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
Green dock
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