There never had been a major settlement here, he surmised. It was a setup, all of it, all the leaks of routes and trade—and he had not betrayed Mallory: Mallory had primed him with everything she wanted spread to her enemies. Canisters of junk for a cargo-He looked about him as they went out onto the open dock, so chill that breath hung frosted in the air and cold lanced to the bone. They herded him right, the jab of a rifle barrel, all of them headed out… and he looked back, saw them taking Curran off in the other direction.
“Curran!” he yelled. “Hold it! Blast you, my crewman goes with me—”
Curran stopped, looked toward him. Sandor staggered in the sudden jerk at his arm, the jab of a rifle barrel into his ribs—Kept turning, and hit an armored trooper a blow in the throat that threw the trooper down and sent a pain through his hand. He dived for the gun, hit the floor and rolled in a patter of shots that popped off the decking. The fire hit, an explosion that paralyzed his arm. He kept rolling, for the cover of the irregular wall, the gun abandoned in panic. “Move it,” someone yelled. “Get him.”
A second shot exploded into his side, and after that was the cold pressure of the deck plates against his face and a stunned realization that he had just been hit. He heard voices shouting, heard someone order a boarding—
“Give up the freighter,” he heard called. “You just shot the bastard and it’s no good. Come on.”
He was bleeding. He had trouble breathing. He lay still until the sounds were done, and that was the best that he knew how to do.
Then he lifted his head and saw Curran lying face down on the plates a distance away.
He got that far, an inching progress across the ice cold plates, terrified of being spotted moving. The wounds were throbbing, the left arm refused to move, but he thought that he could have gotten up. And Curran—
Curran was breathing. He put his hand on Curran’s back, snagged his collar and tried to pull him, but it tore his side. Curran stirred then, a feeble movement. “Come on,” Sandor said. “Out of the open: come on—let’s try for the ship.”
Curran struggled for his feet, collapsed back to one knee; and blood erupted from the burn in his shoulder. Sandor made the same try, discovered he could get his legs under him, offered a hand to Curran and steadied him getting up. “Get to cover,” he breathed, looking out at all that vacant dock, foreign machinery more than a century outdated, a dark pit of an access. That was Australia back there, two berths down, dark and blank to the outside; and Lucy was in the other direction… Lucy—
They made it twenty meters along the wall; and then the cold and the tremors got to them both. Sandor hung onto the wall, eased down it finally, supporting Curran and both of them leaning together. “Rest a minute,” he said.
They’ll blow the station,” Curran predicted, “Hard vacuum.— Come on, man. Come on.” It was Curran hauling him up this time; and they walked as far as they could, but it was a long, long distance to Lucy’s berth.
Curran went down finally, out of strength; and he was. He held onto the blood-soaked Dubliner, both of them tucked up in the cover of a machinery niche, and stared at what neither one of them could reach.
Seals crashed. Australia was loose, preparing for encounter. Sandor went stiff, and Curran did, anticipating the rush of decompression that might take them; but the station stayed whole.
Then a second crash of seals.
“Allison,” Sandor said, and Curran took in his breath.
Lucy had prepared herself to break loose. Someone with the comp keys was at controls.
They’re wanting an answer,” Neill said from com—turned a sweating face in Allison’s direction.
“No,” Allison said.
“Allie—those are guns out there!”
“They know comp’s locked and their man might not answer. No, don’t do it.”
They’re moving,” Deirdre said.
Vid came to her screen, a view of a monster warship, the twin of Norway, a baleful glow of running lights illuminating the angular dark surfaces of the frame. Cylinder blinkers began their slow movement as the carrier established rotation.
“They’ve broken communication,” Neill said, and Allison said nothing, waiting, watching, hoping that the behemoth that passed near them would reckon their man’s silence a communications lockup. And that they would not, in passing, blow them and the station at once.
“Movement our starboard,” Deirdre said, and that image came too: another ship had been around the rim, and it was putting out “Freighter type,” Deirdre said.
“One of theirs,” Allison surmised.
There was a silence for a moment “Get down there,” she said then, “and get those port seals complete. We’d better be ready to move.”
“Both of us?” Deirdre asked.
“Go.”
All the functions came to her board; her cousins scrambled for the lift back in the lounge that would take them down to the frame. They had to get the seals complete or blow the dock and damage themselves, with no dockside assistance in their undocking.
And meanwhile the warship glided past them, while they played dead and helpless.
That was a panic move, that. The Mazianni had picked up something on scan: she dared not activate her own, sat taking in only what passive sensors could gather… no output, no visible movement on the exterior, except the minuscule angling of the cameras that she reckoned they would miss.
A force left on the docks might have spotted that closure of seals; it might have been better to have done nothing. Might have—She could be paralyzed in might haves. She had two of her own out there—on that ship; on the station—no way of finding that out It hurt And there was no remedy to that either. She cleared it out of her mind for the moment, focused finally, functioning as she had not been functioning since somewhere back on Viking. So things were lost; lives were lost. She had several more to think of, and the captain of that ship out there was her senior in more than years and firepower. No match at alclass="underline" the only chance was to go unnoticed, to prepare the ship to ride out the destruction of the station as a bit of flotsam, if it happened.
If that warship scented something out there, something sudden enough to draw it out, something was loose in Venture System.
Mallory, it might be. She fervently hoped so.
The red telltales winked to green, indicating the ports sealed. Deirdre and Neill had gotten them secure. In a moment she heard the working of the lift.
Com beeped. She listened. It was the characteristic spit and fade of distant transmission, numerical signal, an arriving ship for sure. She punched it through to comp, flurried through an unfamiliar set of commands,
Wording, the young-man’s-voice said, familiar sound by now, soothing. The answer came up. Finity’s End. Alliance merchanter, headed into ambush. She reached toward the com, and vid suddenly lost the movement of the Mazianni warship—a surge of power that for a moment wiped out reception. They moved— Lord, they moved, with eye-tricking suddenness… and her own people were headed across the deck toward her from the lift with no idea what was in progress. If she had the nerve she would put in com, give out a warning—and get them all killed.
“Neihart’s Finity just arrived,” she said. “Headed into it.”
Two bodies hit the cushions and started snatching functions to their own boards, without comment.
Warn them or not? There was a chance of making a score on the Mazianni if they lay low: of breaking things loose at their own moment, if they could pick it. Their guns were nothing. A pathetic nothing; and Finity had far better than they had—that was a guessable certainty.
“Got another one,” Neill said; and then: “Allie; it’s Dublin.”
The blood went from her face to her feat.
“We’ve got to warn them,” Deirdre said.
“No. We sit tight”
“Allie…”
“We sit tight. We’ve got the Mazianni base. We give Dublin a chance if we can. But we don’t tip it premature.”