Then everything went blank, and Corfe found himself suddenly back in the coupler station inside the van. The rear door was open; figures were clambering in. He blinked, stupefied. His concentration had been so total that he had lost all track of time.
Kevin slid quickly into the station next to him and put on the headset and collar. Taki was getting into the third, on the other side behind Kevin. Ohira was at the door. “Stay there,” Ohira told Corfe, extending an arm. “Just give me the keys.” Corfe found the keys in his pocket and handed them over. Ohira tossed them to one of his kinsmen, who ran around to the front and climbed in the driver’s door. A car filled with more Oriental faces was pulled up close behind.
“They’ve got Michelle on Payne’s boat—Shoals, on Lake Union,” Corfe gasped.
“I know. Eric told me. We’re going there now,” Ohira shouted. “He’s heading there too. Keep stalling them.” He slammed the doors. The motor started, and moments later Corfe felt the van moving, then pulling away fast and cornering. He and the other two buckled themselves tight into the seats—once neurally coupled, they would have no functioning reflexes to stop themselves being thrown around.
“Okay, then, Doug, what have we got? Initiating now.” Kevin scanned the displays, his fingers racing over switches and keys.
“We’re losing mecs,” Corfe said. “There’s only six left functioning on the boat.”
“That’s okay,” Taki said from behind. “I brought a box of them in the car.”
And now there were three operators.
“Right.” Corfe smiled for the first time that day. That ought to even things up a bit. “Kev, there’s a telebee in trouble up near the bridge that you can pick up on,” he said. “Taki, I’ve got a critter in the engine room that needs to move.” He switched them all through to the common audio channel, then reentered coupler space himself.
“Got it,” Kevin’s voice said on the circuit.
“Active,” Taki confirmed a couple of seconds later.
“I’m forward of Taki, in the salon where Michelle is,” Corfe told them. “She’s going to need help pretty soon. The KE is along the passage to the left leading aft. Kev, the general utility on Channel Three is at a switchbox farther forward. It’s sawed halfway through the main input power line. Can you handle that one too? . . .”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
One of Finnion’s men had found a medical kit containing scissors, and Payne was trying to cut the mec out of Vanessa’s hair. It seemed to have lost all life but was hopelessly entangled. She shook with the effort of containing her fury and trying to keep still. “Get it off me, Martin! Get that thing out!”
The room was in pandemonium with passengers and crew searching along shelves, shaking out drapes, tearing up seat covers and cushions. Garsten crouched to probe around where his briefcase had been set down, then yelled in alarm and recoiled back as something scurried up the outside of his jacket sleeve. He swatted with his other hand, missed, and lost his balance twisting and trying to grab it as it burrowed under his shirt collar.
Then there was a noise that sounded like an explosion from somewhere forward, and the salon lights went out. More shouting and consternation erupted in the darkness. Michelle, still on her feet, edged to the table where the buffet was laid out, found the end, and heaved it up hard to be rewarded by a tremendous din of crashing china and shattering glass. She lunged at the forms of Payne and Vanessa outlined in the darkness, and shoved them toward where Garsten had gone down on his hands and knees. They reeled and went down, and another shadowy figure loomed and tumbled over them. Michelle threw a chair in on top for good measure, and in the confusion moved to the end of the room where the two exits were, one leading up, the other down. Someone was coming down the companionway to the right. Michelle slipped into the passage on the other side that she had been in briefly earlier, leading aft.
Closets and doors lined both sides. Her only choice was to continue toward the stern, where the lights were still on, and hope that that part of the boat would be empty of people for the moment. She figured the engines were that way, and the engineer was still in the salon. On a vessel this size, there seemed a good chance that he worked alone.