If you take my orders, we’re headed out our own way, going back to what we’ve
always done. If you want to follow Mazian, I’m sure turning me in would pay your
way back to him in style. Right now there can’t be anyone else he’d rather have
his hands on. You go deal with Mazian, if enough of you want to. But for me… no.
No one runs Norway but me so long as I’m in any condition to say so.”
A murmur came back over com. Channels were wide open. The murmur took on
distinction… rhythm. Signy… Signy … Sig-ny… Sig-ny … It spread to the bridge:
“Sig-ny!” Crew rose out of their places. She looked about her, jaw set, and
determined that her composure would hold.. They were hers. Norway was.
“Sit down!” she shouted at them. “You think this is a holiday?”
They were in danger. Australia might have been diversion. They were moving too
fast for reliable scan now, and Atlantic’s position and Pacific’s were
conjecture: anything could turn up out of the hazed comp projections of
longscan, and there were riders loose.
“Rig for jump,” she said. “Lay for 58 deep. Keep us out of the way for a while.”
Her own riders were still at Pell. With luck they could dodge long enough.
Mazian would be too busy to bother. With sense they would lay low, trusting her,
believing in her, that she would come back for them if she possibly could. She
meant to. Had to. They desperately needed the protective riders. With any sense
at all the riders would have scattered to the far side of everywhere when they
realized Norway was running. She had never yet failed them. And Mazian knew
that.
She put her mind from it and punched the med station. “How’s Di?”
“Di’s fine,” a familiar voice answered for himself. “Let me up there.”
“Not on your life.” She punched him out and pressed guard one. “Our prisoners
break any bones in that?”
“All in one piece.”
“Bring them up here.”
She settled into her cushion, leaned back, watched the progress of events,
mapped in her mind their position out of plane of the Pell System, moving out
for safe jump, at half light speed. Damage control reported in, a compartment
voided, a little portion of Norway’s gut spilled out into the cold, but not in a
personnel section… nothing serious, nothing to impair jump capacity. No dead. No
injured. She breathed easier.
Time to get out. For close to an hour the signals of what was going on at Pell
had been flashing toward ships that would kick it on, until it ended up in Union
scan. It was about to become an unhealthy region for bystanders.
A light went on her board. She powered her seat about, faced the prisoners who
had come in the door aft, hands secured behind them, reasonable precaution in
the tight aisles of the bridge. No one got on Norway’s bridge; no outsider…
until these two. Special cases… Josh Talley and Konstantin.
“Reprieve,” she said. “Thought you’d both want to know.”
Perhaps they failed to understand. The looks they gave her were full of
misgivings.
“We’ve quit the Fleet. We’re bound for the Deep, for good. You’re going to live,
Konstantin.”
“Not for my sake.”
She gave a breath of a laugh. “Hardly. But you get the benefit of it, you see.”
“What’s happened to Pell?”
“Your speakers were live. You heard me. That’s what’s happening to Pell, and now
Union has a choice, doesn’t it? Save Pell or chase after Mazian in hot pursuit.
And we’re getting out of here so we don’t confuse the issue.”
“Help them,” Konstantin said. “For the love of God, wait. Wait and help them.”
A second time she laughed, looked sourly on Konstantin’s earnest face.
“Konstantin, what could we do? Norway’s taking no refugees. Can’t. Let you off?
Not under Mazian’s nose, or Union’s. They’d dust us so fast…”
But it could be done… when they went back after their riders, a pass by Pell…
“Mallory,” Josh said, coming closer to her, as close as the guards would let
him. He shook at the restraint of their hands and she signed, so that they let