The Serrano Connection (118 page)

"He means you," Professor Meyerson said to Prima. "You're in danger now."

"We must retake the Rangers' houses, and cleanse them of the filth of contamination—destroy the infidels with holy fire—"

"Not that there's anything really to worry about," the marine major said; his voice overrode the other man's on the com. "All they've got is old-fashioned small arms and big knives. You'll be safe enough in the ground transport—"

"No," Hazel said. "They have whatever was on
Elias Madero
. They said so, when they were talking after I was captured."

"What
was
on
Elias Madero
?" Barin asked. "Ship weapons?"

"I don't know, but something bad, something they'd stolen from Fleet."

A cold wave ran down Barin's spine, as if someone had swiped along it with a piece of ice. The Guernesi had talked about arms traffickers and stolen weapons . . . and Esmay had mentioned that her captain was concerned about missing nuclear warheads.

"Major, it could be a lot worse than that—these guys may have our missing nukes."

A pause, in which the ranting voice went on about sin and defilement and tyranny. Then: "I
knew
we shouldn't have brought a Serrano along. Things always get
interesting
with a Serrano along. All right, Ensign, suppose you tell the admiral while I see what I can do to keep these guys from using whatever it is they've got."

Barin had just presence of mind to sever the connection to the cube reader's speakers, then switched channels to contact
Navarino
in orbit.

"We're on it," he was told first. "Monitoring all local transmissions . . . and we have scan working on locating any fissionables. Get those kids out now, if you can."

"I don't want to be another man's servant," Prima said suddenly. "I don't want my children brought up in another man's house. . . ."

Barin spared her a glance, but no more; he was trying to patch into ship's scan and see if he could spot anything. Then Prima grabbed his arm.

"You—your grandmother is really the commander? And you are a man of her family—you must give me your protection."

"I'm trying," Barin said.

"I want to go," Prima said. "Me, all my children. Take me to my husband."

Barin stared at her, startled out of his immediate concern. "Take you—? You mean, to the ship?"

"Yes. That man—" She pointed at the now-blank screen. "He will give me to someone else; he may tell them to mute me just because I have talked with you—and if he knew I had killed Jed last night, he would certainly do so." Heavily, with no grace at all, she knelt in front of Barin. "I claim you as my protector, in place of my husband."

Barin glanced around; Professor Meyerson had her usual expression of alert interest, and the guards looked frankly amused. "I—let me talk to my grandmother," he said. When in doubt, ask help.

"No—it is you I claim."

"She means it," Meyerson said. "And she'll probably do something drastic if you don't agree."

And he had always wanted command track. Well, he had it now. "Fine," he said. "You're under my protection. Get your household together—"

"I can't speak for the other wives," Prima said.

"Would he give
them
away? Mute
them
?"

"Yes . . ."

"Then you jolly well
can
speak for them, and you have. Get them together; don't bring anything but warm bodies." He chinned his comunit. "Major, we're going to be bringing out the whole household. I don't even know how many—" He looked at Hazel, who shook her head. Even she didn't know. "More transports," he said, trying to think if they'd have shuttle space. If they crammed in, if nobody blew the shuttles on the way up—

People started crowding into the front hall: women, carrying babies; girls leading younger girls, boys pushing younger boys ahead of them, and one man—a narrow, angular fellow that Barin disliked on sight. They all stared at Barin and the guards, but there was less noise than he expected. The girls were all looking silently at the floor; the boys were all staring silently, with obvious awe and longing, at the soldiers' weapons.

Prima made her way through the crowd and dipped her head to him, which made Barin acutely uncomfortable.

"May I speak?"

"Yes," he said. "Of course."

"I have sent messengers to the other Rangers' houses—by the women's doors—to their ladies."

"What? No!" But even as he said it, he realized it must be so. "You think—"

"You said I could speak for the other wives. As you are my protector, so you are theirs, through me; it is your people who killed their husbands, after all."

Barin looked over the crowd that filled the hall from side to side, and was packed into the rear passages—somewhere between fifty and a hundred people, he was sure, and made the easy calculation.

"We need more shuttles," he murmured to himself. And what of the male relatives of the other Rangers, who were surely in their houses as—what was his name? That fellow Ranger Bowie had been talking to—had been here. Wouldn't they resist? He could not possibly get that many people out of a city in riot, without casualties. A child whimpered, and someone shushed it.

"What's your situation, Ensign?"

Waiting for inspiration
, he could have said. Instead, he gave his report as succinctly as possible, into the hissing void of the comunit, which hissed emptily at him for long enough to make him worry. Then his grandmother's voice in his ear.

"Am I to understand that you have undertaken the evacuation to our ships of the entire civilian population of that misbegotten excuse for a city?"

"No sir: only about five hundred of them. Rangers' households."

"And upon whose authority?"

"It . . . had become a matter of family honor, sir. And Familias honor."

"I see. In that case, I suppose we are bound to support your actions, if only to have you present and accounted for when the bill comes in." His grandmother, according to rumor which he had never cared to test, could remove a laggard officer's hide in a single spiraling strip, from crown of head to tip of toe, without raising her voice. He felt dangerously close to finding out whether she would use its full powers on a callow young descendant.

"Contact!" That was the marine major in charge of the landing party. "We are being fired upon; say again: we are receiving hostile fire."

"Engagement code: open green." His grandmother's voice when speaking to the others was flat and edgeless. "Say again: engagement code is open green."

Open green . . . new objective, new rules of engagement. She had given it to him. Barin felt a simultaneous lift and sink of the heart which almost made him sick, then he steadied to it.

"In support of Ensign Serrano and an unknown number of civilians, in the hundreds, who will be embarking for evacuation—open green."

He could hear the suck of the major's indrawn breath: the ground support more than adequate for a small party was far from adequate to protect and escort hundreds.

"Support on the way—"

He tried to calculate how long it would take, whether they would have to draw shuttles and troops from the other cruisers, from
Shrike
. Then he shook his mind away from that, which was someone else's task, to his own, which was organizing this mass into the most protectable, in the safest possible place to await what his grandmother would send.

To Prima, still waiting before him, he said, "They will send more shuttles, but it will take time. We will keep you as safe as possible, but—" But . . . if the rioters knew where the nukes were, if they could trigger them, there was no safety. "—If you know anything of outland weapons, where they are hidden, it would help."

"I know somethin'." That was a boy, perhaps thirteen, now waving his arm.

"What?" he asked.

"Daddy gave Uncle Jed his key, an' told him right afore he left to go hunt down that runaway girlie."

Key. That would be an arming key. Barin's stomach curled into a tight cold knot.

"And where's your uncle Jed, do you think?"

"On the floor in there—" Prima waved toward a door across the hall. "I couldn't think what to do, so I left him—"

"Check it," Barin said to the guards. One of them went in, shutting the door behind him on the smell of death that had puffed out into the hall.

"Looks like an arming key, on a chain around his neck. In the pockets—another key, different—looks like he has the primary for one system, and the secondary for another."

But how many systems were there, and how many men held the keys, and did they know in what order to use them? He could not count on the other Rangers' wives to poleax their husbands' relatives.

"We have two arming keys," Barin reported to the major. "From Ranger Bowie's brother. I expect each Ranger had one or more keys and left them with a successor."

"How many troops do you have with you?"

"Only the four, as escort."

"Damn. We need to get those keys out of those houses, before we all form a pretty fireworks display. These guys are insane—you should see how they're acting out here."

Barin could hear, in the distance, noises like those on a live-fire range.

Esmay Suiza, back on the bridge of
Shrike
where she belonged, discovered that everyone aboard—including Captain Solis, who had given up the last of his doubts about her intentions—was treating her with excessive care. All the special crew borrowed from
Navarino
had gone back to their ship—Meharry, she knew, would not have treated her as if she were delicate crystal, just because she'd had a spell of hypoxia. She felt quite fit for regular duty, more than willing to go back to work rather than sit by Brun's side as she dozed in regen. If she could have been on
Gyrfalcon
, with Barin, that might've been different, but soon enough they'd be back at some base, where they could finish what they'd started.

"I'm fine," she said, to the third offer of a chance to take a break. "It's my watch—" She caught the edge of a significant glance from Solis to Chief Barlow on communications. "What? Am I making mistakes?"

"No, Lieutenant, you're doing fine. It's just that there have been . . . developments."

Something cold crawled through her chest, down toward her toes. "Developments?"

"Yes . . . while you were offwatch, the landing party went down to retrieve those children . . ."

"What's wrong?"

"There've been . . . complications. And—Admiral Serrano's grandson is down there."

Barin was down there? "Why?" came out in an accusatory tone she had not meant to use to her captain. "I mean," she said, trying to recover, "I didn't think an ensign would be chosen for such a team."

"He wasn't, originally. But he's there now, and since you and he—well, so I understand—"

"Yes," Esmay said firmly. Whatever else might be secret, that wasn't any longer.

"He's managed to get himself into a right mess, and we're supposed to help him out, but I do not think you should be on the team. You've already had your stint at suited combat—"

"I'm fine," Esmay said. "I am perfectly recovered, passed by medical, one hundred and ten percent. It is of course the captain's choice—"

Solis snorted. "Don't start
that
again. One time for each trick. Besides, he had to chew his nails over your exploits on the station; it's only fair for you to reciprocate."

"War isn't about fair," Esmay muttered. To her surprise, that got a flashing smile.

"You're right there, Suiza, and if I decide your talents are needed, be sure I'll send you. If you can assure me that being in love with the Admiral's grandson won't warp your judgement or affect your performance."

"I'm not in love with the Admiral's grandson," Esmay said. "I'm in love with Barin. Sir."

Another look between captain and chief; she felt her ears heating.

"Wonderful," Solis said, in a tone that could be taken in several ways.

The crackle of gunfire was nearer, as was the
crump
and crash of Fleet light-duty guns. Barin felt he should be doing
something
with his menagerie, but he couldn't figure out what. If he took them out in the street to head for the port, they could be shot; if he kept them here, they were a grand target.

"Serrano—taxi's here, room for fifteen."

That simplified things slightly. "Sera Takeris, Professor—take the
Elias Madero
children, the babies, and—let's see—" Room for fifteen adults . . . make that two adults, four small children, and—surely he could cram in ten babies. No, another adult and ten babies. "Prima, bring eight more babies, if you have them, and a reliable woman to care for them."