Downbelow Station tau-3

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  A crowd was gathered about the doors. He worked his way through them, ordered them back. They moved, sullenly, and he used his pass to open their side of the access, stepped through quickly and used the card to seal the door before any could gather the nerve to follow. For a moment then he was alone on the upward ramp, the narrow access, in bright light and a lingering smell of Q. He leaned against the wall, trembling, his stomach heaving. After a moment he walked on down the ramp on the other side and pressed the button which should attract the guards on the other side of Q line.

  This button worked. The guards opened, accepted his card, and noted his presence in Pell proper. He passed decontamination, and one of the guards left his post to walk with him, routine, whenever the councillor from Q was admitted to station, until he had passed the limits of the border zone; then he was allowed to walk alone.

  He straightened his clothes as he went, trying to shed the smell and the memory and the thoughts of Q. But there was alarm sounding, red lights blinking in all the corridors, and security personnel and police were everywhere evident There was no peace this side either.

  v

  Pell: station central, com central office; 1300 hrs.

  The boards in central com were lit from end to end, jammed with calls from every region of the station at once. Residential use had shut itself down in crisis; situation red was flashing in all zones, advising all residents to stay put.

  They were not all regarding that instruction. Some halls of the halls on monitor were vacant; others were full of panicked residents. What showed now on Q monitor was worse.

  “Security call,” Jon Lukas ordered, watching the screens. “Blue three.” The division chief leaned over the board and gave directions to the dispatcher. Jon walked over to the main board, behind the harried com chiefs post. The whole of council had been called to take whatever emergency posts they could reach, to provide policy, not specifics. He had been closest, had run, reaching this post, through the chaos outside. Hale… Hale, he fervently hoped, had done what he was told, was sitting in his apartment, with Jessad. He watched the confusion in the center, paced from board to board, watched one and another hall in confusion. The com chief kept trying to call through to the stationmaster’s office, but even he could not get through; tried to route it through station command com, and kept getting a channel unavailable blinking on the screen.

  The chief swore, accepted the protests of his subordinates, a harried man in the eye of a crisis.

  “What’s happening?” Jon asked. When the man ignored the question for a moment to handle a subordinate’s query, he waited. “What are you doing?”

  “Councillor Lukas,” the chief said in a thin voice, “we have our hands full. There’s no time.”

  “You can’t get through.”

  “No, sir, I can’t get through. They’re tied up with command transmission. Excuse me.”

  “Let it foul,” he said, when the supervisor started to turn back to the board, and when the man looked at him, startled: “Give me general broadcast.”

  “I need the authorization,” the com chief said. Behind him, red lights began to flash and multiply. “It’s the authorization I need, councillor. Stationmaster has to give it.”

  “Do it!”

  The man hesitated, looked about him as if there were advice to be had from some other quarter. Jon seized him by the shoulder and faced him to the board while more and more lights flashed on the jammed boards.

  “Hurry it,” Jon ordered him, and the chief reached for an internal channel and punched in a mike.

  “General override to number one,” he ordered, and had the acknowledgment back in an instant. “Override on vid and com.” The com center main screen lit, camera active.

  Jon drew a deep breath and leaned into the field. The image was going everywhere, not least to his own apartment, to the man named Jessad. “This is Councillor Jon Lukas,” he said to all Pell, breaking into every channel, operations and residential, from the stations busy directing incoming ships to the barracks of Q to the least and greatest residence in the station. “I have a general announcement. The fleet presently in our vicinity is confirmed to be that of Mazian, proceeding in under normal operations for docking. This station is secure, but will remain under condition red until the all-clear is given. Operations in the com center and elsewhere will proceed more smoothly if each citizen will refrain from the use of communications except in the most extreme necessity. All points of the station are secure and there has been no damage or crisis. Records will be made of calls, and failure to regard this official request will be noted. All Downer work crews, report to your section habitats at once and wait for someone to direct you. Stay off the docks. All other workers continue about your assigned business. If you can solve problems without calling central, do so. As yet we have nothing but operations contact with the Fleet; as soon as information becomes available, we will make it public. Please stay by your receivers; this will be the quickest and most accurate source of news.”

  He leaned out of the field. The warning lights went off the console camera. He looked about him to find the chaos on the boards much less, as the whole station had been otherwise occupied for a moment. Some calls returned at once, presumably necessary and urgent; most did not. He drew a deep breath, thinking in one part of his mind of what might be happening in his apartment, or worse, away from it — hoping that Jessad was there, and fearing that he would be discovered there. Mazian. Military presence, which might start checking records, asking close questions. And to be found harboring Jessad -

  “Sir.” It was the com chief. The third screen from the left was alight. Angelo Konstantin, angry and flushed. Jon punched the call through.

  “Use procedures,” Angelo spat, and broke off. The screen went dark, as Jon stood clenching his hands and trying to reckon whether that was because he had caught Angelo with no good answer or because Angelo was occupied.

  Let it come, he thought in an excess of hate, the pulse pounding in his veins. Let Mazian evacuate all who would go. Union would come in after… would have need of those who knew the station. Understandings could be reached; his understanding with Jessad paved the way for that. It was no time to be timid. He was in it and there was no retreat now.

  The first step… to become visible, a reassuring voice, and let Jessad see him doing it. Become known, have his face familiar all over the station. That was the advantage the Konstantins had always had, monopoly of public visibility, handsomeness. Angelo looked the vital patriarch; he did not. He had not the manner, the lifelong habit of authority. But ability — that he had; and once his heart had begun to settle out of the initial dread of the disorder out there, he found advantage in the disorder; in any events that went against the Konstantins.

  Only Jessad… he remembered Mariner, which had died when Mazian had crowded in on the situation there. Only one thing protected them now… that Jessad had to rely on him and on Hale as his arms and legs, having no network yet of his own; and at the moment Jessad was neatly imprisoned, having to trust him, because he dared not try the halls without papers — dared not be out there with Mazian coming in.

  He drew in a breath, expanded with the thought of the power he actually had. He was in the best of positions. Jessad could provide insurance… or what was another body vented, another paperless body, as they sometimes ended up vented out of Q? He had never killed before, but he had known from the time he accepted Jessad’s presence that it was a possibility.

  Chapter Two

  Norway: 1400 hrs.

  It was a slow process, to berth in so many ships: Pacific first, then Africa; Atlantic; India. Norway received clearance and Signy, from her vantage at the post central to the bridge, passed the order to Graff at controls. Norway moved in with impatient dispatch, having waited so long; was opening the ports of Pell dock crews to attach the umbilicals while Australia began its move; was completing secure-for-stay while the super-carrier Europe glided into dock, disdaining the pushed assi
st which station wanted to give.

  “Doesn’t look like trouble here,” Graff said. “I’m getting an all-quiet on dockside. Stationmaster’s security is thick out there. No sign of panicked civs. They’ve got the lid on it.”

  That was some comfort. Signy relaxed slightly, beginning to hope for sanity, at least while the Fleet sorted out its own business.

  “Message,” com said then. “General hail from Pell station-master to Fleet at dock: welcome aboard and will you come to station council at earliest?”

  “Europe will respond,” she murmured, and in a moment Europe’s com officer did so, requesting a small delay.

  “All captains,” she heard at last on the emergency channel she had been monitoring for hours, Mazian’s own low voice, “private conference in the briefing room at once. Leave all command decisions to your lieutenants and get over here.”

  “Graff.” She hurled herself out of her cushion. “Take over. Di, get me ten men for escort, double-quick.”

  Other orders were pouring over com from Europe, from the deployment of fifty troopers from each ship to dockside, full combat rig; for passing Fleet command to Australia’s second, Jan Meyis, for the interim; for riders of docked ships to apply to station control for approach instructions, to come in for reattachment. Coping with those details was Graff’s job now. Mazian had something to tell them, explanations, long-awaited.

  She went to her office, delayed only to slip a pistol into her pocket, hastened to the lift and out into the access corridor amid the rush of troops Graff was ordering to the dockside… combat-rigged from the moment they had gone into station approach, headed for the hatch before the echoes of Graffs voice had died in Norway’s steel corridors. Di was with them, and her own escort sorted itself out and attached itself as she passed through.

  The whole dock was theirs. They poured out at the same moment as troops from other ships hit the dockside, and station security faded back in confusion before the businesslike advance of armored troops who knew precisely the perimeter they wanted and established it. Dockworkers scrambled this way and that, uncertain where they were wanted: “Get to work!” Di Janz shouted. “Get those waterlines over here!” And they made up their minds at once… little threat from them, who were standing too close and too vulnerable compared to the troops. Signy’s eyes were for the armed security guards beyond the lines, at their attitude, and at the shadowed tangles of lines and gantries which might shelter a sniper. Her detachment surrounded her, with Bihan as officer. She swept them with her, moving rapidly, up the row of ship-berths, where a mob of umbilicals and gantries and ramps stretched as far as the eye could see up the ascending curve of the dock, like mirror reflections impeded only by the occasional arch of a section-seal and the upward horizon… merchanters docked beyond them. Troops made themselves a screen all along the route between Norway and Europe. She followed after Australia’s Tom Edger and his escort. The other captains would be at her back, coming as quickly as they could.

  She overtook Edger on the ramp up to Europe’s access; they walked together. Keu of India caught them up when they had passed the ribbed tube and reached the lift, and Porey of Africa was hard on Keu’s heels. They said nothing, each of them gone silent, perhaps with the same thoughts and the same anger. No speculations. They took only a pair apiece of their guards, jammed the lift car and rode up in silence, walked down the main-level corridor to the council room, steps ringing hollowly up here, in corridors wider than Norway’s, everything larger-scaled. Deserted: only a few Europe troops stood rigid guard here.

  The council room likewise was empty, no sign of Mazian, just the bright lights of the room ablaze to tell them that they were expected at that circular table. “Outside,” Signy bade her escort, as the others went. She and the others took their seats by precedence of seniority, Tom Edger first, herself, three vacancies, then Keu and Porey. Sung of Pacific arrived, ninth among the chairs. Atlantic’s Kreshov arrived, settled into the number four seat by Signy’s other side.

  “Where is he?” Kreshov asked finally, at the end of patience. Signy shrugged and folded her arms on the table, staring across at Sung without seeing him. Haste… and then wait. Pulled out of battle, kept in long silence… and now wait again to be told why. She focused on Sung’s face, on a classic aged mask which never admitted impatience; but the eyes were dark. Nerves, she reminded herself. They were exhausted, had been yanked out of combat, through jump, into this. Not a time to make profound or far-reaching judgments.

  Mazian came in finally, quietly, passed them and took his place at the head of the table, face downcast, haggard as the rest of them. Defeat? Signy wondered, with a knot in the pit of her stomach, like something which would not digest. And then he looked up and she saw that small tautness about Mazian’s mouth and knew otherwise… sucked in her breath with a flare of anger. She recognized the little tension, a mask — Conrad Mazian played parts, staged his appearances as he staged ambushes and battles, played the elegant or the coarse by turns. This was humility, the falsest face of all, quiet dress, no show of brass; the hair, that silver of rejuv, was immaculate, the lean face, the tragic eyes… the eyes lied most of all, facile as an actor’s. She watched the play of expressions, the marvelous fluidity that would have seduced a saint. He prepared to maneuver them. Her lips drew tight

  “You all right?” he asked them. “All of you — ”

  “Why were we pulled out?” she asked forthwith, surprised a direct contact from those eyes, a reflection of anger in return. “What can’t go over com?” She never questioned, had never objected to an order of Mazian’s in her whole career. She did now, and watched the expression go from anger to something like affection.

  “All right,” he said. “All right.” He slid a glance around the room… again there were seats vacant They were nine, with two out on patrol. The glance centered on each of them in turn. “Something you have to hear,” Mazian said. “Something we have to reckon with.” He pushed buttons at the console before his seat, activated the screens on the four walls, identical. Signy looked up at the schematic they had last seen at Omicron Point, the taste of bile in her mouth, watched the area widen, familiar stars shrinking in wider scale. There was no more Company territory; it was not theirs any more; only Pell. On wider view, they could see the Hinder Stars. Not Sol. But that was in the reckoning too now. She knew well enough where it was, if the schematic kept widening. It froze, ceased to grow.

  “What is this?” Kreshov asked.

  Mazian only let them look.

  Long.

  “What is this?” Kreshov asked again.

  Signy breathed; it took conscious effort in that silence. Time seemed at a halt, while Mazian showed them in dead silence what was graven in their minds already.

  They had lost. They had ruled there once, and they had lost.

  “From one living world,” Mazian said, almost a whisper, “from one living world of our beginning, humankind reached out as far as we’ve ever gone. One narrow reach of space here, thrust far back from what Union has… the Hinder Stars; Pell… and the Hinder Stars. Tenable, and with the personnel overloading Pell… possible.”

  “And run again?” Porey asked.

  A muscle jerked in Mazian’s jaw. Signy found her heart beating hard and her palms sweating. It was close to falling apart… all of it

  “Listen,” Mazian hissed, mask dropped. “Listen!

  He stabbed another button. A voice began to speak, distant, recorded. She knew it, knew the foreign inflection… knew it.

  “Captain Conrad Mazian,” the recording began, “this is second secretary Segust Ayres of the Security Council, authorization code Omar series three, with authority of the Council and the Company; cease fire. Cease fire. Peace is being negotiated. As earnest of good faith require you cease all operations and await orders. This is a Company directive. All efforts are being made to guarantee safety of Company personnel, both civilian and military, during this negotiation. Repeat: Captain Conrad Mazian, th
is is second secretary Segust Ayres — ”

  The voice died abruptly with the push of a key. Silence lingered after it. Faces were stark with dismay.

  “War’s over,” Mazian whispered. “War’s over, do you understand?”

  A chill ran through Signy’s blood. All about them was the image of what they had lost, the situation in which they were cast.

  “Company’s finally showed up to do something,” Mazian “To hand them… this.” He lifted a hand to the screens, a gesture which included the universe. “I recorded that message relayed from the Union flagship, that message. From Seb Azov’s flagship. Do you understand? The code designation is valid. Mallory, those Company men who wanted passage… that’s what they’ve done to us.”

  She drew in her breath. All warmth had fled. “If I’d taken them aboard…”

  “You couldn’t have stopped them, you understand. Company men don’t make solitary decisions. It was already decided elsewhere. If you’d shot them on the spot, you couldn’t have stopped it… only delayed it.”

  “Until we’d drawn a different line,” she replied. She stared into Mazian’s pale eyes and recalled every word she had spoken with Ayres, every move, every intonation. She had let the man go, to do this.

  “So they got their passage somehow,” Mazian said. “The question is, what agreement they’ve made first, at Pell — and just how much they’ve signed over to Union. There’s the possibility too that those so-named negotiators aren’t intact. Mind-wiped, they’d sign and say right into Union’s anxious fingers, knowing the company signal codes — and no knowing what else they spilled, no knowing what codes, what information, what was compromised, how much of everything they’ve handed over; our internal codes, no, but we don’t know what of the Pell codes went… all the kind of thing that would let them come right in here. That’s why the abort. Months of planning; yes; stations gone; ships and friends gone; vast human suffering — all of that, for nothing. But I had to make a fast decision. The Fleet is intact; so is Pell; we’ve got that much, right or wrong. We could have won at Viking; and gotten ourselves pinned there, lost Pell… all source of supply. That’s why we pulled out.”