Breach of Containment. Elizabeth Bonesteel
dirt, obscuring her visibility entirely. The harness kept her from dropping onto the ceiling as they skidded upside down through the frozen dust, far faster than they should have; the engines were whining, trying to soften the landing, and she thought they had been damaged. In an instant, though, the engines no longer mattered: they slammed against something she couldn’t see, she jerked roughly against her harness, and the engines shut down.
“Arin?” she said, unbuckling herself, her feet dropping onto the ship’s ceiling. “You still hooked in?”
There was silence, and everything in her went cold.
“Arin!” She rushed toward the containers. Where they had been carefully lined up on the floor they were now tossed about the ceiling like huge squares of confetti, on top of each other and in corners, a few broken open, seeds scattered. She saw the safety cable behind one of them and grabbed it, pulling; it resisted. She shoved at the container covering it; the heaviest of them was ninety kilos in this gravity. If she braced herself against the wall she should be able to shift it. Squeezing between the container and the wall, she positioned her feet and set her shoulders, then took a deep breath and shoved. The container slid reluctantly away from her, and fell off to the left.
Arin was crumpled against the wall, unmoving.
She rushed to him, careful not to shift him. She could see his chest rising and falling rapidly, and she felt a glimmer of relief. Where was the damn med scanner on this ship? Under a pile of containers, she realized; she would have to rely on her rusty field training. Pressing her gloved fingers against the thin fabric of his suit hood, she took the pulse in his throat; a little fast, but steady enough. She cleared the debris away from him, trying not to move him, unsure of where he had been hit and how hard. His nose was bleeding; it was clearly broken. As she was running her hands carefully along his arm, he stirred and groaned.
“Sit still,” she told him sharply.
“What,” he said.
“We’ve crashed,” she told him. “You got hit with a container. Be still; I don’t know how badly you’re hurt.”
He opened his eyes; both pupils, she noted, were even. His concussion couldn’t be too bad. “Why’d they shoot at us?” he asked, coherently enough.
“Because they don’t want us here.”
He looked confused. “We’re bringing them food.”
“We’re interfering in local politics.”
“Don’t they need us?”
Now was not the time for a lesson. “Lie still, Arin. I’m going to see who I can contact.”
She made her way back to the front of the ship and managed to pull up a rudimentary console. No comms at all, but the environmental controls were still on: air, temperature. They could breathe, at least.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t shoot, and she cursed. If she’d been running this mission off of Galileo, she would have been carrying a sidearm. There would have been half a dozen pulse rifles in the cargo hold, just in case. Fucking freighters.
They were lying here, upside down in the dirt, and they were helpless.
You don’t have to come, sir,” Greg had told Herrod. “I’m guessing there’s going to be more shouting and denials than discussion this time.”
Herrod had given him a familiar look of mild amusement. “Shouting and denials require diplomacy, too, Captain,” he had pointed out. “And while I may not be able to throw my weight around anymore”—here he gestured at Greg’s assembled security detail, eight armed soldiers of considerable size—“I can still sling a pulse rifle if the situation calls for it.”
Greg had the distinct impression Herrod was having fun.
In the end he had settled for a single platoon with two senior soldiers: Bristol and Darrow, both of whom he knew well, both of whom knew how to be unobtrusive when they needed to be. “With any luck,” he told the platoon, “this is a false alarm, and you’ll all be nothing more than pomp and circumstance. But keep your eyes open, and stay on your toes.”
He could have taken a pilot, or at least a cabin crew, but Greg was fond of flying, and as the ship’s captain he rarely got a chance to do it. Herrod had the good sense to settle himself in Sparrow’s passenger cabin instead of sitting copilot, so Greg had the space to himself. Sparrow was an easy shuttle to fly, smooth and responsive, and Greg almost never engaged the autopilot, even when it would have freed him up to do something else. He could watch the stars, see the moon advance through the front window, while keeping an eye on surface scans and nudging their direction now and then.
Almost as relaxing as running. He smiled.
Oarig had denied any plans to intercept the food drop. “Why would we interfere with a commercial shipment?” he asked, and Greg had no rational answer. He hadn’t pointed out that few of Oarig’s actions since his precipitous installation had made commercial sense. If Oarig was preparing some sort of ambush, it spoke of inexperience. The Admiralty had no intelligence on Oarig, but Greg was guessing, based on his appearance, that if he was more than twenty it was not by much. Not enough time to learn real politics, no matter how young he had started.
In contrast, Villipova, the governor of Smolensk, was a grim-faced woman of fifty-four, used to occasional violence, but reasonably skilled at dealing with corporations and trade. Greg had dealt with her under less stressful circumstances, and had found her unfailingly practical, if not prone to overtures of friendliness. During their negotiations she had seemed tired and irritable, and had struggled with letting Oarig speak his mind. She clearly thought the Baikul governor was foolishly inflexible, and much of Greg’s challenge had been getting her to listen long enough to understand the areas where Oarig was open to compromise.
When he had briefed Commander Broadmoor on the tactical situation, he had told her to expect both domes to be coordinating attacks on each other. “This attack may just be the start,” he’d said. “Keep the troop shuttles on deck, and your people ready to go. And if you detect anything more radioactive than a thorium mine—you alert me instantly, understood?”
Greg had no doubt Oarig would revel in Central sending infantry to Smolensk, but he doubted the governor would sit silent when Baikul received the same treatment. Greg’s orders to Emily Broadmoor had been clear: she was to deploy the others if—and only if—she thought a show of firepower was the only way to prevent the colony from blowing itself up.
They were still ten minutes out from the dome when Commander Broadmoor commed him. “Sir,” she told him, “we’re showing some activity on the surface. Pulse rifles, and what looks like a wreck.”
Here we go, he thought. “Any distress calls?”
“Hang on …” She was silent for a moment, then: “There’s a beacon, sir. It’s a cargo ship off of Budapest.”
Greg hit Sparrow’s comm. “Savosky?”
“This is Yuri Gorelik. Captain Foster, is that you?”
Savosky had not yet returned, then. “We’re getting a beacon from one of your shuttles down here. Looks like they got caught in some surface fighting. Are you in touch with them?”
“No, Captain, we’re not.” Gorelik sounded concerned. “Captain Savosky is on his way back right now. Shaw was supposed to be making the cargo drop.”
“On her own?” The question came out before Greg realized what he was asking. Of course Elena would have managed a way to do it on her own.
But that wasn’t what was worrying Gorelik. “She was supposed to be alone,” he said. “But it seems we’re missing our other mechanic. Arin Goldjani. Captain Foster—”