Elizabeth Moon - Serrano 7 - Against the Odds

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Against the Odds

by Elizabeth Moon

Familias Regnant books by Elizabeth Moon

Hunting Party

Sporting Chance

Winning Colors

Once a Hero

Rules of Engagement

Change of Command

Against the Odds

For Kathleen and David

Non omnis moriar

Acknowledgements

As usual, I have many people to thank for help, including some who prefer

not to be listed; you know who you are, and you know I appreciate it.

David Watson and Kathleen Jones, for hours of brainstorming and for their

collection of useful references, but most of all for wanting the story so

badly that they restored my ability to tell it. The weekly fencing crowd

(Allen, Andrew, Beth, Connor, Sean, Susan, Tony, Brian, etc.) for varied

expertise that included such things as damage control on an aircraft

carrier and the characteristics of large cables under tension, an evening

of editorial commment, and especially for allowing me to work off my

tension by poking them with swords. Clive Smith and Christine Joannidi for

bits of physics, the history of an Anglo/Greek trading family, and the

best Yorkshire pudding in central Texas. Those who hang out in my SFFnet

newsgroup and provide facts, ideas, and general support (in this case, a

double dose of thanks to Cecil, Howard, Julia, Rachel, Tom, and Susan.)

Carrie Richerson for her ability to detect mushy spots in

characterization. My husband Richard for the worst pun in the book. Our

son Michael for patience with a writing parent. Michael Fossel, M.D.,

Ph.D., for stimulating discussions of rejuvenation. Ruta Duhon for weekly

doses of sanity even when writing gets wild.

Mistakes and errors are all mine, not theirs.

Note to Readers

Readers familiar with Change of Command will notice a temporal overlap

between the last part of that book, and the first part of this one. Here

the first chapter starts between the mutiny and the second assassination.

Newcomers may wish a bit more background.

The Familias Regnant is a political assembly of great families, now spread

across hundreds of solar systems. Centuries ago, they combined their

individual family militias into the Regular Space Service, which has the

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dual mission of policing the spaceways and defending the Familias from

external attack.

In the previous book, Change of Command, longstanding dissension and

unrest in the R.S.S. came to a head and elements of the Fleet mutinied.

The mutineers first struck at the Fleet training planet, Copper Mountain,

freeing some of the prisoners from a high-security brig on a remote

island. The rest they massacred. Their original plan had included taking

over a weapons research facility, but loyalists managed to prevent that,

at least for the moment. Unfortunately, the mutineers managed to destroy

their transportation: the loyalists are marooned.

CHAPTER ONE

Copper Mountain,

Fleet Weapons Research Facility

A cold wind swept the barren top of Stack Two; Ensign Margiu Pardalt's

eyes ached from squinting into it. Broad daylight now; the wind had long

since swept away the bitter stench of the seaplane fires. Where were the

mutineers? Surely they would land, to snatch the weapons they knew had

been designed here. Had the message she'd tried to send using the old

technology actually reached anyone, or would the mutineers get away with

their whole plan? And when would they come . . . when would they come to

kill her?

"This is stupid," Professor Gustaf Aidersson said. Bundled in his yellow

leather jacket over his Personal Protective Unit, with a peculiar gray

furry hat on his head, he looked more like a tubby vagrant than a

brilliant scientist. "When I was a boy, I used to imagine things like

this, being marooned on an island and having to figure out a way to get

home. I had thousands of plans, each one crazier than the one before. Make

a boat out of my grandmother's porch swing, make an airplane out of the

solar collector, take the juicer and a skein of yarn, two cups, and a

knitting needle and make a communications device."

Margiu wondered whether to say anything; she couldn't feel her ears

anymore.

"So here we are, on the perfect island, full of challenges. I should be

improvising rappelling gear to go down the cliffs, and something to

construct a sailboat . . . I actually have built a boat, you know, but it

was with wood from a lumberyard. And I sailed it, and it didn't sink. Of

course, it wouldn't hold all of us."

"Sir," Margiu said, "don't you think we should go back inside?"

"Probably." He didn't move. "And there is not one thing on this blasted

island to make a boat or an airplane out of." He gave a last look at the

blackened stain that had been their transport. Then he looked at Margiu

and his mouth quirked in a mischievous grin. "There's only one thing to

do, when the bad guys have all the transport . . ."

"Sir?"

"Make them give it to us," he said, and headed inside so abruptly that

Margiu was left behind. She caught up with him as he went in the door.

"Make them-?"

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"It's a desperate chance . . . but by God it'll be fun if it works," he

said. He looked around the room at the scientists and military personnel

who were also stranded. "Listen-I have an idea!"

"You always have an idea, Gussie," one of the scientists said. Margiu

still hadn't sorted them all out by name. They all looked tired and

grumpy. "You probably want us to make an airplane out of bedsprings or

something . . ."

"No. I thought of that, but we don't have enough bedsprings. I want the

mutineers to bring us an airplane and give it to us."

"What?"

The professor launched into an enthusiastic explanation. In the few

seconds from outside to inside, his idea had already developed elaborate

additions. The others looked blank.

Major Garson was the first to nod. "Yeah-the only way to get transport is

to get them to give it to us. But it's not going to be easy. They've got a

lot more troops topside than we have . . . they can scorch us with the

shuttle weaponry, for that matter."

"So our first job is to convince them we're not that dangerous," the

professor said. He had taken off his hat and shoved it into a pocket; his

thinning gray fringe stuck up in untidy peaks.

"Do they even know how many of us there were?" asked Margiu. "They don't

know the planes were full, do they? Vinet didn't get any messages up to

them-"

"No . . . that's right. And except during the firefight last night, we've

been mostly undercover. But they'd be stupid to come in carelessly," Major

Garson said. "Never count on the enemy to be careless."

"But-" The professor held up his hand a moment, then nodded. "But suppose,

using Margiu's radio apparatus, we give them what looks like accidental

clues. We try to contact them, pretending to be mutineers fighting with

scientists-"

"No, wait!" That was the skinny man with wild black hair. Ty, Margiu

remembered. "Look, they know the loyalists have the radio now. Suppose we

send a message, like we hope it'll bounce around to mainland, begging for

help. And then break off. And then an hour or so later, there's a message

to them from some of the military pretending to be mutineers, and then-"

"How would the mutineers know how to use that equipment?" Garson said.

"It's nothing Fleet-trained people would know unless they happened on it

somewhere else, like Ensign Pardalt. And besides, it's too fragile. It

could get shot up in a firefight."

"Suppose we say the radio's the loyalists'," Margiu said. The others

looked at her. "And we're begging for help from the mainland, like he

said." She nodded at Ty. "But of course it doesn't come. We sound more and

more desperate-we talk about being hunted by the mutineers, about the

people killed in the explosions of the planes, and then the food

shortages-the mutineers have all the supplies . . ."

"Yes! That's good," the professor said. "And we'll move the thing around,

so when they trace the signal they'll know someone's trying to stay in

hiding-and then we'll take it underground . . ."

"We'll need a visible force of baddies," the major said. "A squad'll do

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for that. Local uniforms . . . and PPUs can look like anything, with the

right setting. We've got the suitcoms for local-have to have our people

stay in character."

"So . . . what are we going to do if we get the shuttle? They can always

shoot us down before we get anywhere."

"Not that easy if they come down with one of the combat troop shuttles,

sir," said one of the neuro-enhanced Marines. "They're hardened and highly

maneuverable."

"Which brings up-who's going to fly it?"

"I'm shuttle-qualified," said one of the pilots. "Ken's not, but Bernie

is."

"If you're qualified to fly troop shuttles, why are you on seaplanes down

here?"

"Fleet has a lot more shuttle pilots than seaplane pilots," the pilot

said, spreading his hands. "Only a few of us mess around with the

old-fashioned stuff."

"Bob . . . what about Zed?"

"On a shuttle, LAC size? No problem, Gussie. It'll fit, and we can use it.

Like I said, it'd hide something the size of this island, let alone a

shuttle."

The professor glanced again at Garson. "Then, Major, if you'll divide us

into loyalists and mutineers-giving me the tech-trained people-and set up

a scenario for us to act-"

"We'll have to do something about those bodies. . . ." Garson said, and

gestured to some of the men.

Margiu had never had close contact with scientists before this, and if

she'd thought about them at all, she'd had a storycube image of vast

intelligence applied step-by-step to some arcane problem. They would be

solitary, so they could concentrate; they would be serious, sober,

abstracted.

They would not, for instance, waste any moment of their precious

preparation time playing some incomprehensible game that involved a

singsong chant, puns, and childish insults, dissolving into laughter every

few seconds.

"Your starfish eats dirt," the professor finished.

"Oh, that's old, Gussie." But the others were grinning, relaxed.

"So now-we're going to get them to bring us a ship, and then let us fly

away?"

"We'll have Zed on-they won't see us."

"They'll see the moving hole where we were," Swearingen said. "It's a lot

harder to hide things in planetary atmospheres.

"Not with Zed," Helmut Swearingen said. "We've solved that problem, or

most of it. The thing is, all they have to do is hit a line across our

course-and since we have to fly to the mainland-"

"Why?" the professor asked; he had found a cache of candy and spoke around

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a lump of chocolate. "It's the obvious thing, of course, but being obvious

won't help us now. At the very least we can zig and zag . . ."

"Not forever . . . we have to come down somewhere."

"Maybe," the professor said. "And maybe not. Suppose they think we've

blown up or something. We could toss fireworks out the back-"

"Oh come on, Gussie! The fake explosion while the real vessel gets away is

the oldest trick in the book." Swearingen looked disgusted.

"Because it works," the professor said. "All it has to do is distract them

long enough for us to make a course change. Two points define a straight

line: they have takeoff and the explosion. If we aren't at an extension of

that line, they'll have no idea where we are."

"It's ridiculous! It's all straight out of storytime. I have to agree with

Helmut-"

"There's a reason for stories being the way they are," the professor said.

"Yes, they're for the stupid or the ignorant, to keep them out of our way

while we do the work . . ." Swearingen said.

"Can you even name one time in real life-not your pseudo-history-when

someone faked an explosion and escaped in a vessel the enemy thought was

blown up?"

The professor blinked rapidly, as if at a long sequence of pages. "There

are plenty of ruses in military history-"

"Not just ruses, Gussie, but that hoary old cliche of faking the explosion

of an engine, or a ship, or something . . ."

"Commander Heris Serrano," Margiu said, surprising herself. "When she was

just a lieutenant. She trailed a weapons pod past a fixed defense point,

and when it blew it blinded the sensors long enough for her to get her

ship past. Or Brun Thornbuckle, during her rescue, sent the shuttle as a

decoy after landing on the orbital station."

"You see?" the professor said, throwing out his hands. "A hoary old cliche

still works."

"It works better if you keep them busy thinking about other things,"

Margiu said.

"Like what?" one of the others asked her.

"Anything. Because you're also right, if they see the shuttle taking off

and then it disappears, and then something blows up, they're going to be

suspicious."

"So we don't have it disappear until just at the explosion."

"We have Zed, but the controls aren't that good. Not yet."

Silence for a long moment. Then one of the pilots said, "Look-the shuttle

will have a working com, right? The bad guys will want to be in touch with

the shuttle crew."

"Yes . . ."

"So we continue our little charade on the shuttle. Suppose . . . suppose

we talk about the weapons we've recovered. We're trying to see how they

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work-"

"They're not going to believe their people would do something that

stupid."

"Wouldn't they?"

"But-" Everyone turned to look at Margiu. She could feel the ideas

bubbling up in her mind like turbulence in boiling water. "Suppose the bad

guys-ours, I mean-said they also had the scientists-and they were

questioning them-and they found out one of the things was a stealth

device. And they wanted to try it, to see if it really worked-"

"That would explain the disappearance. Good, Margiu!"

"I still think they'd be suspicious."

"Spoilsport." The professor sighed, and rubbed his balding head. "But

you're probably right. Let's see. Our pseudo-bad guys question the

scientists . . ." He pitched his voice into falsetto. "Please don't hurt

me-I vill tell you effryting."

"Good lord, Gussie, what archaic accent is that?"

"I don't know-I heard it on a soundtrack years ago. Don't interrupt . . .

so the scientists act like terrified victims and maybe that can be

overheard. And then they turn Zed on, and it works-"

"And it's still as transparent as glass," Bob said.

"So I'll scratch it up-YES!" The professor leaped up and danced in a

circle. "Yes, yes, yes! Brilliant. Scratchy, like old recordings, old-time

radio-break-up-"

"What?! Damn it, Gussie, this is serious-"

"I am serious. I am just momentarily transported by my own brilliance. And

yours, and Margiu's here." He calmed down, took a breath, and went on.

"Like this: the normal takeoff, the threats of the bad guys, the terror of

the scientists. But then, when they-we-turn Zed on, it doesn't keep

working. It sort of-" he waggled his hand. "Sort of flickers. They hear an

argument-more threats, more piteous pleadings, curses at some fool who-I

don't know, kicks the power cable or something. The shuttle is there, then

it isn't, then it is-but always on the same course. A voice shouting in

the background: be careful, be careful, don't overload it, it wasn't

designed for-! And then the explosion, and then the course change."

A long silence this time, as they all digested what the professor had

said. He mopped his face, his head, and pushed the crumpled, stained

handkerchief into his pocket.

"It does explain everything," Swearingen said. "It gives them more to

think about, more complications."

"It seems to give them more data," said Bob. "But all the data are false.

It might work."

"So what we need is something to make a big bang, that will look like a

shuttle blowing up on the bad guys' scan from upstairs . . . which we can

get far enough away from before it blows that we don't also blow . . ."

"Something, yes."

The group dissolved as the scientists wandered off. Margiu, used to direct

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orders and a clear set of directions, felt let down as she followed the

professor down one passage after another. Were they ever going to go to

work? And what would Major Garson think, with her just wandering around

idly watching someone who seemed to have very little idea what he was

doing.

But that, she soon found out, was a mistake. After a rapid tour of the

ground-floor levels of the site, the professor found Major Garson and

began suggesting where to put what. Garson, meanwhile, was working on his

own pretense. He had divided his troops and assigned the NEMs to play

mutineer.

"If they think the NEMs are mutineers," he said, "they'll believe that the

loyalists are in serious trouble. Also, the NEMs are so big and bulky that

it's hard to get facial detail when they're in their p-suits with the

head-jacks. That means I can move them around and have them play more

parts."

Margiu glanced at the NEMs sitting around, half of them sticking

odd-shaped patches to their p-suits. One of them grinned at her. "The bad

guys are old Lepescu cronies," he said. "They take ears from their kills.

So-we thought we'd use an ear shape openly, as a recognition patch. No one

else would." He slid the tube of adhesive back in one of the pockets.

"Come along, Ensign," said the professor; Margiu followed him, glancing

back at the NEMs who were clustered there. She hoped they were all

loyalists.

Twelve hours later the whole situation felt even more unreal.

Periodically, Margiu and the professor joined Garson and one of the troops

and scuttled rapidly from one building to another, following a plan of

Garson's that had the loyalists trying to evade the "mutineers." The NEMs

pretending to be mutineers, meanwhile, shot entirely too close for

Margiu's comfort, and shattered all the ground-floor windows. Far

underground, with doors shut against the wicked drafts from above, the

scientists and remaining troops had organized the collection of boxes,

cylinders, cables, and things that looked like leftovers from a junk heap

onto pallets.

On one of their tours through the working areas, the professor shook his

head over the tarps used to cover the loads before lashing them down.

"It's too bad they destroyed those seaplanes," he said. "Look-these would

have made wonderful sails, and we could have built a ship with the frames

of the planes."

"No, we could not," Swearingen said. "I can just see us now, Gussie,

setting sail in something you whipped together with stickypatch and hairs

pulled from your beard. Which aren't long enough to make ropes, in case

you hadn't noticed."

"Rope . . ." the professor said, his eyes going hazy in what Margiu now

knew meant a moment of thought. "We're going to need one really good cable

to make this work . . ."

"There was cable in the planes," one of the pilots said. "But now-"

"Spares," said the other. "They had to stock spares somewhere around

here-" He looked around the room they were in, bare to the walls except

for the pallets.

"I know," offered one of the scientists. "What's the cable for, Gussie?"

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"Towing the explosive," Gussie said. "We don't want to just drop it . . .

then we'd have to delay its explosion, and it'd be below our last visible

position. We want to tow it . . ."

"Out the back of a troop shuttle," said the first pilot, blinking. "I'm

beginning to wish I weren't shuttle-qualified."

"It's doable," said the other. "I did a practice equipment drop once, and

they shove the stuff out the back with a static line-there's a kind of

yank, and then it's gone . . ."

"Fine; you can fly that part of it," said the first.

"What bothers me," said another scientist, "is the scan analysis of the

explosion. If they've got somebody good up there-and we have to assume

they do-then they're going to expect shuttle components in the explosion.

You've proposed that we use some of the weaponry in development, and it

certainly will make a big enough bang. But it won't have any

shuttle-specific ID. Once they realize that, they'll know we're still

around."

"What kind of stuff would it take?" Garson asked. "Can we just throw out

the life rafts or something?"

"No, it's the explosion itself. They'll expect some differences, because

they'll know the shuttle has exotic new stuff on it, but the shuttle

itself, when it explodes, would contribute recognizable chemical

signatures. The shuttle weaponry, for instance, would be assumed to go up

with it."

"Why not just add the shuttle's weapons pods to the tow load?" asked

Margiu. Everyone stopped and looked at her.

"Of course!" The professor, unsurprisingly, was the first to recover

speech. He beamed at her. "Didn't I say redheads were naturally

brilliant?"

"But that would leave us with no weapons . . ." Garson said.

"But we weren't going to fight our way out with the shuttle anyway," said

the professor. "We're just using it as transport. We know we can't take on

a deepspace ship."

Garson chewed this over a long moment. Finally he nodded. "All right. It

makes sense, I just . . . don't like not having them. But as you said,

they'll do us more good proving we're not there, when we are. I'll add

that to our list of priorities once we get aboard. Be sure we have extra

tiedowns and pallets, though."

The troop shuttle made a careful circle around the island; its onboard

scans could pick out details from a distance that made light weapons

ineffective. The NEMS clustered on the runway with the little huddle of

scientists obviously under guard and the tarp-wrapped bundles of the cargo

beside them. The shuttle made another approach, this time dropping out a

communications-array bundle. The NEM commander grabbed it and flicked it

on. Margiu could hear what he said, but not what the shuttle crew

answered.

"No-we were mainland based-at Big Tree-waiting, but we got grabbed for

this mission-yeah-no. No, he died in the first firefight. Got his body, if

you want it. I've got his ears. . . ."

The shuttle swung back, slower yet, and settled onto the runway. Margiu

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had not realized how loud such shuttles were, if no one bothered to baffle

the exhaust. She could hear nothing but its own whining roar. The great

hatch in the rear swung down, forming a ramp. Five men came out, weapons

ready. Surely there weren't just five . . . no, there came another five,

setting up a perimeter.

The NEMs waved; the newcomers waved back as they came forward. Margiu

could sense the moment in which they decided it was all right, when their

attention shifted from the "mutineers" to the scientists and their

equipment. Margiu flicked through the channels on her p-suit headset, and

found the active one.

"Got 'em all, did you?"

"Except the dead ones," one of the NEMs said. "Listen, we've got to get

all this aboard-and there's another load packed up inside. How many

personnel d'you have?"

"Eighteen. They want us to hurry it up-"

"Come on, then." Half the NEMs turned, as if to head back inside; the

others were still obviously guarding the scientist-prisoners.

"Barhide-come on down-" said one of the newcomers. Eight more armed men

came down the shuttle's ramp.

These were much less wary, their weapons now slung on their backs.

"We're goin' in to pick up the rest of the cargo," she heard one of them

say, and someone aboard the shuttle-a pilot, she hoped-told them to hurry

it up.

With her primary task still the professor's life, she had no part in the

brief, violent struggle that followed, when the NEMs and the other

loyalist troops jumped the mutineers and killed them, while the putative

rebel NEMS chivvied the scientists toward the shuttle, talking loudly on

open mikes. It took less than two minutes, and most of it had happened out

of sight of scan from overhead. Margiu scrambled out of her p-suit into

the gray shipsuit of the dead enemy, rolled him into her p-suit, and let

one of the NEMs haul him out by the legs. She crammed the com helmet on

her head, tucking the telltale red hair out of sight, and stalked out onto

the runway as if she belonged there.

The cargo was moving slowly up the ramp, with the laboring scientists

complaining vociferously that it was dangerous, that it could blow them

all up, that they should be careful. The NEMs swung their weapons,

threateningly; scientists cringed; Margiu found it hard to believe it

wasn't real. From the unreality of those hours of waiting, when it was

real, to this-the reversal confused her, but she found herself playing her

part anyway.

They made it onto the shuttle, Margiu and the others working under the

scientists' directions to get the cargo lashed down. Out of the corner of

her eye, she saw one of the mutineer flight crew peering through from the

flight deck.

"How much longer?" he called.

"They say it could blow us all to hell if it wiggles in flight," the NEM

sergeant said. "And it's heavy-you don't want it to shift."

The other man grinned. "All right, all right. Just try to hurry it up.

Admiral wants to boost out of this system now we've been spotted . . ."

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Margiu turned her head away, afraid her expression would be too obvious.

So her half-remembered design had worked, had it? And somewhere, sometime

soon if not already, Fleet would find out what was going on at Copper

Mountain. At least that had worked, and if she died today, she would have

done something worthwhile.

When they had the last of the equipment in the shuttle, one of the NEMs

signalled the shuttle pilots-Margiu couldn't hear what was said, but the

sudden lurch of the shuttle made it clear they were moving. Their own

pilots, wearing dead mutineers' uniforms, stood near the front, ready to

take over from the mutineers when they had enough altitude and the stealth

equipment was ready to use.

They had been airborne perhaps ten minutes-the wrinkled blue sea had

become a hazy blue carpet far below-when Major Garson worked his way

forward past the pallets and tiedowns to the front. He spoke to the NEM

sergeant, and then the waiting pilots. Margiu's stomach clenched. She

glanced at the professor, who was grinning. She wondered if he was ever

scared, or if having a constant ferment of crazy ideas protected him from

fear.

Only one NEM could fit on the flight deck, but armored as he was, the

sergeant should be safe from most weapons the pilots might carry. And

they'd shown no concern about their passengers.

The NEM went through onto the flight deck; the first pilot followed

closely. Margiu took a good grip of the stanchion; they'd all been warned

to get a good handhold, just in case. In case of what, she'd wondered.

The shuttle nosed over sickeningly, and Margiu's stomach rose to the back

of her throat. What was happening up front? Weight slammed back onto her,

as the shuttle pitched up, then lifted as the nose dropped once more. She

gulped, swallowed, gulped, and just managed not to spew. Someone else

wasn't so lucky. Her imagination raced through scenarios-the mutineer

pilots trying to crash the shuttle; the loyalist pilots trying not to let

them, the scan crews up on the station reacting to the shuttle's erratic

movements with demands for information. The downward pitch levelled

slowly, and weight returned, stabilized.

The flight deck door opened, and one of their own looked out. "He was

willing to suicide-" he said shakily. "But we've got it now."

"To your places," the professor said. Margiu made her way to the rear of

the shuttle, and had, from that vantage, a clear view of the actors as

they went about their pretense.

Margiu found the experience very unlike watching a storycube, even though

she understood the plot: knowing, as she did, that the conversation was

faked on one end, she couldn't help worrying that it was faked on the

other end as well.

Surely the mutineers weren't taken in by the pretense? Surely they would

realize soon enough that the cross talk between the supposedly mutinous

NEM and the cringing scientist was too contrived to be real? That the

irregular alternation of disappearance and reappearance from scan had to

be a setup? Surely they would catch on when the ship disappeared that

final time, and then there was an explosion . . . She glanced at the

professor, who was nodding and grimacing at the "actors."

What if the mutineers had a vid scan in here? He was enjoying himself far

too much to be a real scientist captured by mutineers and forced to betray

file:///F|/rah/Elizabeth%20Moon/Moon,%20Eliz...20Legacy%2007%20-%20Against%20The%20Odds.txt (10 of 291) [5/20/03 11:42:02 PM]

Elizabeth Moon - Serrano 7 - Against the Odds

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