Downbelow Station

by C. J. Cherryh

  Tibet was engaged, trying to make the incoming fleet dump speed to deal with them. North Pole was moving. Merchanter vessels serving as militia were altering course, slow ships, short-haulers, at a standstill compared to the speed of the incoming fleet. They could slow it if they had the nerve.

  If.

  "Rider's turned," scan op said in her ear. She saw it onscreen. The rider had gotten their acknowledgment minutes ago, had put about; that scan image was meeting them now. Longscan comp had put the rest of the arc together and the comp tech had reasoned the rest by human intent ... the yellow fuzz going off from the red approach line was longscan's new estimate of the ridership's position; the old estimate faded to faint blue, mere warning to watch that line of approach in case. They were headed right down it in outgoing plane, while the incoming rider was obliged to go nadir. And they were all streaming out together, right down the line.

  Signy gnawed her lip, cautioned scan and com monitor to keep up with events all around the sphere, fretting that Mazian had hauled them out in one vector only. Come on, she thought with the taste of one disaster in her mouth, no more like Viking. Give us a few options, man.

  CFX / KNIGHT / 189-9090-687 /

  NINERNINERNINER / SPHINX /

  TWOTWOTWOTRIPLET / DOUBLET /

  QUARTET / WISP / ENDIT.

  New orders. The late ships were given the other vectors. Pacific and

  Atlantic and Australia moved onto new courses, slow motion flowering of the pattern to shield the system.

  318

  Downbelow Station

  iii

  Pell: stationmaster's offices

  MERCHANTERHAMMER

  TOECSINVICINITY/

  MAYDAYMAYDAYMAYDAY/

  UNIONCARRIERSMOV/

  ING/TWELVECARRIERSOURVICINITY/

  GOINGFOR JUMP/

  MAYDAYMAYDAYMAYDAY....

  SWAN'S EYE TO ALL SHIPS/

  RUNRUNRUNRUN....

  ECS TIBET TO ALL SHIPS/RELAY/....

  Over an hour old, proliferating through the system in relay through the com of every ship receiving and still going, like an echo in a madhouse.

  Angelo leaned to the comp console and keyed through to dockside, where the shock of a massive pullout still had crews spilling out on emergency call: military crews had handled it, their own way, undocked without interval. Central was in chaos, with a pending G crisis if the systems could not adjust to the massive kickoff. There were palpable instabilities. Com was jammed. And for nearly two hours the situation on the rim of the solar system had been in progress, while the message flashed its lightbound way toward them.

  Troops were left on the dock. Most had been aboard already, barracked onship; some had not made it, and military channels on-station echoed with incomprehensible messages, angry voices. Why they had pulled the troops, why they had delayed to board those they could with attack incoming ... the implication of that was the liberty of the Fleet to run out on them. Mazian's order....

  Emilio, he thought distractedly. The schematic of Downbelow on the left wall-screen flickered with a dot that was Porey's shuttle. He could not call; no one could— Mazian's orders ... com silence. Hold pattern, traffic 319

  Downbelow Station

  control was broadcasting to merchanters in orbit; it was all they could say.

  Com queries flowed from merchanters at dock, faster than operators could answer them with pleas for quiet.

  Union was bound to have done this. Anticipated, Mazian had flashed him, in what direct communication he had gotten. For days the captains had stayed near the ships— troops jammed aboard in discomfort— not in courtesy to station; not in response to their requests to have the troops out of the halls.

  Prepared for pullout. Despite all promises, prepared for pullout.

  He reached for the com button, to call Alicia, who might be following this on her screens....

  "Sir." His secretary Mills came on com. "Security requests you come to com central. There's a situation down in green."

  "What situation?"

  "Crowds, sir."

  He thrust himself from his desk, grabbed his coat.

  "Sir—"

  He turned. His office door opened unasked, Mills there protesting the intrusion of Jon Lukas and a companion. "Sir," Mills said. "I'm sorry. Mr.

  Lukas insisted ... I told him...."

  Angelo frowned, vexed at the intrusion and at once hoping for assistance.

  Jon was able, if self-interested. "I need some help," he said, and his eyes flicked in alarm at the small movement of the other's man hand to his coat, the sudden flash of steel. Mills failed to see it ... Angelo cried aloud as the man slashed Mills, scrambled back as the man flung himself at him. Hale: he recognized the face suddenly.

  320

  Downbelow Station

  Mills shrieked, bleeding, sinking against the open doorway; there were screams from the outer office; the blow struck, a numbing shock. Angelo reached for the driving hand and met the weapon protruding from his chest, stared disbelievingly at Jon ... at hate. There were others in the doorway.

  Shock welled up in him, with the blood.

  iv

  Q

  "Vassily," the voice said over com. "Vassily, do you hear me?"

  Kressich, at his desk, sat paralyzed. It was Coledy, of those who sat about him, hunched and waiting, who reached past him and punched the respond button. "I hear," Kressich said past the knot in his throat. He looked at Coledy. In his ears was the buzz of voices out on the docks, people already frightened, already threatening riot.

  "Keep him safe," Coledy said to James, who was over the five others who waited outside. "Keep him very safe."

  And Coledy went. They had waited, had hovered about com, one of them always near it, gathered here in the confusion. It was on them now. After a moment there was a rise in the noise of the mob outside, a dull, bestial sound which shook the walls.

  Kressich bowed his face into his hands, stayed so for a long time, not wishing to know.

  "The doors," he heard finally, a shout from outside. "The doors are open!"

  321

  Downbelow Station

  v

  Green nine

  They ran, stumbling and breathless, jostling others in the corridor, a sea of panicked people, red-dyed in alarm lights. A siren still went; there was a queasiness of G as station systems struggled to keep themselves stable.

  "It's the docks," Damon breathed, his vision blurring. A runner hit him and he fended the body off, pushed his way, with Josh in his wake, where the ramp opened onto nine. "Mazian's peeled off." It was all that made sense.

  Shrieks broke out and there was a massive backflow in the crowd that brought all the press to a stop. Of a sudden traffic began to go the other way, people retreating from something. There were frantic screams, bodies jammed against them.

  "Damon!" Josh yelled from behind him. It was no good. They were pushed back, all of them, against the crush of bodies behind. Shots streaked overhead, and the whole jammed mass quivered and rang with screams. Damon got his arms in front of him for leverage, to keep from being suffocated ... ribs were compressed.

  Then the rear of the press turned, running in panic down some route of escape; and the crush became a battering flood. He tried to stand in it, having his own direction. A hand caught his arm, and Josh caught up with him, staggered as the mob shoved and stampeded and they tried to fight the current.

  More shots. A man went down; more than one— hit. The fire was going into the crowd.

  "Stop shooting!" Damon shouted, still with a wall of people in front of him, a wall diminishing as if a scythe were hitting it. "Cease fire!"

  Someone grabbed him from the back, pulled him as fire came through. He got the edge of one and jerked in pain, scrambling for balance in the rout, running now— it was Josh with him, pulling him along in their retreat. A 322

  Downbelow Station

  man's back exploded an arm's length ahead of them, and the man fell und
er the others.

  "This way!" Josh yelled, jerked him left, down a side corridor where part of the rout was going. He went, that direction as good as the other ... saw a way to double back through, redoubled his effort, to get to the docks, running through the maze of secondary corridors back again to nine.

  They made it as far as three intersections, frantic people scattering everywhere, at every intersection of the corridors, staggering in the flux of G. And then screams broke out in the halls ahead.

  "Look out!" Josh yelled, catching at him. He gasped air and turned, ran where the curving inner hall rose up and up into what was going to turn into a blank wall, the sector division.

  Not blank. There was a way. Josh yelled and tried to drag him back when he saw the cul de sac; "Come on, " he snapped and caught Josh's sleeve, kept running as the wall came down off the horizon at them, became level, a blank wall with a painted mural, and at the right, the heavy door of a Downer hatchway.

  He leaned up against the wall, fumbled his card out, jammed it in the slot.

  The hatch opened with a gust of tainted air, and he dragged Josh into it, into virtual dark, numbing cold.

  The door sealed. Air exchange started and Josh looked about in panic; Damon reached for the masks in the recess, thrust one at Josh, got one over his own face and sucked a restricted breath, trembling so that he could hardly get the band adjusted.

  "Where are we going?" Josh asked, voice changed by the mask. "Now what?"

  There was a lamp in the recess. He took it, thumbed the light on. He reached for the inner-door switch, opened it, a sound that echoed up and up. A slant of the beam picked out catwalks. They were on a grid, and a 323

  Downbelow Station

  ladder went down farther still, into a round tube. G diminished, dizzyingly. He caught at the rail.

  Elene ... Elene would be in the worst of it; she would go to cover, get those office doors locked— had to. He was not able to get through out there; had to get to help, reach a point where he could get security forces moving in a front that could stop it. Up. Get up to the high levels; that was white sector on the other side of that partition. He tried to find an access to it, but the beam showed no way. There was no direct connection, section to section, except the docks, except on number one level. he remembered that— complicated lock systems ... Downers knew where— he did not.

  Get to central, he thought; get to an upper hall and get to com. Everything was amiss, G out of balance— the Fleet had gone; maybe merchanters too, throwing them out of stability, and central was not correcting it.

  Something was massively wrong up there.

  He turned, staggered as G surged sickeningly, grabbed an upslanted rail, and started climbing.

  Josh followed.

  vi

  Green dock

  There was no response from central; the handcom kept giving back the standby, interspersed with static. Elene thumbed it off and cast a frantic look back at the lines of troops that held green nine entry. "Runner," she called. A youth came up to her on the double. They were reduced to this, with com blacked out. "Get to all the ships round the rim, one to the next as far as you can run, and tell them to pass the word on their own com if they can. Hold where you are, tell them. Tell them ... you know what to say. Tell them there's trouble out there and they'll run headon into it if they bolt. Go!"

  Scan might be out. She had reckoned the blackout the Fleet's doing; but

  India and Africa had gone, leaving troops to hold the dock, troops they had no room to take; and the signal was still being interrupted. No 324

  Downbelow Station

  knowing what information the merchanters were getting, or what messages the troops might have gotten over their own com. No knowing who was in charge of the deserted troops, whether some high officer or some desperate and confused noncom. There was a wall of them at the niner entries of blue and green docks— a wall of troops facing up the curving horizons sealing off those same docks from either side, rifles braced and ready, the sealing of their square. She feared them no less than the enemy incoming. They had fired, turned one mob, killed people; there were still sporadic shots. She had twelve staff members and six of them were missing ... cut off by the com blackout. The others were directing dock crew efforts to check the dumped umbilicals against a fatal seal breach; the whole section should be under precautionary seal— if her people up in blue control could get it straightened out: they had dead switches, the whole system jammed by an override. G flux still hit them at intervals; fluid mass in the tanks had to be shunted as fast as the lines could jet it their way, everything in tanks anywhere, to compensate; station had attitude controls; they might be using them. It was terrifying in a huge space like the docks, the up and down of weight, unsettling premonition that at any moment they might get a flux of more than a kilo or two.

  "Ms. Quen!"

  She turned. The runner had not gotten through: some ass in the line of troops must have turned him back. She started toward him in haste, toward the line that suddenly, inexplicably, was wavering, facing about toward

  them, rifles leveled.

  A shout roared out at her back. She looked, to the upcurving horizon, saw an indistinct wavefront of runners coming down that apparent wall toward them, beyond the curtaining section arch. Riot.

  "The seal! " she shouted into the useless handcom, dead as it had been. The troops were moving; she was between them and targets. She ran for the far side, the tangle of gantries, heart pounding, looked back again as the line of troops advanced, narrowing their perimeter, passing her by, some of them taking positions in the cover of the gantries. She thumbed the handcom and desperately tried her office: "Shut it down! "— but the mob was past blue control, might be in it. The noise of the mob swelled, a tide 325

  Downbelow Station

  pouring toward them while others were still coming down off the horizon, an endless mass. She realized suddenly the aspect of the distant faces, behavior not panic, but hate; and weapons— pipes, clubs—

  The troops fired. There were screams as the first rank went down. She stood paralyzed, not twenty meters from the troops' rear, seeing more and more of the mob pouring toward them over their own dead.

  Q. Q was loose. They came waving weapons and shrieking, a sound which grew from distant roar to deafening, with no end to their numbers.

  She turned, ran, staggering in the flux, in the wake of her own fleeing dock crews, of scattered Downers who saw man-trouble and sought shelter.

  The noise grew behind her.

  She doubled her pace, a hand to her belly, trying to cushion the shock in her stride. There were screams behind her, almost drowned in the roar.

  They would overrun these troops too, gain the rifles ... coming on by the sheer weight of numbers. She looked back ... saw green nine vomiting forth scattered runners, getting past the troops. Panic showed in their faces. She gasped for air and kept going, despite the dull ache in her pelvic arch, dog-trotting when she must, reeling in the G surges. Runners began to pass her, a scattered few at first, then others, a buffeting flood as she passed white section arch; and on the horizon ahead a tide breaking crossways from niner entries, thousands upon thousands up the sweep of the horizon, running for the merchanter ships at dock, screaming that merged with the cries behind, men and women screaming and pushing each other.

  Men passed her in greater and greater numbers ... bloody, reeking, waving weapons, shrieking. A shock hit her back, threw her to a knee and the man kept running. Another hit her ... stumbled, kept going. She staggered up, arm numb, tried for the gantries, the shelter of supports and lines ... shots burst out ahead of her from a ship's access.

  326

  Downbelow Station

  "Quen!" someone yelled. She could not tell the source, looked about, tried to fight the human tide, and stumbled in the press.

  "Quen!" She looked about; a hand caught her arm and pulled her, and a gun fired past her head. Two others grabbed her, hauled her through the
press ... a blow grazed her head and she staggered, flung her weight then with the men who were trying to pull her through, amid the web of lines and gantries. There were screams and shots; others reached out to seize them and she tensed to fight, thinking them the mob, but a wall of bodies absorbed her and the men with her, merchanter types. "Fall back,"

  someone was yelling. "Fall back. They're through!" They were headed up a ramp, to an open hatchway, a cold ribbed tube, glowing yellow white, a ship's access.

  "I'm not boarding!" she cried in protest, but she had no wind left to protest anything, and there was nowhere but the mobs. They dragged her up the tube and those who had held the entry came crowding after as they hit the lock, hurtling in. They jammed up in a crushing press as the last desperate runners surged in. The door hissed and clanged shut, and she flinched ...

  by some miracle the door had taken no limbs.

  The inner hatch spilled them into a lift corridor. A pair of big men pushed the others through and steadied her on her feet while a voice thundered orders over com. Her belly hurt; her thighs ached; she sank against the wall and rested there until one of them touched her shoulder, a huge man, gentle-handed.

  "All right," she said. "I'm all right."

  It was easing, the strain of the run ... she pushed her hair back, looked at the men, these two who had been out there with her, heaved through the crowd, shoving rioters out of the way; knew them, and the patch they wore, black, without device: Finity's End. The ship that had lost a son on the station; the men she had dealt with that morning. Going for their ship, perhaps ... and they had gone aside after one of their own, to pull a Quen out of that mob. "Thank you," she breathed. "The captain— please, I've got to talk to him ... fast."

  327

  Downbelow Station