Downbelow Station
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Far too much, that it would be easy. The Fleet had the area pocketed ...
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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 generalhush 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 347
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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."
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"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.
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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."
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"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 desire 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 acr
oss 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.
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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.
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.
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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 dartships, 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 ...
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The Fleet slowed farther. 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.
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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.
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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.
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 stationmaster 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."
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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."