There was a sound of machinery inside the open cargo lift: the lights were extinguished . . . Merry’s orders. They would make no targets.
Shadows passed the car: the three Warriors skittered over the wet pavement and into the lift, following their own sight, that cared nothing for darkness.
No one moved. An inestimable time later she heard Merry’s voice over the radio advising her they had the ship.
She left the car. “By squads,” she shouted. “Board!”
She went with the first, that drew Mundy along with them—reached the dark security of the lift. Mundy screamed at the police, a voice swiftly muffled again. The next ten started their retreat.
“Be still,” she said, annoyed by continued struggles from the outsider. “They’ll do nothing for you. Don’t try my patience.”
The last squad was coming in, rifles still directed at the police. Her attention was fixed on that. And suddenly there was another truck coming. She expelled a long breath of tension, held it again as the truck scattered bewildered police, as it came straight for the cargo lift and jolted up within, rain-wet and loud, the azi with her dodging it. More of her men poured from it, dragging prisoners.
Tallen. They had got him, and all his folk. She found her heart able to beat stably again, and shouted orders as the truck backed out again. It almost clipped the hatch, missed. The azi driver bailed out while it was still moving and raced for the hatch, pelted aboard.
She hit the close-switch, and the lift jolted up, taking them up, while the ITAK police gazed at the diminishing view of them. Just at total dark, she hit the lights, and looked over the azi and the Warriors and the shaken prisoners.
“Ser Tallen,” she said, and nodded toward Tom Mundy, who had no joy to see his own people. Pity took her, for Mundy turned his face away as far as he could, and when she bade Tallen released to see to him, Mundy wanted only to turn away, a shaven ghost in grey.
“You’re going home.” she said to Tallen. She had no time for other things. She gave brief orders to an older azi, setting him in charge, and set herself in the personnel lift, rode it up to more immediate problems.
A nervous pointing of weapons welcomed her above; she waved them aside and looked past Merry to the watch crew, who huddled under the threat of guns, way from controls, in the small passenger compartment.
“Kontrin,” the officer-in-charge said, and rose: the azi let him. He was, she noted, ISPAK, not ITAK. “We’ve done everything requested.”
“Thank you. Come forward, ser, and run me some instrument checks; I suppose that you can do that, until the crew shows.”
The ISPAK beta wiped at his face and came with her, well-guarded, showed her the functioning of the board; it was exceedingly simple, lacking a number of convenient automations. Outside, there was the ministration of ground-service. That, she reflected, simply had to be trusted: one simply minimised the chances.
She settled into the nearest of the cushions, folded her arms and closed her eyes as the first touch of dawn began to show, for she was robbed of sleep this night, and she reckoned that this frightened beta would hardly risk anything with so many armed azi at her back.
Then crew arrived, with a flurry of distressed calls to the bridge; they were no more relaxed by the time they had negotiated the personnel lift, past the azi below and the Warriors with them, and into the upper level to the welcome of Merry’s armed squad.
“Just do your job,” Raen advised them. They settled in, speaking only in fragments and that when they must. “We’re not scheduled,” was the captain’s only protest. “We may not have a berth up there.”
“We’ll get one,” Raen said. She reached for the com switch herself, requested lift clearance, obtained it, priority. If traffic was in the way, it would be diverted or aborted. The shuttle’s engines were in function; it settled earthward as its stilts drew in, and engaged its moving-gear, trundled ponderously out toward the lifting area.