Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [195]
But now that there was an opening in the hull, the atmosphere streamed out in a jet of gas like a full tank of rocket fuel, and Kotto calculated that it could continue to do so for a long time. He grabbed the comm system and called for help from the shipyard workers. “It’s getting away! You’ve got to come and help me corral the hydrogue ship.”
The derelict careened into another floating rock and continued unharmed like a wild pinball. Kotto’s lab shuttle barely had sufficient velocity to keep up with its madcap course.
It took over two hours for a small group of shipyard workers to seize the derelict ship, by which time all of the contained atmosphere had belched itself out. Along the way, they also rounded up a battered GU, who was drifting helplessly in space.
Embarrassed, Kotto issued quick but sincere apologies. He thanked Kellum and his men for rescuing the derelict and bringing it to a halt—now far from the ring plane and high above the gas giant. “This will do right where it is. No need to drag it back into the rings. We’ll just do our work way out here.” He rounded up his compy assistants.
“The farther away from our shipyards, the better, by damn,” Del Kellum said. He and his workers returned to their duties.
Kotto stared hungrily at the now-open derelict and rubbed his hands together. He couldn’t wait to see what was inside.
Chapter 98 — PATRICK FITZPATRICK III
In the engineering bay’s background drone, Fitzpatrick felt he could speak confidentially with his fellow prisoners. So long as he and his EDF comrades appeared to be working, the Roamer supervisors allowed them to fraternize.
Over the past two days, though, their captors had treated them differently, glaring at the hostages as if they had done something wrong. The seemingly benevolent watchers now simmered with anger. Was it the discovery of the destroyed Roamer ekti ship? But they had known about that for quite a while.
Fitzpatrick finally learned, through muttered comments and whispered complaints, that the EDF had finally struck back against the insidious Roamers and their sneaky bases. One of their depots had been taken over, the supplies confiscated and the facility destroyed.
“Serves them right,” said Shelia Andez. “They provoked the King—what did they expect would happen? I hope the Roachers learn their lesson and stop their stubborn little fit.”
“It proves the Hansa is willing to enforce their demands,” Yamane said.
“It proves to me that we shouldn’t just be sitting here.” Fitzpatrick glanced meaningfully at his companions. “Maybe the EDF is already out there looking for us. If my grandmother knew I was alive, she wouldn’t sit still.”
“Or maybe it’s in our own hands,” Shelia said.
“We should consider our options,” Yamane said, tinkering with a damaged compy. “Perhaps we can even find unexpected allies.”
The Soldier compies salvaged from wrecked EDF battleships had been put to work out in the industrial yards, where they performed tasks too difficult or dangerous for Roamers. As a cybernetics specialist, Yamane was one of the few people at Osquivel qualified to perform maintenance on the Soldier models. He used the opportunity to study how the sophisticated compies adapted to their forced reprogramming.
Fitzpatrick helped him probe one of the combat-designed machines, studying its instruction modules and programming implants. This one had suffered a brief collision out in the rockyards, but the scrapes and discolorations were merely superficial.
“The Roachers already wiped the obvious military programming from these machines, but their memory structure