evacuating the station. Please play the following section for outside broadcast
where possible: Attention. By dockmaster’s authority, all station law enforcers
are requested to do their utmost to establish order in whatever areas they are.
Do not attempt to go to central. Stay where you are. Citizens of Pell: you are
in serious danger from riot. Establish barricades at all niner entries and all
section lines and prepare to defend them to prevent the movement of destructive
mobs. Quarantine has been breached. If you scatter in panic you will contribute
to riot and endanger your own lives. Defend the barricades. You will be able to
hold the station area by area. Station com is blacked out due to military
intervention, and the G flux is due to unauthorized undock of military ships.
Stability will be restored as quickly as possible. To any refugee out of
quarantine: I appeal to you to contribute your efforts to the establishment of
defense lines and barricades along with Pell citizens. Station will negotiate
with you regarding your situation; your cooperation in this crisis will make a
profound impression on Pell’s gratitude, and you may be assured of favorable
consideration as this situation is stabilized. Please remain where you are,
defend your areas, and remember that this station supports your lives too. All
merchanters: please cooperate with me in this emergency. If you have
information, pass it to me on Finity’s End. This ship will serve as dock
headquarters during the emergency. Please play ship to ship and broadcast
appropriate sections over exterior systems. I am standing by for your contact.”
Messages flashed back, frantic queries after more information, harsh demands,
threats of bolting dock at once. All about her the folk of Finity’s End were
making their own preparations for flight
At any moment, she hoped, at any moment com might clear, station central might
come through bright and sane, bringing contact with command—with Damon, who
might be in central and might not. Not, she hoped, in those corridors with Q run
amok. Mainday noon—the worst of all times—with most of Pell out away from jobs
and shops, in the corridors…
Blue dock was his emergency assignment. He might have tried to come there; would
have tried. She knew him. Tears blurred her eyes. She clenched her fist on the
arm of the chair, tried to think away the diminishing ache in her belly.
“White section seal just activated.” Word came to them from Sita, which had a
vantage. Other ships echoed reports of other seals in function; Pell had
segmented itself in defense, the first sign that it had defensive reactions left
in it.
“Scan’s got something,” came panicked word from a crew member behind her. “Could
be a merchanter out of pattern. Can’t tell.”
She wiped her face and tried to concentrate on all the threads in her hands.
“Just stay put,” she said. “If we breach those umbilicals we’ve got dead in the
thousands out there. Do manual seal. Don’t break, don’t break those
connections.”
“Takes time,” someone said. “We may not have it.”
“So start doing it,” she wished them.
vii
Pell: sector blue one: command central
The red lights which had flared across the boards had diminished in number. Jon
Lukas paced from one to the other post and watched techs’ hands, watching scan,
watching the activity everywhere they still had monitor. Hale stood guard beyond
the windows, in central com, with Daniels; Clay was here, at one side of the
room, Lee Quale on the other, and others of Lukas Company security, none of the
station’s own. The techs and directors questioned nothing, working feverishly at
the emergencies which occupied them.
There was fear in the room, more than fear of the attack outside. The presence
of guns, the lasting blackout… they knew, Jon reckoned, they well knew that
something was amiss in Angelo Konstantin’s silence, in the failure of any of the
Konstantins or their lieutenants to reach this place.
A tech handed him a message and fled back to his seat without meeting his eyes.
It was a repeated query from Downbelow main base. That was a problem they could
defer. For now they held central, and the offices, and he did not intend to