He wasn’t heroic. He was a maker of dictionaries. And he shivered in a cold far more than he’d bargained for. He daren’t muster coherent conversation during this transit in which, baji-naji, his bodyguard had to have other things than inane chatter on their minds—their objective, and getting inside. Getting to that point was all up to Jase’s two men, now, the skill to home this thing in on a moving station and the luck not to get them shot at or smash them to bits on some antenna or other ephemeral projection that might not be in the plans.
Gin swore there was a way in. Gin swore this pod could limpet itself to any kind of hatch and establish a secure seal—a seal which still had to be there when they got back from their mission with whatever prize they’d managed to lay hands on. The pod had to be there, or it was going to be embarrassing getting back to the ship—Excuse me, sir, can you point out a corridor which will lead us to the core? We seem to have lost our way . . .
“It’s working very well, Bren-ji,” Jago said: it was Jago holding him.
“One has every confidence.” His teeth chattered from the cold. They didn’t have suits. They couldn’t use their equipment from suits and suits, even on humans, would say to anyone they met, invader, which wouldn’t help at all. So they took their risk of vacuum, and glided in their pressurized bubble, weightless now, emitting only that pod signal, down into the heart of the damaged station’s ring, and across. It seemed to take forever.
“Barnhart-nadi,” Banichi said.
“Yes.” Passable Ragi, that yes.
“Bren-nandi, say to Barnhart that if we come under fire, he will keep always to your left.”
“Yes,” Bren said, and relayed that vitally important instruction, which effort temporarily kept his teeth from chattering. If Barnhart was to his left, he noted, that put him to Jago’s left—never on his security’s right hand. Not in this.
Not since a certain hillside in Malguri’s district, in the faraway east. Not since the day he’d learned what it was to get afoul of his own security. If he strayed out of order, his security would kill themselves trying to get to him. Their atevi instincts would send them toward him. All planning took that into account.
But the initial foray was his. All his.
The pod underwent an unplanned course correction, and his stomach tried to rise up his throat. Not auspicious, not auspicious, his brain insisted. He had to do better than this. He concentrated on that proposition, noting, by the glare of lights now green, that Barnhart was having no easier journey, while—God, did nothing bother atevi stomachs?
But whatever they had had to miss, they had missed. It was Jase’s crew flying this thing. And somewhere—somewhere behind them—above them, relative to station—Jase was not idle. Jase would be talking to Guild authorities, pretending to negotiate the release of Becker and his men, keeping Guild officials as busy as he could. Meanwhile Gin did something involving a far smaller miner craft—while ship’s crew attempted a simple descent to the mast, hard-suited and armed to the teeth in case station had thought it was going to take over that tube and control access to the ship.
It was more than guns that batch would have, however. It would be another batch of brochures, which were by now from Jase’s office to that team’s hands.
The brochures had said, among other things his eye had glossed past, in one desperate glance: Reunion Station is disbanded by order of Captains’ Council.
All station citizens, administrative elements, and crew: boarding is imminent for Alpha Colony, where we have a longstanding, peaceful arrangement with natives of that planet. Expect mutual protection in an atmosphere of cooperation and economic prosperity.
Atevi were in there, buried in the fine print.
Baggage limit: 20 kilos per adult, 4 kilos per child, dimensions of standard duffle, exceptions granted for uncommon cause. Baggage must be yielded to security on arrival. Weapons must be declared and placed in ship’s armory . . .
It went on into more specifics for evacuation of medical facilities, for children and elderly, and the use of the safety cable in the tube.
It offered people from deep space and curved metal horizons a sunset on the beach and a ski resort, and one had to recall how Jase, first landing, had had trouble looking at a flat horizon, and nearly lost his supper in a fast-moving vehicle. Among other details, the Council of Captains was locally down to one captain, if Sabin didn’t turn up, and Alpha Colony hadn’t existed for centuries as Alpha Colony, but it was the sort of thing the Reunioners would expect to hear.
The pod underwent more readjustments, then a sudden shove from the engines that taxed even Jago’s strength to hold him. Bren clenched his teeth, trying not to think anything was wrong, trying to think of the brochure, not the arm cutting off his wind.
It went on, and on. What are they doing up front? he wanted to ask, if he had any air. Are we in trouble? But he’d long since learned not to chatter at people doing what they had to do, especially if it was going wrong. He clenched his teeth, breathed shallowly, and tried to keep his wits about him.
If somehow some armament didn’t like the firesafe signal the pod emitted, and wanted to blow them to little agitated atoms . . .
Toby, he’d write, if he had the chance, you won’t believe where I’m going. You won’t believe what we’re doing. What we’re hoping to do. We’re absolutely crazy. There might have been a better plan than this . . .
Big bump. Jago nearly lost him from her grip.
Clang. Bang. Bump-scrape-clang. He gritted his teeth while the pod skidded over some surface it should be able to grab. God, they’d missed their grapple.
Thump-clang.
Jolt.
Whine.
“We’re at the port,” the pilot reported breathlessly.
Thank God, thank God, thank God.
The whining kept up. And kept up. The whole pod seemed queasy in its attachment—but attached. Something had gone wrong, he was sure the pilots had improvised—but they had weight. His feet were on the floor again, which meant they’d reached a cylinder surface, and Jago let him go. She made a rapid check of her gear, as Banichi and Cenedi’s men did, as Barnhart checked his pockets and his coat, and he took the cue himself: he had the gun still in his right pocket, despite the jolt, that, and the pocket com in his left. Brochures securely inside his coat.
The whining stopped. The pilot and co-pilot crawled out of their seats and began working at the forward port, pulled it back, and, dyed with blinking green light, showed them a metal wall, flame-blackened, a lot the worse for wear.
In the middle of that wall, a round port with a blinking green light in the middle of it, under lettering that said EPORT 81.
They’d missed number 80. They were at another access. How did that number match their numbers? Bren asked himself: was it up or down on the cylinder, and where were they?
The pilot and co-pilot opened the control cover, going for switches. There was a red handle. The co-pilot pulled it, and the whole surface of the door recessed rapidly.
White light came on, blinding, flooding their little pod.
Banichi and Jago went through, and Bren went, the rest of the mission behind them, through the open port, into a white-lit airlock.
“Good luck,” the pilot wished the lot of them, and the door shut between. Banichi pushed a button and opened the door into Guild territory—a dimly lit engineering corridor that very happily had heat and light and air that didn’t hurt. One could be ever so grateful for those basics. Bren personally was.
“This way,” Barnhart said, and pointed with a gloved hand. They walked a considerable distance down that corridor, and the air by now didn’t feel so warm.
But they reached a shut section door marked 80, which was where they were supposed to be, and an unfortified approach—far more luck than their skidding entry had forecast.
Bold as brass, Barnhart strolled in that direction, and Bren took a deep breath and got into the fore of the expedition as well, as far as a cross-corridor whic
h was, to their vast relief, vacant. The pilot had stayed behind, keeping systems hot and waiting for them, but the co-pilot had tagged along with them. For a brief while they were to be infelicitous eight—disastrous eight, double infelicitous four. Only acquiring the prisoner could change those numbers to three of threes, the adventurously felicitous nine—God! The mind zigged and zagged in terror through superstition and operations—even his atevi bodyguard would call it nonsense, while their nerves twitched to it. At this point of the operation, felicitous numbers rested in accomplishing their mission. Jase’s orders. Jase’s sensitivity to atevi nerves. And now atevi lagged back and a handful of reasonable-looking humans, give or take the cold-area coats and gloves, had only to walk calmly down the corridor, calmly, up to an ordinary lift, in the right section, the section they were supposed to be in.
Bren turned, gave a little nod and waited for atevi to join them and take up positions on either side of the door.
Then he stripped off the gloves, pocketed them, punched in a call—no need for the key—and waited for the lift.
The door opened. Empty. Not unexpectedly so. The lift system cycled people to sensible destinations, not detouring them through cold, dimly lit maintenance levels. People in cold, inconvenient spots had to wait while the lift system emptied a car.
“Nadiin,” Bren said, first in, holding the door open, and Banichi, Jago, and the rest boarded and occupied the sides, atevi back against the walls, out of sight, humans to the center.
Barnhart input their destination. The lift rose. And rose. And rose.
And stopped.
The door opened. A single security officer faced them, not even yet expecting trouble as he walked in.
Bren grabbed his jacket and yanked him in. There was a yelp, the start of an outcry.
That stopped, if the struggle didn’t. The car started up again.
They reached level four. And stopped. The door didn’t open. The lift panel flashed a request for security clearance.
“Key,” Barnhart said, and Bren put the keycard in.
The door opened tamely and without alarm. And while his key was in, Bren put the car into a maintenance hold, door open.
“Very poor,” Jago said softly, “very poor provision.” As they exited the lift.
They had one prisoner in the lift car, a slightly conscious and bruised prisoner. One of Cenedi’s men remained with him. The rest of them moved out at a sedate pace, and without a word Bren took the lead, in a brightly lit, warm corridor, Barnhart beside him, the co-pilot close by. They were to make as soft an entry as they could into what their prisoners back on the ship told them was a detention area, creating as little fuss as possible.
Max security, Becker and his men had called it. Max security, as station understood the term. Jago thought it wouldn’t be much. God, he hoped not.
Blind turn. And if they were getting close to occupied areas, it was the paidhi’s turn to see, solo, what was down that hall. He gave a little tug at his slightly rumpled work jacket as he faced the corner. “Hang back,” he said to Barnhart and the co-pilot, got a worried look back.
“Use great caution,” Jago wished him, a whisper at his shoulder, “Bren-ji.”
“One will do one’s utmost, Jago-ji,” he said. He pulled the com from his pocket, did a fast check of his shortrange communications, nothing so extensive as to reach the ship, and the answering flash said he had contact with his bodyguards.
He walked out, facing a sealed door, no guards in sight. Just very blank corridor on either hand, no designation on the door.
He used his key, locked the door open by means that gave as few signals to the system as possible, and walked ahead into an equally blank corridor, no doors, nothing but a left turn toward what his recollection of the diagrams said should be a main transverse corridor. He whistled tonelessly as he walked, not wishing to startle anyone around the next corner, and on inspiration, took one of the brochures from his jacket pocket—not that paper wouldn’t be a phenomenon, but it posed its own puzzle to the eye, and distracted attention from the cut of his coat.
He walked around the bend, and saw a man at a desk, the image of men at desks in front of sealed doors everywhere in human civilization.
He walked up, whistling, preoccupied with his brochure.
“What’s that?” the man at the desk asked him. And a second, closer look: “What department are you?”
“Technical.” That explained almost anything, in Bren’s experience. “You seen this thing?” Bren laid the brochure on his desk.
“Where did you get this?”
“Admin.” That also answered everything.
The man handled the brochure cautiously, saw the pictures of beach and mountain. Opened it, gave it a scant glance, while Bren meditated simply hitting him on the head, but he was curious.
The man read, looked up, alarmed. “They’re serious?”
“Very serious.” He played it by ear. “Look, I’m supposed to estimate the prisoner’s needs in this transfer.”
“You have to talk to Madison. He’s in charge. B corridor.”
A name was helpful. But he couldn’t leave this man unaccounted for. And he didn’t know what to do with him. “Look,” he said, improvising. “I’ve got to have a list.”
“What list?”
“List, man. There’s always a list, isn’t there? Life requirements. That sort of thing. You’re supposed to have one drawn up for me.”
“I’m not supposed to have anything. That’ll be Madison, that’s what. I can call him.”
Last thing he wanted. “Look, Madison’s not in my instructions. You were supposed to have the list.”
“I just sit at this door, man. I don’t have any damned list!”
“Look, they swore up and down you were going to have it.” He switched sides on the desk, drawing the man’s eyes toward him, away from the corner where his staff waited. He put on a hangdog face. “Man, you’re putting me in a hard place. Shigai said move on it.”
There. Shigai wasn’t a name. It was Ragi. And Banichi, and Jago arrived around the corner.
“Migod,” Bren said, looking up.
The man turned his head. Fast. Bren pulled his own gun, as the man swung to look around—and made a dive for his intercom.
Bren grabbed his arm short of that button and held his gun right at eye level.
“No,” Bren said. “Don’t touch that button. I really wouldn’t touch any button. They won’t hurt you. I might.”
Banichi and Jago arrived on the other side of the desk, and the man looked left and right, sweating.
“They’re not from the same planet as the prisoner,” Bren said. “They’re from Alpha, matter of fact, same as I am. Same as he is.” This, for Barnhart, who had stayed close to Banichi, along with the co-pilot. “And the brochure, let me tell you, is the truth. This station is being evacuated by order of the Captains’ Council, and you’ve got a limited time to do it. Upper administration is being recalcitrant, not to the good of ordinary station folk. So we’re seeing to the evacuation ourselves, trying to get all you good people onto the ship and lifted safely out of here before the attack comes.”
“Attack.”
“This station isn’t going to exist in a few days. We’re here to take you back to Alpha Colony, where it’s safe, where there’s an abundant, peaceful planet, and where you don’t have an alien ship ready to come in here to get back this prisoner you claim to have. If we can have a little cooperation, here, I’ll let you go. Then you and your family can go pack your belongings, advise your neighbors, and get yourselves off this station alive. That is, supposing we can get our ship fueled in time to get away from here. Which Mr. Braddock for some reason doesn’t want us to do without following his regulations. Mr. Braddock has annoyed the aliens, lied to our senior captain, and otherwise made himself generally objectionable to us. Given the situation, and an irritated alien presence out there, we aren’t in a patient mood. So decide what you’re going to do.”
>
It was not a pleasant sight, a truly scared man. But not a stupid man. He didn’t move. He looked from him to Barnhart and the co-pilot, twice, and once, fearfully, at Banichi and company.
“Get up from the desk,” Bren said. “You’re quite safe. I’ll send you where you’ll be safe for the duration. I take it you have family who want to see you again. Just get up quietly. One of my associates will see you to safety.”
“One of them? Who are they? What do they want?”
“The legitimate inhabitants at Alpha. As for what they want—after several hundred years of careful negotiation, they’re our hosts, our allies, and on our side. Nadi-ji, escort this good gentleman to the lift car.”
One of Cenedi’s men, behind Banichi and Jago, took that request. “Kindly comply,” that one said in Mosphei’, certainly a surprise coming from the dowager’s staff, and a greater surprise to their detainee, who had broken into a sweat.
“And where is this prisoner?” Bren asked.
The man looked at him as if he had the only life preserver.
“You’re safe with him. Worry about me, and be very accurate. Where is the prisoner?”
“B,” the man said. “B17.” And helpfully pointed the direction B was supposed to be. “There’s a restricted section. Three guards.”
The Guild didn’t seem to command the highest loyalty among the populace.
“And who is this Madison?”
“In charge of the prisoner. In charge of the section.”
“This person says the prisoner resides in B17, and we may expect three more guards there.” Bren gave a dismissive wave of his hand, quite calmly so—the dowager’s gesture, he was disturbed to realize—but the mind was busy.
Cenedi’s man took their anxious detainee back down the corridor toward the lift, there to join the unfortunate from the lower deck . . . a collection that might grow further, Bren thought desperately, and none of them the ones they wanted, while they were keeping a lift car out of the system longer and longer, which might soon raise questions from maintenance.
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