Starliner(85)
"They tell me that the exercise should only take a few more minutes, madam," replied the crewman. He spoke loudly enough for everyone aboard the lifeboat to hear. "Then we'll be able to return to our business. Believe me, this isn't my idea of a good time either."
"Tblisi news?" Chekoumian said as he poised with the reader in his hand.
"Last week's Tblisi news," his companion said in a tone of mild protest. "Want it? Go ahead." He took the reader and ejected the data chip, which he handed to the importer.
"I had to make a quick run to Tellichery to install a new manager at my outlet here," Timurkanov explained as Chekoumian inserted the news download into his own reader. "Half our exports are to Tellichery, you know. I came over on one of our cargo charters, but I decided to treat myself first class on the hop back."
He looked around in disgust. "At least on The City of San Juan, I was only sharing my cabin with one other guy, not fifty."
CLANG
Several passengers screamed.
"What the hell is that?" bellowed the well-dressed young man across the aisle from Chekoumian. When the fellow tried to stand up, he found that the restraint system clamped him solidly into his seat no matter how he poked or twisted.
"By the name of the Virgin!" Timurkanov said. "That was a lifeboat launching or I'm a Jew!"
"Please stay calm, ladies and gentlemen," the crewman called. He had to shout to be heard. The timbre of his voice suggested that he hadn't been thrilled by the sound either. "There's nothing to be—"
CLANG
More distant, but clearly another launch to those who recognized the sound—and proof that the Empress of Earth was breaking up to the passengers who didn't. More people were screaming and tearing in vain at their restraints.
Almost anticlimactically, the hatch slid open—the seats unlocked—and the lighting within the lifeboat brightened dazzlingly to the same level as that of the corridor outside.
"There is no hurry, please, ladies and gentlemen!" cried a steward who was pummeled aside by the first rush of passengers through the hatch.
"I guess we can go now, buddy," said Yuri Timurkanov when he noticed that his aisle-side companion wasn't moving. After a further moment, he tapped Chekoumian on the shoulder. The importer's hologram reader quivered, then slipped from his fingers.
"What?" Chekoumian said, wild-eyed. "Oh—I'm sorry."
He lurched out of his seat and staggered down the aisle without looking back at Timurkanov.
Timurkanov picked up the abandoned reader. "Hey, buddy?" he called. "You dropped this."
The projected news was a report on the wedding the previous day of Marie Djushvili to Ivan Lishke, a timber merchant of Bogomil.
* * *
The whang of Lifeboat 67's launch echoed metallically through the boat deck.
"One away," said Ran Colville to the six Cold Crewmen with him in the machinery room nestled between Bay 109 and Bay 111.
Swede, a watch chief with twenty-two years in sponge space, grunted. Ran didn't have a clue as to what the fellow meant by the grunt, or if it was even a response to the statement. The remaining Cold Crewmen, all from Swede's watch, were frozen-eyed and silent.
Ran regretted not having Mohacks and Babanguida to back him, but only because he would have liked someone to talk to. Cold Crewmen couldn't talk on duty and didn't talk much when they were off-watch.
Ran didn't have the least concern about the way Swede and his crew would perform if a Nevasan hijack team suddenly rushed up the corridor from Bay 111. Two of the Cold Crewmen had been issued submachine guns. The other four men bore the equipment of their occupation: adjustment tools and, for Swede, an arc shears that weighed sixty kilos and could saw through 70-mm collapsed-steel hull plating at the rate of a centimeter/second.
Theoretically the Cold Crewmen were to back up the Third Officer and his bandolier of stun bombs, which would provide the first line of defense. Realistically—if the Nevasans broke out of Bay 111, there was going to be a bloodbath the like of which hadn't been seen on a starliner since the Strasbourg had the incredibly bad luck to collide with an asteroid while inbound toward Earth.
Commander Kneale had looked askance when he heard who Ran wanted for support, given that the Staff Side ratings on his watch were unavailable. Kneale hadn't objected, though.
Lifeboat 111 fired with a clang and a double shockwave. At a distance, even on the Boat Deck, the suction as the outer doors closed and the inner ones opened to refill the bay was muted. Ran and his men were next to the bay. The hatch to their hiding place was ajar to save time if they were needed. They got the full, ear-popping effect
They were used to it. The Cold Crewmen were in and out of airlocks at four-hour intervals for as long as the Empress of Earth was in transit between the stars, and their berths between watches were just off the engineering control room, where the locks were.