feel out there.”
Orders flashed. A third time the station destabilized. Green nine corridor began
to show clear as people raced for smaller spaces, even smaller corridors. Jon
punched through to Hale again. “Get forces out there. Get those docks clear;
I’ve given you your chance, confound you.”
“Sir,” Hale said, and winked out again. Jon turned full circle, looked
distractedly at the techs, at Lee Quale, who clung to a handhold by the door. He
signaled Quale, caught his sleeve and hauled him close when he came. “The
unfinished business,” he said, “down on green dock. Get down there and finish
it, understand? Finish it.”
“Yes, sir,” Quale breathed, and fled… with sense enough to know, surely, that
their lives rested on it.
Union might win. Until then they claimed station neutrality, held onto what they
could. Jon paced the aisle, catching at chairs and counters in the occasional
strong flux, trying to keep the whole center from panic. He had Pell. He had
already what Union had promised him, and would have it under Mazian and under
Union too, if he was careful; and he had been, far more than Jessad had ordered
him to be. There were no witnesses left alive in Angelo’s office, none in Legal
Affairs, abortive as that raid had been. Only Alicia… who knew nothing, who
harmed no one, who had no voice, and her sons…
Damon was the danger. Damon and his wife. Over Quen he had no control… but if
young Damon started making charges—
He cast a look over his shoulder, suddenly missed Kressich, Kressich and two who
were supposed to be watching him.
The desertion of his own enraged him, of Kressich—he was relieved. Kressich
would vanish back into the hordes of Q, frightened and unreachable.
Only Jessad… if they had not gotten him, if he was loose, near something vital—
On scan the riders were moving closer. Pell had yet a little time, before
Mazian’s troops hit. A tech handed him positive id on the ships that waited out
there; Mallory and Porey, Mazian’s two executioners. They had a name, the one
for ruthlessness and the other for enjoying it. Porey was the other one, then.
That was no good news.
He stood and sweated, waiting.
viii
Green dock
Something was going on outside. Damon walked over the littered floor of the dark
shop and leaned there, trying again to see out the scarred window, jerked as the
red explosion of a shot distorted in the scratches. There was screaming mingled
with the grinding of machinery in operation.
“Whoever’s out there now, they’re moving this way and they’ve got guns.” He
edged back from the door, moving carefully in the lessened G. Josh stooped,
gathered up one of the rods that had been part of a ruined display, offered it.
Damon took it and Josh got another for himself. He moved up near the doorway,
and Josh went to the other side of it, back to the wall. There was no sound near
them outside, a lot of shouting far away. Damon risked a look, the light coming
from the other way, jerked back again at the sight of human shadows near the
scarred window.
The door whipped open, carded from outside, someone with priority. Two men
dashed in, guns drawn. Damon slammed the steel rod down on a head, eyes
unfocusing for horror of it, and Josh hit from the other side. The men fell
strangely in the low G, and a gun skittered loose. Josh scooped it up, fired
twice to be sure, and one jerked, dying. “Get the gun,” Josh snapped, and Damon
bent and pushed fastidiously at the body, found the unfamiliar plastic of the
gun butt in a dead hand. Josh was on his knees, rolled the other body, began to
strip it. “Clothes,” Josh said. “Cards. id’s that work.”
Damon laid the gun aside and swallowed his distaste, stripped the limp body,
took off his own suit, struggled into the bloody coveralls… there would be men
aplenty in the corridors with bloodstains on them. He searched the pockets for a
card, found the papers there, found the card lying where the body’s left hand