Downbelow Station tau-3

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  There was not a sound, not a move. It suddenly made full sense.

  “That’s what I didn’t want on com,” Mazian said. “It’s your choice. We’re at Pell, where we have a choice. Do we assume it’s Company men who sent that… in their right minds? Unforced? That Earth still backs us — ? It’s in question. But — old friends, does that really matter?”

  “How, matter?” Sung asked.

  “Look at the map, old friends, look at it again. Here… here is a world. Pell. And does a power survive without it. What is Earth… but that? You have your choice here: follow what may be Company orders, or we hold here, gather resources, take action. Europe’s staying regardless of orders. If enough do, we can make Union think twice about putting its nose in here. They don’t have crews that can fight our style of fight; we’ve got supply here; we have resources. But make up your minds — I won’t stop you — or you can stay and do what I think you might do. And when history writes what happened to the Company out here, it can write what it likes about Conrad Mazian. I made my choice.”

  “Two of us,” Edger said.

  “Three,” Signy said, no faster than the murmur from the others. Mazian passed a slow glance from one to the other, nodded.

  “Then we hold here, but we have to take it. Maybe we’ll have cooperation here and maybe we won’t. We’re going to find out. — And we’re not all in on this yet. Sung, I want you personally to go out to North Pole and Tibet and put it to them. Explain it any way you like. And if there’s any large number of dissenters in any crew, or among the troops, well give them our blessing and let them go, take one of the merchanter ships here and ship them out I leave it to individual captains to handle that.”

  “There won’t be any dissent,” Keu said.

  “If there are,” Mazian said. “The station, now — we move out and disperse our own security throughout, put our own personnel in key spots. Half an hour is enough for you to break this to your own commands. Whatever they ultimately decide to do, there’s no question that we need to hold Pell securely before we can take any action, either to clear a ship for some to leave, or to hold onto it.”

  “Go?” Kreshov asked when silence lingered.

  “Go,” Mazian said softly, dismissing them.

  Signy pushed back and moved, first after Sung, past Mazian’s own security at the door, gathered her two-man escort and went, aware of others hard at her heels. Uncertainty still weighted her conscience. She had been Company all her life — cursed it, hated its policies and its blindness — but she felt suddenly naked, standing outside it.

  Timidity, she reasoned with herself. She was a student of history, valued the lessons of it. The worst atrocities began with half-measures, with apologies, compromising with the wrong side, shrinking from what had to be done. The Deep and its demands were absolutes; and the compromise the Company had come to the Beyond to try would not hold longer than the convenience of the stronger… and that was Union.

  They served Earth, she persuaded herself, better by what they did than the Company agents did by what they traded away.

  Chapter Three

  i

  Pell: sector white two; 1530 hrs.

  The warning lights must still be on outside in the corridor. The salvage center kept to a deliberate pace. The supervisor walked the aisles between the machines and silenced any talk by his presence. Josh carefully kept his head down, unfastened a plastic seal from a small, worn-out motor, dropped it into a tray for further sorting, dropped clamps into yet another tray, disassembled the components into varied categories, for reuse or recycling according to wear and type of material.

  There had been, since the original com announcement, no further word from the screen on the forward wall. No discussion was allowed after the initial murmur of dismay at the news. Josh kept his eyes averted from the screen, and from the station policeman at the door. He was more than three hours past his shift’s quitting time. They should all have been dismissed, all those on partial. Other workers should have arrived. He had been here over six hours. There was no provision for meals here. The supervisor had finally sent out for sandwiches and drinks for them. There was still a cup of ice on the bench in front of him. He did not touch it, wishing to seem completely busy.

  The supervisor stopped a moment behind him. He did not react, did not break the rhythm of his actions. He heard the supervisor move on, and did not look to see.

  They did not treat him differently from the others here. It was his own troubled mind, he persuaded himself, which made him suspect they might be watching him in particular. They were all closely supervised. The girl by him, a solemn, slow-moving child and ever so careful, was doing the most complex job of which she was capable, and nature had cheated her of much capacity. Many here in the salvage center were of that category. There were some who entered here young, perhaps to seek a track up through the job classifications, to gain elementary mechanical skills and to go higher, into technical positions or manufacture. And there were some whose nervous behavior indicated other reasons for being here, anxious, obsessive concentration… strange to observe the symptoms in others.

  Only he had never been a criminal as they might have been, and perhaps they trusted him less for that. He cherished his job here, which kept his mind busy, which gave him independence… quite as the sober girl beside him cherished her place, he thought. At first, in his zeal for demonstrating his skill, he had worked with feverish quickness; and then he saw that it upset the child beside him, and that distressed him, because she could not do more, could never do more. He compromised then, and did not make his efficiency obvious. It was enough to survive. It had looked to be enough for a long time.

  Only now he felt sick to his stomach and wished he had not eaten all his sandwich, but even in that matter he had not wanted to seem different from those about him.

  The war had gotten to Pell. Mazianni. The Fleet was at hand.

  Norway, and Mallory.

  He did not think some thoughts. When the dark crowded him, he worked the harder and blinked the memories away. Only… war… Someone near him whispered about having to evacuate the station.

  It was not possible. It could not happen.

  Damon! he thought, wishing that he could get up and leave, go to the office, be reassured. Only there was no reassurance to be found, and he was afraid to try it.

  Mazian’s Fleet. Martial law.

  She was with them.

  He might break, if he was not careful; the balance of his mind was delicate and he knew it. Perhaps to have asked for this oblivion was in itself insane, and Adjustment had made him no more unbalanced than he had ever been. He suspected every emotion he felt, and therefore tried to feel as few as possible.

  “Rest,” the supervisor said. “Ten-minute break.”

  He kept working, as he had through previous rest periods. So did the girl beside him.

  ii

  Norway; 1530 his.

  “We hold Pell,” Signy told her crew and the troops, those present with her on the bridge and those scattered throughout the ship. “Our decision — Mazian’s, mine, the other captains — is to hold Pell. Company agents have signed a treaty with Union… handed them everything in the Beyond and called for us to stand aside while they do it; they turned our contact code over to Union. That’s why we aborted the strike… why we took out. No knowing what of our codes is betrayed.” She let that sink in, watching grim faces all about her, aware of the whole body of the ship and all the listeners elsewhere within it. “Pell… the Hinder Stars, this whole edge of the Beyond… this is what we have left secure. We aren’t going to take that order from the Company; we aren’t going to accept surrender, however it’s cloaked. We’re off the leash, and this time we fight the war our own way. We’ve got ourselves a world and a station; and the whole Beyond began from that. We can rebuild the Hinder Star stations, all that used to exist between here and the Sun itself. We can do it. The Company may not be smart enough to want a buffer now between the
mselves and Union, but they will, believe me they will, and they’ll be smart enough at least not to trifle with us. Pell’s our world now. We’ve got nine carriers to hold it. We’re not Company anymore. We’re Mazian’s Fleet, and Pell is ours. Any contrary opinions?”

  She waited for some, although she knew her people like family… for some might have other opinions, might have second thoughts about this. There was reason they should.

  A sudden cheer erupted off the troop decks, found echo, all channels open. People on the bridge were hugging one another and grinning. Graff embraced her; armscomper Tiho did; and others of her officers of many years. Some were crying. There were tears in Graff’s eyes. None in her own; might have been, but that she felt guilt… still, irrationally, the habit of an outworn loyalty. She embraced Graff a second time, pushed back, looked around her. “Get all of us ready,” she said. It was going all over the ship, open com. “We’re moving in to take station central before they know what’s hit them. Di, hurry it.”

  Graff started giving orders. She heard Di doing so, down in the troop corridors, distinctive echo. The bridge moved into activity, techs jostling one another in the narrow aisles getting to posts. “Ten minutes,” she shouted, “full armament, all available troops arm and out.”

  There was shouting elsewhere, the com giving evidence of troops rushing to suit even before the orders were officially passed. The commands began echoing through the corridors. Signy walked back to her small office/quarters and took the precaution of helmet and body armor, none for her limbs, trading risk for freedom of motion. Five minutes. She heard Di counting over the open com, with outright chaos feeding out from various command stations. No matter. This crew and the troops knew their business in the dark and upside down. All family here. The incompatible met early accidents and those left were close as brothers, as children, as lovers.

  She headed out, slipping her pistol openly into the armor-holster, rode the lift down; armored troops pouring down the corridor at a rattling run hit the wall to give her room the instant they recognized her coming through, so that she could run to the fore, where she belonged.

  “Signy!” they cried after her, jubilant. “Bravo, Signy!”

  They were alive again, and felt it.

  iii

  Pell council: sector blue one

  “No,” Angelo said at once. “No, don’t try to stop them. Pull back. Pull back our forces immediately.”

  Station command acknowledged and turned to its business. Screens in the council chamber began to reflect new orders; the muffled voice of security command gave reports. Angelo sank back in his chair, at the table in the center of council, amid the partially filled tiers, the soft murmurings of panic among those who had contrived to get back here through the halls. He propped his mouth against his steepled hands and sat studying the incoming reports which cut across the screens in rapid sequence, views of the docks, where armored troops boiled out. Some of the council had waited too long, could not get out of the sections where they worked or where they had taken up an emergency post. Damon and Elene came in together, for refuge, out of breath, hesitated at the door. Angelo beckoned his son and daughter-in-law in on personal privilege, and they approached at his urging and settled at two of the vacant places at the table. “Had to leave dock office in a hurry,” Damon said quietly. “Took the lift up.” Hard behind them came Jon Lukas and his clutch of friends to seat themselves, the friends in the tiers and Jon at the table. Two of the Jacobys made it, hair disheveled and faces glistening with sweat. It was not council; it was a sanctuary from what was happening outside.

  On the screens matters were worsening, the troops headed in toward the heart of the station, security trying to keep up with the situation by remote, switching from one camera to the next in haste, a rapid flickering of images.

  “Staff wants to know if we lock the control-center doors,” a councillor said from the doorway.

  “Against rifles?” Angelo moistened his lips, slowly shook his head, staring at the flick of images from camera to camera to camera.

  “Call Mazian,” Dee said, a new arrival. “Protest this.”

  “I have, sir. I have no answer. I reckon he’s with them.”

  Q disorder, a screen advised them. Three known dead; numerous injured.…

  “Sir,” a call broke through the message. “They’re mobbing the doors in Q, trying to batter them down. Shall we shoot?”

  “Don’t open,” Angelo said, his heart pounding at the acceleration of insanity where there had been order. “Negative, don’t fire unless the doors are breached. What do you want — to let them loose?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then don’t.” The contact went dead. He wiped his face, feeling ill.

  “I’ll get down that way,” Damon offered, half out of his chair.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Angelo said. “I don’t want you gathered up in any military sweep.”

  “Sir,” an urgent voice came at his elbow, a presence which had come down from the tiers. “Sir — ”

  Kressich.

  “Sir,” Kressich said.

  “Q com is down,” security command advised. “They’ve got it out again. We can splice something in. They can’t have reached the dock speakers.”

  Angelo looked at the man Kressich, a haggard, grayed individual, who had gotten more so in the passing months. “Hear that?”

  “They’re afraid,” Kressich said, “that you’re going to leave here and let the Fleet leave them for Union.”

  “We don’t know what the Fleet’s intention may be, Mr. Kressich, but if a mob tries to breach those doors into our side of the docks, it’s going to be beyond our power to do anything but shoot. I suggest you get on the com link to that section when they get it patched, and if there’s a speaker they haven’t broken, make that clear to them.”

  “We know we’re pariahs whatever happens,” Kressich returned, lips trembling. “We asked, we asked over and over, speed up the checks, run id’s, purify our records, do it faster. Now it’s too late, isn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily, Mr. Kressich.”

  “You’re going to see to your own people first, get them on the available ships in comfort You’re going to take our ships.”

  “Mr. Kressich — ”

  “Work has been progressing,” said Jon Lukas. “Some of you may have clear papers. I wouldn’t jeopardize them, sir.”

  There was sudden silence from Kressich, an uncertain look, his face an unwholesome color. His lips trembled and the tremor spread to his chin, his hands locked upon each other.

  Amazing, Angelo thought sourly, how easily it comes down to small concerns; and how accurately he does it.

  Congratulations, Jon.

  Easy to deal with the refugees of Q. Offer all their leaders clear paper and reason with them. Some had, in fact, proposed that.

  “They’ve got blue three,” Damon muttered. Angelo followed his gaze to the monitors, on which the flow of armored troops and their stationing along the corridors had become a rapid, mechanical process.

  “Mazian,” said Jon. “Mazian himself.”

  Angelo stared at the silver-haired man in the lead, mentally counting off the moments it would take that tide of soldiery to flow up the spiraling emergency ramps to their level, to the doors of the council itself.

  That long, he still held the station.

  iv

  Sector blue one; number 0475

  The images changed. Lily fretted, sprang up and walked back and forth, a step toward the buttons on the box, a step toward the dreamer, whose eyes were troubled.

  Finally she dared reach for the box, to change the dream.

  “No,” the dreamer told her sharply, and she looked back and saw the pain… the dark, lovely eyes in the pale face, the white, white sheets, all about her light, save the eyes, which gazed on the sights in the halls. Lily came back to her, interposed her body between dream and dreamer, smoothed the pillow.

  “I turn you,�
�� she offered.

  “No.”

  She stroked the brow, touched so, so gently. “Dal-tes-elan, love you, love you.”

  They are troops,“ Sun-her-friend said, in that voice so still and calm that it shed peace on others. ”Men-with-guns, Lily. It’s trouble. I don’t know what may happen.“

  “Dream them gone,” Lily pleaded.

  “I have no power to do that, Lily. But see, there is no using the guns. No one is hurt.”

  Lily shivered, and stayed close. From time to time on the ever-changing walls the face of Sun appeared, reassuring them, and stars danced, and the face of the world shone for them like the crescent moon. And the line of men-in-shells grew, filling all the ways of the station.

  v

  There was no resistance. Signy had not drawn her gun, although her hand was on it. Neither had Mazian or Kreshov or Keu. Threat was for the troops, leveled rifles with the safeties off. They had fired one warning burst on the docks, nothing since. They moved quickly, giving no time for thought in those who met them now, no hint that there was argument possible. And there were few who lingered to meet them at all in these sections. Angelo Konstantin had given orders, Signy reckoned — the only sensible course.

  They changed levels, up a ramp at the end of the main hall. Boots rang in complete vacancy; the sharp report of troops in their wake filing off to station themselves at the appointed line-of-sight intervals sent up other echoes. They passed from the emergency ramp to the area of station control; troops moved in there too, under officers, lowered rifles, while other detachments headed down the side halls to invade other offices: no shooting, not here. They kept moving down the center corridors, passed from cold steel and plastics to the sound-deadening matting, entered the hall of the bizarre wooden sculptures, whose eyes looked no less shocked now than before.