Downbelow Station tau-3

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  Feint and strike: like their entry… a ship to draw them, attack from another vector. Tibet and North Pole were headed in to intercept, had been coming from the first moment scan image had reached them: longscan had just revised their position, set them as much closer, reckoning they would go at max.

  Union moved. That scan had reached them in the same instant; shifted vector right into the fire they were laying down, Norway, Atlantic, Australia… Union lost riders, took damage, going rimward in spite of fire, going at Tibet and North Pole. There was a ringing oath over com, Mazian’s voice pouring out a stream of obscenity. Twelve carriers left of the fourteen that had come in, a cloud of riderships and dart-ships, bore away from station and into their two outrunners that were distance-blind and alone out there.

  “Hit their heels!” Porey’s deep voice came through.

  “Negative, negative,” Mazian snapped back. “Hold your positions.” Comp still had them in synch; Europe’s command signal drew them unwillingly with Mazian. They watched the Union fleet pass their zone of fire, heading for Tibet and North Pole. Behind them, a flare of energy reached them: static that cleared… “Got him!” com echoed. Pacific must have taken out that crippled Union carrier some minutes back. There were other things possible across the system, that they could lose track of. Could lose Pell. One strike could take it out, if that was Union’s intent.

  Signy flexed a hand, wiped her face, keyed to Graff, and he took up controls on the instant — they were dumping velocity again, pulling maneuvers in concert with Mazian. Protests garbled over com. “Negative,” Mazian repeated. There was a hush throughout Norway.

  “They haven’t a chance,” Graff muttered too audibly. “They should have come in sooner… should have come in — ”

  “Hindsight, Mr. Graff. Take it as it falls.” Signy dialed up general com. “Can’t move out of here. If it’s a feint, one ship could come in and wipe Pell. We can’t help them… can’t risk any more of us than we’re already about to lose. They’ve got an option… they’ve still got room to run.”

  Might, she was thinking, might, the instant their scan narrowed on them, and longscan started showing what they were into… veer off and jump. If scan techs on Tibet and North Pole fed the right data into longscan, if the picture on their scopes did not show Mazian and help coming right on Union’s tail, misinterpreting their maneuver as one of following…

  The Fleet slowed further. Scan showed a fade-out among the merchanters, that slow-motion flight having reached jump limit. They bled away, Pell’s life, drifting off into the deep.

  She dead-reckoned time factors, Union’s speed, proliferation of their image, Tibet’s and North Pole’s velocity incoming. About now, about now, Tibet should be figuring it out, realizing Union was on them. If their scan was telling them truth…

  Their own scan kept showing history for a moment, then locked up, stationary, longscan having run out of speculations. Head to head, yellow haze, while red lines tracked through that haze, the real scan they were getting.

  Closer. The red line reached decision-critical — kept going. Head on. Signy sat and watched, as all of them had to watch. Her fist was clenched and she restrained herself from hitting something, the board, the cushion, something.

  It happened; they watched it happen, what had happened already, the futile defense, the overwhelming assault. Two carriers. Seven riders, to a man. In forty and more years the Fleet had never lost ships so wretchedly.

  Tibet rammed… Kant hurled his carrier into jump near the mass of his enemies and took his own riders and a Union carrier into oblivion… there was a sudden gap in scan… a grim cheer at that; and again when North Pole and her riders hurtled through the midst of the Unioners…

  They almost made it through Kant’s hole. Then that image became a scatter of images. North Pole’s comp signal that had begun a sending… ceased abruptly.

  Signy had not cheered, only nodded slowly each time to no one in particular, remembering the men and women aboard, names known… despising the situation they were handed. Longscan resolved itself, question answered. The surviving images that were Union kept on running, hit jump, vanished from the screens. The Unioners would be back, reinforced, eventually, simply calling in more ships. The Fleet had won, had held on, but now they were seven; seven ships.

  And the next time and the next it would happen. Union could sacrifice ships. Union ships prowled the fringes of the system and they dared not go out hunting them. We’ve lost, she addressed Mazian silently. Do you know that? We’ve lost.

  “Pell,” Mazian’s voice came quietly over com, “is under riot conditions. We do not know the situation there. We are faced with disorder. Hold pattern. We cannot rule out another strike.”

  But suddenly lights flashed on Norway’s boards; a whole sector sprang to renewed independence. Norway was loosed from comp synch. Orders flashed to the screen, comp-sent.

  … secure base.

  She was loosed. Africa was. Two ships, to go back and take a disordered station while the rest kept to their perimeter and room to maneuver.

  She punched general com. “Di, arm and suit. We’ve got to take ourselves a berth, every trooper we’ve got on the line. Suit alterday crew to guard the docks. We’re going in after the troops we had to leave.”

  A shout erupted from that link, many-voiced, angry, frustrated troops suddenly needed again, in something they were hot to do.

  “Graff,” she said.

  They red-lighted despite the troops in prep below, pulled stress in coming about and headed deadon for the station. Porey’s Africa pulled out of pattern in her wake.

  vii

  Pell Central

  “…Give us docking access,” Mallory’s voice came over com, “and open doors to central, or we start taking out sections of this station.”

  Collision, the screens flashed. White-faced techs sat at their posts, and Jon gripped the back of the chair at com, paralyzed in the realization of carriers hurtling dead at Pell’s midline.

  “Sir!” someone screamed.

  Vid had them, shining masses filling all the screen, monsters bearing down on them, a wall of dark finally that split apart and passed the cameras above and below station. Boards erupted in static and sirens wailed as the carriers skimmed their surface. One vid went out, and a damage alarm went off, a wail of depressurization alert.

  Jon spun about, sought Jessad, who had been near the door. There was only Kressich, mouth agape in the wail of sirens.

  “We’re waiting for an answer,” another, deeper voice said out of com.

  Jessad, gone. Jessad or someone had failed at Mariner and the station had died. “Find Jessad!” Jon shouted at one of Hale’s men. “Get him! Take him out!”

  “They’re coming in again!” a tech cried.

  Jon whirled, stared at the screens, tried to talk and gestured wildly. “Com link,” he shouted, and the tech passed him a mike. He swallowed, staring at the oncoming behemoths on vid. “You have access,” he shouted into the mike, as he tried to control his voice. “Repeat: this is Pell station-master Lukas. You have access.”

  “Say again,” Mallory’s voice returned to him. “Who are you?”

  “Jon Lukas, acting stationmaster. Angelo Konstantin is dead. Please help us.”

  There was silence from the other side. Scan began to alter, the big ships diverting from near-collision course, dumping velocity perceptibly.

  “Our riders will dock first,” Mallory’s voice declared. “Do you copy, Pell station? Riders will dock in advance to serve as carrier dock crews. You give them an assist in and then clear out of their way or face fire. For every trouble we meet, we blow a hole in you.”

  “We have riot conditions aboard,” Jon pleaded. “Q has broken confinement.”

  “Do you copy my instructions, Mr. Lukas?”

  “Pell copies clearly. Do you understand our problem? We can’t guarantee there’ll be no trouble. Some of our docks are sealed off. We accept your troops in assistanc
e. We are devastated by riot. You will have our cooperation.”

  There was long hesitation. Other blips had come into scan, the riders which attended the carriers. “We copy,” Mallory said. “We will board with troops. Get my number-one rider safely docked with your cooperation or we will blow ourselves an access for troops and blow section by section, no survivors. That is your clear choice.”

  “We copy.” Jon wiped at his face. The sirens had died. There was a deathly hush in the command center. “Give me time to get what security I can muster to the most secure docks. Over.”

  “You have half an hour, Mr. Lukas.”

  He turned from com, waved a summons to one of his security guards, by the door. “Pell copies. Half an hour. We’ll get you a dock clear.”

  “Blue and green, Mr. Lukas. You see to it.”

  “Blue and green docks,” he repeated hoarsely. “We’ll do our best.”

  Mallory signed off. He pushed past com to key in the main com center. “Hale,” he exclaimed. “Hale.”

  Hale’s face appeared.

  “General broadcast. All security to docks. Get blue and green docks clear for operation.”

  “Got it,” Hale said, and keyed out.

  Jon strode across the room to the doorway where Kressich still stood. “Get back on com. Get on and tell those people you claim to control to stay quiet. Hear?”

  Kressich nodded. There was a distractedness in his eyes, a not quite sanity. Jon seized him by the arm and dragged him to the com board, as the tech scrambled out of the way. He set Kressich down, gave him the mike, stood listening as Kressich addressed his lieutenants by name, calling on them to clear the affected docks. Panic persisted in the corridors where they still had cameras to see. Green nine showed milling throngs and smoke; and whatever they cleared panicked mobs would pour into like air into vacuum.

  “General alert,” Jon said to the chief at station one. “Sound the null G warning.”

  The woman turned, opened the security casing, punched the button beneath. A buzzer began to sound, different and more urgent than all other warnings which had wailed through Pell’s corridors. “Seek a secure place,” a voice interrupted it at intervals. “Avoid large open areas. Go to the nearest compartment and seek an emergency hold. Should extreme gravity loss occur, remember the orientation arrows and observe them as station stabilizes… Seek a secure place…”

  Panic in the halls became headlong flight, battering at doors, screaming.

  “Throw G off,” Jon sent to the op coordinator. “Give us a variation they can feel out there.”

  Orders flashed. A third time the station destabilized. Green nine corridor began to show clear as people raced for smaller spaces, even smaller corridors. Jon punched through to Hale again. “Get forces out there. Get those docks clear; I’ve given you your chance, confound you.”

  “Sir,” Hale said, and winked out again. Jon turned full circle, looked distractedly at the techs, at Lee Quale, who clung to a handhold by the door. He signaled Quale, caught his sleeve and hauled him close when he came. “The unfinished business,” he said, “down on green dock. Get down there and finish it, understand? Finish it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Quale breathed, and fled… with sense enough to know, surely, that their lives rested on it.

  Union might win. Until then they claimed station neutrality, held onto what they could. Jon paced the aisle, catching at chairs and counters in the occasional strong flux, trying to keep the whole center from panic. He had Pell. He had already what Union had promised him, and would have it under Mazian and under Union too, if he was careful; and he had been, far more than Jessad had ordered him to be. There were no witnesses left alive in Angelo’s office, none in Legal Affairs, abortive as that raid had been. Only Alicia… who knew nothing, who harmed no one, who had no voice, and her sons…

  Damon was the danger. Damon and his wife. Over Quen he had no control… but if young Damon started making charges -

  He cast a look over his shoulder, suddenly missed Kressich, Kressich and two who were supposed to be watching him.

  The desertion of his own enraged him, of Kressich — he was relieved. Kressich would vanish back into the hordes of Q, frightened and unreachable.

  Only Jessad… if they had not gotten him, if he was loose, near something vital -

  On scan the riders were moving closer. Pell had yet a little time, before Mazian’s troops hit. A tech handed him positive id on the ships that waited out there; Mallory and Porey, Mazian’s two executioners. They had a name, the one for ruthlessness and the other for enjoying it. Porey was the other one, then. That was no good news.

  He stood and sweated, waiting.

  viii

  Green dock

  Something was going on outside. Damon walked over the littered floor of the dark shop and leaned there, trying again to see out the scarred window, jerked as the red explosion of a shot distorted in the scratches. There was screaming mingled with the grinding of machinery in operation.

  “Whoever’s out there now, they’re moving this way and they’ve got guns.” He edged back from the door, moving carefully in the lessened G. Josh stooped, gathered up one of the rods that had been part of a ruined display, offered it. Damon took it and Josh got another for himself. He moved up near the doorway, and Josh went to the other side of it, back to the wall. There was no sound near them outside, a lot of shouting far away. Damon risked a look, the light coming from the other way, jerked back again at the sight of human shadows near the scarred window.

  The door whipped open, carded from outside, someone with priority. Two men dashed in, guns drawn. Damon slammed the steel rod down on a head, eyes unfocusing for horror of it, and Josh hit from the other side. The men fell strangely in the low G, and a gun skittered loose. Josh scooped it up, fired twice to be sure, and one jerked, dying. “Get the gun,” Josh snapped, and Damon bent and pushed fastidiously at the body, found the unfamiliar plastic of the gun butt in a dead hand. Josh was on his knees, rolled the other body, began to strip it. “Clothes,” Josh said. “Cards. id’s that work.”

  Damon laid the gun aside and swallowed his distaste, stripped the limp body, took off his own suit, struggled into the bloody coveralls… there would be men aplenty in the corridors with bloodstains on them. He searched the pockets for a card, found the papers there, found the card lying where the body’s left hand had dropped it. He canted the id folder to the light. Lee Anton Quale… Lukas Company…

  Quale. Quale, from the Downbelow mutiny… and Jon Lukas’s employ; in Jon’s employ, and Jon had comp in his control — when Q happened to get the doors open, when Konstantins happened to have been murdered in Pell’s tightest security… when his card stopped working and murderers knew how to locate him — it was Jon up there.

  A hand closed on his shoulder. “Come on, Damon.”

  He rose, flinched as Josh used his gun to burn Quale’s face beyond recognition, the other corpse afterward. Josh’s own face was sweat-slicked in the light from the door, rigid with horror, but the reactions were right, a man whose instincts knew what they were doing. He headed for the dock and Damon ran with him, out into the light, slowed at once, for the docks were virtually bare. White dock seal was in place; the seal of green dock was hidden up the horizon. They walked gingerly across the front of the huge seal of white, got in among the gantries across the dock, walked along within that cover, while the horizon unfolded downward, showing them a group of men working at the docking machinery, moving slowly and carefully in reduced G. Corpses and papers and debris lay scattered all across the docks, out in open spaces which would be difficult to reach without being seen. “Enough cards lying out there,” Josh said, “to give us plenty of names.”

  “For any lock not voice-keyed,” Damon murmured. He kept his eye to the men at work and those standing guard down by the green niner entry, visible at this range — walked out carefully to the nearest corpse, hoping it was a corpse, and not someone dazed or shamming. He knelt, still watch
ing the workers, felt through the pockets and came up with a card and additional papers. He pocketed them and went to the next, while Josh plundered others. Then nerves sent him scurrying back to cover, and Josh joined him at once. They moved further up the dock.

  “Blue seal is open,” he said, as that arch came down off horizon. He entertained a wild, momentary hope of hiding, getting to blue sector when the traffic in the corridors returned to normal, getting up to blue one and asking questions at gunpoint. It was fantasy. They were not going to live that long. He did not reckon they would.

  “Damon.”

  He looked, followed the direction Josh indicated, up through the gantry lines to the first berth in green: green light. A ship was in approach, whether Mazian’s or Union’s there was no telling. Com thundered out, echoing instructions in the emptiness. The ship was closing with the docking cone, coming in fast. “Come on,” Josh hissed at him, pulling at his arm, insisting on a break for green nine.

  “The G isn’t going,” he murmured, resisting Josh’s urging. “Don’t you see it’s a trick? Central’s got the corridors cleared for their own forces to move in them. Those ships wouldn’t dock with G completely unstable; no way they’d risk that with a big ship. Just a little flux to quell the riot. And it won’t stay cleared. If we run into those corridors we’ll be in the middle of it. No. Stay put.”

  “ECS501,” he heard over the loudspeaker then, and his heart lifted.

  “One of Mallory’s riders,” Josh muttered at his side. “Mallory. Union’s retreated.”

  He looked at Josh, at the hate which burned in the angel’s haggard face… hope cancelled.

  The minutes passed. The ship snugged in. The dock crew ran to secure the umbilicals, thrust the connections in. The access slammed into seal with a hiss audible across the empty distance. Machinery whined and slammed beyond it, the lock in function, and the dock-side crew started running.