Breach of Containment. Elizabeth Bonesteel

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СКАЧАТЬ to the ship’s autopilot. The energy pulse swept past them silently.

      Beside her, Arin began unstrapping himself. “What are you doing?” she asked.

      “I’ll get the cargo ready for the drop.”

      “Arin—”

      “I’m here, Elena. Let me help.”

      Stupid. Damn kid. “You hook yourself onto the wall,” she told him, “and you keep your head away from the open door, do you understand? They will be firing on us. This isn’t make-believe. This is fucking war.”

      She kept her eyes on their attackers as she heard him pull one of the attached lines out of the wall and hook it securely around his waist. She heard scraping as he began shoving the cargo to one side, exposing the ship’s side door. If she got low enough, she could open the door, and he could shove the containers out, one by one. Twenty seconds, tops. Maybe less.

      “Two minutes,” she told him. “Stay behind those containers, dammit. Keep covered.”

      But before she could steer them lower, the alarm came again. “We are being targeted,” the shuttle repeated calmly. On the tactical display, she could see the small lights moving toward them from three directions this time. Too many, and far too fast.

      “Hang on, Arin!” she shouted, and took the controls back to manual. One of the shots would miss, she could see; the other two seemed to be homing in on them. Different firing systems, then; their attackers were neither experienced nor properly prepared. Which doesn’t mean their strategy won’t work. She watched the faster shot get closer and closer to them, and as it closed in, she rolled them abruptly to one side. She heard the containers shift, and the missile swept past them.

      But the second detonated not thirty meters from their undercarriage, and they were suddenly pitched forward, nose toward the ground, the ship’s engines groaning as they attempted to compensate. “Arin!” she shouted.

      “I’m okay!” he shouted back. “Elena, just get—”

      They hit the ground nose-first, the front window slamming into the dirt, obscuring her visibility entirely. The harness kept her from dropping onto the ceiling as they skidded upside down through the frozen dust, far faster than they should have; the engines were whining, trying to soften the landing, and she thought they had been damaged. In an instant, though, the engines no longer mattered: they slammed against something she couldn’t see, she jerked roughly against her harness, and the engines shut down.

      “Arin?” she said, unbuckling herself, her feet dropping onto the ship’s ceiling. “You still hooked in?”

      There was silence, and everything in her went cold.

      “Arin!” She rushed toward the containers. Where they had been carefully lined up on the floor they were now tossed about the ceiling like huge squares of confetti, on top of each other and in corners, a few broken open, seeds scattered. She saw the safety cable behind one of them and grabbed it, pulling; it resisted. She shoved at the container covering it; the heaviest of them was ninety kilos in this gravity. If she braced herself against the wall she should be able to shift it. Squeezing between the container and the wall, she positioned her feet and set her shoulders, then took a deep breath and shoved. The container slid reluctantly away from her, and fell off to the left.

      Arin was crumpled against the wall, unmoving.

      She rushed to him, careful not to shift him. She could see his chest rising and falling rapidly, and she felt a glimmer of relief. Where was the damn med scanner on this ship? Under a pile of containers, she realized; she would have to rely on her rusty field training. Pressing her gloved fingers against the thin fabric of his suit hood, she took the pulse in his throat; a little fast, but steady enough. She cleared the debris away from him, trying not to move him, unsure of where he had been hit and how hard. His nose was bleeding; it was clearly broken. As she was running her hands carefully along his arm, he stirred and groaned.

      “Sit still,” she told him sharply.

      “What,” he said.

      “We’ve crashed,” she told him. “You got hit with a container. Be still; I don’t know how badly you’re hurt.”

      He opened his eyes; both pupils, she noted, were even. His concussion couldn’t be too bad. “Why’d they shoot at us?” he asked, coherently enough.

      “Because they don’t want us here.”

      He looked confused. “We’re bringing them food.”

      “We’re interfering in local politics.”

      “Don’t they need us?”

      Now was not the time for a lesson. “Lie still, Arin. I’m going to see who I can contact.”

      She made her way back to the front of the ship and managed to pull up a rudimentary console. No comms at all, but the environmental controls were still on: air, temperature. They could breathe, at least.

      Unfortunately, they couldn’t shoot, and she cursed. If she’d been running this mission off of Galileo, she would have been carrying a sidearm. There would have been half a dozen pulse rifles in the cargo hold, just in case. Fucking freighters.

      They were lying here, upside down in the dirt, and they were helpless.

       CHAPTER 6

      You don’t have to come, sir,” Greg had told Herrod. “I’m guessing there’s going to be more shouting and denials than discussion this time.”

      Herrod had given him a familiar look of mild amusement. “Shouting and denials require diplomacy, too, Captain,” he had pointed out. “And while I may not be able to throw my weight around anymore”—here he gestured at Greg’s assembled security detail, eight armed soldiers of considerable size—“I can still sling a pulse rifle if the situation calls for it.”

      Greg had the distinct impression Herrod was having fun.

      In the end he had settled for a single platoon with two senior soldiers: Bristol and Darrow, both of whom he knew well, both of whom knew how to be unobtrusive when they needed to be. “With any luck,” he told the platoon, “this is a false alarm, and you’ll all be nothing more than pomp and circumstance. But keep your eyes open, and stay on your toes.”

      He could have taken a pilot, or at least a cabin crew, but Greg was fond of flying, and as the ship’s captain he rarely got a chance to do it. Herrod had the good sense to settle himself in Sparrow’s passenger cabin instead of sitting copilot, so Greg had the space to himself. Sparrow was an easy shuttle to fly, smooth and responsive, and Greg almost never engaged the autopilot, even when it would have freed him up to do something else. He could watch the stars, see the moon advance through the front window, while keeping an eye on surface scans and nudging their direction now and then.

      Almost as relaxing as running. He smiled.

      Oarig had denied any plans to intercept the food drop. “Why would we interfere with a commercial shipment?” he asked, and Greg had no rational answer. He hadn’t pointed out that СКАЧАТЬ