Chapter 11

Turnabout

Despite the fact that it kept her perfectly safe, Tanya Boros was not happy aboard

Battle station G-6. She was a person who needed human contact about her, particularly

masculine contact. By the very nature of this station, she was completely alone. No ship

other than the one built to dock with it was allowed to approach unchallenged and de-

spite the station's thoroughly planned defenses, she was unsure how well it could protect

her in an emergency. To be on the safe side, she'd hidden a blaster of her own just

inside the airlock of the mated ship. That personal touch made her feel much better.

Her only contacts with people -were over the subcom: most often with the killers hired to

lure Wombat and Periwinkle out into the open, occasionally with headquarters for her

daily reports. Other than that she had nothing to do, and the boredom was driving her

crazy.

She'd been excited to hear of Wombat's capture, and had actually enjoyed her short talk

with him. Her great regret was that she'd be stuck in this damned station and never have.

the chance to repay him personally for having interfered in her affairs. By rights, she

should be Empress now; her father was the oldest recognized child of Stanley Nine, and

had been given a Patent of Royalty. Banian should have succeeded to the Imperial

Throne when Stanley Nine was killed in a spaceship mishap.

Instead, her father had been forced to hide in shame and plot to recover what was

rightfully his. Lady A had filled Boros in on exactly how large a role Agents Wombat and

Periwinkle had played in the capture and execution of Banian, and in Boros's own exile to

Gastonia. Tanya Boros was in a mood for revenge.

She'd been frightened by the unexpected assault, but the battle station had worked

precisely as it had been intended to. Now, to her great delight, she had Wombat, and an

unknown woman who might well be Periwinkle, at her complete disposal.

The two SOTS agents were still alive and basically unharmed after their crashing fall.

The machines had helped Boros peel them out of their battle armor down to the light

jumpsuits they wore under it. They were now bound securely against the wall in the small

chamber just across from the control room in the central core of the battle station. Boros

knew she should report instantly to headquarters to let Lady A know of the capture, but

she postponed the call for a short while. Lady A would get them soon enough and could

interrogate them to her heart's content. Boros intended to leave them alive, although

they'd probably wish they were dead by the time she'd finished.

Boros watched her captives intently over the next several hours. Their short, muscular

bodies showed they were from some high-grav planet, probably DesPlaines. The woman

was not as strikingly beautiful as Boros herself, but still very attractive; it was the man,

though, to whom she paid the most attention. She had an inordinate fondness for

masculine anatomy, and he was a prime example. She noticed some recent bruises,

possibly gotten from her own assassins. She made a mental note to discover what had

happened to them, although they must have been eliminated in some way. In the

meantime, Wombat and his superb masculinity were entirely at her mercy.

As the agents began to regain consciousness, Boros left them alone and turned, instead,

to watching them on the internal monitors. There was always the chance they'd talk to

one another when they thought they were alone and reveal something important.

Jules and Yvette came to and realized their predicament. They looked around, saw one

another, and smiled wanly. They each asked how the other was feeling; aside from

headaches, sore muscles, and major bruises they seemed in pretty fair shape. There

didn't appear to be any breaks or sprains. Once the details of their health were

established, though, they weren't interested in doing any more talking. After half an hour

of silence, Boros turned off the monitors in disgust and went to see her captives

personally.

"How good of you to drop by," she smiled sweetly at Jules, undoing the seam halfway

down the front of his jumpsuit and baring his muscular chest. "I was beginning to think I

wouldn't have the pleasure of your company this time around. And you must be

Periwinkle," she added, turning to Yvette.

"What's a periwinkle'?" Yvette asked innocently. Boros shrugged. "Just a minor

annoyance that will soon be eliminated. Nothing to worry about much longer." The room

lapsed into silence for a moment. Boros took the opportunity to run a finger down the

front of Jules's chest. "I've dreamed of you, you know."

"Really? I'm flattered."

"Oh yes, Gospodin Wombat. You're naked in an arena, surrounded by swifters and

braknels and panna-cats. They're all very hungry and trained to leap at your particular

scent. I play the scene in slow motion so I can watch every delicious moment. The claws

rake their way down your body like so."

Boros demonstrated with her own fingernails, digging them -into Jules's flesh and ripping

gashes so deep they drew blood. Jules made no sound; he merely watched Boros

coolly, trying to size up what she would and would not do. "You won't get any information

by torturing us, I guarantee you," he said calmly.

Boros looked him straight in the eye and merely smiled. "I don't want information," she

said, chuckling deep in her throat. "There are other people more skilled than I am who'll

get that from you. As long as I leave you alive and able to talk, they'll be satisfied. I have

my own interests in this matter."

Yvette tried to divert the woman's attention away from her brother. "That's fine with us,"

she said. "The longer you delay, the more time you'll give our friends to return with

reinforcements."

"The ship that brought you here was blown apart right after dropping you off," Boros

informed them. "I don't think you should count on any help from them."

Jules looked quickly over to his sister. Yvette's face was stiff with shock at the news of

her husband's death. It was always possible, of course, that Boros was lying to see their

reaction, but the calmness of the woman's tone made that seem unlikely. They still had

Vonnie as the card up their sleeve, but that hardly comforted them in view of the fact that

Pias was dead.

Boros could tell her little bombshell had had its desired effect on her captives. Her smile

broadened. "Oh good, I was wondering whether I'd ever be able to hurt you. This is

going to be more fun than I expected."

Pias found it hard to tell precisely when consciousness returned to him, surrounded as he

was by the blackness of interstellar space. When his ship had blown apart, the explosion

had knocked him unconscious and thrown him into the vacuum. Had he been clad in an

ordinary spacesuit, it would have been ripped to shreds and he'd have been asphyxiated;

but the battle armor he'd worn held up to the shock. It contained its own oxygen supply

good for many hours of breathing. Pias survived.

It took him several minutes to remember where he was and to realize the extent of his

predicament. He was stranded in deep space with several hours of air and no

transportation. Vonnie had been told to wait two days before sending in the Navy; even if

they spotted a tiny armored figure the instant they arrived, he would have been long

dead. No, he could not afford to wait for others to help him. He recalled the old proverb

of his native Newforest, that a single deed was worth more than a thousand promises.

He would have to act to save himself.

There was nothing immediately around him; the explosion had scattered debris all over.

The only thing that could possibly help him was the battle station, still floating leisurely in

space fifty kilometers away. He wondered how successful Jules and Yvette had been in

their assault. For all he knew, they might have taken over and were now in charge of the

entire structure. But he couldn't afford to risk that assumption.

He didn't know how sensitive the detectors were aboard the station, so he had to

proceed cautiously. If the screens could see him at all, he would register as just another

piece of debris from the exploded ship-but if he started accelerating too quickly, he

would look decidedly suspicious. Slowly, then, he gave short bursts on the correctional

jets built into his armor, pushing himself into an orbit that would slowly bring him near the

battle station.

After nearly three hours of drifting, he approached within easy range of the station. He

could see the maintenance hatch where Jules and Yvette had forced their way in, so he

knew they'd at least gotten that far. But there had to be another way in as well. having

been invaded from that direction once, the battle station's defenses would be looking for

another assault there. Pias always preferred to do the unexpected.

His mind had not been idle while his body drifted, and he'd thought of another possible

entryway. Floating around to the aft portion of the station, he came to the giant engines

that propelled it through space. If Boros decided to move the station during the next half

hour, Pias would be killed instantly-but if not, he should be able to worm his way through

the exhaust tubes and past the nuclear propellants, into the body of the station itself.

There was a chance of radiation poisoning from the ship's drive, but his armor should

protect him from most of it-and the possibility of overexposure was a better risk than the

certainty of asphyxiation if he did nothing.

The exhaust nozzle curved around him like an enormous metal bowl, blocking out the

stars. He used the light on his helmet to scan the walls around him for the vents he knew

must be there. At last he spotted them directly ahead. A vessel this size required a lot of

reaction mass to start it moving, and the vents, while tiny in comparison to the size of the

nozzle itself, were large enough to accommodate a man in space battle armor.

Pias wriggled his way into the vent and climbed slowly forward down the dark, narrow

tube, lit only by his helmet lamp. He felt like a worm inching his way into the Galaxy's

largest apple. He continued along until he came abruptly to the end of the line, the sealed

entrance to the fuel storage tank.

He had his blaster with him but didn't want to use it; not knowing the nature of the fuel

used aboard the station, he didn't want to set off the tank and suddenly be blown to

pieces. Instead he studied the nature of the closed seal and decided to try brute force

against it. The seal was designed to prevent the contents inside the tank from leaking out

into the ducts; it had not been constructed to resist pressure coming from the other

direction.

Bracing himself as best he could against the slippery inner surface of the exhaust tube,

Pias pushed with all his strength against the flap. He could feel it starting to give, so he

redoubled his efforts and was rewarded with a crack of an opening. He stuck his arm

inside to wedge it open, just as a rush of fluid came escaping from the tank.

If the drive had been activated, pumps within the fuel tank would have sent the liquid out

under tremendous pressure and Pias would have been knocked back out through the

nozzle. As it was, the leak was a gentle stream in freefall, barely noticeable except that it

covered his armor in a gooey mess and partially obscured his faceplate, making vision

difficult.

With great difficulty he pulled himself through the small opening and into the tank. He was

now completely surrounded by the liquid fuel and vision was impossible. Feeling his way

slowly and carefully around the walls, he came to an external hatch. From what he'd

recently learned about spaceships and how they worked, he knew a large vessel like this

often had an engineer's entrance into the fuel tanks, to enable someone to check for

leaks and malfunctions in the fuel pumps. He opened the hatch manually and slithered

into a small airlock. When he closed the hatch behind him and activated the pump, the

liquid fuel that had escaped into the lock with him was pumped back into the tank. In just

a few minutes he stood in his armor, dripping wet but otherwise ready to enter the battle

station itself.

Pias pulled his heavy-duty blaster from the side compartment of his armor and held it at

the ready. The inner door of the airlock slid open and he emerged into the body of the

battle station. Everything about him was quiet and still. He hoped his entrance had been

undetected, but he could count on nothing. He'd spent several years traveling through the

Galaxy as a gambler before he'd met the d'Alemberts, and he knew he was now playing

one of the largest gambles of his life. Every defense of this station was geared to ward

off violent attacks; he was betting it had little or no defense against a quiet infiltration like

his. As long as he kept things peaceful, he would probably be safe. If fighting started, all

bets were off.

As he left the engineering section, he found himself in a large, spherical cavern with

crisscrossing girders. In the center of the spherical area was another sphere. If there

were any people in the station at all, that's where they'd have to be.

Moving slowly and quietly, Pias made his way along the steel beams toward the central

sphere. His head was constantly turning as he looked for any possible threats through his

badly smudged faceplate. By moving his head slowly back and forth, he hoped his

peripheral vision might spot any hostile motion that escaped his direct notice.

The stillness was ominous. He could never have guessed, just from his surroundings, that

he was in the midst of a mighty engine of destruction. Nothing stirred, nothing moved but

him. He could almost convince himself the station was deserted.

He reached the central sphere and found all the doors locked tightly and, as part of the

defensive nature of this station, there were no exterior palm plates to open the doors.

Judging from how quiet things were, Pias didn't think the doors had been deliberately

closed to exclude him; nevertheless, he now faced a decision. He could either wait here

an indeterminate length of time until one of the sphere's occupants opened the doors in

the normal course of events, or he could force the issue and blast his way in, upsetting

the peace he'd striven for all this time.

Pias checked the tiny gauge in his helmet indicating how much good air he had left in his

armor. The gauge read right on the empty line, meaning he had perhaps half an hour to

breathe. So much for waiting.

The door appeared to be a thick sheet of magnisteel. His blaster could burn through it

given a couple of minutes but the instant his beam touched the metal of the door the

alarm would be sounded, and he doubted he'd have any uninterrupted minutes after that.

This would have to be a quick and dirty job.

Backing off a respectful distance, he braced himself against one of the naked girders and

threw a contact grenade at the door. He waited until just before the grenade reached its

target and launched himself after it, blaster drawn and ready.

The explosion rocked the battle station with a shattering roar, blowing a hole in the door

big enough for Pias to sail through easily, riding the concussion wave along the air

currents. The automated defenses clicked on instantly at the explosion, but even the

computer-guided weaponry had trouble at first deciding where to shoot. The blasters first

trained on the doorway, sending their energy beams to a spot Pias had already passed

beyond.

By the time the computer had adjusted its thinking to the situation, Pias was well into

action. He threw a second grenade down the hallway ahead of him; the throwing motion

slowed his forward progress and started him spinning, so he had to reach up against a

nearby wall to steady himself. The grenade caused another teeth-jarring explosion and

knocked out some of the automated blasters mounted on the walls-the blasters that

were the battle station's last line of defense against invasion.

More blasters fired at him from behind, but Pias's armor gave him time enough to turn

and calmly shoot back at the offending weapons, knocking them out of commission

before they could do sufficient damage to him.

Silence descended on the station once more-not the silence of peace, this time, but the

heavy silence of an enemy contemplating its next move. Pias was sure he'd taken care of

most of the blasters around him; the only other weapons he feared were bombs or

grenades, and the enemy was not about to set such things off near its central command

post. There would be too much destroyed in the process, and the station would be

irreparably damaged while being "saved."

Pias had not thought about the use of ultragrav as a weapon, and the sudden

gravitational field hit him hard. The five-gee force caught him unaware, but fortunately he

didn't have far to fall to the "floor" of the corridor. The space armor absorbed a lot of the

shock, and while Pias had the air knocked out of him, he was not unconscious.

His native world of Newforest had a .gravitational field of two and half Earth gravities,

and he'd been spending a lot of time lately on DesPlaines with its three-gee field. The

space armor was exceedingly heavy, nearly doubling his normal body weight. He felt he

was carrying a load four times his accustomed self-a burden that would stagger anyone.

Slowly, very slowly, Pias brought up first one leg, then the other, until he was in a

hands-and-knees position. That's as far as I'm going to make it, he thought. He gritted

his teeth against the pain and crawled down the corridor. The lights suddenly went out,

but he turned on his helmet lamp and continued the painful crawl.

There were a couple of doorways further down the hallway, both sealed closed. Pias

took his last grenade and pushed it along the floor ahead of him. The grenade just

reached the doorways as it exploded, shattering the metal doors inward. Pias then

continued his crawl until he reached the doorways.

One of the rooms looked to be the control center of the station, but there was no one in

it. In the other room, however, he struck paydirt. Jules and Yvette were bound and

stretched up against the wall, sagging under the increased gravitational field. Tanya

Boros was lying on the ground, barely conscious. She was not wearing heavy armor--but

then, she was not used to five gees, either. By turning on the ultragrav within the central

sphere, the battle station's computer had immobilized her as well.

Boros looked at the hole in the door and the blaster in Pias's hand. She may have been a

silly and vindictive woman, but she was enough of a realist to want to stay alive. "I

surrender," she gasped feebly.

"Good," Pias said in a voice only barely stronger. His voice was carried to her by the

armor's exterior speakers. "Now how do you turn this damned thing off?"

Boros gathered her strength together and said, "Peace mode" as loudly as she could.

The computer, attuned to her voice, obeyed the command. The ultragrav shut off as

quickly as it had come on, and the station reverted to freefall.

After pausing for a moment to gather his own strength, Pias pushed himself off the floor

and floated over to Yvette. He untied her and gave her the gun to hold on Boros while he

quickly undid the helmet of his armor. The oxygen gauge read below empty.

"What took you so long?" his wife asked him lightly, though her concern was evident in

her eyes.

Pias shrugged. "Oh, I just decided to take the scenic route. "