Downbelow Station tau-3

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  He drew a calmer breath and looked at Jessad, who nodded a reassuring satisfaction.

  viii

  The webbery of ladders stretched before and behind, a maze of tubes across the overhead, and it was bitterly cold. Damon shone the beam one way and the other, reached for a railing, sank down on the gridwork as Josh sank down by him, the breather-sounds loud, strained. His head pounded. Not enough air, not fast enough for exertion; and the maze they were in… branched. There was logic to it: the angles were precise; it was a matter of counting. He tried to keep track.

  “Are we lost?” Josh asked between gasps.

  He shook his head, angled the beam up, the way they should go. Mad to have tried this, but they were alive, in one piece. “Next level,” he said, “ought to be two. I figure… we go out… take a look, how things are out there…”

  Josh nodded. G flux had stopped. They still heard noise, unsure in this maze where it came from. Distant shouts. Once a booming shock he thought might be the great seals. It seemed better; he hoped… moved, with a clattering ringing of the metal, reached for the rail again and started to climb, the last climb. He was overwhelmingly anxious, for Elene, for everything he had cut himself off from in coming this way… No matter the hazard, he had to get out.

  There was a static sputter. It boomed through the tunnels and echoed.

  “Com,” he said. It was coming back together, all of it.

  “This is a general announcement. We are approaching G stabilization. We ask that all citizens keep to their present areas and do not attempt to cross section lines. There is still no word from the Fleet, and none is expected yet. Scan remains clear. We do not anticipate military action in the vicinity of this station… It is with extreme sorrow that we report the death of Angelo Konstantin at the hand of rioters and the disappearance in violence of other members of the family. If any have reached safety, please contract station central as soon as possible, any Konstantin relative, or any knowing their whereabouts, please contact station central immediately. Councillor Jon Lukas remains acting stationmaster in this crisis. Please give full cooperation to Lukas Company personnel who are fulfilling security duties in this emergency.”

  Damon sank down on the steps. A cold deeper than the chill of the metal settled into him. He could not breathe. He became aware that he was crying, tears blurring the light and choking his breath.

  “… announcement,” the com began to repeat “We are approaching G stabilization. We ask that all citizens…”

  A hand settled on his shoulder, pulled him about “Damon?” Josh said through the noise.

  He was numb. Nothing made sense. “Dead,” he said, and shuddered. “O God -

  Josh stared at him, took the lamp from his hand. Damon thrust himself for his feet, for the last climb, for the access he knew was up there.

  Josh pulled him hard, turned him around against the solid wall. “Don’t go,” Josh pleaded with him. “Damon, don’t go out there now.”

  Josh’s paranoid nightmares. It was that look on his face. Damon leaned there, his mind going in all directions, and no clear direction. Elene. “My father… my mother… that’s blue one. Our guards were in blue one. Our own guards.”

  Josh said nothing.

  He tried to think. It kept coming up wrong. Troops had moved; the Fleet had pulled out. Murders instant… in Pell’s heaviest security…

  He turned the other way, the way they had just come, his hands shaking so he could hardly grip the railing. Josh shone the light for him, caught his elbow to stop him. He turned on the steps, looked up into Josh’s masked, light-distorted face.

  “Where?” Josh asked.

  “I don’t know who’s in control up there. They say it’s my uncle. I don’t know.” He reached for the lamp, to take it. Josh surrendered it reluctantly and he turned, started down the ladders as quickly as he could slide down the steps, Josh following desperately after.

  Get down again. Down was easy. He hurried at the limit of breath and balance, until he was dizzy and the lamp’s beam swung madly about the framework and the tunnels. He slipped, recovered, kept descending.

  “Damon,” Josh protested.

  He had no breath for arguing. He kept going until his sight was fading from want of air, sank down on the steps trying to pull air enough through the breather to keep from fainting. He felt Josh leaning by him, heard him panting, no better off. “Docks,” Damon said. “Get down there… get to ships. Elene would go there.”

  “Can’t get through.”

  He looked at Josh, realized he was dragging another life into this. He had no choices either. He got up, started down again, felt the vibrations of Josh’s steps still behind him.

  The ships would be sealed. Elene would be there or locked in the offices. Or dead. If the troops had hit him… if for some mad reason… the station was being disabled in advance of a Union takeover…

  But Jon Lukas was supposed to be up there in central.

  Had some action failed? Had Jon somehow prevented them from hitting central itself?

  He lost count of the stops for breath, of the levels they passed. Down. He hit bottom finally, a gridwork suddenly wider, did not realize what it was until he searched with the light and stopped finding downward ladders. He walked along the grid, saw the faint glimmer of a blue light, that over an access door. He reached it, pushed the switch; the door slid back with a hiss and Josh followed him into the lock’s brighter light. The door closed and air exchange started. He tugged down the mask and got a full breath of air, chill and only slightly tainted. His head was pounding. He focused hazily on Josh’s sweating face, marked with the mask, distraught “Stay here,” he said in pity. “Stay here. If I get this cleared up, I’ll come back; if I don’t — decide for yourself what to do.”

  Josh leaned there, eyes glazed.

  Damon turned his attention to the door, got his breathing back to normal, rubbed his eyes to clear them, finally pushed the button and put the door in function. Light blinded him; there was shouting out there, screaming, the smell of smoke. Life-support, he thought with a chill… it opened on one of the minor halls, and he headed out, started running, heard running footfalls behind him and looked back.

  “Get back,” he wished Josh, “get back in there”

  He had no time to argue with him. He ran, down the hall… had to be in green sector; it had to be nine in this direction… all the signs were gone. He saw riot ahead of him, people running scattered through the halls; and some had lengths of pipe and there was a body in the hall… he dodged it and kept going. The rioters he saw did not look like Pell… unshaven, unkempt… he knew suddenly what they were, and flung everything into his running, pelted down the hall and up a turn, headed as close to the docks as he could get without going into the main corridor. He had to break into it finally, dodged a runner among other runners.

  There were more bodies on the floor, and looters ran rampant. He shouldered past men who clutched pipes and knives and, some of them, guns…

  The entry to the dock was closed, sealed. He saw that, staggered aside as a looter came swinging a pipe at him, for no reason more than that he was in the way.

  The attacker kept going, a half-circle that pulled him about and ended against the wall, with Josh, who slammed his head into the wall and came up with the pipe in his hand.

  Damon whirled and ran, for the sealed doors… reached for his pocket, for the card, to override the lock.

  “Konstantin!” someone shouted behind him.

  He turned, stared at a man, at a gun leveled at him. A length of pipe hurtled out of nowhere and hit the man, and looters scrabbled for the gun, a surging mob. In panic he whirled, thrust the card for the slot; the door whipped back, with the vast dockside beyond, and other looters. He ran, sucking in the cold air, down the dock toward white sector, where he saw other great seals in place, the dock seals, two levels tall and airtight. He stumbled from exhaustion and caught himself, pelted up the curve toward them, hearing someone close be
hind him and hoping it was Josh. The stitch that had started in his side unnoticed grew to a lancing pain… Past looted shops with dark, open doors, he reached the wall beside the huge seals, fetched up against the closed door of the small personnel lock, thrust his card into the slot.

  It was dead. No response. He pushed it harder, thinking it might have failed contact, inserted it a second time. It was cut off. It should at least have lighted the buttons, given him a chance to put through a priority code, or flashed the hazard signal.

  “Damon!” Josh reached the door beside him, caught at his shoulder, pulled him around. There were people moving behind them, thirty, half a hundred, from all across the docks… from green nine, in greater and greater number.

  “They know you got a door open,” Josh said. “They know you’ve got that kind of access.”

  He stared at them. Snatched his card from the slot. Useless, blanked; control had blanked his card.

  “Damon.”

  He grabbed at Josh and ran, and the crowd started forward with a howl. He raced for the open doors, for the shops… into the dark doorway of the nearest. He whirled inside, pushed the button to seal the door. That at least worked.

  The first of the mob hit the door, hammered at it. Panicked faces pressed close to the plastic, lengths of pipe hammered at it, scarring it: it was a security seal, like all the dock-front stores… pressure-tight, windowless, but for that double-thick circle.

  “It’s going to hold,” Josh said.

  “I don’t think,” he said, “that we can get out again. I don’t think we can get out of here until they come to get us.”

  Josh looked at him across the space of the window, from the other side of the door, pale in the light that came through it.

  “They blanked my card,” Damon said. “It stopped working. Whoever’s in station central just cut off my card use.” He looked toward the plastic, on which the gouges were deepening. “I think we just trapped ourselves.”

  The hammering continued. Madness raged outside, not assassins, not any sane impulse toward hostage-taking, only desperate people with a focus for their desperation. Q residents with a pair of stationers within reach. The scars deepened on the plastic, almost obscuring the faces and hands and weapons. It was remotely possible they could get through it.

  And if that happened there was no need of assassins.

  Chapter Two

  i

  Norway; 1300 hrs.

  It was a waiting game now, probe and vanish. Ghosts. But solid enough out there, somewhere beyond system limits. Tibet and North Pole had lost contact with the incoming enemy; Union had about-faced, at the cost of one of Tibet’s riders… at the cost of one of Union’s. But it was far from over. The com flow kept up, calm and quiet out of both carriers. Signy gnawed her lip and stared at the screens before her, while Graff tended op. Norway held position along with the rest of the Fleet — having dumped speed, drifted, still not too remote from the mass of Pell IV and III and the star itself. Dead-stopped. They had refused to be drawn out. Had now to use mass to shelter them from an arrival close at hand. It was not likely that Union would be reckless enough to use jump for entry — not their style — but they took the precaution… sitting targets as they were. Wait long enough and even conservative Union commanders could circle their scan range to find new lines of attack, having probed things; wolves round the firelight, and themselves trying to sit within it, visible and dead still and vulnerable. Union had room out there, could get a good run started, too fast for them to handle.

  And for some time there had been bad news coming out of Pell, silence broken, rumblings of serious disorder.

  From Mazian… persistent silence, and one of them dared breach it with a communication to question. Come on, she wished Mazian, turn some of us loose to hunt. The riders hung off from Norway in widest deployment, like those of the other ships, twenty-seven riderships, seven carriers; and thirty-two militia ships trying to fill up their pattern — indistinguishable on longscan, some of them, from riderships; two of them from carriers. As long as the Fleet sat still, not betraying themselves by tight moves and speed, whoever looked at scan had to wonder if some of those slow, steady ships might not be warships disguising their moves. Tibet’s rider had gotten back to mother; and Tibet and North Pole had seven riders and eleven militia in their area, short-haulers incapable of running, turned brave by necessity: they could not get out of the way… so they made part of the screen. As if they could depend on attack coming from that direction. Union had felt at them. Pricked at the organism and vanished out of range. It was probably Azov out there. One of Union’s oldest; one of the best. Feathertouch and feint. He had sucked in more than one commander too good to die that way.

  Nerves crawled. The techs on the bridge looked at her from time to time. Silence existed inside as well as among the ships, contagious unease.

  A comtech turned at his station, looked at her. “Pell situation worsening,” he said off com. There was a murmur from other stations.

  “Minds on your business,” she snapped, on general address. “It’s likely to come from any side of us. Forget Pell or we get it in our faces, hear me? I’ll vent the crewman who woolgathers.”

  And to Graff: “Ready status.”

  The blue light went on in the overhead. That would wake them up. A light flashed on her board, indicating the armscomp board lit, the armscomper and his aides fully prepared.

  She reached to the comp board, punched a code for a recorded instruction. Norway’s sighting eye began to rove toward the reference star in question, to perform identifications and to lock in. In case. In case there was something going on unaccounted for in their plans, and Mazian, likewise receiving that Pell chatter, was thinking of running: their direct beam pickup was trained on Europe, and Europe still had nothing to say. Mazian was thinking; or had made up his mind, and trusted his captains to take precautions. She tapped a signal to the jump tech’s board, as he had already to have noted the other move. The board went live, a stepped up power flow to the generation vane monitors, that gave them options other than realspace. If the Fleet broke from Pell, chances were they would not all arrive where they were instructed, at the nearest null point. That there would never again be a Fleet, nothing between Union and Sol.

  The com flow from Pell became grim indeed.

  ii

  Downer access

  Men-with-guns. Keen ears could still pick up the shouts outside, the terrible fighting. Satin shivered at a crash against the wall, trembled, finding no reason for this thing that happened… but that Lukases had done this; and Lukases gave orders, in power in the Upabove. Bluetooth hugged her, whispered to her, urged her, and she came, as silently as the others. The whispers of bare hisa feet passed above them, below. They moved in dark, a steady flow. They dared no lights, which might guide men to find them.

  Some were ahead of them, some behind. Old One himself led, the strange hisa, who had come down from the high places, and commanded them without telling them why. Some had lingered, fearing the strange ones; but there were guns behind, and mad humans, and they would come in haste very soon.

  A human voice rang out far below in the tunnels, echoing up. Bluetooth hissed and pushed, moved faster in his climbing, and Satin scampered along with all her might, heated by this exertion, her fur damp and her hands sliding on the rails where others had grasped them.

  “Hurry,” a hisa voice whispered at one of the levels, high, high in the Upabove’s dark places, and hands urged them up still another climb, where a dim light shone, making a silhouette of a hisa who waited there. A lock. Satin tugged her mask into place and scrambled up to the doors, caught Bluetooth’s hand, for fear of losing him where Old One should lead.

  The lock received them. They jammed in with others, and the inner seal gave way on a mass of brown hisa bodies, hands which reached and drew them out in haste, other hisa, who stood facing outward, shielding them from what lay beyond.

  They had weapons, lengths of pi
pe, like the men carried. Satin was stunned, felt backward after Bluetooth, to be sure of his presence in this milling angry throng, in the white lights of humans. There were only hisa in this hall. They filled the corridor as far as the closed doors at the end. Blood smeared one of the walls, a scent which did not reach them through the masks. Satin rolled a distraught glance in the direction the press was sweeping them, felt a soft hand which was not Bluetooth’s close upon her arm and lead her. They passed a door into a human place, vast and dim, and the door closed, bringing quiet.

  “Hush,” their guides said. She looked about in panic to see if Bluetooth was still with her and he reached out to her, caught her hand. They walked nervously in the company of their elder guides, through this spacious man-place, oh, so carefully, for fear, and for respect to the weapons and the anger outside. Others, Old Ones, rose from the shadows and met them. “Storyteller,” an Old One addressed her, touching her in welcome. Arms embraced her; others came from beyond a bright, bright doorway and embraced her and Bluetooth, and she was dazed by the honor they gave. “Come,” they said, leading her, and they came into that bright place, a room without limits, with a white bed, a sleeping human, and a very old hisa who crouched by it. Dark and stars were all about, walls which were and were not, and of a sudden, great Sun peering into the room, upon them and on the Dreamer.

  “Ah,” Satin breathed, dismayed, but the old hisa rose up and held out hands in welcome. “The Storyteller,” Old One was saying, and the oldest of all left the Dreamer a moment to embrace her. “Good, good,” the Oldest said tenderly.

  “Lily,” the Dreamer said, and the Oldest turned, knelt by the bed to tend her, stroked her grayed head. Marvelous eyes turned on them, alive in a face white and still, her body shrouded in white, everything white, but the hisa named Lily and the blackness which expanded all about them, dusted with stars. Sun had vanished. There was only themselves.