Company Wars 01 – Downbelow Station

not belong here, with the likes of Abe Blass and these grim very-same people.

His father had made him expendable. If he were ambitious he would try to make

points for himself in these circumstances, ingratiate himself with Union. He did

not. He knew his abilities and his limits, and he wanted Roseen, wanted his

comforts, wanted a good drink he could not have with the drugs filling his

system.

It was not going to work, none of it; and they would snatch him Unionside where

everyone walked in step, and that would be the end of everything he knew. He

feared changes. What he had at Pell was good enough. He had never asked much of

life or of anyone, and the thought of being out here in the center of nothing at

all… gave him nightmares.

But he had no choices. His father had seen to that.

Blass came finally, sat down and solemnly spread charts on the table and

explained things to him as if he were someone of consequence to the mission. He

looked at the diagram and tried to understand the premises of this shifting

about through nothing, when he could not in fact understand where they were,

which was essentially nowhere.

“You should feel very confident,” Blass said. “I assure you you’re in a far

safer place than the station is right now.”

“You’re a very high officer in Union,” he said, “aren’t you? They wouldn’t send

you like this… otherwise.”

Blass shrugged.

“Hammer and Swan’s Eye … all the ships you’ve got near Pell?”

Blass shrugged again. That was his answer.

Chapter Six

« ^ »

i

Maintenance access white 9-1042; 2100 hrs.

The men had come and gone for a long time, men-in-shells, carrying guns. Satin

shivered and tucked further back into the shadows by the cargo lift. They were

many who had run when the Lukas directed, who had run again when the stranger

men came, by the ways that the hisa could use, the narrow ways, the dark tunnels

where hisa could breathe without masks and men could not. Men of the Upabove

knew these ways but they had not yet shown them to the strangers, and hisa were

safe, though some of them cried deep in the dark, deep, deep below, so that men

would not hear.

There was no hope here. Satin pursed her lips and sidled backward in a crouch,

waited while the air changed, scampered back into safe darkness. Hands touched

her. There was male-scent. She hissed in reproof and smelt after the one who was

hers. Arms folded her about. She laid her head wearily against a hard shoulder,

comforting as she was comforted. Bluetooth offered her no questions. He knew

that there was no better news, for he had said as much when she had insisted on

going out to see.

It was trouble, bad trouble. Lukases spoke and gave orders, and strangers

threatened. Old One was not here… none of the long-timers were, having gone

somewhere about their own business, to the protection of important things, Satin

reckoned. To duties ordered by important humans and perhaps duties which

regarded hisa.

But they had disobeyed, had not gone to the supervisors, no more than the Old

Ones had gone, who also hated Lukases.

“Go back?” someone asked finally.

They would be in trouble if they turned themselves in after running. Men would

be angry with them, and the men had guns. “No,” she said, and when there was

muttering to the contrary, Bluetooth turned his head to spit a surlier negative.

“Think,” he said. “We go there, men can be there, bad trouble.”

“Hungry,” another protested.

No one answered.

Men might take their friendship from them for what they had done. They realized

that clearly now. And without that friendship, they might be on Downbelow

always. Satin thought of the fields of Downbelow, the soft clouds she had once

thought solid enough to sit on, the rain and the blue sky and the

gray-green-blue leaves, the flowers and soft mosses… most of all the air which

smelled of home. Bluetooth dreamed of that, perhaps, as the heat of her spring

faded, and she had not quickened, being young, in her first adult season.

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