Company Wars 01 – Downbelow Station

was happening farther up, but there was a skein of umbilicals in the way.

Mallory was using her own men for dock crews; but Jon Lukas must still be in

command up in central, cooperating with Mazian, and in the pressure of Union

attack, Mazian would choose efficiency over justice. Go out there, approach

armed and nervous Company troops, raise a charge of murder and conspiracy while

Jon Lukas physically held central and station, and Mazian had Union on his mind?

“I could go out there,” he said, unsure of his conclusions.

“They’d swallow you alive,” Josh said. “You’ve nothing to offer them.”

He looked at Josh’s face. Of the gentle man Adjustment had turned out… there was

nothing left, but perhaps the pain. Set him at a comp board, Josh had said once,

and he might remember comp; set him into war and he had other instincts. Josh’s

thin hands clutched the gun between his knees, and his eyes were set on the arch

of the dock, where Norway was moving in to dock. Hate. His face was pale and

intense. He might do anything. Damon felt the butt of the pistol in his own

right hand, shifted his grip on it, moved his forefinger onto the trigger. An

Adjusted Unioner… whose Adjustment was coming undone, who hated, who might go on

coming apart. It was a day for murders, when the dead out there were too many to

count, when there were no rules left, no kinships, no friendships. War had come

to Pell, and he had lived naive all his life. Josh was dangerous—had been

trained to be dangerous—and nothing they had done to his mind had changed that.

Com announced arrival; there was the boom of contact. Josh swallowed visibly,

eyes fixed. Damon reached with his left hand, caught Josh’s arm. “Don’t. Don’t

do anything, hear me? You can’t reach her.”

“Don’t intend to,” Josh said without looking at him. “Only so you have as good

sense.”

He let the gun to his side, finger slowly removed from the trigger, the taste of

bile in his mouth. Norway was in solidly now, a second crashing of locks and

joinings, a seal hissing into union.

Troops boiled out onto the dock, formed up, with shouts of orders, took up

positions relieving the rifle-bearing crewmen, armored figures, alike and

implacable. And of a sudden there was another figure from high up the curve, a

shout, and other troops came from the recess of the shops and offices along that

stretch, from the bars and sleepovers, troops left behind, rejoining their

comrades of the Fleet, carrying their wounded or dead with them. There was

reunion, a wavering in the disciplined lines that took them in, embracings and

cheers raised. Damon pressed as close to the concealing machinery as he could,

and Josh shrank down beside him.

An officer bellowed orders and the troops started to move in order, from the

docks toward the green nine entry, and while some held it with leveled rifles,

some advanced within it.

Damon shifted back, farther and farther within the shadows, and Josh moved with

him. Shouts reached them, the echoing bellow of a loudspeaker: Clear the

corridor. Suddenly there were shouts and screams and firing. Damon leaned his

head against the machinery and listened, eyes shut, once and twice felt Josh

flinch at the now-familiar sounds and did not know whether he did also.

It’s dying, he thought with exhausted calm, felt tears leak from his eyes. He

shivered finally. Call it what they would, Mazian had not won; there was no

possibility that the outnumbered Company ships had beaten off Union for good. It

was only a skirmish, decision postponed. There would be more such, until there

was no more Fleet and no more Company, and what became of Pell would be in other

hands. Jump had outmoded the great star stations. There were worlds now, and the

order and priority of things had changed. The military had seen it. Only the

Konstantins had not. His father had not, who had believed in a way neither

Company nor Union, but Pell’s—that kept the world it circled in trust, that

disdained precautions within itself, that valued trust above security, that

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