The Ship Avenged

Chapter Two

Joseph ben Said paced restlessly through his office. It was on the top, the third story of a building well up on the slopes overlooking New Keriss. He stopped and looked down from the open window; mild salt air caressed his face, smelling of the gardens outside and faintly of the city of low, scattered buildings that stretched down to the waters edge.

How different, he thought-as always.

How different from the days before the Kolnari came. Old Keriss had occupied the same site; the airburst hadn't dug much of a crater when the city died in a moment of thermonuclear fire. But the old city had been bigger, more densely built, narrow streets as well as fine avenues. Thickest of all along the old docks, with their shrilling tenements and slums. The New Kerris was cleaner, more modern now that Bethel was in touch with the rest of the galaxy once more. Cleaner, safer, more prosperous… although perhaps less happy than the old city had been.

Or perhaps I was happier then. His lips quirked as he remembered a lord's son down slumming, and how he'd saved that young noble from the knives of a rival gang. Then turned and found a hand extended; taken it in his own, astonished. Met Amos ben Sierra Nueva's eyes, and been lost to his old life.

That brought him back to the present; his face clenched like a fist, eyes narrowing. He sat behind the desk and keyed the screen.

"Home," he said.

It cleared, and his wife Rachel looked up in surprise from her own keyboard as his image replaced whatever she'd been working on. In the background he could hear children playing. His children… No. They are safe, and my duty is clear.

"Joseph!" she said, concern in her dark eyes. "Is there any news of the Prophet?"

He shook his head. "Nothing from SSS-900-C," he said. "Simeon reports no word. No trace of the Benisur's ship has been found; it is as if they had vanished from space-time."

He took a deep breath, and saw her face change. Rachel had come to know him too well, in the years of their marriage. Joseph held up a hand.

"Please," he said softly. "My heart, do not tear at me; this is hard enough to do. But Amos is more than my Prophet; he is the friend of my soul, my brother."

"There are younger men to do this work!"

Joseph smiled ruefully. "Are there any better trained to seek him offplanet?" he asked.

Rachel met his eyes for a moment, then glanced aside. Hers shone with unshed tears.

"Where will you go?"

"I cannot say," he said. Must not, they both knew. There was a leak in Planetary Security. "But it must be soon." He willed strength into his voice. "Do not fear, my love. We have friends beyond Bethel, as well as enemies."

"Why the fardling void can't they just say give me a bribe?" Joat Simeon-Hap demanded.

New Destinies hung in space four thousand kilometers away; much closer in the main bridge screen, of course. It wasn't very large as independent stations went, merely a cylinder ten kilometers long by one in diameter, spinning contentedly-smugly, her mind prompted-in orbit around an undistinguished orange-brown gas giant, which orbited a run-of-the-mill F-class star. That was a pinprick of violent light in the distance; closer in were a few barren rocks, none of them larger than Mars, and some asteroids.

Junk system. Junk station. Barely worth visiting because it intersected a few transit routes. There weren't many fabricators in space nearby, either. One long latticework, a graving dock that looked capable of repairing fair-sized ships or building small ones. A couple of zero-g algae farms, huge soft-looking bubbles. Some in-system traffic, miners and passenger craft and wide-mouthed scoopships to skim and harvest the gas giant's outer atmosphere. Probably they didn't pick up the litter on the station, and charged you extra for the gravity.

Joat chuckled sourly at the thought; it appealed to her sense of the ridiculous. It didn't make her less impatient. New Destinies had a reputation as one of those places that looked the other way. A fair number of the ships who docked here were in the smuggling trade, which, frankly, was what kept the station going. But a couple of generations of not noticing had an effect. Here, bribery and graft were just the way things were done. So Joat couldn't understand why none of her hints had been picked up on, or no overtures had been made in that direction.

She loved the Wyal, and not just because the ship was hers. But there were times when you had to get off the ship or run starkers, raving and frothing.

The jerk's on a power trip. She combed a hand through shoulder-length blond hair and spoke, altering her tone slightly:

"Find out who this fardling bureaucratic nightmare is, wouldja Rand?"

"You mean Dilton Tolof in Health and Immigration?"

"Yeah."

There was a confused pause.

"Joat, he's Dilton Tolof in Health and Immigration."

She rolled her eyes. "Do you have to be so literal?"

"That's the way I'm made, Joat."

"I mean find out about him."

"Why?"

"Just do it!"

"You're upset," Rand sounded surprised. "Is it me, have I caused offense?"

"No, but he has. I'd like to tailor-make a little lesson in the etiquette of negotiation for him."

"You want to benefit him?" Rand sounded mildly astonished.

She smiled slowly.

"In a sense."

"It's been my observation, Joat, that you're not inclined to return good for bad. Nor has there been any solicitation of bribery. Yet, you seem to believe that Mr. Tolof is somehow asking for one. I admit to being puzzled."

"Logic, buddy. It isn't as though this little station is the most sought-after destination in Central Worlds' space, Rand, so sheer volume of work can't be the reason for this kind of delay."

Joat frowned. Two things about her tended to make the overbearing and officious think they could push her around. One was her age. At twenty-three, Joat was extremely young to be the captain and owner-aboard of a starfaring freighter. The other was that she was the adopted daughter of Space Station Simeon-900-C and Channa Hap; the first child to be adopted by a Brain-Brawn pair. For some reason that Joat couldn't fathom, these facts were supposed to make her malleable and stupid. Or, worse, naive, which she couldn't even remember being.

"It's just the way these little, out-of-the-way places operate. Now, I don't object to baksheesh, within reason," she said in a tone that would have alarmed anyone who knew her well. If you lay on the sweet talk thick as honey, make no demands, don't insult me and you sure as blazes don't throw obstacles in my path. Maybe then, she'd pay. Maybe.

Joat spun her gimbaled pilot's chair around and fondly regarded the winking lights of her friend's "face." Technically it wasn't a person-perhaps even not really a personality, if you wanted to get philosophical-but definitely a friend.

The rows of lights that formed its countenance served no purpose but to give Rand expression and to satisfy her low taste for ancient popular entertainments. Just now, they were predominantly yellow, signaling puzzlement.

"Civil servants are like rugs-you have to whack them now and then to get the dirt out. I just want to give him a little goose to teach him not to mess with me," Joat told it.

All the lights flickered yellow.

"You want to give him a barnyard fowl?" Now Rand did sound astonished.

Joat laughed. "In this instance, Rand, a goose means a pinch on the butt to get him going." No sense in shocking a machine. Sometimes she wondered who did the component blocks she'd bought for the basis of the AI.

"Ah!" The lights flickered blue, signaling pleasure in this new understanding; then back to yellow. "But, the references I found to that use of the term referred to it as an expression of erotic interest."

"Not in this case, I assure you," she said dryly.

"Well that's why I thought you wanted to give him the bird."

Joat choked back a laugh.

"I've said something amusing," it accused.

"No, it's me. I took it wrong."

After a moment it said, "Joat, really! If I'm to avoid these verbal pitfalls it would save time if you'd simply tell me why you're laughing. Just because the information is in my files somewhere doesn't justify wasting my energy searching for it."

"So you know why I laughed?"

"You had a misspent youth."

"And a largely misspent adulthood."

"Not really. You've actually accomplished quite a lot for such a young woman. You've only been an adult legally for two years."

Joat squirmed. Praise made her feel as if she was being set up; not least because she'd used it so often and so effectively that way herself.

"Y'know, you sounded kinda exasperated there for a minute," she said lightly.

"I was. And a particularly stupid reaction it is, if I may say so."

"Hey," she shrugged, "you're the one who wanted to understand emotions."

"Understand them, not have them."

Joat raised an admonishing finger. "Knowledge is never wasted."

"While time and energy too often are. Specifically by forcing me to apply this program."

"Well, in general, emotional responses aren't voluntary," she said.

It wasn't really fair to force emotion-analogues on the AI. On the one hand I feel guilty. On the other, it's fun. Such a grubby little emotion, guilt.

"If you don't experience an unexpected reaction once in awhile, then how can you understand emotions? Or put up with 'em for that matter. Remember, understanding makes all things tolerable."

"I had fewer problems with tolerance before I was capable of exasperation! Knowledge or lack of it isn't the problem; this program is the problem."

Uh oh. Clearly Rand wanted that program gone, and was perfectly capable of erasing it.

"Oh no you don't," she said. "I didn't sweat blood creating that program just so you could erase it the first time it runs. You leave it alone. Y'hear me?"

A neatly clipped "Yes." Then: "I suppose I should be grateful that you haven't found a way to irritate me."

"I'm getting close," Joat threatened with a grin. "Frustration and irritation are in the same family, so be prepared. After all, if you want to understand someone you have to walk a kilometer in their…"

"Would you can the quotes, please? If I want to drown in cliches I have access to all four volumes of The Wit and Wisdom of the Known Universe. The unabridged version."

Joat pursed her lips. "Sorry. Uh, have you got anything on Dilton yet?" she prompted.

"According to station records Tolof has had numerous citations for unauthorized power-grabbing. He's exceeded his allotted limit of power seventeen times, but was fined for only the first three."

"Interesting. And what's the name of the individual who waived his penalty charges?"

"Graf Dyson. I'm searching for references to that name."

After a full minute Joat raised a brow and prompted, "Anything?"

"No. Nothing significant, anyway. He lives here and is employed by the Bureau of Fines and Levies, but he has never been recorded as being guilty of the most minor infractions. He leads an exceptionally ordered and modest life, and his credit balance reflects that. Puzzling."

"For a citizen of New Destinies it's unbelievable." Another effect of catering to smugglers; their awareness of what constituted bad behavior was deeply impaired. "Do any of our friends or acquaintances show his name on any of their documents?'

"Yes," Rand replied promptly. "Captain Yandit has received several citations for disturbing the peace, but was never fined. Records show that the fine was waived by Graf Dyson."

"Well then, as Graf Dyson is a friend of a friend, I think we can safely claim acquaintance. Don't you?"

"No."

Joat linked her fingers and cracked her knuckles with a flourish. "Put me through to that mudpuppy in the health office, buddy, and watch me finesse this."

Dilton Tolof's pinched face appeared on the screen.

"New Destinies, Health and Immigration." Then he realized to whom he was speaking and smiled, a thin and somehow sour expression that fitted his pinched face. "Ms. Simeon, if you continue to pester me like this, I'm never going to be able to process your records."

"Well, I was talking to Graf, Graf Dyson? He asked me what was taking me so long. I've got a little present for him, and you know how impatient he gets. We're real good friends." She simpered at the man on the screen in her best fluff-head imitation. "Anyway, he said mentioning his name might serve to, you know, expedite things. Like, as a favor to a friend?"

Tolof's narrow face flushed and he glanced nervously around.

"You know… G. D.?"

"Sure do. Captain Yandit, you may have dealt with him, huge, Ursinoid fellow with a temper? He introduced us at a party one time, and we hit it off right away." Joat snapped her fingers, indicating the speed with which she and Dyson had become fast friends. "Graf said you guys were real close, mentioned that you'd done some deals?" She raised an inquiring brow and smiled knowingly.

Dilton's sour smile turned slowly into the expression of a man who'd just opened a box of chocolates and found maggots.

"Well," he said, "heh heh, your documentation appears to be in order, no need to be, uh, nitpicky."

He punched a few keys and her comp received the "cleared" signal that would allow Joat and her crew the freedom of the station and permit docking robots to begin unloading the Wyal's cargo.

"Thank you so much," she gushed and gave him a wink. "I'll be sure and tell G.D. what a pal you were."

Joat punched off the connection and sneered, "No need to be nitpicky." She shivered. "Ghu, but I hate bureaucrats."

The ship rumbled and there was a slight swaying sensation. Docking tractors attached blinked across the screen, and a grid swelled to fill the view. She kept her hands poised over the controls, but the AI and Stationside kept the Wyal steady as she slid towards the non-rotating docking ring at the north pole of New Destinies. About the running of the station and their docking procedures, the New Destinites were consummate professionals.

"Especially you, Dilton," she added in the same tone. "You worm."

"Whozzat?"

The air scrubbers whirred into overdrive as a sudden, overwhelmingly sweet and spicy aroma invaded the control cabin, followed by Alvec Dia, one of her crew. In fact, he was her crew, with an Admiralty Grade artificial intelligence, a three thousand kiloton freighter didn't need more than two.

"Gak!" Joat wheezed, waving her hand in front of her face. "Alvec, what is that stench?"

"Stench, Boss?" Alvec seemed genuinely puzzled. "That's Senalgal Spice, the favorite cologne of the Rose of New Destinies."

He put his hands on his hips and raised a brow, archly. Or as archly as a middle-aged man with scar tissue across the knuckles of both hands and a build like a freight carboy could. Joat couldn't help grinning at him, and an answering smile split the rough, lived-in face.

"You have a lady-friend here?" she asked, trying to breathe shallowly. He had friends of that sort on a number of stations, all answering to the name of Rose.

"Not yet." He winked. "But I aim to."

"Do me a favor, Al, air out a little before you go a-hunting. I wouldn't want you arrested for assault this early in the day. I'd have to bail you out."

"I'll be careful, Mother. We cleared?" He jerked a thumb dockside.

At Joat's nod he waggled his fingers farewell and left with a jaunty step.

She watched him leave. The monitors showed him dodging cargo robots trundling forward across the open space just inside the hull of the docking ring. Then, taking an experienced spacer's leap across to the entrance of the spindle, he grabbed the handholds, did a neat turn and went feet-first through the hatchway, ready for the transition to spin gravity in the core.

There was a clanking through the hull as the robots boarded; she watched on screens slaved to the interior monitors as one busily rushed up to grab a pallet, loaded it onto the flatbed of its body, then hustled off to dockside to unload it onto a stack already piling up on a larger float that would take the shipment to a warehouse.

Joat watched them idly for a few moments, then her interest was caught by their human supervisor.

He was tall, with a soldier's posture but a soft gut. His eyes… they never stopped tracking. Back, forth, back; the eyes of someone expecting trouble, someone who'd been expecting it so long they couldn't stop. Scarred face, with the distinctive red splotch on one cheek. At some time in the not-too-distant past he'd been caught in an explosive decompression. Not an uncommon industrial accident off-planet, but… His uniform was just a little too… something. It fit him, it wasn't new, but somehow, it wasn't right.

He wore it as though it wasn't completely familiar, Joat realized. It had been his hand fumbling for a pocket that wasn't there that had caught her eye. Joat sat up straight.

Who? Nobody she could think of was gunning for her right now-angry with her, yes; ready to do her the dirty in any underhanded way they could, yes. But not killing mad, not enough to hire muscle to go after her. And this man was obviously muscle of some sort. His whole body screamed retired mercenary. But why would a retired mercenary accept a pick-up job on New Destinies?

Not a merc, then. So, he was a cop. And he was watching the Wyal.

But why were they watching her? Dilton hadn't had time to sic this guy on her, even if he'd the guts to do it. Neither had Dyson, whoever he was, because he couldn't possibly have reacted this fast to the little scam she'd just pulled on his buddy. He probably didn't even know about it, at least not yet.

Her mind went to the small mysterious package she was carrying for Central Worlds Security. Did New Destinies know about it? Were they after it? Was it something that would incriminate her?

Joat frowned. She wasn't about to risk her ship for some CenSec song and dance. The package was supposed to be dropped with the local operative at The Anvil, one of the bars around the rim of the station. She glanced at the time, she was due there in one and a half Earth standard hours.

Joat gritted her teeth. So I owe them. That doesn't mean they own me. More to the point, it didn't mean they could endanger her ship. She'd drop it all right, and then she'd tell them what they could do with their special courier packages.

"Rand, I gotta go."

"Now? Before unloading is completed?"

"You see that osco on monitor four?"

"The unloading supervisor?"

"Yeah. He's a cop."

"He can't be, Joat, he's wearing a supervisor's uniform. The police uniform for this port is very different, I assure you."

Rand put a holo snap of a local policeman on screen for her edification.

"I know what a cop looks like, Rand, in or out of uniform. And that's a cop, and he's watching us."

"I'm impressed by your prescience, Joat. Why is he watching us?"

"I don't know and I don't intend to find out. I'm going out the side door."

"The…? Joat, we don't have a side door."

"I'm going out the service hatch and into the station via one of theirs," she said, briskly closing out the file she'd been idly working on while waiting for clearance.

"That's illegal…"

"I know that, but…"

"And dangerous!"

"I'm relying on you to help me avoid getting caught," she explained. Joat wondered how Rand would choose to respond, for she'd given it almost complete autonomy. It might decide to have nothing to do with this scheme, which would complicate things tremendously.

"Could we talk deal?" Rand asked smoothly.

Joat's eyebrows went up and she cocked her head.

"Excuse me?"

"That exasperation program…?"

Joat frowned and folded her arms thoughtfully. Then she sighed.

"Okay, deal, you can erase the program. Now will you help me?"

"I'll do my best." Rand's voice conveyed pride in self combined with disapproval of her plans.

Joat suppressed a smile. Sometimes Rand was downright prissy. She wondered if she'd unintentionally programmed it that way-it couldn't have caught it from her behavior, that was sure.

"Don't worry Rand."

"When you say not to worry, worry becomes imperative."

"Where's the station's nearest service hatch to Wyal?" she asked.

Rand threw a schematic on the screen, replacing the smiling policeman. Wyal was represented by a bunking yellow dot, the nearest service hatch blinked red.

"Now, show me the surveillance cameras."

A pause, then Rand indicated them on the schematic in blue.

"Whew," Joat sighed. "They have pretty good coverage. Any chance you can hack into the surveillance network and simply run a tape of empty space while I'm out there?"

"Doubtful. With so many suspect elements sharing the station's amenities, New Destinies has a fairly sophisticated security system. Something of that complexity would probably activate an alarm."

"Fardles." She drummed her fingers on the console. "What can you tell me about the lock?"

Rand threw up another schematic. "It's a standard design. Nothing complicated, with the usual tell-tales in place." As it spoke small arrows blinked on indicating the areas spoken of. "There are cameras in the corridor outside the service hatch."

Joat brushed her hair back. Time for another trim, she thought inconsequentially. She went to a locker at the rear of the bridge compartment and palmed the sensor. It opened, and she began to take out various useful items and slot them into pockets and less obvious hiding places in her taupe overall; also in her belt, in the heels of her boots, and one or two in special cavities in her molars.

"Is there any time when the route I'll have to traverse and the lock itself isn't under observation?"

That came out as a mumble, since her fingers were in the back of her mouth, but Rand had excellent voiceprint filters.

"For approximately ten seconds the route and the lock are clear. As it won't alter their function, I may be able to slow the sweep of the cameras so that you have forty seconds," Rand told her. "I can do nothing about the telltales, though, and the cameras inside are stationary."

She considered the diagram before her.

"It'll take me twelve seconds to get from Wyal to the lock," she murmured.

"Optimistically."

"Twelve seconds." She grinned. "And if I can't silence a tell-tale in twenty-eight seconds I deserve whatever happens to me. Can you take out the camera in the corridor?"

"I believe so. But it will surely be considered suspicious."

"Feh!" Joat made a contemptuous face and a dismissive gesture. "It probably happens all the time."

Then she rose and laced her fingers together, cracking her knuckles briskly. "Let's do it. You're in charge of the Wyal until I return. Don't accumulate too much time on the station's virtual reality net-we can't afford it."

"It's research," Rand said indignantly. "My interactions with humans increase my versatility."

"You can research Alvec and me for free," Joat said firmly, running a mental checklist of the devices she was carrying. A few more? No, the only really useful item would be a laser welder-you could do really astonishing things with a laser welder, if you knew how-but it was a bit conspicuous.

Useful, though. It was a pity. She and a couple of other students at Vega Central Institute-Simeon had sent her there for six months-had cut down a bronze statue of the Founder, cut it in half, and rewelded it around a shower fixture in the quarters of the Dean of Cybernetics. And she hadn't had to use anything but a hand-cutter and a floater platform to do it, either.

Actually Simeon had sent her to Vega Central for a year. They'd sent her back after six months.

Bureaucrats, she thought. No sense of humor at all.

Joat tied her hair back in a ponytail and paused to study herself in the screen set to mirror beside the airlock; large, gray-blue eyes stared solemnly back, examining delicate features in a sharp-boned face. Not much trace of the feral child she'd been when Simeon and Channa found her hiding in the ventilation ducts of SSS-900-C; she'd been living in a nest of stolen blankets and cobbled-together computer parts. Good training to be a high-tech guerrilla during the Kolnari occupation of the Station, but not so hot as a preparation for life.

She pursed her lips and looked at the package she was to deliver. I must have grown up. I haven't opened it.

CenSec would have all sorts of cyberdog guardians built in, but that just increased the itch. Her fingers twitched as if they held micromanipulators and a datacode bar. She sighed and shook her head. No, it wasn't worth the hassle. She'd made up her mind to that the first time she'd agreed to take on a CenSec shipment at Simeon's request.

The less she knew, she'd told herself, the better. Because CenSec was the kind of organization that considered you were in their debt if you did them a favor. They started out owing you and ended up owning you. That might appeal to straight-arrow types brought up in boring rectitude, who fell down on their knees in thanks at getting to play Galactic Spy.

Not me, Joat thought defiantly. Nobody's gonna get a piece of my soul. She'd gotten far more adventure than she wanted by the age of twelve. And she knew that, for preference, adventure was somebody else in deep doodly, far, far away.

She gave herself one last appraising look, then picked up the CenSec package and zipped it into one of her pockets before heading for the suit-storage locker.

Joat suited up quickly. It was a process she'd always handled well, winning a fair number of credits in Brawn school betting on just how fast she could do it.

No gruddy sense of humor there either, she thought. Her knack for separating her fellow students from their disposable income was just one of many reasons she'd finally been asked to leave. By the time they finally got around to asking her, though, she was already half packed. I don't understand how Channa ever got through without freezing into an icicle. Then again, a lot of people thought she had.

The fact was she and her teachers and fellow students were fundamentally incompatible. She regarded them as too stiff-necked, they saw her as far too flexible.

Her only concern in leaving Brawn training had been the possibility that she might be disappointing her adoptive parents. She grinned reminiscently, remembering their words as she stepped out of the Station airlock-Simeon had waited, "standing" beside Channa in his favorite vid persona, a big blond bruiser with a dueling scar and a Centauri Jets cap turned backwards.

"Toldja," he'd said blithely.

"I knew they'd never hammer you into a straight arrow," Channa said with a warm smile. "You were born to be independent."

"Or to hang," Simeon added.

Joat tapped the lock controls. Air bled out; the telltales in the rim of the helmet below her chin showed hard vac. She crouched in the open door of the lock, studying the surface of the station, pronged and spiked with various sensors and antennae. This close even a modest station loomed immense, a metallic god-sized lathe twirling forever against the orange glow of its planet. It turned with a slow ponderous inevitability; at this range your gut refused to see it as an artifact. She turned her head, looking for the flashing red light that indicated the location of the service hatch.

Joat sighed. This little excursion would be so much easier if she'd never revealed the secret of the device that had rendered her invisible to virtually all sensors and recording devices. Simeon had insisted on letting everyone know how to counter it. Of course the patent had accounted for a big part of the down-payment on her ship. Create the problem, solve the problem, collect the money, she thought.

Ah, well, New Destinies was one of the few windowless stations. They'd spun it up from the nickel-iron of a single asteroid, and nobody had bothered putting in luxuries. So at least she didn't have to worry about some tourist catching her in the act with their holo camera and immortalizing this exploit for the delight of station security.

Light strobed across her target. She estimated the angle and aimed the magnetic grapple built into the sleeve of her suit, leaning forward, arm extended.

"Ready," she said into her suit com. "Say when, Rand."

"Standing by, Joat." Rand paused a moment. "Now."

There was a slight twitch that pushed her arm gently backwards as she fired the grapple. The contact plate spun out on its near-invisible line and clung to the station's skin about a meter from the small service hatch. Joat activated the mechanism in her sleeve that would reel her towards the station, then gave a jerk on the line that propelled her outward.

Joat pulled her feet forward and her knees up against the suit's resistance, rolling herself head over heels in a controlled somersault; timing it so that the stickfield on the soles of her boots would strike first, and her bent legs absorb the impact.

When she left Wyal's gravity field the blood in her veins leapt within her, rushing to her head in a dizzying surge. The weightlessness made every part of her feel strange, as though she'd been bounced upward, never coming down, only climbing, soaring. Swimming in the universal sea, a friend at Brawn school had called it. No lie. The few moments of queasiness until she adjusted was worth it; then gravity returned as centrifugal force spun her outward. The stationary docking ring fell behind, and suddenly up was towards the rotating bulk of New Destinies. It was the docking ring that seemed to move, with the Wyal embedded in it like a pencil in a sharpener.

She felt closest to Simeon, her adopted father, when she moved through space in her suit. Encased, as he was, in a machine that kept her alive in a murderous environment, yet personally in contact with the infinite.

Joat watched the universe flick by, ship, stars, station, three times before she reached her target.

The stickfield on her boots held her to the station against the surge of recoil and Joat clasped an extended hand around a utility handle jutting out from the station's skin. Her inertia surged, balanced and stabilized by the grip and the automatic flex of leg and thigh. The anchor cord finished reeling itself back into the sleeve of her suit with a small definite click, de-energizing the disk and whipping it back into the slot. Her eyes were telling her that she stood upright on a huge metal plain. Weight said that she was hanging from her feet with a great metal plain above her. Both were wrong, and she had no time to waste.

"Now," she muttered. "Down the rabbit hole, or I'll be very late."

Her suited fingers traced the exterior of the airlock. Standard model, a fiber-steel oval with memory putty sealant around the edges and a mechanical doglock wheel in the center for emergencies. No use trying that, it would be safetied. Instead she took out a multitool and began opening the access cover of the lock control, whistling soundlessly between her teeth.

Well, and aren't you clever, she thought, as the first choice undid the couplers that held it closed. You found some of the weirdest nonstandard components on these out-of-the-way Stations.

Her suit had some nonstandard components, too. She unclipped an extension datalink from her belt and clicked the connector into the link on the control card. Then she closed her eyes and subvocalized a series of code words.

A chittering voice sounded in her inner ear. "Whhhaaat's up, boss?"

"Got a little job for you, Speedy."

She opened her eyes again. Playing across the thin-film crystal of her suit visor was a holo of a ferret. Not a real ferret; this one was vaguely anthropomorphic and wore a beret. One hand clutched a smokestick in a long ivory holder. Stylish, she thought. There was no point in being mechanical when you designed an AI, even the fairly simple specialized type.

This one, for example, was a specialist in locks.

"Cycle this airlock, but don't let anyone know about it."

"Rrrright, boss."

The holo image vanished. It was replaced by a schematic of the circuitry and the control program for the access. The picklock program slunk through the commercial programming with sinuous ease, then struck. Red slivers appeared on the green circuitry, marking the spots where false data was being fed back into the systems central monitor. That severed the controls from the Station's computers, at least for a while.

Of course, there was always the chance that some interfering type would be actually looking at the inside door of the airlock when she came through. Harder to fool the ol' Eyeball Mark I.

"Rand, is there any way for you to tie into the vid monitor covering this accessway and let me know if anybody's out there?"

"No, Joat, there isn't. I've already knocked it out. But this access is located in a maintenance area that's not very thickly populated. It's a chance you'll have to take. You have seven seconds."

"Fardles!"

Joat imagined some passerby attracted to the mysteriously cycling lock, watching in puzzlement the flashing of the warning light that showed the lock was in use.

What if there's a klaxon or a bell? she wondered. She sighed mentally. Then I get arrested, I guess. Bad planning, Joat. If the worst happens it'll serve you right for being so impulsive.

She gripped the handholds on either side, disdaining the steps set into the doorway, and popped herself feet-first through the hatch with a grunt. That left her straddling the entranceway, now a hole between her feet. Reaching back, she pulled the hatch closed behind her and glanced at the chrono display down at the chinbar of her helmet. Well within the time limit.

Jack Of All Trades strikes again, she thought, slightly smug. Breaking-and-entering was one of those pleasant hobbies you didn't have much opportunity for when you'd gone legitimate. A pleasure to indulge the skill on good, legal-well, quasi-legal-Central Worlds business.

Air hissed into the narrow airlock, quickly growing thick enough to hear through the exterior pickups. A faint ping told her when the pressure was near-enough ambient. Immediately she popped the seal on her helmet and began stripping off the suit, wrinkling her nose slightly at the metallic smell. No excuse for that, in a station-even a small one.

Snaps, locks, and seals parted before her fingers with the easy grace of a lifetime's practice; she had the full measure of finicky neatness common to the vacuum-born. She folded the suit tightly, tucked the gauntlets into the helmet and pulled a small black rectangle from a pocket. It clung when she tapped it onto the inner airlock door over her head, and she snapped a thin cord into a jack on its side. The other end of the cord was pressed against the bone behind one ear. She scanned the sounds from the other side of the metal.

Nothing, she thought cheerfully. Nothing but mechanical noise, none of the irregular thumps and gurgles that indicated an organic sapient. Carbon-based life-forms had messy sonic signatures.

"Rand, can you give me the name of an outfitter? I might as well have my suit seals checked as carry it around with me."

"There are sixteen outfitters licensed to maintain suits. The nearest specialty store is Stondat's EnviroSystems Emporium, Spin Level 3"-that would be counting inward from the outermost deck, standard throughout human space-"Stack 14b, corridor 9. The camera block is running." Rand's passionless voice took on a faint overtone of contempt. "Very bad security."

Joat smiled. Her attitudes towards sloppy workmanship had rubbed off on the AI. She used a small extensible probe to key the interior door of the airlock and trotted up the ladder into an access corridor running both ways until it lost itself in the curve of the Station's outer hull.

"External cameras are back online, no detection," Rand said.

"Grudly. Out for now." Broadcasts were a needless risk.

The corridor was bare except for the color-coded conduits and pipes that snaked in orderly rectilinear patterns over walls and ceilings. An occasional small maintenance machine trundled by, usually following a pipe rather than the floor.

And footfalls rang. Joat felt herself relax, vision growing bright with the sudden clarity of extreme concentration. The young man who walked in from a side-corridor was wearing the same Stationside police uniform as the one in Rand's holosnap, but his face had the pleasant formlessness of youth. Sheltered youth.

"Oh hey, am I glad to see you!" Joat caroled, an expression of surprised relief on her face. "We just got in, and I'm looking for Stondat's. The suit outfitter? I've obviously gone wrong," she hoisted the suit up a bit with a little grunt, "and this thing is getting heavier by the meter. Where am I?"

She let a trace of wail into the last words, making her eyes go wide in an expression she knew knocked six standard years off her apparent age.

"Let me show you, ma'am. These corridors are for Stationside Maintenance only."

He led the way to a lift, reaching past her to palm the entry. Her hand brushed across his arm.

"There, that's set for Spin Level 3. You can't miss it."

Joat's smile turned broader and more sardonic as the door irised shut. Insect-tiny in her ear, she could hear the young policeman's report via the sticktight she'd brushed across his uniform to blend with the fabric. It was a carbon-chain type, too, almost impossible to scan and biodegradable.

"Just someone who got lost," he said. "Some vapor-brain from a miner family-ship, probably, can't find her way around anything bigger than a thousand cubic meters. Proceeding."