Space Stations

THE BATTLE OF SPACE FORT JEFFERSON by Timothy Zahn

“EIGHTEENTH April, 2230,” Ranger Bob Epstein said into his log microphone.

“Morning report. Three more days to President Ukukho’s visit.”

He gazed with satisfaction at the sentence on the screen as he picked up his slightly stale bagel covered thinly with cream cheese. A little lox would have been nice, but lox was hard to come by on United Colonies Space Fort Jefferson.

Actually, pretty much everything was hard to come by on Space Fort Jefferson. Tourist-free tourist attractions, as he’d often been told over the past seven years, rated very low on the Park Service’s priority list.

He scowled as he set the bagel back onto its plate. It wasn’t a fair assessment, as he’d argued back for most of those same seven years. Granted, for much of its four-point-three-year orbit Space Fort Jefferson was largely deserted, with only its five-ranger crew here to keep the decks and empty weapons emplacements company.

But for the four months when its elliptical path carried it near the asteroid belt’s Anchorline Archipelago, there was quite a bit of activity on the old fort. Granted, it wasn’t Disney Ceres, but it was still busy enough to keep the rangers hopping. And even during the long down-time, there was always a trickle of visitors willing to endure the long and boring trip to set foot on a piece of genuine, if obscure, history.

But that was going to change now. Earth President Ukukho himself was on his way; and for the first time in a hundred years, someone in actual governmental authority was going to visit the station.

And since the public lapped up everything Ukukho said or did, that meant that billions of people who’d never even heard of Space Fort Jefferson were going to be brought face-to-face with it.

And what billions of people saw, millions of people went touristing to. Or so went the theory. Bob took another bite from his bagel, visualizing the list of improvements and renovations he would be submitting to the Park Service as soon as the crowds started arriving. At the top of the list would be to finally finish the renovation of Decks Three to Six that had been started two years ago and never completed. The mess made the fort’s original gunnery control area nearly impossible for even the rangers to get to, and visitors always liked seeing control rooms.

There was a gunshot-crackle from the intercom. “Bob?” Kelsey’s voice came distantly.

Bob reached over and flicked the switch. “Yes?”

“Bob?”

Muttering under his breath, Bob flipped the switch off, gave the side of the box a sharp rap with his knuckles, and flipped the switch back on. On second thought, maybe it would be the intercom that would head the replacement list. “Yes?”

“Got a ship coming in to dock,” Kelsey reported.

“The GenTronic Twelve?” Bob asked, frowning. The yacht had been on their scopes for the past thirty-two hours, bringing in the latest batch of off-season tourists. But last he’d checked, it shouldn’t be here nearly this soon.

“No, they’re still three and a half hours out,” Kelsey confirmed. “This is a Fafnir Four.”

Bob felt his eyebrows lifting. “A Fafnir Four?”

“Yep,” Kelsey said. “Government issue, fully stealthed—Hix didn’t even spot it until it hailed.”

“Yes, but a Four?” Bob repeated. With the President on his way, the Secret Service would naturally be stopping by to check things out, and Fafnirs were the ship of choice for most government agencies.

Problem was, a Fafnir Four only held two people, not nearly enough for a Presidential advance team. The advance team for the advance team, maybe?

“It’s a Four, all right,” Kelsey insisted. “I’m in Dock Obs, looking straight at it.”

Reaching to his recorder, Bob flipped the switch from “standby” to “off.” He’d finish the log entry later. “I’ll be right up.”

The two visitors were already in the entryway reception room by the time he arrived.

The older man, about Bob’s own youngish forty-five, was studying one of the

information plaques lining the wall. The other, twenty years younger, was standing at a sort of stiff at-ease, his eyes shifting between the door and a nervous-looking Hix.

Apparently, he didn’t have the time or the interest for anything as job-unrelated as mere history.

“Good day, gentlemen,” Bob greeted them cheerfully as he stepped into the room. “I’m Ranger Bob Epstein—Ranger Bob to our visitors. What can I do for you?”

“We’re not visitors, Ranger Epstein,” the younger man said, his voice as stiff and government-issue as his posture. “We’re here on official business—”

“At ease, Drexler,” the older man said dryly, straightening up from the plaque he’d been looking at and giving Bob a slight smile. “I’m Secret Service Agent Cummings, Ranger Epstein; this is Agent Drexler. We’re here to check things out for the President’s flyby.”

Something seemed to catch in Bob’s throat. “His flyby?” he asked carefully. “We thought—”

“That he would be visiting the station,” Drexler said briskly. “I’m afraid that’s been changed. The organizers realized that a stop would take up too much time and fuel, so Space Force One will merely be flying past.”

“I see,” Bob said, trying hard to hide his disappointment. Hix wasn’t nearly so good at it; his face was a map of crushed hopes and expectations. “May I ask when this decision was made?”

“That’s none of your concern—”

“A week ago,” Cummings spoke up. “I know this must be something of a disappointment for you.”

Bob took a deep breath. A week. Seven days. They could have told him. “We’ll get over it,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t give you any kind of heads-up,” Cummings went on. “But the President’s itinerary isn’t the sort of thing you broadcast across the Solar System.”

“I understand,” Bob said, glancing over at Hix. The big man still looked like he wanted to cry, but he was starting to pull himself together again. “It’s not like Space Fort Jefferson is an indispensable part of a historic Presidential tour.”

“Or of history itself, for that matter,” Drexler added.

Bob felt his face settle into familiar lines. “That’s hardly fair, Agent Drexler,” he said.

“Space Fort Jefferson has had a long and hardly insignificant history.”

“Really?” Drexler said, regarding Bob coolly. “Which part do you consider to have been significant? The thirty glorious years it spent as a prison for the Archipelago? The fifteen it did duty as a jabriosis quarantine center? Or the twenty-two it’s now spent as a tourist attraction?”

Bob took a deep breath, his mental argument center loading Defense Pattern Alpha—

“All right, Drexler, you’ve made your point,” Cummings put in quietly. “It’s not Ranger Epstein’s fault that Space Fort Jefferson never got to serve in its primary capacity. Not really Space Fort Jefferson’s fault either.”

Drexler snorted in a sedate, government-issue sort of way. “Maybe if the designers had had the foresight to build particle shielding into the hull, they’d have gotten some actual use out of it.”

Bob sighed. He got so tired of going over this same territory with people who’d never bothered to check their history. “Particle weapons hadn’t even been developed when they started building the station,” he said.

“He’s right,” Cummings agreed, tapping the plaque he’d been studying. “Construction began in 2082. The first successful test of a particle weapon wasn’t until 2089.”

“The shielding they put in was more than enough to handle anything known at the time,”

Bob added. “If Xhong hadn’t made his technical breakthrough when he did, Space Fort Jefferson would have been a perfect defender of the Ceres-to-Earth shipping route.”

“Perhaps,” Drexler said. “But part of a designer’s job is to anticipate future trends and incorporate them into his plans.”

“But we didn’t come here to discuss history,” Cummings interrupted diplomatically. “We need to give the station a quick once-over for any possible danger to Space Force One and its escort. Just routine, of course.”

“After all, we wouldn’t want a section of hull to fall off and float into their path,” Drexler said under his breath.

Cummings sent him a strained look. “For what it’s worth, I understand the commentators will be giving some of the station’s history during the approach,” he said. “I know it’s not a Presidential visit, but at least it’s something for your trouble.”

“Yes, sir,” Bob said, nodding. “I’m sure we all appreciate it.”

Cummings nodded in return. “Now, if you’ll take us to the main control complex…?”

“Of course,” Bob said, swallowing his annoyance and gesturing through the door. “This way, please.”

A full self-guided tour of the station, including a reading of all the information plaques, was timed to take about five hours. Adding in a lunch break—carry-on bubblepack or back aboard your own ship; the visitors’ cafeteria hadn’t been open for ten years—the whole thing was a pleasant day’s touristing.

Cummings and Drexler didn’t bother with the plaques, and they weren’t interested in lunch. But unlike standard tourists, they also insisted on seeing the rangers’ living quarters, workshops, and storerooms.

It was nearly four hours before Cummings pronounced himself satisfied that Space Fort Jefferson was safe enough for President Ukukho to come within five miles of. What Drexler thought he kept to himself.

“We’ll need to stay aboard until after Space Force One has passed out of magscope range,” Cummings told Bob as they headed back toward the entryway. “We’d like to set up as near the main control area as possible.”

“Certainly,” Bob said. Ahead, he could hear a murmuring of unfamiliar voices from the reception room. Apparently, the GenTronic Twelve had arrived, and Bob tossed up a quick prayer that there wouldn’t be any bored teenagers or inquisitive toddlers in the group. “The station was originally designed for a crew of fifteen hundred, you know.

There’s a duty dayroom just off the control complex you can use.”

They came around the corner into the reception room, and Bob breathed a quiet sigh of relief. No toddlers; no teenagers; just nine youngish, pleasant-looking men in upscale bulkyjackets spread out around the room reading the plaques. Probably rich enough to be sued if they broke anything, which meant they would be careful not to. Hix was hovering nearby, looking like a combination proud mother and nervous curator, all traces of his earlier depression gone from his face. Hix loved showing off his station to visitors even more than Bob did.

“Ah—here’s Ranger Bob now,” Hix said as Bob and the agents stepped into the room. “I was just telling Herr Forste here what a good job you’ve done keeping Space Fort Jefferson running.”

“Nice to meet you, Ranger Bob,” Forste said, smiling. His English had a pleasant North European accent to it. “And who are your friends?”

Bob looked at Cummings, wondering what exactly he was supposed to say here.

Cummings moved smoothly into the gap. “My name’s Alan,” he said. “This is my friend Thomas. You and your friends come from Ceres?”

“Not exactly,” Forste said. “We’re from Free Norway.”

Free Norway? Frowning, Bob turned back to him—

And caught his breath. From beneath their bulkyjackets, all nine men had suddenly produced small but nasty-looking handguns. “You will all please put up your hands,” Forste said.

He smiled genially. “Especially you, Secret Service Agents Cummings and Drexler.”

They picked up Kelsey as he filled out duty logs in Dock Obs, Renfred as he polished plaques in the Number One Fire Control Center, and Bronsoni as he sneaked an unauthorized nap in the Number Thirteen-D torpedo launch tube.

“Which leaves only Gifford Wimbley,” Forste said with satisfaction as he and four of the other gunmen herded the prisoners into the Number Three Defense Monitor Complex.

“Where is he?”

“He’s on a supply run to Ceres,” Bob said. “He won’t be back for another two weeks.”

Forste’s eyes narrowed. “Really,” he said, lifting his left thumbnail to his lips and tapping the tip. “How very convenient. Sjette? You up in Command yet?”

“Yes, I’m here,” a voice came back, just loud enough for Bob to hear.

“Check the duty log,” Forste ordered, his eyes on Bob. “Is Gifford Wimbley off the station?”

Bob cleared his throat. “Uh… Giff usually doesn’t bother to check himself out,” he said.

“Since there are just the six of us, and we always know where everyone is—”

“No sign of anyone checked out,” Sjette’s voice came back. “According to this, everyone should be here.”

Forste’s eyes bored into Bob’s face like rust remover on a gun turret that’s been neglected too long. “Where is he?”

“I told you, he’s on Ceres,” Bob insisted, feeling sweat starting to break out on his forehead.

“He’s hiding,” one of the other gunmen said, sniffing the air distastefully. Defense Three was far off the standard tourist route, and it hadn’t been properly cleaned in ages. Even for Bob, who was used to such things, the scent of old metal and new mildew was a powerful combination.

“Of course he is,” Forste said, lifting his gun another couple of inches. Bob held his breath; and then, to his relief, Forste merely smiled and took a step back. “But that’s all right,” he said. “We have three days; and Space Fort Jefferson isn’t all that big. We’ll find him ourselves.”

“Three days until what?” Drexler demanded.

Forste regarded him coolly. “Three days until President Ukukho comes within firing range of this station, of course,” he said. “Three days until the people of Earth and the Colonies are brought face-to-face with the determined men of Free Norway.”

“Free Norway?” Bronsoni asked, a puzzled look on his face. “I didn’t even know it had been locked up.”

“Don’t be an imbecile,” Forste snapped, his eyes suddenly glowing with revolutionary fervor. “All of us are locked up in our own ways. Norway in particular has been imprisoned by a corrupt press, a bloated welfare bureaucracy, and the insidious, multitentacled cod industry. It must stop.”

“How will killing President Ukukho help you?” Kelsey asked.

“It will bring system-wide attention to our plight,” Forste said, his eyes blazing even brighter.

“Yes, but—”

“How exactly do you intend to accomplish this?” Cummings asked calmly.

Forste focused on him. “Of course,” he said, the fire in his eyes fading back to something approaching normal. “You want to learn our plans in hopes of defeating them.”

He shrugged. “But since you have no way to communicate with anyone outside this station, I see no reason not to tell you. It will be a rapid-fire, three-pronged attack as they reach their closest approach. First, a carefully targeted spread of laser blasts will blind their antimissile defense sensors. Next, two Disabler torpedoes will be launched to paralyze the escorting ships. And finally, a single Hellflare missile into Space Force One itself…”

He left the sentence unfinished. “And the whole Solar System will suddenly understand your problems and tribulations and flock to Free Norway’s side?” Cummings suggested.

“Of course,” Forste said, as if that was obvious. “All the oppressed peoples of the System will rise up as one.”

“And destroy the evil cod industry.”

Forste’s eyes narrowed again. “I don’t like your attitude, Agent Cummings,” he said.

And flipping his gun casually toward Cummings, he fired.

Bob gasped as the boom of the shot hammered into his ears. Drexler shouted something and started into a leap that would probably have cost him his life if Hix hadn’t grabbed his arm and kept him back from the terrorists.

As for Cummings himself, his expression never even twitched. He glanced down at the red stain spreading rapidly across his chest, looked back at Forste, and collapsed to the deck.

“Get him to the medpack!” Bob snapped, taking a step toward the fallen man.

“As you were, Ranger Epstein,” Forste snapped back.

“I’m a Park Service Ranger,” Bob countered, ignoring the order and kneeling beside Cummings. “I have an oath to keep, and that oath includes rendering aid to anyone on my station who needs it.”

He looked up at Forste, trying to ignore the gun now pointed directly at his left eye.

“And even the oppressed peoples of the System,” he added, “don’t appreciate someone who guns a man down in cold blood and then refuses him medical assistance.”

For a long moment Forste seemed to think that one over. Then, as casually as he’d shot Cummings, he raised the muzzle of his gun away from Bob’s face. “I suppose they don’t,” he conceded. “Very well. Take him away.”

The medpack was probably two generations behind standard Park Service medical equipment, which meant it was at least five generations behind state-of-the-art for the rest of the Solar System. But it was good enough to diagnose the problem, remove the bullet from Cummings’s right lung, and plug him into the coma-nutrient rapid-healing system.

“It says he’ll recover to within ninety-seven percent of normal capability,” Bob told Forste, peering at the med-pack’s display. “Looks like he’ll be in a healing coma for… sixty-two hours.”

“Sixty-two hours?” Forste said incredulously. “That’s ridiculous.”

“That’s what it says,” Bob insisted, pointing at the countdown display.

“Any medpack I’ve ever heard of could patch him up in a tenth that time,” one of the other terrorists insisted suspiciously.

“This is an old and discontinued model,” Bob told him. “It has a lot of problems.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Forste said. “Two and a half days. That will still have him up and around in time to watch the show.”

He took a step closer to Bob. “Now. I’ve done you a favor by letting him live. Your turn.

Where is Ranger Wimbley?”

Bob sighed. “I already told you. He’s on a supply run to Ceres.”

Forste lifted his gun in front of Bob’s eyes. “You know, I have enough rounds in here to give each of your rangers three of them,” he pointed out darkly. “And I’d still have enough left for you.”

“I’m sure you would,” Bob said, starting to sweat again. “But it wouldn’t change the reality of the situation. Giff isn’t here.”

“Want me to take him to one of the storerooms?” one of the other terrorists suggested.

Forste shook his head. “A waste of time. Where did you say all that construction was?”

“Decks Three through Six, West Quadrant,” the other said. “I only glanced in there, but it’s a real maze.”

“That’s where he’ll be, then,” Forste decided. “You and Niende go find him.”

“Right.” The other flipped an abbreviated salute and left the room, taking one of the others with him.

“And as for you,” Forste added, gesturing to Bob with the gun, “it’s time for you to join the others.”

The other rangers were gathered in a tight conversational knot in the back of the monitor complex as Bob was escorted back in. The knot broke as the pressure door slammed shut behind him, surging forward like bees whose hive has just been hit by a thrown rock.

Even so, Drexler got there first. “How is he?” he demanded.

“He’ll be all right,” Bob assured him. “He’s out of danger and in a quick-heal coma.”

Drexler looked back toward the pressure door, his eyes simmering like overheated circuit coils. “Damn them,” he ground out. “Damn them all.”

“Careful,” Kelsey warned. “They could have painted a bug or two on the wall before they put us in here.”

“There aren’t any bugs,” Drexler said. “I’ve already checked.”

“So what about this plan of theirs?” Renfred asked, playing nervously with his mustache. “It can’t possibly work, can it?”

Drexler’s lips compressed. “Well, that’s the real hell of it. It just might.”

“You’re kidding,” Bronsoni said, his mouth dropping open.

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Drexler growled. “This place was designed to take the biggest sub-nukes they had available back then, which means you’ve got a hell of a lot of metal and collapsed ceramic in your hull. That means a lot of sensor shielding; and that means the escort ships may very well not spot the telltale missile and laser EM

signatures until it’s too late.”

“But what about you?” Kelsey asked. “Aren’t you supposed to check in or something?”

“Of course we are,” Drexler bit out. “But Forste has to know that. I’m guessing they’ve either cracked our code and can fake a message, or else they’ve got an agent on one of the escort ships who can do it for them.”

“And they did know who you were,” Hix murmured. “That means they know a lot about the President’s plans.”

“That point had not escaped me,” Drexler said icily. “Regardless, we can’t assume that this scheme will be cracked at the far end. That means it’s up to us.”

He looked at Bob, visibly bracing himself. “So we need a plan; and Part One of that plan is getting us out of here. Is Ranger Wimbley clever enough to figure that out?”

Bob shook his head. “I’m sorry. But like I’ve told everyone else, Giff is on Ceres.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Drexler insisted. “You flinched when Forste asked you about him.

Why would you do that if he was on a simple supply run?”

Bob glanced at Kelsey, and the pained look on Kelsey’s face. “Because it’s an illegal supply run,” he said reluctantly.

Drexler frowned. “An illegal supply run? What’s he getting, elephant tusks?”

Bob sighed. “He’s picking up a shipful of electrical equipment, plumbing supplies, and enough construction webbing to at least start putting the West Quadrant back together again.”

Drexler frowned even harder. “What’s illegal about that?”

“The fact that we’re buying the stuff ourselves instead of going through Park Service Procurement,” Kelsey told him. “Bypassing bureaucratic banana slugs is a Class E felony these days. Or didn’t you know that?”

“No, I didn’t,” Drexler said between clenched teeth. “So that’s it. The entire opposition is conveniently locked together in this room. Terrific.”

“Don’t give up hope yet,” Bob said. “We still have one ally that Forste may not have figured on.”

“Who?” Drexler asked. “Our comatose Agent Cummings?”

“No,” Bob said, smiling the smile of a man stuck too long on the same dead-end post.

“Space Fort Jefferson.”

Tredje got the door halfway open before it jammed. Cursing, he eased his way sideways through it, hoping his barrel chest wouldn’t get stuck.

“We could try one of the other doors,” Niende offered from behind him.

“Shut up,” Tredje advised, exhaling and pushing. A second later, he was through.

He stepped to one side as Niende joined him. The whole area, as far ahead as he could see, was one huge collection of scaffolding, barriers, supply piles, and drop cloths. Over against some of the walls were rolled-up sections of carpet, either freshly pulled up or else hoping to be put down some day, and here and there were islands of tool cabinets.

Some of the barriers seemed to be warning about drums of rust remover and other cleaning chemicals that had been gathered together; others were guarding against actual holes that went clear through the deck. The whole mess, he knew from their initial sweep, covered nearly a quarter of the circumference of the wheel-shape that was Space Fort Jefferson.

And this was just the mess on Deck Three. Decks Four, Five, and Six were in the same shape.

This, he decided, was going to be a long day. “All right, give me some space,” he told Niende, drawing his gun. The rangers weren’t supposed to be armed; but then, they weren’t supposed to be hiding either. “Let’s find him.”

“Easy,” Annen warned as Sjette and Femte eased the rolling carrier down the corridor, wincing every time it bounced over an uneven section of decking. The Disabler torpedo wasn’t especially fragile; but if it should somehow happen to go off, the discharge of high-voltage current would be unbelievably spectacular for the entire quarter second it would take to burn the three of them into unrecognizable lumps of carbon.

Down the corridor, the lights flickered. Again. Annen swore, glancing up at those overhead for signs of similar flickering. Somewhere nearby he could hear the occasional soft click of a spark bleeding current off a bad ground in the clusters of cables running along both lower edges of the corridor. This whole section of the station, clearly, was an electrical disaster just itching to happen.

He shook his head in disgust and a growing sense of uneasiness. The timing and positioning of the flyby, unfortunately, gave them no choice as to which quadrant of the station they needed to use to launch their attack. Even more unfortunately, the zone of necessity was well off both the tourist and living areas of the station and clearly in the advanced-degenerate stage of its life. Uncertain lighting and power were bad enough; but if something else went out—

“Hold it,” Sjette said suddenly, straightening up from his half of the carrier in front of a door with the universal “men’s room” symbol on it. “I have to.”

“Make it quick,” Annen said, glancing around. The quiet snapping was getting worse; he doubted the power had been turned on down here for years. Any minute now the corridor would probably blow all its circuit breakers and plunge them into darkness.

“As quick as I can,” Sjette said with just an edge of sarcasm. He pushed open the door and disappeared inside, unzipping as he went.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Femte muttered, twitching at a particularly loud snap.

“What if the power goes out at a crucial moment?”

“Never mind the power,” Annen said. “What about the air system? What about simple basic hull integrity?”

Femte shook his head. “You know, if we can’t paralyze both escorts at the same time, one of them will surely sacrifice itself to protect the President.”

“And then Space Force One will land its Marines on top of us,” Annen said grimly.

“We’d better make sure—”

He broke off at the sudden bellow that came from inside the men’s room. “Sjette!” he snapped, yanking out his gun and dashing around the back end of the Disabler. If that missing ranger was skulking around in there—

He skidded to a halt as Sjette staggered through the door, soaked from forehead to shins.

“It doused me!” he gasped disbelievingly. “I finished, and it just—it wet me!”

With an annoyed snort, Annen jammed his gun back into its holster. “We’re wasting time,” he growled. “Come on.”

“A minute,” Sjette said, lifting his hands and distastefully eyeing the water dripping from his fingertips. Stepping back toward the corridor wall, keeping well back from the Disabler, he lifted his arms and gave them a firm shake downward. A cloudburst spattering of raindrops chattered into the walls or plopped into the growing puddle at his feet—

And suddenly, with a violent thunder crack, Sjette was encased in a brilliant flash of blue-white fire. Annen had just enough time to gasp—

And then the fire vanished, and the corridor’s lights all went out.

Leaving only the sound of Femte’s startled curse, the pounding of Annen’s own heartbeat, and the wet slap of Sjette’s body collapsing onto the deck.

Forste’s grip on Bob’s upper arm was like a lockclamp as he hurried the ranger along at a pace just short of a flat-out run. “What’s happened?” Bob asked for the fifth time since Forste and his men had hauled him out of their makeshift prison.

For the fifth time, Forste ignored the question. But at least now Bob had a good idea where they were going: sickbay.

Something about Cummings?

They reached the medical center, and Forste all but shoved Bob through the door. Three of the other terrorists were there: two standing grim and armed, the third twitching half-unconscious on one of the treatment tables. Over the whole group hung the pungent aroma of singed flesh. “There,” Forste said, pulling his gun out of Bob’s ribs and jabbing it toward the corner where Cummings was sleeping peacefully in his medpack cocoon.

“Shut it down and get him out of there.”

Bob shook his head. “I can’t.”

Forste’s gun was suddenly in his face. “I said shut it down.”

“But I can’t,” Bob protested, his knees suddenly going wobbly. “It doesn’t have a cancel switch. Once it’s running a program, it can’t be shut off until it’s finished.”

“Don’t svark us,” one of the terrorists snarled, his knuckles white where he gripped his gun. “That’s a Galen R-225. Galens are designed better than that.”

“This one isn’t,” Bob said. “And it’s a Galen R-224. They didn’t put in the cancel switch until the 225.”

The terrorist had been starting toward Bob, murder in his eyes. Now, abruptly, he froze in midstep, doing a hard right and striding over to the medpack. “Well?” Forste asked as he crouched down beside the ident plate.

“It’s a 224,” he confirmed in a voice like grinding walnuts. “What kind of idiot designed this?”

“Probably the kind who got fired while they rushed the 225 into production,” Bob said.

“From what I heard, they only made a few hundred 224s before they figured it out and canceled the model.”

“So why do you have one?” Forste demanded suspiciously.

Bob waved a hand around the room. “Why do you think? The Park Service got them cheap.”

Forste’s mouth worked, but it was clear he couldn’t find an answer to that one. “What if we just shut the thing off, pull Cummings out, and put Sjette in?”

Bob shook his head, “You pull the plug in the middle and you might not be able to get it started again,” he said. “You’d have to erase the current program, which means purging the memory; and with this thing there’s no guarantee you wouldn’t crash it and have to reboot off the recovery disk.”

“What if we just shoot Cummings, then?” the other terrorist suggested tightly. “That ought to end the program.”

“It would probably also end the medpack,” Bob pointed out, trying not to shudder at the thought of such casual murder. “And your friend will still be burned. Look, why don’t you instead let me see what I can do to help him?”

“You have medical training?” Forste asked.

“Nothing official,” Bob admitted. “But I know how to handle burns and basic injuries.

We’ve all had to learn first aid, pretty much in self-defense.” He nodded over at the 224.

Forste puckered his lips in disgust. But there wasn’t anything he could do about it, and he and everyone else knew it. “Go ahead,” he growled.

Fifteen minutes later, with much of his body covered in burn foam, the injured terrorist was snoring gently on a cot. “The foam works best if the subject is asleep,” Bob explained as he put everything away. “I just gave him enough for a ten-hour nap.”

“Yes, I know,” Forste said coolly. “I was watching the dosage you measured into the hypo. Just as well for you that you didn’t try to put him under for, say, the next four days.”

Bob shivered slightly. The thought had occurred to him, actually, to do exactly that. A good thing he hadn’t acted on it. “Is that it, then?” he asked.

“That’s it,” Forste confirmed. “Annen, take him back to his cell. And then get back to work.”

So, Bob thought to himself as he was escorted back down the rusty corridor. One down.

Eight more to go.

Space Fort Jefferson, it appeared, was on a roll.

“What do you mean, it’s not working?” Forste’s voice came tartly.

“It’s not working, that’s all,” Fjerde shot back. “I’ve run it fifteen different ways, and it’s just dead.”

“What do the diagnostics say?”

Fjerde snorted. “What diagnostics? This comm system must have been built in the last century.”

“I don’t care if it’s three days older than dirt,” Forste snapped. “If we can’t get up-to-the-second positioning data from our friend aboard the escort ships, we haven’t got a chance of pulling this off. How fast can you fix it?”

“I’m not sure it can be fixed,” Fjerde protested. “The antenna array alone—”

“You’ve got twelve hours,” Forste cut him off. “Get it operational, or it’s your own head.” He clicked off without waiting for a reply.

For a moment Fjerde glared at the antiquated comm system with its joke of an antenna array. Then, cursing under his breath, he started taking it apart.

Considering the rust and mildew evident elsewhere in the corridor, Sjuende thought, the locking wheel on the door to the Number Four Torpedo Launch Center was suspiciously easy to turn. The place wasn’t on the tourist route; could the rangers have some private use for the place?

Or could it be that the missing Ranger Wimbley was hiding in there? Getting a grip on his gun, Sjuende pulled the door open—

To be greeted by a puff of moist and oddly fetid air. “What’s that smell?” Attende asked uneasily from behind him.

“I don’t know.” Sjuende reached for the light switch, twitched his hand back again as he remembered the faulty electrical circuits that had fried Sjette. Using the edge of his insulated flashlight instead, he flicked on the lights.

He was expecting to see the drab gray and the grim, no-nonsense metal and ceramic of a Space Force weapons room. What he got instead was Garden Club Headquarters.

“What the hell?” Attende gasped, crowding in beside him.

“It’s a hydroponics room,” Sjuende said with a twist of his lip. He glanced across the row of torpedo tubes “Uh-oh,” he muttered.

“What?” Attende demanded. “—oh. Oh.”

“Oh, indeed,” Sjuende agreed tightly. All eight tube covers had been flipped all the way back to accommodate extra rows of various vegetable-looking plants. Even from across the room, he could see that years of neglect and careless watering had rusted every single cover solidly in place.

“Let’s try another room,” Attende suggested. “Numbers Two, Seven, and Eight are still available.”

“Hardly,” Sjuende said, shaking his head. “Two’s tubes are open to space, which means the covers are pressure-sealed; Seven is being used as a junk storage room, with more stuff in there than we could possibly move out in three days; and Eight has no floor.”

“No floor?”

“Part of the big renovation, I suppose.” With a sigh, Sjuende lifted his thumb. Forste, he knew, was not going to like this.

Forste didn’t. “I suppose you’d better get busy and clean it all off, then,” he said when he was finished swearing.

“You don’t understand,” Sjuende said. “I’m not talking about a little rust. I’m talking about a whole lot of—”

“Then it’s going to take you a whole lot of time, isn’t it?” Forste cut him off. “There’s a storage locker at the corridor intersection near Rooms Three and Four—Annen said there were some spray bottles marked ‘Rust Remover’ in there. Get busy.”

Sjuende sighed. When he’d signed up for the revolution, this was not exactly what he’d had in mind. “Yes, sir.”

“Yes, there are hydroponics in here, too,” Annen told Forste, looking around the Number Six Torpedo Launch Center. “Vegetables, mostly. Considering the selection we found in the galley pantry, I don’t blame them for growing their own.”

“Very charitable of you,” Forste growled. “Now, can we concentrate on the problem at hand?”

Over by the Disabler, Femte muttered something under his breath. “Of course,” Annen said, giving an annoyed glare of his own at his thumbnail. Pressure or not, Forste had no call to be so sarcastic. “Everything’s rusty, but it doesn’t look bad enough to have damaged the tubes. We’ll have to move some of the plants out to confirm that, of course.”

“Well, then, do it,” Forste snapped. “Call me when you’ve got good news. And not until you’ve got good news.”

“Yes, sir,” Annen said stiffly, shutting off the radio with an unnecessarily hard snap.

“Testy, isn’t he?” Femte commented.

Annen took a deep breath. “Things are not going exactly as planned,” he reminded the other. “Come on, let’s get these plants out of the way. You pick the tube you think looks cleanest; I’ll pick the one I like best. Between us, we’ll hopefully get one that’ll work.”

They set to their task, lifting the planters out of the tubes and tube covers and carrying them across to the far wall where they could be set down out of the way. Femte continued to mutter under his breath as he labored, his half-heard diatribe against welfare and the cod industries punctuated by grunts as he hefted a particularly heavy load and the occasional curse as an overfull planter spilled dirt or water onto his bulkyjacket or the floor. Annen, for his part, worked in silence.

Which was probably why he was the one who first noticed the gentle hissing.

He froze in place, eyes narrowed and head swinging back and forth as he tried to locate the source of the sound. It was a leak, of course; but was the gas coming into the room or going out? Either way, it could be very bad news indeed. Across the room Femte grunted again as he lifted another planter—

“Quiet,” Annen snapped. “Listen.”

Femte paused, the planter cradled in his arms like a green leafy baby. Then his head jerked up, and a second later the planter had been heaved across the room and he was making an Olympic-class dash for the door. “Wait!” Annen shouted, diving around the end of the tube in a desperate attempt to cut him off.

But he was too late. With visions of either leaking air or poisonous gas clouding his vision, Femte was unstoppable.

Unstoppable, that is, until he hit one of the patches of muddy water between him and the door.

“Looks like you’ve got a mild concussion,” Bob told the man, flicking off his pupil light and reaching for the bandages. “Must have hit the wall pretty hard.”

“I’m all right,” the other insisted, wincing as Bob applied the bandage to his still-oozing head wound. “Just give me a shot of something.”

“Sure,” Bob assured him. “I’ll do that; but then I think you should sleep for a while.”

“Sleep?” Forste put in suspiciously. “You want to sedate him, too?”

“It would be the safest thing to do,” Bob said, pulling the sedative and painkiller hypos out of their slots in the first-aid kit. “The medpack has another—” he peered across at the countdown display, “—fifty-nine hours to go, and until it’s free, we can’t do a complete diagnosis. He’s probably okay; but if he isn’t, and we don’t make him rest at least overnight, he could die.”

“Just overnight?” Forste asked. “That’s all you want?”

“What I want has nothing to do with it,” Bob countered. “I’m just trying to deal with the reality of the situation.”

“Of course,” Forste said. “You’re never responsible for anything around here, are you?”

With a sigh, Bob set both hypos down on the table. “It’s your call,” he told Forste. “You tell me what to do.”

Forste looked down at the hypos; and as he did so, there was a click from his thumb.

“Forste,” he said, raising his hand to his lips.

“It’s Sjuende,” a faint voice came back. “I found the leaking canister.”

Forste’s gun lifted an inch closer to Bob’s face. “Poison gas?” he asked.

“Nitrogen,” Sjuende said, sounding disgusted. “I’ve shut it off.”

Forste frowned. “Nitrogen?”

“To make nitrates for the plants,” Bob explained, frowning to himself. There was something odd about Sjuende’s voice. A faint slurring, perhaps? “I already told you there wasn’t anything poisonous in that room.”

Forste took a deep breath, let it out. “All right, Sjuende,” he said. “Stay there. Annen’s on his way back; help him get Disabler One in place.”

“You sure?” Sjuende asked. “Attende and I still have a lot of work to do before Disabler Two can be set up.”

“Disabler One can be in place in thirty minutes if Annen has enough extra hands to help him,” Forste snapped. “Let’s try to get at least something ready to go before we quit for the day, shall we?”

“Yes, sir,” Sjuende muttered.

Forste tapped his thumbnail and turned to Annen, who was glowering silently over by the door. “Well? Get going.”

“Yes, sir.” Annen sent one final glower toward the injured Femte, then turned and left.

Forste looked back at Bob and gave a nod that managed to be curt and reluctant at the same time. “Put him to sleep.”

“But I’m fine, sir,” Femte protested.

“Shut up,” Forste said. “You just concentrate on getting a good night’s sleep. You’ll need it when we play catch-up tomorrow.”

Femte sighed. “Yes, sir.”

Five minutes later he was stretched out on the cot next to his burn-foamed comrade. “I expected the possibility of injuries while neutralizing the Secret Service agents,” Forste muttered under his breath. “Or possibly after the attack, if any of the Marines survived long enough to get into suits and packs. I didn’t expect we’d lose two men while we were just setting up.”

“Space Fort Jefferson isn’t exactly your average work area, of course,” Bob pointed out absently, still trying to figure out what in Sjuende’s voice had caught his attention. “This can be a risky place if you’re not familiar with it.”

“Apparently so.” Forste lifted his thumbnail. “Fjerde? Any progress with the comm system?”

“I’ve got the antenna apart now,” the other reported. “It’s got a lot of rust and dirt embedded in it. I’ll clean it and see if it works any better then.”

Bob felt his stomach suddenly tense. Rust? “Mr. Forste—”

Forste cut him off with a glare. “Consider it break time,” he told the other. “Get down to Launch Center Six and help Annen and Sjuende.”

“Yes, sir.”

Forste tapped the nail and hefted his gun toward Bob. “Don’t you ever interrupt me—”

“Your man Sjuende said he and Attende had a lot of work to do,” Bob cut him off. “Did it involve cleaning off rust?”

Forste eyed him guardedly. “Yes.”

“Are they using our bottles of cleaner?” Bob asked. “And if so, are they wearing breathing masks?”

Forste’s expression was starting to cloud over again. “Why?”

“Because the cleaner is toxic, that’s why,” Bob said. “After a couple of hours, especially in an enclosed space like that—”

Forste snarled a curse, his gun jabbing into Bob’s ribs. “Come on. Bring the kit.”

They found Attende sprawled on the floor in Number Four, his arms and legs twitching as he babbled something incomprehensible. “Damn, damn, damn,” Forste snarled, kneeling down beside him. A spray bottle and rag were still clutched in the man’s hands; gingerly, Forste pushed both of them as far away as he could. “Why the hell isn’t this stuff labeled as dangerous?”

“The main drum is,” Bob said, kneeling on his other side and opening the first-aid kit.

“We have to buy it in bulk—it’s cheaper that way—and put it into our own bottles.

Didn’t you see the masks in the storage locker?”

“The bottles weren’t labeled,” Forste bit out. “Why would they expect to need them?

What’s he babbling about?”

“Probably nothing,” Bob said, finding a wide-spectrum detoxifier hypo in the kit and injecting it into the twitching man’s arm. “On its way to suffocating you, the stuff is also a pretty potent hallucinogen. Who knows what he’s seeing?”

“Can you save him?”

Bob laid the biosensor strip across the side of the man’s neck and watched as the numbers came up. “He’ll be fine,” he assured Forste. “We got to him in time, and this stuff’s great for cleaning all sorts of toxins out the system. Though around here we mostly use it after too much time with the whiskey bottle.”

Forste grunted. “So what now? He just sleeps it off?”

“Basically,” Bob said. “A couple of hours and he’ll be fine. Give me a hand and we’ll get him back to sickbay.”

The corridor, Sjuende decided, had picked up a definite tilt in the past three minutes. Of course, in that same time it had picked up a nice selection of plant life, too. Laid out across the gray metal in front of him were several rows of pink flowers interspersed with green vines sporting giant tomatoes.

He blinked and squinted. Pink and red; the clashing colors hurt his eyes. What was going on, anyway?

And then, in the distance, he heard the sound of footsteps approaching the intersection behind him.

He had his gun out in an instant, the whole thing falling suddenly into place. It was the missing ranger, of course. He’d laid out the plants to slow him down, and now he was trying to sneak up on him from behind.

Well, it wouldn’t work. Sjuende pressed his back against the corridor, afraid to jump over the tomato plants in case they tried to grab him, and turned to face the sound.

They’d be sorry—he was way too smart for them.

Too cool, too. Not to mention too shiny.

The footsteps were nearly to the intersection now. Sjuende leveled his gun at the spot where his attacker would appear. Peripherally, he noticed that his gun was growing grass, and wondered vaguely whether that was within its normal design specs.

And then the figure turned the corner, and Sjuende gasped his admiration. Not only had the ranger come up with this brilliant scheme of planting flowers across the corridor, but he’d even been smart enough to discard his uniform and put on Fjerde’s clothes. And Fjerde’s face.

Smiling genially at the cleverness of it all, he fired.

The boom of the gun echoed back and forth across the corridor, sounding rather vinegary. Dimly through the noise, he heard what sounded like a shout from behind him.

He turned. Annen was standing there, hip-deep in tomatoes; waving his gun and screaming something.

Only they weren’t tomatoes anymore, Sjuende realized with a start. Instead, they’d turned into a ravenous hedge of cactus.

There was only one thing to do, and Sjuende did it without a second’s hesitation.

Lowering the gun toward the attacking plants, he fired. It was a perfect shot. The cactus erupted in a burst of red sap; and suddenly, to his relief, the whole patch vanished.

So did Annen. Sjuende frowned, then realized the other was merely lying on his back on the deck, gripping his thigh as a parade of cherry tomatoes rolled out and collected themselves into a little pile beside him.

But the important part was that the renegade ranger Giff had been dealt with. Smiling, Sjuende lifted his thumb to report the good news to Forste.

He was just wondering why his thumb had turned into an elephant’s trunk when the whole corridor went dark.

“And so we’re down to three,” Forste said softly, his gun pressing hard into the back of Bob’s head as the ranger knelt beside the second of the gunshot victims. “Just three able-bodied men to speak out for the oppressed peoples of the Solar System.”

“It’s not quite that bad,” Bob said carefully as he finished wrapping the leg. It was amazingly hard to breathe with a gun pressed that hard into the base of his skull. “I mean, aside from these two, everyone else should be up and about by tomorrow.”

“Of course,” Forste said. “You sound so reasonable. You always sound so terribly reasonable. And yet, one by one, we keep falling.” .

“But it’s not me doing any of this,” Bob protested. “I’ve been locked up the whole day.”

“Of course it’s not you,” Forste said. “It’s your friend Wimbley. Where is he?”

“But—”

“Shut up,” Forste cut him off. “Call him out. Call him out now, or I’ll—”

He broke off. From somewhere in the distance came the sound of a horrible crunching and clattering, accompanied by a panic-stricken bellow. “What was that?” Forste demanded, shoving the gun even harder into the back of Bob’s head. “What was that?”

Bob winced. “I’m afraid… offhand, I’d say it was the two men you had searching the construction area. I warned you before that the deck there was unstable for—”

“Damn you,” Forste snarled. Reaching down with his free hand, he grabbed a fistful of Bob’s shirt and hauled him to his feet. “That’s it, Ranger Bob,” he bit out, spinning Bob around and jamming the muzzle of the gun up under his chin. “You’re dead. You hear me? You’re dead.”

There was a flicker of movement at the edge of Bob’s vision. He glanced over Forste’s shoulder, feeling his eyes widen—

Forste was fast, all right. He reacted instantly, spinning around and stepping partway around Bob’s side, clearly intending to use the ranger as a shield. His gun shifted toward the assumed threat behind him, his other hand still gripping Bob’s shirt.

But it was too late for even instant reflexes. Even as Forste tried to bring the gun to bear, Agent Drexler plucked it expertly from his grip and drove his other fist hard into the terrorist’s stomach.

With a strangled cough, Forste folded over the fist and collapsed to the deck. “You all right?” Drexler asked, pulling Bob out of the other’s reach.

Bob got his lungs working again. “I’m fine,” he assured the agent, looking back at the intersection where Drexler had appeared. The other rangers were there, too, crowding cautiously around the corner with broomsticks and other makeshift weapons in hand.

“Any idea where the other two are?” Drexler asked as he cuffed Forste’s hands and hauled him to his feet.

“Somewhere at the bottom of the Deck Six renovation area,” Bob told him. “They probably won’t be giving you much trouble.”

“I don’t… understand,” Forste managed through his painful-sounding breathing. “How did you… manage it?”

Bob shrugged. “I told you. I never lifted a finger.”

“Then how…?”

“But I may have mentioned that the station and its equipment had a few problems,” Bob added, looking again at the approaching rangers.

At the rangers, and at the pale but determined figure of Agent Cummings as he limped along, leaning his weight on Hix’s arm.

Forste followed his gaze, and his jaw dropped. “That’s right,” Bob said with a nod. “One of the problems is a medpack countdown display that isn’t worth a damn.”

The terrorists had been locked up, Drexler and Cummings had made their report, and the rangers had gradually drifted back to duties or meals or bed. And once again, Ranger Bob sat at his desk with his recorder in hand.

“Eighteenth April, 2230,” he said. “Evening report.” He took a deep breath. “Well,” he began. “Space Fort Jefferson won its first battle today…”