Editing Beggars & Choosers

"Seems safe enough. Hold this." She passed the taper to Beglan and scaled the ladder to the hatch overhead. With a groan and an icy crack! the hatch opened and a dusting of snow and bitter cold flooded in. She put her eye to the gap. "Looks clear. Come on up."<br><br>

"In a minute." Rina took a turn around the tower, looking out on all sides. Nothing's moving. Should be safe. She tipped her face to the stars above and watched them twinkle in the clear night air. Memory stirred. <br><br>

Rina regarded the soles of her boots and nodded at Beglan's caveat. Not if they're knee deep in water, she thought but listened on. "That's a good idea, provided we have enough hydro to make it work. We'll need to do that trick at the choke points ... "<br><br>

"Pity we don't have working comms. We could lure them to that section of the deck with our voices by remote, then blow everything. Wait a minute ...," Rina frowned. Are we sure about that? Thinking back, she realized they'd only been interested in checking the comms system to call out from the ''Gift'', not hail individual compartments inside her. "We might be able to do that. What if we weren't even on the same deck, but were able to lure them down there with the wall comms? If nothing else, it would reduce the risk to us by letting us seal ourselves up in the safe room before they even got down there. More wiggle room."<br><br>

"The Stitches ... A while back, we found out that Gordon favors turning Navy special forces into Stitches. For their combat savvy. If they're still able to think, that's what we're up against. At least until he blows the whistle on them and they frenzy. There's half a dozen of Potemkin's henchmen. We can't discount the possibility that they'll have combat training too, rather than just being gun-toting goombahs. Still, divide and conquer. Potemkin does favor throwing the Stitches into the fire first. Break them up, then. Turn eight into four and four. Ideally, take out a few before we break up what's left. How do we do that?<br><br>

"There's the path leading to the airlock stairs. There's the airlock. There's the internal stairs--hell, that whole stair well. It's narrow and can be sealed off at both ends between decks. Can we use that? There's the landing on the lower deck where the gun locker is--again, completely compartmentalizeable. There's the landing on the upper deck: ditto. And then there's the decks themselves. We've already discussed where we'd isolate them on the decks proper. If we can take out one in the airlock, maybe one or two more on the stairs, that would reduce their number to six, maybe five by the time they set foot on the lower deck. That would make the hydro more able to take them all out when we set it off. Gribanyi Iesus Kristos, I can't believe I'm having this conversation."<br><br>

"If Potemkin falls into our hands, maimed, maybe dying, what do we do with him? That's assuming, of course, that Roskov is either driven off or doesn't care what happens one way or the other. While I seriously dislike the wisdom of leaving an enemy like him alive behind us ... I don't know, Beglan. I know there are plenty of us who'd want a piece of him. But kill him when he's down? As much as I hate what he's done to us and our girl, I don't think I could actually pull the trigger on him. Not like that. Combat? Sure. But when he's at our mercy and can't fight back?"<br><br>

"You do. If you throw that away, he wins." She sighed. "I guess you could say it comes down to this: do we spend the little time we've got fixing a radio to ask for help that might not come? Or do we use that time to make our defenses and our traps against a force that we know '''will''' come to do us ill? What is the best use of our time and resources toward our survival, Beglan?"<br><br>