Downbelow Station tau-3

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  And the human faces, the small group gathered in the anteroom of the council chambers, were as round-eyed.

  Troopers swept through, pushed at the ornate doors to open them. The leaved doors swung to either side and two troopers braced like statues facing inward, rifles leveled. The councillors inside, in a chamber far from filled, rose and faced the guns as Signy and Mazian and the others walked through. There was dignity in their posture, if not defiance.

  “Captain Mazian,” said Angelo Konstantin, “can I offer you to sit and talk this over with us… you and your captains?”

  Mazian stood still a moment. Signy stood between him and Keu, Kreshov on the other side, surveying faces. Not the full council, not by half. “We don’t take that much of your time,” Mazian said. “You asked us here, so we’re here.”

  No one had moved, not to sit, not to shift position.

  “We’d like an explanation,” Konstantin said, “of this — operation.”

  “Martial law,” Mazian said, “for the duration of the emergency. And questions… direct questions, Mr. Konstantin, regarding agreements you may have made with certain Company apents. Understandings… with Union, and the flow of classified information to Union intelligence. Treason, Mr. Konstantin.”

  Blood left faces all about the room.

  “No such understandings,” Konstantin said. “No such understandings exist, captain. This station is neutral. We are a Company station, but we do not permit ourselves to be drawn into military action, or used as a base.”

  “And this… militia… you have scattered about you?”

  “Sometimes neutrality needs reinforcement, captain. Captain Mallory herself warned us of random refugee flights.”

  “You claim ignorance that information… was handed to Union by civilian Company agents. You aren’t party to any agreements, arrangements, or concessions which those agents may have made with the enemy?”

  There was a moment of heavy silence. “We know of no such agreements. If there were any agreements to be made, Pell was not informed of them; and if we had been we would have discouraged them.”

  “You’re informed now,” Mazian said. “Information was passed, including code words and signals which jeopardize the security of this station. You’ve been handed to Union, stationmaster, by the Company. Earth is folding up its interests out here. You’re one. We’re another. We don’t accept such a situation. Because of what’s already been turned over, other stations have been lost. You’re the border. With what forces we have, Pell is both necessary to us and tenable. Do you understand me?”

  “You’ll have every cooperation,” Konstantin said.

  “Access to your records. Every security problem should be weeded out and set under quarantine.”

  Konstantin’s eyes shifted to Signy and back again. “We’ve followed all your procedures as outlined by captain Mallory. Meticulously.”

  “There’ll be no section of this station, no record, no machine, no apartment, if need be, where my people don’t have instant access. I would prefer to withdraw most of my forces and leave yours in charge, if we can have this clearly understood: that if there are security problems, if there are leaks, if a ship bolts from pattern out there, or if order breaks down in any particular, we have our own procedures, and they involve shooting. Is that clear?”

  “It is,” Konstantin said, “abundantly clear.”

  “My people will come and go at will, Mr. Konstantin, and they’ll shoot if they judge it necessary; and if we have to come in shooting to clear the way for one of ours, we will, every man and woman in the Fleet. But that won’t happen. Your own security will see to it — or your security with the help of ours. You tell me which way.”

  Konstantin’s jaw clenched. “So we are plain on both sides, Captain Mazian, we recognize your obligation to protect your forces and to protect this station. We will cooperate; we will expect cooperation from you. When I send a message hereafter, it goes through.”

  “Absolutely,” Mazian said easily. He looked to right and left of him, moved finally, walked a space toward the doors while Signy and the others still faced council. “Captain Keu.” he said, “you may discuss matters further with council. Captain Mallory, take the operations center. Captain Kreshov, check through security records and procedures.”

  “I’ll want someone knowlegeable,” Kreshov said.

  “The security director will assist you,” Konstantin said. “I’ll call that order ahead.”

  “I also,” Signy said, glancing at a familiar face at the central table, the younger Konstantin. The young man’s expression altered at that look, and the young woman by him reached a hand to his.

  “Captain,” he said.

  “Damon Konstantin… yourself, if you will. You can be of help.”

  Mazian left, taking a few of the escort with him, for a general tour of the area, or more than likely, further operations, the taking of other sections, like the core and its machinery. Jan Meyis, Australia’s second in command, was on that delicate task. Keu drew back a chair at the council table, taking possession of it and the chamber; Kreshov followed Mazian out. “Come on,” Signy said, and young Damon paused for a glance at his father, who was thin-lipped and upset, at parting with the young woman at his side. They did not, Signy reckoned, think much of her company. She waited, then walked with him to the door where she gathered up two of her own troopers for escort, Kuhn and Dektin.

  “The command center,” she directed Konstantin, and he showed her out the door with incongruous and natural courtesy, tending the way they had come in.

  Not a word from him; his face was set and hard.

  “Your wife back there?” Signy asked. She collected details… on those of consequence. “Who?”

  “My wife.”

  “Who?”

  “Elene Quen.”

  That startled her. “Station family?”

  “The Quens. Off Estelle. Married me and stayed off her last run.”

  “She’s lost. You know that.”

  “We know.”

  “Pity. Children, you two?”

  It was a moment before he answered that one. “On the way.”

  “Ah.” The woman had been a little heavy. “There are two of you Konstantin boys, aren’t there?”

  “I have a brother.”

  “Where is he?”

  “On Downbelow.” The expression was more and more anxious.

  “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m not worrying.”

  She smiled, mocking him.

  “Are your forces on Downbelow too?” he asked.

  She kept the smile, saying nothing. “I recall you’re from Legal Affairs.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’d know quite a few of the comp accesses for personnel records, wouldn’t you?”

  He shot her a look that wasn’t frightened. Angry. She looked to the corridor ahead, where troops guarded the windowed complex of central. “We’re assured your cooperation,” she reminded him.

  “Is it true that we were ceded?”

  She smiled still, reckoning the Konstantins, if anyone, to have their wits about them, to know their value and that of Pell. “Trust me,” she said with irony. command central, a sign said, with an arrow pointing; communications, another; blue one, 01-0122. “Those signs” she said, “come down. Everywhere.”

  “Can’t.”

  “And the color keys.”

  “The station is too confusing — even residents could get lost — the halls mirror-image, and without our color-keys…”

  “So in my ship, Mr. Konstantin, we don’t mark corridors for intruders.”

  “We have children on this station. Without the colors…”

  “They can learn,” she said. “And the signs all come off.”

  Station central lay open before them… occupied by troops. Rifles swung anxiously as they entered, then recentered. She looked all about the command center, the row upon row of control consoles, the technic
ians and station officers who worked there. Troops visibly relaxed at her presence. Civs at their posts looked relieved as well — at that of young Konstantin, she reckoned; for that purpose she had brought him.

  “It’s all right,” Signy said to the troops and the civs. “We’ve reached an accommodation with the stationmaster and the council. We’re not evacuating Pell. The Fleet is setting up a base here, one we’re not going to give up. No way Union’s coming in here.”

  A murmur went among the civs, eyes meeting eyes with subdued looks of relief. From hostages they were suddenly allies. The troops had grounded their rifles.

  “Mallory,” she heard whispered from point to point of the room. “That’s Mallory.” In that tone, which was not love… nor was it disrespect.

  “Show me about,” she said to Damon Konstantin.

  He walked about the control center with her, quietly named the posts, the personnel who filled them, many of whom she would remember; she was good at that when she wanted to be. She stopped a moment and looked about her, at the screens, the rotating schematic Downbelow, dotted with green and red points. “Bases?” she asked.

  “We’ve got several auxiliary sites,” he said, “trying to absorb and feed what you left us.”

  “Q?” She saw the monitor on that section too, seething human mass battering at a sealed door. Smoke. Debris. “What do you do with them?”

  “You didn’t give us that answer,” he replied. Few took that tone with her. It amused her.

  She listened, looked about her at the grand complex, bank upon bank, boards with functions alien to those of a starship. This was commerce and the maintenance of a centuries-old orbit, cataloging of goods and manufacture, of internal and onworld populations, native and human… a colony, busy with mundane life. She surveyed it with a slow intake of breath, a sense of ownership. This was what they had fought to keep alive.

  Com central came through suddenly, an announcement from council. “… wish to assure station residents,” said Angelo Konstantin, with council chambers in the background, “that no evacuation of this station will take place. The Fleet is here for our protection…”

  Their world.

  It only remained to put it in order.

  Chapter Four

  Downbelow: main base: 1600 hrs. station standard

  Local Dawn[2]

  Morning was near, a red line on the horizon. Emilio stood in the open, breath paced evenly through the mask, wearing a heavy jacket against the perpetual chill of nights at this latitude and elevation. The lines moved in the dark, quietly, bowed figures hastening with loads like insects saving eggs from flood, outward, out of all the storage domes.

  The human workers still slept, those in Q and those of the residents’ domes. Only a few staff helped in this. His eyes could spot them here and there about the landscape of low domes and hills, tall shadows among the others.

  A small, panting figure scurried up to him, gasped a naked breath. “Yes? Yes, you send, Konstantin-man?”

  “Bounder?”

  “I Bounder.” The voice hissed around a grin. “Good runner, Konstantin-man.”

  He touched a wiry, furred shoulder, felt a spidery arm twine with his. He took a folder paper from his pocket, gave it into the hisa’s callused hand. “Run, then,” he said. “Carry this to all human camps, let their eyes see, you understand? And tell all the hisa. Tell them all, from the river to the plain; tell them all send their runners, even to hisa who don’t come in human camps. Tell them be careful of men, trust no strangers. Tell them what we do here. Watch, watch, but don’t come near until a call they know. Do the hisa understand?”

  “Lukases come,” the hisa said. “Yes. Understand, Konstantin-man. I Bounder. I am wind. No one catches.”

  “Go,” he said. “Run, Bounder.”

  Hard arms hugged him, with that frightening easy strength of the hisa. The shadow left him into the dark, flitted, ran …

  Word sped. It could not be recalled, not so easily.

  He stood still, watched the other human figures on the hillside. He had given his staff orders and refused to confide in them, wishing to spare them responsibility. The storage domes were mostly empty now, all the supplies they had contained taken deep into the bush. Word sped along the river, by ways which had nothing to do with modern communications, nothing which listeners could monitor, word which sped with a hisa’s speed and would not be stopped at any order from the station or those who held it. Camp to camp, human and hisa, wherever hisa were in touch one with the other.

  A thought struck him… that perhaps never before Man had the hisa had reason to talk to others of their kind in this way; that never to their knowledge was there war, never unity among the scattered tribes, but somehow knowledge of Man had gotten from one place to the other. And now humans sent a message through that strange network. He imagined it passing on riverbanks and in the brush, by chance meetings and by purpose, with whatever purpose moved the gentle, bewildered hisa.

  And over all the area of contact, hisa would steal, who had no concept of theft; and leave their work, who had no concept of wages or of rebellion.

  He felt cold, wrapped as he was in layers of clothing, well insulated against the chill breeze. He could not, like Bounder, run away. Being Konstantin and human, he stood waiting, while advancing dawn picked out the lines of burdened workers, while humans from the other domes began to stir out of sleep to discover the systematic pilferage of stores and equipment, while his staff stood by watching it happen. Lights went on under the transparent domes… workers came out, more and more of them, standing in shock.

  A siren sounded. He looked skyward, saw only the last few stars as yet, but com had wind of something. And a presence disturbed the rocks near him, and a slim arm slipped around his waist. He hugged Miliko against him, cherishing the contact.

  There was a call from across the slope; arms lifted, pointed up. The light of the descending ship was visible in the paling sky… sooner than they had wanted.

  “Minx!” He called one of the hisa to him, and she came, a female with the white blaze of an old burn on her arm; came burdened as she was and panting. “Hide now,” he told her, and she ran back to the line, chattering to her fellows as she went.

  “Where are they going?” Miliko asked. “Did they say?”

  They know,“ he said. ”Only they know.“ He hugged her the tighter against the wind. ”And their coming back again — that depends on who does the asking.“

  “If they take us away…”

  “We do what we can. But there’ll be no outsiders giving them orders.”

  The light of the ship brightened, intense. Not one of their shuttles, but something bigger and more ominous.

  Military, Emilio reckoned; a carrier’s landing probe.

  “Mr. Konstantin.” One of the workers came running up, stopped with a bewildered spreading of his hands. “Is it true? Is it true that Mazian’s up there?”

  “We were sent word that’s what it is. We don’t know what’s going on up there; indications are things are quiet. Keep it calm; pass the word… we keep our wits about us, ride events as they come. No one says anything about the missing supplies; no one mentions them, you understand? But we aren’t going to have the Fleet strip us down here and then go off to leave the station to starve; that’s what’s going on. You pass that word too. And you take your orders only from me and from Miliko, hear?”

  “Sir,” the man breathed, and at his dismissal, ran off to carry the news.

  “Better put it to Q,” Miliko said.

  He nodded, started that way, from the hillside on which they stood. Over the hill a glow flared up, field lights on to guide the landing. He and Miliko walked the path over to Q, found Wei there. “Fleet’s up there,” Emilio said. And at the quick, panicked murmur: “We’re trying to keep food for station and ourselves; trying to stop a Fleet takeover down here. You saw nothing. You heard nothing. You’re deaf and blind, and you don’t have responsibility for anything; I do.
”

  There was murmuring, from the resident workers, from Q. He turned, he and Miliko, headed by the path from there to the landing site; a crowd of his own staff and resident workers formed about him… Q folk too; no one stopped them. They had no guards anymore, not here, not at the other camps; Q worked by posted schedules like other workers. It was not without its arguments, its difficulties; but they were less a threat than what descended on them all, which would make its demand for provisions for troop-laden carriers, and possibly demands for live bodies.

  The ship came down in thunder, settled into the landing area and overfilled it, and on the hillside they stopped their ears in its sound and turned their faces from its reeking wind until the engines had shut down. It rested there in the breaking day, foreign and ungainly, and bristling with war. The hatch opened, lowered a jaw to the ground, and armored troops walked down onto the soil of the world as they on their hillside stood still in a line of their own, armorless and weaponless. The troops braced, aimed rifles. An officer came down the ramp into the light, a dark-skinned man with a breathing mask only, no helmet.

  “That’s Porey,” Miliko whispered. “That has to be Porey himself.”

  He felt the burden on himself to go down and answer the posed threat, let go Miliko’s hand; but she did not let go his. They walked down the hill together, to meet the legendary captain… stopped at speaking range, all too conscious of the rifles now much closer to them.

  “Who’s in charge of this base?” Porey demanded.

  “Emilio Konstantin and Miliko Dee, captain.”

  “Before me?”

  “Yes, captain.”

  “Receive a decree of martial law. All supplies at this base are confiscated. All civilian government, human and native, is suspended. You will turn over all records of equipment, personnel, and supplies immediately.”