“You take Graham’s orders.”
“Yes, sir,” Kaplan said faintly. “We’re all here. Andresson; Polano, the lot of us. Got to the rifles, couldn’t get the rigs. We’re armed. There’s a bunch of atevi on the station.”
God help us, Bren thought. The monitoring.
“Resources,” Bren said loudly. Harshly. “About which we won’t speak.”
Ramirez reached for the side of the bed, tried to put a foot off it, and didn’t. “Damn,” he said, “damn!”
“Don’t get up,” Jase said. “Leave it to us, sir. Hear me? Leave it to us.”
“Get it done!” Ramirez said, in pain, and Jase pulled away, drawing Kaplan with him toward Bren; and there was no choice but to take the light with them, out to the hall where they gathered to plan their next move.
“What are we going to do?” Kroger caught his arm. “What can we do? You’re talking about getting a communications panel to work. You want it to reach C1. If they were overhearing us, they already know the captain’s here and they don’t give a damn… you think they’re going to listen to orders?”
It was a point. It at least argued they might be free of bugs.
“Then we assume they’re not overhearing us,” he said, “and we give them a—”
The security door opened, not their doing, a spotlight shone at them.
Bren shoved Jase to the wall and down as Kaplan and Kroger just stood helpless in the light.
Banichi, however, had not ducked, and the light went down, spun like some alien sun about a hall turned chaotic with bursts of electric charge, and Jago moved, and Tano, three shadows of giant size against the light. Bren remembered the gun in his pocket. He snatched it out, stood up and aimed it, heart pounding, but his eyes found no targets, just three atevi, a suddenly lengthened hallway, and a human lying flat in that truncated circle of light, struggling weakly under Banichi’s foot.
“Others have escaped,” Banichi said. “I advise against pursuit, Bren-ji.”
Tamun’s supporters might be few, but misinformed crew might number far too many to risk casualties, even in their dire straits; that was his thought about pursuit. But then he saw what the straggler was wearing.
“Is that a security rig? Are they security?”
“One believes this man is,” Banichi said. “Watch the corridor,” he said to Jago and Tano, and removed his foot from the struggling captive, who scrambled away, but only as far as the wall and an abortive attempt to rise.
Jase and Kaplan together seized on that man and spun him against the wall.
“Bobby,” Kaplan said to the man as he struggled to get loose, “Bobby, you hold it, hear! Don’t make a fuss. The old man’s alive, you hear me? Ramirez is alive. You want to see, or do I beat your head in?”
A wide-eyed stare met the erratic light as Kroger retrieved the intruders’ lantern.
“Yeah,” the man named Bobby said, “yeah. If that’s so, I want to see him.”
“We get the rig,” Andresson said. “So turn it over. Tamun’s gone right out of his head. Shot the old man. Now he’s shot Frank for no good reason. We got to get rid of him.”
“You say!”
“We all say! These aliens could’ve diced you for the cycler and didn’t, so shut it down and be polite. They’re sane. Tamun’s crazy. You’re alive and the rest are still breathing. Think it through.”
The wind seemed to go out of Bobby then, and he let Jase and Kaplan both help him up and haul the rig off him, piece by piece, Kaplan fitting it on as they went.
More light came into the corridor, this time from the chest-lamp of Bobby’s equipment as Kaplan turned it on.
“Let Bobby talk to the captain,” Jase said, “and then let Bobby go, to tell anybody he wants to. Tamun’s out. He’s damn-all out the air lock when Ramirez gets hold of him.”
“What’s Ramirez doing with the aliens?”
“Surviving,” Jase said. “No thanks to the human sods who won’t help him.”
“You come with me,” Kaplan said, taking Bobby in tow.
“The light is a target,” Jago remarked quietly in Mosphei’, never taking her eyes from the hall. Her pistol was in her hand. “Dangerous, Gin-nadi.”
Ginny Kroger looked disturbed as Banichi took the light from her unresisting hand and killed it.
“A light down the hall,” Jago said, once that light was shut down. “Growing brighter.”
Bren didn’t see one in the direction she was looking, but his eyesight was nothing like hers in dim light. That fitful reflectivity of atevi eyes showed now as Tano glanced his way in the small light Jago held aimed at the floor, and it was more than an ornamental distinction.
“Take cover, nandi,” Tano said.
“Someone’s coming,” Bren said to Kroger and the rest. “They’re coming back. Everyone under cover.”
The pocket-torch went out immediately. He had the illusion of total blindness, then, but he heard someone coming up near him, from the direction that Bobby and Kaplan had gone, and his ears said two men, at least two, in hallway they controlled.
“I’m with the old man.” A stranger’s voice somewhat dismayed him. Bobby’s, he thought, where he had expected Jase’s. “He says go, I go. Let me loose down the hall. I’ll spread the word. Don’t go shooting at my team.”
“Then go,” he said. He whispered, more loudly, “Jago, Tano, Bobby-nadi is coming through. Let him reach his associates.”
“There is hazard,” Jago said. “Bobby-nadi, speak out to others down the hall. They are attempting stealth.”
“You stay put down there!” Bobby yelled out into the dark, and the shout resounded like the trump of doom. “The captain’s here, and they got him alive, and Tamun’s a bleeding liar! You can talk to ’em, hear?”
There was a silence, a lengthy, anxious silence.
“Prove it’s you!”
“Tad,” Bobby shouted out, “you remember who broke the water tap and flooded the section! Would I be telling you that if it wasn’t me?”
“Bobby?” came a voice out of the dark, from well around the corner. “Bobby? Are you with them?”
“Yeah. And I’m all right, and Leo’s here and Frank and his team, and Tamun shot Ramirez with a bullet, Tad. Spread that on the net. Shot the old man with a bullet. You can talk to Leo on the net. He’s got my rig on.”
“Tad,” Kaplan said, into the communications on the body unit. “You hear me? Frank Modan’s gotten a bad shock. Blew a hell of a lot of his rig out. There’s the lot of us trying to save the captain, but he’s in a bad way, shot in the chest. We got a tape, which is him, which I can play for you, if you’ll just plug into Cl and pass it on, and keep passing it. You’re still live, aren’t you? You’re hearing me loud and clear.”
“They’re telling the truth!” Bobby shouted up the corridor by voice. “Tell Cl just the hell do it, all right?”
“You got that recorder, sir?” Kaplan asked under his breath.
“I have it,” Jase said. “No adapter, just take it in on directional mike.”
The small sound of the recorder’s play button, the initial whisper of the leader sounded unnaturally loud in the waiting silence.
“Ramirez here.” The recorder gave out that thread of a voice. “Don’t believe a thing Pratap Tamun says, don’t take his orders for spit. I’m alive now only because Jase got me out. Tamun and his cousins are guilty as sin. Jase Graham to sit fourth. Jase, you get him out, hear!”
* * *
Chapter 27
« ^ »
Do you read?” Kaplan asked when the recording played out. “Tad? You hear that loud and clear?”
Kaplan paused a moment, and his expression showed alarm. “There’s somebody moving up on them. —Tad! You get to us, hear! Run!—Ma’am, mister,” this, incongruously, to Banichi and Jago. “They’re moving our way, they have to! Don’t shoot!”
“I understand, Kaplan-nadi,” Jago said, a voice that was calm itself. “Banichi?”
“Cenedi is behind them,” Banichi said.
Bren said, very quickly. “Kaplan! They should stop, immediately, and stand still. Our own security is in the corridor. Tell them stand still, offer no threat!”
“You guys stop!” Kaplan said urgently into the mike. “You wait! Stand still, it’s atevi security behind you. Don’t spook anybody, just don’t move. Those guys are hell!”
Then Kaplan acquired a renewed puzzlement. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and: “I’m getting a query from Phoenixcomm. Sabin’s up there. She heard it.”
“What side is she on?” Bren asked.
“Shall I ask, sir?”
Incredible, Bren thought, standing in the dark, with security units moving every which way, the dowager left in the dark at dinner, his own security hair-triggered, Ramirez struggling for breath to stay alive, and they had to ask a Phoenix captain where she stood on the issues.
“Ask,” he said.
“What’s the captain want?” Kaplan translated the question, and then relayed the answer. “Sir, Cl says she’s looking for Ogun, evidently he’s out of touch, and she doesn’t want anybody going anywhere.”
“He could be dead” Bren said. “Tell Cl what happened to us.”
Kaplan began to do that in rapid terms. Meanwhile light appeared at the intersection, and a handful of men in security rigs walked in their direction.
Then very tall figures bearing lights appeared behind them and came their way, too.
“Tell the captain,” Jase said to Kaplan, “I’m acting on Ramirez’ orders, fourth seat, by his appointment. Ask her if Tamun’s up there with her.”
“Yes, sir.” Kaplan relayed that. “No, sir,” he said when he heard the reply. “Sabin doesn’t know where he is, either.”
“Tell her I request she find Ogun, don’t let Tamun near the buttons, and keep the hatch sealed until we can get word out. Tell Cl to broadcast Ramirez’ message. If they didn’t copy it, we can play it again. Tell Sabin to get the power on! The captain can’t take this.”
Kaplan relayed that, too, and said, “Sabin says stand by.”
An unexspected siren blast, brief and loud, made the atevi wince; and a second later the lights flared up to noonday brightness and the ventilation fans came on. They had a number of station security uncertainly exposed to view, and Cenedi and half a dozen of his own men were on the far side of the humans.
Ramirez’s message suddenly, loudly, recycled through every wall unit.
“Is the captain’s message going out?” Banichi asked, to be sure.
“Indeed, Banichi-ji. Advise everyone things are going moderately well.”
“Going very well,” Banichi said, “since I believe by now Lord Geigi and his men are growing impatient, and will take to the dock.”
“Lord Geigi is here?” Bren asked in shock. “Himself?” He realized no one had ever told him to the contrary, and he had assumed, since they said Geigi’s men, that they were a loan. The roundish, sometimes outrageous lord of the coast… indeed, Lord Geigi would come out on a wild venture like this, especially in ’Sidi-ji’s wake.
The dowager never, ever traveled without resources.
And on the docks… Bren thought, with the shuttle exposed to danger, and, my God, the ship, that Holy Grail of all human activity. The ship they had seen on approach, not far from the shuttle dock…
“The ship, Jase. The access is there, isn’t it? Same dock as the shuttle?”
“Adjacent,” Jase said. “Same area. If Sabin holds the hatch, they can’t get in, but if she thought human lives were threatened…”
“We’ve got to get down there. Up there. We can’t have Geigi threatening Phoenix, whatever else. The crew will think the worst.”
“His objective is the dockside,” Banichi said calmly. “And the safety of the shuttle.”
“Misunderstanding is all too possible in this situation. Banichi, they mustn’t go yet. Get word to them to hold.”
“We have no reliable contact with them,” Banichi said, “except by Phoenix itself, and we should not, Bren-ji, advise them Geigi is there. We cannot betray Lord Geigi. We will cost atevi lives and endanger the aishidi’tat.”
“We have to get up there,” Bren said. “We have to stop this before it blows up.”
Banichi offered no argument to that. “Cenedi. A potential associate holds the ship, Sabin-aiji; Ogun-aiji cannot be found. Ramirez-aiji is here, wounded and weak. Geigi, if he moves, will possibly create confusion of forces up on the dock.”
“Three quarters of an hour until Geigi moves, unless these humans move against the shuttle.”
“Ten minutes by lift for us to get up there,” Jase said. “Nadiin-ji, we must go, we must go now, to hold the docks open and prevent misunderstanding.” Negotiations were going on among Bobby’s group and Kaplan’s, in jargon and shorthand, a desperate, profane babble of argument. “Kaplan is in contact with Sabin. Shall we advise her we’re coming?”
“Tell her we’re coming, so she expects atevi.” Bren made the critical judgment, a commitment they had to take. “Don’t say a thing about atevi already up there. Don’t mention Lord Geigi. —Ginny. You’re going to have half a dozen security and a few of the atevi in your section, with Ben and Kate to translate. They’ll keep you safe. We’re going upstairs to try to defuse this before it blows.”
“I don’t like this,” Kroger said. “I don’t like this in the least. Let me talk to Sabin.”
“Do, if you can get through. Advise her to just keep that hatch shut. We’re trying to sort it out.”
“You will not go, Bren-ji,” Jago said. “Make no such plans.”
“Someone has to negotiate between the dowager and Sabin,” he said. One grew accustomed to gunfire, and lights going on and off, even to the notion of power cut to the whole station. He experienced no fear of those things; but of the random misunderstanding that could kill the whole enterprise and start another war… of that he was mortally afraid; and it was in his lap.
The dowager, God help them, and Lord Geigi.
And Sabin.
He attached himself to Banichi and Jago, with Jase tagging after him. “Let us go, Nadiin-ji. We have no time to debate this.”
“Go,” Banichi said; Kaplan also joined them, with all but two of the others in security gear, Tad having surrendered his to Andresson and others to Pressman and Johnson. Cenedi detailed ten men from his own force to remain on guard, communicating with them as they were moving out. Ten minutes just for the lift, Jase had said, and Bren walked fast, broke into a jog to keep up with Banichi’s long strides in the lead, and then the rest of the company began to hurry as fast as they could, down to the main corridor, to the lifts.
The buttons of the lift panel proved dead. There were no lights there. Banichi hesitated not the blink of an eye before starting to take the panel apart.
“Sabin’s going to clear it,” Kaplan said, and Bren put out a hand to prevent further disassembly.
The panel lights flashed on; the door responded tamely to a button-push as the car arrived.
“All of us? ”Jago asked.
“Best we arrive with force,” Banichi said. “Suggest, nadi, that Cl contact the shuttle crew and advise them that I am attempting to contact them.”
It seemed a very good idea. Bren relayed it to Kaplan, who called Cl on his suit-corn. Meanwhile they crammed inside the car, wedging as tightly as they could.
The car started to move. Jase was looking up at the indicators when Bren looked his way, and they both stood as very short humans amid a crush of very tall, bullet-proofed atevi. Bren drew in his breath, having time now to be scared out of his mind, time to review the choices that had put them here, and all the hazards of their position. The car seemed to move more slowly than before, or his mind was racing faster. They committed themselves increasingly to Sabin and a set of switches all under her control, vulnerable to freezing cold, absolute dark, and a bad, bad situation for them if someone stalled the car in the system.
That Tamun might have access to those switches was not something he wanted to contemplate.
The car thumped, gathering speed. They were packed so tightly the eventual shifts of attitude did little to dislodge anyone, only that their whole mass increasingly acquired buoyancy.
Please God they got there, Bren thought, thinking of Tamun, and buttons. He watched the flashing lights change on the panel, counting. It was so crowded he couldn’t move his arm to draw the gun in his pocket, so crowded he fell into breathing in unison with Jago, whose deep breaths otherwise pressed at wrong times.
Three levels to go.
Two. They had no more gravity.
The car drifted to a stop, everyone floating as the door opened to a cold so intense it gave the illusion of vacuum.
Pellets hit and sparked around them, atevi spilled out of the car left and right, shoving to get clear and sailing off in the lack of gravity. Bren fended for himself, shoved off Tano, who was behind him, and flew free, trying to do what Jago had done and catch the edge of the door to stop herself and reach cover.
He tried. But a hit convulsed his leg with shock and prevented his grip on the door edge. A coruscation of impacts flared and crackled on the metal surfaces near him.
A human voice, Jase’s, shouted, “Ramirez! Ramirez is alive! Tamun’s done!”
He tumbled, instinct telling him doubling up would relieve the pain, intellect telling him it was a way to get killed. He tried for a handhold as he drifted by a pipe.
“Bren-ji!” A hand snagged him, pulled him toward safety.
A second electrical shock blew him aside: he tumbled high above the lift exit handlines, grabbed the icy cold surface of a hose with a bare hand and swung to a stop, or at least a change of view.
He saw Jago drifting loose trying to reach him in this illusion of dizzying height. And he saw a human in concealment with a gun, aiming up at her.
He fired without thinking, jolted himself loose from his grip and hit another solid surface hard. He rebounded, flying free from that, and tumbled, trying to get a view of Jago. He couldn’t see the man he’d fired at. He couldn’t hear anything but the fading echoes of fire.
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