DERELICT RUN
(Part 7 of 8)
“Right, then.”
“The Lady blast it. Hells and hells!”
“They won’t hear from us,” he said. “Well, ain’t that a peach?”
She punched the bulkhead. He heard the clang through his headset.
“Why don’t we take the comms up to the crater’s edge?”
“You are a dumb ape. You got a kilometer of power cabling? You got the tools?”
“Lissen, I ain’t dumb, I’m just bouncing notions here.”
“Bounce away, ape,” she said bitterly.
“Hey, reflect a signal off another moon—next moon in is Pannyachis, ain’t it?”
She looked at him contemptuously. “Pannyachis is on the other side of Aphrodite right now. Check back in thirty-six, thirty-seven days, and then you find we’re on the wrong side of the top of the moon. While we’re dead. Ape.”
He considered hitting her, but sat down slowly instead.
“All right, they’ll miss us, and send someone after us,” he said.
“How long before anyone starts looking? How long before someone decides we’re missing?”
“It could be a couple days,” he admitted. “And if Stationmaster sent us out here in secret...”
“Merdo! Fiku that. All right, I die for a load of gold, I wanna see it.”
“Right, then.”
She was light on her feet, skip-stepping alongside him, cautiously maneuvering the rubble as they neared the abandoned spaceship. He saw figures moving by it, toting boxes with slow deliberation: light as a box of ration tins but ponderous in mass. He heard them bitching and complaining on the radio.
“How many more?” Batalo demanded.
“Most of ’em, dummy.”—Vesperto.
“Outta my way or this thing’s gonna go right through you”—Krimulo.
Mercutio opened his mouth—
There was a white flash in the emergency hatch. A tremor in the surface of the moon like a giant’s stamp. Part of the hull cracked from within, like a chick punching through its shell, and debris flew out, scattered, tumbled in every direction, raining down, or spinning into the stars.
Kuŝim screamed, lost her footing, and bounced, banging her helmet; her yell resonated in his ears.
He heard his men shout. He fell on his knees, rolled, scrambled, rolled, and stood. He took a step towards them but stopped and turned to her. “Kuŝim! Pilot!”
“Ow,” she said.
He knelt-drifted lightly by her. “Yah, you all right?”
She managed to sit like someone struggling in deep water. “Ishara!” she exclaimed. “What was that?”
“You hurt?”
“Don’t think so. What in the hells—?”
“Dalibor!” he yelled. “You there?”
“Here, estro.”
“I’m almost back; hang on.”
“Aye that.”
A pattering of shattered ship fragments came falling, rolling, flying. He raised his arms to shield himself, and bounded along as fast as he dared.
Dalibor and Maltego met him.
“The hells you all do?”
Dalibor’s voice was shaky. “Dunno. We were dragging those boxes out. Taking forever. The others were inside—something went boom—”
“Something went boom all right,” the warrant said. “Dammit! Temes take it. Maltego, you come with me. Dalibor, stay with the pilot.”
The Solidareco had been junked, filled with trash. Now it was ripped and gutted, bulkheads bent like pasteboard. They found someone in the ruins of the corridor, damaged, caught in spatters of red ice and frozen to the wall in it.
“Feraji,” Maltego said. “Dammit, Ricochet, you got killed and you owed me fifty drachms over cards.”
“Merdo,” Mercutio said, shaken.
The muster deck was blown apart. The stack of boxes in the corner was now in every corner and halfway through the ship and probably on the surface as well. There were gold bars scattered around, and Krimulo, Vesperto, and Batalo were scattered around also, not all in one place or another, nor in one piece. They were stiff like statues, white and red, and ripped spacesuits, and decking run through them, and cables and tubing everywhere.
The warrant took a minute to absorb the chaos revealed by their helmet lamps and torches. “What happened, Maltego?”
Maltego looked slowly around. “Merdo,” he said. “Merdo. Coulda been me, estro.”
“Yah, but what happened? Focus! We get hit? Somebody do this?”
“Nah.” Maltego pointed at the corner. “Nobody living. See the scorch marks?”
“Yah.”
“Here’s what I think. The cases of gold were stacked around a warhead. We moved enough of them—” His fingers made an expanding movement. “Boom.”
Mercutio cursed. “Provs. Fikaj Provs! Five hundred years later…”