Downbelow Station tau-3

by Caroline J. Cherryh

  “Yes, sir,” Porey said. Anger vibrated through his tone. “Done.”

  Mallory, Mazian thought, a word which had become a curse, an obscenity.

  Orders were not yet disseminated, plans not firm. They had to assume the worst now and act on it. Disrupt the station’s controls. Get the troops off and run for it… they had to have them. Ruin anything useful.

  Sun. Earth. It had to be now.

  And Mallory… if once they could get their hands on her…

  viii

  Pell central; 2400 hrs. md; 1200 a.

  Jon Lukas turned from devastation on the screens to chaos on the boards, techs scrambling frantically to relay calls to damage control and security.

  “Sir,” one asked him, “sir, there’re troops trapped in blue, a sealed compartment. They want to know when we can get to them. They want to know how long.”

  He froze. He had stopped having answers. The instructions did not come. There were only the guards, who were always about him, Hale and his comrades who were always with him, day and night, his personal and unshakable nightmare.

  They had their rifles on the techs now. He turned, looked at Hale to appeal to him to use the helmet com to contact the Fleet, to ask information, whether it was attack or malfunction, or what had sent a Fleet carrier ripping over their heads and three others on its tail. Of a sudden Hale and his men stopped, all at the same time, listening to something only they could hear. And all at once they turned, leveled rifles.

  “No!” Jon screamed.

  They fired.

  ix

  Downbelow main base; 2400 hrs. md.; 1200 a.; local night

  There was little chance for sleep. They took it when they could, man and hisa, crouched the one in Q dome and the other in the mud outside, sleeping as best they might, shift by shift in their clothes, in the same mud-caked, stinking blankets, what sleep they were allowed. The mills never stopped; and the work went on day and night.

  The flimsy doors of the lock slammed, one after the other, and Emilio lay stiff and still, apprehension confirmed — a sound had wakened him. It was not time to wake, surely it was not time. It seemed only minutes ago that he had lain down to sleep. He heard the patter of rain overhead; heard a number of boots crunching the gravel outside. There was no shuttle down; they roused both shifts of them out only for loading.

  “Up and out,” a trooper shouted.

  He moved. He heard moans about him, the other men wakened, winced in the strong light which swept over them. He rolled out of the cot, grimaced with the pain of strained muscles and blistered feet onto which he pulled water-stiffened boots. Fear worked in him, small things wrong, different from other nighttime rousings. He fastened his clothing, put on his jacket, groped at his throat for the breather mask which always hung there. Light hit his face again, drew groans of misery from others. He walked for the door among others who were going; outside, through the second door, up the wooden steps to the path. More lights in his face. He flung his arm up to shield his eyes.

  “Konstantin. Round up the Downers.”

  He tried to see past the lights, eyes watering… on a second try made out shadows beyond, others of their number brought up from the mills. Shuttle had to be coming down. It must be. No need to panic.

  “Get the Downers.”

  “All of you out,” someone inside shouted; the doors opened then straight through, deflating the dome crest as all others were herded out at gunpoint

  A hand found his, childlike. He looked down. It was Bounder. The Downers were up. All the other hisa had gathered, bewildered by the lights and the hard voices invoking their name.

  “All of them out now?” a trooper asked another. “We got them all,” the other said.

  The tone of it was wrong. Ominous. Details became strangely clear, like the moment of a long fall, an accident, a time stretched thin… Rain and the lights, the glistening of water on armor… he saw them move… rifles lift…

  “Hit them!” he yelled, and flung himself at the line. A shot popped into his leg and he hit the barrel, shoving it aside, following armored arms to armored body. He bore the man over, ripped for the mask while armored fists flailed, battered his head. Rifles went off; bodies hit the ground about him. He scooped up a handful of mud, Downbelow’s own armament, slammed it into armor faceplate, into the breather intake, found a throat under the armor rings and kept after it while shouts and Downer shrieks rang through the rain.

  A shot went overhead and the man under him stopped fighting. He scrabbled in the thick mud for the rifle, rolled with it and looked up into a gun leveling at his face; he squeezed the trigger and slagged it before it aimed, the trooper staggering under fire from another quarter, screaming in the pain of diffused burns. Fire from behind, near the dome. He fired at anything in armor, heard Downer shrieks.

  Light hit him; they were spotted. He rolled again, fired for the light, no skill at aiming, but it went down.

  “Run,” a hisa voice shrieked at him. “All run. Quick, quick.”

  He tried to get to his feet. A hisa seized him up and dragged him until another could help, into cover by the dome, where his own men had taken cover. Fire was coming back at them from the hill, the path which led to the landing field, their ship.

  “Stop them!” he yelled at whatever of his men could hear. “Cut them off!” He managed a limping run, a little distance; shots hissed into the puddles about him. He slowed as others of his men kept going, tried to keep going.

  “You come,” a hisa shrieked. “You come me.”

  He fired as he could, ignoring the hisa that wanted him to retreat to the woods. Fire came back and a man of his fell, and fire started coming from the flanking woods, hitting the troops, driving them to run again, and he limped after. The troops had reached the hillcrest, disappeared over the shoulder of the hill; had surely called for help, reinforcements, for the probe’s big guns to be trained on that path to meet them the moment they charged over it. Emilio cursed tearfully, used the rifle for a crutch, and some of his men kept going still. “Keep low,” he yelled, and struggled further, with visions of the ship lofting, of all the helpless thousands who waited by the images. The troops had distance on them, and armor that protected them, and once over that hill…

  They came up over it. Fire lit the dark, and most of his men flung themselves down at once, squirming back to cover from a fire they could not face. He crouched, came as far as he could, lay on his belly to look down from the hill into the fire of the heavy guns. The ground itself began to steam downslope. He saw troops regrouping against the probe’s lighted hatch, under an umbrella of fire that laced the slope, beams steaming through the rain and boiling earth as well as water. The troops could reach that safe haven; the ship would loft and hit them from overhead… nothing, nothing that they could do.

  Shadow flooded toward the field, behind the lines of rallying troopers, like illusion, the pouring of a black tide toward that hatch. The troops silhouetted in the hatchway saw it, fired… must have called the others; they started turning and Emilio opened up fire on their backs, heart-chilled with the sudden realization what it was, what that other force must be. He scrambled to his knees, trying to get a shot at the troops in the open hatchway despite the beams slicing the hillside. The dark flood kept coming over their own fallen, carried the doorway, and suddenly gave way, retreating desperately.

  Fire bloomed in the hatchway, spread and swept through the troops and the attackers; the sound came, and the shock hit his bones. He sprawled in the mud and lay there. Firing had stopped. There was silence… no more war, only the patter of rain in the puddles.

  Downers babbled and chattered and scurried up behind him. He tried to gain his feet, meaning to get down there, where people of his own had fallen, blasting that hatchway.

  Then the ship’s lights came back on, and the engines rumbled, and it began to fire again, guns sweeping the slope.

  Still alive. He raged at it, hardly felt the hands which crept about his arms and
sides and tried to carry him… Downers, bent doggedly on helping him, chattering and pleading with him.

  Then the ship shut down both the firing and the engines. Rested dormant, lights winking, but with the hatch gaping dark and fire-blackened.

  Downers pulled him away, threw arms about him as he tried to stand, and dragged him when his leg went out from under him. A hisa’s thin hand patted his cheek. “You all right, you all right,” a voice pleaded. Bounder’s. They crossed behind the hill, hisa gathering up more of the dead and wounded, and suddenly human figures were coming toward them out of the woods, humans and hisa together.

  “Emilio!” he heard, Miliko’s voice. Others were running toward him behind her… Men and women left behind… he struggled for a few running steps and reached her, hugged her insanely, with the taste of despair in his mouth.

  “Ito,” she said, “Ernst — they got them. The blast jammed their hatch.”

  “They’ll get us,” he said. “They’ll call down the bigger stuff.”

  “No. Got a com station in the bush; one message… one fast message to base two com unit at the gathering… it’ll get them out of there. We got them.”

  He let go, because he could, began to fade — looked back toward the ship, invisible behind the hill; there was another flare of engines, ominous thunder, a desperate ship trying only to save itself.

  “Hurry,” she said, trying to help him walk. He came, hisa hovering all about them. “Hurry,” the hisa kept saying, over and over again, surrounding all of them, some walking, others silent, carried by the hisa, over the face of the hill and beyond, deep among the rain-dripping trees, up into the hills… they kept moving until sense grayed and blackened and he sank down into wet bracken, was hauled up again by a dozen strong hands and carried at the last almost running. There was a hole in the hillside, a place among the rocks.

  “Miliko,” he said, irrationally fearing the dark, close tunnel. They took him into it, and let him down, and in a moment arms gathered him up again and held him, rocking gently, Miliko’s voice whispering into his ear. “We’re all right,” she kept saying. “The tunnels will hold us all… the deep winter burrows, deep in all the hills… we’re all right.”

  Chapter Four

  i

  Norway 0045 hrs. md.; 1245 hrs. a.

  They were pulling back. Australia was veering off, Pacific and Atlantic gone off the track. Signy listened to the sigh of relief which ran the bridge as the channels gave good news instead of the disaster which had been heeling them. “Look sharp,” she snapped. “Damage control, get to it.” The bridge wavered in her vision. Alcohol, perhaps, though she doubted it. They had gone through maneuvers enough in recent minutes to sober her.

  Norway was intact for the most part. Graff was still nominally at helm, but he had let it go to alterday’s Terschad for a moment, and spared a look at telemetry, his face bathed in sweat and set in a long-held grimace of concentration. G went off combat synch and weight became definite, comfortingly stable.

  Signy stood up, listening to the reports of longscan, testing her reflexes. Stood steadily enough. Looked about her. Eyes glanced furtively in her direction, darted back to business. She cleared her throat and punched in general address. “This is Mallory. Looks like Australia has decided to cash it in too for the moment. They’ll all be pulling back to base and giving Mazian an assist. They’ll be taking Pell apart. That was the plan. They’ll be headed for Sol Station and Earth; and that was the plan. They’ll carry the war there. But without me. That’s the way it is. You’ve got your choice. You’ve got a choice. If you take my orders, we’re headed out our own way, going back to what we’ve always done. If you want to follow Mazian, I’m sure turning me in would pay your way back to him in style. Right now there can’t be anyone else he’d rather have his hands on. You go deal with Mazian, if enough of you want to. But for me… no. No one runs Norway but me so long as I’m in any condition to say so.”

  A murmur came back over com. Channels were wide open. The murmur took on distinction… rhythm. Signy… Signy … Sig-ny… Sig-ny … It spread to the bridge: “Sig-ny!” Crew rose out of their places. She looked about her, jaw set, and determined that her composure would hold… They were hers. Norway was.

  “Sit down!” she shouted at them. “You think this is a holiday?”

  They were in danger. Australia might have been diversion. They were moving too fast for reliable scan now, and Atlantic’s position and Pacific’s were conjecture: anything could turn up out of the hazed comp projections of longscan, and there were riders loose.

  “Rig for jump,” she said. “Lay for 58 deep. Keep us out of the way for a while.” Her own riders were still at Pell. With luck they could dodge long enough. Mazian would be too busy to bother. With sense they would lay low, trusting her, believing in her, that she would come back for them if she possibly could. She meant to. Had to. They desperately needed the protective riders. With any sense at all the riders would have scattered to the far side of everywhere when they realized Norway was running. She had never yet failed them. And Mazian knew that.

  She put her mind from it and punched the med station. “How’s Di?”

  “Di’s fine,” a familiar voice answered for himself. “Let me up there.”

  “Not on your life.” She punched him out and pressed guard one. “Our prisoners break any bones in that?”

  “All in one piece.”

  “Bring them up here.”

  She settled into her cushion, leaned back, watched the progress of events, mapped in her mind their position out of plane of the Pell System, moving out for safe jump, at half light speed. Damage control reported in, a compartment voided, a little portion of Norway’s gut spilled out into the cold, but not in a personnel section… nothing serious, nothing to impair jump capacity. No dead. No injured. She breathed easier.

  Time to get out. For close to an hour the signals of what was going on at Pell had been flashing toward ships that would kick it on, until it ended up in Union scan. It was about to become an unhealthy region for bystanders.

  A light went on her board. She powered her seat about, faced the prisoners who had come in the door aft, hands secured behind them, reasonable precaution in the tight aisles of the bridge. No one got on Norway’s bridge; no outsider… until these two. Special cases… Josh Talley and Konstantin.

  “Reprieve,” she said. “Thought you’d both want to know.”

  Perhaps they failed to understand. The looks they gave her were full of misgivings.

  “We’ve quit the Fleet. We’re bound for the Deep, for good. You’re going to live, Konstantin.”

  “Not for my sake.”

  She gave a breath of a laugh. “Hardly. But you get the benefit of it, you see.”

  “What’s happened to Pell?”

  “Your speakers were live. You heard me. That’s what’s happening to Pell, and now Union has a choice, doesn’t it? Save Pell or chase after Mazian in hot pursuit. And we’re getting out of here so we don’t confuse the issue.”

  “Help them,” Konstantin said. “For the love of God, wait. Wait and help them.”

  A second time she laughed, looked sourly on Konstantin’s earnest face. “Konstantin, what could we do? Norway’s taking no refugees. Can’t. Let you off? Not under Mazian’s nose, or Union’s. They’d dust us so fast…”

  But it could be done… when they went back after their riders, a pass by Pell…

  “Mallory,” Josh said, coming closer to her, as close as the guards would let him. He shook at the restraint of their hands and she signed, so that they let him go. “Mallory… there is another choice. Go over. There’s a ship, you hear me? Named Hammer. You could clear yourself. You could stop this… and get amnesty.”

  Something got through to Konstantin; the eyes went to Josh, to her, apprehensive.

  “Does he know?” she asked Josh.

  “No. Mallory — listen to me. Think, where does it go now? How far and how long?”

  �
��Graff,” she said slowly. “Graff, we’re going back after our riders. Keep us set for jump. When Mazian clears the system, we’ll move in crosswise, maybe shoot this Konstantin fellow out where he can take his chances with Union; freighter might pick him up.”

  Konstantin swallowed visibly, his lips bitten to a thin line.

  “You know your friend’s Union,” she said. “Not was, you understand. Is. A Union agent. Special services. Probably knows a great deal that could be of use to us in our position. Places to avoid, what null points are known to the opposition…”

  “Mallory,” Josh pleaded.

  She shut her eyes. “Graff,” she said. “This Unioner is making sense to me. Am I drunk, or does it make sense?”

  “They’ll kill us,” Graff said.

  “So,” she said, “will Mazian. It goes on from here. To Sol. To a place where Mazian can find new pickings, gather strength. It’s not a fleet anymore. They’re looking for loot, things to keep themselves going. For the same thing we are. And all the null points we know, they know. That’s uncomfortable, Graff.”

  “It is,” Graff acknowledged, “uncomfortable.”

  She looked at Josh, looked again at Konstantin, whose intense face hoped, desperately hoped. She snorted disgust and looked at Graff, at helm. “That Union spotter. Lay course that way. They’ll jump out of scan when they get wind of us running. Get us contact. We’re going to borrow ourselves a Union fleet.”

  “We’re going to run dead on them stumbling about here in the ’tween,” Graff muttered; and that was true. Space was wide, but there was a hazard of collision, the nearer they ran to that particular vector out of Pell, two intersecting courses relying on longscan.

  “We take our chance,” she said. “Use the hail.”

  She looked then at Josh Talley, at Konstantin. Smiled with all the bitterness in her. “So I play your game,” she said to Josh. “My way. Do you know their hailing codes?”