The lift car slammed to a stop, jarring every bone in his body; its doors opened halfway, jammed. He squeezed through, cursing, into a bedlam of panic-stricken workers, soldiers bellowing futile orders, falling masonry and the stench of burning plastic. He saw a mob off to one side; saw that they were fighting over a hovercraft. He sprayed them with the stun rifle, clearing a path to it; dodged over helpless fallen bodies and squeezed into its cab.
He sent it spiraling up through the vast inner column, like a leaf caught in an updraft; through the access canyons toward the docking bay where Niburu and the others would be waiting for him, had to be, had to be crazy if they were still there, had to be still there… .
He landed on a loading platform, seeing barricades ahead. He fought his way out through the instant mob that formed around the hovercraft, wondering where the hell anybody thought they were going to go in it. Just away from where they were, maybe— He staggered as the citadel shuddered around him; ran on toward the barricade, with his heart in his throat. The guards blockading the access swung their weapons toward him.
He slowed, and dropped his own weapon. “I’m Kullervo!” he shouted. “I’ve got clearance, I’ve got to get through, they need me inside!”
They hesitated, staring at him. “Something came through about Kullervo—” the man in charge said.
“Couldn’t make it out, sergeant,” someone said. “Garbled, like everything else—”
The sergeant frowned, then gestured. “Go on,” he said. The other guard shouted, and the sergeant ducked aside as something smashed down between them. “What the fuck is happening here?” he bellowed.
Reede ran on, not sure the question was meant for him; certain that he didn’t nt to answer it.
The access corridor to Docking Bay Three was filled with acrid smoke and ” armed men. Reede shoved his way through them, half afraid that by the time he -reached the end there would be nothing left to find. At last he emerged inside the bay’s lower level, seeing the vast chamber still intact, its docks rising and falling away for stories on all sides.
There was motion everywhere, noise and smoke, the looming hulls of freighters cutting off his view, until it was impossible to make sense of anything his eyes and ears fed to his brain. He swore, looking left and right, up and down. All the citadel’s systems must be choked with the poison of his virus program by now; there would be no way he could call up the LB’s location or communicate with its onboard systems—no way to find out whether they were even still here.
He found a ladder, began to climb the scaffolding, hoping it might give him a better line of sight.
“Kullervo!” A voice called his name as he pulled himself up onto the platform. He turned, saw Sparks Dawntreader pushing toward him through the mass of semi-rational human bodies that lay between them. Dawntreader gestured frantically. “This way!”
He shouted in acknowledgment and relief, began to run toward the half-visible beacon of Dawntreader’s red hair, dodging workers and soldiers.
“Kullervo!” Someone else shouted his name, behind him; a hand clamped over his arm, jerking him around. He was face to face with the sergeant from the barricade. The sergeant’s eyes were black with fury. A gunbutt came at him out of nowhere, struck him in the side of the head, clubbing him to his knees. “The Master wants you back, you miserable fuck.” The guard’s fist closed over the front of his shirt, dragging him to his feet. “They said you did this! I ought to kill you myself—”
Reede swayed, his hands pressing the side of his face; he was knocked reeling into the metal wall of the bay as someone else slammed between them.
Dawntreader. Sparks collided with the guard, knocking him off-balance. The guard pitched backward down the ladder-well with a strangled cry, and disappeared from sight.
“Are you all right?” Dawntreader was beside him now, supporting him with an arm around his waist.
“Yeah,” Reede muttered, wiping blood from his eye. “Come on—” Dawntreader led him on along the echoing platform through what seemed to be an endless game of human carom. Reede thought he heard shouting behind them, someone calling his name again. “How far—?” he gasped, as they started out across the scaffolding between two looming transport hulls.
“Other side,” Dawntreader panted, gesturing ahead. “See it, right there—?”
Reede wiped his eye again, nodded. “Are they all—?” Something shook the catwalk like a giant’s fist, jerking it out from under him. He went down, with Dawntreader sprawling on top of him, as gouts of fire exploded through the wall of the bay high above. He watched helplessly as enormous chunks of twisted metal came hurtling out of the sky, falling toward them like deadly leaves. “Hang on—!” He shut his eyes, sinking his fingers into the grillwork beneath him.
A sheet of metal larger than both their bodies slammed down on the catwalk half a meter behind his foot, shearing away the alloy as if it were cardboard; the metal platform under his body shrieked and bucked. More falling metal roared past him, and on top of him Dawntreader screamed once, a brief, raw paincry.
Reede swore, shaking his head as he pushed himself up at last, trying to lever himself out from under the dead weight of Dawntreader’s unresponsive body without dislodging either of them from the broken platform. He heard shouting again, behind him; sure this time that the voices called his name. He looked back across the sudden chasm, saw the line of armed men barely visible beyond the still-intact hull of a cargo freighter, inching their way out onto the ruined scaffolding, trying to reach a point where they could get a clear shot.
Reede struggled to his knees, pulling at Dawntreader’s arm. Blood matted Dawntreader’s hair, red on red. He couldn’t tell anything about the wound or how bad it was. “Come on,” he shouted, barely aware that he was shouting uselessly. “Come on, damn it, get up, get up—!”
Dawntreader’s body shifted, slid; he saw Dawntreader’s legs go over the side of the catwalk, felt the other man’s body try to follow. He caught the back of Dawntreader’s tunic with both hands, digging in his heels, stopping their slide. But his own exhausted body refused to give him anything more. He swore, watching the progress of his pursuers toward them.
Suddenly someone was behind him, beside him; he caught a glimpse of midnight skin and hair. “Here, boss—”
” Ananke—” he gasped, “get him!”
Ananke slid past, going out over the edge of the twisted walkway as if it were flat on the ground, not a hundred meters in the air. Ananke clung with an acrobat’s skill to the broken superstructure, levering Dawntreader’s unresponding limbs back onto the grid as Reede hauled with all his remaining strength. Something gave, and Dawntreader’s body slid forward suddenly. Reede pulled him onto the catwalk with a final heave.
“Boss—!” Ananke shouted, pointing down. Reede followed his pointing hand, seeing Dawntreader’s belt, the thing that had tangled in the grid and trapped him until it had come apart. It hung from a claw of twisted metal below the catwalk; the pouch dangling from it was the pouch in which Dawntreader had carried the water of death.
Reede flung himself down with a curse, pushing precariously over the edge, his hand flailing. But the pouch was impossibly beyond reach. Ananke crouched beside him, steadying him, until he came up again, white-faced, shaking his head.
Ananke looked down through the grid, and up at him. Suddenly he disappeared over the edge, swinging out and down until only his feet showed. Reede watched through the grid as he pulled himself underneath the platform. In a moment he was back on top again, grinning, as if there were no gravity. He held something in his hands, held it out … the belt and pouch.