Company Wars 01 – Downbelow Station

precautionary seal—if her people up in blue control could get it straightened

out: they had dead switches, the whole system jammed by an override. G flux

still hit them at intervals; fluid mass in the tanks had to be shunted as fast

as the lines could jet it their way, everything in tanks anywhere, to

compensate; station had attitude controls; they might be using them. It was

terrifying in a huge space like the docks, the up and down of weight, unsettling

premonition that at any moment they might get a flux of more than a kilo or two.

“Ms. Quen!”

She turned. The runner had not gotten through: some ass in the line of troops

must have turned him back. She started toward him in haste, toward the line that

suddenly, inexplicably, was wavering, facing about toward them, rifles leveled.

A shout roared out at her back. She looked, to the upcurving horizon, saw an

indistinct wavefront of runners coming down that apparent wall toward them,

beyond the curtaining section arch. Riot.

“The seal!” she shouted into the useless handcom, dead as it had been. The

troops were moving; she was between them and targets. She ran for the far side,

the tangle of gantries, heart pounding, looked back again as the line of troops

advanced, narrowing their perimeter, passing her by, some of them taking

positions in the cover of the gantries. She thumbed the handcom and desperately

tried her office: “Shut it down!”—but the mob was past blue control, might be in

it. The noise of the mob swelled, a tide pouring toward them while others were

still coming down off the horizon, an endless mass. She realized suddenly the

aspect of the distant faces, behavior not panic, but hate; and weapons—pipes,

clubs—

The troops fired. There were screams as the first rank went down. She stood

paralyzed, not twenty meters from the troops’ rear, seeing more and more of the

mob pouring toward them over their own dead.

Q. Q was loose. They came waving weapons and shrieking, a sound which grew from

distant roar to deafening, with no end to their numbers.

She turned, ran, staggering in the flux, in the wake of her own fleeing dock

crews, of scattered Downers who saw man-trouble and sought shelter.

The noise grew behind her.

She doubled her pace, a hand to her belly, trying to cushion the shock in her

stride. There were screams behind her, almost drowned in the roar. They would

overrun these troops too, gain the rifles… coming on by the sheer weight of

numbers. She looked back… saw green nine vomiting forth scattered runners,

getting past the troops. Panic showed in their faces. She gasped for air and

kept going, despite the dull ache in her pelvic arch, dog-trotting when she

must, reeling in the G surges. Runners began to pass her, a scattered few at

first, then others, a buffeting flood as she passed white section arch; and on

the horizon ahead a tide breaking crossways from niner entries, thousands upon

thousands up the sweep of the horizon, running for the merchanter ships at dock,

screaming that merged with the cries behind, men and women screaming and pushing

each other.

Men passed her in greater and greater numbers… bloody, reeking, waving weapons,

shrieking. A shock hit her back, threw her to a knee and the man kept running.

Another hit her… stumbled, kept going. She staggered up, arm numb, tried for the

gantries, the shelter of supports and lines… shots burst out ahead of her from a

ship’s access.

“Quen!” someone yelled. She could not tell the source, looked about, tried to

fight the human tide, and stumbled in the press.

“Quen!” She looked about; a hand caught her arm and pulled her, and a gun fired

past her head. Two others grabbed her, hauled her through the press… a blow

grazed her head and she staggered, flung her weight then with the men who were

trying to pull her through, amid the web of lines and gantries. There were

screams and shots; others reached out to seize them and she tensed to fight,

thinking them the mob, but a wall of bodies absorbed her and the men with her,