“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
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 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 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
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.
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.