Company Wars 01 – Downbelow Station

him go. “Mallory… there is another choice. Go over. There’s a ship, you hear me?

Named Hammer. You could clear yourself. You could stop this… and get amnesty.”

Something got through to Konstantin; the eyes went to Josh, to her,

apprehensive.

“Does he know?” she asked Josh.

“No. Mallory—listen to me. Think, where does it go now? How far and how long?”

“Graff,” she said slowly. “Graff, we’re going back after our riders. Keep us set

for jump. When Mazian clears the system, we’ll move in crosswise, maybe shoot

this Konstantin fellow out where he can take his chances with Union; freighter

might pick him up.”

Konstantin swallowed visibly, his lips bitten to a thin line.

“You know your friend’s Union,” she said. “Not was, you understand. Is. A Union

agent. Special services. Probably knows a great deal that could be of use to us

in our position. Places to avoid, what null points are known to the opposition…”

“Mallory,” Josh pleaded.

She shut her eyes. “Graff,” she said. “This Unioner is making sense to me. Am I

drunk, or does it make sense?”

“They’ll kill us,” Graff said.

“So,” she said, “will Mazian. It goes on from here. To Sol. To a place where

Mazian can find new pickings, gather strength. It’s not a fleet anymore. They’re

looking for loot, things to keep themselves going. For the same thing we are.

And all the null points we know, they know. That’s uncomfortable, Graff.”

“It is,” Graff acknowledged, “uncomfortable.”

She looked at Josh, looked again at Konstantin, whose intense face hoped,

desperately hoped. She snorted disgust and looked at Graff, at helm. “That Union

spotter. Lay course that way. They’ll jump out of scan when they get wind of us

running. Get us contact. We’re going to borrow ourselves a Union fleet.”

“We’re going to run dead on them stumbling about here in the ’tween,” Graff

muttered; and that was true. Space was wide, but there was a hazard of

collision, the nearer they ran to that particular vector out of Pell, two

intersecting courses relying on longscan.

“We take our chance,” she said. “Use the hail.”

She looked then at Josh Talley, at Konstantin. Smiled with all the bitterness in

her. “So I play your game,” she said to Josh. “My way. Do you know their hailing

codes?”

“My memory,” Josh said, “is full of holes.”

“Think of one.”

“Use my name,” Josh said. “And Gabriel’s.”

She ordered it, looked long and thoughtfully on the pair of them. “Let them go,”

she said finally to the troopers who guarded them. “Let them loose.”

It was done. She half turned the cushion, averted her eyes momentarily to the

screens and glanced back again, at the incredible presence of a Unioner and a

stationer loose on her deck. “Find yourselves a secure spot,” she said. “We’re

bending an arc in a moment… and maybe worse ahead.”

ii

Pell: blue sector one, number 0475; 0100 hrs, md.; 1300 hrs. a.

The flying-feeling hit them from time to time. They huddled together, and some

hisa outside in the corridor moaned in fear, but not those near Sun-her-friend.

They held to her, so she should not fall, so that she at least should be safe.

Even great Sun was shaken, and staggered in his course. The stars shook, in the

darkness round about the white bed and the Dreamer.

“Be not ’fraid,” old Lily whispered, stroking the Dreamer’s brow. “Be not

’fraid. Dream we safe, safe.”

“Turn up the sound, Lily,” the Dreamer whispered, her eyes tranquil as ever.

“Where’s Satin?”

“I here,” Satin said, easing her way through the others to Lily’s place. The

sound increased, the human voices which shrieked and wailed over the com and

tried to call out instructions.

“It’s central,” the Dreamer said. “Satin, Satin, all of you—listen. They’ve

killed Jon… harmed central. They’re coming… the Union men, more men-with-guns,

you understand?”

“Not come here,” Lily insisted, rejoining them.

“Satin,” the Dreamer said, staring at the quaking stars. “I will tell you the

way… each turn, each step; and you have to remember… can you remember so long a

thing?”

“I Storyteller” she declared “I ’member good, Sun-she-friend.”

The Dreamer told her, step by step; and the thing itself frightened her, but her

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