Downbelow Station tau-3

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  “Lily,” the Dreamer said again, “who are they?”

  At her the Dreamer looked, at her, and Lily beckoned. Satin knelt down, and Bluetooth beside her, gazed with reverence into the warmth of the Dreamer’s eyes, the Dreamer of the Upabove, the mate of great Sun, who danced upon her walls. “Love you,” Satin whispered. “Love you, Sun-she-friend.”

  “Love you,” the Dreamer whispered in her turn. “How is it outside? Is there danger?”

  “We make safe,” Old One said firmly. “All, all the hisa make safe this place. Men-with-guns stay away.”

  “They’re dead.” The wonderful eyes filmed with tears, and sought toward Lily. “Jon’s doing. Angelo — Damon — Emilio, maybe — but not me, not yet. Lily, don’t leave me.”

  Lily so, so carefully put her arm about the Dreamer, laid her graying cheek against the Dreamer’s graying hair. “No,” Lily said. “Love you, no time leave, no, no, no. Dream they leave, men-with-guns. Downers all stand you place. Dream to great Sun. We you hands and feet, we many, we strong, we quick.”

  The walls had changed. They looked now upon violence, upon men fighting men, and all of them shrank closer together in dread. It passed, and only the Dreamer remained tranquil.

  “Lily. The Upabove is in danger of dying. It will need the hisa, when the fighting is done, need you, you understand? Be strong. Hold this place. Stay with me.”

  “We fight, fight mans come here.”

  “Live. They daren’t kill you, you understand. Men need the hisa. They don’t won’t come in here.” The bright eyes grew dark with passion and gentle again. Sun was back, his awesome face filling all the wall, silencing angers. He reflected in the Dreamer’s eyes, touched the whiteness with his color.

  “Ah,” Satin breathed, and swayed from side to side. Others did, one with her, making a soft moan of awe.

  “She is Satin,” Old One said to the Dreamer. “Bluetooth her friend. Friend of Bennett-man, see he die.”

  “From Downbelow,” the Dreamer said. “Emilio sent you to the Upabove.”

  “Konstantin-man you friend? Love he, all, all Downers. Bennett-man he friend.”

  “Yes. He was.”

  “She say,” Old One said, and in the language of hisa… “Storyteller, Sky-sees-her, make the story for the Dreamer, make bright her eyes and warm her dreams; sing it into the Dream.”

  Heat rose to her face and her throat grew taut for fear, for a great one she was not, only a maker of little songs, and to tell a tale in human words… in the presence of the Dreamer, and of great Sun, with all the stars about, to become part of the Dream…

  “Do it,” Bluetooth urged her. His faith warmed her heart.

  “I Sky-see-she,” she began, “come from Downbelow, tell you Bennett-man, tell you Konstantin, sing you hisa things. Dream hisa things, Sun-she-friend, like Bennett make dream. Make he live, make he walk with hisa, ah! Love you, love he. Sun smile look at he. Long, long time we dream hisa dreams. Bennett make we see human dream, show we true things, tell we Sun he hold all Upabove, hold all Downbelow in he arms, and Upabove she make wide she arms to Sun, tell we ships come and go, big, big, come and go, bring mans from the faraway dark. Make wide we eyes, make wide we dream, make we dream same as humans, Sun-she-friend. This thing Bennett give we; and he give he life. He tell we good things in Upabove, make warm we eyes with want for these good things. We come. We see. So wide, so big dark, we see Sun smile in the dark, make the dream for Downbelow, the blue sky. Bennett make we see, make we come, make we new dreams.

  “Ah! I Satin, I tell you time humans come. Before humans, no time, only dream. We wait and not know we wait. We see humans and we come to Upabove. Ah! time Bennett come cold time, and old river she quiet…”

  The dark, lovely eyes were set upon her, interested, intent upon her words as if she had skill like the old singers. She wove the truth as best she could, making this true, and not the terrible things which were Happening elsewhere, making it truer and truer, that the Dreamer might make it truth, that in the turning cycles, this truth might come round again as the flowers did, and the rains and all lasting things.

  iii

  Station central

  The boards had stabilized. Station central had adjusted to panic as a perpetual condition, apparent in the fevered attention to details, the refusal of techs to acknowledge the increasing coming and going of armed men in the command center.

  Jon patrolled the aisles, scowling, disapproving of any move beyond necessity. “Another call from the merchanter Finity’s End,” a tech told him. “Elene Quen speaking, demands information.”

  “Denied.”

  “Sir — ”

  “Denied. Tell them to sit and wait it out. Make no more unauthorized calls. Do you expect us to broadcast information that could aid the enemy?”

  The tech turned to her work, visibly trying not to see the guns.

  Quen. Young Damon’s wife, with the merchanters, already trouble, making demands, refusing to come out. The information had already proliferated, and the Fleet had to be picking it up by now from the merchanters in pattern about the station. Mazian knew by now what had happened. Quen with the merchanters and Damon on green section dock; Downers knotted about Alicia’s bedside, blocking number four crosshall in that area. Let her keep her Downer guard: the section door was shut. He folded his hands behind him and tried to look calm.

  A movement caught his eyes, near the door. Jessad was back after brief absence, stood there, a silent summons. Jon walked in that direction, misliking Jessad’s grim sobriety.

  “Any progress?” he asked Jessad, stepping outside.

  “Located Mr. Kressich,” Jessad said. “He’s here with an escort; wants a conference.”

  Jon scowled, glanced down the hall where Kressich waited with a cluster of guards about him, and an equal number of their own security.

  “Situation as it was with blue one four,” Jessad said. “Downers still have it blocked. We’ve got the door; we could decompress.”

  “We need them,” Jon said tautly. “Let it be.”

  “For her sake? Half-measures, Mr. Lukas…”

  “We need the Downers; she’s got them. Let be, I said. It’s Damon and Quen who’re trouble. What are you doing in that regard?”

  “Can’t get anyone on that ship; she’s not coming out and they’re not opening. As for him, we know where he is. We’re working on it.”

  “What do you mean you’re working on it?”

  “Kressich’s people,” Jessad hissed. “We need to get through out there, you understand me? Pull yourself together and talk to him; promise him anything. He’s got the mobs in his hand. He can pull the strings. Do it.”

  Jon looked at the group in the hall, his thoughts scattering, Kressich, Mazian, the merchanter situation… Union. The Union fleet had to move soon, had to. “What do you mean, need to get through out there? Do you know where he is or don’t you?”

  “Not beyond doubt,” Jessad admitted. “We turn that mob loose on him and there won’t be enough to identify. And we need to know. Believe me. Talk to Kressich. And hurry about it, Mr. Lukas.”

  He looked, caught Kressich’s eyes, nodded, and the party came closer… Kressich, as gray and wretched-looking as ever. But those about him were another matter: young, arrogant, cocky in their bearing.

  “The councillor wants a share of this,” one said, small, dark-haired man with a scar on his face.

  “You speak for him?”

  “Mr. Nino Coledy,” Kressich identified him, surprising him with a direct answer and a harder look than Kressich had ever mustered in council. “I advise you to listen to him. Mr. Lukas, Mr. Jessad. Mr. Coledy heads Q security. We have our own forces, and we can get order when we ask for it. Are you ready to have it?”

  Jon turned a disturbed look on Jessad, obtained nothing; Jessad was blank of comment. “If you can stop the mobs — do it.”

  “Yes,” said Jessad quietly. “Quiet at this stage would serve us. Welcome to our counci
l, Mr. Kressich, Mr. Coledy.”

  “Give me com,” Coledy said. “General address.”

  “Give it to him,” Jessad said.

  Jon drew a deep breath, suddenly with questions trembling on his lips, what kind of game Jessad was playing with him, pushing these two into the inner circle; Jessad’s own, as Hale was his? He swallowed the questions, swallowed anger, remembering what was out there, how fragile it all was. “Come with me,” he said, led the way inside, took Coledy to the nearest com board. Scan was visible from there, Mazian still holding steady. It was too much to hope that Mazian would be easily disposed of. Far too much, that it would be easy. The Fleet had the area pocketed… Mazian’s ships, dotted here and there about the multi-level halo that was the merchanters’ orbit about Pell.

  “Move,” he said to a tech, dislodged him, put Coledy in that place and himself punched through to com central. Bran Hale’s face lit up the screen. “Got a call for you to send out,” he told Hale. “This one goes on general override.”

  “Right,” Hale said.

  “Mr. Lukas,” someone called, breaking the general hush in central. He looked about. Scan screens were flashing intersect alert.

  “Where is it?” he exclaimed. Scan had nothing definite. A peppering of yellow haze warned of something incoming, fast. Comp began to siren alarms. There were soft outcries, curses, techs reaching for boards.

  “Mr. Lukas!” someone cried, frantic appeal.

  iv

  Finity’s End

  “Scan,” the alarm rang out. Elene saw the flicker and cast a frantic look at Neihart.

  “Break us loose,” Neihart said, avoiding her eyes. “Go”!

  The word flashed ship to ship. Elene gathered herself against the parting jolt… too late to run for the dock, far too late; umbilicals were long since shut off, ships grappled-to only.

  A second jolt. They were free, peeling away from station as the whole row of still-docked merchanters followed, counterclockwise round the rim; as any mistake in inside shutdown might mean a ruptured umbilical, as whole sections of dock might decompress. She sat still, feeling the familiar sensations she had thought she might never feel again, free, loose, like the ship, outward bound from what was coming at them; and feeling as if part of her were torn away.

  A second invader passed… came zenith and disrupted scan, triggered alarms… was gone, on its way toward the Fleet. They were alive, drifting loose at their helpless slow motion rate, coming out on an agreed course, a general drift of all those undocking. She folded her arm across her belly and watched the screens before her in Finity’s command center, thinking on Damon, on all that was back there.

  Dead, maybe; they said Angelo was dead; maybe Alicia was; maybe Damon — maybe… she hurled the thought at herself, trying to accept it sanely, if it had to be accepted, if there was revenge to be gotten for it. She drew deep breaths, thinking on Estelle, on all her kin. A second time spared, then. A talent for leaving disasters. She had a life in her that was Quen and Konstantin at once, names that meant something in the Beyond; names which Union would not find comfortable for them in future, that she would give them cause to remember.

  “Get us out of here,” she said to Neihart, cold and furious; and when he looked at her, seeming amazed by this shift of mind: “Get us out. Run for jump. Pass the word. Matteo’s Point. Flash the word system-wide. We’re leaving, right through the Fleet.”

  She was Quen, and Konstantin, and Neihart moved. Finity’s End overshot the station and kept going, broadcasting instruction to every merchanter near and far in the system. Mazian, Union, Pell — none of them could stop it.

  Instruments blurred before her eyes, cleared again with a blink. “After Matteo’s,” she said to Neihart, “we jump again. There’ll be others… in deep. Folk who’ve had enough, who wouldn’t come to Pell. We’ll find them.”

  “No hope of your own there, Quen.”

  “No,” she agreed with a shake of her head. “None of mine. They’re gone. But I know coordinates. So do we all. I helped you, kept your holds full and never questioned your manifests.”

  “Merchanters know it.”

  “So will the Fleet know these places. So we hang together, captain. We move together.”

  Neihart frowned. It was not characteristic of merchanters… to be together on anything but a dock-front brawl.

  “Got a boy on one of Mazian’s ships,” he said.

  “I’ve got a husband on Pell,” she said. “What’s left now but to settle accounts for this?”

  Neihart considered it a moment, finally nodded. “The Neiharts will stand by your word.”

  She leaned back, stared at the screen before her. They had scan image, Union insystem, ghosts ripping across scan. It was nightmare. Like Mariner, where Estelle and all the other Quens had died, holding to a doomed station too late… where the Fleet had let something through or something had gotten them from within. It was the same thing… only this time merchanters were not sitting still for it.

  She watched, resolved to watch scan until the last, to see everything until the station died or they reached jump-point, whichever might happen first.

  Damon, she thought, and cursed Mazian, Mazian more than Union, who had brought this on them.

  v

  Green dock

  A second time G surged out of balance. Damon made a startled grab for the wall and Josh for him, but it was a minor flux, for all the panicked screams outside the scarred door. Damon turned his back against the wall and rolled a weary shake of his head.

  Josh asked no questions. None were necessary. Ships had peeled away on the rest of the rim. Even here they could hear the sirens… breach, it was possible. It was encouraging that they could hear sirens. There was still air out there on the dock.

  “They’re going,” Damon said hoarsely. Elene was away, with those ships; he wanted to believe so. It was the sensible thing. Elene would have been sensible; had friends, people who knew her, who would help her, when he could not. She was gone… to come back, maybe, when things settled — if they settled. If he was alive. He did not think he was going to be alive. Maybe Downbelow was all right; maybe Elene — on those ships. His hope went with them. If he was wrong… he never wanted to know.

  Gravity fluxed again. The screams and the hammering at the door had stopped. The wide dock was no place to be in a G crisis. Anyone sane had run for smaller spaces.

  “If the merchanters have bolted,” Josh said faintly, “they saw something… knew something. I think Mazian must have his hands full.”

  Damon looked at him, thinking of Union ships, of Josh… one of them. “What’s going on out there? Can you reckon?”

  Josh’s face was drenched with sweat, glistening in the light from the scarred door. He leaned against the wall, lifted a glance at the overhead. “Mazian’s liable to do anything; can’t predict. No percentage for Union in destroying this station. It’s the stray shot we have to worry about.”

  “We can absorb a lot of shots. We may lose sections, but while we have motive power and the hub intact, we can handle damage.”

  “With Q loose?” Josh asked hoarsely.

  Another flux hit them, stomach-wrenching. Damon swallowed, beginning to experience nausea. “While that goes on we don’t have Q to worry about. We’ve got to chance it, try to get out of this pocket.”

  “Go where? Do what?”

  He made a sound deep in his throat, numb, simply numb. He waited for the next G flux; it failed to strike with its former force. They had begun to get it in balance again. The abused pumps had held, the engines worked. He caught his breath. “One comfort. We’re out of ships to do it to us again. I don’t know how many of those we can take.”

  “They could be waiting out there,” Josh said.

  He reckoned that. He reached a hand up, pushed the switch. Nothing happened. Closed, the door had locked itself. He took his card from his pocket, hesitated, pushed it in the slot and the buttons stayed dead. If anyone in central had any des
ire to know where he was, he had just given the information to them. He knew that.

  “Looks like we’re staying,” Josh said.

  The sirens had stopped. Damon edged over, chanced a look out the scarred window, trying to see through the opaque slashes and the light diffraction. Something stirred, far across the docks, one furtive figure, another. The com overhead gave out a burst of static as if it were trying to come on and went silent again.

  vi

  Norway

  Militia freighters scattered, stationary nightmare. One of them blew like a tiny sun, flared on vid and died while com pickup sputtered static. The hail of particles incandesced in Norway’s path and some of the bigger ones rang against the hull, a scream of passing matter.

  No fancy turns: dead-on targets and armscomp lacing into them. A Union rider went out the way the merchanter had, and Norway’s four riders rolled, whipped out on a vector concerted with Norway and pulled fire, a steady barrage that pocked a Union carrier paralleling them for one visible instant.

  “Get him!” Signy yelled at her armscomper when the fire paused; it erupted over her words and pasted into the spot the running carrier turned out to occupy. They forced Union to maneuver, to dump G to survive it. A howl of delight went up and sirens drowned it as helm jerked control away and sent their own mass into a sudden turn, comp reacting to comp faster than human brains could at such speeds… she hauled it back and paralleled the quarry. Armscomp ripped off another barrage right down the belly array and whatever came of it, scan started to show a field peppered with haze.

  “Good!” the belly spotter shouted into com general. “Solid hit…”

  There were wails as Norway half-rolled and swung into a new zig. Merchanters leaked past them, headed out as if they were a tableau frozen in space: They were doing the moving, whipped through the interstices of that still-standing race and went after the Union ships, keeping them zigging, keeping them from gathering room for a run.