Hidden Empire - Kevin J. Anderson [147]
"You're evacuating, sir?" asked the shift boss.
"Now!" he yelled. "Scatter while you can."
The diamond globes rose toward the defenseless Erphano skymine. Alarms shrieked louder while the bridge crew scrambled. Announcements bellowed through the intercoms. Berndt Okiah damned himself for not foreseeing this specific situation, for not conducting more drills, but even so his people reacted quickly and efficiently, including Junna.
Berndt went to the communications console, shoving the technician aside and telling her to get a seat aboard one of the scout vessels. He broadcast an open frequency signal. "Alien ships, we mean you no harm. We are here in peace." He waited, but no signals throbbed through the Erphano skymine. "We are no threat to you. Please communicate. Tell us what you want."
Again, no reply.
Already, a flurry of tiny scout ships launched from the drifting facility, streaking off into the open clouds toward what they hoped was safety. But each of those ships could hold a maximum of three, maybe four people. Berndt couldn't possibly get all of his crew away in time.
The five alien globes climbed to the level of the skymine, shimmering, hiding misty secrets inside their murky cores. Each curved vessel was immense, a diameter larger than six Roamer cloud mines. Berndt Okiah had seen these awful things on the images the EDF had captured from Oncier.
The pyramidal protrusions from the smooth hulls crackled with rising intensity. Blue lightning skittered from point to point, building up.
The skymine's bridge deck was empty now, except for himself and two crew members who had stayed behind. "Maybe they want the ekti!" an old veteran shouted.
Alien pirates who also wanted to steal stardrive fuel? Berndt thought. No explanation made sense. His fingers danced over the controls, disengaging the transport container filled with the valuable hydrogen allotrope. He broadcast on all channels, "Take our cargo, but please don't harm us. We have three hundred souls onboard—families, women and children." The plea sounded foolish even as he spoke. How could an alien care about such things?
Cargo canisters of ekti dropped away, and Berndt moved the skymine across the sky, hauling the large facility away at its clumsy top speed. The expensive cargo tumbled into Erphano's clouds like an offering...or a ransom. Berndt's heart fell when the alien globes ignored the ekti and continued to close in on the skymine.
He could easily have rigged the fuel canisters to detonate. Perhaps the explosion would have been great enough to crack open one of the diamond globes...but most likely not. And there were five of the city-sized monstrosities. Though they had not yet opened fire, he knew he was doomed either way.
"Time to separate the habitation module," Berndt said, his last desperate measure. "We'll have to sacrifice the skymine and hope the aliens follow the larger factory and let us get away."
Bolts and clamps blasted apart as their connectors were broken. The separable main deck rose away from the lumbering industrial facility, carrying most of the skymine's crew members. Looking chagrined but defiant, young Junna climbed back onto the bridge deck. Before Berndt could shout at his daughter for not making good her escape, his wife climbed up beside him. "Oh, Marta!" His heart melted, and he shook his head, wanting to damn them for the foolish love that might now cost them their lives.
The alien warglobes ignored the scout ships that had flown away from the skymine. Even so, once the main facility was destroyed, those small craft would have no place to land, nowhere to refuel. The construction yards in the broken moons of Erphano had been abandoned after the skymine launch. Berndt prayed to the Guiding Star that some rescue would come before the escapees' life-support systems ran out and the tiny crafts plunged one by one into