had dropped it. He canted the id folder to the light. Lee Anton Quale… Lukas
Company…
Quale. Quale, from the Downbelow mutiny… and Jon Lukas’s employ; in Jon’s
employ, and Jon had comp in his control—when Q happened to get the doors open,
when Konstantins happened to have been murdered in Pell’s tightest security…
when his card stopped working and murderers knew how to locate him—it was Jon up
there.
A hand closed on his shoulder. “Come on, Damon.”
He rose, flinched as Josh used his gun to burn Quale’s face beyond recognition,
the other corpse afterward. Josh’s own face was sweat-slicked in the light from
the door, rigid with horror, but the reactions were right, a man whose instincts
knew what they were doing. He headed for the dock and Damon ran with him, out
into the light, slowed at once, for the docks were virtually bare. White dock
seal was in place; the seal of green dock was hidden up the horizon. They walked
gingerly across the front of the huge seal of white, got in among the gantries
across the dock, walked along within that cover, while the horizon unfolded
downward, showing them a group of men working at the docking machinery, moving
slowly and carefully in reduced G. Corpses and papers and debris lay scattered
all across the docks, out in open spaces which would be difficult to reach
without being seen. “Enough cards lying out there,” Josh said, “to give us
plenty of names.”
“For any lock not voice-keyed,” Damon murmured. He kept his eye to the men at
work and those standing guard down by the green niner entry, visible at this
range—walked out carefully to the nearest corpse, hoping it was a corpse, and
not someone dazed or shamming. He knelt, still watching the workers, felt
through the pockets and came up with a card and additional papers. He pocketed
them and went to the next, while Josh plundered others. Then nerves sent him
scurrying back to cover, and Josh joined him at once. They moved further up the
dock.
“Blue seal is open,” he said, as that arch came down off horizon. He entertained
a wild, momentary hope of hiding, getting to blue sector when the traffic in the
corridors returned to normal, getting up to blue one and asking questions at
gunpoint. It was fantasy. They were not going to live that long. He did not
reckon they would.
“Damon.”
He looked, followed the direction Josh indicated, up through the gantry lines to
the first berth in green: green light. A ship was in approach, whether Mazian’s
or Union’s there was no telling. Com thundered out, echoing instructions in the
emptiness. The ship was closing with the docking cone, coming in fast. “Come
on,” Josh hissed at him, pulling at his arm, insisting on a break for green
nine.
“The G isn’t going,” he murmured, resisting Josh’s urging. “Don’t you see it’s a
trick? Central’s got the corridors cleared for their own forces to move in them.
Those ships wouldn’t dock with G completely unstable; no way they’d risk that
with a big ship. Just a little flux to quell the riot. And it won’t stay
cleared. If we run into those corridors we’ll be in the middle of it. No. Stay
put.”
“ECS501,” he heard over the loudspeaker then, and his heart lifted.
“One of Mallory’s riders,” Josh muttered at his side. “Mallory. Union’s
retreated.”
He looked at Josh, at the hate which burned in the angel’s haggard face… hope
cancelled.
The minutes passed. The ship snugged in. The dock crew ran to secure the
umbilicals, thrust the connections in. The access slammed into seal with a hiss
audible across the empty distance. Machinery whined and slammed beyond it, the
lock in function, and the dock-side crew started running.
A handful of men poured out of the obscuring periphery of the gantries,
unarmored… two running across to the far side, to take up position with rifles
leveled. There was the sound of others running, and com was on again, warning of
Norway itself inbound.
“Get your head down,” Josh hissed, and Damon moved slowly, knelt by the brace of
one of the movable tanks where Josh had taken closer cover, tried to see what