A carrier blip exploded onto them, underside. Norway held to its necessary
course, boards flaring red, alarms ringing, collision with a world imminent and
too much speed to dump in time.
And of a sudden there were other blips, small and coming hard in a ring nose on
to them.
Norway… Norway… Norway… their comp flashed.
Their own riders.
“Keep on!” she yelled at Graff over a cheer from the bridge. Comp took the
maneuver as hard as the ship could bear, a move that tore at human bodies and
made nightmare of half a dozen seconds. They started dumping speed hard, with
Australia coming dead at them through the needle’s eye of their riders,
riderless itself or with none deployed.
“Barrage,” she said, swallowing the taste of blood. The screens flashed terror:
it was collision imminent fore and aft, a C-approximate ship bearing right down
their tail and equally locked in escape curve from Pell. Fifty-fifty what
maneuver would impact them, up, down, or straight on.
Graff dropped: topside fired and Australia whipped over as fields sent
instruments into chaos. The hull moaned and the whole ship jolted.
Maneuver continued; suddenly there was breakup on scan, dust screaming over
their hull. “Where are they?” Graff yelled at the scan tech. Signy bit through
her lip and winced, sucked at the blood. Australia could have dumped chaff;
could have blown; they kept dumping speed, her order unchanged.
“… cleared Pell,” a rider voice came to them, what their own scan was beginning
to show as they cleared the danger themselves. “And lost a vane… think Edger’s
lost a vane.”
There was no way they could see; Australia was on long-scan: it was the nature
of the chaff they reckoned. “Form up,” she ordered her riders, feeling more
secure with them about Norway like four extra arms. Edger could not risk further
damage now, not if a vane was gone; not for any revenge.
“They’re going for jump,” she heard. It was a Union voice, none that she knew—a
foreign accent. Suddenly there was a vast coldness in her gut, a knowledge that
it was all beyond recall.
Be thorough, Mazian had taught her, teaching her most that she knew. No
half-measures.
She leaned back in the cushion. All over Norway there was silence.
iv
Pell: sector blue one, number 0475
Lily at least remained. Alicia Lukas-Konstantin let her eyes move about the
walls, last of all to the small module, part of the molded white of the bed
itself, two lights, one on, one off, one green, one red. Red now. They were on
internal systems.
Power was threatened. Lily did not know, perhaps; she managed the machines, but
what powered them was likely to be mysterious to her. And the Downer’s eyes
remained calm, her hand remained gentle, stroking her hair, a remaining contact
with the living.
Angelo’s gifts, the structures about her, had proven as stubborn as her own
brain. The screens kept changing, the machines kept pumping life through her
veins, and Lily stayed.
There was an off switch. If she asked Lily, Lily, ignorant, would push it. But
that was cruel, to one who believed in her.
She did not.
v
Norway
Carefully, Damon left his place, felt his way dizzily past the banks of
instruments and the techs to reach Mallory. He hurt; an arm was torn, his neck
ached in its joints. There could not be a soul on Norway spared such misery, the
techs, Mallory herself. She turned bleak eyes on him from her place at the main
boards, powered her cushion about to look at him, nodded slightly.
“So you’ve got your wish,” she said. “Union’s in. They don’t need to track
Mazian now. They know for certain where he’s gone. I’m betting they’ll find a
base at Pell valuable; they’ll save your station, Mr. Konstantin, no question
now. And it’s high time we got ourselves out of here.”
“You said,” he reminded her quietly, “you’d let me off.”
Her eyes darkened. “Don’t press your luck. So maybe I’ll dump you and your
Unioner friend on some merchanter when it suits me. If it suits me. Ever.”
“My home,” he said. He had gathered his arguments; but his voice shook,