Free Empire's End by Chris Bunch; Allan Cole Page A

gettin’ on, ‘n Ah’m noo lookin’t forward’t’ bein’t a Resurrection Man. Shall we be gettin‘ at it?”
    The Mantis soldiers who had died on Vulcan—Jorgensen, Frick, Frack—had been friends of Kilgour’s as well. Alex himself had almost died, defusing a nuke.
    Sten nodded, then realized there was no way Alex could see the gesture through the thick alloy helmet.
    “Let’s move.”
    He touched controls and sent his suit jetting forward, on its tiny Yukawa drive, toward the main clump of wreckage— Vulcan’s central core.
    He was probably being foolish, but rather than use one of the deep-space worksuits—which were really small spaceships with a tiny bicycle-type seat and room enough to scratch when and where it inevitably itched—he and Kilgour had corseted themselves into fighting armor.
    Vulcan, he had rationalized, might still have a McLean generator on, and some gravity. Or maybe its whirling bulk would give some weight, and it would be better walking rather than trying to fly the canister-shaped deep-space suits through the corridors.
    Behind him the Victory hung, with the destroyer Aoife as screen. He had ordered the Bennington and Aisling to proceed directly to Sten’s eventual final destination, after his minifleet had spent several ship-days after the raid pursuing nonrational trajectories, eluding pursuit.
    Beyond the Victory he also had a full flotilla of tacships on CAP around Vulcan.
    A trap was unlikely.
    But Sten had not lived to his present age without being careful, native caution his training had amplified. One commandment, going back into prehistory and old Earth, was from an odd unit called Rogers’ Rangers—“Don’t never take no chances unless you have to.”
    The question now was, Where in this scrapheap was he to look?
    “Sten.” It was Freston, back aboard Victory . He had demoted himself from captain to man the com board and was sitting on an open-miked tightbeam caster to the suited men.
    “I’ve got a transmission.”
    “Where?”
    “From Vulcan. A very weak broadband signal’s coming from the core. Weak, and erratic. Like an SAR beacon that’s running dry. I’ve gotten a triangulation from the Aoife . On your orientation, it’s at twelve o’clock, near the tip.”
    “That was called the Eye,” Sten advised. “Stand by.”
    He braked the suit, killing velocity and steering toward Alex, aiming himself so his suit’s own directional com pointed directly toward Kilgour.
    “Ah heard,” Alex said, without preamble. “An* thae raises more sarky questions thae i‘ answers. If Mahoney left somethin’ aboot, p’raps he’d bolt a wee transponder to it. T‘ make life simpler f’r us.
    “But Mahoney whidny hae left i‘ runnin’, i‘ i’s a truly deepy darky secret, aye? He would’a keyed it’t’ go off frae somethin‘ or someone when thae got close. Playin’ Cold an‘ Warm wi’ the bairns, as it were. Nae’t‘ mention battery life an’ such, which i‘ Preston’s watchin’ his gauges, seems to be runnin’t doon.”
    “Possibly,” Sten agreed. “Which means that somebody else set it off.”
    “Wi’out knowin‘ it or wi’out bein’ able to retrieve th‘ goodies. Or th’ whole thing’s boobytrapped an‘ th’ mad bomber had nae th‘ patience’t’ let us find his handiwork blind an‘ then blowin’t ourselves oop.”
    “Right. Which gives us something to really worry about— once we’re onboard.”
    “Aye. Noo. Home’s been narrowed, assumin’t we’re thinkin’t correct, an‘ yon beepitybeepity’s noo a wild signal frae some bit ae forsook electronics.”
    “Agreed. Home’s somewhere in the Eye. Something that we knew about. Or I did, anyway. Our hideout—that old liner—was around there. Nope. DNC. Mahoney wouldn’t know about that. Maybe his old office, when he was spying out the land, pretending to be a recruiter? Maybe—but that does not compute easily, either. Mahoney wouldn’t chance us remembering where it