“Marie. Marie, they’re looking at us. Let’s just walk.”
“Nerves. All right. “ Marie put the camera back in her pocket and they started away, but the men started across the dock, four of them.
“Damn,” Tom said. “Marie,—”
“Just keep walking.”
“We could go into a bar. It’s safer.”
“I don’t like to be in places.”
God. Marie was sane ninety-nine point nine percent of the time. And then you got the schitzy tenth percent.
“I don’t care, we should get off the dock… get where we’ve got protection…”
Marie threw a look over her shoulder. Started running. He did, casting a fast look back, and they had, and he caught up to Marie, grabbed her arm as they were running and tried to drag her into the nearest bar, but Marie started fighting him and he let go and put on double speed as the Corinthian crewmen came pounding up the deck behind them.
They knocked into a woman coming out of a bar, knocked her flat, and kept going. People were shouting.
Then he saw people start to run toward them from down the dock in the other direction, and realized it was Saja in the lead.
Marie started to change direction. “It’s Saja!” he yelled at her, and grabbed her and ran for oncoming reinforcements.
But Corinthian personnel weren’t giving up the chase. They reached Saja and three of the cousins, and Saja had pulled a length of light chain from his pocket, the cousins had come up with other contraband, and there wasn’t time to think about anything but getting Marie out of there.
Except Marie wouldn’t go, Marie had a piece of chain, too, and it whipped about and caught a Corinthian crewman across the neck. There was a pile-up of bodies as the man went down, Marie went down, and the nearest bar emptied out more Corinthians.
“Security!” somebody yelled, on their side or Corinthian’s or the bystanders, he wasn’t sure, only a number of people had mixed into it that weren’t Corinthian or Sprite, people yelling that the cops were coming, about the time a fist came out of nowhere and hit him in the temple.
He couldn’t see. He stumbled over somebody’s leg or arm and went down, trying to fend off the attack with his uplifted arm, hearing chains flying and people yelling—he heard somebody yell cops, and look out, and he couldn’t find Marie, couldn’t find anything but the deck-plates. He scrambled for what he thought was a clear zone, and met what might be the frontage wall, he wasn’t sure. Hands helped him up, held onto him as the dark gave way to hazy sight and an orbiting couple of red spots.
Flashing blue, then. The cops were coming in, breaking it up with stun-sticks and bare hands. He didn’t see Marie. He didn’t know what to do. They were hauling people out of the tangle on the deck and arresting them and he found space to retreat at his back, people just pushing past him to shout information, who’d swung, who’d done what, the cops were shouting to calm down, they wanted officers, and they wanted them now.
He heard Saja saying he was an officer, dammit, and Corinthians started it, and somebody else shouting it was Sprite and there was a crazy woman trying to kill their captain, but Marie wasn’t anywhere in sight, Marie was loose somewhere and she was liable to do anything… or some Corinthian could have dragged her off, he didn’t know and he didn’t take station police as going to listen to a spacer quarrel.
He had the chance. He just backed away, just turned and kept walking, dizzy, his head hurting. He wasn’t aware of where he was walking, only it turned out to be toward Corinthian, and where they’d come from, and then he knew where Marie would go if she was loose. If she wasn’t crazy, she’d want the evidence to prove to the universe Corinthian was guilty and they’d had the motive to attack her, she’d fry Austin Bowe if it was the last and only thing she could do, and the evidence, if she couldn’t get at Corinthian’s own data, was at an address.