatial motion as best we can. W are coming round onto your darkside. It will be a clo dock."

The static took over again, but the
Anah 5
did begin to slow as the two bodies came closer and closer. It still looked as if they were going to touch, but then, at the very last moment, the cluster ship started to curv around the asteroid.

"Ground troops stand by."

In the drop bay, the fighting men sealed their armor, concentrating fixedly on the small details rather than speculating about what was to come. The lights went out, and the bay's atmosphere was allowed to whistle into space. The eerie, drawn-out noise scraped on their already stretched nerves. The
Anah 5

entered the asteroid's shadow. The bay doors open. Below them was the dark expanse of rock with its clusters of steadily shining lights.

"Let's hit it! By the numbers."

The first troopers launched themselves into the void. They jumped in groups of five, five men clinging to a soft, lozenge-shaped floater. The nulgrav floater compensated for the opposing gravity fields of the ship and the asteroid and sank lightly and silently toward the rec-star's surface. The troopers' one advantage was that the asteroid had no appreciable ground defenses. In normal combat, such a heavily armed installation would have been reduced to red-hot slag before ground forces could hope to set foot on it. The Therem had never planned for piracy. The men of the
Anah 5
were able to float down shielded from all sensors by the bulk of the ship. As long as they observed helmet silence, their presence would not be detected until they actually entered the base.

Rance was in the fourth party to drop. Renchett, Dyrkin, and Hark were hanging onto the same floater. Rance was coming to rely on these veterans, and he wanted them beside him on what might conceivably be their last mission. The first three groups touched down without mishap. In the final moments, the ground seemed suddenly to rush up at them. Rance told himself that it was only an illusion and braced himself. They touched with only the slightest of shocks. He detached his armor from the webbing on the floater and looked around. Men were drifting down all around him. Above them, the
Anah 5
filled the sky. Using only hand signals, he started moving the men who were already down out of the immediate landing area. One group's floater, when it was only a few meters off the ground, did a sudden flip and came down on its edge. There were muffled curses in everyone's communicator. It was a breach, but Rance hoped that nobody on the asteroid would notice the brief, random noise. The
Anah
5's damaged subbrain had yielded only a partial plan of the recstar. Rance displayed their immedi ate surroundings on his visor. If they'd come down in the right place, there should be a main exhaust vent over on their right. He peered into the darkness. It was only after a minute or so that he spotted the containing wall. It was time to break helmet silence.

"Bearing 351 on dead reckoning. That's our back door; let's go!" The men moved forward, pulling the weightless floaters behind them. They were forced to traverse giant conduits and other enormous pieces of equipment. Everything on the outside of the asteroid was so huge that the men started to feel like microscopic parasites crawling across the outside of something that they hardly even understood. The containing wall around the vent was a little more human in scale. It was smooth, circular, and maybe fifty meters high. As they approached it, Rance issued another order.

"Grappels forward."

There were three puffs of smoke as grappling hooks were fired up and over the wall. The trailing lines would be used to haul men and floaters up and over the wall. At the top they'd strap on to the floaters again and descend slowly down the vent. Everything went well until they started dropping down the wide shaft. A man lost his hold on his floater and tumbled headlong into the vent. Even in the asteroid's low natural gravity, he was certain to be killed by the fall. As he fell, he screamed. The dragged-out howl echoed blood-chillingly in everyone's helmet. If anyone on the asteroid had spotted them and was monitoring, he'd be scanning the whole area by now.

The schematic didn't show how deep the tunnel went. Rance knew from the previous visit that the human environment was pretty deep inside this particular installation. On the other hand, if he went too low, he'd risk the chance of his whole force being sucked to their deaths at the core. At regular intervals, the vent intersected with

smaller lateral tunnels. Rance let five of these go by, and then he decided that they'd gone low enough.

"Steer your floaters into the next tunnel and set down."

The pitch-dark tunnel ran on for what seemed like forever. It had to be some kind of emergency runoff from the power system. There wasn't enough heat in the bone-cold rock to register on their redscopes, and they had to rely on their helmet lights. Not that there was too much to see. The walls were smooth and unbroken rock, and the troopers had walked for some minutes before they came to an inspection port. Rance motioned for the main force to hold back. He waved to Hark to check it out. Hark examined the door and indicated that it was locked from the inside.

"Burn through it, but be careful. There's probably atmosphere on the other side." Weapons flared in the dark, throwing the men around the door into stark relief. After a few seconds, the door blew back in a rush of pressure.

"They know about us now, for sure. We've got to move fast from now on." Rance put five troopers through the lock. Escaping air shrieked past them. When they drew no fire, he sent another five through, then he went through himself, followed by Dyrkin, Renchett, and Hark. The ten men had fanned out into a semicircle around the blown port. The lights were on in a perfectly ordinary, if deserted, corridor. The only thing that wasn't strictly normal was the flashing of pressure-drop alarms. The section of corridor had undoubtedly sealed itself, and if nothing else, a repair crew would be on its way.

"Benset, get the rest of the men through into this section." Rance looked at the longtimers. "You three come with me. We've got to find an elevator."

They moved up the corridor at a run. As Rance had

expected, they quickly came to a closed emergency door.

Hark grinned. "You want me to get it?" Rance nodded.

Hark took down the inspection cover. "How come I suddenly became the door expert?" "You've got the touch."

There was another rush of escaping pressure as Hark bypassed the automatic safety control. The doors opened on a surprised dauquoi repair crew that took one look at the armed and armored men, turned tail, and wriggled away.

Renchett raised his MEW, but Rance stopped him.

"Let them go."

"There goes the element of surprise."

"They still don't know what we're doing here."

The elevators were three sections on. Rance sent Dyrkin back to bring up the rest of the men while the others waited tensely beside the bank of elevators.

"We can't have too much longer. Somebody's going to be along to investigate any minute." Men started streaming down the corridor. Rance used the first to arrive as a defensive circle around the elevator banks. Then he left Benset in charge of loading the rest of the men onto elevators and rode down on the first one. No word of the attack had come down to the women's level. As the doors opened, the troopers confronted a small group of women routinely waiting for the elevators. With no major ships docked at the asteroid, it was a quiet period in the recreation area. The women, who were plainly and functionally dressed, stared at the men in amazement.

"What are you supposed to be?"

In all his planning, it hadn't occurred to Rance that he'd actually have to explain himself to the women.

"We've come to take you out of here."

"You're out of your mind. You're only going to get yourselves killed."

"Where did you come from?"

"We need to talk to someone in charge."

"The shores will be here soon enough."

Hark quickly stepped in. "We need to see a Venerable Madame." Rance glanced at him. "You know about this stuff?"

Hark nodded. The women looked at each other uncertainly. A small crowd had started to gather.

"This is going to end in a lot of trouble," one of the women said.

"This could end with us getting free of the Therem," Hark said. A second elevator full of men arrived, and then a third. The women's attitude began to change. A plump young woman with short-cropped blond hair stepped up to Hark.

"I'll take you to Conchela."

"Conchela is a Venerable Madame?"

"You know Conchela?"

"I did once."

Hark felt a little sick. He had forgotten about the time distortion. Conchela would be an old woman by now. He wasn't sure how he felt about seeing her. Rance was starting to look anxious. Men were pouring out of the elevators, and they had nowhere to go.

"Can we speed this up?" Rance said.

He and Hark took a squad of men and followed the blond girl. The rest of the troopers took up a position by the elevators. The advance walked between the avenues of closed and empty booths. The quiet, deserted area had a strange effect on the men. They looked around nervously, almost as if they were trespassing. Conchela's home was a good deal larger than the one to which she had taken Hark. Presumably a Venerable Madame had

certain privileges. She still crafted jewelery, however. As Hark and Rance came through the entrance, Conchela had her back to them. She was wearing a simple kaftan. She turned and stepped back in shock.

"Have you come to arrest me?"

Hark quickly removed his helmet. "It's me. Har-kaan." She sadly shook her head. "Don't you men ever age.

She wasn't exactly old, maybe in her mid-fifties and well preserved. Her hair was a natural gray, and there wasastrength about her face and bearing that spoke of intelligence and authority. Maybe, by becoming a leader of women, Hark thought, she was fulfilling a destiny that had started when she had served in the Lodge of the Spirits.

When Rance had explained the situation, Conchela wasted no time with unnecessary questions or expressions of disbelief.

"So you've come to take us out of here. We've dreamed of this moment all our lives, but when it finally comes... what can I say? It's frightening. It's a huge step into the unknown."

"At least it'll be our unknown."

"Do you think you can really pull this off?"

"I think we have a chance."

"I'll mobilize the women. How do you plan to get off this rock?"

"That's the tricky part. We have to fight our way into the shuttle dock and hold it long enough to get us all off. We also have to neutralize the main fire-control center so they can't shoot us down on the way out."

"You'll be taking on the lanteres."

"I have two hundred men, all armed and as mean as hell. Do you women have any weapons?"

"A few."

"There were explosives the last time I was here."

'That was a long time ago. They clamped down on that, but I expect there's some about. Where do you want the women to assemble?"

"In front of the elevator banks. As soon as you can. Tell them to keep the stuff they bring with them to an absolute minimum. No more than they can easily carry. "

As Rance and Hark left Conchela to start marshaling the women, alarms started to shrill all over the environment.

"Seems like they're on to us." "It took them long enough." After a full minute of clamor, the alarms were replaced by a full-power authority voice.

"This is addressed to the unauthorized men by the elevators. You will lay down your weapons and prepare to identify yourselves."

Rance, Hark, and the men with them broke into a run. The announcement was repeated once more. There was the sound of shore patrol sirens on the other side of the area. Rance reached the elevators just in front of the shore patrol.

"Hold your fire! Nobody fire unless you have to."

The shore patrol came out of the central avenue. There were six of them in servo suits and maybe a dozen more on foot. When they saw the size of the force from the
Anah 5,
they stopped in their tracks. Clearly no one had told them what they were up against. Rance gave thanks for the confusion. The leader of the squad dismounted from her servo and walked uncertainly toward the men.

"What the hell is going on here?"

"We're liberating you."

The squad leader halted. "Liberating?"

Rance talked fast. At first the squad leader refused to believe him, but in the end, the obvious evidence of the large force of men was just too overwhelming.

"So, are you with us, or do we all have to start shooting each other?" The squad leader looked totally confused. "I don't know. I've got to talk to my people."

"No communicators."

"I just want to talk to the people with me."

She walked back to her squad, and they went into a huddle. Rance shook his head.

"I wish they'd hurry it up. Time is not on our side."

At that moment, Conchela emerged from a side corridor with a crowd of women behind her. Quickly she detached herself and hurried over to the shore patrol. There was further discussion, then she and the squad leader came back to Rance together.