Company Wars 01 – Downbelow Station

comment. “If you can stop the mobs—do it.”

“Yes,” said Jessad quietly. “Quiet at this stage would serve us. Welcome to our

council, Mr. Kressich, Mr. Coledy.”

“Give me com,” Coledy said. “General address.”

“Give it to him,” Jessad said.

Jon drew a deep breath, suddenly with questions trembling on his lips, what kind

of game Jessad was playing with him, pushing these two into the inner circle;

Jessad’s own, as Hale was his? He swallowed the questions, swallowed anger,

remembering what was out there, how fragile it all was. “Come with me,” he said,

led the way inside, took Coledy to the nearest com board. Scan was visible from

there, Mazian still holding steady. It was too much to hope that Mazian would be

easily disposed of. Far too much, that it would be easy. The Fleet had the area

pocketed… Mazian’s ships, dotted here and there about the multi-level halo that

was the merchanters’ orbit about Pell.

“Move,” he said to a tech, dislodged him, put Coledy in that place and himself

punched through to com central. Bran Hale’s face lit up the screen. “Got a call

for you to send out,” he told Hale. “This one goes on general override.”

“Right,” Hale said.

“Mr. Lukas,” someone called, breaking the general hush in central. He looked

about. Scan screens were flashing intersect alert.

“Where is it?” he exclaimed. Scan had nothing definite. A peppering of yellow

haze warned of something incoming, fast. Comp began to siren alarms. There were

soft outcries, curses, techs reaching for boards.

“Mr. Lukas!” someone cried, frantic appeal.

iv

Finity’s End

“Scan,” the alarm rang out. Elene saw the flicker and cast a frantic look at

Neihart.

“Break us loose,” Neihart said, avoiding her eyes. “Go”!

The word flashed ship to ship. Elene gathered herself against the parting jolt…

too late to run for the dock, far too late; umbilicals were long since shut off,

ships grappled-to only.

A second jolt. They were free, peeling away from station as the whole row of

still-docked merchanters followed, counterclockwise round the rim; as any

mistake in inside shutdown might mean a ruptured umbilical, as whole sections of

dock might decompress. She sat still, feeling the familiar sensations she had

thought she might never feel again, free, loose, like the ship, outward bound

from what was coming at them; and feeling as if part of her were torn away.

A second invader passed… came zenith and disrupted scan, triggered alarms… was

gone, on its way toward the Fleet. They were alive, drifting loose at their

helpless slow motion rate, coming out on an agreed course, a general drift of

all those undocking. She folded her arm across her belly and watched the screens

before her in Finity’s command center, thinking on Damon, on all that was back

there.

Dead, maybe; they said Angelo was dead; maybe Alicia was; maybe Damon—maybe… she

hurled the thought at herself, trying to accept it sanely, if it had to be

accepted, if there was revenge to be gotten for it. She drew deep breaths,

thinking on Estelle, on all her kin. A second time spared, then. A talent for

leaving disasters. She had a life in her that was Quen and Konstantin at once,

names that meant something in the Beyond; names which Union would not find

comfortable for them in future, that she would give them cause to remember.

“Get us out of here,” she said to Neihart, cold and furious; and when he looked

at her, seeming amazed by this shift of mind: “Get us out. Run for jump. Pass

the word. Matteo’s Point. Flash the word system-wide. We’re leaving, right

through the Fleet.”

She was Quen, and Konstantin, and Neihart moved. Finity’s End overshot the

station and kept going, broadcasting instruction to every merchanter near and

far in the system. Mazian, Union, Pell—none of them could stop it.

Instruments blurred before her eyes, cleared again with a blink. “After

Matteo’s,” she said to Neihart, “we jump again. There’ll be others… in deep.

Folk who’ve had enough, who wouldn’t come to Pell. We’ll find them.”

“No hope of your own there, Quen.”

“No,” she agreed with a shake of her head. “None of mine. They’re gone. But I

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