troops were no better uniformed, but armored: that, they kept in condition, at
all costs. She hastened down via the lift into the lower corridor, proceeding
amid the rush of troops Di Janz had ordered to the dock, combat-rigged, through
the access tube and out into the chill wide spaces.
The whole dock was theirs, vast, upward-curving perspective, section arches
curtained by ceiling as the station rim curve swept leftward toward gradual
horizon; on the right a section seal was in use, stopping the eye there. The
place was vacant of all but the dock crews and their gantries; and station
security and the processing desks, and those were well back of Norway’s area.
There were no native workers, not here, not in this situation. Debris lay
scattered across the wide dock, papers, bits of clothing, evidencing a hasty
withdrawal. The dockside shops and offices were empty; the niner corridor midway
of the dock showed likewise vacant and littered. Di Janz’s deep bellow echoed in
the metal girders overhead as he ordered troops deployed about the area where
Hansford was coming in.
Pell dockers moved up. Signy watched and gnawed her lip nervously, glanced aside
as a civ came up to her, youngish, darkly aquiline, bearing a tablet and looking
like business in his neat blue suit. The plug she had in one ear kept advising
her of Hansford’s status, a constant clamor of bad news. “What are you?” she
asked
“Damon Konstantin, captain, from Legal Affairs.”
She spared a second look. A Konstantin. He could be that. Angelo had had two
boys before his wife’s accident. “Legal Affairs,” she said with distaste.
“I’m here if you need anything… or if they do. I’ve got a com link with
central.”
There was a crash. Hansford made a bad dock, grated down the guidance cone and
shuddered into place.
“Get her hooked up and get out!” Di roared at the dock crews: no com for him.
Graff was ordering matters from Norway’s command. Hansford’s crew would stay
sealed on their bridge, working debarcation by remote. “Tell them walk out,” she
heard relayed from Graff. “Any rush at troops will be met with fire.”
The hookups were complete. The ramp went into place.
“Move!” Di bellowed. Dockers pelted behind the lines of troops; rifles were
levelled. The hatch opened, a crash up the access tube.
A stench rolled out onto the chill of the dock. Inner hatches opened and a
living wave surged out, trampling each other, falling. They screamed and shouted
and rushed out like madmen, staggered as a burst of fire went over their heads.
“Hold it!” Di shouted. “Sit down where you are and put your hands on your
heads.”
Some were sitting down already, out of weakness; others sank down and complied.
A few seemed too dazed to understand, but came no farther. The wave had stopped.
At Signy’s elbow Damon Konstantin breathed a curse and shook his head. No word
of laws from him; sweat stood visibly on his akin. His station stared riot in
the face… collapse of systems, Hansford’s death ten thousandfold. There were a
hundred, maybe a hundred fifty living, crouched on the dock by the umbilical
gantry. The ship’s stench spread. A pump labored, flushing air through
Hansford’s systems under pressure. There were a thousand on that ship.
“We’re going to have to go in there,” Signy muttered, sick at the prospect. Di
was moving the others one at a time, passing them under guns into a curtained
area where they were to be stripped, searched, scrubbed, passed on to the desks
or to the medics. Baggage there was none, not with this group, nor papers worth
anything.
“Need a security team suited up for a contamination area,” she told young
Konstantin. “And stretchers. Get us a disposal area prepared. We’re going to
vent the dead; it’s all we can do. Have them ID’ed as best you can,
fingerprints, photos, whatever. Every corpse passed out of here unidentified is
future trouble for your security.”
Konstantin looked ill. That was well enough. So did some of her troops. She
tried to ignore her own stomach.
A few more survivors had made their way to the opening of the access, very weak,